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Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare
Jeremiah writes "The pending Iraqi war promises to deliver quite the display of modern, smart technology well beyond what we saw in '91. President Bush recently ordered the development of rules for cyber engagement by the military. Beyond the numerous special forces on the ground like in Afganistan, the US will use soldiers in office chairs to disrupt Iraqi infrastructure."
...you have to stop the DDOS when you get the 'destination unreachable'
Is Kevin Mitnick getting one of those chairs ?
getSexySig();
"President Bush has signed a secret directive ordering the government to develop..."
Not so secret any more, is it?
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
Are these going to apply to United States citizens?
Are these going to apply to people operating in the US?
Are the info-soldiers within the US?
Are these going to be subject to constitutional limitations?
What's this Submit thingy do?
Civilian involvement? Letters of marque and reprisal have been banned by international treaty, but those traditionally apply to physical battle. Will the script kiddies rain on Iraq?
SIG: HUP
Please, don't give iraquis mail addresses to all spammers around the world, that will hurt them badly, but will be very cruel.
Why stop at just having the military conducting these attacks? I am sure there are vast numbers of us on the Internet that would be perfectly willing to sacrifice our time and bandwidth on DDoS attacks against every box in Iraq. There are certainly plenty of us that would be more than happy to hack into Saddam's computer networks. As Americans, we should all be allowed to do our part.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
that this "Elite Hacker Force" will be shut down after Bush is done with his war.
But somehow I can't believe that. After all it's quite a useful "tool" for making a point when talking with Ambassadors from foreign countries...
See my blog for my free opinions.
They have what, a dozen computers?
Unless we have to attack Microsoft (and the day is coming, I promise you!), this order isn't really all that useful.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
From todays SomethingAwful.com post... I take no credit, other than shameless cut and paste!
Operation: Winnuke
Operational Plan: One of the most vulnerable areas of Iraq is its weak technological infrastructure. Still largely in a state of disorder from the constant US and British bombing campaign against Iraqi communications centers, the Iraqi computer network is vulnerable to attack. One US plan calls for a multi-phase operation conducted largely within the framework of the recently unveiled International Community Messenger. This computer system allows world leaders to communicate one-on-one over the Internet. Phase one of the operation will involve a coordinated effort by George W. Bush to get all of the world leaders supporting a war against Iraq online at the same time. He will tell them all to start innocuous conversations with Iraq and that when they see the warning level of Iraq rising on their contact list they are to begin warning Iraq until the nation is logged out of the Messenger service. If executed properly phase one will prevent Iraq from rallying sympathetic nations to its cause after phase two has struck.
Phase two will begin with the United States beginning a conversation with Iraq over trivial things. At some point during the conversation the US will send Iraq a seemingly harmless video file that actually contains an annoying virus script that will deadlock the Iraqi computer system, making it both difficult and embarrassing to use. As mentioned, before Iraq can retaliate or request aid allies of the United States will warn Iraq until it is temporarily banned from the service. To help you better understand how this operation will go down we have modeled it using advanced computer technology called "Microsoft Notepad".
US_of_A[NATO] Hey d00d, what's up?
_+Iraq[AoE]+_ not 2 much fag
_+Iraq[AoE]+_ u got the UN resolution u want me to sign lol
US_of_A[NATO] yeah man, check this out 1st, it's a krad video of this crazy Koreen kids dancing
US_of_A[NATO] wants to send you the file Dance_Routine(Funny!).wmv.vbs.
_+Iraq[AoE]+_ ok its downloadin
US_of_A[NATO] cool when its done run it
_+Iraq[AoE]+_ ok
_+Iraq[AoE]+_ WTF its opening gay pron popups
US_of_A[NATO] pwned
You have warned the user US_of_A[NATO]
You have been warned by the user US_of_A[NATO] Warning Level is 10%
You have been warned by the user UK[NATO] Warning Level is 25%
You have been warned by the user Spizzain[NATO] Warning Level is 50%
You have been warned by the user iTaLy[NATO] Warning Level is 75%
You have been warned by the user Canada[420TreesHitter][NATO] Warning Level is 100%
***You are being temporarily logged out of International Community Messenger***
After this Iraq's computer and communication infrastructure will be isolated from the world community and Iraq will be vulnerable to further offensive operations.
Possible Threats: North Korea is constantly online and attempting to send the United States viruses through ICM. Technical specialists are usually able to persuade to the president not to open "Sexyjapaneselass_Vs_Playboy.scr". However, President Bush has already infected some 400 government computers with various e-mail and ICM viruses, and if alone may do so again. In the right North Korean hands this could compromise the security of the entire operation.
Estimated Casualties: Pretty much everyone in Iraq's tech-sector is expected to be summarily executed by Saddam if this plan works. Other than that no casualties are expected.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
... they're prepared to engage in one mother of an immoral battle, and have said their prayers, kissed their girls, and balanced their books. War in Iraq is *not* going to be pretty for you guys.
...
The US is now what Germany was in the 30's... off to fight its merry war with 'justifiable cause'.
Don't you Americans realize that the UN was *made* to prevent countries like yours from abusing their power?
That this war is now being trivialized into some sort of 'happy meme' worthy of idle discussion by tech nerds in the context of some sci-fi-turned-reality 'cyberwar' is really disturbing.
If globalization, McDonalds, Britney and all the other wonderful machinations of The American Way didn't turn me off your crappy country, then the robotic nature of its citizens kowtowing to the propaganda machine being operated by King George Bush II definitely is
I don't care if there are guidelines for 'cyberwar against Iraq' being published... This war is NONSENSE!!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only countries this will work against are those that are like the US, and sorry, but despite our ethnocentric view of the world, most countries are not us except Canada and the UK (didn't turning on one's allies work for Hitler?).
This idea is not new. When the military staged a wargame where they tried this very same thing, they got their arse handed to them in a brown paper sack:
Yeah, right.
---
Not trolling, just worried.
This administration seems intent on creating uncontrollable monsters. It's not OK to create groups of nasty people just because you intend to use them against other nasty people. At some point they'll need something else to attack just because that's what they do best.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Heh... I can count on one hand, and have fingers left over, the number of copies of SQL Server that are probably running in all of Iraq.
Talk about a friendly-fire incident...
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
With the army's recent foray into the video game biz, do you think we'll se a "video game" that's purpose is to hack into Iraq? Of course, whether or not the video game is a simulation or not is anyone's guess.
Hear ye, Hear ye!
I here-by secretly announce that all wars shall be fought via Unreal Tournament! Rejoice at this secret announcement!
YarrRrr
Iraq is running Linux!
how is Taco going to feel when he reads about a Chinook full of young Americans that got shot down from a SAM battery that could not be hacked and disabled because Achmed reads Slashdot,
Right. The Iraq government can afford to run a net connection to every SAM battery, and is stupid enough to leave it open to the Internet. Even societies that can afford to network their military, don't connect the Internet to internal systems - it's just stupid. The most secure connection is none at all, and everyone knows that.
I'm sure it's an unpopular view amongst the freedom of IP at all costs crowd that's common here, but maybe for the duration of the Iraqi conflict, we can stop posting exploit and bug notifications, at least until the US has installed a nascent capitalist, western ideologued democracy in Iraq.
I didn't realize we were planning on slaughtering all the Iraqs and colonizing the country. That, of course, is about the only way we're going to get a "western ideologued" society in Iraq. What do you think the odds are that we can even get some sort of stable democracy going - historically, "our son of a bitch" governments have been common - and it's questionable whether you can just stick a democracy in a country that has no concept of one and have it thrive.
...to be a patriot and fight for your country, all from the comfort of your office chair, while dressed in your underwear.
Just think of all the mp3s and movies we can legally download from top secret Iraqi sites!
In the last Gulf War the air defenses were networked, including key elements of their radar network.
That was, reportedly, reduced by allowing a contraban printer to "slip through" blockades on goods to Iraq. The printer had a virus that spread through the air defense network.
IIRC this happened in the last days before the bombing campaign began.
It was widely reported after the war, on Nightline and I think Bob Woodward mentioned it in hos book "The Commaders" too. I have not heard if it has been verified beyond that since.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
storming into iraqi offices and installing windows xp as a form of attack, but that might just violate of couple of laws set down by the geneva convention.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
I'm sure it's an unpopular view amongst the freedom of IP at all costs crowd that's common here, but maybe for the duration of the Iraqi conflict, we can stop posting exploit and bug notifications, at least until the US has installed a nascent capitalist, western ideologued democracy in Iraq.
Flip the issue around and see if your suggestion makes any sense:
For the duration of the war, let's refrain from posting notices of vulnerabilities and exploits so that sysadmins in places other than Iraq can't keep their systems properly defended from cyber-terrorists who are sympathetic to the Iraqi cause (or are simply anti-American).
Makes no sense, right? Withholding vulnerability information is far more likely to adversely affect civilian and public service networks in the US and supporting nations than the Iraqi military/industrial complex.
Overheard in the Oval Office:
Bush: Hey, I've just had a great idea! Why don't we attack Iraq over the Inter-net!
Advisor: I'm not sure what you mean, Mr President.
Bush: Well, couldn't we infect Saddam with one of those Inter-net viruses, for example? We could use our prowess in genetical engineering and nanu-technology to genetically infect Saddam with a deadly Inter-net virus! Whaddya think?
