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So for those who are mentally engaged, it may take many more years for the symptoms of the disease to appear. But once they do, the course of the disease seems to speed up. Researchers say there's a bit of a silver lining here: knowing that the disease will likely progress more quickly. "We think this is very good news," Wilson says. "It suggests that cognitive activity extends your period of cognitive independence as long as it possibly can." And it will likely shorten the battle at the end of life. This means Alzheimer's patients may be less of a burden to caregivers and loved ones.

Btw I doubt there is a clear cut policy that makes what Williams said a terminable offense.

Enjoy:

http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/ethics/ethics_code.html

It's not really a partisan issue. He clearly violated their policy.

Not too long ago, NPR was in the news because they instructed their employees not to attend Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. Their response can be found here.

One of the reasons given in the article states "You must not advocate for political or other polarizing issues online". It would seem to apply in this case.

Hey, if the news media can cite Wikipedia as a reliable source of information all the time

Just because a dying profession uses Wikipedia in a way that is irresponsible, it does not validate Wikipedia as a primary source of information. So, I hope your post is sarcasm.

"But government interference, shortsighted regulators, and indifferent corporate leaders each played a role in the demise of a program that could have lessened US.dependence on Middle East oil."

I take exception with most of this statement from to the Journal. I have a strong suspicion that the first two had very little to do with the decision. According to this capsule history of Chrysler, "Between 1973 and 1974, Chrysler's auto production plummets by 26 percent," due to poor sales of the full-size cars they had invested in (including the turbine car) in the face of the 1970's oil shock. Methinks the Journel doth protest too much about "government interference" when most of the blame lies squarely with the management of Chrysler who, together with the rest of the industry during the day, made crappy decisions on which cars to back. They really didn't have much choice but to scale back on their experimental programs as they were hemorrhaging money. I know it's politically beneficial to the right to bash the government with these sorts of unfounded statements, but it's historically inaccurate. But then, anyone who actually sees Murdoch's Journal as a source of unbiased journalism these days is really a bit of a moron.

If you really want to understand the mind of the auto companies in that day, read The Reckoning by David Halberstam, which gives an insightful view of how auto companies were run in the fifties and sixties and how their bad management led to the supremecy of the foreign car in the US and how it almost led to the demise of the domestic auto industry in the seventies.

FYI, the Monarch butterfly report showing harm was discredited due to the concentrations of pollen placed on the milkweed. It was way more than would normally by found in the wild.

And thank your for for the support.

That said, here are some links you might find informative;

Monsanto
more Monsanto
Yet more Monsanto (busy aren't they)
intersting site
Canola
GM canola in the wild
Possible wipe out of terrestrial plant life
another one

Have fun reading.

_

A while back (June 5 2009) Tom Levenson was talking about his book, "Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist," on Science Friday http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144. A caller asked the Levenson about Stephenson's work. Levenson said that the Newton's voice was so plausible that he had stopped reading them until he had finished his own book.

Very interesting to note. I had been wondering about that part of the story.

Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don't come together until the final book.

Absolutely!. I am at the last 100 pages right now and it surely does not lose steam. Nor punk. (OK, I'll stop now)

A while back (June 5 2009) Tom Levenson was talking about his book, "Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist," on Science Friday http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144. A caller asked the Levenson about Stephenson's work. Levenson said that the Newton's voice was so plausible that he had stopped reading them until he had finished his own book.

Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don't come together until the final book.

Is this Cyber-Alert Week for the Obamarama Cyber-Security Team hyped by the propaganda from
Richard Clarke.

Yours In Moscow,
Kilgore Trout, C.I.O.

Finish your degree as fast as possible. You don't want to burn any extra enthusiasm on anything that won't get you out of school. As it is, you will need every last drop.

Also, read this article: "Three Books For Surviving Graduate School," at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125856586

It's a piece by the author of this book: Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School, http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Your-Stupid-Decision-School/dp/0307589447

"[citations needed]"

http://cnn.com/
http://msnbc.com/
http://abc.com/
http://cbs.com/
http://nbc.com/
http://npr.org/

That's the short and easy list. Don't be disingenuous. I reference the prevailing popular^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmainstream media. To claim otherwise is ignorant. And/or insulting.

"There's this fellow Jefferson at the door. Says he'd like to have a word with you."

