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hearsay (that's the correct term for what someone says).

Actually no, if you insist on using terms from a court of law the correct term for what someone says is "testimomy". If their testimony is that someone else said they witnessed something that the witness himself did not witness - THAT is "hearsay".

So when Col. Abu Mohammed formerly of Saddam's Fedayeen says he saw Al Quaeda operatives at Salman Pak that would be in a court of law "testimony". IF he said "someone else told me they saw Al Queada operatives at Salman Pak" THAT would be hearsay

I'm having a bit of trouble extracting the content from the jingoism there.

OK, let me rephrase. We have an enemy that wants to do us harm. If he has a safe secure place where he can congregate, plan, train, gather assets etc. as well as a quasi-government that helps finance and train their recruits by renting them as mercenaries that is bad for us and good for them.

IF on the other hand we invade that safe haven and turn it into a roiling mess of civil war and ethnic rivalries where they can still find some recruits but are also constantly getting shot at and and bombed whenever the congregate that is Good for us and bad for them.

The second situation is the worst case scenario in Afghanistan at this point. Even a complete failure of the Afghan state is better for us in our war on terror than a hostile state that was succeeding and providing safe harbor for our enemies.

Yet Clinton lobbed missles at Osama, but none at Saddam.

You completely undermine all your other points when you exhibit such ignorance of recent history.
It also strains your credibility when you dismiss as mere speculation the idea that Saddam had an interest in seeing the U.S. forces leave Saudi Arabia. Sure, I suppose (there I go with the "suppositions") that Saddam COULD be one of those rare heads of state that really doesn't care if there are hostile troops on his border, blocking his ports, shooting down his aircraft, bombing his air-bases, AAA positions and intelligence offices. Perhaps he actually LIKED it despite his loud verbal opposition, violent rhetoric and threats.

Sure it is a supposition that Saddam wanted the Americans to leave - it is on the same level of supposition that you are engaging in when you say Iraqi's want us to leave now.

Then you need to read more about Osama. He isn't just Religious. He is a FANATIC. He gave up his nice home to live in a cave in Afghanistan. His people are willing to die to strike at their enemies

Speaking of suppositions, I don't see anything in this statement that precludes bin Laden's ability to form temporary alliances of convenience with those that don't share his fanatical religious views. You are SUPPOSING that such an alliance is simply impossible but there is no reason to suppose any such thing and plenty of reasons to suppose the alternative. Bin Laden HAS had relationships with those he quite openly considered apostate (the house of Saud, Musharef, etc.) or even pagans (ourselves) it is a HUGE leap into speculation to think that his religious belief that once allowed such interaction now forbids it.

I am NOT saying, and have not said throughout this entire thread that I believe that Al Queada and Iraq were definitely in a relationship with one another. I am merely saying that such a relationship is PLAUSIBLE on it's face and that there was evidence that SUGGESTED but did NOT PROVE (because it was either from a suspect source or because it was circumstantial) such a link. You respond with "but you didn't PROVE it" - Right - that is what I said! You also respond with your own flight of supposition by saying such an alliance is IMPOSSIBLE on it's face because religious people are incapable of forming alliances with secular people even if they have done so in the past... because "you don't understand, these people are FANATICS".

bush spends money like a liberal (education is more than 65% up under him, the only things down is transportation.

Regardless of political leanings, education seems to be one thing it's in everyone's interest to spend money on: these are the people who will be supporting us when we're old and decrepid. Even if you realise that you can't depend on the system and need to deal with your own retirement fund, you know that someone will have to support those that didn't think ahead. If the next generation is too uneducated to compete in the global economy, then that someone will be you and your carefully managed retirement fund.

Besides, what is the education budget versus that of defense? I was curious. 5 seconds of googling gets me $315 Billion for defense in 2003. Hrm. A lot lower than I expected. In contrast, education got $64 Billion 2003, $38 Billion 1999. Which seems about right (given that the US has underperformed wrt other countries on managing to produce educated students, historically), and in line with your 64%.

I'm really suprised by the military budget. I thought it was in the low TeraUSD. Anyone have other sources to confirm/correct?

Pointing out the evidence implicating Israel in 9/11

I have yet to see anything that actually implicates Israel or Israel's intellegence agencies in the attack of September Eleventh, but there is ample record of the United States supporting terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda, and there has been disturbing evidence implicating US intelligence personel in a previous attack on the WTC in 1993, as well as the recent discovery of high level FBI personel being deeply involved in the career of a Boston mob leader, Whitey Bulger (the FBI allowed several people to be wrongly executed for crimes they knew had been carried out by Whitey Bulger's operation).

Pointing out that the war on drugs is genocide.

