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Actually, US States do have their own army. The National Guard units, when not Federalized, are under the direct command of the state Governor, who can call them out on his own authority for various tasks. I grant you, this does not mean they get to run their own foreign policy, but they are the same units that go to Iraq and Afghanistan, so they are definitely real soldiers. They even get tanks and F-22s.

Of course, I don't agree with the idea that EU countries are states. That's silly. However, they could end up that way pretty easily, given enough time.

Very well said. The Governor of each state in the USA could use PUBLIC LAW 105 85, bio warfare or population reduction funded by the Dept of Defense to stop chemtrailing, GMOs and more today. The Gulf States could go after the oil companies as well. No need to pass a law, just start knocking them down, if you want to warn them first, fine but make it clear that no further violation of the state's airspace by unsanctioned and non-air-controlled flyovers will be allowed, should said plane, unmarked aircraft (FFA violation perhaps?) cross the state line a second time, no warning will be offered. F22s, drones, whatever it takes, shoot one or two down and the others will stop. Sorry, not a war monger here, but understand that its the only way to stop the BS.

Remember that 1000 ppm of Aluminum is deemed toxic by the EPA, we are getting multiple thousands every day, quantifiable and measurable in soil, air and water samples, don't take my word for it, start measuring. And GMOs, come on already, do your homework, eat them if you want cancer and illness so that you will die younger...again research, I have...GMOs suck the life out of you.

So Corporations want to be people, while I do not agree with this legislative, court ordered lie, any corporation whose actions kill a person should receive the same legislative and judicial punishment as that of any other person that kills another based on that state's laws. If the death penalty applies, so be it, that corporation should cease to be allowed to do business in that state, granted that does not go far enough IMO. How many Corporations are already mass murders based on the body count alone?

BTW, this is another reason I stopped voting Republican and/or Conservative, they are too quick to get in bed with Corpers, take their money and kill off their own population one experiment at a time, pathetic. They say they stand for family, yet their actions destroy the family. Liberals are not much better. Conservatives say they stand for truth, but their talking points are full of half-truths and lies....pathetic. Don't take my word for it, during the 2012 election listen to Rush Limbaugh, than Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann every day for two weeks and decide for yourself who is truthful and who is lying...trust me it will be obvious. It was to me.

Thankfully there is much hope, Conservatives (19%) and LIberals (9%) add up to less than 30% of Americans, so the rest of us just need to stop allowing THEM to divide us and work together...this is their worst FEAR. That we will wake up, unite and re-take our birthrights.

Also you need strong politically independent county sheriffs to stand between county citizens and unlawful and illegal search and seizures by Corper agents masquerading as Government regulatory and enforcement agencies. Just have the armed citizens, the swat and the sheriff stand between these Corper agents (whatever their form) and County citizens, small business owners who are trying to help their communities.

Of course the Governor of the state and the National Guard should support the County Sheriffs and vice versa. As the citizens must stand with them all to affect change. Do it for all our children.

Everything must start locally, secure your vote, town, city and county. Paper trail, if the vote can not be verified, it m

Well, it's on the east coast, so there a are a few possible culprits who come to mind who might do just that.

    Really....

    "Sorry, I can't be bothered with finding this, so I'll ask Slashdot how to do it without trying."

    I would think his problem should be pretty simple. SuSE does have a package manager, right? You can uninstall the vendor package, and install your own. Voila, problem gone.

    I've been known to do both the tarball method, and the source method. It's really not *that* painful to build things from source directly on the machines in question. Writing a script to log in and do something like

echo "To: me@dod.gov\nSubject: " > /tmp/somemsg
hostname >> /tmp/somemsg
echo "somepkg\n\n\n" >> /tmp/somemsg

rpm --erase somepkg >> /tmp/somemsg
cd /usr/src/
wget http://internal.dod.gov/srcs/somepkg.tar.gz
tar xpzf somepkg.tar.gz
cd somepkg ./configure && make && make install >> /tmp/somemsg
sendmail -t /tmp/somemsg

cd ..
rm -rf somepkg
rm somepkg.tar.gz
rm /tmp/somemsg

You can't be serious.

Mine came from the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. You might have seen the story about the stolen laptop on the news. If the most well-funded military in the world can't keep a lid on our personal data, who can?

