Cyborg army being developed. Oh… good.

We're using robots big and small in Iraq. Made in the USA. It is DOD policy that by 2015 all vehicles on an American battle field will be robots. Thus, this Orwellian scenario could develop. As the USA develops an armed force of robots less advanced nations, some of them our allies, fearing global domination by the US, unite and launch a pre-emptive strike against America.

You Wrote: "As the USA develops an armed force of robots less advanced nations, some of them our allies, fearing global domination by the US, unite and launch a pre-emptive strike against America."

It is extremely unlikely (read impossible) that the entire world would or could join together and attack us. I mean, Europe couldn't even get together to form a union that might economically rival the US. France refused to sign the constitution of the European Union. Russia is too busy trying to hold on to its influence over former Soviet states which puts it in direct conflict with Europe. Japan would never side with China against us. The world needs several hundred more years of US tyranny before they will be able to overcome hundreds and thousands of years of animosity towards each other in order to unite against the US. Turks and Greeks, Shiite and Sunni, Chinese and Japanese, Russians and Ukrainians, Indian and Pakistani, etc. You are greatly underestimating established prejudices.

The US, like every great power, will probably collapse from within, not from outside forces. This will take a long time to happen, but it will happen, it always does.

Hi Roger, is it just me, be when I read your reply, although I agree wholeheartedly with what you have said, this and the original post left me with a feeling of national paranoia emanating from the States? I have to say, the general feeling here in the UK is that the USA's foreign policy could use some work, and our politicians do tend to use 'foreign threats' as a way of getting through unpopular legislation, but this is a bit much!

Many of us here in the U.S. also feel our foreign policies, and many of our domestic policies are ill conceived and borderline disasterous, but at the end of the day, we are Americans. We are not going to hate our own county. Many of us believe that when the elections come in 2008, the new president will start to set things right. We believe in our democracy.

At the same time, there is a growing sentiment here that the rest of the world is getting a bit preachy and self righteous. After all, what are other nations doing that are so good? It's not like the US is stopping anybody from going to the Sudan to stop the genocide there. Where is the outcry from you guys on that? You're as silent as we are, and just as guilty. Yes the U.S. made a mistake when it invaded Iraq (in my opinion) and continues to pursue a terrible policy of refusing to admit that mistake.

Look, lets be real, what the U.S. is doing in Iraq is wrong. We messed up and its a mess and we don't know what to do. If we pull out, things get worse, if we stay, things get worse. We don't know what to do.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, but criticism at this point would not be.

Hi Roger, I'm not being critical, just concerned! We have a great tradition of electing who we expect to be the next best thing as regards politicians, only to realise, just after the election, what a dirty, lying cheating rogue they are. My point is, why do we feel it necessary to go down this route? We have more and more spending on arms, yet is the threat there to warrant it? (Please bear in mind that I have close personal connections to the RAF, and when I say we, I include the UK and US, but as tradition dictates, not France) And if the threat is there, are we creating it? Are we spending much on prevention as opposed to defence? You should be proud of your country, as am I, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to be critical, quite the reverse. Any way, thats enough philosophy for a Monday!

I think you are mistaking the policies of my country as consistent with what I believe. Just because the media or the US government says that the Patriot act is necessary or increased defense spending is necessary because of terrorism doesn't mean I believe it. I'm as tired of this overreaction to terrorism as anybody, and I'm not the only one here in the states that feel that way. The U.S. is deeply divided nation right now as can be seen by every election for the past eight years.

You said that my remarks sounded paranoid. My remarks were basically "The world won't unite to attack us". The world doesn't just hate us, there is plenty of hate to go around. What about that is paranoid?

Politics is always a tough subject. I hope you know generally agree with you on many of your posts and harbor no ill will here. I just want to open the possibility to you that you may be speaking here under misconceptions of what some of us Americans believe.

Also, I think there is a general misunderstanding regarding our type of Democracy. We are a representitive democracy, not a parlimentary one. In our style of Democracy, the President has enormous power. As one man, he can pretty much dictate policy unless the opposition party has a huge majority in the Senate or Congress, which it doesn't. That's why the 2008 elections are crucial. Change won't come to American politics till a new President is in office.

The problem with government overreaction is that the impetus pressuring towards one side can only be maintained for a short while, then there tends to be a huge swing in the other direction. Extreme external or internal pressures drive us to make extreme irrational decisions, i.e. extreme poverty was an impetus for the popular rise to power of socialism and faschism in 1930s Europe. The fear has been used in the last 8 years to drive a policy that rewards a lot of corruption in the US. Iraq probably wasn't a bad idea, just severely mismanaged, the US should have handled it more along the lines of Japan, which by the way we created their current State. I predicted Iraq early on when we first went into Afghanistan. The govenrment needed a distraction for the media, a real war scenario to keep them off Afghanistan. Afghanistan would have been correlated to vietnam real quick by the media and become extremely unpopular with the sheep. Afghanistan needed to be addressed. The news coverage of vietnam made it so unpopular we lost a war by winning all the battles just not fast enough. Iraq was a winnable war, good distraction for the press, always popular with the baby boomers wanting to prove themselves again, good for the politicians. The peace is unwinnable, and the US never likes to stay involved (it cost people money). Many democrats and republicans were on board with war in iraq. The smart thing for Bush would have been to win the war and pull the troops out, let them fight it out themselves for political control, or Europe to send 300,000 UN troops and prove the inadequacy of the UN. In the end all of this will make previously untenable candidates for president like Clinton or Obama viable. Swing way Right, now way Left (just always remain corrupt).

Things are not as bad as all that.

Some experts say that the primary reason for the overthrow of Saddam was to gain the cooperation of various Middle East intelligence services that were not talking to us and to this end it was a success. Dozens of plots to follow up the 911 attack have been thwarted thanks to this cooperation.

The economy is good.

Unemployment is down.

Incomes are up.

Alternative energy and green technologies are being spurred on like never before.

The battle in Iraq is at worst a stalemate, and a stalemate we eventually win as the Iraq government takes over.

Islamo-facism does not appear to be increasing in popularity.

There is no significant difference in the freedom the American people enjoyed in 2000 and what they have in 2007.

Compare the current state of affairs to the year 2000. The USA then was in the beginning of a recession and Al Quada was nearing completion of its planned second attack against the twin towers. US Embassies had recently been attacked with a large loss of life. The USS Cole had been attacked and nearly destroyed. Several other terrorist attacks against American interests and military personel had occurred. The news media was not making an issue of terrorism and most people were just not aware of it.

"As the USA develops an armed force of robots less advanced nations, some of them our allies, fearing global domination by the US, unite and launch a pre-emptive strike against America."

Is that you, James Cameron? Your plot for Terminator 4 needs some work, bro'.

BTW, your recent documentatory on the Discovery Channel wasn't very convincing.

The article from SCI FI Tech is fine, but Defense Update has a more complete version of the story. Plus, there's a link to a video of a prototype.