Cold War Satellite Pics Declassified

wwwssabbsdotcom writes "Looks like 25 years ago, we were taking pretty good B&W pics of the rest of the world, interesting story. How about those Cuban Missile Crisis pics, do they have that roll available?"

Comments

one thing

[insomaniac]

its about time ;)

Re:one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

And nowadays we are taking pretty good colour pics of teenage girls getting stretched open.

Thank you internet, thank you! I no longer need to feel unclean, visiting shady porn bookstores filled with heavily breathing, sweaty men.

I can do the heavy breathing and sweating all on my own (when Mum's at the shops).

Cuban Pics

[Karamchand]

Though there are probably satellite pictures of those missile bases on Cuba they were discovered from a plane.

Re:Cuban Pics

[meringuoid]

Yes, the intelligence pics that proved the Soviets had missiles in Cuba were taken by U2 spy planes. They were published immediately - if you're trying to force the Russians to remove their missiles, you don't keep it a secret that you know about the missiles. You tell the world.

In the early sixties, satellite reconaissance was primitive - it was still at the stage of ejecting the film in a little capsule to be picked up on the ground :-) Planes were getting much better material then.

Re:Cuban Pics

[Chicks_Hate_Me]

Just like the missles we had pointed to them in Turkey?

Re:Cuban Pics

[Orne]

The new International Spy Museum in Washington DC has a very nice walk-through of photos taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis... 3 foot tall pictures show the (before and after) construction of facilities on the island.

Combined with intelligence information about a shipment of material on route to Cuba made, they make a very telling case for why the blockade was ordered. My parents claim that the US was never closer to nuclear war than on that day, and the museum does a very good job of putting the story together. I'd definitely recommend a trip.

Re:Cuban Pics

[meringuoid]

Just like the missles we had pointed to them in Turkey?

Yes, very much like them. And not so very different from the ones in Britain and Germany, and in Canada pointing across the pole. Not that anyone ever had a double standard...

kodak instant moments?

[greechneb]

According to the article they were looking for "Kodak Instant Moments" - I wonder how they would use that in a commercial. "When want the best images of your enemies, use kodak film..." naah.

Re:kodak instant moments?

[cordsie]

Don't they mean Kruschev instant moments?

Whose looking in your window?

[Havoc'ing]

If you figure we can view a galaxy a bizzillion miles away through the hubble just imagine what we are capable of now right in our back yard. And the hubble aint even classified.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[phil reed]

just imagine what we are capable of now right in our back yard.

Not as much as you might imagine. A Hubble-sized telescope in orbit at Hubble's altitude, pointed straight down, can resolve down to 15 centimeters. That would be enough to tell that you drive a Honda instead of a Surburban, but it couldn't tell much beyond that.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes me wonder why we need guys driving around Iraq in little white jeeps.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Havoc'ing]

My comment was largely based on technology not the hubble itself. The hubble is based on "released" technology. The gov has the money and willpower to advance it long before it may be publicly availible. I vuguely remember a comment about being able to reading a headline on a newspaper from space but cant remember where.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[phil reed]

Well, my comment was based on the laws of physics. You can throw as much technology as you want at the problem, but it's physically impossible for a Hubble-sized mirror, looking straight down from Hubble's altitude, to read a newspaper headline. You would have a hard time even telling that you were looking at a newspaper.

We should avoid using spy movies as a basis for estimations on what our government is capable of.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Honorbound]

Indeed. Given that we can get one-meter or better spatial resolution panchromatic data from commercial sources now (http://www.digitalglobe.com/index.shtml and http://www.spaceimaging.com), one wonders what the government is up to. Now, when the multispectral resolution gets to below one-meter we'll have reason to be really excited.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[ottffssent]

Or more than you might imagine. 1m resolution is fine enough to see the lines in parking lots and count full v. empty spaces and see opened doors (not sliding van doors). What do you think something 7 times as good will show? Make and model of car, all doors, how many people, whether and what they are carrying, and if they wear glasses. You can probably tell the make of shoe someone is wearing at that resolution.

And that's just from one frame. With multiple frames, you increase dramatically the information you have available, and you can interpolate down much finer than the camera resolution.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[JKnowledge]

Actually, there are satellites pointed at the earth that can "allegedly"(in the classified sense of the word) be used to calculate the height of a curb, and this was several years ago.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[silas_moeckel]

Granted lets not talk about the hubble specificaly but as I used to work with Satalite GIS data trust me you can tell if somebody is reading a newspaper especialy if you have a few offset shots to interpalate. The russians sold us (for whatever reasons in the mid 90's US sat data was classified but the russians would shoot you just about anything for a few hundred bucks) good half meter res sat photos you could tell if the women sunbathing in there back yards had there bikini tops on or not (this is black and white remember) All of this was from russian declasified sat data so we would have to assume ther clasified ones are better (maybe not film has the problem of being consumable and having to be retrieved digital might not give the rez but a constant stream of pictures instead) Now we are 10 years later while I boubt they can head the newspaper over your head of if they would even want to but make and modle of your car not a problem.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget that the hubble dosen't have to see through any atmosphere. helps with resolution.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Havoc'ing]

I see the point but once again I was not talking about the Hubble specifically but merely the advantages of technology that are unknown to the common public and could be. There's plenty of other methods outside using a gigantic mirror to accomplish things. As for the newspapaer, its pretty familiar albeit I always question the sources... http://www.india-emb.org.eg/Section6E/IIIA_Engl_8. html http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_i d=221 http://www.wfs.org/stauffer.htm

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to parent: And with fine enough infrared sensativity to locate people and warm objects in a house, through the house.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[phil reed]

Here's an older DejaView message on the topic. It addresses this very issue.

Undergraduate physics:

Resolving power R (resolution) of a diffraction limited telescope: R = wavelength/(2*diameter telescope)

This means for the HST (2.4 meter) and visual wavelenght (500nm) R = 500nm/4.8m = 1*10^(-7)

Since the Hubble is in orbit h = 680km (380 miles) high, this means it can theoretically resolve: Detail = R * h = 0.07. Thus 7cm (3 inch) details. Not enuff for reading license plates, even if someone would hold it up to the sky so we dont have inclination effects. Besides this, the best visual wavelength camera on board (the PC chip on the WFPC2 camera) UNDERsamples this signal by a factor of 2 giving an effective resolution of 14cm (1/2 feet).

This holds only if we ignore atmospheric turbulence effects (which certainly DONT average out), the pointing instability (up to about 10mas (micro-arcseconds)) and thermal breathing (up to 10mas). This degrades the image even further. (10mas translates to about 5cm as seen from the HST)

Furthermore, target acquisition is problematic. HST uses guide-stars, which need to be in the field of view, to lock on targets. Certainly no stars available on the face of the earth ;-p. Even then: A quote from the HST data hanbook: "It is also possible to take observations (primarily WFPC2 "snapshot" exposures) without guide stars, using only gyro pointing control. The absolute pointing accuracy using gyros is about 14" (one sigma), and the pointing drifts at a rate of 1.4 +/- 0.7 mas s**-1. "

So, we have a 66% chance of 14" (arcseconds) acquisition accuracy. This translates to about 1400 pixels offset (if we were well sampled) on a ccd camera or 100m inaccuracy on the ground.

Say we want a spy satellite with 1cm resolution (ignoring degrading affects) on orbit 300km high (if lower, atmospheric friction would cause it to fall back to the earth), then applying the same formulae as above we would need a telescope diameter of roughly 5 meters. (According the the space shuttle reference guide you would have to keep the payload doors open in flight to make it fit, hehehe)

Conclusion:

IMBO the NSA cant read license plates. The technology for space telescopes with this capability is only now being developed (look for NGST on the web) against HUGE costs, certainly not within the NSA's budget. Besides target acquisition is a severe limitation, and it's role becomes more important when the resolution increases.

just my $0.02

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[johnjay]

What if there was a satellite with the adaptive optics that the La Palma observatory is using to take pictures of the sun? I have only a layman's knowledge of this, but it seems that if the CIA put a laser on your roof pointing straight up, the satellite could use the laser point as a reference and be able to resolve enough so they could clearly see anything they wanted.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are full of shit. It's "interpolate," btw -- it's quite startling that someone supposedly so well-versed in the business would misspell such a trivial word.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he can't spell "satellite", either, which is even more telling.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[mike_mgo]

It figures that engineers would be using this stuff to check out women sunbathing.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Buran]

One of the later Keyhole satellites -- 11 or 12, I'm not sure which and I haven't had the time to look into it since deciding to last week -- actually is based on the Hubble design. However, the optics are not the same -- they cannot be.

As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.

Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

However, it is entirely possible for such a satellite to be launched by the Shuttle -- the size of the payload bay, don't forget, was set by a DoD request ("you set it up like this or we don't pay you to help develop it") and there were a bunch of DoD flights back in the 1980s and early 1990s. And Hubble is just about perfectly sized to fit in the bay -- it's the largest payload, physically, ever launched, I think.

So it'd make sense that the civilian version of the KH-1x satellite in question exactly fits -- because that's the payload the shuttle was designed for. (A set payload bay size then leads to the overall size of the orbiter, which leads to the wing design, which leads to the requirements for engines, fuel, boosters, etc...)

It also means that, since the Soviets copied the US shuttle design for Buran, ALL reusable space planes that have ever flown were designed to carry this mystery DoD payload! Even the one that's not ours! (I don't say "manned" because Buran carried no crew during its only flight.)

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[mesocyclone]

Problems with this analysis:

1) Id doesn't take into account any electronic processing of resulting signals or using multiple images taken seconds apart to achieve higher resolution.

2) Optical spy satellites are likely to use multiple mirrors, both to use adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric turbulence, and to avoid the problem of fit in the shuttle payload.

I believe it is the Keck telescope (which has adaptive optics) that has resolution sufficient to read a license plate from much higher orbits (all other caveats apply).

A little tidbit... the Multiple-Mirror Telescope (MMT) on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona used to be (and may still be) owned by the airport. When it was built, it was built with an azimuth/elevation mount, rather than the usual polar mount, and used a computer steering system that was accurate enough to account for minute flexing in the very rigid metal frame.

The mirrors were Air-Force surplus from the spy satellite program.

The Air-Force used to "borrow" the scope from time to time. The Az-El mount was probably chosen to allow tracking of earth orbiting objects - Russian satellites.

The spook folks work with very impressive technology. They are bound by the laws of physics, but they probably have engineering tricks that the public world has not heard of. Tricks in signal processing, adaptive optics in space, ultra-precision pointing, etc.

Actually, if you just solve the problem of taking current earth borne adaptive optics telescopes into orbit, you can pretty well achieve the resolution you want.

And then, of course, there is synthetic aperture radar. Synthetic aperture is a mathematical technique for creating a synthetic (virtual) antenna of very long length (very high resolution in one dimension) along the motion of the radar. Simple radar has, of course, much lower resolution than optics for the same size antenna, due to the much longer wavelength. But when you extend the antenna for hundreds or thousands of meters through synthetic aperture magic, that resolution gets very good.

And then, of course, we can speculate about Lidar. I have no idea what the spooks may do with that.

I think the problem of resolution is no longer of significance to the spook business. The bigger problems are areal coverage, data reduction and storage, and concealment.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[mesocyclone]

Sigh. This is what I get for posting before reviewing. The MMT was owned by the Air Force, not the airport!

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[MoneyT]

When it comes to military and government technology, the general rule of thumb that I have heard from most millitary people I talk to is take what the public is being told is hightech, and multiply it by a factor of 10.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[chamenos]

i suspect the weapons facilities or whatever are underground. pictures taken by satellites probably gave them the suspicion that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and they need to go and take a look to make sure.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that it is possible to "blur" the image or take multiple images from different angles (or through different levels of blurryness) and then use a computer to de-blur or combine the multiple images (e.g. from different angles)... into one super high-res image.

For example, at a low resolution, if I take 100 images where the camera is "vibrating" randomly, a computer might be able to combine the 100 images from slightly different angles, so as to get better resolution. If the camera moves to the right a tiny, tiny, tiny bit, and then to the left a tiny, tiny bit, some technique can certainly be used to make it as if one super-high-res camera was used..

I believe some sort of electron-microscope-type thing uses this technique.

=)

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[GroverTeam]

It wouldn't be the NSA anyway, it would be the NRO.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I vuguely remember a comment about being able to reading a headline on a newspaper from space but cant remember where. "

David Icke's website. It was probably next to something about how Bush is a lizard who microchips girls heads so him (and the Queen of England) can have sex with them without them (or the public) knowing. Presumably he's not heard of prostitutes.

Seriously, this "released" stuff is BS, pure and simple. Unless the gov has battery mathmaticians and physicists and programmers who work outside the regular science/maths culture.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[packeteer]

I have heard that too... from bragging GI's. Talk to someone who has some real picutre of the situation and they will tell a differant story. They have horrible problems organization and getting use out of their technology. Some companies make it past them in what they can do because companies are in it for money. Money will drive people much harder than preotecting yourself. Sure the military does have VERY high tech secrets but most of the time they arent able to mass produce anything useble out of it and end up buying their tech from companies or modifying existing products.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you don't need the space shuttle to get something into low earth orbit. In fact many of the commercial remote sensing satellites are fired up on rockets developed by Lockheed Martin, Orbital, etc.

