Saturday's New York Times and embedded scholars in America's wars

Anyone worth his inquisitive salt should read on line or in print the Saturday edition of the New York Times. In that weekend day's edition, surprisingly interesting articles appear which never would find their way in weekday and Sunday editions. Last week, it was the US Bureau of the Budget's findings that thanks to Bush & co's tax cuts to the wealthy that the top 1 per cent of household income increased in two years--2003 to 2005--46,1 percent whilst the other quartiles of the country's ratepayers did not advance but in the hundreds of dollars! Today in the Arts & Leisure pages in the Metro section we have a longish article of embedded social scientists [read anthropologists] who under the cover of Harvard are helping fight with tools of their trade the war in Afghanistan on our side. Precedent of the enrolment of social scientists in the good war meaning world war 2, is evoked to give the current enterprise a veneer of respectability, but nary a word on say the Johnson and Nixon administrations who through the CIA and other covert agencies used these very social scientists to wage America's disasterous war in Vietnam and covertly in Laos and Cambodia. There is nothing neutral about embedded social scientists; they are there to identify, uncover the enemy which the good side has to capture, torture, or kill on the battlefield.
In this age of Guantanamo and Abu Gharib, the American Psychological Association is in the throes of scandal since they see nothing wrong aiding and abetting in torture, although they are quick to say they are there neutrally to save prisoners from extreme forms of torture! Now the American Anthropologists Association's latest meeting had a polite discussion on the matter of its members embedded with American troops in Afghanistan. No conclusive results came of this sterile debate and the AAA sidestepped the issue. But Harvard has since it has at the head of its programme a former Pentagon official with a Ph.D., and oodles of money to run an institute which will honey coat the ugly fact that these civilian are in the business of torturing and killing people.
Had these social sciences associations of the chattering monkies had their druthers, they simply would encourage members who want to contribute to the 'war' effort to enlist in the military. In this way, the lines will would be drawn more finely. They wish to remain with soap clean soft hand whilst they engage in the swamp of reprehensible activities.
A last word today: Tom Hayden and Archibald Cox, you know those trouble makers of the Vietnam war and Watergate scandal have brought the issue to light. But for the flunkies of Bush & co such as the press and the universities with large government grants, these people are 'retro' and suspect and damaged goods. Well the good Germans will have a price to pay soon!