TFA heavily implies that the aid knew the codes were lost but covered up the mistake until the mandatory code change rather than cop to it and get the codes replaced. It seems to me this would be a court-martial offense at the very least.
That the people checking on such an important document did not communicate with each other or follow up with the President is also appalling.
My first inclination is that Clinton's aides couldn't get him to meetings and speeches on time, so why am I not surprised?
But to be fair, that's the trouble with rules that state "if you lose this, you are in super big trouble." You get two choices: a. admit it and be fired, b. hope no one finds out. If you go with b and they do find out, you're fired, but at least it wasn't guaranteed.
And, from my experience, if you're stuck with the job of keeping track of something sensitive, and you ask, "so what's the procedure if something is lost?", the answer will be "don't lose it!" It doesn't matter that everyone who has been in for a few years has seen responsible people lose things, the higher-ups just deny the possibility and then when something is inevitably lost, that person is slammed.
If North Korea and Iran were to use any WMDs they would have used chemical weapons which they both had for decades. Hell, for eight years, Iran didn't use chemical weapons against Saddam even in retaliation. Maybe if you stop watching Fox News, you'd notice the leaders portrayed as demonic figures bent on bringing hell on earth are actually very pragmatic people and that's exactly why they manage to stay in power.
The main reason the Iranians didn't use chemical weapons is because biological and chemical agents are very difficult to employ. If your people don't have good protective gear, and neither the Iraqis nor the Iranians have it, the use of dispersed agents can backfire if the wind changes. Further, the actual result is not that a large number of casualties are caused (most people will survive if they get up high and into the sunlight, since wind and sun disperse and break down the agents) but that the area becomes contaminated and unusable. So, again, without protective gear, they are not useful tactically beyond covering your withdrawal.
Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, used them explicitly as weapons of mass terror, even against his own people. They are fairly effective if you're trying to kill a significant number of civilians and, since the area becomes contaminated, make everyone in the area instantly homeless. (Yes, thank you President George W Bush, it is amazing how much better the region is doing now that Hussein is dead.)
Ahmadinejad, who has been president since 2005, certainly isn't as bad as Hussein was, but he's still a very dangerous character and it's incredibly irresponsible for us to pretend it's safe for him to have nukes.
I agree. If you aren't born into wealth you have no place at an institution of higher learning.
Depends, if you're willing to become a wage slave to pay off endless loans, you can still do it. You can pay them off quicker, though, if you follow the super-rich liberal example and don't pay your taxes.
Raising demand elasticity wouldn't hurt the consumer. In fact, higher demand elasticity helps the consumer.
Sorry, should have said that consumers have higher price elasticity. So they're willing to spend more because they can get more loans.
I strongly suspect that your economic theory here is just wrong.
This is just basic microeconomics, not some elaborate theory.
But, for whatever reason, politicians routinely ignore this stuff. Otherwise they'd never call for price controls, protectionism, etc. I don't pretend to understand why.
And we wouldn't also now have a system that all but requires a college degree to be competitive. While loading down much of the populace with debts at a time when income is typically lowest, and then burdened by taxes to pay for other people to end up in the same situation.
The reason college is so expensive and ubiquitous is because liberals demanded student loan programs. These increased demand and demand elasticity, which have inflated the price of a college education.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the tuition bubble bursts, but I'm going to guess that you'll blame conservatives for that, too.
Also, what's with all the retards of the world insisting on "answering" questions by linking lmgtfy? Are you afraid to admit that you also don't know the answer to the question but still want to feel "superior"?
I've seen the White House on Google Maps and Google Earth and there seems to be some kind of thick cloud obscuring the area. Will they generate any electricity with these things or is it just another feel-good liberal gesture with no real world effect?
It's the East coast, so it's mild compared to southern heat, and not nearly as sunny as Cali, but there are definitely plenty of sunny days.
Can someone tell me the major reason as to why those capable of joining Facebook refuse to join?
