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The WMDs, which clearly did exist (we even have records he used them) don't need airholes, and are easier to hide harder to find

1) Pro-war hawk, Bush appointee, former devout WMD believer, and head of the WMD search David Kay acknowleges that no such weapons existed at the time of the invasion. The search teams are no longer operating.

2) The inspections teams were on the same track; the IAEA was reportedly close to declaring Iraq nuclear-free, while UNMOVIC was working on verifying chemical weapon destruction quantities based on the amount of residual chemicals in the destruction zones. The residuals were evident, but the quantity of source material was unknown. Both have now stated that they believe, just like Kay, that there were not WMDs in Iraq. In short, every inspection team sent to Iraq has reached that same conclusion.

3) The highest profile Iraqi defector in history, Hussein Kamel (Saddam's son-in-law), in addition to giving a bunch of humiliating information on Iraq that he later got assassinated for (exposing Iraq's biological warfare program and leading them to the information, pointing out that UNSCOM's head's personal translator was a double agent, etc), informed the teams that Iraq *had* destroyed its chemical and biological agents in order to try and get the embargo lifted and limit inspection team knowlege of how much their scientists knew.

Saddam's refusal to cooperate with inspections

The IAEA and UNMOVIC heads themselves described good cooperation from the Iraqi government. Blix - the more harsh of the two organization heads - stated that "Iraq wwas guilty of only small infractions". Most of the Iraqi complaints were of the US spying to gather information for war, which turned out to be true. And lets not forget the peace initiatives.

active promotion of terrorism

The closest thing Iraq did to active promotion of terrorism was giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers to compensate for Israel's policy of destroying the families' homes. Of course, Saudi Arabia did the exact same thing. Beyond that, there was very, very little that could be construed as supporting terrorism (a lot of misinformation went around on this subject: read up on Ansar al-Islam (more), Ramzi Yousef (mirror), Abu Nidal, and Salman Pak).

Now, if you want countries with clear, major ties to funding terrorists, you need to look at Iran and the United States.

Illegal attacks on peacekeepers

Oh, this is just rich. The No-Fly Zones were not UN-accepted; the French, Russians, and Chinese considered the joint US-British "No Fly" enforcement to be both illegal and counterproductive violation of Iraq's airspace. Then, before war began, we began bombing essentially at will to try and goad Iraq into attacking the US. The reason we were able to start the war with a ground assault was that our air assault began long before the war started.

Overlord Q, do you have special insider privledges that tell you secret little tidbits of info like 'Bush is a good president?'

I can't find anything saying that on Google... Maybe you can tell us more about the 'bullshit and lies.'

But I'll tell you what - look into the facts about Bush and you wouldn't type drivel like that - officially Worst President. Ever.

I ain't makin' it up - Bush writes it himself:

"Vacationing Bush Poised to Set a Record
With Long Sojourn at Ranch, President on His Way to Surpassing Reagan's Total"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/02/AR2005080201703_pf.html

Now imagine, no heavy encryption, no PGP, just plain text from teenage punks...and they couldn't get anything useful because they used CODE words.

Oh, I dunno. I think the Homeland Security crowd has the "code words" thing down pat already. Or they believe they do, anyway.

(Incidentally: If you are Muslim or have a Muslim surname, perhaps it would be best if, if you are getting married in the near future, that you do not discuss this subject with anyone by email. Just to be safe.)

I think the W3C needs to institute a "Terror bit" to be deployed alongside the "Evil bit".

That measure should be accompanied by the requirement that terrorist organizations use the .die top-level domain (just like, as we know, all pr0n sites use .xxx).

In conjuction with that, CyberCafes and others can filter terrorist sites out with any of the highly-effective Net Filters and the evildoers are thwarted again, with a minimum of effort!

Ain't life simple!

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1984

No longer will Dick Cheney have to pay visits to Langley, Virginia and lean on CIA analysts to produce the kind of intelligence a Veep might need; not now that the President has his man, Republican loyalist Porter J. Goss, heading up the Agency, and a second term in hand. Of course, the CIA was already highly politicized in the first Bush term. Run by George Tenet (accurately dubbed "a political apparatchik" by Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis), throughout most of the last four years, it proved a servile agency despite possessing perfectly clear-eyed analysts who knew the truth about Iraq and wanted to pass it on.

