The War

Since everyone else is putting in their 2 cents worth so will I.

It is a fact that the basis for going to war was Wrong. There is no arguing that Iraq did not have the weapons of mass destruction as we were led to believe. Was this done on purpose? I don't know and neither do you. It is all water under the bridge and not worth arguing about until the war is over and everyone home.

Should we pull out? No. Once we invaded the country we have an obligation to finish the job and install a stable regime that can defend itself and it's citizens. Until this is done we stay and suffer the costs and deaths associated with being there.

My real question about the war has to do with technology and all those lovely tricks that I have seen in war movies over the past few years and read in various books. We know that the insurgents are planting road side bombs on the most traveled routes. Why don't we have satellites in orbit over Iraq constantly monitoring the ground and identifying patterns where someone is planting a bomb? With computer technology they should be able to pick up all the moving pieces on a road and around it. Then they can watch for aberrations such as an unexpected stop in a lonely area and then continued movement. Supposedly a computer could do this with ease and notify the military that X spot is likely a bomb. Experience could lead to a refined process so there aren't many false alarms or perhaps that is when a human sitting in the Pentagon steps in and reviews the tape to actually see if someone stopped and put a bomb down. If a bomb is planted then the person doing so can be tracked to their current location and/or back to where they came from. Same goes for car bombs. Ok, we can't really pick them out of the crowd but once one goes off you could backtrack through the surveillance tapes and find it's source. Then blow the hell out of the source. You do enough of this tracking you could bounce from the car bomb to it's garage source then follow all the folks that went in and out of the garage and you find some safe houses, etc, etc.

Insurgents crossing the borders with Syria? Now you have proof and can track them and eliminate them. Imagine the Syrian ambassador when you pop in the tape of folks crossing the border. Heck, air that tape on Al-Jazeera and then shut down all movement into and out of Syria - period - until they play ball. We are dieing here folks.

I have heard the folks paranoid about big brother, I don't think they have anything to fear if we can't use our current technology to track these bastards in Iraq. Personally, all the new bombers and boats and bombs should be put on hold until the system I have in mind is up and running.

The 3 Bs won't save lives in the short term and a surveillance system will and could be used repeatedly for similar problems. Drug dealers in the jungles - tracked. Illegal immigrants at the border - tracked. Terrorists the world over - tracked. Historical sites being pillaged by tomb robbers - tracked.

Why isn’t' the media all over this? Because they don't want to actually help solve a problem, they need problems to stay in business.