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Of the nearly 400 separate media visits (with over 1,000 journalists)and 181+ congressional representatives who have visited GITMO (including last weeks visit by a bi-partisan congressional group), I have yet to see any reporting anything that rises to the level of 'torture' or even any serious complaints by the prisoners (unless you include the 5 cases where Korans were mishandled).

As for the lack of trials, as most detainees are considered more on the grounds of prisoners of war and not criminals they cannot therefore be given a criminal trial. On the other hand each detainee has been given a military hearing to determine their status which resulted in several (at least 38) being released. Of course of those 38, about a dozen have be either recaptured or killed during further acts of violence on their part.

On the Iraq front, the latest casulty report's I've seen put 'civilian' deaths around 26,000. Even going from the conservative numbers of how many people Saddam made dissapear in an average year (25,000), there are more people alive today in Iraq than would have been at this time under Saddams rule.

As for the spread of democracy, where have you been hiding your head lately. More countries than ever have begun allowing their people (or in some cases more of their people) to elect or be elected as representatives. While many are only for local positions, others such as Kuwait (unless you missed them allowing women the right to vote and them appointing the first ever female cabinet minister) are much more substantial. Even a recent poll of Iranians show that 74% believe that the US presence in Iraq will help them move from a theocracy to a full fledged democracy.

You may wish to sit there and spout off about how the US is single handedly destroying the world but the facts just do not back you up. And don't try accusing me just standing up for my country. I do not now, nor have I ever lived in the United States.

On a final note, using the BBC as an example of international reporting was a poor choice. They have so much trouble with bias reporting in Iraq that their Chairman was forced to resign not too long ago.

"Now, as for today's USA - what have we done wrong? We took out a dictator who routinely murdered his own people!" ... with the result, that there still is routine murder in that country ...

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

"Thou shalt not kill" is in the religious cannons of Christians, Jews and Muslims -- Muslims through Abraham (it is in their sharia ?sp? law, from the Hadith), Jews (Torah), and Christians by Old Testament. So. All from Moses. And Moses was guided by God. Ultimately, the 10 Commandments came from God, not Moses. The very definition of sin for 3 major world religions all comes from the same source.

Jesus was a Jew, and instructed his students not to sin.

When GW Bush says he is guided by the question "What would Jesus do?" apparently GW thinks Jesus "Turn-the-other-cheek" Christ would bear false witness against Saddam Hussein for the 911 attacks, bear false witness a second time regarding Iraq having wmd's, and then bear false witness a third time regarding Saddam's intention to use them. Then GW-Jesus would commit murder 20,000 times against Iraqi civilians, among others, and then he'd steal the oil under their graves.

My question is how the Christian coalition could possibly be deceived by such a monster. GW's clearly not guided by anything Jesus ever did, or said.

ps. It's sad, to me, that slashdot has so much anti religious tendency that it cannot even see the strength of the christian religion AGAINST a GW Bush. I got downmodded to flamebait just for using religious doctrine to emphasize GW's hypocracy in the draft policy.

If you call yourselves open minded then stop being so narrow.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Thou shalt not kill.

That's a commandment, is it not?

Why is Bush's gov't looking for more young people to train as professional mass murderers?

What would Jesus do?

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

The body count [in the "war" in Iraq] shouldn't be news?!? It should be in the news MORE. All we ever here is how many Americans have died as though that is all that maters. I've never heard any of the main stream news give an account of how many people have died. My other, more light hearted reply was going to be about the contrast between your "titilating expose into Britney's Spears" quote and your "Get free porn here" sig. :)

So, how do you know tha they don't hate us? Did you put in your own poll? Conduct interviews with lots of people? Choose the ideological media, like Fox News, which we know is oh so trustworthy? Or did you just make it up? Seriously, I want to know how people who assert this, and ironically you see them all over the media, how do they know this?

And for your second point, if you're referring to the Newsweek article, that was tragic, and Newsweek should be truly ashamed, if they're not just withdrawing it because they felt pressured to do so. But come on, a minimum of 21,000 Iraqi casualties from the U.S. invasion and occupation? That's not enough to make people hate us?

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.

