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you have no FUCKING clue what the ground reality is. You would seem to think we go out of our way to kill Iraqi civilians. Wrong. We have our strict rules of engagements.

Was Abu Gharib within those rules of engagement? How about the torture in guantanamo bay? The thing is, you're right, we have no fucking clue, and I'll bet if we knew the whole story it would look a helluva lot worse than it is. you can look at yourselves through rose coloured glasses if you like, the rest of the world with a half a brain knows what this war is really about.

You don't even know why you're there. First it was because Saddam had WMD's. Now that ya'll look like fools in the eye of the world and have turned up nothing, y'all simply change your mission objectives to say it's to liberate the Iraqis (who incidentally did not seem to want you there at all).

I admit I don't have as much of a clue as I'd like. I point you to articles like this where you have the police policing the police, only answering to themselves. I don't buy it and you shouldn't either.

China attacks Taiwan

They've threatened it, but they won't. They're incapable of taking the island. The Chinese Navy doesn't have enough amphibious transports to put enough troops onto the island fast enough, air drop of troops only works when you have air superiority (the Chinese wouldn't, even without our help), and the majority of their troop transports are from the fifties and sixties - they're likely to lose a significant percentage of the invading force on mechandical trouble alone (lose in the sense that they won't be available for invasion). The best the Chinese can do is missile barrage, but that historically has never been a useful tactic for forcing the surrender of an enemy.

The Chinese threats of invasion are sabre-rattling, to keep the Taiwanese off-balance, and to force us to decide which China we support. Officially, we don't recognize the Taiwanese as a sovereign nation, so if we were to intercede on their behalf, we'd risk war with China. It wouldn't hurt us militarily, but we do a lot of business there. Though, this armchair quarterback seriously doubts the Chinese resolve on the matter of Taiwan. The United States is their largest market for manufactured goods, if they were to push us we might not capitulate, and then their economy is right fucked for a bit.

Source to my Chinese military assertions.

Do you really think that the major problem for the USA in the 9/11 was the death of many people? I don't think so, it's not logic:

* 9/11

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/vict ims/main.html
USA civilian deaths: 2'898
USA military deaths: 125

Total: 3'023

* Afghanistan war

USA military deaths: 184 http://icasualties.org/oef/
Afghanian civilian deaths: 3'000 http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm

Total: 3'184

* Iraq war

USA military deaths: 1'651 http://icasualties.org/oif/
Coalition military deaths: 180
Coalition contractors: 238
Iraq old military deaths: 9'200 http://www.comw.org/pda/0310rm8exsum.html
Iraq civilian deaths: 21'795 http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/
Iraq police deaths: 2'115 http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

Total: 35'179

* Conclusion

Total USA deaths in 9/11: 3'023
Total USA deaths in war: 1'835 (60% of 9/11)
USA military injured: 12'384 (409% of 9/11)
Other deaths: 30'321 (1003% of 9/11)

Probably for the CIA and the highests USA political institutions, the main problem of the 9/11 cannot be the death of many people, but it should be searched in economic and image loss, political instability and other things, but not for the deaths, at all.

If you keep in mind these things, the interest of the CIA and others defence agencies in massive network attacks is simply logic.

Blah the chinese military is one of the most puny in the world, as it turns out.

While it is true that China is modernizing its forces and increasing defense spending, the prospective improvements in overall military capability need to be set against the very low-technology starting point of China's armed forces.

Millitary

And for the record, they're a third world country economically.

The US didn't blow up unarmed at distance individuals going to work (9/11).

You are correct if you are suggesting that the US did not orchestrate the 9/11 attacks. However, you are dead wrong if you are claiming that the United States has never blown up unarmed civilians, going to work or otherwise. In war, the civilian populations are almost always the ones who suffer the most, and the United States military has its share of civilian deaths under its belt.

Look here for a few examples of what I'm talking about. [Note that that page says, from the "2003 Iraq War", but it should probably say, "2003, 2004, 2005, ... Iraq War"] Many of these could be described as unfortunate accidents, as happen in a war, but remember also that it was the United States that employed the practice of striking "economic" targets in the first and second Gulf Wars; that was the euphemism they used for the killing of civilians in their workplaces. What was the World Trade Center but a very large economic target, and those innocents murdered but "collateral damage" (as the military likes to term it)? I'm not trying to justify 9/11, but you should think about these things in perspective. We're not in a position to decry such acts when they occur on our soil if we happily commit them abroad.

Looking a little farther back, there was Operation: Just 'Cause [my apostrophe ;-)] in which the US invaded Panama in an attempt to seize General Manuel Noriega, in which somewhere between 300 and 3,000 Panamanian civilians (depending who you ask) were killed in waves of indiscriminate neighborhood bombings, and thousands more were rendered homeless. There are many more examples, if you would care to study our military history. Nothing can possibly justify the slaughter of nearly 3,000 innocent people in the United States on September 11th, but if you look at our history, you'll see that our government and military haven't exactly let civilian lives stand in the way of their objectives either.

The US is not led by rich jerks like Bin Laden or Sadam who's sole purpose in life is to use religeon as an excuse to accumulate power and kill people who do not agree with his views.

