AP - American bomb disposal experts in Iraq say few people understood what they did.

FULTON, Texas A former Air Force sentry dog handler in Vietnam has one last mission.

He's working with others to honor military canines with a national monument.

Our war dogs deserve recognition for the lives they saved, said Larry Chilcoat, who patrolled the combat perimeter of Camp Cameron, Vietnam, throughout 1969 with a German shepherd named Geisha.

It's been 40 years, and I have a beautiful wife and granddaughter, but I don't carry their pictures, said Chilcoat, 62. But I still carry a photo of Geisha; she changed my life.

I love my family, Chilcoat said, but Geisha was my lifeblood in a jungle nightmare, and we both relied on each other day and night to survive.

She heard things I didn't and let me know, and I knew she would die to protect me.

Military dogs saved more than 10,000 lives in Vietnam, according to the U.S. War Dog Association. More than 200 of about 4,000 dogs that served in Vietnam died while on duty, Chilcoat said.

Chilcoat is one of three former military dog handlers who received Pentagon approval in January for a proposed Military Working Dog National Monument.

The veterans presented plans for a bronze pedestal with a soldier and four dogs, designed by Brian Rich of Fairfax Va. He's the uncle of a Marine dog handler, Cpl. Dustin Jerome Lee, who was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade March 21, 2007, in Fallujah, Iraq.

Lee's bomb sniffing dog, Lex, wounded and later was adopted by Lee's family, said Rich, 35, a graphic artist and former Marine.

It's helped my family with the loss of my nephew, and motivated me to design the monument, Rich said.

Chilcoat said Pentagon officials loved the design.

Chilcoat, project founder John Burnam of Bethesda, Md., and Richard Deggans of Plano are taking back a clay model in mid-April being made by bronze sculptor Paula Slater of Hidden Valley Lake, Calif.

Chilcoat, Burnam and Deggans, who are among more than 10,000 Vietnam War dog handlers, met through the Vietnam Dog Handlers Association. Their push to honor their dogs led to President Bush signing legislation in 2008 for a monument, to be built and maintained with private donations. The location is tentatively planned for Fort Belvoir, Va. They have raised about $20,000 of an estimated cost of about $850,000.

Pigeons, dolphins, horses and other animals have served in wars since World War I, said Burnam, 62, who served in the Army from 1966-68. But no animal has done as much as the dog, which has served as sentries, scouts, trackers and patrol leaders, he said.

Burnam and his scout dog led infantry patrols.

Burnam knows first hand the dogs, like his scout dog that led infantry patrols, deserve recognition.

We were the tip of the spear, detecting sounds and movement in the jungles that led to ammunition caches, underground tunnel complexes and entrenched enemies, he said.

If the dog's body goes rigid, they cock their head, perk ears, fix their eyes, you know it's dangerous, he said. You certainly don't want to go where the dog doesn't want to go. They saved my butt from enemy fire several times.

In one incident, his dog alerted as they led a patrol into a clearing, he said.

We hit the ground ambushed by enemies in bunkers, he said. We laid behind a 10-inch diameter tree trunk, with enemies firing in front of us, and our guys firing over our heads. If we would have moved either direction, they would have blown the hell out of us.

Shared by phillip
I help support the JPMRC that is mentioned.

By Peter Almond
MailOnline
Last updated at 2:29 AM on 07th March 2010

It was one of the most complex military logistical and medical operations ever undertaken and it saved the life of a young British soldier critically injured in Afghanistan.

It involved hundreds of doctors, air and ground crews of several nations, travelling many thousands of miles, revolutionary and experimental medical equipment, several planes and helicopters and communications between three continents and cost millions of pounds.

For months, details of the massive operation to save one man's life have been shrouded in secrecy. The injured soldier was not shot by the Taliban but was almost certainly wounded accidentally at his camp near Sangin in Helmand province in late July last year.

It is understood that Soldier X he is not being identified at the request of his family was not wearing body armour at the time. The Ministry of Defence has declined to offer any explanation.

The respected American journalist Michael Yon, himself a former US special forces soldier, reported on his blog that he heard the shot and saw a flurry of activity and a medical evacuation helicopter taking Soldier X away.

Then began a most incredible effort to save his life.

Soldier X had been shot in the abdomen and chest, losing his right lung and damaging his liver, according to the US military Stars And Stripes newspaper. Another American military report said his blood supply was replaced more than ten times, and that he was transfused with 75 units of blood and another 75 units of platelets.

He was alive but only just. He needed specialist equipment to do what his lungs could not: provide oxygen to his blood and remove the carbon dioxide built up in its passage through his body. He needed an artificial lung and intensive care within hours. Such equipment was available at hospitals in Britain, nearly 4,000 miles away, but Soldier X would almost certainly die on the long flight.

He needed a portable, low-pressure artificial lung and the Americans offered to help. But the bureaucracy of moving from the British to the American military system meant that valuable time was being lost.

More...

* Major accuses Brown of using troops as a 'party political prop' as PM announces 100m of new equipment on surprise Afghan visit

Contacted by a quick-thinking British doctor at Camp Bastion, Mr Yon sent an urgent email to a group of American civilian volunteers called Soldiers' Angels near Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where most American casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are initially sent.

The volunteers, founded by the great-niece of General George S. Patton, alerted the US Army's nearby Landstuhl Regional Medical Center's Acute Lung Rescue Team, which specialises in going straight to the aid of soldiers with severe lung problems.

And within an hour, the team was in touch with doctors at the nearby University of Regensberg who had access to a revolutionary portable artificial lung called a Novalung. The still experimental German-made machine takes over much of the job of circulating blood, filling it with oxygen and filtering out the carbon dioxide without the use of the mechanical pumps in the older Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machines, which have been known to cause damage to a patient by forcing the blood around the body.

Novalung is powered by the patient's own heartbeat at a lower pressure, and has been used by the Landstuhl team several times, even though it has yet to be formally accepted into general use by either Germany or Britain.

It had never been used on a patient in transit, however. Soldier X would be the first to use it on his flight back to Germany.

With time running out, and Soldier X needing specialist attention immediately, a call was made from Camp Bastion to the US-led Combined Air and Space Operations Center at al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where all military aircraft movements in and around Afghanistan are controlled.

Within minutes, the Joint Patient Movement Requirements Centre there identified a US C-130 Hercules at Kabul that could fly pulmonary specialists immediately to Camp Bastion.

