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The FBI failed to catch Capone through 1931 when the Treasury Department finally nailed him.

During that period, Republicans Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were president (1921-1933). The 67th through 72nd Congresses (1921-1933) were all Republican majorities in both chambers.

The FBI, like all police agencies, is corrupt and incompetent, largely by design. The "anthrax bomber" investigation has produced nothing after 6.5 years but a dropped investigation of suspect #1 because of incompetence and zero evidence (but lots of wasted work and time), and now the (apparent) suicide of suspect #2. But I didn't just single out the FBI as blowing it. What I said was

Yet another terrorism investigation blown by Bush's agencies ignoring the most basic and trivial due process.

Bush deserves special blame for an FBI incompetent to handle terrorist investigations without blowing them. The main effect that the 9/11/2001 planebombings had on the US government was giving Bush free rein (with his Republican Congress - just like the 1920s) to remake the FBI, and all of the Federal government, into a new system primarily targeting terrorism. The FBI, like the rest of Bush's agencies, has done little but blow every investigation by ignoring or screwing up basic requirements to establish who is a terrorist, and what they actually do to qualify for punishment or legitimate exploitation. The latest news was that Bush's "Justice" Department had Monica Goodling rejecting critical counterterrorism applicants who were supremely qualified, but perhaps married to a Democrat, and giving the job to totally unexperienced and useless Republicans. The rest of the US Attorneys purge for the same reasons is also pretty well documented. As is its unprecedented depths and scope.

Now before you go and cite the mysterious "effectiveness" of this hellishly damaging incompetence at every level (from Lyndie England and company at Abu Ghraib, through Alberto Gonzales and now Mukasey, all the way up through Scooter Libby to Cheney and Bush), citing how the US hasn't been successfully attacked again since 9/11/2001, let's look at the facts that the Bush regime has known since at latest 2003 that the Qaeda's strategy has been to not attack the US, and instead concentrate on attacking allies like Spain and the UK. I'm sure even the geniuses at the FBI got that memo. Though maybe they got it earlier, since they seemed to know they should ignore their field office's warnings that Qaeda terrorists were learning to fly planes but not to land them.

The FBI has never been very good, but under Bush it is unprecedentedly worse. Despite Bush getting unchecked powers to remake the FBI into as effective a force as it needs to be. Which Bush has evidently used to at best keep the FBI, and his other counterterrorism agencies, at least as bad as they were when our country's survival wasn't supposed to depend on them daily.

They are nuts, so it's hard to say exactly what "their dreams" really are.

But if the way they ran Afghanistan was any example, or their slightly less nuts/fanatical/medieval fellow Salafists the Saud family tells us anything, then they would of course love total control of national snooping infrastructure.

But of course I'm not saying that some Qaeda jerkoffs are in a cave somewhere plotting to do stuff like that. They barely hijacked some planes, after years of planning, fanatical (if sometimes inconsistently virtuous) supporters, $millions in budget, and a completely compliant US "defense" leaving the gates wide open. They're not up to doing more than signing up each other in their cellphone friends plan.

What I am saying is that these Qaeda enemies are most certainly happy when our governments crack down on our liberty on the pretext of fighting the Qaeda. Because they know it makes us less safe when we distrust our governments, when our governments are preoccupied spying on us instead of catching and killing them.

Now, you want to see some Qaeda plans? OK, look at how the Qaeda has planned since 2003 not to attack the US directly, but to pressure our allies (like Australia) to drive everyone against our governments. Stunts like this one in Australia are part of how our governments play right into Qaeda hands by working against them.

That's their plan to eradicate us. By using our own stupid reactions to their small, asymmetrical tipping point pressures against us.

And if you don't think stimulating Big Brother into taking away our liberties is part of those reactions, that it doesn't please them because they're winning by it, then you're part of how they're beating us, too. I don't think you are. So try to take in this bigger picture with a little more perspective.

Turn off the Fox News and try walking outside for a change.

Not just because it'll get you away from the radiation that's bombarding that plate in your head. But because you'll see the real world.

The stock market's record high is money going to bankers, not most Americans. The market isn't the government, but the rules encouraging the bankers to soak up all the money are made by Bush's government.

Those thousands more terrorists plotting our doom were multiplied by Bush's insane invasion of Iraq instead of fixing Afghanistan. And the terrorists didn't get us at all for the previous 8 years until 9/11/2001, when Bush let the country's guard down by deprioritizing terrorism and bin Laden down below pornography. And since then, the well-known Qaeda strategy has been to attack our allies to drive them away from our catastrophic invasion. Which has worked perfectly, including allowing the Qaeda to become as strong now as it was when it attacked in 2001.

There's no new democracies in the Mideast: there's a puppet sham Iraq government sucking up resources while covering for a civil war pointed at us from every direction. And there's another puppet Afghanistan government that controls nothing but Kabul. And ridding the world of Saddam, an evil dictator your favorite Republican, Reagan, propped up with the very gas he used to murder "his own people", the Kurds for whom Saddam was hanged as the specific war crime that produced his death sentence. And your Republicans even screwed that up. Both small: the revenge killing that will never stop escalating violence in that part of the world. And large: the total catastrophe for everyone that the invasion has produced for years, with no end in sight.

