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White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
An anonymous reader writes "This New York Times article reports that in 2002, the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts. Specifically, aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges." In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges.
Politicians? Lying??
Bullshit.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
They went with the CIA judgement that they could be used for nuclear projects. Regardless of whether they were or weren't, the other option is for Saddam to build rockets. Why would he need rockets? Oh, that's right, he was a dictator that killed lots of people.
.... is what it said when I first clicked on comments? Oh, and like it's a big suprize to any of us? Bush et al lied!
Tibbon
tibbon.com
"Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States."
So where are those tubes now Dick?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
And here I was thinking the tubes were used for a gigantic mouse maze he was building.
If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People
... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998
by John Hawkins
Since we haven't found WMD in Iraq, a lot of the anti-war/anti-Bush crowd is saying that the Bush administration lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Well, if they're going to claim that the Bush administration lied, then there sure are a lot of other people, including quite a few prominent Democrats, who have told the same "lies" since the inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. Here are just a few examples that prove that the Bush administration didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction...
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others
"Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002
"Saddam's goal
"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may l
Does this extend to the President?
The same question dogged Nixon to resign.
Seastead this.
I mean, come on.. They lied about a lot of stuff dealing with Iraq.
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
I keep reading stories like this, hoping the American public will finally "get it". But it never happens. Richard Clarke, the 9/11 commision, Abu Ghraib, whatever. If it's not there kid in Iraq, they don't care. We just need to face it: about 45% of this country is going to support Bush no matter what. I'm not saying people should switch to Kerry, but if you still support Bush at this point, you must have constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in your head.
The saddest part is that there is a very high chance you guys will have this team back in business (?) again for the next four years. I read the transcript of that debate last week and it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason. Damn shame.
Free XBox, PS2
This is utter crap that such a topic would appear on Slashdot. Anyone worth their politcal salt would already have knowledge of this issue and the complexity surrounding it. Please, move on or join a politics 101 forum. And for it to make the FRONT PAGE??? Bias showing through?
The tubes were stated as COULD be used for nuclear weapons. They could also be large drinking straws or sewer pipes. I, for one, would rather NOT take that chance. Better to be too cautious than not cautious enough.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
and you want to trust something coming from the new york times? That's just shy of the reliability of CBS news. They're a totally liberal news source with a rather smudged record regarding reliability... Them bashing the white house is not a new thing. Why does this suddenly get reported? nuff said
Weren't some of the news channels telling us that before hand or am I the only person that remembers history? I feel like we're living in the world of 1984.
I intentionally gave party members syphilis, et all.
At some point, we had to say "enough" to his gamesmanship, and make good on the resolutions to do something about it.
Just because it looks like he was screwing with us instead of building weapons doesn't mean the casus bella was wrong. The ball was in Saddam's court.
Have you seen how many comments the political stories get? $$$$!
I read this story Saturday evening and the tubes that Iraq was shopping for were of a much greater tolerance than needed for their small artilery rockets.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Validity of the article aside, this really irritated me...
"Joe graduated...
Joe went to work...
, and Joe's job...
Joe spent the...
In 1997, Joe transferred..."
Five lines right in a row starting with "Joe..."
In college, that kind of crap would have gotten me a "Please see me after class!"
The NYtimes is slipping.
Although, who is the Joe? Is he an all American Hero?
Also, Kerry's a flip-flopper. Also, in the debate he said he never used the word "lie" to describe what Bush did, but he actually did use it. And those National Guard documents that CBS News showed were faked.
We know what's important.
Sincerely,
Fox News
MSNBC News
Most Bush Supporters
You know what is even sadder than this? That there were countries in the world who supported the US (Spain) and that there were other countries who sat on their asses and didn't say anything (Canada) rather than aligning against the US like France and Germany. The rest of the world is really to blame here, not the U.S. Had the rest of the world (or even the Democrats) aligned against Bush and his government then none of this would have happened.
duh!
The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent ambiguity of intelligence.
This was a case study in lying and having the fucking people fall for it because we were told to have faith in the leaders of our country or be labeled unpatriotic.
On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes' suitability for centrifuges.
Perhaps this is partially why the administration originally claimed that Hussein was not a credible threat to the United States?
One senior official at the agency said its "fundamental approach" was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports "weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been." But he added, "There was certainly nothing that was hidden."
Let's not fuck around here. It's called making the viewpoint you want noticed more apparent than those you don't regardless of whether or not it's true... This is what any good position paper should do.
"Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."
Sounds like exactly what the United States ended up doing. It decided it was right and it had the power to make sure it got what it wanted out of the deal. Notice the reference to oil... Not to the safety of the United States' populace. Oil. Cute.
Iraq for over a decade.
The sick union of racist filth who support the state sponsored terrorism and ethtic cleansing in Isreal and the nutty right wing bible prophesy nuts needed any pretense, no matter how flimsy, to launch the invasion.
A big thanks to all the retards who voted for Bush.
WTG!
I'm glad we don't have a bias one way or another here at /.. I mean, "In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges" screams "I'm a Democrat, I hate Republicans!" to me.
Location: Mt. Xinu
I don't get it... How is this news for nerds? In light of all the other political blather going around, it isn't news that matters, either. Can we stop the political BS and just get back to the nerdy stuff?
Slashdot, let's not try to be a site you're not. Let's leave the political discourse to the other sites and leave it out of here. Please!!
"
Truth? If truth got into the American political system the whole country would fall apart!
That's why we elected and re-elected Bill Clinton.
Dole kept saying, "I'm a plain and honest man." Bullshit.
Clinton said, "Hi folks I'm full of shit and how do you like that?!"
And people said, "Well, at least he's honest."
" George Carlin On another not, it's shameful that our political system is the way it is, in terms of the disintegration of checks and balances. If the Senate had heard everything and seriously debated, do you think the public would have heard of the "slam dunk"? Probably not. Sorry to mix humor and serious.
Would calling Saddam a dictator that killed people get you modded down as flamebait.
If y'all would tone down the rhetoric, you would have Bush out of office, but instead you use inflammatory terms like the headline here. You wind up turning off the undecideds/moderates out there with the over-the-top Bush bashing.
What concerns me most is the ability of this administration (or the potential of any future ones) to pull a veil over the collective US public to go to war against an enemy that was a perceived threat, not a real one. What worries me most is that this could very well happen again, if we let this one slide. That in the future, a Republican or democrat white house could choose to shift its focus on a nation that it deems to be evil and take its own young men and women in to a hail of bullets and ill will.
Bush was brilliant or clueless enough to have his administration divert the public's gaze from Afghanistan or Iraq, forcibly or otherwise and even the critics in the media remained largely silent over the unjust war the country was being dragged in to. The esteemed Bob woodward said it himself that he finds himself guilty of ignoring stories that were of relevance, that could have proven to the public time and again that this war was being fought in the name of lies, that this was an unjust war. But men, who shirked their duties when their country asked of them to fight, chose to send young men and women in to harms way.
It were a crime then to question the legality of this war, it was unpatriotic to do so, it was simply wrong to doubt on the ability of our Commander in Chief, who chose to surround himself with yes men instead of criticism, like a clueless King who was fed what he needed to know by his courtiers, and never the truth.
It happened once, and it will happen again. And its a shame that it does, in this age when media remains omnipotent, the public has access to information of any nature, that a group of men and women could pull a veil over our collective judgement and lead many a mother's kid in to a nation in peril and a war that never end.
Rapid Nirvana
"Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges."
Not that I buy it, but the claim the Bush administration is going to be making (and this is covered in the article) is that the CIA didn't highlight or even mention the debate going on in the intelligence community over the use of these aluminum tubes. Condoleeza Rice appeared on a lot of Sunday shows today (I saw the CNN one) claiming that back when she claimed that the tubes could "only really be used for nuclear weapons", she knew of the debate but thought it was a marginalized dissent and that the overwhelming consensus in the intelligence community was that these tubes were to be used for nukes.
Of course, the response to these claims is: you couldn't have afford to have just based your information on the CIA briefings. If you're leading the nation to war, call in the advice of every relevant department and organization. The path to war shouldn't be a light one. And of course, since the nuclear issue was one of the major ones that drove us to war, supposedly, then the Energy Department clearly should have been consulted. And their overwhelming views were that the tubes were to be used for rockets.
Two points that are interesting in this article (that deserve a read)...
#1: The fact that the CIA endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the aluminum tube evidence, knowing the yellowcake evidence was bullshit. Meanwhile, the Energy Department endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the yellowcake evidence, knowing the aluminum tube evidence was bullshit. And yet, this was just read as a double endorsement.
#2: Dick Cheney's roll throughout all this (the fact that he was basically demanding evidence before any surfaced, or at least any that he was aware of).
...in other news was sky reported to be mostly blue and sun is expected to rise tommorow morning.
How is that news? Or are there really people left in the US who trust the Bush administrations and will be totally _shocked_ by this? Duh.
I agree with this.
Can we keep this biased libreral crap off the site unless it really is technolgy related?
Smells to me like someone at slashdot has an agenda.
What next? "Duke Nukem Forever delayed"?
Jebus.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Watch how quickly these charges are met with irrelevant counter-charges about Al Gore inventing the Internet or Kerry and his 4th purple heart.
Or not...
The failure of Congress to voice even token dissent on every foreign policy decision since 9/11 is the biggest failure of the entire system in my view. Every Congresscritter should be voted out of office and barred from even running for town dogcatcher for the rest of their miserable lives.
Half the country knows George Bush and Co. are a bunch of half-wits with their own agendas, but we deserve better from Congress. That they chose to goosestep to the White House's tune with nary a word of protest is unforgiveable.
Chamberlain gives Hitler Carte Blanc to annex Czechoslovakia, announces "Peace in our time."
Actually, why don't we see a Politics story on Slashdot about the corruption in Food for Oil? Way bigger of a deal than the WMD issue.
Yeah, it's so annoying when the facts become partisan!
Business as usual.
Those of you who can, will vote this time around, right...? right? 2 weeks left to register if you haven't already. If you've moved, changed your name, or haven't voted in 4 years, re-register.
I was going to mod you troll, but then I realized, maybe better to explain to you that you can set preferences in your account settings to ignore the politics section.
Do that, and then you won't have to worry about us liberals getting in the way of your video game updates.
no you fool. its the sky is blue, YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
(the "in other news" joks getting old REAL FAST)
The attempts to import nuclear materials from Sudan and other places are documented. The NY Times is one of the most liberal pieces of fish wrap in the US. I put them right up there with CBS News, the Washington Post, and CNN.
All have had their problems with "creative" journalism.
I really began to dislike the NY Times after I read the book "Bias". To hear the stories about the article counts on homeless and poor change simply because of who was in the presidents office made me want to puke.
It's like the national insurance plan. During 51's term in office, there were 42 million people without insurance. During Slick Willy's 8 years in office, there were 43 million people without insurance. But you never, EVER read about that in the newspapers. Now, we've got 44 millions people without insurance, and it's in the papers every day. Why? Because we've got a conservative in the oval office.
Media Bias. I don't watch Fox News either. I don't watch any news. The media is about selling advertisements. There's NOTHING good in the media anymore. Nothing. How many human interest stories in Iraq? None. How many human interest stories in Afghanistan? None. Yet the women over there have been oppressed for decads. We don't hear about that from the lefties in the media. Yet if Kerry wins, we'll hear about all those great humanitarian things that happened... and they'll be praising Kerry for those things. I'm tired of it. The public is realizing it, and that's why Bush remains popular, even though it's during wartime.
The bleeding hearts put up a weak candidate with a poor work ethic, weak morals, and a shady past, and the biggest thing they can do is "hate Bush." Well, Bush didn't lie as bad as John Kerry.
John Kerry's lied to us for 30+ years. He's lied to himself for so long that he believes it himself. Cambodia for Christmas in 1968? Ha. Good one.
Who signed that Silver Star? And when was it awarded to John Kerry? (I'll give you a hint... it's just about the time when Kerry decided to run for a Senate seat. Hmmm...)
Who lied?
I have a hard time believing the New York Times as being a credible source for anything. They are in the same league as CBS and the LA Times. Is this post even Slashdot worthy? I don't think so.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
A few years ago, slashdot reported on news items that were unusal, intersting, and not on the major news services. You could tell when CNN picked up stories FROM slashdot. Now more and more news items I have already seen on cnn.com or nytimes.com show up hours or even days later on slashdot. And there are more and more non-tech news items.
Is slashdot still relevent?? Is it still worth reading? If this continues, I will have no reason to read it.
Slashdot, if you are listening, get back to your roots and stop just repeating cnn and nytimes articles.
It is annoying when they're presented in such a partisan way. There's a huge difference between "White House ignored doubts about Iraqi Nuclear Programs" and "White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs."
Im not a fan of Bush 100%, but I do believe we had a just reason to go over there. If my leader was commiting genocide and I could not get out of under his control, I sure would want somebody to come kick his ass. We dont have to police the world, but make sure everybody atleast has the right to life(or atleast those who want it). Now if somebody would have came out and said this is why we are ousting Saddam, it would have been better than trying to convice people of WMD's...
Chow down on that corporate cock, you whore.
but i also always thought their trumped up reason was laughable
couldn't the administration had just said "look, we should have killed this snake saddam in 1991, but we couldn't deal with a lot of body bags then. we now know a basket case of a middle east is bad for the us, and so we can stomach the body bags, because it's better a couple hundred dead servicemen in iraq than a couple hundred thousand dead civilians in washington dc. osama is not a cause, he's a symptom. and the cause is a f**ked up middle east. so to war with iraq we go, to begin the the process of fixing the middle east. because september 11th shows that the middle east will export its problems to us, so it is our responsibility to fix the middle east, whether we deserve it or not."
and i fear it's tehran, here we come, and a draft, in 2005. because i don't know about you, but i don't trust those mullahs with nukes, and i know for certain the neocons, or even the dems, don't either.
i just hope that when we go to iran, they level with the us citizen, rather than play let's make up a stupid excuse.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ugh, the spin on this article, both the headline and the editorial comment by Michael, is annoying. (The actual NYTimes piece is worth reading.)
1) Old news. All this analysis that the tubes could have, or even
were fairly likely to have been used for rockets, not centrifuges
was known and public in Dec2002-Mar 2003. If you don't remember
it, you just weren't paying attention. It's even old news that
the Energy Department and State Department experts were the
ones disagreeing. (What *is* news is that the caliber of experts
that said the tubes were likely not for centrifuges was not
made public at that time to the best of my knowledge.)
2) Michael grossly mischaracterizes the Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld
position at the time as saying the "tubes were slam-dunk evidence".
That was *not* the way the White House or the administration
presented the case at the time. The tone of 95% of their statements
was basically... well, we're not sure but it doesn't look good.
There is evidence that Saddam is reconstituting his nuclear program, etc.
What are we going to do about it?
In fact, the "slam dunk" comment was made *in private* by CIA director
Tenet to George Bush when Bush told the director that the case seemed
weak and was that the best info he had? At least that's the
story documented by Bob Woodward's book that came out a year after
the war, "Plan of Attack" (WSJ opinion,
a longer CBS News summary.)
Now why Tenet said it was a slam dunk is a bit of a mystery to me.
And it presumably is the basis for the 2-3 statemtents pre-war
made to various obscure audiences but reported in the mainstream
press where Bush or Cheney said things like "we *know* Iraq
has WMD"... statements that were remarkable and notable precisely
because the administration was generally not so definitive in
saying that Iraq had WMD... most of their statements centered
around Saddam's recalcitrance in the light of various UN resolutions
and inspectors.
Hey, I'll go so far as to say Bush misled the American people
and/or made a poor decision to go to war, knowing that the evidence
was thin. And I think that is a #1 reason not to vote for him.
But I don't think a Slashdot article heading "White House Lied
About Iraq Nuclear Programs" or a editorial comment that the
administration was announcing that the tubes were "slam-dunk evidence"
is right. It's really sad to see such misrepresentation of what happened.
--LP
Agreed. This article should be on the Politics only page, and not the main Slashdot page. The ONLY thing political that Slashdot should have on it's front page is something that is Tech/Science/"News for Nerds" stuff. If I want to discuss politics, I'll do it at a more appropriate place!
Doh!
This shit should not be on the frontpage of /..
This is Michael's unbalanced ass taking advantage of his "editor" position since he has no "blog platform" that anyone in their right mind would read.
Taco will not be please. Mods, mod parent up.
Come on! I'm fed up with this election and posts like this just steam me. I come to this site to keep up with the ins and outs of the technical world. A posting like this is just going to turn me off. True believers cannot be reasoned with and reading these posts just make me hit the back button.
So true.
And this is why...
Not because I'm for one side or another, I'm not. I really could care less. But all I see is constant bickering and splintering of whats left of the already sparce intelligent community.
Most have left already, the rest will go.
Instead of uniting behind intelligent debate on technological issues, you're doing your best to find hype to divide the rest.
How about Kerry Cheating during the debates?
http://www.drudgereport.com/dnc57.htm
Nope, wont see that one here, but lets post old news instead about something that the CIA did, and blah blah blah... so it continues.
Basically I hate seeing what has happened to the community here. Trolls and moronic posts, and the topics are now lamer then ever. Worst part, I usually read about these topics elsewhere, long before I see them here. Slashdot has become more of an archive then anything.
Oh, and OSDN? What happened to that? Now we're OSTG.. ah yeah... Why don't you just close down the site, call open source a sham because you lived out your 15 minutes.
Bleh... Karma to spare because I used to care.
Let the moronic and short smart-ass and anonymous posts ensue...
If you care, then you can see the truth in my post. If you don't care, then just mod me down because you're a liberal, and I'm an open minded thinker. Thank you.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Michael: When you rip off posts from Drudgereport.com, The New Scientist and other well-read sites, make sure you follow the thread through to the point where they explain that the story was nothing more than a political hit piece.
