Suck It Up, Soldier

by pessimist

When Bu$hCo went to war, the American people assumed that their fighting men would be cared for decently. We know, however, that wasn't necessarily the case.

Native Americans Back From Iraq Decry Cutback

Saying that conditions in Indian country are worse than conditions in Iraq, two Native American war veterans spoke out yesterday against the Bush administration's plan to cut millions of dollars from a fund that helps build houses on reservations.

During his first days in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Julius Tulley said other soldiers griped about living in tents, hauling drinking water, eating tasteless food rations and not being able to shower, watch television or access the Internet. But "it didn't take long" for Navajos to adapt to that life, said Tulley, 41, of Blue Gap, Ariz., the heart of Navajo country. "We were used to it. I thought, 'What are you complaining about?' . . . What they missed, it was nothing to us." Blue Gap is "where you see a lot of poverty," he said.

"I'm not here to bash my commander in chief," Tulley said. "Nor am I here to speak out against the military. I'm here to say that I've gone to war. I put my life on the line. My brothers put their lives on the line. I want to say, 'Look, I've done my part. My family's done their part. Now I want something in return.' "

Former Army specialist Gerald Dupris, 22, described his mother's neighborhood inside the Cheyenne River Reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D., as "a lot worse than what I left in the military in Iraq." Dupris said lawmakers reviewing the president's budget "should realize that a lot of Native veterans return home to worse than what they left. They should realize what we've done for this country, and give back to the Native reservation."

Rest assured that the military is on top of this complaint!

A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to Battle

The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has. "They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."

That will take care of the idea that this nation owes its soldiers anything!

Bringing The Terminator To Life

The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.

Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy. Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move like humans or hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets. With the development of nanotechnology - the science of very small structures - they may become swarms of "smart dust." The Pentagon intends for robots to haul munitions, gather intelligence, search buildings or blow them up.

The history of warfare suggests that every new technological leap - the longbow, the tank, the atomic bomb - outraces the strategy and doctrine to control it. "The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," said Mr. Johnson, who leads robotics efforts at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk, Va. "I have been asked what happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather than a tank parked nearby. We will not entrust a robot with that decision until we are confident they can make it."

Considering the record of Bu$hCo War, Inc. I scream "MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT!" Others agree:

Trusting robots with potentially lethal decision-making may require a leap of faith in technology not everyone is ready to make. Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has worried aloud that 21st-century robotics and nanotechnology may become "so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses."

"As machines become more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them," Mr. Joy wrote recently in Wired magazine. "Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage, the machines will be in effective control."

Showing Me The Money

The Pentagon today owes its soldiers $653 billion in future retirement benefits that it cannot presently pay. Robots, unlike old soldiers, do not fade away. The median lifetime cost of a soldier is about $4 million today and growing, according to a Pentagon study. Robot soldiers could cost a tenth of that or less.

And they won't insist that the Federal Government meet obligations first promised over a century ago.

Several hundred robots are digging up roadside bombs in Iraq, scouring caves in Afghanistan and serving as armed sentries at weapons depots. By April, an armed version of the bomb-disposal robot will be in Baghdad, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Though controlled by a soldier with a laptop, the robot will be the first thinking machine of its kind to take up a front-line infantry position, ready to kill enemies.

"It's more than just a dream now," Mr. Johnson said. "Today we have an infantry soldier" as the prototype of a military robot, he added. "We give him a set of instructions: if you find the enemy, this is what you do. We give the infantry soldier enough information to recognize the enemy when he's fired upon. He is autonomous, but he has to operate under certain controls. It's supervised autonomy. By 2015, we think we can do many infantry missions.

"The American military will have these kinds of robots. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when."

Meanwhile, the demand for armed bomb-disposal robots is growing daily among soldiers in Iraq. "This is the first time they've said, 'I want a robot,' because they're going to get killed without it," said Bart Everett, technical director for robotics at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego.

Mr. Everett and his colleagues are inventing military robots for future battles. The hardest thing of all, robot designers say, is to build a soldier that looks and acts human, like the "I, Robot" model imagined by Isaac Asimov and featured in the recent movie of the same name. Still, Mr. Everett's personal goal is to create "an android-like robot that can go out with a solider to do a lot of human-like tasks that soldiers are doing now."

A prototype, about four feet high, with a Cyclops eye and a gun for a right arm, stood in a workshop at the center recently.

It readied, aimed and fired at a Pepsi can, performing the basic tasks of hunting and killing. "It's the first robot that I know of that can find targets and shoot them," Mr. Everett said.

