Transforming the National Guard and Reserves into a 21st-Century Operational Force
Final Report to Congress and the Secretary of Defense
Published January 31, 2008

"The Commission concludes that there is no reasonable alternative to the nation’s continued increased reliance on reserve components as part of its operational force for missions at home and abroad. However, the Commission also concludes that this change from their Cold War posture necessitates fundamental reforms to reserve components’ homeland roles and missions, personnel management systems, equipping and training policies, policies affecting families and employers, and the organizations and structures used to manage the reserves. These reforms are essential to ensure that this operational reserve is feasible in the short term while sustainable over the long term. In fact, the future of the all-volunteer force depends for its success on policymakers’ undertaking needed reforms to ensure that the reserve components are ready, capable, and available for both operational and strategic purposes."

New York Times, 02/13/2008
by Eric Lichtblau
"After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants."

Rand has posted the final report of their Counterinsurgency Study series. The central question the study attempted to answer was "How should the United States improve its capabilities to counter insurgencies, particularly those that are heavily influenced by transnational terrorist movements and thus linked into a global jihadist network?"

Previous reports

* Heads We Win -- The Cognitive Side of Counterinsurgency (COIN). RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Paper 1
http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP168.pdf

* Subversion and Insurgency. RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Paper 2 http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP172.pdf

* Understanding Proto-Insurgencies. RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Paper 3
http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP178.pdf

* Money in the Bank -- Lessons Learned from Past Counterinsurgency (COIN) Operations. RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Paper 4
http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP-185.pdf

* Byting Back -- Regaining Information Superiority Against 21st-Century Insurgents. RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Volume 1
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG595.1.pdf

* Counterinsurgency in Iraq (2003-2006) RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Volume 2
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG595.3.pdf

From the Defense Science Board Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Surety: The Task Force report is an independent assessment of the systemic causes of the August 30 unauthorized movement of nuclear warheads from Minot AFB, North Dakota to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. Based on the information and insights gained from investigating and assessing these systemic causes, the report includes 16 recommendations to strengthen nuclear weapons surety.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the U.S. Census Bureau’s new Census Atlas of the United States speaks volumes about how the nation’s population and housing characteristics have changed over the years. The atlas, with more than 700 full-color maps, is the first general population and housing statistical atlas published by the Census Bureau since 1925.

Featuring more than 300 pages and weighing about 7 pounds, the atlas presents data from 1790 through 2000. It is arranged by topic and grouped into three general themes — who we are, where we come from and what we do. Most maps feature county-level detail for the United States and Puerto Rico.

Census Atlas of the United States is available on the Census Bureau Web site. A print copy of the Census Atlas can be purchased from the Government Printing Office online bookstore. This item will be available in D. H. Hill Library but has not yet been received.