For instance, check out an earlier NY Times piece that actually reinforces the administration's position. Or you could review that this hit piece was to be joined by CBS News in another attempted effort to push fraudulant information and sucker all the sheep out there.
Or should we expect a post from you about "critical national guard documents damage Bush" and experience a deja vu Slashdot experience?
Slashdot readers - you too can read it before Michael (or some alleged anonymous reader, just like the CBS anonymous sources) reads it and makes up a libelous headline damaging Slashdot credibility and objectivity:
Drudge Report
The New Scientist
and other excellent critical reads include:
Power Line
Weekly Standard
Little Green Footballs
Oh... I should warn you - if you're determined to vote for Kerry in spite of everything, do NOT go to the any of the above sites. It'll destroy any opportunity for ignorance you might have.
* It is becoming difficult to find articles that are not tainted by ppc on /. lately, I will concede that. Perhaps things will settle down slightly after the election...
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Oh wait, presidents can only be impeached for lying about their personal life, not for something that actually affects the American people.
I just looked out from window and sky is black ;-)
I find it interesting (thought not shocking) how a newspaper, such as the NYT, will pull anything out of context to extract the best headline possible. I somehow doubt that Aluminum Tubes were the single piece of evidence that the current Administration had. It is more likely that this information was used as a small piece of evidence along with other information. Also, I think it is quite interesting that this is considered a Republican story. As I recall Democrats and Republicans had access to the same evidence that Bush did. Then again, that wouldn't make for a juicy headline for the masses. What was I thinking, honest news ? That would never sell (at least in NY).
Last time I checked, Slashdot's hook phrase was "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." not "Tech news for nerds. Technology that matters." I mean, you saw the optical illusion story, do you really think
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this server dedicated specifically for politics? You can't expect much objectivity from a peer-run news site who's readers are mainly geeks who are upset (and rightfully so) about the government suppressment and litigation goin' down right now. If Gore was president and the same stuff was going down, we'd all still find some way to bash the government.
This isn't liberal propaganda or anything...See, it's in the "Republicans" section...
On a side note, how the hell is this news? I mean, let's face it, the missiles they think these might've been really destined for were prolly about as close to WMDs as we're gonna get.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
... that the New York Times should be considered an unbiased and balanced source for all of our political news.
Funny, they haven't had a single anti-Kerry piece so far.
- no coverage of political campaign contributions being misappropriated and illegal
- little to no coverage of the backlash against Fahrenheit 9/11
- no coverage of George Bush interview with Bill O'Reilly
- next to zero coverage of CBS evidence mistake
And let me just say - slashdot - you are REALLY polarizing your users, I know this makes no difference and will be modded into flamebait oblivion. But how about a pro Bush post - like computers for education plans that he's signed - or an Anti Kerry story - about how the military is actually using the best technology and they needed more funds for it and Kerry voted against sending more money to fund it. (Yet says he's for removing Saddam and completing the job in iraq)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
My dad is a machinist and we have a small (hehe) cnc lathe in our garage. We have a ton of aluminum stock, up to ten ft. He's not a terrorist (i think).....brb, somone's knocking at my door...
>
>
>dropped carrier
In case Michael's hacking has you confused folks, the NYT article never claimed that the White House lied. The entire jist of the article is that there was opposition to evidence which the Bush administration built their WMDs claims on. That's not good enough for michael, however. He has to nearly double the length of the submission by adding his own 2 cents of editorial drivel. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!
What a complete and utter hack. Michael has once again proven that far from this sites aim, he is incapable of posting anything other than his left-leaning hack bullshit. This is one reason I will never pay real money for slashdot.
There was a slight chance the coffee addiction thing was only psychological.
No wonder Slashdot had to add a political category with all of the unemployed so-called "tech" people hanging around, just like the welfare cases that hang out at democraticunderground.com. As for the current administration, just remember this: Tyranny comes in many flavors but they all taste like shit. Until people get a clue and vote out these bastards (democrat, republican, they're all the same anyway) things are never going to change. BTW those of you who support Kerry and have a decent job, bend over 'cause he's going to fuck you hard, take your money to give to those less fortunate (like unemployed slashdot posters!) and not bother to give you a reach around. Yeah, this will get modded as flamebait but what the hell, you little pillow humpers just can't handle the truth.
"Far from "group think," American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A "holy war" is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions."
If this were a surprise, it might matter more. However, I have trouble believing that an intelligent person can believe most of the things the Bush administration says. I do not think this will hurt Bush because his supporters are completely uninterested in knowing the truth.
Do you remember the cost estimates of the Republician Drug Plan? (e.g. here, here).
What about WMD?
Do you believe him when he talks about how much better is the economy?
Did you believe Bush or Greenspan when they talked about the need for tax reductions because the federal government was going to have too large a surplus?
"But continuing to run surpluses beyond the point at which we reach zero or near-zero federal debt brings to center stage the critical longer-term fiscal policy issue of whether the federal government should accumulate large quantities of private (more technically nonfederal) assets. At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses currently projected imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government. This development should factor materially into the policies you and the Administration choose to pursue.
"I believe, as I have noted in the past, that the federal government should eschew private asset accumulation because it would be exceptionally difficult to insulate the government's investment decisions from political pressures. Thus, over time, having the federal government hold significant amounts of private assets would risk sub-optimal performance by our capital markets, diminished economic efficiency, and lower overall standards of living than would be achieved otherwise.
"Short of an extraordinarily rapid and highly undesirable short-term dissipation of unified surpluses or a transferring of assets to individual privatized accounts, it appears difficult to avoid at least some accumulation of private assets by the government." (From here)
When I hear Bush or his crew talk, I know that the truth is the exact opposite of their opinion.
Iraq was a hotbed of terrorists before we invaded? NO!
Iraq is now a hotbed for terrorists because Bush invaded? YES!
Did Bush look like a "little boy" who did not really belong in that first debate?
You know religion has started more wars, killed more people, than any other topic. I would just like to give the finger to anyone that goes over to some country, tells mass amounts of people that their believes are wrong, and unholy, and then promise to convert the masses just so they can get decent food to eat... (sc*ew you cristians childerns fund).
Ambient [Servlet Based Webapp Engine]
What about the 4 Al-Quaida related attacks on the US interests during the Clinton 8 year reign? 1. World Trade Center 1st attack 2. Khobar Towers 3. Embassies in Africa 4. USS Cole The whole Clinton administration should be thrown in jail due to negligence. Eight years in office and we bombed a tent in Afghanistan, got dragged through the streets of Somalia and bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. Wow. Bush is kickin' ass and taking names. Leave him alone.
Why did this make the front page?
The Commander in Chief lying to the American people to bring us into a costly, unneccessary war to enrich his friends and allies?
That's "Stuff that Matters"?
Did SCO not file a motion to take a potty-break today or something?
Thats what you get for unconditionally trusting your president. Now if you still vote for bush after knowing this information, you're as guilty as the terrorists by allowing the head terrorist to continue his job in the white house. You may be thinking 'how dare you say that' well lets see. Bush started a war based off of lies, he manipulated intellegance to suit his personal vendeta against saddam, and he manipulated foreign goverments (UK) to do his bidding. I'm not a liberal I'm a centrist. I truely hope that this new information changes the way a few people vote but I highly doubt it. Frankly I am amazed at the propoganda people believe about kerry being a flip flopper, and how they either are uninformed about how bush has flip flopped himself, or how they choose to ignore it.
I'm no fan of the Bush administration, but you've got to admire their command of spin, PR, insinuation and all the other advertising tricks they've pulled over the last few years. For instance, if you say that "the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts", that does not specifically say that all the nuclear experts were in agreement about such a conclusion. The administration could then cherry-pick a few intelligence reports (of which I assume there are hundreds, perhaps thousands) that support their theories, then claim that "the research shows", "intelligence reports indicate", etc. The insinuation that a majority of the reports stake similar claims is false; however, such conclusions are to be made by the press and the public and are not to be directly and specifically stated by the administration, avoiding the accusation of "lying" per se. These people (on both sides) are masters of advertising. Pay attention, everyone; it is now your responsibility to filter out data and fact from spin and PR. I recommend viewing Spinsanity.com and reading "All The President's Spin" for more, and watching anything important (like the "debates") on C-SPAN.
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/article s/A32182-2004Sep18.html">lies about the cost of their geriatric/pharmaco bribery^Wprescription drug plan, promised at $400B to convince Congress to vote for it, then readjusted to $534B after the law was (barely, illegally) passed? Another lie: now it's up at least $42B more, to $576B, a 44% increase over that already vast sum. When the decade after its passage on a pack of lies, how close to a trillion dollars will have been fed to pharmaceutical companies to get their campaign bribes^Wdonations, and votes from old people who believe they're getting free drugs?
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First of all, since only about 50% of the population will vote, it's only about half of that 45% who will be voting for Bush. Basically, one-quarter of the country falls into this category, and one-quarter into the Kerry camp, and one-half in the Who Knows? category. OK, with that out of the way, let's play devil's advocate and speculate on why those people will vote for Bush despite what you say:
Liberal Attacks: "Yeah sure, figures it's in the New York Times, that bastion of liberal thought. Let me check Fox News to get the real story. Heh, just as I thought, they don't even mention it, must not be true. Just more liberal lies."
Patterns of Birth: "I was born Republican, my pappy was Republican, his pappy was too, and I'm gonna die Republican."
One-Issue Paramount: "I wish Bush would be more forthcoming about these things, but hey, he's going to (fight abortion / put conservatives on the Supreme Court / fight for school prayer / put tax money in my pocket / keep them liberals away from my wallet / keep America safe)."
Shared Beliefs: "We got ourselves a born-again Christian in the White House, and by God, we've got to keep him there!"
Shared Geography: "He's from Texas! Not like them panty-waists from Taxachusetts."
Rambo Syndrome: "He got tough with them terrorists, and he's gonna keep getting tough, and that's the way I like it!"
How do you reason with such persons? Basically, you don't. If they want to microfocus on one particular issue, ain't nothing you can say to negate it. Just remember, it's really only 25% of the country.
I think the point is that this is another indication of this administration's willful disregard for advice and information from the scientific community if it conflicts with their agenda. If that isn't news for nerds (or news that should worry nerds) then I don't know what is.
if you were a nerd rather than someone with his nose up bush's ass 24/7 you would turn off "POLITICS" dumbass.
since when is lying to congress and the american people "political"? when they get caught, report it, no matter who it is or where the trail leads.
Iraq, North Korea, China, India, Wales, etc, actually any country, has a right and a duty to defend itself. If the US and other countries have nukes, then every sovereign nation on the planet has the duty to defend itself with similar force.
Keep reading stories like this eh ? Your right, if Americans get a bloody nose or have to actually do work to protect our freedoms we should just quit. The EFF should close shop because it is too much work. Capitalism should come to a screeching hault because of Karl Marx. We should have kept Sadam Hussein in power so we can have a sense of invincability. We should just ignore all transgressions and create pseudocommunites that value Peace over Freedom. Jesus Christ, we should simply abandon our economic and diplomatic policies for the past century, flush them down the toilet. We don't need markets to sell our products, we don't need stability across the world.
"aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges."
Funny that a few months later, its the administration who misinterpreted many pieces of intelligence information. Months ago, Bush & Cheney were saying information was falsified by the CIA.
I have my doubts that the CIA falsified the information. Its a shame that all this information is classified (or has since been shredded and burned) and will probably never be brought before the courts.
Ummm, it was on the main page.
How about Kerry Cheating during the debates?
Okay, you've got a war that has claimed about confirmed 12,000 Iraqi civilian lies (possibly an additional 30,000 or so in the initial airstrikes, according to a survey that got shut down before completion ), 1100 soldiers' lives, Iraqis tortured and killed while in US custody, during a war has plummetted your country into massive debt, has increased the likelihood of anti-Americanism and hence helped Al Quaida recruitment, all based on a lie, and you want to complain about WHAT?!?
Holy shit man. Hair-splitting like this needs to be confined to the barbershop, and nowhere else.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Hello Materials Scientists, Aerospace engineers, civil engineers, any nuclear scientists (thought rare, someone out there may be one):
Why Alumninum?
If I was going to create a bunch of centrifuges to functionally distill uranium hexafloride gas, I'd have plenty of money, right? So, using any exotic material I wanted would be best, given that what I'm doing has to be done exactly right and the cost of the tubes is not the big determining factor?
So, here's the question: Why Not Titanium? Is it too heavy? I believe (given very limited info on turbine design) that titanium is a much stronger (though more brittle) material for high speed / high stress components.
Or, what about Magnesium? Mg is lighter than Aluminum, and probably thus could spin faster.
Can anyone comment on that the best material would be for a high speed centrifuge? Would the corrosive nature of a floride compound dictate for or against it? is this somethin we should even be discussing the actual answer to on an open forum?
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
But, strangly, /. is silent on the issue of Kerry wanting to offer Iran nuclear materials so the #2 or #3 oil producer in the world can develope a peaceful nuclear energy program. IOW, Kerry supports IRAN having nuclear energy yet he doesn't think that the US should have nuclear energy.
/. saying the political section would be balanced?
What happened to
Kerry brought a cheat sheet to the debate.
I first heard about the rockets and the yellowcake shortly after I finished reading Daniel Ellsberg's book "The Pentagon Papers". I found many parallels to what may be going on here in the current administration. For example, in the book we learn that McNamera was talking to Ellsberg about whether things were better in Vietnam over the last year, and came up with the answer that they were worse. At the end of the flight, McNamera got off the plane and told reporters that things were far better than a year ago.
In another location he tells the story of one of the guy in Vietnam who was one of the few people who actually visited most of the locations in South Vietnam. He had a meeting with the President, but before that was meeting with the Cheif of Staff. The CoS was saying "I think the war will be over within the year. The guy from Vietnam (sorry, bad with names, Paul someone?) said "Oh, I think we can hold out at least TWO years." His meeting with the President was canceled on the spot.
The point I'm trying to make is that information doesn't necessarily flow as it should. In the case of Vietnam, the President wanted a victory. Just like the current administration, from their first National Security meeting was talking about what they had to do to attack Iraq. It seems that that and the tax cut were the two largest "no negotiation" points with the administration.
I'm forced to wonder if the same thing is happening in this administration. The second-tier staff are insulating the President from some of the evidence, because of his drive to attack Iraq.
I also just recently finished Paul O'Neil's book about his time as Secretary of the Treasury. It goes into details about how the President was ignoring the evidence and recommendations from O'Neil and Alan Greenspan that the numbers behind the tax cut were not realistic, and rejected their recommendations to put in triggers so that if the budget did not meet the expectations the government wouldn't be stuck in a shortfall. As we've seen since then, Greenspan and O'Neil were right.
So, did the same thing happen with Iraq? Well, we've already seen that the government had intelligence that the Weapons of Mass Destruction weren't there, and they were telling the public otherwise. So, what can we assume about the other intelligence?
Sean
Since I am unaware of anyone else doing it, I would like to collect arguments for whether Bush and Cheney should face criminal charges for the following things:
/. journal.
1. The Iraq war was a distraction from the war on terror, not part of it. It only became part of the war on terror after, under Bush/Cheney leadership, the war was executed incompetently (at the leadership, not serviceperson, level). Did Bush/Cheney purposefully destabilize and Iraq and not secure the country to draw the terrorists in? What would Iraqis think of this plan? Is there evidence that this was the plan and in exactly what way is it against U.S. law?
2. Cheney pushed for the war with a clear and obvious conflict of interest, as just former CEO of Halliburton, who is profiting tremendously from the war. Since American patriot servicemen and women have died in the pursuit of profit for Cheney, what specific criminal charges should Cheney face?
3. Once the mistake to invade Iraq was decided, the war was executed incompetently and negligently by Bush. Does this constitue criminal misconduct?
I am trying to collect legal advice and evidence on this topic. Please post here or on my
I will summarize any information collected and post to a future threads. Of course I don't know if anyone is interested in helping to pursue this. I believe it is important for citizens of the United States to recognize and reject the serious illegal actions of this administration. I believe this course should be pursued no matter what the outcome of the election next month.
I mean, this was the nail in the coffin for me.
What we need to ask ourselves is, WHO fed these lies into the white house, and why? What foreign power had interest in seeing Saddam toppled? What foreign power was recently caught spying on us? What foreign nation basically puppeteers both the white house and congress?
Gee, could it be Israel and Ariel Sharon? No, wait, that would be anti-semitic of me to say.
I'm going to go stand in a corner now.
GWB can rebut any statement by just saying the same simplistic catch phrases that cite only the successes in Iraq. For better or worse, Bush really knows his constituency. People can take "Saddam is in jail" to the polls, but not the three-paragraph (well reasoned or not) statements Kerry makes about why he thought Saddam was a threat but would have relied on inspectors using war as a last resort with a larger coalition of nations, etc.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
The New York Times also revealed the following additional revelations:
An intercepted parcel containing an assortment of lamp hardware, which the Bush administration insisted was for constructing a hash pipe, was in fact intended for repairing Saddam's collection of Tiffany lamps damaged in the first Gulf War.
A shipment of innertubes, which were thought to be destined to become slingshots, were in fact ordered after some jackoff installed the spikes backwards at the Baghdad airport.
A Soviet-era nuclear submarine, which was being smuggled across the mountains along the border with Turkey, was actually intended for marine biology research.
The green copper statue of Saddam holding up a torch in Baghdad harbor welcoming huddled masses yearning to be oppressed was not a gift from the French. Rather it was constructed on Saddam's orders by local workers.
Other shocking revelations will surely follow as this story continues to unravel.
Unknown host pong.
Aluminum tubes... aluminum tubes people!
How can you possibly disagree with the government on this?!! This is irrefutable evidence! The ignorance level on here astounds me.
What else can you possibly use an aluminum tube for?!!
