[London, November 24. Image via Getty]

LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 24: Intisar Alobady, an anti-war protester, holds an Iraqi flag outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre on the first day of The Iraq Inquiry on November 24, 2009 in London. Chairman of the Iraq Inquiry Sir John Chilcot will lead a committee of Privy Counsellors who will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

KBR has released a typically douchey statement:

"However, the decision validates what KBR has maintained all along; that the arbitration process is truly neutral and works in the best interest of the parties involved."

However, their actions tell a different story. Unlike Jamie Leigh Jones, (who won the right to take her lawsuit to court), Barker's claim was kicked back to arbitration. Now that the settlement is in Barker's favor, KBR is still trying to fight their own system:

Barker said she was upset KBR is trying to modify the award.

"They are still dragging it out," she said. "They didn't win and now they want to amend the award. You can't with binding arbitration. How is that fair?"

(Image via ABC News)

Woman Awarded $3M In Assault Claim Against KBR [TPM]

Earlier: Jamie Leigh Jones Takes On Pro-KBR Senators On Rachel Maddow
Republicans: Defending Rape Victims Is A "Political" Move
Sen. Franken Fights KBR On Behalf Of Rape Victims
After 2 Years, Court Rules Gang Rape Unrelated To Employment
Iraq Sexual Assault Victim: "I Felt Safer On The Convoys With The Army Than I Ever Did Working For KBR"

[Radwaniya, Iraq; November 16. Image via Getty]

An Iraqi soldier stands guard as school girls gather in the playground of their school in Radwaniya west of Baghdad on November 16, 2009. Iraqi soldiers paid a visit to the school handing out school bags, pens and pencils. AFP PHOTO / ALI AL-SAADI (Photo credit should read ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Fort Carson, Colorado; August 18. Image via Getty]

FORT CARSON, CO - AUGUST 18: Kendra Kaplan, 5 months pregnant, watches as her husband Staff Sgt. Joshua Kaplan and fellow U.S. Army soldiers arrive on August 18, 2009 in Fort Carson, Colorado. She had brought a sealed envelope with an ultrasound, so that they could learn the baby's gender together upon Joshua's arrival. The Kaplans will be having a baby boy, concieved during Joshua's mid-term leave in March. Approximately 575 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat team from the 4th Infantry Division returned Tuesday following a 12 month deployment to Iraq. At lower left is their son Ayden, 3. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

[Baghdad, August 18. Image via Getty]

An Iraqi girl offers US soldiers sweets as they stand guard during the inauguration of a US-funded project to support small businesses in a northeastern suburb of Baghdad on August 18, 2009. US President Barack Obama warned on August 17 that Iraqis would be tested by more 'senseless' violence but vowed the United States would meet its deadline to pull out all troops by the end of 2011. AFP PHOTO/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE (Photo credit should read AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Moreno Valley, California; August 11. Image via Getty]

MORENO VALLEY, CA - AUGUST 11: Specialist Kelli Roberts hugs her daughter, seven-year-old Kaylenn, upon return from her second tour as soldiers of the California National Guard's 1st Battalion, 185th Armored Regiment return from a yearlong combat tour in Iraq at March Air Reserve Base on August 11, 2009 near Moreno Valley, California. More than 800 National Guard soldiers are returning from the deployment statewide. They were augmenting the 81st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, based in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

[Wilmington, North Carolina; July 9. Image via Getty]

WILMINGTON, NC - JULY 9: A woman stands outside the Wilmington National Cemetery during the funeral for Sgt. 1st Class Edward Kramer on July 9, 2009 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Kramer and three others died when an IED went off near the Humvee they were in, according to a statement from the Defense Department. It was the last day of regular combat operations for U.S. forces in Iraqi cities. The four deaths marked the North Carolina National Guard's largest single combat loss since World War II. (Photo by Logan Mock-Bunting/Getty Images)

[Beverly Hills, May 27. Image via Getty]

A woman attends a demonstration on May 27, 2009 in front of the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, to protest US President Barack Obama's opposition to the release of photos documenting detainee abuse in US facilities during the war in Iraq. Obama is to make remarks at a fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

[New York, April 23. Image via INF]