Hundred's of thousands? Check here for about as close to a real count as you can get. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm

Further, the cause for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was not religion. Unless you want to make the arguement that the US was attacked my religious extremists trying to spread their ideology and would like to see nothing more than the destruction of western civilization.

I guess you'd allow them to slit your throat whilst you protest their demise.

At least 20 Million people are still enslaved today [source]
Communism (or some varient there of) is alive in five countries [source]
It seems that we're doing most of the raping and killing in Iraq [source] [source]

Liberals, as it turns out, have been for US and UN intervention to end slavery world wide. They've been for withholding MFN status from China until the communist regime there did something about its human rights record. And the left has been 100% behind preventing AMERICANS from raping and murdering Iraqis.

The right, in contrast, has lept into the arms of communist China for the sake of making a few quick bucks. It's turned the other way as millions are enslaved around the world, some on our own shores. And the neo-cons refuse to hold accountable those that knew about the Abu Ghraib attrosities and yet did nothing.

As to your first question, let me ply my left wing university education. As plato once said, given the ability to elect their own leaders, the people will inevitably choose fools and naives.

Wow, thousands of years later and the guy's still got it pegged.

closer to 25k
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

One thing I've noticed. Well-educated Brazilians usually don't offer leadership for their country; instead they complain about how bad things are. The high quality of your English shows that you are at the top of your country in education. However, you offer only negative comments, and no positive guidance.

I don't know if the proposed program to help poorer people have internet connections is the best way to spend money. However, it seems to me that Lula has the best interests of his country in his heart.

It seems to me that many well-educated Brazilians have only their superiority at heart, and don't want things to be better for the average person.

Be thankful that you have Lula!!! Help him! Ask how you can help!

Look at this about the recent presidents of the United States:

Ronald Reagan: Child of a severe, violent alcoholic.

George Bush: Child of an angry alcoholic.

Bill Clinton: Child of two severe alcoholics.

George Bush, Jr.: An alcoholic himself, with all the characteristics of alcoholics, such as acting out anger destructively.

The U.S. government has started 24 wars since the end of the Second World War. The U.S. government has killed at least 3,000,000 people who never directly threatened the United States.

How many wars has the Brazilian government started since then? None. Be thankful that you have a peaceful government. Find ways to help.

This comment was posted from Brazil.

Limiting the debate was due to this tactic.

You're dodging the subject. We're talking about debates between the president and Kerry, not between democrats. You're also ignoring the fact that Bush tried the same ploy in the 2000 elections too, when there were no evil democratic debates.

Did you really learn anything from the debates? Did you even tune in?

Yes, for all three. I learned quite a lot, mainly that Bush was a poor speaker, a trait I consider a sign of intellectual weakness and a lack of mental and moral clarity. I also saw him expose his unjustifiable ideological positions, and repeatedly conflate Iraq and Al Queda. The man is an ideologue, not a realist. The debates proved this to me repeatedly.

Good call, media-boy.

This "liberal media" thing is getting really old. After 9/11, the media has bent over for the Bush administration. Prior to the war, they did everything they could to play up Iraq as a threat and support Mr. Bush. It was disgusting.

Did you realize that the 'Red Scare' was a real problem to be dealt with?

The "domino theory" was obviously wrong, because we *lost* the Vietnam war and the consequences it predicated didn't come to pass. More generally, the idea of "spreading democracy through war will lead to peace" is one that has been studied greatly and shown to be lacking. It was an ideology adopted by a certain class of liberals (notably Mazzini), but failed then as it will fail now. There is an excellent paper by Michael Doyle analyzing this particular ideology, long before Bush flip-flopped from 2000 and bought into it.

so as to stop Russia from gobbling up surrounding countries.

What a delightfully naive conception of the balance of power. Russia gobbling up countries was a danger to the extent that it upset the power balance. Vietnam was not a strategically important location, merely an ideologically important one. Controlling Vietnam, a country quite a distance from Russia, and not contiguous with it, a country with no industrial base and few natural resources, would not do anything to make Russia more powerful. That's why Vietnam was a wrong war, because we were just chasing ideological victory, not a strategic one.