But not, it seemed, servile enough. Unhappy with the intelligence pickings from the CIA, the Bush administration turned to its loveably, unreliable then-"friend," Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, for the sort of intelligence that could actually be used to terrify a nation into war -- you know, all those weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands, all those ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda -- and then Douglas Feith, the number three man in the Pentagon, created the Office of Special Plans to "search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists." It cherry-picked intelligence from Chalabi and others and passed it up the line to those eager to speak of mushroom clouds going off over American cities.

Such a complicated process, though. Now, former Republican congressman as well as ex-CIA agent and spy-recruiter Goss will bring no less loyal political aides from the House and elsewhere into the Agency's leadership and so simplify matters in a second Bush term. Already, before November 2, Goss's CIA was working hard to suppress crucial 9/11 information, as Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer reported. The CIA will now be but another, ever expanding militarized arm of an administration that will already control Congress (hence no possibility of serious oversight over the Agency), significant parts of our courts and justice system, a media machine, a political machine, a religious machine, a majority of the state governments in our federalist system, and sizeable hunks of the government bureaucracy. The President, in other words, will have his own intelligence arm and secret army at his beck and interventionist call for the next four years, and no one around to take a peek. The ultimate check on the administration was the electorate and it just failed. (Oh, let's not forget that there will at least be angry CIA agents and others still stuck in this highly politicized system, feeling betrayed, and as things begin to go truly off the tracks, leaking like mad.)

Of course, this administration has long been intent on putting much of what it does not only beyond all oversight, but utterly out of sight. After September 11, they put extraordinary effort and legal thought into creating an offshore mini-gulag, beyond the courts, beyond prying eyes, a torture-system beholden only to the President of the United States in his role as commander-in-chief. The CIA was put in charge of the most secret aspects of this system and, as the part of the government best tooled in the arts of offshore interrogation, from Abu Ghraib to a

It seems to me that this is just an attempt at "cheap education".

A startling fact is that the number of students pursuing engineering and science degrees and careers is shrinking greatly. At a time when other countries, such as India and China, are stepping up their national education in science and technology, the US is making budget cuts in education funding.

Now I don't consider myself a liberal...in fact, I am a moderate who leans in many ways toward the conservative side, but these budget cuts scare me. If we can't foster the brainpower today that will keep us competitive tomorrow, jobs will keep flowing to India. But this time, they won't be call center or grunt-programming jobs. They will be development jobs. Design job. Knowledge jobs. That is what really scares me.

This article, and this practice, seems like nothing but a smoke-and-mirrors trick to divert money from the real problem. You will inspire far more students to take up careers in science and engineering if you pay to hire good teachers (like those that I was fortunate enough to have) than by making Tom Cruise a rocket scientist. It may cost more, but the raw returns are much greater. This should be a supplement to widespread greater science and engineering funding, NOT a replacement. It would work much better that way -- to have students see it on TV as a catalyst, then go to school where their teachers make the subject interesting and fun.

Here's a little song that tells you everything you need to know about the Creation, you (D)evilutionists you. http://mp3.washingtonpost.com/bands/buzz_skyline.s html -Buzz Skyline

I'll just post these two links. If you bothered you could find many more yourself:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/02/AR2005080201686.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/politics/03bush. html

Bush has never endorsed the teaching of Intelligent Design as a science rather than religion. That's simply a fabrication intended to karma bait the Bush haters. Congratulations on your success -- but you are still a troll.

Actually...

"Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/02/AR2005080201686.html

"Citing political pressure, George Bush recently discussed his views on Evolution and Intelligent Design, shortly following the Catholic Church's condemnation of the theory."

"Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories." ~ Source.

Bush does not provide federal funding or mandate for the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools because it does not match his philosophy of Reagan-esque "small government." Plain and simple.

Q I wanted to ask you about the -- what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?

THE PRESIDENT: I think -- as I said, harking back to my days as my governor -- both you and Herman are doing a fine job of dragging me back to the past. (Laughter.) Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.

Q Both sides should be properly taught?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people -- so people can understand what the debate is about.

Q So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?

THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I'm not suggesting -- you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.