Disclaimer: I am one of those who refuse to join Facebook. My reason is simple: I do not see what joining this social network would do to improve my life. In fact, I believe it would simply complicate it. Am I wrong?
If you don't have trouble keeping up with people in real life, there's not much reason to use Facebook. I've got friends who are scattered all over, so it's pretty useful to me. Also, there are a lot of people you can keep up with without being close buddies.
I am in favor of compulsory military service for every adult citizen in the US. Many modern nations enforce it: Germany, Norway, China and even Canada. It's not just for small third world nations.
Oh fuck no. After I get done with this deployment I'm done for good.
I remember when I was doing a field exercise in garrison, it was wet and miserable as usual. So some of us pointed this out, and suggested that we go some place where it was not.
"Oh noes!" said the platoon sergeant. "Your BROTHERS are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are being shot at and are way more miserable than you. How can you go to bed and be warm and toasty and comfortable, when they are not?"
Now that I am stuck out here while people are relaxing at home, I can report that your being comfortable or miserable back at home has no discernible effect on my level of suck here. I always thought that platoon sergeant was a fucking moron, but now I have anecdotal evidence to prove it.
When was the last time the US military had to endure a war this long without a draft?
We really shouldn't be enduring wars, we should be winning them. Even with a volunteer service, we spend way too many resources babysitting people who don't want to be here. I'm, presently, an involuntary recall, meaning I did my time, got out, and was dumb enough to respond to the letter. I thought I had a lousy attitude because they could kick me out and I wouldn't care, but I've met Guardsmen who are so worthless that even the fact that they could be killed doesn't compel them to take their job seriously. I can't imagine how bad draftees would be.
Most people who are at or just above that income range are small business owners, and punitive taxes will force them to hire fewer employees. You may not have noticed this, but the unemployment rate is a bit high right now.
Myth, and the small percentage (3%) it does affect are "S" corps who became such because of the TAX BENEFITS, and did so before Bush crippled the country with out of control spending on a senseless war and even more senseless tax breaks. We've had ENOUGH of the VOODOO economics.
They're the 3% of S-corps that account for 50% of the jobs generated by s-corps... most s-corps hire are single individuals because many kinds of self-employment or working as a contractor requires starting an s-corp. Yes, with an unemployment rate of over 9%, we certainly have had enough of voodoo economics.
If you can't see how comparing today's US government as it is today with countries who have single payer, etc, etc, etc (which not only are we NOWHERE near today, but we weren't even near when The New Deal started) as a fallacious, slippery slope bullshit talking point argument that has no bearing on reality, we aren't going to find a middle ground, so enjoy your house of cards that you call logic and piss off.
I'm enjoying the fact that you realize that you're not going to get what you want in a million years, but that's only because people like me won't stop warning people about what you really want and where we're going. In other words, we're not going to drive off the slippery slope, but it's because our hands are firmly on the steering wheel, and we're not budging.
Exactly, so why is the right making such a big stink about people who make 250K+?
Most people who are at or just above that income range are small business owners, and punitive taxes will force them to hire fewer employees. You may not have noticed this, but the unemployment rate is a bit high right now.
I don't need numbers. Look up Glass-Steagall
I'm familiar with Glass-Steagall, and repealing one old, stupid law doesn't put a dent in the massive amount of regulation accumulated over the past 60 years.
No one is arguing that we're on a "slippery slope" to anything, just a steady decline into a European-style welfare state.
So you deny using slippery-slope fallacy and in the same breath engage in it. Debate over.
Not quite, you still need to learn what a slippery slope is. A slippery slope argument suggests an unrecoverable end-state that can't be disputed because you don't specify what the end-state actually is. That's why it's a fallacy: by not saying where you're going and how you're getting there, you don't make the logical connection.
Lots of people live in a Euorpean-style welfare state quite happily, they are commonly known as "Europeans." We're amply familiar with it, it costs a few hundred bucks to fly there, and the history of European economy is well documented.
