I watched a Scientific American program on PBS the other day. Alan Alda goes to MIT and talks about computers. One segment showed computer directed laser (really just a modified printer) cutting sheets of plastic into shapes drawn on a computer screen. The various pieces of plastic then became a bicycle (or at least the frame, pedals and handlebars of a bike, since they hadn't figured out how to make tires, brakes or a chain) and a flash adaptor for a camera (to change the direction from which the flash lit the photo subject in order to prevent "red-eye").

Alda waxed enthusiastic about the future of this particular technology, saying that we would no longer have to go to the store to buy a bike, but could receive the bike design by email and simply print it out after making modifications to suit our own particular needs or tastes. I wouldn't just be purchasing or making "a" bike, I would be making "my" bike.

I really enjoy stuff like this, especially the mechanical engineering contests staged regularly by one particular professor. But the engineers at geek central (and I mean that in a good way - these people are great, and I guess I am a geek wannabe) forgot one thing.

There are three words dreaded by every parent in the world, especially in western nations where Christmas is a big deal. The engineers completely failed to take those words into account.

Some assembly required.

Americans (and this American in particular) will have to become a whole lot more adept at inserting flange A into slot B before this particular technology will migrate to the home. This is in addition to the need to create all sorts of infrastructure to facilitate this type of manufacture. The materials that will be used as the basic building blocks already exist (sheet plexiglass, at this point) but the printers are not generally available.

If the technology does catch on, there are all sorts of fascinating implications. Mass production (and the mostly unionized jobs involved) will shrink even further than it already has, except for sectors making and shipping the materials used in home manufacturing. Products liability law will be in for a rough time. Once the consumer himself is actively involved in the design and manufacture of a product, there will be substantial questions about who is responsible for the inevitable flaws in the design or manufacture of a product.

 
The wife of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry said yesterday that suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay should be given prisoner of war status.

"They were captured while fighting a war," Teresa Heinz Kerry said at an informal discussion with minority activists in Seattle. "They should have the rights that other prisoners of war have had."

Yes, they were fighting a war. No, the Geneva Conventions do not apply to them. Being captured while fighting a war is not the sole criterion for the application of the Conventions. There are lots of reasons why they are not entitled to the protection of the Conventions. There is one reason that is more important than the others, however. They are not prisoners of war.

A quick check on Google:

Article 4

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

The people being held at Guantanamo are not members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict or members of militias or volunteer corps forming a part of those armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

Please note that the requirement is that you have to meet all of the conditions listed below.

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

I seriously doubt that anyone being held at at Guantanamo meets that condition.

Failure to meet this criteria alone would disqualify them for POW status. But let us continue.

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

This is a requirement that the supposed POWs be in uniform. They were not in uniform, so the prisoners don't meet that condition, either.

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

Most or all of the prisoners at Guantanamo concealed their weapons, so this condition isn't met, either.

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Somehow I don't think that the "laws and customs of war" include driving a truck filled with explosives into a clearly marked Red Cross building and pushing the detonator, or the use of marked ambulances to transport weapons and personnel.

So, all in all, number 2 is out.

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

These are hardly members of the regular armed forces, regardless of to whom or what they profess allegiance.

4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

Nor are these guys civilians accompanying or supporting the regular armed forces.

And there are, of course, no identity cards.

5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

No members of the Afghan merchant marine or crew members from civil airlines at Guantanamo, to my knowledge.

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

This may be the one that Mrs. Kerry is talking about, although I don't know how "spontaneously" they took up arms to oppose us in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regardless of any spontaneity, note that they must carry arms openly (they don't) and respect the laws and customs of war (they don't).

So these guys simply aren't POWs within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions. You know, the ones Mrs. Kerry wants applied to them.

Heinz Kerry said that denying the detainees the protections of the Geneva Convention is "insulting, ignorant, and insensitive" to the rest of the world.

Great alliteration for the sound bite,but let's take a closer look at those one at a time.

Insulting:

How has keeping the prisoners in Guantanamo insulting? And if an insult has been hurled (other than the obvious insult to our intelligence involved in Mrs. Kerry's statements) exactly who has been insulted by keeping these guys at Guantanamo? Have the prisoners been insulted? Their relatives? Their societies? The people of the US? The world?

Sound bites are nice, especially alliterative ones. But I need a few specifics.

