"By the way wikipedia is as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica."

Then Encyclopedia Britannica must have a LOT of errors in it. Wikipedia is great for what it is and I use it all the time. The thing is: you cannot be assured of it's accuracy. You really need to already be an expert in the area you're researching to safely use it. Contrast this with a real encyclopedia where you don't have to worry about getting information that is just flat out wrong.

"What exactly is the threat, there? Anyone knows how old that clause is?"

The UCMJ dates back to the '50s but I'm sure provisions against homosexuals in the military date back even further. The UCMJ is stricter and harsher legal code than that applied to the civilian populace; the idea is that lawful bearers of arms must adhere to a higher standard of moral and ethical behavior if they are to be entrusted with a military responsibility. As such, behavior that is perfectly legal in the civilian world (such as adultery) can result in prison time for military personnel. The provisions in the UCMJ against homosexual conduct are a throw back to a time when homosexuality and sodomy were widely considered morally degenerate. These days I think the general US populace is still uncomfortable with seeing two men kissing, for example, but the only people who seem to believe that homosexuality is truly degenerate and immoral is the Christian Right.

Bottom Line: the UCMJ is meant to enforce good moral and ethical conduct on US military personnel. The provisions against homosexuality date back to when society considered homosexuality immoral, but society has since moved on. The UCMJ however has not been revised by Congress to reflect the new moral standard of society.

"What other rational reason could there be for firing the ~50th Arabic linguist for nothing more than being gay?"

Because homosexual conduct is a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the military is therefore legally obligated to discharge or relieve any soldier that is openly gay. The UCMJ can only be revised by Congress; the "Don't Ask-Don't Tell" Policy is often characterized as the military being retarded, but the military does not have the power to change it.

Yep, Phalli is correct. Phallus is a Latin 2nd declension masculine noun, so the nominative plural ending would be a long -i. Isn't Latin grammar fun?

Also, it's the Parthenon that the Athenian women barricade themselves in. The treasury of the Delian League had been transferred there in 454.

Ah, the joys of a classical education.

I'm surprised the police were allowing bystanders so close to the building. It looked like the cordon was only 10 or so meters past where the building fell.

I've always been partial to "Roads to Moscow" myself.

"Comments are welcome because I'm not entirely sure what happens - whether the building is demolished on the insurgents or whether they manage to sneak away."

It seemed like they were spending most of the video trying to pin down the exact location of the insurgents. I think the roof they were standing on was the roof of the building that they destroy at the end of the clip. It looks like they decided that it was going to be way too dangerous to try to clear that building, so they keep it surrounded and then clear another building where they think insurgents might be (the bit in the stairwell). Finally, it looks like they destroy the building with what sounded like 25mm cannon fire from either a LAV or Amphibious Assault Vehicle. When they're going through the wreckage at the very end you get a brief glimpse of one the mangled bodies of the insurgents.

Holy shit. High pucker factor on that one.

Only a couple minutes into the clip, but where the hell did they find these people? Both families seem to be made of total fucking idiots who can barely string a coherent sentence together. While an interesting idea for a show, the people need to be able to say something meaningful if their interactions are to have any meaning to the viewer. So far it looks like it's just going to be scattered thinking and nearly incoherent babbling.

"Having seen the film, I can only say that they have every reason to be pissed, the more I think about it the more I realize that the overall tone of this film aimed to reiterate this this cultural conflict by appropriating history."

Have you read any of Herodotus? Herodotus, who is our best source for battle of Thermopylae, wrote his histories with the express purpose of exploring the cultural conflict between East and West, especially it's origins and it's outcomes. In other words, any modern depiction of the Persian Wars will necessarily have overtones of cultural conflict because our best source on the wars took for granted that they were culturally motivated. Therefore, I don't think it is a misappropriation of history to emphasize cultural conflict in a film about Thermopylae. If that is politically incorrect, then it's just something that we will have to live with until a more authoritative source than Herodotus comes along.

Tombstone was such a great movie, anything with Sam Eliot in it immediately jumps up a couple notches in my book. That said I think The Outlaw Josey Wales is still my favorite western.

"You a bounty hunter?"

"A man's got to make a living some how."

"Dying ain't much of a living, boy."

