This summer, the photographer Platon took pictures of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He followed them on their journey through training and deployment, after demobilization and in hospitals, to compile a portrait of the dedication of the armed services today.

This is the photo-essay that Powell mentioned in his endorsement message.

From the archive:

You are about to be punched in the stomach. That sinking feeling is your heart wondering which direction the swing is going to come from.

Service

From the October issue of The Walrus:

BEIRUT — The workday is over, and I’m standing in the driveway beneath my worn concrete apartment building, digging in my pocket for keys. A headlight flashes from the street to my left — a moped pulling up to the entrance. The driver, who sports a black balaclava and an AK-47, drops off his hefty, similarly attired passenger. Slipping a key into the lock of the gate to the lobby, I am acutely aware of this faceless gunman waiting impatiently behind me.

I pause. Shouldn’t he produce his own keys to get in? I opt for polite — he does, after all, have his hands full — and give the bars an extra push, allowing him to follow through behind me. He returns the courtesy by stretching the eyehole of his mask down and hooking it under his chin, revealing the clean-shaven young neighbour I met on the elevator one afternoon last month. He says hi, I say hi, and we both take a step toward our reflections in the mirrored wall of the small, Italian-made lift.

“Big day today, huh?” I ask as we start to climb.

“Yeah,” he replies blankly, rearranging his grip so as to hold both the AK and his extra banana clip more comfortably.

Neighbourhood Watch

The solution for people who have spent a long time in Afghanistan was a different one: to work with the Taliban and somehow to uncouple the Afghan fighters from al-Qaeda. Seven years of killing later, it feels a bit too late to try that now. So, western policy seems glued to fighting a war that many people in the know are now saying the west is never going to win: "We're here because we're here because we're here . . ."

The killing fields

Despite their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan.

Both are wrong.

History cries out to them, but they are not listening.

From the archive:

Historian David McCullough has said that all teachers of history should be trained storytellers. But there are some stories that Americans would rather not hear.

The reality of war in Afghanistan

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

From the archive:

The Soviets understood that these methods were cruel. They were also honest with themselves about the purpose of such cruelty -- to brutalize their enemies and to extract false confessions, rather than truthful intelligence. By denying this, President Bush is not just misleading us. He appears to be deceiving himself.

“I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos

The U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn a series of allegations made in federal court that tie Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, to a plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States, blow up apartment buildings here and release cyanide gas in nightclubs.

Defense lawyers said the decision should force the Pentagon to drop charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism against Mohammed, which were filed by military prosecutors in May. The charges, the lawyers said, are spurious and based on false confessions obtained through torture.

From the archive:

... essential ... superb, tough-minded ... meticulous ... assiduously investigated, brilliantly argued ... usefully horrifying ... devastating ... shattering ... powerful ... sharp, shaming ... grim, yet straightforward ... raises a great many uncomfortable, important questions. Sad, important and very difficult to watch.

Also:

Here it is, the much-hyped moment where Sarah Palin was unable to name any Supreme Court case that she disagreed with, other than Roe v. Wade.

One presumes this means she concurs with the Court's recent decisions:

Boumediene v. Bush is one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in recent years.

McCain has already promised that if elected he will appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito. It would take only one such appointment to make further decisions like Boumediene impossible, and probably reverse that decision itself.

I must say, this is most confusing.

Key Allegations Against Terror Suspect Withdrawn

All U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data -- such as phone records or Web sites visited -- should be required to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. A framework is offered that agencies can use to evaluate such information-based programs, both classified and unclassified. The book urges Congress to re-examine existing privacy law to assess how privacy can be protected in current and future programs and recommends that any individuals harmed by violations of privacy be given a meaningful form of redress. Two specific technologies are examined: data mining and behavioral surveillance. Regarding data mining, the book concludes that although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity. Regarding behavioral surveillance in a counterterrorist context, the book concludes that although research and development on certain aspects of this topic are warranted, there is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for operational use at all in counterterrorism.

Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment

We hear again and again from Washington that we have turned a corner in Iraq and are on the path to victory. If so, it is a strange victory.

George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success -- or a path to victory.

Is This a 'Victory'?

Bruce Schneier:

How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person's name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight.

The TSA's useless photo ID rules

A man from Somerville, Mass., and his friend who went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.

See also coverage at the Times UK, from which the title is taken:

The founders of the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) have been banned by a court from correcting any publicly owned signs after trying to correct one on the Desert View Watchtower that, for seven decades, has drawn attention to an “emense westward view of the Grand Canyon”. Oblivious to grammar, the prosecutors pronounced the sign “a unique historical object of irreplaceable value”.

Also worth a "look" -- The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, which has been misinterpreting bad punctuation since 2005.

Vigilantes wage war on signs of American illiteracy