Stars and Stripes 2.12.15

Volume 7, No. 9 ©SS 2015

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2015

ANCHORMAN SUSPENDED IRAQ WAR STORY DISCREPANCIES UNCOVERED

BY STARS AND STRIPES CAST DOUBT ON CREDIBILITY OF WILLIAMS AND NBC

Brian Williams poses with Command Sgt. Maj. Tim Terpack in a video screen grab from an “NBC Nightly News” report broadcast on Jan. 30.

Courtesy of NBC Universal

For information please contact Waverly Williams 803-774-1237 or waverly@theitem.com

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COVER STORY

NBC suspends Williams without pay

BY PATRICK DICKSON Stars and Stripes

N

WASHINGTON BC has suspended Nightly News anchor Brian Williams for six months without pay for fabricating stories about his time in Iraq and elsewhere, the network announced late Tuesday.

“We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months,” the president of NBC News, Deborah Turness, wrote to the staff. “Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News.”

The Iraq issue erupted online when Iraq veterans took umbrage at a news report in which Williams used a ceremony honoring a retired command sergeant major at a New York Rangers hockey game to repeat the story that his aircraft was forced down in Iraq.

Days later, Williams admitted the claim was false when Stars and Stripes reporter Travis J. Tritten contacted NBC News to ask for comment to statements by some servicemembers challenging the veteran anchor’s version.

But Williams’ apology that night on NBC Nightly News failed to stem the criticism. He admitted his helicopter was not hit but claimed that he “was instead in a following aircraft” and said he had bungled the tribute to a veteran.

The apology was met with scorn and derision, particularly online, and deeper scrutiny followed.

“While on Nightly News on [Jan. 30], Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003, Turness wrote in her memo to staff Tuesday. “It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position.

“In addition, we have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field.”

Days after his on-air apology, several news organizations reported that NBC News had launched an internal investigation into Williams’ reporting.

The next day, it was reported that Williams sent a note to the NBC News staff in which he wrote: “[It] has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions.

“As Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next

several days, and Lester Holt has kindly agreed to sit in for me to allow us to adequately deal with this issue.”

Soon, his recollections of Hurricane Katrina were called into question. He told anecdotes about his hotel being overrun by armed gangs and described seeing a body floating down the street from his hotel window in the French

travel with me.”

Williams did not say in his reports from Iraq in 2003 that his Chinook had been hit by ground fire.

But by 2013, he told Alec Baldwin on Baldwin’s public radio show that “I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe.”

When Baldwin asked whether Williams thought he would die, he replied, “Briefly, sure.”

Weeks later, he told David Letterman on air that “two of the four helicopters were hit, by ground fire, including the one I was in” — “No kidding!” Letterman interjects — [by] “uh, RPG and AK-47.”

When the hockey game report hit the air, some soldiers called him on it.

The claims bothered several soldiers aboard the formation of 159th Aviation Regiment Chinooks that were flying far ahead and did come under attack March 24, 2003, Tritten wrote.

One of the helicopters was hit by two rocketFor first-hand propelled greaccounts from nades — one did the GIs aboard not detonate but the Chinooks passed through the airframe and rotor that day, go to blades — as well as stripes.com/ small-arms fire. brianwilliams “It was something personal for us that was kind of lifechanging for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it,” said Lance Reynolds, who was the flight engineer. “It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.”

Reynolds said Williams and the NBC cameramen arrived in a helicopter 30 to 60 minutes after his damaged Chinook made an emergency landing at an Iraqi airfield near Objective Rams, a temporary base being hastily set up near Najaf in southern Iraq.

Soon after the Stars and Stripes report, a media feeding frenzy began.

Tritten appeared on several news shows as cable news followed up. Social media users mocked Williams mercilessly.

Reactions among the soldiers contacted again after the issue exploded were mixed. Some thought the record Quarter of New Orleans, which was not had been corrected and just wanted severely flooded. to move on. Others said the apology He also told a story, also now in doubt, of being in an Israeli Black Hawk was half-hearted and perhaps forced on a man who never would have come helicopter and watching Katyusha forward otherwise. rockets pass underneath him. On The In her note Tuesday, Turness said Daily Show, he concluded the story by the NBC investigations into Williams’ telling Jon Stewart, “Any time you want reporting was ongoing. to cross over to the other side, baby,

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COVER STORY

In his own words: Williams talks to Stars and Stripes

BY TRAVIS J. TRITTEN Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams on Sunday scuttled what would have been his first public appearance to explain his situation when he canceled a planned appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

Williams has answered questions about the Iraq incident — how he ended up telling a war story he now admits was false — only during an interview with Stars and Stripes.