Ask a Ukranian how that feels; ask'em if they'd like to go back.

Frankly, I don't care about the Ukranians. Our president's job is to ensure our own security, not freedom for mankind.

As to the casualties, there's no comparison, only in Ted Kennedy's sloshed mind.

The comparison isn't in the casualties, it's in the way the war was legitimized.

You're aware that we found at least 400,000 dead in the desert, right?

What does that have to do with how many we killed? And where did you get *that* figure?

Where did you get these numbers, anyway?

The estimates are an older figure from here. I hadn't checked the number recently, it's up to 16,000 now. Of course, you'll inevitably dismiss the figure as biased, but they go into a great deal of detail, so at least read the site.

Do the Iraqi people appear to mind the losses, whatever they are?

Okay, so the argument is that killing civilians is justified, as long as the ones left don't care? Well, then you must have loved Saddam. Because the Iraqi population really didn't care when he gassed the Kurds, for the simple reason that the vast majority of the population was never affected by the killings, while the instability before his rule had affected everyone. In any case, a poll done several months ago showed that 40% of people wanted Saddam back. This is simple to understand: a dictator is bad for a certain 1%, and better than chaos for the other 99%. A fledgling democracy is dangerous and thus undesirable for everyone.

Why do you insist that this has anything to do with skin color?

Because Americans are pretty damn racist. (Hell, jus

They are the same who boasted 10,000 would die if we invaded Iraq.

Um... over 17,000 actually DID die. That's counting civillians; unlike the figures you'll get from the DoD.

And actually even the claim that Saddam gassed his own people in the 80s has been disputed.

Jude Wanniski (whose website you linked to), is quite alone in denying that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds. Slate has a good article that discusses the issue. Besides, several of his claims are clearly false:

To begin with there were never any victims produced.

A quick Google image search for Halabja belies that claim. There are numerous photos of the immediate after-effects of the attack. More recently, there was a study to investigate the long term effects of the chemical exposure. The victims of the attack suffer from high rates of respiratory problems, cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders, and skin and eye problems. Maybe part of the reason he claims victims can't be found is because they're some of the 300,000 bodies discovered in mass graves.

The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The reports of the chemical bombing were not just from Kurds who crossed into Turkey. Some of the pictures linked above were from journalists flown in from Tehran the next day.

Wanniski even mentions the oft repeated myth: that at the very least our State Department gave a "green light" to Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in August 1990. According to this article from the Christian Science Monitor, that myth has been debunked by no less than Iraq's former Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz.

It may well have been Iran, and in either case it happened on a battlefield.

It is highly doubtful Iran was behind the attack. In the first place, their troops and allies were the ones attacked (see here). Secondly, there is no evidence of Iranian use of the type of chemicals at Halabja (see here).

In addition, although chemical weapons were used multiple times in the Iran-Iraq war, the reason the Halabja attack sticks out is precisely because it was not a battlefield. At the time, Halabja was a city with a population of about 80,000 which had just recently came under control of Iran and their Kurdish allies. Many of the approximately 5000 victims of that particluar attack were civilians. Most of the published photos were of women and children killed, for the simple reason that news media thrives on sensationalism.

We've managed to kill 100,000 civilians with our advanced "smart" bombs - is it surprising that primitive mortars would kill 5,000?

First, the claim of 100,000 dead is based on an extrapolation from a survey. I'd take the 100,000 figure with a grain of salt until a more extensive survey is done. There is a Slate article that dissects their methodology. A reliable number of civilians deaths reported can be found at the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website. As of Feb 10, 2005, they count less than 18,000 civilians reported killed.

Second, most of the deaths are not from our precision guided munitions, the so-called "smart bombs." In fact, most of them

In the process we kill a few hundred thousand.

Are you kidding me? Even the anti-war extremists at Iraq Body Count say < 18,000 civilians killed - and they include civilians killed by insurgents, so the number killed by US forces is even lower. Talk about being ill-informed.

By 'order of magnitude too high' you meant that there could easily have been only 99,999 casualties, right? ;-) If you were using the more common usage and meant that there might have only been 10,000 take a look at the Iraq Body Count site. They have been tracking all confirmed media reports of casualties, and the current minimum is 15,671.

