Enjoy your weekend.
Mullen goes to bat for State Department budget
Regardless, Gates’s push to actually take money from his own department and giving it to State is real, despite some bureaucratic wrangling over the assistance. And the Pentagon’s lobbying will no doubt have an effect if and when Conrad’s budget resolution makes it to the Senate floor. We’re hearing that a bipartisan effort led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-MA, is preparing to try to roll back Conrad’s cuts. Then again, Congress might not even tackle the issue directly this year.
Pentagon to Troop-Killing Superbugs: Resistance Is Futile
Today’s troops have a nine in 10 chance of surviving their battle injuries. But wounds and amputation sites leave them vulnerable to infection, especially by Acinetobacter — an (opportunistic pathogen) somewhat misleadingly nicknamed “Iraqibacter” for its prevalence in war-zone medical facilities. As Wired magazine reported in 2007, the bacteria has infected at least 700 American troops since 2003, and killed at least seven people exposed to it in military clinics.
Floating Causeway Boosts Hospital Ship Ops
Mercy’s solution is to treat patients like rolling stock. In amphibious operations, roll-on cargo vessels will carry on their decks pieces of heavy-duty “lighterage” — basically, motorized causeways — that they can crane into the water to function as a bridge between the large ship and landing craft. Vehicles drive directly out of a side door, onto the lighterage and then into the landing craft. The lighterage is simply an interface.
Christopher R. Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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