At the same time, the 618th Tanker Airlift Control Centre at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois was alerted to co-ordinate the move of the Landstuhl team with the Novalung from Germany to Camp Bastion and back.

We received the call on our operations floor to airlift the British soldier from Afghanistan to Germany and immediately did what we could to make it happen,' said Colonel John Martins, the 618th TACC director of operations, who led co-ordination efforts for the mission.

It was a complex move. Not only did we have to find a plane and aircrew to fly the patient out of Sangin, but also we had to find another plane and crew to get the right medical personnel and equipment into Afghanistan because we needed specialised medical teams to care for the patient in-flight.'

At Ramstein, a giant US C-17 Globemaster loaded with cargo for Iraq was quickly reassigned to take the Novalung team to Afghanistan and within six hours it was airborne and on its way, via a stop for more medical equipment at Bagram, Kabul.

Once on the ground at Camp Bastion, however, the aircrew found that the six hours it would take to prepare Soldier X for the flight back meant they would run out of permissible flying hours. Another aircrew would be needed while they flew back to Germany with several more wounded soldiers.

A second C-17 was urgently reassigned at Camp Bastion, while the Novalung was carefully connected to the blood vessels of Soldier X's legs.

Eight hours later, and within 22 hours of receiving the call for help, the US Air Force had moved Soldier X from a combat zone on one continent to the medical safety of another.

At Ramstein, the Germans took over Soldier X's care. A civilian Lifebird medevac helicopter was on hand to fly him to Regensberg for more operations.

Some time later, Soldier X was flown back to specialist care in England and is believed to be continuing his recovery.

The only official response from the MoD about the case has come in a statement from Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, assistant chief of defence staff (health), which said: The current Coalition operation in Afghanistan allows flexibility in the selection of the best casualty transfer system available at the time.

The US evacuation of a UK casualty to Germany exemplified the success of this arrangement, and the professional skills of the Coalition medical teams, resulting in a highly successful outcome.'

The only reported comment from Soldier X's family comes from MaryAnn Phillips, of Soldiers' Angels at Ramstein. In a message to Michael Yon on his website, she said she had met the young soldier's mother at Regensberg Hospital, where he had regained consciousness and was improving.

She had no idea of the extraordinary lengths hundreds of people had gone to save him.

I told her about some of this,' MaryAnn wrote to Yon. She broke down and couldn't believe all of those people would do all that for my son. It was a very, very moving moment.'

{loadposition user8}

Shared by phillip
No thank you. Most of the AF are not TACP, PJs, or Combat Controllers.

Run a mile and a half. Do as many push-ups as you can in a minute. Ditto for sit-ups. And have your waist measured.

Now, compare the Air Force physical training test to the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test: Sprint 880 yards, a half-mile. Lift a 30-pound ammo can from your chest over your head as many times as you can in two minutes. And, finally, navigate a 300-yard obstacle course that includes crawling, carrying a casualty and throwing a grenade.

All done decked out in your utility uniform and boots.

For seven airmen at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., who took the CFT at the invitation of the leathernecks assigned with them to the 33rd Fighter Wing, there is no comparison to the Air Force's PT test. The CFT is no walk in the park, but it can be done, the airmen say. They passed, after all.

I could barely feel my legs when I was done, said Staff Sgt. Simon Delacruz, assigned to the 96th Security Forces Squadron. The cans are the killers.

The airmen's respectable performance is encouraging a small but growing movement inside the Air Force that wants the service to institute its own CFT.

Perhaps the most vocal advocates are airmen who have served on the battlefield, such as joint terminal attack controllers. Their calls haven't gone unheard three airmen have developed CFT programs on their own, and the Air Force exercise physiologist responsible for the new PT scoring standards that go into effect July 1 is looking at how the service could incorporate a combat fitness element.

Even airmen who aren't wild about a CFT are embracing the training. Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., just opened its fourth center for CrossFit, a strength and conditioning methodology used widely by other services and law enforcement agencies. At least seven other bases are also offering CrossFit classes.

Semper Fi fit

The Marines unveiled their CFT nearly 18 months ago on orders from the commandant himself. Gen. James Conway gave the directive after hearing from deployed Marines about the need for a different measure of fitness.

Today, Marines must take two tests the CFT once a year and the PT test twice a year. On Jan. 1, airmen began taking their PT test twice a year as well as having the test administered by civilian fitness experts.

Air Force officials expect to see the PT failure rate jump from about 2 percent servicewide to 15 percent or even higher when test scorers begin using the tougher standards and minimum scores. About 10 percent of Marines failed the CFT during the phase-in period, which ended last March. So far, according to Corps officials, only 5 percent of Marines have achieved the perfect score 300 points.

The Air Force is closely monitoring the Marines' performance while it continues its research. Exercise physiologist Neil Baumgartner, who overhauled the Air Force's PT test in 2004 and in 2009, wants to customize the CFT for various career fields. For example, a pilot and a personnelist would take different versions of the test.

Doing that takes time, Baumgartner said. Right now the idea is still conceptual. It's not set in stone. He added that the earliest that airmen could see a CFT is three to five years.

The airmen at Eglin impressed the Marines with their dry run.

They did very well, said Marine Sgt. Maj. Bonnie Skinner with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501, who proposed the joint effort. If the Air Force [had the test], seeing at least the airmen that joined with us, I don't see them having a problem whatsoever.

Marines for the most part like the CFT because it adds variety to their fitness program and helps prepare them for deployments, Skinner said.

You are going to do a lot more things in a combat situation that are a lot closer to the Combat Fitness Test than what you are going to do for the normal PT test, she said. It's positive reinforcement.

A tug of war

The momentum for the Air Force to add a combat fitness test has come mostly from airmen returning from deployments.

Being an old Desert Storm airman and being on five deployments three to Saudi Arabia and two to Iraq not once did a situation come up where you had to run a mile and a half. And no one could care less if you had a 32-inch waist, Tech. Sgt. James Geiss wrote in an e-mail to Air Force Times, referring to the run and waist measurement components of the current PT test.

When those rocket/mortar attacks hit the base, what mattered was that you get your butt to safety, wrote Geiss, who is assigned to McChord Air Force Base, Wash.

Staff Sgt. Jermain Morrow prepares security forces airmen for deployment as an instructor with the 96th Ground Combat Training Squadron at Eglin and wants to see the Air Force adopt a CFT.