The embattled anchor published a Facebook apology to troops after claiming he was in a Chinook forced down by rocket-propelled grenade fire in 2003, addressed the issue on air Wednesday, and issued a brief statement over the weekend saying he will temporarily leave the news desk while NBC investigates.

Questions have also arisen around statements he made about reporting on Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans in 2005 and Israel’s war with the militant group Hezbollah in 2006.

As NBC investigates and Williams keeps out of the public eye while his place as one of the most watched and trusted television news reporters in the country remains uncertain, Stars and Stripes is publishing on its website a full transcript of the Feb. 4 interview in which the anchor admits he was never on the attacked helicopter and claims he was unaware his flight was not directly behind but actually far from the company that was hit.

Here is a partial transcript of Stars and Stripes’ interview,

For a full audio and transcript the Williams interview, go to stripes.com/brianwilliams edited for space.

Stars and Stripes: Speaking to these veterans today, all of them told me they couldn’t understand how you could misremember what aircraft you were on or whether your aircraft was hit, so I’m just wondering how that could happen?

Williams: Same reasoning in reverse. It was my first engagement of the war and, remember, I was and we were all, I think, scared. I have yet to meet the veteran who doesn’t admit to cinching up a little bit when it starts, and it all became a fog of getting down on the ground. What do we do now? … So, a professional will look at this differently.

They go into a kind of hyperdrive. I did what a civilian, an untrained civilian, would do in that instance and it was being scared. I think anyone in my shoes would admit that.

It could not have been a more foreign environment. All we knew is we had been fired upon. All we knew was he had set down, and then with the arrival of the sandstorm. How do we defend our little desert bivouac area?

I had multiple guys tell me that they remember immediately after this the news coverage — this was within days of the incident.

They said you and NBC had reported in those first broadcasts that you were on the aircraft that came under attack. So is that not true?

No, I think I correctly reported, as I did in my blog in ’08, that I was on the aircraft behind the one that was hit.

Because I knew we had all

BRAD BARKET, INVISION /AP

Brian Williams speaks at the 8th Annual Stand Up For Heroes, presented by the New York Comedy Festival and The Bob Woodruff Foundation, in New York on Nov. 5. come under fire, I guess I had assumed that all of the airframes took some damage because we all went down. Also, remember, adding to the fear of the moment was the fact that our load master let loose our cargo, so you go through this over-torque where you rise in the air before you settle despite what was some dandy piloting by the crews of all three aircraft. It was like landing on the surface of the moon, and I’m going to have a far different recollection than that of the professionals.

I was told by one of the crew members who was actually on your Chinook that you were an hour behind this grouping of three Chinooks that were out in

the front, and that those three Chinooks out in the front came under fire and the middle one was hit.

And that’s the first I’ve heard of that. I did not think we were in trail by that far. I think that’s probably a good question for Tim [Terpak, a retired soldier featured in the NBC broadcast where Williams claimed he was on the attacked Chinook], who I now learn witnessed the overflight.

But I could not see in front of us. But I thought we were just in one flotilla, for lack of a better word. That’s the first time I’ve heard that.

Is NBC going to do anything on the air to kind of correct the record?

I don’t know. I’ll talk to my

boss. I am certainly willing. Again, it’s very basic — I would not have chosen to make this mistake. I don’t know what screw-up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft from the other. The fact is, I remember three aircraft going down. I was on one of them. An additional aircraft aside from ours took an RPG through the rear housing above the ramp, and it was our first engagement of the war, a trip that eventually brought me to downtown Baghdad. This is what I said to you earlier; my war experience in no way matches that of the professional soldiers who we were traveling with. tritten.travis@stripes.com Twitter: @Travis_Tritten

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COVER STORY Amy Poehler, left, Brian Williams and Seth Meyers are seen when Williams made a surprise cameo at the Weekend Update desk on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” on Sept.

30, 2006.

DANA EDELSON, NBC/AP

Vet recounts Williams ditching event for ‘SNL’

BY PATRICK DICKSON Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams’ on-air apology last week for lying about coming under attack while on a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 rang hollow to a number of veterans — perhaps none more so than Boston firefighter Neal Santangelo.