The War on Drugs is not genocide no matter what definition you apply. But it has become quite a money maker for law enforcement agencies through the seizure of property. If you also allow for the truth that the War On Drugs is what keeps the price (and profits) high, you now associate the War On Drugs with the ability of our Intelligence Agencies to illegally fund terrorism while hiding thier involvement from Congress (and the Amercan people). The "genocide" argument here is as much a distraction from the real issues as the "Israel" argument is for 9-11.

Pointing out that feminism has ruined America.

Whe I was in training at Great Lakes, the Fire Control school was having difficulty in retaining one of the finest Naval Electronic Combat Control Systems instructors available, mostly because the then Secretary of Defense held that very opinion. The attempts to remove this fine instructor, who had more years experience, and was far more familiar with this equipment than any other enlisted personel available, were a rediculous distractionthat had nothing to do with "feminism" and everything to do with the boneheadedness of persons who were unable to understand that one does not need a dick swinging between thier legs in order to be able to kill people for thier country (On the other hand, one does need a strong back and self discipline). Feminism (the idea) has not harmed America any more than the end of segregation has, and like in the case of segregation, the problems that have occured have been the direct result of those reationaries who were creating unnecessary conflict knowing fiull well that, like was demonstrated in the article, that the majority of people would voice opinions on the side of convention, even if they did not necessarily believe those opinions to be accurate.

I'm sure there are others, but I expect this is enough to score me -1, Heretic.

I'm sure that you like to think of yourself as a heretic, but the truth is that you've just attached yourself to yet another "fasionable" set of ideas that migh be called "the politcally correct of the politically incorrect" (to coin a phrase). You'll never truly deserve the title "heretic" until you find that both the left and the right are attacking what you think (or say, if you decide to ignore the advice contained in the article).

Unfortunately, this kind of thing still starts in the military world. The DoD has been developing requirements for Network Centric Warfare (NCW). Basically turning warfare interfaces into a RTS game like StarCraft, C&C, complete with fog-of-war, semi-autonomous units, comm & data sharing, etc. On the technical side, this is manifesting itself as Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) architecture. One of the first actual implementations is being worked in in the form of Future Combat Systems (FCS).

These are complex systems, so the DoD has been maturing development of modeling & simulation interoperability by making contractors adhere to High Level Architecture (HLA) so they can properly analyze these systems before deploying them. HLA basically provides a lot of the same data object registration, distribution, and interfaces that older tech like CORBA does, with extra simulation concepts.

These technologies are being commercialized under the buzzwords "Nework Centric Operations" (NCO) and "Network Enabled Operations" (NEO). Advocates usually point to well networked operations like Wal-mart, UPS, et al. as poster children for what could be done (automatic restocking, package tracking, load balancing & route optimization, etc.) with enough NEO infrastructure. A lot of the interchange standards (including C4ISR) are getting established through bodies like the OMG. Other than the interchange standards, there's not all that much new tech involved... maybe RFIDs and various other networking tech (grid/mesh networks, strong encryption/authentication, mobile IP, etc.). Most if it just involves looking at technology that already exists and figuring out how to piece it together to actually do something worthwhile.

Disclaimer: I work for one of the gov't contractors throwing all these buzzwords around.

... Intelligence gathering goes into overdrive ...

Interesting theory, but what kind of new intelligence could have been gathered between February 2001, when Powell flatly asserts that Iraq has no WMDs, or August 2001, when Bush indicates his lack of knowledge of Iraqi WMDs, and August 2002, when Dick Cheney said to the VFW national convention, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

And, if there was new intelligence during that period, why haven't the administration said so? Even Joseph Wilson's report on the hoax Nigerian yellowcake memo predates Powell's quote.

If you really want to know the truth, just ask Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz:

"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue - weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

All your Windoze mackines belongg to us !

I wonder how many access points you would find
by flying over the Pentagon

Democratically yours,
Kilgore Trout

FYI, if you're denied a security clearance, you have the right to appeal. The Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals takes care of this.

According to about.com, "If you are denied a security clearance, or an assignment to a sensitive position or a position of trust, or your current clearance or access is revoked, you have the right to appeal the adjudicative decision. Under such circumstances you will be provided a statement on the reason(s) why you are ineligible for the clearance and the procedures for filing an appeal. If you believe the information gathered about you during the investigation is misleading or inaccurate, you will be given the opportunity to correct or clarify the situation."

Here's a DoD press release from 2000 citing 435 (113 on-duty) accidental deaths for the year
which is actually more than one a day. They weren't all training accidents, but the accidental death rate for peacetime is over 30/100,000/year assigned troops.

So did we. Have we stopped developing nukes? Nope. In fact, we just increased spending on a new tactical nuke designed to eliminate underground bunkers.

