At 05:08 31/08/2003 -0400, you wrote:
The thing wwith Saddam's sons seems straightforwardly illegal, but then this is Bush's "wanted dead or alive" frontier vigilante mentality. They were afraid Sazddam's sons might escape thru a tunnel or something, I think. They were afraid that, somehow, they would get away -- which may not have been an entirely misplaced concern, considering howw "we" miss things under our noses so often.
No, I'm afraid that the Americans simply acted stupidly. Saddam's sons had been betrayed by the owner of the house who would have known whether there was a secret passage or not. And he wouldn't have betrayed them if there had been.
In the British Army most officers are rather stupid. But what 'the authorities' do is to weed them out systematically at regular intervals until those that remain in their late 50s or early 60s are very bright indeed. (Unlike the Civil service, where they can start with obvious high-flyers of high IQ from the universities, Army officers start out as a pretty mixed lot.) When I was in the army the very best officers I ever met belonged to a small minority (about 1%) who had come up through the ranks and had had many years service as NCOs (usually Regimental Sergeant Majors). However, these 'working class' officers could never rise higher than about Colonel. The higher ranks were still reserved for the middle-class material that were being thinned out on the basis of IQ. We have an ex-middle class early-retired officer living down the road from me who left with a decent pension in his early 40s. I dislike having to pay taxes to pay for his pension but I'm heartily relieved that he's not holding command anywhere.
However, although the most senior British Army officers are of 130+ IQ I would judge, I was not impressed by "Stormin' Norman" at the time of the Gulf War I. He was supposed to be a genius or something. On the basis of his briefings to journalists I rated him at about 120 IQ, no more. The fact that he hasn't subsequently appeared in the ranks of CEOs in business means that he probably wasn't as bright as that. Or perhaps he's a Professor in some third or fourth league university? He's probably raising chickens. I'd be fascinated to know what he's doing now. Strikes me that Powell isn't as bright as he ought to be as a Secretary of State. Not a patch on the previous lady. But at least he has a decent vocabulary and can get his words out in the right order and I think he has some decency in him. I would guess that Marshall was probably your last really bright army officer.
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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