The latest outrage is a father’s video of a U.S. Army barracks at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, the home of the famed 82nd Airborne Division.

It shows the quarters where his soldier son and other soldier sons were sent to live upon their return from combat. Mold and mildew and peeling paint are bad enough, but what about a big barracks bathroom ankle-deep in raw sewage?

Scandals like this latest one and an earlier eruption of public outrage over the miserably maintained quarters where wounded soldiers were warehoused at Walter Reed Army Hospital are an indictment of the core competency of our Army. » read more

Some people are truly unforgettable; larger than life and so full of life that the memory of them lingers long after they're gone. One such man -- the late Capt. B.T. Collins — came roaring back to life for me this week with an announcement of the publication of a new book.

The book is "Outrageous Hero: The B.T. Collins Story" and it's a pure labor of love over the past 15 years by B.T.’s older sister, Maureen Collins Baker, who knew that B.T.’s memory shouldn't be treasured only by those of us who loved him. She wanted his story to live on in the hearts of many more Americans.

B.T. turned up in my office at U.S. News & World Report magazine not long after I'd written a cover story in the fall of 1990 on the 25th anniversary of the epic battles between U.S. and North Vietnamese soldiers in South Vietnam's Ia Drang valley. He wore a steel hook for a right arm and he limped in on a plastic right leg, souvenirs of his second tour in Vietnam. » read more