Better Living Through Science

We're Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean
Our job was to see that the White House stayed green
We might have had flaws, like bending the laws
But God only knows it was for a good cause
--Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean,
Bob Warren

The map is not the territory
--Alfred Korzybski
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In Mary Tillman's book about her son, Pat -- Boots on the Ground by Dusk -- Ranger noticed Tillman listed the Rules of Engagement (ROE), which she asserts were violated in the case of Pat Tillman's death and the subsequent cover-up. Among these:

You may . . .

• Use non-lethal riot control agents
• Detain civilians on target for intelligence exploitation

You must . . .

• Positively identify (PID) your targets

The U.S.'s rules of engagement clearly allows Special Operations Forces to employ riot control agents. This would seem to contradict the rules of war which prohibit the use of such chemical agents.

Going off for a moment on the topic of chemical weapons: attacking Iraq for possessing chemical Weapons of Mass destruction it is somewhat hypocritical considering the huge stockpile of chemical and nuclear weapons possessed by the U.S. We want what we want, but Iran, North Korea and Iraq cannot have equivalent weapons. Is this because we are so measured in our martial actions?

It smacks of racism. A (still barely, predominantly) white Christian nation can have WMD, but rag heads and slope heads need not apply for admission to this club. At least not small, ineffective slopes or rags. Pakistan, India and China, well, that's o.k. Why? Ranger is still trying to tease that one out.

Is Iran or North Korea ever going to employ a nuke? If they did, it would be equivalent to national suicide. More likely to pop a nuke would be India, Pakistan, China or the U.S., and not necessarily in that order. The money is on India or Pakistan.

Another ROE allows for the "detention of civilians on target for intelligence exploitation." A mouthful, for sure. "Civilians on target" actually means local indigenous personnel in or around their homes while living their daily lives in their own country, without asking for our invasion democracy. They can be detained, but hopefully they won't score a six-year detention, like the poor slobs at Gitmo.

The good news for us is that the ROE allow us to claim intelligence exploitation. However, after six years, it is just exploitation, and detained is another word for arrest. (The Geneva Conventions would allow a foreign army of invasion and occupation to detain citizens of the host nation if this were a real war, which this is not.) The U.S. military is not an international police force.

The U.S. Army was designed to fight wars against external threats to the survival of the U.S. That is why it is called the Department of Defense, not the Department of Presumptive Invasions. Detaining people for "intel exploitation" does not make the U.S. safer from a terror threat.

The safety of Afghanistan and Iraq is a separate issue, and Ranger for one is tired of his tax dollars being spent to nation-build phony nations in a phony war.