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MODERATORS: Whoever moderated the parent comment as Flamebait is not smart enough to be called ignorant, he is iggerunt.

The parent comment says, "Support for Israel may be the greatest cause of our problems." The king of Jordan says this is so. The foreign minister of Iran says this is so. (They were both interviewed on the Charlie Rose show.) Osama bin Laden said U.S. government support for Israeli violence was one of the two reasons he attacked the United States. (The other reason was U.S. government support for those who are against needed political change in Saudi Arabia.)

The U.S. government has been supporting the killing of Arabs for many years now by giving between 3.5 and 5 billion of your tax money to Israel, every year. There are only 14 million Jews in the entire world. There are only 4.8 million Jews in Israel. That money is about $1,000 for every man, woman, child, and baby in Israel who is Jewish, every year.

That money must be used to buy weapons made in the United States, at inflated prices. I seriously doubt that anyone who is in control of this policy has anything against Arabs or Jews, or even knows much about their cultures. It's government corruption, only that, not ideology.

To get votes from the millions of Jews in New York, Governor Pataki basically declared war on Arabs. To learn more about this, see the article, New York Governor Pataki's statements are equivalent to a declaration of war. Those who want power don't care how much damage they do.

Osama bin Laden says he wants a Muslim-religion-controlled political coalition. I've studied the matter for years, and I don't think there is much chance he can achieve that. The violent religious extremists in Muslim countries are not crazier than the violent religious extremists in the United States, however. The corruption caused by those who want weapons profits is supported by some of those who call themselves evangelicals. The evangelicals have an ugly plan that sounds to me like it might achieve a terrible goal. They want to kill all the Jews. They don't say that, of course. They don't take reponsibility for that. They say that their ancient books say that all the Jews will be killed or converted. Since there is slim chance that Jewish people would want to be evangelicals, or would be accepted by evangelicals, they are really saying that all the Jews will be killed. They are helping their prophecy by encouraging the 14 million Jews to get into bloody battles with the 1.1 billion Muslims. Experiment: Go into a very poor area of the U.S. and ask the next 10 street kids you see what they think the outcome of such battles will be. I will accept whatever they say.

Abba Eban, a respected Jewish leader, said that after World War II Jews were not welcome in Europe, even though they had suffered a lot. I agree with that. Some Jewish violent extremists believe that Jews must fight for their own land because they are not welcome elsewhere. That's not true, of course; Jews do very well in making contributions to New York. The weapons makers encourage the Jews in their worst impulses.

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

I now this is somewhat offtopic.

But while some people do at least try to count the civilian victims of te latest Iraq war (here),
I never heard any estimates on the number of Iraq military victims.

Does anyone now of any estimates?

Think again.

# of Americans killed on 9/11: 2,819

# of Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq: ~10k

Maybe these numbers are wrong, if so perhaps someone can find a better reference.

In other words, I'd like to see Bush's publicists rescue him from the whole 'killing tens of thousands of civilians to gain control of Iraq for dubious reasons' debacle.

It was only a Slashdot comment, posted at 6:53 in the morning. The major point is correct. Many bills before Congress are given misleading titles. I could only think of 3 that early in the morning. If you don't like the ones I picked, choose others, like this one: Congress Degrades National Parks. Here's a quote: "The National Park Enhancement and Revitalization Act, HR 4158, sponsored by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), has an appealing but deliberately misleading title."

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

For full image backups, try Acronis. Symantec learned customer care from Microsoft, it appears.

With Acronis, you can make a full system drive backup of Windows XP while Windows is running.

Last time I checked, Ghost was VERY quirky.

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

Criticize George W. Bush? That's easy. Check this out: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government

Or this:

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

Or this:

15 of the 19 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?

"Interesante (Score:0, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on 12:04 AM -- Saturday October 09 2004 (#10477597)
Wow, thats pretty neat."

How can that be a troll? É interesante, acordo. It's just a first post. Over-rated maybe, but not a troll.

It is neat. It proves the old adage, which I just invented: If it is possible, some programmer will do it.

I'm interested in the sociology of this. Is it possible that the executives at Google did not realize that they were offering a free place to put backups of encrypted files?