I got mine from the VA, too. The VA is not the Department of Defense, though.

-h-

Lets just add some conspiracy to this...

    Some of my friends in Florida noticed some odd 'humming' from the MacDill AFB during the storms of the last two seasons.

    In a few documentaries, non-conspiracy type, there were mentions of HAARP being used to steer storms away from high value locations (such as MacDill AFB, home of SOCOM).

    HAARP is widely known to be Tesla's work. Tesla was well known for things that go zap.

    The government has interesting military busdget info (PDF warning)

    Bumping a storm away from valuable places such as MacDill, and letting it damage some oil stuff is worth while. It runs the price of oil up, and the damaged oil equipment can be replaced. Of course, a few people may get hurt, but that's not the government's concern.

    I'm sure NASA won't be informed of the actions at HAARP, so they'll be investigating something where they will never receive the details of how it happened.

Got any proof of that, or are you just parroting the anti-Bush talking points?

The Feds always take two or three days to show up, and five to seven days to reach full strength. Local authorities are ALWAYS responsible for the first 72-96 hours of a disaster, that's how all the plans are made, and it's primarily because of the dithering incompetence of the local Democratic pols and the collapse of the New Orleans police department that so many people could not be rescued this time.

The military won't put people and equipment directly into the path of a hurricane, lest they become victims themselves and lose their airlift capability. But shortly after the storm passes, they pour in.

Military air, sea, and land operations began on Aug. 30, and in fact, there were more than twice as many soldiers on duty by day 5 of Katrina than on day 5 of Andrew in 1992. And that's after moving them in over a much larger area than Andrew affected. You can't wave a magic wand and move people and machines in an instant, but that seems to be what some of the ignorant anti-Bush ranters are expecting.

Unless you have invented a Star trek transporter beam, just can the ill-informed bitching and do what you can to help, OK?

-ccm

Got any proof of that, or are you just parroting the anti-Bush talking points?

The Feds always take two or three days to show up, and five to seven days to reach full strength. Local authorities are ALWAYS responsible for the first 72-96 hours of a disaster, that's how all the plans are made, and it's primarily because of the dithering incompetence of the local Democratic pols and the collapse of the New Orleans police department that so many people could not be rescued this time.

The military won't put people and equipment directly into the path of a hurricane, lest they become victims themselves and lose their airlift capability. But shortly after the storm passes, they pour in.

Military air, sea, and land operations began on Aug. 30, and in fact, there were more than twice as many soldiers on duty by day 5 of Katrina than on day 5 of Andrew in 1992. And that's after moving them in over a much larger area than Andrew affected. You can't wave a magic wand and move people and machines in an instant, but that seems to be what some of the ignorant anti-Bush ranters are expecting.

Unless you have invented a Star trek transporter beam, just can the ill-informed bitching and do what you can to help, OK?

-ccm

This "Silly left view" is the general world concensus on the reason for war. So it's not soo little or lefty as you might think it is.

The points I brought up are all fairly well documented points of fact. That oil is a key element in the middle east and a key part of Iraq's strategic importance goes without saying. That we invaded Iraq _because of_ oil is a difficult argument to make when the evidence we do have about the decision making process doesn't seem to show that as a source of primary motivation - there were plenty of conversations about "getting Saddam", papers written by neocon thinkers about democratizing the middle east, and so on. Since I'm assuming I'm arguing to a hostile audience, I'd prefer to stick to arguments that I can point to evidence on. If you can point me to evidence that shows that this was Bush's primary motivation, I'll gladly refer to that evidence in my future arguments.

As for your sources of statistics, I think they are wrong - the Persian Gulf as a whole supplies about 30% of the world's oil (and the amount of that coming from Iraq has varied greatly over the last few years, but a large portion of that is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. so Iraq can't be more than 5-10% - according to the DOD, it was around 3% shortly before we invaded). The most wildly optimistic estimates from a few years ago said about 11% of world oil reserves were believed to be in Iraq (as expressed by left wing sources - see here for example). And according to a conservative think tank a year ago, the number based on best current estimates is similar - between 10 and 12%, including estimated unexplored and untapped oil fields in Iraq. The people who threw around numbers like 25-30% of world oil reserves were apparently off their rocker, and no credible sources I have found claim that Iraq was pumping out 1/3 of the crude oil supply.