It shows you what type of condition you are in to head overseas, Morrow said.

Like Morrow, Master Sgt. Jerry Wright with the 96th Logistical Readiness Squadron took the test and thinks airmen would benefit from taking it. He knows, however, that not everyone would give the CFT a thumbs-up.

You have a pretty big divide between the administrative Air Force and the flight line, Wright said. The administrative side isn't going to be so receptive. The flight-line side that deploys where you have to take cover or you are getting shelled will like it.

Master Sgt. Kevin Palumbo, with the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., is a CFT detractor.

It burns me that people who can shut down and go to the gym three times a week are the ones saying it would be great to do more testing, Palumba said. I wish to God I had the people and skill levels to support having an eight- to nine-hour workday and being able to include going to the gym during that period.

For Maj. Shannon Smith, the discussion shouldn't be an either/or debate about the CFT and the PT test.

I agree combat fitness is important. However, it is not the only reason we should take a periodic fitness test, said Smith, commander of the 790th Missile Security Forces Squadron at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.

First, our health care is paid for by American taxpayers, not just during our time on active duty, but for many years beyond our time in uniform. If we make a concerted effort to eat right and remain physically fit while serving in uniform, the less problems we'll have in the future, thus becoming good stewards of our tax dollars. Second, it is our duty and responsibility to present and maintain a professional military image to those same taxpayers.

A trio of studies

Three airmen did their own research on combat fitness.

Capt. Thomas Worden started thinking about combat readiness on a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. Too many times, Worden said, he found many airmen who could not even run for cover and he wondered whether the Air Force's fitness test was part of the reason.

When Worden returned in April 2007, the civil engineer went off to the Air Force Institute of Technology, the service's graduate school of engineering and management, where he set out to come up with a test to accurately measure an airman's combat fitness.

Worden's discovery: the half-mile run, 30-pound dumbbell lift and push-ups do the best job of determining an airman's combat fitness.

Though Worden believes more research is needed, he also is convinced the Air Force like the Marine Corps must include combat fitness in its fitness program.

The PT test is good at measuring general health and if an airman is going to rack up medical bills in the future, he said. But it's not very good at measuring if you will be good at combat.

In his USAF Concept for Functional Fitness, F-22 pilot and certified personal trainer Maj. Jeremy Gordon outlines a six-event CFT: an 800-meter run, a 50-repetition press of a 30-pound object, a 400-meter run, a 50-pound object carried 100 feet, 50 full sit-ups and five pull-ups.

Airmen's scores would be scaled for age and gender and be based on how fast they could complete the course.

Gordon concedes his test would be significantly more challenging than the PT test but would force airmen to focus on stamina, flexibility, strength, power, speed, coordination, balance, accuracy and agility.

The PT test, according to Gordon, focuses too much on both the waist measurement and the 1.5-mile run, and neglects total fitness. It doesn't prepare airmen for combat or their day-to-day jobs, he said.

Rarely does an airman's job call for long-duration exertions [like a 1.5-mile run] without any weight or external objects to move, the report states.

An Air Force doctor has also weighed in with a fitness program, although he doesn't call it combat fitness.

Lt. Col. Daniel Kulund, chief of the medical staff at the 319th Medical Group at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., has designed the Virtual Military Obstacle Course. Airmen do the circuit-training program with a 10-pound plastic pipe called a fighting stick meant to simulate the size, weight and balance of an M16.

Kulund came up with the idea after observing how military obstacle courses require maximum effort, and oftentimes an awkward position, so you could get hurt, he said. It's really not a practical way of regular physical training.

Kulund, who at 68 is the service's oldest active-duty airman, has lobbied Air Force leaders to adopt his program servicewide. Former Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper showed interest; the chiefs of staff since Jumper have been less enthusiastic.

Like Gordon, Kulund thinks the Air Force should place a higher priority on total fitness and preparing airmen for the physical challenges of both their jobs and deployments.

Air Force physical training is like the cross-country team with some push-ups and sit-ups put in, he said.

Related reading

At Luke, it's gospel to preach combat fitness

The invented Republican/ Foxy News talking point du jour is that the Democrats intend to 'ram health care reform down our throats' even though 'the American people don't want it.'

Bzzz. That's just wrong! First of all, when there is a landslide triumph for a party as there was in November, 2008, for the victor to actually govern and legislate is not 'ramming' anything down anyone's 'throat.' It is doing what the people asked you to do. Obama campaigned on this issue, and presumably that fact had not escaped the electorate's notice.

Just so we don't forget, if we sized the lower 48 states according to their population, this is what the Democratic victory looked like, according to cartophilia:



So it is that little tiny red thing that is talking about 'ramming' down 'throats.'

Second, 80 percent of Americans in a recent ABC/Post poll want to prohibit limits on pre-existing conditions, and 72 percent want to impose an employer mandate. Some 63 percent favor some form of public health care reform. The same proportion, 63%, want president Obama to keep trying to pass a reform. A majority, 56%, want everyone to be covered. The allegation that the 'public doesn't want it' is an artificial creation of millions of dollars in disinformation money purveyed by the pharmaceutical companies through the US Chamber of Commerce and their bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators. If a pollster explains to a member of the public what is actually in the bill, Americans like most of the provisions, as Ezra Klein says.

Besides, all the Democrats want to implement (not ram) is the same thing every other advanced industrial society has, which is health care for all citizens. As it is, we pay more than the Netherlands or Germany or Sweden, but our health statistics are much worse than any of theirs.

As for ramming things down people's throats, here is what the Republicans rammed down our throats during Cheney-Bush:

1. War on Iraq, costing over 4,000 American service lives, 31,000 wounded bad enough to go to hospital, many of them maimed for life, and costing over our lifetimes $3 trillion (which we don't have). All based on outright lies.

2. Torture.

3. Warrantless wiretaps.

4. 'Protest zones' and arbitrary arrest of people peacefully assembled.

5. Further gutting of financial regulation, pushing the country's economy off a cliff

6. Deep tax cuts for the superwealthy and de facto tax increases for the middle classes, passed by reconciliation

7. Unfunded programs, including wars, tax cuts and medicare changes, that created most of the current budget deficit and much of our current public debt, much of it passed by reconciliaton.

8. Virtual abandonment of our troops in Afghanistan for a concentration on Iraq, and slacking off on capturing the top al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership.

