Saddam's Inbox Hacked

MotorMachineMercenar writes "Wired News is reporting that Saddam Hussein's email account (press@uruklink.net) has been hacked into. The account had a five-letter login with the same password. Messages in his inbox sent from all over the world included everything from death threats to business propositions to offers to sell him WMDs. A choice quote from the article: 'One AOL user sent Saddam a one-word message: 'Imminent.' Attached to the Aug. 6 e-mail was a photograph of an atomic mushroom cloud.' I wonder what the login was." You'd think it was "press," password "press," but if it were that obvious I think someone would have said so.

Comments

Other good news for Saddam

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Jambunju of Nigeria needs his help getting his family's money out of the country, and if Saddam helps, he will get half of it.

Plus, thanks to the miracle of herbal viagra, he'll soon be able to sustain an erection all night, and please many women in bed!

hmmm

[pizza_milkshake]

hmmm Saddam wasn't using AOL? he may be more dangerous than we thought.

Re:hmmm

[hebertpa]

Yes but even AOL users can choose better passwords

Re:hmmm

[cdrudge]

Arabic OnLine maybe?

Re:hmmm

[C0LDFusion]

Of course not. Haven't you heard? Iraq OnLine is the 137,000,000th hottest internet service provider, serving all of 2 people (Saddam and the hacker)for the past decade! And it's growing fast! With new Dictator Controls, it's easier for Saddam to choose what access you have. And e-mail is a snap. Just ask the guy who hacked his inbox!

Re:hmmm

[ncc74656]

hmmm Saddam wasn't using AOL? he may be more dangerous than we thought.

Has anyone checked to see if the password is 12345?

Re:hmmm

[sean23007]

That sounds like the kind of password an idiot would have on his email.

Note to self: 12345 no longer an acceptable password for this account...

Re:hmmm

[superyooser]

The real proof that Saddam is evil (from a web developer's perspective):

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage5.0">

Also, they're using Microsoft-authored Java classes using the deprecated applet element.

<applet code="fphover.class"

and they're obviously anti-/. too. ;-)

codebase="./"

Worst of all, there's no DOCTYPE declaration, without which, a validator does not know which HTML version to expect. This means that Iraq has no intention of complying with international web standards.

I'm waiting for the U.N. to send in Web Inspectors.

Hoax?

[RAMMS EIN]

I can't help but think this is bogus. What exactly is _Saddam_'s Inbox? Does _he_ read that mail, or do his subordinates? Anyway...interesting, no matter if it's true or not.

Re:Hoax?

[Unknown Bovine Group]

I agree. A hoax or an intentional plant on Hussein's part. I immediately thought of the "orgy of evidence" line from Minority Report.

On the other hand, if it's true, whomever "hacked" the account and told the press probably only duplicated a hack already done by the NSA, and caused Saddam to close the hole. Good job, bonehead!

Re:Hoax?

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

I vote Red Herring ...

Re:Hoax?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, like the article says, the address is the Iraqi equivalent of "president@whitehouse.gov". (As opposed to "president@whitehouse.com", which is something quite different. ;) So what it means, no doubt, is that a bunch of low-level employees do a first pass through it, filter out all the spam and death threats, then pass it onto their slightly less low-level superiors, who filter out most of the rest of it and write up summaries, then pass it on ... [repeat n times] ... until Saddam gets a one-page summary on his desk and maybe a couple of really interesting letters, like the one from an American to which he (supposedly) wrote a personal reply.

Iraq's government is very, very different from ours in a lot of ways (duh) but it's still a government, and thus a bureaucracy, and all bureaucracies have certain aspects in common. The people who read the e-mail addressed to "press@uruklink.net" and those who read the e-mail addressed to "president@whitehouse.gov" would probably be able to fit quite nicely into each other's jobs.

Re:Hoax?

[stefanlasiewski]

Duh! Saddam doesn't read his email, one of the "Saddam Lookalikes" reads the email, and occasionally responds... so I guess you could call them "Saddam Typealikes".

Re:Hoax?

[dattaway]

Its a hoax until I see links to mirrors of his inbox. It would be for historical purposes of course...

Re:Hoax?

[Genjurosan]

For some reason, I just don't see Saddam reading e-mail. What exactly would he expect? An outlook invite to the lunch and learn session on advanced tourture methods in the atomic conference room? Or perhaps he gives out his card at political functions so that people can e-mail him new ideas about how to fund terrorist operations without the world knowing about it.

--
Saddam Hussein
President, god, and super nice guy (because I said so).
Iraq, country of milk and honey
(964)(1) 718-9267 (phone)
(964)(1) 885-2286 (fax)

"This issue is not inspectors, the issue is disarmament."

- GWB

Re:Hoax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq's government is very, very different from ours in a lot of ways

Yeah --- the guy they voted for got to be President.

Re:Hoax?

[bhsx]

It's not over yet! The 0.1% of those who voted for "Not Saddam" are calling for a recount of the Floridastan votes.

Re:Hoax?

[timeOday]

You're missing the point. The joke is not on Saddam, but on all those well-wishers, detractors, and would-be business partners who sent him mail. I found the excerpts very entertaining.

Re:Hoax?

[jonnythan]

Not only unanimous, but every single registered voter in the country turned out and voted for Saddam.

100% voter turnout is pretty impressive.

Re:Hoax?

[Daniel Quinlan]

Yeah --- the guy they voted for got to be President.

Yes, this is "funny" here in the United States and people can crack jokes about the U.S. needing a "regime change" and such, but the truth is this:

• We change our regime every 4 years.
• If you didn't vote and vote for Saddam, you may be tortured or killed. Why else would the man get 100% of the vote. As an extreme example, I really doubt the Kurds in Iraq wanted to vote for the guy who used chemical weapons on them.
• We can complain about our government without being killed or tortured. I'd like to see the people who protested against the Bush administration (in Washington D.C. with the free press watching over police and protesters alike) go to Iraq and do the same thing about Saddam. And if you're an Iraqi and the CNN cameras are away (they will be, since the media's movements are controlled in Iraq), good luck with your protest!

Anyway, joke ha ha. Try laughing about Iraqi election rights if you live in Iraq. Democracy means that you can vote for someone who is not guaranteed to win. Yes, that means that Al Gore didn't get picked and that the guy you didn't like did win. Enjoy it.

Re:Hoax?

[shogun]

We change our regime every 4 years

I'm not an American but I'd like to point out that occasionally swapping between Democrats and Republicans is NOT a regime change.

All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[leviramsey]

Hack inbox for great justice

Seriously, when are people going to learn that short usernames with the username as the password are a bad idea? Maybe the US should bomb everybody whose email is stupidly secured like that?

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Mr. Sketch]

Maybe the US should bomb everybody whose email is stupidly secured like that?

I think you mean the US should set him up the bomb.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[evocate]

You know what YOU doing!

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

I think you mean the US should set him up the bomb.

Your grammar is atrocious! For future reference:
"I think you mean the US should set up him the bomb."

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Mr. Sketch]

Wow, you're right. All this time I thought it was 'set us up the bomb', but after checking the bible you're right, it is is 'set up us the bomb'.

Someone should go back and moderate my previous post -1 Idiot.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[iocat]

It's offtopic, but I had to respond:

An objective analysis of both W's record and Saddam's record reaveals that Saddam has a much worse record on human rights. It's funny and popular to say otherwise on Campus, maybe, but last time I checked, the US government doesn't maintain a specially horrific prision for the children of dissidents, doesn't gas its own citizens, doesn't execute military officers by the hundreds, doesn't explicitly repress free speech, etc. Which the Iraqi government, controlled by Hussein, does.

Regardless of whether or not attacking Iraq is a good idea, saying what you said kind of makes you seem like a moron, because it's absolutely factually incorrect, and it lessens the impact of any argument you try to make.

The worst Republican, on his worst, conspiracy-laden, evil, money-grubbing day is better than Saddam Hussein on his best, most charitable, not-killing-people day.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[dpille]

on his best, most charitable, not-killing-people day

If you set parameters like that, I have to disagree. Rumsfeld says he's letting people go from Guantanamo, meaning that all those people who said wait, you can't just imprison people who may be innocent were almost on the money. They only missed the part where they used may be instead of are. If you pick a day where Saddam isn't actually killing people, he's obviously doing no worse than this.

I wouldn't have taken the poster literally- and with stuff like the above going on, his figurative point is easy to make.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Lemmy Caution]

I can't stand Bush, but Bush is no Saddam. Saddam is a murderous thug, a gangster whose gang controls a country. It's as if Tony Soprano ran a country, but with fewer moral qualms. I don't think the US should be rattling its sabres and I don't think another war is warranted, but Saddam is still an asshole of the widest caliber.

That said, Iraq is probably the only Arab country where women can wear whatever they want, fully participate in political life (well, to the same limited, oppressed amount the men can, anyway) and have full legal equality in both professional and personal domains. It's better to be a woman in Iraq than to be one in Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait, or even Egypt. To some extent, that's due to the nature of the Baath party's platform, and also to the fact that Saddam is a very secular thug.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Skjellifetti]

That said, Iraq is probably the only Arab country where women can wear whatever they want, fully participate in political life (well, to the same limited, oppressed amount the men can, anyway) and have full legal equality in both professional and personal domains.

Bahrain held an election this week in which women could both vote and run for office.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Hard_Code]

Not to argue with your conclusion, but:

doesn't gas its own citizens

Oh really?