Undoubtedly problems with the oil supply in Iraq, though it's a much smaller total amount than you suggest, are in part responsible for oil prices. I never said otherwise. But the point still stands - invading Iraq was a terrible failure as a way to lower oil prices, and it increased the general feeling of instability in other Arab OPEC countries and of fear on oil markets. As for the invading Iraq _for_ the oil argument, we don't _have_ the oil, and we'll be incredibly lucky if the US government sees enough oil money to make up for the incredible cost of this war and ongoing troop presence. Halliburton and friends may see plenty of money, but at this point most of that money is coming from the US government and taxpayers. The Halliburton et. al. angle is certainly interesting to me, since the associations between the Bush administration and these businesses are very well documented, but I don't think it's a very effective argument with American conservatives, who see it as anti-business to attack Halliburton. And again, it's not provably causative.

Admirable act?, How is it any American's right to decide that your neo-conservative democracy(totalitarian?,Police state?) is the right way for the world? what made you god? Are you some supreme race? You know there was some other people in history who thought exactly the same way and their actions are remembered as anything but "Admirable".

I never used the words "admirable act", so this is a straw man argument. Work on your reading comprehension skills and come back later. As for the idea that democracy is superior to totalitarianism, you will pretty much not find a single American outside of the Chomskyites in academia who doesn't agree with this in some way. Thus making such arguments is entirely counterproductive, and brands you as part of the looney left (as you have probably just unknowingly done for yourself). I'm trying to win votes for Kerry from moderat

The really idiotic part was that the class action lawsuite was dismissed because "the class had suffered no damages." One law firm's reaction was the potential value of this ruling as a defense for future privacy theft instances.

I remember this story. IT was not a "Laundry Ship", but a merchant ship suspected of being a spy ship. The LT was a US navy observer onboard a Canadian Helo helping to conduct a personnel transfer from the USS Ohio, an SSBN (carries up to 24 nuke missles), when he got lazered from the ship. Optomitrists said his eyes had burns consistant with that of a laser, and the ship was searched several times for the cause of the injuries, but nothing was ever found. The pilot just lost a fight to get a Purple Heart due to ongoing problems caused by the laser. here's some links: http://www.dod.gov/advisories/1997/p06261997_p156- 97.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/155443_laser06 .html

Does no one remember SERVE? (Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment)
http://www.dod.gov/releases/2003/nr20030602-0073.h tml
No one voted. They and you had such wonderfulfly inteligent headlines as "Internet Voting Inherently Flawed" from CNN. That stated nothing more than the opinion that nothing on the internet could ever be secure.
It was eventually cancelled.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/05/elec04.p rez.internet.voting/

In addition, I had several people on my last ship who had had the surgery done by civilian doctors -- they simply had to sign a waiver that said they were aware that if their eyes were damaged by the surgery they could be discharged, and the senior medical officer signed off on it without giving them any trouble about it. None of them had any problems whatsoever.

Mr. Abell is not "Assistant Secretary of Defense" as the article claims. His actual title is Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness which puts him three levels below Rumsfeld.

Likewise, Ms. Walker's actual title is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Material and Facilities) (PDF), but even that's misleading because it's only for Reserve Affairs. In other words, she's 4-5 levels below Rumsfeld, as this PDF indicates.

In the big scheme of the federal government, those people are high, but not unreasonably so. There are thousands of employees at their level.

It's strange that they're in the Department of Defense, though. You'd think that a significant security clearance would be required for that kind of job. On the other hand, having a worthless master's degree wouldn't necessarily disqualify them from the job.

Ryan

I suspect that it's simply a patch antenna. For the size and weight, it's hard to beat the gain of a patch antenna.

Here is an example for 802.11b of which the author notes, "What's nice about the patch antenna over the "cantenna" is its broad beamwidth. The cantenna has to be pointed very precisely at the AP to get anything at that range, but the patch can be tilted several degrees and still get a signal." The Spirit's antenna was estimated to be 2 degrees off aim at the initial connect attempt, but they said they should still get good data at up to 4 degrees off, and beyond that they would still get carrier.

