Army Vs. Colorado Ranchers and the Old West

When the military is given the right to 'condemn' land in order to take it away from unwilling American Citizens we have situations like this...

Mack Louden worries that his 30,000-acre ranch sits in the cross hairs of the Army’s plans to expand its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, and he, along with other Colorado ranchers, are increasingly upset about the idea.

“Where we live, how we live, it’s all going to die a slow death if the Army gets our land,” said Mr. Louden, a fourth-generation rancher from Las Animas County, along the southern edge of the state.

He and other ranchers are to testify on Monday before a committee of state lawmakers in support of a bill that seeks to keep the Army from acquiring nearly a half-million acres it says it needs to train soldiers in the nuances of modern warfare.

Colorado law grants the federal government permission to condemn land for some purposes, like building courthouses and post offices. And the Defense Department lifted a moratorium this year on land acquisitions to allow the Piñon Canyon expansion.

But State Representative Wes McKinley, a Democrat from Walsh, has sponsored a bill that would try to keep the Army from invoking eminent domain in this case. The Colorado House of Representatives has passed the bill, which is now winding its way through the Senate. The legislation may not affect the expansion, however, as it is unclear if the Army would be bound by state law.

Like many cowboys and ranchers from the region, Mr. McKinley’s family settled in southeastern Colorado’s shortgrass prairie lands as part of the Federal Homestead Act of 1862. The act allowed settlers to live on public land for five years, with the promise that the land would become theirs if it was farmed sufficiently.

Now, Mr. McKinley worries that his traditional rural way of life, and that of his neighbors, will wither in the path of American military might.

“People will have their livelihoods, their heritage, their homes taken away,” he said. “Their lives will be destroyed. There’s not much demand for a 65-year-old cowboy.”

Full Article

Conditions at Walter Reed Known about for Years

Full Article at CQ

Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.

But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital’s problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Young and Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., the former chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, both acknowledged in interviews that they were aware of patient care problems at Walter Reed long before The Washington Post exposed them two weeks ago.

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Young detailed his efforts to assist patients at Walter Reed during visits he or his wife made to the hospital as early as 2003. He described repeatedly confronting the hospital’s then commander, Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, about patients who, they discovered, had received poor care.

Young said his wife, Beverly, found one Walter Reed patient lying in his hospital bed without sheets or blankets, having soiled himself. Another, who suffered from a battlefield brain injury, had fallen out of his bed three times, even after Young had told Kiley about the problem, the lawmaker said. And he said a third patient, who had an aneurysm, died after a respiratory therapist ignored family warnings about the patient’s fragile condition and treated him anyway.

“We got in Gen. Kiley’s face on a regular basis,” Young said, adding that he even contacted the commander of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda in the hopes of getting better care there for the patient with the aneurysm, though doctors at Walter Reed declined to transfer him.

“What else do you want me to do? I am not going to go into a hospital and push my way into a medical situation,” Young said after the hearing.

Young said he “separates my life as a member of Congress and the work I do on a volunteer basis,” visiting military hospitals with his wife almost every week.

Young said he used his role as an appropriator to push to fund a new lab at Walter Reed and a new phone system at Fort Carson so patients could more easily make appointments.

But he said he purposely opted to bring concerns about individual patients’ care privately to the attention of Walter Reed commanders, rather than wield his clout as an Appropriations subcommittee chairman.

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

At the time, Young said, he believed “what I was dealing with was basically isolated cases, solder by soldier,” rather than a systemic problem at the hospital.

Even now, Young said, he’s not sure what more he could have done.

“Appropriations alone cannot solve all problems,” he said. “It takes more. It takes skill, it takes experience, it takes determination, and it takes attitude.”

He placed the blame for the hospital’s substandard conditions on Kiley, who now serves as the Army’s surgeon general, its top-ranking uniformed doctor. Young said he was not satisfied with Kiley’s answers at the hearing Wednesday and predicted that he would be relieved of his post by the weekend.

“The rumor around the Capitol is they’re keeping him here to take all the spears,” Young said.

Davis’ Panel Aware Since 2004

Davis, the former chairman of the committee with responsibility for oversight of government programs, said his options also were limited. He said his committee staff first learned in 2004 about problems with wounded soldiers’ health care while investigating their pay problems.