BTW, the U.S. government is currently allowing nonclassified LEO remote sensing sats of a .6 meter resolution. I would have to assume that the government has classified satellites with better resolutions.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[ottffssent]

That would be "Who's", a contraction for "who is".

Whose is the posessive, as in "whose socks are those?" or "the one whose head is largest".

Silly Slashdotter. You probably use "alot" too, don't you?

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[alcohollins]

Not as much as you might imagine. A Hubble-sized telescope in orbit at Hubble's altitude, pointed straight down, can resolve down to 15 centimeters. That would be enough to tell that you drive a Honda instead of a Surburban, but it couldn't tell much beyond that.

Who needs the Hubble telescope? The government has the predator unmanned spy planes to take pics and send video feeds, and even shoot missiles at you. They fly high enough so you can't see them, and can't hear them. Sure, it doesn't offer the all the benefits of a satellite. But that's not the point... Plus, satellites can't launch missiles at you.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[RapaNui]

Most probably using either LIDAR at a sufficiently small (non-visible) wavelength (quite susceptible to atmospheric effects), or RADAR -- _much_ smaller wavelength, therefore higher potential resolution. IIRC both these technologies are used to collect elevation info.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[EMH_Mark3]

If I recall correctly, current military satellites have a resolution of about 10 cm (~4 inches). Compare that to commercial satellite that have resolutions varying between 1 and 10 meters.. (Although one satellite can acheive a 66cm resolution)

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[operagost]

Oceanographers could use this to track the movements of sea creatures, as well.

Picture it- sharks with FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS attached to their heads!

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Yazheirx]

If governments could do this, why is there such a push for downward looking unmanned vehicles?
before you troll me into oblivion I will give you that some satellites can not see through cloud cover.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, target acquisition is problematic. HST uses guide-stars, which need to be in the field of view, to lock on targets. Certainly no stars available on the face of the earth

You could use Hollywood stars... ...humm

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem, and since when does not the ION-storm exist?(you know, that satelite beam cannon from C&C 2) :)

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Havoc'ing]

Yup, I used Aint too alot. -g :-)

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Way back when they put aero-shells on those primitive film base spy sats so they would orbit down low and get a closer look. So do the math again but figure the distance as much lower. Also figure they might be using some of the spectrum other then visable light and think about symthetic aperatures. Laws of physica allow all kinds of fun tricks

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Plus, satellites can't launch missiles at you

Can't they guide in bombs and missiles?

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor can he use the correct homonym of "there".

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems surprising you worked for a significant period with satellite pictures... and can't even spell the word satellite.

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[Mark of THE CITY]

a telescope diameter of roughly 5 meters

But the mirror does not have to be a full circle. The Keck duo isn't, and the resolution corresponds to the distance from one mirror far-edge to the other.

Given this, the Shuttle dimension that's critical is the length of the bay, not the width.

The Cuban Roll

[InvaderSkooge]

The Cuban roll is still embargoed, I'm afraid.

Re:The Cuban Roll

[BabyDave]

The Cuban roll is still embargoed

Darn, now what am I going to have for lunch?

Might as well say it....

[LittleGuy]

"I can see my house from here!!!"

Re:Might as well say it....

[CBackSlash]

Maybe you can already.

Re:Might as well say it....

[alayne]

"I can see my house from here!!!"

obSimpsons:
"Hey Maw!!! Get off the danged roof"

all we need now is the dark side of the moon pics

[bigmoosie]

some more pics of the dark side of the mon are in order now

Oh good!!!

[Pig Hogger]

Will we finally be able to see Jackie Kennedy's pix while she was sunbathing on Onassis's yachts???

Here are the images you wanted

[ekrout]

http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/u-2a/u-2_62_cuba_mi ssile_base.htm

Re:Here are the images you wanted

[The Evil Couch]

I'm glad there's captions and pointers to what's what in that picture, because I have no idea what any of the crap in that picture is. I suppose this declassification is great for photo analysts working for the History channel, though somehow I don't think it'll be much use to too many others.

Re:Here are the images you wanted

[greenjinjo]

If I receive mail with the above subject line then the pictures are usually very different from the ones in the link above (don't be fooled by the erectors, they are not what you might think).

Re:Here are the images you wanted

[CharlieG]

Part of the reason it's hard for us to understand is that a LOT of the analysis was (is?) done with stereo pairs.

The National Air and Space Museum had an exhibit on the a while back, and they shoed some stereo pairs - It's MUCH easier to figure out what things are

No Mozilla support?

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

Went to the link inside of the link (the USGS site itself) and it demands that I either use IE or Netscape -- Mozilla is not supported (apparently neither is Apple in any form). *sigh*

Re:No Mozilla support?

[mfago]

Yea, what the fuck?!

Good to see our tax dollars hard at work.

Re:No Mozilla support?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the site: *Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 uses the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine which does not support the original Java applet security model used with EarthExplorer applets.

Re:No Mozilla support?

[LWATCDR]

So lets all use the out of data applet security model that only IE supports.
But wait you could install java2 on IE so everyone can use this. Dumb!

Re:No Mozilla support?

[operagost]

Try getting the prefbar from XULPlanet and setting your user agent to something they like.

Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

Contrary to earlier reports, NIMA is releasing virtually all of its imagery from these programs except for imagery of Israel.

Now, I could be all suspicious, and beleive that this not showing Israel is in part so that we don't betray the fact we always knew about the Israeli nuke program, even back in its nascent stages, and look more like chumps who let Israel push us around and do the very things we claim not to tolerate from Hussein, and are pissed at North Korea about; but to do so would be paranoid and probably get pegged by the IAO as an Israel/America hating terrorist, and if there's one thing that crimps my discourse, it's thinking that I might be thought of as anti-american. (Stupid America, we suck.)

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[CommieLib]

You're seriously going to tell me that North Korean / Iraqi Nukes = Israeli nukes? Do you really think that there's a good chance Israel would use its nukes against us?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are implying that other people's lives are worthless and the only important ones are U.S. lives?

And then we bitch and moan about Americans being perceived as arrogant all over the world. . .

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

You're seriously going to tell me that North Korean / Iraqi Nukes = Israeli nukes? Do you really think that there's a good chance Israel would use its nukes against us?

No, of course not, we're their bitch, and a really big powerful one at that. They wouldn't attack us. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have developed nukes in exactly the way we don't like other people to be developing nukes, especially since they probably stole some of that technology from the US. It certainly points out how inconsistent and hypocritical we are. We don't want to give the rest of the world anything else to throw in our faces, do we?

I have to ask you though: Do you seriously think that NKorea will use its nukes against us? Not even Ari Flischer says that, and his job is to emphasize the dangers of Iraqi nukes and the Axis of Evil (Including NK). North Korea is pretty stable, compared to Iraq or Israel.

Hell, do you think there's a good chance Iraq will use its nukes against us? They can't even get close to us. Sure, they could attack Israel, and Israel could nuke/gas them back (depends on what the new government decides). But Iraq is not going to nuke us. Even the CIA has said that the only real chance of Iraq using its weapons of mass destruction is if we force them. Certainly, they don't pose a nuclear threat.

So who is the biggest diplomatic embarrasment? Israel. Who is the biggest threat to peace? Iraq or Israel. Who do we not want to be seen as pampering as we start a war with Iraq? Israel. It's better to keep the data out of sight, away from embarrassment, than to say "we were young and foolish then. Oh, and we lied about not knowing if Israel has the Bomb, we just did that because we love Israel better than all you dirty muslims."

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Wyatt Earp]

US/UK/Israel/France all have an understanding.

Since all four nations have the ability or have had the ability to photograph one another's sensitive areas, they have all agreed not to publish this information in an accurate form civilians or foriegn governments can access.

Since Israel is a small nation with alot of military areas all over, it's one big excusion zone.

Now then, what is the difference between Israel's nuclear program and Iran/Iraq/Libya/North Korea's nuclear program?

Simple, Israel doesn't export nuclear technology. Israel and South Africa jointly developed atomic weapons and tested one in the South Indian Ocean (maybe). South Africa gave up it's weapons in the mid 90s and the Mossad was offing Nuclear Scientists in SA in 93-94.

But even if one doesn't listen to the Zionist News Agencies, tell me one nation or group Israel shares technology with other then the US?

They've done joint small-arms development with the Czechs. They's done armor and anti-tank work with Turkey. They've done MiG-21 upgrade work with Romania and other former WP MiG-21 operators. But no one, not even the most violent Israel haters has accused them of nuclear, chemical or bio weapon export.

Yet with Libya/Iran/Iraq/North Korea/Pakistan and to some extent France and China, it's all about nuclear technology transfers for weaponizing.

For everything Israel has done in the Middle East, or been accused of, they've not used chemical weapons. They've not fired nuclear capable ballistic missiles at 3 or 4 regional neighbors. They've not been running around trying to buy materials for nuclear devices or guns that shoot projectiles hundreds of miles.

Syria and Egypt back in the United Arab Republic days used chemical weapons in Yemen. Iraq used them in the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq tossed FROG and SCUDs at Iran, Isreal, and Saudi Arabia. North Korea has activly tried to take-over South Korea and destabalize Japan.

Israel doesn't have camps in the Negev for training Marxist/Republican/Maoist/Islamist/Anti-West terrorists like North Korea/Iran/Iraq/Libya have had or have.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

Most of my argument vis a vis Israel has been on the basis of what is politically reasonable, and I'm not going to suggest that Iraq is the most stable place in the world. But remember, Israel is not afraid to tear it up, if we look to history, we see Israel is quite fine with fighting, they took over Palestine, part of Egypt, the Golan Heights (they still occupy the Golan Heights and Palestine)... And they aren't afraid to be hawkish now either. Sharon had threated to react in big ways if Iraq tried to SCUD them again, Israel has recently done major military operations in occupied Palestine, and they're generally a little loose. BTW, using chemical weapons doesn't work as a morality determinant in this case, because we claim to be the good guys.

North Korea has activly tried to take-over South Korea and destabalize Japan.

See, you're digging back 50 years, why, a mere 30 years ago, we were gassing and destabilizing South Veitnam, and here we are, passing judgement on North Korea for something relativly forgotten and distant.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[lemkebeth]

You wrote:

Israel is quite fine with fighting, they took over Palestine, part of Egypt, the Golan Heights (they still occupy the Golan Heights and Palestine)

I feel compelled to point out that Britain gave Palestine for the new Israel. Palestine was British controlled

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[CommieLib]

Well, according to your definition, we're also the bitch of Britain, France, South Korea...the list goes on. Yes, you're correct; we do choose sides that we will defend, even when they're not any more perfect than we are.

You don't think that our alliance has anything to do with the fact that they are a democracy, or that maybe some people in this country think that the Jews should be allowed a homeland?

No, NK wouldn't use it against us. They might use it against South Korea, which is always the issue. They might also sell nukes to terrorists to prop up an aging communist dictatorship that can't feed its people. Best case scenario, they demand U.N. funds and programs in exchange for dismantling their nuke program. Does this make us South Korea's bitch?

Israel as the biggest threat to peace...I certainly hope I'm misunderstanding you. What I'm hearing is "we could only have world peace if we would sell out the Jews", which is all too familiar a refrain...

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Wyatt Earp]

"See, you're digging back 50 years, why, a mere 30 years ago, we were gassing and destabilizing South Veitnam."

The US did not "gas" South Vietnam. CNN tried to pull that and they had to admit it was BS.

The US did work in South Vietnam, but no one should think that it was the Big Bad Imperialists fighting the Good Wholesome Peoples of Vietnam.

The North and the Communists acted every bit as badly as the United States and France did down there. After the North broke the Paris Peace Accords and took the South by force of arms, it wasn't all love and hugs.

Israel did not take over Palestine. The UN Mandate mandated that it be split 60-40 in favor of the Arabs and the Jews, Lebannon, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Trans-Jordan and everyone else decided to take it all over and "push the Jews into the sea." They lost.

Then in '67 Jordan, Syria and Egypt had everything set up for a suprise attack, but Israel jumped them first. That is why the West Bank, Sinai and Golan were lost.

The only time since 1917-18 that the United States used chemical weapons in combat was when a US transport in Italy was sunk and the gas escaped from the burning/sinking ship, and those chemicals affected Allied soldiers and sailors.

North Korea's destablization of the region isn't distant.

In 1976 2 American soldiers on thier side of the DMZ were attacked and hacked to death by DPRK soldiers with axes.

Since 1954 more than 1,000 Americans have been killed in combat by the DPRK at or near the DMZ.

US, Japanese, and South Koreans have been taken prisoner, ships attacked and aircraft shot down.

Hundreds of Japanese and South Koreas have been kidnapped by North Korea.

http://www.kdvamerica.org/CombatChronology.html

"North Korea attempted to assassinate R.O.K. President Chun Doo-hwan while he was visiting Myanmar. North Korean terrorists planted time bombs at the Aungsan Mausoleum where a R.O.K. delegation was waiting for the arrival of the president. The bombing killed 17 Korean Officials including several cabinet ministers, and wounded 14 others. It was revealed that three North Korean terrorists (1 NK Army Major and 2 Army Sr. Lts.) had been involved and they were acting under the direct order of Kim jong-il."

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

I feel compelled to note that's not completely accurate. The Palestine I'm talking about, the occupied palestine -- and I can see how you may have considered all of palestine, original Israel and all, sorry about that -- once belonged to local non-Israeli states (Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon(?) I think), and it was taken from them in the course of war. It does not matter whose land it really is. These questions that shape a lot of discourse on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are not important besides in setting up the situation where we do our psycho-political profile of a nation, these morality assigning claims are not the issue.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Umm, hello?