I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
-FL
What the hell are you talking about? They threatened to fire the Medicare auditor if he told anyone their actual estimated cost, because it exceeded Congressmembers' upper tolerance of $400B by at least 10%, now nearing 50%, before the program is even fully underway. This is the truth, and your tired denial with "liberal" as a smokescreen is sleazy. How do you like Representative Tom DeLay's criminal inducements to his fellow Republican, to vote for the bill in exchange for DeLay backing the reluctant Rep's son's campaign? Your own words apply only to the extent of not believing your Slashdot posts: they're part of the pack of lies destroying this country. Happy?
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How is that "news"?
"Great thing about politicians, though, you can always tell when they're lying: their lips move."
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Considering how many stories the times has 'gotten wrong' and 'had to retract' about Bush in the last four years, and all the other crap they write about, you have to take everything they write now with a grain of salt. A very large grain.
The NY times is so partisan, that they are no longer credible. So I have a very hard time believing any of this, nor anything they write. Besides nuclear weapons were only ONE of the reasons we went in there, read the state of the union address! And Sadam did have illegal weapons, he even used some of them in the war.
So please, get down off your cross already, somebody needs the wood.
Is there nowhere to turn where I don't have to read partisan political crap? What does this have to do with tech news?
Maybe you'll like this better.
Make your own uranium centrifuge
Posted by CmdrTaco, October 3, 2004
Monkey pointed us over to an article at Tom's Hardware that has a howto with plans and schematics for a pretty nice setup on rolling your own nuclear program at home. This could be just the thing for generating your own electricity or raining fiery death down on your neighborhood. Now I know what to do with all my old artillery rocket bodies!
(Read More...|49 of 52 comments)
Seems a little fishy.
Oh you mean the same NY Times we trust to report the made up news...excuse....news.
j m2 0040629.shtml
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/joelmowbray/
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
All presidents lie because the lazy Americans, worried more about their IRAs, how big their SUV is and how tiny their cell phone is, let them get away with it.
As for the matter at hand, Bush wanted Saddam because Saddam made Daddy Bush look stupid. His presidency will be seen by history as the quest of a young man to regain the love and respect of his father after years of debauchery. Any part of it that is not that way is merely the Republican Party's kapo (Cheney, Ashcroft, et al) animating their puppet in the White House.
Don't ask yourselves why we're in Iraq, ask yourselves why the other Arab countries are not. They're not because we prop up their aging criminal royal families in exchange for oil, while the royal grandsons race their cigarette boats around off Monaco. Remember, the 9/11 planes were not flown by Afganis, or Iraqis. They were flown by Saudis and Egyptians that hate our role in this.
Interviewed by the BBC, bin Laden once said that if he came to power oil would be sold at a price set by the world market. He's no dummy; he knows "his" country would need America to buy oil. Hell, that's practically all the part of the world has to sell. He knows our consumption of oil drives the world's economy. He's just saying 'no more sweet deals for Uncle Sam to look away while we murder our people' like we do for the House of Saud.
If Bush wants to "spread Freedom" he needs to look at who America has been sleeping with since the end of the 2nd World War. But he doesn't want to spread freedom; he wants to get re-elected (see earlier remarks, "Cheney" "Ashcroft.")
I think this campaign is living in the past too much. We are so into the details of how the war took place and what we were lied to about that we are forgetting the real issues.
1. Iraq is our responsibility. I don't care what someone did or didn't do. I want to know what they are gonna do with Iraq from this point forward. We broke the country and now we need to fix it. Should the person with the most experience with the whole endeavor finish his agenda? Or should the person with a fresh idea try act out the exit strategy?
2. North Korea; how should we go about handeling them? Kerry thinks he can go talk to them and get the weapons at the same time. Or so he said. Does he plan on involving China since it is their backyard? I would like to see detailed assessments from both candidates.
3. (My own personal issue) I would like to see the candidates stress their opinions on Union Labor and frankly I am in favor of the candidate who would lift restrictions from Union Labor. I imagine it is Kerry but it is hard to say with all the stance switching. Infact, I haven't heard either candidate talk about Labor Reform, unless I flat out missed something completely.
Thank you. I agree completely. My blood pressure has gone up and my karma has gone down every time I try to respond to these liberal view points here. I want the old slashdot where we knew who was good and who was evil and we could all have a good time flaming them.
...it was a thinly veiled pursuit of $$$. It had absolutely nothing to do with WDM's or 9/11. You know it. I know it. Bush continues to lie about it.
about why Bush really wanted to invade Iraq? Money? Oil? Freedom for the Iraqi people? Hegemony? Power? What?
It was Saddam's "pubes" that were of International interest, not his "tubes"!!!!
-psy
last year.
Not that it matters to people who don't follow the news.
Oh, and the fact that this information was presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee (of which Kerry was a mostly absentee member) doesn't matter either.
Ha ha. (sigh)
Listen, first, I didn't even know there was a politics server on Slashdot until tonight. It's clear Michael's political rage got the better of him tonight. Second, the DMCA was birthed under Clinton's watch. So go back 6 years and speak up then, or, and I think I speak for everyone that really doesn't want to hear it anymore, STFU
Bush: Welcome to Whose America Is It Anyway?. The administration where everything is made up and the facts don't matter. That right, the facts don't matter. Just like a Texas murder trial.
Strong?! They lied! And then we invaded Iraq, where we're bogged down in a miserable catastrophe built on lies. Isn't that "a bit strong"? This isn't TV, this is WAR. LIES!
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
It was mentioned in Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell them paper back edition that was released months ago.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The invasion of Iraq was predicated not on what Saddam was trying to acquire, but on what he had.
The problem was, the sanctions were working. No-one - not the Syrians, not the Nigerians, not even the North Koreans - were crazy enough to supply Hussien with components or technology for WMD and risk the economic, political and military repurcussions.
As it is becoming increasingly clear, the Bush administration was aware of this fact. In response, they lied about it.
This is fairly old news. I mentioned it on my website on Aug.1 2004. Do a search on www.theshrub.com using *office of special plans*. Interesting stuff. Then Google it. TheShrub created an intelligence office inside the Dept of Defense. Thereby discarding other agencies such as the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. All this to come up with a lame excuse that comes back to haunt him. Do lots of reseach before you vote this Nov 2004. BUT DO VOTE!! Check out www.2bozos.com too.
How many stupid democrat geeks there are. Wake up people
Nooooo! Surely not! Nooooo!
Glad I live in Britain - our 10 Downing Street would NEVER lie!
Oh no - wait...
Stop sending mixed messages!
are only made tolerable by the fact that Bush is going to win in November.
Get this crap off slashdot.
Bueller? Bueller?
BU__ SH__!
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Saddam was an evil nutjob. He deserved to be ousted. Why did we need to 'justify' doing so to begin with?
Well since I'm a citizen of the United States, I'm only able to hold my own government accountable directly. When our vice president says "There is no doubt that Iraq has reconsitituted it's nuclear weapons program", he has made a very strong statement.
It is our governments job to guide the country. When they are guiding the country into an unpopular direction, they need to justify this. I think it is irresponsable to make statements like the one above when there is in fact much doubt.
Lied is a bit strong, but I believe misled is an understatement. It's only right to hold our leadership accountable.
-- john
Unless there was some reason to believe that he did have weapons, there was no reason not to simply continue with the inspections. Anyone with any sense knew this at the time -- why do you think Powell tried so hard to convince the UN that Saddam really did have WMD?
Even if you feel that at some point something had to be done, why that particular point, if there was no evidence of WMD? And why this particular action -- even if something had to be done, why did that "something" have to be invading and taking over the country?
More importantly, this is no excuse to lie to the American people. If the war was justified regardless of whether Saddam was building nukes, why not just say that? Why lie to us about it?
The answer, of course, is that the American people would never have accepted going to war unless they felt threatened. So basically, Bush tricked us into going to war, and now he wants us to be OK with that because he thinks the war was justified anyway. That just doesn't work for me, and I think a lot of the American people feel the same way.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Sorry, I can't imagine the DMV allowing somebody to have that as a license plate. It was, in fact, a bumper sticker.
Sorry for the confusion.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Let me first of all remove my tin foil hat. *crunch* There, that's better. Now, for those of you that still don't know what the Iraq war is about, I recommended that you read the Policy for a New American Century Plan For Iraq. The article itself is quite a read, but a short synopsis is available here : http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews /pnac_030310.html
(and every other major news site for that matter).
To summarize : The Iraq war was never about WMD's, regime change, Terrorism, or even Oil (well, not for Iraq's oil specifically). After the fall of soviet Russia, America remained the sole remaining super power. We obtained, and remain in this position by means our economy. Our economy is oil based, there is no way around that. The PNCA plan basically states that if we wish to remain on top (read: maintain economic stability), we need to control the flow oil. Iraq may not be the largest oil nation on the face of the planet, but its right next door to everyone that is. The idea, of course, is that by controlling Iraq, we might 1. Bring stability to the region and therefore stabilize the flow of oil and 2. Be in a better position to take control of the flow of oil when shortages begin.
Most estimates place us at about 20 years before bad oil shortages really begin. This isn't brain surgery folks, the Iraq war was a bait and switch. How else to you tell the Land of The Free that to maintain your current level of economic comfort you have to annex another country?
*Tin foil hat is now back on*
The gerrymandering of political districts has gotten way out of control. There are districts split into several pieces, districts which follow interstates between major cities, all by democrats and republicans agreeing to carve out safe districts for themselves, as if they have given up trying to improve their percentage of legislatures and congress. (Wouldn't it be a sweet dream to get the anti-monopoly trust busters after the two major parties? Oh such a sweet dream!)
Political battles are now not a single battle for the center with compromise being the order of the day, but two independent battles, left and right, with the minority is pretty much guaranteed to be a waste of time. Out of 435 seats in the house, only someting like 20 are an actual horse race with the winner in doubt.
What you get is polarized politics. Instead of having to actually woo ALL the voters, they have to woo their side of the political spectrum. The winner is guaranteed to be from one extreme or the other, not the center. And since the majority of voters in each district have become accustomed to their guy winning, it is natural to extrapolate to the entire country, and think of themselves as being the majority in the entire country, thus their opponents are simply immoral and selfish. No one has to compromise any more, or think about the entire country, because they believe they are thinking of the entire country, and their opponents are minority radicals. We have become a nation of cliques.
Whether or not centrist candidates actually accomplish much is a different question, and whether third party candidates would do better is yet another question, but having safe guaranteed seats and a stagnant congress surely does no good to anybody except the entrenched powers.
Infuriate left and right
They should require every Political story that goes up to get approved by TWO editors, with differening political views. And they should prohibit the editors from adding their own thoughts on to the end. If they want to make a comment, they should make it with the rest of us.
Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
/. Preferences
Then I remembered that you *can* exclude stories posted by any of the Slashdot supermods, or whatever the hell you call them. Just go to:
Click on the tab titled "Homepage," then under "Exclude Stories From the Homepage" locate the author you don't want to see again (in this case Michael) and check the box.
Now, the suggestion to Slashdot coders: Why not create a special section called "Ignore shitty articles by Michael?" After all, it's not that I want to exclude stories as much as I don't like my time wasted by a jackass like him.
but it still sounds like pretty good grounds for impeachment to me. It really doesn't matter if he's tried, we just want the guy out of office!
My site: Free Nature Pictures
On the one hand, the Bush administration has been roasted by the Democrats for not taking pre-9/11 intelligence seriously enough.
On the other hand, the Bush administration is getting roasted by the Democrats for taking post-9/11 intelligence too seriously.
It sure is nice to have your cake and eat it too, eh Democrats?
Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.
Anyone else want to boycott Slashdot subscriptions?
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Bush and Kerry had the same information presented to them before this all started and they both chose to go ahead with military action. If Bush lied, Kerry lied. Period.
Mistakes may have been made, but if so they were made by both candidates. Now, one opportunistic candidate is pretending that he had nothing to do with it and using his own mistake (if one was made at all) against his opponent. Shameful really.
To be honest, I am quite disappointed in the cognative skills of most Slashdot posters regarding this topic. I thought this particular community of people were smarter than many posts suggest.
Kerry hasn't told you one thing that he is going to do. He has proffered nebulous lists, buzzwords, and catchy quotes, but nothing substantial or concrete. Most of you that are planning to vote for him have no other reasons in mind than he isn't Bush and he isn't a republican, and that is really pathetic.
The problem with this whole post is this: Just because I disagree with Bush out of doesn't mean that I like the Democrats. I dislike both parties. They're both up to their ears in risky foreign policy that earns us the hate of the rest of the world. How many dictators (including Saddam) have the Democrats and Republicans installed over the years? Remind me why they supported (or orchestrated) the destruction of several democratic governments in the Americas alone?
It's time to get rid of both of our main parties.
i read the first three pages of this new york times opus, and not once does it indicate the white house lied about the use of the tubes.
it does say that energy experts suggested they were to be used for rockets, but what the heck would energy experts know about rockets?
hey, tin foil hat crowd, i hope you're wearing 'em. don't put 'em down until the liberals tell you its ok.
Well then that must be the majority. I can't find a poll that doesn't show Bush ahead. The Gallup Poll, for example, shows Bush ahead of Kerry 52 ro 48. Google the rest.
http://www.busyweather.com/
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS (Their caps, not mine)
First three docs:
Iraq Oil Map.PDF
Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.2.PDF
Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.1.PDF
So, before the war, the Vice President, like, has this task force thing, and they won't tell anybody what they talked about. But they had a map of the Iraqi oilfields AND lists of people who would be intersted in those fields. Oh, and the VIP himself? He's still pulling down mad money from Halliburton, to the tune of about half-a-mill a year.
But "War for Oil"? Man, that's just CRAZY talk right there. CRAZY.
Or they could just can Michael.
In the international press it was widely reported that the WMD claims that the US made were very dubious e.g. compare this Guardian article from Feb 6, 2003 that took Powell's presentation to the UN security council apart bit by bit.
That is why the world opinion was so critical of this war as it was clear from the beginning that this was a war of choice and not necessity.
The scandal here is twofold:
1) An administration that set out to send troops into harms way for very dubious reasons (I still don't understand what they hoped to gain).
2) A complacent American press that allowed the American public to be suckered into this pointless war.
You should really read the article. It is long, but provides an interesting tale of how this happened. What can be done to help make sure that it doesn't happen again?
NT
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
If by "Flip-Flop" you mean "Being able to change his opinions based on new information", sure.
Yeah the difference between Kerry and Bush is that Kerry can admit Bush's mistakes since he is running against him... but he agrees we have to see those mistakes through. Bush thinks we have to see those mistakes through and it's of no practical value given our soldiers and enemies to admit mistakes were made.
I somehow suspect that if Kerry made the exact same mistake, he would take Bush's position. And vice-versa.
Color me annoyed. Although I can't say disillusioned... at the end of the day I think it's fairly rational albeit a bit ideologically inconsistent... and signs of rationality are always better than foolishly consistent ideology. On both sides.
The President didn't lie about the information that was presented to him. Neither did President Clinton or Senator Kerry when they were presented with the same information. In fact, all the way up until the Democratic Presidential Debates, Kerry thought Saddam Hussein was a threat and even made the same claims about their WMD program(s) that President Bush has made.
Is there some directive that states that one must read all articles that appear on the main page? If so, I must have missed the memo.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
You'll find a mixture of ancient history (chemical weapon use by Iraq from the late 80's when the US was still broadly supportive of Saddam, and tried to blame it on Iran), shaggy dog stories (tales from an Iraqi "defector" of 20 secret WMD facilities which have since mysteriously evaporated) and flawed intelligence presented as fact (the famous cylinders), and so on.
Even though the US has long had control of Iraq, freedom of movement, and plenty of reasons to look, zero credible evidence has been found to substantiate a significant threat to the US by Iraq as implied by that page.
With hindsight, the point isn't that wholesale deception was practised on the electorate (and still is) but that every scrap of "evidence" from faked up accounts of Iraqi uranium provisioning to the wild fantasies of "defectors" with vested interests has been martialed in support of a foreign policy decision that had already been made.
This lying on an industrial scale, in order to take the country to war, for goodness' sakes, shows most clearly the contempt in which the US electorate are held by the elected, imho.
Incidentally, a look at how the NYT originally reported the cylinders story makes an interesting comparison with their recent 16-page splurge. Since this was (AFAIK) how the cylinder story broke, you'd think it might have got more of a mention.. ;-)
Iraq didn't attack the USA.
It is the strategy from many governments to silence internal conflicts and problems -> economic crash.
By creating an outside (fictisous) thread.
I don't like this but it has proven many times to work.
Hitler did it, just to mention one example
The watchmen is an other clasical example where this is worked out.
Why don't articles like this make the front page:
http://theinquirer.net/?article=18840
THREE PCS from the Washington State HQ of the campaign to re-elect George W. Bush were stolen at the end of last week, the Seattle Times reported.
The Seattle Times quotes the state republican party chairman as saying he believes Democrats were behind the theft.
That's because only specific machines were targeted, Chris Vance is quoted as saying.
The paper said that notebooks used by senior executives in the campaign were lifted in the burglarly. The paper said that while data on the notebooks was backed up, there's still a problem.
The data includes details about a plan to get out Republican voters, dubbed the "72 hour plan". This is a plan to make sure that all registered Republicans vote on election day, rather than sit on their butts and watch Jerry Springer or play blingo on QVC.
I know it's kind of long but:
Why order tubes with such tight tolerances? An Iraqi engineer said they wanted
to improve the rocket's accuracy without making major design changes. Design
documents and procurement records confirmed his account
-- john
The parallels with Vietnam are very striking. A congressional resolution authorizing the president to take action, based on fraudulent reported threats, twisted all out of proportion for different purposes. Ridiculous rules of engagement by politicians who have no clue what war really is, hamstringing the warriors, because a real war, which might have a chance of "winning", would destroy the country in order to save it. Bogus statistics showing progress in "winning". Description of the enemy as anything evil other than the reality of a mostly native populace trying to throw out foreigners.
