A quick note, in case anyone is wondering.
“VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) – A Vancouver soldier is one of ten killed this week by a roadside bomb in Iraq.”
Vancouver Washington is a town of 157 thousand people in the northwest corner of the state on the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon.

Posted by: jonku | Oct 19 2006 6:59 utc | 4

Uncle Sam–
I notice a key provision mentioned in that diary: That the guard may be made to serve in a state other than its own. Looks like they are seeking to build armies of occupation, and know that they might not be able to trust guardsmen to kill their neighbors from their own town or state.
Recipe for civil war. It comes.

Posted by: Gaianne | Oct 19 2006 7:56 utc | 6

Whats your problem with it? One of our gunners was a gunnys mate on a PBR boat in the Mekong Delta. Our mortar section leader was a 4th ID grunt in Nam. We call em “grey hairs”.
How old are you? Why not get off your fat ass and serve your country while it’s at war? Is that your problem with it? Does it finally hit you?
SSG G

Posted by: Kevin | Oct 19 2006 11:34 utc | 8

A 52-year-old woman was killed last month.
Expect the 14-year-olds soon. That’s the usual pattern for armies on their last legs.

Posted by: ahem | Oct 19 2006 12:48 utc | 10

Why does his age matter, he is an adult? He agreed to risk going to war when he decided to take the $7,000 dollars a year instead of the $30,000. He was old enough to remember Viet Nam and to know that the war he could be called to fight in might not be righteous. He made this decision well into adulthood and continued to take the money. I know many very fit men in their 60s and beyond who could handle the challenge of active duty.
Instead focus on the young who are being recruited, who are too young to understand enough to make such a commitment. They too are being lured with money.

Posted by: PollyA | Oct 19 2006 14:04 utc | 12

Billmon:
Don’t drive yourself crazy thinking about what you could or should have done, it’s very likely that nothing short of an armed revolution was going to stop the Bush administration, the Republican leadership, and their financial backers from doing anything they damn well pleased. We had bigger protests before the Iraq war started tan we had during VietNam, yet all those millions of voices were betrayed and dismissed by the so-called “professional” media, whose corporate backers are either unwilling dupes of the right or wholehearted supporters.
We’re doing the best that we can. We’re not cut out for the kind of fanaticism and zombie-like behavior of the Christian right, who are Bush’s biggest supporters. It’s not that we don’t want to defeat them, it’s that we don’t want to become like them.
What the GOP is doing is practicing pure power politics, with no goals other than grabbing more power. That’s all they see, that’s all they know, and there’s nothing they won’t do, no one they won’t kill, to get their way. More than half a million dead Iraqis and all they care about is whether or not it hurts their chances this November. What does that say about their mentality? As I’ve said before, they just don’t see anyone outside of their own little circle as being human. That’s the only way they can justify it in their minds.
Faced with that kind of mentality, our options are very limited, and blaming yourself is counter-productive. You do the best you can and hope that’s enough.
Cup O’ Joe – Blog Of The Working Man’s Thinking Man!

Posted by: Joe Vecchio | Oct 19 2006 14:59 utc | 14

@Kevin
Why the hell would anyone with morals and a conscience want to take part in this dirty, illegal, murderous war of aggression in Iraq or in any future war the criminals running this country may start?

Posted by: ran | Oct 19 2006 15:40 utc | 16

Vancouver Washington is a town of 157 thousand people in the southwest corner of the state on the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon.

Thanks for pointing that out. I was born there, and questions about my hometown often went something like this:
‘Where you from?’
‘Vancouver, Washington.’
‘You’re Canadian?’
‘I said I was born in WASHINGTON!’
That said, the weed is better in Vancouver, B.C.

Posted by: misc. | Oct 20 2006 2:46 utc | 18

Uncle Scam posts about Posse Comitatus, see above. Not in the papers, even if this has been coming up for a long time now.
Bush signs the Military Commission Act and nobody peeps to any effect. Straw and Blair indulge in in-your-face anti Muslim digs and propaganda.
Silence. Except from bloggers.
One interpretation is as follows. BushCo and Blair understand that hard times are coming up, no matter what happens in Iraq / Iran or with NK (which last is trivial btw.) They know perfectly well that their fragile, energy dependent societies, blighted by individualism and arrogance, a reliance on the nanny state, which is not admitted to and projected on others, will, when problems arise or standards of living are lowered, lead to extreme and uncontrolled violence. Pre-emptive action is needed; the laws and procedures and projected actions to quell that violence must be in place, should it occur. Possibly, it might not. Americans might just fall down and pray in front of the TV, and concentrate on helping their neighbors. I reckon it is calculated they will behave if the crisis is temporary and the status quo can be restored. If it is perceived that not, all hell will be let loose. In their own interest, that cannot be allowed. Katrina was a sort of natural experiment.
These are the rationales, I think. From their position, it makes sense.
Other Western societies are perhaps better armed to resist such shocks. Denmark, Switzerland and Greece (all very different) probably don’t need the public official rejection of habeas corpus. Doesn’t mean they are ‘better’ – just different. Smaller, to begin with.

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 20 2006 14:32 utc | 20