Advisor: Erm... I'm speechless, Sir.
Bush: Write some guidelines around those ideas, will ya?
Advisor: Very well sir. Do you mind if I make some minor modifications, sir?
Bush: Do whatever you think is necessary. We make a great team don't we?
Bush: Erm, yes sir. Isn't it about time for your nap now Mr President?
"All your base are belong to us.....no really. They now belong to us. Sgt. Fingaz hacked their Cisco PIX then disrupted their radar while playing Everquest and chatting in #topsecretbiotch."
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
Oh, I sure they are networked, but I don't think they're pingable from where we're all typing from. And I'm fairly certain they're not running BSD.
So... the first step in our war is to send the Geek Corps to Iraq to teach everyone how to use computers. Then we sick SUN on them to convince them to upgrade to mission-critical workstations and servers. While we do that, we use old equipment to get individuals and businesses stuck on the .doc format. Finally, we convince Saddam to consolidate his technological resources under XP, .NET, and Office.
At which point, why do we have to invade at all? Microsoft can just run their government like they do ours.
The ______ Agenda
I know I should not have trusted you with those documents!
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
However, there are other questions this brings up:
Food for thought.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
So can we now expect accidental hacking of the Chinese embassy, Canadian soldiers, and the occasional civilian wedding to occur in conjunction with the more traditional (but increasingly obsolete) accidental smart bombing?
Chairman of Microsoft Bill Gates announced a humanitarian donation of 1 million copies of Windows ME to Iraq.
More news at 11...
Do you guys want to defeat Sadam in CounterStrike or what?
I can just see the latest edition of "Soldier of Fortune" with advertisements in the back for "733t h4Xor5" to DDOS the 8 servers that comprise the Iraqi Ministry of Disinformation.
They'll probably have a lurid cover photo showing "actual damage done" to such a server.
"Eeewww - look at the smoking wires just hanging out of the CD drive bay!"
"Provided by the management for your protection."
right after the Iraqis invaded kuwait in 90, the US got a french company that was supplying printers to Iraq to put a chip in that we supplied. The chip had a receiver that basically allowed us to remotely take out their networks using the printers attached to it.
But they don't have to hook it up to the Internet. Yes, that would be a dumb move, but all the US has to do is obtain 1 network node by force in operating condition and hack from there. Remember that "Just unplug it from the Internet" security is only as strong as the physical security of your weakest network access point.
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
Just have Gates send the Iraqis a complementary set of licenses for MS products... within a couple of days, the problem will solve itself...
"Of course I'm wrong... That's how I get to 'right'." - Gil Grissom
The requested COUNTRY (Iraq) was not found. If you feel like it, mail the president@whitehouse.com to see if he had anything to do with it.
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
Most countries have electronic switching systems and microwave links for the phone service. Those were targets that NATO hit in Serbia several years ago, and in Iraq in 1991. Even Afghanistan had some. Russia uses microwave links. China also. Actually, it's probably only countries like Somalia, which have almost no communications infrastructure, that wouldn't be vulnerable.
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Okay, mostly for porn.
But, instead of persuing global conventions that would deter this from happening, effort is under way to legitimize it.
This is so sad. I suspect many future generations may suffer for some of the mistakes being made today.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
If they *are* hooked up to the internet, and someone finds their IP, just post it here on slashdot and they'll be instantly defenseless.
no telling what they are running, I was just pointing out some conjecture and facts from the last time
I will add that publishing this probably compromises nothing.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Is it just me, or does anyone else see a pattern in US strategic thinking along the lines of "We have bigger and better technology/supply lines/bombs, and that will make final victory inevitable." I don't intend to argue that logistics are not an essential part of military planning, nor that technological advantages don't give an edge. But there seems to be a wide spread feeling in the US government that because they are the biggest guy on the block, they will inevitably win.
With the greatest respect, cod's wallop!
The American high command seems to be infected with this attitude as well. It seems to me that much (if not most or all) of the talk from the US about how the US will win is posited on the massive technological/logistical superiority of America. But far more important is strategy and tactics. (See Wellington's Peninsular campaign to see an example of how superior strategy and tactics can defeat a much larger army.)
There is some evidence that much of the US military is still unwilling to be flexible in its tactical/strategic thinking. See this article in The Guardian for a insightful analysis of a recent, huge US military exercis - in which the American side *lost* and the "Red" (read Iraqi) side won.
I'm a Canadian and the reek of hubris from across the 49th parallel is stunning!
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
1. We (the Bush administration) can do anything we want to anyone else.
2. Noone can not do anything at all to us (the Bush administration).
3. Americans, including American companies, can do anything they want to any foreign country, company or person.
4. No foreign country, company or person can do anything to any american person or company.
There, that sounds about right.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Which is why I find the suggestion that somehow discussing exploits on the internet weakens our ability to do that silly.
It won't matter in the slightest. Any hacking attempts aren't going to be foiled because someone released a patch for apache.
The discretion point is key both because you want to minimize non-military damage (hospitals etc) but also because of the covert possibilities of subtlety. Take down their entire network (even if it is tin cans, string and a goat) and they're sure to notice. Hack in and change the error message on their missile control launch system to "Launch successful" and it could go un-noticed until the whole war's over. (or for half an hour, whichever comes first)
"The pending Iraqi war promises to deliver quite the display of modern, smart technology well beyond what we saw in '91." ... "the US will use soldiers in office chairs to disrupt Iraqi infrastructure."
Will give a great footage on CNN:
As you see on this graph, this was the traffic to their webservers in the last month. Now check this peak when we started to probe it and after that the constant block of traffic towards it.
And check the BGP statistics, since three days their routing-entries have disappeared!
ps. http://www.mavetju.org/~edwin/bomb-iraq.html
bash$
In other news, Salvation Army thrift shops were being swarmed by US Rangers seeking to flesh out their inventory of Commodore 64s.
Said an unidentified Ranger at the scene, "One thing we learnt from Afghanistan and Jon Katz is that the C64 has mutated into a powerful web-connected device over the last 20 years. We need to prepare with our own arsenal of C64s."
Could
POKE 16434,255
Bring down Sadam?
The primary one being that cyberwar automatically equals, and is limited to, the internet. Many systems are networked, and/or acessible from outside, without being on the internet.
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No need to worry about Iraq. There is *NO EVIDENCE OF WoMD IN IRAQ*!!!
Will you say you are wrong when we find these weapons?
And how exactly do you explain saddam giving the order to use said weapons if the US led coalition attacks?
Hmmmmmmmmmm?
And yes, I consider the UN Security Council passing unanimously Reoslution 1441 as the world agreeing with us.
And I consider the 40 nations that are with the US a 'coalition'.
If Iraq just runs those networks off of the common infrastructure (Ie. Not on the Internet as a whole). What the hell is the States going to do to hack it? They could use SocEng to get numbers and passwords, etc. But at that point they may as well use SocEng to acheive their objectives.
I think some people think Hackers can do far more than they really can. They are just technically adept, and (sometimes) quality social engineers, nothing more. They can't change the laws of physics. If the network isn't connected to anything you can connect to (and if you owned an entire country that wouldn't be too hard to set up.), then you can do dick from the states to that infrastructure.
If the network is wired up to the internet and these holes exist that could be taken advantage of, then the people setting up the network need to seriously consider wtf they are doing. You don't put primary infrastructure on the internet even with high security. You are just asking for trouble at that point.
~ kjrose
Here's how Powell should have produced his evidence:
"We're absolutely sure Saddam has weapons of mass destruction because WE SOLD THEM TO HIM! And I have the receipts RIGHT HERE!" (Powell holds up receipts)
That would remove all doubt, wouldn't it. But I guess we'll never see that.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
If you attend US military conferences, you know that they're quite proud of their CND (computer network defence) ability, but refuse to comment on their CNA (computer network attack) capability. That's partly because they had no RoE.
In fact, some other industrialized nations are pushing for CNA to be considered a weapon of mass destruction, since the effects of most viruses and DDoSes can't be predicted until they're launched (your attack on a power plant takes out a hospital...and another...and another).
As for Iraq's dependence on the 'net, don't think about SAM batteries with IP addresses. Think about Info Ops. Think Wag the Dog. Think about pro-Iraqi websites suddenly "reporting" US victories. Or US sites suddenly being "attacked", giving the FBI justification to round up those Iraqi-Americans on its watch list.
Far-fetched? Right about the time that the latest Osama video was being "authenticated", a senior US officer was bragging to me about how advanced their video morphing technology was getting.
... and I bet that various hacker groups as well as terrorists will be queueing to apply for .iq domain names to set up honeypots. Maybe the US military will be able to suggest new ideas for holes, worms and viruses to exploit.
Or maybe set up a neat firewall which port forwards electricity-grid.iq to powersupply.whitehouse.gov.
Cyberwarfare is far too easy to turn the tables with.
Will you say you are wrong when we find these weapons?
... while the "Arab Class" suffer for it.
At this point, I have no reason to 'trust' the United States to find anything. I watched Powell at the UN, and you know what? Iraq is right: it was a typical American show, complete with special effects and cheap stunts. Show me *ONE* thing that he presented that could not have been put together by some 12 year old with iMovie and Sound Forge...