But one big difference. It took 8 years, from 1964 to 1972, to get the populace riled up enough to become so disgusted with the rulers' lies to shake things up. It has taken only one year this time. Just as personal video cams taping the Rodney King beating have made it a lot harder for police to get away with random vigilante justice, so have the internet and digital cameras and satellite phones made it a lot harder for world leaders to fool all of the people.
Sure it will happen again, but the response time to detect bullshit will be even shorter next time.
Infuriate left and right
Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
It's really hard hearing viewpoints you disagree with, isn't it?
I think this weapons technology sale to China in the mid-90's is the sale in question.
if you want to know what bush was really thinking, rather than what he actually said, look at when bush smirks or rolls his eyes.
to head up the follow up comment about why they would need anodized coatings on the tubes if they were just for rockets:
The inspectors solved another mystery. The tubes
intercepted in Jordan had been anodized, given a protective coating. The Iraqis had a simple explanation: they wanted the new tubes protected from the elements. Sure
enough, the inspectors found that many thousands of the older tubes, which had
no special coating, were corroded because they had been stored outside.
The inspectors found no trace of a clandestine centrifuge program. On Jan. 10,
2003, The Times reported that the international agency was challenging "the
key piece of evidence" behind "the primary rationale for going to war." The
article, on Page A10, also reported that officials at the Energy Department
and State Department had suggested the tubes might be for rockets.
-- john
The politics category is slashdot is kind of out of hand.....There's not really any discussion whatsoever, just a bunch of agreement going on. I feel there's being very little new that's been brought to the table, or any new thoughts on the subject from any of these posts here. Sure you can say the same about me and mod me flamebait, but I'm not posting this from my political beliefs, I just feel nothing is being accomplished from these one-sided "discussions" which feel more like a high school pep rally with everyone chanting in unison. C'mon lets's add something new aside from Clinton gets sucked off and impeached...so why the fuck don't we all go abu garib on Bush's ass!?!?
For instance....The NYtimes, which has a history of perjurers (Jason Blair) and playing up toe the 5th avenue aristocracy has an anti-bush article which mainly sites known liberal only authors. Not that partisan writers cannot be effective, but a little variety should spice it up.....
http://www.commaecho.com
im sorry, there is more than rhetoric? Politics is just another hollywood'ish drama, with those not in power the poor innocent david's among the incumbent philistenes. Looking back to the 80's headlines, the hair may have changed but the plot stays the same.
In the long run Democrats = Republicans. Different agendas, different means of mobilising voters, but neither party has a solution to any of the country's problems beyond staying in office. Remember the pre-clinton republicans? Back before they had the house republicans we're reasonable, hell they had to be. Give them a 4 year run in the majority, all the moderates are ejected for extremists, the McCain's and Jefford's suppressed in favor of the neo-cons and Frists. "Moderate view? What the F* do we need a moderate view for?"
Does noone else see a pattern? Give the democrats the majority for 8 years and we'll end up with a socialist agenda. Doesn't bother me quite as much as the neo-Fascist one, but I'd kinda still prefer something in between.
Whatever, I guess I'll just settle in for my new regressive tax with matching satellite tracking implant so I can get on planes.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
If this was the global test that the bushies are talking about I would agree with you but it is not the case. The global test that Kerry was talking about is the one that all the presidents since Georges Washington have done. It is in the national interest and is war the only choice we have? As usual the fucking bushies are distorting everything that Kerry said and you have bitten to the bait. You should realize that almost everything that comes out of the washington chickenhawks mouths are lies or distortions of comments from their opposition.
No matter what his motive were when he started the war, his adminstration has effectively played the war card again and again.
Not supporting your president in a time of war is tantamount to not supporting our troops, casualties, American victims, the Iraqies right to freedom, a world without fear or our own nation in a time of crisis.
Think what you may, this is a time of drummed up nationalism and a lot of people are still angry and scared. Conflicting facts and false realities are everywhere (and honestly, if you truely want to believe your president it doesn't take much).
Quack, quack.
Here's a link to a Reuters Synopsis. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1003-20.ht m
Iraq - I don't care if there were WMD's or not
#1 - Iraq is a strategic location flanking Iran on the west. We are also in Afghanistan flaking Iran on the east. WMD's were just a floater to get us into Iraq and prepare for the next targets. The Pentagon and CIA know much more than we do and know that all of our media is watched by the enemies. So due to national security, they cannot disclose all information.
#2 - Peak Oil (and natural gas). Just Google for Peak Oil. China is now the #2 importer of oil behind the US. Our entire economy and way of living depends on oil. There is no way at all we can just switch to solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power in a decade. Further, we use natural gas for fertilizers for food. We use oil to power the machines which harvest and transport food. Without oil, the US economy and population will die. So you liberals can cry me a farking river about Iraq. We are better off now and in the future by securing oil in the Middle East. That is, unless you want to starve and die.
#3 - US Dollar. If oil is allowed to trade in a currency other than the US Dollar such as the Euro or Gold, the US Dollar will collapse, our economy will grind to a halt, and we will be in a Greater Depression. We must ensure that oil transactions will continue to take place in the US Dollar currency.
Cheney
#1 - I really like this guy. He's a no-nonsense guy who won't take BS from anyone. Just watch the VP debate on Tuesday. Cheney is a great business leader and enhances the Bush ticket.
#2 - He worked his way up from nothing. That, my fellow Patriots, is the American dream. You start out with nothing and build yourself a fortune! Only in America is that possible.
Guns & Lower Taxes
#1 - Clinton's "Assault" Weapon Control Act expired! You liberals can take my guns from my cold, dead hands. If you really want it, I'll give it to you, one bullet at a time.
#2 - My money is exactly that - my money. I am now paying less taxes due to Bush's tax cuts. I don't give a damn about the lazy people (or as the liberal media calls them: poor). They can get a job and work hard just like I and Dick Cheney did.
And lastly, Pax Americana. There is nothing wrong with being an empire. Someone has to be an empire, so why not us? I fully embrace it. Those who threaten us and our allies (Poland, etc.) will suffer missile strikes and death. I honestly do not have any problem at all with that and am voting for Bush this November. It's either us or them, kill or be killed. We were attacked on 9/11 and now it's time to kill everyone involved. Only Bush is man enough to attack other nations who support terrorists and give the UN, an evil socialist organization, the finger.
Now, you can mod me down at -1 Troll, but I am not trolling - I am telling you my reasons for voting for Bush, though some of you may disagree with them.
The gamesmanship of which you speak--is he building WMDs, isn't he?--was answered in two ways. First, Saddam was bombed routinely for a decade. Second, he was subjected to crippling sanctions. I say "he," employing the euphemism offered by Washington, but outside of true believers like Madeleine Albright and the doorman outside the American Enterprise Institute, it was understood that the bombs fell on, and the sanctions starved and poisoned, innocent civilians. Half a million dead children later, bombs and sanctions created the world's most valuable ghetto.
Saddam was "screwing with us," yes, but he paid the price in being pauperized and miniaturized--a ghost of the asshole he had been when Donald Rumsfeld still paid house calls. And so he would have remained, a tinpot dictator with only his inglorious memories to keep him company, without the least hope of becoming the James Bond-style mastermind that cackled in the fantasies of neocons and neoliberals alike, had it not been for the world-historical miscalculation of our invasion. We were lied to. We invaded because of lies--lies told by one set of politicians and eagerly swallowed by another. And now we are fucked, with nothing to show for our dead sons and our tattered honor. And this folly will haunt us across the decades.
So, how many people have read the 9/11 Commission reports? How many people believe, verbatum, everything the media spews?
How many people really know who said what, when, and based upon what evidence? I'd bet 99% of the people responding in this forum really don't have a clue as to the real facts.
I have read excerpts of the 9/11 report. I don't believe everything I hear from the media. I actually listened to Bush's initial speech about going into Iraq and know that WMDs were not the only reason. I also know that not only Bush and his administration, but Clinton and his, and every government agency in the federal government screwed the pooch on the whole damned deal. How do I know?
I pay attention to the facts (and research them when they seem to be lacking), and ignore the editorializing, half-truth telling, spin-doctor journalists. I won't even waste my time reading the NYT article. Maybe Bush (or his administration) lied, maybe not, but I won't take the word of the NYT on it.
PGA
(original post: "Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.")
(reply post: Sounds like exactly what the United States ended up doing. It decided it was right and it had the power to make sure it got what it wanted out of the deal. Notice the reference to oil... Not to the safety of the United States' populace. Oil. Cute.)
Dude, the problem is that if you have $2-10 billion a year free and clear in guaranteed oil income, even the U.S. can't stop you from getting nukes sooner or later. Especially if you've had 10 years practice hiding stuff from us, catching us even when we sent spy equipment in with UN inspectors. The most we can do is discourage you from using them. And if you're the type of guy who has demonstrated A) you have the willpower to use them when needed (vs. Kurds, Iranians), and B) you have the willpower to invade your neighbors to ensure your glorious future, then it's just quite possible that we might want to take you out. To ensure that, while someone else besides us (hint: we don't need it) may get that $2-10 billion a year, it damn well won't be you.
It's called "regime change". And in a nutshell I think that's why we *really* went into Iraq.
--LP
P.S. This post should not be taken as an endorsement of the above policy one way or another. It is an assessment stating that the above seemed to be the policy.
I'm forced to wonder if the same thing is happening in this administration. The second-tier staff are insulating the President from some of the evidence, because of his drive to attack Iraq.
It's sometimes referred to as "pumping sunshine", and it seems to be common in big bureaucracies-- nobody wants to report bad news upwards, no matter how bad it gets. If the boss doesn't (or can't) verify things directly occasionally, it goes on and on.
It may have been going on on both sides of the Iraq/WMD thing:
Scientist/Engineering Mgr reporting to Saddam: "We've demonstrated that we can produce this amount of U235 in this amount of time. We've also shown that the shaped charges for compressing the material to critical mass are working perfectly"
translated: we made some powerpoint charts to show you what you want to hear so we not only won't be killed, but can afford food for our families. We know we won't be found out, because there just isn't that kind of technical depth around here.
Staffer reporting to white house:"We know that they're trying to make WMDs and we have this order that they placed for 60,000 aluminum tubes that we think are for centrifuges"
translated:we got a copy of the Iraqi scientist's powerpoint slides, but we don't have any way to check if it BS. The aluminum tubes that they're ordering for small rockets will sound good if we say they're for a centrifuge farm. I better have good things to report so I don't get fired and can continue to feed my family
This kind of thing isn't unusual when there's a lot less at stake, so why shouldn't we expect it to happen when everyone is on edge/fearful in a toe-the-line-or-get-out organization (on both sides).
In this time just before a national election, expect the worst from everyone. Be it Dan Rather, or Slashdot - PULEEEZEEE the NYT?
On matters of the body politic in the US, the NYT has to be one of the leading non objective papers running. Period. When they aren't making up the news - they are slanting it, but I digress.
Even after reading the 15 pages, I still come away with the following.
1. The intelligence community latched onto an idea and passed it on up.
2. The executive branch wanted very much to believe this evidence.
3. Neither the intelligence community, nor the executive did a lot of vetting.
Lets be honest here people. You've been systematically lied to for more than a decade. For some reason a country starts ordering a bunch of tubes and claims a legitimate use for them. Considering past behaviour you go looking for non legitimate uses - and you find one. After a decade of deciet - which concept for the tube's use do YOU latch on to?
Lets not forget, that for some reason we can't find WMD, but we can find pesticides. Lots of them, all stored in **tada** ammunition bunkers. Now either the Iraqi army was extremly fastidious, and had really bad crabs, or something else was going on there. Another honesty check folks. The difference between weapons of mass destruction and pesticides is the intended target.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
And if one talks about policy... US policy was always massive response to any attack of any sort on the US. For those of you old enough to recall it was called MAD - Mutual Assured Destruction. For sixty years it keep the US and USSR from fighting each other on their respective lands.
According to the MAD doctrine any attack on the US mainland should be met with a massive nuclear response.
By this logic one could hold Bush at fault for not launching a massive attack after 9-11 in the general direction of the perps.
In-fact, by not following the MAD doctrine, Bush made the US nuclear deterrent effectively worthless. No nation will believe the US stance anymore and will be more likely to attack the US with nukes. Why? Because Osama has proven that the US will try and find perps and reasons instead of just blindly lash out. It makes the inconceivable attack conceivable.
Now some claim the doctrine was dropped earlier but it has never been stated to be the case.
I am not advocating this action rather pointing out that Bush took a "nicer" course of action than doctrine suggested toward the Middle East. A course of action that reduced the USA's security according to the logic of MAD.
Did you miss the memo, and by memo, I mean post, where you said I was reading a subsection?
Much of the evidence presented as "proof" had been discredited before the President's State of the Union address that presented the evidence as unequivocable. The yellow-cake evidence had already been determined to be a forgery, the British intelligence report that figured prominently had been shown to be a cribbed-together mishmash of outdated sources (a 5-year old thesis available off the 'net, and some stuff from one of the Jane's military references), the the "aluminum tubes" evidence had been widely discredited by experts in the nucular field. I read all of this after the UN presentation by Collin Powell, and before President Bush's State of the Union address.
The one piece of evidence that was kept rather quiet, mentioned obliquely as reports from defected Iraqi citizens, turned out to come from one or two con artists.
There was not one single piece of evidence that was valid, and anybody following the leadup to war could tell. Anyone who questioned the legitimacy of the evidence was labelled a "liberal," as if it were a dirty word. Hell, even Anne Coulter called those folks traitors.
To place so many citizens in harm's way (and to perform a national variety of vigilante justice) based on such questionable evidence took either an unbelievable amount of self-deception, or a desire to attack Iraq *in spite* of the evidence.
Considering there was *no link whatsoever* between bin Laden and Hussien, I can only interpret the evidence in one way: President Bush intentionally lied to the US citizens to follow a path to war with a beaten enemy. I don't know why. The "liberal" in me thinks it might be to benefit Halliburton and Bechtel. The realist in me realizes it might be nothing more than a distraction from the complete disaster in Afghanistan. Or there might have been a *real* reason to go after Iraq, one that had to be hidden from the world.
Considering the price tag in human life and our nation's honor and credibility, I'm not sure which would be worse.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
My previous post: here was marked as troll. I hope another moderator will disagree and give my post a chance at visibility. If congress decided for impeachment proceedings against this administration for legitimate concerns I don't think it would be considered trolling. I just want to hear arguments for and against the ideas I put forth.
He said
sky reported to be mostly blue and sun is expected to rise tommorow morning
You parsed it as
sky reported to be mostly blue and (sun is expected to rise tommorow morning)
An alternative parsing is
(sky reported to be mostly blue and sun is expected to rise) tommorow morning
Infuriate left and right
"screams "I'm a Democrat, I hate Republicans!" to me."
I know. Reality is SO freakin' biased. Why do the facts hate Bush and his followers? Why oh why? There should be a law!
The scary thing is that at this rate I could actually see one being created:
The RightThink Homeland Defense Act - "Because only a terrorist would question the President's motives!"
Is this slashdot.org or moveon.org? I think if Bush pushed for the government to move to open source, some slashdotters would probably explode.
Trust me, there won't be a draft. Nobody wants it. The bill was started by a democrat and is "dead" in the senate because no one will even think of sponsoring it. The military doesn't want people forced into a job they don't want. How well do you think those people would perform? The public doesn't want a draft, and neither do any politicians. And for the people who say Bush is sending your sons and daughters to die; The individuals who signed up for the military know they can be called into action at any time. If you don't want to be in Iraq then you shouldn't have signed up. Sounds easy enough.
I suspect this bill was started just to try and hurt Bush later in the election. The media picks up the story about a bill for a draft and the public goes apeshit.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
To try and bring some balance here how about this:
To meet the goals of doubling special forces and their support units, Kerry would have to reinstate draft.
Kerry voted against the 1991 gulf war, which was heavyly supported by the UN and other nations. Iraq would be in control of much of the world's oil supply, and plundering another nation if Kerry had his way. Did that not pass the "gobal test", since Iraq disagreed? Can you really trust Kerry to handle your security?
No, it's annoying to read articles that have nothing to do with tech. Show it in the politics subsection, I couldn't care less. But the scope of the site is based around technology - and this is one hell of a stretch. It shows up by default.
If I want politics, I'll go to the politics section, DailyKOS or Drudge. The fact that Michael's got his panties in a bunch over the election doesn't mean the rest of us need to see it.
It must be really hard for you that someone showed others how to ignore pap like this, isn't it?
Truth is a hilarious thing. It is so different to so many people. For example, there is the truth that both Congress and the Whitehouse were presented with the same information. Or possibly the truth that Sadam Hussein was seeking (not necessarily posessing) Nuclear Arms. There is the thought that both Congress and the Whitehouse came to the same assesment, and in context of which tubes that are of specification for a Nuclear Program were considered as contributing evidence. However Truth is a broad thing, such as the truth in our economic\political (all the same) policies over the last century. Has everyone somehow forgotten that our market only works because we sell to foreign markets ? Has someone forgotten the 17 UN resouloutions Sadam Hussein violated. Had someone forgotten that other presidents have lied about more then Aluminum Tubes ! You are convicting a person who brought down a homicidal madman because he mistook the purpose of Aluminum Tubes you fool. Maybe my tiny little worldview is slightly larger than a crackpot liberal veiw that we can somehow live in a fantasy land. The TRUTH is that Sadam Hussein was dangerous and needed to be brought to justice. And there are other truths. For example the truth that Johnsons Great Society is bullshit and welfare has done nothing more than make poor families who can't advance. Maybe there is some truth in that we can't give handouts and that people need to work. Maybe there is some truth that Liberal Nations of Europe are nowhere near as successfull as the United States. But what am I talking about, I only have a "tiny little worldview".
in fine US tradition-- no accountability, ..and our australian government follows
no enquiry, conflict of interest.
blindly to please their emperor.
haven't our governments realised that
century's of western medalling into other
countries affairs is the root cause for
our "terriorist" problem ?
nothing remembered, phuck all learnt...
mobius.
something to think about next time people
grizzle about their high tax margins, or
being cavity searched at the airport.
i will certainly be thinking about
it when i go to vote next week.