The "voted into office" in 2000 wasn't tyranny, it was first a stolen election, then a perversion of the Supreme Court. The following 6 years of torture, illegal renditions, suspended Habeas Corpus, relentless domestic spying in violation of FISA, outing a CIA/WMD agent to cover up lying us into war, the political rigging of the Justice Department... the list goes on. That is precisely the kind of tyranny that Nixon tried during his Vietnam, right down to the FISA that was created and updated to prevent Nixon's specific domestic spying operations. It's not that Republicans have "opposing views", it's that their "views" are just smokescreen for the tyranny they've dealt with their endless power abuses.

It's really boring, but still disgusting, the way you Republicans will trot out the Rumsfeld Doctrine: always reverse any charge against you to its opposite extreme, then deny that straw man. I never said anything about anyone "slightly conservative", but rather the obvious Republican extremist I easily slapped down in the post that set you off.

So yes, every talking point you chanted in your post exposes that you're a Republican operative. Republicans, the "Conservative" ones, anyway, used to be against big government, government coercion, "foreign entanglements", "nation building", "social engineering", lying, torture, cheating, stealing, child molesting, drug abuse, prostitution, adultery... Every single disgusting act you Republicans have made your trademarks.

So yes, you'd better shut up. You people have been wrong about every damn thing you've said since you've gotten any power. Any decent group of people would be so shamed by their old fallen champion Nixon, that they'd never repeat the crimes. But you people have rushed to outdo the old tyrant, and praise the crimes as the hand of god. The evidence of your largely irreparable damage is everywhere. Go outside. Shut up and listen. And promise yourself (you can't say anything to me I could ever believe) that you'll learn how to act before trying it again in public. You'll thank me, when you learn to be a human and live in reality again.

Dr. Arisholm is an expert in parametric three-wave interaction modelling. We collaborate on the design and implementation of chirped pulse optical parametric amplification (CPOPA) an alternative route to phase-controlled intense few-cycle laser pulses.

Oh, I love to talk about how BushCo knows Qaeda is successfully targeting us in Iraq and in our allies rather than inside the US. Thanks for the excuse.

So you're laughing and gloating about how sane people are shouting at you insane Republican zombies that you're responisible for torture, unwarranted wiretaps, throwing the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. And all you've got is "But Clinton...". I guess you're gloating that your boys managed to stop Clinton from doing much by impeaching him over a blowjob.

You are a terrorist. Laughing and gloating. Republican pedophile. I'd ask who raped you as a kid, but I'm not interested in knowing any more about your evil ass.

After attending militar excersises with US personell, I can confrim this. In one excercise, our home guard kicked the ass of the USMC. I find that incredible, but not if you analyse the mentality of the USMC. They fly in on choppers, equipped with the baddest and coolest in military technology. They are big fellas with kick-ass war faces. Then their chopper lands and they jump out. And fall into 2 meters of fine grained snow. The the Norway Home Guard (Maybe even that cute girl on the picture) come loafing around on their cheap-ass skis (The skis are called "NATOboards", guess why. See them here: picture). The USMCs are thouroghly stuck in the snow, not able to reach their equipment, and all of the team are killed by headshots, according to MILES.

Also, the american forces are a bit naïve. On another excercise, navy SEALs were to rescue 2 prisoners from a building on the top of a hill. They left a bunch of equipment behind, as the excercise did not allow for CS gas to be used. The Norwegians responded by having only a couple of gunmen in the building, while digging the others into the ground at the foot of the hill. As the SEALs passed the soldiers by 50 meters, the ones in the building pounded the SEALs with CS, and the dig-in soldiers ran up and shot the confused SEALs in the back. The SEALs complained that they iddin't excpect CS to be use and had no ABC equipment with them. Their colonel apparently gave them a chewing out, becaus they were so incredibly naïve to think that every force in the world would obey the rules...

"As well as being the first stealth ship..."

The Norwegian KNM Skjold were built some five years ago, and do have stealth capabilities.

KNM Skjold were last year in the US to demonstrate its capabilities to the US Navy.

From http://www.knmskjold.org/english/engfacts.htm:
"For the first time radar absorbing materials are included in the loadbearing structure (structural RAM) of a vessel over large areas. This contributes to significant weight reduction compared to the conventional method of cladding this material on the outside of the load bearing structure. The ship is designed with a low number of reflective panel orientations and none right angled corners. This is the reason for the faceted external shape of the vessel."

Norway has also designed a stealth missile torpedo boat Skjold

This is a surface effect ship, and you will have no problems spotting it on IR or seeing its wake. But you will have a *very* hard time seeing it on radar at all.

As for submarine sims, Silent hunter II aws released 2-3 years ago. You can play it in multiplayer with Destroyer Command. Play the hunter or the hunted.

You're joking, right? Have you ever even *used* a GPS device in a car or indoors? I happen to be working on a device that has embedded GPS. It's about the size of a quarter, and it has no problems whatsoever in a car or indoors.

I'm using an old Garmin GPS II in my car. I've got a roof-mounted antenna, which is essential. Even so, sometimes the GPS loses coverage in deep valleys or woodlands. I would think your embedded device would have bigger problems, with a small antenna and all.

I've also used military hand-held GPS receivers in the army and had the same experience there.

But if you can provide some sources, I would be interested to check it out.

Check here for more info (in norwegian only, sorry) on the Skjold-class MTBs. I'm not sure when they will be ready though. The boats are propelled by water jets which means they can turn really really fast. The swedish navy is also getting stealthy boats, and they got water jets too.

and to the one who talked about seeing the ship from space: good luck targeting those missiles, on a moving target, with images from space.