You obviously haven't read the treaty or even the definition of proliferation. Our nuclear arsenal is not growing or spreading- on the contrary, we have eliminated a majority of our nuclear weapons (2,450 nuclear warheads in 1989, and only 500 in 2003, source. We have destroyed 80% of our nuclear weapons so far, source). We are very much in compliance with the NPT.

Conclusion: US policymakers are unwilling to live by the same rules they make everyone else follow and throw a fit when others follow their wonderful example.

And what rules would those be? I don't think any rational country is asking the US to give up our nuclear weapons- especially now that the threat of nuclear weapons spreading to unstable areas is greater now than ever before.

1. There's no proof that Iran's civil program is a weapons program. There's just suspicion. Frankly, I don't blame them. Having an enriched civil program leaves a weapons program a possibility when and if that becomes necessary.

Wait- so are you actually saying that you think Iran should have nuclear weapons? I'm glad people like you aren't in charge.

Since the US has demonstrated that treaties and the UN are meaningless

I fail to see how the US has demonstrated that. Treaties are taken very seriously in this country- they must be ratified by a full congress and they become a strict law.

And the US has not demonstrated that the UN is meaningless- the UN demonstrated that. The UN passed 17 freaking resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter against Iraq. If you care to read the UN Charter, Chapter VII resolutions are binding to all members of the UN, and members are REQUIRED to enforce them. If the best they could do after 12 years of blatant non-compliance by Iraq is send inspectors on a wild goose chase, then the UN is meaningless.

If you think about it, what has the UN actually accomplished in its life? The UN has tried to resolve 2 major conflicts in the past 50 years- Korea fought to a stalemate and is still unresolved, and they let Saddam jerk them around for 12 years. Yeah- the UN is sooooo important.

It's mighty convenient that the US doesn't obey the rule of law. It's just like the absolute monarchies all over again, ruling by divine right instead of by and under the rule of law.

Again- where do we disobey the rule of law?

Since the US has no divine right to ignore treaties

Right- and we dont.

while holding everyone else accountable to them

Do you think the US is the only country that doesnt want North Korea or Iran to have nuclear weapons?

plainly the treaty is now invalid and it's, again, a nuclear free-for-all.

Plainly, you are going to find any excuse to justify your hatred of the United States.

So did we. Have we stopped developing nukes? Nope. In fact, we just increased spending on a new tactical nuke designed to eliminate underground bunkers.

You obviously haven't read the treaty or even the definition of proliferation. Our nuclear arsenal is not growing or spreading- on the contrary, we have eliminated a majority of our nuclear weapons (2,450 nuclear warheads in 1989, and only 500 in 2003, source. We have destroyed 80% of our nuclear weapons so far, source). We are very much in compliance with the NPT.

Conclusion: US policymakers are unwilling to live by the same rules they make everyone else follow and throw a fit when others follow their wonderful example.

And what rules would those be? I don't think any rational country is asking the US to give up our nuclear weapons- especially now that the threat of nuclear weapons spreading to unstable areas is greater now than ever before.

1. There's no proof that Iran's civil program is a weapons program. There's just suspicion. Frankly, I don't blame them. Having an enriched civil program leaves a weapons program a possibility when and if that becomes necessary.

Wait- so are you actually saying that you think Iran should have nuclear weapons? I'm glad people like you aren't in charge.

Since the US has demonstrated that treaties and the UN are meaningless

I fail to see how the US has demonstrated that. Treaties are taken very seriously in this country- they must be ratified by a full congress and they become a strict law.

And the US has not demonstrated that the UN is meaningless- the UN demonstrated that. The UN passed 17 freaking resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter against Iraq. If you care to read the UN Charter, Chapter VII resolutions are binding to all members of the UN, and members are REQUIRED to enforce them. If the best they could do after 12 years of blatant non-compliance by Iraq is send inspectors on a wild goose chase, then the UN is meaningless.

If you think about it, what has the UN actually accomplished in its life? The UN has tried to resolve 2 major conflicts in the past 50 years- Korea fought to a stalemate and is still unresolved, and they let Saddam jerk them around for 12 years. Yeah- the UN is sooooo important.

It's mighty convenient that the US doesn't obey the rule of law. It's just like the absolute monarchies all over again, ruling by divine right instead of by and under the rule of law.

Again- where do we disobey the rule of law?

Since the US has no divine right to ignore treaties

Right- and we dont.

while holding everyone else accountable to them

Do you think the US is the only country that doesnt want North Korea or Iran to have nuclear weapons?

plainly the treaty is now invalid and it's, again, a nuclear free-for-all.

Plainly, you are going to find any excuse to justify your hatred of the United States.

Yes, go ahead and lable Bush weasle of the year. It's fine with me just as long as you remember that for every lie you acredit Bush, it was found at the UN's doorstep FIRST.

