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Videogame Character Threatens National Security?
Watchful Babbler writes "Apparently, 'the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April' was clear and definite: a reclusive millionaire had formed a terrorist group with the intent of launching chemical weapons attacks on Western cities. The White House was notified and the Director of the FBI briefed as the government raced to find information. But then, according to USNews.com, a White House staffer decided to Google for information on suspected threat Don Emilio Fulci and found him -- in a video game - Sega's action title Headhunter. No word on exactly which sources and methods came up with this gem, but word in the E Ring is that Fulci had issued the cryptic warning, 'You have no chance to survive make your time'."
Sounds like the government was trolled.
Could the world's most elaborate April fools be amiss?
too funny for reality.
Government sues Mario. Nintendo execs in jail...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Wow. At least we know their intel gathering stuff works.... It just can't tell reality from fantasy.
Only the purest of souls seek enlightenment. Everyone else just wants power.
Just recruit Mario Mario and his brother Luigi Mario. They're able to stop any trouble that comes their way.
Oh, you may need to pardon them for their mushroom usage, but it's for a good cause.
... or is terrorism winning?
It certainly feels like evey time we get a false positive we panic.
Of a very knee-jerk reaction to security here in the US... What I dont get is how Grade B (uncorroborated, domestic, single-informant) information winds up at the top of the threat matrix, unless someone was trying to play a joke?
...that the Princess has been captured again. Good thing Google is up to date on terrorist kidnappings too.
crazy dynamite monkey
I wonder if he was added to the CAPPS II system as a "no fly" person.
John.
I don't think the Dreamcast game Headhunter was ever released in the US. You can find PAL versions on eBay, and some game websites have old stories on the game, (for example, gamespot.com), but the stories don't indicate a release date, or if the game ever actually came out. Only in Europe and Japan apparently, although the sequel, Headhunter: Redemption is slated for US release on PS2 and XBox
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
hmm, was it the first by chance?
When asked for a name, he responded "I. P. Freely".
This links comes from what amounts to a trashy "dc insider" gossip column. Though, this sort of stuff happens all the time. People phone in bogus tips all the time. If they sound legit, they get investigated.
I also object to the articles description of Headhunter as "popular".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This isn't funny, for fuck's sake, this is downright worrying as hell. We're talking about the government with supposedly the most intelligence in possession of the most WMDs, the biggest army, the most firearms, the most money...and they start a level three alert over a goddamned video game character. I ain't gonna be sleeping easy tonight. Mod me down all you want, but this scares the living hell outta me.
nigritude ultramarine
Anyone care to explain this? According to Google it's some kind of TV show...
If the US can so call intelligence community can be fooled into sending out alerts based on a Sega game how hard can it be fore AlQuda to send out false threats to yo-yo with the servalince. Since all this does is tell real people to do things sooner or later they will get tired and ignore the warnings thus allowing for a real threat to go further then it would without the DOS attack. I mean the terrorist aholes should start scaring people left and right, force the threat level up and down. How much risk is there to leak false intelligance.. then not follow through. Sooner or later we will get fed up, let our guard down and whamo they get a free ride. Jebus I really should wash my gray hat its looking darker and darker every day.
"Against what?"
"Every single military installation worldwide!"
"Really? What did it say?"
"'All Your Base Are Belong To Us."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
The story is so silly it's almost unbelievable.
But then Powell used a Graduate Student's Thesis to justify a war against Iraq in front of the entire world.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Funny, I googled and got nothing but the news story. Even googling without the quotes doesn't give anything about the game.
Does the US Gov't have hooks into google to prevent "Terrorist" information from being found?
*NSA Laughs and nervously rubs neck*
Yeah, that Splinter Cell is just a silly ol' game too.
A the cryptic message "all your base are belong to us" was intercepted from a suspected terrorist cell. All US military bases on alert.
This way to the egress...
NYC sewer system may be target of a disgruntled mafia splinter group, ringleaders believed to be two brothers named Mario and Luigi.
paintball
That would explain the missing WMD's quite nicely :)
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
wonder if anyone in the white house did consider calling spiderman for help. keep watching the night sky if you happen to live in D.C...