In response to your comment about there being no clear plan, the plan is for the additional troops to be a police force. This is right out of the counter-insurgency playbook. Look at successful counter-insurgencies throughout history and they all applied overwhelming force to police the populace, provide security, and prevent insurgent forces from operating freely. This may not be the dashing, clear mission objective such as "take Hill 317" or "defend this bridge until relieved" but again successful counter insurgencies have all used military forces in a police role.

To be honest I do not think 21,000 additional troops will be sufficient to establish the baseline of security necessary for an effective counter-insurgency. It is worth a try however because there is still a possibility it might slow down the escalation of sectarian violence, and if we cannot slow down said violence then nothing else we do will really matter. My key point here is that the additional troops for security purposes is straight out of the counter-insurgency playbook. Watch the movie Battle for Algiers sometime. Granted France eventually lost Algeria but they conducted a successful counter-insurgency against the FLN in Algiers several years prior to the mass uprisings that would eventually lead to independence. If you watch the movie, you will see that the French had a military presense on virtually every street corner. Attacks still got through, but the ability of the FLN to operate freely throughout the city was severely, severely limited.

"I agree that a force addition looks good on paper, but it looked good on paper back in Vietnam, the additional force elements there were just not enough to back out of what turned into a civil war. The same situation is being repeated here."

Except that Vietnam was a conflict between two sovereign nation-states. Granted both states were ethnically linked, but it was an external conflict between two states rather than an internal conflict in one state. In the event that the Soviet Union ever invaded Western Europe, US Special Forces teams would have been deployed throughout eastern Europe to make contact with dissident forces and train, equip and lead them on guerilla operations in the Soviet rear. In Vietnam, the North was doing the exact same thing to the South in preparation of a conventional invasion. The reason why we failed in Vietnam was because we treated the conflict as if the South had a domestic insurgency, rather a foreign infiltration by the North. Granted Iran is playing a part in supporting the Shiite militias, but such support pales in comparison to the guerilla combat operations that the PAVN was conducting in South Vietnam.

"If the 21,000 force commitment fails. What then?"

Then it fails and we try plan B, which I would hope would be a partitioning of the country.

"The US will have no maneuvering "

So are you saying we should hold said 21,000 troops in reserve for deployment in some later, alternative strategy? If not, then how does deploying the troops now limit our ability to maneuver? Look, the NIE makes it pretty clear that withdrawal in the next 12 to 18 months is not an option. In the face of that we either commit our available resources in one last push to make this thing work, or we can immediately turn to other options such as partitioning the country. Either way we will be in this for the long haul. With that in mind, giving the surge a try for 5-6 to months is worth a shot. If the security situation improves then we follow up on such success, if we see no improvement then we pursue the other less favorable options (i.e. partition). In the event it doesn't work, having additional forces on the ground gives us additional flexibility to pursue an alternate strategy. If said troops are not needed for an alternate strategy they can be redeployed, if they are then they are already in country availible for use.

"there will be another crushing morale plummet as US forces will pull out like they did in South Vietnam."

In the likely event that Iraq completely falls apart then such a moral plummet will occur regardless of whether or not the troop surge occurred.

Look, I am very pessimistic about our chances for success in Iraq. I think success would still be entirely possible were there still support for the War. I think the troop surge could possibly work, but probably won't. And I think if the surge fails we should look into a soft partition of the country, which is far less than ideal but will serve our interest of regional stability for better than a failed Iraqi state. In all likelihood I think the failed state is the outcome we're going to get however. The last three years in Iraq have basically been wasted, and I blame the bush administration entirely for that. If we are to succeed we basically need to start from square one. There simply isn't patience among the American people any more for such a long term commitment to Iraq however. I suspect that if the troop surge does not succeed, which is highly probably, patience for the war will be entirely over and a rapid withdrawal will follow leading to the collapse of the Iraqi government and a destabilization of the region. With that in mind what I think we should do is entirely a moot point because there will never be an opportunity to do any of it.

"There is no clear plan for the deployment of the extra 21,000 troops. Most will be stationed in Iraq and the Anbar province. There is no additional task given to these other then blanket security operations which would only mean exposing the troops to more hostile fire."