You're half-right. The "rich jerks" part is dead on, and the bit about using religion to accumulate power could conceivably be applied. Of course, there's no way to truly understand the motivations of our leaders, but there's little doubt that they have thus far taken advantage of panic and fear to further their political careers. As for the killing of political dissidents, it hasn't happened in this country so far (at least, that we know of ;-), but just look at all the other countries that bear the mark of US-sponsored totalitarianism. How about Nicaragua, with the US-trained death squads and terror groups? Or Chile, where the US helped install the brutal tyrant Auguste Pinochet? Or Israel, which is to this day supported by US funding and weapons, and which freely executes alleged "terrorists" (including a paraplegic in a wheelchair) without any trace of due process, and without even any regard for the civilian lives that happen to be around when the missiles hit? The list goes on.

Your ticked because you cannot join the brown (Nati) or Al-queda and be a bigger jerk. If Bush were to kill his political enemies he would not last long.

True. I'm very glad to live in a country where we have such liberties that, even as they are being gradually eroded by panic and fear-mongering, are much greater than those experienced in most other places in the world. But your comment about the grandparent poster wanting to join a terrorist organization doesn't even make sense. H

they want to replace secularism with a system where everyone is forced to obey one brand of Islam
Extremism is always bad regardless of what it refers to, hence the word EXTREMISM. I'm sure John Ashcroft (who spent $7000 of tax-payer money to cover up the breast of a naked statue of Lady Liberty, because it offended his religious beliefs) and George Bush (who supports public schools teaching Creationism - one of the most ridiculous fairy tales ever written - as well as school prayer) would have no problem supporting a constitutional amendment making Christianity the state sanctioned religion.

do not worship the Muslim god

Same god, different prophet.

It may frustrate you, but it is quite true.

Not so fast, buster. Sure, they don't like the fact that we're technically open to other religions, despite printing "In God We Trust" on our currency and making witnesses swear on the Bible in courts of law, and we change a pledge to include the words "under God".
But guess what! Turns out former President George H. W. Bush is so full of religious tolerance, he states that Atheists are not citizens and not patriots.
And he's not even the religious one in the family!

Here's a very simplified list of why they hate us:
1. US Foreign policy has always been: "what's in it for us?" and we make many deals and decisions that affect the middle east negatively.
2. We claim to love democracy, but we help overthrow democratic governments if we think the replacement will be more benefitial to us, even when the replacement is a dictator deals with terrorists in order to get our oil fix.
4. We don't want to seem soft, so when we're hit by an ally, we strike back at a former ally who's now an enemy with a debilitated military which made him an easy target. In the words of Chris Rock: "If they were such a threat to us, how come it only took us two weeks to take over the whole f**king country?!"

Recommended reading: Why do they hate us?

Remakes are best done in the manner of Gus Van Sant or Shigeru Miyamoto: preserve the essential elements of the original while updating the bells & whistles. "Remakes" (and sequels, for that matter) that appropriate the name or concept of the original while ditching the core elements are what give remakes (and sequels...) a bad name.

That being said, I'd like to see (Yet Another) remake of "Elite" for the new millenium. "Freelancer" does not count.

You are wrong on the military front. China is stronger than any other country in Asia

It's not. A lot of people assume it is because of it's size, but it really doesn't have the capability to wage long-term, modern war.

China could easily beat India (the presence of WMD simply means that there won't be any "real" war).

If China incurred far enough into India to get at it's resources, India would launch nukes; they'd figure they didn't have a choice.

Taiwan is a joke, compared to China.

Absolutely not. Taiwan has cutting-edge stuff; the US sells them equipment that we're using ourselves. There is no way for China to invade Taiwan--the Chinese navy would be instantly detected leaving port, tracked by radar, and blown to smithereens. They can't wage war overseas, they just don't have the capability.

Military people don't like to admit this but don't forget that there is something called "war of attrition". Basically you just keep sending your soldiers until they win by sheer numbers. China can easily do this.

A modern war of attrition requires resources. China just doesn't have enough of them.

They have all the latest Russian stuff

No, they had the latest Russian stuff in the 1950's maybe. Their air force numbers under 5,000 planes, and most of them are incredibly obsolete. Hell, they're still using stuff WE gave them in WW2. Check out this link:

http://www.comw.org/cmp/fulltext/iddschina.html for a rundown of China's military forces.

For isntance, China has far greater number of submarines and aircraft carriers than Japan.

China's submarines are, like most of their hardware, very, very obsolete. And China has no aircraft carriers whatsoever. If they managed to marshal the resources to build or buy one, it would be the first thing hit when war broke out.

Not really true if you are practicising totalitarianism. The tyrannical governments that fail are non-totalitarian systems like dictatorships (one evil dude), monarchy, etc. But systems like Communism and fascism can survive for a long time. Soviet Union survived for quite a while and could have survived even longer if Gorbachev et al wanted to.

The Soviet Union didn't last long at all. Generally totalitarianism just can't exist in a large state successfully. Look at North Korea, and what that whacko has to do to keep the system in place.

Therefore, the strategy is not to build the super-fort, the one that keeps bad guys out no matter what. That doesn't work.

Instead, modern thinking on security is all about layered defenses which raise the cost of attack to (hopefully) unacceptable levels to the attacker(s), as well as preserving flexability and resiliancy.

Although IANAMH (I am not a military historian), I have read enough to generally agree with these ideas. I don't disagree with Schneyer's main thesis, I just am not that surprised by it.

Here is a fairly interesting article called From Sandbags to Computers: What's New in Field Fortifications and Protective Structures. Maybe we can analogize some of modern military tactical theory to cyber-defense.

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In a hundred-mile march,