If the U.N. weapons inspectors finds them based on intelligence received from the U.S., sure, I'll say I was 'wrong'.
But with regards to the U$ofA 'finding' anything, it's just Fox and The Chickens time.
Come on. You *know* this is only about oil so all yo' fat SUV's can keep rollin'
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
thats "1337 H4X0R F0RC3"
"You are a bloody zealot." ... something a nation like yours is quite happy to produce, I might note ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
why doesn't the US just challenge countries to a CTF game in UT2003 - of course I heard Bush is a camper and cheny likes to call everyone a BOT! -JVM
Let me remind you of the origins of the atom bomb, and of Einstein's later remark that he wished he had cut off the hand that signed a letter to Roosevelt endorsing it. The scientists who knocked themselves out to build it were working to stop Hitler, but once the knowledge was out there, it was beyond their control.
A government-sponsored development of hacking has enormously destructive potential for all of us who use the internet. Today Iraq is the target. Tomorrow, the target could be domestic dissent. Isn't Ann Coulter already calling the Democrats who didn't cheer Bush's SOU traitors?
Bad, bad, bad idea
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Show me *ONE* thing that he presented that could not have been put together by some 12 year old with iMovie and Sound Forge...
Only if that 12 year old wasn't wearing his tinfoil hat so the government mind control satellite could guide his actions.
Seriously...I want some of what you are smoking.
historically, "our son of a bitch" governments have been common
Iraq being a good example of this...
- Fact is, there is no evidence. There is only oil
Full ACKLord "not Gargamel's Cat!" Azrael
US cyber-warfare units will attempt a DDoS attack on the Iraqi infrastructure through Iraq's remaining 56 kbaud AOL dialup connection. That will surely be successful.
That was, reportedly, reduced by allowing a contraban printer to "slip through" blockades on goods to Iraq. The printer had a virus that spread through the air defense network.
This hoary April Fool's joke lurches into the sunlight again, thanks to GMontag. Go back to sleep, and shame on whoever moderated this up.
---
"The 1991 Infoworld April Fool's story written by reporter John Gantz about a National Security Agency-developed computer virus smuggled into Iraq from France hidden in a chip in a printer continues on with a life of its own a full eight years after its genesis. The joke piece about the virus that attacked the Iraqi air defense computer network during the Gulf War was given a shot in the arm late last year by James Adams' book on information warfare, "The Next World War." Adams had been hooked by the original April Fool, US News & World Report, which had passed on the hoax as fact in its book on the Gulf War, "Triumph Without Victory," in 1992.
In the March 1999 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, at the end of an article on "information warfare," science reporter Jim Wilson takes the sucker-bait: "In the days following the Gulf War, stories circulated that [information warfare] weapons had been unleashed on the Iraqi air defense system. According to these accounts, French printers exported to the Iraqi military were intercepted and equipped with special chips developed by the [National Security Agency]. On these chips were programs designed to infect and disrupt the communications systems that linked anti-aircraft missiles to radar installations."
Popular Mechanics, a magazine seemingly aimed at a readership that gets an erection over stories about the amount and variety of bombs that can be dropped on foreigners by a B-52, can be found on almost any neighborhood newsstand.
More good company: A few months ago ex-CIA chief William Webster and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave were also gaffed by the Gulf War virus hoax in a Center for Strategic and International Studies report entitled "Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism, Cyberwarfare."
Perhaps it is time for the publisher of Infoworld to consider charging for reuse of the magazine's April Fool's joke."
---
Helevius
What are the cyber-warfare plans of OTHER countries? Is America in the lead on getting organized on this?
I just happened to spend time last week at a talk given by an Army Intelligence officer (keep in mind that the Army does about the least amount of high-tech crap of any of the armed forces).
Basically, there's only one country with major cyberwarfare plans, and it's China. China maintains a standing segment of its army trained specifically in cyberwarfare, and actively conducts research in it. We have far fewer resources in this than China does.
May we never see th
Junis hammered it out on his Commodore 64 from the deserts of Afghanistan in retaliation to the U.S. presence there.
It's ALL TRUE!
... gives a whole new meaning to the term "Cluster Bomb".
One link from slashdot and your cluster is totally wasted.
There's not a hell of a lot of support for a land Iraq war over here. More than anywhere else, but not a hell of a lot. UK citizens (not gov't) are against it, and just about everyone else is against it.
It's more along the lines that we just don't *care* enough to run around lobbying to stop it. Lots of work, not much benefit. And Bush *really* likes waging war.
May we never see th
The pending Iraqi war promises to deliver quite the display of modern, smart technology well beyond what we saw in '91.
Smart enough to know the difference between enemy soldiers and a wedding party?
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
First, the Internet infrastructure in Iraq will be minimal and the government will not trust it enough. Individuals in such a STalinist society are continully looking over their shoulders, anything written down can and will be held against them. If it is written down it must be on physical paper, stamped and then signed. This is not Western Europe.
Second, one of the few outside sources of information is the Internet along with Satellite TV.
Lastly, the regime usually can switch off all international access very quickly. Do they really want to encourage this if this is where the potential revolutionaries are getting information.
See my journal, I write things there
If they start DOSing people, that is probably a violation of their AUP. Someone should warn them that the telcos will shut off their connections!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The pending Iraqi war promises to deliver...quite a display
It seem to have escaped you that there are humans getting killed by this "firework". They have family, brothers, sisters, friends. Ever wondered, how one becomes a terrorist?
"It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in." --General Colin Powell [When asked about the number of Iraqi people who were slaughtered by Americans in the 1991 "Desert Storm" terror campaign (200,000 people!)]
Interesting thought here - how much cyberwarfare will end up automated? Will people develop automated defenses to "hack back", considering how fast virii and attacks can spread?
.
Now imagine one attack triggering off retaliation, that in turn triggers off others, then others . .
Forget Slammer's 15 minutes of fame. We can have a cyberwar in 15 minutes!
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
They can fix problems quickly. They will not rely on the software of the country attacking them.
I'm going after the admin of the Iraq (.iq) TLD!. No, wait.
Finally, a reason to be proud of being in the chAir Force!!!
Good old Chair Born Rangers!
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
So, what they really are going to do is post a news story with as links www.government.iq and www.army.iq and let the
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
My point was that the scientists who worked on the bomb imagined it would be used against Hitler--they were wrong. They had no control over where their "baby" was used.
It always amuses me whenever I read these types of tirades.
Your sense of superiority must indeed be a constant source of fun to you and to all those around you.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
"Rules ?!? In a knife fight ?!?"
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
Me too, and for pretty much the same points as you, though I'll put a lot of other similar motivations in on the Bush side.
As for Hussein, IMHO he's a thug - a fairly bright thug, but still a thug. He's nowhere near a Hitler-Class Evil Genius.
Also IMHO, we now have a case of two wrongs, and it's almost impossible to figure out how to do the right thing. It's entirely possible that war with Iraq is necessary, but there has been so doggone much smoke cast about by now that it's impossible to see clearly. The pro-war camp may well be right, but I suspect for the wrong reasons. The anti-war camp probably has the right reasons, but I suspect that they're probably wrong.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
HTML "programmers": enlisted privates
RedHat certified: USArmy officer
ten years Unix sysadmin: noncommissioned sargeant
open source project leads: USArmy captain through colonel
Linux kernel maintainers: USArmy four star general
Cisco cert: USMC
FreeBSD sysadmins: Delta Force
OpenBSD sysadmins: Airborne Rangers
Oracle DBA's: Navy captains
MCSE: cannon fodder
MCSE who didn't patch SQLServer: dishonorable discharge
Hell, if I get to spend time on the firing range with some MCSE's, sign me up. See real USArmy rank hierarchy here.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Bush seems to have an "at all costs" attitude which even includes freedom.
#> disable power.output !hospitals
telnet radar
#> redirect to root@army.mil
telnet allbiologicalweapons
#> detonate
I'm sure these things will just be conventiently plugged in to the internet.
I agree. If you wish to make a more general increase in national security, you probably want to put a lot of effort into processing and distributing intelligence information properly. Weren't the findings about the 911 intelligence surprise that the signals picked up by the intelligence services were so strong that they could have / should have investigated further?
Then again, by developing a "cyber warfare" program, you also hopefully gain important insight into how to protect yourself. There might be a nice trickle-down effect of gained insights that can help the rest of us make better security policies. I wouldn't say the resources totally wasted, but possibly suboptimal in terms of return of investment.
Stop the brainwash
Hit em with all we've got... these fat pipes we have... then they unplug their internet connection...
In the real world, this would be the equivelant of all their troops, tanks, and missles just 'disappearing' off the face of the earth...
Doesn't sound all that great to me...
Snooze and you lose your sushi.
>disrupt Iraqi infrastructure you know, no army surrenders or have much problems because of this kind of thing. Mostly this only is bad for civilians. Remember what happened on England or Leningrad in 2nd war, they resisted bravely anyway. So, O mostly don't see any sense in doing this. Well, I don't see any sense in the war anyway, maybe besides lowering oil prices.
Saddam is _not_ going to disarm peacefully.
Agreed. That's not my question. My question is: So what? Why is this a reason to start a war?