If you haven't noticed, we don't publish images of military facilities in any of our allies. Israel, being one of only two examples of a free, open democracy in it's part of the world, is very definitely one such ally.

But since you don't see any difference between a nation (like Israel or the US) which has had nukes for decades and never used them, and a nation like Iraq which has used every WMD it has ever gotten it's hands on, including against hundreds of thousands of its own people, I guess expecting you to think logically about the matter is a little much.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Umm, no, you're the only one who said anything of the sort.

He's suggesting that a nation like Iraq, which has used every WMD it ever got it's hands on, including against it's own people, should do what they agreed to do at the end of the Gulf War -- disarm.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[AForwardMotion]

Honestly which country is more responsible: Israel or Iraq? Let's be reasonable here. Iraq is a volatile third world country who might pass nuclear weapons out to terrorist organizations. Israel developed their nuclear forces as a deterrent from these other Middle East nations doing something that would be rather rash. Israel is hated by just about every country it is near not only because they basically stole the land straight out from under Arabic feet, but also because they are an incursion of non-Islamic ideas and beliefs upon their world. If you think that the more extreme of the Muslim nations in the Middle East want peace you are sadly mistaken. They want revenge. Think of Iraq as a man with revenge on his mind on the way to the gun shop. For what reason do you think this man want's to buy a gun? For hunting purposes? Protection? Well he'll certainly tell you it's for protection. Psychology 101 says he'll even tell himself that it's for protection. But this man want's to get back at someone he hates not only for the fact that his enemy committed a terrible transgression against him (or his family/friends), but he also abhors everything about this enemies way of life! Naturally he's going to use this weapon on said enemy. I look at Israel and I just don't see that sort of behavior coming out of them. Call it my gut feeling. You can probably also call it the United States' "gut" feeling. The US also feels very protective of Israel. It just feels like the right thing to do to be protective of them. We relate to them just as we relate to countries such as Great Britain because it is a western society.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[pben]

No but Israel did help with the South African nuclear program before it was shut down by the South African goverment. There is still that unexplained flash that occured over the southern Indian Ocean that was detected by a US spy satellite.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, a war in which those other states that had their land taken were the aggressors.
Hell, israel gave egypt their land back. Why, because the government made a BELIEVABLE promise not to attack israel. Israel had demonstrated its willingness to give up almost all of the land it "occupies", provided these countries cease to be hostile to israel. They want the guarantee before, not after they give the land back. How would you like it if all your neighbors were gunning for your throat?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

The US did work in South Vietnam, but no one should think that it was the Big Bad Imperialists fighting the Good Wholesome Peoples of Vietnam.
Actually, they should think that, just getting rid of the "good" and "wholesome" bits, which are unimportant value judgements on the Vietnamese. We went in and opressed and fought the South Vietnamese so we could fight the North Vietnamese. Vietnam was a situation created by the US Imperialism. That we "intended to protect the freedom of the South Vietnamese" is A) not really true, and B) not important. We coerced the South Vietnamese, which not only works against their freedom we claim to protect, but is an unjustified, destabilizing influence that far exceeds North Korea. Eventually we wised up and just picked client states, as in the Iraq-Iran war, and gave the chemical weapons to Iraq to play with.

The US did not "gas" South Vietnam. CNN tried to pull that and they had to admit it was BS.
The only time since 1917-18 that the United States used chemical weapons in combat was when a US transport in Italy was sunk and the gas escaped from the burning/sinking ship, and those chemicals affected Allied soldiers and sailors.
Only if you accept the modified definition of chemical weapons put forth by the United States when we signed on to the Geneva Convention (50 years late, of course), a definition excluding defoliants and riot-control agents, the two types of chemical weapons which we used in Vietnam. Does the term "Agent Orange" ring a bell?

Israel did not take over Palestine...[the Arabian states] decided to take it all over and "push the Jews into the sea." They lost.

Then in '67 Jordan, Syria and Egypt had everything set up for a suprise attack, but Israel jumped them first. That is why the West Bank, Sinai and Golan were lost.

What exactly does this matter? Israel demonstrated no problem with fighting when threatened, and they have no problem holding the Golan Heights, despite the fact it's useless. Israel is no Switzerland, especially given Sharon's warnings of big retaliatory action if Iraq were to try to SCUD them. You know they'd do it, they're that crazy.

That in mind, I want to know what preemptive strike against Israel was prevented by the bombing of Lebanon for several decades. There is no legitimate reason, in a defense model, for Israel to send its bombs into Lebanon, and blow shit up.

I was actually pleasantly suprised by the scope of the destruction in Korea after the cold war ended (mainly picked because its convient, and does represent some change in US policy. Curiously, all your examples are from the cold war, not good for trying to reduce the distant aspect of the North Korean Threat you hype up. Maybe that's because the highest bodycount in a single incident was of NKs, or not, I'm not privy to your logic in deciding examples), I thought a live border would have a lot more casualties. And when you consider the fact that North Korea has become generally more and more conciliatory throughout the 90s and this decade, (up to the announcment of nuclear weapons, which we don't quite know what to make of), North Korea's nukes are certianly not a threat to regional stability, much less a threat to the US.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

I didn't say there wasn't a difference, I said it would be kind of embarrasing to be that hypocritical, especially because Israel refused weapons inspectors, and we support them. I realize we're hypocritical to start, but it's more so. International perception is key, in this little consparicy theory.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

And I say again -- there is nothing the least bit hypocritical in responding differently to a free, open democracy which has never used WMD on anyone than to a brutal dictatorship which has used every WMD it has ever gotten its hands on, including against its own people.

And international perception is not the key at all -- the responsibility of the US President is to do what protects and serves the US, not what is popular with third-world dictators and European appeasers.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Wyatt Earp]

Well, I can see you don't know the history of the Middle East nor the causes of the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebannon or the occupation.

To make it quick and simple - Hezbollah was shelling the north of Israel, Hezbollah was sending murder teams into Israel and killing women and children. The Christians in Lebannon involved in a Civil War against the Syrian backed Muslems asked for Israeli involvement, Israel became involved. Israel and the Christian militias did go over-board a few times, but Syria was and is using Lebannon as a Poppy and Hash production area and the Bekka was an invasion route into the north of Israel.

The United States did not and has not used chemical weapons in a battlefield role since the First World War. Agent Orange was not a chemical weapon anymore than Roundup is. I guess that if I use Roundup on a thistle I am a violator of the Geneva Conventions on Chemical Weapons.

"Only if you accept the modified definition of chemical weapons put forth by the United States when we signed on to the Geneva Convention (50 years late, of course)"

Not exactly, but kind of.

http://www.zarc.com/english/chemical/genevaproto co l.html
June 17, 1925
PROTOCOL FOR THE PROHIBITION OF THE USE IN WAR OF ASPHYXIATING, POISONOUS OR OTHER GASES, AND OF BACTERIOLOGICAL METHODS OF WARFARE

At the end of World War I, the victorious Allies decided to reaffirm in the Versailles Treaty (1919) the prewar prohibition of the use of poisonous gases (see Introduction) and to forbid Germany to manufacture or import them. Similar provisions were included in the peace treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

Drawing upon the language of these peace treaties, the United States - at the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1922 -- took the initiative of introducing a similar provision into a treaty on submarines and noxious gases. The U.S. Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification of this treaty without a dissenting vote. It never entered into force, however, since French ratification was necessary, and France objected to the submarine provisions."

"Before World War II the protocol was ratified by many countries, including all the great powers except the United States and Japan. When they ratified or acceded to the protocol, some nations -- including the United Kingdom, France, and the USSR -- declared that it would cease to be binding on them if their enemies, or the allies of their enemies, failed to respect the prohibitions of the protocol. Although Italy was a party to the protocol, it used poison gas in the Ethiopian war. Nevertheless, the protocol was generally observed in World War II."
"Vietnam was a situation created by the US Imperialism."

Bonk! Vietnam was a situation created by French Imperialism and it became a proxy struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

To make it quick and simple - Hezbollah was shelling the north of Israel, Hezbollah was sending murder teams into Israel and killing women and children. The Christians in Lebannon involved in a Civil War against the Syrian backed Muslems asked for Israeli involvement, Israel became involved. Israel and the Christian militias did go over-board a few times, but Syria was and is using Lebannon as a Poppy and Hash production area and the Bekka was an invasion route into the north of Israel.

So what you're saying is that both sides went over the top and blew the shit out of each other. In case you hadn't noticed, that was the fucking point that the parent poster was trying to make. That Israel is no better than its neighbours, as they are all a load of gung-ho vengance seekers. They start a conflict, they use the previous conflict as a reason. It escalates, it goes on and on and on, it's the cycle of violence.

Also, spraying thousands of thousands of kg of Roundup over a populated area would probably do a considerable amount of human harm. Agent Orange is no better, don't try to pretend that this was some magic substance that stripped foliage from trees and left your breath smelling morning fresh :-P

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[pauleir]

Perhaps you've forgotten that the US has used nuclear weapons in warfare (remember WWII?). Or that the US, as recently as the Gulf War, has deployed Depleted Uranium weapons (a simple google search will enlighten you).

Stop thinking that the US is some holier than though state.

Israel as well is no human rights champion. Just look at the atrocities that are going on in occupied Palestine.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Wyatt Earp]

No, what I am saying is that both sides are no equal.

No matter what Israel does, they are not a destablizing terrorist state.

Look at what happened today.

"Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a group of Israelis leaving Friday night prayer services in the Jewish Quarter of Hebron killing at eleven people and wounding 14.

As security forces rushed to evacuate the wounded they came under heavy sniper fire and hand grenades were thrown at them in what an army officer called a complex ambush. The attack came from terrorists situated in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood overlooking the Jewish Quarter in the divided West Bank city."

Israel does not have "Zionists" come to the Negev and train in camps to export Zionism. Jews typically don't take aircraft hostage, blow them up or fly them into buildings. Israel hasn't been accused of shipping sensative nuclear, chemical or biological goods or information to other nations. Israel didn't try and flood the Persian Gulf with oil, nor did they set fire to more than 900 oil wells. Israel hasn't chucked rockets or missiles into Saudi Arabia.

Israel is better than Syria, Iraq and Hezbollah, they don't export terror or fund terror groups or use chemical weapons on the battlefield or civilians.

No Agent Orange wasn't a nice magic substance, but it was not a domestic or battlefield chemical weapon like VX, Sarin, Mustard or Zyklon-B are.

"That Israel is no better than its neighbours, as they are all a load of gung-ho vengance seekers. They start a conflict, they use the previous conflict as a reason. It escalates, it goes on and on and on, it's the cycle of violence."

Really? Is that why Israel returned the Sinai? Is that why Israel attempted to return 97% of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority in Dec of 2000?

Iraq pays the family of a suicide bomber up to $20,000 after the bomber kills Jews. Israel doesn't pay IDF soldiers a bonus for killings.

That alone leads me to think that Israel might be more trustworthy.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Umm, hello? I never denied that the US used nuclear weapons in combat -- indeed, by doing so, we saved the lives of the hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese soldiers and millions of civilians who would have died in the invasion of the Japanese home islands (just read up on the invasion of Okinawa, which killed far more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if you have any doubt).

Are you suggesting that Mr. Hussein would use nuclear arms, would set such a high threshold on their use? After what he did to Iran or to the Kurds?

Really?

Your attack on Israel is equally misguided -- Israel has shown incredible restaint in its own defense, something which cannot be claimed about the murder-suicide bombers.

So, holier than thou? Who knows. Holier than Mr. Hussein? Damn straight...

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

You did misunderstand. First off, I'm saying Israel and Iraq are the biggest impediments to regional stability.

Secondly, it's not about Jews, it's about Israelis. This framing of Israeli issues as Jewish issues is an fraudulent appeal to solidarity when delivered towards Jews, and a dishonest play on non-Jewish western guilt over the holocaust when not. Only a little over half of all Israelis are Jews (less than 60% I know, but I can't give you a stat). The US is more Christian than Israel is Jewish, and you don't see criticism of the US portrayed as criticism of christians by any but the looney religious right like Buchanan, Falwell and Robertson. Why is that? For one thing, because the Holocaust focused on Jews -- and Gypsies, (the racist verbs "to jew" and "to gyp" both connotate similar swindling of the other party in economic transactions, interesting coincidence) communists and homosexuals, but no one cares about them.

I am not off the mark, I beleive, when I say that Israel is a source of tension and perpetuates war in the middle east, but that does not mean that getting rid of it is a better alternative. Then again, I also say we shouldn't just get rid of Iraq, so what do I know?

North Korea is not likely to use the bomb on South Korea, Iraq and Israel could very well nuke each other, if the upcoming Israeli government follows Sharon's lead, and a US attack on Iraq induces them to fire on Israel.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[pauleir]

Are you suggesting that Mr. Hussein would use nuclear arms, would set such a high threshold on their use? After what he did to Iran or to the Kurds?

Do you really think that the US is after Hussein because of his past or because he has any "weapons of mass destruction"? The US, as you may know, actually aided Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. You have to step back from the war propaganda that's currently abound in the US media. The current administration wants this war simply because of oil. The fact of whether Iraq has any has weapons what so ever is really irrelevant to the administration's plans.

