I visited the studios of KUER's RadioWest for Veteran's Day to discuss the locally-produced Reserved To Fight-- a heartbreaking documentary about the homecomings of four U.S. Marines from Utah.

First things first, Reserved is an absolute must-see for anyone who wants to get a grunts-eye-view of the war after the war. (That should include anyone who claims to "support the troops.") As I wrote last week, "just paying attention is the single most important honor we can render to those who fight this nation's battles."

You can find out more about Reserved, including show times, here.

During the show, host Doug Fabrizio asked me about what the United States commits itself to when it goes to war. I told him that in addition to the tremendous sacrifice of blood and treasure, it was important for us to remember that we make a separate moral purchase: the cost of the lifelong well-being of every single service member who fought for our "grateful" nation.

Truth is, though, that our nation has a pretty ugly track record when it comes to taking care of those who fight its battles. And Exhibit A, today, is a new federal report that concludes that about a quarter of the 700,000 veterans who served during the 1990-1991 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness.

That's a striking number, in part, because the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs spent years denying that the condition even existed, even as tens of thousands of service members suffered from a variety of symptoms, including memory and concentration problems, chronic headaches, widespread pain, gastrointestinal problems, and other chronic abnormalities.

Now, nearly two full decades after the end of that war, a federal report states that "scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans."

Vietnam War vets know this story. It took them years to get the federal government to recognize that the ailments they were suffering from exposure to Agent Orange were real. Cold War veterans know this game, too -- they were told for years that exposure to nuclear radiation during atomic test explosions wouldn't make them sick.

Do today's wars have a similar ailment that is being overlooked (hidden?) by those charged with caring for our nation's warriors? You can make a pretty safe bet it is so.

Sadly, the message we keep giving our veterans -- and one that is projected, loud and clear, throughout Reserved -- is just five words long:

"You are on your own."

Labels: Afghanistan, Coming Home, Iraq, veterans

Who were the absolute dorks in the Pentagon who came up with this?

From today's Military Times:

"Eighteen months after banning access to YouTube and other social networking and entertainment sites on Defense Department computers, the Pentagon has launched a site where troops and families can upload and share videos."

"Don't look for anything too edgy on TroopTube. All videos are subject to screening for 'taste, copyright violations and national security issues,' according to the Web site, which is administered by Military OneSource, the Pentagon's online family resource center."

Yeah, that's gonna be a big hit.

Now that blue is the new red, here are two words you're unlikely to hear from Democrats in Congress:

War Tax.

Back when Americans ranked the dismal situation in Iraq as a greater priority for the next president than the flagging economy, senior Dems including David Obey, John Murtha and Jim McGovern, in an effort to make an unpopular war even more unpopular, proposed a 15 percent "war surcharge" to pay for ongoing combat operations and keep up with the demand for veterans services back home.

"If you don't like the cost, then shut down the war," Obey said, just over one year ago.

If it were sincere, it would be a noble idea: Draft all Americans into the war effort by making them pay for it, right then and there. No killing on credit. No making our children pay for our bloody adventures.

If made permanent, a war tax would force future politicians (like Murtha, who voted in favor of the resolution allowing President Bush to commit troops to Iraq) to think long and hard about new military expeditions. And it would allow our nation to keep the best parts of an all-volunteer force while ensuring that those fortunate sons not serving in uniform would be contributing in treasure, if not in blood, whenever we decided to start shooting.

Perhaps most importantly, it would force more Americans to pay attention to how their money is being spent. And far greater than the parades and the flags, far greater than the bumper stickers and the care packages, far greater than the expression of any personal feelings about the rightness or wrongness of any given war, just paying attention is the single most important honor we can render to those who fight this nation's battles.

But it's an honor that so very often falls short -- perhaps because most Americans simply do not feel as though they have a stake in the fights being waged under their flag.

A war tax would change that.

It wasn't just anti-war Democrats who were behind such a bill. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a strident supporter of the war effort in Iraq, also supported a surcharge.

