Fire Rumsfeld, fire him now

Fire everyone in the policy making branch of the Defense Department! Should have happened a long time ago, of course.

So much for Abu Ghraib being one of Bush's self-admitted mistakes:

Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

There could not be a WORSE fucking decision than this one. Especially in light of all that has been exposed the last two years. This is insane!

On another note, I've mentioned a few times on this blog that one of the major issues that we, as a nation, truly have to consider is how we use our military. The signature nature of American fighting is logistics and firepower...overwhelming firepower to the point of, ironically, overkill. In the short-term this undoubtedly saves soldiers lives, but in the long-run it creates far too many civilian casualties (that we ignore) and causes resentment (which makes us somehow surprised) undermining policy goals and ultimately making things more dangerous from American troops.

Here is an example, American troops accidently kill three civilians while test-firing a 155 mm gun. Which is a gigantic piece of artillery and of quite dubious utility in fighting an insurgency (to say the least). But it sure does blow shit up good.