That's a suggestion for the Google file system shell. There should be automatic encryption, using a locally stored password. Didn't the Google executives realize that most of the data will not be useful to them, because it will be encrypted? I hope I never see a Google ad for Ö|tè&~1}¥bkä40e)Æ&#243 ;G.

For many people, safe storage is much more interesting than yet another email account. Of course, everything in the entire world should be free, not just information.

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

"Correct. However, having a gi-normous, constantly-growing deficit is not." (I agree with that.)

Is that word gi-normous similar in meaning to huge-gantic?

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

I agree that Michael Moore sometimes has an objectionable way of presenting material. But, as you are doing, many people talk about Michael Moore instead of talking about the huge amount of corruption he tries to document.

There is a huge, huge amount of material. Here are reviews of 35 books that say the same thing as Michael Moore. You can have the same message presented in a learned way, or a funny way, or a typically Republican way, or a journalistic way: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government

Here is just a little hint of the corruption: Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

Here's another hint: 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?

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

Here's another hint: 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 partly a smokescreen to get attention away from the Saudis?

The killing of Iraqi civilians is just human error. Knowing this makes Iraqi families feel much better.

This is not a major story. It is just meant to be a local story. For example, see this 2002 story: Secrets of Aids 'immunity'. Here is a quote, "Scientists have known since the mid-1980s that some people with HIV do not go on to develop Aids."

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

This is not a major story. It is just meant to be a local story. For example, see this 2002 story: Secrets of Aids 'immunity'. Here is a quote, "Scientists have known since the mid-1980s that some people with HIV do not go on to develop Aids."

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

Someone thought of using Jojoba seeds for biofuel. However, after giving the Jojoba plant enough water to grow fast, the resulting product was too expensive and too slow-growing.

So, I was skeptical about this plant until I read more. This plant is different. It's a tropical plant, where presumably there is enough water.

See the Jatropha curcas description and cost and photo. The Jatropha System explains the advantages.

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

I agree. That's a shocking conclusion, however, because business owners are usually a higher proportion of Republicans. Do Republicans in Crawford know something we don't know?

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

I've read a little about Crawford. I get the impression that the newspaper's EXTREMELY negative view of George W. Bush is not so unusual that they would have to worry about people canceling their subscriptions, or advertisers boycotting the paper. Newspaper must reflect the ideas of their readers and advertisers at least a little just to stay in business.

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U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. You must pay it back.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Yet? It's been a year, give it up. The US has been living there for a year, if they didn't find it they won't by now.

The Iraqi government doesn't make IEDs. Not only that, but there was no proof that it was WMDs anyway. You are referring to the case when an IED went off, and there were traces of Sarin at the scene. The experts say that it's likely someone took an empty shell left over from the Iran-Iraq war and turned it into an IED, not knowing that there was some leftover Sarin inside it. There are thousands of those shells lying near the border, an unexpected break on their part. Ever notice how the White House gave up trying to say there were WMDs?

Iraq Body count lists between 12976-15033 innocent civilian deaths.

If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority. I mean, the US has allied with Uzbekistan, a country with a horrendus human rights record (which boiled one of its dissidents alive). If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now. If the war in Iraq was about "ties to al-qaeda", then we should've hit the Saudis first, 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9-11 were Saudis. Shouldn't we have mopped up Afghanistan first? It looks really bad if the US withdrew its Special forces from the mountains of Afghanistan in order to put them to work hunting Saddam Hussein. We gave Bin Laden Months to get a lead. If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now... hey.. (this paragraph copied from an earlier /. post some time ago)

many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD

I don't know. I think the world would be a safer place if we put him back in charge. He was doing a fine job at keeping all the different extremist religious groups in check. Now it's hell-in-a-handbasket over there. Know how many Americans Saddam killed in the past decade? None. Now he's gone and we're past 1,000 casualties.

Of course, I suppose you could argue that the "world" might not be safer, but at least the Iraqi people are. Not these Iraqis, for course.

I've read the analyses. Every time there was a new fact, the "experts" retreated from something they said before. The last issue was the signatures. First, they could not have been signed by the Lt. Colonel. Next, they were photocopies of the Colonel's signature. Even if the signatures were forged, that was entirely in concert with things that happened at the time. The USAF at that time was very, very, very corrupt, as in pretending that major, repetitive aircraft failures did not exist. A clerk photocopying signatures would not have been a big event. It really helps if you were there, and I was.