That the government flunkies don't get out enough.
Don't they know that "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy"?
Perhaps we need to coin a new acronym.
How about "DSFR".
Do Some Freaking Reasearch.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
A relocation expert from sunny Guantanamo Bay will be coming by in a few minutes to assist you in understanding the heretical error in your ways. I hope you're photogenic.
April Fools was a little over a month ago...
Once this story gets out someone's going to realize that they can disguise an underground movement by naming it after a video game's bad guys. Then the FBI will think it's just a video game clan.
When I just googled, I saw nothing of the like... only 3 results, the usnews article was the top then some french article I didn't bother to read. Anyone know of this character or even the game? I'm not really a Sega person... speaking of which... Sega? When was the last time you saw a Sega? And htis happened last April.... hmm... something fishy.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Somebody better tell the US government there's flaming skull guys floating around too (and they look like they're up to no good).
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
We'll, then all the FBI has to do is plug in their Gameshark and enter the following codes...
Hero Is Immortal 24509328 36F055F8
Enemies Are Blind 24109228 36705568
hahaha.... you are s0 FUNNYIE! your the firstest pERSon! to mAKE THE MARIO FUNIE!
> 'the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April'
Slight typo, that was supposed to read:
'the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix day one last April'
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
In all likelihood this is an anomaly of the highest order. They probably got this from some data mining software that processes internet traffic. I'm not surprised that a program would pick this up and not realize that it's a fictional character.
Anyway, you have to expect that no system is perfect and that mistakes will be made from time to time. This was just one of those wacky mistakes. I'd sleep easy. The rest of what they are doing is probably accurate and affective. We'll just never know one way or the other. But since the country isn't a pile of ashes right now, I think the intelligence community is doing their job pretty well.
Blaze a trail to the New World
When I just googled, I saw nothing of the like... only 3 results, the usnews article was the top then some french article I didn't bother to read.
Anyone know of this character or even the game? I'm not really a Sega person... speaking of which... Sega? When was the last time you saw a Sega? And this happened last April.... hmm... something fishy.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Sorry Mario, but our princess is in another castle ...
*DrugCheese rants*
They've already kept steps to keep this dangerous terrorist from getting his hands on a handbook for computer crime.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Try googleing on "Don Emilio Fulci" and you will get two links. One is the story that we saw, and the other is in Italian.
Are we expected to believe that our security agents were able to decode a web page written in Italian? That's just asking us to believe too much.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Did anyone else read 'reclusive' as 'recursive'? What would a recursive millionaire do?
I don't see how so many of you conclude that the government doesn't know a real threat from a video game character. A threat can crop up in any one of a gazillion ways. Once made, they have to verify threats before they take them seriously. They did. They determined it was a video game character.
How else does it work? Magic? When a threat comes in, they use telepathic powers to determine that any given name is a real one and not a video game character? A quick google isn't to everyone's liking?
Dumbasses.
check here:
e ad hunter/
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/h
and here:
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/217586.asp
It's still an old game, but yes, it was brought to the US as a PS2 game.
Rumors among the jihadi-message boards say that Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have started communicating to each other and their followers "in the open", under code names "Darth Sidious" and "Darth Maul".
The National Security Agency said that comment it will not, but you mustn't underestimate the power of the Emperor.
I'd find this funny (as in ROFLOL) if it wasn't for the fact it cost the government money to produce and then disprove; AND, it took time away from the President, who, should have more important things to do...
Lame, really lame.
So, it seems that all you need to do to get a terrorist plot ignored is to frame it with the plot from a popular videogame ...
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Consider the Pentagon folks who looked at this "threat" and suspected sagely (and rightly) that it was too fanciful to be credible.
How closely do they resemble the Pentagon folks who, in early 2000, looked at jet-hijacking scenarios and suspected sagely (and wrongly) that they were too fanciful to be credible?
(See answer in back of book.)