Your attack on Israel is equally misguided -- Israel has shown incredible restaint in its own defense, something which cannot be claimed about the murder-suicide bombers.

Once again you need to remember that the pro-Israel media in the US distorts the facts. The IDF has killed roughly 3 times as many Palestinians, 85% of which are civilians, than Israelis killed by suicide bombers. As well the IDF has bombed numerous hospitals, schools, and civilian homes. If that's what you call restrained then...

The fact of the matter is that Israel is occupying a sovereign state and her people. Just place yourself in the Palestinian's shoes for a second. An outside force has occupied your country, holding your people hostage, for over thirty years. You grow up seeing your friends and family killed, ridiculed, and oppressed. If you were in this situation then what would you do?

Maybe you should you look into some international media sources to get a more balanced view.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Do you really think that the US is after Hussein because of his past or because he has any "weapons of mass destruction"? The US, as you may know, actually aided Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. You have to step back from the war propaganda that's currently abound in the US media. The current administration wants this war simply because of oil. The fact of whether Iraq has any has weapons what so ever is really irrelevant to the administration's plans.

Leaving aside that you make these absurd claims without providing any evidence to back them up, your allegations don't even make sense on their own terms. If, in fact, Bush's goal is to make money on oil, the last thing he would want to do is take action against Saddam Hussein -- you see, regime change in Iraq means an end to the UN sanctions against Iraq, which means a massive drop in the price of oil.

So I guess you didn't really think your black-helicopter theories through, now did you?

Once again you need to remember that the pro-Israel media in the US distorts the facts. The IDF has killed roughly 3 times as many Palestinians, 85% of which are civilians, than Israelis killed by suicide bombers. As well the IDF has bombed numerous hospitals, schools, and civilian homes. If that's what you call restrained then...

No, once again you are making wile claims without bothering to back them up. Can you point to any credible source backing up your claims that the Israelis have done anything like what you claim?

Keep in mind that even Arafat now admits that the claims of massacres which his people and the European press made this spring were outright lies, so unless you have some reason to believe that you know more about the matter than he does, why would we take you seriously?

The rest of your post descends into misrepresentation of history (hint: the West bank has never in history been a sovereign state -- check any history book) and a pathetic attempt to justify the slaughter of civilian men, women, and children by murder-suicide bombers. As you do not even provide cites for the claims above, I won't dignify such tripe with an answer.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

As the United States are the biggest consumer of oil I'm pretty sure a drop of the oil prices would help your suffering economy.

And, of course, you are refering to _American_ press to back up your arguments.

Please, understand, that now, just the same as during the Gulf war your goverment is lying to its people.

When Saddam threatend to throw out all inspectors because they suspected spies were in their country, the US goverment said Saddam was a lying bastard. After the war, the US goverment stated they had spies in there. So Saddam was right, your goverment was lying.

Secondly, the so-called depleted uranium. A German scientist noticed that the depleted uranium that harden the US bombs were actually highly radio-active. So, in fact, the entire region has been infected with radio-active uranium. With massa's of cancer patients turning up, kids born with all kinds of genetical distortions. Even the US-veterans's babies have the same symptoms.

So, please, let's all stop pretending the US is "The Good" side, and every one who doesn't agree with them is Evil.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, you've really made your point.

The only thing that matters is that _you_ won't get nuked. It doesn't matter what kind of bastard owns the bloody things and how many people he has already killed, as long as he doesn't harm any Americans it seems to be OK in your opinion.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[pauleir]

Thanks for your civil discussion. Your obvious lack of self confidence shines through with your rude comments.

Take a look at his Washington Post article. You'll see that oil is the biggest factor in this push for war. The fact that oil prices will drop is not the focus. It is that US companies will have unfettered access to the second largest oil reserves in the world, which will be conveniently administered by the US.

Thanks for the article, but Jenin is not the only time the IDF has killed Palestinians. Try a google search and you'll find that you simply don't know what your talking about.

While I concede that Palestine has never been officially a sovereign state, the fact remains that the Palestinian people have lived for centuries in what is now modern Israel. In fact if you simply would take the time to read about the history of the conflict you will see that the Palestinian people have in fact suffered mass injustices at the hands of the Israelis including the obvious expulsion from their lands. While I am in no way condoning suicide bombers or any other acts of violence, I am simply stating that your view that Israel is somehow the good guy in this conflict is vastly distorted.

So not to add to the troll, but instead of trying to trump anothers comments with your obviously ignorant views, you should perhaps spend a little time researching your views so that they may seem a little more than an idiot's rant.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahum. You're wrong. Britain is _your_ bitch. And please remember, it is about the only European country agreeing with your new president's strategy. When Bush visited Europe, there were protest marches all over the place. Europe didn't agree with the bombardments of Afghanistan and they don't agree with the bombardment of Iraq now. Europe's just _your_ bitch. Especially Britain...

Jews allowed a homeland? Of course, but why didn't they give them a part of North America? Don't you think the Palestinians should be allowed a homeland?

Ah, and of course, when anyone disagrees with your opinion you mark 'em as fucking nazi's...

Being a victim of a holocaust does not give anyone the right to kill other innocents.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Ha. Hahaha. Hahahaha.

So in other words, if a war would result in oil prices going up, then that's proof that the US is going to war because of oil, and if a war would result in oil prices going down, then that's proof that the US is going to war because of oil. Damned if we do, and damned if we don't, eh?

Forgive me if I'm not impressed, particularly as all of these increasingly twisted and byzantine conspiracy theories can only hold if one willfully ignores the blindingly obvious -- that the US has a vital interest, under the doctrine of self defense, in preventing Iraq from attaining weapons of mass destruction, weapons it has already shown itself to be more than willing to use.

If you want to argue otherwise, you need to provide evidence, not wild ranting and speculation.

Your sorry attempt to defend Mr. Hussein only confirms that you are way out in black-helicopter land.

As for depleted uranium, at the risk of pointing out the painfully obvious, it's called `depleted' uranium for a reason. It's not radioactive, nor would it make sense for it to be -- our own troops are the ones who spend the most time around it, after all.

So thanks for playing, but please try harder next time.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI both the US and Britain _trained_ terrorist in Afghanistan to destabilise Russia. And the US has supplied Iraq with weapons and training to aid them in fighting Iran.

Furthermore, as Mr. McVeigh proved, there are plenty of terrorists being trained in the US as well.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Note that the articles you link provide some interesting speculation, but no evidence. Most notably, they ignore the obvious fact that both the French and the Russians have a vital interest in keeping the oil deals they have made with Mr. Hussein, and would not have voted for the recent UN resolution if it would have the result you claim.

Now, if you can provide any evidence to back your claim, you'll be providing more than conspiracy theories. Instead, you provide speculation which has not stood the test of time (your articles date from before the President approached the UN at all in one case, and from very early in the debate in the other).

As for Israel, you keep claiming massacres (though I see you've backed down from your earlier claims of numbers or percentages), but you provide no cites. Why should we take you seriously? You also claim `expulsions', but who are you claiming has been expelled? There are plenty of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and they have all the rights of any other Israeli (indeed there were 17 Palestinian members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, the last time I checked).

This makes a marked contrast to the expulsion of all Jews from the West Bank by Jordan when they invaded it in 1948, or from the current Palestinian Authority, which makes it a crime punishable by death to be Jewish in the West Bank.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I've learned, proof is not something you read in the press. Especially not during war in your own country's press.

And bear in mind that the _only_ country that has used nuclear weapons so far, is the US.

So they call it depleted, therefore it must be depleted? You are even more naive then I thought.
(Regarding your own troops: US veterans of the Gulfwar have severly handicapped children because of some misterious "disease")

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

The German leader during WWII didn't care about international perception either. And they did what seemed right in their point of view. They didn't care about pleasing other countries leader either.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreement? Iraq was defeated by the US. You really can't say that "they agree". They were forced to accept your demands.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

As far as I've learned, proof is not something you read in the press. Especially not during war in your own country's press.

So in other words, not only do you have no evidence to back up your wild claims, you also want us to believe that of all the thousands of media outlets in the US, and tens of thousands more around the world, every single one is hiding the evidence that would back up your conspiracy theories.

And bear in mind that the _only_ country that has used nuclear weapons so far, is the US.

Your point being what? By using two nuclear weapons, we saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides, and millions of Japanese civilians. Are you claiming that Mr. Hussein would show as much discretion in using nuclear weapons?

Really?

So they call it depleted, therefore it must be depleted? You are even more naive then I thought. (Regarding your own troops: US veterans of the Gulfwar have severly handicapped children because of some misterious "disease")

Please feel free to provide any evidence backing your claim -- study after study has shown no lasting effects on Gulf War veterans not consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. More generally, if there were such effects, and they were from use of DU ammunition, why weren't there similar effects in any of the hundreds of training ranges, and other conflicts (from Grenada to Afghanistan) where DU ammunition was used? Eh?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Godwin aside, what's your point? `Hitler believed he was right, so everyone who believes he's right is wrong?'

That's not even marginally coherent.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jews typically don't take aircraft hostage, blow them up or fly them into buildings. Israel hasn't been accused of shipping sensative nuclear, chemical or biological goods or information to other nations. Israel didn't try and flood the Persian Gulf with oil, nor did they set fire to more than 900 oil wells. Israel hasn't chucked rockets or missiles into Saudi Arabia.
They don't have to. They buy real guns from the US and use those to shoot innocent people. If you have a large technically advanced weaponry you don't have to blow yourself up. Israel is better than Syria, Iraq and Hezbollah, they don't export terror or fund terror groups or use chemical weapons on the battlefield or civilians.
Again, they don't have to, they support the US, an d the US supports them.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you like it if all your neighbors were gunning for your throat?

I would seriously think about what I might have done wrong.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Hey, are you European?

So in other words, you advocate appeasement?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Ah, okay, so if you object to any government at all owning nukes, even free, open democracies like Israel, can we assume you'll be going after France and Britain next?

No? So it's just Israel you despise? Thanks for making that clear.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[KingMeer]

Look at what happened today. "Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a group of Israelis leaving Friday night prayer services in the Jewish Quarter of Hebron killing at eleven people and wounding 14. As security forces rushed to evacuate the wounded they came under heavy sniper fire and hand grenades were thrown at them in what an army officer called a complex ambush. The attack came from terrorists situated in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood overlooking the Jewish Quarter in the divided West Bank city."

I have to admit, that is extremely cold-blooded of the Palestineans. However, it's not as though Israel hasn't carried out any missions as cold-blooded or worse than this. Whenever Israel sends a team to "infiltrate and arrest militants", they bomb and buldoze(yes, buldoze) half the city then send in their aromored vehicles and tanks to finish off the job killing scores of civilians in the process. If that wasn't bad enough, they just about always block all ingoing and outgoing traffic including ambulances, leaving those injured to die a slow painful death.(This can be verified by reading archived stories on CNN, BBC, or just about any other news source). If they ever do get through, often hours later, the only thing they can do is pick up the rotting mess left by the occupying forces.

Israel is better than Syria, Iraq and Hezbollah, they don't export terror or fund terror groups or use chemical weapons on the battlefield or civilians.

For your information, Israel has supported terrorist organizations in the past. When Israel invaded Lebanon(in which it killed 17,000+ people), it encountered strong resistance from Hezbollah. In response, Israel began to supply tanks, armored vehicles as well as other munitions to christian "freedom fighters" in the south. And just because chemical weapons specifically aren't being used against civilians, the use of other weapons against civilians isn't justified. IMHO, an apache helicopter shelling and firing rockets at apartment buildings and hospitals is no better than unleashing nerve gas in a subway station.

Really? Is that why Israel returned the Sinai? Is that why Israel attempted to return 97% of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority in Dec of 2000?

No, they gave back the Sinai because the US forced them to. The US was already giving large amounts of military and economic aid to Israel and the camp david accord promised even more. Had Israel refused, the US may have potentially cut off billions of dollars in aid crippling the Israeli economy. For your information, to this day, Israel is the single largest recipiant of US aid.
As for the 97%, there has been some debate as to how much land this actually constituted and where exactly it was. Israel's definition of Jerusalem for example, went all the way to the Jordanian border and since most of Jeruselam wasn't part of the deal, it could exclude large amounts of land as well as divide what was left of Palestinean land.

Iraq pays the family of a suicide bomber up to $20,000 after the bomber kills Jews. Israel doesn't pay IDF soldiers a bonus for killings."

I have not seen any evidence proving or disproving this fact. However, IDF soldiers as well as US soldiers, Canadian Soldiers and soldiers of any other nation protecting "National Interests" are compensated for their service. Their families to are compensated when they become casulties of war fighting for their country. Now if this is legitamate, why can't palestineans be compensated for the sacrifices they made for their country's(or future country's) "National Interest"? I know it's a bad idea to pay someone's family because they were a suicide bomber who may have killed innocent civilians(not all suicide bombers target civilians), but that doesn't stop Israel, or the US or Canada from compensating it's soldiers when they may have killed civilians in battle.
Also in terms of being trustworthy, Iraq has had 2 major wars on the past 50 years with it's neighbors: The Invasion of kuwait, and the Iraq-Iran war. Israel on the other hand has had several others including but not limited to: The 1967 war, the Yom Kappur war(sorry bout the spelling) and the invasion of Lebanon in 1980.
Now I know you are going to say that these wars were in defense. In some cases it may be true, but in most, it simply is not. 1967: Israel attacked it's neighbors first. Call it a pre-emptive strike if you like, but they attacked first. 1980 invasion of Lebanon: Need I say more.
I personally would not trust a nuclear nation that openly attacks civilians and other nations and is surrounded by neighbors which lack nuclear weapons. Also, there have been several UN resolutions telling Israel to pull it's military out of the west bank, NONE of which it has abided by. The only UN resolution they honor is the one claiming their right to exist.
These are some of the several reasons why Israel is no better than Iraq or Hezbollah.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Com2Kid]

Being France's bitch has already caused to many problems. . . .