In Sunday’s edition of the Boston Herald, Santangelo recounted for columnist Peter Gelzinis how, at the last minute, Williams had told organizers of a 2006 Congressional Medal of Honor Society banquet in the city that a “pressing engagement” would prevent him from serving as master of ceremonies and keynote speaker, which he’d agreed to do six months earlier. He would instead have time only to greet the audience.

As members of the committee that arranged the event, Santangelo and Tom Lyons were disappointed, but they arranged for a police escort to rush Williams to the airport to catch his plane back to New York City.

After the banquet, as they

and other committee members relaxed in the hotel lounge, Santangelo’s wife phoned to say she knew why Williams had to bail out. She was watching the news anchor ham it up with Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler in a Weekend Update sketch on “Saturday Night Live.”

In the skit, Williams was not told that he did not get the Update anchor job, and has an awkward moment with co-anchors Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers.

Santangelo wrote an angry letter to Williams a week after the banquet. “In an act of egotistical, blatant self-promotion, you deceived the (Medal of Honor) Recipients, declined to break bread with them and disrespected them,” he wrote.

“You placed comedy before

courage ... Your conduct was irreverent, insulting, incomprehensible and shameful. …”

He never sent it.

“I didn’t want to send it off like some loose cannon,” Gelzinis quotes Santangelo as saying. “So, even though the local committee agreed with every word, we decided to run it past the national (Medal of Honor) society.

“And what came back to us was, ‘Yes, we agree with what you’re saying, but we don’t want to burn any bridges with this guy.’ ” Williams still sits on several advisory boards of the Medal of Honor Foundation, an adjunct of the MOH society.

They have declined any comment, Gelzinis wrote.

The accusation that Williams sought celebrity status,

‘ You placed comedy before

courage. … Your conduct was irreverent, insulting, incomprehensible and shameful.

’

Neal Santangelo Boston firefighter

perhaps at the expense of journalistic standards, has been made elsewhere since veterans challenged his account of being aboard a helicopter forced down in Iraq in 2003.

In her Sunday column in The New York Times, Maureen Dowd wrote: “As the performers — Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Bill Maher — were doing more serious stuff, the supposedly serious guys were doing more performing. …

“With no pushback from the brass at NBC, Williams has spent years fervently ‘courting celebrity,’ as The Hollywood Reporter put it, guest-starring on “30 Rock,” slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon and regaling David Letterman with his faux heroics. “Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47,” he told Letterman Williams is now being scrutinized for a number of stories, including telling journalism students that while covering Hurricane Katrina, he had seen a dead body floating past his New Orleans hotel room, where flooding was not severe, and how armed gangs had run

amok in the hotel.

Many of his stories, however, were told as he was out pushing his “brand” on shows such as Fallon’s or Letterman’s, and his bosses at NBC exhibited no public discomfort with his doing so.

In one of his many appearances on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” he told a story of being in an Israeli Black Hawk helicopter and watching Katyusha rockets pass underneath him.

Like many of his stories, it evolved from the first telling.

At the end of a nearly sixminute segment, he concludes his story by telling host Jon Stewart, “Anytime you want to cross over to the other side, baby, travel with me.”

On the “NBC Nightly News” broadcast Monday, stand-in Lester Holt said, “We want to take just a moment to tell you where Brian is tonight” … then mentioned Williams’ note to the staff, adding that he’ll take several days off “amid questions over how he recalled certain stories he’s covered. …

He’ll be off while this issue is dealt with.”

dickson.patrick@stripes.com Twitter: @StripesDCchief

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MILITARY

Fort Hood victims to be awarded the Purple Heart

BY PATRICK DICKSON Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The Army announced last week that it will award the Purple Heart and its civilian counterpart, the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom, to victims of a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.

Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded in the attack by Maj. Nidal Hasan, who was convicted in August 2013, of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.

Hasan is being held on the military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., while posttrial and appellate processes continue.

An Army statement said Secretary of the Army John McHugh has approved the awards following a change in the medals’ eligibility criteria mandated by Congress.

“The Purple Heart’s strict eligibility criteria had prevented us from awarding it to victims of the horrific attack at Fort Hood,” McHugh is quoted as saying. “Now that Congress has changed the criteria, we believe there is sufficient reason to allow these men and women to be awarded and recognized with either the Purple Heart or, in the case of civilians, the Defense of Freedom medal. It’s an appropriate recognition of

their service and sacrifice.”