Yes, it will expose more soldiers to hostile fire. The fact remains however that casualties throughout the Iraq War have been remarkably light given the nature and length of operations we have been conducting there. Over 3,000 deaths and 20,000+ wounded looks horrible on paper, and is certainly tragic, but the reality is that the casualty rates are not yet high enough to have any significant impact on combat effectiveness. If a given Rifle company loses 7 men and has about 25 wounded over the course of a one year tour (these were the casualties sustained in a cavalry company commanded by a friend of mine), there will be very little impact on the overall combat effectiveness of said company. Yes, casualties are bad but so long as they do not significantly impact combat effectiveness they have no tactical or operational impact upon the conduct of a war. They do however further sour public opinion, but at this stage of the game I think the people who will only support a war below a certain casualty threshold have long since stopped supporting the Iraq war.

"At the same time you are dropping an influx of troops into a country where 70% of the population looks upon your forces as occupiers. All that would do is unify the resistance and insurgency against coalition forces even more."

Certainly true, but at the same time the Iraqis are absolutely desperate for some kind of security and increasingly do not care who provides it:

"Now, it's one thing to say that polls show -- American commanders say it -- that most Iraqis, 80 percent of them, do not like being occupied, true. But if you ask any individual Iraqi in any of these areas whether he would rather see more of American troops, they almost invariably say, "Yes," unless they're members of the Mahdi army or one of the militias, because that's what brings calm to the area." -John Burns, New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june07/baghdad_01-10.html

"It is best I do not use her name. Any Iraqi known to have contact with foreigners is at risk. And security is the only issue that matters now, she says. "Everything depends on it. I am not worrying about democracy, about the economy. The security comes first, and we've lost that." ' -Andrew North, BBC Correspondent, Baghdad

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6192815.stm

The point is that it really does not seem like the Iraqis really care who provides security, at this point, so long as they don't need to be constantly afraid of getting kidnapped or killed by a carbomb. We can talk about cultural differences and national pride etc. but I know that if I had been living in such conditions for several years, I'd be willing to be under "foreign occupation" if it meant I could stop being constantly afraid for myself and my family. Based upon what the above two, and other correspondents are reporting I'd say that the average Iraqi is in a similar state of mind.

"Either way, what will that force increase do without a clear working plan? Are US forces going to be used to actively suppress the Sunni or Shi'a militias?"

That's my understanding. Due to a lack of US and Iraqi National troops a security vacuum was created in Iraq. The Sunni insurgency was able to take such firm root because of said vacuum. The Sunni insurgency eventually began targeting Shiites, which prompted the Shiites to form militias for their own protection. Reprisal killings sparked reprisal killings and the result is a Sunni-Shi'a civil war on top of the original Sunni insurgency. The idea behind the surge is to provide sufficient US forces to establish joint security sites in the key neighborhoods of Baghdad that will take the place of the various militias. If you can get a (relatively) impartial third party providing security in lieu of sectarian militias, you have a possibility of slowing down or even stopping the escalation of reprisal killings.

A couple comments.

As Rickegee said, McCain is in the race to win. His shift to the right in order to make it through the primaries can only be expected after what he experienced at the hands of the Bush campaign in NC in 2000. At any rate, his compromising of principles in order to get elected is the exact same behavior displayed by his chief opponent: Hilary.

q[I find his views on the surge dis-speakable even though hes a veteran of the Vietnam war.]q

He's been for more troops since the rioting after the fall of Baghdad. The fundamental element of any counterinsurgency operation is security. Since the enemy is unconventional you cannot destroy him outright, but with sufficient security you can deny his ability to operate freely. The denial of free operation is the foundation from which an insurgency can be defeated; without it, the insurgency will only grow. McCain's position since 2003 has been that there are not sufficient troops to provide that essential level of security, and accordingly additional forces should be deployed to Iraq.

At this stage in the game, the 21,000 troop surge is all the extra manpower we have to commit. It probably won't be sufficient but it's worth a try. The National Intelligence Estimate released today makes it pretty damn clear that a withdrawal conducted over the next 12-18 month would cause the situation in Iraq to worsen precipitously, further destabilizing the region. In the face of that we have to find some way to stabilize Iraq, possibly through a soft partition or by some other means. Having 5 additional brigades in Iraq at the very least will give us additional flexibility. If they are able to improve the security situation sufficiently to allow for political and economic developments, so much the better. If not, the additional forces provides flexibility for whatever different strategy we attempt to pursue.

"I love Johnny Cash, but the NIN version is still the best."

For me they are basically two different songs. The NIN version is basically the suicide note of a drug addict. Cash's, on the other hand, turns the song into a reflection on mortality by an old man. When I first saw this video I was simply amazed how the exact same song became something entirely different under another performer. A testament to the power of music I suppose.