Khalili said the company learned about the problem on Monday from a third-party security research organization. But one security researcher -- who asked not to be named because doing so could jeopardize his relationship with the company -- said certain circles in the hacker underground community have known about and exploited the Cisco.com password flaw for two weeks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/06/AR2005070601953.html/

Spoken like a true fanatic. We do not have the means to do both. The federal budget is running at enormous deficits, and expenditures for doing real science are being curtailed so that a few people can fly around in elitist and colossally expensive amusement park rides. Manned space exploration does not promote space science or exploration, it restricts them because far fewer activities can be done per dollar, they can only be done close to home, and they are extremely modest in their capacity to explore the cosmos or generate interesting science.

You have a magical-religious belief in fairy tales and shiny objects. Oddly enough, your list of space missions that actually do produce interesting science and significant exploration consists entirely of unmanned projects. You don't even understand the evidence you put forth for your own arguments.

And I'm the fool? Wow.

How about when people die?

Newsweek Apologizes
Inaccurate Report on Koran Led to Riots

Spokesman Bryan Whitman called Newsweek's report "irresponsible" and "demonstrably false," saying the magazine "hid behind anonymous sources which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny.

If they want totally anonymous sources, then the publications should take complete responsibility for misinformation published. That includes being liable and sueable.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 Source

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 Source

"Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members." - Sen. Hillary Clinton, Oct 10, 2002 Source

Bush NEVER said that Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks on 9-11-01. However, a majority of the American people were convinced that some link existed between the Iraqi government and those who committed the 911 attacks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A32862-2003Sep5&notFound=t rue/
The grandparent poster never blamed Bush for this fact. Maybe there's something wrong with the American media or education system that has made people so ignorant. Perhaps the fact that we are one of the most religious industrialized nations means more of us are willing to have faith in blatant falsehoods. Regardless of the forces that shape public opinion, I think it's safe to say that the US military and executive branch would not have attacked Iraq if the American public was strongly against such an attack. Our support, through public opinion poles, election of right wing leaders, willingness to work in the defense industry, willingness to pay taxes, unwillingness to protest, etc, has directly lead to this war. Modern states do not go to war because of some arbitrary dictum from their commander in chief, they go to war due to a complex set of forces that cause the commander and chief to make decisions that he knows the public will support. We do not live in an authoritarian dictatorship. Most leftists view those in power as the sinners who are manipulating the people, and the masses as the sheep who are blindly following the leaders. I see the media, the politicians, the religious leaders, and all of those in power as the result of social forces just as much as "the people" are. Hardly anyone makes rational decisions! We're all just getting swept on and away by the invisible hand of history. We (the voters, the students, the congressmen and women, the solderers, the teachers, everyone!) need to stop and think and evaluate what exactly are the implications of our choices on our fellow human beings. We should be conservative in action, making sure to first do no harm before doing anything at all. We should be scientific in thought, meaning willing to accept any idea as possible, but subjecting every idea to scepticism and rational scrutiny. As the world grows more interdependent, humans must either become smarter, or live in fear of terror attacks they are unwilling to understand.

We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

  While not explicitly declaring Iraqi culpability in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, administration officials did, at various times, imply a link. In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official. Later, Cheney called Iraq the "geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Bush, in 2003, said "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001."

Beyond the Sept. 11 attacks, administration officials have also suggested that there had been cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda that went beyond contacts. Bush last year called Hussein "an ally of al Qaeda." Just this Monday, Cheney said Hussein "had long-established ties with al Qaeda."

Correction (same article you cite, right column):

In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.

The defense of the outing of Joe Wilson's wife falls apart when it is shown that his Niger reconnaissance was, in fact, correct.

For the sake of any critical thinkers who may have read the parent post: The quote from the Washington Post was INCORRECT. Specifically, s/Iraq/Iran/.

Here's the sidebar on the same damn page this genius quoted from:

_____Correction_____
In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.

----

These damn right wing zealots are really starting to bug me. It's politics before country with these types.

A memo from the State Department, which outs Valerie Plame as an agent, disagrees with your former Niger mining minister. It looks as though the State Department all ready knew that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/20/AR2005072002517_pf.html

If Wilson's trip was approved by his wife, who approved the trips for the administration officials who were on the same trip? Was she the one who also approved Ari Fleischer and Dan Bartlett go along with him?