US germ war tests on civilians

Tuskegee syphilis experiment
more

US eugenics program
more

Intentional radiation of civilians during nuclear testing
more

Gulf War Syndrome, which was at first completely ignored and lied about, and finally recently acknowledged (although we still don't know what it is, nor do we know whether the government really knows or not - there have been accusations of experiments on our own soldiers).

not to mention:

Genocide of indigenous peoples as official policy
by the way, this shit was [is?] still going on in uncomfortably recent history still going on:

Article II of the Genocide Convention also expressly prohibits
involuntary sterilization as means of "preventing births among" a
targeted population. Yet, in 1976, it was conceded by the
U.S. government that its ÒIndian Health ServiceÓ (IHS), then a
subpart of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), was even then
conducting a secret program of involuntary sterilization which had
affected approximately forty percent of all Indian women of
childbearing age. The program was allegedly discontinued, and the IHS
was transferred to the Public Health Service, but no one was
punished. Hence, business as usual has continued in the ÒhealthÓ
sphere: 1990, for example, it came out that the IHS was inoculating
Inuit children in Alaska with Hepatitis-B vaccine. The vaccine had
already been banned by the World Health Organization as having a
demonstrated correlation with the HIV-virus which is itself correlated
to AIDS. As this is being written, a Òfield testÓ of Hepatitis-A
vaccine, also HIV-correlated, is being conducted on Indian
reservations in the northern Plains region.

Supposedly, Himmler kept a framed photograph of a Native American, as a reminder of the splendid example the United States provided.

The list goes on and on. Sure, Saddam may be a war criminal. But our own history is not so rosy...in fact it is pretty fucking disgusting and we need to wake up to that fact. We don't have the moral highground we profess to have. In fact Iraq's entire history pales in comparison to the atrocities that have been committed in the names of US citizens. This doesn't make either right. It makes both wrong.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Dirtside]

Yeah... whenever you're trying to remember which of two forms an AYB quote takes, just think about which one has more grammatical errors, and that's your quote. :)

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[etymxris]

I really don't think it's fair to compare the Iraq of today with the US of 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. As for the more recent "atrocities" you mention:

• We don't know what caused Gulf War Syndrome, or if the US government is responsible. The only evidence of a coverup is the evidence that the symptoms are so vague that no one even thought to look at it as a separate illness until sometime after the war.
  
• Doing bad things with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons before we knew the dire consequences of using them is one thing. But it is another thing to use such weapons on civilians when you know exactly what the effects will be.
  
• That the US government was giving Hep B vaccines to Inuit children in a covert attempt to increase incidence of AIDS among that racial group during the 1990's is just ludicrous. It may very well be that there are bad side effects to the Hep B vaccine, and it may be that the US government was negligent in exploring the effects of such vaccines, but to say that the use of the Hep B vaccine was done intentionally and solely for the purpose of giving Inuit people AIDS is just ludicrous, and I'll regard it as such until you can come up with better evidence.
  

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Quazion]

And then to think the US goverment put that person called Saddam on his throne. You would figure they would have screened him first.

I dont know the whole deal, but still its not saddams fault he has been given the power todo the same thing nearly every country has done in the past or still doing now or maybe will do in the near future. Its evolution :) wake up and smell the coffee, or not ?

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Lemmy Caution]

Women are freer in Kuwait than in Saudi Arabia (talk about lowering the bar!), but still less than they are in Iraq, or even Iran (where women can and do vote and participate in the political sphere and hold office, even if they still have a very conservative dress code.)

Kuwait's biggest political problem is its failure to provide basic civil and political rights for the majority of its residents, of course - the majority of residents are non-Kuwaiti "guest workers".

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Hard_Code]

Point 1: Granted. Gulf War Syndrome is still vague and relatively little is known about it. But the government DID now that lots of soldiers were complaining about it. They first ignored them, then told them there was no such thing, and now, whatever the heck it is, the government is finally admitting there may be something to the claims (whether or not the military did something intentionally, or the soldiers were exposed to enemy chemical agents, etc.). The point is, the government was willfully disinterested in GWS.

Point 2: Forgive me if I reserve a healthy skepticism of the naivete and innocence of those who perpetrated "accidental" civilian casualties and ailments during the course of experimentation. Vague enemies on the other side of the planet are eternally convenient, yet, inexcusable, reasons for such behavior.

Point 3: I never made the claim, and neither does the article, that the US was trying to infect any group with AIDS. The point is, the US has been in violation of the Genocide Convention (I was not aware of this particular convention), perpetrating involuntary sterilizations as recently as 1976! With similar callousness, according to this article, the US apparently used sub-par or experimental vaccines on Native Americans.

I didn't make this stuff up. Just because they don't teach it to you in namby pamby middle school US history doesn't mean it is not real. Search Google yourself. Better yet search your library. This stuff is historical fact, not speculation. We just refuse to acknowledge the dirty portions of our past...which I think does ourselves a disservice - especially when we expect to use our moral highground to sidestep international law and treaties to "do the right thing".

As far as our history with dealing with Native Americans, I suggest:

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years

The sooner we dislodge the fantastic myth, and somberly acknowledge and admit to our real past, the sooner we become a better people.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Leto2]

doesn't explicitly repress free speech

Then why is the US so poorly ranked on the worldwide press freedom index ?

Greetings from the Netherlands (proudly #1 on the worldwide press freedom index!)

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Luyseyal]

Nah, the official position of the Reagan/early Bush Sr. administrations were:

• officially condemn Iraq for using chemical weapons
• but also take Iraq off the list of terrorist-supporting states so US can sell them "dual-use technologies"
• give Iraq intelligence data for use against Iran (and maybe the Kurds (who, incidently, were supporting an Iranian takeover of Iraq at the time))

So, while officially we condemned Iraq, we did aid them against Iran in an attempt to prevent further Soviet influence on our cheap oil and preserve our precious bodily fluids.

You might want to watch out about calling the Kurds "[Saddam's] own people". Iraqis and Kurds, while sharing the same religion, have very different cultures and speak different languages. In an area of the world where monoculture rules the day, this is a huge source of conflict. Turkey also systematically oppresses and kills Kurds and their children, but you don't see Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, or Bush, Jr. taking a stand because Turkey is a NATO ally.

Anyway, I'm not arguing a side, just adding some n.b.'s.

-l

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[OblvnDrgn]

Since the other people are tackling your Gulf War Syndrome statements, let me handle your blurb. I cite Cecil Adams (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020322.html)

The gist is that Dr. Pinkerman, a Los Angeles doctor/lawyer/Native American activist, conducted a study that said IHS physicians sterilized 25% of American Indian women between the ages of fifteen and fourty-four, and claimed that 40 percent WOULD be by 1975. Not only was that a claim based on the future, but her numbers aren't exactly supported either. She also misunderestimated the number of Native American women in the country by about a fourth of the actual.

Furthermore, about 41 percent of US Women of child bearing age, or their partners, had been sterilized as of 1995, that's ALL races. Not to mention the Native American population has increased more than the US average, so they're hardly declining.

Now, I'm not saying US history is perfect. Far from it.. we (as a country) have done a lot of bad things. But not QUITE as many as we're accused of.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Hard_Code]

Would you like me to go home and get you references to books, or are those not good enough for you either? Get off your ass and do your own fucking research and when you have a real opinion come back.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

It's interesting how in that report African countries with ratings of 31st and 47th have "have genuine press freedom too," but the U.S. is a bunch of Nazis and has a "poor rating" for being 17th.

There's also no sources or statistics, although there are numerical "notes" references next to each country. I couldn't find the "notes" anywhere, but apparently the U.S.A. is ranked low because of imprisoning journalists. Again, no references, and I wonder if they are referring to "journalists" like Mumia...

Tim

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Nailer]

Your grammar is atrocious!

you're grammar, friend. ;)

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Alranor]

So in a way what you're saying is "it didn't work, so please ignore the fact that we really shouldn't be doing it" ??

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[commodoresloat]

All of the above may be true but the very idea that one would compare Saddam to W in a serious manner is ridiculous. Torture and brutality are the norm for Saddam's regime. You disappear if you cause too much trouble. Political liberties are unheard of. Politics is an exercise in hubris, not in civil society.

Of course, all that said, any easy good/evil binarism here is ridiculous too. We have to keep in mind that the US, with the extensive help of W's dad throughout the 80s, helped make Saddam as powerful and brutal as he is. And the upcoming war is just an excuse for a blatant resource grab in the middle east. I would much prefer to see W and Saddam duke it out with pistols than make their citizens suffer and die for them.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

Oh no, the day has come when modding up an AYB reference is Informative instead of Funny! The end is definately upon us.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Luyseyal]

It's nice how convenient it is to call them rebels. Post-WW1 when the Middle East was being carved up the Kurds were promised space for a Kurdish state under The Treaty of SÃvres. The subsequent Treaty of Lausanne mentioned nothing of a Kurdish state and atrocities ensued on both sides for most of the 20th century. So, you expect all of them to be satisfied with assimilation into Turkey?

My main complaint of Turkish policy is its support of a Palestinian state from Israel, but not one for Kurds. Why should they expect Kurds to assimilate into Turkish culture and but not expect Palestinians to assimilate into Israeli culture?

Anyway, I agree to retract "and kills" from my original statement as I had in mind extermination policies that are no longer in place.

-l

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[NewtonsLaw]

Now I'm going to play devil's advocate here so the statements are not necessarily representitive of my own feelings but:

[the US government] doesn't explicitly repress free speech

Errr... have you read the DMCA????

the US government doesn't maintain a specially horrific prision for the children of dissidents

No, but it does hold "combatants", including US citizens, supposedly protected by The Constitution, without the right to consult a lawyer, without the right to a phone call, under conditionditions that appear to have raised the heckles of even Amnesty International. The basic tenet of presuming innocence until guilt is proven seems to be missing in both cases eh?

doesn't execute military officers by the hundreds

No, but there are plenty of states in the USA that do execute people -- and on occasion it's been shown that those people were not guilty of the crimes with which they were accused. It could be argued therefore that both Saddam and George W are responsible for the executions of innocent people.