WMDs? Why, the UN published figures to the effect that Nearly four tons of VX nerve agents, Growth media for 20,000 litres of biological warfare agents, 15,000 shells for use in biological warfare and 6,000 chemical warfare bombs were unaccounted for.

A threat to world peace? Looks like the UN whole heartedly agreed with President Clinton when he said, "Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons." I don't recall the UN batting an eye, do you? I don't seem to remember France, Germany China or Russia losing too much sleep over Operation Desert Fox either.

And lets not forget Resolution 1441 that clearly states:

"Recognizing the threat Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security. Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure ...as well as all other nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to nuclear-weapons-usable material. Deploring further that Iraq repeatedly obstructed immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to sites designated by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) ...and ultimately ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA in 1998, ...in spite of the Council's repeated demands that Iraq provide immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), Deploring also that the Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism ...to end repression of its civilian population... Determined to ensure full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions... Determined to secure full compliance with its decisions..."

And also said...

"1. Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions... 2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; 3. Decides that, in order to begin to comply with its disarmament obligations ...the Government of Iraq shall provide a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other delivery systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and dispersal systems designed for use on aircraft, ...and nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to weapon production or material; 7. UNMOVIC and the IAEA shall have the right to be provided by Iraq the names of all personnel currently and formerly associated with Iraq?s chemical, biological, nuclear, and ballistic missile programmes and the associated research, development, and production facilities
13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations."

Did I mention that 1441 was ratified unanimously by every permanent

According to the Annual Defense Report by Donald Rumsfeld, the defense budget, adjusted for inflation, has risen from $310 billion in 1999 to $379 billion in 2003, which is a jump of 22 percent -- hardly "slight".

Furthermore, the report was written before the invasion of Iraq, the costs of which will probably push the defense budget to well over 5% of GDP. This is likely to exceed everybody but the corrupt and insane kleptocracies of the Middle East.

That chart is for 1999, before Bush II.

Traffic avoidance does not exist. In any case, it is a concept for wimps. You build a road, a beautiful smooth curving road into the hills, an asphalt work of art calling out to you "driiive mee! Take that cuuuuurve!" and there's some yokel driving an old Pontiac station wagon at 20 mph. And buses coming the other way. It's a historical inevitability. You can't win.

Instead, I propose a traffic elimination system. It's been tested in numerous locations across the world, and has proven mighty effective in those really dense congestion situations.

Never hurt Clinton... and Clark was ultimately fired, by the Clinton administration, after the incident over Pristina airport (where he threatened to have his British counterpart relieved of command for refusing to obey insane orders; the two governments then overruled Clark and supported Gen. Jackson's objection - then removed Clark ahead of schedule.)

Clinton and Bush both dodged the draft. But Clinton did not then ponce arround aircraft carriers wearing a flight suit.

Wrong. Clinton did precisely the same thing (USS Theodore Roosevelt, 1993; again on the USS Independence, 1996) - and just like Bush, he flew in wearing a flight jacket then changed into a suit for the occasion. More here. In short, the complaints about Bush's visit to the Abraham Lincoln are all crap: Clinton did it, LBJ did it, and at least one Democrat Senator has a similar photo of himself; the only distinction is that AFAIK Clinton is the only one who spoke of his "loathing" of the military.

Addition to my parent post: This article on a U.S. military web site implies that ALL U.S. military personnel are vaccinated against smallpox: Smallpox Research Project Data Presented

Apparently they were doing what I suggested in my parent post, although the research report doesn't say that: GMU, GW in Patent, Ethics Dispute. The Washington Post article is badly reported, because it doesn't mention the scientific basis for believing smallpox vaccine could stop AIDS.

"And then there was the office of strategic influence. [...] I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have." - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 2002-11-18, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2002/t11212002_ t1118sd2.html

You cite Clinton's "failure to deal with Iraq" and then you admit that Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda, 9-11, or terrorism. Why would his dealing with Iraq in 1998 have stopped 9-11? I would argue (and the evidence is quite clearly on my side here) that Bush's handling of Iraq has dramatically increased terrorism; there were no Iraqi suicide bombers prior to April 2003. I would also argue that the Bush Admin was well aware of this.

Try re-reading the news for the first 8 months of Bush's presidency. There was no significant talk of Iraq at all. Nothing. Even after 9/11 the target was Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Wrong. The Bush Admin was gunning for Iraq from 9/11 on, and it is clear from statements by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and even Bush. I don't have time to do your homework for you, but a quick look at the Defense Department website turns up this example. And whether or not you think Bush wanted to go after Iraq from the beginning, it was obvious by mid- to late-2002 that attacking Iraq was on America's agenda whether we found a good reason to do so or not. And despite all the claims we haven't even found a single chemical weapon there, not to mention the dreaded biological and nuclear weapons Bush scared America into believing existed.