Some claim that if an "appropriate authority" have made a "solid legal demand" for information and action, and that demand is ignored or rebuffed, then it is an appropriate excuse to "immediately remove by force" the person who failed to obey orders (with "UN", "Disarm Iraq" and "War" being the three example fillers). I happen to believe that there should be some more levels of negotiation in between failure to comply and ALL OUT WAR. However, if you like that attitude, how about if we reword that with "appropriate authority" being "US Congress" and "solid legal demand" being a request for VP DC to turn over information about his energy policy meetings, and HE OUTRIGHT REFUSED! Is that a sufficient reason to "immediately remove by force" Mr. DC? Apparently not. Hypocracy is so ugly.
Bush talks like Iraq is ready to jump out and take over the world unless we stop him. Go look at what really happened. Iraq attacked in 1990. UN responded. Iraq Defeated. Iraq withdraws. Iraq hasn't peeped outside their borders since 1991. CIA rates Iraq as non-threat unless attacked first. So what does Bush do? He makes a lot of noise. He claims Iraq is about to attack everyone. He says he's going to attack them first. He CREATES the threat situation where there was none before. Sure, Iraq wasn't disarming, but they weren't trying to start a war either. Of all the tin-pot dictators in the world, Saddam knows from personal experience exactly what will happen to him if he does. He may be a mad man, but he isn't stupid. He wants weapons to maintain power inside Iraq, not outside.
Now because of Bush's "Heroic, No non-since, Take control, Total domination threats", we have North Korea, a REAL international threat, breathing down our necks. What is "our hero" George doing about them? NOTHING! I guess he wanted an easy target for his "Pet Project" war, not a "real enemy" that he might actually have to negotiate with. You can't look all powerfull and right if you have to negotiate. Bad for the "Hero" image.
I can't say what the appropriate action is from now forward. Maybe war is the only out. Bush is claiming he can't back down now. It would look weak. But I think it was REALLY BAD to intentionally put us into this situation in the first place. WAR KILLS PEOPLE. The best way to save American lives is NOT TO GO TO WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE. Why was Bush so desperate to start one where it wasn't necessary? Obviously not to save lives. Probably it was to distract us from all the bad economic news, or maybe to avenge Daddy's image. Great idea. Economy in a slump, severe deficit. So lets make it worse by inventing an expensive war, runnin up the deficit even more and strangling the economy to death.
Forking Stupid Arrogant Idiot.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Sadly, we are America, land of the free and home of the brave, no longer.
I hear it got changed to "Land of the fee, home of the slave". How and when this happened is classified.
you are not good enough...
just a thought...
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
All these .WAR files I work with....makes me wonder. Web-ARchive they say, yeah right!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
I don't know who else has heard this but the Department of Defense recently contracted United Devices to work on smallpox reasearch, also called the patriot grid. Since there are about 2 million machines running the UD client, this would put a massive amount of machines at the DOD's disposal.
The UD client is closed source so there's no way of knowing if the software the the DOD wrote is totaly dedicated to testing smallpox drugs or launching a cyber attack.
Massive DDOS attack anyone?
Blaze a trail to the New World
We'll be able to shut down their 2 ATMs and reboot all of those illegally imported PS2s....that should crush them.
RAOFLMAO!
Bush giving guidelines about cyberwarfare is like a gibbon giving tips to a brainsurgeon!!
What an arse.
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
This one .... :-P
Happy War to you
i had a sig, once..
It's somewhat assured nowadays that a smart bomb will hit it's intended target and that any incidental loss/casualties will be localized. With cyber terrorism suddenly physical location doesn't matter as much. Could illegal hacking be masked by the campaign?
Oh, your website selling 'Peace in Iraq' bumber stickers was hacked? Gee sorry, our bad. We thought you were a military target.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
Not my intention to be troll here, but i quote:
"the Pentagon has stepped up development of cyber-weapons, envisioning a day when electrons might substitute for bombs and allow for more rapid and less bloody attacks on enemy targets."
Hacking to shut down radars and power from thousands of miles away can have no other cause than to support an aerial assault, and aerial assaults are never bloodless. They just want to cripple people so they cannot strike back. Maybe we should redefine the terms "blood" and "human beings" to fit the United States wardance more correctly. Schools and hospitals without power can only turn people more against US.
Fighting for peace is like fuxxing for virginity.
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
...he pissed off Gore in the last election... he could use some input from the inventor of the internet.
Snooze and you lose your sushi.
Well, then I guess there's really no use arguing with you, you're already prejudiced, which typically precludes all logic and reasoning. What evidence did you want, Blix wheeling in a vat of Anthrax? I didn't know the US was the only nation that relied on photographic and recorded intelligence...
this is only about oil so all yo' fat SUV's can keep rollin'
Ah. So you're racist as well as ignorant. Lovely.
while the "Arab Class" suffer for it
Ah yes, the poor 'Arab Class', with some of the highest per capita incomes in the world. And since when is economics not a reason to go to war? I know you think that the US could roll off of oil in a couple of years, but realistically we, and most other developed and developing nations, could not.
So we have a political force in the middle east that is power hungry at best, and genocidal at worst, and they have the ability to destabilize the economy of the Western world--hell, probably the whole world. If you think the only thing that would suffer is SUV sales in this case, you're more than just a troll, you're just plain stupid.
Interesting, and good, point about the Ivory Coast. It immediately comes ot mind that the Ivory Coast is a former French colony. This doesn't justify them doing whatever they choose, but does lay a framework. One wishes Beligium had taken a more intelligent role in its former colony, Rwanda, regardless of international inattention.
With France/Germany's relevance here (when THOSE two agree, watch out), I'd like to hear them out. Instead we dispense a "you're either with us or against us" sort of doctrine; if you're against, you're "old Europe," whatever that means. If I were French I'd be pissed even if I thought Bush was right.
The international law of intervening in another country's internal affairs is complicated and ill-defined. But with Iraq we have not a former colony (though one could argue western meddling has a lot to do with Middle Eastern borders and problems) but a nation that is supposedly threatening *us* in the U.S. with some imminence. Alternatively, he is apparently in violation of UN resolutions dating from the last gulf war, and that should give us jurisdiction to coerce inspections or, if necessary, more. But the administration instead argues something called "pre-emptive self defense" that would supposedly authorize attacking anyone who could pose a threat to you some day. Imagine how many wars we would have if this were broadly applied -- India and Pakistan anyone? North and South Korea? I bet there are a dozen more. Hey, the longer we wait, the more bombs North Korea will have, and those bombs or bomb material may be for sale. They are already collaborating with the Pakistanis, our (ahem) ally.
Worst of all this, however, is that the proof is just not there. Yes, Hussein is interfering with our search for proof, but that doesn't prove he's got what we're looking for. And at the outset the Administration was pepared to act unilaterally and hastily; though they've backed a bit I think they revealed their basic philosophy and indifference to proof right there. That Saddam is a slimeball -- heck, my six year-old could prove that with a couple of press clippings. We have rarely intervened on the humanitarian basis alone, and here would kill thousands of Iraqi conscripts before getting anywhere near Hussein. Thousands of the people we are supposedly liberating. The Iraqi people, sadly, bear the burden of either Saddam or our invasion.
Speaking of bad guys, what happened to Osama bin Laden? And again, what about that nut in desperately poor North Korea who may have the bomb? Anyone else uncomfortable with the words "desperate" and "the bomb" in one sentence?
I can understand why you're on the fence. In a way I am, too. But I'd be all the more so if I thought the Administration were on the fence, too, rather than heeding the advice of neocons over generals. Notice that Powell, who was keeping a low profile is now center stage; the folly of ill-considered, unilateral action must have become clear. Notice Bush at least tentatively considering exile as an option for Hussein -- not that he'd ever accept it, but the consideration signals a retreat from wanting his head on a pike above all else.
Finally, and like the sole comment I should have made, absolutely yes bloodless methods of warfare are desirable, to save lives on both sides. After all, it is the victory and not the killing that, for us, is supposed to be the point. The violence diminshes su and our message. I was intrigued to learn that Timothy McVeigh was in a support role on the of the combat bulldozer (a specially outfitted tank) details that buried Iraqi conscripts alive in their trenches. He came away from it disillusioned, and crazier.
You may want to read this "reoslution" again. It does not sanction a pre-emptive war. Actually the UN charta explicitly states that military action against another country is only in accordance with international law if either world peace is at stake or your country has been attacked by the other country. On both accounts I do not see how Iraq qualifies.
Introducing the concept of a pre-emptive war is ludicrous. Already North Korea entertains the idea to start their own.
Afganistan was borderline, there has been no internationally accepted government, but Iraq is a whole different story. It will send a strong signal to the world that we left the stable post WWII area. Now it's a free-for-all, may the militarily fittest one survive.
If oil was the true problem they'd be digging up the artic at full blast.
... oh, except ... one.
.02/barrel to Russia, $50/barrel to USofA.
... guess what? It's not true.
...
... it says that this incident never happened.
... ? I'll leave you to read about it on CNN.
For starters: that's highly illegal (to dig up oil in the Arctic) and extraordinarily difficult.
Second, Iraq is bang squat right in the middle of the world, in case you didn't notice it.
It's in a *perfect* position to ship its ultra-high quality oil to *any* spot on the planet cheaply
The U.S., which happens to be a long fucking way away to ship oil to and from, and especially longer if you consider this one slight fact: the *demand* for American Oil will hit rock bottom if Iraq is available to ship its oil anywhere, because its *BLOODY EXPENSIVE* to ship oil from the USofA to its customers.