No, Bush is not as bad as Saddam -- but it's not an absolute black and white distinction, it's only a matter of degree.

There endeth my role as devil's advocate ;-)

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[snake_dad]

The world would be really boring without american conspiracy theories. Yes, I'm to lazy to look up the spelling of conspiracy. Sue me.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Fjord]

Uh, that's true for the other countries too. the reason why Iraqi reporters get thrown in jail is because they break laws. Freedom comes from not having those laws in place. Lets look at the scant infomarion from the link:

Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.

The first part is definitely an abridgement of freedom of the press. Whether you agree or not that a government should be able to force a journalist to reveal their sources, it still means that there is less freedom of the press.

The second one is a little shakey, but noting the wording ("several" vs. "often") it seems like this isn't a common case, it just happened several times. One can still argue that it is an abridgement of freedom of the press, though. Yes, we need some secure areas, but it may be that not all areas this happened at need to be secure. It's hard to know from the tiny blurb here.

Maybe the metrics were stacked to make the U.S. looked bad. Maybe it is brazen reporters crossing lines that got the U.S. bumped from 16 to 17, but the first issue is one of concern. It's like saying "look at those brazen reporters, exposing faults of big business or our government and not telling our government who blew the whistle."

Or maybe this country isn't as free as it says it is.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Luyseyal]

Considering Sevres was a treaty the Ottoman Empire was strong-armed into signing, and Lausanne was signed after - the new nation - Turkey won its independence from the invading armies, the two cannot be compared.

They don't have to be compared except insofar as a people who were promised something, got nothing.

Again, a comparison between the Kurds and the Palestinians does not make any sense, since their nation was later invaded by (or more like given to) the Israelis.

Since the Kurds have resided in the area from ancient times, they were and are every bit as deserving as Palestinians of self-determination. The same argument against Israel could be made against Turkey and Iraq: that they have unjustly occupied the Kurdish homeland since WW1.

If the Palestinians all wanted to be Arab Citizens of Israel, there wouldn't be a problem. But they don't. Are you suggesting that all Kurds want to be citizens of Turkey/Iraq? Are you suggesting that the break-up of the Ottoman Empire is not sufficient justification for giving all of its constituent peoples self-determination?

But more importantly, the Israelis oppress the Palestinians, in the true meaning of the word oppress.

You see a vast difference between Turkey's policy on the PKK and Israel's policy on the PLO? In both instances, regular people are oppressed due to "guilt by association" whether or not they actually performed any terrorist acts. This is the crux of the issue. In both countries, the political moderates in the minority are silenced by the terrorists on the one hand and the overzealous counter-terrorists on the other.

What extermination policies would those be?

In the last 20 years? Bombing, burning, and otherwise destroying thousands of Kurdish villages, in some cases killing the inhabitants directly, but in most cases, allowing death to happen of its own accord (as happens among the homeless).

-l

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Fjord]

One thing to consider is that a lot of these atrocities don't come out in the open until many years later. 50 years from now, there may be someone else in another forum saying "I really don't think it's fair to compare the X of today with the US of 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago"

Plus, a lot of these were less than 50 years ago. The Sarin, Soman, Tabun and VX civilian tests were from 1962-1973 and the Native eugenics was in 1976. That was only 12 years before Saddam used Sarin on the Kurds.

The original poster is certainly wrong when they said GW is worse than Saddam, but GW's only been in power for 2 years, Saddam's been there for 23. I think if you add up all the atrocities the U.S. government has done in the last 23 years (known and unknown, to it's own people and to foreigners) it would outpace what Saddam has done in that time, but then again, the U.S. has a lot more influence over the world.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[cei]

You're right. The US doesn't gas its own citizens. But it supports Russia, who just did...

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Luyseyal]

Indeed.

-l

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[doug363]

And guess what? Saddam simply has to let weapon inspectors into Iraq and prove that he has no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and it all stops! Now, if you were a leader of a country such as Iraq and you genuinely wanted the best for your citizens, which would you prefer? Letting in some weapons inspectors and following UN guidelines or seeing thousands of your citizens die?

Not only that, but sanctions against Iraq do not stop food and medical supplies. If people in Iraq aren't getting adequete food, then that is the fault of the Iraqi government, not of the US and the UN. In fact, there are UN programs in place deliberately aimed at getting food into the country (e.g. the oil for food program). The US and the UN are attempting to punish the Iraqi government without harming it's civilians. What alternative do you suggest? That everyone capitulates to mighty Saddam's will and apologizes immediately? Maybe you should stop trying to put blame on the US for something which is clearly Saddam's fault.

Password? in english?

[Jonny Balls]

Don't you think his password wouldn't be in ENGLISH?

Re:Password? in english?

[dr_dank]

C'mon, don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

Remember our friend from last year?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna play some Doom 3.

Re:Password? in english?

[vee-dub.net]

Hmmmmm.....

[me@myhost me]$ telnet mail.uruklink.net 110
Trying 62.32.60.16...
Connected to mail.uruklink.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK X1 NT-POP3 Server mail.uruklink.net (IMail 7.07 39961-78)
user press
+OK send your password
pass press
-ERR Invalid userid/password
quit
+OK POP3 Server saying Good-Bye
Connection closed by foreign host.
[me@myhost me]$

Bummer.

Re:Password? in english?

[babbage]

What, so "press" is the Arabic word for a journalistic contact address now? What a cognate!!

You make a valid point, but English does seem to be the lingua franca of the interweb, even (apparently) among contries at the "axes of evil". The site seems to largely be in English, so the people running it presumably are English speakers as well. I can say, just from some of the foreign-born students I've known, that people that learn a technical subject in a particular language will tend to think in that language when practicing the craft, even if otherwise they speak something else. (For example, a Russian friend who studied aeronautical engineering as his father did, but couldn't discuss the subject with his dad because he only knew the English terms for everything & didn't know how to express the same concepts in his native language.)

So, like I say, I think your point is insightful, but at the same time I don't think it's unreasonable that the un/pw would have been English terms if the rest of the site was also English (as, from the little I poked around, it seems to be).

Re:Password? in english?

[sfe_software]

Actually, I kinda assumed that the press@ address is, most likely, an alias that points to a similar Arabic-worded address. I could see that easily. If you have visitors from English-speaking countries, you'd have an English contact address (just like how they have an English version of the site).

If the site weren't slashdotted I'd try to find the corresponding "Contact" link on the Arabic version, to verify this...

The article didn't say that the username/password was a 5-letter *English* word -- just that it was 5 letters. That "press" happens to also be 5 letters is probably just coincidence, as if it were press/press I'm sure it would have been hacked a long, long time ago...

WMD

[po8]

WMD = Weapon of Mass Destruction. Not obvious, IMHO.

Re:WMD

[Mr. Sketch]

Thanks. In all seriousness I thought it was some type of spam and I was trying to figure it out. The best I could come up with was Wonderous Money Deal.

Re:WMD

[Pike65]

Oh OK.

. . . . How exactly do you send someone an e-mail trying to sell them a weapon of mass distruction?

Sadam,
You have been approved.
You can receive a thermo-nuclear warhead!
Did You Know?
-There are No special requirements to obtain these weapons.
-These are weapons that you NEVER have to repay!

Sadam,You Qualify!
Click Here
Limited Time Offer!

Re:WMD

[CodeJudge]

Heh, or as political satirist Mark Russell said last week:

"The notion of inspection looking for WMDs is ludicrous. The United States knows *exactly* what WMDs Iraq has: we still have the receipts!"

bah-dum bum

I wonder....

[JoeLinux]

Hmm...this would make for a good fark contest: Make a email that might be in Saddam's inbox.

To: Madmn@aol.com
From: GWBush@whitehouse.gov

Subject: Hahahahaha

Prepare your Camels, 'cause we're about to get medeviel on your scud-launching ass. And if you use Bio weapons, you won't stop glowing for a LONG time. And don't think you can bankrupt us. We use weapons on you, we order more, our side gets more jobs. So let us in, or we'll come down on you like the hand of god.

Party on,

GWB

Re:I wonder....

[Malcontent]

If it mentioned oil I could have sworn dubya himself wrote that email. Grammer mistakes and all.

Re:I wonder....

[JoeLinux]

To: Madmn@aol.com
From: GWBush@whitehouse.gov

Subject: Re: Hahahahaha

Forgot to add: If you are going to send the big bad Republican Guard after us, please be sure to equip them with white flags and THEIR own hand restraints. It was quite annoying last time to have to resort to plastic ties.

Oh, oh, and please pass out white flags. We'd hate to accidently kill one of the many thousands trying to surrender.

And once again, use bio weapons on us, and we'll do something truly evil back: Feed your people. Including the Kurds.

We have food
Are you afraid?
Down with Iraq
Down with Iraq

GWB.

Re:I wonder....

[sql*kitten]

Party on

You know, I can't help but thinking that in another time and another place, Saddam and Dubya would have been good buddies, probably frat brothers. They both have an insatiable appetite for the good life, they both make all their money from oil, they both affect a religious piety when it suits them, they both love to be a "man of the people". This isn't as unlikely as it sounds, George Bush junior once owned a company (Arbusto Energy) jointly with one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers.

What the world really needs is for one of Dubya's daughters (not Jenna, the other one) and one of Saddam's sons to fall in love. Then, after many Baz Luhrmann-esque antics their fathers can be reconciled, and live happily ever after on a ranch in the sovereign state of Texraq.

Re:I wonder....

[_ph1ux_]

kinda like how austin powers and doctor evil went to school together?

Re:I wonder....

[babbage]

An obvious forgery, there aren't nearly enough typos, grammatical errors, garbled logic, etc. It is well known that the real GWB write at a 2nd grade level, but this is solid 5th grade stuff. Nice try... :-)

Re:I wonder....

[babbage]

It is well known that the real GWB write at a 2nd grade level, but this is solid

Err, "writes".