Lets check these 'facts':

So the Chinese Army did not send in tanks to stop students protesting?
- The US Govt has used the army against its own population. Check the protests in the 60's. The US regularly uses its army both overtly (iraq, grenada) and covertly (cambodia, iran, south america) against other countries.

So those executions I saw where they had the people kneel and put a bullet in their brain never happened?
- The US executes a truck-load of people. In fact, this is a problem highlighted by both Amnesty International and the US Supreme Court.

So there really is freedom of religion and speech in China?
- Freedom on religion and speech? No problem (as long as you are not a muslim). Yes, I will conceded that on this point, the US does provide significantly more freedoms.

And the Chinese did not lob missiles over an island full of people to keep them in line?
- The US government regularly lobs missiles into cities and towns (iraq, afghanistan). Dont be fooled into thinking these 'smart bombs' are really that smart - 17,000 iraqis can't be wrong (but they are dead).

- TV does propogate myths in both directions - dont believe everything your overlords tell you.

No its not. Its closer to between 15 and 17 thousand. The number you are citing is most likely based on a refuted statistical study which basically claims the total body count is between 8,000 and 200,000, with 100000 the midpoint. Thats a fairly large range, far too big to have any meaning at all.

If you're going to compare to the EU, let's go all the way. The EU has a declining birthrate and a large number of people on the verge of retirement. Their socialist systems will implode under their own weight.

The same is being said about our Social Security system, which btw, is the largest socialist program that is not identified as a socialist program. Socialism in the US?! Never!!

Let's also mention military might. The EU spends about $0.35/year on their military budget, and that's why when some asshole in Absurdistan starts massacring people, the EU sends a platoon of potato peelers and the US sends 20 battallions of armed and trained Marines.

I'd rather we followed the prime directive. We don't. But despite spending almost as much as the rest of the world does on military, we don't have a stellar record of policing the world.

I don't remember any of our marines showing up when Pol Pot butchered a million (give or take a few hundred thousand) Cambodians. Or when Idi Amin "Dada" wiped out half a million of his subjects. Where exactly where our marines when Juvénal Habyarimana was waging a genocidal war against the Tutsis? (Of course, after his death another 800,000 were slaughtered, so can't directly credit him with every death.) BTW, it was the French who stepped in to bring a fragile "peace" (a little too late for all the dead), but our marines were quite conspicuous by their absence during all this turmoil. Did our marines show up when Augusto Pinochet was busy imprisoning, torturing and executing 30,000 Chileans?

So yes, we send our Marines only to the Absurdistans that happen to have oil. See how our marines took care of the "Butcher of Baghdad"; but let us not dampen our euphoria by also mentioning the 17,500 to 100,000 we have managed to wipe out in the process of deposing Saddam Hussein.

BTW, it is not as if the EU is stingy when it comes to spending money on their military. France, Germany, the UK, and Italy are 4 of the top 7 countries when it comes to the military expenditures. France, Norway, Greece, UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, all make it to the top 25 Military Expenditures per capita.

The EU socialist-lite system works because it depends on the charity of the American military.

For all the money we are pouring into the military complex, we'd better believe that we are doing it for charity, or we'll have to start asking some really disturbing questions. The EU may or may not collapse under the weight of their socialist systems. But one thing is certain - if current levels of military expenditures continue and 'boomers start to retire in 2010, then by 2015 the US budget will have little else to spend on other than the Defence, Soc. Sec, and medicare. No wriggle room.

By 2025 the proverbial shit will hit the fan. Don't take my or anyone else's word for it (such as the NYTimes, WashingtonPost or for that matter

have read (sorry, cannot cite source) that the claim that 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq is based on a statistical survey that says somewhere between 5,000 and 100,000 civilians had been killed.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ has a pretty thorough min and max based on cited sources if your interested in the real numbers.

Iraq Body Count keeps a detailed record of all news reports regarding civilian deaths in Iraq and attempts to synthesize all of the information from several different sources.

They currently have the total between 15,289 and 17,503.

deaths

Listed.

