Slashdot Mirror

From the Washington Post article here which is btw the article which is actually referenced in the article that's posted above,

An unmanned Stryker is part of the military's effort to move more machines into battle to save both money and lives. "Well before the end of the century, there will be no people on the battlefield," said Robert Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Management and Technology.

The sad part is of course that he didn't say: "Well before the end of the century, there will no longer be a need for battlefields" :(. Sad Sad :(

Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design

The title says it all

ince when are you suppossed to let several thousand people die as two flaming towers collapse and just go on as if nothing had happened? You fight back. You kill every damned one of those sons of bitches. It really fuckin' irks me when the liberals here on slashdot have more hatred for Darl McBride than Osama bin Laden. At least Darl isn't a mass murderer.

Since when has Osama Bin Laden been hiding in Iraq?

Maybe you'd rather hear it from the President himself:
"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

Additional information at WashingtonPost.com - Captain Kangaroo.

You didn't look at the links, did you? He was paroled a long time ago. If it's a ruse, it's a mystery as to why he is presisting in it.

I did look at the links, moreover I'm old enough to remember when Colson was convicted.

I don't personally have any opinion, one way or the other, about the sincerity of his conversion. I haven't met the man, or listened to his ministry -- and I do try to meet and listen before judging a man's faith.

Nonetheless, it's worth noting that some people have questioned his sincerity; and given his role in the Watergate affair, it's worth considering that Colson may have hidden agendas, and a gift for wearing false faces.

Anyone can quote scripture -- "even the Devil".

-kgj

Deja Vu?

"There is no controlling legal authority that says this was in violation of law."

-- Al Gore, seven times (in one form or another), White House news conference, March 3

"Gate" means "caught", and these injudicious Senators have been. If you look at a Watergate timeline, you'll see how timeconsuming these processes are:

The Republican goons were caught bugging the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel at 2:30AM 6/17/72. It took 2 days until the Washington Post even reported the Republican security aide among the "burglars", on 6/19/72. A couple more months to report the $25K paycheck from Nixon's campaign to one of the Plumbers, 8/1/72. Another couple months to report Attorney General Mitchell's anti-Democrat espionage fund, 9/29/72. The FBI determined that the Watergate breakin is the tip of an iceberg of political crimes by Republicans against Democrats, reported weeks later on 10/10/72. NIXON IS REELECTED IN A LANDSLIDE on 11/7/72. Nixon aides Liddy and McCord are convicted conspiracy, wiretapping and burglary 7 months after their crimes at the Watergate, on 1/30/73. Three months later, top Nixon aides Erlichman and Haldeman, and Attorney General Kleindienst, resign to escape pressure over the operation and the coverup, while Nixon lawyer Dean is fired for refusing to play ball, on 4/30/73. The Senate hearings begin weeks later, on 4/18/73. Nixon is impeached for obstruction of justice on 7/27/74. Nixon resigns 8/8/74.

From the Watergate breakin to Nixon's resignation took over 2 years from . Public interest didn't begin to snowball for months after the crimes, 6/17/72 - 8/8/74; counting from the first Republican breakin, at the doctor's office of Daniel Ellsberg (leaker of the revelatory Pentagon Papers) on 9/3/71, that's almost 3 years - 75% of a Persidential term. With the Murdoch fascist pablum global media empire, including Fox News, the NY Post, the Weekly Standard, even the P2P news media like the Internet might take a lot of time to get these latest crimes in the Senate into the public consciousness.

Don't write this story off yet. As the various Federal criminal investigations of Cybergate, the 9/11 Kean-Hamilton commission, the Ernergy Bill graft investigations, as well as a host of other criminal investigations in the US and around the world begin to bear fruit, there will be plenty of fascinating stories of traitorous Republican plotting and scheming to read at the beach this Summer. The vast rightwing conspiracy will be accepted as a theory as reliable as the Pythagorean.

# 2003-12-18 18:52:34 Cybercrime hits capitol hill (articles,usa) (rejected)

This was reported in the December issue of Cryptogram. You can find a Washington Post article here. And the Information Week article here.