"People keep saying we're not asking a sacrifice of anybody but our military in this war," Lieberman said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in early 2007. "I think we have to start thinking about a war on terrorism tax."

That would be good news for any Democrats looking to resurrect the war tax effort, because the independent Lieberman (who caucuses with his former party but often opposes them on national defense issues) would be an important voice and a crucial vote for Dems seeking a veto-proof senatorial majority.

It would be good news, but it's not. Because now that the Democrats are in power, they're likely to forget all about a proposal that McGovern once said was important because "George Bush has gotten away with paying for this war on our credit card."

Of course, that was back before Democrats had such dominant control of both chambers of Congress -- and back when the man in the Oval Office held a pen that would most certainly veto any successful war tax bill. That was back before Sen. Barack Obama began selling a tax cut for middle-class Americans. That was back when it was perfectly safe for Democrats to float such a revolutionarily democratic idea.

That was back before McGovern and his Democratic allies were in such a substantial position to actually do something about that credit card bill.

There is an immeasurable liberty in powerlessness -- one that Democrats have exploited to no end over the past few years. Now that they are the ones in control, it will be interesting to see what words were just words and what words they actually meant.

And when it comes to a war tax, I'm betting I'll get to keep my 15 percent.

Labels: Iraq, politics

I feel like I'm living in Bizarro World, a planet from the Superman comics ruled by the very simple code: "Us do opposite of all Earthly things!"

In Bizarro World, for instance, I'd actually want to check the daily status of the 401k I've been dutifully plugging money into -- since it's been losing money at such a splendidly feverish pace! In Bizarro World, I'd like German industrial heavy metal music. In Bizarro World, this wouldn't be election season, and I wouldn't be addicted to the RealClearPolitics Electorial College Map, Fivethirtyeight.com's pollster ratings, or Politico's lively stable of bloggers.

In Bizarro World, up is down, left is right, and we'd all agree that the surge in Iraq worked like a charm!

Ah! There it is -- the transuniversal portal of my current affliction: The surge. Or rather, the current way that strategy, and its proponents, have been deified by pundits like Michael Gerson.

In today's Washington Post, Gerson calls Republican presidential nominee John McCain "a vindicated prophet" who was "gloriously right" about the need for more troops in Iraq when violence dropped dramatically after the implementation of the surge strategy, which injected about 20,000 more U.S. troops into Iraq.

"After early challenges, the positive results have become undeniable," Gerson writes. "As violence in Iraq has plummeted, normality has returned to markets, and neighbors and political accommodations have moved forward."

Gerson's certainly not the only person to suggest this. It has, of course, become a matter of conventional consensus. And it's a convenient one, albeit one lacking a stable evidentiary support structure.

Let's set aside, for a moment, the fact Iraq is still in the midst of a very serious security crisis, in which civilians continue to die at a rate of about 500 a month (the population-adjusted equivalent of about 5,000 Americans a month, or 60,000 Americans a year, being wiped out in religiously-motivated executions, mass bombings, attacks on police stations and, of course, the occasional beheading.) In Bizarro World, this would be "security." And to read Gerson and many others, you'd think it was.

On this planet, of course, that's not security. It is an improvement -- and a stunning improvement at that -- but it's not security.

And on this planet, correlation is not causation. In other words: Just because it rained the last two Tuesdays you won five bucks on a scratcher ticket doesn't mean that you'll win again if it rains this Tuesday.

But in Bizarro World, that's exactly what would happen. You'd win the next time it rains on a Tuesday. And next time. And the time after that. (You'd be unhappy about this, of course, but you'd keep playing anyway, because that's what happens in Bizarro World.)

In absence of anything else having occurred in Iraq, over the past year, you might reasonably conclude that the surge did exactly what Gerson said it has. But, of course, the surge was not the only thing that happened in Iraq over the past year. And most notably, three other things happened:

1) Influential Shiite cleric Muqtadda al-Sadr called a cease-fire for all members of his powerful Mehdi Army militia, ordering it to cease attacks against Shiite rivals, Sunni enemies and even U.S. and other coalition forces.