It's fine with me if the documents are proved forgeries. However, I haven't seen that yet. If you have a link, I would like to see it. I would like to meet the forger, too, who made documents that look genuine to me and fake to almost everyone else. It was a lot of work to impress me, just one guy, a guy that the forger could easily guess might not exist.

Back then we really struggled with the shortcomings of the typesetting equipment we had. The cheaper equipment needed constant maintenance. The documents look like they were done on a machine that needed maintenance. That was a big joke back then, because it meant that the machine was either stolen, or someone got the machine and didn't want to spend the money to maintain it. Usually someone who did not want to spend the money was someone who was an enthusiast like me. Usually they got the machine on loan from someone who had a lot of money and not much understanding of how difficult the machines were to operate, and was embarrassed at wasting so much money, and wanted the machine out of sight. It was something we kidded about.

The big issue is that George W. Bush acts and thinks like an alcoholic. Alcoholics are usually angry people who act out their anger in a destructive way. 13,000 innocent Iraqis and their families have suffered, and tens of thousands of others. Before, Saddam Hussein was killing Iraqis, and the Iraq government was somewhat stable. Now the U.S. government is killing Iraqis, and the Iraq government is less stable, and you pay. Is that, in your judgement, an improvement?

Some people say it will be at least 50 years until the U.S. government can build a good reputation again. All because of one highly conflicted man who is in power because he sells the U.S. government to the highest bidder.

Proving whether George W. Bush dropped out of the Air National Guard because he could not pass the drug tests begun in the Guard on the month he dropped out is not necessary. The Bush administration has carried conflict of interest in U.S. government to a new level. They have also carried deniability to a new level. Three movies and 35 books tell a little of the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. Some of those books were written by Republicans. Some of the books were written by former members of the Bush administration. There is an overwhelming amount of material; however, because of the carefully maintained deniability, in many cases we may never know exactly what happened. If you didn't read the books, you have no way of knowing how bad the corruption is.

You cannot develop an accurate opinion by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another. Remember, the media exists to make money. Unfortunately, we don't have directly supported media, only ad supported media, and advertisers, understandably, are careful not to alienate anyone.

See this section of the same article: The psychological effects of alcoholism provide a framework for understanding the Bush administration.

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George W. Bush's brother was on

If oil or other mineral on land are sought-after commodities, will the US use their "air, sea and land superiority" to strong-arm there dominance over those resources? Good question.

This might help.

The Iraqi authorities actively discourage the release of the Iraqi wounded tally http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq1003/. The US authorities "don't do bodycounts".

The bodycounts are tallied by 3rd parties on sites like http://icasualties.org/oif/ or http://www.iraqbodycount.net/. A rough extrapolation from US casualties to wounded based on the nature of the casualties (predominately due to coalition or faction bombs) the wounded figure could be 5-10 times the number of casualties i.e. 65/75 to 130/150 thousand.

Plutonium has a half-life of 24,100 years. Ten half-lives reduce radiation by a factor of 2 to the 10th, which is 1024. Reducing the radiation of Plutonium by a factor of 1,000 is not enough to make it safe. In 241,000 years, the Plutonium will still be one of the most poisonous substances on earth.

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U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. Feel safe?

There are a lot of people, on TV and on the Internet, who overanalyze the details of politics, and show no interest in the big issues.

For an example of one of the big issues, consider this: The U.S. government is borrowing money to kill Iraqis.

Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. government is killing and destabilizing, and U.S. taxpayers are supporting the violence. Do you consider that an improvement?

The violence helps rich people like the Bush family and Dick Cheney's friends to profit. (The Bush family says they have sold their interest in Carlyle Group, and they no longer are connected. However, the company is privately held, and there is no way of verifying statements made about ownership.)

A lot of the problems in the U.S. seem to be connected with karma. Make trouble in the world, and your own quality of life will go down.

Those are big issues that are not sufficiently discussed. If they were discussed, many of the complicated projections being made now would be worthless. The U.S. government's system of violence depends on ignorance. Those who discuss politics while avoiding the big issues become part of the system of violence.

