WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has ordered a review of the National Guard’s response to recent protests over police brutality and racism, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
“The report will address a range of issues, including training, equipping, organizing, manning, deployment, and employment of National Guard forces,” a statement said.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy will conduct the review, it said.
(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senior Pentagon leaders said on Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic which has hit the United States could continue for months.
“I think we need to plan for this to be a few months long at least and we’re taking all precautionary measures to do that,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said when asked how long the outbreak may last and how long the military would continue the support efforts to counter it.
“I am fully confident that at the end of the day, in a period of months, we will get through this,” Esper said during a virtual town hall.
At the same event, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said that while it was unclear how long the outbreak would last, taking models from the experience of other countries, which may or may not apply to the United States, the outbreak could last into July.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Pentagon says 174 service members have coronavirusWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 174 service members had the coronavirus, an increase of 41 cases from the day before.
In a daily update, the Pentagon added that 59 civilian employees, 61 dependents, and 27 contractors had also tested positive.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is looking at converting more than 10,000 New York rooms, potentially in hotels and college dorms, into medical care units to help address the fast-spreading coronavirus, the commanding general of the Army Corps said on Friday.
The pandemic has upended life in much of the United States, shuttering schools and businesses, prompting millions to work from home, forcing many out of jobs and sharply curtailing travel.
Lieutenant General Todd Semonite told reporters at the Pentagon that the Army Corps was looking at converting the rooms and other large spaces into intensive care unit-type facilities and it would need to happen within weeks, not months.
“We’re talking about over 10,000 that we are looking at right now,” Semonite said, adding that a decision would be made by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Earlier this week, the White House said it was in talks with the Pentagon about how the military can be deployed to deal with the coronavirus, including setting up field hospitals in states with a surge in cases.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for the Army Corps to increase hospital capacity. The Army Corps of Engineers is made up of 37,000 soldiers and civilians providing engineering services in more than 130 countries, its website says.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Leslie Adler and Howard Goller)
By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of U.S. National Guard troops could be activated to help U.S. states deal with the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak, the head of the U.S. National Guard said on Thursday.
The National Guard, part of the reserve component of the U.S. Armed Forces, has already been called up in 27 states, including New York, to assist with cleaning public spaces and to deliver food to homes.
General Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that a total of about 2,000 troops have been activated so far and he expected that number to double by the weekend.
“It’s hard to tell what the exact requirement will be, but I’m expecting tens of thousands to be used inside the states as this grows,” Lengyel said during a Pentagon press briefing.
The National Guard could, for example, assist local law enforcement efforts under state control, he said. But that is something it cannot do if it is federalized, Lengyel said, adding he was not aware of any such plans and did not think it was a good idea.
“That would not make sense in this situation,” Lengyel said.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said the Defense Department was not considering federalization of the National Guard.
Nearly 9,000 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported in the United States, with more than 3,000 in New York state, according to state health departments.
“It’s a historic event, unlike any we have faced in recent years,” Lengyel said.
Dealing with the coronavirus outbreak is an unusual mission for the National Guard, best known for assisting during national disasters like hurricanes and supplementing the U.S. military overseas or during times of war. More than 21,000 National Guard members are currently abroad.
Lengyel compared the coronavirus outbreak to a national disaster of unprecedented scale.
“It’s like we have 54 separate hurricanes in every state and territory and the District of Columbia… Unlike a hurricane, we don’t know when this is going to dissipate or move out to sea,” he added.
Even within the military, the disease is taking a toll. The Pentagon said that 51 U.S. military service members had been diagnosed but, as of Thursday, none were hospitalized and two had recovered.
In a sign of the impact the outbreak was having, the director of the Defense Health Agency said on Thursday that calls to the U.S. military health system’s nurse advice line had surged by about 500% in just the past few days.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Diane Craft)
By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military is preparing to report a more than 50% jump in cases of traumatic brain injury stemming from Iran’s missile attack on a base in Iraq last month, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement, said there were over 100 cases of TBI, up from the 64 previously reported last month.
The Pentagon declined to comment, but in the past had said to expect an increase in numbers in the weeks after the attack because symptoms can take time to manifest and troops can sometimes take longer to report them.
No U.S. troops were killed or faced immediate bodily injury when Iran fired missiles at the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike at the Baghdad airport on Jan. 3.
The missile attacks capped a spiral of violence that had started in late December. Both sides have refrained from further military escalation, but the mounting number of U.S. casualties could increase pressure on the Trump administration to respond, perhaps non-militarily.
Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that the service members suffering from traumatic brain injuries had been diagnosed with mild cases. He added the diagnosis could change as time went on.
Symptoms of concussive injuries include headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light and nausea.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly said there has been no effort to minimize or delay information on concussive injuries. But the disclosures following Tehran’s attack has renewed questions over the U.S. military’s policy regarding how it internally reports suspected brain injuries and whether they are treated publicly with the same urgency as loss of limb or life.