Visual aide.

murder of a child,

Go find out which countries in the world allows deathpenalty on minors. Its a fairly interesting list.

, no seperation of church and state,

You heard your president make any references to 'GOD' or 'Christians morals' lately? His whole bloody campaign was based on religion. You may have seperation in theory, but sure as hell not in practice.

it's endless, picture yourselves in her position where your family and entire society want you dead to satisfy their fear and dogma

Well..shit happens everywhere. As far as I've understood from my Iranian friends, there are far worse countries when it comes to womens rights, generaly unrest and general safety. Iran has a an active opposition, and an active student body with a growing intellectualism. The more we alienate them with our "holier than thou" attitude and meddling in their internal affairs, the less influence we have on them.

I mean, bitching about one dead girl might be slighlty hypocretical considering we killed about 1 million people through sanctioning iraq, and a few more after the actual invasion (but they aren't important enough to actually try counting atleast. Link is only verified deaths, and is probably dwarfed by the real numbers)

We're bloody great at seeing the needle in someone elses eye, but can't see the log in our own. Everything is all about stories, and the big numbers which actually mean something are forgotten. Sometimes, I honestly think Muslim Fundamentalists have a bloody good point in wanting us exterminated(for the record I'm atheist).

Maybe you are the ignorant one if you imagine everyone killed was in the military?? This will make sobering reading.

• Iraq - ~16,000
• Sudan - somewhere between 7,000 and 300,000 depending on who you ask

"Your attitude is messed up because cameras in post offices gets your heckles up more than terrorists killing thousands of civilians."

So we're allowed to call them terrorists now?

sort of. there are important differences between the US and China, for sure. with the exception of recent (post-9/11) abominations, the process of imprisoning people in the states is much more transparent and the involved parties have much greater accountability. we seem to be past the stage of our history where we slaughter our native population, by several decades maybe. the fact that we still have a death penalty is, by broader western or industrialized standards, appalling, but at least the same accountability exists there as for imprisonment, unlike China.

but it is flatly not true that the US isn't killing large numbers of "anyone else's" citizens: numbers say otherwise.

Yeah, but this will probably be used in Iraq, so who cares if kills civilians?

Could you be more specific?

Are you talking about the 1,000,000+ casualties when Saddam invaded Iran in 1980?

Or are you talking about the 300,000-400,000 casualties of Saddam's war on the Iraqi people?

Or are you talking about the 20,000 - 35,000 casualties when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990?

Or are you talking about the the 14,000 - 17,000 counted at Iraqibodycount which is a one time cost to stop Saddams murderous regime?

Or are you talking about the ... "creative" numbers in that now famous Lancet article? It is really amazing. The United States has a mortality rate of 8.5/1,000 whereas they found Iraq had a mortality rate of 5/1,000 before the war (p. 4, results) which they used to "calculate" a total of 8,000 to 194,000 excess deaths with the "most likely" value of 98,000. (Check out those confidence intervals.) Some find those numbers fishy, or simply unrealistic.

Do you care about the millions that Saddam killed? If so, don't worry, he won't be killing anymore.

Those Iraqi soldiers probably didn't prefer dying as civilians.

the conservative one (by their own account)

The realistic one because of its methodology

Hmm, at 200 thousand per-year, he'd run out of people pretty soon.

The problem is you are using bad numbers as you can see here and here.

You can start getting a better handle on the numbers here and here.

There's a link in that article to a site that has totals and incident-by-incident breakdowns as well as analyses. Civillian deaths caused by US forces account for something like 90+ % of the total. There's a reason such information isn't readily available from the mainstream press.

Way to single out and clasp onto a tenuous nibblet of quotation for the sake of your earlier postulation. You totally harmed your credibility by doing that, rather than being compelling. I can scarcely believe you did that with such apparent vigor.

Mod grandparent up. The news article doesn't have anything informative, but some of the sites it links to do.

I am a US citizen who left the United States in 2001 as a direct result of the election of Bush. My father was a presidentially-appointed government employee under Clinton, but Bush replaced him with a Republican (as is standard operating procedure when a president from a different party is elected). Dad therefore got a job at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda prosecuting war criminals from the Rwanda genocide and my entire family moved to Tanzania.

