The people at the top have to make the decision that they want to keep the peace or they are intent on waging war and choose the people on that basis. When the war has ended, you get the combat troops out or prepare for the backlash, because the troops can’t throw a switch and change instinctive behavior.

The politicians don’t understand, and will never understand the difference, and a lot of people on all sides of many conflicts are dying as a result.

The UN needs it’s own force of specifically trained peacekeepers for these missions, but the politicians don’t want to give up the power.

You cannot give a soldier a long list of people who they can and can’t shoot at, and change it often and NOT expect things to go horribly wrong. A soldier on a battlefield doesn’t want ambiguities! They get them killed and they know it.

It’s also VERY bad to expect a soldier to be happy about going into a village and seeing (and smelling) a lot of fresh corpses, and then telling them that they are not allowed to go after the bastards that did it (because it’s not Politically expedient!) You do that to a good solder a few times, and he begins questioning everything. And one day, he either kills himself, or anyone around him. You cannot train a solder that “this is an enemy. When you see an enemy, you kill them”. and then send them to a hellhole and say “This is an enemy. You are not allowed to kill this enemy until we tell you too.” And too bad if the enemy kills you first!

If I had truly known what Cambodia would be like for us, I would have shot the commanders sending us there!

I lost any and all respect for the Military after that. And their usual excuse “We were just following orders” doesn’t cut it with me.

Soldiers kill or be killed. That’s it. If you expect anything else, you are going to end up with a lot of very screwed up people on your hands when they get back! I shudder to think what the US will be like when your soldiers in Iraq get back, if they do.

When you mix roles for the military things get vague. You can’t have vague on a battlefield, you have to act instinctively. People who have never had the experience of being shot at, don’t understand why the rules need to be black and white in a war.

In a civilian environment, they can’t be that way, because it is rarely a matter of life or death, and you have to be open to shades of gray or you’re going to spend all your time in court.

When weapons are involved you have to have clear rules.

I understand what you are saying about Military vs. civilian intel. Was like that here also, until Fraser and then Howard got in and blurred the lines (or just destroyed any boundaries at all, like Raygun and Bushmoron did there).

I remember when the Military had clearly defined rules, boundaries and tasks. Now most Gov’s seem to think the Military is their own private force to do with as they will. And the Military morons allow it! *sigh*

One day, I’ll wake up and the World will be normal and understandable. One day. 🙂

I wouldn’t be surprised either. 😉

…watch this space…

Iran can route through Russia and satellites, but India and the gulf States are really hurting, as is Egypt. The business impact is major the Gulf States and India, as they have become over reliant on the ‘Net and haven’t implemented alternate paths, except for satellites.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all to have about a dozen cable layers suddenly show up in the area with plans to relieve the “poor, affected countries” from a burden of too many Euros. I would expect a number of them will want to go through Russia.

Those cables knock Iran’s traffic to zero.

Somehow, I don’t believe in that kind of accidental.

Actually, I think I’ll blame it on del.icio.us eating up all the server time.

Things are getting better, slowly. It works for a while, and then I have to re-try, but only once for the last couple of days.

There was no way of knowing until after you looked at it what you had, but it wasn’t targeted, and it was more paperwork if you didn’t catch it quickly. This was complicated by the fact that you had anomalies, like the largest chunk of the US Alaskan telephone system was actually operated by the Air Force for a very long time. The military needed a landline system and no company would spend the money, so excess capacity was leased out to a private system. That was a major communications security nightmare. The same situation occurred in other countries as well, so the line of demarcation wasn’t clear, especially when you get to the problem of companies with military contracts.

Many multinationals operate as de facto countries and inject themselves into “the game”.

FM, it sounds like they have erased the line and it will have to be chiseled in bedrock by the next administration – the military doesn’t involve itself with civilian activities. There are too many serving and former military officers in the intel community, and too much military activity in civilian areas.