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Fortunately, the FBI is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to buy entertainment systems for all their agents. Police are working round the clock to beat the game and defeat this criminal, the Bush administration is reinstating the draft to illuminate the threat, the government is commissioning programmers to build a ten-story Gameshark, and military units are already being convicted of abusing NPCs
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Upon learning that the threat was actually a harmless video game, all of the FBI agents sheepishly pulled their pants up from around their ankles.
They then proceeded to bash the game because of all the harm it could cause in warping the children who play it.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
There was a Whitehouse report a few decades back about a threat from some invaders, possibly from space. An alert staffer caught it at the last minute.
Law enforcement agencies all across the United States are searching for Tommy Vercetti. He is wanted for a string of felonies including (but not limited to) murder, assualt, battery, weapons sales, grand larceny, and above all else Grand Theft Auto.
Informatus Technologicus
People without moral or practical imagination--the types who have gutted our liberties with the Patriot Act, and led us to invade and torture Iraqis--exemplify the kind of simpleminded sorts who shouldn't be allowed to play M-rated video games.
Or run governments.
It's not like the White House cares for any sort of accuracy... It's a steamroller for ineptitude.
From How Bush Chose Stupidity:
"The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history."
"A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important."
"Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness."
"A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders."
I'm surprised the White House isn't requesting $100 billion to fight this new threat to our national security. After all, if we can COMPLETELY make up a fear like potential weapons-of-mass-destruction....
Wait until they find out that Don Michael Corleone is making a move to control the world's largest shipping company International Immobiliare.
They can't allow the majority of the worlds ships to be controlled ny a figure liket that.
While I won't say whether I agree with the war or not, a spontaneous parody is definitely in order.
In A.D. 2003
War was beginning.
Saddam: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal
Saddam: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you! We met in the '80s!
RUMSFELD: How are you gentlemen!!
RUMSFELD: All your Iraq are belong to U.S.
RUMSFELD: We are on the way to your weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam: What you say!!
RUMSFELD: You have no chance to survive make your time.
RUMSFELD: Ha Ha Ha Ha...
What is the E Ring?
If this isn't an April fools, maybe the parent should be insightful, not funny.
...to the Pong Fiasco of 83 when the US spent billions of black budget funds on a useless anti-pixel defense system.
However, following the link doesn't yield much else
Arthur C. Clarke got it right for once ;)
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...WMD.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
HAND, Simoniker!
Doh! Ignore this... next time I'll learn to read. :)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The alternative is to eliminate nonsense threats, like videogame villains, before they top the threat matrix. That's what security professionals do. Apparently not what the BushCo incompetents do. You trusted them on September 11, 2001, you trust them now, don't be surprised when you get screwed again.
--
make install -not war
I also heard that there was a lot of talk about an upcoming Revolution November of last year. But it turned out that there was absolutely no story, and it was nothing but a bunch of special effects.
K THX!
Come on folks, don't be naive. Just because this guy is a video game character does not make him any less a threat to national security. Do we really need another 9/11-style attack before we wake up? Remember after 9/11 when it turned out that the Sesame Street character Bert (of Ernie and Bert) was working closely with Osama bin Laden? Now I don't know a lot about this Don Emilio guy but I will feel much safer when he is locked away in Guantanamo, or at least huddling in a cave in Pakistan somewhere taunting us with audio tapes while American bombs explode nearby....
Had they not already used the AYB reference in the summary.
Karma: Non-Heinous
In the process of fighting the Secret Service, even with help from the EFF, Steve Jackson Games almost went under.
BTW, I'm not saying that the Steve Jackson case is the same as the FBI's current screw-up. But law enforcement makes mistakes, and sometimes they make big mistakes because they're simply not clued in to popular culture, not to mention computer technology as it is actually used in society.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Is it really necessary to mod the exact same post from the same person up to +5 TWICE IN THE SAME NEWS STORY?
The title might be redundant but the post is original and has never been written before because I just wrote it.
On March 1 1990, the offices of Steve Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy... More than three years later, a federal court awarded damages and attorneys' fees to the game company...
The EFF also has a Top Ten most mis-reported elements of the case:
This instance with Sega's fictional character, though embarassing for the FBI, is certainly preferable to the above.