What's next, Coffee is addictive?
We should have been
So much more by now
Too dead inside
To even know the guilt
"...according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity."
Oh yeah, there's credibility just oozing from this story. We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine? On conditions of anominity??? Oh, and it just happens to be election year! What a coincidence!
And while we're on the subject of amazing coincidences, where was this scandal coverage in 2002? I mean, you supposively had top CIA officals who knew, you had the Department of Energy who knew, America's leading nuclear scientists who knew as well as any number of intelligence experts and Martha Stewart who knew. No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?
Are we stretching the bounds of credibility yet? No? Then it's a good thing for the NYT that investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. I mean, you'd almost think this administration acted without cause...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
hearing the yammerings of recent college grads or high school students or other malcontents on electoral politics is not why I come to /.
/. seem like a hack site pushing an agenda (well ANOTHER agenda besides the constant anti-corporate "mind" set here).
This makes
Tiresome. Think I'll be investing my time elsewhere. Like in actually doing something worthwhile rather than reading a bunch of morons and middle achievers blast their uneducated, poor-spelling guts messily across the screen.
Ta ta, MFers.
I imagine George Bush has a sign on his desk: "The buck stops, um - somewhere else."
Whether or not the Bush administration foisted known lies or used mistaken judgement, whether or not the war in Iraq was planned from inauguration or if it was really meant to combat an immediate threat, the fact remains that the war was a big fat mistake and the administration refuses to take responsibility for it.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Is what you'll be hearing right before elections!
So much for a balanced political debate at Slashdot Politics? I thought the whole point of this was to combat the one-sided and inaccurate media?
Bush and company called the evidence conclusive and worthy of going to war; it was used as justification to both US citizens and the international community. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, kill a thousand plus US troops, trash carefully crafted diplomatic relations...THEN sell all that as a "success" AND the reason you should be elected- you goddamn well better have your I's dotted and your t's crossed.
It was publicly reported that at best the evidence was inconclusive, and now we see that it was quite positively false, and further that they KNEW it wasn't conclusive. Fact is, to date, not a single fucking piece of evidence has been uncovered to support any of Bush's claims that Iraq had any "weapons of mass destruction", and certainly not the claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat to national security.
That fits my definition of "lying" pretty well, thanks.
Please help metamoderate.
"Martians invade Earth after receiving intelligence that Bush was plotting a Mission to Mars. Although they find no Weapons of Mars Destruction they insist we had the capacity to build them. Alien war profiteers reopen Alcatraz, rename it Abu Probe, proceed to "interrogate" humans." - Tatsuya Ishida, http://sinfest.net/
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
The transcript is here
Now please stop reading this left-wing propaganda, and resume your consumption of FOXNEWS. Support our troops!!!
LIZ JACKSON: Two weeks after Cheney's speech, the Bush administration leaked the story of the aluminium tubes to the New York Times. It was front-page news. Anonymous officials were quoted saying there was new information that Iraq had embarked on a worldwide hunt for material to make an atomic bomb, and that the specifications of the aluminium tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that the tubes were for Iraq's nuclear program. Administration officials warned, "The first sign of a 'smoking gun'...may be a mushroom cloud." There was no mention of any debate or dissension about the tubes at all.
1: This is old news that should not have been ignored at the time. To whit, as I recall there were a few stories about the fact that the tubes were a) purchased for missle use (They fit the dimensions of some Iraqi missle), b) too short to use in centerfuges, c)higher tolerance than needed for the crappy missle, and d) a pain to properly wield together in such a fashon that they could be modified for use in a centerfuge (although it was feasably possible).
2: This is also similar to the Yellow Cake (YUM!) issue that the administration paraded in front on congress and the press. The State-Department type staff felt that the story was created by the Italians. (Later confirmed? I heard that it was a Berlisconi publication that made the documents.)
3: Bush got the war approved on the grounds that: 3a)He would make a coalition; 3b)Use force as a last resort; 3c)He would have a plan for what to do after beating the flintstone army. 3a) England, Poland; Costa Rica? 3b) ummm, no. 3c) The Department of Defense & the State Department (among others) told him that he would need a multiple of the troops actually used - at least if he wanted to keep a sembilance of order.
4: The real point is not that the war is indefensible (I think a war was justified) - but that the grounds used to justify the war were pretty much BS and every government in the world knew it. 4a) I suspect that the Brits went in assuming a more compitantly run war, because they were also tired of the BS from Iraq. 4b) Everyone who was not enforcing the origional war armistance terms might have joined if 3b) Force was used as a last resort (or at least used a little later); 3c) Bush had had a credible plan for after the "War Phase: (aka reconstruction); in general was not a little Bushitter.
The President has set US foregn policy back to before the Monroe Docterine.
Alex McDiarmid
Under Clinton and Bush the GOP controlled congress by a majority, thus they can push impeachment proceedings or not even start them, thus a special prosecutor for a BJ and war claims from the WH going unchecked.
On this level, justice is very, very partisan.
Hey, don't worry, be happy. The Spanish-American war was started with much less information, and for a lot less justification.
.45, which apparently was created to stop psychotic Filipino tribesmen who refused to fall down when plugged with .38s.
But, it led to the liberation of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, and the annexation of Hawaii. It also led to the invention of the Colt
If you want to blame someone, blame the Democrats. They're a terrible opposition party. I'm sure they calculated that, when it was all over, they'd rather criticize Bush for attacking Iraq than be put on the spot for opposing the war if Iraq actually did something exciting.
Yeah, read that one twice.
Is America safer now? Heck yes. Iraq has been removed from the global stage, and is now not even a regional player.
Are there risks? Yes, definitely. No risk, no reward.
What the US needs is a good Iraqi PR firm. Nobody wants to see photos of people going to work, since that's not dramatic enough for news. But the media will eat it if you feed it to them.
What's happening in Afghanistan? No hostilities, no media, no crisis. I'm sure the situation there is almost identical to Iraq, but without drama there's no news.
Southern Command's big problem isn't Iraqi insurgents. It's problem is it has no idea how to manage news organizations. Throw some human interest, post-war stories there. Humanize the situation. The embedded reporters are bitter, cynical flakes who would find something to complain about if they had free suites at the Four Seasons. Rotate them out and get the Saachi to do your PR/human interest stuff.
Grant the reporters you like access, and they'll lick your boots until their tour is up.
It doesn't, unless you know it was all pre planned.
Here is a short synopsis of the situation.
Note, the group they are referring to,PNAC, go to their website, or read some on them with various google links, very easy to find, you'll see the bulk of the heavy hitters inside the current regime had this whole deal planned out well in advance of 9-11. Combine that with a lot of the "government prior knowledge" evidence about 9-11 that you can find, and maybe it will make things clearer.
Realistically, it's a pretty bad scene right now, the US is in fairly dire straits. Basically we've been junta-ized. All the evidence is there, just spread out. A lot of people really don't want to accept it, or psychologically can't accept it, because they would have to live with that lie, knowing and accepting and excusing it, or do something about it, and the "doing something" is potentially pretty serious when you realise there's absolutely no chance of "voting" our way back to any sort of rational sanity or true honest governing.
> Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
Yeah, 'cause ignoring inconvenient facts got us into this mess, so maybe ignoring more inconvenient facts will get us back out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If the United States invaded Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 because they had intelligence that stated that Osama Bin Laden had plans to attack the United States by flying planes into buildings, and those attacks did not happen because we invaded Afghanistan, what do you think the Democrats would be saying. It is clear to me that they would suggest that the President lied about the intelligence reports, that he misled the American people, that there is no way a small band of disgruntled arabs could possibly pull of something on that scale.
There was a clear and present danger poised by Saddam's defiance of the entire world. The same defiance Hitler showed. Germany was after World War I living under sanctions and limits it by the allies after the war. The correlations between Hitler and post World War I Germany and Saddam and post Gulf War Iraq are undeniable. There were intelligence reports of the weapons of terror and mass destruction that Hitler's scientists were working on in hidden labs and secret factories (tanks, planes, V1 and V2 weapons, chemical and biological agents, and even a nuclear bomb). We did not take them seriously. Until it was too late to avoid a world war. But if we fail to learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. This time we will not have to worry about it. I would much rather have the luxury to debate what disaster might have happened, could of happened, was misled about happening, as long as it did in fact not happen. If he had weapons of mass destruction and was unwilling or incapable of using them against the United States, who says he would not have supplied those to terrorist groups willing to try. He did after all have responsibility in the failed attempt to assassinate the first President Bush when he visited the Middle East after the first Gulf War. So, he is willing to try to kill the President of the United States, but would not be willing to work with a terrorist group to strike at us. I don't believe that for a second.
I remember within weeks of September 11th, 2001 that people were criticizing the president for not preventing the attacks because in their minds there was clear intelligence that the united states was in danger and the Osama had plans to attack America, and that the White House failed to act.
The only thing consistent about the allegations and attacks on Bush are that they are politically beneficial to the Democrat Party's chance to win the election by tearing down Bush. If it is September 11th, Bush did not act as he should on intelligence (makes Bush look bad). Iraq war, Bush lied and misled America and made a mistake by invading the wrong country (makes Bush look bad). Bush did not use American soldiers enough in Afghanistan and is solely responsible for not capturing Osama at Tora Bora because we relied on Afghans to do the fighting (makes Bush look bad). In Iraq, we are using to many American troops, we should be using the Iraqis to do the fighting and not American troops (makes Bush look bad). How can that be the right option in one scenario and not the other. Simply because of the outcome, if we caught Osama and American troops died in the process, they would criticize him for that. Only imagine what would have happend if Franklin Roosevelt faced the same political attacks by the Republican Party. He didn't, because all Americans, politicians, civilians and military understood that we were in a fight to protect our freedoms. The first couple years of the second world war looked like a quagmire, like we were losing and it was only going to get worse.
So, it does not surprise me that Kerry attacks Bush on every position. You would expect that from someone who is thinking about what is most beneficial to themselves, even though he takes stances that contradicts himself in the process.
The real problem is Kerry does not know what he really believes. If he knew, he would have staked his position and stuck with it. His problem is that he knew it would be unpopular for him to stand in the President's way after September 11t
Numbers at http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ are reporting that about 13,000-15,000 Iraqi's are dead. But you all must remember that "The enemy attacked us", according to W.
There was evidence and reasoning both for and against the theory of WMDs in Iraq. Both sides were credible. Even if a good-sized majority thought there was nothing there, it doesn't indicate lying. The submitter is being intellectually dishonest.
Knowledge is valuable. Ignorance is dangerous. Censorship is unacceptable. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10
So?
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Though I only read the first few pages of the article, I can already see that this is extremely old news. I saw an english documentary on this exact fact during the actual iraq war! Just search google for "nuclear centrifuge aluminium tubes" and you'll see hundreds of links on that topic! Most of them date over a year ago.
Your site link goes to Air America.
Again, there is nothing about "lying" in this article. Did Dan Rather "lie" when he presented the memos on CBS? All the foreign intelligence reports were pointing to WMDs in Iraq. Even Clinton said Saddam had WMDs.
Iraq invaded Kuwait *because* Kuwait was the first aggressor in the Gulf War.
no.
iraq invaded kuwait because saddam himself said he needed something for his idle army to do. they were becoming restless and a possible threat to his power.
saddam has all along said kuwait belonged to iraq. long before the gulf war.
its quite odd how most iraqis felt saddam's invasion of kuwait is unjustified (though bizarrely enough feel that his scud attacks on israel were justified), and you defend what he did.
what's rather ironic about the whole thing is that kuwait provided financial support for iraq during the iran-iraq war in the 80's.
Now, the suggestion to Slashdot coders: Why not create a special section called "Ignore shitty articles by Michael?" After all, it's not that I want to exclude stories as much as I don't like my time wasted by a jackass like him.
Wow, that's some reaction. You don't even try to refute anything that was said, you just go off on a tirade and tell people how to avoid seeing stuff like this in the future. Scary... It's disturbing to think that you are probably a voter, and that there are actually other people out there who think similarly (based on the fact that you got modded up).
I don't care if you are liberal, conservative, or somewhere in the middle -- to see someone bury his head in the sand so as not to see any stories that might reveal something bad about his preferred political party is just plain frightening. God help us all if there are many of you out there.
Perfect: 'Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil.'
Is there anything more pathetic then restricting oneself from opposing views? Well, perhaps trying to impose 'democracy' in a state we don't understand, isn't ready for it, and perhaps doesn't even want it. And of course, this new 'democracy' should have an 'Exclude Anti-US, Anti-US-Puppet-Government' section in all its media.
After all, it's the American Way(tm).
A.) /. was free to begin with
/. has advertising
/. editors can't even spell
/. is just fun fluff anyway; other forms of entertainment still abound for free
/. editors
/.ed before half of them can reach them anyway
...
B.)
C.)
D.)
E.) I am poorer than any of the
F.) I would rather donate to a charity
G.) Paying to get "first post" is lame
H.) There are no other significant benefits to subscribing
I.) From subscriber's complaints, the links are
J.) The site hasn't seen any major redesign for years
K.) Half the color schemes are still eye-rending
I would have supported invading Iraq reguardless. I'm still wondering why we ever supported Saddam, and why we continue to support or ignore people like him. The world needs some serious clean-up done, by NATO, by the UN or by the US and her allies.
Also it was assumed that Iraq was interested in obtaining some serious weapons to threaten it's neighboring regions and to make the UN and US think twice about invading. Just because they never succeeded at getting things that even the UN admits was a probability (but were unable to prove) you people pretend that Bush *lied*. To lie you have to intentionally mislead people, I suspect that Bush honestly believed there was WMD. He's not a liar, just wrong (or perhaps incompetent).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Scott Ritter was a U.S. Marine who served in the Gulf war and acted as chief inspector of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM). He resigned his role as chief inspector after the CIA was caught trying to into the inspection teams in 1998.
In an interview with Paula Zahn, one of the United States' leading experts on Iraqi weapons programs left no question as to his feelings on the justification for war:
Scott Ritter was bashed by the media, who painted him as a traitor to the United States for failing to accept the White House's justifications. It's interesting how the media, often accused of being quite liberal, went out of their way to discredit Ritter and show loyalty to the White House in late 2002, yet reported of just which mouths had engulfed Clinton's penis could hardly be avoided during Monicagate.
The real story here isn't that the White House lied -- if you pay attention, White House officials "flip-flop" so much over the supposed motivations for war that even their caricature of Kerry looks rock solid. The real story here is that the media fell for the Iraq justification (or lack thereof) hook, line, and sinker, while doing the dirty work of discrediting Scott Ritter and ignoring or discrediting any other voices asking for more investigation for military action against Iraq.
You want links? Try these:
Documentation of "flip-flops" by the "liberal" media -- reporting the truth (that UN inspectors voluntarily left in December 1998), then
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
and stopping him was still a benefit. Doesnt saddam kill like 10,000 people a year? The US saved lives.
But you know what, the elections will probably be bushshit too! :)
Spread the word!
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence
Here is the headline Michael ran with:
White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
Do we really need to the News for Nerds site turning into moveon.org?
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
To whoever modded me down as troll, you exemplify exactly what the liberal media does - squash all those who disagree with their viewpoint. There are many others who share my views. Just take a look at the electoral vote map. Except for the liberal coasts, the rest of the country and Alaska is voting conservative.
"We train our children to drop fire on people, but we won't let them write 'fuck' on the sides of their airplanes, because it's obscene." -- Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now
My site: Free Nature Pictures
The Slashdot poster this came from and others like him are indeed for real!
The successful products of propaganda! As Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, once said, "Give me control of the German media, and I can control the German people." But then, of course, this poster would probably say the same of me, the only difference being that rationality and basic logic is not on his side. --Bummer, that. (Who owns the media, after all?)
I mean, many people still believe a jumbo jet hit the pentagon! Why is this?
But, oh, those bad, bad Middle-Easterners. They're all animals, right? They "Hate us for our Freedoms." Those same fringe groups were also funded by the CIA. (Who put Saddam in power, please? That's right! And who put the most recent despotic lunatic in power in Iraq earlier this year? You guessed it! Same people!)
Though these days, animosity in Iraq felt toward the US has been well earned, I'd say. Cluster bombing kids? Well, that's simple economics. A small price to pay for getting rid of a dictator, (which the US put there in the first place.) Hm. Strange, that. Some would almost think that the Bush/Nixon league wanted the world embroiled in profitable war for some reason!
But anyway. . . the trick, of course, is to get as many drone-copies of the fellow who posted the above to vote Bush next month. --At least enough to create a 'close race' so that Diebold and all that other stuff can swing it nicely in his favor once again. --Either that, or the same people who brought you 9-11 may indeed blow up a chunk of Manhattan and blame it on the pretend terrorists in order to convince you.
Remember those scary, scary Anthrax attacks all those many moons ago with US weapons grade spores?
Or how about the indestructible Arab 'terrorists' passport on top of the WTC crater?
Among a thousand other details forgotten in the shuffle by Joe-Average.
My favorite part is how often the argument comes up, "There are no such thing as conspiracies because so many people are not able to keep it a secret!" --Which of course is a broken argument, and I'll tell you why. .
Very simply. . , with much of the public not just willing, but down-right determined to look the other way you don't need to keep the mistakes and obvious tell-tale signs covered up, because the public will do it for you! Whenever those fascinating bits of incriminating/discordant info pop up, they are instantly shuffled to the back of the public consciousness by the media and by posters like the one above because, "Conspiracies Don't Exist." It's circular logic, and around and around it goes. .
It is rooted in a variation of Stockholm Syndrome; where the abused will actually protect their kidnapers. The poster above is a prime example of this psychology, and it's because of him that the world is messed up the way it is. --Too many willingly deaf and blind people.