I was speaking in the present tense. Jefferson is dead.

The Tea Party is observably of the Religous Right.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130013275

It's only terrorism if we're the ones doing it.

I follow the US space programme with intereset, because it's the best hope the human race has for getting off this rock.

This morning I heard on NPR it take about 140,000 USD to get 500 g to Mars.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130268502

How many tons would it take to support a mission from Earth to Mars and back? How many tons to set up a viable colony, even if we knew what it would take *and* already had the technology to set up that colony?

Your guess is as good as mine. But I'm not going to hold my breath. We better do the best we can to keep this planet alive for a long time. Now if we had the money we wasted on the bank bailouts....

See Is Debt OK? here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99927343

This is what I get for not reading the article first. Faux News. Where's my salt lick?

This will cause me mod damage, but I'm going to dive in here one more time: numbski, don't be a jerkwad.

There are several other sources for this same story. And yet, you are going to deny that it is true because the single link above is from 'Faux News'.

Forget Google, logic, or even a mild interest in the actual article itself, it's FOX BASHING TIME. WHOOOAAAAHHHHH!

Partisanship is a disease of the mind, and it just made you do something stupid. Reflect on that.

Some things are quick fixes and other things are not.

The all mighty economy is in many aspects like Skinner's Pigeons with the economists each acting like they've found the pattern. Even if the DFL was 100% honestly working for us, it could not reliably stop the momentum of the present situation because of the nature of the problem. Perhaps it could be done better; that is always speculative, and always a sore point open to criticism. Of course they are not 100% honest either...

In addition, about 30% of the population will never accept the truth when it counters their beliefs no matter how obvious and factual; it may actually make them more entrenched: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874
(Note: I'm not saying just that 1/3 but I'm referring to the 1/3 who blindly follow anything the neoliberals want, which to some degree still loves Bush.)

While Democrats and Republicans look dangerously similar to the informed observer, they still function differently and arguably their differences are necessary to keep the whole democracy farce alive. Democrats are disorganized and not unified, it is like herding cats - in fact, they pride themselves on their diversity of opinion over being effective. The Republicans are run like much more like a modern business and it comes as no surprise they embrace selling out to business openly and fire insubordinates. There are a few good ones on both sides; more on the Democrat side because they are more tolerant which also means they tolerate moderate Republicans becoming Democrats. The label "Democrat" does not mean a whole lot. A 1 party rule by Democrats does not look like the other side. Yes, in the larger picture of critical issues both produce similar results.

Corruption maintains a working control over the game making the two parties more like a Good Cop, Bad Cop routine and the public wastes time fighting about which one is the Bad Cop. As I am again doing with this post.

You are incorrect if you think the Exec Branch has so much power. It has gained too much power, that is true - but actually, it is not powerful.... Its a matter of going with the flow or against it. Going with the flow, it appears almost dictatorial but going against it - it appears weak -- it does not have as much to do with the individual in the job as people think it does.... or the law... Corruption is too powerful today and the power brokers determine which way the "flow" is going and how strong.

Healthcare should have pointed this out if you really payed attention to it (not on tv news.) The public wanted more by huge numbers. That didn't matter, Obama stubbornly pushed his party to suicide forcing them to not give up which is what most wanted and some planned for. Remember, its better to try and fail (for millions of excuses) than to oppose something popular - that's politics 101. Even most the opposition couldn't reveal their true position, it always had to be framed in failure -- its not good enough, its in the wrong direction, etc. Few dared to say they loved the current situation -- lying is part of the job you know.

Some think the 70s was the turning point. I think Nixon was a turning point. It wasn't Carter being weak or poor at his job - the system was hijacked so it didn't matter. Either "side" honestly pursuing their goals will not be effective going against the flow of corruption. I must admit however, I was shocked healthcare passed with any significant concessions (still pathetic, but better than I expected.)

Even worse than software patents, there is a new UN resolution going around that would give world governments more control over the internet. This is even worse, IMO, than software patents, which "only" threaten to drive software innovation to a virtual standstill: allowing governments to control the flow of information on the Internet could well destroy it, and the newfound freedom of expression and access to information we are currently taking for granted.