They have commies as elected officals, do we really have to keep on supporting them? ...

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

Gol' darn it, we can't appease people! If we appeased our enemies by being nice to them, we might not have to fight, and we all love fighting! After all, it's not like talking ever did anything. And isn't that all that appeasement is? Talking and diplomacy, comprimising, instead of duking it out like real men with issues about the size of their dicks?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

Note that the articles you link provide some interesting speculation, but no evidence. Most notably, they ignore the obvious fact that both the French and the Russians have a vital interest in keeping the oil deals they have made with Mr. Hussein, and would not have voted for the recent UN resolution if it would have the result you claim.

They would not have voted for the resolution, if that were the case, if A) they seriously thought doing otherwise would prevent war, B) they seriously thought the resolution would insure a war and C) they were able to do this in a vacuum, outside of American arm twisting. None of these conditions were met by the UN resolution.

As for Israel, you keep claiming massacres (though I see you've backed down from your earlier claims of numbers or percentages), but you provide no cites. Why should we take you seriously? You also claim `expulsions', but who are you claiming has been expelled? There are plenty of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and they have all the rights of any other Israeli (indeed there were 17 Palestinian members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, the last time I checked).

Plenty of Israeli Arabs have rights, not Palestinian citizens. Discrimination against Israeli Arabs, and the economic inequality due to the way military service works in Israel, aside, Palestinians are a disenfranchised occupied land. Of course, Israel, and especially Israeli Jewish supremecists, who are fearful of a non-Jew-dominated Israel, doesn't WANT to give citizenship rights and voting power to Palestinians.

or from the current Palestinian Authority, which makes it a crime punishable by death to be Jewish in the West Bank.

Priceless. That was priceless. A bigger load of lying hyperbole I haven't seen since I last checked this thread. But hey, everyone must love the demand for evidence on one side of the mouth, and the "Palestinian Authority kills small israeli babies for fun" style outragous lies out the other.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[Wyatt Earp]

The UN Security Council hasn't ordered Israel out of the West Bank or Golan.

The General Assembly has, which is about the same as the Washington D.C. City Council telling the world what to do.

Israel's right to exsist is a Security Council matter. All the resolutions about Iraq are Security Council matters.

The difference on the matter of combat death insurance is - American, Israeli, Jordanian, Russian, Canadian CIVILIANS don't get paid for blowing up malls and pizza places, Palestinian Terrorist families are paid by Iraq for doing this thing.

"IMHO, an apache helicopter shelling and firing rockets at apartment buildings and hospitals is no better than unleashing nerve gas in a subway station."

There is a world of difference, sorry you don't understand.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Are you really suggesting that we should make foreign policy based not on what is right but on what we hope will keep totalitarian dictators and terrorist crazies from attacking us?

Really, Mr. Chamberlain?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

I see, so not only is the US mean and nasty, but we can `arm-twist' sovereign states into signing resolutions which they have permanent veto power over? I guess I'm not buying it. Any of the UK, China, France, or Russia could have vetoed the resolution. Not only didn't any of them, but none of the other members of the Security Council voted against it either.

So which is it? If we don't consult the UN, we're `unilateralist', but if we do, we're `arm-twisting' them? Damned if we do, damned if we don't, eh?

And I repeat my statement -- Palestinians who live within Israel have all the rights of other Israelis. What you refer to is the absurd Palestinian claim of a `right of return' which would allow non-Palestinians (such as Arafat, who was born and raised in Cairo) to claim Israeli citizenship. No other nation on earth is asked to adopt such a policy, not even the Arab lands, most of which expelled their Jewish populations long ago.

And in case you haven't been paying attention, Israeli children are being murdered by Palestinians almost every day. But no doubt in your black-helicopter world, shooting toddlers while they listen to a bedtime story is `heroic resistance', eh?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

What exactly is the difference between a policy that "will keep totalitarian dictators and terrorist crazies from attacking us" and a policy that won't, say, make a bunch of first world countries impose trade bans on us? What is the difference between appeasement there and diplomatic comprimise anywhere else?

For example, why do we still work with Russia when they use chemical weapons on their own people, and perpetuate religious and geoethnic genocide? Why don't we attack China for their human rights record? Because we fear some type of retribution, economic or military. The difference between appeasing China, or appeasing Europe, or appeasing Canada and appeasing Iraq is simply that we don't fear Iraq.

To honestly reject appeasement in the case of Iraq on the basis of What is Right, and not China (and to frame the Iraq debate in What is Right vs Practicality will do the same for China, thus requiring us to say China is Right), is to endorse a doctrine of Might Makes Right that makes Right the policy of appeasement pursued by Chamberlain, because Nazi Germany was powerful. ADDITIONALLY, it justifies the Holocaust, because, hey, the Jews were weak.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

All of this ignores the simple fact: our goal in this action is self-defense, plain and simple. If we had reason to believe that China posed the same sort of threat to us as Mr. Hussein does, we would indeed have to act. That China already has nuclear weapons would necessarily make such action more difficult -- and is a perfect example of why we must prevent Mr. Hussein from reaching the same point.

Now, your proposal would seem to be that any time a tin-pot dictator expresses a desire to attack us, we should rush to meet his demands. Do you really believe that this would make a good foreign policy? I doubt it...

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[mauri]

Well, that was stupid. Iraq is in ruins after 8 years in war with Iran, Gulf war and decade of sanctions and aerial bombing. Iraq has no meaningful weapons which would endanger any one except maybe Israel, and then they have that oil. And then they are neighbour of and perfect base for attacking the real enemy Iran.

And now the question: Where is the parent of this thread?

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[mauri]

I don't believe that you can be so stupid?
Take a look at Ha'aretz and you get most facts straight. Yes, the ratio of jews to palestinians killed in last intifada is 1 to 3. In last week Israelis have murdered 3 palestinian children, again read it at haaretzdaily.com which is Tel Aviv newspaper, in case you don't know its the UN recognized capital of Israel.
UN resolution mandated 2 separate states in Palestine, but due to political and military hooplaa the palestinians are just left out in the cold. And don't dare to name Israel democracy, a country with no constitution and 1/3 of people derived of most rights including citizenship.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[mauri]

Hey you ever read any history?
If Israel is free open democracy then I am Cowboy Neal. Those WMD you quote Iraq as having were given mostly by US of A to fight Iran. When Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam Hussein in 1983 he, for some reason did not shoot him, but instead was improving US-Iraq relations.... despite gassing and stuff.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Uh, yeah, OK. That's not what the UN says, that's not what anyone who's gotten out of Iraq alive says, that's not even what those who oppose US action (such as chief inspector Hans Blix) say.

The fact is, at the time the inspectors were forced out of Iraq in 1998, they were regularly finding not only chemical and biological weapons facilities, but supplies such as high-grade centrifuges built with high-quality pure aluminum tubes, such as are used in production of weapons-grade nuclear material.

All this in the hands of a country which agreed to disarm after it's brutal aggression against Kuwait was rolled back, and has been in material breach of those agreements for years.

That may seem like `no meaningful weapons' to you, but that's a chance which we cannot afford to take.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[mauri]

Err, no. If you just happen to read any news then first "weapon inspectors were forced out" by UN/US before desert fox bombing and second there are no high-grade centrifuges never found. And the biggest problem is with delivery systems, Iraq just does not possess anything like that. They havent *ever* had anything more than Scud B which is little short for attacking USA :P
And then of course nobody cares about North Koreas existing nuclear weapons and delivery systems... grr, its dangerous to mess with real powers.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Your point being what, exactly? In 1983, Saddam had not yet gassed his own people (1988), embarked on a massive program to develop WMD (1987, and much more so after 1991), invaded Kuwait (1990-1), or signed UN disarmament pacts, which he is now in material breach of (1992-2002).

At the time, he was the lesser of two evils, a counterbalance to the menace in Teheran.

Times change.

And Israel is a free and open democracy, with equal rights for all of its citizens, but you're a far cry from being CowboyNeal...

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Actually, that's not correct. Even the article you link to speaks of Husseing spending a whole bunch of time and money trying to get nukes, but claims he has not succeeded (how they can know, since no inspectors have been near Iraq in four years is left as an exercise for the reader). These sources have more information on the matter, and disagree even on this point:

• A piece on Hussein's atomic program from Richard Muller of LBL
• Richard Sperzel (former head of the UN weapons inspections) to the House

As for delivery systems, a missile is hardly the only way to deliver a WMD. A far bigger risk is that of Mr. Hussein providing such a weapon to al Qaeda, or to his own intelligence services for a more uncoventional delivery.

And yes, if North Korea becomes as much a threat to us as Iraq is, we will deal with it. That doing so will be harder now that they already have nukes is a perfect demonstration of why we must not allow Mr. Hussein to get that far.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

If we really did pursue a policy of self defense, why would we go after Indonesian rebels? I mean, besides the fact it's been our policy since the Carter administration.

So what I hear is that the saftey and well being of Americans IS what is right. The problem is that Iraq, even if it has weapons, is not a threat to US, self-defense wise. Sure, they pose a threat to some of our allies, but it's not like those allies are nessecary for our self-defense, we don't need Israel to defend our border with Canada. Since we apparently don't care about genocide and chemical and biological warfare if it stays away from the US, we don't need to give a rat's ass. If Israel blows up Iraq in response, good for us...

On the other hand, pissing off parts of the world that are ripe to produce wanna-be terrorists, that's just not intelligent if we want to reduce the threat of terrorism. So what's up with this Self Defense BS? Maybe there is another agenda underneath, such as a post-neo-imperialist reign of American military power, now that it turns out owning everyone and their mother doesn't make people our obediant shoe-producing zombies well enough.

My "proposal", (which I wouldn't call mine, because I think we need to use our Hege to deal with the way Russia treats the Chechs, Turkey treats the Kurds, China treats everyone, North Korea treats everyone, Pakistan treats everyone, etc, but not with weapons of war) as you call it, is to consider that perhaps we should comprimise with others, and try to stop threats on a pre-military level. Does this mean that we do everything anyone wants us to? No. Does this mean that we give them money because they threaten us with rocks? No. It does mean that we consider the possibility that blowing people up isn't the way to make us popular. It does mean that we comprimise on things. It does mean that we consider the possibility that our actions might have negative consequences in the longer term, or even the short term, and that just because we don't like someone's shirt color, doesn't mean we can bust their face in.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

Fascinating -- so your `proposal' is that we use our power to deal with anyone anywhere who you feelis doing something nasty to anyone, as long as our self defense is not at stake. But when faced with someone who we know is building WMD, and who we know has no qualms about using them, including potentially on us, well, hands off, man!

Not exactly a coherent foreign policy, is it?

Here's what I say: the President and government of the US are directly responsible to provide for the defense of the US and its citizens. Among other things, this means making it very dangerous to harbor those who are trying to attack us, and making it very dangerous to build WMD which might be used on us or our allies.

As for what might `produce' terrorists (an interesting word -- are you really claiming that those involved don't choose their own actions?), the last decade has shown us that what produces terrorism is weakness and lack of response to terrorism -- show them that terrorism achieves their goals, and you'll get more terrorists. Just look at the record: our cutting and running in the face of Mogadishu led straight to the first attack on the World Trade Center. Our refusal to adequately pursue the network that carried out that attack led to the embassy attacks. Our two-bit response to those attacks led to the attack on the USS Cole. And our `fire a few missiles and forget the matter' response to that led to September 11.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[InvaderSkooge]

It is coherent, if we use non-military influence to deal with people. I'm supporting Clintonesqe economic neo-imperialism there, with a concern for liberties as opposed to a concern for money. I'm not advocating the use of military power. (or for that matter deadvocating the use of military power with the parenthetical (not me). at this point I'm fighting flow without extending) OTOH, it isn't coherent with my argumentation, that's why I never advocated this policy, it was parenthetical.

I don't get the connection between protection of our allies and protection of ourselves and our citizens. Sure, it's probably important to protect out allies, that's what allies are sometimes supposed to do, but do we really gain anything from protecting Israel, in terms of the defense of the US of A? Not really.

In regards to the production of terrorists (I am claiming a causal relationship between the enviroment a group of people are in and their response. Individuals do indeed all choose, but statistically, more will choose, or less, depending on circumstances. So production is valid), it is not weakness that causes terrorism, if you look at history, it is the opposite. Nazi Germany was strong, and yet they suffered from attrition from terrorists inside their nation (good guy terrorists, but terrorists). Britian, ruling the world, was spending lots of money on tropps to put down revolts and terroristic attacks on its colonial machine, until it fell apart/was dismantled. In the 80s, despite the arms race, and hegemony race of the Cold War that left the US sitting high above the third world, the threat of terrorism rose up (incidentally, it coincided with the decrease in the (perceived) threat from the Soviets), and occasionally from terrorists we weren't even funding! Non-US endorsed terrorism spread in the 90s, despite the rising American military power and the ascension to uncontested first place in the world heirarchy of power. Timothy McVeigh did not go to Oklahoma City with a Ryder truck because the US was getting weak. The assertion that it is weakness that leads to terrorism is simply a ruse to support the expansion of the very power which terrorists respond to in the first place.