Too bad he's not also dumb.
And too bad Kerry is a tool, unwitting or otherwise.
-FL
I can't wait to print out the 15 pages of text, and show all of the Bush-administration what really happened. This angers me.
And now we are fucked, with nothing to show for our dead sons and our tattered honor. And this folly will haunt us across the decades.
Last I checked the thing has been folly that has already haunted us across the decades. In fact your rant says as much....but in no way do explain how installing a democratic government in Iraq would continue this trend.
Your whole argument seems to be that we did shitty things in the past and made a mess...therefore we should do nothing and leave it a mess.
I for one think that cleaning up the messes left after the cold war is not only the smart thing to do to shore up our own national security as well as the world's but it is the moral thing to do as well.
I mean are you proposing that after all the things the US, the Soviet union and Western Europe did to Iraq and the Iraqi people we should in turn just leave it to Suddam and his sons and let it stew under thier tyrrany??
What does this "show for our dead sons and our tattered honor"?
What are you smoking? They wanted to go into Iraq even before 9-11 -- that tragedy was just a convenient excuse. Learn about neocons before you write them a blanket check for their invasions. They are slowly transforming this country into the Soviet States of America. Everyone outside this country sees it plain as day.
While I generally agree with you, that statement assumes a situation like the Cold War, where both sides understand and want to avoid the result: complete annihilated by the other (mutually assured destruction). Does Kim Jong-Il care? Would Osama Bin Laden care if he had a nuclear arsenal? You don't start a nuclear bluffing match with a madman who has nothing to lose.
Obviously you're right, pure MAD only applies to situations such as that during the cold war, and any degree of asymmetry at all ruins it. However, having nuclear weapons is a great bargaining chip, or, more accurately, not having them renders you pretty much irrelevant.
I'd be willing to wager that a whole lot more Al-Q activity goes on in Pakistan than Iraq (Iraq as it stood before the invasion that is, obviously it's seething with hardline islamist nut-jobs now). However, Pakistan has the bomb, and therefore doesn't have to be pushed around, similarly to Nth Korea - no US administration is going to attack them if they can nuke even Japan in retaliation, let alone land one in California.
This has been the big give-away from the start. If Saddam had nukes (or even plenty of chem- or bio- weapons), the neo-cons would never have invaded. Why would you put thousands of troops in a position where they would likely be nuked? If you still don't get it: Iraq was invaded because it DIDN'T have WMD. It was a soft target*, with oil, and invading it no doubt served many other political purposes, but it clearly didn't have WMD, that much was fairly transparent before the invasion began.
* for invasion, evidently occupation is a different story.
I meant 'incredibly clever', or possibly "an incredible, clever". Sorry about that. I also missed something at the end; add "is accurate" after "classic)" there. Hope it's still readable. :/ tech colleges
I agree 100%.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Who really cares that the reasons that where given to oust a horrendously evil dictator might have been exaggerated to rally the rest of the world to get rid of saddam. I know I don't, I was in the first gulf war and it's what should of been done the first time around.
I'm going to preface this with the statement that I don't neccessarily disagree with the finding in the linked story.
But doesn't it strike people strange that Slashdot has made a post that is arguably an opinion, rather than a fact? Agree or disagree, the issue in question really is a matter of difference of opinion, rather than hard provable fact. For every NYT article stating 'Bush lied' I'm sure you could find a Wall Street Journal article asserting the opposite.
Is the intent of the Slashdot article to be 'journalistic' in intent, or is it truly meant to be an opinion piece? Most other periodicals/publications/journalistic endeavours either split up news into straight reporting and an editorial section, or just have one or the other and make it clear which way they lean - does Slashdot do this as well?
Again things are being politicised by posters like the one above. This isn't a question of whether the 'opposing side' lied, or would have lied in the same way. They might have, but that is, for this issue, that is the killing and maiming of humans (Iraqi and American, and members of the 'Coalition of the Willing.'), under purposefully false, purposefully misleading pretences, lies, fabrications. This is the issue, not some partisan bickering. That is an attempt to deviate attention away. It is dispicable.
untimely.net
I would like to suggest that the editors of slashdot abstain from publishing politically loaded stories to it's front page (www.slashdot.org). While I do agree that any discussion of technology as it intersects with law (i.e. Copyright/fair-use) must contain some acknowledgment to the law markers, stories such as this one seem more inclined to incite partisan bickering than to be informative. This article is not an expose' and is inconsistent with the normal editorial standards for this site.
While I strongly encourage the freedom of political expression, I have always felt that we, the technically elite, should strive to rise above the political rhetoric of the lesser men for whom we tolerate.
Not always,
The American public raised an outcry against the B. and Butthead cartoon because of their violence. The program then switched to a sexual theme. The outcry ended.
This is being posted to Slashdot? This is a new low for Slashdot. How partisan do you have to be? And from an "anonymous reader" too. Next, I bet Slashdot is gonna start pushing the false information that Iraq never went after yellow cake in Nigeria, or Burkett's "indisputable" memos saying Bush skirted his duty in the 70's.
Perhaps if this had appeared two years ago when everyone else was talking about it, I might give it some leeway. Stick to the tech news.
"Hard work never killed anyone." -- Some Dead Guy
Kerry did not make the choice to go ahead with military action. He made the choice to leave that up to Bush. There's a huge difference.
Now, granted, leaving such a decision up to Bush is a horrible mistake. But a vote to authorize the president to make the choice whether or not to use force is not the same as a vote for the use of force.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
This comment is not about politics. But I just had to say it, nice web site buddy. I like it.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
As for Clinton, nobody really cared if he was boning his interns. That was just a way to get at him. He was accepting millions of dollars from Chinese and other Asian donors and making any policy they saw fit. Another point is that he was being paid to look out for the United States and he was completely AWOL. Madeline Albright admitted she and the Clinton adm. knew the North Koreans were cheating on the nuclear deal and they didn't do anything about it! US foreign policy then was more about propping up Tyson Foods than anything, else.
Americans shouldn't have to die just so Bush Junior can clean up Bush Senior's mess.
A Secret background investigation involves financials and court records. They don't go through your past contacts and they only ask about drug use after the age of 18.
You can explain away a _lot_ of things on a Secret investigation. A TS or above is much, much harder. I'm aware of a person with a felony conviction who got through a Secret investigation with a bunch of testimonials from govt employees to his upstanding character. Admittedly, he was rejected once before.
There is a Judge Advocate who makes decisions on such things.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Your ideas are very well stated.
There is increasing evidence that politicians believe (perhaps rightly) that we cannot discuss things such as the US's utter dependence on oil and what ensuring that need is fulfilled might require as adults.
It must be all of those baby boomers who still haven't gotten their heads out of their 60s "peacenik" (they're not really for peace; they're just for not themselves dying -- essentially cowards and DAMN loud ones at that) asses.
I jumped out of my chair and blubbered something about GW being a collosal liar when he said that in the State of the Union Address.
The aluminum tubes not being for nukes was reported upon (on the back page) months before that speech. Of course no one made a font page deal about it until now, after his agenda of Iraqi war has already been achieved.
Congratulations Slashdot, you are now part of the years-too-late mainstream media.
Intelligence is guess work, and I trust the NY Times in helping secure and protect American interests as much as I do the U.N, France, Germany, or Russia .. or any other country for that matter ... meaning Zip.
Bush's mistake was being wrong and erring on the side of American interests, and as an American, I can forgive that.
You just can't ignore those problems without them becoming bigger and bigger, like Carter during the Iran revolution. Oh how much better could the region be if Carter weren't such a gutless president and actually protected American interests rather then let 400 some odd hostages sit as trophies for some despotic and backwards Islamunists. What's going on in the mideast, their condition and governments is can all be traced back to British, French, Italian, Spanish and German adventurism and Imperialism from decades to more then a century ago and I would just as soon would have left whole political morass to them, including the Balkans and Chechnya. Then we could withdraw to our own Hemisphere and be a leading example for Democracies in the Americas.
But the scope of the site is based around technology...
The scope of this site is no more and no less than what the editors and Rob Malda want it to be. They've stated this several times over the years. Just get used to it.
Gosh darnit, I am so sick and tired of the liberal media twisting and spinning all the news into some sort of Conservative conspiracy story. I wasn't too thrilled watching that PBS commie Jim Lehrer moderate the presidential debate, either. Jesus, if you're not going to place your faith in God and the * elected * president's office, and trust that the men in the closed meetings know a bit more than you or I know, that what are you going to place your faith? Bush and Cheney are smarter, and probably more honest than 75% of the bleeding heart liberal whiners that keep wrecking my day. I hope you all go back to your gay bars and stay the hell away from my ballot boxes.
Hey /., why not just come out and put a "Kerry for President" sign on your front page and be done with it?
Alas, people are forgetting that making chemical weapons is not as hard as people think.
For example, the World War I generation poison gases such as mustard gas and phosgene could be made fairly easily with small, easily concealable chemical plants if you have the right chemical ingredients. Given Iraq's petroleum industry, such knowledge is well within their reach.
More modern nerve gases such as Tabun (GA), Sarin (GB) and Soman (GD) do require more sophisticate production methods, but given that a Japanese religious cult did make Sarin on a homemade still tells me that the Iraqis could make these nerve gases using small production facilities given their petrochemical knowledge (after all, nerve gases are closely related to insecticides and herbicides).
There was much fear that the Iraqi government may have passed on knowledge on how to make chemical weapons using small chemical plants to various terrorist organizations, and terrorists would have used them to disperse the gas in a crowded area or a ventilation intake of a large building with pretty gruesome results.
to click on the article. Some nerds care about politics. You can't possibly argue that the president lying to the American people doesn't matter, can you?
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Wow. I don't happen to agree with the official political thinking of the /. moderators. So, I get modded as flamebait. Whatever happened to being open minded. I guess that only applies to people who agree with you. I knew that /. Politics was a bad idea. I'll talk technology with you all day long, but you just cannot talk religion, politics, or people's wallets.
OFN.
http://www.truthuncovered.com/
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Count on it if Bush is reelected, and mark my words. Your country will know no peace until he's done tearing up the middle east. And the only way to do it is with a new "draft". Though, it won't be a draft like it was in days gone by. They're busy working on a new spin for it.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Please, don't use slashdot for politics news. It is all extremely biased. The selection of articles that are published all seem to have a lot to do with things that Bush did bad. Hmm. They are just another part of the liberal media. What about the swift boat veterans? Has anyone heard of that? Also, the White House may have lied about WMD's, but they did so without knowing it. They were given information and told to evaluate the information. They came up for a solution. REMEMBER YOUR GOD JOHN KERRY VOTED FOR THE WAR!!!!!
I liken it to the same sort of power religion has over some people, it's like the cult of Bush.
It is a religion. It is the way these people see the world, their place in it, and what constitutes "good" and "evil" / "right" and "wrong".
I think, assuming you're not being sarcastic, the "buddy" makes it hard to tell and you never know around here. But assuming you meant it, thanks, I appreciate it. :-)
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This is definitely classic G.W. He hasn't quite caught up with the times. He has totally bungled the "war on terror' since pre-9/11. His admininstration didn't pick up where Clinton left off. They were looking at Iraq when the planes hit the towers. They half-ass the whole Afganistan campaign and let bin Laden slip away at Tora Bora. Then, they move onto Iraq and took valueable resources away from the hunt all the while creating the perfect recruitment poster for al Quaeda and alienating most of our allies. He didn't quite comprehend that Sadaam was a vanquished threat and that there is a new player on the block using a whole new bag of tricks. I believe he had to prove to himself that he could do better than his dad against Hussein. (Silly rabbit)
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The post above is naive and simplistic to the point of being an embarrasing joke. It ignores the definite rumblings of protest, both overt and covert that arose during the build up to the war, and afterwards, from both the CIA, and other intelligence sources.
The post malevolently misconstrues the nature of this administrations tactical history, where viscious, if vapid criticism is the norm. Examples are plenty, but the Plame case is an excellent case in point.
The post above also misunderstands, and so confuses the nature of the new security/polical nexus that has developed in Washington, where 'people should watch what they say' is, or at least was, an offical position. It is as if Saddam accused his accusors of lacking credibility by saying, 'well why didn't you complain earlier? and not anonymously?' when they were under his brutal regime.
The fact is this: the above post is disingeniously simplistic and partisan, it is sickening. It is also ironic, that a post decrying a lack of credibility, itself undercuts its own crediility through sheer, unmitigated tendentiosnes.
untimely.net
Maybe it's just me, but hasn't this news already been reported? It doesn't look like it. It's really amazing in my opinion how much propoganda and the media can turn us. This came as no surprise to me, and in fact, I initially had an urge to scream "repost!". It can't be good how swayed I've been by the occasional TV and news online.
Gossip goes a long way; now I question how much my other knowledge of politics is truth or lies.
- Code Dark
Here's a corrected second link. It's the funnier of the two, but read Kerry's "notes" first.
Another day, another political hack job by the once-great NYT. Maybe they have Dan Rather working with them in his spare time.
Like flashing a tit at the Superbowl. Oh, the humanity!
As someone who invited a bunch of teenagers from church watch the Superbowl together at a youth group superbowl party, I found the whole halftime "tit show" disappointing.
And rather disinginuous on the part of the stars involved who had been promising "a big surprise" for weeks. There's enough sexual cr*p on TV... does it have to even be on during the Superbowl? Showing the tit was only the culmination of a build up of various gyrating actors wearing leather S&M-type outfits...
Don't get me wrong... the Superbowl broadcasters can do whatever they want to get an audience. Us people who think sexuality matters and should be encouraged to be channeled into a bonding experience between monogamous partners for the benefit of both those partners' emotional security and the emotional security of their offspring will adjust our viewing accordingly. But the broadcasters can't ultimately have it both ways; either the Superbowl broadcast is family-friendly or it's an MTV pseudo-veiled sex-fest. They've tried to stretch to catch both audiences, and last year was merely the breaking point.
In hindsight, the Britney Spears shakeathon at the prior year's halftime show should have been a warning of what was coming. Oh well, live and learn. Dunno if we'll be having a church Superbowl party next year. We'll see. Maybe we'll all just watch it at home. Or not watch it. The ads are half the reason I watch the game, and I can catch those on the Internet advertising agency websites the next day anyway.
--LP, who apologizes for letting a one-line off-topic post spur an additional lengthy off-topic alternate-perspective-posting.
This is old news. We all heard about this months and months ago. The CIA director already quit, and I have to think there's a good chance the president will lose his over this and other bad intelligence handling. History suggests that anyway.
I have to think this was just posted to make a splash. "Bush Lied". Nice.
Seriously.. this is a new low for Slashdot.
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
Thank you for the insightful statement. I am not sure if the Bush administration lies or not. I also am not sure how you could know. Also, is a lie a lie if the lier did not know they were lying? The Bush administration was acting on information that they were given. REMEMBER YOUR GOD JOHN KERRY VOTED FOR THE WAR BASED ON THE SAME INFO!! George Bush simply wants to finish the job correctly. As was evident in the Presidential debate, John Kerry does not have a plan to finish the war. In fact in 20 years as Senator he has done nothing. He has created no new legislation. I am not sure that this man who can't even choose a good hairstyle could lead our country effectively.
Lost my Job in 2002 spent 6 months getting new one at lower pay.
My health care premiums have risen every year.
The first Tax break was really a loan to be repaid the next year. Funny I had to pay it while I was on my unemployment.
My friends are now fighting a war and have emailed me several times to never believe what their superiors have said. Believe the News.
No WMD's and I'm sure Saddam is still laughing inside about it.
Our freedom is threatened by the Patriot Act.
Bush wants to amend the constitution a document that has historically given rights to individuals. This time he wants to take away individual rights.
Cuts money to the police while at the same time allowing the assault weapon ban to expire.
Oh despite a 87billion dollar boost in money soldiers (I was one) are still getting raises that are lower than inflation and many make much less than poverty level with housing and food considered.
That second tax break amounted to 15 dollars a month for me and I make 60k a year. However I'm paying more than 40 dollars extra a month in Gas for my veichle and nearly 50 dollars extra in energy costs for my house.
Oil prices are high reguardless that there's no shortage and in fact Saudi Arabia has consistently said consumption is far below supply. Yet nobody is doing anything to stop the price runup's.
Also I've learned something. Americans need to pay attention to who they're voting for. That senator or govenor you're voting in may have more ambitions than just helping your state or their constituents. Cheny is a grand example of who we may not of had to put up with if they didnt vote him into congress years ago. In fact he may never of joined up with any of the Bushes and Gore could be president today.
I think the best quote I've heard is:
The government was telling us that they were 100% certain that Iraq had WMD's. Now, how can you be 100% certain of something, and yet not know where at least *some* of them are?
Installing a democratic government? I see...
I'm glad you agree that most of the American public is blind.
It's funny how you guys dont cover what the Clintons had to say about the very same tubes. Anyway, it's interesting how the political bias here on Slashdot from the "authors" comes out so blatantly as we approach the election. Seems like the pro-Kerry media feels people are too stupid to see through their bias. People like Dan Rather who would do or say anything (even make something up) in order to influence public opinion. What happened to just reporting the news instead of giving all the commentary? You should do more to give more in depth info rather than the simplistic "Bush Bad, Kerry good" mantra.
OK... I'm constantly STUNNED that people vote for Bush, and not just vote, not just in the way of 'Gee, he's not great, but what are the alternatives', but more in the vein of 'Man, I really LOVE Bush! More BUSH, MORE BUSH!'
