A Thousand Points of Empire

Not the same old Cheneyburton at all.

Handpicked, alrighty, according to Poppy's specifications.

If all the King's horses and all the King's men still fumble the ball, you can bet there's still the Fourth Branch that's not afraid to do what must be done to make that omlet.

...all three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary — have embraced a sweeping shift of priorities and resources in the national security arena.

The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states...

...Mr. Obama’s best political cover may come from Mr. Gates, the former Central Intelligence Agency director and veteran of the cold war, who just months ago said it was “hard to imagine any circumstance” in which he would stay in his post at the Pentagon. Now he will do exactly that.

A year ago, to studied silence from the Bush White House, Mr. Gates began giving a series of speeches about the limits of military power in wars in which no military victory is possible. He made popular the statistic, quoted by Mr. Obama, that the United States has more members of military marching bands than foreign service officers...

Yes, indeed, aid workers and foreign service officers appointed by an ex-head of the CIA in charge of the D.o'D. Officers who prefer their martinis stirred, not shaken. With the occasional joker in the deck.



Like the commenter said, Joker+No Batman=You're totally fucked

It's part of the script.

So many scripts are getting their chance for the big screen these days. It's a thousand points of Empire. You have to hand it to Poppy's replacement crew for Rumsfeld-Cheneyburton, they aren't at a loss for imagination.

While Barry O. had to shelve his plans for conscription for national service to win the $election, let's face it, the Golden Crescent won't love Big Obrother until there are a lot more boots on the ground. Hence, two interesting reports that have the virtue of indicating where a lot of those black budget warbucks have gone/ are going/ will go:

“My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can,” said Ronald C. Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, who is designing software for battlefield robots under contract with the Army. “That’s the case I make.”

Most certainly! Because the ethics of hunter-killers are part of the program.