• Playboy Enterprises has announced that their website is getting a conservative makeover to attract mainstream advertisers. • Broke consumers are eschewing traditional medicine in favor of vitamins in attempts to save a few bucks, the New York Times says. •  Researchers believe that sex could be the cheap new way to cure hay fever. • Aw: 45 people volunteered several nights ago in New Haven, VT, to help carry salamanders, newts, and frogs across the road during their annual migration. These so-called "bucket brigades" are common throughout the Northeast. •  Click here to see wax sculptures of Barack and Michelle Obama. • And if that doesn't creep you out, here is a video of a Japanese robot that has been programmed to mimic baby behaviors. •  A California man stabbed a woman in front of Toys 'R' Us, immediately laid down on the ground, and when confronted, claimed that "God made me do it." •  Indian men living in the U.S. are having a harder time finding brides willing to make the move to America since the economy has tanked. Many Indian women feel that it is safer to stay in India, where layoffs are not as widespread. •  Annoyed by Madonna's adoptions but unsure why? This article by Robin Givhan may help you figure it all out. •  Not everyone loves April Fool's pranks: the Taipei Times has received complains from the Taipei Zoo about their misleading "fake panda" story. •  Now that Obama has lifted the ban on stem cell research, scientists are looking for donations of excess embryos to help them find cures for debilitating conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's. • Newsweek examines the gay love for Grey Gardens, and argues that gay icons may actually be kind of a bad thing. • Walgreens has pulled the "Chia Obama," saying that the presidential house plant is not appropriate for sale. • New data shows that Nebraska is the "happiest" state, financially, with Iowa close behind. •  And now for some truly terrible news: Researchers have identified a certain kind of yeast that can mutate rapidly, rendering anti-fungal medications ineffective. Ugh. •  Atomic games is working on a new video game based on the Iraq war, currently titled "Six Days in Fallujah." •  More than 1 in 10 Britons say they would cheat if they could get away with it, according to a recent survey. •  In India, soaps that focus on women's issues are gaining in popularity, especially those about "girl child issues." • 

England, who served 521 days in prison for her role in the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, is now living in a trailer with her parents in rural West Virginia, and spends most of her time with her lawyer, Roy, a Gulf War veteran who seems proud of his client's infamous conduct. England is perhaps the best known face of the Abu Ghraib scandal, as photographs showing her dragging a prisoner by a leash came to best represent the horrors being committed at the prison; the fact that England was a woman only horrified people more, and as Brockes notes, she "wasn't the only woman soldier in the photographs - Sabrina Harman and Megan Ambuhl were both court martialled for their roles - but England was the most arresting looking, like a 14-year-old boy who shouldn't have been there in the first place. Her legal defence, that she was unduly influenced by Specialist Charles Graner, the father of her child and the only soldier still serving time for abuses at Abu Ghraib, was compounded outside the courtroom by assumptions about her background; that she came from a place where people didn't know better."

Back in her hometown, England is now having trouble finding work, due to her record as a felon and her notoriety. She claims that she's received both hate mail and fan mail, and recalls her time at Abu Ghraib with a type of weird fondness, a laughter that springs up at strange times. When Brockes asks England about any female prisoners at Abu Ghraib, England responds, while laughing:"At one point we had four. Oh my God, this one, she was crazy. They had to take her to the loony bin. We called her the wolf lady coz she had all this hair. She was screaming and whatever."

England becomes incredibly defensive when Brockes suggests that perhaps Megan Ambuhl, a fellow female soldier, was smart enough to stay out of the photographs: "She didn't plan that. It just happened. She wasn't clever. She's a pothead. She was just there. She wasn't in a lot of photos because she didn't want to be. She would just walk away," and later claims that she was coerced into taking the photos by Specialist Charles Graner (who also happens to be the father of her son), ""I didn't want them. But he was so persistent. Go on! Just for me! If you loved me, you'd do it. I'm like, gee, OK just take the damned picture."

Though Graner is still in prison for his role in the scandal, as Brockes notes, "it is England's rather than Graner's face that will be remembered. The photographer invites England to accompany him for photos, but she is reluctant; she lingers at the table and fidgets. Roy jokes, 'How about I find you a hood and some wires?' England laughs, mirthlessly. 'You know me too well.'"

England tells Brockes that she's still processing the events that took place at the prison: ""I mean, I had a lot of time to think about it after the trial and what I'd learned. Thinking back ... I don't want to say I matured more, but I realised that I was so naive and trusting. But what happens in war, happens. It just happened to be photographed and come out. Of course, a lot of people said if you guys had just shut up or killed them, there wouldn't have been any trouble. I could think of it like that, but ... I mean, I don't even know how to describe it. They were the enemy. I don't want to say they deserved what they got, but they ... um. They ... This is my problem. I can't think of words."

