Even in hard times, this is the holiday season and a time when thoughts turn to home and family and dinner tables covered with food and gaily wrapped presents and bright lights.

Save a moment amid the celebrations to give thought to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform in far-flung parts of this world who won't be sitting down to dinner with their families.

More than 170,000 men and women of our military will spend their Christmas and New Year's in Iraq and Afghanistan, where killing and dying never take a day off. » read more

We've been treated to a real spectacle this week as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney limped into the home stretch of their Magical History Tour, employing distortions, half-truths and untruths in a final, desperate attempt to pervert or somehow prevent history from judging them accurately.

The president journeyed to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., to try to polish his legacy with a rambling 15-minute speech that laid out his many glorious achievements of the last eight years for a captive military audience.

Standing amid the splendid ruins of what once was a proud nation, Bush celebrated keeping America safe from terrorist attacks; transforming our military; reorganizing and repairing our broken national intelligence agencies; creating the mighty Department of Homeland Security, and making the world safe for freedom and democracy. » read more

President-elect Barack Obama's choice of retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs is the smartest and best appointment he's made so far.

It sends a signal to millions of our veterans, and to the active duty military, as well, that the serious business of caring for those who've borne the burdens of fighting our wars will now be in the right hands — the hands of a fine soldier who bears the scars of war himself.

The current occupant of the White House has made much of his role as a wartime commander-in-chief these last seven years, but his record and that of his administration has been disgraceful when it comes to taking care of the inevitable casualties of war. » read more

This week, I'm writing in defense of an old friend, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who was dragged through the mud this week in a 5,000-word article by David Barstow in The New York Times.

Several months ago, Barstow wrote a story on a Pentagon program undertaken on orders of then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that offered hand-feeding and special treatment to a motley crew of television’s military talking heads.

That was a largely successful effort to get the analysts, especially retired military brass, "on the team" cheerleading for the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, and to keep them there with a mix of carrots and sticks. » read more