Although, I do agree that the support of terrorists -- like giving money in aid to the Taliban, training of Contras and the Iran weapons for hostages program, I apologize for the lack of Clinton-era examples, he was more covert about it, and everyone was too busy caring about who he screwed to see who we were funding and who we were bombing -- is bad. And, yes, the 'fire a few missiles into an asprin plant and forget' thing did suck. In fact, once terrorists are a threat, simply ignoring them is a bad option, but responding to that threat by becoming larger, by becoming more-sp the bullies of the world, by provoking more terrorists, is lunacy. You don't need to beat someone up to have peace with them.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[neocon]

And if we lived in a world where everyone who might oppose us was tractable to Clinton-style wishy-washiness and `engagement', that would be all very nice. In the real world, where some of those who oppose us act in basically irrational manners and/or oppose us because they disagree with basic tenets which we hold dear, that's a recipe for disaster (as the Clinton administration clearly demonstrates).

In short, in the real world, you're suggesting that we bribe tyrants who would destroy us, and when that fails, give into their demands.

I'm not convinced. I doubt anyone else reading this is either.

Re:Hello, this is the US, Israel's bitch.

[KingMeer]

The difference on the matter of combat death insurance is - American, Israeli, Jordanian, Russian, Canadian CIVILIANS don't get paid for blowing up malls and pizza places, Palestinian Terrorist families are paid by Iraq for doing this thing.

That is because the type of warfare they're involved in is completely different. Much of the war in Palestine/Israel is guerilla which results in heavy civilian involvement. Just because the Palestinean freedom fighters, are not drafted into an army, does not make their cause any less justified than that of an official Army. You have to remember that there is no state of Palestine, and thus they have no air force, no army and no navy to protect them from Israeli attacks. All they have right now are the "terrorists" which although not classified officially as soldiers, fight against their enemy in any way they can with whatever supplies they have. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't approve of Night Club or Pizza Parlor bombings, even Palestineans are often killed in those, but suicide bombings are often a last resort for those that have lost their families to Israeli military attacks, and in their minds, and the minds of most palestineans, they are Soldiers for a free Palestine.

Now, when you say there is a world of difference between apache helicopter attacks on civilian targets and terrorist attacks on civilian targets, I in fact do fail to see much difference. Civilians being targeted by any group, whether the military or a terrorist group is still targetting civilians. The fact that one is official(ie the IDF) and others are outlawed(Hamas, Hezbollah, PFLP), it doesn't change the fact that civlians are being killed. If my mom was killed in a hotel bombing, it doesn't matter if it was done by terrorists or by the government. I don't care if it was an authorized military attack to take out a single "suspected militant" or a "political figure" or whether it was done "officially" or was "the work of evil-doers". Either way, my mom, and hundreds of other innocents would be murdered and I would be pissed at whomever did it, whether it was done officially or unofficially.

ho hum....

[Anonymous Coward]

*Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 uses the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine which does not support the original Java applet security model used with EarthExplorer applets.
**EarthExplorer will not currently work with Macintosh systems due to the following:

1. IE and the Microsoft Virtual Machine does not support LiveConnect for Macintosh systems.
2. Old versions of the Java Virtual Machine (Netscape 4.6 and earlier) do not support LiveConnect for Macintosh systems.
3. The Java 2 Virtual Machine does not support the original Java applet security model EarthExplorer uses.
4. Signed secure applets don't communicate properly through LiveConnect when using the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine on a Macintosh. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160274 for more information.

Macintosh users may search for many of the same products at: http://edc.usgs.gov/webglis. You can also access EarthExplorer using the PC emulation package "Virtual PC" if you have this installed on your system

Re:ho hum....

[ddkilzer]

FWIW, Bug 180338 filed on b.m.o under Tech Evangelism.

It's too bad I can't personally direct where I want my tax dollars to go sometimes.

Slashdot effect

[BigMucho]

Um... am I trippin or is MSNBC currently down? How cool would that be if they fell victim to the Slashdot effect!

Re:Slashdot effect

[Openadvocate]

Here's something to focus you mind on.
If Slashdot links to Slashdot, will it be slashdotted?

Interesting, somewhat related

[Anonymous Coward]

While working at nasa, a co-worker told me this story once:
Apparently in the 80's, he had been working on a satellite which contained a sensor to measure ground temperatures. The contractors who were working on the image processing for the data were so far behind, that the program would not be ready until a couple months after the satellite launch (a major PR disaster - no pretty pictures for the public to see!). So he was put on a crack team to hack something together that would be ready by launch time. What they ended up putting together was better than the specs. So the satellite launched and they got back the pictures and saw alot of interesting things... Like, gee, what's that underground hot spot in Nevada, and so on and so forth... So they were all pleased with themselves until the Feds came, classified their program and all the images, dumped all their equipment in a truck, and drove off.. I guess this shows why it is never better to do more than "government work" :)

Early Days

[redshift-systems]

25 years ago? B&W hey? Wow, that's like pre-micro$oft era. Before they came along and brought colour to all our lives.

See

[bigsexyjoe]

Some people think smog is bad. They don't understand that it an important counter-intelligence measure.

If it wasn't for smog the Russians would have all sorts of pictures of you picking your nose and scratching your balls in public.

Re:See

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the worst smog in this country?
LA Right...
Where is Lockheed Skunk works based?
LA Right...

Coincidence?....

Other News

[stinkydog]

In other news the website http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ has been crashed by unknown terriosts from the shadowy 'slashdot' organization. This massive 'Denial of Service' attack, know as the 'Slashdot Effect', is the orginizations trademark, much feared by webmasters and network engineers everywhere.

SD

Re:Interesting....

[mblumber]

This joke is overused, and you used it incorrectly because you don't understand it.

The reference is to "Underpants Gnomes" (a South Park episode) where a bunch of gnomes steal Tweak's underpants. Their business plan is as follows:

1. Steal underpants.
2. ????
3. Profit! ...and so now you see how this often related to the .com's back a few years ago, but how your "conspiracy theory" list doesn't make any sense.

Cuban Missiles?

[JohnnyBigodes]

How about those Cuban Missile Crisis pics, do they have that roll available?

Saaaaay, you wouldn't perhaps be Saddam Hussein shopping for a few missiles, would you?

Re:Cuban Missiles?

[elodan]

Saaaaay, you wouldn't perhaps be Saddam Hussein shopping for a few missiles, would you?
Duh, obviously not - his email address isn't "press@uruklink.net"!

Slash and Dotted

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problems visiting a site that is being slashdotted. Normally, I can just go back a few hours later and look. But Today, the link on Earth Explorer was acually loading. So I decided to throw it in a tab and browser the rest some other sites.

A few minutes later I check back to the Earth Explorer site to find a very ugly message that was taking forever to load: "EarthExplorer has failed to start because it has detected that your browser does not meet the requirements necessary to run EarthExplorer. Please download a compatible version by clicking one of the buttons below."

Re:Slash and Dotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Try putting some money in the machine first.

The probable limit of spysats

[MtViewGuy]

I think the practical limit for today's KH-11 and newer spysats is about 6-7 cm resolution, not enough to read a newspaper headline but definitely good enough to tell what kind of vehicle you're looking at.

Remember, even at 100 cm resolution the IKONOS satellite is capable of showing some amazing images. Remember that IKONOS image of the North Korean rocket test facility?

I expect within the next 4-5 years several companies will be orbiting imaging satellites capable of resolution at 100 cm resolution. It'll be nearly impossible to hid any secret activity with that type of resolution.

Re:The probable limit of spysats

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiding secrets is easy. Just create a structure, temp. building, a parking garage etc., the US has been doing that for years. As in "You can't unfold these plans unless you're in the shed".

Re:The probable limit of spysats

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when you are an incredibly genious country like india.

Then you can access this thing called the internet, find out what times which satellites are passing overhead,

AND BUILD YOUR NUKES WHILE THEY ARE NOT WATCHING...

Re:The probable limit of spysats

[amanb]

And do what exactly when the satellites return?

Re:The probable limit of spysats

[MtViewGuy]

However, don't try to be cute and put up any major unusual structure outside of town--it's bound to be seen from an imaging satellite.

The Russians hid their rocket engine test program by deliberately building their facilities in a suburb of Moscow and putting up apartment-like buildings with no-expenses-spared noise and engine exhaust surpression systems. That was exorbitantly expensive and only one such facility was ever built.

goatse.cx link, don't click

[jpm165]

you'll regret it. And you know what, while i am at it fuck slash and its stupid ass lameness filters. It took me like 10 attempts to submit this warning.

BFD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called infrared.

waste of tax dollars...

[mr_gerbik]

Why does the US spend millions and millions of dollars on expensive spy satellites when they could just use kites??

-gerbik

Re:waste of tax dollars...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now, around tax time you go tell the government to go fly a kite.

KH-9, Big Bird

[wiredog]

It was the last of the bucket droppers. An interesting book, if you can find it, is Deep Black. It's a history of overhead imaging from the Civil War through the KH-11 program, including the U-2 and SR-71 aircraft.

My father worked for the Defense Mapping Agency (the predecessor of NIMA) until 89 and he was surprised at some of the things that showed up in that book. Especially that the resolution of the KH-11 (best is 2.5 inches, so it can't read license plates) and KH-9 (9 inches) were in there.

A number of interesting uses

[d-Orb]

While much of the talk here is about either seeing celebrities naked baking under the Mediterranean sun or spying axis-of-evil governments and the such, the main use these images will have is that they are the first imagery of the Earth from space available. They do record images of the poles from where ice cover can be estimated. Again, forest cover can also be estimated from a time before civilian satellites were a reality. In other words, these images provide us remote sensing data from quite a long while ago. This should help the investigation of better climatic models and so on.

Re:A number of interesting uses

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they could also be used as target acquisition devices for those new high-powered lasers the pentagon is building.

ZAP!

100cm

[wiredog]

That's 1 meter. IIRC, the French satellite has 1 meter resolution in the visible light bands. I think the latest Landsats are that good.

Re:100cm

[MtViewGuy]

If I remember correctly, the resolution of SPOT (launched by the French) had a resolution of 10 meters in general. The current Landsat has a resolution around 5 meters, if I remember correctly. For many commercial imaging satellites, very high resolution is not really necessary because they're designed to cover wide areas for environmental research.

It was only after IKONOS became operational in the late fall of 1999 that commercial imaging satellites reached the 100 cm resolution level. You'll see a lot more 100 cm resolution imaging satellites from multiple companies in the coming years--several American and several European companies are designing such satellites now. We may see commercial imaging satellites capable of imaging down to 50 cm very soon.

Castro on the toilet...

[jokercito]

NOT a pretty picture!

USGS web page: Gale Norton strikes again!

[mfago]

As mentioned in another post, the USGS webpage itself is unusable unless you're running Netscape 4 (windows or linux only) or IE for Windows.

I think it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to emailthe maintainer of the web page.

Unsurprising for the gov't to so thouroughly screw-up like this, especially with Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the helm. FWIW, she is facing contempt of court charges for lying in Federal court during a trial of gross mismanagement of the Native American Trust fund. Mismanagement by completely failing to secure a computer system...

Hell, why don't we all email Gale herself?!

Re:USGS web page: Gale Norton strikes again!

[Mike Schiraldi]

Your link is messed up -- it should be a .gov.

Re:USGS web page: Gale Norton strikes again!

[vsprintf]

I'm not going to defend Gail Norton, but FYI, the problems with Earth Explorer were created long before she was appointed. Where to start?

You (we) elected several administrations who saw government-funded code as an Evil Thing that sucks the life-blood (money) from deserving private enterprises like Microsoft. There was a federal mandate to use COTS wherever possible.

The responsible government PHBs, never a group to question an edict or make a decision based on facts, decided EE would use COTS. The government PHBs gave the decision to the private sector coders (contractors) to implement, based on a commercial product the government PHBs had chosen.

Many months and man-hours later, the valiant coders had done their best to turn a mouse scrotum into a bowling-ball bag, but as you've noticed, it still has limitations.

So, kids, the moral of the story is: Don't post about "my tax dollars at work", be thankful the government is committed to using COTS and protecting your jobs - even if the end product sucks.

Insteresting Little Story

[FatRatBastard]

I used to live on RAF Woodbridge in the UK back in the 80s (go Warriors!) and was there during the infamous Rendlesham forest UFO sighting (of Unsolved Mysteries and East at Left Gate fame). One of the better theories I've read about the whole thing was that the UFO story was a cover story for retrieving low flying spy satellite film canister, which, frankly, makes a hell of a lot more sense than the UFO nutters who are convinced we were doing all sorts of who knows what with ET.

Re:Insteresting Little Story

[mumblestheclown]

Absolute bollocks.

While there may indeed have been film recovery of satellite films (this sounds marginal, but not outside of the realm of possibility), the idea that the film was designed at an airbase if the parachute failed is absolute bollocks.

given the aerodynamics of a tumbling film canister and high altitude winds or whathave you, they'd be lucky to hit a given county, much less a given airbase. The plan is stupid--if the film cannister is designed to potentially survive a parachute-less fall, why would they bother with the parachute?