Under Section 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015, Congress expanded the eligibility for the Purple Heart by redefining what should be considered an attack by a “foreign terrorist organization” for purposes of determining eligibility for the Purple Heart, the Army release said.

The legislation states that an event should now be considered an attack by a foreign terrorist organization if the perpetrator of the attack “was in communication with the foreign terrorist organization before the attack” and “the attack was inspired or motivated by the foreign terrorist organization.”

In a review of the Fort Hood incident and the new provisions of law, the Army determined that there was sufficient evidence to conclude Hasan “was in communication with the foreign terrorist organization before the attack,” and that his radicalization and subsequent acts could reasonably be considered to have been “inspired or motivated by the foreign terrorist organization.”

Soldiers receiving the Purple Heart automatically qualify for combat-related special compensation upon retirement.

Recipients are also eligible for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

DOD names new chief of suicide prevention office, elevates position

BY JON H ARPER Stars and Stripes

Since the attack, victims’ families and their allies in Congress had butted heads with the Army and the White House on whether this was a terrorist attack or “workplace violence.”

Witnesses said Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” — before the attack in a crowded processing center in the Central Texas base. Most of the victims were either just returning from Iraq or Afghanistan or readying to embark to those combat zones.

The military has not executed an active-duty soldier since 1961. Five men are on the military death row, but none is close to an execution date. dickson.patrick@stripes.com

WASHINGTON — Keita Franklin became the new director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office on Monday as the Pentagon continues to grapple with mental health problems plaguing the force.

There were 479 suicides across the force in 2013, the most recent calendar year for which final Defense Department statistics are available.

There were 259 suicides among active-duty troops and 220 among Reserve Franklin and National Guard members, according to the latest DOD Suicide Event Report.

For comparison, the 479 number is greater than the number of U.S. troop fatalities sustained during any year of Operation Enduring Freedom (which encompasses the Afghanistan War) except in 2010, when 499 servicemembers died.

The suicide rate for the active-duty component in 2013 was 18.7 per 100,000 servicemembers. The rates for the Reserve and National Guard components were higher, at 23.4 and 28.9, respectively.

The ground forces, after years of grinding counterinsurgency warfare, have higher rates of suicide than the other services, according to DOD data. Suicide rates for the

active components of the four services were: Army: 23.0 (per 100,000).

Marines: 23.1.

Air Force: 14.1.

Navy: 13.4.

The suicide prevention office aims to reduce those numbers.

“I am very pleased to have Dr. Franklin take the lead in this very important mission,” Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Jessica Wright said in a news release.

Franklin’s position has been elevated to a career Senior Executive Service position.

Wright said the move is “reinforcing the department’s commitment to decreasing the incidence of suicide and increasing resiliency across the armed forces.”

Franklin has a history of working on behavioral health issues, according to biographical information furnished by the DOD. Most recently, she was head of the Behavioral Health Branch at Marine Corps Headquarters. In that role, she led five behavioral health programs, including suicide prevention.

Franklin has also worked for both the Air Force and the Army, supervising family programs at the installation and regional levels. Her primary area of interest is post-traumatic stress symptoms and how those symptoms affect family functioning, according to the DOD. Her post-doctoral research examines the impact of deployment and psychological well-being on family relationships. harper.jon@stripes.com

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MILITARY

Navy Lt. Liza Dougherty, right, and wife Faith at their wedding in 2012.

Courtesy of Dana Pleasant

ESPOUSING CHANGE

Military same-sex couples overseas fight for benefits

BY STEVEN BEARDSLEY Stars and Stripes

NAPLES, Italy aith Dougherty arrived in Italy in 2013 with her pregnant Navy-officer wife and an expectation the military would support them like any other family.

She quickly learned that wouldn’t be the case. Denied military sponsorship for an Italian visa, Dougherty was forced to return as a student and enroll in Italian language classes.

Because she wasn’t put on her wife’s military orders, she was barred from using military travel and had to pay for her own flights.

She might have been kept from on-base housing — had the base commander not been one of the couple’s biggest supporters.

F

“We exhausted everything,” said Dougherty, 35, after her family left Italy in 2014, two years earlier than planned. “We were paying as much money as we had to. We were doing everything we could to keep me in the country.”