_________________________
I long for the day when Google stops asking me, "Did you mean: inigo rage"
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
An FBI employee recieves a detailed tip about some immenent terrorist threat. Instead of researching first, he makes a calculated judgement that since a specific threat was mentioned, he *might* just go ahead and send the info up and down the pipeline so people can be alert...after all, wouldn't it have been better to have a national bulletin that said "Immeninent attack!" at about 6:00am EST on 9/11/01 than to have a detailed summary four hours later!?
I just don't see how we should be upset about the handling of this event. Yes, its kind of funny. The linked article seems to indicate that everything happened in the timeframe of one day. I mean, don't tell me you expected this guy to recognize some character from a video game?
heh, that will throw them off the trail. lol
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I recall a 007 movie in which M jokes about the US getting inteligence from CNN, but this is absurd!
-
From the (extremely brief) article it sounds like the system put in place to evaluate threats worked. A potential threat was identified somehow, then dismissed once it was turned out to be a nonthreat. Its not like any action beyond evaluation was taken. Even if the "potential threat" in this case was a videogame character, I would prefer to have a human being make that call then let some automated search engine do the screening based on some rules. Whatever automated system they are using is probably only designed to identify potential threats, not evaluate them.
Meanwhile, the real Don Emilio Fulci is laughing his ass off in his secret lair. "All it took was a few million dollars in bribes at Sega to have myself added to a video game, then a careful leak to the FBI. Now no US government agent will dare to say that he suspects Emilio Fulci. BWAHAHAHA!" :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"FBI in Lala Land"
Maybe Homeland Security should recruit Max Payne, Duke Nukem, the guy in Doom, the CT team from Counterstrike, and maybe even Sonic the Hedgehog.
Although it may be funny in hindsight, it's scare to note that our intell is that bad. Maybe we need to stop spending money on "studies" and other bull and use them to get good reliable informants and good googlers.
No, the questions were:
1. Does Iraq have weapons of mass destruction that can be used against the United States?
2. Is Iraq planning to use those weapons?
As is plainly evident, even to the man the Bush Administration hired to find the weapons couldn't find them, and I've seen no document saying that Iraq was planning an attack.
I think we all remember Colin Powell circling some stuff on a map, and then holding up a vial saying, "They have this here." Well, where the did "here" go?
What about North Korea? They actually have a nuclear program, and a dictator who has directly threatened the US. What about Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers came from, and home to bin Laden and many terrorist organizations funded by the Saudi Government?
Bush doesn't have any balls. He'll attack a country that has virtually no defense (Afghanistan) or a country that we've been bombing for 10 years (Iraq), but not so much as cut diplomatic ties with the nation that 80% of the 911 terrorists originated from (Saudi Arabia).
I don't think Bush is evil, but he is incompetent and short sighted. Not too great of a choice for President.
Al Gore - Hunt for the camoflaged lock-box
I've been following the International Court proceedings the past few years and found them to have all the charm and moral fiber of the old Stalinist ones.
There were so many judicial f**k-ups like having a witness testify that they were coached and paid for their testimony yet still allow some testimony that it lost all sense of justice and common sense a long time ago.
The best story is the of a character named Groban or Gruban in Bosnia. He ended up fueling the stories of one Pulitzer pud puller, was then investigated 'thoroughly', made the top 50 most wanted list and was indicted in court 'in abstentia' since there were scores of witnesses and testimonies who testified.
Turns out it was a mythical folk hero like Paul Bunyan.
So you see, the State Department is in fine company.
There are so many more like that maybe the US government might want to send the Don over to Holland try to get him sentenced.
zack
Yeah, those sound like objective, non-politically motivated quotes. I have it on good sources that:
"mozumder cannot tell the difference between a qualitative analysis, and something that was taken out of a book designed to slam bush."
"Muzumder is alltogether willing to abandon common sense, and accept that bush doesn't know anything at all about the rather broad topic of 'policy'"
"Muzumder has an axe to grind, but uses a very soft stone. Consequently, he ends up looking like a jackass."