There are so many new threats to freedom on so many new fronts it's hard to even define what they all are, let alone what can be done about them.

as I have seen you railing and railing on this over the whole thread, I decided to reply to this post. You obviously live in the same area I do, which is rather interesting, and you are posting on Slashdot, which means you are literate. I am a little baffled why you rail against this technology without even reading about it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130052519

These "wifi routers" are working in the white space between channels that was freed up due to the digital conversion, due to the way the channels are allocated by the FCC, when the digital transition was accomplished, each channel needed less bandwidth. Think of it as channel 45.5, not as 45 and 46 are losing their license. When the channels were analog, there was a gap between the channels in order to prevent interference, with a digital broadcast, interference is less of an issue, and this area of "do not use" is now free, the best way to visualize this is to look at a chart of the wifi bands used in 2.4 Mhz:

http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/wireless/wi-fi/80211-channels-number-frequencies-bandwidth.php

if you look at the chart, and the source material for it a bit above, you will notice that for instance, between channels 1 and 6 there is a unused band of 14 khz, if you collected the bands between 1, 6 and 11, you now have 28 khz. When speaking of the TV channels, look how much possible bandwidth is available now that the gaps are no longer needed in the TV frequencies.

Hopefully this post allows you to understand what the FCC is doing, because everything I have seen you comment in this article appeared to be complaints due to lack of knowledge of the subject. Maybe someday we can meet up for beers.

Actually, you can...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128626037

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/09/16/129910351/how-your-brain-figures-out-what-it-doesn-t-know

...for not linking the NPR article -- and for linking the same paywalled article twice. Good job. Is this what you were going for?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/09/16/129910351/how-your-brain-figures-out-what-it-doesn-t-know

I hope you don't think we've hit the bottom of the real-estate market. Fine wines maybe? Collectables? Seems much safer to just buy interest rate derivitives, at least that way your losses are limited to 100%.

I wager he's talking real estate. Probably been snatching up lower end homes to rent out to the previously home owning subprime market. That would be my guess. I really hope he hasn't gone into debt to buy collectibles or fine wines!

Speaking of real estate, here's an interesting aerial photograph from a Florida subdivision that was built during the 1970s land boom. No houses were ever built, just sold lots. Today, trees are growing between cracks in the roads.

Wal-Mart money does good things, too -- for example, paying a starving college kid to write a paper! (Wikipedia corroborates.)

Well, apparently he's decided not to go ahead with it, after a "visit" from the FBI

Here I was just hearing about the man who lied to his laptop just yesterday. This morning I wake up to the new that the computer is lying back to him.

Makes me so proud! Little AMD is all grown up!

the one and only Richard Clarke:

""A cyberattack could disable trains all over the country," he tells Fresh Air host Terry Gross. "It could blow up pipelines. It could cause blackouts and damage electrical power grids so that the blackouts would go on for a long time. It could wipe out and confuse financial records, so that we would not know who owned what, and the financial system would be badly damaged. It could do things like disrupt traffic in urban areas by knocking out control computers. It could, in nefarious ways, do things like wipe out medical records."

A cyberattack could also disrupt my game of Medal Of Honor.

Yours In Krasnoyarsk,
K. Trout

Our PRIMARY export right now is "entertainment".

No it isn't. Not by a long shot.
The most recently available number for total hollywood studio revenues is $42.3 billion in 2007.
Total US exports were a hair over $1 trillion in 2009.

So even if every single cent hollywood made came from exports, they would still be a drop in the bucket.

Like a $38 quadrillion lawsuit?

Several years ago, the federal prison system started offering customer-service calling centers.

and also points to "new recycling centers, printing facilities and industrial laundry rooms." The Nation seems to think BP is paying prisoners to clean up oil damage, and theres always number-plate production. You should note that

in the 1930s, Congress began allowing the bureau of prisons to put prisoners to work making products — part of an effort to rehabilitate them. But there was a catch. Because its labor costs are so cheap — prisoners make less than a dollar an hour — Federal Prison Industries was not allowed to sell products to anyone but government agencies and non-profits.

If you're interested in the topic both Forbes and USAToday ran some pretty good stories on the rise of prison call centers a couple of months back.

Citation Needed?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129475831

Rep. DeGETTE: You know, I've spent a lot of time talking to Senator Orrin Hatch about this.

FLATOW: Yeah, he's one that I was talking about, yeah.

