In this thesis, I examine novelist Sara Paretskys use of voice as power in the V.I. Warshawski series. The series gives Paretsky the opportunity not only to use her own voice, but also to create new ones. It is in V.I.s world that Paretsky is able to decide who gets to speak and what those speakers get to sayand what they do not get to say. In this study, I examine two categories of voices Paretsky uses throughout the series: the voice she creates and the voice she silences. The voice that Paretsky creates is revealed in the community of women that V.I. embraces. This community consists of strong individuals who are even stronger collectively, women who take care of themselves and each other, who speak against the stereotypes and violence that society tries to use against them. The voice Paretsky silences is that of patriarchy. This voice is revealed in the violent men who target V.I. and seek to silence her. It also is embodied in the women who act as an extension of these men. Throughout the series, the voices Paretsky creates and those she silences join together to promote an image that affirms, rather than demeans, women. In the end, Paretsky presents a series and a heroine that speak loudly, clearly, and defiantly.

Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein were the only national leaders ever to use large-scale missile launches against American forces and their wartime allies. In both cases, the missiles were too few in number and lacked the accuracy and warhead size to be militarily effective. Use of the V-2 and SCUD missiles showed that conventionally armed ballistic missiles have minimal tactical military value and are more suitable as terrorist weapons. Indeed, the goal of those two meglomaniacal dictators was to terrorize enemy civilians and achieve a political settlement of a hopeless military situation. Each leader hoped to split the Allied coalitions arrayed against him. Hitler turned his missile against London in 1944 hoping to crush British morale and compel public opinion to demand that Prime Minister Winston Churchill seek an end to the conflict short of total victory. Hussein launched his SCUDs to exploit Arab animosity toward Israel, calculating that terror attacks would trigger Israeli military intervention, provoking a defection of Arab coalition members and forcing the United States and its European allies into a political settlement that would avert military disaster for Iraq. The Allied forces in both cases learned lessons about the limitations of air power as a means of neutralizing a mobile target. Despite massive aerial bombing in both wars, the Allies stopped the mobile launchers only when ground troops overran the launching areas. In the Gulf War, satellites, air supremacy, and Patriot interceptor missiles failed to eliminate the SCUD threat, a task completed by the ground offensive, but such technological advances may prevent future terroristic uses of ballistic missiles. The employment of ballistic missiles has new strategic implications because of the events of September 11, 2001. The global war on terrorism involves the newly defined axis of evil, composed of states capable of producing ballistic missiles. Missile technology transfers to third world countries threaten world stability, in view especially of the possible use of nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. If rogue states judge previous missile attacks to be successful, such success could motivate other leaders or terrorists to use their missiles as instruments of terror.

In late October 1950, the People's Republic of China (PRC) committed approximately 260,000 troops to combat in North Korea. The initial Chinese decision to intervene in the Korean conflict was based on a misperception of American commitment to halt communist expansion. American actions seemed to communicate the desire to avoid confrontation. The withdrawal of U.S. troops and the limited equipping and training of the South Korean army implied Washington's lack of interest in the fate of Korea. Therefore, Mao endorsed North Korea's proposal for the military reunification of Korea. China stood to gain international prestige and access to Soviet equipment and training at little cost. But the North Korean attack collapsed following the commitment of American and United Nations forces. Chinese troops attacked and surprised the UN forces, inflicting heavy losses while driving them down the peninsula in disarray. Mao desired the quick expulsion of UN forces from Korea. To this end, the Chinese launched five brutal offensives between October 1950 and April 1951, but failed to realize their goal of imposing a communist government on an unified Korea. Following the commencement of hostilities, the Chinese exaggerated their own military capabilities and underestimated the firepower and general effectiveness of American forces. But the Chinese army was unable to assimilate modern weaponry and tactics and, facing immense logistical difficulties, could not use its superior numbers to overwhelm United Nations forces. Inaccurate political and military assessments by Chinese leaders served to deny the PRC its goal of a unified Korea while ensuring it would be embroiled in a long and costly war.

This paper looks at the effects of professional basketball on white culture. Traditional scholarship focuses on the impact this has on the African-American community. Very little attention is given to its effects on white America. The focus of this paper is to examine whiteness and to understand how it is socially constructed. In addition, this paper will examine how some elements of black style have been appropriated by white America and changed the definition of whiteness in America. White America's appropriation of limited aspects of black style has been facilitated by the culture that is associated with professional basketball. The economic and social contributions of these athletes have expanded the boundaries of traditional whiteness. This paper presents the argument that the parameters of historical whiteness has expanded to include certain elements of blackness, but this pattern does not alter traditional racist ideology.