9. The gutting of environmental regulation and the surrender of the public to corporate polluters.

10. Bush's 'victory' itself in 2000.

So suck it up, GOP. You really screwed us all over and messed up the country big time. All we want to do is have people's children be able to see a doctor without it bankrupting the family. That's your big complaint?

End/ (Not Continued)

We can debate whether today's jobs number was good or not, but this much is clear, compared to other recessions, the job losses, and lack of job gains, are truly unprecedented (via FelixSalmon and Catherine Rampell)

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Iraq will pump up oil production from 2.4 million barrels a day now to 12 million barrels by 2017. That's the promise of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who'd like to hold onto his job after elections on Sunday.

It's not 2004 anymore. And it's no longer in Washington's interest to play up purple fingers in Iraqi elections. So let's bring you up to speed on what's been happening there since the surge was deemed a success:

• A bevy of suicide bombings this week went underreported in the US press. Three explosions just today killed 12 people. Chances are it's the work of the Sunni minority, who've stayed quiet the last couple years because US troops paid them off to lie low a key reason the surge has kept the fighting to a dull roar.
• The Sunnis are restless because the Shiite majority maneuvered recently to keep hundreds of Sunni candidates for parliament and local offices off the ballot. Of course, we were told the whole idea of the surge was to give Iraq's factions breathing room to settle their differences. So much for that.

We still have 100,000 American troops in Babylon trying to make sure that non-American oil companies like BP and China National Petroleum Corp. have reasonably secure access to the giant Rumaila oil field. (ExxonMobil got a small consolation prize in the bidding.) We marvel at the spectacle.

Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning

Securing Iraqi Oil Fieldsfor US Competitors originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."

Master Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver has filed a lawsuit against the makers of the film The Hurt Locker, claiming that screenwriter Mark Boal based the film's central character on him after Boal was embedded in Sarver's bomb squad unit in Iraq. I can't speak to the overall merits of the case, but one claim rings particularly hollow. The Detroit News reports:

Sarver said the very title of the movie was a phrase he coined in Iraq, and that Boal asked its meaning after hearing him use it. Boal has since copyrighted the phrase, Fieger said.
Sarver explained today that the term is akin to Davy Jones Locker, where legend says drowned sailors are kept.
"It's just a horrible place you go when you mess up," Sarver said. "It's a mental state. A place that's full of pain and hurt."

Unfortunately for Sarver, (in the) hurt locker is military slang dating back to 1966, as a quick trip to Google News Archive readily shows. I give the full history of the expression in my latest Word Routes column on the Visual Thesaurus. Check it out.

Home entertainment spending fell 5% in 2009 as the economy slacked off and DVD technology continued its decline. The bad news for Hollywood is that digital delivery and Blu-ray discs, while growing, aren't making up for DVD's fall.

Revenue from DVD rentals and sellthrough totaled $16.4 billion in the U.S. last year, or 80% of the industry, according to the Digital Entertainment Group. That represented a $2 billion decline from 2008. Meanwhile, Blu-ray and digital -- including video-on-demand -- grew by a combined $1.1 billion in 2009, to $3.6 billion, and now represent about 20% of the revenue that DVD generates. (Click here to see the full report.)

Will Blu-ray pass digital this year? It's not as crazy as it sounds -- as player prices continue to fall, some 4.5 million Blu-ray devices were sold in Q4, bringing the total to 17.3 million. But more digital movie playback devices are going to hit the market this year, too, including Apple's iPad, and whatever devices Walmart sells based on the Vudu video service it just acquired.

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On Thursday, actor Tom Hanks joined Tina Brown and Nicole Wallace on "Good Morning America" with George Stephanopoulos to discuss Karl Rove's new memoir, 'Courage and Consequence', among other things.

After Brown and Wallace weighed in on the timing of the book release and Rove's insistence that the Iraq war was a good idea, Stephanopoulos turned to Hanks: "You ready to read about this?"

"I can't wait to buy Karl Rove's book when it's discounted in the discount bin," Hanks replied. "He has a right to write a book. It'll be interesting to a degree. I'm sure he's going to just blow the lid off of everything and tell the complete truth about those 8 years."

WATCH:

HuffPost Impact, the Huffington Post vertical focused on causes and donations, has come under fire by the Nieman Journalism Lab, which is questioning its relationship its partner, Causecast.

According to Nieman Journalism Lab, the section's content is outsourced to the for-profit firm that has nonprofit clients.

Causecast gets a platform to promote its services and the nonprofits it chooses to highlight, some of which are its partner organizations.

Meawhile, HuffPost shares advertising and sponsorship revenues the section generates with Causecast.

At face value, the partnership between Huffington Post and Causecast seems like a good idea. Online ad sales continue to plummet as advertisers realize that traditional banner ads don't work like they thought they did. But the lack of transparency about who is writing the post makes the deal a little shadier than it first seems.

According to Nieman, there has been at least one instance where one of the Causecast/Huff Post writers posted a story about one of their organizations. In a post about the nonprofit Malaria No More, there was no disclaimer highlighting the relationship between the two groups -- despite the fact that there was a Causecast widget at the end of the story for readers to donate to the nonprofit.

When we asked about the relationship between the two groups, Mario Ruiz, VP of Media Relations of The Huffington Post, replied in an email:

HuffPost Impact was created to spotlight the kinds of stories that don't often get prominent coverage: service, causes, volunteering, and giving back. The editorial process for Impact is the same as the one for all of HuffPost's verticals, with the section's editors overseen and guided by senior HuffPost editors.

Impact does not offer paid editorial placements, either in terms of story selection or the inclusion of links. Advertisers interested in cause-related marketing are limited to placing ads on the Impact section, or through sponsorships that are clearly marked as such.

Incidentally, HuffPost Impact editor Victoria Fine wrote today that she is leaving to pursue stories in Iraq and South Africa.

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• Huffington Post Sets Out Catnip For Kids With 'HuffPost College'
• Huffington Post Has A Jayson Blair Moment, Too

An inappropriately titled new story and live demonstration nevertheless showcases how far technology has evolved when it comes to machine translation guided by context and nuance as much as words themselves.

The first time I saw a technology demonstration in this regard was at Strong Angel III in San Diego, in 2006. The real time translation of broadcast video was at the time, and frankly, even now, incredible stuff.