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Bush's education improvements were partly fraud

"A recession is when someone you know is out of work.
A depression is when you are out of work."

And a disaster is when all that is happening and the government is borrowing money to kill Iraqis.

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

It's karma. Make trouble in the world, and your own quality of life will go down.

A very real change in Iraq policy would need to send some serious messages. It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah. Stop interrogating Iraqi detainees, but killing them and letting dogs and pigs eat at their rotting bodies. Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings will be punished 100-fold, 1000-fold.

You mean over 12,000 dead civillians are not enough to get our point across?

Taking some points out of order, just to get the data in then the speculation.

The IBC itself does not publish citations for the sources of its study, and uses a method that has been proven to overestimate figures. I'm too lazy to make a link and even though the source is conservative, it explains the faults of the system: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/002/554awdqo.asp

The IBC does publish citations. Check out this. The column on the far right lists a source -- a three-letter code for the publication. Click on the header for definitions. However, I have doubts about the methodology at well.

The BBC also posted other data; unfortunately, they did it in a sidebar. The sources and estimates are:

Iraq Body Count: 13-15,000
Brookings Inst: 10-27,000
UK foreign secretary: >10,000
People's Kifah >37,000

How many of these "civilian" deaths are actually either terrorist or Saddam holdover fighters?

To be completely fair, I don't think it's possible for even the troops actually engaged in the fighting to know that for sure. However, the US and Iraqi governments keep assuring us that the insurgency is small. As compared to what, I want to know. As compared to population (about 25M), 10% would still be huge about 2.5M compared to our ~200K -- even 1% means that they have more people on their side in Iraq.

So let's make an assumption -- that they are telling us the truth. That the insurgency is small compared to the US force -- that seems fair to me. If it's not then we are, to use the most generous phrasing possible, being misled. So let's say that the insurgency is at 5% the strength of the US military presence in Iraq. That would be about 10K. I think this is a pretty darn large estimate, wouldn't you agree? See, I'm trying to allow "small" to be fairly large to be generous to the Administration. It also makes these back-of-the-napkin calculations turn out that we killed less innocents.

Just to put some limits on it, on the high end, if we killed more than about 75% of the insurgency, I think the casualty rate (currently about 2.8 soldier killed/day) among coalition forces would not be rising. So lets assume, again, that the Administration is telling us the truth and we're winning -- that we're right at the breaking point. Let's assume we've killed 75% of the insurgency. That means 7500 people. Again, I'm trying to be generous.

The Brookings Institute is considered "centrist" (they supported President Bush's Headstart changes among others). So, if we killed 7500 insurgents that means we killed between 2500 and 19500 innocent civilians. The middle of the range is 11,000. That's if *every* dead insurgent is being counted as a "civilian casualty". Just to be even more generous we'll say that the Brookings institute has error margins that are just too large, so we'll just lop off the top half of the range to be generous to the Administration.

The point of this little exercise isn't to get good numbers -- nobody thinks they have good numbers. The point is to look at what's being fed to us. It appears to me, that right now we feel like we have to kill between 2.5 and 11 innocent civilians for every US soldier that dies. Is that the mark of a well-run military campaign or is that the mark of tired, mismanaged soldiers who have had their tours extended too far?

No matter which way you think this analysis is wrong, it puts the Administration in an even more unfavorable light. If the insurgency is bigger, they lied. If we've killed less than 75% of the insurgents, we're probably not winning.

It's inescapable. Even if we're being told the truth, that the insurgency is small, that we are winning, and most of the "civilian casualties" are terrorists, then we're killing at least 2 and maybe as many as 11 innocent civilians to every soldier that dies. Seems pretty un-humanitarian to me.

So what about the 12000+ dead civilians in Iraq who did not enlist and did not have jobs which came with the possiblity of laying down their lives?

Killing children is something I personally believe I would choose not to do at any point (barring extreme circumstances, which I beleve makes anyone capable of anything) and no one I know (including my muslim friends) does it either--if one of them did, I'd really want to get inside their brains to know at what point they stopped being rational.

