Do you know Allen West? If not, you should. A lot of folks think he'll be president someday.

After ten years of widespread bitching, the U.S. Army has changed its official combat uniform, replacing the black beret—which is hot and difficult to put on, not to mention very early-2000s—with the rather more fetching patrol cap, which was standard until 2001. The beret will still be a component of the service uniform, and units that wore berets before the change—Rangers (black or tan), Special Forces (green), Airborne (maroon) and Joni Mitchell (raspberry)—will continue to rock theirs. [Army Times; images via AP]

Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking thousands of classified documents obtained during his tour in Iraq. But according to an officer, and a confidential military report, Manning was so psychologically unstable he should never have been sent to Iraq in the first place.

Although they have super-advanced stealth helicopters that make your eyes automatically burst into flames if you even look at them, the U.S. Army is always years behind when it comes to the technology the rest of us use. They've just discovered social media!

Tonight Frontline will air an investigation into Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and the Wikileaks disclosures, and the show is teasing the broadcast online with an interesting find: a complete archive of accused Wikileaks source Bradley Manning's Facebook page.

A domestic fight with an 18-year-old Bradley Manning—the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified documents to Wikileaks—led his stepmother to frantically call 911 claiming he threatened her with a knife, according to a Frontline investigation.

Remember Specialist Jeremy Morlock, the 22-year-old Alaskan who took horrifying photos of his own war crimes? He's now pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and has been sentenced to 24 years in jail; in exchange, essentially, for not getting a life sentence, he'll testify against the four other soldiers also accused of murdering Afghan civilians "for sport." He apologized in court to his victims' families and "the people of Afghanistan themselves." [NYT]

The German newspaper Der Spiegel somehow got its hands on photographs of U.S. soldiers posing with a corpse, and published them, and the Army wants you to know it feels really terrible. "Today Der Spiegel published photographs depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army," spokesman Col. Thomas Collins said in a statement. "We apologize for the distress these photos cause." The photos apparently depict Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and PFC Andrew Holmes—both charged, along with three others, with killing Afghan civilians—posing with the corpse of an Afghan man named Gul Mudin (Morlock, in his photo, is apparently "smiling as he lifts the head of a corpse by the hair"). Well, no hard feelings, Army! Let's maybe just keep the war crimes to a minimum in the future, okay? [NYDN]

Bradley Manning, the army intelligence analyst accused of leaking reams of classified data to Wikileaks, has been hit with 22 additional charges. One of them is "aiding the enemy," which carries the death penalty.

If you get a fax these days, you know nothing good will come from it. Oh, a fax came for me? Please send it right through the shredder then light it on fire and throw the ashes into a volcano. Because who sends faxes anymore? Racist NASCAR fans, that's who!

Egypt has finally dumped its arrogant, paternalistic dictator of three decades in the largest country in the Arab world. That's quite an achievement for a suppressive police state after only two to three weeks of protests that weren't very organized to begin with. But what comes next? Will pure democracy just kind of "appear"? Or does an impossible process of constitutional negotiations between the people, the army, the Muslim Brotherhood, business leaders, and foreign powers need to take place over the next year before anything even approaching a stable and responsive political system emerges? Unfortunately it's that second scenario, the "impossible process of constitutional negotiation" one, that's realistic.

Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, the Army doctor who refused to deploy to Afghanistan over doubts that commander-in-chief Barack Obama was born in the United States, was sentenced to six months in military prison today. Martyr! But no, not really.

Discount drugs! Energy drinks! Capitol Hill junk food! Cancer moneymakers! Meditation depression! Food allergies! Youth sports fat! Baby thumb fat! Soldier fat! It's your Wednesday Health Watch, where we watch your health—dipped in Icy Hot, furiously skipping rope!

The second day of Senate hearings regarding a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" repeal went better for shameless filibuster-leader John McCain. But that's only because he fully embarrassed himself yesterday. But are the individual service chiefs really against repeal?

Sick of all this gays in the military jibber-jabber? Well, rest easy, because the whole controversy has been settled on The Daily Caller. The solution? Lesbians are totally fine in the military, but gay men (hereafter "gays") are absolutely not.

Breast taxes! Cortisone effects! Toxic prisons! Glaxo whistleblowers! Manhattan noise! Personalized therapies! HuffPo quackery! And the Army vs. suicide! It's your Wednesday Health Watch, where we watch your health—with pharmacologically-inspired positive mental attitude!

Wikileaks released another enormous trove of classified military records on Friday, thumbing its nose at an outraged Pentagon and seeming to stand bravely for freedom of information. But this time they agreed to self-censor some information, and they overdid it.

Wikileaks has the Army totally freaked out, and it's stepping up its efforts to keep sensitive information out of unauthorized hands. This lame cartoon character it uses to train soldiers not to leak stuff doesn't seem up to the challenge.

The Defense Department acknowledged today that it's allowing openly gay people to join now, following a court decision—still under appeal—that struck down "Don't Ask Don't Tell." Openly straight people are still allowed to join, too.

Those US soldiers in Afghanistan accused of murdering Afghan civilians "for sport," which the Guardian first reported weeks ago? It took some time for US media to pick up on the story, but a leaked video confession has surfaced.