Now, Microsoft is demonstrating real time translation of voice calls made over its Exchange Server platform. So while this is NOT a translating phone as the news story on Download Squad and the technology demonstration itself tries to make out, it is nevertheless extremely impressive.

The applications go well beyond the corporate world where this technology will be first deployed. Let's be clear, significant perils of machine translation are well known and unlikely to go away for the next few years. And Microsoft is not the only one experimenting with this cutting edge technology. However, even the sophistication of the translation demonstrated by Microsoft in this video was unimaginable a few years ago.

But then again, didn't DARPA that secretive agency in the US promise us by this year software that can almost instantly translate Arabic and Mandarin Chinese with 90 to 95 percent accuracy?

Implications for humanitarian aid and peacebuilding?
There are of course several exciting possibilities for the application of this technology in the domains of humanitarian aid and peacebuilding. If the inaccuracy of the translations are accepted by all parties, these platforms even without 100% accuracy become valuable tools in cross-cultural conflict resolution, conflict transformation and post-disaster, to strengthen interactions between foreign and local aid workers as well as victims on the ground.

A very different approach by Skype to almost real time translation years ago failed, but as a model still interests me. Could this model be revisited for example in situations like Chile and Haiti this year?

The other impeding factor is the lock-in to Microsoft Exchange Server infrastructure, well beyond the price point and sustainability for NGOs that matter most in disaster response and peacebuilding. Can we envision a service model where this is moved to the cloud and on-demand, can connect entities together? An associated fee is easier to find funding for, and without any server infrastructure or complicated software to set up, this then becomes a more helpful service.

Microsoft's video is interesting for another key feature I've not seen yet on any comparable system. Machine retranslation, in this case from English to German and then to English on one end of the conversation, all in real time. This allows the speaker to judge how well his statement has been translated, helping to address false impressions created by erroneous translations.

I wonder when we will really move into real time translation on mobiles? Today, we are playing Quake III on mobiles. When I was growing up, Quake III required a pretty serious gaming rig.

25 years hence, will it really matter if we are really monolingual? By then, would multilingual social and political interactions, and even person to person conversations, be mediated by some form of mobile, real time, contextual translation?

Shared by Rick Klau
In other news, Rove admitted that the sun rises in the east, and Canadians love hockey.

This semester I've been teaching a master's-level course for teachers called Using Technology in the Language Arts Classroom, and as usual, teaching the course pushes me to think about how digital tools fit into the pedagogical needs of today's student population. With that in mind, I've been curious for a while to see the PBS documentary, Digital Nation, directed by Rachel Dretzin, with contributions from Douglas Rushkoff, in part because of the attempt by the filmmakers to extend the conversation about the issues presented in the film to the web. Like Henry Jenkins, who has posted a negative review of the film (but a positive review of the website), I found myself feeling frustrated at how the documentary framed a number of important questions about digital media literacy, but as an example of a transmedia documentary, I think it's a fascinating case study, something that media scholars and others can use to powerful effect in their classrooms.

Jenkins raises some significant concerns about the frames through which the documentary engages with digital media. We are presented at the very beginning of the film with scenes depicted addicted South Korean gamers, some of whom undergo a two-week Internet Rescue Camp designed to teach them to withdraw from the internet. Other sequences seem to depict family life as transformed with parents and children glancing at each other over a set of illuminated screens in what Dretzin referred to as her kitchen experience, while some students (rather anecdotally) report being able to write an awesome paragraph but not being able to focus for the length of an entire paper. Douglas Rushkoff's conversion narrative isn't entirely convincing, either, and seems to be somewhat imposed on the film to give it a (somewhat tenuous) narrative arc. Perhaps a bigger problem is the lack of understanding of what it means to multitask. As Jenkins points out, some forms of multitasking have existed for a long time and often involve combining several mundane activities: watching a sporting event or listening to music or talking on the phone while washing dishes, for example.

As Jenkins and others have commented, however, many of these changes need to be placed in a historical context, and to be fair to the filmmakers, they did include Jenkins' remark that these debates about distraction and multitasking and information overload have a much longer history dating back at least to the Progressive era. Yeah, movies and kinetoscopes aren't iPods or Crackberries, but it's reductive to suggest that these problems and debates about literacy are entirely new. More frustrating for me was the tendency to refer to today's students as digital natives, an assumption that was (from what I can recall) never really challenged in the film. To be sure, students today barely remember a time when Google didn't exist, and many can navigate using a mouse in ways that surprise many adults, but that dexterity may not correspond to the more complicated forms of information literacy raised by web search and other activities.

In places, I found the documentary relatively helpful, especially in its recognition that real communities form in the virtual worlds of online games and Second Life, and the segment focusing on Cooking with Bubbe, an online cooking show featuring an 80-something Jewish grandmother, showed the power of online communities, as well. The questions that the film raised about military uses of digital media were timely and important, especially the concerns about using done aircraft, in which pilots operating machines in Las Vegas direct airplanes to drop bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. I think it's well worth asking about the moral implications of this kind of war: what does it mean when we can fire missiles or drop bombs 7,000 miles from any real danger and then go home and have dinner with our families or go to a PTA meeting? It's an unsettling question, one that the PBS version of the documentary can only begin to cover.

Which is why I think any critique of the film needs to acknowledge the mediating role of the Digital Nation website. Although it is no doubt true that many viewers will only encounter the film via the PBS broadcast, the conversation has spilled out onto the PBS website and beyond, illustrating the potential of transmedia documentary to create engagements with the world that are not always defined by a single perspective. Viewers, like me, who are concerned about military uses of digital media can follow that path. Or, we could learn more about one teacher's use of a Ning to make Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird more accessible. Jenkins is absolutely right that the supplemental material (a vast archive of deleted scenes, user contributions, viewer comments, and other material) can offer us a valuable lesson in media literacy: What was included in the PBS film? How was it organized? What might that tell us about the biases of the PBS audience? For that reason, rather than dismissing the PBS documentary, I think it makes more sense to see it as just one component of a much larger work, one that is contradictory, complicated, messy, and often very compelling, much like the digital age in which we are living.

The key story of the moment is the beginning of the Fed's tightening cycle, a topic on which Morgan Stanley analysts recently dedicated a major report.

In it, the company explored the historical connection between cheap money. As you would expect, the market likes it. A lot.