Just because someone said something, even if it was in print, does not make it so. I never liked Clinton, in fact, I was one of the haters, but I never did anything so foolish as to suggest he was going to suspend national elections, like so many tinfoil hat conservatives did. Why? Because the idea is preposterous on the face of it. Is bush an eloquent speaker? Clearly he is not. Do you believe for one second that he does not have any knowledge of anything that could fall under the heading "policy"? If so, you are the fool, not bush. For an administration to contain a cabinet as diverse in opinion as his does, yet to not consider diverse viewpoints would be rather self-defeating, wouldn't it?
Observation of the Polical scene requires thought, and examination. Quotes from the preface of a book whose entire purpose is to slam Bush do not qualify for the former, nor the latter. Dunce cap for you slappy.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
So is the US going to bomb Sega too?
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I'm afraid you might have a leak.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
It's really Japanese video game programmers whom the US military should be afraid of. "Somebody set up us the bomb" read backwards is "Bomb the US, upset somebody!" Looks like they are using a false pretense of a bad translation to hide secret code messages to their allies.
Please, god, a bullet in the eye of every "comedian" who comes out of the woodwork thinking they're being funny by pounding out some random Mario reference. Yours has to be the 10th I've seen just reading from the top.
History shows that war on any common noun does not go well. Where are we with the war on drugs? How's that war on poverty going?
For a war to really get traction and be effect it needs to be against a Person or Place, not just a Thing.
Do Some Freaking Reasearch.
They did. That's why it was tossed out. This is how the process works. They check out tips. There's a process for this.
Lemme ask you a question--did you "do some freaking research" to see if this story was actually true?
Please refrain from using the internet for more than ninety(90) minutes per each seven(7) days.
James A. O. Joyce, it's time to go.
Sleep. Sleep. Shut the fuck up. And sleep.
Please limit your use of the internet to ninety(90) minutes for every seven(7) days.
Shiftless, it's time to go.
In light of the revelations of this videogame "threat" fiasco, the Iraqi torture photos, and countless other Bush-damaging stories of demented incompetence we endure daily, those of us free from denial and the tyranny of fear welcome leaks.
--
make install -not war
Just out of curiosity, could it have been April 1st?
THIS IS INSANE ! THEY ARE MIXING REALITY WITH FICTION! I CAN NOT SAY WHAT IS A GAME, WHAT IS REALITY ANYMORE! THEY ARE DESOTRYING TEH REALITY!
I have a question for the authors:
Don't you think you should have to suffer for all the harm you've done...and intend to do to the human race?
Don't you think the world's greatest game artist ought to be punished... for the most effective deforming of reality?
Death to the demon, Yevgeny Nourish!"
Death to Pilgrlmage! Death to tranCendenZ!"
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
- Nation of Domination
- Noddy
- Nodwick
Your search for "GDI" returned several results:Where is a Don Emilio Fulci when you need him?
Maybe we could get Bill Gates instead.
all the gullible people actually believing the our intelligence services are that gullible.
sega's internally engineered multiplayer game, 10six, was reknowned as a hotbed for international hackers.
... i can't find the link to it,
sega abandoned it's hardware to focus on games,
as everyone knows. what most people don't know
is that the marketing department in north america
single handedly brought the ruin of sega's hardware efforst, and their last,
greatest release, the dreamcast.
sega N.A. marketing pumped millions of dollars
into flash in the pan concert and tour style
promotions that did nothing to capitalize
on the edge they held in sophistication,
hardware, and available games. the dreamcast
was swept away, and with it, sega's hardware
legacy.
anyhow.
10six was part of sega's new direction in
releasing games developed internally.
the multiplayer game 10six was hacked so furiously, it was impossible to play. the producers recieved anon phone calls at home late at night with feature requests. etc.
the world of 10six was out of control due to hacking, so the game was to be reset.
the reset mechanism was a comet that was
to strike the 10six simulated world,
at 9 am, september 11, 2001.
just before the comet was scheduled to 'strike'
to reset the game,
the first plane hit the wtc tower.
i sh$t you not.
but apparently a spin off show about the
x-files nerds had an episode about a remote
controlled hijacked airliner crashing
into wtc.
odigo.
etc.