And it's also well known that people against the Bush regime have their own well documented problems with getting straight A's in grammar too :-)

Re:I wonder....

[dew]

I think you forget that Bush's parents and Osama's parents sat on the same board at the Carlyle Group. Interconnections may be tighter than you think.

Re:I wonder....

[mikerich]

kinda like how austin powers and doctor evil went to school together?

With Tony Blair co-starring as Mini Me?

My god it's all starting to make sense!

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:I wonder....

[grammar fascist]

I think you both forget that Osama's entire family has disowned him.

Gotta love guilt by association.

Re:I wonder....

[alcmena]

With Tony Blair co-starring as Mini Me?

It makes more sense with Tony Blair co-starring as Number 2 seeing as how he's GW's lap dog.

Re:I wonder....

[Zigg]

George Bush junior once owned a company (Arbusto Energy) jointly with one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers.

As damning as this may sound, it should be remembered that Osama is the black sheep of the family.

Re:I wonder....

[Wolfier]

Weren't it for the Dubya connection, do you honestly think they would even read that aloud "osama is the black sheep"?

Re:I wonder....

[Guppy06]

"George Bush junior once owned a company (Arbusto Energy) jointly with one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers."

Is Kevin Bacon also involved?

Re:I wonder....

[Zigg]

Put down the tinfoil hat, eh?

CONFIDENTIAL PURPOSE

[limekiller4]

Yes, but did he get any business propositions from Nigeria.

That's what I want to know.

Re:Scary

[Iamthefallen]

Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.
The US hasn't in modern times seen widespread destruction on home turf, we still remember it vividly.

If the US could prove to European leaders (and European population) that Iraq is indeed the threat the US makes it out to be, then I'm sure European nations would also support military action and possibly be a part of it, as most have stated, they want a UN mandate first. But, the "He dun tried to kill mah paw" argument isn't that convincing on the European side of the pond.

Dear Saddam:

[teamhasnoi]

I urge you to reconsider my competitors offer of "4G" wireless technology. Our "5G" technology is better and will allow you 'set it and forget it' just like my rotisserie. We promise this will be the best "Wireless Weapon of Mass Destruction" you have ever used, or your money back! We have over 20 years of experience providing housewives with labor saving 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'.

Thank you for your kind and world dominating consideration,
Ron Popeil

Ronco.com (secure connections available!) CALL US!
In the USA, toll free,
(800) 486-1806

Outside the U.S.(of course), call our business office
(818) 775-4602
Monday-Friday
8am to 5pm Pacific Time.

examples of leaders' bad passwords...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

King of the Druids: "One... Two... Three... Four... Five."

Dark Helmet: "That sounds like the combination an idiot would have on his luggage!"


<snip>

President Scrooge: "One two three four five? I can't believe it! I have the same combination on my luggage!"

Doesn't matter if the address is real...

[EarwigTC]

Whether or not Saddam or his regime read it isn't really the point. The interesting thing is what people sent, and why. It's also a unique privacy issue; these people who thought they could quietly support Iraq are exposed in such a way that they can't really claim to have been violated.

Re:Scary

[pubjames]

Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.

Hey guys, just to make the argument clearer could you please make a distinction between Saddam and his cronies and the people/country of Iraq. I'm sure many Europeans (and hopefully Americans) would consider themselves pro-Iraq if we are talking about the country and people, but anti-Iraq if we are talking about Saddam and his cronies.

I thought it was Weapons of Media Distraction

[Theodore Logan]

Or was it only that I thought it should be?

Y2K-Not OK!

[phawley]

from article:

The version of webmail software used by the Iraqi ISP is known to have several security holes -- but the patches available for them do not appear to have been applied.


from uruklink.net website:

October28 ,102

like Y2K? ;)

Re:Y2K-Not OK!

[thrig]

The 102 is likely a failure to have read the documentation for localtime() or gmtime(), which in perl (and probably other languages) returns the number of years since 1900.

perl -le 'print ((localtime)[5])'

Pearl Harbor ring a bell?

[paranoid.android]

Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.

The US hasn't in modern times seen widespread destruction on home turf, we still remember it vividly.

Hmm, let's see here:

1) Pearl Harbor
2) WTC

I think those qualify as "modern times," "widespread destruction" and "home turf."

Re:Pearl Harbor ring a bell?

[Iamthefallen]

Widespread? Hardly. In Europe entire cities were reduced to rubble, millions and millions again killed, by nazis, by allies, by starvation, by disease. Imagine the WTC and Pearl Harbor a thousand times over and you'll start to get close.

I'm not trolling or reducing WTC or Pearl Harbor to events wihtout meaning, but, Europes past is filled of bloody wars every couple of years, and yet it took the insane slaughter of WW2 to get us to realize that it really wasn't getting us anywhere.

Re:Pearl Harbor ring a bell?

[Samrobb]

America hasn't got enough 'history' and so can't understand these things.

No - we have more than enough history... your history, as a matter of fact. We understand these things very well, thank you, which is why we go to great lengths to keep our homeland from experiencing the sort of things that have happened elsewhere in the world.

So - what next? Are you going to claim that only someone who dies from lung cancer is smart enough to know that smoking is dangerous?

Re:Pearl Harbor ring a bell?

[Stonehand]

Er, what do you think ended the Second World War, if it wasn't overwhelming force? I'd say that it's a cardinal example of how force /did/ solve a problem far more effectively than the pre-war diplomacy did.

Re:Pearl Harbor ring a bell?

[perlyking]

We understand these things very well, thank you, which is why we go to great lengths to keep our homeland from experiencing the sort of things that have happened elsewhere in the world.

You don't seem to be doing terribly well at it, perhaps the world would be a safer place if you stopped :-)

Re:Pearl Harbor ring a bell?

[Dark Lord Seth]

No, they don't. They were localized attacks and Pearl Harbour was a valid military target. Both are NOTHING compared to, for example:

• The firebombing of Dresden
• Trench Warfare
• Concentration Camps
• ETA terrorism
• IRA terrorism

In related news

[Theodore Logan]

Saddam's personal homepage is right now being subjected to what appears to be a large scale DDOS attack. After Saddam has butchered his sysadmin and the hackers, he's coming for you Jamie...

Re:Scary

[Iamthefallen]

Ah good point, but IF military action is taken, it's not enough to simply remove saddam, the entire government employed staff needs to be looked at, every cache of arms that could pose a threat be destroyed, a new system of government needs to be made, new police, new army etc etc etc. Basically, little will remain of the old Iraq except for the people and the borders. Therefore it will be a war on the nation, not against a person.

IF action is taken, it must be such that no one will have to go back and redo it again 10 years from now.

Re:Scary

[TheCaptain]

Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.


I would have hoped you also saw the result of NOT using force when it should have been...like keeping Hitler from rearming after WWI.

I am not trying to be a troll or leave the wrong impression, but Saddam and his crew are not the types you want to have that kinda stuff. The U.N. knows it and made resolutions to prevent it...unfortunately, none of them are being enforced.

There were agreements made to stop the last war...like weapons inspectors that wouldn't be interferred with etc. Saddam isn't abiding by his side of the deal, so the other side isn't bound to the ceasefire either. This has very little to do with GWB wanting to kill him because of his father...and that is a really really lame accusation, IMHO.

So who exactly did the hacking?

[Dan Crash]

Did Brian McWilliams, author of the article, do the actual hacking? Or was he just informed of it by some skript kiddie? The article is mysteriously vague about who did the deed.

Assuming they did do the hacking, this is ethical... how? Does this mean they figure it's all right to hack into anyone's e-mail and publicize the results? What if it were your e-mail?

It may have been a nifty trick that someone happened to guess the right password, but as journalism, this is beyond the pale. I'd like to see someone from WIRED News comment a little more specifically on who the hacker was, why his or her name wasn't disclosed, and how WIRED justifies reporting on the hacked contents of an e-mail account, and where they draw the lines.

Re:So who exactly did the hacking?

[MacAndrew]

Great point. The elusiveness of the article bothers me -- someone should own up, even if it's the dreaded "reliable source."

I doubt American law protects Hussein's email account or even the Americans who wrote to him; anyway the U.S. wouldn't prosecute, though it should follow up on the messages from its citizens offering material support. Constitutionally, the 4th Amendment does not apply to private actors. Now, Iraqi law must protect his account (after all, Saddam Hussein IS the law) but Wired may be beyond his grasp.

As for ethics, journalists are frequently presented with discovering or handling sensitive or confidential information. It's tough to decide and depends on the gravity of the problem. If they act prevent an imminent crime of significance by violating privacy, I think they should or are morally obligated to. They face the same sort of difficult decision any of us would in the same situation. A good example would be Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers revealing gov't deception concerning the Vietnam War.

One code of journalist ethics proposes:

Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story.

All involved US corporate leaders arrested!

[erroneus]

Some of these commercial offers might even be considered high treason.

I hope that all U.S. corporate leaders involved are immediately arrested and charged with treason or some other appropriate offense. This is wrong on so many levels it churns my stomach. The arrogance of these people astound me to no end.

I sincerely hope this is a hoax but somehow I can see that it's possible.

If there is truth to U.S. business attempting to solicit business with Saddam Hussein, then I expect to see reports of arrests and investigations in the news. But I can already hear the paper shreading machines in operations and the degausing machines humming...

Re:All involved US corporate leaders arrested!

[R.Caley]

If there is truth to U.S. business attempting to solicit business with Saddam Hussein, then I expect to see reports of arrests

After all, deals with dictators are the US government's job.

Re:All involved US corporate leaders arrested!

[repvik]

Criminal or not, I do believe that the evidence is insufficient and that it wasn't exactly recovered in a legal way.
If anyone got arrested over this (Other than the hacker), I'd be extremely surprised and disappointed.