So why is the U.S. working so hard to stop this? Because Iraq's oil is better than Texan Grade, and closer to every single customer (except one), and, here's the rub, they're *WILLING* to fuck Americas economy by selling it at
America will be *bankrupt* if Iraq is allowed to sell its oil on the free market, don't you white-bread eating Citizens understand this? Your economy is based on your ability to sell oil on the world market. Iraq is a *serious* threat to that ability, so your self-elected 'government' - where's the armed millitia now, eh? - is sending in the troops to fight it off.
This is a War of Economy, and *nothing* else. This war is *nothing* but a cover operation to protect American Oil sales abroad for the foreseeable future.
War on Iraq is USofA's 'Internet Explorer', if you like.
The 'war for oil' thing doesn't make one shred of sense - so say the Americans win tommorrow, the oust Saddam. Okay so now magically all of the oil problems are solved?
What oil problems? Don't tell me you believe that there's a shortage of oil on this planet? Dude, the energy 'problem' is another one of those wonderful "diamonds are a girls best friend" campaigns that the Imperial 60's gave us, and hey
What's problematic about oil is not *having* it, it's shipping it to the people you want to sell it to
If it were truly about oil, the best way to get the oil flowing would be to buddy up with Saddam and turn a blind eye to his crimes - a man who has actually used Chemical weapons against his own citizens, but hell who cares it's just about oil anyways.
Yeah, coz you know the United Nations report on this so-called 'chemical weapons' attack on his citizens, you know
But the U.S. reports say
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
- neck
of the woods, support the President and what he planning for Iraq.That'd be the red kind, right? Tell your cousin I said hi.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
All this cyber warfare is all well and good, but wouldn't it be largely wasted against Iraq? I mean, they don't exactly have all that many computers that we can hit. Contrarily, the US is extremely reliant on computers and vulnerable to attack. Until one of our possible enemies is on the same level that we are, we should be concentrating much more on defending our own infrastructure than attacking someone else's.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The US is considering the use of 'cyber warfare' -- disabling the enemy's computer infrastructure through the use of viruses, hacks, and other methods -- in the near future. But get this, the issues being weighed are similar to those involving nuclear weapons. Do we want to set a precedent? Can we control collateral damage? Will we have to buy even more Microsoft licenses? Etc...
I like the thought of special opps having to install a server or router with a satallite hookup so some geek in the CIA can hack into the network. :)
i read awhile ago about going to cyberwarfare schools in libya and other well known terrorist states and how they all actively train and recruit people.. i'm wondering if any of it will matter if everyone just filters their country out but if they have people planted in teh states.. with decent terrorst-money funded connections and datacenters.. or maybe w/ teh money put into mobile technologies tehy would be a real, mobile threat.. of course there is no way to know so why worry about it ;)
War isn't just the result of the American people eating everything spewed from the propaganda machine... there is actually some reasoning behind the idea of war with Iraq. No one wants to send our kids over to die for no reason, but the fact of the matter is that Sadaam is a tyrant. Even if he currently has no weapons of mass destruction(which he probably does from all accounts) at the very least Iraq is nothing but a terrorist training ground waiting to happen. If Iraq's invasion of Kewait and the taking of hostages wasn't enough evidence of their motivations I don't know what is. They represent a threat to anyone within their sphere of influence. It should be obvious to most that the losses we will take in a war with Iraq are fewer than even a modest terrorist attack that could be staged from there. So this is our choice: we either allow him to continue building his arsenal until he has reached the point where he can do more serious damage(i.e. he developes a suitcase nuke), or we take him out now and free his oppressed people while we're at it. If other countries are not willing to help, that's not surprising... America has been saving your cowardly asses since WWI.
My Blog
This article says "an administration official ... declined to confirm or deny whether such planning was underway," possibly because planning is done and the attack has already begun? Think about it - if they want to overcome these fail safes, what's the best way to do it? Break into the systems that initiate/run them and disable them before the physical attacks even begin. So that would make such electronic attacks part of the preperation and planning for physical attacks.
If they plan on attacking physically in under six months (and I think Bush does, or at least would like to), then they would probably be breaking into the systems right now...
All circuits busy.
Bush supports thieves and is trying to build an kleptocracy
Do you understand that? Do you think that if Bush had energy policy for sale they would keep them from companies like Enron? If companies like Enron had access do you think they would hesitate to use it? They did buy some from VP Dick Cheney. Remember that?
Bush has shown a remarkable lack of restraint as to what laws and inquiries he will evade, as have the thieves. Remember a little incedent about a year and a half ago? Around October 16th?
THAT'S why he's doing this, genius. I would think it would be obvious.
If you disagree with my "facts", maybe you should check your yours first. Proof, Mr. Rutledjw?
Until Cheney hands over his papers on his involvement with Enron, I don't think he should have any right to ask the same from Saddam.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I never cease to be amazed at how people in US firmly believe in the propaganda from official media outlets. They don't have immunity for it and they will learn it in the hard way as we did. Anyway.
Forget human rights crap. US never cared about them when it was against their interests.
Proven amounts of oil are shrinking everywhere in the world except Iraq and Saudi and these countries will account for 50% of world oil reserves during nearest decades. It's well-known fact, but you ignore obvious facts.
- First, US worked hard to lure Iraq into attacking Kuwait. Note that everything started when Kuwait started draining neighbor Iraq fields and US signalled that Iraq can handle that situation (they were loosing serious money) with military force. The rest is known, but note that previously independed Kuwait is now US colony after war. If you want to force them to do something, you can order US troops who can swiftly deal with stubborn official and his loyal forces. Today we ignore that fact that US occupied Kuwait, turned it into the colony that can't have its own will and now Kuwait is under almost direct US rule. If things get tough Kuwaits oil will go directly to US at no cost except troops upkeep.
- But at that time it was impossible to invade Iraq because UN won't allow it. Now they are used to US driving its forces arond the globe, kurds are prepared for rebellion and US can split Iraq, taking oil fields and leave everything else to afghan-like chaos.
- Then comes Saudi. Remember that most terrorists at 9/11 were Saudis? It will take some heavy propaganda, but their country will be invaded by US soon -- may be 10 or 20 years.
- Then... as oil production becomes too energy consuming to be profitable humanity will have to find alternative energy source. The only one alternative viable power source is nuclear and US can't allow other countries rely on it because once it becomes common energy source you won't be able to control ALL reactors and other countries will start getting nuclear arms and thus immune to things that are going in Iraq (some lousy rockets without much brains but with simple nuclear charges will wipe all your carriers and bases and no sane neighbor country will allow you to build bases anymore on their territory and let carriers visit their waters). Thus whole world crisis is needed where other countries will suffer enough to be unable to build nuclear plants. Remaining plants could be bombed as Israeli did with Iraq plant, that's why such huge money are dumped into stealth bombers.
- When oil supply start going down humanity will have "methane pause", there are a lot of methane available (but not much), and currently about 93% of methane fields are in Russia. That's why I will go and vote even for communists or facists if they support upkeeping serious amounts of nuclear weapons able to wipe US. It's the only way to keep US at the bay, because as soon as they feel able to shoot down most our missiles and withstand nuclear blasts from these who come through new missle shield they WILL attack. Eh? You start saying something about human rights? Well, when Khasavurt accord established slavery regime in Chechnya with US help HALF OF MILLION russians were expelled, many thousands were killed. This fact got ZERO attention in US. Compare that with chechen refugees who got featured everywhere. Compare that with expelled Albanians (most of whom were in Kosovo because they sneaked there some decades before) -- they were useful. That's why I will support government that cares about MY nation and not abstract "human rights" which get bent at US will.
We as human race have to assemble and disarm US before they bring down civilisation.Well, I exaggregated a little. But this is where real interests lie. Governments may be different, be it "democracy", dictatorship, republic or something else, but geopolitical interests remains the same, no matter who acts as face of the country. It even doesn't matter what he says. Look who gets the profit.
Step 1: Spam Sadam's Email! Step 2: Put Iraq web page on Slashdot and give them the ?. effect! :)
You covered all his points with almost the same rebuttals I was going to.
Thanks for saving me some time!
Bravo!
It's refreshing to see that some folks around here have rational views and are well informed.
If someone expects me to die for them, they better give me a damn good reason, not "trust me. I know some secrets that I can't tell you."
So did you join the military (in which case you'd be court-martialed, since the word of your superior officer is considered enough), or did they reinstate the draft when I wasn't looking, or are you just on crack?
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
How does one define a "uniform"?
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I think YOU are also missing the point. Now an enemy that *could* have used the instantaneous communications cell phones would have afforded must rely on motorcycle courriers that may take hours or even days to transmit their message - or in the case when armies are on the move may miss them and *never* deliver their message.
I would agree that having these high-tech capabilities can blind the US military to the possiblity that their opponent may do something smart and low-tech that defeats our capabilities. General Van Riper very effectively showed them the cost of such an oversight - which is the entire point of such war games. But those low-tech work-arounds come at a cost (in speed and reliablity). In the short run Gen. Van Ripers low-tech couriers allowed him to set up and win *one* suprise attack (albeit a spectacular one). An unacceptable result for the US Military to be sure, but over the long run he is at a massive disadvantage - he cannot quickly or reliably communicate with his troops (especially now that we know to strafe motorcyclists when we see them).