Perhaps the weirdest element of the interview is the bubble England and her lawyer, Roy, seem to live in. Despite (or, perhaps due to) the fact that she and her child have to live in a trailer with her parents, that she can't get a decent job, she seems to latch on to the Abu Ghraib days like some people latch on to high school or college memories; one gets the sense that it was the only time she felt like she was wanted or belonged somewhere, a horrible idea, considering that the bond these people shared was the torture of other human beings. Though she says she'll be on antidepressants for the rest of her life, one wonders if she has even begun to process her actions or how they affected others; for now, it seems, England's life revolves around a sequence of hiding, passing the blame, and waiting for the rest of the world to forget.

She's Home From Prison, But Lynndie England Can't Escape Abu Ghraib [The Guardian]

• Celebrity gossip sites like TMZ and E! Online have seen a boost in cellphone readers since they have begun introducing mobile updates to keep readers up-to-date on the latest Kim Kardashian mishaps. • A New York cat therapist poses for New York Magazines "Look Book" with her formerly panic attack-having kitty and talks about helping cats with behavioral problems. • A Welsh woman has created a blog that asks women to share their stories of domestic abuse in hopes of illustrating how widespread domestic violence is in the UK. • According to a recent survey of online behavior, men are more likely than women to feel as strongly about their online communities as they feel about their off-line ones. • Chris Hardy, an ex-Mormon who created a beefcake calendar featuring Mormon hunks, had his recent BYU degree put on nonacademic hold after BYU found out he had been excommunicated between the time he completed his studies and the time he attended graduation ceremonies. • An 89-year-old Ohioan woman was arrested last week after she refused to give a child back his football when it landed in her yard. • A judge in Pennsylvania has ordered a woman and her husband to take down the woman's makeshift "bubble," which she says helps her environmental illness which makes her sensitive to substances. • A speculation ad from the CLM BBDO Paris advertising agency caused a bit of trouble for Pepsi last week when an ad that suggested a lifeguard was willing to look the other way while a young boy molested a woman in exchange for a can of Pepsi was leaked on the internet. • A representative for the Nebraska State Legislature announced today that the state would be altering its safe-haven law to apply only to infants who are up to 3 days old. • Researchers are currently studying the link between past birth control use and a lowered risk uterine and ovarian cancers by examining the amount of estrogen that is found in the urine of monkeys who are given birth control. •

• A study of the gynecological screening tests for cervical cancer in Sweden has found that immigrants from Norway, Denmark, and Central America are more likely to develop cervical cancer than Swedish nationals. • Germany has the largest wage gap between men and women in Western Europe, which is due in part to maternity leave and shortened hours for working moms and outright gender discrimination.• In related news: New laws in England that would extend maternity leave benefits to a full year and allow parents to demand flexible working hours have some "employment lawyers" worrying that employers will stop hiring women altogether. • Louise Glueck, former U.S. poet laureate, has been awarded the Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery of the art of poetry." • Women's activists in Iran enjoyed a victory on Monday when Iran's parliament decided to shelve a proposed law that would allow husbands to take multiple wives without permission from their first spouse. • The victory was brief, however, as four Iranian women's activists were imprisoned on Tuesday for contributing to banned women's websites. • Darlene Harris, a police officer in Atlanta, tells the story of how she discovered at the age of 35 that she is an "intersexed" person, or someone whose internal or external sexual anatomy don't fit the typical definitions of female or male. •

• Two women have been charged in the murder of a British couple honeymooning in Antigua and Barbuda. • The Maricopa County Sheriff in Arizona has violated a ruling that he is not allowed to require female inmates to receive a court order before they are granted an abortion. • In (somewhat) related news, there is a new program at the Ohio Reformatory for Women that allows inmates to raise their children in their cells and in in-house prisons to keep the bond between mother and child tight. • More than 80% of women in the Air Force in Iraq reported persistent fatigue, difficulty concentrating and nearly 20% reported one symptom of PTSD. • Meanwhile in the region, a man has been arrested in Jerusalem for helping beat, threaten, and rob a divorced Israeli woman under the self-proclaimed title of "chastity guards." •

MEGAN: Spencer, do you really think that Republican donors will be quaking in their boots when their secretaries start opening letters from MoveOn founder Tom Mattzie letting them know that he knows they're giving money to Republican-y groups?