U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to play down the brain injuries last month, saying he “heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things” following the attack, prompting criticism from lawmakers and a U.S. veterans group.
Various health and medical groups for years have been trying to raise awareness about the seriousness of brain injuries, including concussions.
Since 2000, about 408,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, according to Pentagon data.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Franklin Paul, Dan Grebler and Lisa Shumaker)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Tuesday 50 U.S. service members were now diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after missile strikes by Iran on a base in Iraq earlier this month, 16 more than the military had previously announced.
President Donald Trump and other top officials initially said Iran’s Jan. 8 attack had not killed or injured any U.S. service members.
“As of today, 50 U.S. service members have been diagnosed” with traumatic brain injury, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Campbell said in a statement about injuries in the attack on the Ain al-Asad air base in western Iraq.
Symptoms of concussive injuries include headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light and nausea.
Thirty-one of the 50 were treated in Iraq and returned to duty, including 15 of those diagnosed most recently, Campbell said.
Eighteen of the total have been sent to Germany for further evaluation and treatment, and one was sent to Kuwait and has since returned to duty, he said.
“This is a snapshot in time and numbers can change,” Campbell said.
In its previous update on Friday, the Pentagon had put the number of those injured at 34.
Trump last week appeared to play down the injuries, saying he “heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things.”
That prompted criticism from a U.S. war veterans group. William Schmitz, national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said on Friday the group “expects an apology from the president to our service men and women for his misguided remarks.”
According to Pentagon data, about 408,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury since 2000.
Iran fired missiles at Ain al-Asad in retaliation for the U.S. killing of a top Revolutionary Guard general, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike at Baghdad airport on Jan. 3.
The missile attacks capped a spiral of violence that had started in late December, and both sides have refrained from further military escalation.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
By Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Idrees Ali
KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday recovered the remains of individuals from a U.S. military aircraft that crashed in Afghanistan and was in the process of confirming their identities, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.
On Monday, the U.S. military said an E-11A aircraft crashed in the province of Ghazni but disputed Taliban claims to have brought it down.
Earlier on Tuesday, Afghan forces and Taliban fighters clashed in a central region where the U.S. military aircraft crashed as the government tried to reach the wreckage site in a Taliban stronghold.
The U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said multiple attempts had been made to recover the remains but had been hampered because of the terrain and weather.
The Pentagon declined to comment.
Security forces were sent to the site immediately after receiving a report of the crash in the Deh Yak district, but were ambushed by Taliban fighters, Ghazni provincial police chief Khalid Wardak told Reuters.
“As per our information, there are four bodies and two onboard were alive and they are missing,” Wardak said, adding that the forces subsequently received an order to retreat and airborne action is to be taken instead.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said Afghan forces backed by U.S. military support had tried to capture the area around the crashed aircraft and clashed with fighters of the Islamist militant group.
The attempt was repelled, however, he told Reuters, but added that the Taliban would allow a rescue team access to recover bodies from the crash site.
“Taliban fighters on the ground counted six bodies at the site of the U.S. airplane crash,” he said, adding that while there could have been more, the militant group could not be certain, as fire had reduced everything to ashes.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, U.S. officials said the plane was carrying fewer than five people when it crashed, with one official saying initial information showed there were at least two.
The crashed aircraft, built by Bombardier Inc, is used to provide communication capabilities in remote locations.
The crash came as the Taliban and United States have been in talks on ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan.
Trump has long called for an end to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, which began with an American invasion triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that al Qaeda launched from then-Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
(Additional reporting by Rumpam Jain; Writing by Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jonathan Oatis)
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate, rushing to meet a looming deadline, approved and sent to President Donald Trump a $1.4 trillion package of fiscal 2020 spending bills that would end prospects of government shutdowns at week’s end when temporary funding expires.
By strong bipartisan margins and with White House backing, the Senate passed the two gigantic funding bills for government programs through Sept. 30.
Trump is expected to sign both bills into law before a midnight Friday deadline.
Notably, the Pentagon would get $738 billion for military activities – $22 billion more than last year.
Investments in domestic programs range from child nutrition and college grants to research on gun violence for the first time in decades and money for affordable housing programs that Trump had opposed.
The legislation also contains a series of new initiatives, including funding for Trump’s military Space Force, raising the age for purchasing tobacco products to 21 from the current 18, and repealing some taxes that were intended to fund the Affordable Care Act health insurance, popularly known as Obamacare.
About a year ago, the U.S. government plunged into a record-long, 35-day partial shutdown after Congress refused to give Trump the money he wanted to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall – one that he previously had insisted Mexico would finance.
This time around, money for border security would stay level at $1.37 billion, far below what Trump had sought.
Earlier this year, angered by Congress’ refusal to give him the wall money, Trump declared an “emergency” and took funds from other accounts appropriated by Congress and used them to build part of the border wall that was a central promise of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Congressional and White House negotiators reached a deal on the spending bills to avert government shutdowns just days before Washington plunged into a different kind of political crisis: the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approving articles of impeachment against Trump, a Republican.
