REVOLUTIONARY AND TRANSFORMING

Not a week goes by in which at least some of our many enemies don't wet their beds thinking about what will come out of America's mighty weapons shops next.

Just as I told you last Friday. Of this, there can be no doubt. You have to be pretty slick to get the strategic and tactical edge on us!

"Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," an anonymous military official told a LA Times reporter for a frontpage story on Monday.

"The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be revolutionary."

Indeed, for General Atomics and others weapons makers, Gorgon Stare and other such things are always revolutionary for the bottom line. But not so revolutionary for those Americans who still get to come home in boxes in the war with no end.

Little could be more obvious than the simple fact that American wonder weapons render enemies powerless, forcing them to surrender in mere weeks, sometimes days.

Wars have become shorter and easily winnable by entire orders of magnitude!

When the Secretary of State goes to Pakistan and "faces sharp rebukes from an audience" really angry and not much impressed with American technological supremacy, that's just an obvious case of a staged event.

Another fact of life in modern America is that the latest in arms manufacturing is always revolutionary.

Even the most ridiculous and stupid practices -- like Shock and Awe, which was not a killing device but a way of employing them en masse -- are revolutionary. And if you thought that was warped and bizarre, you're not thinking right. Shock and Awe was a perfectly excellent and wonderful plan. And you can't condemn a good plan for just a couple disastrous slip-ups in execution.

"Like the Reaper and its earlier counterpart, the Predator, the newest technology program has been given a fearsome name, the Gorgon Stare ... " reported the Times.

And don't forget the Blitzer, folks.

"Using the all-seeing eye, you will find out who is important in a network, where they live, where they get their support from, where their friends are," bragged the anonymous senior official to the Times, perhaps reading off the screen of his Powerpoint presentation, the one recommending an open-ended contract for the purchase of more General Atomics stuff.

"This is Buzz Lightyear technology," said another anonymous military official, reading from still another PowerPoint pitch. Possibly.

And there's the problem.

If there are people possessed of critical thinking skills applying themselves to questions over whether or not even more flying robot with missiles are bringing the war to a close -- rather than just making the populaces they are being sicced on more angry -- it's not at all clear from the Times piece.

"Some fear too much reliance on drones," equivocated the headline on the story's runover page.

It's more obvious that portions of the military are overrun with corporate pitchmen.

And these particular pitchmen have been going at it all year long, something not really noticed by the Times.

The salesmen also seem to think that "Buzz Lightyear" is a more common symbol than the hundreds of movies and sci-fi books, seen worldwide, in which the employers of robot assassin forces are always the bad guys.

What is obvious is their heads don't work right. They are in the service of death for the sake of arms sales. And the journalist who never really gets around to discussing this side of things is just making it worse.

Another way of looking at the Predator/Reaper/Gorgon Stare program is to view it as national Enzyte -- similar to the sold through TV pill that makes the johnson longer while putting a smile on your face. Guaranteed.

Similarly, at Armchair Generalist.