First off, even if there were no regulations, they would still be lobbying as much (more, actually, since 'regulation' also covers lobbying) to get favorable treatment, government contracts, etc. etc.
No one is saying that we should only deregulate, they're arguing that all forms of government intervention and spending need to be limited.
Secondly, during our best and strongest years(post-WW2), the top tax rate was in the 90's, the banks were heavily regulated, and the government was distributing a large percentage of the GDP ((laundry list excised))
The top tax rate was 90%, and no one paid it. That's why government revenue didn't go down substantially when they cut the rate. If you're rich, you have the money to move your money around and hide it. Or, if it comes to it, you have the option of simply not working as much.
My initial inclination is that it's simply not possible for banks to have been nearly as regulated as they are now because there were no computers. But if you have a metric of how much a sector is regulated, I'd like to see some numbers to back up your assertion.
And your numbers are simply wrong on the % of GDP. After WWII, federal spending dropped to 14.5% of GDP. It climbed up to 20% and has stayed at about that level since then. Source: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/hist.html Social Security and Medicare were both started around that time, but both of them are wealth transfers from the young and poor to the old and rich. They take money out of the hands of potential entrepreneurs and put it in the hands of people with limited means, so even by Keynesian theory they can't be stimulative.
And while the claim is that WWII proved Keynes right, we've recently spent massive sums on stimulus and unemployment is at 9%. Japan did it and suffered the "lost decade." Germany is *not* doing it and they are rebuilding their economy. The rational explanation seems to be that the recovery from the Depression occurred before WWII, and that while a shared sense of purpose may be beneficial, massive programs to dig holes and fill them in again actually depress the economy.
Both the commercial sector AND government can be great positive OR negative forces. Crippling EITHER is sheer idiocy! We merely need to curtail the TRUE threats without succumbing to slippery slope rhetoric by the radicals.
You need to check your facts and understand other people's arguments. No one is arguing that we're on a "slippery slope" to anything, just a steady decline into a European-style welfare state. While it may be apparently comfortable, it's antithetical to liberty and the human condition. If you're looking for radicals, they're all on the left: do a burnt car / broken window / cracked skull count at a Tea Party rally, now look at the behavior of leftists at a G20 summit and get back to me.
The private sector and the government are not forces, they are organizations of people who have to make sense of the world to operate. Virtually all organizations, whether commercial, non-profit, government, are run by people who have a surprisingly superficial understanding of how their own operation works, and they prefer to ignore change in the world if they can. The difference is that organizations in the private sector (unless a politician deems them "too big to fail") can go out of business and be replaced, whereas in the government there has to be a public outcry and years of campaigning to fix anything.
The government can be a good force, but we the people have to be attentive managers. We can only effectively managed it as long as the our collective attention span can keep track of it. The reality is that our collective attention span is more or less a fixed resource. We've gone past diminishing marginal returns at all levels of education and are presently overwhelmed with information from modern news sources. The rational thing to do is limit the siz
A big issue here in NZ is that it is illegal to force people into unions, and what the SAG and the other unions are trying to force, is that everyone must have a union contract.
in NZ it must be an Opt-in collective, it cannot be compulsory. however that is exactly what SAG, FIA, et al are trying to force.
Asking the actors not to do business with the studio because it's non-union is how it's supposed to work, right? I'm generally anti-union, but everyone's a crook in film and television.
Had the Pentagon shrugged and allowed the book to be published nobody would've cared beyond the media exclaiming "Secrets! In this book!" completely avoiding any issues meant to be brought to light by Mr. Shaffer's memoir.
Those secrets would've remained hidden in plain sight. Everyone would continue to not care about Afghanistan and the status quo would have remained without burning books.
While there are people in the DOD who certainly do handle PR, there are other people who handle intelligence, others who handle counter-intelligence, etc.
Most people in the DOD don't care in the slightest what's on TV. To them, that's someone else's job. The intel folks, who are probably calling the shots, want stuff redacted because they've got ongoing military and intelligence operations that can be disrupted if the enemy gets that information.