Dougherty’s story is similar to those of other same-sex spouses who have tried joining Defense Department employees overseas in the past year and a half. When the Supreme Court discarded parts of the Defense of Marriage Act on June 26, 2013, it opened the door to housing and other benefits for same-sex spouses of federal employees, including servicemembers and civilian workers in the DOD. But the military has delayed extending certain benefits common to spouses overseas, including official passports, visas and housing allowances, citing the need to check first for sensitivities with host nations.

Overseas benefits remain off-limits to samesex spouses in Germany, and their status is unclear in Korea, two countries that together host more than 90,000 troops and civilians.

Progress has been slow in other countries, including the Netherlands and Belgium, the first two countries in the world to legalize gay marriage. Command sponsorships were offered in Italy beginning last summer — the same week the Doughertys left the country.

A Defense Department spokesman said officials continue to work with the State Department on the issue.

“This has been an evolutionary process since the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Lt. Col. Nate Christensen said.

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MILITARY FROM PAGE 11

Those affected say they’ve been forced to choose between family and assignments beneficial to their spouses’ careers. Some say the military should have anticipated the issue before it arose and then provided better guidance to components after the ruling, preventing haphazard interpretations of DOD policy.

“Some detailers and branch managers have been very supportive and sympathetic and have changed orders,” said Ashley Broadway, president of the American Military Partner Association, which advocates for gay rights in the military. “The problem, in my opinion, is there hasn’t been clear direction from the Pentagon to the various branches about this issue.”

Implementation The Supreme Court decision changed the federal definition of the word “spouse,” a term used in most basing agreements between the U.S. and host nations but rarely, if ever, defined in those documents.

In August 2013, the military delayed command sponsorships for same-sex spouses overseas as it reached out to host nations, concerned that some might not agree to similar interpretations of status-of-forces agreements.

In the meantime, units in the U.S. were told to make sure their personnel were eligible to bring spouses overseas, and human resources commands were instructed not to issue passports or plane tickets in cases when they weren’t.

Administrators didn’t always get the message. Senior Airman Melissa Garcia-Rubio, 25, received teo-year orders to a military police detachment in Sigonella, Sicily, in August 2013, and was told to put her wife on the documents. A month and a half before leaving, she was informed the tour would be unaccompanied.

Theresa Mueller, 38, was issued an official passport before joining her wife and three children in Germany in May. She then was told she’d have to pay for the plane ticket because she was ineligible for military travel. Mueller’s family still doesn’t receive the full housing allowance, she said, and she remains concerned

Courtesy of Melissa Garcia-Rubio

Senior Airman Melissa Garcia-Rubio, left, stands with her wife, Juliana, following their wedding in 2013. After accepting orders to the Navy air station in Sigonella, Sicily, Melissa Garcia-Rubio was told she wouldn’t be able to bring her wife due to restrictions on command sponsorships for same-sex spouses in some countries. The restrictions for Italy were lifted last summer. someone could take her passport away.

In Korea, gay spouses were initially denied access to commissaries and exchanges because officials considered those privileges part of command sponsorship, a decision reversed in December 2013.

Confusion was widespread among commands, said Broadway, who is married to an Army lieutenant colonel.

“JAG attorneys contact me weekly asking me for guidance as they are trying to assist servicemembers with this very issue,” Broadway wrote in an email last summer.

Dougherty assumed she would need to wait a few weeks before applying for a residency permit following her arrival in Italy with her wife, Lt. Liza Dougherty, in July 2013, shortly after the DOMA ruling. The wait instead dragged on, with little word from officials. As Liza Dougherty, 32, entered her third trimester, Faith Dougherty returned to the U.S. to apply for a student visa to replace her tourist visa, paying for her own ticket.

Things remained difficult after her return to Italy. Her

class requirements kept her from staying home with her newborn son, as the couple had planned. Then the Navy rejected Liza Dougherty’s request for an exemption to the command sponsorship policy. The couple started looking for a way out, but Liza Doughtery’s detailer turned down an initial request for new orders, relenting only after the officer’s boss, thenbase commander Capt. Scott Gray, became involved.

“We had the benefit of a boss that stood up for me and went to bat for me and made sure the right things happened for our family, but there are so many other people in Italy who were in our spot,” Liza Dougherty said. “Maybe those who don’t have the financial resources we have.”

