Cruz throttled his Honda motorcycle to more than 100 m.p.h. in the chase that wound to North Topsail Beach, police said.
read more here
The Invisible War: Sundance Film Review
12:15 AM PST 1/29/2012 by David Rooney
The Audience Award winner for best documentary at Sundance 2012, Kirby Dick's shocking investigation into widespread sexual assault in the U.S. military is an urgent call to action.
PARK CITY – A gut punch of moral outrage, Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War presents overwhelming evidence that the U.S. military’s purported zero-tolerance attitude to sexual assault is a charade. It illustrates the human cost of that sham with heart-wrenching displays of courage and dignity in the face of institutional indifference. Destined to draw major editorial attention, this hard-hitting advocacy film exposes the dirty secret not as an attack on the armed forces but as an indignant petition to protect the more vulnerable among their ranks.
Emotionally powerful interviews with rape victims, conducted by Dick’s producer Amy Ziering, form the core of the documentary. But even without putting faces to the issue, the statistics alone are staggering. Department of Defense data shows that 20% of servicewomen experience rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment, causing a higher rate of PTSD among them than among men in combat.
Given the repercussions – violence, ostracization, loss of rank or career – it’s estimated that 80% of sexual assault cases in the military go unreported. With 3,158 cases recorded in 2010, that puts the likely total for the year at more than 19,000. Of the more than 108,000 veterans who screened positive for Military Sexual Trauma (MST) in 2010, 45.7% were men.
read more here
Warrior Transition Battalion Command Sergeant Major James Smith has risen quickly to the top of two demanding professions at nearly the same time. / Leaf-Chronicle/Philip GreyWritten by
U.S. Defense Department can't account for billions for Iraq, audit finds
By Josh Levs, CNN
January 29, 2012
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: The U.S. is keeping Iraq out of the loop on some projects, report says
NEW: The U.S. Embassy in Iraq disagrees with that complaint
The Defense Department can't account for about $2 billion in past spending, report says
The department acknowledges a "records management issue"
(CNN) -- The U.S. Defense Department cannot account for about $2 billion it was given to cover Iraq-related expenses and is not providing Iraq with a complete list of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, according to two new government audits.
The reports come from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that, the inspector general says in an audit published Friday.
Although the Department of Defense (DoD) had "internal processes and controls" to track payments, the "bulk of the records are missing," the report says, adding that the department is searching for them.
Other documents are missing as well, including monthly reports documenting expenses, the audit says.
"From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 monthly reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports."read more here
The other major cause for alarm were the deaths of seven children, all 2 years or younger. In each case, police arrested a parent or caregiver.
"We had way too many of those," said 4th Judicial District Attorney Dan May, whose district includes Colorado Springs.
Many of those cases involved families with ties to Fort Carson, May said. And most were not families that had prior contact with county human services.
"I think a lot of these are parents who couldn't believe they did this — who never would have seen themselves doing something like this, except for in that one moment," May said.
El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark, a military wife, said many military families face the added stress of deployment or the return of a service member. Because of the transient nature of the population, they may not have the support system they need.
read more here
