Oklahoma Air National Guardsman Maj. Dan Rooney received a President’s Volunteer Service Award and got it hand-delivered by President Bush himself during Bush’s stopover at Tinker AFB, Okla., earlier this month. Rooney was just about to deploy for his third tour in Iraq when he received the award for his work in starting and running the Folds of Honor Foundation, which offers educational assistance to dependents of fallen or disabled service members. Since its creation in 2007, the foundation has provided 200 scholarships totaling $1.1 million. (AFPS report by Samantha Quigley)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…