The only source that I could find that implicates Plame in sending her husband to Africa is the email from Cooper explaining what Rove said to him. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/page /2/

Of course, nobody has any real reason not to trust Karl ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove

Both of your statements are untrue and outdated - even the article you link to is an year old. There are much newer sources of information (based on testimonies under oath in front of a Grand Jury). Wilson's wife brought him in the CIA for a meeting - that is what her involvement was. She had neither the power, nor the influence to "approve trips to Africa". And the reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium, that were to be investigated, were not for 1998, but from this century.

I guess it would be too much to ask, since you linked to the Washington Post page, that you would read the Senate's "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assemssment on Iraq" or at least its Conclusions - after all, they are linked off that same page...

For your edification, here is a small excerpt:

The assessment that "Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear program" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee.

Both of your statements are untrue and outdated - even the article you link to is an year old. There are much newer sources of information (based on testimonies under oath in front of a Grand Jury). Wilson's wife brought him in the CIA for a meeting - that is what her involvement was. She had neither the power, nor the influence to "approve trips to Africa". And the reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium, that were to be investigated, were not for 1998, but from this century.

I guess it would be too much to ask, since you linked to the Washington Post page, that you would read the Senate's "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assemssment on Iraq" or at least its Conclusions - after all, they are linked off that same page...

For your edification, here is a small excerpt:

The assessment that "Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear program" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee.

That depends. Is your wife a CIA agent?

If she were, apparently she'd either directly or indirectly approve trips to Africa for me, her husband, to disprove what she would call "crazy reports" of Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa. Which it actually did do[1], by the way.

[1] "According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998."

Which might become more important as time goes on with global warming--I don't know how much fishing might go on at that latitude. Nations sometimes go all out for fishing rights. Right now South Korea has troops on the Takeshima (as the Japanese call them) or Dokdo (in Korean) island and it's causing a little bit of tension. Of course there's also some oil in the region which probably doesn't help matters either.

Actually, what Sandy Burger did makes Watergate AND this Plame nonsense look like a college prank. But I don't see any outrage in Mediaville over that.

I'm sorry, was that off-topic? Well, since the parent was modded "interesting" I guess it isn't.

It doesn't logically follow that just because the FBI doesn't arrest you, you are out of the woods. Ask Steven Hatfill.

Those who want corruption want stupid patents so they can scare others away from working in their area of technology. They don't care if they sometimes lose a few court cases due to stupidly weak patents. In general, taking something to court is so expensive that the corrupters win just because of the threat.

A major way those who want corruption destroy government effectiveness is by starving the agencies of operating funds. That's what happened to the patent office. The corrupters won't allow hiring of enough people to do the job well.

For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

They are corrupting the courts. Those who want corruption spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.

Another major way that corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.

The book Other People's Money discusses corporate corruption. It's excellent. Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?, by Dilip Hiro is an excellent book about the corruption that led to the most recent U.S.-Iraq war.

The corruption is extremely widespread. The books mentioned above and the 3 movies and 34 books reviewed in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

In general, most Americans don't want to know how corrupt their government has become. Most don't read books. The TV news they watch is heavily influenced by the corrupters. For example, GE, one of the largest sellers of weapons, owns NBC, one of the major ways Americans get their news.

What idiots modded this thread informative?
Probably the same idiots that modded yours "Insightful".

The following is off the IIS webpage.

About Internet Security Systems
Internet Security Systems, Inc. (ISS) was founded in 1994 by Christopher W. Klaus and made its initial public offering on the NASDAQ on March 23, 1998.

Profile The company provides security products and services that preemptively protect enterprise organizations against Internet threats.

ISS celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2004 and has commanded the leading edge of security innovation, inventing cornerstone technologies such as vulnerability assessment and intrusion detection/prevention.

The company continues to set standards in the security space with its Proventia Enterprise Security Platform (ESP), offering enterprise-wide preemptive protection that is tightly integrated with existing IT business processes.

X-Force Research The foundation of ISS' preemptive approach to Internet security is its X-Force research and development team. ISS can stop more threats because it knows more: by discovering, researching and testing software vulnerabilities and collaborating with government agencies, industry consortiums and software developers.


This is not a donation business. Companies and governments pay these people to provide products and services.

In response to:

Lynn did NOT work for Cisco, nor does ISS work "for / with" them.

I want you to read the following line very carefully ok!

