Consider that our army has protected us from absolutely nothing for the past fifty years. Not terrorism, not natural disaster, not foreign invaders (who reached our shores in WWII).

Realize that our army has travelled the globe torturing and killing, wasting American lives, polluting the earth with everything from depleted uranium to DDT, and burdening Americans under ever greater national debt and global dismay.

Recall that every successful war fought by our armed forces -- from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI and WWII -- was fought without benefit of a professional standing army. These were conscript armies assembled FOR A PURPOSE. They stood in sharp constrast to the meaningless war-mongering money-=hogging military beast of today.

Remember that every great war president from Lincoln to Eisenhower warned against a standing army and an overbearing military as the greatest threat to a democracy.

And don't forget the end of Democratic Rome -- Marius built up the first professional armies in response to the incompetence of the aristocratic generals and undermined the pillars of democracy. Caeser extended these armies from defense to conquest as Rome became a dictator's republic. And Octavius turned these armies on Marc Antony to seize the ashes of this Republic and make her into a military empire owned by him alone.

Do we want to answer to our next Augustus? Dismantle this nasty beast while we can.

So... A soldier - our nation's soldier, tortured a prisoner to death. Imagine youself in such a situation, savagely beaten, bound, and shoved into a sleeping bag head first. Now someone sits on your chest. You try to breath but you can't. What is it like to suffocate to death? Your murderer? He gets confined to base for 2 months. Your murder also costs him 6000 dollars. Oh yeah, there is a letter of reprimand in his record now. That's it. And his superiors? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What about the folks who beat you? U.S. civilians? CIA? Who the hell knows... What did Bush say? "We do not torture." Bullshit. We absolutely do torture. Our military is out of control. Our government is out of control. I am sick and ashamed of our country...

I deeply apologize if my actions tarnished the soldiers serving in Iraq - what's the "if" supposed to mean? Torturing and killing a prisoner might tarnish the reputation of the US army? And in that case he apologizes for that - not actually for killing the man...

Sorry, but there is something more deeply wrong with the US than the treatment of this murderer: the belief that foreigners are not human. Unfortunately that attitude is very widespread throughout the US, not just on the republican side.

Single Man, you're the one who should recall that every war fought by our armed forces -- from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI and WWII and beyond -- was indeed fought WITH the benefit of a professional standing army. A small corps of career professionals around which the drafted armies of the past were built.

That you leave off your examples at WWII is telling. Perhaps you weren't aware that the post-WWII US military was woefully undermanned and unprepared for the Korean War. Relying on new draftees wasn't enough for the fast-paced course of that war; the US Government had to call up many a WWII veteran in order to fill the ranks. Does that syndrome sound familiar?

The US Defense Establishment - for it's far more than just the Department of Defense - spends too much money that would be better spent elsewhere is a given. Personally, I believe an arbitrary firing of some 1,000 brass from the top ranks of each miltary branch would do wonders against complacency. But relying on mass drafts for wars for which we have far less time to prepare than in the past is not the answer, unless you advocate a return to isolationism.

Thank you David for that piece in Salon.

"Since the Army seems to have no inclination to enforce the principles of command discipline and accountability among the senior ranks, the corrosive effects of U.S. torture in Iraq and elsewhere will continue to haunt any efforts to regain lost stature and credibility in the world.

"I deeply apologize if my actions tarnished the soldiers serving in Iraq," Welshofer said to the jury at his trial's close. His actions -- and even more the military's woefully inadequate response to them -- have tarnished far more than that."

-- By Brig. Gen. David Irvine and David Danzig -

This fits in the story too....

The Terrorist in the Mirror

By NOAM CHOMSKY

Quote: "This most elementary of moral truisms is sometimes upheld at least in words. One example, of critical importance today, is the Nuremberg Tribunal. In sentencing Nazi war criminals to death, Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, spoke eloquently, and memorably, on the principle of universality.

"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes," he said, "they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us....We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."

If they are not brave enough to stand up for the soldiers underneath their command, then they should all be tarred with the same "torturing scumbag" brush and be given no respect.

Lewis E. Welshofer was convicted for being an uneffective torturer not for being a torturer. He simply damaged the prisoner too much making him unusable. He was fined for this. Of course the sentence would be more severe if he would kill a cat.

What was the outcome of Korea and Vietnam?

These countries remain two of the last strongholds of communism. Indeed we would have been better off without any army after WWII and fighting no further wars. So would millions of foreign citizens trapped in the aftermath.

Yugoslavia, you say, by way of rejoinder?

But that was won from the air.

The cold war?

All about missiles and bombers.

So America's unique geographic position means we do not need a standing army any longer. Further, we have spread our influence through information and economics. These forces liberated east Europe without bloodshed and are invading and undermining communists in China today.

It is the large standing professional army -- and the inevitable wars that follow to feed it -- which isolate us from the world now.