Making Way for Designer Insects
Risks and Benefits of Gene-Altered Bugs Merit Thorough Study, Report Says

By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page A01

The insect world could shortly undergo a genetic makeover in the laboratory. Scientists are at work developing silkworms that produce pharmaceuticals instead of silk, honeybees resilient enough to resist pesticides and even mosquitoes capable of delivering vaccines, instead of disease, with every bite.

Researchers are tinkering with insect genes to develop more than a dozen new varieties, offering potentially broad social benefits while posing complicated new health and environmental risks. Though most of the designer insects are at least five to 10 years away from reality, concern is growing that government agencies have yet to think about how to oversee the research.

A new report scheduled for release this morning warns that the issues posed by gene-altered insects are so complex that unless federal agencies begin now to design methods of oversight, the necessary rules may not be in place when scientists are ready to start releasing insects into the environment.

The report by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a think tank in Washington, outlined laboratory work of astonishing ambition, with goals that go far beyond the relatively limited uses to which genetic engineering has been put to date.

Research is already underway, for instance, to create mosquitoes with genes that render them incapable of transmitting malaria, with the idea that the souped-up mosquitoes would be released into the environment to spread their new genes into every type of mosquito capable of carrying the disease.

Malaria sickens more than 300 million people a year and kills more than a million, many of them babies in Africa, so any technology that brought it under control would be a milestone in social history. Yet, in one example of the complicated questions society will have to confront, it's theoretically possible that rendering mosquitoes immune to malaria will make them ecologically fitter, and therefore more likely to transmit other diseases, some of which are fatal.

Mosquito researchers have said they are well aware of the potential risks and have pledged caution in moving forward with their experiments.

The Pew report noted that someone is going to have to decide what kind of research is needed to estimate the likely effects, and then decide whether the benefits of releasing the designer mosquitoes are worth the risks. And that decision will have to be made in a complex international environment: Many African and Asian countries are ill-equipped to assess elaborate genetic technologies, and their citizens are sometimes suspicious even of simple technologies designed in the West. Just recently, resistance to polio vaccination in some Muslim communities in Africa led to an upsurge of that disease.

American regulatory agencies are likely to play a key role in overseeing the insect research, since much of the laboratory work will be conducted in the United States, the Pew report said. Yet only the Agriculture Department has moved to assert jurisdiction, and only over a relatively limited group of gene-altered insects, namely those that could become plant pests. The few gene-altered insects likely to be ready for commercialization in the next five years would probably be covered under those rules, including an altered variety of pink bollworm meant to help control that pest in cotton. But the majority of insects on the drawing board would not be covered, the Pew report said.

The Agriculture Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration all have congressional authority that might give them some oversight power, but the agencies have yet to stake out whether, or how, they will use their authority to oversee the full range of ge

Where I work, we had a stray bullet come through a window and pass through where someone would've been sitting, had she/he not gone to lunch early that day.

Two people were stabbed to death right across the street. Two 70-year-old women, in a flower shop, during a robbery.

Our buildings are filled with asbestos. We can't drink the water due to bacteria in the pipes. The HVAC is constantly messed up: my boss' office is about 58 degrees F (14C) right now, but a couple weeks ago they had to send us home because it was 90+F (32C). Occasionally, we've been stuck without water for flushing toilets and washing hands.

One time, a sewage backup came out of one of our (already unusable) water fountains.

Ceiling tiles have collapsed on people's desks or right in front of some people from the GSA (Government Service Agency - they own the buildings) here to tour the building. Leaking pipes are the norm.

One time they told us to open the windows to encourage ventilation due to microbes in the air. Then they told us not to open the windows due to lead paint being used on the windows.

Here's an article from 2000 summarizing the problems.

These are the conditions US Census Bureau employees have to work in. Many, many people leave because of the problems.

--RJ

I wonder if that canyon was formed by the big flood in the bible, like the Grand Canyon was. That's what a book being sold in the GC gift shop says.