Re:relax, it's just an abhorrence (Score:2)
by taernim (557097) on Monday May 10, @04:36PM (#9112001)
(http://www.neville-longbottom.com/)
Never forget.
September 11 memorial
...I hear Ashcroft was this close to putting out a worldwide APB on a bald guy in a grey suit who puts his pinky to his mouth when he talks.
He was a little embarassed at first, but Lockheed Martin now has a $10 Million contract to study the feasability of sharks with frickin' laser beams.
a journalist got the name and identity of an undercover CIA operative and released it.
Who will guard the guards?
Ask and ye shall receive, troll.
well, you know, iraq did that.
and we said, no, *show us* where you do not have WMD.
and honestly, if i were the iraqi on the other end of that, i'd say... "?!?!?!" how? burden of negative proof? WTF? how about you prove i *was* going to do something, that i *do* have WMD, now that you have access?
the bush administration gave iraq a catch-22: if we find WMD, we will kick your ass. if we do not find WMD, it is because you are hiding them, and we will kick your ass.
can somebody please explain to me how the WMD argument, from the administration standpoint, makes sense?
This isn't the first time the White House has released completely fabricated lies in an effort to confuse people. Remember the stories about the Clinton staffers "trashing" the White House, it never happened.
This story is intended to convince us that the FBI and CIA is stupid. They've done a lot of these smear jobs recently to make our intelligence services look "stupid". That's the whole angle. The White House was never warned about anything. It was an "intelligence failure".
So here we have another example of an "intelligence failure". The White House staffer sweeps in to the rescue with a Google search. The added benefit is to show that the FBI is hyper-sensitive and issues threat level increases based on video game characters (imaginary).
If anyone truly thinks we have field agents dumb enough to issue a warning on non-vetted information, well they're pretty naive. I dare say they would be completely unable to survive the extensive training program that every FBI agent has to pass. If the FBI is that stupid, our country is truly in danger.
If you combine "1984" and "The Prince" you will get the operating manual for the Bush White House. They're all LIARS!!!!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
..., now this.
I am glad that the man in charge of protecting our national security DOES have the balls to act when necessary.
... "No, It's because I de-prioritized counter-terrorism efforts. Bin Ladin has nothing to do with it. In fact I'm in the process of dismantling existing intelligence gathering efforts. For example, I cancelled the investigation on the USS Cole and forced that nosy FBI agent to come home. We booted his ass and he works at the World Trade Center now."
.... WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!!! Either that, or big balled dummy knew and was VERY PLEASED.
Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. But memos titled "Bin Ladin determined to strike in the US" tend to elicit some activity. It could generate a question like, "Hey Ashcroft, is this the reason you only fly private charter now????"
Ascroft's response of course would be
The President's Response: "I thought I told you to shut down all those investigations against my old Bin Ladin buddies. You know them and my daddy go way back. They're really ticked that some of our agents are trying to shut down their charities. Make sure that money keeps flowing. It's how they fund their little brother Osama."
Condaleeza Rice: "Mr President, would you like me to read the report to you again????"
President: "No. 11 pages is way too long. Make sure you redact it so if I have to remember it again, it will only be two pages. Just cut out the nine in the middle. Yeah, and get Dick on the phone. I have to figure out how the Iraq war plan is going. Did we end up giving most the oil to Exxon or Shell????"
Of course, the morning of 9/11 your beloved hero was very vigilant in protecting our nation. He knew about the diverted planes BEFORE he left the hotel. He knew about the first strike BEFORE he went into the classroom. A reporter asked him if he knew what was going on in New York, he responded "Yeah, I saw that on TV, that was a pretty bad pilot".
Tick, tock, tick, tock, buzzzz. You can see the engine creaking inside the presidents mind. But he doesn't put two and two together. In fact, along the line he must have issued an order for the Air Force to STAND DOWN. Otherwise, all the jets would have been INTERCEPTED as per standard operating procedure (Google Payne Stewart Plane Crash).
