US Marines – A large number of Marines who spent time ashore in Liberia have contracted malaria.

• Washington Post: Marines’ Malaria Cases Show Protections Failed
• Virginian Pilot: Outbreak of malaria hits Iwo Jima ready group

US Marines – A review of the fratricide incidents that occured in Iraq.

• SeaPower: Fratricide Mars U.S. Successes in Iraqi Freedom Conflict

Background – Information Warfare – James F. Dunnigan on how important it is to win the media war.

• StrategyPage: Do Media Victories Mean Anything?

Background – Wargaming, Information Warfare, and Transformation – An article by noted wargame designer Mark Herman, which makes the case that to be realistic, future wargames must stop being based upon force attrition models and instead must be based upon a model of a force’s entropy, or cohesion. Written in 1998, the article now appears quite prescient in light of the conflict in Iraq earlier this year in which the entropy of Iraqi forces can be said to have been maximised, leading to their disintegration.

• Joint Forces Quarterly: Entropy-Based Warfare: Modeling the Revolution in Military Affairs (PDF format only)