Despite all the bitching and moaning about resetting the war game & cheating the "opposing force" of a victory the war game still performed it's function. You *know* the generals & military planners that were burned by that suprise attack have learned a very important lesson. The other function of the war game is to train for the most likely scenario - which is why they reset it after they got themselves wiped out - unless we are *planning* to be devestated in an initial attack it was pointless to continue the game in that state after the flaw in their thinking (which they are now intensely aware of) was revealed. On the other hand I think it would be very good to have war games that are more open ended where the US commanders have to adapt to suprises and defeats and have to come up with a few suprises of their own to claw their way back to a victory after getting their asses kicked.
Read the polls and weep-- the American people support going to war against Iraq.
But then again, I've never seen the facts get in the way of a good liberal rant.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I think one point that's overlooked (unless I missed it) is the fact that any long range cyber-attacks would take place over network infrastructure that the rest of us are using. Forgetting about the situation for a moment where a SEAL team with a token geek unplugs all of Iraq's servers, if we're thinking long range attacks, this is the Internet, not the army's private network. This is roughly the equivalent of dropping bombs from a commercial airliner. If Iraq tries to crack back and can't find the root, isn't it possible they'll just attack the closest hop to the army they can find? This could be disastrous for the internet all over the world. Please let me know if I am assuming something wrongly here.
Conclusion: Never buy a second hand printer advertised on http://www.ebay.iq/
Hate me!
I hope you like substandard or nonexistant medical care because H-1b doctors are all that's keeping that puppy going in a lot of areas. But even for H-1b people there are areas (like W. Virginia and S. Chicago) where they simply refuse to go. Thata's why we had J-1 visa waiver positions. The J-1 waiver program is getting phased out so you're going to be able to see the disaster in human misery that a citizen only policy will produce in miniature if you open your eyes and pay attention.
I also notice that nobody is bitching and moaning about J-1 visas which are less controlled, much easier to get, and frankly a better tool for terrorist use. H-1b visa holders are eligible to convert to green cards so there is a temptation not to take the martyr route. J-1 visa holders OTOH are almost always forced to leave the US except by very hard to find waivers mandating years of service in some dangerous hell hole.
I wonder why the anti-immigrants always rail about H-1b and never about J-1?Maybe it isn't about national security at all but nativism, pure and simple. We need to keep those furriners out!
Not!
Treaties are never intended to be "until all time," even if that is what the wording says. A country enters into a treaty because it sees a benefit to doing so. If the treaty stops being a benefit, or worse, causes a harm, that country has an OBLIGATION to withdraw from it. Remember a government is only accountable to its own citizens, not the rest of the world. That might sound unfair, but gunboat diplomacy usually works.
Another side note: if Congress empowers the President to do this, we have ALREADY backed out of that treaty. Reference the Supreme Court "Cherokee Tabacco Case". The Supreme Court ruled that laws passed by Congress supercede any previous treaties.
1r4q1 w1ll b3 0wn3d |3y 1337 U$ m1l1t4ry h4x0rz
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
They'll need a pretty big catapult to get them very far into Iraq though.
it's questionable whether you can just stick a democracy in a country that has no concept of one and have it thrive.
That doesn't say much for the Japanese and Germans. I'd say they've come a long way since we made them make some changes. I dare say that their democracies are thriving.
-- ignoring AC's since... well, always --
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
(ed's note: This proposal is an alpha draft. )
Guidelines for cyberattacks against FRIENDLY nations:
1. Do not attack from known US sites. (For example, hacking Britain from a dot-mil is a no-no.)
2. Only minor defacements permitted. (Minor is defined as "changing the official statements to support US policy".)
3. Play with foreign intelligence services. And please, TRY to win guys!
Policies for cyberattacks against NEUTRAL nations (e.g. Switzerland, Vatican City):
To hell with them. They don't care.
Policies for cyberattacks against HOSTILE and ROGUE nations:
1. Bomb the telecommunications facilities, power plants, nuclear facilities, and chicken farms (can't be too careful).
2. Repeat until dead^H^H^H^Hsystem failure.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
You have not been paying attention. Saddam's already been caught post Kuwait with active WMD programs because defectors who had worked in those programs told earlier inspectors where to look. We're talking tons of chemical weapons and no convincing evidence that they were ever destroyed. This is what the current inspectors are saying, not the US administration or some outside hardliner.
A little basic fairness would be in order.
That doesn't fix anything. The US isn't the only one with satellites. Can you imagine the furor if two days later Russia addresses the Security Council and says, here's *our* satellite photos of the same area at the same timestamp and the US simply lied about the evidence.
It would stop the drive for war with Iraq dead. By june, Iraq wouldn't even have sanctions against it. No US govt. official is going to sabotage US foreign policy that badly by presenting evidence that can be easily checked.
World peace was at stake in 1991 with the swallowing of Kuwait. We never signed a peace treaty with Saddam and neither has anybody else. He's in power only because we signed a cease fire and the UN went along with that.
When you have a cease fire in a war and one side violates the terms, the rule is simple, the other side gets to resume hostilities immediately. The US has bent over backwards to try to avoid war, Sec Council res 1441 is just the most recent example.
You obviously have no knowledge of the oil market.
The only oil exports we make are to Japan because it's cheaper to ship oil from Alaska to Japan and buy Venezuelan crude to replace it than for Japan to buy it from the Middle East and pay the pirate tax for shipping it through the Straights of Malacca. And btw, Russia is a major oil exporter and competitor to Iraq. I'm pretty sure they're not getting Iraqi oil except in lieu of cash for the money the USSR fronted them during the Cold War.
Beyond that, Iraq can't control where it's oil is going after they sell it. Price differentials just don't work because the low price consumers will up their buys and resell at a profit to the high price consumers.
Get a clue
That doesn't say much for the Japanese and Germans. I'd say they've come a long way since we made them make some changes.
Ever heard of the Weimar republic? The Germans were certainly familiar with democracy - but the first time we made them make some changes, it didn't stick.
It's true that the Japanese did not have a democratic society prior to the US invasion. But they did have an educated society, and a more complex social structure then "big man on top calls all the shots."
Democracy calls for a lot of personal responsibility and involvement; is the average Iraqi educated enough to understand the issues, and democratic enough not to give the keys to the country to the first dictator to walk by and promise everything?
Same logic applies to North Korea. Cease Fire for an even longer time but no peace treaty. The fact that this is so and that they were located on the axis of evil is what makes them so aggravated lately. I regard them as a much greater threat to world peace then Saddam these days.
From my point of view I can still not see how exactly Iraq is in violation of the terms of the cease fire and 1441. The inspectors are on the ground and the cooperation is probably as good as it gets in a 3rd world country like Iraq. Saddam was dangerous in 1991 I don't see that he is anymore.
I admit that he's an awful bastard and if there ever was a case for assassination, Saddam is it's poster boy. Yet, I have not heard any arguments that justfy a war that will kill many innocent civilians and enrage the Muslim world.
"Saddam is _not_ going to disarm peacefully."
IPFreely(47576):
Agreed. ...
I happen to believe that there should be some more levels of negotiation in between failure to comply and ALL OUT WAR.
In summary: IPFreely 1) Concedes that Saddam is not going to disarm without war 2) Advocates that we should continue to negotiate with Saddam.
Advoctacating that we negotiate while simultaneosly stating that negotiation will fails is evident self-contradiction. My purpose in noting that contradiction is not to make a case either for or against war. Rather, I wish to draw attention to the fact that IPFreely, slashdot user number 47576, is a fucking moron.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
for 6 years the Iraqis claimed they have 0, null, zero, zip active in biowarfare. Then a defector appeared who worked high up in the program and spilled the beans. The Iraqis then admitted to running a program. The same was true for their nuclear and chemical programs.
The production paperwork for an awful lot of Vx gas was discovered by the last round of inspectors but there never was any provision of proof of destruction. Vx is very nasty stuff and enough is in Iraq's hands to make the populations of a few cities completely disappear. Then there's the mustard gas, the anthrax, the botulin (sp?) toxin, and the list goes on.
The cooperation is nowhere near as good as it gets. Take a look at South Africa for a practical example of a better situation of disarmament cooperation or even Romania which had a nuclear program that successfully seperated U-235 (the one part of the nuclear production chain that Saddam hasn't figured out). They announced that the previous (communist) govt. had a nuclear program, brought the IAEA inspectors to the labs, helped the IAEA inspectors pick their jaws off the floor when they saw what was there and shut it all down. They ended up getting a nice CANDU nuclear complex out of it all (Cernavoda 1-4) which is exactly how the NPT treaty is supposed to work. Small states stay non-nuclear in exchange for help with peaceful nuclear programs for energy.
Just fill a few C5-A's with AOL CD's and 1000 free hours to every one.
The Iraqi internet will be clogged by room spam bots, and offers to look at naked women.
There will be no way for military traffic to get through
cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
When the US bombs water treatment plants killing hundreds of thousands with biological toxicity is that considered high tech or low tech? "Destroy the infostructure?" with a more honest approach to language it would be called biological warfare against the Iraqi people
They'll probably end up DDOSing the entire Eastern Seaboard. Either that or somebodies home page from their wedding.