Ignorant:

As previously noted, Mrs. Kerry appears to be completely unaware of the terms of the Conventions she wants applied to the prisoners. I'm pretty sure that combatants captured out of uniform can be summarily executed as spies according to the Geneva Conventions. And most (all?) of the prisoners at Guantanamo were not, by any stretch of the imagination, in any kind of uniform. But if I had to guess, I would say that summary execution is not exactly the outcome Ms. Kerry desires.

No, the only ignorance on display here is that of Mrs Kerry.

Insensitive:

Let's see, now. We mustn't mustn't mustn't lock up people who not only want to kill us, but have done so in the past and promise to continue to do so in the future just as soon as they get the opportunity.

Because locking them up hurts their feelings.

Words fail me.

A spokeswoman for the Kerry campaign said Senator Kerry supports his wife's position that the detainees should be given basic protections such as the right to an attorney.

That's right, let's give them all lawyers and let them go to court. Then they can tie up commanders in the field with court sanctioned requests for information concerning the circumstances of their capture. Kerry (who, by the way, according to James Taranto, served in Vietnam) is touting his national security credentials every other hour. This is how he wants to conduct the war that was started on 9/11 by a vicious unprovoked attack on civilians that left 3000 dead? WITH GODDAM LAWYERS?

Sorry. Lost it there for a minute.

I am a lawyer. Since I am not a Moslem, nor will I ever become one, I am also one of the people these guys want to kill. My wife is also one of those uppity females they want to cage and cow. She (shudder) works and (double shudder) drives a car and (God help me!) leaves the house unaccompanied by a male member of my family and (the crowning insult) without a veil. Both of my children would also be killed by the people to whom Kerry wants to give lawyers . I am allowing my daughter to get a college education (insisting, actually). My daughter also drives and goes male-less and veil-less. My son ..., well let's just say my son would not have very much patience with these assholes. If it was up to them, he would almost certainly be dead.

I've lost count of the ways that my family and I have violated the rules that Islamist terrorists want to impose on me by force.

Lawyers just aren't going to get the job done. When the people on the other side are using guns and howitzers and rocket propelled grenades and shoulder mounted anti aircraft missles and roadside bombs, then only people with guns are going to get the job done.

And Kerry (not his wife, but Kerry) wants to use lawyers.

Ain't this a wunnerful country, where even complete idiots can run for President?

Update: Another reason they want to kill me is that I laughed like hell at this (via Meryl Yourish)

 
Citizen Smash poses an interesting problem:

The all volunteer armed forces are too isolated from too many Americans, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of the members of the armed forces identify themselves as Republicans and the fact that an increasing number of Americans have little or no contact with the military.

He wants to know how to remedy this problem.

My suggestion is to simply wait. Odds are the problem will fix itself in the long run.

The real issue here is not how to change the military. It is well educated, professional and, most importantly, the most effective in the world, bar none. It ain't broke and it don't need fixin. So don't fix it.

The real issue is how to effect change in the Democratic party so as to eliminate the need of candidates from that party to pander to the far left in order to obtain the nomination. If and when the party moves toward the center of the political spectrum, especially on issues of national security, the political makeup of the armed forces will become more diverse, thus increasing the overlap between the membership of the armed forces and the membership of the Democratic party. Increased overlap equates with increased contact, and Smash's problem is solved.

I should note at this point that the problem is not unique to the Democrats. One only needs to think of Patrick Buchanan to realize that the political spectrum has two places where a candidate or party (or a portion of a party) can reasonably be characterized as extreme. Perhaps the first thing for centrist organizations within the Democratic party such as the DLC to do is to give some thought to how the Republicans managed to marginalize the Buchanan wing of their own party.

To change the Democratic party, I think you have to work from both above and below. Clinton attempted change from above. He succeeded, at least for a while. He led the party towards the center. But no one from the current group of candidates has been able to duplicate Clinton's feat. Howard Dean's striking success in the earliest portions of the Presidential campaign meant that all of the candidates had to do what they could to emulate him or risk losing the nomination. If you aren't nominated, you can't run. If you can't run, you can't win. If you can't win, you can't govern. So candidates do what they can to win the nomination first, the election second and worry about the fallout from each later.