The injunctions filed against him state that ISS and Cisco had been working together on the flaw for the past four months, and that up until earlier this week, a Cisco executive was slated to co-present the findings with Lynn at Black Hat.

This came from the washington post

Here is another one just in case you didn't like that one

We appreciate the cooperation we have received from ISS in this matter. We are working with ISS to continue our joint research in the area of security vulnerabilities."

Wow, joint research.

The court injunctions stated that they had worked with each other for months on this specific issue. Cisco states that they were doing joint research on security vulnerabilities. I can't believe people are making this big of a deal over this one point. The two companies worked with each other. I do not know if Cisco was a client of IIS but they at least worked with each other. It is hard for me to believe that IIS volunteered their time working with Cisco. I am sure a little money changed hands but that doesn't matter.

I can't prove that someone has not used this exploit; however I can indicate that no case has been found. Nothing has been reported. With that in mind what are the odds?

Let's look at a few things. While the exploit was a secret the only people who were likely to identify the exploit were people who could reverse engineer the Cisco OS like Lynn supposedly did. Not many people are able to do that. Fewer yet want to.
Even if several people did go through that process there is no guarantee that they would identify the exploit and then we have to assume that those individuals that did make such a discovery would act maliciously. What is the likely hood that a problem will crop up under those circumstances?

Next we have Lynn (Your Buddy) making a public display of how to exploit the Cisco OS. Now what is the likelihood that a problem will crop up? Did the chances that the exploit would be used go up or down genius?

Did Lynn serve the public interest by going public against the wishes of Cisco and IIS? I think not. You are free to disagree. You are even free to be pricks about it.

It was? I remember that when the war was "over", Bush gave his "Mission accomplished"-speech. In it he said that "USA has removed major supporter to Al-Qaida". Well, the fact was that Hussein hated Bin Laden, and there was no connection between the two. Bin Laden did contact Hussein and proposed an alliance between the two. Husseins reply was "Not interested. Fuck off". Now, thanks to the invasion, Iraq is excellent breeding-ground for terrorism. And since the invasion, the amount of terrorism in the world has skyrocketed. So if the plan was to reduce terrorism by invading Iraq because they were "supporting terrorism", I think it can be safely said that the plan failed.

Are you ignorantly claiming that Iraq wasn't on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list for the last, say, 30 years?

how exactly? Iraq had no links to the 9/11 it has no offensive capabilities to threaten USA (hell, they had no capabilities to threaten their neighours!) So how was Iraq "threatening"? In a sense that they could in theory do SOMETHING to USA? Well, Finland could in theory do something bad to USA/Americans, are we to be invaded as well?

Iraq's offensive capabilities have been extensively demonstrated and documented for over 2 decades, and their support of international terrorism only strengthened those capabilities. The only offensive capabilities Iraq needed was a few terrorist nuts willing to carry out their plans, just like they were trying to do in Prague and Kuwait and here.

But, all this is besides the point. The reason Iraq was invaded was that they had WMD's, remember? Well, I'm still waiting for those WMD's to be discovered. And when it started to become obvious that there were no WMD's to be found, the reason for the war switched from WMD's to "bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq".

The WMD's have been found and have been extensively documented. The ISG released a 1200+ page report detailing countless WMD violations found after the 2003 invasion, including a number of programs that the UN didn't have a clue about and Iraq was doing a pretty good job of hiding. There is a reason why people like David Kay and Tommy Franks have said that Iraq was more dangerous than we imagined before the war.

I for one find this whole thing to be weird. Apparently USA has the need to spread democracy. Then why is USA being buddies with Pakistan, which is ruled by a military dictator who overthrew a democratically elected government just few years ago? if WMD's are so bad, why is USA friends with Pakistan who has openly admitted that they have nukes? USA says one thing, but they act completely different. If WMD's and dictatorships are bad, then surely Pakistan should be occupied by now?

Clearly WMD's and spreading democracy are not the only considerations. Our leaders should only act when our security or our interests are threatened, which would certainly rule out Pakistan.

Seriously, this talk of "spreading democracy" and "WMD's" is pure bullshit and karma-whoring. Looking at the comments of US Administration before the invasion, it seems that there are three possibilites:

a) They lied

b) Current US Administration is filled with morons who are simply incapable of handling the job they are required to do. Inconsistent foreign-policy ("Dictatorships are bad! But not all dictatorships. WMD's in the hands of dictators are a bad thing! But not always!"), illegal invasions of sovereign nations based on flimsy evidence etc. etc.

c) Both

So, what is it?