At a February 2005 hearing on care for wounded Army Guard and Reserve soldiers, Davis said, “I’m appalled that these men and women not only have had to face the recovery from their war wounds, but are simultaneously forced to navigate a confusing and seemingly uncaring system of benefits.”

Davis said he directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct several studies, “some of them coming from complaints from veterans that were stationed” at Walter Reed.

Davis’ committee staff aides fielded calls and attempted to help wounded soldiers and their families who called with complaints about pay and health care problems. At the committee’s March 5 hearing at Walter Reed, Annette L. McLeod testified that only after calling Davis’ office in 2006 did she make progress in getting proper care for her husband, Army National Guard Spec. Wendell W. McLeod Jr., who was injured while deployed in Iraq.

But Davis says he never pressed other committees or Republican leaders for legislation or new money to address problems his staff had identified.

“We are not appropriators. . . . I don’t know what else we could have done,” Davis said. “If generals don’t go around and look at the barracks, how do you legislate that?”

Democrats Also Aware

Democrats said they did all they could while in the minority.

John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, who was the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he sought appropriations to address problems he found during visits to military hospitals. For example, he obtained money for air conditioners for the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and modern stretchers for a Baghdad field hospital.

Murtha focused blame for the Walter Reed scandal on the Bush administration and said the Pentagon discouraged patients from talking to lawmakers in both parties.

“My impression is that the military was constrained, even intimidated, from telling me and other congressional members about the real problems and the real needs,” Murtha said.

Democrat Henry A. Waxman of California, who now chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, defended how his predecessor as chairman had handled the problems at Walter Reed.

“It isn’t that Chairman Davis didn’t ask them to account for it,” Waxman said. “I don’t think the problem is in our committee. The problem is in the Department of Defense.”

John F. Tierney, D-Mass., the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, made a point to praise Davis and former subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays, R-Conn., at the March 5 hearing at Walter Reed. “I want to thank those members for their leadership so far,” Tierney said.

Who Needs Tazers When You Have This!

Rotten sent me a link to this article on Wired. It is all about a new 'non-lethal' weapon that has been in development by the department of defense. Picture something that emits waves of ... well, something like microwaves but actually the wave lengths are between a microwave and a radio wave.

It burns, it hurts, and it might just heat up your lunch while it is at it.

Here is the link to the Full Article

The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.

You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.

According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.

The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.

Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.

"It will repel you," one test subject said. "If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again."

But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, "some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters," the Air Force experiments concluded.

GOP says Rumsfeld is stepping down

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Samsung...makers of Personal Home Defense...

I guess MP3 players isn't the only thing that Samsung is building these days.

Here is there latest, for only $200,000.

Robot sentinella
Uploaded by Alice_in_Wonderland

No Arms Race In Space

From an article in the Washington Post today

...there isn't an arms race in space...because no one else has the capability of racing there but the US...

Bush Sets Defense As Space Priority
U.S. Says Shift Is Not A Step Toward Arms; Experts Say It Could Be

President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S. interests."

The document, the first full revision of overall space policy in 10 years, emphasizes security issues, encourages private enterprise in space, and characterizes the role of U.S. space diplomacy largely in terms of persuading other nations to support U.S. policy.

"Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power," the policy asserts in its introduction.

National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones said in written comments that an update was needed to "reflect the fact that space has become an even more important component of U.S. economic, national and homeland security." The military has become increasingly dependent on satellite communication and navigation, as have providers of cellphones, personal navigation devices and even ATMs.

The administration said the policy revisions are not a prelude to introducing weapons systems into Earth orbit. "This policy is not about developing or deploying weapons in space. Period," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Nevertheless, Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank that follows the space-weaponry issue, said the policy changes will reinforce international suspicions that the United States may seek to develop, test and deploy space weapons. The concerns are amplified, he said, by the administration's refusal to enter negotiations or even less formal discussions on the subject.

"The Clinton policy opened the door to developing space weapons, but that administration never did anything about it," Krepon said. "The Bush policy now goes further."

Theresa Hitchens, director of the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, said that the new policy "kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy" and has a "very unilateral tone to it."

The administration official strongly disagreed with that characterization, saying the policy encourages international diplomacy and cooperation. But he said the document also makes clear the U.S. position: that no new arms-control agreements are needed because there is no space arms race.