My hope is that all 3 bodies of law are smart enough to transcend their religious confictions and enact laws capable of outlawing things that make a society disfunctional. The Bible has no problem with rape--I however do. I can also see where laws governing monopolies, and driving under the influence have their place as well, but aside from modern cults, you won't see much of this in any religious doctrine.

That's all I'm saying. The moon is a bit past third quarter now. :D

>plus 1000 dead war

Correction: 1000 U.S. citizens have died. The number of Iraqi civillians is over 11,000 by LOW estimates. If you add in Iraqi soldiers, and you've got a total body count around 17,000, again, by low estimates.

I'd say about 12,000.

" US are very too dumb, they will elect Bush and they stress, it's very funny!"

" US are very too dumb . . ."
This part of your sentence does not translate well. The flaw in your grammar could, with a little allusion, be extended so that YOU (plural) are ignorant also.

" . . .they will elect Bush and they stress , , ,"
The 'each and several states' send delegates to the appropriate state capitols in the second week of December. These electors will cast their votes for President and Vice President. http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm
Individual citizens will vote of course, but the popular vote in a presidential election is only a barometer for the electors to gauge the political atmosphere. Additionally, many/most of us will not vote for Bush.

" . . .it's very funny!" The word you're looking for is "ironic", perhaps "sardonic". George W. Bush being president has been anything but funny.

Maybe you'd like us to vote for isolationist Pat Buchanan?
See: https://www.cato.org/dailys/12-22-99a.html

Yeah, and I guess the fishermen he is shooting and killing on the open water somehow don't care about living or dying? I mean, obviously, right? Otherwise they wouldn't be out there, trying to catch food for the day! They must not have learned your "lesson," that "when the shooting starts, get your ass inside!"

Do you hear what you are saying, man? Killing Japanese fishermen was justifiable because your Dad "wanted to live," and thought that out of all the innocents he killed, there might have been a few people with guns under tarps? Bullshit! He was a terrorist!

By definition, terrorism is "violence against civilians or similar noncombatants, especially in order to achieve political or similarly ideological aims, or to intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

You think that 11690 civilians have been killed in Iraq so far because they've been hit by ricocheting bullets in street battles? No, it's pilots like your Dad who are "just following orders" (or not) and intentionally targeting civilians or similar noncombatants. My United States of America is the biggest terrorist the world has yet known.

By neglecting to include the 11,000 Iraqi dead in your figures, you have invalidated any credibility your post might have had. Making fun of terrorism is tasteless. Making fun of the War on Terror is fun: it provokes conservatives into making clown noises.

I would hardly call Claudia Rosette "freelance" considering that she works for the Hudson Institute, which shilled for the Neo-Wrongs and generally played boosters for the tremendously successful Iraq war. A neo-con think tank like Hudson is an utter failure if it can't plant stories in at least the WSJ and the NRO (indeed that's where it was initially run). In her latest article at the Hudson Institute's website Rosette admits that only Ahmed Chalabi has the documents with the supposed evidence and 4 months later he still won't show them to anybody. Of course it's hard for him find time to get those documents to Rosette what with all palling around with and debriefing the Iran intelligence services in Tehran. Rosette tries to tiptoe away from having been Chalabi'd by making reference to other mysterious "confidential documents the UN is socking away" and to the neo-con picked Duelfer's testimony, without any specific knowledge of the supposed UN documents or where Duelfer got his own info. C'mon man, hasn't this country been fooled enough times by Chalabi's claims?

I have no love for the UN, but I don't think we need a naive conspiracy theory to see why France and Russia didn't want to knock out Saddam:
a) it wasn't in their economic or military interests
b) it was a bad war to get into. Iraq has been the straw that breaks the camel's back for years now, and to try to get right in the middle of it with no real regional or international support was asking for a quagmire, and France and Russia knew it
c) France is big baby in international affairs (mainly it's trying to hang out to some semblance of being a relevant player)

The answer is not to come out with some more Chalabi-promulgated nonsense to try to show that they're in on some global fraud, and it certainly isn't to insert ourselves into the middle of a regional hornet's nest.

Saddam Hussein was not a nice guy.