A sleep-depraved Saddam is forced to stare at a photo of his dead son's bodies. After he's finally allowed to sleep and REM kicks in, a voice-over script explains to him that its all his fault and guides him on how he should cooperate fully.

It's well known that sleep-deprivation is a tatic employed by western interogation. Somehow, our culture doesn't see phsychological torture as being torture at all, and it's "acceptable". Must be the lack of blood. It does as much damage though...sleep deprivation is a very powerful tool.

Here's a quote from a news article on the subject, that I just pulled out of Google.

Other U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that interrogators deprive some captives of sleep, a practice with ambiguous status in international law.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the authoritative interpreter of the international Convention Against Torture, has ruled that lengthy interrogation may incidentally and legitimately cost a prisoner sleep. But when employed for the purpose of breaking a prisoner's will, sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture."

I've read stories about how Camp X-Ray is bathed in light 24 hours a day and prisoners aren't allowed to cover their eyes at all.

What kind of world do you live in where a budget doesn't have to take into account the current economic situation?

Tax cuts have reduced government revenue -- they haven't paid for jack. And the "stimulus" they've provided (much like the stimulus your lifestyle gets if you max out your credit card debt in a month) has not grown enough to cover the cuts themselves, let alone the drastic increase in spending Bush has overseen.

See this article for starters.

Florida is not the only place where electronic voting isn't working well. Fairfax County Virginia, high tech and relatively affluent, can't get it right either.
(brief anonymous registration required)

Are you now or ever have been a member of a student organization -- Wall Street Journal | May 29, 2003
That's why people in this rural university town were so surprised on Feb. 26, when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived before dawn in unmarked vehicles at Mr. Hussayen's home to arrest him. The agents rousted him from bed and took him away in handcuffs. Over the next two days, most members of the campus MSA, which Mr. Hussayen formerly headed, were interrogated about their immigration status, extracurricular activities and views of the U.S...

Homeland Defense is protecting you by getting rid of *dangerous* women and children
The wife [..] says she'll voluntarily leave the United States within 120 days. The decision by Maha Al-Hussayen put an end to the government's attempts to deport her and her children. Al-Hussayen's attorney says she made the decision after she was threatened with jail and several character witnesses became too intimidated to testify on her behalf. She must leave by March 6th.

This guy had a *glowing* GPA in grad school here and here
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi national working on his computer science doctoral degree, quietly moved his student office from the Computer Science Department into the school's engineering isotope lab, apparently without his adviser's knowledge, according to the documents.
Al-Hussayen moved into the engineering lab while he was under surveillance by agents assigned to the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force, the documents say. Surveillance teams determined Al-Hussayen primarily used the engineering isotope lab after hours.

And 4 other people you DIDN'T hear about

The Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable" searches and seizures. Reasonability, however, is not a static concept, it changes according to the circumstances.

The Fifth Amendment applies to "criminal prosecutions." Those being held at Guantanomo are not facing military--not criminal--sanction. Furthermore, the Supreme Court is not "sleeping through this." In the coming months, the Court will be reviewing a challenge to the constitutionality of Gitmo detention.

To sum up: your post is wrong, wrong, wrong.

What's so funny about it?

Libraries probably are next. Maybe not by the RIAA (yet), but journal publishers already have them in their sights.

Libraries under attack
Pat Schroeder's New Chapter
Publishers vs. Libraries

Unfortunately, it seems the primary motivation for the Mars for the general population is now sensationalism. I'm sure the Slashdot audience how a different view on Mars though.
USA Today has a good article about how Mars is shifting from science to politics.
The Washington Post explains better the goals of the current US gov.

I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing because that's usually how space projects get more funding but it might explain why the photos are looking more "nice to the user" than "scientifically realistic".

When was the last time you saw a crackwhore vote? By the way, as you can see here, your worn-out stereotypes ("welfare slag?" never heard slag used in that context before.) no longer apply.

To which he replied "Try living on $7 bucks an hour"

Well, it's gone up since then at least -- it's $13-15/hour now. See here or here.