As the below chart shows, the S&P 500 has been nicely correlated with excess credit growth -- or the change in non-finanical credit. This latest rally was no exception. When the Fed does close the spigot, watch out below.

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See Also:

• Bernanke's Tightening Will Doom Us With Deflation
• Morgan Stanley Issues Warning: Look What Happened To The Market During The Last Two Tightening Cycles
• Here They Go, Australia Set To Resume The Tightening Cycle Next Tuesday

Okay, time for a deep dive into the tactical. The point of departure is this paper by Army Maj. Thomas Ehrhart, Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half-Kilometer (.pdf), written last year at the Command and General Staff College, that says fighting in Afghanistan has exposed the fact that American infantry are poorly equipped and trained for long range firefights.

In Afghanistan, the infantryman's weapons, doctrine, and marksmanship training do not provide a precise, lethal fire capability to 500 meters and are therefore inappropriate, Ehrhart says. Unlike on the streets of Iraq, where firefights were few and were typically fought under 300 meters, insurgents in Afghanistan skillfully use the wide open rural and mountainous terrain to stretch the battlefield. The following excerpt sums it up pretty well:

Comments from returning non-commissioned officers and officers reveal that about fifty percent of engagements occur past 300 meters. The enemy tactics are to engage United States forces from high ground with medium and heavy weapons, often including mortars, knowing that we are restricted by our equipment limitations and the inability of our overburdened soldiers to maneuver at elevations exceeding 6000 feet. Current equipment, training, and doctrine are optimized for engagements under 300 meters and on level terrain.

There's a lot to unpack in this paper, the author gets into the relative merits and disadvantages of the 5.56mm round, reliability of the M4, the rifleman's standard ACOG site, basic training, adding more marksmen to the squad and even the shortcomings of the standard issue magazines (Magpul gets a real big shout out for their PMAG M4 mag replacement). He concludes that only with significant changes to training, doctrine and weapons will infantry be able to engage targets out to 500 meters.

In the table of organization for a light infantry company only the six M240B 7.62-mm machineguns, two 60-mm mortars and nine designated marksman armed with either 7.62-mm M14 rifles or accurized 5.56-mm M16A4's rifles are able to effectively engage the enemy. These weapons systems represent 19 percent of the company's firepower. This means that 81 percent of the company has little effect on the fight. This is unacceptable.

I'm going to get into a number of these points throughout the week, but first off, I want to get into Ehrhart's description of meeting engagements in Afghanistan and the standard U.S. tactical response. The enemy travels light and employs supporting weapons from standoff, to include mortars and medium machineguns. Faced with these conditions, the modern [U.S.] infantry attempts to fix the enemy with direct fire and use supporting assets to kill the enemy, he writes.

Supporting assets is either artillery, if in range, or more commonly air strikes. My question, can U.S. troops be provided enough organic lethality that they can overmatch the enemy with both direct and indirect fires without having to wait for air strikes? Prompt air support might not always be available and the infantry must have the weapons to overmatch the Taliban.

The Soviets in Afghanistan ran into the same tactical challenge. Read accounts of Soviet infantry firefights in Afghanistan in the 1980s and you'll see they invariably hauled their AGS-17 30mm grenade launcher with them on most every dismounted operation, particularly in the mountains. It was cherished for its high rate of fire and nearly 1,700 meter range.

I know this gets into another important point the paper raises, which is an overly encumbered infantryman trying to run down Taliban light fighters. Yet, at around 50 pounds with tripod and ammo, the whole package was relatively light and mobile; it could be broken down into manageable parts. Soviet infantry valued the AGS-17 so much they built a special harness that attached to the assistant gunner's back so that if they ran into a firefight he would drop down on his stomach and the gunner would mount the grenade thrower to his back and begin firing. The AGS-17 became the weapon around which the squad or fire team was organized, much like the light machine gun in U.S. and western armies.

U.S. infantry do not have a comparable weapon. The Mk. 19 40mm launcher weighs 73 pounds (the AGS-17 gun weighs 37 pounds), and that's just the gun, add another 20 pounds for the tripod and then ammunition and you see why it's typically mounted on vehicles. The weapon also has a bad reputation for rattling itself apart during sustained use.

The Soviets learned pretty quickly in Afghanistan that high rates of fire were vital. Lessons from Afghanistan led them to mount auto-cannon on their BMP infantry fighting vehicles, BTR wheeled vehicles and they rushed lots of ZSU 234 quad anti-aircraft guns to theater. The Soviets had lots of towed, rapid fire anti-aircraft guns organic to their infantry units and these were liberally placed about combat outposts in Afghanistan.

Another U.S. shortcoming in the small arms fight is the lack of a GPS guided mortar round. Only now is the Army developing a GPS round for its 60mm and 81mm mortars, and they have yet to reach the battlefield. With a 60mm mortar and GPS guided rounds, American infantry would be ale to accurately target Taliban fighters on the next ridgeline, and even behind it.

The American military, and particularly the Army, has been platform focused, doctrine and weapons development has focused on crews fighting a mounted weapons system, be it a tank, Bradley or what have you (the Army plans to spend $7 billion over the next few years to develop a new armored fighting vehicle to add to its massive fleet of armored fighting vehicles). The future of irregular conflict will predominantly be small-unit infantry fights, a fact the acquisition community has not grasped. It's about time they did and begin fielding lightweight, highly accurate and lethal weapons that are easily carried by the infantry.

Are you trying to build a community for your company or brand? Are you looking to go beyond just big numbers of Facebook fans or Twitter followers?

This article reveals three important tips you need to know to help build and manage communities.

What Is Community Management?

Previously I wrote examined the different roles for those who work with social media in business. Among the many roles, the community manager is by far the most important because he or she is on the front lines of communication. Here's how I define community manager:

A community manager usually manages an editorial calendar for a blog/community, a Twitter account and various third-party social media channels like a Facebook fan page or a YouTube account.

A community manager may also be responsible for managing a social listening platform like Radian6 and filtering/assigning conversations to others in the business unit for a proper response. He or she may even organize in-person events (or town halls) to get feedback from the community. The community manager is the face of the brand. Conversations are at the core of the job responsibility.

Over the years, I have worked for several big brands and have learned some valuable lessons about community. When I refer to community, it's not just a social networking site where users are required to login and create profiles. Communities can be built on Twitter, YouTube and even on a blog where the conversations are happening within the comments.