SPENCER: The thing to know about Tom is that he's relentless. He carries twin shotguns that he twirls like drumsticks as the city burns behind him. He lights a cigar off the smoldering ruins left in the wake of a missile strike that failed to kill him. in the movie version, Michael Bay will have to literally sew Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura together in order to get a proper portrayal of Mattzie, because one action hero just can't do the job alone.

MEGAN: That makes him sound ever-so-slightly more rugged and sexy than he is. Let's not go overboard. He will likely not appreciate this comparison, but he reminds me of Frank Lutz. Only smarter.

SPENCER: My question for you is do you really think Mattzie — who I like a lot, if you can't tell — would do this if Freedom's Watch really kept its donor lists anonymous?

MEGAN: There's anonymous, and there's anonymous. I mean, yes, Freedom Watch spokesman Ed Patru is right, they don't have to disclose their donors to the IRS. But if I'm guessing, and I am (and guessing moreso that Tom's not stupid enough to put it out there if it weren't already a fait accompli), he's already got the lists through a shady donor list swap done through a 3rd party. Having worked at a nonprofit, technically-nonpartisan-but-Republican-leaning think tank, this is how it's done. Heritage shares donors with ATR shares donors with CEI etc. It's a money-maker for everyone, and it's all arranged through 3rd party arrangers.

SPENCER: All the GOP quotes in the NYT piece struck me as bluster — like, Sheldon "Evilest Jew Alive" Adelson surely knows what his legal options are, but a lot of potential Freedoms' Watch/Corsi donors probably don't.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, I can't imagine the low-end donors are the ones he really wants, and the rich ones aren't going to be that worried.

SPENCER: so who would the likely 3rd parties be here? Who could sell the lists to Tom?

MEGAN: Well, but if Tom's good with the dirty tricks, and here's hoping he is, then he could've practically bought it directly. It's more how he would make himself or his organization seem like the sort of group Freedom Watch would trade with. Or how much money he offered to do so.

SPENCER: A friend just emailed to say he heard Freedoms Watch on the air on Missouri radio running downballot ads for a congressional race. Hmmmmm maybe Mattzie is using a cutout himself LIKE THE PUNISHER.

MEGAN: Um, ok, I think it's time for a segue. If we're on Freedom Watch, we should at least mention the fact that their completely inept fired former President is suing Kelsey Grammer. So maybe that's how Tom knows — someone is short of cash and respect. And certainly self-respect.

SPENCER: Let's insult John McCain for saying stupid shit like this:

“What do you think that Saddam Hussein would be doing with oil at $120, $125, $130 a barrel?,” McCain asked. “What do you think he’d be doing? I’ll tell you what he’d be doing. He’d be doing what he said he was committed to doing. And that’s acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction, which he did twice before.”

Your first instinct is to gently tell the Senator that there wouldn't be oil at these prices if we hadn't fucking invaded Iraq.

MEGAN: My first instinct, actually, was to chortle at the thought that McCain is the Amazing Kreskin and knew ALL of this when he voted to invade Iraq.

SPENCER: And then your second instinct is to notice how fortuitous Obama is to have the question of the original judgment over the invasion to be once again mooted as an issue.

MEGAN: Can you imagine him in a turban with a crystal ball and stuff? Go ahead and try. It's funny.

SPENCER: Man, you and your Johnny Carson-ass vanilla humor.

MEGAN: I'm going to ignore your comments about my humor. I'm bringing the average age of the room in which I'm currently sitting down to 70.

SPENCER: The only way McCain possibly looks prescient is if he divorces The Surge from The War (ceding for a second the wisdom of the surge).

MEGAN: Can you Surge without a War? I mean, really? I don't think McCain's messaging machine is good enough to make the entire country re-imagine the war as not a singular effort that started when we invaded and hasn't ended yet.

SPENCER: That's why McCain wants the voters to think the war's balances were zeroed in spring 07. But if he's returning to the question of invading, obviously Obama's judgment is superior. and then McCain's first/last/only argument for his candidacy is nullified and the universe's balance is finally righted.

I'm with you — McCain's actual argument for the war is too complex for voters: we have to stay because if we don't it'll sink into chaos even though what I advocated has brought violence down and we're winning but we're not winning hard enough and that's why we can go by 2013 mostly although we should actually stay 100 years as long as no one dies and I'm cold when is Murder She Wrote on?

MEGAN: Murder She Wrote is on every night at midnight on the Hallmark Channel. D'oh. Damn old people osmosis.

SPENCER: Which is why he's just like Surges For Everyone! Surge In Afghanistan! Economic Surge!
But speaking of old people...

MEGAN: I mean, isn't another word for "economic surge"... "bubble?

