British colonel's scathing attack on 'arrogant, bureaucratic' AmericansRichardo Sanchez, left, the coalition commander in Iraq, is said to have had minimal contact with senior British officers Photo: EPA Restricted - Staff Interviewed 8 September 2004, 0830hrs, Watchfield [British Staff College, Shrivenham] [Retyped from the original version for source protection reasons. The complete response to each question is given but not all questions are included]  Q: Did you receive the correct level of advice and support for the nation-building task that the Division faced? A: We got virtually no advice for nation-building and we had to make up a lot of things ourselves. Surprisingly, as a result, we got ahead of the Americans in the North. I was particularly lucky because I enjoyed complete support from PJHQ [Permanent Joint Headquarters, the main UK-based operational command HQ] over nearly everything. Unfortunately, they often did not have the resources to give us as these were embedded in the CPA [the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.] At that level the bureaucratic inefficiency, the inability to spend money, even though it was there, and the frustrations that this caused were immense. This was compounded by US commercial practices as their system of contracts seemed designed to exclude all other but US business. The whole system was appalling. We experienced real difficulty in dealing with the American military and civilian organisations who, partly through arrogance and partly through bureaucracy, dictate that there is only one way: the American way. As far as the Iraqis were concerned, here was a nation who could put people on the moon but who could not, or would not, fix the electricity supply. You need to have money in order to make things happen, to buy protection from the looters, to smooth out tribal problems and to have…

   Republicans face up to Specter of a grim future Out of America: Senior senator's defection may deprive his old party of its last political weapon: the filibuster   Sunday, 3 May 2009  How much further can the Republicans fall? In 2006 they lost control of Congress. Last year they lost the White House. And now they're about to lose their last bit of serious political weaponry: the filibuster. In one shape or another, this classic legislative blocking device of talking a bill to death exists in almost every parliamentary democracy. Nowhere, though, does it enjoy a quasi-mythical status as in the US Senate. For that we can thank Jimmy Stewart, who, as the innocent and virtuous Senator Jefferson Smith, staged the most famous of all filibusters, albeit a fictional one, in Frank Capra's 1939 movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington.In fact, the tactic had been around since the 19th century, and Capra's version was probably inspired by the mid-1930s antics of Huey Long, the populist and autocratic governor and senator from Louisiana who once spoke for 15 hours non-stop against a bill he thought did not do enough to help the poor, entertaining his non-existent audience by reciting Shakespeare and his favoured southern recipes.Filibusters really came into their own, however, in the 1950s and 1960s, as the last resort of southern senators opposed to civil rights legislation. The two great claims to fame of Strom Thurmond of South Carolina are that he was the only man to serve in the Senate when he was 100 years old, and that he staged the longest ever individual filibuster, in August 1957 against a bill enabling blacks to exercise their right to vote. It lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes and featured Thurmond reading verbatim the voting rights of all 48 states. (Hawaii…

 Internet Security 101: What not to post on Facebook A Consumer Reports survey found that more than half of adults who use social networks post information that puts them at risk for identity theft and other cyber crimes. A survey of 2,000 U.S. households in January showed 9% of those who used social networks were victims of malware, identity theft, scams of harassment within the last year, according to Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports. (The group did not say how that rate compares with similar households that do not use social networks.) But what constitutes risky information? Here's a handy list of seven things that Consumer Reports says users should "stop doing now" on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or any other social network:Using a weak password. Avoid simple names or words that can be found in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of the word.

Listing a full birth date. Listing a full birth date -- month, day and year -- makes a user an easy  target for identity thieves, who can use it to obtain more personal information and potentially gain access to bank and credit card accounts. Consumer Reports' survey showed 38% posted their full birth dates. Choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

Overlooking useful privacy controls. Facebook users can limit access for almost everything that is posted on a profile, including photos and family information. Leave out contact info, such as phone number and home address.

Posting a child's name in a caption. Don’t use a child's name in photo tags or captions. If someone…

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