So what would the most successful Demcrat since FDR do? We know what he actually did: He promoted the candidacy of Wesley Clark, who, as a highly successful career officer is presumably no wuss on matters of national security. I don't think the strategy is working, but that's because Clark simply wasn't ready for prime time. Good strategy, poor execution in both timing and the choice of candidate. Although Clark might have been the best available, I don't think he was or is good enough. He has spent the last four weeks trying unsuccessfully to extricate his foot from his mouth. Additionally, he was a late entry with no organization. In national politics, its tough to work out the kinks as you go.

The evidence at this point is that the strategy of reforming the Democratic party from the top only by providing a centrist candidates can only have limited success. After a maximum of two terms, the same problem resurfaces. Therefore, in addition to having centrist candidates, the Democrats need an institutional incentive to prevent the need to kowtow to the far left during the run up to the nomination. That requires change from below, which, at least in theory, is relatively simple. The more moderate members of the party have to take back control of the nomination process from what James Taranto calls the angry left. To do that, moderate Democrats have to vote in the primaries in significant numbers. This, however, is one of those areas where theory is difficult to turn into practice. The far left wing of the Democratic party is very committed but relatively small in numbers. The moderates in the party are far greater in numbers, and could easily control the nominating process. The problem is that the moderates are difficult to involve in the primaries.

For the Democratic party to be moved toward the center of the political spectrum by the rank and file, the sum of the moderates' commitment and numbers has to outweigh the sum of the commitment and numbers of the far left. The numbers take care of themselves. What the Democrats need is a large group of committed centrists. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it probably is, to some extent, and therefore effecting a sea change in the party from below will be very difficult.

In addition, I would suggest re-examining the rules governing the convention put into place by the McGovern campaign for his 1972 debacle. There are probably a lot of areas in which rules changes might foster more moderation within the ranks of activists.

Regardless of how change comes to the Democrats, I think Smash's problem is self correcting to a large degree. With the far left in control of the nomination, only far left candidates will be nominated, but they won't win in the general election. Continuous failure in the general election means that either the party will marginalize itself and lose its status as a force in national elections (and be replalced by another, more centrist group) or will reform itself so as to be able to field candidates capable of winning national elections.

The reform of the Democratic party is much more likely than its marginalization and eventual replacement. After losing five (Nixon-Humphrey, Nixon-McGovern, Reagan-Carter, Reagan-Mondale and Bush-Dukakis) out of six Presidential elections (the sixth was Carter-Ford, which Republican loss is almost wholly attributable to Watergate) the Democrats put forward a centrist, Clinton, who won two terms. Given that politicians want more than anything else to win, continuous losses are unacceptable. Additionally, while America is not particularly kind to politicians who lose, it is even less kind to third parties. Perot's campaign in 1992 was the high water point for post WWII third party movements. He won no electoral votes and some twenty percent of the popular vote. As a practical matter, he hasn't been heard from since.

 
The Weekly Standard has published a leaked memo on the ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. It has been linked by Instapundit and many others in the blogging community and is extensively referred to on the Fox News site. It provides strong evidence of a longstanding well established relationship between nonsecular Iraq and secular al Qaeda that the anti-war pundits said could not exist. It's news.

The very first quote from the memo tells us what captive operatives have told our government.

The memo also tells us what our intelligence and military services knew from specific confidential sources. The sources are not explicitly identified in the Weekly Standard article (and probably not in the memo itself), but there are dozens of clues that can be used to identify who on the other side has been talking to us.

The memo is news, alright. It's news that should never have been published. What the Weekly Standard tells us is also available to any al Qaeda or Baathist with a computer and a modem. Don't bother telling me they don't use the internet.

The leak was obviously an attempt to put to rest the claim that there was no relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda, and that administration claims to the contrary were either wrong or exaggerated. But the damage done by the disclosures in the memo is simply not worth winning a political argument over whether Bush was correct when he asserted that Saddam and al Qaeda were cooperating.

If Bush has to take a political hit because he can't disclose the memo, them's the breaks. This is not a memo by a staffer or a Senator on the Intelligence Committee detailing political plans. Leaking that memo won't result in anyone's death. This is a memo that provide militarily useful information to people who will use that very information to kill our people. And no one, not the leaker, not Stephen Hayes, the author of the article, and not one of the bloggers who linked to the article, apparently gave that aspect of the matter sufficient thought.

I acknowledge that the bloggers and news services who referred to, linked to or otherwise reported on the article could not undo the damage done by the Weekly Standard, but I still think they were wrong. They could not unring the bell, but they sure as hell didn't have to ring it again, louder.