SPENCER: Let's talk about this David Broder column — what did you make of it?

MEGAN: I read it and was like, ok, so, let me understand this thesis. Obama decided to campaign for his own candidacy rather than spend the summer with McCain going to 10 town hall meetings at McCain's suggestion and using his own campaign staff to pack the room the way McCain uses his, let alone the logistics work, instead of having staff do GOTV efforts. And so McCain's plan — which he shouldn't have counted on anyway — goes flat. And then McCain betrays his promises about negative campaigning and spends a month going negative and blames it on the other guy not attending the events that he was never going to attend anyway and McCain pretend like he wouldn't've gone negative if Obama had joined him and people are supposed to believe that? But, he did convince David Broder, apparently, since Broder didn't bother questioning that "logic."

SPENCER: First on the issue: how has Obama gone negative on McCain? The equivalence is absurd: McCain intimates that Obama is an unAmerican elitist N-WORD terrorist and Obama says... McCain isn't a maverick.

MEGAN: Oh, and he had the audacity to point out that McCain was intimating that Obama doesn't "look" Presidential, so Obama's playing the race card by pointing out that McCain is playing with racial stereotypes.

SPENCER: Demonstrating the daffiness of the column is Broder's inclusion of this:

I asked Obama if he had any regrets about turning down McCain's early June invitation to start the joint appearances back then. He said, "I think the notion that somehow as a consequence of not having joint appearances, Senator McCain felt obliged to suggest that I'd rather lose a war to win a campaign doesn't automatically follow. I think we each have control over ourselves and our campaigns, and we have to take responsibility for that."

A halfway introspective columnist would have said, "Oh shit, this quote exposes the weakness of my thesis. I'd better come up with something else."

MEGAN: Man, Obama needs to stop qualifying his attacks. "Doesn't automatically follow"? It doesn't follow. at. all.

SPENCER: Yeah, agreed. but David Broder — even after he took the Post's buyout he will. not. stop. writing. he is to journalism what Tucker Max is to sex.

MEGAN: Well, that assumes that Tucker Max had actual sex.

SPENCER: Well even better, because there ain't any actual journalism here.

MEGAN: Yes, I've "heard" that involves unbiased reporting.

SPENCER: No it doesn't! you don't start on me now! I make a living off biased reporting, which is more honest and transparent than this shit Broder does. Broder's problem isn't bias, it's total lack of rigor and intellectual discipline.

MEGAN: There is no objectivity anyway, but the subjective appearance thereof.

SPENCER: But let's celebrate the implosion of the Tennessee Jew Baiter

MEGAN: I mean, I actually feel bad because Nikki Tinker isn't a terrible person, but Steve Cohen has got the worst of the deal of representing that district from Day 1.

SPENCER: So Nikki Tinker, a one-time Harold Ford protege, ran an ad against her Jewish primary opponent in which she said Rep. Steven Cohen was sullying "OUR churches" but unsupportive of school prayer — and got fucking trounced last night. i dunno, Tinker seems like a pretty terrible person from this Jew's perspective.

MEGAN: Ok, well, what I meant was that she didn't seem like a terribly bad person schooled in the Cynthia McKinney school of anti-Semetic politics until then. That ad was fucking over the line, it was really offensive and I was pre-disposed to like her as a female candidate. So, thank goodness for that, even if Obama went all mealy-mouthed in his non-condemnation. I miss the old Obama.

SPENCER: Why is what he said mealy-mouthed?

“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee,” Obama said in a statement. “It’s time to turn the page on a politics driven by negativity and division so that we can come together to lift up our communities and our country.”

MEGAN: Well, it is compared to when he weighed in for Barrow.

SPENCER: ?

MEGAN: So, John Barrow's a Blue Dog (i.e., conservative) white Dem in Georgia who was facing a primary fight there, and Obama cut an ad for him. He didn't even mention Tinker or Cohen by name, and Cohen backed him before the Tennessee primary. One of your colleagues wasn't impressed by that, actually.

SPENCER: But was it a negative ad? I'm not understanding why the two cases are similar.

MEGAN: Well, I guess my point is that when it came to Barrow, Obama was in the trenches cutting ads for the incumbent even when it wasn't a terribly negative campaign. But in this case, the campaign's been getting ugly for a while, and the ad was just the last thing, and rather than coming out and saying "I support Steve Cohen and these ads are disgusting," he issues a statement about his opposition to negative campaigning.