Big ball, no brain Bush goes into a classroom and sits on his ass reading to 2nd graders while our nation it under attack. Than, he is informed that a SECOND plane hits the World Trade Center. Big dummy still hasn't figured it out
Nevertheless, big balled dummey sits in a classroom for another 15 minutes and finishes the goat story. It's so rare that the President is among his intellectual peers. I'm sure he relishes those precious moments.
OK big balled dummy, what do we do. Do you rescind your stand down order that prevented planes from scrambling. Nope, not yet. Plane #3 hasn't struck yet. Don't believe the lies. Do you seriously believe that planes capable of travelling 1500 miles an hour stationed just outside the capital would be unable to intercept the Pentagon airliner????????
Are we stupid??? Is the military this utterly inept???? I don't believe so. If they were, the Soviets would have leveled our nation a LONG time ago.
After all the stupidity on the morning of 9/11, the President makes a brave call to "authorize" shooting down the Pennsylvania plane. How brave he is since he could have prevented the fall of WTC 1, as well as saving the lives of people in the Pentagon. Had he not issued a stand down warning, he could have saved WTC 1 as well.
Who knows, he might have even prevented WTC 7 from mysteriously imploding for no apparent reason.
On to Afghanistan. Does Bush have the Balls to see the Afghan campaign through???? Does he have the balls to put large numbers of boots on the ground to catch his old family friend Osama Bin Ladin??????
Nope. Bush is more concerned with Saddam Hussein. He was obsessed from day one.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Interesting little factoid: Saudi Arabia, which has always produced more oil than Iraq, produced roughly 40 billion dollars worth of oil in 2002. The price tag, this year, for occupying Iraq looks to be in the range of 100 billion.
So they aren't really gaining anything from this as far as that goes.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I thought it was funny. silly mods
TIAEAE!
Perhaps that's because hardly anyone wants to be poor, or at least not in the sense that a "war on poverty" would try to correct. Certainly, there are monks who give away all of their earthly posessions, but that's not quite the same as living in a dirty building in a bad section of town and eating Ramen most of the time. We're not going to try to force the monks into a luxury condo, but everyone else would probably prefer a nicer life.
The war on drugs is a war on things that people want to do. I don't personally use anything other than alchohol and occasionally caffeine myself, but I don't see how pot smoking hurts anyone, ever (and if you think it does, is it worse than what alchohol does?) It will eventually fail; I believe it to be a question only of how long we can live in denial. At the very least, we need to be able to grow hemp in this country (US).
Terrorism, also, is different. There's not a specific thing you can target, or at least not one that's feasible. We have enough food for the poor people in this country; there's probably enough for many other countries as well. It's easy to find the poor people; unlike the terrorists, they're probably not going to hide from you when you try to give them food and medical treatment (although to be fair, some are too proud to accept help).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
5) "Iraq is sitting on some of the richest natural resources in the world to finance almost anything that they would like" Not if the rest of the world refuses to sell anything to them.
You mean like the embargo that was going on for most of the 1990s? And the oil-for-food program that got Saddam kickbacks from France, Russia, and half the world? The same half of the world that whined the loudest when we announced we were going to take care of Saddam once and for all?
Yeah. That was really effective.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Mod this up.
Yes, despite the "illiterate dipshit" at the end. Uncalled for? Yes. So is
claiming that the original material says "no such thing" when yes, it sure DOES.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
You mean the US Government has intelligence?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
(I particularly groaned at "safe assumption." Perhaps you'd like to talk to the family of the poor guy whose head was chopped off on television today. Safety is a relative thing, sure, but the word "safe" does not in any sense describe our foreign policy under Bush II. "Careful" also would be inappropriate. "Considered" would be an extreme reach. You need words like "daring" to comfort yourself with.)
Let's take the pre-war (pre-revisionist history) version of this argument at its face for a moment, though, because you're willing to. You're saying there's a lot of anthrax left around. Hmm.