Increasing urbanization in a global setting of political and economic instability indicates that urban warfare may well be the major conflict scenario of the 21st century. The United States armed forces are not currently prepared to meet that challenge. The last major urban conflict involving the American military was the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War. As part of the Tet Offensive in 1968, Communist forces seized control of Hue and held it for nearly a month. Having undergone intensive tactical training for their mission, the enemy, solidly entrenched in buildings of various kinds, offered fierce resistance to the American and South Vietnamese troops who tried to reconquer the city. U.S. Marines bore the brunt of the fighting. Untrained and unequipped for street-fighting, they encountered immense difficulties in clearing Hue. Faulty intelligence, command and control problems, and a lack of proper equipment made the experience a nightmarish one and the human cost was considerable: 147 Marines and seventy-four soldiers lost their lives, while a combined total of 1,364 were wounded. Only through raw determination, superior firepower, and adaptive leadership were the Marines able to prevail. The Battle of Hue offered critical lessons for subsequent military planners. Later conflicts in places such as Somalia and Afghanistan suggested that Hue might be more relevant than expected for contemporary warfare. As a result, the U.S. armed forces have made significant strides toward correcting deficiencies in the areas of doctrine, training, and equipment. However, they remain under-prepared for urban warfare because they are still not training as a joint and combined arms team across the full spectrum of operations. This is in large part due to continued shortfalls in training infrastructure and lack of equipment. U.S. armed forces must continue to maximize urban operations training at every level in order to validate doctrine, learn how to fight, and develop specialized equipment for urban operations.

The battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 was a pivotal battle of World War II. The defeat at Kursk placed the Wehrmacht on the permanent strategic defensive on the Eastern Front. The opening of the Soviet archives after 1989 has permitted more thorough analysis of that battle and produced greater appreciation of the Red Armys performance, while casting doubt on the notion that the Germans were close to an operational victory. Preceding the clash, both sides prepared feverishly, attempting to bring the units involved to their maximum capability by replacing personnel, upgrading equipment, and conducting training. The Germans delayed the attack several times to deploy the new armored vehicles. Soviet leaders gathered intelligence from their own sources as well as from ULTRA, which was the codename for British intelligence gained from the German Enigma machine. The Soviets, in anticipation of the onslaught, built a massive and intricate defense. Kursk began on July 4, 1943 with a German attack in the south to gain observation for artillery. The main battle began on July 5 when the Germans attacked both shoulders of the Kursk salient. The fighting was furious. In the north the frontlines quickly stabilized, but in the south German forces made progress. The critical moment occurred when they reached the village of Prokhorovka on July 12. The II SS Panzer Corps and the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank and Fifth Guards Armies fought to a tactical draw with hundreds of tanks lost on both sides. However, the Allied invasion of Sicily prompted Hitler to transfer panzer divisions from Kursk to the Mediterranean Theater, thus seriously reducing the assets available to Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the commander of the German units in the south. This decision essentially ended the Battle of Kursk. Had Hitler given his subordinates more freedom to destroy the Soviet armored reserves, they might have mitigated the catastrophe. But the Germans at Kursk could not have achieved victory. It was a simple matter of the Soviets outnumbering the Germans in all categories, and the Red Army had improved its capabilities to the point it could execute devastating deep, combined arms operations against the Wehrmacht.

This study examines five films of Steven Soderbergh: <em>sex, lies, and videotape</em> (1989), <em>The Underneath</em> (1995), <em>Out of Sight</em> (1998), <em>The Limey</em> (1999), and <em>Traffic</em> (2000). For each film, themes and cinematic form and technique are analyzed with the intent of demonstrating a consistent authorial voice of the director. The investigation reveals that common themes include the protagonist at odds with the world about him, journey, ambiguities and uncertainties in the characters' worlds, and the nondichotomous nature of reality, especially in regard to morality. The study also argues that Soderbergh has evolved a style that favors a nonlinear narrative and parallel editing, frequent use of a hand-held camera, and systematic uses of color. It is concluded that such commonalities in theme and style provide evidence for an evolving artistic vision.

