Marine Fights A 'Broken' System
(CBS)
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August 3, 2009 11:33 AM CBS News Producer Mary Walsh recounts her first meeting in 2004 with Corporal Casey Owens, a Marine who was disabled in Iraq, frustrated with the treatment he received from the Veterans Administration.
July 24, 2008 2:30 PM
Semper Fi<i>do</i>
David Martin is National Security Correspondent for CBS News.
It would be easy to watch tonight's story on the Marine Corps mascot and think it's a lot of foolishness.
I mean, really, does a dog need a service record complete with all his merits … and demerits (he once ate a Marine's hat). But it shows the lengths the Marines will go to in order to cultivate their public image.
Chesty is an English bulldog – those pug noses and jutting lower jaw are bred to make them better able to hold on once they sink their teeth in – and he's named after Chesty Puller, the most decorated Marine in history. He is, in other words, the perfect symbol of the Marine Corps.
(Dept. of Defense)
I mean, really, does a dog need a service record complete with all his merits … and demerits (he once ate a Marine's hat). But it shows the lengths the Marines will go to in order to cultivate their public image.
Chesty is an English bulldog – those pug noses and jutting lower jaw are bred to make them better able to hold on once they sink their teeth in – and he's named after Chesty Puller, the most decorated Marine in history. He is, in other words, the perfect symbol of the Marine Corps.
March 18, 2008 12:19 PM 
David Martin is National Security Correspondent for CBS News.
The war began in dramatic fashion: Stealth fighters and cruise missiles launching a bolt out of the blue attack against a compound where Saddam Hussein was believed to be spending the night. Saddam survived the strike and perhaps that should have been an omen of the difficulties to come – that it would take more than high tech weapons to get rid of Saddam. It took foot soldiers to flush him out of a hole in the ground. And today it is foot soldiers in the form of the troop surge who have helped produce a reduction in violence.
Donald Rumsfeld used to talk a lot about "transformation," and a great transformation has finally taken place, although not on his watch … and not the one he envisioned. What he had in mind was transforming the Cold War military into a smaller, more agile fighting force. After he left, a larger fighting force was sent into Iraq to conduct a new counterinsurgency strategy.
The conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. wouldn't be in so much trouble in Iraq if Rumsfeld had just sent more troops in at the start. I'm not sure I buy that. For one thing, more troops would have taken longer to get there, so the whole dynamic of the initial invasion would have been different. For another, there was no plan for what to do with more troops. Finally, if more troops had used the same heavy-handed tactics that prevailed in the first years of the occupation, they might have succeeded only in outraging Iraqis even further.
Five Years Later: An Axiom Of War
(CBS)
The war began in dramatic fashion: Stealth fighters and cruise missiles launching a bolt out of the blue attack against a compound where Saddam Hussein was believed to be spending the night. Saddam survived the strike and perhaps that should have been an omen of the difficulties to come – that it would take more than high tech weapons to get rid of Saddam. It took foot soldiers to flush him out of a hole in the ground. And today it is foot soldiers in the form of the troop surge who have helped produce a reduction in violence.
Donald Rumsfeld used to talk a lot about "transformation," and a great transformation has finally taken place, although not on his watch … and not the one he envisioned. What he had in mind was transforming the Cold War military into a smaller, more agile fighting force. After he left, a larger fighting force was sent into Iraq to conduct a new counterinsurgency strategy.
The conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. wouldn't be in so much trouble in Iraq if Rumsfeld had just sent more troops in at the start. I'm not sure I buy that. For one thing, more troops would have taken longer to get there, so the whole dynamic of the initial invasion would have been different. For another, there was no plan for what to do with more troops. Finally, if more troops had used the same heavy-handed tactics that prevailed in the first years of the occupation, they might have succeeded only in outraging Iraqis even further.
October 1, 2007 1:30 PM 
General Peter Pace retired today as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. David Martin, National Security Correspondent for CBS News, has these thoughts on his career. -- Ed.
For the past six years, General Pete Pace has had an office not far from my broadcast booth in the Pentagon, so it was not at all uncommon to run into him in the hallway. He was always going somewhere in a hurry. Partly that's a function of the demands of being the nation's senior military officer, but partly it's a reflection of the fact that he's a driven man -- driven by something that happened nearly 30 years ago in Vietnam. That's when young Marines under his command as a green second lieutenant followed his orders and were killed. He kept a photo of the first Marine he lost on his desk and could recite from memory the names of all who had died, including the segreant who stepped in front of him and took a bullet aimed at him. He would frequently say -- sometimes choking back tears -- that he owed those men a debt he could never repay and that his mission in life was to support the troops in the field. You didn't have to be around him much to be convinced that he was absolutely sincere.