Here are three lessons to consider when managing a community:

#1: Embed within your community.

During the War in Iraq, there were several journalists from various news organizations who would embed themselves within infantry units in order to get access to front line reporting. The result was that viewers were able to keep up to speed with what was going on several thousand miles away.

Community managers must also embed themselves within the community they serve and become integrated with the community.

The result is the collecting valuable data and insights from the community members and reporting back to management. The reporting is usually feedback on how to improve the company's products, services or business processes.

Community managers will be successful if they are authentic and leave egos at the door. Community members are smart and can see right through egos and many times they will call you on it. The best tip I can give to a community manager is just to be yourself.

During my time at Yahoo!, one of my core responsibilities was community management. In order to do this effectively, I had to earn the trust of the community. I accomplished this by taking off the mask of corporate America and doing what comes naturally: being myself. I invested hours a day just getting to know others in the community and engaging in really simple and personal conversations. It didn't take long for others to consider me a friend and begin to trust me.

#2: Don't just focus on monetizing.

The biggest mistake a community manager can make is to start screaming one-way marketing messages at the rest of the community. The members will do one of two things: they will either leave the community or call you out on it publicly. Both are bad for business and should be avoided at all costs.

Unfortunately, situations like this still happen today. Brands and small businesses create groups, fan pages or Ning communities for the sole reason of monetization. There may be some sales as a result, but there is little to no long-term benefit, much less repeat sales. Remember the old saying, It takes more to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing one.

The most effective strategy to drive revenue for a business is to build the community, earn members' trust and delicately ask for their permission to market your services, a wise proverb from Seth Godin.

#3: Don't just listen, get the community involved.

Yes, the hot topic today is listening and the tools are just about commoditized with new applications launching every month. Building strong customer loyalty is not just listening but also actingembedding yourself within the community and becoming a trusted voice there. However, the challenge for every business in social media is to eventually become believable. And that means winning consumer trust.

Here is an example during my tenure at Intel how we succeeded through social media after a big consumer marketing campaign:

In May 2009, Intel launched a Sponsors of Tomorrow commercial featuring Ajay Bhattthe co-inventor of the USB. Check out the video here:

The catch phrase, Our rock stars aren't like your rock stars, aimed to put a human face to the Intel brand. For a split second, one of the Ajay Bhatt fans in the video rips open his shirt to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with Bhatt's image. We were bombarded with requests for the T-shirt on Twitter, YouTube comments and on our blogs. We then ran a T-shirt contest through Twitter and gave away 100 Ajay Bhatt T-shirts.

Intel now runs an Ajay Bhatt fan page on Facebook where I see the number of fans still growing today.

Do you manage a community? What other tips would you suggest? I would love to hear your point of view, please comment below.

Anthropologist Michael Rakowitz has an upcoming exhibit at the Tate Museum in London in which he proposes that Saddam Hussein may have consciously or unconsciously been influenced by Western science fiction, particularly Star Wars. In New Scientist, Jessica Griggs writes:

You may have heard that when US troops stormed one of Saddam's palaces they stumbled across lurid posters by fantasy artist Rowena Morrill. But did you know that she's a close friend of Boris Vallejo, the artist who drew the iconic poster for The Empire Strikes Back depicting Darth Vader with two lightsabres crossed over his head?

Does the poster's image sound familiar? It is remarkably similar to Saddam's Hands of Victory monument commemorating Iraq's victory over Iran. The arch in central Baghdad consists of two bronze casts of Saddam's forearms holding two 43-metre-long crossed steel swords melted down from the weapons of slain Iraqis; the helmets of vanquished Iranians litter the base of the hands.

On inauguration day in 1989, Saddam rode through the arches on a white horse, declaring The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own or to be forced down a path which is not willed by him.

Could this all be coincidence? Perhaps, but you'll be convinced otherwise once you've read about Saddam's private militia's uniform. Before his son, Uday, handed over control of the Fedayeen Sadaam (translation: Saddam's Men of Sacrifice) to his younger brother he wanted to give his father something to remember his work by. So he presented Saddam with their new uniform: black shirt, black trousers and a ski-mask over which a strikingly Darth Vader-esque helmet was placed.

Link via Technabob | Exhibition Information | Images: New Scientist

Psst! Blues might be coming back every day of the week.

Not anytime soon, says Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, but there is the possibility and here's why: Schwartz's boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, told his joint staff members at the start of the year that service dress uniforms are the uniform of the day.

So now, airmen who work for Gates officers and enlisted members are showing up at the Pentagon in blues every day, enduring the scratchy material and daydreaming about their roomier, no-iron fatigues.

If change starts at the top and works its way down, ask yourself this if you work in an office: How much longer can it be before I'm wearing my service dress uniform for the whole workweek, too?

Schwartz isn't looking at any immediate changes to the current uniform policy, according to Lt. Col. Adriane Craig, his spokeswoman.

It was Schwartz, though, who, shortly after becoming chief, directed all nondeployed airmen with desk jobs to wear blues on Mondays, taking the first step toward reversing the cammies-all-the-time policy put in place after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In a memo dated Sept. 4, 2008, Schwartz announced the change effective four days later and explained why he with the blessing of the service's other four-star commanders made it.

We all agreed that part of our image, culture and professionalism is instilled in our blues, Schwartz wrote. As a result, the blue uniform will be the duty uniform worn every Monday by Air Force personnel in appropriate career fields and environments as determined by your installation commander.

For time immemorial, blues have helped identify airmen. If an airman wasn't turning a wrench, pulling guard duty, flying or hammering a nail, he wore blues. The notable exception were warrior days during the Persian Gulf War, when units with airmen assigned to patrols over Iraq encouraged airmen to put on their desert cammies to show support for their deployed colleagues.

Then, Sept. 11 happened, the U.S. went to war against al-Qaida and airmen traded in blues for fatigues.

The battlefield attire lasted until June 2003, when then-Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper decided he had had enough with the casual look. In a message to the major commands, Jumper complained about members in flight suits and BDUs at high-level staff meetings with civilian leadership.

Jumper's successor, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, reverted back to the policy of flight suits and fatigues, arguing America was still at war and airmen should dress like it.

The latitude Schwartz gave wing commanders under his blue Monday rule caused angst in the ranks.

Some wing commanders told airmen to wear long-sleeve shirts and ties; others gave the go-ahead for the short-sleeve shirt and no tie.