2) After years of careful negotiations on the part of U.S. forces in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province and years of indiscriminant killing there on the part of Al Qaida-allied insurgents, a wave of Sunni leaders turned against foreign operatives and (with their palms heavily greased with American greenbacks) allied with U.S. forces.

3) Following a years-long civil war in which tens of thousands died in (and several million fled from) the brutal sectarian violence, much of Iraq was fractionized into religious enclaves, separated by geographic and manmade barriers. Like Crips and Bloods in the Los Angeles ganglands of the 1980s, Shiites and Sunnis quickly came to know which neighborhoods they were welcome in and which they were not. (There is some evidence that some of these cold enclaves are beginning to thaw -- a good sign, perhaps, that some Iraqis are prepared to return to the relatively tolerant multi-secular society they have lived in for generations.)

Why are so many people content to set aside these facts for the more convenient equation of "surge = success"?

Let's face it, Americans tend to see the world through red-white-and-blue-tinted glasses. After years of flipping past the news on Iraq, President Bush's announcement of the surge strategy got (some) Americans thinking about that war again. So, in many eyes, the only thing that did happen in Iraq, over the past year, involved other Americans. The surge arrived. Violence was quelled. Hooray for the U.S. of A.

Politicians, meanwhile, tend to prefer black-and-white-tinted shades. Politics is about taking credit for everything you can -- and you have to do it in a sentence or less, otherwise it doesn't work for TV. So, for McCain to score points, he can't simply say that the surge helped -- he has to say it was everything.

In this world, there's simply little room for trigonometric equations.

And that's likely why the normally professorial Barack Obama, (who despite how he describes it now, did indeed oppose the surge in no uncertain terms,) can't seem to bring himself to argue the point when confronted on the topic, as he was on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News a few weeks ago.

I'm all for giving credit where it's due. And there is absolutely no reason to think that the surge wasn't at least partially -- and maybe significantly -- responsible for helping maintain the growing security that has been realized in Iraq over the past year. As such, U.S. and coalition forces -- not just those who fought during the surge, but all who laid the groundwork for it in the incredibly violent years before -- deserve recognition for the role they played in helping bring violence down.

And to the extent that McCain -- along with many others -- had long suggested that the United States needed to send more troops to Iraq, a certain amount of political credit is due there, too.

But unless he also predicted (and I somehow missed) the significant ways in which Iraq would change in other ways over the past year, a prophet he's not.

Except, perhaps, in Bizarro World.

Labels: Iraq, politics

A little over a year ago, talk radio's family advice guru, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, was in town to chat with some military families at Fort Douglas. In an interview before her talk, I asked Schlessinger about her most common words of advice for military spouses.

"I don't want to hear any whining -- that's my message to them," Schlessinger told me.

Schlessinger noted that soldiers at war (her son, among them) face death, injury, fear and loneliness -- to an extent that is simply incomparable to problems back home.

"He could come back without arms, legs or eyeballs, and you're bitching?" Schlessinger said before taking the stage at the base theater to host her daily program on ethics, morals and values. "You're not dodging bullets!"

If you pay attention to this blog, you know the rest of the story: Some of Schlessinger's fans took offense at the good doctor's 1,000 mg prescription of tough love. A few days later, she wrote in her blog that her words had been taken "out of context." A few days after that, she went on Fox News to explain what she meant -- and I got called to the carpet by Fox's Bill O'Reilly. (Sweet!)

Said O'Reilly to Dr. Laura about yours truly: "This man is an ideologue who's out to hurt you, and he shouldn't be working in any major newspaper!" (Double Sweet!)

At the crux of the controversy -- and I use that word lightly, 'cause we're not talking Iran-Contra here -- was a question about Schlessinger's intent. I reported her words: "stop complaining." She insisted that I missed her meaning: "complain all you want -- just not to your husband when he's away at war."