The question, of course, is how well did he fulfill his life's mission. He was the nation's second ranking military officer for four years and highest ranking for the past two -- a time in which the war in Iraq turned into a near disaster whose outcome is still in doubt. As he leaves, the troops he is so devoted to are serving 15 month tours in Iraq with only 12 months at home. No one will say it publicly, but senior officers who served with him are harshly critical of his inability or unwillingness to stand up to the famously domineering Donald Rumsfeld. Pace himself admits he made mistakes, and the reason he is retiring today is that his confirmation hearing for a second tour term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would have been a bruising battle in which all those mistakes were laid on the public record.
When I interviewed him just before he became Chairman, Pace said "whenever I'm done serving, I will leave knowing that I tried my best." I have no doubt he tried his best, never once sluffed off. It will be up to history to decide whether his best was good enough.
Keeping Pace With Pace
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
For the past six years, General Pete Pace has had an office not far from my broadcast booth in the Pentagon, so it was not at all uncommon to run into him in the hallway. He was always going somewhere in a hurry. Partly that's a function of the demands of being the nation's senior military officer, but partly it's a reflection of the fact that he's a driven man -- driven by something that happened nearly 30 years ago in Vietnam. That's when young Marines under his command as a green second lieutenant followed his orders and were killed. He kept a photo of the first Marine he lost on his desk and could recite from memory the names of all who had died, including the segreant who stepped in front of him and took a bullet aimed at him. He would frequently say -- sometimes choking back tears -- that he owed those men a debt he could never repay and that his mission in life was to support the troops in the field. You didn't have to be around him much to be convinced that he was absolutely sincere.
The question, of course, is how well did he fulfill his life's mission. He was the nation's second ranking military officer for four years and highest ranking for the past two -- a time in which the war in Iraq turned into a near disaster whose outcome is still in doubt. As he leaves, the troops he is so devoted to are serving 15 month tours in Iraq with only 12 months at home. No one will say it publicly, but senior officers who served with him are harshly critical of his inability or unwillingness to stand up to the famously domineering Donald Rumsfeld. Pace himself admits he made mistakes, and the reason he is retiring today is that his confirmation hearing for a second tour term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would have been a bruising battle in which all those mistakes were laid on the public record.
When I interviewed him just before he became Chairman, Pace said "whenever I'm done serving, I will leave knowing that I tried my best." I have no doubt he tried his best, never once sluffed off. It will be up to history to decide whether his best was good enough.
April 5, 2007 9:20 AM 
CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin has been reporting on the British sailors.
This was not the British Navy's proudest hour. Now that the 15 British sailors have been released, you can expect a lot of questions about how they were so easily seized in the first place and why they seemed so ready to cooperate with their Iranian captors.
On March 23, the British warship Cornwall was operating farther north in the Persian Gulf than usual -- an area where the waters are more restricted and the boundaries more in dispute. It was also operating with the knowledge that three years earlier the Iranians had seized another British boarding party. Yet the Cornwall left the boarding party it sent to search a suspicious merchant vessel unprotected. The Cornwall itself was some eight miles away from the merchant as it was being searched. The water in the northern Gulf was too shallow to permit it to get any closer, the British Navy says. A helicopter from the Cornwall was overhead when the search party first went aboard the merchant but returned to the Cornwall before the search was completed, leaving the 15 sailors and Marines to make their way back to their mother ship in two small boats without any air cover...
Not The British Navy's Proudest Hour
(CBS)
This was not the British Navy's proudest hour. Now that the 15 British sailors have been released, you can expect a lot of questions about how they were so easily seized in the first place and why they seemed so ready to cooperate with their Iranian captors.
On March 23, the British warship Cornwall was operating farther north in the Persian Gulf than usual -- an area where the waters are more restricted and the boundaries more in dispute. It was also operating with the knowledge that three years earlier the Iranians had seized another British boarding party. Yet the Cornwall left the boarding party it sent to search a suspicious merchant vessel unprotected. The Cornwall itself was some eight miles away from the merchant as it was being searched. The water in the northern Gulf was too shallow to permit it to get any closer, the British Navy says. A helicopter from the Cornwall was overhead when the search party first went aboard the merchant but returned to the Cornwall before the search was completed, leaving the 15 sailors and Marines to make their way back to their mother ship in two small boats without any air cover...