Military uniform stores ran short of belts and enlisted caps after airmen pulled their blues out of mothballs and found the clothes didn't fit or were worn out, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service reported. In the two weeks after Schwartz's announcement, Class B uniform sales jumped 60 percent.

Today, commanders still have to remind airmen to get dressed up on Mondays. At Minot Air Force Base, N.D., for example, officials put out a written reminder Jan. 21 that frigid weather and the warmer airman battle uniform did not trump the blue Monday rule for airmen who work in offices.

Related reading

* What the general wears

* You get the blues just thinking about it

Getting Saudi Arabia to take responsibility for Pakistan's actions is in India's interests

At a recent conference in Abu Dhabi on emerging powers and the Middle East, one of the arguments I made was that a stable Afghanistan requires a balance of two distinct sets of powersIndia-Iran-Russia on the one hand, and China-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia on the other. Even so, I suggested, Saudi Arabia (and the Gulf Arab states) would be better off not wholly aligning themselves to China, because they would be better off by balancing the two Asian powers than hitching themselves to any one of them.

The Saudi Arabian government has unparalleled clout in Pakistannot only does it have influence over almost all of Pakistan's power centres, it is also popular with the masses. Riyadh has managed Pakistan masterfully. While there is a Saudi-Pakistan nuclear nexus (and a Saudi-China ballistic missile nexus) it is focused on Riyadh's perception of the strategic threat from Iran. And while the Saudi Arabian regime continues to promote its version of Islam across the worldincluding Indiait also recognises that global jihadi terrorism undermines its own interests.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, like any other state, is deeply interested in its own survival and securityjust as it uses Islam to promote its interests, it has not shied away from putting down any threats to its own survival. It allowed French special forces to storm the Grand Mosque at Mecca in 1979, it allowed US forces to operate from its soil against Iraq and it has not allowed the Palestinian struggle to come in the way of a modus vivendi with Israel.

Given all this, it makes good sense for India to engage Saudi Arabia on managing the security threat emanating from Pakistan. Shashi Tharoor is right when he said Saudi Arabia of course has a long and close relationship with Pakistan but that makes Saudi Arabia all the more valuable interlocutor for us (via Smita Prakash/ANI). Introducing the special issue of Pragati in February 2009, we had argued that the dynamics of Pakistan's relationship with United States, China and Saudi Arabia are changing and that there is an opportunity for India to engage in bold, imaginative diplomacy to galvanise the international community to radically change Pakistan's course.

Recognising Saudi Arabia as an interlocutor on Pakistan brings Riyadh's role above the table. India must compel the Kingdom to take responsibility for the actions of its wards in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Even if religious solidarity, personal relationships and the nuclear nexus are factors that shape Saudi policy, Riyadh is unlikely to be insensitive to its overall geopolitical interests. In January 2006, The Acorn wrote that Saudi Arabia is taking baby steps towards a different relationship with India. Though that may be too gradual for India's liking, it is nevertheless a welcome development. So too are the milestones scheduled to be highlighted during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's trip this week. [Related Links: Jyoti Malhotra in Business Standard, article & editorial in Arab News]

Just as the Saudis are better off hedging India and China, it is in India's interests to balance the powers on either side of the Persian Gulf.

Tailpiece: Back at the conference, I challenged the conventional wisdom that it is India-Pakistan tensions (oversimplified to Kashmir) that stand in the way of Afghanistan's stability. Rather, I argued, it is the US-Iran relationship that forces the United States to rely on a state that has opposing interests (Pakistan) and repulse a state that shares them (Iran). Lubricating a US-Iran rapprochement is in India's interests.

Psst! Blues might be coming back every day of the week.

Not anytime soon, says Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, but there is the possibility and here's why: Schwartz's boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, told his joint staff members at the start of the year that service dress uniforms are the uniform of the day.

So now, airmen who work for Gates officers and enlisted members are showing up at the Pentagon in blues every day, enduring the scratchy material and daydreaming about their roomier, no-iron fatigues.

If change starts at the top and works its way down, ask yourself this if you work in an office: How much longer can it be before I'm wearing my service dress uniform for the whole workweek, too?

Schwartz isn't looking at any immediate changes to the current uniform policy, according to Lt. Col. Adriane Craig, his spokeswoman.

It was Schwartz, though, who, shortly after becoming chief, directed all nondeployed airmen with desk jobs to wear blues on Mondays, taking the first step toward reversing the cammies-all-the-time policy put in place after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In a memo dated Sept. 4, 2008, Schwartz announced the change effective four days later and explained why he with the blessing of the service's other four-star commanders made it.

We all agreed that part of our image, culture and professionalism is instilled in our blues, Schwartz wrote. As a result, the blue uniform will be the duty uniform worn every Monday by Air Force personnel in appropriate career fields and environments as determined by your installation commander.

For time immemorial, blues have helped identify airmen. If an airman wasn't turning a wrench, pulling guard duty, flying or hammering a nail, he wore blues. The notable exception were warrior days during the Persian Gulf War, when units with airmen assigned to patrols over Iraq encouraged airmen to put on their desert cammies to show support for their deployed colleagues.

Then, Sept. 11 happened, the U.S. went to war against al-Qaida and airmen traded in blues for fatigues.

The battlefield attire lasted until June 2003, when then-Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper decided he had had enough with the casual look. In a message to the major commands, Jumper complained about members in flight suits and BDUs at high-level staff meetings with civilian leadership.

Jumper's successor, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, reverted back to the policy of flight suits and fatigues, arguing America was still at war and airmen should dress like it.

The latitude Schwartz gave wing commanders under his blue Monday rule caused angst in the ranks.

Some wing commanders told airmen to wear long-sleeve shirts and ties; others gave the go-ahead for the short-sleeve shirt and no tie.

Military uniform stores ran short of belts and enlisted caps after airmen pulled their blues out of mothballs and found the clothes didn't fit or were worn out, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service reported. In the two weeks after Schwartz's announcement, Class B uniform sales jumped 60 percent.

Today, commanders still have to remind airmen to get dressed up on Mondays. At Minot Air Force Base, N.D., for example, officials put out a written reminder Jan. 21 that frigid weather and the warmer airman battle uniform did not trump the blue Monday rule for airmen who work in offices.

Related reading

* What the general wears

* You get the blues just thinking about it