That there was something top-secret flying near an airbase during the cold war is not hard to believe. The notion that this was a film cannister recovery device with lights on it (let me get this straight--it has lights on it AND is designed to renter the atmosphere?) is incredibly hard to believe.

Re:Other News-Locked up.

[Anonymous Coward]

"At the height of the Cold War, U.S. spy satellites were busy looking for those "Kodak instant moments" on a global basis. Now decades later, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are spring-loaded to soon make available thousands of once secret spysat snapshots."

Try more like. "In other news an unknown company complained that it couldn't compete with the governments free offering of photos, and demanded that the site be closed down, so we can make a profit from selling them to the people who originally paid for the whole thing"

Re:Interesting....

[Anonymous Coward]

You think way too much about non existent no-issues...

Uh uh uh,

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get some of those with UFO's, before they got removed from the picture?,,, please....?

Re:Whose (sic) looking in your window?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hubble's ability to image galaxies a "bizzillion" miles away has nothing to do with its magnification power. An amateur with a 6" scope in his backyard can see QSOs that are six billion light years away with an eyepiece yielding only 30x magnification (though it would, of course, be indistinguishable from a field star.) It's all about the brightness of the object, not its distance.

No Chernobyl pics, probably

[Charles Dodgeson]

I doubt we'll see Chernobyl pics; they're too recent for one thing. But it would be fun. Anyone remember the early days of it when the US was reporting the event based, so they said, on spy sat pics, and non-communist central and northern Europe was reporting contamination in their air. But the line from the USSR was, "No, we don't have any problem. No we don't need your help. BTW, anyone know how to put out a graphite fire?"

In the eastern block, news of the event was only reported about a week afterwards. A joke going around Hungary (which borders the Ukraine) was, Q: Why do we celebrate the October Revolution in November? A: Because that is when TASS felt fit to report it.

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[Openadvocate]

Dark side? There's no dark side, although I do like to listen to Pink Floyd.

Unbelievable technology

[HisMother]

I've read articles about the technology behind these -- it's pretty amazing. The pictures were not "beamed" back to earth -- they were taken on film and the film parachuted back.

Yup, the film was Kodak film -- no kidding

[Buran]

Actually, the Corona program did use Kodak film. Due to static problems with early film (which caused arcing on the exposed negatives), Kodak developed polymer-based film.

I work in an electron microscopy lab and the film used for the EM systems is Kodak 4489 "ESTAR Thick Base" -- which means that my paychecks depend directly on something that was developed for use in space. (As a space buff -- Buran is/was the Soviet space shuttle -- I'm quite pleased with that situation.) A spinoff, as they're commonly called.

The EM film is mounted on metal plates for exposing and when developed yields 8cmx10cm transparencies using Kodak D-19 developer. For Corona, the exposed film was placed in a reentry capsule which parachuted back to earth and was retrieved midair by a C-119 Flying Boxcar aircraft. It doesn't take that long to develop at all and can be ready for analysis the same day.

According to the Kodak EM film page:

"KODAK Electron Micrography Film 4489 has approximately half the speed of KODAK Electron Image Film SO-163 film, but exhibits less curl and shorter pump-down times. Coated on a 7mils Estar support, KODAK Electron Microscope Film offers exceptional dimensional stability and eliminates the use of traditional glass support products."

We are still using film because (1) electron microscopes are very expensive, so ours are from the mid-1970s, (2) it's not that easy to retrofit them, at least as far as I understand it, for full digital, and (3) it's not all that hard to put the negatives on a lightbox and shoot them with a professional digital SLR, which is how we get the images into computers for processing. And, of course, (4) digital camera technology still hasn't beat out film for quality yet, though we're hoping to get a Canon EOS-1Ds soon that will start to close the quality gap.

(The film is kept in a vacuum once in the microscope -- something else which I'm sure was a benefit for Corona.)

If you want to see some sample EM images taken with the Kodak film, see our lab's image gallery. Don't bother with Kodak's sample images, they suck. ;)

I'm pretty sure that Kodak also designed the Corona camera system, though I'm not certain who the actual builder was.

Re:Yup, the film was Kodak film -- no kidding

[lemkebeth]

Actually, I seem to recall one or two cameras (hideously expensive) that exceed the quality of film.

Re:Yup, the film was Kodak film -- no kidding

[whiskers]

Actually two c-119 airplanes with a cable between them (they took off that way). The film canister was separated from the parachute by a long riser. The planes attemped to fly the cable into the riser, if successful the cable would then be played out from one plane and retrieved into the other until the film was on board. Later I believe a single c-130 with a Y shaped tubing rig on the front was used. The same rig could be used to retrieve a person from the ground (a balloon was used to extend the riser in that case). Neat ride I hear. I've seen the rig on the plane- never got the ride. This is early 1960's

Re:Yup, the film was Kodak film -- no kidding

[whiskers]

Further reserch indicates a single plane with a trapese like rig out the back. The two plane idea which I had heard about must have been an early proposal that was never used.

Flexing Mirrors

[LudditeMind]

I wonder if the solution that allows us to mitigate the bluring of the atmosphere for ground telescopes would help with imagery satelites.

Re:Flexing Mirrors

[Big Mark]

Probably not, as spy satellites don't use mirrors, they use high quality lenses, and you cant put things on the back of the lens to deform it and have light pass through it at the same time.

Although it is a possibility that a lens could be developed where it's precise curvature could be controlled by a superfine mesh of electrodes on their surfaces, which wouldn't interfere noticeably with the image (diffraction caused
But as the lenses are composed of many, many different bits of glass, the processing power required to perform the calculations for every surface is beyond wince-inducing, and NASA don't like using new things either (they've got 486s or plain vanilla Pentiums, IIRC, controlling Hubble) so it couldn't happen for a long time.

Still, come back in a decade or three. Big Brother is not only watching you, he's mocking the size of your "equipment" when you go for a leak as well!

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[Buran]

No, indeed not, just a hidden side. :)

I hate the "dark side" misconception and every time I hear it I want to bash the asker over the head with that damn CD. "But a big, famous band said it, it's got to be true!" "Yeah, and how do you know they passed grade school science? Now shut up and read this astronomy textbook..."

Isn't it a 2-CD set? Good, heavier. All the better to bash morons with.

Panoramic Imagery

[briancnorton]

This is all great and all, but I have worked with corona imagery (after 1996) and it's REALLY hard to use.

First of all, the imagery is not vertical, it's panoramic. Great for intel agencies, not so great for mapping. It's almost impossible to orthographically rectify, and hence use for anything useful. The resolution of the film is very good. It's something like 150 lp/mm, and the stereo is very good, but it's a pain in the butt to do panoramic stereo without special equipment.

second, geo-referencing was accomplished in a brilliant, if arcane way. A second camera was involved that took pictures of the stars 180 away from the image. To find out what the picture is of, you need starcharts and a lot of math to figure out what stars you are looking at, where the satellite was, and what the picture is of. The equipment to do this in a useful environment is VERY expensive.

third, it's panchromatic and not IR sensitive. You can see some ground features, but nothing environmental, and not all that much of historical significance. Consequently, the imagery has not been used for as much as had been hoped.

earthexplorer.usgs.gov fails

[Anonymous Coward]

*Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 uses the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine which does not support the original Java applet security model used with EarthExplorer applets.

Facinating ingelligence!

[mumblestheclown]

Imagine - hanoi appears to be at the juncture of two rivers, and beijing seems to have some sort of big square.

With intelligence-gather incapabilities like that, no wonder we won the cold war.

Cuban missile pics

[Sarin]

They didn't use satellites to make those, but spyplanes.

Geez, has no-one seen thirteen days?

Of course no Chernobyl pics

[Anonymous Cow Hoard]

Why mention anything about Chernobyl here? The pictures being released are only as late as 1980, and only from the film-drop satellites. There are pictures of the Chernobyl incident running around out there, just Google for it. And for the record, it's not "the Ukraine"...is there a "the" on a map? It's just Ukraine. Ukrainians hate people tacking "the" on the front :P

The ones that are still classified

[smaugy]

Wouldn't it be possible to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle to find out which ones weren't declassified?

Re:The ones that are still classified

[FTL]

> Wouldn't it be possible to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle to find out which ones weren't declassified?

Knock yourself out. Meanwhile the rest of us will just read the article:

> NIMA is releasing virtually all of its imagery from these programs except for imagery of Israel.

Re:The ones that are still classified

[yppiz]

If the military satellites are at all like commercial imaging satellites, you wouldn't be able to tell which photos are still classified.

Commercial spy satellites like Quickbird don't take pictures of every square of earth. Instead they photograph sites users request photographs of.

And they might photograph the same site at different points in time.

So unless you noticed something like that an important Soviet base was completely missing from the set, you wouldn't be able to tell what images were still classified.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

Re:The ones that are still classified

[smaugy]

Knock yourself out. Meanwhile the rest of us will just read the article:

NIMA is releasing virtually all of its imagery from these programs except for imagery of Israel.

Uh huh.

"Missing in action are some KH-7 and KH-9 satellite photos taken during the 1963-1980 time period that are still considered to be highly sensitive for national security reasons."

Re:The ones that are still classified

[drinkypoo]

Since no one would bother shooting every inch of dirt, probably not. This WOULD be an amazingly interesting thing to do, though. You would have to write some pretty good software to do it, reconciling your images to a three-dimensional model of the earth, stitching, and so on; But it would be extremely interesting to see what it looked like.

Spot the obvious connection

[henley]

There's a very good reason why you might link the ability to look way-out-there with the ability to look really-closely-down-here.

The Hubble Space Telescope is very closely based on earlier KH-series spy sat designs. So much so that it was shipped from the manufacturer to Kennedy Space Center in a KH-11 shipping container.

Indeed, a lot of the early gross design decisions on Hubble were subject to "anonymous" review from the relevant black agencies, and changes made appropriately.

Call it an early example of the Peace Dividend....

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[Anonymous Coward]

matter of fact, it's all dark...

Emailing bounces. Has their mail server crashed?!

[caluml]

This is the Postfix program at host xxx.xxx.co.uk.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below.

The Postfix program

: Name service error for usgs.org: Host found but no data record of requested type

Chimera

[Anonymous Coward]

I was able to view it using Chimera (a Mozilla project for OS X) on an Apple G4. Don't know what happened with your browser.

And 30 years later...?

[MicroBerto]

I don't even want to IMAGINE what they are taking right now. With the way technology advances, I bet the latest satellites can tell you how many ants are running around an ant farm.

And it's no wonder how they were able to missile-attack a *car* in Yemen from an un-manned aircraft! They can see everything now!

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[quinophexx]

Of course there is a dark side you fewl, unless there are 2 suns illuminating it from both sides.....

one scary thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Know someone who is building a killer satellite, capable of killing individuals from orbit.

Imagine if it gets hacked... Sorry Bill, it was a bug.

I heard similar story about SeaSat...

[Anonymous Coward]

From my geophysicist friend. Her story was that the sea-surface height (or temp) measurement was so good it could track submerged Nuclear Missle subs. So the feds had it shut off.

True? You be the judge.

-- ac at work

Common misinformation on HST

[StupendousMan]

The parent is wrong about several things:

As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.

HST's instruments include movable mirrors which allow one to modify the focus. They could easily focus on objects at the distance of the Earth's surface. HST has taken pictures of the Moon, which is certainly not at infinity.

Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

Some of HST's instruments would saturate if they took exposures of the Earth through wide filters. Others would not. The HST calibration team sometimes takes exposures of the Earth or Moon to use as flatfields.

But, yes, as many have already pointed out, HST can't take images resolving newspaper headlines.

The hubble is great because it's beyond atmosphere

[leeet]

The whole idea behind Hubble is to place it beyond the atmosphere where you get all the "distortions".

Now if you place a spy satellite up there and look down, you get the opposite problem. You have to go through all that "crap" and have all kinds of image tools.

That's the whole idea behind drones, they fly pretty low and get REALLY good images. You can probably tell what kind of cigarette people are smoking.

Mozilla, Netscape Not Supported

[DarkKnightRadick]

http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/ doesn't support Mozilla 1.x or Netscape 6.x or 7.x because they don't use Java2. So now I'm gonna have to install Netscap 4.7...what bs.

Re:Mozilla, Netscape Not Supported

[Anonymous Coward]

An edit on my previous:

http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/ doesn't support Mozilla 1.x or Netscape 6.x or 7.x because they use Java2. So now I'm gonna have to install Netscap 4.7...what bs.

Working site

[tevman]

http://edc.usgs.gov/webglis

this is the site w/o java issues

Cuban missile crisis pics

[corvi42]

Yeah, that roll from the bay of pigs, where the air support showed up an hour too late - that one would be priceless.

Sopranos Quote

[delcielo]

Christopher Moltisante: "You mean that was real?! I saw that movie. I thought it was bullshit."

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[Anonymous Coward]

So you rant about the intellegence of people who use the term "Dark Side" but at the same time are under the misconception that the "Dark Side" album is, and always has been a single CD.

I say its a draw in the special olymics. Lets see what other have to say.........

Film catch

[MacAndrew]

Actually, I think the film rolls were captured in midair by aircraft. Ground (water) pickup was a fallback.

It may sound low-tech, but to me a lot harder than what we have now with a plain old digital camera and radio transmitter. Imagine all the moving parts, all the things that could go wrong.