Local law Forty countries have agreed to recognize same-sex spouses since 2013, according to the DOD. Another 64 either have rejected recognition or weren’t even asked formally based on cultural attitudes toward the issue.

Progress has come at

different rates. By the time Faith Dougherty’s tourist visa expired in the fall of 2013, U.S. officials hadn’t reached out to the Italian Foreign Ministry Affairs, according to a ministry official. That would happen at the end of the year, and it would take Italian officials another six months to approve the matter.

Other responses haven’t been as clear. Korea has given no guarantees it will grant visas for same-sex spouses, but anecdotal accounts suggest that some requests are being approved.

Germany, which has not legalized gay marriage, is asking the U.S. to recognize its domestic partners as spouses under the SOFA, a request it made last March. As of last November, it had yet to hear back from U.S. officials on the subject, a ministry representative said. A potential problem could be that the U.S. can’t guarantee equal treatment of gay spouses across the U.S., given the disparity in state laws, and Broadway said the military hasn’t responded to her questions on the issue. She said she isn’t sure how to answer the regular emails from

those mulling assignments in the country.

“We just don’t know what to advise folks to do,” she said.

The Netherlands, the world’s first country to legalize gay marriage, remains closed to command sponsorships for reasons that remain unclear. Belgium was added to the list of countries where command sponsorship is available at the beginning of November. A legal adviser for the Belgian Defense Ministry, Nicolas Lange, said the U.S. must decide who it considers a dependent, not Belgium.

Chris Jenks, a former military lawyer who once headed the international law branch for the Army, agreed, saying that under diplomatic custom, the U.S. should determine who is a military dependent under the SOFA. “The sending state determines who are ‘spouses,’ ” he wrote in an email. “So when a U.S. servicemember arrives in a NATO country, (dependents) have documentation from the U.S. military that identifies them as a ‘member of the force’ for the purposes of the NATO SOFA … not documentation that they are either the spouse or the child of the servicemember.”

Others, like Dru BrennerBeck, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served as chief of the military and civil law division at U.S. Army Europe from 2001 to 2003, say the military is being appropriately cautious. Diplomatic protocols go back centuries, she said, while foreign military basing is more recent and a much more delicate subject in most countries.

“The various countries are quite sensitive about expansive interpretations [of the Status of Forces Agreement] because of the extensive privileges given to those with SOFA status,” she said.

Whatever the reason, families like Mueller’s, the civilian in Germany, continue to wait for a resolution, their frustrations growing.

“Some days I just want to be done with it and go home,” she said. “We spent a fortune to come over here.”

Stars and Stripes reporter Ashley Rowland contributed to this report. beardsley.steven@stripes.com Twitter: @sjbeardsley

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just wrote to say Troops authorized to wear II love you, husband service stars on GWOT-EM T

BY JON H ARPER Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Troops are now authorized to wear service stars on their Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal suspensions and service ribbons if they have received more than one GWOT-EM for their support of overseas operations.

The new policy, retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001, was approved by Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Jessica Wright in a memorandum issued Monday.

The change went into effect immediately.

Servicemembers are allowed to wear only one GWOT-EM suspension or service ribbon on their uniform, even if they participated in multiple operations and received more than one award.

In the past, there was no way to tell by looking at a servicemember’s uniform how many GWOT-EMs they had received.

The new policy has changed that. Troops may now wear a service star for each subsequent award.

For example, if a servicemember received a GWOT-EM for participating in Operation Enduring Freedom and one for Operation Iraqi Freedom, they may now wear one service star on their suspension or service ribbon to indicate a second award; if they received three medals for participating in OEF, OIF and Operation New Dawn, they may wear two service stars, and so on.

The five approved operations

The Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, front and back. are: Enduring Freedom (inclusive dates: Sept. 11, 2001-TBD).

Iraqi Freedom (inclusive dates: March 19, 2003-Aug. 31, 2010).

Nomad Shadow (inclusive dates: Nov. 5, 2007-TBD).

New Dawn (inclusive dates: Sept. 1, 2010-Dec. 31, 2011).

Inherent Resolve (inclusive dates June 15, 2014-TBD).

Although the Afghanistan component of OEF ended Dec. 31, OEF counterterrorism operations continue elsewhere in the world, including the Middle East, Africa and the Philippines.

