September 2001, Conservative Monitor): "Endangered species has power to halt war training" was the headline on an article in an October 2000 edition of the Washington Times. Written by Steve Miller and datelined Fort Irwin, California, the article began "What may be one of the most formidable threats to national security today has a craggy face, scaly arms and, well, he likes a little grass now and then." He was referring to the desert tortoise. Soldiers on the Army training center's battlefield were instructed to call a commander if a desert tortoise crawled out of a hole. At that point, the entire training exercise would stop. This insanity has been repeated on every military base in the nation in one fashion or another. The US Defense Department oversees and controls 17 million acres of US land, down from 30 million acres after World War II. It has been losing the fight for space to train a modern military for years. When asked about the need for national security, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management (the same one that shut off water to the farmers of Klamath Valley) was quoted in the article as saying, "It is not in our purview to make a determination related to national security. Ours is to make sure the Endangered Species Act is complied with." And, after reading that and what follows, it's hard not to agree with his conclusion: [T]he Greens have infiltrated our military establishment, just as they have done in