I choose: D) The international consensus for the 13 years prior to the invasion was that Iraq was a threat to peace and security, and the 9/11 attacks taught us that we could not allow these kinds of threats to peace and security to go unchecked.

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/0 7/update_to_cisco.html

Article with more quotes from Lynn from an interview, and hints at possible criminal charges.

"The injunctions filed against him state that ISS and Cisco had been working together on the flaw for the past four months"

The latest update (here, but expect more updates at http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/) says that he "is said to have illegally reverse-engineered Cisco source code" (why bother reverse-engineering sources?*) to discover the vulnerability and that Cisco and ISS had four months of work in progress on the issue before this presentation.

He may have misused information from his former job at ISS and be operating outside the bounds of his ISS employee contract allowed him to act.

*: I can see how, if the source codes contain hash numbers which are generated elsewhere and need cracking, that there would be reverse-engineering the source code. If it was recovering the source code from a compiled binary, why not say so? If breaking the DMCA by decompiling an encrypted binary, why not tell us?

The latest update (here, but expect more updates at http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/) says that he "is said to have illegally reverse-engineered Cisco source code" (why bother reverse-engineering sources?*) to discover the vulnerability and that Cisco and ISS had four months of work in progress on the issue before this presentation.

He may have misused information from his former job at ISS and be operating outside the bounds of his ISS employee contract allowed him to act.

*: I can see how, if the source codes contain hash numbers which are generated elsewhere and need cracking, that there would be reverse-engineering the source code. If it was recovering the source code from a compiled binary, why not say so? If breaking the DMCA by decompiling an encrypted binary, why not tell us?

he at least have waited a few weeks to see how Cisco responds

He waited a few months.

How long should it take?

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/0 7/update_to_cisco.html

The injunctions filed against him state that ISS and Cisco had been working together on the flaw for the past four months, and that up until earlier this week, a Cisco executive was slated to co-present the findings with Lynn at Black Hat.

We are in violation of the freakin' charter!

Why? Because TamMan2000 says so? You are going to have to do better than that.

There was nothing illegal or against the UN charter with our 2003 invasion of Iraq. On the contrary, the UN charter mandates that member states enforce Chapter VII resolutions, which we did.

And the fact that we have a security counsel veto is the only thing that has kept chapter VII resolutions off our ass. That and the fact that nobody wants to try to enforce one on the sole remaining super power, Iraq is easy to pick on, the US, not so much...
In addition to that, many of the 17 resolutions Iraq was in violation of were written specifically so that compliance was either impossible or subjective (cheezedawg, you have WMD, prove otherwise), in other words they were written so that their garaunteed violation could be political capital.

That is baloney. Have you read resolution 687 or any of the subsequent resolutions? How about this 1999 letter that UNSCOM gave Iraq about how to satisfy the commission. Or the 175 page Unresolved Disarmament Issues document that UNMOVIC delivered to Iraq in 2003. Iraq's requirements to resolve these issues were very clearly communicated to them- they just ignored them.

Does the phrase Salvadoran death-squad mean any thing to you? How about School of the Americas?

Are you unaware of these, or are these not considered supporting terrorism to achieve our goals in your book?

No, I don't consider the SOA as supporting terrorism, because there is no evidence that they do. Sure, some people affiliated with it later turned out to be criminals, but if this is your standard, then places like the Univ of Michigan, UCLA, Wichita State, and pretty much any institution in the world "support" terrorism.

The use of force was threatened, and the demands went unheaded, but the resolution to back up the threat was never passed, correct?

The authorization to use military force was given in resolution 678. You should read it sometime.

Besides, you are dodging the real issue on this question. I did not say Iraq was not a threat. I said everyone is a threat. The point is that if you set out to prove that any group is a threat, and you have a decent spin/research staff, you will suceed. Of course Iraq was found to be a threat, it is a forgone conclusion...

No, you are dodging the issue. Iraq was a country that in the recent past had illegally tried to expand its borders (twice), launched unprovoked missile attacks on 3 of its neighbors, used chemical weapons against its own people and against Iran, was in open defiance of international orders to disarm, directly supported dozens of terrorist organizations, had tried to direct terrorist attacks against the United States multiple times, and was trying to plan even more attacks against us up until the invasion. If you can't see this as a unique threat, then I am glad that you are not in charge of our national security.