The operations that this guy was a part of probably didn't stop when he got out. Other people are probably there. They still have sources and agents in the field. Even if no one is killed, they could lose years of progress. It may be hard to understand, but keep in mind that the enemy is already intimately familiar since this is his area of operations. He could use small details from this book to figure out where the operators had been, and he can actually go to those sites and mine them for more information, and check it against other intelligence efforts, until he could find our current operations.
It's silly for the DOD to always invoke "national security" every time anything is leaked, but there is a real potential for damage. Considering that the total cost of these books is less than one truck, vs the millions for setting up an operation, it makes perfect sense what they're doing. The only real criticism I have is that they didn't work better with the publisher to handle this in a competent manner, and I think someone ought to lose their job over it.
..and the Streisand effect they are now creating ensures that the redacted information is rapidly identified and disseminated?
Got two grand to blow on Ebay?
Really, if the idiots in the Reserve had done their job, this stuff would be just as censored, only without the spectacle of a book burning.
Every government operation with any kind of security has burn bins available precisely for destroying books. There are tremendous amounts of information destroyed every day, and most of it is just classified secret, so it's totally mundane.
The waste is incredible, whether it's civilian or military it doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
TFA heavily implies that the aid knew the codes were lost but covered up the mistake until the mandatory code change rather than cop to it and get the codes replaced. It seems to me this would be a court-martial offense at the very least.
That the people checking on such an important document did not communicate with each other or follow up with the President is also appalling.
My first inclination is that Clinton's aides couldn't get him to meetings and speeches on time, so why am I not surprised?
But to be fair, that's the trouble with rules that state "if you lose this, you are in super big trouble." You get two choices: a. admit it and be fired, b. hope no one finds out. If you go with b and they do find out, you're fired, but at least it wasn't guaranteed.
And, from my experience, if you're stuck with the job of keeping track of something sensitive, and you ask, "so what's the procedure if something is lost?", the answer will be "don't lose it!" It doesn't matter that everyone who has been in for a few years has seen responsible people lose things, the higher-ups just deny the possibility and then when something is inevitably lost, that person is slammed.
If North Korea and Iran were to use any WMDs they would have used chemical weapons which they both had for decades. Hell, for eight years, Iran didn't use chemical weapons against Saddam even in retaliation. Maybe if you stop watching Fox News, you'd notice the leaders portrayed as demonic figures bent on bringing hell on earth are actually very pragmatic people and that's exactly why they manage to stay in power.
The main reason the Iranians didn't use chemical weapons is because biological and chemical agents are very difficult to employ. If your people don't have good protective gear, and neither the Iraqis nor the Iranians have it, the use of dispersed agents can backfire if the wind changes. Further, the actual result is not that a large number of casualties are caused (most people will survive if they get up high and into the sunlight, since wind and sun disperse and break down the agents) but that the area becomes contaminated and unusable. So, again, without protective gear, they are not useful tactically beyond covering your withdrawal.
Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, used them explicitly as weapons of mass terror, even against his own people. They are fairly effective if you're trying to kill a significant number of civilians and, since the area becomes contaminated, make everyone in the area instantly homeless. (Yes, thank you President George W Bush, it is amazing how much better the region is doing now that Hussein is dead.)
Ahmadinejad, who has been president since 2005, certainly isn't as bad as Hussein was, but he's still a very dangerous character and it's incredibly irresponsible for us to pretend it's safe for him to have nukes.
Well, it is really a bad name per my understanding.
To keep up with the trend, they should try "iOffice", "FaceOffice",
It's Office365 because it won't work on Feb 29.
I agree. If you aren't born into wealth you have no place at an institution of higher learning.
Depends, if you're willing to become a wage slave to pay off endless loans, you can still do it. You can pay them off quicker, though, if you follow the super-rich liberal example and don't pay your taxes.