Agreed. But irrelevant. Hussein would have been overthrown by the Iranians during the 1980s except for one reason: The US supplied him and kept him in power! You can't have it both ways; one day he's a great vicious thug, the next day he's a bad vicious thug.

Saying that 10,000+ were "mangled" is an outright lie.

Mangled is not very descriptive, it could mean many things. As to the number, this UPI article from Dec. 2003 states almost 11,000 medical evacuations from Iraq. No doubt, some of those evacs are for suicide attempts, post-traumatic stress, and other mental problems. Mangled could mean many things.

the highest number of wartime civilian casualties in Iraq: right around 12,000

Are you referring to the Iraq Body Count's stats? If so, those numbers are generally recognized as being low as they refer to deaths only cited by the major media.

As to whether the Iraqis are better off with the US occupation or with Hussein's dictatorship, the ultimate source of authority on this is the Iraqi people themselves. And based on western public opinion polls, the Iraqi people have spoken: they have run out of patience and a majority want the US out, the vast majority consider the US to be an occupier and a solid majority want US troops gone immediately, 55 percent said they would feel safer if the US left, and Americans polled believe the invasion of Iraq has increased the terrorist threat to the United States, not decreased it. (Note, CommonDreams.Org is a news aggregator; those stories are from wire services and mainstream newspapers.)

Strangely, in the quick check I did, I did not find a poll bluntly asking Iraqis if they were better off under Saddam or better off under the illegal US occupation. I wonder if I missed it or whether the corporate mass media is afraid to ask the question. (I'd appreciate a link if anyone finds such a mainstream poll.)

what they're doing is a perfectly viable form of non-violent direct action. they're using technology to create the world they want rather than asking for it. i think they're doing a great thing.

would you say that interrupting the workings of the Nazi party is a bad thing? how about interrupting the working of some unnamed party who rounds up individuals off the street, without trial, and holds them in jail for years without access to lawyers, torturing them all the while?

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=as cii&q=guantanamo+&btnG=Search+News

should we protect the speech of mass murderers who indiscriminately kill innocent people?

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s821954.htm
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?item ID=5308&sectionID=15
http://iraqbodycount.net/

this is the digital equivalent of blocking a street to interrupt the convention. they're just holding people responsible for their actions. believe me, most of the world is vey much in support of trying to stop our government right now.

lastly, should we try to physically stop a government which is even willing to jail people for LINKING to contraband information?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=sher man+austin&btnG=Google+Search

really? tell that to cnn .

We don't want to indiscriminately kill innocent people

we may not want to, but according to this we're sure doing a lot of what we don't want to do. i guess we'll just have to suck it up and deal with it though. no one else wants to kill almost fourteen thousand civilians.

i'm still not clear how it was "mind-numbingly clear" that iraq had weapons of mass destruction. after all, if you had weapons which could kill large numbers of people at once, and you were being invaded by large numbers of people, wouldn't you use those weapons as opposed to not use them? and yes, i know that iraqis who would use them were threatened with immediate death or whatever, but against those odds, they're faced with immediate death anyways! if they had them, they would have used them. there's no reason not to.

The bottom line... that's what people who don't want accountability always focus on. Not on the numbers that got you to the bottom line. People who want accountability want to know how you GOT that bottom line.

Regarding Kerry and his service, I'll stick with McCain's opinion- Kerry served honorably and no dirty trick is going to change that. There are some sick people out there. He volunteered for combat, I don't particularly care about the shiny objects bestowed upon him after the fact. But tell me, do you think the people who give out medals are that stupid?

Bush's administration lied about certainty and specificity. Bush's State of the Union address identified specific quantities of specific substances, and Rumsfeld announced their location. You don't do those sort of things when you're not sure. All the others were emboldened by the administration's confidence in those findings, and rightly so; you'd expect the executive branch to have the best access to intelligence. When people raised doubts they were told "trust us, we know what we're doing". Well, Fool me once, shame on you, as they say.

And I defy you to come up with any methodology by which you can show that more civilians would be dead if Saddam were still in power than as a result of the war. As a conservative estimate over 11,000 civilians have been killed directly as a result of this war. So far we only know about 5000 or so from Saddam's reign, and it seems that many of these were from the insurgency after the first Gulf War that the US encouraged but failed to support. Furthermore, it's not clear at all that Allawi is going to be any better. You may recall that this is why we didn't take out Saddam the first time- it was judged that Saddam was a known quantity, and humbled at that- it was not clear that we could easily do better. This alone does not show that the war wasn't justified, but it does show that your thinking is very lazy.