Can't tell you how much I wished that Saddam would have been taken out 1991. Unfortunately history never repeats. This Gulf war will operate in a very different environment.
There are a lot of good reason to not oppose the coming war, mainly because the removal of Saddam is a noble goal (best summarized here).
Yet, the current administration and Blair for all their combined talents did not motivate this well enough. If the majority of Europeans (not talking governments here but polls) think that this is about Oil, the Muslim media (most of them government controlled) will never buy into it.
That is why many European governments take the stance that more patience could very well pay off. It's not like only many Europeans see it that way, some former CIA analysts put together this open letter to Bush very much advising the same.
The UN is by its very design a fragile entity with one simple objective: Keep the status quo, try to make open war on a world wide scale impossible. Its design as a result of the collective experience of the death toll of WWII. This framework worked pretty well for a very long time. To scrap it just to hasten to get Saddam removed is ill conceived. The UN will have to become something else over time or perish, but such processes take a long time and have to be managed carefully. It'll take many little steps and compromises. The EU process has shown how different countries can merge to something bigger and better. In essence such a process could serve as a template to truely unite all civilized countries.
I lived in the states and I lived (mostly) in Germany (for my wife it's the other way around).
I do nor share you view regarding our politics. The EU is an achievement of many generations of European politicians. The economic integration has worked for a long time, even the euro seems to do just fine, there are no borders any longer, a EU constitution is on the horizon, and if Rumsfeld continues his rants we will have a EU army much quicker than I anticipated.
Please do not confuse communism with socialism or social-democracy. The latter is about well balanced welfare, and this balance will continuously have to be adjusted. In an open society these adjustments are always a political struggle and cause some friction and bad press. The welfare societies have managed for more than half a century. The concept as such is deeply ingrained in Europe, well across the political spectrum. In fact what qualifies as conservative in my country would be considered a die heart liberal in the states.
I always wondered about this differences. The only explanation that I came up with is somewhat sad: Americans don't like the idea that their tax money goes to support other American's in need, because in an country of such diverse ethnic mix the solidarity between the citizens is just way lower than in older more homogeneous nation states.
No wonder they've been putting this war off for so long--They had to wait until Mitnick got out. ;)
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Whenever I see anything with the word "Cyber" used, it instantly makes me think the source has no clue about anything related to technology.
When was the last time any respectable technology expert used the word "Cyber" ?
Scott
Since much of the current government over-spending is for military, why not make those guys shoulder their fare share of the burden?
Please provide me with a link that quotes Blix or an IAEA official stating that Iraq has been obstructive the last couple of months.
It still very much looks to me as if the inspectors could get a handle on this.
If the states were willing to dig in untill fall I'd bet that many countries were inclined to help them finance the operating cost of keeping so many troops stationed on Iraq's borders. Half a year more patience would send a strong message, that this is not about oil nor retribution but about international justice. (On a side note: By than the Venezuela strike will hopefully be over making this whole endavour less risky for the world economy).
It is not possible to hack a computer system just because you decide to do so. Hacking relies on discovering flaws, often by accident.
Throwing money at a group of people to hack a system which could well be secure is a risky gamble.
And do you honestly think that iraqs key warefare systems are connected to a publicly accessible system like the internet?
I think internet access from within Iraq would be a big threat for the US because there would be a hole in the media control they want to establish (clean war). So what they can do with "Cyber-Warfare" is to prevent american people from seeing cruel pictures of war - and in turn to keep them thinking that everything is allright...
With the media abuzz and critics ranting, George Bush gave a speech to further clarify his plan for cyber warfare. "We have firsthand evidence that Iraq has computers. As we all know, an evil mind only does evil things, and if you don't believe me pick up a Bible like the good Catholic American you are. Suddam is undeniably using these computers to generate weapons of mass destruction. We also have word from a classified source that Suddam is hiring computer people to make programs that when you run them do horrible things to computers other than those in Iraq." Bush continued the speech speaking about patriotism and his ability to have the knowlege and wisdom of God. He also invented three new words, and became the first person to somehow misspell a word while trying to pronounce it aloud. Stay tuned for more mind numbing details.
http://mediagoblin.org/
It's very interesting to think about how the law of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions (International Humanitarian Law, I'll call it IHL) fit into this. It's also somewhat frightening. IHL regulations will cover this sort of thing somewhat - for example, using computers to direct attacks toward the civilian population is directly forbidden.
The problem is, a lot of this law is not fully developed. I went to a talk 2 months ago about "Cyberspace and the Law of Armed Conflict." The person giving the talk is a head lawyer for the Red Cross's IHL division. He said that talk was about the first given on that topic; it is a very new issue of international law. The problem with new issues is they tend to be developed as they play out - so the loudest voice will often make the law.
Here is more information about IHL.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Most of what I know about IHL comes from the Red Cross, whose purpose is to preserve international humanitarian law (according to the Geneva Conventions).
It is to destroy a information source they cannot control otherwise. It is to prevent the rest of the world from seeing something real about the war (remember vietnam?) or some propaganda from the other side.
wake up,look at your calendar, it's 1984...
If a govt. runs OSS, everyone has access to the source, including enemy govts. So, if I know govt. X is running Linux, I hire a bunch of hackers to find weaknesses in the security, which should be a lot easier when I have the source available. Rather than report them, however, I catalog them, and the one's that are still remaining when war breaks out I use against enemy computers. Of course, given MS is handing out source to govts. now, they're facing the same problem.
Vote for Pedro
Hmm, well, here's a defector who worked on the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission for 30 years, and says that the nuclear program is ancient history.
I might add that if Donald Rumsfeld didn't like the gassing of the Kurds and the other atrocities, maybe he should have raised the issue after he shook hands with Saddam Hussein during a 1983 meeting, instead of inviting the Butcher of Baghdad to expand his military and business ties with the United States.
Give me one example of a time when Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction without the support of Ronald Reagan (esp. note 33), and I'll reconsider the idea that Iraq is an imminent threat to America.
Agreed that war is the health of the state but you lose sight that we can actually lose this war and the powers that be certainly don't want that. It is important to understand what kind of 2nd class jim crow like system these islamist nutcases want to impose on us.
Islam has this unfortunate tendency to kill its reformers. When we get the balls to host all the heretics and protect their lives by going after those who issue death fatwas against them, the war will soon be over.
All that needs happen is for people to start realizing that muslims don't have 1st amendment protection equal to jews and christians. It's not government repression that's the problem though, it's that our govt. doesn't take it as seriously when an islamic jurist sentences a US citizen to death as they would if the Archbishop of Canterbury would do it.
They should keep it simple.
Vote for Pedro
Here's a link and below, some relevant quotes showing various recent acts of Iraqi bad faith.
"Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed the inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace."
" I turn now, Mr. President, to the key requirement of cooperation and Iraq's response to it. Cooperation might be said to relate to both substance and process. It would appear from our experience so far that Iraq has decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, notably access.
A similar decision is indispensable to provide cooperation on substance in order to bring the disarmament task to completion through the peaceful process of inspection and to bring the monitoring task on a firm course.
An initial minor step would be to adopt the long overdue legislation required by the resolutions. "
" In this updating, I'm bound, however, to register some problems. The first are related to two kinds of air operations. While we now have the technical capability to send a U-2 plane placed at our disposal for aerial imagery and for surveillance during inspections and have informed Iraq that we plan to do so, Iraq has refused to guarantee its safety unless a number of conditions are fulfilled.
As these conditions went beyond what is stipulated in Resolution 1441 and what was practiced by UNSCOM and Iraq in the past, we note that Iraq is not so far complying with our requests. I hope this attitude will change. "
" I'm obliged to note some recent disturbing incidents and harassment. For instance, for some time farfetched allegations have been made publicly that questions posed by inspectors were of an intelligence character. While I might not defend every question that inspectors might have asked, Iraq knows that they do not serve intelligence purposes and Iraq should not say so."
" Demonstrations and outbursts of this kind are unlikely to occur in Iraq with initiative or encouragement from the authorities. We must ask ourselves what the motives may be for these events. They do not facilitate an already difficult job, in which we try to be effective, professional, and at the same time correct. Where our Iraqi counterparts have some complaint, they can take it up in a calmer and less unpleasant manner."
" These reports do not contend that weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq, but nor do they exclude that possibility. They point to a lack of evidence and inconsistencies which raise question marks which must be straightened out if weapons dossiers are to be closed and confidence is to arise. They deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq, rather than being brushed aside as evil machinations of UNSCOM.
Regrettably, the 12,000-page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that will eliminate the questions or reduce their number."
" I turn to biological weapons. I mention the issue of anthrax to the council on previous occasions, and I come back to it as it is an important one. Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.
Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction. "
The State of Kuwait has a great web site that documents much of Iraq's brutality. And don't forget Saddam's goons cheering the crashing of the Columbia space shuttle. "We are happy that it broke up," Iraqi government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.
The Iraqi leadership has been painted correctly.
I have the strong suspicion they have plans too.
[ Paranoia Mode ON ]
At least with open-source and having people trained in programming, I feel we have a pretty good chance of surviving a cyber-attack... kinda like I would feel confident of crossing a desert if I knew we had trained mechanics and machinists in the envoy.