Rep. DeGETTE: A conservative Republican. And here's what Orrin says to me. He says, you know, these embryonic stem cells, they are embryos created for in-vitro fertilization techniques. They don't they're not needed anymore, and so what happens is they're thrown away as medical waste.

What we want to do is allow people to donate those embryos when they don't -the couples who they were created for, when they don't need them, for medical research. And what Senator Hatch says, to him that's the ultimate pro-life decision. They were created for life, and then they can be donated to help save someone else's life. I think that's really persuasive.

In other words, "you haven't bribed the right people yet." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126199094

I've got a great new revenue generator for Slashdot. Just copy the business model of
N.P.R.:

Sell music via hyperlinks to your stories about bands you never want to hear.

I expect a royalty payment of 80 percent on the revenue from music sales.

Yours In Moscow,
K. Trout

WNYC's Radiolab did a very similar story involved nuns donating their brains to Alzheimer's research. It was the University of Minnesota though, so it may also have been a different group of nuns.:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127211884

Basicly, you are right. They Nuns were a good choice because (as they put it):

Snowdon wanted to look at aging over time, and decided to focus on sisters because they all had fairly similar histories and backgrounds. Most of them joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation when they were 18, and all had abstained from smoking or drinking. So Snowdon signed up 678 sisters, all over the age of 75, from the order. All of the sisters agreed to donate a small part of their brains to the study after they died.

The study looked at writing as an indicator of Alzheimer's risk. And they chanced upon a jackpot - all the sisters in the study had essays that they had written at 18 or 19, roughly 70 years earlier.

Do yourself a favor and listen to that episode, or at least read the transcript.

Funny you mention checklists in medicine. There's other people, in the medical field, who've made the exact same observation you have. I remember hearing an interview back in January, on NPR, with Doctor Atul Gawande who is trying to encourage the use of standardized medical checklists in hospitals in the U.S. He wrote a book called, _The_Checklist_Manifesto_.

Change takes time, but given the results that guy saw, this is probably going to become standard practice in hospitals and clinics across the U.S. and probably the world. This really needs to happen. Like you say, checklists work to help manage memory and complexity in time-critical situations where the work *must* be done right. I think people resist checklists, because it makes them feel like they've become some sort of cog in a machine, but I for one recognize the limits of my memory and ability to manage complexity in critical situations.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129395326

People are getting stuck for long enough to create cottage industries for villagers. I guess those drivers who are lucky enough to be stuck near a village are the ones getting food and water.

Here is a quote that raised my eyebrows;

Wang, driving from Hohhot to Tianjin in a coal truck, had been on the Huai'an section for three days and two nights. "We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs," Wang said. "The number of roads from northwest China to Beijing are limited," he complained, asking "Why should I pay the toll fee?"

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-08/566070_2.html

I believe the original (perhaps not the first, but the most media-friendly) quote from Maes warned that the bike-sharing program was "converting Denver into a United Nations community." Now, depending on who you talk to, this may not even be such a bad thing; but the most entertaining part is how huge he blows the conspiracy theory, claiming that "this is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms." This leaves Colorado conservatives with a difficult choice: Dan Maes, or ex-Republican Tom Tancredo, who is running for the American Constitution Party and believes that we should repeal the Voting Rights Act. Jim Crow mk II, anyone?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516989

If I were you, I'd start coming up with lists of questions that only she would know the answers to. Ask her relatives and friends to come up with questions, some silly, some serious. The more specific the questions, the more specific the answers - more general questions to get her to tell long winded stories that will capture her essence. Ask what you'll want to know ten years from now. Have your kids ask questions. Who knows, some of the answers might come in handy during junior high and high school when social problems are so vexing for kids :)

The ATF conducted about 1,800 successful traces last year of crime guns recovered in Mexico. Ninety to 95 percent of those led to American gun dealers according to Javier Ortiz. In October 2003, ATF traced seven assault weapons belonging to a murdered associate of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to Simon's Trading Post(ph) in Pasadena, Texas. The dealer, Simon Garza, pled guilty last year to selling weapons to prohibited individuals. His punishment? Five years probation, a $100 fine and he lost his license to sell firearms. That was one of the few traces that led to a conviction. Fewer than half of all traces are successful and only a fraction of those lead to the most recent purchaser

In the Firearms Trafficking Report the American Government Accountability Office stated that

While it is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally smuggled into Mexico in a given year, about 87% of the firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last five years originated in the U.S., according to data from Dept. of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. According to U.S. and Mexican officials, these firearms have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years

Fox challenged the selection bias of the numbers, finding that "83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S." I should probably have done a little more digging for a better source than Fox but if you're interested some google mining should uncover something more reliable.