In addition to this threat, there were a number of strategic goals of the invasion, with countering the hate and oppression in the area with freedom and democracy at the top of that list. For lots of reasons, Iraq was the best place to start with these goals. It isn't perfect, but war never is.

Just more of the reasons why p2p is a friend to the indie and just a few of the many reasons why the big record companies are going the way of the dinosaurs.

CD Price fixing class action [antitrust] lawsuit against the big music labels settled:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-cd-settle ment.htm
http://www.musiccdsettlement.com/english/default.h tm

The full suit can be downloaded here(quite interesting I may add)
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/aug/aug08a_0 0_attach.pdf

And just in case you weren't sure how the music industry works (and why we are inundated with lackluster crap advertised on the knob.....errrr, i mean 'played' on the radio by big manufactured label artists)!!

We've all known for a long time that contemporary pop music stinks. We hear "hits" on the radio and wonder, "How can this be?" Now we know. And memos from both Sony's Columbia and Epic Records senior vice presidents of promotions circa 2002-2003 -- whose names are redacted in the reports but are well known in the industry -- spell out who to pay and what to pay them in order to get the company's records on the air.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163537,00.html

Recording industry titan Sony BMG Music Entertainment agreed Monday to pay $10 million and stop bribing radio stations to feature its artists in what a state official called a more sophisticated generation of the payola scandals of decades ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/25/AR2005072501025.html?sub=AR

Linux provides a very cost-effective (almost free) solution. The cost is born by the small army of volunteer open-source developers.

Nokia is making the right choice and shall remain the #1 cell-phone manufacturer.

Yeah, the liquid fuel tank camera view was incredible. I hope that I can find the clip of the shuttle executing its roll with earth in the background.

In other news, researchers may have discovered the reason that so many slashdotters are obsessed with encryption and data security.

There's a brief story in the Washington Post about a local company involved in innnovative identity establishment technology. The term "claims" is prominent in their description as it is in the Microsoft document. Interesting. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/24/AR2005072400911.html

I can't think of many non-military organisations which have bigger budgets

I can. 2005 Numbers:
Department of Health & Human Services: 584B
Department of Education: 56.5B
Department of Veterans Affairs: 32.5B
Department of Housing & Urban Development: 32B
Department of Homeland Security: 29B
Department of State: 27.5B
Department of Energy: 23.8B
Department of Agriculture: 21.4B
Department of Justice: 20.2B
NASA: 16.1B
Cheaper Departments include: Treasury, Transportation, Labor, Interior, Drug Administration, EPA, and Commerce. They generally run 8-15 billion each.

Source: Washington Post

An earlier Washington Post article discusses their disagreement.

Bakri said he would like Britain to become an Islamic state but feared he would be deported before his dream was realized. "I would like to see the Islamic flag fly, not only over number 10 Downing Street, but over the whole world," he said.

Looks like they're friendly and reasonable after all! I apologize.

Are you even following the war? It was the initial attack that destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq, NOT insurgents.

I've been following it, but not on Al Jazeera. It's a rather "duhhh" kind of point that US military "blew stuff up." They blew up areas of Iraq's already-awesome infrastructure (neglected for decades, according to Iraqis) to weaken Iraq's military. That's war. Unlike with the "insurgents," the point was not to do harm to the people, but to do harm to their government so that they could be more quickly and easily beaten, thus inflicting fewer war-related casualties, so that Iraqis could resume life with a democratic government. Immediately after the war, the US government began _rebuilding_ the infrastructure, repairing not only war-damaged areas, but also old stuff that just wasn't working well three decades on. The inhumanity of it all!

Meanwhile, my sources seem to think the "insurgents" (otherwise known as "terrorists," speaking of labels) ARE destroying infrastructure. *Specifically* to damage reconstruction efforts and harm the everyday Iraqis in the process. (There would be plenty more of these attacks if it weren't for Iraqi police and coalition soldiers preventing them.) But where, oh where, are THEIR reconstructive efforts?? If you can use moral relativism to equate these two kinds of damage, you've got severe issues well beyond your lack of logical prowess. (This is not to mention the fact that the terrorists don't need to rely on infrastructure attacks to harm Iraqis, when they can carbomb neighborhood children, gas stations, police stations, and stores, which they do quite frequently. You're right -- these "insurgents" are the ones to get behind!)

