As much as we in the western world abhor Big Brother, except in England, perhaps, the US military should have been very Big Brother-ish in Iraq, with an eye to restoring order faster.
By this, I mean that our ground forces should have had hand-held units that would quickly register every Iraqi they met. I’m thinking of a small, hand-held device with a Wi-Fi connection to a local laptop computer that is itself connected to a military civilian database.
Say our soldiers meet a group of Iraqi citizens. One at a time, their picture would be taken by the device, at the same time it invisibly measured their height. Then the Iraqi would be told to clench the device in his right hand, and then his left, where both his hand prints would be scanned.
He would be asked him name, and the name of his tribe, his address, his religion, questions about his family and a few other things, and his voice would be recorded. Then a cheek swab would be later used to register his DNA.
Then while this was entered in the database and cross checked to see if he was already in it, the laptop would print him out a laminated ID card with his picture on the front of it, and encrypted 3D bar code on the back. No text that could be read by anyone else, except those that had a scanner.
From that point forward, his ID card would be part of a national census, his voter registration, his ration card, his key to government services, his criminal record, and would automatically alert if he was far from home or had outstanding wants or warrants.
Now, as repulsive as this would be to Americans, it might shave a year or three off a military occupation, which in turn might save a lot of our soldiers lives and help us to leave that country faster.
Anyone who kept their ID card with them would get a quick pass, but to not have their ID card would mean they would be detained until they could be identified and issued a card. Cards would be extremely difficult to fake, and easy to cross check.
People under a military occupation should expect to be under tight control until order is restored. And to deny the enemy the ability to hide in plain sight would be worth its weight in gold.
Maybe if we had him working in the States, Franken would not be leading in the Senate race.
Do ya think he could kill ACORN?