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If you hold TS or higher(I know they claim there is nothing higher, but the kickers like SCI require a more in depth background investigation, so I think its a matter of semantics) one of the requirements is a being in the pool for random drug tests.
I must say that I am suprised you got past adjucation with that attitude toward drug use. They tend to not like anything more than experiementation in the softer drugs (weed). When did you get your clearance?
For anyone wondering why people get clearances denied, this site can give you a pretty good idea on the general reasons people are denied clearances.

Ok.

We could really cut our defense budget if we used conscription and paid them $50/month too.

I honestly don't know enough concerning the status of weapons of mass destruction, or the legal definition of the term, to pretend to be knowledgable on the subject. So I won't even touch that issue. You sound like you have your facts straight, whereas I know I don't. So while I may disagree with the conclusions drawn from what we've found in Iraq - that is, I still don't think we should have invaded in the first place - I'm willing to concede to your information until I hear from elsewhere.

However, you say the beating to death of several prisoners "never happened." I am in the process of reading the official DoD report on the prisoner torture in Abu Ghraib. It's available (warning PDF format) online here. On page 13 (15 of the PDF) the independent panel wrote in their findings, "There were five cases of detainee deaths as a result of abuse by U.S. personnel during interrogations." I would imagine they weren't hugged to death. Now the report (what I've read of it) doesn't state specifically how they died. But it does state the deaths were the result of abuse by U.S. personnel. In a prison setting, in the hands of trained U.S. troops (although the report also gets into the poor quality of their training) to "interrogate" a prisoner to death is simply unacceptable.

In addition, Maj. Gen. Fay's investigation into the Abu Ghraib abuses (and here I quote from this book which contains the DoD independant report that I linked to above as well as Maj. Gen. Fay's preliminary investigations - I'm sorry I don't have the time to find it online, but I imagine it's available) found soldiers had been "slapping and kicking" detainees, "'poking' at an injured detainees leg," and forcing a detainee to stand in such a way "as to dislocate his sholder." In addition to at least five deaths, I'd say that gives good ground to state that there was torture, even under the definition of "the unlawful infliction of bodily harm."

Soldiers also placed detainees in "simulated sexual positions with other detainiees" and were forced to be naked in a way was meant to "degrade or humiliate." While this may not be torture it was, according to Maj. Gen. Fay, "prohibited by Geneva Convention IV" note that the Iraqi soldiers DID qualify for Geneva Convention protection, but it's not even important because it also violated "Army policy."

Maj. Gen. Fay goes through, in detail, the reported abuses including "sexual assault," "physical abuse," a situation where an interpreter "allegedly raped a 15 to 18-year-old male detainie," and more. Fifty in-depth descriptions of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. And much of it has photographic or even FILM evidence.

When you can find picture after picture after picture after picture of prisoners being abused - both through bodily harm and mental abuse - and of soldiers acting in a manner that one soldier (according to the DoD panel's report) called the "lust for the fun of it," how can you possibly state beatings and abuse "never happened?"

(I'm going to pause for a minute. Rereading your post I discovered you did not, in fact, claim that NO beatings or abuse took place. Rather, you denied a few specific abuses. It turns out you were wrong about that, but it may not be fair for me to say that you said abuses "never happened." I am going to modify my statement to say that you implied abuses never happened. Your acusation of the "anti-war movement of just plain making shit up" (interesting from someone who is so wrong concerning pri

...when the Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, back then chaired by Mr. Rumsfeld, has been released.

While I can't address everything you brought up (the poster of the message you're replying to will have to do that) I can answer a couple of your questions:

1. please list these supposedly new and "empty" military training facilities.

   The only new training facility expansion I could name was in Fort Jackson (which happens to be one of the largest basic training facilities in the U.S.). Being an inquisitive sort, though, and knowing that the military tends to employ civilian contractors for the construction of such things, I took a quick look through the publically available DoD contracts to see if there are any others being built. It turns out there are a lot of new facilities being built with planned finishing times in 2004/2005. Check it out yourself through DefenseLINK. So this one does seem to have some merit.

