Obligatory What-If XKCD: http://what-if.xkcd.com/12/

Agreed, some fields need a specific degree (Engineering, Physics/Biology/Chemistry/etc) while others such as many Computer related ones will care as much (if not more than) about practical and work experience.

Depending on what field you want to go into, the Military can be a very good option. It's a large part of how I made the transition from History major to Network Security. The Military doesn't care what your past experience is (it can be a plus, but never a minus), just what your aptitude test scores are. They will pay to send you to the appropriate training for your field, and if you have existing student loan debt, they have a program to pay that off too (it's how I paid off mine) in lieu of receiving the Montgomery GI Bill. Note that this applies to the Army, not necessarily the other services - I can't speak directly for how much choice you get in which field you go into in the others, but the Army at least will put your choice of training into the written contract. Once I finished my time in the Army, I found that the fact that I had a BA in History didn't matter so much as the fact that I had a degree, I had work experience/certifications/etc. If anything, it was a positive, as I had somewhat better overall communications skills (writing/etc) than many of my counterparts that came from a purely technical background.

It's certainly feasible. It takes political will, but more importantly it takes _Money_. All of that stuff is going to cost money. It's not so simple a matter as saying "Well we already spend $X on Y, let's put it on Z instead." You have to house those soldiers and feed them. Field operations are an increased cost over using the established housing and facilities on their old bases. Trucks using fuel moving food/water/etc. That said, it's certainly in the realm of possibility. Congress isn't interested in paying, and it's not just a matter of the left not wanting to stop immigrants. The entire reason the President was able to make his most recent order on how to prioritize deportations is because the law Congress passed only allocates enough money to deport a small fraction of the people here, and gives him the authority to prioritize how it's spent. They're certainly able to try and pass a new law changing that, or to spend money to really secure the border, but they're not likely to do that.

Correct. The Irish Government's position is that the Mutual Assistance Treaty covers this, and is the appropriate method for the US to use to get access to the data.

Nevermind the fact that as a result of the torture he suffered, McCain cannot (fully) raise his hands anymore.

Only one person has gone to jail over this - John Kiriakou, a whistleblower who was prosecuted for revealing classified information about this activity.

What about John Kiriakou? He was a whistleblower on some of this stuff, and part of (if not the entire) reason we even know about this stuff. What happened to him? Oh, right, he got thrown in federal prison for his troubles.

Yes. What this underscored for me was just how much Cheney and his ilk were in control of things than had been suspected.

What's really sad is how much of this wasn't done by actual skilled interrogators, who know that torture is not only amoral but also horribly counterproductive to getting good intelligence. I've worked with some of those guys, and they're really good at what they do - and would have nothing to do with anything of this sort. Experts like Ali Soufan have long debunked the kind of myths that surround crimes like these - and that's what they are, crimes. There's no justification or excuse for it whatsoever.

I'm reminded of a quote I once heard from a U.S. Army interrogator (paraphrasing a bit to make the context and intent clear): "Torture and Drugs are something people do for fun - they're not used for gathering intelligence."

This has mostly been my experience. Certs will help get you an interview, but they won't get you the job if you don't know your stuff. If you know your stuff, and have some kind of prior experience, anyplace decent should have no problem hiring you. The only exception to that is in some government/government contracting work, where specific certifications are required by federal regulations (like DoD 8570), and they have to have someone with one of those certs in that seat.

The US government has a Fraud Waste and Abuse hotline for things like this. You can report anonymously, or not. If I recall correctly, too, there are also whistleblower provisions where they pay a share of any fine or settlement to the whistleblower.

Eventually we're going to hit a point where the competitive economic value of unskilled human labor is simply too low to earn someone a living. We may already be edging to that point, at least in the developed world. I don't mean to be snarky when I ask what the solution is? Not everyone is smart enough or trainable, so do we just let them starve? When we have that much productivity, I think it's honestly time to reexamine our Calvinist moral ideas about work and value. My notion is that we'd have to move to something like Milton Friedman's idea of a guaranteed basic income, and then rather than view those who don't "work" negatively, we instead value those who do create/work/etc positively. I don't think we're there yet, but it's where we're going.