So, now we've got a radically destabilized nation in which, unlike pre-invasion Iraq, all manner of Al Quaeda activities can mix with the amorphous ranks of "insurgents" without our being able to tell the difference any better than we can apparently tell Iraqi cops from the bad guys. Assuming that what you say is true, there are also stockpiles of WMDs around that we can't find. Presumably these would have been hidden somewhere. Perhaps by people with ties to the insurgency. You think?
So how, exactly, did this invasion help prevent terrorists getting weapons of mass destruction? What's to keep these terrorists from getting hold of the WMDs you say are still there? Hellooooo? Is anyone home? I'm hearing an echo -- is that the cognitive dissonance?
Or did the weapons run across the border into Iran or Syria? Is that how the invasion helped secure us against attack? Because I'm not finding it all that reassuring...
If Bush and company believed their "He might give them to the terrorists" argument, they wouldn't have invaded the way they did to start with. Ansar Al-Islam scooted out of Iraq before the fighting even got to them -- they were in the Kurdish-controlled area, up north. Powell specifically talked about the danger of Ansar Al-Islam getting weapons from Saddam, but we didn't even fight the war like that was our reason for being there. We ran for the capital.
And now that things are over, Bush and his supporters have largely slipped from their original rationale for the war -- though they'll refer to 9/11 as a sort of ghost of the idea, without being able to connect their phantom dots any more. I don't blame them; accepting the original arguments would only make them look more reckless.
This war didn't do what it claimed to want to do. With this junta in charge, it's not going to do anything but sink us into the tar baby.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Yeah, Saddam Hussein was living high on the hog off his people. But he was effectively contained. He wasn't getting parts for munitions to reconstitute his pre-Gulf War military.
We would have done better by arming the Kurds to the teeth and letting them take care of business.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The world told him to show proof that he had disarmed. He didn't. The only safe assumption a Commander in Chief could make based on that evidence is that he still has the weapons. Anthrax just does not dissappear, after all.
So, if I ask Cuba to show me proof that it has no military capability to attack the US, and they don't comply, my only option is to invade the country?
Good point, how could anyone prove that they don't have WMD. Hell, I could have WMD hidden somewhere. How could I prove otherwise?????
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
We knew nothing more about his unaccounted WMD at the end of those 12 years than we did at the beginning.
Actually, we know that any unaccounted WMDs have long since become useless and we've annihilated his capability for producing anymore.
12 years and he hasn't even been able to look sideways at another country or much of his own country without incurring airstrikes.
Sounds like successful containment to me!
-2 troll? RTFA! mr_luc gave proof refuting the parent.
And in the meantime, we still would have had to keep troops in Saudi Arabia (much to their displeasure) and keep on with the no-fly patrols. And Saddam would still have been giving $25K to Palestinian suicide bomber families.
Not to mention that a lot more Iraqis would have been killed by Saddam, and arming the Kurds might have just meant that he would have gassed them with poison gas again.
Granted, Iraq isn't paradise now, but reading Iraqi blogs like http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/ make me realize that Iraq is a much better place now than it was under Saddam, and it's in the US's best interest to keep it improving.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Please read the Iraqi blog I linked to. It paints a very different picture of Iraq than you do, and I'm more inclined to believe the word of someone that lives there than I am yours.
As for the 'tens of thousands' claim, I keep hearing that claim that the US has killed tens of thousands of civilians, but I haven't seen any proof of it yet. Perhaps you're forgetting that our enemies there, in violation of the Geneva Convention, dress as civilians, hide behind civilians, use mosques as ammo dumps and sniper points, and generally do their best to use the people of Iraq as civilian shields?
The Iraqi people now can speak freely, there are a couple hundred newspapers being published in Baghdad alone, and they're buying satellite dishes and anything Western they can get their hands on (owning a satellite dish was a felony under Saddam). It's too bad your hatred of George W. Bush is blinding you to the fact that anything good could be happening in Iraq.
Neighborhoods weren't battlezones under Saddam because anyone that dissented in any way was killed or tortured. Electricity production passed its peak under Saddam several months ago. And no one could afford water or gasoline unless they worked for the Ba'ath party.
And the way you use the word 'global', I do not think it means what you think it means.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.