What Caught My Eye Today

Russia - Break out your favorite 'military intelligence' oxymoron quips. Fifty of Russia's 249 generals failed a pop quiz and will be fired. The Deputy Defense Minister said, "We do not intend to keep officers who are not up to par for their positions and high titles in the armed forces." That's right, if you want to get paid for being incompetent you should have applied for a government job. The proficiency test and subsequent firings ar epart of a general downsizing of Russia's military. An additional 133 generals will be forced to retire this year because of poor health or old age. Ultimately, the number of officers will be more than halved, to 150,000, for an army of about 1 million. So let me see if I've got this straight. If 150,000 represents a reduction of more than 50%, that means there are more than 300,000 officers currently. If my math is correct (and I think it is), that is soldier to officer ratio of 3 to 1. I've been on luxury cruise ships where the staff to passenger ratio twice that. Just how much leadership do these guys need?

Spain - Spain has opened a judical investigation of those responsible for alleged torture at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Spanish officials were moved to act after speaking to prisoners who said they were beaten, sexually assaulted, and had chemicals sprayed in their eyes. What, no waterboarding? The inquiry will examine "perpetrators, instigators, necessary collaborators, and accomplices" to tourture, including soldiers and military intelligence officers. The investigation is separate from an ongoing Spanish inquiry into abusive interrogation techniques that could result in charges agains former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush administration officials. Ah right, there it is. All I have to say is that Congress better get its act together if it wants to level charges against anyone in the Bush Administration. Otherwise, Congress is likely to find itself waiting in line behind the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Or perhaps not, seeing as the United States is one of the few countries that does not recognize the Court's authority. Either way, the fact that an ally of the United States has opened a criminal investigation against former U.S. officials cannot be good.

Canada - I'm not purposely targeting Canadians; it's just that they happen to be one of the first to admit to a problem every other technologically advanced nation all faces. Canada's tax agency is stockpiling hundreds of old computers containing sensitive taxpayer data that officials are unable to delete. Tax offices around the country have been storing old hard drives in locked facilities. Some have resorted to smashing computer to destroy the data. Police officials said to properly destroy a hard drive, it should be run through commerical equipment that slices it into bits no bigger than the width of a pencil. See, you all are making this way too complicated. There is a simple solution to this. Here's what you do--Fire up one of those bad boys and connect to the Internet. Navigate to a website of questionable repute (otherwise known as a porn site). I promise that within a couple of minutes, you will have so many pop up ads, the computer will be pretty much useless. Not that I speak from personal experience or anything like that. I...uh...yeah, I read an article about this in...uh...yeah, a journal. That's right.

Prisons - Here's another entry for the So Stupid It Must Be True file. As a cost cutting measure, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has been allowing prisoners to transfer themselves, unescorted, from one prison to another. Brilliant. Simply brilliant, wouldn't you say? Officials have confirmed that some prisoners at minimum security facilities are given bus tickets and told to make the trip to the next prison on their own, and that some prisoners have seized the opportunity to escape. A Bureau spokeswomen said "the savings are substantial. Obviously. I mean if a prisoner escapes, you no longer have the overhead costs associated with incarcerating the guy anymore. I want to know what's wrong with the prisoners that didn't try to escape. Some just ain't right with those dudes.