• The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003-January 2005 : on point II : transition to the new campaign by Donald P. Wright, Timothy R. Reese ; with the Contemporary Operations Study Team. June 2008 (720 pages, PDF, 104Mb). Also available in paper copy from GPO.

From the Combat Studies Institute web site:

On Point II is the US Army's first historical study of its campaign in Iraq in the decisive eighteen months following the overthrow of the Baathist regime in April 2003. The book examines both the high-level decisions that shaped military operations after May 2003 as well as the effects of those decisions on units and Soldiers who became responsible for conducting those operations.

The authors, historians at the US Army's Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, based this account on hundreds of interviews with key participants and thousands of primary documents. Critical chapters in this book address the decision to disband the Iraqi Army, detainee operations (including the incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison), reconstruction efforts, and the Army's response to the growing insurgency.

At the core of On Point II is the dramatic story of how after May 2003, the US Army reinvented itself by transforming into an organization capable of conducting a broad array of diverse and complex "Full Spectrum" operations. This was the new campaign that confronted American Soldiers beginning in May 2003 as they strived to create stability in Iraq.

See also: Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History, by Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, June 29, 2008.

It turns out that the fear of domestic surveillance by our government and the repression of citizens' civil rights is not a new issue. Total Information Awareness (TIA) is not a nightmare dreamed up by John Poindexter. Modern Mechanix has unearthed an Atlantic article from November, 1967 called, "The National Data Center and Personal Privacy" by Arthur R. Miller (no not THAT Arthur Miller!) in which is described the building of a large central database to compile large amounts of statistical/personal/medical data on US citizens. It was so scary that there were Congressional hearings on computers and their use to invade citizens' privacy.

But such a Data Center poses a grave threat to individual freedom and privacy. With its insatiable appetite for information, its inability to forget anything that has been put into it, a central computer might become the heart of a government surveillance system that would lay bare our finances, our associations, or our mental and physical health to government inquisitors or even to casual observers. Computer technology is moving so rapidly that a sharp line between statistical and intelligence systems is bound to be obliterated. Even the most innocuous of centers could provide the “foot in the door” for the development of an individualized computer-based federal snooping system.

For those with access to LexisNexis Congressional you can read the entire hearing online including Edgar Dunn's testimony or get thee to a federal depository library to check out the hearing. Here's the entire citation:

The computer and invasion of privacy. Hearings, Eighty-ninth Congress, second session. July 26, 27, and 28, 1966. by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Special Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy.

[Thanks BoingBoing!]

If you wish to pay your respects but cannot travel to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in D.C., can now do so from your computer. NARA and Footnote.com have released a searchable digital replica of the Memorial Wall.

The site also allows you to "leave a tribute, a story or photograph about any of the 58,256 veterans killed or missing in the Vietnam War".

Word of warning, the site claims that due to recent high traffic, you might experience slow loading pages or images. They are working to improve this.

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report entitled (45 page pdf) Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2007, updated January 14, 2008 .  It reviews hundreds of instances in which the United States has sent military forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict to protect U.S. citizens or promote U.S. interests. The listed deployments vary in size and length, legal authorization and significance. In eleven separate cases listed in bold-face type the U.S. formally declared war against foreign nations; but for most the status of the action under domestic or international law hasn't been addressed.  A sample entry:

"1798-1800      Undeclared  Naval  War  with  France.    This  contest  included  land actions, such as that in the Dominican Republic, city of Puerto Plata, where marines captured a French privateer under the guns of the forts. Congress authorized military action through a series of statutes.
1801-05          Tripoli.   The   First   Barbary   War   included   the U.S.S. George Washington and Philadelphia affairs and the Eaton expedition, during which a few marines landed with United States Agent William Eaton to raise a force against Tripoli in an effort to free the crew of the Philadelphia.    Tripoli  declared  war  but  not  the  United  States, although Congress authorized U.S. military action by statute."

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is calling for the papers of the Founding Fathers Project to be made available to all Americans through the Internet  according to a story in a Vermont newspaper.  The Project has been collecting and annotating the papers for 50 years.  The project has been criticized for moving too slowly and for costing more than an estimated $60 million in federal and private funding.  Leahy's Committee heard testimony from Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough whose access to the papers of John Adams contributed to research for his award-winning biography. 
Leahy is quoted in a press release as saying "I support the prompt digitization of all of the Founding Fathers’ Papers, so that this information can be made available to all Americans via the Internet.  If Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and Franklin could pipe into this discussion today, we all know that they would ask, “What are you waiting for?”  Harnessing the exquisite power of the Internet to preserve and proliferate the Founders’ papers is a marriage made in Heaven. "