For the record, I take Schlessinger at her word. That's certainly not what she said, but there's no reason to think that's not what she meant. And after all, what kind of heartless jerk would tell the wife of a forward-deployed soldier not to complain at all?

Will Bowen, that's who.

Except Bowen's not a heartless jerk at all. Rather, he's the very reasonable, compassionate pastor of Christ Church United in Kansas City, Missouri. A few weeks ago, my wife brought home Bowen's book A Complaint Free World. The bestseller challenges readers to go 21 days without complaining -- about anything.

Bowen's challenge is hard enough task for those of us living average, ordinary lives. But what about those whose challenges are so much greater? Those with a spouse at war, for instance? For those folks, isn't a little bit of bitching healthy?

Bowen says no.

"What do you benefit from complaining?" Bowen asked me this afternoon. "You think you'll feel better, but what you're really doing is exasperating the negativity."

I wasn't convinced. Surely, some complaining is OK, right?

The Christian pastor took a Buddhist approach.

"Everyone is trying to reach enlightenment," he said. "What is enlightenment? It's being at peace with what is."

"I guess that all depends on what the definition of 'is' is," I said, conjuring my best Bill Clinton. Maybe it was the mobile phone connection or maybe it was my delivery, but Bowen didn't laugh.

OK, so how was it I came to be trying out jokes on Will Bowen this afternoon? And what does this have to do with Dr. Laura?

Two words: Jennie Taylor.

Taylor, the wife of a Utah National Guard soldier and mother of two toddlers, is the family readiness group leader for the 116th Security Forces -- a job that made her the home-front face of a unit that arrived in Iraq during one of the deadliest months since the war began, more than five years ago.

I ran into Taylor a lot while her husband was deployed -- and I never heard her complain once. Not when she learned that her husband's unit had been tasked with one of the most dangerous jobs in Iraq. Not when her husband was wounded in a roadside bomb attack. And not even when, with two months to go on his original one-year tour of duty, Brent Taylor called his wife to tell her that he wanted to stay in Iraq, because the Army was stretched thin.

Bowen's entire movement is based on helping people stop complaining -- but he told me that he was still impressed.

People like Taylor, he said, "are the lights of inspiration for all of us to follow."

Hmm.

Maybe Schlessinger was right to begin with -- even if she didn't intend to be. Maybe the best thing for military spouses is to just stop complaining. Not just to their spouses, but to everyone.

If Jennie Taylor can do it, can't they?

And it they can, can't we all?

Count me among the inspired. My name is Matthew D. LaPlante, and I'm a bitchaholic. It's been 8 hours since my last complaint...

Just 496 to go.


'Stronger than a Spartan'
History is wrong: Military marriages, Jennie Taylor says, can make better soldiers
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

She's a red-headed dervish. Changing diapers. Checking e-mails on her Blackberry. Making dinner. Taking calls. Soothing cries.

"I want daddy," a little one sobs.

Jennie Taylor glances up at the computer screen. A slideshow flashes through photos of her husband in Iraq. In this one, he's wearing body armor, carrying a rifle and wearing a red Santa hat.

The photo is from last Christmas. He'd already been gone eight months at that point. Now Taylor and her kids are on their way to a Halloween party.

The 116th Security Forces deployed to Iraq during the incredibly violent spring of 2007. The Utah National Guard unit returned home in April - all, that is, except for 27 members who, along with Taylor's husband, answered a call to stay in Iraq.

Through it all, Taylor remained the resolutely chipper public face of the unit. As the 116th family readiness group leader, she arranged holiday parties for family members and organized drives to collect educational and humanitarian supplies for Iraqi civilians. She was the first call for distressed wives and mothers. She even coordinated the welcome home celebration for the soldiers that returned as scheduled, though her husband wasn't among them.

She smiled the whole time.

Now, her long race is almost over.

Another Christmastime photo of her husband pops onto the screen. Taylor sighs.

"I want daddy, too," she says.

"Always the plan."
Don't pity her. She hates that. This is what she signed up for. Every midnight worry. Every child's cry. Every exhausted moment.