I don't know if they're so much sweeping it under the rug so much as (very rightfully) fearing for their lives. NPR was recently running a string of stories about this with the related story found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128929784 I can not blame the traditional media for avoiding a subject where they face more danger than most war zone correspondents do. The blog in question seems to have done something that traditional media can not: Avoided identifying itself in a way that allows the cartels to go after it with violence. I am personally happy to be living in an era where the dissemination of such dangerous information is possible. Maybe we wont get it how we want to, but the information is out there to be had. Especially in a country where Orwellian measures aren't being taken, important information has a way of finding its way past blocks that may have been 100% effective in stifling it in the past.

The food inspection system in the US is better than any the Earth has ever known. I think that qualifies as "good".

I am totally with you on War.

I don't know where you live, but in the US all workers on gov projects (including public roads) must be paid a prevailing wage. Doesn't mean the workers are necessarily well paid, but it means they make the same or more than any private road builders in the State. This keeps a private road builder from low-balling a bid and hiring $8/hour people that would make "bargain basement wages".

Do you think that, if a private corporation were to gain complete control over traditionally government responsibilities (which they would without regulation), they would not be "fucking around in a financially wasteful fashion with entitlements"? I think those fantastically large bonuses and golden parachutes executives get (even when they ran a company into the ground) would count as entitlements. And "quashing civil rights and criminalizing activities that have no victims"? Private organizations like the RIAA do exactly that.

The United States still leads the world in manufacturing. We won't next year - the Chinese will take over then. short and sweet article to save you all some trouble: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102761476

Here is the story NPR did on this a few days ago - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129010499

"Wilkinson says that just because the plants are genetically modified, doesn't mean they'll be more successful than wild plants. In this particular case, herbicide resistance will provide little edge to plants growing in areas that, almost by definition, don't receive many herbicides. "It's very difficult for either of these transgene types to give much of an advantage, if any, in the habitats that they're in," he says, referring to the genetically modified canola."

I hate Monsanto and GM because of their legal views and actions on DNA patents. I also hate how their products require tons of chemicals to grow and how it gets into the environment. I hate it how it promotes growing "all one type of plant" which turns niche problems and pests into giant clusterfucks because of the lack of biodiversity that would have naturally kept the problem in check. Google "pig weed" which is now ultra resistant to all known herbacides thanks to GM/Monsanto. The list goes on and on.

The Hummer tax loophole? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11172853 I prefer the electric car tax break as opposed to the polluting gas-guzzler loophole.

The fact is, China is freer than the UK, about as free as Canada on the civil liberties front

Oh, so I suppose that in the UK there are so many black jails (that is, secret jails where provincial and national governments can "disappear" people to) that it's literally a cottage industry? Or that entire provinces of Canada are barred from journalists, so the international community can't see the human rights abuses? I guess you think that in the US you are required to have registration papers before you can migrate from the poor inland villages into the city? Maybe you think Australia executes nearly 2,000 people a year?

And I can gaurantee that you did not, "proclaim, 'I disagree with Islam. Let me quote the koran to make my point,'" anywhere in China, or you'd be posting from the inside of a windowless cell. If you had tried it in Tibet, you'd be dead, because the Chinese government has posted snipers throughout the region to ensure that nobody questions Chinese rule there.

The fact is, China is freer than the UK, about as free as Canada on the civil liberties front

Oh, so I suppose that in the UK there are so many black jails (that is, secret jails where provincial and national governments can "disappear" people to) that it's literally a cottage industry? Or that entire provinces of Canada are barred from journalists, so the international community can't see the human rights abuses? I guess you think that in the US you are required to have registration papers before you can migrate from the poor inland villages into the city? Maybe you think Australia executes nearly 2,000 people a year?