I, Robot

Decades ago, Isaac Asimov posited three rules for robots: Do not hurt humans; obey humans unless that violates Rule 1; defend yourself unless that violates Rules 1 and 2.

Mr. Angle was asked whether the Asimov rules still apply in the dawning age of robot soldiers. "We are a long ways," he said, "from creating a robot that knows what that means."

We are also a long way from establishing a military and political structure that knows what that means:

Colin M. Angle, 37, is the chief executive and another co-founder of iRobot, a private company he helped start in his living room 14 years ago. Last year, it had sales of more than $70 million, with Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner, one of its leading products. He says the calculus of money, morals and military logic will result in battalions of robots in combat. "The cost of the soldier in the field is so high, both in cash and in a political sense," Mr. Angle said, that "robots will be doing wildly dangerous tasks" in battle in the very near future.

The technology still runs ahead of robot rules of engagement. "There is a lag between technology and doctrine," said Mr. Finkelstein of Robotic Technology, who has been in the military robotics field for 28 years.

"If you could invade other countries bloodlessly, would this lead to a greater temptation to invade?"

I say it does.

But as 'THE' Donald Rumsfeld is so fond of spouting lately, "You fight with the army you have, not the one you'd like to have". With such a condition, one is then faced with soldiers who expect something from their government in recognition of their service - like help for combat stress.

Turn On, Tune In, And Drop Out!

This is what Owwer Leedur's Pentagon is going to do for your sons and daughters over-stressed from the rigors of doing a robot's job - they will turn them into the 21st Century version of hippies:

Ecstasy trials for combat stress

American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares. The US Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Scientists behind the trial in South Carolina think the feelings of emotional closeness reported by those taking the drug could help the soldiers talk about their experiences to therapists. Several victims of rape and sexual abuse with post-traumatic stress disorder, for whom existing treatments are ineffective, have been given MDMA since the research began last year. Michael Mithoefer, the psychiatrist leading the trial, said: "It's looking very promising. It's too early to draw any conclusions but in these treatment-resistant people so far the results are encouraging. People are able to connect more deeply on an emotional level with the fact they are safe now."

He is about to advertise for war veterans who fought in the last five years to join the study. According to the US national centre for post-traumatic stress disorder, up to 30% of combat veterans suffer from the condition at some point in their lives.

Known as shell shock during the first world war and combat fatigue in the second, the condition is characterised by intrusive memories, panic attacks and the avoidance of situations which might force sufferers to relive their wartime experiences.

Dr Mithoefer said the MDMA helped people discuss traumatic situations without triggering anxiety. "It appears to act as a catalyst to help people move through whatever's been blocking their success in therapy."

The existing drug-assisted therapy sessions last up to eight hours, during music is played.

Will they listen to the Doors? The Jefferson Airplane? Jimi Hendrix?

The patients swallow a capsule containing a placebo or 125mg of MDMA - about the same or a little more than a typical ecstasy tablet.

And they won't let cancer and AIDS patients smoke a doobie!!!!

Psychologists assess the patients before and after the trial to judge whether the drug has helped.

21st Cent'ry Schizoid Plan

But who is going to care now that THE LAW has a hole in it???

The study has provoked controversy, because significant doubts remain about the long-term risks of ecstasy. Animal studies suggest that it lowers levels of the brain chemical serotonin, and some politicians and anti-drug campaigners have argued that research into possible medical benefits of illegal drugs presents a falsely reassuring message.

Like they offer a message of hope to anyone but the Topper$???

The South Carolina study marks a resurgence of interest in the use of controlled psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. Several studies in the US are planned or are under way to investigate whether MDMA, LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can treat conditions ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to anxiety in terminal cancer patients.

I want the tie-dye T-shirt concession!!!

Remember - the Sixties couldn't have happened without the research being conducted by the CIA and the military during the Fifties. Scientists so involved were often the earliest promoters of such drug usage during the Sixties, as they enjoyed the experiences they had during their research and sought to share them with others as a way of extending their research.

Now here we are with the military following society instead of leading it, presenting drugs which have a known hazard along with some which have a history, and implying that such drug usage would be OK whether it is or not. the impressionable - as in the Fifties and Sixties - won't be able to dissociate the harmful aspects as long as an authority figure presents usage as OK. It will spread as those who enjoy the experience initiate their friends - and the pattern will begin again.

I wonder what property values are in Haight Ashbury?

[Puts on Easy Rider soundtrack "Don't ... Bogart ... that joint, my friend! Pass it O-ver ... to me ...]

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