What scares the royal pookie out of me is that I am encouraged to "be a team player" and work with proprietary systems I have no idea how to troubleshoot the innards should I have to. Even having the tools to do so may be illegal (under DMCA).
Maybe its a big fear of mine, but I keep seeing these things coming up that to me should not exist.. such as loopholes in the code which allow worms to literally bring down networks of these proprietary products in seconds flat. Who really knows how to fix it on that level? I have long had the suspicion that these may be intentionally be placed in the code... but if someone finds them, only *then* they will issue a fix. Yes, please consider me a bit paranoid here, but personally, I am scared crapless that my country may depend on something it does not understand how it works. Geez, a lot of it is not even coded here! And even if it was, the aura of secrecy going on only leads me to speculate maybe somebody is up to something no good.
Maybe our government is working with the providers of proprietary software to install special ..er.."features" for them that nobody else is supposed to know about.. but then, once you have security by obscurity, how can you be certain that you are the only one that knows about it... and is a party that will sneak for you - will they sneak for someone else too? What other "bugs" exist which could bring down the system or render any security methods used by an organization moot? ( I use "bugs" in quotes because the people who want them in place may have paid well to have these "features" installed in the software. ).
Again, I restate I could be well into paranoria here, but when I consider how important the computational infrastructure is to us, I consider the need for many people, not just a select few, to understand it intimately, and know exactly down to the hardware level exactly whats going on, how it works, and how to fix it if it doesn't. We have many engineers which could probably walk into any other critical infrastructure and operate it if they had to. I, for one, have worked in power plants and oil refineries, and feel I could walk in and bring one up if I had to... but then all the gauges and design specs are in plain view.
Forgive me if my rant is a bit long, but frankly, I am scared. Scared of what I do not know. Even more scared because I percieve there are many people in power taking steps to make sure that we, as a public, are to be kept ignorant of the inner workings of something I perceive so critical to our civilization. (DMCA).
[ paranoria mode still on ]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Thank you for this link. That was truely informative. Of course you can read it more than one way. After all Blix also said:
"While the inspection is not built on the premise of confidence, but may lead to confidence if it is successful, there must nevertheless be a measure of mutual confidence from the very beginning in running the operation of inspection. Iraq has, on the whole, cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field.
The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect. And with one exception, it has been [without] problems. We have further had a great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good.
"The environment has been workable. Our inspections have included universities, military bases, presidential sites and private residences. Inspections have also taken place on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest, on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. These inspections have been conducted in the same manner as all other inspections. We seek to be both effective and correct."
There is no doubt that this level of cooperation stems solely from the military pressure on Iraq and I very much welcome this pressure. Yet, reading this transcript just reaffirms my earlier assumption that half a year more patience could truely help the cause.
This guy wants to be sure that he can nuke the United States:
"That's why I will go and vote even for communists or facists if they support upkeeping serious amounts of nuclear weapons able to wipe US"
Slashdot values that +4 Insightful. Also at +4 Insigntful, United States=Nazi Germany:
"The US is now what Germany was in the 30's...".
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
FWIW, I was never entirely sure how I felt about THE Gulf War (not yet ready to call it the first Gulf War :) -- in terms of methods, I think the carnage was far more than necessary, and that we killed the wrong people, tens of thousands of conscripts as opposed to Republican Guard and, of course, the command. But like everyone I realized that once we'd let the snake out of the bag we had to do something about it. I think oil was a secondary motive, and "saving the Kuwaiti people" a distant third. (Odd fact, for all our talk about human rights, secular Iraq grants women more freedom than any other Arab state -- the ones that are our allies or at least neutrals.
So there was some botching before, during, and after the war, which we need to understand or we'll do it again. I'll give Bush the slack that 9.9 out of 10 dictators would've had a coup under the circumstances. On the other hand, why didn't we get behind the Kurds? Why did we let him fly his gunships? We muttered something about not being able to tell who the bad guys were (!). Whatever.
I have to emphasize there is little or no evidence that the Israel had anything to do with 9/11, any more than Saddam did. The reason cited by Al Queda was the stationing of our troops in their holy land, in cahoots with the weak Saudi rulers. The Israel/Palestine pretext appeared after the fact. Now, if maintaining a presence in the Gulf is a good idea, we'll take our lumps. But the terrorist attacks, however unjustly, are part of the price. People all over the place hate us, but well-financed, educated, fanatical ones are rare. 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi, not to mention you-know-who and his staunchest supporters.
Do we change our policy because of the attacks? God no! Ironically the terrorists box us in! Would we bother with all those troops if we'd toppled Saddam in the first place? Maybe. I guess we should recall that we did flee Lebanon after the Marines were killed, but then oil wasn't at stake, or national honor; still it did make it look like bloodying our nose would work, and that was the theory behind Saddam's disastrous choices in the war, and the 9/11 attacks (though the latter, granted, were blind hatred, the Al Queda heirarchy would like to dispose of the House of Saud -- not inconceivable).
Actually, he did. Prior to invading Kuwait, he specifically asked the United States what their position would be to such an action. The US response? The George Bush Sr. administration replied "We don't care.". So either GB set him up for a fall, or he changed his mind and his policy after the fact. Either way, it looks to Saddam (and probably a few others) like a big fat lie and that the US can't be trusted.
And by the way, the quote to which you are refereing was meant to describe Saddams position and experience after the gulf war, not before. You did read the whole paragraph didn't you?
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Didn't mean to misrepresent the American people in my earlier posting. I have very strong sympathies for Americans, who I think are indeed (exceptions on individual basis non-withstanding) an extraordinarily friendly and supportive people.
Yet, this does not necessarily translate to foreign politics mirroring these characteristics. The only explanation that I have for this is that there is a break-down of the democratic feedback loop when it comes to foreign policy.
I think that since WWII the quality of American foreign policies decreased at an alarming rate. From my point of view there is one major culprit: The quality of American media. If you compare it to the Pre-WWII and WWII times it is now at the utmost low. American journalism used to be a beacon for the free world. Nowadays it'll doesn't even qualify as joke because it's just too sad an affair.
I find it interesting that if you conduct studies in Muslim countries even there a large majority of people draw a clear distinction between Americans and the politics of the US (this finding is quite astounding given that they are certainly exposed to an extreme media bias). It goes without saying that this distinction does not carry over to extremist fringes. But even Osama himself apparently felt the need to justify the attacks on civilians in saying that the US taxpayer's dollars go into the funding of Israel and military oppression.
It is indeed telling that North Korea does not seemed to be bothered in the least that the EU stopped funding a substantial relief program after they announced to reinitiate the work on their nuclear facilities. In this case the reason is quite simple: North Korea was included in "the axis of evil" next to Iraq. The US did not sign a treaty that guarantees that North Korea won't be attacked. The US military is the only military force in this region that North Korea has to be afraid of. Iraq will be attacked. They are very afraid now. Being paranoid and afraid is the hallmark of this regime. But every psychologist will tell you that a paranoia follows a certain logic. If Bush did not include them in his "axis of evil" speech the world would be a safer place now. Politicians have to watch their words carefully. It looks to me as this is a completely alien concept to the people that make up the current US administration.
To wrap this up I am totally with you: "There is more than one way to run a country, and what is right for one, is not right for the other." Funny thing is (I do not make this up) that I just read somebody saying the very same thing in an interview. A Muslim fundamentalist who currently seeks political asylum in Norway. He is on the US terrorist suspect list, but he made a very plausible case that he doesn't care how people live in the US or Europe but that he wants to see a Muslim fundamentalist regime in power in his own country.
P.S.: Skipped the health care bit, because this comment has to come to an end eventually. Just one tidbit: I have a private health insurance at a reasonable cost. Me and my wife plan to return to the states and I would like to keep it (the rational is: Since my parents and my sister a doctors I'd rather seek medical treatment back home in case some serious ill befalls me). What really upsets me is that I could go anywhere but the states without having to pay more. In the states I will have to pay a significant higher amount to keep my insurance than in any other country in the world. The costs for medical treatments in the US are just so much higher than anywhere else. Can't tell you how much that annoys me.
P.P.S.: Won't be going into the American race issue, although I think you should keep in mind that many things that people love about America outside America (especially music) wouldn't be there without African Americans. A colleague told me once that he can't stand the stuffy British English accent, he thought American pronunciation sounds so much better, but only the African American pronunciation he believed to be truly cool. Does affirmative action work and is it justified? I have no clue. What I know, and there I think we are in perfect agreement, is that racism breeds racism and as such the racism of African Americans towards "Caucasians" is reactionary in every sense of the word.
Democracy calls for a lot of personal responsibility and involvement; is the average Iraqi educated enough to understand the issues, and democratic enough not to give the keys to the country to the first dictator to walk by and promise everything?
Right, and the US is doing so much better in all those areas...
We aren't perfect; but the average voter knows what the issues are, and has some knowledge about the issue. Furthermore, we believe in democracy; no general or monomanic is going to get support if he just declares himself dictator, and people going by the back door are still going to have the ACLU and friends and a bunch of far-right jumping all over it.
That would remove all doubt, wouldn't it. But I guess we'll never see that.
;-)
No probabily not, cuz the French and Germans have the recipts!
-=-