Respectful Dissent; humor

Thank you, Mr. Gates.

In the newly established spirit of respectful dissent, a few things I think are a waste of taxpayer money.

New uniforms. In the middle of a very costly war (the most expensive ever?), all the services are changing uniforms, and in the case of the Air Force, they are inventing new ones (the PT gear). Why are new uniforms necessary? Were the old* ones not working? I won't speak for the other services, but our DCUs used to work fine, and still better than the new ABU since they don't glow in white light after one wash, and catch on fire and melt to your skin when shot, as the ABU does. Here's a cost saving idea: Scrap every new uniform you have people not fighting the war working on, and keep the old ones. Put those people to work fighting the war. Further cost saving: Don't issue us all two uniforms (green and tan). Make tans general issue since most of the AF is going to see combat in the desert, not Germany or Japan.

The F-22. Yes, a cornerstone for U.S. defense spending for the next 5 years. And to pay for this item, we have (so far) decimated about 7 years worth of officer ranks, by making fewer officers and paying others to quit. (I don't have enough firsthand knowledge of what it's done to the enlisted ranks, but I have been briefed in the past that Force Shaping was supposed to affect all ranks.) People, most definitely not the AF's most valuable resource. There was a cartoon that made this point quite well a few years ago, I will try to link to it directly if I can find it. Check out the site below. Boyd, who I will return to again, would have said of priorities: "People, ideas, hardware. In that order."

The Dodo is (was?) a paper document that circulated at USAFA for many decades. It started underground, then eventually came under the purview of the establishment and was still circulated in censored form during my time there (graduated 2000). I've heard rumors it no longer circulates in any fashion. However, in 1998 a group of grads got together a formed a private website to host the comics that wouldn't be allowed at USAFA, and it is still going strong. A lot of the humor is directed at cadets and grads, but there is still plenty there you will find funny if you don't fall into those two groups. Incidentally, it is also often my best source of tactical level information on things going on at the Academy. eDodo

[edit 30 apr 08: changed new to old.* (Am I dyslexic?)]