Brent Taylor asked his future wife to marry him on a Saturday. The following Tuesday they walked into a National Guard recruiter's office in Draper, holding hands. There was no question about what was ahead.

"This was always the plan," Jennie Taylor says. "He always knew that the military was a family decision. I always knew what I'd agreed to."

She's not impressed by stickers, car magnets and slogans. That's not patriotism.

"If you're going to say 'God Bless America,' you gotta be willing to pay the price," Taylor says. "This is our price."

Taylor is driven by something she learned while teaching high school history. In the ancient warrior city-state of Sparta, men weren't permitted to live with their wives and children until they'd served more than a decade in the military.

"Women and children were a liability," Taylor says. "It makes sense. Who wants a soldier in the field distracted by the problems of home?"

From the moment her husband's unit left, Taylor has been determined to turn that historic detail on its ear. "We've adopted this saying, 'stronger than a Spartan,' " she says. "As odd as it sounds, my husband is a better soldier because he left a wife and two kids behind."

"I was so angry."
Not that it's been easy.

The month that the 116th arrived in Iraq was one of the deadliest on record for U.S. forces there. One hundred and thirty-one U.S. and allied service members were killed in Iraq that month - the overwhelming majority in roadside bomb attacks. The 116th was tasked to provide convoy security, escorting military and civilian vehicles on the bomb-laden roads of northern Iraq.

Within the first few days of the deployment, a soldier from a sister unit was killed. By the end of the first few weeks, dozens had been the victims of roadside bomb attacks, and several had been wounded. Brent Taylor was among the soldiers who received a Purple Heart for wounds received in a roadside bombing. He didn't tell his wife.

Jennie Taylor learned her husband had been injured while reviewing some paperwork she was helping him prepare for a promotion. "I was so angry," she remembered. "I said, 'So, the Purple Heart, huh? Did you think that might be something you were going to mention at some point?' "

But that surprise had nothing on what came in January.

"You can't stop here."
It was midmorning in Utah, late evening in Iraq, when Brent Taylor called.

"I don't think I'm done here," he told his wife.

Taylor was at her mother's home in North Ogden. She fell to her knees and buried her face into her hands. He was supposed to be home in just two months.

"It was like getting punched in the stomach," she said, "like running a 10K, getting to the end and then being told, 'you can't stop here, you have to run a marathon.' "

Violence was down. The surge was ending. But stability in Iraq was tenuous - and the Army was stretched thin.

"They need people to stay," the soldier continued.

Taylor's thoughts turned to the other parents, spouses and children who soon would be getting calls like this one. They would need her to be strong.

"OK," she said. "Who else is staying with you?"

Brent Taylor says he wouldn't have stayed in Iraq if his wife had objected. And he knows that she knows that, too.

"There's no way I could have done it if she didn't support me," says Taylor, who is finally due home this week. "She wasn't excited about it, but I knew she was supportive."

"We got us into this."
There are days when it all seems like too much to handle.

"There are days when I ask, 'What about our kids? What about our marriage? What about our lives?' " Taylor says. "I've gotten to the point where I think, 'What on Earth have we gotten ourselves into?' But you know what? It was us. We got us into this."

And so she won't complain. "When I do," she says, "I always regret it."

Kristen Ashworth said she can't remember hearing her sister-in-law and close friend utter a single complaint the whole time Brent Taylor has been away.

"Jennie just says, 'I don't expect anyone to understand, but we both feel it is the right thing to do,' " Ashworth said.

"It's not always easy for her, but she's the strongest person I know."

Labels: Iraq, lessons, military families, Utah National Guard

The envelope arrived Monday. The return label indicated it was from Air Combat Command -- but it was thin.

Too thin, I thought, to contain the 178-page report I'd been told to expect "any day." Another bureaucratic form letter, no doubt, probably something like: Dear Mr. LaPlante, Thanks for your Freedom of Information Act Request. Screw you.