2. please tell me how keeping the experienced soldiers in the field until their rotation is up, regardless of their scheduled ETS, is a bad thing...?

   Apparently soldiers in garrison are also being extended beyond their ETS, so your argument doesn't hold here. Personally I can see arguments for and against keeping soldiers past their ETS; right now we're not officially at war and if I were a soldier in our "volunteer" army and was told I couldn't get out at my originally agreed period, I'd be pretty upset. On the other hand, if we're expecting big trouble it makes more sense. Since we're being told that Iraq is under control and everything is fine, should we be expecting big trouble?

3. please list the high-ranking military officials who resigned SPECIFICALLY due to Bush's policies. that should be easy considering how many you claim to exist.

   I'd assume that the original poster is probably referring to Generals Newbold, Franks, Shinseki, Keane, and White (that I can think of -- there are probably more). You've got him here; these people didn't resign because of Bush, they resigned because of Bush's Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (and in some cases they didn't so much resign as retire early). Of course, one could also argue that there's really not much difference...

4. I take it you are referring to cutting-edge encryption code? if so, then as far as I'm concerned, we shouldn't let it leave the NSA, let alone the borders...

   Oh come on, if you have any software background you must surely realize that the stuff deemed too hot for export these days is hardly cutting-edge. My company has to actually import OpenBSD CDs from Canada rather than getting them domestically because of the crazy restrictions on software exports currently in place here.

5. when/where did Bush attempt to reduce "combat pay"?

   I didn't know about this and Googled around for it. It looks like Bush was reported as doing so in the summer of last year. Realizing it wasn't going over well politically, it was quickly dropped. Apparently in August of last year the tune had changed to one of no increase in combat pay (at least as publically argued in the debate over the Fiscal Year 2003 Supplemental Appropriations bill).

   In fact, Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) is increasing an estimated 6.2%, staying well ahead of COLA and inflation increases.

   Even if this is true, basic pay is only increasing by 3.5%, and that's certainly not ahead of other increases. I can see where they may not be too happy.

Furthermore, Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors in 1998, when Clinton was still in power. The UN pulled them out in 2003, before we invaded. Saddam kicking the weapons inspectors out in 1998 was a clear violation of UN resolutions and treaties ending the war. We did jack shit about it then.

We did "jack shit" about it then? Are you kidding, or completely out of your mind?

Does the phrase "Operation Desert Fox" ring a bell?

Tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. So it is entirely possible that the US has killed more Iraqi civilians in a year and a half that Saddam did in 30 years.

I in no way claim to be intelligent, but one reason I have for supporting Bush (ignoring guns & abortion, which are big issues for me) is that he recognizes that the War on Terror is not like the War on Drugs.

Bush has also answered questions many times, while Kerry has refused to answer questions from a reporter that many consider to be left-leaning!

Bush has also had the balls to say that Social Security is in danger, and will need to be revamped. Kerry's response was, "It'll work long enough." I was pleasantly suprised to find that I actually agreed with Bush's domestic policy.

Perhaps the main reason is that Bush's reelection is going to be 4 more years of the same, which (for me and my friends) has not been too bad. But Kerry's election would be (potentially) 8 years of who knows what. I have no real hope that either party will work to fix the DMCA, as both parties supported it whole-heartedly, but perhaps we can at least keep Congress involved with howling about Iraq and not passing any more extensions.

The PATRIOT act is troubling, but Kerry just says he wants to "review" it. If Kerry says that he passed it without reading it, then he is admitting that he didn't do his job as a Senator. That is frightening. At least Bush seems to know (and do) what his job entails.

And furthermore, we need a decisive electoral victory for Bush, to show Iraq and Afghanistan that we really are going to support them, not dump them like a hot potato the moment it becomes convenient. That was the biggest mistakes we've made as a country recently - pulling up short of Baghdad in 1991, which resulted in many Iraqis who thought we were going to help them overthrow Saddam dying, and ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviet Union fell, which resulted in the Taliban taking control.

Also, I do not believe that an administration that supports the Clinton view of the Second Amendment is good for the long-term freedom in America.

