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SpaceShipOne Rockets To 68,000 Feet
ehartwell writes "According to Space.com, Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne flew its first rocket-powered flight today, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' 12-second first flight. SpaceShipOne's engine burned for 15 seconds, pushing it to Mach 1.2 (930 mph) and a peak altitude of 68,000 feet. To win the X-Prize they need to reach 330,000 feet twice within 2 weeks."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
(+1 bonus pre-emptively removed for being offtopic)
The UN had its thumb up its ass and was unwilling to do a thing to stop the murder, rape, and torture carried out on a daily basis in Iraq.
The US is not the world's police force. If you are trying to justify going to war with Iraq based on how poorly its citizens were treated by their leaders, then by that same logic we should be invading North Korea, China, and a host of smaller nations.
Emperor Dubyah "justified" his invasion by lying to the citizens of the US about an alleged threat against them when there was none. If the case was so strong based on the way Hussein treated his people, then why didn't he use that as the basis for his argument?
The answer is obvious - while most Americans will support a war to prevent an imagined danger against their own country, they will NOT support one to remove a foreign dictator who has no effect on them and never will. Dubyah is a deluded fascist, but he's smart enough to figure that out.
It's funny how Republicans wanted to impeach Clinton for lying about a blowjob, but they don't see anything wrong with their president having his lackeys fabricate evidence to support a war that gets hundreds of dedicated US soldiers killed.
If Howard Dean had his way...
If Ronald Reagan hadn't had his way - financing Taliban "freedom fighters" in the 80s and allowing the US to sell Hussein weapons - we wouldn't have gotten into this mess in the first place.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I applaud the way you care about all the world's citizens as equals. Most Americans care only about Americans, and screw everyone else. You are, then, no doubt as concerned about all the other tyrants and dictators and oppressors in the world. You may want to take a look at the human rights records of some of America's closest allies. And some of the nations that joined the "Coalition of the Willing" to oust Saddam. And take a look at some of our not-quite-close allies, but pals as long as the checks keep coming. Using human rights as a scale, who would you invade next?
Bonus question: why would the US government fine you $50,000 if you travel to Cuba, while China is A-OK? They both suffer under tyrannical regimes known for brutally crushing opposition and are known for human rights abuses. What's the dif?
To get rid of that cancer on the human race? Absolutely. The UN had its thumb up its ass and was unwilling to do a thing to stop the murder, rape, and torture carried out on a daily basis in Iraq. It was unwilling to enforce any of the eighteen Security Council resolutions passed against Iraq. It looked the other way while France, Germany, Russia, and North Korea kept selling Saddam weapons systems and related equipment. Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world on the same scale as Hitler and Stalin. That we eliminated that threat at a loss of hundreds (vs. the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands lost in your average war) is an acceptable trade for the millions in Iraq who are no longer under his thumb...or for the billions elsewhere in the world who are a little bit safer tonight.
So quick with your answer. You must not have much love in your life, I guess. Saddam was never a threat to anyone outside of the middle east, and he wasn't a threat to anyone outside of southern Iraq since 1991.
You forgot to mention that Saddam's death toll, which is by most estimates about three orders of magnitude greater, is no longer increasing.
17 Iraqis died just yesterday, 20 times as many as American solders. And tens of thousands of Iraqis died in the war. This is hardly the end of suffering in Iraq, but hopefully it will be the beginning of then end.
And incase you were sleeping before the war started, inspectors were back in Iraq before the war started. Hans Blix himself has said that military action was not necessary. How can you claim that UN demands were not being met when the people responsible for implementing those said they were?
In the end, this will probably a good thing for the people of Iraq, but I think it's doubtful that bush would have been able to gather the political support he needed if He'd tried to sell the war on a "Saddam is evil" meme in the first place. The reason we had to go to war now is because of the WMD that the administration claimed he had. Bush should not have lied to get us into a war. And if he wasn't lying, if he actually believed what he was saying, then that's far, far worse.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Not to run too far off topic with everyone else, but the 'why this nation and not that nation' questions are all fairly easy to answer. Why pick on Cuba and not China? Because China has a billion people in it and picking on them is more painful then not. It is the same reason why invading Iraq was considered, but not North Korea. The US can take over Iraq with a minimal amount of casualties, and we did. Even the losses we are taking right now are not that bad compared to all other past wars. Invading North Korea would have been horrific.
The US military went into Iraq not sure if Iraq had WMDs and not sure if they would use them. North Korea has many WMDs which are mostly chemical, though they are adding nukes the pile, and they would without a doubt use them. Not only would they use them, they would use them on civilians in South Korea. There is absolutely no doubt in this. A war in Korea would be horrific on the scale that would likely make all other wars before it since the World Wars look tame.
Now, the morality and cost of the Iraqi war are certainly fair questions, but the why is pretty obvious in my opinion. Why Iraq? Because it was the right place, at the right time, with the right excuse. WMDs were an excuse to try and build a democracy in the Middle East through military force. I imagine their hope is that Iraq will one day be like Japan, practically pacifist with a love of trade. So, in that regards it was the right place, the Middle East. It was the right time as the US is trying to crush Islamic fundamentalism, and while Iraq barely touched Islamic fundamentalism, it is near a horde of nations that do. Having a beacon of Western style democracy in Iraq at this time would probably influence the nations around Iraq pretty strongly. Finally, it was the right excuse. WMDs was the excuse. WMDs were not the reason, just the way to make the war 'legitimate'. You can't push a resolution through the UN saying "We need to invade because they are not a democracy." The UN has never done such a thing and it never will. They were however able to get it close enough to a legitimate invasion on the WMDs issue. It is like locking up a mobster for tax evasion. You are not really locking them up for tax evasion, it is just the only thing you can nail them on.
Like I said, the morality and (even bigger in my opinion) the cost of the war are up for question. The reason why Iraq of all nations is pretty clear. They just happened to the poor bastards who fit all the criteria.