I almost kicked myself Tuesday when I called up The Air Force Times online. Somehow, The Times had obtained the records I'd been waiting on for seven months. Worse, they were first out the gate with a story about an investigation into something that happened in my backyard -- an accidental strafing at the Utah Test and Training Range that nearly killed two soldiers.

My thoughts shot back to the envelope on my desk at work. I did Mach II to the office. Sure enough, the letter contained a CD which, in turn, held the 178 page report -- in pdf form.

Duh!

Air Force Times - 1, Matthew D. LaPlante - 0.

There's nothing good about getting scooped. But it does present a challenge: "Now that the story's out there, how can I improve on it?"

With 178 pages to work from, the possibilities were endless.

Like a kid into a jigsaw puzzle box, I dove into the reports. Picking out a piece here and a piece there, I first sought to build the border -- the better to understand the big picture. From there, I began working inward, connecting piece to piece until the story emerged.

There is a point in puzzle building when you find the piece that brings everything together. For me it was this: During the investigation, both soldiers mentioned that the sports utility vehicle in which they were driving "exploded" just as one of them was reaching down for the radio.

A mundane action that would have been lost in the tides of thousands of other mundane actions was now deeply seared into their memories. "That's it," I said aloud. "That's my piece."

A few hours later, this is what we published at sltrib.com:

Sitting ducks in the desert
Records reveal mistakes that led to strafing of SUV at training range

By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

The radio was too loud.

For whatever reason, that's what stuck out in the mind of 1st Lt. Jared Cox when an investigating officer asked him about the night of April 8 - the night he and another soldier nearly died.

Dozens of pages of interviews and written testimony reveal a night that was, in many respects, a routine shift at the Utah Test and Training Range - before things went dangerously wrong.

As such, the report sheds light on a world little appreciated outside military circles, where even in the relative safety of a training exercise, the difference between life and death is measured in inches, in seconds, and in trust.

Calling it a night.
Cox and Sgt. 1st Class James Walker - visiting from Ft. Lewis, Wash., to train with the Air Force to prevent friendly fire mishaps in combat - had been out past midnight for several nights in a row.

Even those well outside of designated bombing areas must stay in place when attack aircraft are in the air over Utah's west desert practice range. So the pair was getting used to being stuck on the range, waiting for other training missions to end.

But on that overcast Tuesday night, a pause in live-fire operations had opened a window to get off the range. Cox and Walker stripped off their body armor and took the opportunity to call it a night.

They were sidetracked, however, when Cox first forgot his camera in another vehicle, and then for a few minutes more as he gave last-minute instructions to others remaining behind. By the time he got back to his vehicle - a Chevrolet Suburban rented from from Avis - a convoy of other vehicles had already left the range.

Meanwhile, a group of F-16 fighter jets from Hill Air Force Base were en route to their practice targets.

A call came over the radio - "really loud," Cox recalled thinking. He reached down to turn down the volume...

Aiming for 'the coffin.'
In skies above the Utah desert, Maj. John Erickson had just taken on 2,000 pounds of fuel from an aerial refueling tanker. In the cannons under the wing of his aircraft were 220 high explosive incendiary rounds - exploding bullets as big around as a 50-cent piece.

Erickson's intended target was an old armored personnel carrier, parked in an area known as "the coffin" for the distinct pattern formed by surrounding roads.

Flying with night vision goggles at 575 mph, the veteran pilot made a first run over the target area, accurately picking out the personnel carrier with an infrared lighting beam for his wingman, Col. Kevin Schneider. Soon, the two fighter jets were coming around for another pass. Now Schneider was illuminating the target. Erickson could see it as he approached the coffin.

Glancing at his altimeter, Erickson saw that he was lower than he'd intended. Later, Erickson would tell an investigator that he'd already broken the range regulations once that night, coming over the target at about 1,100 feet above ground level when he should have been closer to 1,500.

He wasn't going to make that mistake again. "Don't press the range reg's on this one," he recalled thinking. "So I'm shallow. I'm going fast... I've got to recover higher."

It only took a second or two to adjust. But at 575 miles per hour, the ground below was flying by at a rate of more than one Salt Lake City block every second.

