Latest counts of the devastating casualties:
Summary: Tsunami Deaths by Country
Ways to donate:
Earthquake: How to Help [Updated Extensively 12/29]
Also, please check out the map created by elgato at the Swanky Conservative for a look at the geographic immensity and human tragedy of the disaster.
Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Recognizing the obviously detrimental effect of homefront instability on soldiers, the Army is investing in programs to salvage and strengthen marriages among its troops.
With studies showing divorce rates as high as 21 percent among couples where one spouse has been sent off to war, the Army is spending $2 million on a variety of marriage programs, including vouchers for romantic getaways to places like the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.
“I’ve been in the Army 20 years, and I’ve never seen the Army pay for programs like this,” said Lt. Col. Chester Egert, chaplain for the 101st.
One program being implemented Army-wide teaches couples forgiveness and the skills to communicate. It includes a 40-hour course with lessons on the dangers of alcohol and tobacco and how to recognize post-traumatic stress. Soldiers who complete it are rewarded with promotion points and a weekend retreat with their spouse.
“If you learn those skills, you can make an impact on the number of divorces, and the number, we think, of reports of physical violence,” said Col. Glen Bloomstrom, director of ministry initiatives for the Chief of Chaplains.
To make the program more desirable, commanders are encouraged to give their soldiers time off to attend. Baby-sitting is often provided.
“What we’re trying to do is change the culture, that it’s OK to work on your marriage and take some time, and invest in your lifelong relationship — especially now when we’re asking so much of your military spouses,” Bloomstrom said.
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The Army’s recent foray into marriage counseling was started in the late 1990s by a chaplain in Hawaii working with a unit with a high number of divorces. In 2001, laws were changed to allow the Army to pay for lodging and meals for the retreats.
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Egert said the Army’s effort doesn’t just make for stronger families — it makes for better soldiers.
“Soldiers will come apart in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’ll absolutely collapse if they think their wife is going to leave them or their husband is going to leave them,” Egert said. “I’ve seen soldiers hospitalized because they absolutely had a nervous breakdown because they were worried about their families.”
Added Bloomstrom: “You are really giving something that the couples know they need, at a time they may be receptive to hear it.”
I have a little experience in these kind of matters, though only enough to give me a window through which I can peek and gain a small measure of understanding. While at my initial training at Ft. Knox, I was dumped via letter by my girlfriend at the time. Granted, it was nowhere near the ordeal of a divorce or a custody battle, but it most assuredly had an effect on my personal morale and motivation.
I support the aims of the Army’s programs and recognize their potential value. My only question is the awarding of promotion points for involvement — this seams an unfair and unnecessary advantage to married personnel as opposed to their single counterparts. Marriage already has a financial inducement in the services, not to mention the nice little get-aways, etc., mentioned in this article.
Long an exporter of terror, in all reality if not officially, Saudi Arabia is increasingly having to deal with the Islamist bastards that it has allowed to spawn coming home to roost.
Islamic extremists set off bombs and battled with police in the Saudi capital Wednesday night, leaving nine militants and one bystander dead and causing oil prices to jump as the insurgents signaled they will keep up attacks despite the kingdom’s crackdown on al-Qaida.
A car bomb was detonated by remote control near the Interior Ministry in central Riyadh — killing a bystander, according to Saudi TV — followed soon after by an explosion when two suicide attackers tried to bomb a troop recruitment center.
The gunmen who set off the ministry blast fled, but then engaged in a gunbattle with police in northern Riyadh that killed seven militants and wounded an undetermined number of officers, police said.
The attacks came two weeks after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called on his followers to focus attacks on his homeland. While damage to the Interior Ministry was minor, it was a bold assault on the government body at the center of Saudi Arabia’s war on other Islamic extremists.
Prince Ahmed bin Abdel Aziz, the deputy interior minister, told Saudi TV the attackers were all Saudis. He said they were “terrorists (who) took a great risk, because they know that their end is imminent.”
Trust me, the end of Saudi terrorists is very far from imminent.
The first explosion went off around 8:30 p.m. near the Interior Ministry, a huge modern high-rise in a complex that includes a luxury hotel. Two militants set off a car bomb by remote control in a traffic tunnel near the ministry, police said. A limousine driver was killed, Saudi TV said.
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A half hour later, a second explosion shook the city. Two suicide bombers tried to drive into a troop recruitment center about five miles away, but they came under fire from police and set off their explosives prematurely. The two bombers died, but there were no other reports of casualties.
The two militants behind the ministry blast, apparently joined by accomplices, later fought with police in a northern district of the capital. The gunmen, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, holed up in a building and were killed while fighting with officers who surrounded the structure, police said.
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The explosions took place at night, when few employees were at the ministry or the recruitment center. Past militant attacks, including some claimed by al-Qaida, appeared designed to maximize casualties, but drew heavy criticism when many of the dead were Arab and Muslim.
It is interesting to see the extremists buckle slightly under public pressure. Perhaps they should employ some pollsters and focus groups.
Extremists have staged a number of attacks recently, but none on the scale of dramatic operations early this year and last year that killed dozens.
Early Wednesday, a suspected militant was killed in Riyadh after tossing a bomb and shooting at security agents, a security official said. On Tuesday, another suspect and a bystander were killed in a shootout in the same Riyadh neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said. One suspect was captured in that incident.
The extremists’ biggest attack recently came Dec. 6, when militants said to belong to al-Qaida’s Saudi branch stormed the U.S. consulate in Jiddah, killing nine people.
Ten days later, bin Laden issued his audiotape — his first message in years directed specifically at Saudis. He praised those who carried out the consulate raid and urged his followers to attack the kingdom’s oil installations to weaken both the West and the Saudi royal family.
Saudi forces have cracked down on al-Qaida — killing and arresting a large number of its suspected top figures in the country — after the large attacks early in the year.
In May, gunmen attacked oil company compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast of Riyadh, and killed 22 people, 19 of them foreigners. Earlier the same month, attackers stormed the offices of an American company in Yanbu, 220 miles north of Jiddah, killing six Westerners and a Saudi.
On April 21, a suicide bomber struck a government building in Riyadh, killing five people. In November 2003, a suicide bombing at a Riyadh housing compound killed 17 people, most of them Muslims working in Saudi Arabia.
Long ago, the Saudis sold their souls, supporting terrorism abroad and allowing radicalism to fester at home. They now are seeing the bills coming due, and the longterm stability of the government must soon come into question if changes aren’t made at the very roots of Saudi society.