If Bush knew there was no threat in Iraq and sent us to war anyway, he should be impeached. But so far there is no evidence of that.

Actually, there's quite a bit of evidence that his administration lied, starting with his claims of an IAEA report on Saddam's nuclear weapons that didn't exist, the claim that there was evidence Iraq was involved in al Qaeda (which he has since backed off of), and the Nigerian yellow cake uranium documents that were such obvious forgeries they could only have been included in the Bush Administration's "evidence" for propaganda purposes. If the Administration didn't know these things were lies, then they are beyond incompetent. I won't even get into the half-truths his administration has been snowing us with; the above are the demonstrable lies.

Now, that said, I really don't think impeachment hearings are the best thing for this nation, and I probably wouldn't support them. But there's surely more than enough evidence to justify them then there was during the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Lying about an affair in front of your wife is a very different thing than lying about national security issues to the American people while supporting policies that you are well aware make us less secure as a nation.

But in a worst-case scenario we have one less ruthless dictator in the middle east.

And you have a massive increase in chaos, death, and terrorism in the middle east. And some ten attacks on American soldiers per day. And a billion-dollar per week price tag, not to mention the $87 billion more Bush asked for.

You forgot American military operations in Bosnia, Somalia, and Kosovo. Or are you claiming Desert Fox was a war and was the first "Iraq" that you mentioned?

When I was studying U.S. history in the late 1990s, I learned that at that time, the United States Congress had not declared a "war" since World War II. Operations in Korea were officially a "police action", and operations in Vietnam were a "conflict".

The US spends around 3 to 4% of its GDP on defense.

table here

Notice how we have gone from a War on Terror (where we didn't find Osama or even put an end to the Taliban, or stop terror)

Of course you remember that the current US policy is to ignore bin Laden? "The goal has never been to get bin Laden." It's funny how these things change over time.

In fact the actual quote is:

"...for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa."

This brief history of Wilson's role as Secretary of Defense sets the record straight:

Wilson's nomination sparked a major controversy during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee... During the hearings, when asked if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." Later this statement was often garbled when quoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country."

OK, I did a little computation.
The height of the pentagon is ~77 feet
From these pictures under extra info at cnn. The first three explosion shots at a guessed 30/sec frame rate show an explosion expanding at one building height every 2 frames, or 77*30/2= ~1155 ft/sec, not unreasonable for a fuel air explosion. Now, the low end air speed of an approaching plane is 250 and the high end is 600 mph that means that the plane was moving at ~1000 ft/sec at the fastest and should have been viewable for three or four frames. So were are the images of the impacting plane?

Further the explosion originates at the outer edge of the building and shows no forward momentum in the debris expansion as would be expected of a frontal impact.

Submited on september 6, 2003:

Northrop, working with the Pentagon and NASA sucessfully tested a "quiet" supersonic flight wednesday at California's Edwards Air Force Base. In the tests, an F-5E aircraft with a modified nose section flew supersonically through the test range, shortly thereafter, an unmodified F-5E flew supersonically through the same airspace, with the sensors showing a clear reduction in the intensity of the sonic boom produced by the F-5E modified fuselage.

Yeah, 'cept it's a smaller calibre, actually. NATO 7.62mm. A 0.40Cal or 10mm MP5 is quite nasty with the right armor-piercing-fragmenting slug.

Still I'd rather have a 40MM automatic grenade launcher

The basic problem with the Osprey is the drivetrain. There are five gearboxes, three clutches, flexible shafts with multiple couplings, and in the Navy version, disconnect points where the wings fold. Most of this mechanical nightmare is part of the backup system through which one engine can power both rotors. The rotor/tilt wing system requires huge amounts of maintenance, enough that maintenance records have been falsified to make it look better. It's also a very expensive aircraft for its size.

Despite this, Osprey crashes occur mostly for other reasons.

• Software failure when recovering from a hydraulic failure.
• Rotor stall blamed on pilot error, but reflecting a hole in the flight envelope at low speed operation.

VTOL aircraft tend to crash even more then helicopters. The Harrier, the only VTOL produced in quantity, has many, many crashes on the record, especially with pilots in training. The flight envelope where transitions from and to vertical flight occurs is unforgiving. Helicopters are better behaved near transition.

holy cow!
(BTW, it's Norton, not Norman)

http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Aug2003/030807-F -2828D-033.jpg

The subject says it. I have to applaud such an excellent troll.

That said, I find the level of hostility and even outright hatred directed at me for a casual comment - that was not even the substance of my post - astonishing. My initial post was intended to point out that Cuba has long been used as a major base of operations for electronic signals intercepts and espionage by both the USA and the USSR/Russia. Nothing more, nothing less. If you choose to read it in a paranoiac manner that you believe implies malice where none exists, that is your issue, not mine.

