to our history; it's poorly taught, mostly and de-emphasized everywhere -- amazingly so in the Armed Forces. That and the ego that says "I don't need to know what someone else did because this situation is unique (almost never true) and I am unique (too often true -- and not in a good way)."

So, we get to continually reinvent wheels. In my lifetime we've invented round ones three times, triangular ones twice, Square five times (a US Army specialty) and polygons of various degrees about six times.

We also have 'up or out' and a personnel system that moves you to justify its own existence and those two things destroy any attempts at continuity. Add the pressure to do something stupendous in each rating season and you've got an invitation to trouble. The truly sad -- even agonizing -- thing is that virtually every error in Iraq either I or one of my equally old buds predicted and that includes the detainee bit...