Since military enlistment levels aren't keeping up with US military needs, the possibility of robot snipers in Iraq is an increasingly likely one. How else might the Bush administration cope with low enlistment rates? Why, paid private hire, of course-- and Frontline has just the feature for those following "Private Warriors" .Grateful to DefenseTech for the links.
Also tangential to this topic, Ed Harriman uses actual budgetary documents in his coverage of the auditors in Iraq for the London Review of Books. Harriman describes the effects of precision bombing as rather unbudgeted:
In March this year, a further $832 million ‘was reprogrammed for management initiatives’, largely ‘for operations and maintenance at various power and water plants, urgent work in the electrical and oil sectors’ to repair sabotage damage, and to pay for building contracts on which it had become extremely dangerous and expensive to work. The most recent audit, issued in April, reports that projects are running between 50 and 85 per cent above the original estimated costs. The free-spending days are over. Americans are having to divert increasing amounts of US development money just to keep what remains of Iraq’s damaged public utilities working, and to finance the Iraqi police and army.