Raising demand elasticity wouldn't hurt the consumer. In fact, higher demand elasticity helps the consumer.
Sorry, should have said that consumers have higher price elasticity. So they're willing to spend more because they can get more loans.
I strongly suspect that your economic theory here is just wrong.
This is just basic microeconomics, not some elaborate theory.
But, for whatever reason, politicians routinely ignore this stuff. Otherwise they'd never call for price controls, protectionism, etc. I don't pretend to understand why.
And we wouldn't also now have a system that all but requires a college degree to be competitive. While loading down much of the populace with debts at a time when income is typically lowest, and then burdened by taxes to pay for other people to end up in the same situation.
The reason college is so expensive and ubiquitous is because liberals demanded student loan programs. These increased demand and demand elasticity, which have inflated the price of a college education.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the tuition bubble bursts, but I'm going to guess that you'll blame conservatives for that, too.
Sniper fire from a .38 Special revolver? Not likely. Doesn't even sound similar.
"Don't worry about those bullets coming from an unknown shooter, men, they're only 38's!"
Dude, I was kidding...
Also, what's with all the retards of the world insisting on "answering" questions by linking lmgtfy? Are you afraid to admit that you also don't know the answer to the question but still want to feel "superior"?
It's about people being lazy and asking stupid questions. I've commented on this before.
That's why sites like stackoverflow are nice, since they reward good questions.
ah, another simpleton who doesn't get my meta-ironic subtletisms...
Pretty sure those assholes with the halogen headlights can see through several meters of solid rock pretty easily.
I've seen the White House on Google Maps and Google Earth and there seems to be some kind of thick cloud obscuring the area. Will they generate any electricity with these things or is it just another feel-good liberal gesture with no real world effect?
It's the East coast, so it's mild compared to southern heat, and not nearly as sunny as Cali, but there are definitely plenty of sunny days.
Can someone tell me the major reason as to why those capable of joining Facebook refuse to join?
Disclaimer: I am one of those who refuse to join Facebook. My reason is simple: I do not see what joining this social network would do to improve my life. In fact, I believe it would simply complicate it. Am I wrong?
If you don't have trouble keeping up with people in real life, there's not much reason to use Facebook. I've got friends who are scattered all over, so it's pretty useful to me. Also, there are a lot of people you can keep up with without being close buddies.
I am in favor of compulsory military service for every adult citizen in the US. Many modern nations enforce it: Germany, Norway, China and even Canada. It's not just for small third world nations.
Oh fuck no. After I get done with this deployment I'm done for good.
I remember when I was doing a field exercise in garrison, it was wet and miserable as usual. So some of us pointed this out, and suggested that we go some place where it was not.
"Oh noes!" said the platoon sergeant. "Your BROTHERS are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are being shot at and are way more miserable than you. How can you go to bed and be warm and toasty and comfortable, when they are not?"
Now that I am stuck out here while people are relaxing at home, I can report that your being comfortable or miserable back at home has no discernible effect on my level of suck here. I always thought that platoon sergeant was a fucking moron, but now I have anecdotal evidence to prove it.
When was the last time the US military had to endure a war this long without a draft?
We really shouldn't be enduring wars, we should be winning them. Even with a volunteer service, we spend way too many resources babysitting people who don't want to be here. I'm, presently, an involuntary recall, meaning I did my time, got out, and was dumb enough to respond to the letter. I thought I had a lousy attitude because they could kick me out and I wouldn't care, but I've met Guardsmen who are so worthless that even the fact that they could be killed doesn't compel them to take their job seriously. I can't imagine how bad draftees would be.
Most people who are at or just above that income range are small business owners, and punitive taxes will force them to hire fewer employees. You may not have noticed this, but the unemployment rate is a bit high right now.
Myth, and the small percentage (3%) it does affect are "S" corps who became such because of the TAX BENEFITS, and did so before Bush crippled the country with out of control spending on a senseless war and even more senseless tax breaks. We've had ENOUGH of the VOODOO economics.
