US Military and open gazatteer of the world!

Link: NGA: GNS; Names Files of Selected Countries.

This is an amazing resource.  The US military has a series of files, open to the public, of every place name in the world [or at least it purports to have - who could check?].  It's awesome.  It even has the phonetic spellings for place names! Should you need to hitch a lift to some small town in Vietnam that hasn't seen a foriegner since Jonny left in 1972 then you can now tell the cab driver and he'll understand you.   The gazatteer is not to a very granular level - for instance Crouch End, where I live is not listed but the higher level Hornsey, is. 

Now you know why the military have this.  And why they have a column, curiously empty, of "populated place classification"?  Collateral damage? 

Anyway, it's a fantastic resource to build with [though you'd have to be creative to create an sql datadump of the files... ] 

related links:
UK  place names via http://www.geograph.co.uk