:(
I'm just so baffled... but your cases do make a lot of sense, and help me work out where these amazingly narrow minded people are coming from. Well, that and the documentaries I've seen regarding Bush and the Church groups... *shudder*
While I'm glad I'm in Australia and not there:
a) What happens in the US affects us all
&
b) Our current Liberal (who are very NOT liberal in that sense of the word) government is not that much better... we are over there in Iraq with you
the scene here is so complicated, it can proceed to become vendetta against all those who are against bush now. he could quietly get people to rally behind him in the garb of patriotism and then proceed to crucify everyone against him, albeit very , very slowly. i think what bush has done is alienate US from the international community. every other country, save for bush's croonies hate USA now, for being unilateral. the days are gone now that people take US as a leader. US has become more of an opportunist than anything else. and in the USA, people should realise that bush and cheney have taken them for a ride. for thier personal benefit through bechtel etc. the scene is so muddy. i guess the best thing that can be done to avoid all complications is to dethrone bush. or else, USA, can forget being the lone super power in the world!
fear, uncertainty, denial.
9/11 proves that the middle east exports its problems. thousands died on that day who had nothing to do with the middle east. so it doesn't matter if the us is center of pure evil in the world or the us is a beacon of good, all that matters is that the us is a target. and its also pretty obvious that the us is the only one who's going to do something about it.
so all of your fud: us being south african whites in the days of apartheid, nobody buying us goods, the us not respected or liked, doesn't matter at all.
no really: stack up everything you've said, and throw in a few more anti-american sentiments. i am honestly responding: who cares. really, why should the us care what anyone else thinks? can you give me a solid, justifiable reason why anti-american sentiment should matter when confronted with a world environment that creates something like 9/11?
so you show me a list of problems in your post above. fine, my response: 9/11 is a problem many orders of magnitude larger than everything you have indicated above. therefore, the problems you have indicated to me can be dismissed, there is a larger problem at hand. simple analysis i think, don't you?
in other words, you show me indications that the us is unpopular in the world due to it invading iraq. well, 9/11 says to me that that the us has larger problems than a popularity contest. so invade iraq, and to hell with what you think, really. you're not helping us, so please, be my guest: go sit in a corner and talk abotu how evil americans are. so what? what can you offer me? you can't offer me any help, so i don't care what you think of me.
because thousands of my fellow citizens incinerated is a whole hell of a lot bigger issue than who is loved or not.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
WHILE discussing policy on the phone with (can't remember)...
-- "Mr. President, do you want us to launch the missiles?"
"Don't"
"Stop"
"Don't"
-- "Pardon me, Mr. President?
"Don't stop!"
"Don't stop!"
"Don't stop!"
Once the people of this country get their heads out of their false reality created by what they are fed via consolidated media perhaps they will learn. It is unlikely that anything will change because people refuse to think for themselves. They want to be a passive recipient of all the news they get.
......
That is because political views are learned the same place/time their religious views are learned. At home in early childhood.
People, as a whole, tend to decide upon a question EMOTIONALLY and then attempt to justify that EMOTIONAL decision with whatever "facts" are available.
Of course, what constitutes a "fact" is determined by their political/religious upbringing so
No, it's a damn shame that the idiots in this country believe that he is right.
Of course he is right. He's telling them what they ALREADY know is the truth.
His administration has been caught in the liars den multiple times yet somehow they are able to get people to continue to turn to them in the face of this "imminent threat".
When people are afraid, they react as herd animals. All Bush needs to do is keep enough of them afraid enough for long enough to get him re-elected.
Stop looking at recent history from factual analysis. Look at it from an emotional analysis standpoint. Everything will become so much clearer.
It's all about maintaining and re-enforcing the fear. Fear gives you control of the herd.
Sorry dude, but Hussein provided volumes of proof on paper as demanded and inspectors had finally achieved free reign. The U.S. censored much of this material before providing it to the United Nations, then invaded Iraq as they had planned all along. We now know Hussein didn't have squat and had obeyed the WMD dismantling that Pappy required of him in the '90s. It didn't matter what proof Iraq provided to President Twitchy because Twitchy was dead set on invasion. We now know what the CIA knew all along, that Iraq was a neutered kitten -- a mighty cry, posing no threat except to its own tail. The only thing Twitchy has accomplished with his two invasions is giving terrorists a second wind and wildly successful inspiration for recruitment. America is 100 times less safe because of this administration.
As opposed to Dubya's brilliant solution to the cost of the war: not paying for it! Yep, that's real fiscal conservativism!
Your post was pretty much entirely Republican talking points. Do you get paid by the post, or this an hourly gig?
Cthulhu loves you.
Here lies Micheals soap box, ignorance contagious, and other things irrelevant to technology, science, or truth.
I think I have finally figured out the qualifications to being a slashdot editor. You just have to be dumb enough to actually believe that for some reason Bush is evil and only democrats are right for the country.
What a crock if you can post stories like this why not the ones that paint the picture in a positive light for Bush or America. All you post are stories from left wing nut jobs and you claim this is news for nerds or something that matters? It's bullshit.
Beliefs like the ones you hold are the catalysts for eternal war.
Learning to work with our neighbors would go a lot farther to securing our future than bickering with them over who gets the right to exhaust our final oil supplies.
Can we please, just for a few minutes, remove our tinfoil bodysuits and think??
So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies. At first glance, this sounds plausible. That's how you can explain the president's willingness to wage a war in Iraq - it's close to afghanistan, right? And those terrorists were arabs. He thinks that should be enough to convice the average shmuck american. Then when you consider that we know we could crush the Iraqi army easly, he can spew a bunch of feel-good rhetoric: we're ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant and liberating the iraqi people. As an added bonus, he can give the contracts for getting all of that iraqi oil to his corporate buddies. It sounds like a decent plan.
Now, please, think critically about that for a second. The hypothesis is that bush's desire for going to war was based on purely political (and perhaps montary) reasons - so that he could get a boost in the poll numbers. A few big questions should present themselves:
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You cannot possibly know that. Since it is becoming increasingly apparent that there were no WMD, it seems quite likely that further investigation would eventually have proven this fact. At the very least, since it turns out we had no evidence to credibly suggest he did have WMD, wouldn't it have made sense to at least try?
More importantly, none of this excuses the fact that Bush lied to the American people.
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This is untrue. For one thing the President has access to the SOURCE of the information. Senators do not.
The SOURCE was dubious and known to be dubious.
BUSH lied Period!
Help fight continental drift.
So what specifically do you challenge? Because from where I sit it looks like yet another variation on the "don't believe your lyin' eyes" mem that conservatives love to trot out whenever the facts are against them. You have a specific rebuttal, then speak up. Until then, shut yer whining yap.
We stepped in, overthrew their government, and deposed their leader. In doing so, we were able to put our own (US-chosen) leader, the "Shah of Iran" (yes, THAT shah) into power, with a very specific set of rules and policies that were to be followed by his people, dictated by... you guessed it.. the United States Government.
We've been screwing around with the Middle East for several decades, even long before radicals like Osama and Al Zawahiri were even born.
Also, lets not forget that the same Afghanistan rebels that the United States helped and funded with money and military arms to beat the Russians out of Afghanistan... were the the same Afghanistani rebels that became Al Queda, and attacked us on 9/11. Yes, the very same group.
There's a lot more to this than people are seeing at the surface.
The reason why people should hate you is because you support a bigger Douche bag than kerry, mr. bush.
Perhaps we're all just taking advantage of the opportunity to speak out against our government while we still have that right.
Enough with evil corporation bullshit. Let's face it -- you Americans are just plain stupid.
You could make the same claim against the NYTimes couldn't you? That:
You will find that the real truth actually lies somewhere in between thinking that the Bush administration lies on a regular basis and the NYTimes always tells the truth and thinking that the Bush administration always tells the truth and the NYTimes lies on a regular basis. Both are extremist views.Kerry is on the senate inteligence committee, and gets the same briefings as the president on the intelegence in Iraq. And he voted for the use of force in Iraq.
So you can vote for the guy who wanted to invade Iraq under false pretenses, or you can vote for the guy who wanted to invade Iraq under false pretenses. The choice is yours.
Oh, yeah, this is news for nerds how??
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
is lying.
And you all know it is true.
Oh, wait - you already did!
How can you "lie" without knowing it? The definition of a lie is to know the truth, yet say something contrary to it. In the article topping this thread:
"Precisely how knowledge of the intelligence dispute traveled through the upper reaches of the administration is unclear. Ms. Rice knew about the debate before her Sept. 2002 CNN appearance, but only learned of the alternative rocket theory of the tubes soon afterward, according to two senior administration officials. President Bush learned of the debate at roughly the same time, a senior administration official said."
This whole "lie" thing is just trumped up by the Kerry kool-aid drinkers to bolster their waffle-man. There was no lie - there was no misleading. They stated the intelligence as they knew it and as all governments believed it (including the Germans and French) at the time.
There WAS controversy, but not everyone who needed to know knew it. They WERE wrong, but that's not lying. The only liars here are those purporting that there was any kind of black-helicopter-theory coverup (read: Kerry supporters).
In a few years' time, I'm sure everyone will have accepted that this war was indeed about oil.
However what most people don't yet realise is just how NECESSARY a war for oil is at this time, as a desperate measure to postpone the collapse of our economy as we know it. There may be a good reason for keeping the Energy Task Force proceeding secret, a reason which goes way beyond the obvious conflicts of interest. I suspect that if the truth were revealed, we'd have a major panic on our hands. Here's the deal:
We are now on the threshold of a REAL OIL SHORTAGE as oil production reaches its maximum while demand continues to grow, China's industrialization accelerates, and all the big oil companies are restating their reserve estimates dramatically downward.
Google the keywords "peak oil" and get informed about what's really going on in this world. This is scary shit.
Oil production may already have peaked. Though we can never literally "run out of oil," what will happen is global demand for oil will significantly outstrip production, while production itself declines and becomes increasingly difficult and expensive.
A war for oil today will buy our economy some time. Probably not nearly enough time to convert everything to run on hydrogen, but politically speaking, postponing the inevitable may be better than doing nothing.
Google it. Seriously!
Note: the people that agree with you live in very sparsely populated areas. Having a bunch of land where noone lives marked as "Republican" does nothing for you. Your post was a troll, especially the part about "ARGHAH! AMERICAN EMPIRE RULEZ!"
But hey, theres nothing wrong with empires. Slaughtering those natives will teach them! Why not start at home? Heil Bush!
Funny thing...
Guess who is most likely going to be on the January Ballot for the Iraq elections. Yeah its Saddam. His Lawyers are currently working on it and there is neither current Iraqi nor International law that prohibits this right now as he will not technically be guilty until after his trial so in closing. Iraqi's can elect Saddam
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
...and what do we do to people who endanger national security? we arrest them without charge and dump them in cuba. Go on, someone make my day! please be sure the media get a good position to catch him being taken away in a police cruiser. Bush is certainly up there as one of Americas worst presidents, I really want to see him loose badly, it would definately boost respect for America.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"Where are your hidden weapons labs?" "We have none!" "Well, show us." "Show you what?" "Your weapons labs." "But we have none." "Well, prove it." "All right. Where would you like to look?" "You tell us." "But if we have no weapons labs, we have nowhere to tell you about." "Ah, so, then, you refuse to be cooperative."
At the last, when the inspectors were still in there, just before they were pulled out, the Iraqis were cooperating to the fullest extent of their abilities. There were some major paperwork problems, apparently generated because when they destroyed some of their weapons they didn't document them sufficiently. But they were even being allowed to inspect within all the places that had previously been off-limits, and in fact were even allowed unannounced visits with no warning time.
Strangely, the rest of the world thought they were doing fine. Given that, one must either assume that every single other country with the exception of England* is bone stupid, or that we are warmongers who above all else didn't WANT the inspections to work.
Makes you feel good to be an American, don't it?
-fred
* - (Yes, we had other allies eventually. But at that point we still hadn't scraped them together, so it was just GWB and GB)
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
This and most of the other lies used to justify the war were pretty much known to be false before the war began. It's nice to see the news media starting to do their job now that thousands have died and we're in an unsolvable mess. Thank you NYT, thank you so FREAKIN much.
However, the NYT's article also says time after time that the Department of Energy's access to the White House was limited, whereas the CIA had direct access to senior officials.
So, WHY was the DoE's access limited?
So, WHY did the CIA have direct access?
So, WHY was there a difference between the DoE and the CIA?
Now, part of the job of the PotUSoA involves gathering ALL the information necessary to make an informed decision on what is best for the USofA.
For my part, I believe that the decision to invade Iraq was already decided. Those individuals and organizations that provided any information to support that decision were valued while any individuals or organizations that provided information CONTRARY were derided.
No he did not.
I know you want it to be true but it isn't.
It's an interesting observation that there's a certain similarity to the Rather memo situation in terms of proceeding with conclusions based on thin evidence.
I'd add that in both cases, there was supporting evidence that fueled both parties acceptance of certain central arguments/documents. Rather seemed to take the White House's quiet "neither confirm nor deny" stance as a confirmation. And the Bush Administration took Saddam's hiding from inspectors as a sign he had something to hide. Rather had other, new, second-hand testimony from parties who were at least somewhat close to the situation. And the Bush administration was looking at other information about Saddam seeking uranium through various channels (and I'm talking about more than just the famous bogus Niger yellowcake documents, but the other less-discussed supporting streams of evidence).
The parallels to my mind aren't 100% there though; Rather presented the memos as being legit with no caveats and no public acknowledgement about ambiguities in sourcing or documents. The administration was pretty open during the run-up that there weren't smoking guns, but that they felt a strong need to act given Saddam's past behavior and continued recalcitrance.
It is true that towards the end of the run-up, in Jan-March though, they started giving more definitive statements that Iraq definitely had WMD on certain occassions, but without really attributing to any particular piece of evidence their certainty. At the time, some people thought they were just blowing smoke. Some thought they had intel that they weren't revealing to protect 'sources and methods'. Some accepted it on faith and some on fear. Now, having found little evidence on the ground, the administration's certainty now rests more on pragmatic grounds (certainty helps our troops, fuels our will to fight the enemy at the necessary level of intensity) than on evidentiary ones. Perhaps it's true that that's where their original certainty stemmed from as well.
Kudos to you for drawing the connection, but I wouldn't rest too much analysis or "hypocrite"-namecalling on it.
--LP
Kerry hasn't told you one thing that he is going to do. He has proffered nebulous lists, buzzwords, and catchy quotes, but nothing substantial or concrete.
Bush constantly accuses Kerry of his flip-flops, or whatever you want to call them, and cites them as evidence of him being unfit to lead. Let me share an excerpt or two from the transcripts of some public lecture by the late RP Feynman (who should need little introduction here, if he does, just google it ok?):
"The government of the United States was developed under the idea that nobody knew how to make a government, or how to govern. The result is to invent a system to govern when you don't know how. And the way to arrange it is to permit a system, like we have, wherein new ideas can be developed and tried out and thrown away. The writers of the Constitution knew of the value of doubt. In the age that they lived, for instance, science had already developed far enough to show the possibilities and potentialities that are the result of having uncertainty, the value of having the openness of possibility. The fact that you are not sure means that it is possible that there is another way some day. That openness of possibility is an opportunity. Doubt and discussion are essential to progress. The United States government, in that respect, is new, it's modern, and it is scientific. It is all messed up , too."
So, to wit, as most geeks should be aware, uncertainty is key to progress, and the american constitution rates well, having been written according to these principles. He continues in the next lecture:
"... has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether what he says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask him intelligent questions - that is, penetrating, interested, frank, direct questions on the subject, and no trick questions - then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man. It is important to appreciate that. And I think that I can illustrate one unscientific aspect of the world which would be probably very much better if it were more scientific. It has to do with politics. Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, 'What are you going to do about the farm question?' And he knows right away - bang, bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. 'What are you going to do about the farm problem?' 'Well, I don't know. I used to be a general, and I don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can't tell you ahead of time what conclusion, but I can give you some of the principles I'll try to use - not to make things difficult for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have some way to take care of them,' etc.,etc., etc.
Now such a man would never get anyhere in this country, I think. It's never been tried, anyway. This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when the real fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around."
This is why I consider Kerry better than Bush, he's not so damned sure of everything. The fact that he changes his mind atleast shows that he THINKS. It also illustrates very well the fundamental flaw not only in american politics, but democracy in general.
Best laugh I've had in a couple weeks
How is this news for nerds?
Nerds have strong opinions about many things, even things that are political. Software Patents are a political issue, for example, as is Linux vs. Windows, to a large extent. GPL vs. BSD licensing has had its share of politically-motivated discussion. So has pretty much anything regarding Sun Microsystems or HPaq or IBM, lately.
Adding in election politics, at least until November, doesn't seem entirely out of line, given that the Presidential election is weighing more on many minds than whether Java 5 supports syntactic sugar for type casting.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Not that I think this justifies what they did, of course, I don't think global domination is a legitimate goal. But if you think it is, this move makes perfect sense.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
taking disputed intelligence, not checking out the dispute anywhere nearly seriously enough, and then using the most favorable possible interpretation to theri desire to take us to war, and lying by saying it was undisputed fact, WHEN THEY KNEW ABOUT THE DISPUTES. Not for not takign intel seriously enough.
The post above is naive and simplistic to the point of being an embarrasing joke. It ignores the definite rumblings of protest, both overt and covert that arose during the build up to the war, and afterwards, from both the CIA, and other intelligence sources.
The post malevolently misconstrues the nature of this administrations tactical history, where viscious, if vapid criticism is the norm. Examples are plenty, but the Plame case is an excellent case in point.
The post above also misunderstands, and so confuses the nature of the new security/polical nexus that has developed in Washington, where 'people should watch what they say' is, or at least was, an offical position. It is as if Saddam accused his accusors of lacking credibility by saying, 'well why didn't you complain earlier? and not anonymously?' when they were under his brutal regime.
The fact is this: the above post is disingeniously simplistic and partisan, it is sickening. It is also ironic, that a post decrying a lack of credibility, itself undercuts its own crediility through sheer, unmitigated tendentiosnes.
How come people keep forgetting that we were attacked on 9/11? You don't see us invading Canada trying to take their tar sands. You don't see us invading Mexico trying to take their oil fields. Why not? Because Canada and Mexico have not attacked us and trade with us.