That said, $13-15/hour isn't going to be a whole lot of money if you're living in So. Cal. -- it's livable, but you're not going to be buying a lot of toys (except lego obviously) or live in a big house (unless you make it out of the aforementioned lego).

Based on the "Lego Master Builder" FAQ page (here's a Google cache, since the main is toast) there are decent benefits as well, plus some travel (which probably means a good bit of travel, for which you'd be paid extra).

Whether or not you can live on that money is obviously dependant on lifestyle and other income, but, hey -- it still is a dream job (if you like Lego).

"The top model builders from each city will be invited to Legoland California in Carlsbad for a chance to become the eighth Lego master model builder and build and maintain the huge Lego sculptures in the park. The winner will be paid $13 to $15 an hour."

Thats pretty good pay for doing something you were do at the age of 5, or for some of us still doing today.

Clicky (Washingtonpost.com)

Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, proposed a sustained commitment to human exploration of the solar system -- with a return to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars -- in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. NASA came up with a budget-busting cost estimate of $400 billion, which sank the project.

"It's going back to being a uniter, not a divider," a presidential adviser said, echoing language from Bush's previous campaign, "and trying to rally people emotionally around a great national purpose."

Another official involved in the discussions used similar language, saying that some of Bush's aides want him to have a "Kennedy moment" -- a reference to President John F. Kennedy's call in 1961 for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.

"It's a national unifying thing, it's a world unifying thing," this official said.

"This is a boon for business and a boon for Texas," one official said....

One presidential adviser, who asked not to be identified, said, after discussing the initiative with administration officials, that the idea is "crazy" and mocked it as the "mission to Pluto."

"It costs a lot of money and we don't have money," the official said. "This is destructive of any sort of budget restraint." The official added that the initiative makes any rhetoric by Bush about fiscal restraint "look like a feint."

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who was a key participant in the White House policy review, said in an interview recently that one goal of any new policy would be to provide much needed clarity to a program that has been drifting.

Dallas, Tex.: If elected President, what are your plans for NASA and the Space Program? Do you think it's time to retire the Shuttle and move on to bigger and better things, such as a human mission to Mars, or returning to the moon?

Howard Dean: I am a strong supporter of NASA and every government program that furthers scientific research. I don't think we should close the shuttle program but I do believe that we should aggressively begin a program to have manned flights to Mars. This of course assumes that we can change Presidents so we can have a balanced budget again.

I read a very interesting editorial by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post the other day (here, registration required). Basically, she says that putting a robot on mars is a good idea because a robot is well suited for this kind of scientific work. Humans on the other hand are supposed to stay on earth - inhospitable climat, muscular deterioration during space flight and extreme radiation make a trip to mars less than pleasent.

Quoting: Mars, as a certain pop star once put it, isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit, as some of the NASA scientists know perfectly well. Even leaving aside the cold, the lack of atmosphere and the absence of water, there's the deadly radiation. If the average person on Earth absorbs about 350 millirems of radiation every year, an astronaut traveling to Mars would absorb about 130,000 millirems of a particularly virulent form of radiation that would probably destroy every cell in his body. "Space is not 'Star Trek,' " said one NASA scientist, "but the public certainly doesn't understand that."

So....do we really need a man on mars? Not for scientific reasons, that's for sure. And what other reasons are there? Anyone who thinks we can just teraform mars into a habitable planet in the next 300 years when we can't even keep the ISS leak-free is seriously deluded...

I guess the question of "Why does Bush want it" doesn't even deserve an answer because it's so obvious...

the lexus liberals are confused ...

"My maid is Salvadorean, so I'm not a racist".

Washington Post : Immigration, at Last Thursday, January 8, 2004; Page A22

...attacked symbolically important and well-fortified buildings in Baghdad Friday, just hours after a top U.S. commander proclaimed progress in the military's newly aggressive high-tech counter-insurgency operation.

The donkey-cart offensive hit the Sheraton and Palestine hotels here, ...

Afterwards, the military ordered that all donkey carts be stopped and searched. Iraqi police then found two more battle-equipped carts, ...