While the frequency is different, you'll find that these people sell patch antennas which compare favorably in signal strength with their parabolic antennas, but with a wider beam spread.

But we all know they're simply using the technology they've been using for years to practice mind control on us.

-Adam

Purpose of NASA - Aerospace exploration and development.
Purpose of DoD - Defending the Nation.

Basically, when the sh*t hits the fan, I'd much rather have a small Navy cruiser then a couple of Space Shuttles.

Interestingly, the DoD's web site shows the 2002 budget at $371 billion, with just over 2 million employees. Walmart's budget/revenue is $227 billion w/ 1.4 million.

That's a *LOT* of employees.

DOD

I don't think that we disagree fundamentally on Bush, however, I think it is a bit naive to think that Bush' primary motivation is US security. It clearly more complex than that. The first point is that Iraq is hardly no threat to the US, and the connection to terrorists are speculation at best. Certainly, 9/11 has opened the eyes for possible threats to US turf as it shattered the illusion of being protected. However, North Korea is arguably a far greater threat to US security than Iraq. After the US left the non-profilaration (uhm, difficult word that) treaty, and now treating North Korea far better than Iraq, one may speculate that it is because North Korea now has posesses some deterrence. The message to the world is thus: Get nukes as fast as you can! That's a very bad message to send.

Thus, while I agree that Bush sees removing Saddam as a way to rid the world of evil and therefore enhance US security, US security is not the main point, there is also a strong, and I would say, rather irrational element of assuming "World Leadership".

I can't see how funding terrorism plays a vital role for suicide bombers. They would have found ways to blow themselves up regardless of financial support. I think the role money plays in terrorism is greatly exaggerated.

While a prosperous Iraq may incite revolutions in other countries, it is also quite likely to have the opposite effect. Remember that many of these countries have been extremely rich, yet have oppressive regimes, and seeing US as an evil force from outside is going to make oppression stronger.

We're not doing that this time.

Yes, you do. You give "just a little support" to the regimes of Uzbekistan and Kirgistan. It's deja-vu all over again...

With nuclear weapons, you don't look for the smoking gun. You look for the cocked gun.

I guess you're pointing to something like this? Well, for one thing, we need to keep nukes separate from biological and chemical weapons. The argument is totally flawed, because it wouldn't be hard at all to detect nukes if they had them, radioactive dust would remain at the sites where experiments were conducted, easily detectable. Actually, I know quite a lot about nukes, and I would be a lot more concerned with terroists setting off a nuke in a US harbor they built inside a container in a ship than Saddam building nukes. It is not difficult to build nukes, but using them for military purposes is a very complex matter.

I don't know that much about biological and chemical weapons, but lets note one thing: There's nothing you can do with bombs that you can't do with inspectors in a fast helicopter. You could look for similar things, and contrary to Bush' propaganda, it would be extremely difficult to hide this stuff if you are to have any hope of using them in battle: WMDs are actually very dangerous, and the problem with them is not making them, but rather making sure you don't get killed in the process or that they backfire on your own troops...

You're one of the few people using this argument who actually elaborates on the idea.

Yes, I'm afraid I haven't seen much commentary on this, and I consider this a huge weakness for the peace movement. All in all, I do feel a bit alienated by the peace movement. For example I regard the "depleted uranium" craze as a complete panic with no basis in reality. It is hard to argue that in the peace movement. People have completely focus.

If there's one thing that Hussein has proven over and over again, it's that he will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent a civilian revolution. Mass killings.

True, but this is actually nothing new. There has been regimes that have done this before and still been overthrown by popular uprising. Mass killings is the rule rather than the exception when it comes to dictators.

Why is it immoral and bad for the U.S. to wipe out Hussein, his administration, and his personal army using overwhelming, tightly targeted military force, but it's supposed to be ok to "encourage" the practically unarmed Iraqi people to rise up in what would be undoubtedly a spectacularly bloody, horrific revolution?

I'm not sweeping it under the rug that these questions are extremely complex. To attempt an answer, it is extremely important for a people to have their own destiny in their own hands. Allthough Saddam may not be very popular, it doesn't necessarily mean that foreign soldiers are very welcome, and you're not the onces to decide.