Erickson looked up and announced his shot.

"Tally target," he said.

He pulled the trigger . . .

'Abort! abort!'
Inside the SUV, there was a brilliant flash of light. Glass shattered everywhere. Explosions. Screaming. Terror.

And then, a sudden realization: That was the first jet. There could be another behind it.

"Turn off the lights!" Walker screamed at Cox, who was behind the steering wheel. Stunned, glass embedded in his face and arm, Cox struggled with the rental's unfamiliar controls.

Walker could hear a second fighter jet roaring in from overhead. "Get out!" he screamed.

The soldiers ran from the vehicle, diving under an embankment

"Abort!" Walker screamed. "Abort! Abort!"

'Were there any injuries?'
Erickson's jet was still climbing from the target run when he heard the call.

"Abort! Abort! Abort!" someone on the radio screamed.

It didn't make sense. He'd spent more than 800 hours in an F-16 cockpit. He'd made a number of successful runs over that same target. If something had gone wrong, surely he would have felt it.

"I mean, I didn't even have a little hair on the back of my neck stand up," the pilot told the investigator. "In my mind, I was like, 'That was a weird abort - I wonder what that was about.' "

The voice on the radio - an air controller on the range - returned. "That was high on the terrain, west of my position!"

That wasn't right. It was hundreds of yards wrong.

"No f---ing way... Were there any injuries?" Erickson asked.

"Standby "

"Damn it."

Ninety-two seconds passed. The voice on the radio returned.

"We do have injuries."

'We train as we fight.'
Inches, not feet.

Seconds, nothing more.

That's what separated life from death on April 8.

At least five 20 mm rounds hit the driver's side of the Suburban, including one that entered the car just inches behind where Cox was seated.

Cox suffered shrapnel wounds. Walker took some light shrapnel and dislocated his shoulder, apparently from the percussion of the explosions. Both were treated and released from a Tooele hospital. Within days, they were back with their families and friends in Washington.

Erickson was grounded pending the results of the investigation, which found him at fault. He's since been recertified to fly and is awaiting permission to begin using live ammunition again.

Commanders at Hill Air Force Base have offered circumspect military maxims to explain what happened - and what it all means.

"One incident like this is too many," one Hill commander offered following the incident.

"Precision matters," another added on Tuesday. "The stakes are high."

But the adage offered by a representative from the injured mens' base in Washington may best epitomize the accident - and the kind of hazards faced by service members every day.

"We train as we fight," said Ft. Lewis spokesman Joe Piek. "And fighting is dangerous work."

Labels: Air Power, Hill Air Force Base, journalism, lessons

We feed heavily off the wires, which bring us news from around the globe. Mostly, our newspaper runs wire copy as we receive it, edited only for space. Sometimes, however, editors wants "localization" -- an extra few sentences here and there to put a Utah face in the picture. And on occasion, we'll mesh a wire story together with local reporting to bring life to a Frankenstory, like the one that ran in Wednesday's print edition of The Salt Lake Tribune.

My original assignment was just to add a couple of paragraphs to an Associated Press article, detailing how the recent woes surrounding the F-22 Raptor might affect Hill Air Force Base. Then, late in the afternoon, I learned that the Air Force and the Navy had finally agreed on how work on the F-35 Lightning II would be shared between the services. Hill would get part of the pie.

What follows, then, is my attempt to bring the two stories together in a way that tells the tale of the Raptor and the Lightning at Hill. Much credit is due to Associated Press reporter Richard Lardner, whose reporting on the political futures of the Raptor comprises a large part of this article. Big raspberries to Hill Air Force Base's public affairs team, representatives from which told me that they were unable to describe, even in very general terms, what kind of F-22 work goes on at the northern Utah base because "the person who knows all that is not here today."

At Hill, Lightning strikes in time to soothe Raptor woes
Hill is confirmed as depot center for newest Air Force jet, but Congress still fighting to fund more expensive fighter
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

When Hill Air Force Base was passed over as a home for the F-22 Raptor, early this decade, some worried that the days of ear-splitting afterburners over northern Utah - and the economic reward represented by that familiar roar - was in jeopardy.

