Vietnam

A recently-unearthed U.S. Navy research project calls for creating mad-made floods and droughts to "disrupt [the] economy" of an enemy state.

GRAB them by the beards, and their hearts and minds will follow: Thus has Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, who oversees thousands of detainees in Iraq , updated a below-the-belt epigram from the Vietnam era. In a Defense Department roundtable with bloggers held in late September, Stone said he was re-educating fundamentalist Muslims - some as young as 11 - in a more moderate version of Islam. Recently, these newly minted moderates, under the watchful eye of their U.S. guards, identified some of the unrepentant fundamentalists, "threw them up against the fence, and shaved the frickin' beards off of them," exulted Stone. "I mean, that is historic."