Although it would be very nice if they could use the evidence, they can't.

Re:All involved US corporate leaders arrested!

[adb]

They can't use it in court, but there's no reason a third party couldn't use it to give them an anonymous tip.

Re:All involved US corporate leaders arrested!

[adb]

Google for Gaiacomm. The guy's a loon in the usual fashion of overenthusiastic Tesla fans.

Uruks from Iraq?

[merriam]

I'm confused. Is Saddam breeding orcs now?

Re:Uruks from Iraq?

[user flynn]

Send this message to Saddam:

Uruk Hi!

Somebody set us up the bomb.
We get signal.
What happen?
Main Screen, turn on.
It's you!
How are you? All your base are belong to us!
You are on the way to destruction.
What you say?!?
You have no chance of survive! Make your time! muhahah muhahahaha!
You know what you doing!!!
Move oil for great justice!

Sincerely,
George W. Bush

Sounds like something from a GW press conference :).

Re:Uruks from Iraq?

[kldavis4]

Uruk is a city in Iraq.

Re:Uruks from Iraq?

[TedCheshireAcad]

All your joke are old to us.

Re:Uruks from Iraq?

[Nept]

Frodo: But he was destroyed. Saddam was destroyed.
Gandalf: No, Frodo. The spirit of Saddam endured. His life force is bound to his weapons and the oil survived. Saddam has returned. His Orcs have multiplied. His fortress of Baghdad-dur is rebuilt in the land of Mordor. Saddam needs only these weapons to cover all the lands with a second darkness. He is seeking it, seeking it, all his thought is bent on it.

Re:Scary

[AftanGustur]

Hey guys, just to make the argument clearer could you please make a distinction between Saddam and his cronies and the people/country of Iraq.

Good point, but the problem is also (as the first poster pointed out), that there is little or no evidence against Saddam. Heck, there is more evidence of use of illegal chemicals, against the Russians now after the hostage-massacre last weekend. And Will mr Bush go against the Russians ?

It's also suspicious that the US has prevented the weapons inspectors from going to Iraq, and is shouting for a new UN mandate that allows it to attack Iraq.

What is also strange is that on the time that has passed since the weapons inspectors were ready to go to Iraq (and the Iraqis ready to accept them). They could have gone to Iraq, be obstructed (if what the US says is true) and we would have a UN resolution calling for a attack of Iraq.

It's clear that there is some second motive for the US to attack Iraq.

Credit where credit is due, slightly OT

[Theodore Logan]

Just in case that is actually modded up and someone finds it funny, I didn't come up with it myself. I read it in a Plastic discussion a while ago. I can't remember which, however, and I can't remember who said it, so I guess this isn't much help tracing down the original source. I just didn't want credit for such a brilliant acronym unless I came up with it myself.

Still vulnerable?

[m0i]

It looks like uruklink.net is still vulnerable:
-port 110 is opened
-it reveals they're running Ipswitch IMail 7.07
-this software has a known overflow and exploit on the web client side
-http://mail.uruklink.net:8383/ is opened.

What are their sysadmin waiting to shut down 110/8383? Wake up!

Side note, it's funny to see that they are running an american OS and mail software..

Re:Still vulnerable?

[daeley]

What are their sysadmin waiting to shut down 110/8383? Wake up!

Somehow, I doubt they're sleeping, nor their families, except in the morbid, metaphorical sense of 'to sleep' that Hamlet uses in his soliloquy. :)

Re:Still vulnerable?

[tswinzig]

Side note, it's funny to see that they are running an american OS and mail software..

Yes, astoundingly they didn't feel like using anything from the huge Iraqi software market!

Re:Still vulnerable?

[Jouster]

Nope, they just changed the DNS entry to a NAT'd entry.

But the server's still accessible by IP address. See my other post later on in this story for instructions.

Jouster

Contratulations, you won my auction! Item #343223

[sjonke]

Dear sadam33. Contratulations! You won my ebay auction for a genuine nuclear missile including certificate of authenticity. Item #343223. Send your money order and your address and I'll ship it out to you pronto. You asked about my feedback - it's true that I have no feedback yet, but this is simply because I had to make a new account: last week I tried to auction off my copy of Microsoft Office XP and ebay killed it and my account.

Ollie

Consider, for example..

[_KhlER3L]

Consider, for example, a flurry of messages apparently sent to Saddam byan employee of a Saudi Arabian oil company in July and August. The e-mailscontained cryptic reports in broken English about the location of U.S. oilpipelines, as well as warnings about the movement of submarines, aircraftand other military equipment and personnel in the Middle East.

Why would a Saudi Arabian oil employee use broken english when there is a 100% chance he speaks arabic? If he's not speaking English well, then what is he speaking in an Arab country? Chinese?

Maybe I'm out to lunch, but I think arabic speaking people send each other emails in arabic.

This Wired article stinks of something...

khl

If it was not for the UN sanctions

[diatonic]

perhaps Saddam could aquire the technology to keep his servers from succumbing to the slashdot effect.

let's get rid of all the spam companies

[kipple]

from the article:

"Saddam's inbox also contained several solicitations from American companies hoping to do business with Iraq -- despite U.S. prohibitions and United Nations trade sanctions."

now I really hope that spam companies will send spam mail to accounts in 'forbidden' countries, thus marking themselves as illegal. It would be fun :)

weird....

[carpe_noctem]

[laptop][reimannj][~]$ whois uruklink.net
[Owner of domain name]
osama khalid
27 april street
baghdad, 0000
IQ

Email: ama_72@yahoo.com
Phone: +964 1 5372494
Fax: +964 1 5434731

[laptop][reimannj][~]$ host uruklink.net
[laptop][reimannj][~]$ traceroute uruklink.net
traceroute: unknown host uruklink.net

Anyone else noticing anything weird about this?

Re:Fake?

[tx_mgm]

most hated man in america for several years running? i think not.
about a year ago, the most hated man in america was, without a doubt, another mid-eastern man.
and he probably still should be, too.
but hey, since we can't find him, lets listen to dubya and go finish daddy's business so we can get that pesky economy off of our minds!
*end sarcasm*

Journalistically speaking,

[Jerf]

To play Devil's advocate, from a journalistic point of view, Wired's primary responsibility is to validate the source of the info. Once that is done, you can make a very good case that this is, at least potentially, the sort of thing that People Must Know, which overrides most other considerations.

The contents were probably awfully mundane, perhaps too much so to qualify for The People Must Know, but one could imagine at least in theory that they might have found something interesting in there.

There is precedent for this: For a big example, consider the Watergate scandal. The New York Times wasn't "supposed" to be in possession of that material, and they certainly weren't "supposed" to publish it, but The People Must Know overrode their reservations, and most of us would consider that the right decision based on the info they had at the time.

On the other hand, hacking into my email and telling the world about it would be unethical; there is no need for anybody to know what's in there, so they'd just be rumormongering.

What, you say this "The People Need To Know" is an awfully fuzzy criterion to be using? Damn straight! These ethical things are hard.

(Remember, I'm playing devil's advocate here; I don't believe it's black and white, but I do think there is a strong kernel of truth here.)

Some people just have no sense...

[coupland]

The part I thought most comical was the people writing to warn him that the CIA would be after him and to exercise caution, or with ideas on how to win a war. Yes, I'm sure Saddam fired off a hardcopy of that e-mail, brought it to his War Ministry and they all read it in awe.

"By the grace of Almighty Allah, skater601@aol.com has shown us the road to salvation!"

Jeez, people can be so dumb...

It must be bogus..

[grub]

Personally I just think it's a matter of PR Whiz Valerie G. Mallinson's employer having a new client..

/. is a weapon of mass destruction....

[Ashurbanipal]

...that we have now loosed on Iraq's feeble Internet connection.

Re:Scary

[mikeee]

So, if a foreign leader order the assassination of US citizens (never mind that it was an ex-President), we should laugh it off as No Biggie?

Frankly, that's Causus Belli on its own, if you ask me.

Free weather service

[craw]

Congratulations! You have been selected to receive our new weather forecast service(*) for absolutely NO COST! This is a valuable limited time offer from the US Government that you do not want to pass up!

Here is our next week's customized forecast for your area.

Sunday: Hazy and humid
Monday: Hazy and humid.
Tuesday: Hazy and humid.
Wednesday: One million degrees, blinding sunlight, and one whomping big ass cloud in the sky.
Thurday: Hazy and humid.

So sign up NOW for this limited time offer.

(*)Terms and conditions of this service may be subject to change without prior written notice.

Re:Free weather service

[BoneFlower]

Reminds me of a joke about Afghanistan:

Q: Whats the 7 day forecast for Afghanistan?

A: Three days.

Netcraft

[cigarky]

The site www.uruklink.net is running Sun_WebServer/2.0 on Solaris.

Time for a parody

[dcavanaugh]

How about a ghost-written testimonial about a Middle East dictator who switches from Mac to XP? At least the photo could be real this time.

President Skroob

[Junior J. Junior III]

That's incredible! I have that same combination on my luggage!

Official Body Count!

[EggplantMan]

Deaths directly linked to the (mis)use of:
IIs : 1
Apache : 0

Is using IIs really worth the risk? Please, think before you deploy IIs.

Correction

[forii]

"I'm more scared by the fact the country with the biggest military buget in the world wants to start invading countries that have not done anything that warrent an attack."

You probably mean "...countries that have not done anything, except aggressively invade their neighboring countries, refuse to disarm, and use poison gas on their own inhabitants that warrent[sic] an attack."

Re:Correction

[foistboinder]

... and use poison gas on their own inhabitants

But Saddam Hussein was one of the good guys when he used poison gas. In fact he was one of the good guys almost up to the day he invaded Kuwait.