Those are some of my reasons.

Things I disagree with Bush on:

1. Outsourcing. It needs control, but I don't care if an Indian has my job if I'm been blown up by a terrorist, so priorities.
2. Education. I think that education should either be controlled by local politics (cities & counties) or not by the government at all.

In fact, I am more in agreement with the Constitutional Party than with the Republicans in many ways, but I feel that especially after the 2000 election, we need to have a decisive victory. Otherwise every election from now on will be decided in courts by lawyers. This is unacceptable.

Here is a link to a blog that explains some of the reasons behind my thinking.

Other, more personal reasons I don't like Kerry:

1. He attacks Bush about this "Draft," yet the draft bills were introduced by Democrats, defeated 402 to 2, and John Kerry himself supported "National Service" as very recently. This is not just politics, but downright shameful. Also, given that many military personell have said they won't reenlist if Kerry wins, the only way he can keep his 40,000 more troops promise would be to instate a draft. Note that the link is to the archive.org's copy of the John Kerry website; this draft stuff has been modified in his current platform. Even Rumsfeld doesn't want a draft.

2. Why the hell does he try to pret

I wouldn't say it wasn't about oil Only. It weakens your argument to narrow it so. Invading Iraq was also about the fact that America had been hit, and so was looking around for somebody to hit back. That's not a very rational way of forming a response to an attack, but that's the way it went. First, Afghanistan (A good move, I think.) Then, unfortunately, Iraq (apparently because Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other chickenhawk members of the Project for a New American Century were part of the decision process.)

So there's oil, and then there's also the strategic placement of the country, and a desire to replace Hussein with somebody more friendly (which unfortunately entails pissing off a whole new group in the Middle East), and the blind 9/11 terrified patriotic fervor of which the chickenhawks took advantage.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr2003 0509-depsecde Here is an interview with Paul Wolfowitz in which he states his reasons for pushing the war in Iraq. They don't stand up to reason, but it's true that few of them are related to oil. He says that the American military presence in Saudi Arabia "and Bin Laden's rage about that" could be solved if the U.S. could keep its troops stationed in Iraq. He also argued that "how can removing this huge source of instability [Hussein] make things more unstable?" He had hoped the U.S. could set up a stable and friendly regime, station troops in Iraq as the new base for American presence in the Middle East, and thus avoid pissing off Saudis by not having troops in Saudi Arabia. The obvious flaw in that reasoning is that now we're pissing everybody off, and that Saddam was actually a stabilizing force once his military had been effectively castrated in the first Gulf War. And his arguments have clearly not been borne out by actual events.

But anyway, oil wasn't the only reason.

"...according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity."

Oh yeah, there's credibility just oozing from this story. We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine? On conditions of anominity??? Oh, and it just happens to be election year! What a coincidence!

And while we're on the subject of amazing coincidences, where was this scandal coverage in 2002? I mean, you supposively had top CIA officals who knew, you had the Department of Energy who knew, America's leading nuclear scientists who knew as well as any number of intelligence experts and Martha Stewart who knew. No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?

Are we stretching the bounds of credibility yet? No? Then it's a good thing for the NYT that investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. I mean, you'd almost think this administration acted without cause...

I don't know which is funnier, the notion that Europe would ever fund defense at US levels (with the resultant sacrfices required by the welfare stare)

According to US military, some European countries spend nearly the same amount of GDP on defense as the USA. On the average, EU would have to spend additional 2.5% of GDP on defense, to match the USA. Now, according to Goethe Institut, EU spent on average in 1999 around 28% of GDP on welfare. Moving 2.5% from welfare to defense would be a noticeable, but not drastic policy shift. The reason why Europe is so drastically outperformed by the USA in terms of military capabilities is that European armies are mostly (UK is an exception --- not surprising, since it is shielded by sea) cold-war style, prepared to fight a large scale land war against the Russian invasion. Such armies are useless in today's combat fields, be it Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq. USA did not have to pay this 'Russian tax', being separated by an ocean. You could develop a more mobile army (leaving aside technological superiority). Given some time, Europe will remodel its armies, abolish the draft entirely and increase the spending. Creating an common foreign policy will give the incentive to do this, and creating a common army will give the economies of scale.