"They would certainly have an element of surprise by having a donkey cart," said Col. Brad May, commander of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. ...

Troops returned fire, apparently injuring a donkey at the Sheraton and shaking up others. ... "They are alive but one is quite frankly pretty shook up. . . . All indications are that the donkeys will recover."

Asked about the status of donkeys, Col. William Darley, another Army spokesman, said that while they are not "enemy combatants, " they are "deemed to have been co-opted to perform the will of the terrorists elements."

The story has been around for a while and I first read it here. on Dec 29, 03.

I like the way in which the Right can create all the huff, puff, & smoke, but then ridicule it when the same is done to them. And people complaining about this "loss of civil liberties" are going to called by the right as being hysterical and they will get away with it. But why ? Why this inequality ?

• A case in point is the Bush in 30 seconds Videoes at MoveOn.org. Maybe a couple of videos out of 1500 submitted ones had Hitler/Bushe theme. I could see myself doing one like that too. But, then the story got picked up by Fox & Drudge Report and not to mention the RNC And ah, the Wall Street Journal has indignation at the Hitler/Holocaust comparison.
• Fair Enough.
• But on the Other hand "the extremely influential GOP activist and White House insider Grover Norquist" referred to the supposedly specious argument that the estate tax was worth keeping because it really affected only "2 percent of Americans." He went on: "I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. I mean, it's not you. It's somebody else." From the transcript, it seems that Gross couldn't believe her ears. "Excuse me," she (the interviewer) interjected. "Excuse me one second. Did you just . . . compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?" ... It's hard to overstate Norquist's importance in contemporary Washington. He is head of Americans for Tax Reform, is an intimate of Karl Rove, the president's chief political aide, and has easy access to the White House. He presides over a weekly meeting of important Republican activists and lobbyists where the agenda -- at least Norquist's -- is to ensure that taxes are reduced to a bare minimum, the government is starved and everyone, the rich and the poor, is taxed the same, which is to say almost not at all.

So, there you go. A President whose actions might have killed thousands (15-20 thousand at least) cannot be compared to Hitler. But the Right can compare impostion of the Estate Tax on the richest 2 % to Hitler and his activities.

Look, at me here while I am talking. Is this fair?

I was wondering the same thing. Last night I posted a cool article about weird slime on Mars, and it hasn't even been rejected yet.

I bet you cringed when it was a liberal administration... It's a made up definition of liberal, provided by people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. And if you buy into that definition, you're being fooled.

Also, I'm not ragging on "people". I'm ragging on the demonic right-wing swine that signed up for my abuse list. I'm polite to everyone else (those not in my freaks list.)

I'd ask you if this isn't faulty logic, but you've already admitted that logic and reason is not the purpose of the "Uma Thurman" posts. ;)

1. Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design. The mainstream media is starting to realize that Microsoft products are especially insecure.
2. (PDF file): The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) urges the Department of Homeland Security to stop using insecure (Microsoft) products. The computer industry attempts to educate those in government about the insecurity of Microsoft software.

There is also the new H-1b for everybody initiative. I doubt the effects here will be noticed till after the election.

In Europe the model seems to be to subsidize universities directly and so tie their growth to the growth in the education budget; this has kept tuitions down and made them almost universally affordable, but also limited the competitiveness of schools in that there is no way to grow departments/programs beyond what a naturally stingy government is willing to pay for. Not a slam against them, just an aknowledgement of the inherent trade-offs in these things.

Here is the opening paragraph of the article:

BRISTOL, England -- Eric Thomas, vice chancellor of the University of Bristol, grows almost misty-eyed when he speaks of the modern science labs, expanded libraries and new classroom buildings he saw on a recent visit to Penn State and three other public universities in the United States.

"You suddenly understand what the fruits of sustained investment in higher education, decade after decade after decade, can really deliver," he said.

By contrast, Bristol and Britain's 86 other universities, all of which are state institutions whose budgets are set largely by the government, contend they have steadily lost ground financially over the past two decades.