Re:Correction

[Glytch]

You probably mean "...countries that have not done anything, except aggressively invade their neighboring countries, refuse to disarm, and use poison gas on their own inhabitants that warrent[sic] an attack."

Well, damn. I'm glad to see that only Iraq ever does those things.

Ominous date

[f97tosc]

Attached to the Aug. 6 e-mail was a photograph of an atomic mushroom cloud.' It is probably not a coincidence that Aug 6 was the 1945 date that the nuke was dropped on Hiroshima.

Tor

The password is...

[jabber01]

1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5..

Same as the code on G.W. Bush's luggage.

Mod parent up

[Adam J. Richter]

Agreed. It wastes a lot of people's time when editors or story authors (in the absense of competent editors) try to show how "with it" they are by not expanding acronyms, especially when they have not recently been used in a slashot headline.

Re:Scary

[phorm]

It's clear that there is some second motive for the US to attack Iraq.

Whilst government is at war, people may then focus on the war instead of the problems within their own country. War also tends to stimulate production and to a certain extent employment in particular areas of the economy.

No more hacking Saddam's inbox?

[Jouster]

So, rather than actually shutting down the ports in question, they just turn off DNS resolution for webmail.uruklink.net. Of course, their NS entries still exist, and a quick subnet scan on port 8383 (nice of them to choose an odd port number, wasn't it?) reveals that adding

62.32.60.16 webmail.uruklink.net

to your /etc/hosts (or C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts for us Windows users) quite nicely lets us into the webmail system.

Alas, the user/pass is not "press"/"press", nor a mispelled "sadam"/"sadam". Ah, well.

Jouster

Re:No more hacking Saddam's inbox?

[Jouster]

And for those who care...

# nmap -vv -P0 -O -p 25,110,8383,8389 62.32.60.16 #webmail.uruklink.net

Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA31 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
No tcp,udp, or ICMP scantype specified, assuming vanilla tcp connect() scan. Use -sP if you really don't want to portscan (and just want to see what hosts are up).
Host (62.32.60.16) appears to be up ... good.
Initiating Connect() Scan against (62.32.60.16)
Adding open port 25/tcp
Adding open port 8383/tcp
Adding open port 110/tcp
The Connect() Scan took 12 seconds to scan 4 ports.
Warning: OS detection will be MUCH less reliable because we did not find at least 1 open and 1 closed TCP port
For OSScan assuming that port 25 is open and port 33201 is closed and neither are firewalled
For OSScan assuming that port 25 is open and port 39570 is closed and neither are firewalled
For OSScan assuming that port 25 is open and port 39827 is closed and neither are firewalled
Interesting ports on (62.32.60.16):
Port State Service
25/tcp open smtp
110/tcp open pop-3
8383/tcp open unknown
8389/tcp filtered unknown

No OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal).
TCP/IP fingerprint:
SInfo(V=2.54BETA31%P=i386-redhat-lin ux-gnu%D=10/28 %Time=3DBD8674%O=25%C=-1)
TSeq(Class=TR%TS=0)
T1 (Resp=Y%DF=Y%W=564%ACK=S++%Flags=AS%Ops=MNNT)
T2( Resp=N)
T3(Resp=N)
T4(Resp=N)
T5(Resp=N)
T6(Re sp=N)
T7(Resp=N)
PU(Resp=N)

TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=truly random
Difficulty=9999999 (Good luck!)
TCP ISN Seq. Numbers: 5E47AE5C A0B64F86 4F9BF508 BFC8A529 A3713D10 9EA869AA
IPID Sequence Generation: Busy server or unknown class

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 94 seconds

Jouster

Re:No more hacking Saddam's inbox?

[Jouster]

I love it!

The changes are propogating across DNS now... "webmail.uruklink.net" is now a private address in the 10.0.0.0/8 class A!

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: mailserv.uruklink.net
Address: 10.0.0.16
Aliases: webmail.uruklink.net

Jouster

Re:Scary

[mark-t]

It's clear that there is some second motive for the US to attack Iraq.

No, DUH!

One word sums it up: OIL

Here is the WHOIS note contact ama_72@yahoo.com

[Brigadier]

Kinda wierd to think the most clear and present danger to the free world uses a yahoo address for there administrators.

Registrar:domaininfo.com
Domain Name: URUKLINK.NET

[Owner of domain name]
osama khalid
27 april street
baghdad, 0000
IQ

[Administrative contact]
khalid, osama
27 april street
0000 baghdad
IQ

Email: ama_72@yahoo.com
Phone: +964 1 5372494
Fax: +964 1 5434731

[Technical contact]
khalid, osama
27 april street
0000 baghdad
IQ

Email: ama_72@yahoo.com
Phone: +964 1 5372494
Fax: +964 1 5434731

[Zone contact]
khalid, osama
27 april street
0000 baghdad
IQ

Email: ama_72@yahoo.com
Phone: +964 1 5372494
Fax: +964 1 5434731

Record created: 29 May 2000
Record last changed: 22 Nov 2001
Record expires: 29 May 2005

Nameserver: nic1.warkaa.com (62.32.60.1)
Nameserver: nic2.warkaa.com (62.32.60.2)

Re:Here is the WHOIS note contact ama_72@yahoo.com

[danimrich]

They even use Frontpage!
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage5 .0">

Does this mean that M$ is bad or that Saddam's web "designers" are stupid?

Re:Here is the WHOIS note contact ama_72@yahoo.com

[zephc]

it means that MS supports terrorists! Or... something... :-D

an aside

[Luyseyal]

A friend of mine was in the Gulf War -- US Army infantry. He said he and all his buds were "encouraged" (i.e., berated by the sargeant until they did it) to sign a waiver and receive an injection of non-FDA-approved anthrax vaccine. I've wondered if this had a possibile relation to Gulf War Syndrome. Any idea?

-l

Re:an aside

[Luyseyal]

In my friend's unit, they weren't allowed to take off their rubber uniform at all for several weeks. Many of them accumulated blisters and other things from not being able to bathe the sweat, piss, and shit off their skin. I don't know if anyone in his unit developed GWS (he didn't), but I bet you're right about the variety of possibilities.

-l

Re:an aside

[Alsee]

A friend of mine was in the Gulf War -- US Army Military Police. He said that sand and grit got into EVERYTHING. I've wondered if this had a possibile relation to Gulf War Syndrome. Any idea?

Doesn't anyone else think it's odd that we never went back to the moon? I've wondered if this had a possibile relation to Gulf War Syndrome. Any idea?

-

Re:an aside

[Luyseyal]

We just don't know.

-l

Just one question.

[PyroX_Pro]

Since when is guessing a password considered hacking?

The Reality

[telstar]

While Saddam shuffles from palace to palace, gasses his own people, and forces a 100% election ... this is what his country's children look forward to:

picture

It's time for a change.
Hack his email.
Crush his forces.
Get him out of power.
Do something for the people that couldn't leave if they wanted to...

Re:The Reality

[kindbud]

"Sorry. This page requires javascript. "

Oh, the horror!

Re:The Reality

[telstar]

I suppose his 100% victory in the recent election is due to the entire country agreeing? That's quite an achievement...

Face it ... you'd disagree with whatever agenda the Bush administration supported. You probably supported our anti-Iraq actions taken and maintained during the Clinton administration, didn't you?

near-constant civil war

[oliverthered]

I live in England, we've been in a near-constant civil war for years and still are.
What this teaches you is to be tollerent of others, not to kill the fuckers.

Maybe, just maybe there are a lot of countries/people that hate the dictatorship that America is trying to impose on the rest of the world . Should they kill Bush for being evil?

Gaiacomm

[KlomDark]

Their web site is so badly done it's hilarious. None of it seems to make any sense. They go on about some super-technological wireless radio system that even works in a submarine, and also some way these radios can be re-tuned into a long-distance incineration weapon.

Check it out, it's pretty funny.

And great sound effects - sounds like a whale giving birth to a chimp, not sure what it's supposed to be, or why on earth a corporate site would want such strange noises to prelude into a really wacked presentation on their super-vague "4G" lethal boomboxes...

Re:Scary

[Citizen of Earth]

Saddam isn't abiding by his side of the deal, so the other side isn't bound to the ceasefire either.

It seems to me that all that GWB needs to do is say simply "Iraq hasn't lived up to the conditions of the ceasefile; therefore, the ceasefire is hereby dissolved and the hot war is back on." Poof.

WACO

[oliverthered]

Use Gas, what like waco

Mod parent down (was: Re:Mod parent up)

[Theodore Logan]

Agreed. It wastes a lot of people's time when editors or story authors (in the absense of competent editors) try to show how "with it" they are by not expanding acronyms, especially when they have not recently been used in a slashot headline.

You could not possibly be serious. If you have read any single issue of any newspaper during the last year you must have seen that acronym. And the latter part of your comment is just hilarious. It hasn't featured in a Slashdot headline, so you couldn't know about it? Want them to clarify who Saddam is too? He doesn't frequent Slashdot headlines all to often either.

Sorry for flamebating/trolling/whatever, but really, try to get out of your cubicle just a little more often, willya?

New way to combat spammers..

[James_G]

Saddam's inbox also contained several solicitations from American companies hoping to do business with Iraq -- despite U.S. prohibitions and United Nations trade sanctions.

To: Saddam, Subject: MAKE MONEY FAST!!!
To: Saddam, Subject: Generic Viagra! $2.50 each!
To: Saddam, Subject: Increase your penis size!

Wouldn't it be so nice to close down spammers because they're breaching UN trade sanctions? Maybe you could even get them charged with treason.. Muahahaha

Gaiacomm Technical Docs

[KlomDark]

I found their "technical" documentation - it was a wildly entertaining read, the ultimate in nonsense techno-babble. What in the hell is a "tetra-gigahertz"?