SPENCER: But it's better if he does that, isn't it? Because now he's on the record as being opposed to, say, comparing your opponent to racist groups or attacking his religion and iwonder who's going to cut those ads in the future. If he just makes it about the TN race it's... just about the TN race.

MEGAN: That's a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way.

SPENCER: I'm an enlightening motherfucker.

• Raymond Hunter Geisel (no relation to the awesomest Geisel ever) was arrested in Florida today for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama. One nutjob down, too many to go. [Politico]
• A President is going to get impeached! No, not ours. Pakistan's own Uncle Pervy. [HuffPo]
• Salim Hamdan, convicted earlier this week of driving for Osama bin Laden, was sentenced today to 66 months in prison. He's already been at Gitmo for 61 months, which means he should be released in 5 but this is the Bush Administration until January 20th. [Washington Post]

• Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, he of the racy and lied-about text messages, was set to jail today for violating the conditions of his bond. The judge said, "If it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat — if it was John Six-Pack sitting in the seat — what would I do? And the answer is simple." Thought Kilpatrick, as he is likely wont to do, "But I am Kwame Kilpatrick!" And then off to the hoosegow he was led. [NY Times]
• In the mean time, the Democratic party's statement of principle on the Iraq War has been leaked. The war was bad, troops will be redeployed, we need a "diplomatic surge" and there's going to be (one hopes) an increasingly small number of troops there for a while yet so that the Dems can't be accused of cutting and running though they still will be. [Washington Independent]
• Margaret Dupes and her (recently fired) high school newspaper adviser are pissed that the high school's principal spiked her piece decrying abstinence-only education. Said principal told the adviser that he was uncomfortable with the content, but his lawyer's telling the press that it was because he was convinced it must've been written by an adult. Great faith in your students, sir! [UPI]

And then the soldiers go into the village to give them food and toys and make nice and crap and then they see what they've done and feel bad and then right at the same time they get the shit bombed out of them and a soldier dies and everyone is like Why am I here again? and freaks out and gets really reckless and maybe kills a villager or two to blow off steam and then freaks out again and pines for their wives who are probably cheating on them. "It's like being in charge of a soap opera," says Kearney. Everyone's on medication. Everyone has PTSD. And it completely tests everyone's limits. As the new Pentagon counterinsurgency manual stresses: "Genuine compassion and empathy for the populace provides an effective weapon against insurgents," adding, "Effective leaders are as skilled at limiting lethal force as they are in concentrating it."Which brings us back to Katie Horner. Her father taught her to shoot/ "Never point a weapon at something you don't intend to kill," he told her.

Her father and brother shot doves. Horner shot skeet. She had a problem with hunting something she wasn't going to eat and didn't have any other reason to kill.

One day an Afghan visited their fire base, Sandifer told me. "I was staring at him, on the verge of picking up my weapon to shoot him," he said. "I know right from wrong, but even if I did shoot him everyone at the fire base would have been O.K. We're all to the point of 'Lord of the Flies.' "

How does Horner cope with the killing? She's unwinding in front of the TV in her living room, her feet tucked beneath her on the sofa. She frowns. "I didn't have to cope with it." She sounds annoyed. "I don't even like the word cope — it implies I had something to get over. I had nothing to get over. I feel like I reacted the same as everyone else."

Ready To Kill [Washington Post]
Battle Company Is here [NY Times]

The Department of Defense agrees, and has stated that "Any service member who is deployed and experiences family problems back home is subject to psychological stress that could decrease effectiveness on the job and undermine military readiness." But family court judges have to make a decision based on what's right for the children. "Just because you have an agreement that says you get to get a child back it may not be the best thing for the child," says Judge Susan Carbon, president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. In Molly Moriarty's case, the Navy allowed her to fly home and fight the court order. But the legislation varies from state to state and some moms aren't so lucky: Spc. Lisa Hayes (pictured) was serving with the Navy in Iraq when she was compelled to go AWOL in order to return home and fight for custody of her 7-year-old daughter. (She refused to return to duty.) As for Ms. Moriarty, she got her kids back after enlisting the help of the Red Cross and several attorneys. "People think, Oh, you're a bad mom," she says. "You abandoned your kids because you wanted to go and play GI Jane. It was horrible. I signed up and took an oath of honor, loyalty and commitment. I wasn't going to dishonor my country by quitting. But then I would think, Oh my poor kids." She adds, "Going to Baghdad doesn't scare me. What scares me is if their dad is going to try this again."

GI Jane: Kids Or Country? [ABC News]