What Would Jesus Shoot?

April 9, 2003 – 12:00 am

Note to Major General William Boykin: you took an oath to defend the Constitution, not the Bible, and while you wear that uniform, obedience to the former is your top job. If you have an issue with that, kindly resign your commission and let someone whose priorities are straight take command.

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A Bulletproof Mind

November 10, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via Rohit Khare ] Peter Maass spent time with a U.S. Army Special Forces officer, before and after, his unit spent time in Afghanistan. The unit’s exploits are an exciting and terrifying read — friendly fire and misadventure accounted for several of that units casualties.
Mixed in with the stories of chasing al Queida and [...]

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Intel Riot Grrl

June 30, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via Amygdala ] The simple joys of a woman interrogating al Quida prisoners:
“True, some have had their choice of words for me,” she said. “But when they realize that where they travel next depends on the opinion of a woman, not only does that put them in their place, it scares the bejesus out [...]

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Minuteman Pizza

June 26, 2002 – 12:00 am

You know, we could do all kinds of fun, peaceful things with decommissioned Minutman III missiles. Pizza delivery, for example. And the old silos in Kansas and Missouri are close to supply points for flour, cheese and tomato sauce.

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IDF Use of Noncombantants in Jenin Raids

May 4, 2002 – 12:00 am

I read the report by Human Rights Watch on the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces action in the refugee camp at Jenin. It’s damning.
The government of Israel had a legitimate reason to send troops into the camp, it was a base for attacks on their citizens, and they had every right to go there [...]

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Suicidal Lies

March 31, 2002 – 12:00 am

Thomas Friedman writing on the suicide bomber strategy in the Mid-East conflict.
“The Spanish Civil War was the place where the major powers all tested out their new weapons before World War II,” said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. “Well, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today is the Spanish Civil War for the 21st century. A big [...]

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My Cyncial View of Why the US is So Hot for NMD

March 9, 2002 – 12:00 am

The recently leaked report on the United States’ willingness to use nuclear weapons is a small datapoint supporting my cyncical view of why I think my country has been so eager to develop a balistic missile defense.
The US understands that if we use a nuke, we are going to get smacked, hard.
NMD is an attempt [...]

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Springtime, Taxes, and the Attack on Iraq

February 16, 2002 – 12:00 am

When I first saw the title of this article in MIT’s Technology Review, I first thought of a song from “The Producers“.
Richard Muller, of Cal Berkeley’s Physics department, says that an attack on Iraq will happen because Iraq’s been working on an ‘gun style’ bomb, like the one the US used on Hiroshima, and that [...]

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Saudi hypocrites piss-off USAF fighter pilot

January 8, 2002 – 12:00 am

It’s not like you need another reason to “hone one’s rage” at the hypocrites running Saudi Arabia, but here’s another.
US Servicewomen, as part of the hired help keeping King Fuad in power, have to wear head to toe veiling when going off-base. Oh, and they can’t drive. And they have to be accompanyied by men.
Try [...]

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al Quida Nuke manual a hoax

November 18, 2001 – 12:00 am

Talk about being hoisted by one’s own inititator, the Villiage Voice reports that plans for an atomic bomb found in an abandoned al Quida HQ may be from a parody article in the Journal of Irreproducable Results. So the question is, who was fooled: al Quida or Western Intelligence?

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Back to the Future with Asymmetric Warfare

October 7, 2001 – 12:00 am

I keep hearing the term “asymmetric warfare” in the press, and on the lips of pundits. From the US Army journal “Parameters” comes this analysis:
The term du jour for future military operations is “asymmetric warfare”; ironically, it’s a concept as old as warfare itself. For centuries, even millennia, weaker opponents have sought to neutralize their [...]

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The Art of Naming Military Operations

September 17, 2001 – 12:00 am

[ via the Muted Horn ] A 1995 article from the U. S. Army journal Parameters on the history of the art of naming military operations from WW I to the present day.
For example, the name for the US Marine operation to aid victims of the 1991 typhoon which devastated Bangladesh was originally Operation [...]

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Hoisted by ones petard: part XIV

June 26, 2000 – 12:00 am

[ via Macintouch ] NATO wrote a virus. It was going to steal secrets from Serbian computers. Instead, it stole secrets from their own machines. Oops.

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