They're the 3% of S-corps that account for 50% of the jobs generated by s-corps... most s-corps hire are single individuals because many kinds of self-employment or working as a contractor requires starting an s-corp. Yes, with an unemployment rate of over 9%, we certainly have had enough of voodoo economics.
If you can't see how comparing today's US government as it is today with countries who have single payer, etc, etc, etc (which not only are we NOWHERE near today, but we weren't even near when The New Deal started) as a fallacious, slippery slope bullshit talking point argument that has no bearing on reality, we aren't going to find a middle ground, so enjoy your house of cards that you call logic and piss off.
I'm enjoying the fact that you realize that you're not going to get what you want in a million years, but that's only because people like me won't stop warning people about what you really want and where we're going. In other words, we're not going to drive off the slippery slope, but it's because our hands are firmly on the steering wheel, and we're not budging.
If the number is converted to base 47, the sum of the digits, mod 47, is 42.
Coincidence? I think not.
In base 2, every number is prime.
They fixed that in base 2.0.1.
Exactly, so why is the right making such a big stink about people who make 250K+?
Most people who are at or just above that income range are small business owners, and punitive taxes will force them to hire fewer employees. You may not have noticed this, but the unemployment rate is a bit high right now.
I don't need numbers. Look up Glass-Steagall
I'm familiar with Glass-Steagall, and repealing one old, stupid law doesn't put a dent in the massive amount of regulation accumulated over the past 60 years.
No one is arguing that we're on a "slippery slope" to anything, just a steady decline into a European-style welfare state.
So you deny using slippery-slope fallacy and in the same breath engage in it. Debate over.
Not quite, you still need to learn what a slippery slope is. A slippery slope argument suggests an unrecoverable end-state that can't be disputed because you don't specify what the end-state actually is. That's why it's a fallacy: by not saying where you're going and how you're getting there, you don't make the logical connection.
Lots of people live in a Euorpean-style welfare state quite happily, they are commonly known as "Europeans." We're amply familiar with it, it costs a few hundred bucks to fly there, and the history of European economy is well documented.
First off, even if there were no regulations, they would still be lobbying as much (more, actually, since 'regulation' also covers lobbying) to get favorable treatment, government contracts, etc. etc.
No one is saying that we should only deregulate, they're arguing that all forms of government intervention and spending need to be limited.
Secondly, during our best and strongest years(post-WW2), the top tax rate was in the 90's, the banks were heavily regulated, and the government was distributing a large percentage of the GDP ((laundry list excised))
The top tax rate was 90%, and no one paid it. That's why government revenue didn't go down substantially when they cut the rate. If you're rich, you have the money to move your money around and hide it. Or, if it comes to it, you have the option of simply not working as much.
My initial inclination is that it's simply not possible for banks to have been nearly as regulated as they are now because there were no computers. But if you have a metric of how much a sector is regulated, I'd like to see some numbers to back up your assertion.
And your numbers are simply wrong on the % of GDP. After WWII, federal spending dropped to 14.5% of GDP. It climbed up to 20% and has stayed at about that level since then. Source: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/hist.html Social Security and Medicare were both started around that time, but both of them are wealth transfers from the young and poor to the old and rich. They take money out of the hands of potential entrepreneurs and put it in the hands of people with limited means, so even by Keynesian theory they can't be stimulative.
And while the claim is that WWII proved Keynes right, we've recently spent massive sums on stimulus and unemployment is at 9%. Japan did it and suffered the "lost decade." Germany is *not* doing it and they are rebuilding their economy. The rational explanation seems to be that the recovery from the Depression occurred before WWII, and that while a shared sense of purpose may be beneficial, massive programs to dig holes and fill them in again actually depress the economy.
Both the commercial sector AND government can be great positive OR negative forces. Crippling EITHER is sheer idiocy! We merely need to curtail the TRUE threats without succumbing to slippery slope rhetoric by the radicals.