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE TALLY; Officials Say Number of Those Still Missing May Be Overstated

By ERIC LIPTON (NYT) 1217 words

It has become clear, though, that the question of foreign citizens has been the most problematic in efforts to keep the city's count accurate. Over the last several days, the city's list of the missing became inflated by what officials said were missing persons reports from consulates and embassies for countries including India and Israel.

But interviews with many consulate officials yesterday suggested that the lists of people they were collecting varied widely in their usefulness. For example, the city had somehow received reports of many Israelis feared missing at the site, and President Bush in his address to the country on Thursday night mentioned that about 130 Israelis had died in the attacks.

But today, Alon Pinkas, Israel's consul general here, said that lists of the missing included reports from people who had called in because, for instance, relatives in New York had not returned their phone calls from Israel. There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead: two on the planes and another who had been visiting the towers on business and who was identified and buried.

It all goes to China, where it's disassembled by teens in makeshift tents looking for a quick way to earn a buck (and perhaps die because of the dangerous toxins in CRT screens.)

Life is just grand, isn't it?

Here are some related links:
US ready to seize Gulf oil in 1973

Was America preparing a war for the Gulf oil in 1973?


Britain Warned of U.S. Plans After War

U.S. Mulled Seizing Oil Fields In '73 British Memo Cites Notion of Sending Airborne to Mideast

And this news item found originally on Reuters ties up nicely to the above:
U.S. OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation) Imports Set Record in 2003, Trend Seen Up

Some doctors have considered prescribing nicotine as a cure for a variety of ailments, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, attention deficit disorder and colitis.

I'm thinking about it!

It's not the new year without the Washington Posts's annual list of what's out and what's in for 2004.

"A recent Sprint Wireless survey of more than 500 college students found that half are cell-only customers"

Oops, the odds of the pollsters to have 18-24 year old in their sample have just been halved...

I'd like to see the raw data of such polls, but I imagine (correct me if I'm wrong), that in their sample of ~1000 people, they have maybe 20 18-24 year old. Assuming this population represent 20% of the potential voters (IANAD), they would have to correct their answer by a factor 10.

Makes you wonder where does the 3% accuracy comes from...

Washington Post Article

Global-warming believers (crappy term but I can't come up with better right now) blamed it on global warming.

Then this year is now the wettest in history here.

That's caused by global warming, too, I guess. Riiight.

Didn't Robin Williams do this already in Bicentennial Man? There was even a scene where they talked abou the three laws of robotics.

Pie, eh? That's funny, because the Neistat brothers said it was more like amateur neurosurgery.

Review 1

As I say, it's easy to explain why this book is bad. What is much, much harder to explain is why so many people think this book is good, or at least why so many people are buying it. After all, if you want to read a book about why the left was wrong and Sen. McCarthy was right, far better ones are out there. Making use of Soviet archives, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have teamed up to write several excellent books about the American Communist Party over the past several years. Even if you prefer to get your history from a female conservative columnist, Mona Charen published a far more thoughtful attack on the post-war left last fall. In Useful Idiots, Charen covered some of the same ground as Coulter, but she did it logically, chronologically and without failing to notice that there were some important differences between Robert Kennedy and, say, Abbie Hoffman.

For that matter, even if you want to read a conservative rant, there are better ones -- Tammy Bruce's The Death of Right and Wrong, for example. If Coulter's shtick is that she's a right-wing blonde, Bruce's shtick is that she's a right-wing lesbian. The formula is the same: quotes picked out from newspaper articles, research that consists largely of extensive Internet surfing. But because Bruce is writing about pop culture, and not accusing the entire post-war Democratic Party of high treason, the end result is somehow less irritating.

Another Review

In short, Ann Coulter has once again revealed herself as one of the most destructive forces in American politics, repeatedly making outrageously irrational arguments and demonstrably false claims. Treason is the culmination of a dismaying trend toward factually misleading and inflammatory books from pundits such as Michael Moore, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage (Salon Premium subscription or viewing of ad required for Savage column). These authors may delight partisans and make their publishers rich, but their work impoverishes our political discourse.