Let's recap: "NOT insurgents." Now, I wonder: what does a person like you do when faced with a multitude of facts, by a variety of more knowledgeable people than yourself, that contradict the very wrong (and very odd) claims that you've made?

BECAUSE THEY AREN'T ONES GOING ROUND CLAIMING TO BE MORALLY RIGHT!!

Yet again: do you actually believe these statements, or do you just hope that no one will argue against you? You DO realize that these people shout "Allah akbar" as the planes slam into the buildings, right? And the same when they behead people? And claim

Can't wait for the next "important social issue" to come up. It's going to be the horrors of chunky peanut butter or some such tripe.

Frighteningly enough, we've already been there, done that. Parents have sued to have anyhting containing peanuts removed from school menus because their children are allergic, even wanting to ban children from bringing in anything with peanuts in it in their lunches. Succeeded too, in some cases.

The point is a US citizen can be declared an enemy combatant without proof and without *any* kind of trial or hearing. Once this is done, it's over -- unless this case is decided favorably by the Supreme Court.

John Roberts, nominated for the Supreme Court this week, views otherwise. He sat on a panel of judges last Friday that upheld Bush's ability to declare anyone--citizen or otherwise--an enemy combatant. That means anyone may be held indefinitely, rendered to other countries for torture, or tried by secret military tribunals. Story about the decision here.

So I wouldn't be counting on the Supreme Court to help if Roberts is confirmed.

It's worth noting that the Senate Judiciary committee unanimously recommended a different PATRIOT reauthorization act on Thursday. It's discussed in the Washington Post. Excerpt from Post article:

"Earlier in the day, however, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that goes significantly further in modifying the Patriot Act. It would require greater oversight of the Justice Department and would place new restrictions on secret searches and surveillance in terrorism probes [...] would allow people to challenge warrants approved by a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and would require that subjects of secret searches be notified within seven days unless an extension is approved by a judge."

This was an 18-0 vote in a committee which includes some of the Senate's most vocal conservatives (Jeff Sessions, Sam Brownback) and, on the flip side, some of its most liberal members (Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold). Feingold was the *only* Senator to vote against PATRIOT in 2001, and even he found this version palatable.

The bill which was reported out of committee was a substitute for S.1389. Thomas should have this new version up in a day or two. PATRIOT is going to be reauthorized - that's a given. Accepting this, liberals and conservatives alike should be backing the Senate Judiciary version of this legislation. As the Post notes, it is significantly more contrained than any of the others under consideration.

Call your Senators and Representatives. Support S.1389, the Specter/Feinstein/Kyl USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005.

His name is no longer Jose Padilla.

It is Abdullah Al Muhajir. He is an Al Qaeda associate. An associate of his in Pakistan is in jail for terrorist activities (which means he's a serious hard guy). He is alleged to have taken up arms against the US and to conspire with bin Laden to kill Americans with a dirty bomb. Traveling from Pakistan terrorist madrassa to Chicago.

Al Muhajir is a hard core, nasty Islamic terrorist. His avowed aim is to kill millions of Americans.

"A former Latin Kings gang member in Chicago, al Muhajir served time in juvenile hall in connection with a gang killing and other incidents in Chicago. During a later stay in a Florida prison as an adult, he converted to a militant form of Islam, law enforcement sources said. Officials said he is married to a Middle Eastern woman, identified by one law enforcement source as an Egyptian."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A28493-2002Jun10&notFound= true

According to the Washington Post (that conservative anti-liberty rag), he had been under observation in Pakistan by the FBI and CIA for terrorist activity. His buddy is in jail in Pakistan. Google. It's your friend. You might try it sometime. www.bugmenot for WaPo registration info.

So, let's review:

A. Juvie record, involved in gang killing.
B. Converts to Islam in the slam, a militant terrorist-oriented version of Islam.
C. Marries an Egyptian.
D. Hangs out in terrorist madrassas in Pakistan for ... what the food?

Yup. I'd want to get on that guy's side too.

Seriously, does the term "idiotarian" mean anything to you? Google it's your friend you should try it sometime.