Some of you have gone so far as to make attempts to learn details of my identity (you know who you are and now so do I - don't worry, I won't publish your identities or other personal information even though it would be an excellent object lesson). If you have something you want to know, just ask - I just might answer. There's really no need for your kind of subterfuge.

Now, despite my better judgement, on to the rest of your response because the record needs to be set straight.

Pro-Shah U.S. satellite stations and CNN's reliability: The report I referred to was broadcast from Los Angeles without any restrictions by government censors. Your comment that "CNN are the people who admitted to censoring various news broadcasts out of Iraq" is supposed to cast doubt on the reliablilty of the L.A. report. What you fail to mention is that every major news organization in the world has to submit to government censors of one kind or another when reporting from a war zone. If you were inside Iraq like CNN, BBC, CBC, AFP, AP and others, you had to submit your reports for vetting by Iraqi government censors. If you were an embedded reporter with U.S. forces, you had to sign a (leaked) contract and agree to restrictions before you were even allowed to be embedded. Reporters are still forbidden to disclose the terms of the contract or the penalities for doing so. Journalists were then required to get the authorization of the company commander to send their reports. At CENTCOM headquarters, information was tightly controlled and heavily censored before it was ever presented to reporters so that they never got anything less than the rosiest possible picture. This was preceded by blanket U.S. government censorship in the first Gulf War and subsequent conflicts. Intelligence Onine, a respected global intelligence community newsletter, documented that the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, from Fort Bragg, North Carolina were active employees of CNN who participated in news production. In the U.K. and Northern Ireland during the worst days of the fighting, it was illegal to broadcast even the voice of an IRA or Sinn Fein member. If you're a reporter in Israel/Occupied Territories, you must sign an agreement to submit to Israeli military censorship as a condition of working there. The list goes on and on. It goes with the territory if you're reporting from a conflict zone, not from a studio in suburban Los Angeles.

Ad hominem attacks: Read very carefully. I made no accusations against anyone. In fact, it was you, Phil, who attempted to equate me with "our enemies" and wrote of my supposed "sympathies towards the Cuban government." You're hardly without sin, so you certainly shouldn't be casting stones, or aspersions for that matter.

Student protests: Iranian students were protesting against plans by their government to privatize its university system - the system is currently government-subsidized - which would result in massive tuition increases and deny access to a post-secondary education to all but the wealthiest Iranians. That is the context in which the protests were taking place and that is

"Next: USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77)"

Why not? You have to name them after someone or something, and like Jimmy Carter before him, Bush One's popularity has risen after he left office, and also like Carter, he has a Navy background as a WW II Naval Aviator (Carter was a sub officer and nuke; thus, a sub was named after him). Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson both also served in the Navy. They won't get carriers, but don't be too terribly shocked if they eventually get smaller classes of ships named after them, perhaps destroyers. Richard Nixon is the one Navy President I'm fairly sure will never be honored with a ship.

For more info on how the Navy names ships, see here.

What exactly do politics have to do with programming languages?

One word: Ada.

There are no engineering reasons to back down from anything

If cost-benefit analysis indicates that a ground-up rewrite would provide better value than refactoring, even in the face of Joel's article, then what do you do?

This link has some good info from the guys making these decisions: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr2003 0613-0274.html

About one computer per soldier, since total personnel in 4/2002 was 481,266. Given the typical astronomical support to combat troop ratio, that's not huge at all.

The sad thing about the fork in this story leading to crap like this is that people politicize scientific endeavors to get floor time. Nuclear happens to be an unfortunate keyword.

I for one do not want to sit in the dark ages and think that if NASA determines it best to use fission reactors to best perform deep space studies, so be it. Fanatics will fantasize about a cabal of technophiles, Illuminati and energy moguls and the x-files guys all hanging out in a dastardly plan to bring about Armageddon because you know, all these rich powerful people really want say, a nuclear war so they can live out their days in a bunker on a destroyed earth because that's the very definition of FUN! It's like people in a vocal minority to maraud around looking to bring Bush or the liberal establishment or [name your group to blame everything on here ]into every discussion.

All countries "are". They are not good. They are not evil. They are all unilateralist whenever they can afford to be. If you want others to believe in your morality, grab an orange robe and become a Buddhist monk. Otherwise, you're a money grubber just like the rest of us.

Those who bet on apocalypse the end of days, bet against a bright future basically always lose. It's not wise to sell short on the progressive countries of the world. Luddites who hearken back to the good ole days are essentially insane.