Great phrases like:

"Mathematical expressions have been eliminated to allow the reader to interpret the words and draw pictures in his mind to see what I, and so many others in the past have discovered but were afraid to write about or do until now."

"The frequency dependence of attenuation in the earth ionosphere wave-guide channel is known but will not be disclosed in this paper."

"If after reviewing all the this data including the above written data, if the reader still does not have a clear understanding then it is clear that the reader does not have the ability to think outside the circle (remember, my condition at the outset?)"

Definitions of acronyms like ATM and CDMA at the end, although none of those terms are discussed in the document.

Read it, laugh your head off! :)

No wonder he hasn't replied.

[C60]

I've been trying to get ahold of him for weeks now.

It's perfectly ethical

[ColGraff]

Saddam Hussein is a bloodthirsty, hitler-esque megalomaniac. He butchers his own people. So far as I'm concerned, this places him beyond the pale of the protections civilized people afford each other. If someone shot Saddam tomorrow, it wouldn't trouble me at all - heck, if Ari Fleischer threw a party I'd probably go. As was said of Eichman - and I know I'm butchering this quote - "He didn't want to share the world with Jews, so we should not be expected to share the world with him".

If we accept (and I wholeheartedly do) that killing Saddam would be at worst a not-bad thing and more likely a Good Thing, then hacking his mail pales in comparison. Anything that serves to humiliate or demean Saddam or those who would work with him is fine by me. Any "leader" as monstrous as Saddam deserves no rights whatsoever so far as I am concerned.

Yeah, whatever.

[Find love Online]

Doing bad things with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons before we knew the dire consequences of using them is one thing. But it is another thing to use such weapons on civilians when you know exactly what the effects will be.

So you're saying it's somehow more morally acceptable to experiment on unwitting people who have done nothing to you then it is use tested and proven poisons on people who are in the middle of an uprising? It's not like Saddam was out gassing people for fun, "His own people" were trying to overthrow him.

We used biological, chemical, and radiological substances we thought would hurt people on innocent people to make sure it worked. Saddam used weapons on people trying to overthrow him. One of them is worse then the other, and it isn't Saddam

Re:Yeah, whatever.

[statusbar]

Not only that, the Kurds that Saddam gassed were fundamentalist muslims that are now in full support of Osama Bin Laden!!! We dropped bombs on supporters of Bin Laden in Afghanistan. What's the difference?

--jeff++

I hope not

[ColGraff]

Uh...high treason is a serious, serious charge. A death penalty charge, in some cases. I should hope the gov't would require more corroboration than an email (when we all know spammers are perfectly capable of forging addresses and headers) before sending someone to jail. Admittedly, those executives who admitted in the article that some sort of "joke" had been played, or that they had been misquoted but had sent emails, should at least be investigated. But no charges. Not based on something like this.

Israel

[ColGraff]

The Israeli tech sector is really booming, and they turn out a lot of good stuff. If the Iraqi site were using Israeli software, that would be hilarious.

Re:Israel

[snake_dad]

Would you happen to know Saddam's ICQ UIN? :)

dosent saddam have a public key?

[gimpboy]

really though, i'm surprised he doesnt give out his public key so people can encrypt the messages they send to him. this would at least create a pain in the ass for the cia.

Re:Scary

[Theodore Logan]

Don't be ridiculous. This war has nothing to do with WMDs or UN resolutions and everything to do with oil. Case in point: Israel has been ignoring UN resolutions for thirty years and have had WMDs for as long. And what does the US do? It supports them. Also, please note that the UN is against an attack on Iraq. How do you reconcile that fact with your "the UN knows this"-rhetoric? Bringing up Hitler and WWII is also really quite disingenious, as it's not like the reasons the US joined the war at all was as noble as you seem to think. Must... not... bite...

I could go on and on, but what's the point? Anyone who hasn't already understood what this war will be fought for will never.

The human side of it

[dstone]

One sad possibility of this hacking is that a certain amount of national (or regime) shame may have come as a result of this hack being publicized so widely. This really is an embarassing blunder. So if we are to believe that Saddam is a ruler who beats/imprisons/executes his own people when he is unsatisfied with their devotion, some IT people in Iraq may very well be betting beaten or imprisoned or worse because of this.

In a free world, exposing hacks results in incompetent people being retrained or fired and the problem gets fixed. In an unfree regime, well, ...

Hello? Nuking cities? Full of civilians?

[myowntrueself]

For what?
To save the lives of soldiers?
Nuking hospitals & kindergartens?

If thats not a crime against humanity *nothing* is.
Its a paradigm example of a crime against humanity.

No such thing as the Gulf War Syndrome

[spineboy]

There have been many scientific and medical papers on this suposed syndrome. Basically the list of complaints that people suffered from were far to numerous and of different types to be produced from any substance or biologic. I've worked with a few people who have researched it, and one MD who was over there , who said that USUALLYmost of the complaints are general whole body pain, aches, etc usualy attributable to unhappy people (e.g somatatization: non specific body pains attributable to general unhappiness, usually from people who are unhappy with their predicament in life and wish to avoid it - kinda like the school kid who "feels" sick when they don't want to go to school)

Don't forget other countries

[Aexia]

Like all those democratically elected governments we overthrew and replaced with murderous military regimes. Guatemala anyone?

But they weren't our own citizens so I guess they don't count.

if I were the hax0r..

[Suppafly]

If I were the one that hacked his inbox, I think I would have sent emails to all of his followers telling them to kill themselves.. or maybe I just would have taunted the rest of the world with email riddles and chain letters.

Cool new pre-emptive framing technology.

[bareman]

Sweet! Now we can email [plant] "evidence" to people to prove that they are guilty.

This is so much easier than going on TV to call them bad names. "Axis of Evil".

Man, if they receive bad emails they must be bad.

This just in... We've just received word that email evidence proves that the president is having an affair with a barely 18 year old girl named Tiffany.

Bomb his ass!

[mustangdavis]

I think you mean the US should set him up the bomb.

Your grammar is atrocious! For future reference: "I think you mean the US should set up him the bomb."

No, this is what we should do:

# tar -zcvf email_bomb.tgz windowsXP.iso

# elm -s "You've got bombed!" press@uruklink.net
repeat step 2 as many times as you can before your ISP shuts you down

Saddam as a unix user?

[Choachy]

SunOS 5.6

login: joshua
password: joshua
Last login: Mon Dec 25 2000 00:29:33

You are logged onto sandbox.uruklink.net.
Unauthorized access to this system will result in shooting, stoning, or hanging.

Mon Oct 28 16:36:42 EST 2002 /export/home3/iraq/saddam
sandbox% ls
mail public_html games

sandbox% cd games /export/home3/iraq/saddam/games

sandbox% global_thermonuclear_war
global_thermonuclear_war : Command not found

sandbox% global_thermonuclear_war
global_thermonuclear_war : Command not found

sandbox% global_thermonuclear_war
global_thermonuclear_war : Command not found

sandbox% @#$*&(@^#
@#$*&(@^#: Command not found

sandbox% exit

Connection to host lost.

Re:Scary

[superyooser]

the problem is also, that there is little or no evidence against Saddam.

Little evidence??? I've never seen such willful blindness. I don't know if it's worth my time to counter this. How have you missed all of Bush's speeches, Blair's dossier of declassified intelligence, the numerous denunciations of Saddam by the U.N., and lots of other information coming out from nations around the world? When evidence against Saddam is presented to you guys, it's like putting an eye chart in front of a pack of moles.

Look, Saddam murders his own family members to prove his ruthlessness to potential dissendents. A close advisor once joked to Saddam that he step down from the "presidency." No smiles from Saddam. That guy's gone. And his family.

Saddam's goal is to be worshipped by his subjects. (Yes, subjects, not citizens.) The latest election is proof of this. Some voters pricked their fingers to mark their selection with blood. (In Old Testament-based religion, the shedding of blood signifies the making of a covenant.) He commands an awful lot of power. Saddam even manipulates the U.S. media. Btw, can anybody provide a link to a transcript or summary of any of the Iraqi election debates? I somehow missed them.

There's been lots of news that Saddam is linked to bin Laden and Palestinian terrorists. These guys are a threat to everybody. It is their explicitly stated goal to destroy the United States. As far as they're concerned, a country either converts to their religion or is targeted for destruction. They call us the Great Satan. They want to kill us. There's absolutely no question about it. What part of "We will kill you!" don't you understand?

Maybe pictures will convince you.

Or a video:
Broadband
56K
28K

Tremble before our might

[Porag_Spliffing]

And suffer this righteous slashdotting. What a weapon of mas destruction we wield.

Damn, what is the net coming to when I can't even login to saddams email.

BTW, chem & bio can not be weapons of mass destruction, mass is conserved in both, only nuke is mass destruction.

"Imminent"

[moosesocks]

Of course, you know the picture of the bomb represents his mail server after being slashdotted :-)

hmm

[mr. sleepy]

I first read this as, "Saddam's X-Box Hacked", and I can't stop laughing.

Now if we can just get into bush's inbox

[NZlinux]

Then we could find out who is the most stupid.

Re:Now if we can just get into bush's inbox

[shaldannon]

don't think that's necessary...isn't it obvious considering he goes by the name 'Duh-bya'?

Re:what

[isorox]

asshole probably can't even use a computer at all without wanting to shoot or gas it.

But to be fair, we all feel like that on a monday morning

Honeypots

[sharph]

I consider myself pretty good with computer security. I even have a honeypot installed on my computer. To lure the crackers in, you must make it very easy to get into the honeypot. This all seems too easy...

I don't think its a good idea for anybody to be jumping to conclusions about what his e-mail gets. That webmail account may have been created for the purpose of luring in crackers working for the US government. They may just forward all the junk and non-secret mail there.

president@whitehouse.com

[GunFodder]

You mean president@whitehouse.com is not Bush's email address? From the replies I got I thought we finally had a president I could relate with. He had nothing but optimism for the economy and seemed supportive of personal rights. Although I never understood why the President needed my credit card number...