At the time, the Raptor was seen as the future of the Air Force's fighter fleet. Hill ultimately got a piece of the pie, but not as much as some had hoped.

Since then, the Raptor has lost some of its luster. That may mean hard times for military communities that scored big in the F-22 lottery. By contrast, a decision announced this week further indicated the communities around Hill will be hearing the thunder for years to come.

Air Force and Navy officials in Washington on Tuesday announced an agreement on the locations of depot repair workloads for a different fighter jet, the F-35 Lightning II. Hill was a winner. At about half the cost of the $191 million-a-piece Raptor and with more missions to boot, the military is expected to field as many as 1,700 of the smaller jets in coming years. Meanwhile, the Bush administration says the 183 Raptors the Air Force has already bought are enough to deal with future threats - and neither of the two major contenders for the nation's presidency have indicated a desire to change course on that issue.

During the presidential debate in Mississippi, Republican nominee Sen. John McCain - one of the Air Force's sharpest critics - said the cost of weapons systems "are completely out of control." In 2006, McCain lost a contentious battle with other lawmakers to deny a multiyear contract for 60 more Raptors.

For his part, Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's top budget priorities are mainly domestic in nature. He's not seen as a potential big spender when it comes to expensive weapons.

At more than $100 million per plane, the F-35 is no cheap bird. But while it's been targeted by critics as one of many weapons on which the military has overspent - at one time it was thought the jet could be built for $30 million a copy - the Lightning program has been spared much of the condemnation penned on the Raptor.

Although Raptor squadrons have been operational for several years, the jet has yet to be used to fight terrorism. Critics say it's too heavy and too reliant on sensors and stealth to be useful in today's guerilla wars.

In the Raptor's corner is Congress, which may still find the cash for the jet if the White House won't. Utah Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch have both supported legislation in Congress that would help pave the way for the Air Force to buy more of the jets, the same proposed spending measure opposed by McCain.

In part, that's because Utah stood to gain mightily from a larger Raptor fleet. At Hill, the 309th Maintenance Wing has been tasked with completing most major structural repairs to the jet, including any potential battle damage. Last year, the wing completed improvements to the plane's night-flying equipment. Hill mechanics also completed repairs on a corrosion problem that the Air Force had identified a decade earlier but failed to correct - at a cost of millions. The fighter is also an increasingly regular fixture in the skies above the Utah Test and Training Range.

Fewer Raptors would mean fewer appearances in Utah - and less need for personnel with expertise in the jet's maintenance.

Although Hill has a stake in the future of the F-22, it's not staked to it. Not since Lightning struck.

In 2006, the base was named as a home for a squadron of F-35 jets. In June, Rep. Rob Bishop announced that the Air Force had chosen Hill as a "key site for future repair work on the F-35 aircraft."

"The fact that we're going to have the 388th Fighter Wing with F-35s and have the depot maintenance operation for F-35s here at Hill too gives us some real opportunities," Bishop said in a statement.

But the Air Force's selection of Hill was still pending an agreement with the Navy, which has collaborated in building the plane, versions of which are being designed to land on aircraft carriers. That agreement was finalized on Sept. 16 and announced this week.

Per that agreement, the fighter's airframe maintenance, which is expected to be up and running in 2012, will be located at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C., and at Hill's Ogden Air Logistics Center.

Still, Congress holds the purse strings. And support for the F-22 is strong. Congress added $523 million to the 2009 budget for advance procurement of more F-22 jets in hopes the next administration will keep the program alive. That could potentially come at a cost to the Lightning program.

"Anything can happen," said Christopher Bolkcom, a national defense specialist with the Congressional Research Service in Washington. He said the pressures to continue the F-22 "are just going to be crushing."

And either way, the noise will be deafening.

- RICHARD LARDNER with The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Labels: Hill Air Force Base, journalism