the notion that Europe would ever be able to do anything but what it's done since the end of WWII (namely: kow-tow to whoever has the guns, be it the US, USSR, or now, increasingly, Muslim extremists)

The USA could well afford to be more rash with the USSR, being shielded by an arsenal of nukes and an ocean. Europe has its problems with sending soldiers abroad (again: abolishing the draft will lessen them), but we were not afraid to send soldiers to Afghanistan. Some EU countries fight in Iraq (UK, Poland, Netherlands) and their experiences (if we still have the UK in the EU in the future) will add to EU military capabilities. The fact that other countries opposed war with Iraq does not mean that they do not fight terrorists. They simple were sane enough to notice that there were no terrorists in Iraq before the war.

the notion that somehow a united, militarized Europe would actually threaten the US, or be seen as threatening by the US.

The EU is not going to wage a war against the USA. It is only going to be taken more seriously by the USA, seriously enough to able to say 'we don't like your blowing up satellites in the sky' and be taken into account by the USA.

Ha! all that's for the paranoid tinfoil hat people. I AND my data against itself. just try hacking my server!

Showing your ID at the gate along with a ticket with your name on it allows the airline to tell your family that yes, you boarded the plane that is currently burning, sinking, or that shattered into a million pieces, but no, we haven't found the body yet. Nor do we expect to, since the largest piece of that particular plane is about the size of a tire. Which, incidentally, is still burning, having been doused by 24,000 gallons of airline fuel that covered it when it fell apart 1/2 hour ago. Sorry. We'll of course pay you for your loss, instead of ... I don't know... making you wait a month or two for us to find the pocket in which your family members stored their ID card, which of course will survive the fire.

What any of this has to do with your freedom, right to privacy or anything else is completely secondary to the reason the airlines started recording who was on which flight.

If you look at the medic view it predicts that the Soldier will drink a small amount of Water in about a minute. I wonder how they do that?

...when they see Darth Vader coming for them, they'll have an intra-pants biohazard situation.

<mst3k>GAH! Don't DO that!</mst3k>

From the hi-res looks of things, the year 2020 soldier (on the left in black) is gonna promote friendly fire casualties with his mask all fogged up.

And the most reassuring thing is that, the code the suit runs is written in Java

Look at the solider in the black. Make it white and we're pretty damn close to having our boys overseas looking like Storm Troopers. All that remains is for Bush to claim himself Emporer, and Chaney to learn the secrets of the Dark Side and become horribly disfigured in some sort of Volcano-related accident.

The guy on the left in this photo looks like a black stormtrooper.

And by the looks of it, it won't be too hard... They're running windows! Here!

The worst of Kopel's lies comes from Debbie Schussel's confusion between "Life for Relief and Development" and "Holy Land for Relief and Development."

LRD is in partnership with the US State Department in providing humaitarian assistance in Iraq.

"Holy Land for Relief and Development" was closed down as a money laundry for Hamas.

According to Kopel, LRD is a money laundry for Hamas. He offers Debbie Schussel as a source; she offers no source at all. It's obvious she got the names confused.

Kopel shouldn't rely on the cut-rate version of Ann Coulter for his "facts."

That's just the worst example. There are many many more.

There's room for comments directly below the posts (unlike Kopel's site), feel free to offer your counter-arguments, if any exist.

What kind of fuckhead accuses people who distribute wheelchairs of being terrorists with no proof or even evidence?

3) I beleive that a massive percentage lose alot of night vision, you might not be able to legally drive at night for example

I asked a lot of questions about this of my surgeon, my optometrist and several friends who had the proceedure done.

I've not lost any night vision that I can tell. I dont have the halo problems that people talk about. The only people I've found who complain about this had the proceedure done several years ago and the technology has come a ways since then.


4) the eye is much more prone to infection


This is no surprise to your optometrist or surgeon. You'll get a collection of eye drops which includiung anti-biotics. You'll be told when you can get your eyes wet in the shower and when you can swim.