Overall I am glad to be in Tanzania, and out of a country where people are so phenomenally stupid, misled, or uninformed that they would consider voting for a president responsible for the destruction of America's economy, budget surplus, international image, and at least 14000 innocent lives. Most of my friends here are from Europe or Asia (I attend an international school) and it is refreshing to encounter other people with real leftist, liberal views (as opposed to the current US democrats who are more conservative than most countries' conservative parties).

I was very much hoping for a victory for Kerry because I think a renewal of US ties with the rest of the world and a gradual pullout from Iraq would make the world (and the US in particular) a safer place, because it seemed like Kerry's economic policies had the greatest chance of decreasing the US deficit, and because I think the US needs to catch up to the rest of the developed world in government support for education and health care. I was initially planning to attend university in the US, but now that Bush has been elected I don't think I want to, both due general anger over the removal of civil liberties and other problems that have resulted and will continue to result from Bush's control of the government, and because of the specific fear, however unlikely, of a military draft. Given this election result, I will likely attend university in the UK, as Blair is at least fairly sensible from a domestic policy point of view (despite his tendency to be subservient to Bush in international policy). The rest of my family will likely remain in Tanzania until 2008, by which time the American public will hopefully have emerged from their brainwashed stupor.

Go on patting your own shoulder for handling democratic elections well.

It is for sure great to be an American. Something to be proud of.

...sick. How ignorant do you have to be to ignore this , or that ?

Innocent people die everyday and it is the US government that kills them. For nothing.

Osama and other threats are still for real while your country is fucking with Iraqi, people that never attacked you in the first place.

Shame on you...

Slashdot is slashdotted, so I can't tell if this was posted correctly before:

Facts you should know before you vote:

If you truly love your country, you will not just enjoy the advantages, you will be there for your country when there are problems.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

See The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.

Government data compares Democrat and Republican economics.

Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. Books are the major media that are not ad-supported. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books that discuss the corruption of the Bush administration: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Bush's education improvements were at least partly fraud.

I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush: "The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."

Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. government is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?

15 of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Many don't like the U.S. Gov. influence on their country.

Did you see the network footage of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi man the Bush family knows as "Bandar Bush"? Since it was Saudis who attacked on 9/11, why did Bush invade Iraq? Was it a smokescreen to get attention away from the Saudis?

Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

Is Bush drinking NOW?

George W. Bush's brother was shown in a lawsuit deposition on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes and using government influence to make money. Family values? Neil Bush is different from other relatives of presidents like Billy Carter; he is heavily involved with government corruption and he does his corruption with the help of his family.

The U.S. government has fought 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.

Facts you should know before you vote:

If you truly love your country, you will not just enjoy the advantages, you will be there for your country when there are problems.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

See The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.

Government data compares Democrat and Republican economics.

Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. Books are the major media that are not ad-supported. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books that discuss the corruption of the Bush administration: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Bush's education improvements were at least partly fraud.

I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush: "The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."

Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. government is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?

15 of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Many don't like the U.S. Gov. influence on their country.

Did you see the network footage of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi man the Bush family knows as "Bandar Bush"? Since it was Saudis who attacked on 9/11, why did Bush invade Iraq? Was it a smokescreen to get attention away from the Saudis?

Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

George W. Bush's brother was shown in a lawsuit deposition on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes and using government influence to make money. Family values? Neil Bush is different from other relatives of presidents like Billy Carter; he is heavily involved with government corruption and he does his corruption with the help of his family.

The U.S. government has fought 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.

The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars since WW2: The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.

The lack of respect for other countries has been going on for a long time. The present violence got started in the 1940s when the U.S. government passed laws that it could secretly meddle in the affairs of other countries, and do things that would otherwise be illegal. After that, everyone who wanted to increase their international profits wanted secret action, and many got it.

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Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

They are not just painting political graffiti with light. They are against Bush.

It's unprecedented: There are 44 well-funded groups against Bush. There are more than 3 movies and more than 35 books about Bush Administration corruption.