Now as far as nuclear devices with regards to the US - the US has been in possession of nuclear weapons the longest and has been able to refrain from using them the longest (Time since Nagasaki, as in, longest period of years since they were last used in war) despite the apparent efficacy of nuclear attack in bringing WW2 to a close.. They are staggeringly expensive and have little military value (until recently, the below ground penetrating missile/bomb design and nuclear torpedoes are also effective, both of these are tactical applications) they are essentially a threat over population centers. The US would not use strategic weapons unless they are used upon the US. Strategic weapons are essentially possessed only by France, Britain, Russia, China, US (and a lesser extent, India, Pakistan). They are effectively deterrence in that populations centers will be totally destroyed if the US is attacked. I don't foresee the preemptive use of strategic weapons nor is there any evidence of that in US nuclear posturing doctrine, which is publicly available:
FAS NPR , and Globalsecurity NPR, and DefenseLINK NPR.

The new preemptive nuclear strike parts of the doctrine basically wants to make a case for the use of tactical nuclear weapons against well fortified targets. Given that a swift conventional campaign in Iraq was so politically painful for the US, I seriously doubt that the US will ever use tactical nukes, much less preemptively. I think the document says it best: It's a nuclear posturing document. Anyone can break their own doctrine or even a SALT treaty anytime they want (See DPRK for an example of violating agreements). You think "dismantled" warheads aren't ready to go at Pentax? The modification of the nuclear posturing to say we will consider the use of preemptive nuclear strike in response to threats from Nuclear/Chemical/Biological attack or threat is simply this: Terrorist of the world and Countries of the world: Think long and hard about turning a blind eye or abetting subversive organizations that place US citizens under a potential deadly threat.

Strategic Weapons and the Cuban Missile Crisis: On October 25, 1962, Castro begged in a letter to Khruschev to preemptively strike the US. Khruschev was essentially shocked that Castro didn't get it. The posturing wasn't designed to start a strategic nuclear war, which Khruschev made clear in a letter to Castro on October 27, 1962,

• Jenni LaPlante, 18, said one of the suspected shooters was calm Tuesday morning at a beforeschool bowling class.
• Six hours before they opened fire [...] Senior Dustin Harrison said they showed up bright and cheerful for the 6:30 a.m. session, and he laughed and joked with both of them.
• Tuesday, Harris, Klebold and another friend missed their 6:30 a.m. bowling class at Englewood's AMF Belleview Lanes. "You always kind of noticed them," said 17-year-old John Hause

Dustin Harrison says both were there. Jenni LaPlante says one was calm, so we know she believed one to be there. (Nothing is said about the other.) John Hause says they missed the class, but he bases this on the fact that he didn't notice them, but he may have missed them if they "were calm" instead of behaving normally; i.e. if they weren't disrupting class with nazi salutes like they often did, he may not have noticed them. We can't say what the police think with any certainty, because we don't have accurate quotes. However, it looks like some of their class thought they were there, and there's a logical reason why the one person quoted as saying they were not may have been wrong. The only way to know for certain is to check the class attendance sheet, but more people are saying they were there than not. I'd say BFC is on solid ground.





Claim 2: Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton doesn't make weapons. It makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites.

Truth: Moore was not standing in front of a weapon, but that plant does have a history of producing them

Details:
The martin plant in littleton was founded as a defense plant, and is where the titan family of missiles were built . The Titan II is "the largest Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) ever developed by the United States.". In 1998, the Littleton plant recieved $550,889,415 of airforce money for continued booster procurement and assembly; three ship sets of solid rocket motor upgrades, spares, and liquid rocket engine quartz skirts for the Ti

I'd not thought of that. It would have to be an extraordinarly threatening disease, although it would be an extremely effective tactic: comply or die.

Personally, I don't think RFID will be the tool used because it has already attracted an extreme amount of "big brother" attention. If one truly attempts to deceive "even the very elect", it won't be with something as invasive or obvious as RFID! Additionally, RFID (and UPC codes, etc.) can serve as a decoy to detract attention from the actual "mark" itself. That's why I am suspicious of the retinal/fingerprint method. It's very subtle, efficient, and accurate, and is becoming more economically feasable every day. There is no action on your part aside from submitting your biometrics for inclusion in a database (thereby marking you as "clean" in your example). It's a simple and innocent-sounding process. It's even becoming increasingly accepted by the public. There are several slashdot stories that make mention of the fact that grocery stores are using fingerprints to identify "shopping club" memebers. And this is just to save a few bucks!

There are religious groups today that oppose any sort of innoculations, and un-vaccinated children attend public schools in the face of state laws requiring vaccinations. This implies the current state of affairs is such that social and legal pressures to vaccinate your children against the worst of today's diseases is insufficient to infringe on one's liberty. It'll take something more dangerous than Anthrax or SARS to tip the scales.

The Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is at the forefront of SARS research. Perhaps this is to bring the military into the public eye as a provider of the "cure" in preparation for "the big one"?

I so enjoy a good conspiracy theory discussion. :)

It's for package management, a very important part of force protection.

We've got a long way to go before terminator or robocop. Can't they at leaste put some plexiglass up infront of that camera?