5) the army and police won't let you join if you've had it, rather tellling I think


Huh? The Army is offering the proceedure to active duty soldiers.

Too bad there was nothing to disarm, and still isn't anything to disarm.

There is no way to sugar-coat this. You are 100% wrong. There is nothing factual about your claim. Perhaps you came to this conclusion based on inaccurate information, but you can no longer claim ignorance for your inaptness of the subject. Please read the facts regarding WMD if you have any questions. Your welcome.

Um...yeah you did. You went to war with Iraq. In fact, you invaded them. Remember? Killed a few innocent people, a whackload of bad guys and pretty soon a cool grand in US soldiers(900 and counting! Go us!)?

Guess what? We never stopped our war with Iraq. According to the Safwan Accord signed by Iraq in 1991 to end the first Gulf War, Saddam was required to disclose his WMD programs and allow the UN to either destory the programs or view evidence that they were destroyed. This was a condition of the ceasefire to the first Gulf War. Well, Saddam never complied, so that means a ceasefire never took place. The conflict that started last year was a continuation of the war that started over a decade ago, and was only brought to pass because 9/11 shocked us into realizing that we couldn't leave serious business like that unfinished.

The only difference is this time we actually did finish the job, and we are safer because of it.

Recently, with the war and all, I've taken more of an interest in military affairs. Lo and behold, the military publishes a lot of magazines and periodicals internally, and many of them are available free online! I like them because they don't have the macho posturing of rags like Soldier of Fortune and other right-wing civillian magazines, and read like professionals writing for other professionals on how to do their job better. Think Wired vs. Linux Journal.

List of DoD magazines
Soldiers - Official army magazine, with full PDF archive.
Airman - Official air force magazine
Marine - Official USMC magazine
Approach - Navael aviaton safety magazine
Ground Warrior - Marine training safety magazine
Infantry magazine - Army infantry magazine, article archive at findarticles.com
Parameters - The U.S. War College's periodical

Soldiers, Airman, and Marine are sort of PR-related publications, so they aren't as interesting. Approach, Ground Warrior and Infantry are written as advice and information sources for their respective professions, so they have more technical detail. I like how they give a view of day-to-day operations in the military, especially training mishaps and other mistakes you don't hear about often. Parameters is a more scholarly magazine that gives a view into what the high-level officers are thinking and planning right now, plus some military history.

They're your tax dollars at work, may as well read them. Better to be an informed citizen than an entertained consumer, especially with the war in Iraq going on.

(To Gen. Rodriguez) Do you have anything you need to add?

GEN. RODRIGUEZ: No, that's it.

Q Larry, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charlie Duelfer, told Fox today that his team has found a dozen artillery shells and rockets that confirmed contained sarin or mustard gas. Now, you talked previously about the two shells that were unexploded in those IEDs, and you pointed (out) that they were from the first gulf war, dated back to that time, and this new discovery is supposed to date back as well. Is there a feeling that they're not a threat or that they still couldn't be used as weapons of terror?

MR. DI RITA: Well, first of all, Charlie in the ISG report to the director of Central Intelligence -- and I wouldn't want to try and characterize what he may have said. I saw a transcript of some remarks he did provide, and he did talk about there's a lot of questions about these shells. There was, in fact, an obligation that Saddam had to declare what he was holding, and we know that he only declared a small percentage of what he had previously reported. So, I mean, several hundred tons of these things were unaccounted for. But again, there's more questions that need to be resolved, and I wouldn't want to try and characterize, you know, how these ultimately will be disposed -- in terms of what the disposition of these things is.

But the fact is that if we've got that kind of weapon activity -- I think Mr. Duelfer also spoke about what he is starting to see as a thirst for the insurgents -- possible attempts by them to either get control of the knowledge, the database, the knowledge base that exists in that country -- scientists, et cetera. And we know just through historical example that these groups have a thirst for weapons of mass destruction.