Magazines like The Nation are against Bush: 100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

There are hundreds of web sites like Dubya Speak, that talk about some negative aspect of Bush's personality. Dubya Speak quotes Bush: "It's only fair if other countries treat us the way they treat them." If he meant, "It's only fair if other countries treat us the way we treat them", that is something important about which George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden agree.

Foreign leaders and politicians call Bush a "moron" and an "idiot".

George W. Bush is certainly the most disliked U.S. president in history.

If I remember correctly, there were, in the early years, four major books published about Clinton. They said Cliton was having sex with slutty women. They tried to find something wrong with his small losing investment called Whitewater. They said he may have, at some time during his being governor of Arkansas, associated with people who later turned out to be involved in questionable activities. Someone in his adminstration committed suicide. The books were interesting, but a little lame.

The books about Bush are different. The books about Bush are about major governmental corruption.


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U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion.

Can you tell me a time in history when it was not the purpose of war to kill civilians?

I suppose I oversimplified when I said that the purpose of war was to kill people. I think a more accurate statement would be to say that the purpose of war is to subjugate people. In most circumstances, that means killing enough people to inspire the remainder to be docile and obedient.

Now in many circumstances, killing the military element can be enough to subjugate the civilians, but not in all cases, especially in areas of the world where the civilian and military elements are not clearly defined. How do you define 'military'? Only those people who have enlisted as regulars in the armed forces? By that definition, there were an amazing number of "civilian" snipers in Viet Nam... and a great many "civilian" combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. I wonder how many of those are counted in the figure quoted here?

To make matters worse, what do you do with a combatant that hides among civilians? When a sniper takes up residence in a civilian hospital (the likes of which happens regularly), what is the opposing force to do? How many of its own military force is an opposing army to sacrifice before killing the civilians? Whose interests are they supposed to have in mind?

What makes all this interesting is that the armed forces of the United States actually do put the civilian population ahead of its own safety to a large degree, something that is unprecedented in the history of warfare. The U.S. militaries go out of their way to target military targets and leave the civilians in relative safety. This is a change even from WWII, where relatively indiscriminate carpet bombing was the norm. And it's certainly in marked contrast to the tactics used by Al Qaeda in 2001. I don't think they got a single military target, did they?

Now here's an interesting thing... according to The Iraq body count page, the reported number of Iraqi civilians killed post-Saddam in Iraq is just over 16,000. That a far cry from the 100,000 which was estimated for the New Scientist article. Does this mean that less than 1 in 5 civilian deaths is being reported? I think there are some screwy numbers being thrown around here.

And lastly, it's been reported that during Saddam's reign, as many as 2 million people may have died as a result of his rule. So even using the most conservative estimates, we're talking a 20:1 ratio of Saddam's dead to post-Saddam dead. So far I'd say there's not even a comparison.

Having said all that, I must say that I still don't think the invasion of Iraq was justified. But we're stuck with it now, so we have to make the best of it. And I can tell you, that life would be considerably more dangerous for 300+ million Americans if a power void the size of Iraq is left to the radical muslims to take over.

Is this the definitive article about software RAID under Linux?

Software-RAID HOWTO. In English and HTML: Software-RAID HOWTO.

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Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

You said, "... there is a long, long, long list of people who are more deserving of the credit that Gore would ascribe to himself."

Vint Cerf said that Al Gore deserves unique credit. Back in those days, which are very difficult to remember now, you had to buy your floppy disks from a special company, and they really were floppy.

Back then it was the raw, early, ugly days of computing. (Just like it is now, with one big monopolist and proprietary file formats, and quirky, partly finished software that wastes your time, like Windows XP SP2.)

Back then, there was no one who had power in the U.S. Congress besides Gore understood anything technical. It's difficult to remember that now. Back then, people just did not relate to computing issues. If you knew something about computing, you were considered socially eccentric.

Back then, the ARPANET was thriving, but it was used by people who considered themselves privileged, and were privileged, and definitely did not want to share their privileges.

Back then, DARPA, the U.S. government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency would give ARPANET access to institutions and companies that were part of the effort to find new and better ways to kill people and destroy their property. Back then, it was perceived that there were enemies everywhere and it was important to protect ourselves by waging all war all the time. (Just like now.) It was called the "Cold" War. The U.S. government killed people, but the killing had to be a secret from the average citizen.