I was thinking of the next BattleBots champion. It is impressive...

a picture of a girl with a standard ATM-ish card reader

There's a jewelry-store chain in Las Vegas that uses those as timeclocks...a company for which I used to work sold them. The company that builds them even pitches their use for such a mundane role.

Take one of these to Battlebots and you're sure to win. :-)

CowboyNeal writes:
"Some pictures are available, although somewhat limited..."

You could say that. There is one picture of a treaded robot/tank, a picture of a girl with a standard ATM-ish card reader and finally, to really show off the state-of-the-art, a picture of a guy with a dog.

CowboyNeal writes:
"Some pictures are available, although somewhat limited..."

You could say that. There is one picture of a treaded robot/tank, a picture of a girl with a standard ATM-ish card reader and finally, to really show off the state-of-the-art, a picture of a guy with a dog.

CowboyNeal writes:
"Some pictures are available, although somewhat limited..."

You could say that. There is one picture of a treaded robot/tank, a picture of a girl with a standard ATM-ish card reader and finally, to really show off the state-of-the-art, a picture of a guy with a dog.

Now, this truely shows off technology at its best. I mean where the hell are its bionic limbs, or it's thermal imaging, or even it's fricking lasers. Its a goddamn gormless bloke being led by a dog. Pathetic.

This year's one day seminar on Integrating Speech Technology in Language Learning has been cancelled. The InSTIL seminar was all that had been left of what was once a funded U.S. research program to use speech recognition to help people learn to read. However, over the past few years the budget of the Interagency Educational Research Initiative has been slashed and the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership program has been ZEROED. The IERI and LAAP programs were created to deal with DARPA funding deficencies, but DARPA has not taken up the slack for speech recognition in language instruction. Fewer U.S. polyglots will have a far greater impact on intelligence-gathering efforts than bandaids like Project Babylon or any of the DARPA advanced speech recognition programs can possibly provide. Please join me in asking John Poindexter and his advisory board and NIST to help get this vital funding back in the budget.

Also, the Linguistic Data Consortium sent their catalog update out yesterday. As usual, there are no new corpi of people attempting to read a language as they are acquiring it, at any age.

Since the 1960's, the intelligence community> has used private corporate contractors, such as Wackenhut, The Curry Company, Scientologythe Music Corporation of America (The Curry Company's parent corporation), and the Mafia to gather information and diseminate disinformation. The changing nature of the information economy, due to the internet and Free Software, threatens the quite lucrative monopoly on information and populace control (hence the recent activities of the RIAA and the MPAA).

It seems to me that the Intelligence Community and the private contractors, who have seen thier profits dwindle since the end of the cold war, seek more to control IT in order to both increase thier ability to monitor the daily lives of private citizens, and to limit the access to information that may inform us about thier covert activities.

The concern of the CIA over technology is not one of information gathering, but one of information, and populace, control.

The military gets such a large chunk of the federal budget (49% IIRC, but don't quote me on it)

It's nowhere near 49%. In 2003, the DoD accounted for 16.9% of federal outlays, 10.6% of net public spending, and just 3.5% of gross domestic product. In 2001, the government spent 3x more on welfare, Social Security, etc. than it did on defense (54% vs. 18%).

This year's one day seminar on Integrating Speech Technology in Language Learning has been cancelled. The InSTIL seminar was all that had been left of what was once a funded U.S. research program to use speech recognition to help people learn to read. However, over the past few years the budget of the Interagency Educational Research Initiative has been slashed and the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership program has been ZEROED. The IERI and LAAP programs were created to deal with DARPA funding deficencies, but DARPA has not taken up the slack for speech recognition in language instruction. Fewer U.S. polyglots will have a far greater impact on intelligence-gathering efforts than bandaids like Project Babylon or any of the DARPA advanced speech recognition programs can possibly provide. Please join me in asking John Poindexter and his advisory board and NIST to help get this vital funding back in the budget.

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The reason Saddam has been "idle" when it comes to threatening neighbors is because he's been contained since Desert Storm. You can bet that if he had been allowed to annex Kuwait back then, he'd have picked up one or two more countries by now.

Maybe you've got a nuke in your basement. Maybe you don't. After we level your house then we'll know for sure.

Now we'll have to wait and see if the WMD claims pan out. If Saddam's history of lies and deception is any example, we're almost certain to find evidence.

n top of everything, most of the powerful people of the bush administartion (such as Cheney, Powel and Rumsfield for example) were important people in the reagan administration.

not so.

this may be ot but the parent was modded up, so...

Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford. He left public life in 1977.

Cheney was a US Congressman from Wyoming during the Reagan administration. He was White House Chief of Staff under Ford, and Secretary of Defense under Bush I.

Powell was in the military until 1993.