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Actually according to some researchers (mainly Sudhir Venkatesh, who's heavily quoted in Freakonomics ), most drug-gang members make far sub-minimum wage -- they'd make more money working at McDonalds, if that was the goal. And your chances of getting killed while dealing much higher than they are in Iraq (1 in 2000 as opposed to allegedly 1 in 4 if you're dealing crack, although the latter sounds a little high). The best explanation I've heard for gang activity is psychological; it's a prestige job, one you do for respect and a lack of attractive alternatives, not one you do for money.

While an Army private doesn't get paid hugely well, they don't do horribly either, particularly when you consider that their salary is almost entirely "take-home pay" (they're not paying for food/rent/healthcare). Plus, it's just not that easy to spend money when you're deployed, which is also when you make the most bonus pay (and get some decent tax breaks -- in an unusual show of decency by the government, combat pay is tax free). Although the pay-per-hour isn't great, it's not unusual to come back from deployment with a sizable amount of savings.

Is soldiering as profitable a career as borrowing money to get a business degree and working for a corporation? Not nearly. But it's not as bad as it's sometimes made out to be, if that's what you really want to do. The problem with the military right now is that they've basically tapped out the supply of 'risk junkies' who actually want to do the job, and have started to deploy people who are only in the service because they thought it was an easy way to get a college education (and who had no real interest in being in the military outside of that). IMO, this is why there are far worse morale problems in the Army than in the Marines -- the Marines were always fairly clear in their recruiting what you were signing up to do, and drew people who actually want to do 'crazy Marine shit;' the Army (until recently) was billing itself as a disaster-relief and college scholarship program, leading to accusations of a bait-and-switch.

Don't bother, I dug a few up for you. A tad more recent event than your link I'm sorry to say. An incident that came to be known as "The Turkey Shoot" or also "The Highway of Death".
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0212/pt_index.ht ml
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=126&ar ticle=14772&archive=true

In case you'd like to brush up on some of our other activities in the area before the recent wars, here's another good place to start.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/

Strange, I didn't see any civilians, much less women and children in those pictures. I was thinking more along the lines of these pictures.

Your comparing the deaths of fleeing uniformed Iraqi soldiers to mass graves filled with civilians is like comparing a German machine gunner on D-Day to Anne Frank!

If you need links to mass graves and the real torture that went on before both of these wars, I guess I could dig those up too.

South Korea temporarily lifts decision to block VoIP services

SEOUL -- The decision to block South Korea-based U.S. military community members from making phone calls via the Internet has been put on hold.

The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communications and Dacom, the Internet service provider that serves about 12,000 base customers, agreed late Thursday to a U.S. Forces Korea request to suspend Saturday's deadline to begin blocking the service.

Dacom and the two other major ISPs, Korea Telecom and Hanaro, want to ban U.S.-based voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, companies that are not in compliance with the country's Telecommunications Business Act.

South Korea agreed to "suspend their decision to block these services pending the results of further discussions with USFK," according to a military news statement released late Friday.

USFK commander Gen. B.B. Bell "expressed his appreciation for the suspension and noted his desire to seek a solution that does not disadvantage U.S. servicemembers and families serving far from home," according to the release. USFK said it will keep people informed of developments.

The issue came to light Thursday when base Internet customers received notices stating they would no longer be able to use some of the most popular VoIP companies, including Vonage, AT&T CallVantage and Lingo.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service contracts on-base Internet service through a company called SSRT, which in turn buys its Internet time from Dacom.

More: http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&ar ticle=37448&archive=true

[But the armed forces] will be just as divided as the citizens are.

We're in a new era of propaganda. According to a poll taken early this year, 85% of the troops in Iraq believe that they're at war "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the Sept. 11 attacks." The military does not appear to be anywhere near as divided (or informed) as the citizens are.

Here in Europe, and in the middle east the common tool is Websense to block selective things. How they determine what they block and don't block changes. Sometimes it is set to limit access to High Bandwidth sites (like the army's own webmail site), but then later in the day, that access is removed. Beyond that, all bets are off on what is/isn't blocked. It is a official network, no different then any corporate one. In this case though, if you don't like it you have to wait up to a year for your tour of duty to end.

Here is an article describing the filtering done in Europe by the military, from an end users perspective.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&ar ticle=33734&archive=true

After this article, lots of the URLs mentioned changed availability.

Cheers,

Mstaj

Take for example this poll, ...of the troops surveyed...85 percent believe a major reason they were sent into war was "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the Sept. 11 attacks." Granted this poll was conducted by Stars and Stripes, one can't take unpatriotic bleeding heart liberal media like this too seriously.

Well today I felt a bit better about the situation. First my wife asked me about it which surprised me. She hasn't shown much interest in stuff like this in the past. And then a little later on when I went over to Stars and Stripes to read todays news they had a story about the rootkit and that they are pulling them out of the BX/PX's.

The more word of this gets out the more DRM will come to light. Eventually most people will know how bad DRM is and maybe, just maybe Sony and the rest will start to feel some pressure to stop trying to push it on us.

Absolutely. Urban crowd control is the optimum environment for nonlethal weapons. The US military is serious about using nonlethal systems where practical, but they do recognize their limitations.

The US Army can't even manage to pay their troops, and you expect them to provide communications?

DG is fine, asshole.

It's not stupid - it's what you gotta do to stay alive.

Weeks without food? Yeah, sure - you'll live, as long as you're in a vacuum. But will you be strong enough to keep up in a fight and stay alive? Fighting takes a lot of energy. Travelling on foot (to find clean water, perhaps) with a shit-ton of gear strapped to your body takes a lot of energy.

If you want to stay alive and keep going, you must replace this energy. Hence, eating food made from piss. It's Better This Way, and plainly a last resort.

Of course, the filter is not quite good enough to get rid of urea, but TFA (did you read it?) states that it's not immediately toxic.

According to this other article, the device is readily able to process seawater into a usable form. I've not been able to find any references, but I do suspect that seawater is saltier than piss.

At any rate, a couple of paragraphs from the above-linked article should clear up the whole salt issue:

One drawback to the bags is that they don't work without the electrolyte powder, which has to be added fresh every time the bag is used. That means the liquid they produce can't be used for cooking, or to rehydrate freeze-dried rations, Darsch said.

The good news is that the sugars in the electrolyte solution can provide energy, while the salts can replace essential salts lost to sweating and dehydration, Darsch said.

At this point, the salt-intake thing should be obvious:

The forward-osmosis filter provides salt, as a matter of course. The body requires salt to function properly. Normally, the body gets most of its required salt from everyday food.

So, you just remove salt from the food, before packaging, to balance the amount of salt added in filtration.

In the end, you end up with a meal which will help you get from wherever you desolate place you're in to somewhere that has better water, or which will at least increase your energy, alertness, and comfort to help keep you from getting killed before your job is finished.