You need to check your facts and understand other people's arguments. No one is arguing that we're on a "slippery slope" to anything, just a steady decline into a European-style welfare state. While it may be apparently comfortable, it's antithetical to liberty and the human condition. If you're looking for radicals, they're all on the left: do a burnt car / broken window / cracked skull count at a Tea Party rally, now look at the behavior of leftists at a G20 summit and get back to me.
The private sector and the government are not forces, they are organizations of people who have to make sense of the world to operate. Virtually all organizations, whether commercial, non-profit, government, are run by people who have a surprisingly superficial understanding of how their own operation works, and they prefer to ignore change in the world if they can. The difference is that organizations in the private sector (unless a politician deems them "too big to fail") can go out of business and be replaced, whereas in the government there has to be a public outcry and years of campaigning to fix anything.
The government can be a good force, but we the people have to be attentive managers. We can only effectively managed it as long as the our collective attention span can keep track of it. The reality is that our collective attention span is more or less a fixed resource. We've gone past diminishing marginal returns at all levels of education and are presently overwhelmed with information from modern news sources. The rational thing to do is limit the siz
In 50,000 years, humans will probably not even be on Earth anymore.
At the very least I'd hope there aren't any more insipid horoscopes being published.
Yeah, capitalization can be very important.
Doesn't help. Any online group for LaTeX is routinely spammed with fetish ads.
What was that we were saying about terrible names for open source software?
Within 10 minutes of this thing going on sale to the public, somebody's gonna have their dick in it.
New corporate slogan?
"Panasonic. Because you're the kind of guy who would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamned courtesy to give him a reach-around."
A big issue here in NZ is that it is illegal to force people into unions, and what the SAG and the other unions are trying to force, is that everyone must have a union contract.
in NZ it must be an Opt-in collective, it cannot be compulsory. however that is exactly what SAG, FIA, et al are trying to force.
Asking the actors not to do business with the studio because it's non-union is how it's supposed to work, right? I'm generally anti-union, but everyone's a crook in film and television.
Had the Pentagon shrugged and allowed the book to be published nobody would've cared beyond the media exclaiming "Secrets! In this book!" completely avoiding any issues meant to be brought to light by Mr. Shaffer's memoir.
Those secrets would've remained hidden in plain sight. Everyone would continue to not care about Afghanistan and the status quo would have remained without burning books.
While there are people in the DOD who certainly do handle PR, there are other people who handle intelligence, others who handle counter-intelligence, etc.
Most people in the DOD don't care in the slightest what's on TV. To them, that's someone else's job. The intel folks, who are probably calling the shots, want stuff redacted because they've got ongoing military and intelligence operations that can be disrupted if the enemy gets that information.
The operations that this guy was a part of probably didn't stop when he got out. Other people are probably there. They still have sources and agents in the field. Even if no one is killed, they could lose years of progress. It may be hard to understand, but keep in mind that the enemy is already intimately familiar since this is his area of operations. He could use small details from this book to figure out where the operators had been, and he can actually go to those sites and mine them for more information, and check it against other intelligence efforts, until he could find our current operations.
It's silly for the DOD to always invoke "national security" every time anything is leaked, but there is a real potential for damage. Considering that the total cost of these books is less than one truck, vs the millions for setting up an operation, it makes perfect sense what they're doing. The only real criticism I have is that they didn't work better with the publisher to handle this in a competent manner, and I think someone ought to lose their job over it.
..and the Streisand effect they are now creating ensures that the redacted information is rapidly identified and disseminated?
Got two grand to blow on Ebay?
Really, if the idiots in the Reserve had done their job, this stuff would be just as censored, only without the spectacle of a book burning.
Every government operation with any kind of security has burn bins available precisely for destroying books. There are tremendous amounts of information destroyed every day, and most of it is just classified secret, so it's totally mundane.
The waste is incredible, whether it's civilian or military it doesn't matter.