And I can gaurantee that you did not, "proclaim, 'I disagree with Islam. Let me quote the koran to make my point,'" anywhere in China, or you'd be posting from the inside of a windowless cell. If you had tried it in Tibet, you'd be dead, because the Chinese government has posted snipers throughout the region to ensure that nobody questions Chinese rule there.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127747626

JOFFE-WALT: This is Steve Rubinow with the New York Stock Exchange, and he says if you want to sell something, you want to buy something, those high-frequency computer are there to sell and buy from you.

Mr. RUBINOW: Which makes for a fairer market for all participants, both the people that are up to their necks in it, and people like you and me as retail customers. Those prices are about as fair as they can be.

JOFFE-WALT: No way, says Kevin Cronin. He works for Invesco. And Cronin is more like what you think of as a regular investor - manages big pension funds and mutual funds. And he says high-frequency computers watch what he does. When he starts to buy, the computers swoop in and start to buy as well, and then sell at a higher price minutes, sometimes even seconds later.

Mr. KEVIN CRONIN (Director, Invesco Global Equity Trading): They dont care about the stocks. All they care about is jumping in front of us and making a penny or two, and doing that millions of times a day.

JOFFE-WALT: That seems annoying to you. But why is that...

Mr. CRONIN: Of course it's annoying.

JOFFE-WALT: Oh, but why is that wrong?

Mr. CRONIN: What are they doing to provide anything in the marketplace other than trying to take the information that our orders give and try to profit themselves?

JOFFE-WALT: Now, high-frequency traders counter that anyone can pay to get access to that information and that speed.

Fortunately there are some facts to back up your argument...

Ok I'll bite - What you say is assumes that there is a functioning Law Enforcement institution in the country that is trusted by the public to be fair, mostly honest and trustworthy... which there is not. Instead, there is no Law there greater than that of a weapon in one's hand and the influence of a local warlord. Whether it is due to intimidation of the Police[1] or fake police [2] or corrupt police, there exists a huge credibility gap between the average Joe and Law Enforcement.

Who knows what was going on in that guy's mind but by taking on a checkpoint he did assume a very big risk knowing that incidents like this go unaccounted and he would be dead. Consider that no one keeps count of how many Afghanis (or Iraqis) die. Sure, you could be a trigger happy Cop firing at 2 ton worth of metal coming at you... or you could be a better Cop and follow some other strategy that would inspire greater public confidence and show your professionalism... e.g., give chase and apprehend, or radio others for support.

IMHO, what we lack here is a government, transparency and it really sucks for us to be there and be the enforcers of checkpoints... Worse, when we have Marines covering up Haditha[3] then we get to be the bad guys and it only fuels rage and resentment.

This is a war that has no meaning for us... as each day goes by, it brings more insinuation and bad repute to us, empties our treasury and distracts from more pressing issues. It greatly saddens me to read stuff like this where once the Russians were seen as thugs disguised as the Great Russian Army, now we are maligned in the same way.

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104607440
[2] Sorry can't find a reference right now
[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5670345
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5439816

Ok I'll bite - What you say is assumes that there is a functioning Law Enforcement institution in the country that is trusted by the public to be fair, mostly honest and trustworthy... which there is not. Instead, there is no Law there greater than that of a weapon in one's hand and the influence of a local warlord. Whether it is due to intimidation of the Police[1] or fake police [2] or corrupt police, there exists a huge credibility gap between the average Joe and Law Enforcement.

Who knows what was going on in that guy's mind but by taking on a checkpoint he did assume a very big risk knowing that incidents like this go unaccounted and he would be dead. Consider that no one keeps count of how many Afghanis (or Iraqis) die. Sure, you could be a trigger happy Cop firing at 2 ton worth of metal coming at you... or you could be a better Cop and follow some other strategy that would inspire greater public confidence and show your professionalism... e.g., give chase and apprehend, or radio others for support.

IMHO, what we lack here is a government, transparency and it really sucks for us to be there and be the enforcers of checkpoints... Worse, when we have Marines covering up Haditha[3] then we get to be the bad guys and it only fuels rage and resentment.

This is a war that has no meaning for us... as each day goes by, it brings more insinuation and bad repute to us, empties our treasury and distracts from more pressing issues. It greatly saddens me to read stuff like this where once the Russians were seen as thugs disguised as the Great Russian Army, now we are maligned in the same way.

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104607440
[2] Sorry can't find a reference right now
[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5670345
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5439816