As for the bombing strategy, duh you use different tactics in different places and if they aren't useful then you evaluate your chances of success and the cost of the conflict in the specific case. 900+ American soldiers dead and over 10,000 Iraqis dead so Allawi can demonstrate even faster Due Process than Texas under Bush.

Why do you want to talk about Michael Moore so badly? Quit trying to change the subject.

Here's a recap of our discussion of Bush's AWOL:

Me: Bush was AWOL, here's the facts that prove it.
You: That site is partisan.
Me: That doesn't change the facts it contains.
You: MICHAEL MOORE MICHAEL MOORE!
Me: WTF?

Can't believe I'm wasting my time on you. In a sense you win- there goes 15 minutes I'll never get back and no one who cares will ever read this.

... killing ... occasional Iraqi civilians

Hmm, its somewhere between 11,000 and 13,000 civilians killed.

Keep in mind that less than 3,000 died here on 9/11/2001. Keep in mind that the US kills more people every year than terrorists or any other government. In fact, I believe its something on order of 1 mil a year since 1960 or so.

regarding the senseless murder of thousands of innocent lives

"I have an issue with the film.
How does he happen to have so much good interview footage with a woman from his hometown whose son happened to die in Iraq... before he died.
Did Moore interview a ton of people and just got ahem.. lucky, or were the earlier interviews staged after the fact?"

Is that an issue with the film, or a question to the film-maker?

Google search turns up 853 US soliders killed in Iraq [but don't forget the 9436 ones we don't count ]. US news channels report 180,000 US troops in Iraq. So the problem is that Moore got "lucky" with picking an interview, given a 0.47% probablity of any given US soldier being dead by the end?

Maybe he got "luckier" by picking someone in the front-line? Maybe he did enough interviews (211?) that one was bound to end up dead. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was unintentional.

That's not evidence of Dubya's virtue, that's evidence of the virtue of the US system, which at least makes an attempt at guaranteeing free elections, and prohibits staying in for more than two terms. Saddam racked up the bodycount that he did because he's been in since 1978.

And the US system also ensures that the power is spread across a cabinet. So it's meaningless to compare a US President's criminal record with that of an Iraqi dictator, who has no "last-call" bell when 8 years are up. Rather, the comparison should be between the current cabinet and Saddam: Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Negroponte , etc.

"Last I checked there weren't any mass graves filled with turkish insurgents on GWB's resume."

If you're talking about the Kurds, I would give several people in the current White House full credit for their part in this. And full credit for helping Saddam brutally crush the Shia uprising too, ensuring that he stayed in power.
Saddam couldn't have done it on his own.

Iraq Body Count. This is civilians only.

According to the anti-war site www.iraqbodycount.net
your number of 10,700 over the past year is inaccurate. There have been an estimated 8900 - 10,800 since Jan 1, 2003 (so over a year).
That includes "up to 7,350 deaths which resulted from coalition military action during the "major-combat" phase prior to May 1st 2003

Now... don't let facts cloud your mind.

oh yeah, cnn - gee i guess it must be true then. riiiight.
here's some stats that are a little more objective.

Um. And you're discounting Iraqi civilian casualties because...? You mean "600 Americans dead...along with untold thousands of civilians".

2 ...kill ratio well over 10 to 1 in Vietnam, "

Wow. so this time we've got an over 10 civilian : 1 soldier kill ratio.

Makes you wonder what the military:military kill ratio might be - though it's hard to count if a bunch of our guys are private security companies.

Here's a disturbing possibility: donations to groups that sound "subversive". I've given money to groups like Iraq Body Count, which tracks civilian casualties in Iraq. And Voices in the Wilderness, which opposed the UN sanctions on Iraq and worked to prevent the war. And of course that most subversive organization, the ACLU, which is actively fighting the existing "no-fly list". I hope I'm wrong about this, but think about the implications if donations to groups like these are enough to prevent one from flying.