The Pentagon Archipelago

First, widespread use of torture becomes policy. A few weeks ago we heard about deportation flights. Now this:

In a Boston Globe story today, Returning Fallujans will face clampdown, Anne Barnard writes about plans to resettle the residents into their bombed-out city:

...troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times....

One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

I am stunned. Identity cards and forced work camps... but oh, we'll pay them, oopy doopy. How do we avoid having America become one of the most notorious criminal regimes of all time? It may be too late.

See Steve Gilliard's pithy item on this particular subject, and his long continuing series on colonial wars. The series should carry college course credit for all you can learn from it.