There is no doubt that the U.N. relief effort in Iraq has been a global scandal. A monstrous dictator was able to turn the Oil-for-Food program into a cash cow for himself and his inner circle, leaving Iraqis further deprived as he bought influence abroad and acquired the arms and munitions that coalition forces discovered when they invaded Iraq last spring.

(To Gen. Rodriguez) Do you have anything you need to add?

GEN. RODRIGUEZ: No, that's it.

Q Larry, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charlie Duelfer, told Fox today that his team has found a dozen artillery shells and rockets that confirmed contained sarin or mustard gas. Now, you talked previously about the two shells that were unexploded in those IEDs, and you pointed (out) that they were from the first gulf war, dated back to that time, and this new discovery is supposed to date back as well. Is there a feeling that they're not a threat or that they still couldn't be used as weapons of terror?

MR. DI RITA: Well, first of all, Charlie in the ISG report to the director of Central Intelligence -- and I wouldn't want to try and characterize what he may have said. I saw a transcript of some remarks he did provide, and he did talk about there's a lot of questions about these shells. There was, in fact, an obligation that Saddam had to declare what he was holding, and we know that he only declared a small percentage of what he had previously reported. So, I mean, several hundred tons of these things were unaccounted for. But again, there's more questions that need to be resolved, and I wouldn't want to try and characterize, you know, how these ultimately will be disposed -- in terms of what the disposition of these things is.

But the fact is that if we've got that kind of weapon activity -- I think Mr. Duelfer also spoke about what he is starting to see as a thirst for the insurgents -- possible attempts by them to either get control of the knowledge, the database, the knowledge base that exists in that country -- scientists, et cetera. And we know just through historical example that these groups have a thirst for weapons of mass destruction.

Let me turn now to chemical weapons (CW). In searching for retained stocks of chemical munitions, ISG has had to contend with the almost unbelievable scale of Iraq's conventional weapons armory, which dwarfs by orders of magnitude the physical size of any conceivable stock of chemical weapons.

For example, there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points (ASP), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated 600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance. Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined.

As Iraqi practice was not to mark much of their chemical ordinance and to store it at the same ASPs that held conventional rounds, the size of the required search effort is enormous.

Not just the Air Force, but all the other services in DoD, then start looking at other federal agencies like DOE, DoC, DoJ, HUD, etc. and you're talking about O(US$1e9) going to Microsoft.

Think for a minute about what that kind of money could buy besides Microsoft licenses!

• It could turbocharge OpenOffice.org development.
• Develop a panoply of high quality freely-redistributable outline fonts, including international glyphs.
• Create a fanastic vector editor that would output SVG, PDF, etc.
• Bring Mozilla/SVG rendering to the latest W3C standards and with the highest possible performance.
• Push free OCR software quality to where scientific articles from decades past are made on-line and searchable from anyone who cared to start scanning in and contributing what they had.

Even more funding could be found if a governments from the EU, Japan and China decided that it were in their best long term interest to have free software available.

It really is this simple:

the global optimum IT solution is to develop and to use open source software because the overall costs of developing it are less than the overall benefits derived from using it.

One of the biggest reasons it doesn't just happen (apart from inertia and the politics of money), is that IT management is fragmented.

If you're the CIO in some mid-level capacity in the government then the local optimum solution is frequently to just "go with the flow" as you dump your excess budget dollars into securing a few more years of Software Assurance and wait until more evidence comes in before you make a brave and risky leap to open source (except in the server arena where it's already a no-brainer).

People in the DoD are already quite familiar with a similar issue where an overall optimum solution, one that is logically and technically obvious, is not the same as the union of local optimal solutions. Namely, the whole issue of Base Closure, aka BRAC.

Most (US) military names use 'X' to signify an experimental design. In this case, I think the 'X' is to indicate the project is to be used for multiple ship classes. Kind of like a variable in a mathematical formula. (Evidence - the program will now be called "DD(X)" to more accurately reflect the program purpose, which is to produce a family of advanced technology surface combatants, not a single ship class)

All that being said, X sure does get used a lot, often in the most retarded of ways. It's just the alphabet's sexiest character. What can you do ?