U.S. troops participating in Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, the follow-on training

Max D. Lederer Jr., Publisher Terry Leonard, Editor Robert H. Reid, Senior Managing Editor Tina Croley, Managing Editor for Content Amanda L. Trypanis, U.S. Edition Editor Michael Davidson, Revenue Director CONTACT US 529 14th Street NW, Suite 350, Washington, D.C. 20045-1301 Email: stripesweekly@stripes.com Editorial: (202) 761-0908 Advertising: (202) 761-0910 Michael Davidson, Weekly Partnership Director: davidson.michael@stripes.com Additional contact information: stripes.com

and counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, will not be eligible for the GWOT-EM. However, the Pentagon is staffing a request to make those troops eligible for the Afghanistan Campaign Medal. That request is expected to be approved, according to a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because no final decision has been announced.

Operation Freedom Sentinel will help support the NATO-led Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan who participate in Operation Resolute Support will be eligible for the NATO Medal but not the GWOT-EM, according to defense officials. harper.jon@stripes.com

This publication is a compilation of stories from Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military community. The contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Defense Department or the military services. The U.S. Edition of Stars and Stripes is published jointly by Stars and Stripes and this newspaper.

The appearance of advertising in this publication, including inserts or supplements, does not constitute endorsement by the DOD or Stars and Stripes of the products or services advertised.

Products or services advertised in this publication shall be made available for purchase, use, or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, physical handicap, political affiliation, or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user, or patron.

© Stars and Stripes, 2015

he reasons I love you worry uselessly. We might try are perhaps not quite to avoid the worst experiences Hallmark-worthy. and miss the ways they could It’s true they are not make us stronger. If we knew the trite stuff of greeting card all about the best duty station sentiments and romance novels ahead of time, we might wish — and thank heaven for that. away our lives as if we could get The chapters of our love story there faster. Not knowing what’s are punctuated by moving next means we have to enjoy trucks and cardboard boxes, what’s now. You may not know trips to the airport and powers where you’re going, but you of attorney, long distance phone always know where you are. calls and temporary housing.

That’s all anyone really knows, Maybe that’s why the reasons and I love you for that.

I love you are less about roses I love you for what you never and more about well-worn say. You do say you love and apuniforms, less about gourmet preciate me. I never get tired of meals in exclusive restaurants that, but I also love you for what and more about understocked you don’t say. You never tell me commissaries in remote locaI’ve spent too much or gained tions. Our love has always been weight, SPOUSE CALLS even when less about expensive gifts and more about priceless memories I have. You made by accident, rather than never say, by design.

“My job is In honor of Valentine’s Day, important,” the conventional day for makeven though ing declarations like this, here it is. You are the unconventional reasons never say, I love you: “Will you I love you, because you are take care of not always with me. This goes things while beyond absence that makes the I’m gone?”

Terri Barnes heart grow or “Will Join the conversation with Terri at fonder. I love you be here stripes.com/go/spousecalls you because when I get you are back?” Those dedicated to a questions are calling, even when it takes you unthinkable, because your trust away from all you love most, in me is absolute, and I love you including me. Those outside for that. You never say “You’re the military label the demands lucky to have me,” but I know of your life as “Sacrifice,” an I am. abstract concept with a capital I love you because you’ll “S.” But I know the tangible never be rich. We never wonder pieces of life your service costs, where our next meal will come the hours and minutes you can from. We can call the clinic if never get back: sweet days with the kids get sick. We can count our growing children, celebraon the next paycheck arriving tions experienced secondhand on time, but you’re not in this by phone and photographs. In for the money. With your ingethe line of duty, you set aside nuity, you could have come up your own safety. You also give with a hundred ways for more up the small comforts of your financial success if you had own home: hot showers, smooth chosen another kind of life. But sheets, morning coffee in you didn’t, and I love you for your own kitchen and Sunday that. You saw a need and chose afternoon football. All these you to spend your life meeting it. It give up for the larger purpose took scrimping and saving at of service to your country, and first, followed by training and I love you for that. I love you, preparation, to do what you do. because you never know where Along the way you had opporyou’re going. You can find your tunities to take easier detours. way in nearly any city, foreign You passed them by, gaining or domestic, without benefit of treasures more important and GPS. You rarely get lost, but lasting than money. in this military journey our I love you for all those reanext destination is never quite sons and more: not for where certain. I love that — and you. If we go, what you say or what you we knew about difficult assignearn, but for the man you are. ments before we got there, we’d Most of all, I love you for that.

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