Back then there was an extremely acrimonious discussion about a new-fangled idea, the .COM top level domain. The privileged did not want their utility to be corrupted by crass commercialism. Back then, it was difficult to get spam. The ARPANET was an organization of gentlemen, who would never cause problems for each other *cough* Mitnick.

Back then, there were not enough viruses for everyone; we had to share. Back then systems were mostly not vulnerable, viruses were spread through the honor system. Okay, that is a joke. It took Microsoft to invent sloppily coded operating systems that would assure the widespread availability of viruses. Unfortunately, that is not a joke.

Back then, there was a new-fangled gadget, the Hayes 2400 Baud modem, which few could afford. There were fears that such high-speed use would cause problems for the telephone system.

Al Gore had technical knowledge. Al Gore had power in government because he was a senator and a famous senator's son. He put the full weight of government behind the idea that just anyone could have access.

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Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

Those Iraqis?

How about these Iraqis? Is their life better since being "liberated"? Do they count?

Having four planes, the twin towers, a portion of the Pentagon, and a few other sundry buildings fall out of the sky and/or collapse is, and I'm going out on limb here, a rather more disturbing event than what Britain and Spain experienced over a few decades. I'm not saying that to lessen the experience of the other countries, but there's not a lot of historical precedent for how a people should react to terrorism of Sept 11th's magnitude.

It is not a very meaningful event in terms of risk suffered per inhabitant. A comparable event in terms of risk in my country would take 185 lives (because of the smaller population). That happens occasionally in the form of plane crashes, explosions, floodings, WWII bombings, etc.

It is shocking because of its absolute magnitude, but it hasn't made terrorism a huge risk to any individual, New Yorker, American, or Westerner, because the aggression is directed against a very large group of people.

It is shocking to find out you have enemies that will commit suicide to harm you.

It is also shocking because it happened to a country whose experience of being attacked at home is limited to an attack on its navy in a colony.

But you do have to take proportions into account. Everything that happens in the US is big, because its population is big. To get its attention, the enemy will hit it hard.

Take the Iraq body count and divide it against the size of its population (some 25 million). Compare that to the "terrorism" bodycount.

Moderators are using their moderation points to make political statements. My parent comment above is not a "Troll". You may disagree, but I am not making trouble. My statements are backed up by 3 movies, 35 books, and a very well-documented article.

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Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

Got any hard numbers (or even squishy ones) on Saddam's totals?
Here's our civilian totals.
You seem to think that an insurgent mess with indiscriminate mass murder via car bombs is better than a generalized public order under a repressive strongman.
BTW, when do we invade North Korea? How about Sudan?

gewg_

You have an anger problem, which seems to be true of most Bush supporters. Bush supporters find it very easy to justify killing other people, and don't realize that some of those killed will have family members who will want to retaliate.

And, you didn't read the books.

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U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion.

It works out to about 1000 a month, not 3000. That's still a 9/11 perpetrated by the Americans, every 3 months.

"Whether or not we should have gone over there has *nothing* to do with how or why technology failed."

The Navy's super-expensive Aegis system caused the U.S. Navy to shoot down a civilian airliner, remember? The technology failed because the U.S. government system allows high-profit junk technology, paid for with the hard-earned money of U.S. citizens.

It would be possible to give many, many other examples.

Those who are angry and don't know it are easily manipulated.

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U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion.

For example: it has been estimated that several thousand civilians died in the first few days of the war (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/). You would think that this was a major tragedy and worth talking about. What was reported? Little. Where were the pictures of the effects of the war, the analysis?

Both NBCs Dan Rather http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,717097 ,00.html and NPR's Morning Edition host Bob Edwards http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030423.as p#3 have questioned the propaganda that they (the media) delivered to us. Dan Rather called it "patriotism run amok" and said that it was in danger of trampling freedom of the press.

Another example: why did the woman who photographed soldier's coffins returning lose her job? Because the war news is being controlled by spin doctors, not being reported in the sense that you and I think of reporting.