Let's see now. Vladmir Putin has designs in the mideast, designs that show no consideration to our well-being. His only mooring point is the Assad regime in Syria. If Assad goes, Putins resurgent soviet empire takes a thumping. In addition to this we have the Iranian Mullahocracy to consider. Khameni now finds it necessary to spread his poiisonous charm via surrogates like Hamas and Hezbollah. These worthies can only function under the sanctuary of the Assad regime. This makes Russia and Iran de facto allies cooperating in their current sine-qua-non of saving Assad-----an outcome detrimental to the future of Israel and the USA. Predictably, the Buchanan-Paul-Rockwell axis now concludes that the anti-Assad forces are our real threat and that the incumbent regime must not be interfered with in any way. Put all this together and you have a darned good reason for a judicious intervention.

To prevent that very bad precedent ( making the UN into a supra-national government with a standing Army); hire mercenaries. There are certainly present-day versions of Denard and Hoare who can qualify. Members of national armed forces can be given leaves of absence in order to participate. Just like the Flying Tigers were. So forth and so on. Mercs operate under an explicit contract to accomplish explicit goals within an explicit time frame and then their formations are disbanded. Problem(s) solved. Thank you for your time and thank Col Bay for illuminating something the public needs to know about.

Everything that enhances and is necessary for species survival can be misused-----and will be. Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty----it is the price of life.

My second (of three) Vietnam tour resulted in five months or so of hospital time. On convalescent leave I took correspondence courses in Political Science. I distinctly remember Paul Douglas's stories on campaigning. Even in that setting, you could tell that he typified "SEMPER FI". BTW: the course was sponsored by a Texas Democrat named Kent Hance. Kent is now a Republican------the kind that would make Charles Percy soild his underthings.

The Democrats used to be defined by the Klu Klux Klan. Now they are dominated by the Klu Klux Tan. The color has changed but not the odor.

Had Sr Fontova and Herr "Rothbart" known each other I've no doubt they would have been great buddies in spite of, or perhaps because of, their differences.

As a personal friend of the late Murray Rothbard, I gotta say that you did catch Unca Murray with his pants down. Rothbard was a born iconoclast whose choice of polemics missed the target about 35 to 40 percent of the time. His greatest weaknes was a rather persistent failure to translate his Austrian principles from purely economic matters into the geo-political sphere. Hence he all too often failed to recognize that the people and activities that he disliked were or could be right, proper and necessary for the well-being and survivial of his country and for that matter the human race. In the case at hand he obviously fell for the concocted notion of Che as romantic Paladin rather than the psychopath that he really was.

These principles are easy to enumerate and explain. Implementing them takes some doing-----no naysayers need apply. "Nuff said. Final comment on "drones". The ethics of their use is NO different from that of manned aircraft, snipers, artillery or atomic bombs. Claims to the contrary are red herrings. But there is a danger to remote control. (Thank you Tom Clancy) A remotely piloted craft can be taken over by hostile forces and turned on our own men. Can somebody do this today? Maybe but I doubt it. Will such a capability come about at some future date? You can bet your aspartame-coated posterior on it. And THAT should be the primary discussion. I've talkked enough See ya next time.

As to the targeting of individuals: The purpose is to reduce enemy capabilities and render them as harmless as possible. How much does his or her death advance that cause? Operative example: This is World War Two; You are an OSS sniper in Germany. You are at a public event. On the stage are Hitler himself, Heydrich, his even more thuggish heir and a decent soldier named Erwin Rommel. You can get off two quick rounds, so of the three whom do you shoot? Answer you shoot Rommel twice just to make sure. Fuherers and their heirs are a dime a dozen. First-rate Field Marshalls are hard to find. End of lesson.

In the water cure, the subject is forced to drink potentially fatal quantities of fluid and the resultant pain is increased by beating or stomping upon the distended abdomen and other parts of the anatomy. He will confess to anything. However ask him where his command post or safehouse is and you will get only gibberish in reply. He has no capacity left for rational thought. On the other hand, the waterboard duplicates the panic of drowning by replicating the physical aspects. To avoid repeat performances the subject will start answering and/or correct previous falsehoods. Or to be more faceticious, hooking a field phone to the genitalia and turning the hand crank works, utilizing a 35 KW only results in fried terrorist.