Slashdot Mirror
Grand Challenge 1, Competitors 0
Ivan writes "According to the DARPA Grand Challenge Status Board, 2 bots were withdrawn before the race started and the remaining 13 were all disabled. Red Team and SciAutonics II tied at 7 miles, a bit short of the 142 miles required." CNN has coverage and interviews.
The only reason he is doing is this because they are not commiting the right resources to it. If they would unleash the full might of the US military and drop a few nukes they would get his ass.
They are committing more military.. Operation Mountain Storm is now commencing with troops moving to Afghanistan's southeastern border to find Osama. I don't really see what difference capturing or killing him would make anyway.. other than making him a martyr and giving a slight political boost to Bush. Has it really made any difference that Saddam was captured?
Salon has a piece analyzing Bush's approval rating. Dubya's approval rating has only increased in three months, Sept 2001, the month the war started, and the month they captured Saddam (who hasn't been seen much). The other 30+ months, his approval rating has decresed between .6 and 1.6 points, bringing it down to the current 45%. The only obvious event that would jack his rating back up is capturing Osama. They have seven months to do it.
-B
With the constant stream of disasters coming out of the Bush administration ( Iraq is fun, isn't it ), it is actually quite important for the current power structure to demonstrate that they were 'right' in as many ways as possible. One way to do that is to capture Osama, and they are willing to spend billions of dollars in doing so ( at the expense of average US workers, not to mention the whole country of Afghanistan ). And yes, it would make Osama ( more of ) a martyr if he were captured, and that would cause an increase in the rate of terrorist attacks on US targets ( and idiotic regimes like Australia that follow the US's war path ), and this will just cause the US to turn up the heat in the war on terrorism, taking advantage of the polarisation of society that the fear of terrorist attacks cause. So it's a win-win situation for Bush.
"It is a desert environment and that is what future battlefields of the US will be," program manager Col Jose Negron said.
...
...Or does he know something that Ali Khamenei should probably guess?...
I guess North Korea and Taiwan can forget about US joining any UN peacekeeping intervention.
I am surprised that Col. Negron has no confidence the exit strategy from Iraq
Vapourware WMD hunt in Iran next presidential term anyone?