The 317th Infantry Regiment was reactivated on July 15, 1942 as a subordinate element of the 80th Infantry Division. The regiment trained for two years in Tennessee, Kansas, Arizona, California, and finally New Jersey before departing for England in June 1944. Entering the European continent after D-Day, the regiment experienced its first combat in August 1944 when it assisted in closing the gap at Falaise and spearheaded Third Army's attack on Nancy. The 317th sat through the logistics shortfall that stopped the Third Army's advance during the "October Pause" in the fall of 1944. But then in November the regiment moved through the Maginot Line and prepared to attack Hitler's West Wall. In mid-December, German forces launched the famous Battle of the Bulge with a surprise attack in the Ardennes forest with twenty-five divisions. The 317th was one of the first units to begin the movement north to relieve the beleaguered American troops in the Ardennes. The regiment continued fighting through January 1945 until some units were exhausted. When Third Army resumed the offensive in February, so did the regiment. On Valentine's Day, 1945, it entered the Reich, moved rapidly through the Eifel and Palatinate regions, and crossed the Rhine River. During this time, the 317th overran some of the concentration camps that were Hitler's answer to the "Jewish question." The regiment moved through Nuremberg and into Austria, where, as it prepared for what loomed as a ferocious battle, the war ended. After serving as an occupation force, the unit officially deactivated in January 1946, after three and a half yearsof valiant service. The 317th had fought its way from Evron, France to Kirchdorf, Austria,participants in the horror and glory of war. It left behind on the battlefields of Europe 312 officers and 7392 enlisted men - fallen comrades in the struggle to free Europe from Nazi tyranny.

The German blitzkrieg across France during May 1940 was the culmination of three years of daring political and military moves that had brought most of Europe under German control. It was the German dictator Adolf Hitler who had outguessed his advisors. Yet, Hitler's bold moves in Western Europe ended with his army's dash across France, and the failure to strike Great Britain that summer when the British were at one of the weakest points in their entire history. After Germany defeated France, Hitler began a fruitless period of waiting for Great Britain to sue for peace. Unlike Hitler, some in the German High Command believed that Great Britain would fight and that a coherent strategy was needed to defeat that island nation. During late June 1940, two strategies emerged for defeating Great Britain. The first, code-named Operation SEA LION, called for an invasion of southern England. This plan was the surest way to bring about a decisive outcome, but also the riskiest. Hitler nonetheless ordered that planning and training for the operation go forward, a process halted by the Luftwaffe's inability to defeat the RAF as the necessary prelude to the invasion. The strategic option less risky than an invasion of the British Isles called for an attack on the important colony of Gibraltar. German planners believed that seizure of "the Rock" would place immense stress on the British Empire and possibly force a negotiated peace. In November, German military units were task-organized and trained for the operation, now code-named Operation FELIX. Hitler understood the importance of Gibraltar, but wanted the approval of Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, before ordering an attack. Hitler waited. By the spring of 1941, Hitler had failed to act and had lost his opportunity to strike Great Britain when it was most vulnerable. He did not have the will to make the difficult decision and implement either strategy. After December 1940, Great Britain would never again be in danger of an invasion of either the island home or of its valuable colony.

The America intelligence community in 1950, unprepared to perform its missions, failed to provide adequate indications and warning to U.S. national leaders and to the Commander, Far East Command (FEC), about the North Korean invasion of South Korea and Red Chinese intervention in the Korean War. Post-World War II policies that reduced the size of the military, cut systems and training, and reorganized intelligence services are responsible for that failure. Training deficiencies meant that intelligence soldiers deployed to Korea without required skills. The military trained analysts to assess enemy capabilities rather than intentions, contributing to poor predictive analysis. Shortages of analysts, photo interpreters, and linguists further plagued the intelligence community and degraded intelligence collection and production. The post-war political climate focused on the Soviet threat. American estimates saw the Soviet Union as the center of control for other communist states, such as Red China and that paradigm framed analysis of Chinese intentions. Assessments by General MacArthur, head of the FEC and Supreme Commander of United Nations Forces in Korea, of Chinese intentions proved decisive in shaping the course of the war in the fall of 1950. The Far Eastern Command (FEC) G-2 shared MacArthur's view that the Chinese would not intervene and spread that appraisal throughout the FEC intelligence community. In MacArthur opinion, the Chinese would not attack late in 1950 because the opportune time to do so had passed; furthermore, he thought since the Red Chinese lacked an Air Force, they would be annihilated by U.S. airpower. Analysts at all levels underestimated the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and failed to understand Chinese operational art and tactics. Consequently, they did not recognize the Chinese first phase offensive in North Korea, and erroneously concluded that the Chinese would withdraw and defend its border. The intelligence community's poor readiness and lack of capability to provide indications and warning resulted in the enemy's achieving surprise. The first surprise led to the deployment, and near defeat, of Task Force Smith at Pusan. The second surprise led to the withdrawal and rout of U.N. forces, which led to a prolonged war of attrition.