However, given that it is in fact a non-urgent situation, these things need careful consideration. We really don't need the lies and the misinformation of the Bush administration in this discussion. However, a thoughtful Elie Wiesel does make a great impression.

As far as "bombs down the chimney", that's a danger, and some Iraqi civilians are probably going to be killed. I think that the number will be very small, however, because of the types of weapons we are using now. 15 years ago, Kosovo era,

Uhm, that's more like 5 years ago, not 15 years. 12 years is the previous Iraq war. Besides, they said the same thing then, and while it certainly has improved, I'm not so sure intelligence has improved one bit, and bad intelligence is probably more important in bombing the wrong people than bad technology.

I have high hopes for Iran, but I think that their chances improve with Iraq defeated.

My thoughts are exactly the opposite. I think that with Iraq defeated, the theocracy is going to tighten their grip, and effectively make the situation a whole lot worse. Then, there's going to be another war.

Note that in Iran, even the theocrats are letting a lot slip through the cracks. I think that with the rest of the world encouraging Iran to cooperate on all levels, like the CERN collaboration, the support for the theocratics is going to be diminish. They will be so marginlized, a lot of formal power doesn't mean anything, because they will have nobody to enforce. Only if they can convince a lot of people that they do have an enemy, it is possible for the theocrats to retain power. And right now, the US is that enemy. If the US seize to be that enemy, there will be a lot more room for improvement in Iran. And when that happens, Saddam will find his own power diminishing the same way.

I think that the key reason comes down the Marshall plan.

I agree. The world should, and I'm sure, is very thankful for that. The US should not interprete strong European opposition as unthankfulness, a true friend will not shut up when he thinks his friend is wrong.

Agreed. The frustrating part about the anti-war movement is that so much of it amounts to looking the other way.

There I cannot agree with the characterization of the peace movement. I have always been deeply concerned with the situation in many trouble zones, and I believe many in the peace movement are. But they are not getting heard. The pro-war only sees what they are supposed to see, what is on CNN, and what the guns are pointing at at the time. I can't point to any war, even WWII, where the US got some very bad allies. It seems like you have to get bad allies to fight a war, thus looking the other way. Saudi Arabia is an example, Uzbekistan and Kirgistan are another two, and these things are happening right now.

As for Bush recent speech, it wasn't really anything new there, as far as I can see. It was clearly addressing European opposition. But I don't think it was very interesting.

To end, I realize that we're in a hell of a situation. At this point, the US can't do anything but going to war. There is no way back, and there hasn't been since res 1441. So, I don't know what is worse, that the Security Council votes against the war, and is destroyed by the US going to war anyway, the negative impacts of the war, and so on, or OTOH, that the Security Council votes for a war, thus making it clear that the only thing that counts is arms arsenal. Either way, the US has very likely destroyed the UN.

Allthough I see that the best way to keep the UN a bit more intact is to have a vote for the war, I just can't see how a war that is based on raw abuse of power, propaganda, lies and misinformation on US part can possibly come to any good. If we had actually discussed it sensibly and then come to the conclusion that a war is the best solution, then it would have been different. But then, one of my favorite one-liners is "Violence is always the last resort of the incompetent" (Isaac Asimov). I think it is quite unlikely that a rational discussion can have war as outcome...

Most importantly, the world has given up the principle of "the burden of the proof is on the claimnant". I really can't think of any justice system or science that can work without that principle. When Rumsfeld says so clearly that this principle is the main obstacle to his plans, I get extremely skeptical, and when he uses the phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", well, I've heard that before from UFO buffs, and I suspect his evidence is on that level. Carl Sagans Balooney Detection Kit should make bells go off.

Bush, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld ruling the world is like handing power to the UFO buffs. Sure, they can make headlines, but that doesn't mean there's anything at all in what they say. And I don't want them to rule...

I don't know who else has heard this but the Department of Defense recently contracted United Devices to work on smallpox reasearch, also called the patriot grid. Since there are about 2 million machines running the UD client, this would put a massive amount of machines at the DOD's disposal.

The UD client is closed source so there's no way of knowing if the software the the DOD wrote is totaly dedicated to testing smallpox drugs or launching a cyber attack.

Massive DDOS attack anyone?

Why buy the DoJ when you can buy the Ministry of Peace aka MiniPax?