--LordPixie

You can get the government position on the detention of "enemy combatants" here.
You can get the law authorizing military tribunals to try "unlawful combatants" here, and the introductory speech here.
Procedures for obtaining an early release are described here.

I'm not surprised that you couldn't find much on the web about the distnction between enemy combatants and unlawful combatants. Most of the news coverage focuses on enemy combatants who have been acused of being unlawful combatants, so the distinction is seldom made clear.

You can get the government position on the detention of "enemy combatants" here.
You can get the law authorizing military tribunals to try "unlawful combatants" here, and the introductory speech here.
Procedures for obtaining an early release are described here.

I'm not surprised that you couldn't find much on the web about the distnction between enemy combatants and unlawful combatants. Most of the news coverage focuses on enemy combatants who have been acused of being unlawful combatants, so the distinction is seldom made clear.

If you honestly think that a patrol in a foreign city being ambushed from a building pauses to determine whether that building is a hospital, building of religious significance or home of orphans, in order to weigh the political consequences of various courses of actions, before opening fire, then you are severely straining your own grasp of reality.

I certainly do. If you have contradictory information, please share it. What unit did you serve in?

I am suggesting that those decision makers continue to severely discount how overwhelmingly important national and international public opinion is in rendering a positive outcome to a military action.

You have that backwards. Success in fighting this war is necessary for the continued existence of public opinion.

Am I the only one who remembers that we're in a war here? That we're in a clash of civilizations? That the terrorists will not stop until the Ummah (the community of all Muslims) is united under a world government ruled by Shari'a?

Don't believe me? Go read Osama bin Laden's declaration of war.

GPS is already an open standard. It is also a one-way system that cannot be restricted in any way except by satellite coverage. As much as everyone would like to believe that the US is evil incarnate, it is not. We have bad presidents (hint: his name starts with a 'G' and ends in 'eorge W. Bush') from time to time and a lot of uneducated, easily manipulated people (middle America), but they are not inherently evil. The nation is still a republic (well, the 2000 election excluded) and I hope the rest of the world realizes this.

Control over GPS is not a power grab by the US. It is not a strategic tool for way that we will eventually lock our enemies out of. It is simply a service the military created for its self and is now sharing with everyone. The only reason the US controls GPS is because we invented it, we rely on it more than anyone else, and we want to make sure it keeps working and improving as time goes on. THAT'S IT! NO EVIL! NONE! Not in this story at least. As for Europe's new system, it looks as if they want to create a system that cooperates with GPS to expand coverage but does not depend on it. More power to them, though I'm curious about some of the features they're adding...

------------
Free mobile porn

There's one other thing I wanted to add and I don't want to forget, is that we really should not prejudice the outcome of any of the investigations that are under way or indeed the larger look that we're taking of the broader system itself.

But one thing appears reasonably certain, and that's that those who make allegations of a culture of deception, of intimidation or cover-up need to be extremely careful about such accusations. The facts so far demonstrate, to me at least, that from the enlisted ranks to the officer corps, when those allegations came to light members of our armed forces immediately launched investigations and sought to uncover wrongdoing.

Now, whatever final our conclusions about this matter may be, we do need to bear in mind that we already know certain things about the system. And that's that a number of the people in it, far from being intimidated or afraid to do the right thing, they in fact did the right thing. They brought wrongdoing to light and they made Americans proud of the manner that they carried out their duties.

And -- trying to think -- there was -- I mean, one individual just made a conscious decision when he had evidence of wrongdoing to take it to the right people and do the right thing. And that is how this all came out, was because of one specialist figuring it out and pushing it up the chain so people could deal with it.

Donald H. Rumsfeld could say that too, but somehow I doubt that he derives much solace from it.

I saw a video of Rumsfeld the other night that was broadcast by the Daily Show and Rumsfeld actually said this:

"But one thing appears reasonably certain, and that's that those who make allegations of a culture of deception, of intimidation or cover-up need to be extremely careful about such accusations."

Wow. That's from a DOD Town Meeting, May 11, 2004

This is what we're dealing with people.

