<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> The article below brought to mind Dwayne's point about the inevitable outcome of competing technologies -- which, as it turns out, doesn't always favor the most "advanced." Joanna ____________________________________________ A <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region> veteran offers an interesting and telling incident summing up his personal feelings about the war "I remember the moment when I knew we were going to lose the war in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Frustrated by our inability to find the elusive Viet Cong, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> had developed a top-secret program to locate enemy troop concentrations. <o:p></o:p> It was a "people sniffer," a device sensitive to the presence of ammonia in urine that could be hung from a helicopter flying low over the jungle. When a high reading was identified, artillery was directed at the area. <o:p></o:p> One evening in 1968 I was attending an end-of-the-day regimental briefing and an infantry captain was describing a sweep through the jungle. He and his men had encountered something they could not explain: buckets of urine hanging from the trees. The regimental commander and his intelligence officer exchanged looks as they silently acknowledged that we were firing artillery (at $250 a round) at buckets of urine all over <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>." [snip] for the rest, see <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3379C496-BA09-4CDE-A93E-2B36DCF7F36E.htm">http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3379C496-BA09-4CDE-A93E-2B36DCF7F36E.htm</a> Joanna </body> </html>