Kinda Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

EarthExplorer has failed to start because it has detected that your browser does not meet the requirements necessary to run EarthExplorer. Please download a compatible version by clicking one of the buttons below.

"Unix (Irix/Solaris/Linux/etc.) N/A 4.06+ (*Mozilla 1+, Netscape 6 .0, and Netscape 7.0 are not supported )"

Re:Interesting....

[demonbug]

The reference is to "Underpants Gnomes" (a South Park episode) where a bunch of gnomes steal Tweak's underpants. Their business plan is as follows:

Weren't the gnomes stealing Cartman's underpants? Obviously you don't understand the joke.

Re:Interesting....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was Tweak. Know your South Park.

Here's an episode description

Cuban Missle Crisis

[SubtleNuance]

Im surprised that so many americans become so indignant w/r/t the Cuban Missle crisis.

Ill say, by nature I am absolutely a pacifist... not only do I abhore violence, but Im not a big fan of Nation-States (which is really a game of Rich Man's "mine - yours") that takes us (poor pions) to war for their wealth.. so i can quickly see through the fog of 'us vs them' to see that I have no reason to want war with any nation...

But anyway, the Soviets moving missles into Cuba wasnt *really* a 'new or extreme' thing - the americans (as anyone who saw K.Constner's film knows) had similar arms in similar positions. The Americans, during the cold-war build up, were willing to unsettle the present condition of build-up by taking the soviets to task over the issue. In reality, this DESTABILIZED the situation... the "Cuban Missle Crisis" was -- by invention -- the result of American Hawks willing to push the issue a closer to the brink..

All in all, it was irresponsible - at that point, more missles simply meant more missles.. again nothing was out-of-the-ordinary... the Soviets should not have lied about the issue and said "yes, for Cuba's defense the missles are going there, just like America has them in X,Y,Z"

Does anyone else see it this way?

usgs.GOV

[Anonymous Coward]

Not org.

Interesting server response...

[vincent99]

Anybody else getting this? Interesting switch condition...

Microsoft VBScript compilation

error '800a0409'

Unterminated string constant

/ads/sb/sb_mgr.inc, line 464

case "skyScrapernwwhonext
-----------

Limitations of satellites.

[clockmaker]

1. Even if they make a satellite with 1 mm resolution, it still couldn't read a license plate because license plates are vertical. When the guv'ment requires license plates on the TOPs of our cars, we will know they have the resolution. 2. Also, most satellites are not geo-synchronous, so they are only over a single spot every so-many orbits. It's not like they can "follow" a fleeing thief. To find a satellite's orbit, try looking here. 3. Various optics effects cause limitations due to atmosphere, wavelengths, diffraction, etc.

Re:Limitations of satellites.

[RegularFry]

That's assuming they don't ever take their pictures except when they're directly over their targets...

We?

[Anonymous Coward]

We? The rest of the world?

Gosh, I need to be a real detective to figure out what nationality the writer who chooses such words has.

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[DjMd]

The moon rotates so no 'one side' is the dark side... Unless you are sugesting the earth has a dark side...

Re:Oh good!!! [OT]

[Puk]

This is OT, but with regards to your sig, have you seen Bill Maher's new book and adaptation of that poster? Apologies if that's how you came across the original, but if not, check it out. :)

-Puk

Russians nuked the Chinese

[cilyrabit]

Rumor... a friend told me this story a year ago, don't know if its true and didn't find anything about it after a quick search on the internet... but here goes:

My friend said "

I had a friend who used to work for the government... years ago he processed the photos that the US spy satellites took. One night at dinner the discussion had wandered onto the topic of the atomic bomb and its potential uses in a modern conflict, and someone says something to the effect:

"... the US is the only country that has used the atomic bomb against another nation..."

At which the friend spoke up, "Except for the time when the Russians bombed the Chinese."

Everyone at the table stopped talking and looked at him. "What!"

"Oh you guys didn't hear about that did you..."

A rough outline of the scenario...

Back in the late 50's or early 60's sometime the Russians and the Chinese are glaring at each other across the Siberian border of which some remote corner's exact boundries are in dispute. Each country lines up some number of troops and tensions are a little high. Finally the Russians move their withdraw their troops back about 10 miles... the next day the Chinese advance 10 miles. A few days later the Russians retreat 25 miles... over the next few days the Chinese advance 25 miles (meanwhile the US spy satellites are catching all of this in photos). A few more days go by and the Russians retreate 50 miles and the Chinese advance once again. So the Russian retreat 100 miles and drop a nuke right above the Chinese! ... From that point on Chinese ceased their dispute over the Siberian border.

Is this true! How come no one has heard of this story? Supposedly the Russians weren't going to tell because they didn't want to attract international condemnation. Besides, they had used in their own territory. They could claim it to be a test.

The Chinese? They didn't want to have to answer the question, "What was China doing with troops deep in Soviet Siberia."

The US? Why were they silent? That is top secret, but maybe some of the declassified photos show the events...

Mount Ararat anomalies

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the CIA is withholding other photos
of Mount Ararat anomalies...

Two dark sides

[Black Copter Control]

There are two 'dark sides' to the moon.

One is the physical dark side... The side that's facing away from the sun (at the moment in question). The other dark side is the classical 'dark side' -- the side that's always facing away from the earth.

During the full moon, both dark sides are the same side. During a new moon, the dark side is actually brightly lit (by the sun) but since none of that light ever really makes it back to earth, it might as well be dark for most earth observers' purposes.

Of course when the near side of the moon is dark, it's lighter than the dark side is when it's dark because it's lit by the reflection of the earth. This means that the dark side of the moon is actually darker (when it's dark) than the 'light' side when it is dark.

This means that the dark side of the moon really is dark when it's dark -- as opposed to the bright side of the moon which is faintly lit when it's dark.

(go ahead.. just try and pass that through an AI parser!)

aaaarg......

[notb4dinner]

From the Earth Explorer site referenced in the article :

"EarthExplorer has failed to start because it has detected that your browser does not meet the requirements necessary to run EarthExplorer. Please download a compatible version by clicking one of the buttons below."

"Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 uses the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine which does not support the original Java applet security model used with EarthExplorer applets."

Who the fruck builds sites that rely on older standards when they know newer ones are available???

[Note: I actually have no understanding of the JVM security model....]

Amazing stuff

[HungWeiLo]

I'm taking a class now with a guy who was one of the chief architects of the 737 (he's getting his bachelor's now, out of all things). He also used to work in the military. He said that even back in the 70's, the military possessed unclassified technology which could read cigarette brands off of a terrorist camp surveillance satellite vidcap. Imagine what the classified stuff could do now!

How long is it?

[jefu]

Sorry.

I meant, how long will it be, given some of the other things on slashdot today about the US Gov't taking things off public web sites, before someone decides to make all those protected too?

After all, it would be Un American to make the information available without someone profiting on it.

Any touch of cynicism detected is copyright by me. Any attempt to imitate it, quote it or otherwise be cynical will be treated as a serious infringement of my intellectual property rights and my legal bloodhounds will descend on you direct from the Baskervilles where I've been hiding them just for that purpose. I've stored up a nice stash of luminescent paint too.

"You can be dogfood." (obobscurereference)

What a silly subject line

[neocon]

Leaving aside that it was the UN which placed the conditions which Mr. Hussein agreed to, what's your point? He was allowed to stay in power after the brutal invasion of Kuwait in return for agreeing to certain terms. He has not lived up to those terms.

More generally, why don't you make your position clear to the rest of us: Yes, or no, do you believe that Mr. Hussein should be allowed to develop weapons of mass destruction?

Re:What a silly subject line

[mauri]

No, I'm not trolling.
Where do you take those things? 97 percent on west bank under PA control? Gimme a break. There are areas A, B and C and only area A is under full PA control.
For some reason Kofi Annan thinks different, btw. he's UN chief (maybe you need some citation or proof?)

As for 3 million people living in west bank and 1,2 million living in Gaza strip, they are NOT citizens of Israel and they have basically no rights.

This crime of being jewish on PA lands is some new kind of blood libel? Are you aware that such knowing lies can be punishable crimes? What about Ha'aretz reporter Amira Haas, who lives in occupied West bank?
Here you find last childs killed by israelis, you can search for more yourself.

The ratio of israeli vs palestinian children killed is similiar - about 1:3. For totals check Btselem.

The problem with this discussion is that one of us is underinformed or maybe just hostile. The facts I have brought are widely available and easily confirmed, but you just don't care. So if you think ignorance is strength then there's no point in discussion.

Re:What a silly subject line

[neocon]

The Amnesty report you cite is riddled with errors -- most notably it still alleges that there was a massacre at Jenin even though even Arafat now admits that this was a lie.

Now, you manage to find one instance of a child accidentally killed by Israeli troops in the middle of a gun battle with armed gunmen. This you hold up against murder-suicide bombers in the children's areas of restaurants, and murderers who break into homes and shoot children as they hear their bedtime stories.

And if you haven't noticed, area A includes 97% of the west bank -- look it up for yourself. As to `citizenship' of those in the west bank, they are citizens -- of the PA. That Arafat does not give them any rights is hardly Israel's fault, now is it? Or are you saying that they should be citizens of Israel? I thought you wanted two seperate nations?

Re:What a silly subject line

[neocon]

This crime of being jewish on PA lands is some new kind of blood libel? Are you aware that such knowing lies can be punishable crimes? What about Ha'aretz reporter Amira Haas [freemedia.at], who lives in occupied West bank?

Are their `useful idiots' like Mr. Haas or Adam Shapiro? Sure. They stand in contrast to the almost daily murders of Jewish settlers by Fatah and the al-Aqsa brigades, both of which report directly to Mr. Arafat, and to the repeated lynchings of any Palestinians even suspected of wanting peace with Israel by Mr. Arafat's Tanzim security forces.

Re:What a silly subject line

[InvaderSkooge]

Yes, they are PA citizens, but are under the rule of Israel. To say that they are all citizens, and could enjoy the same rights is like saying that the american colonists were citizens, just like those in GB, and could enjoy the same rights. PA citizenship is not the same as citizenship of soverign nation, they are in Israel, and Israeli policies, arrived at by non-democratic exclusion of the PA citizens, deprives them of rights. America got founded on the idea that everyone should have the illusion of self-determination, a third of the population of Israel doesn't even have that.

Re:What a silly subject line

[neocon]

No, they are not in any way under the rule of Israel. 97% of the West Bank has been completely out of Israel's control, and in the hands of Arafat since Oslo.

This is what Israel put on the table. The Palestinian half of the bargain was an end to the murder-suicide bombings, and agreement to recognize Israel's right to exist. The PA has refused to live up to either of these conditions.

Re:What a silly subject line

[duren686]

Now, you manage to find one instance of a child accidentally killed by Israeli troops in the middle of a gun battle with armed gunmen.

I didn't read the article, but is this the child in the famous Palestine propaganda picture, that was killed by allegedly Israeli gunfire, who is pictured huddled behind a trash can with his father?

If so, then It wasn't actually the Israeli troops that shot him. See, the Israelis were behind the wall that the kid and his father were huddled up against, and they were firing at Palestinians from behind the kid. The shot that killed him came from in front of him, and went into his head going towards the Israeli troops. Now, unless Israel was using magic bullets that could change their trajectory in mid-flight, it is simply not possible for them to have killed this child.

Re:Oh good!!! [OT]

[Pig Hogger]

Thanks, I didn't know that book.

Ah ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Bat, Man!

Useless

[warkeng]

All I got for going to the link in the MSNBC write up is an error page saying Mozilla 1.0+, and Mac platforms, are not supported. Next...

images of israel

[SystematicPsycho]

Why aren't any satellites allowed to take any pictures of israel? is it a 'repect our privacy' thing? "damn you paparazzi!"

Re:all we need now is the dark side of the moon pi

[thebowery]

Of course the earth has a dark side, you know when its very dark outside? thats when your side of the earth is on the dark side of the earth.Of course you could be one of these flat earth people too.

What a silly subject line

[neocon]

You're trolling, right?

The only article about `three Palestinians dead' on the page you link to is this one, about two Palestinian gunmen and a passerby who died after they opened fire on Israeli troops. Other articles on the site include a piece twelve Jews who were shot yesterday while walking home from prayer. Another article discusses the two Jewish children, ages four and five, who were shot with their mother a few days ago while sitting down for bedtime stories.

Needless to say, there is nothing like the absurd statistic about deaths you cite -- care to provide a cite, or are you just blowing hot air?

As for `two states in Israel', if you haven't noticed, the Israelis have been trying to give the Palestinians their own state since the Oslo peace accords of 1991 (and 97% of the West Bank has been under PA control since that time, asking only for an end to the murder-suicide bombings in return. The y never got that end.

As for democracy, I would remind you that all citizens of Israel, Jewish, Christian, or Palestinian, enjoy exactly the same rights -- indeed there were 17 Palestinian members of the Knesset (Israel's parliament) the last time I checked. This makes a marked contrast to the PA lands, where it is a crime punishable by death to be even suspected of being Jewish.

Last Post!

[alpg]

... C++ offers even more flexible control over the visibility of member
objects and member functions. Specifically, members may be placed in the
public, private, or protected parts of a class. Members declared in the
public parts are visible to all clients; members declared in the private
parts are fully encapsulated; and members declared in the protected parts
are visible only to the class itself and its subclasses. C++ also supports
the notion of *_______friends*: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each
other's private parts.
-- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design with Applications"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...