BTW, that's also a reason why I don't Stupid White Men or Dude, Where's my Country.

Except that this article isn't a review of ROTK, it's a discussion about battle sequences in recent movies. The actual review by the author of this article (who happens to have won this year's Pulitzer for criticism) discusses the specific issues you raised.

Basically, a group of college students have discovered the short life of IPOD's battery(approx. 200 hrs.) Washington Post has done a follow-up to the story, dismissing their false claims & stating (correctly) it is only ~150 hours.

The US could have taken it in 1991, they didn't.

Not committing a crime in the past doesn't absolve you from committing one now. You say that the oil will be sold at market value. Oil was a NATIONAL ASSET for the Iraqi people. It has been PRIVITISED, just like all other NATIONAL ASSETS. And all this is happening before the Iraqi people are being allowed to democratically elect a government to rubber-stamp the 'deals'. All Iraqi's assets that were not bombed are now on the chopping block, and available for a song to any foreign investors with a US security clearance. What utter bullshit! I'll tell you something: if anyone tries that in MY country, they've have some fucking terrorists to deal with, that's for sure.

But that doesn't mean that we just throw up our arms and let that kind of behavior run rampant

What kind of behaviour? He let UN weapons inspectors in. They found nothing. According to international law, the US has no business interfering in the internal affairs of another country. And don't try to bring the 'War on Terrorism' into it. Every intelligence expert I've seen quoted on TV and in the newspaper and on the net have stated that Saddam would be the least likely to have anything to do with Bin Laden and his gang. There is no terrorist link, and there are no weapons of mass destruction.

And yes I was against the Kosovo intervention. I saw a documentary about the revolution there and people were saying that UN ( US ) involvement did not help, and victory was claimed by the local oppressed people. One student was quoted as saying: "If we are ever in a similar situation again, I beg the US and others NOT to try to save us with their bombs. We will do it ourselves".

As for evidence that the US sold WOMD to Iraq, try google, or these:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-20 02Dec29?language=printer
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1213-02.ht m
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/sanc-a21 .shtml

Bush's campaign has an e-mail list totaling 6 million people, 10 times the number that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has, and the Bush operation is in the middle of an unprecedented drive to register 3 million new Republican voters. Source - Washington Post

Looks to me as the laws were conveniently rewritten (as the have been for the past many months) to make legit what would not have been easily defensible without the rewritten laws ....

Maybe the CAN-SPAM law is more commercial than political. But, I am starting to believe that most politics is now commercial ... Am I one of just a few sceptics ?

• Indescriminate and excessive use of force, and a shitload of other charges the US was guilty of according to the International War Crimes Tribunal.
• Several US companies supplying chemical weapons precursors to Iraq.
• Staged media event when toppling the saddam statue.
• US companies provided Iraq with the seed stock for biological weapons agents including anthrax, botulinum, e-coli and many more.

Give me a link to one study that says that, and where they actually found the 70% of the US citizens from. I'll bet it was a very small group of people, from a very poor town in the US. Anyone who has had a college level course in statistics knows you can make a poll say anything you want to if you control the way questions are asked and who participates in it.

The tactics used by the Bush government to encourage this belief ran from the "Lie loud, retract quiet" brand (in which a government official would say outright that Saddam was involved in 9/11, then later retract the statement on a footnote on page 47), to the simple associative method (in which a government official would begin by talking about Saddam, segue into 9/11, and then swirve back to Saddam, never actually *saying* that they were connected, but giving the impression that they were). The government knew that the average American wouldn't support a war in Iraq based on the "Well, Cheney and Rumsfeld think it would be fun" argument, so they deliberately set out to associate Saddam with 9/11. It worked too. Never underestimate Karl Rove, or the ability of Joe Average to be mislead.

From CBS

Congressional investigations after the Gulf War revealed that the Commerce Department had licensed sales of biological agents, including anthrax, and insecticides, which could be used in chemical weapons, to Iraq.

Or from The Washington Post.

According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by (former National Security Council official) Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.