With Democrats and Republicans trying to demonstrate that they can get at least some legislative work done amid Trump’s impeachment, the administration and Democrats also worked out differences over a U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, making for a flurry of pre-Christmas break action in Washington.
The $1.4 trillion in spending for so-called “discretionary” programs, up from $1.36 trillion last year, is separate from “mandatory” programs like Social Security retirement benefits, which are automatically funded.
The higher spending, coupled with tax cuts enacted in 2017, are contributing to widening budget deficits. The government spent $984 billion more than it took in during the last fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects annual budget deficits averaging $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
A rapidly-rising U.S. national debt now stands at $23.1 trillion, a level that some experts fear could eventually hobble the economy.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Steve Orlofsky and Dan Grebler)
U.S. mulls leaving some troops in Syria to guard oil: Pentagon
By Kawa Omar and Idrees Ali
DOHUK, Iraq/KABUL (Reuters) – The Pentagon is considering keeping some U.S. troops near oilfields in northeastern Syria alongside Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to help deny oil to Islamic State militants, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday.
U.S. troops are crossing into Iraq as part of a broader withdrawal from Syria ordered by President Donald Trump, a decision that allowed Turkey to launch an offensive against the SDF which for years was a U.S. ally battling Islamic State.
More than 100 vehicles crossed the border into Iraq early on Monday from the northeast tip of Syria, where Turkey agreed to pause its offensive for five days under a deal with Washington.
The truce expires late on Tuesday, just after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is set to discuss next steps in the region at a meeting in Russia with President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to reporters during a trip to Afghanistan, Esper said that, while the U.S. withdrawal was under way, some troops were still with partner forces near oilfields and there had been discussions about keeping some of them there.
He said that was one option and no decision had been made “with regard to numbers or anything like that”. The Pentagon’s job was to look at different options, he added.
“We presently have troops in a couple of cities that (are)located right near that area,” Esper said. “The purpose is to deny access, specifically revenue to ISIS (Islamic State) and any other groups that may want to seek that revenue to enable their own malign activities.”
Trump’s shift has opened a new chapter in Syria’s more than eight-year war and prompted a rush by Turkey and by the Damascus government and its ally Russia to fill the vacuum left by the Americans.
Trump’s decision has been criticized in Washington and elsewhere as a betrayal of Kurdish allies who had fought for years alongside U.S. troops in a region rich in oil reserves and farmland.
The New York Times reported late on Sunday that Trump was now leaning in favor of a new military plan to keep about 200 U.S. troops in eastern Syria near the Iraq border. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“NECESSARY STEPS”
Turkey is seeking to set up a “safe zone” as a buffer against the YPG militia, the main component of the SDF. Ankara sees the YPG as a terrorist group due to its links to Kurdish insurgents in southeast Turkey.
Erdogan has said Ankara will resume its assault in Syria when the deadline expires on Tuesday if the SDF has not pulled back from its proposed zone, which spans much of the border.
“We will take up this process with Mr Putin and after that we will take the necessary steps” in northeastern Syria, Erdogan told a forum in Istanbul hosted by broadcaster TRT World on Monday, without elaborating.
Erdogan has also said Turkey will set up a dozen observation posts in the “safe zone”, prompting criticism from Iran.
“We are against Ankara’s establishing of military posts in Syria,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told a weekly news conference on Monday broadcast live on state TV.
“The issues should be resolved by diplomatic means … Syria’s integrity should be respected,” said Mousavi, whose country is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Echoing such concerns, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Russia believed long-term regional security could only be achieved by restoring Syrian unity and also by taking into account the interests of all the country’s ethnic and religious groups.
He reiterated that Putin and Erdogan would discuss Turkey’s military offensive in their talks on Tuesday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying that 12 Syrian prisons holding foreign militants as well as eight refugee camps had been left unguarded as a result of Turkey’s military operation.
Turkey’s nearly two-week old offensive has displaced some 300,000 people and led to 120 casualties among civilians and 470 among SDF fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday. Turkey says 765 terrorists but no civilians have been killed in its offensive.
On Monday, Reuters video images showed armored vehicles carrying U.S. troops through the Sahela border crossing into Iraq’s northern province of Dohuk.
About 30 trailers and Hummers carrying heavier duty equipment crossed, with troops in cars coming through, an Iraqi Kurdish security source said.
Turkish security sources said on Monday Kurdish YPG forces were advancing toward Al Hasakah, which is south of the proposed safe zone, adding some 125 vehicles had already left. They also said more than 80 Kurdish militants had been captured alive or surrendered to Turkish forces.
(Additional reporting by Idrees tktk Can Sezer and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul, Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Parisa Hafezi in Dubai and Anton Kolodyazhnyy in Moscow; Writing by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Gareth Jones)