Mr. Abell is not "Assistant Secretary of Defense" as the article claims. His actual title is Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness which puts him three levels below Rumsfeld.

Likewise, Ms. Walker's actual title is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Material and Facilities) (PDF), but even that's misleading because it's only for Reserve Affairs. In other words, she's 4-5 levels below Rumsfeld, as this PDF indicates.

In the big scheme of the federal government, those people are high, but not unreasonably so. There are thousands of employees at their level.

It's strange that they're in the Department of Defense, though. You'd think that a significant security clearance would be required for that kind of job. On the other hand, having a worthless master's degree wouldn't necessarily disqualify them from the job.

Ryan

Under the DoD's RDT&E program, which is research, development, test & evaluation programs for the fiscal year 2004 it's $64.3 billion and $68.9 billion for the next.

I have here a list of the names of 207 jews
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz

I have here a list of the names of 207 negroes
Colin Powell
Condi Rice

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumericans
Bush
US Constitution

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumerican opinions
support for nazi-style invasion

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
versus
Censorship
more Censorship

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
versus
Murder
Gangster justice

Maybe the Iraqis are merely exercising their "Right to bear Arms" in their own country against a foreign invader.

I have here a list of the names of 207 jews
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz

I have here a list of the names of 207 negroes
Colin Powell
Condi Rice

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumericans
Bush
US Constitution

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumerican opinions
support for nazi-style invasion

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
versus
Censorship
more Censorship

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
versus
Murder
Gangster justice

Maybe the Iraqis are merely exercising their "Right to bear Arms" in their own country against a foreign invader.

The Navy is renting this vessel for 11.4 million dollars a year (including operating costs).

this is the DoD here. it's quite fine.

That's not necessarily true.

If you'll take a look at fine sites like this one, this one or possibly this one, you will see that there is little doubt that should Bush get re-elected, we will have, at least, a limited draft instated by early 2005. If you don't follow the other links, I suggest this one. especially if you have a 17-18 year old son OR daughter.

As to the obvious reason that this is going to happen, well you might start looking here; even though the military is basically not letting ANYONE out these days, time up or not, they aren't in my opinion going to be able to meet the numbers due to missed targets.

My word of advice (and I volunteered, was in Gulf War lite, so screw anyone who says I'm not a patriot) is that if you have a boy or girl who are in high school, and they do NOT fully support the policies of the current administration, have them drop out if Bush gets reelected; the current system doesn't take people without high school diplomas, and it'll take them awhile to change the rules.

Incidently, the Air Force has plenty of tech-saavy people, often in the form of reservists.

It's true, they do. Here's one.

Someone above mentioned that this will enable soldiers to carry very heavy armour that can protect them from most small firearms.

Actually most of the progress to date has been made in the other direction: The body armor required to protect soldiers from small-arms fire has been getting progressively lighter. The latest design uses Kevlar vests with ceramic plate inserts, fully protecting the soldier's torso while weighing in at a svelte 16.4 pounds. (A Vietnam-era flak jacket weighed 25 pounds, and didn't offer as much protection.)

What body armor doesn't do (currently) is to protect the arms and legs. It's one thing to wear 16 pounds around your torso; it's another to strap ten extra pounds on each limb. The trade-off between protection and mobility doesn't work in your favor here, especially when you introduce RPGs and explosives into the mix.

Medieval knights overcame the mobility problem by using a horse, but the modern equivalent (an armored Segway? a powered exosuit?) has yet to arrive. If and when it does, though, look for the suit of armor -- after only a 400-year absence -- to make its triumphant return to the battlefield.

Paladin is an old program, started in 1963 I believe. The cancelled artillery program you are referring to is probably Crusader.

Bad weather has prevented U.S. military officials from reaching a site near Zawar Kili, Afghanistan, where a Feb. 4 strike by a CIA Predator unmanned aerial vehicle reportedly killed several Al Qaeda leaders, Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke told reporters here today.

If you think the US has never missed a target with guided-missiles, you are mistaken.

And whether or not it was human error, the end result is still the same. See: here and here among others.