Re:Scary

[GlassHeart]

So, if a foreign leader order the assassination of US citizens (never mind that it was an ex-President), we should laugh it off as No Biggie?

The CIA used to do this regularly, until it was banned by President Ford in 1976. After September 11, President Bush signed an intelligence "finding" instructing the CIA to engage in "lethal covert operations" to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization.

Let me separate the two very carefully. I think that assassination is murder. It deprives an accused person of the human right to due process. However, relative to starting a war - which can kill tens of thousands - yes, it's closer to "no biggie" than it is to "casus belli".

There goes my last shred of respect...

[Guppy06]

"The account had a five-letter login"

You'd think someone who has held on to power with a white-knuckled grip for so long would have the foresight to use a slightly longer password...

You gotta be kidding

[zenyu]

What an astounding bit of moral equivalency. Let's see, Bush is a brutal dictator who bombs innocents in the name of political terror, the Iraq is a republic defending itself and it's freedom by selectively attacking only those who attacked it first, and in the process bringing freedom to millions. Yeah, no difference whatsoever. Fucking asshole.

Re:You gotta be kidding

[0x0d0a]

Let's see, Saddam is a brutal dictator who gasses innocents in the name of political terror and genocide,

Not *quite*. He was worried about a revolution. If you look at the Civil War and Sherman, you'd notice that the US government wasn't exactly nice to the people opposing it, either. Granted, not genocide...

the US is a democracy defending itself and freedom by selectively attacking only those who attacked it first, and in the process bringing freedom to millions.

And this is why Bush is trying to attack...uh...Iraq? When exactly did Iraq attack the United States of America again?

Re:Scary

[0x0d0a]

I am not trying to be a troll or leave the wrong impression, but Saddam and his crew are not the types you want to have that kinda stuff.

Yes, nukes should only be in the hands of responsible types like China, Russia, and the US.

I'm sure you already have a bad enough opinion of China and Russia, thanks to US media, but let's take a brief look at the US: only country ever to actually nuke another. Did said nuking *not* at a linchpin point in the war *or* in a tactical manner, but against an entire city to "reduce US casualties" after the war was essentially won. You can draw your own conclusions as to whether the US just wanted to flex those new muscles we'd spent huge sums of money developing...

US...leading developer of chemical (and up until two decades ago) a leading developer of bioweapons. Largest single source of arms floating around the world. I *think* (although this is pulled out of my ass) that the US has been in conflicts with more countries than any other single country over the last century.

Now, that doesn't mean I think Saddam should get nukes. I can't imagine very many organizations that I'd remotely trust with them -- perhaps the United Nations as a whole. But is the US likely to use them "responsibly" either? The most responsible thing you can do with nukes is *not use them*, and we've already failed that test...

Re:Scary

[AftanGustur]

I think you're joking, realy !!

But since I see no smileys in your comment, I'l reply (and hope you're not a troll).

How have you missed all of Bush's speeches, Blair's dossier of declassified intelligence, the numerous denunciations of Saddam by the U.N., and lots of other information coming out from nations around the world?

First of all, the Blair UK report was a joke (Yes, I read it). It presented no evidence at all, only specualtions that "Sadam might be trying to increase the range of the "Hussein" missiles further than he is allowed to. (Yes the guy is allowed to have weapons and even short-range missiles).
It also speculated, get this, that "Iraq could make a nuclear bomb within a few years if they got the nessecary materials (plutonium etc ..)

Look, Saddam murders his own family members to prove his ruthlessness to potential dissendents.

His "family members" had fled the country and committed treason, stolen classified state secrets and worked with the enemy. The USA has also killed it's own citisens for the same reasons. So it's not exactly a proof of anything.

The rest of your comment is just plain propaganda.. For example you don't have a "proof of his intentions" because some people put blood on the election ballots ?

I'l stop here, there realy is no logic in the rest of your comment and people might start to think I'm a Saddam supporter.

Re:Scary

[0x0d0a]

Ok...that right there is nothing more than putting words in my mouth to make it easier for you to lump me into a group that you can just casually dismiss. No offense, but fuck you. You don't know me any more than I know you.

My point is that I have no reason to spend time talking about all the reasons it could be bad for Russia or China to have weapons of mass destruction, since most Americans will happily agree. The reason they *will* agree is primarily because of all they've been fed by the general US media, which is, for most citizens, the only way they find out what is going on. I don't believe I put words into your mouth.

Are you aware that they airdropped leaflets urging people to flee the city way in advance before doing it, telling them exactly what was going to happen? Actually, by most people's calculations, it did save lives on both sides.

Actually, while they did in some conventional cases, they specifically did *not* do so before Hiroshima. It was completely unanounced. There *were* leaflets dropped afterwards to citizens urging them to help convince the Japanese leadership to surrender.

I recommend the following link, which discusses in depth the diplomatic non-necessity of Hiroshima.

You can think of me what you like, but from everything I have read, the U.S. was FAR more ethical the most countries with reguards to WWII. Yes...we have/had muscle...yes, we used it.

Yes, because you're reading US sources. No one has particularly clean hands in the World Wars, though the darkest crimes of the losers were made much of.

The U.S. gets dragged into alot of other people's messes because they can't deal with them properly.

Oh, bullshit. There is absolutely no way we get "dragged" into bombing the crap out of a country. We may have incentives, like better oil prices, but the US hasn't looked at an invasion for two hundred years now.

Prior to that point in history [WWII], the U.S. didn't do much on the world state...we got dragged into it because Europe couldn't clean up their own back yard.

What was World War I? A backyard picnic?

It's like the cold war prick waving contest between the USSR and the USA...both had enough nukes to end the world x number of times. Kinda pointless really, bragging rights aside.

No, it's because of expected attrition -- assume some don't work, assume some are destroyed before launch, assume anti-ICBM defenses are developed and able to take out N missiles. It's why China is a lot more upset over ABM than Russia -- it'd be a bitch to stop all of the ICBMs from Russia, but China's arsenal could be neutralized.

For that matter, Saddam is the one actually using the stuff these days...on Kurds in his own country.

It would be more justifiable to use it on another country? We had CIA folks stirring up *revolution* over there! If Hussein had secret agents come over and get a bunch of militias here to bomb the White House, and the government here *killed* everyone in the militias, would you call that unjustified? Granted, we'd probably use conventional weaponry, but what matters here is mostly who's foot the shoe is on, not the shoe itself.

No...there is nothing magical about a nuke that makes it good or evil.

I didn't say there was. I'm just dubious about how realistic one can be about it being a good idea to actually set off a nuke. Almost all of their effectiveness comes from their threat, not from their use.

Re:Scary

[superyooser]

Oh great strategy. Let's wait until our opponents test some A-bombs on India or Israel before we decide to go to war. You act as if our objective is to fight an even fight. We want every advantage we can get. If Saddam doesn't have nuclear weapons (uh oh) and we know that he is trying to obtain them, then the time is ripe to invade! We have a short window of time in which to act. The time to act is now! Unfortunately, we know Saddam already does have biological weapons. That's according to weapons inspectors, but what do they know?

It's time to move in before the situation gets worse. We can opt for x casualties now or possibly x^y casualties later in a nuclear war. It is not in our power to say "Yes war" or "No war." War is here. The question before us is: Will we defend ourselves or be conquered?

This is not wild propaganda. We are fighting against the Anybody But America (& allies) coalition. (Like Microsoft is opposed by the Anything But Microsoft coalition: Oracle, Netscape, Sun, IBM, AOL.) They are different, but they have a common opponent. This unites them. They do have solidarity in this respect. Muslims have declared their intent to turn Great Britain into an Islamic country. In recent days, they've declared their intent to terrorize Australia. They want to destroy America and Israel. They're not even satisfied with "moderate" Muslim countries like Indonesia. No non-Islamic/Wahabi country is safe. They're out for world domination.

The enemy's definition of peace is our destruction. Therefore, we have no choice but to make our definition of peace their destruction. To them, terrorism is worship, and jihad is the highest sanctification of life. (See the "Jihad for Kids" video I linked to in my previous post.)

Read the Daily Alert. Very informative. I signed up for the e-mail newsletter.

Re:Scary

[AftanGustur]

This is not wild propaganda. We are fighting against the Anybody But America (& allies) coalition. ..... The enemy's definition of peace is our destruction. Therefore, we have no choice but to make our definition of peace their destruction.

That's it, you're joking ..

Thanks for the (short) discussion, you realy should learn to troll better ..

Re:Scary

[superyooser]

I am in NO WAY joking. What I am saying is factual. The coalition of enemies is real.

WTC terrorist Moussaoui said, "I pray to Allah" for "the destruction of the United States of America." Let me clue you in: this is not a unique thought. There are many millions like him.

The things I have said are widely-known facts. Militant Muslims don't even try to hide their intentions within their own countries. They proclaim peace when speaking in English to Western audiences, but they advocate genocide and hatred in their native language.

They openly proclaim in large gatherings their eternal hatred for America, and they scream passionate vows to destroy America with guns firing in the air and a flaming Uncle Sam on a skewer.

• They preach it in the mosques.
• They teach it in the schools.
• They celebrate it at anti-American/Israeli/Western/ Christian/Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist/infidel rallies.
• They broadcast it over the state-run TV and radio stations.
• They print it in the newspapers.

Widespread militant anti-Americanism exists in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, and many other countries in Asia and Africa.
It's not a secret!

It's not merely a suspicion or conspiracy theory. It's just plain fact, and it's out there in the open for everybody to see.

War is not the choice; victory is. There is a real and present danger. If we act now, we get to fight on our terms rather than on theirs (as on 9/11). Either way, there is war.