Those people in the Middle East do not like our culture, our Western civilization. They have done and will do anything they can to destroy us. It is times like this we need a strong, forceful leader in the White House. One who is not afraid to kill those who threaten us. George W. Bush & Dick Cheney both have those qualities.
What do you say to Poland? Poland! Why does everybody forget that we were supported by Poland!
The real question is what does Poland say to us. Here's what the President of Poland says about the Bush administration's justification to going into Iraq:
"That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
-President Aleksander Kwasniewski
(March 18, 2004)
Great way to build a coalition.
Full Story
It's a good thing we went to war for all of Iraqs' oil, otherwise it would be over 50$ a barral. Oh, wait.........
That's one argument that you don't hear too much about anymore. Wonder why? And why should we give a shit what the rest of the world thinks about the U.S. We know that their all jealous because thier economies are in the toilet because of their massive social programs. Remember that France and Germany didn't want us in Iraq because of their oil-for-food get rich quick schemes, not because they gave a crap about our arguments for war. We should relocate the UN to Geneva and kick out all the scumbag diplomats in NY and let the rest of the world take care of itself. Drill in the ANWR range, buld some nuke and solar plants to gain our energy independence and then let the rest of the world kill themselves off over their religous differences. The real reason the rest of the world hates us is because in 250 yrs we've done more than they have in 2000 years. The arabs used to be at the pinnacle of society, then they found Allah and now their just a bunch of camel humpers. Same goes for the old Europe. I'm done now.
Actually, this time millions of people around the world (including the US) took to the streets protesting the invasion of Iraq before the invasion began. That's unprecedented in the timing and size of the protest. Sadly, the choice in presidential elections appears to be down to two candidates (again) both of whom dicker over the number of troops to send into combat, not when to leave Iraq. Even more sadly, Congressional races remain underdiscussed despite how much more power voters have in smaller races (and Congressional turnover continues to be a joke).
I'm not so sure that that is true. Do you have any survey evidence to point to which would support your statement?
Digital Citizen
this mentality that sees one side of a conflict doing violence, but doesn't see the other side. 9/11 is not the ghost of us cold war sins come back to haunt us. believe it or not, the whole world is not centered on the us. there are other areas of the world with their own agendas and concerns, and believe it or not, some of those agendas and concerns are capable of their own original sins.
...
if the us turned into a lake tomorrow, al qaeda would not celebrate and become pastoral sheep farmers: they would go right on with their agenda. bali, madrid, chechnya, etc. so where you see american hegemony, it is as if you see america exerting some sort of domineering conquest against a vacuum of innocent people, while you are conveniently blind to the domineering conquest that the us is responding to.
so howabout some intellectual honesty: the us does good and bad in the world, but mostly it defends itself. just like every other region in the world. so when something like 9/11 happens, don't be surprised if the us responds militarily. in what world do you live in where a military response from the us is not appropriate or just, to prevent something like 9/11 from ever happening ever again?
so you go on with your bad self, but you seem to have a very propaganda-addled pov, not an intellectually honest one, one that should take careful measure of malice and good intent, on both sides of a conflict.
those who rally around the us flag and shout "rah rah rah! everything the us does is good!" are stupid. the mirror image of that is not intelligence, it's simply more stupidity: "rah rah rah! everything the us does is bad!"
so many propagandized closed minded sheep in this world. i just wish some were more intellectually honest, and see it as it really is: complex. not simple one-dimensional card board cut outs. and intelligence is NOT responding to one flavor of cardboard cut out with an opposing flavor.
please be intellectually honest people: the us does good and bad in the world. i am so sorry if this intellectually honest and measured approach goes against the latest lowest common denominator fashionable propaganda and just isn't "cool" and counterculture. pop culture is dumb. so is counterculture. the only thing that is intelligent is honesty, but it's just not trendy or cool for anyone, so we get lost in the haze of one-sided morons yelling at opposing one-sided morons, and no problems get solved at all.
do you care about the problems in this world? do you honestly? or do only care about them as far as you can salve your conscience with them? and then it's "ooh! look what's on tv!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Going into Iraq was so obviously and patently a wrong thing to do, both from any 'legal' stance and tactically, that it defies belief.
The fact that about 50% of US citizens still think it was 'justified' is terrifying.
Look, we don't mind if you (ie the good ol' citizens of the USA) kill yourselves, it makes for good tv and few out of towners get hurt. But when the US moves on other countries in this way, is a little distressing.
There is a reason that the USA (and not South Korea etc) is ranked as the number 1 threat to world peace.
Apparently they didn't teach you in school that Opinion Pieces (i.e. the Op-Ed piece you linked to above) are the opinion of the author of the piece and usually have a loose license to the truth. While on the other hand the article in the actual story is reporting which comes with a much higher burden of proof for facts.
m ocraticunderground.org/c om/ (remember the Kerry Intern story he broke, and turned out to be a pile of...
Don't use Op-Ed pieces as source for 'facts', also don't use an extremist site to get 'facts'. Examples of sites that do not qualify as reliable on facts are:
http://www.freerepublic.org/
http://www.de
http://www.drudgereport.
http://www.commondreams.org/
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
... How she could go on TV today and say what she said without offering her resignation???
...."
It sounded like she said in Sep 2002 that the tubes COULD NOT be used for anything else.
Today, she said that SHE WAS AWARE in Sep 2002 that some people believed they were to be used for artillery rockets.
The only way should could have avoided lying in Sep 2002 would have been to say "We believe these tubes will be used for uranium
To say that they COULD NOT be used for anything else is to (1) lie and (2) suppress evidence. Yet no one seems up in arms (well, she kept cutting the guy off on her appearance, but no one else in the media has taken her to task for it).
I made that point with the sheep and debate response references. You do have sheep in Britain, don't you?
Is this another one of those 'reports' from Dan Rather?
The Middle East didn't start "attacking our culture" until we started getting involved in their affairs and supported Israel.
lol. well put. can I use part or all of this somewhere (e.g. away message)?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
I don't come here to read about policial lies from either side, I come here to read about technology, science etc. If I want biased paranonid political articles I can go to DU or something.
Politics news about Outsourcing, patents or whatever is fine.. but...
This kind of crap is a waste of bandwith on this site and just insults everyone here on all sides of the issue who reads it. We are all smart here and want to use our brains for things more interesting that simple boring partisan politics.
Thanks and be good to your bartender and waitress.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
Should you mod down the posts that reveal the greatest truths about Lord Shrub, or post messages hailing Lord Shrub and invalidate your mod points? Oh, what a dilemma!
The feature I pointed out was put in there by the heads of Slashdot too, so I'd suggest that you get used to that too.
Getting upset that someone points out an existing feature is quite amusing. Thanks for that.
It's bad enough that the Dems and Reps are pretty much the same party at this point. But it's even worse that the Reps are trying to take over every branch of government. This completely breaks the system of checks and balances, as if it weren't broken enough already.
We need to go in the opposite direction as fast as possible. That starts with getting a Democratic president now, so that we'll have some sort of check on the Republican Congress.
In the long term, this means we need to move beyond the one-party-two-names system and develop some real alternatives. But we have to take that one step at a time, and the first step is to break the Republican stranglehold on power.
That said, I agree completely that congress failed miserably in this regard. Sen. Byrd stood up at the time and waved a copy of the Constitution, saying "our job is not to rubber-stamp the president's resolution, our job is to protect the text of the Constitution!" Nobody listened. Kerry is as accountable for that as anyone. But at least he no acknowledges that going into Iraq was a mistake. That's a start, and right now, it's good enough for me.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Ok, so, there weren't any ASSEMBLED WMDs, but when you find all the necessary parts housed together in the same warehouse, it kinda makes you wonder.
Muammar Khadafi
no, not at all
;-P
when confronted with something like 9/11 dear, it can't get much worse in the middle east, doncha think?
stirring up a hornets nest of terrorists is your concern? you mean the hornets nest of terrorists within the hundreds of hornets nests of terrorists already there you mean?
when is action appropriate? when is inaction appropriate in this world? for some "shoot first ask questions later" is the way to go: all action, no thought... obviously, that is a road to ruin.
but there's also people out there who never act, they just think about a problem, forever searching in vain for a perfect ideal response to a problem when the only range of viable responses are messy and risky and totally imperfect. therefore, they never act. all thought, no action. this pov of "just think about it for 20 years, a solution will present itself" is just as equally stupid and eventually self-damaging as the useless "shoot frist ask questions later" pov.
so therefore, your entire pov speaks less of intelligence on iraq to me, and more on your own maladaptive strategy about dealing with your problems: leave them alone and they will go away.
really? that's the appropriate response to something like 9/11?
right, got it... your a friggin genius lol
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Okay troll, I'll bite.
Investing in alternative methods of energy production would be a lot cheaper and have a much better end result than killing people to take their oil.
The world's resources are limited. We very easily could run out of oil.
We have a crapload of oil stored away already for emergencies. Were it a true emergency, we would tap that, and not start a war.
What?
Americans didn't quite some up all the evidence at the time. For one, Iraq was devastated after the Gulf War. Most of its military was in ruins. To follow up, the sanctions prevented Iraq from selling oil except for a minimal amount. The inspections destroy alot of WMD's. The Clinton era bombings certainly got another chunk of Sadaam's military apparatus. Now, given that Iraq really didn't have much money even with the smuggling. How would it reconstitute a new nuclear program along with chemical one and biological one. Then institute a crash program in long range intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver it all to the US. This all cost real money. If you sum it up, Sadaam would have drop dead before he could drop a bomb on us. Americans have to get that ADD check out some time.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
You really believe that? You really believe that they stated intelligence as they knew it? You have no doubt they weren't pressuring people to tell them only what they wanted to hear and thus caused the very problem of the doubt and uncertainity being left behind? Just for the record, we can't even get records of who met with Cheney on an energy summit, let alone what was actually said or "intelligence" he was given. What makes you think the NYT would have any access whatsoever to what Bush was really briefed on? or Rice? They are just going on the tidbits "two officials" are giving them for their claim about Rice. Rice may very well have known much more but the "two officials" were just covering for her.
Just for the record, I don't like Kerry. I didn't like him when he ran against Clinton in 1992.
You're building up a case to go to war.
You're assembling the evidence for that case.
You find that some of the evidence wasn't substantiated.
You find that some of the evidence was false.
You find that some of the evidence is in dispute.
You find that some of the evidence is hearsay.
At what point do you STOP and have ALL the evidence re-examined?
Rather, what we saw was a continuing onslaught of new "evidence" and fear.
All since proven false.
Now, how is it possible to get ALL of the "evidence" wrong? Not part of it. Not some of it. But all of the "evidence".
Bush and Co. lied to get us into this mess.
That's what the whole "nukular" thing was for... He can just come out now and say: "Nuclear? I never said anything about nuclear weapons..."
Excuse me while I throw up now.
They mapped everyone's oil fields, you dope. They're the Energy Task Force.
And of course it has to be partially secret. We wouldn't want Argentina to know we're going to ditch them for Peru (or something), would you? It may shock you, but sometimes your government has to keep secrets from foreign powers (and thus from the general populace).
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Yes the Middle East is fucked up. The question you have to ask is, how did it get that way? Turns out, if you look at the history (for example, of British interferance in the early 20th century), it got fucked up because of precisely the sort of thing we're doing there now. It is pretty clear at this point that we're going to leave Iraq a smoking ruin, probably in the midst of civil war. The only question is when, and how bad will it be when we finally realize it.
You do not fix something by doing more of the same thing that broke it in the first place.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I don't think this kind of "news" should be posted on Slashdot. Just because the New York Times prints it doesn't make it a matter of fact and it certainly doesn't mean we're hearing ALL of the relevant information. The NYT is HIGHLY partisan and it's regularly reflected in their pages. Having Slashdot, my favorite geek news source, post this stuff is irritating.
/. a political forum.
Please don't post any more political stories like this. The Slashdot readers are smart and can figure this out on their own without making
The world will be in a state of constant war until people respect one another. I think it's time you asked yourself some difficult questions. In particular, what makes your life more valuable than a non-American's life? I also find it curious that you advocate "[killing] everyone involved" and find this statement consistent with attacking Iraq. Is there someone out there reading this comment saying to themselves "That's why I'm voting for Kerry"? Then you're only kidding yourself too. He also supports this war. Despair not. You do have an option. Your option is Badnarik. He *can* win -all it takes it your vote.
Actually, the US did invade Mexico and take oil fields. Today it's called Texas. And California.
Mod me down if you want, but this has to be said.
The rest of the world knew that Iraq had no WMDs. Everyone knew it was a "war to boost the economy". Nobody did anything. Why didn't America know? Ask your media that question and ask yourselves how much international news you actually listen to? Ask yourselves why.
Then you'll see why it isn't surprising. It is always easier for a government to go in for the wrong reasons and explain later, just like it's easier for us to do something we've set our minds on and explain later.
Look at the U.S's foreign policy from the outside (try some independent and known-to-be-unbiased news agencies for a change) and you'll see the difference.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
umm.. if we "must do whatever is neccesary to keep the supply of oil online until we can switch over to other sources of energy"...
... then where exactly are the tax breaks, incentives, whatever, for companies and people trying to do just that? Seems to me, Kerry has already talked about tax credits for people who buy alternative-fuel/efficient vehicles, working to become less oil-dependant, etc. On the flip side, Bush has us investing $120Billion+ on a war in a country with maybe 10% of the worlds oil supply... even at their peak, they wouldn't be a fraction of the oil this country uses on a daily basis. If we had invested that $120B in alternative energy (and education, since having people educated enough to work on alternative energy would be a plus), we'd be far further along... and would maybe have cleaner air (oh yeah, Bush backed out of that didn't he?), cleaner parks (oh yeah, they'll be 'clean' when the loggers are through with them)...
I find it rather interesting that the White House told Russia we'd be invading Afghanistan in October.. in like *May* of 2001. And by November of 2001, the oil pipeline from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, to be build by Cheney's old buddy's at Halliburton, was "back on".. after it had been put on hold because of the Taliban.
Sept. 6-7, 2001 - Put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) totaling 4,744 are purchased on United Air Lines stock, as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the United puts are purchased through Deutschebank/A.B. Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard.
Sept. 10, 2001 - Put options totaling 4,516 are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options.
Sept. 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by United and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600 percent above normal. This at a time when Reuters (Sept. 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off."
Sept. 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25 percent of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Nobody could have ever thought... ??"
(The options were never claimed, after being reported the week after 9/11, and the information on who actually made the put options can only be acquired by the government, or the 9/11 commision, who conveniently never investigated).
Aug. 11 or 12, 2001 U.S. Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer with U.S. naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope, which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]
Sept. 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]
Jan. 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for Mike Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator, who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a naval lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; Toronto Superior Court records]
No Sir, not like anybody could have expected...
just wow
2 things:
1. i don't think you really understand human nature on a fundamental level, the good, the bad, and the ugly. i think you have a picture of human behavior in your mind that doesn't match with real human behavior. your depiction of of the problem that ocnfronts the us after 9/11 seems to be a very, very naive one.
2. the world does not revolve around the us. your pov seems to stipulate that what al qaeda did on 9/11 was because of what the us did in the past. this assumes that the us is the center of the world. but no, dorothy, al qaeda is not the ghost of us cold war sins past. apparently, you are unable to imagine of any region in the world outside of the us, with their own agendas, their own hopes and dreams, and their own capacity for orginal sin. if the us turned into a lake tomorrow, al qaeda would not celebrate and become pastoral sheep farmers. they would go right on with their agenda: bali, chechnya, madrid. capisce?
so what does it take to get from you a conviction to fight for a middle east that isn't a basket case that breeds terrorism... not even on the grounds of concern for your fellow human being, but even when 9/11 establishes that such a cause is even for your own self-preservation?
and you talk to me about me being a sociopath because i'm not concerned with popularity? your whole pov spanks of self-centeredness: concern for popularity above all, unable to conceive of other people's motivations, you can only perceive of other's motivations as such motivations relate to your past actions!
if you believe a popularity contest drives violence against the us, you must still be in high school, because that seems to be the only way you understand cause effect and motivation in this world.
if only it WERE that easy!
i wish it were!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With all due respect, in your culture, a bare breast may seem especially sexual. In other cultures there is no stigma attached to a woman's breast being revealed in public. In Austin, Texas, where I live, women are free to walk around topless if they so choose. ANYWHERE. In fundamentalist religious cultures,such as the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, women were forced to cover their skin from head to toe. In Austin, Texas, our children seem to be growing up just fine. Sometimes they see breasts naked in public. Not unlike when they are walking around the house and their mothers are changing clothes. Kids across America see breasts on the internet anytime they wish. As a result of our nation's children seeing a naked breast on the Superbowl Halftime Show, were they harmed? What damage was done? If you choose to respond to this question, please cite as many scientific studies as possible that indicate children who view naked breasts are likely to have been psychologically harmed.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Bush uses CIA (bad) intelligence when it suits him and ignores it (assessment of Iraq in the next five years) when it doesn't. Remember, the uraninum and aluminum tube intelligence came after 9/11 and the entire intelligence community was sharply rebuked for not doing its job. How can they NOT double check all the intelligence after 9/11? especially when making the case to go to war? Bush says 9/11 changed the way we look at the world and nowhere is this more obvious than with intelligence. The intelligence community needs a new outlook with lots of scrutiny after 9/11. The question is did he give the intelligence for going to war in Iraq the 9/11 scrutiny or the 9/10 scrutiny?
They only answer can be that the buck doesn't stop with George Bush. He's not looking to take responsiblity but rather he's looking to get his way. He wanted to invade Iraq and he found intelligence that agreed with him and he wasn't concerned with due dilligence of having it doubled checked.
Of course now he doubts the intelligence about the bleak outlook for Iraq.
He's only using intelligence as propoganda to get his way. It is transparently obvious.
Left undisturbed, a dog is content.
A dog doesn't hate a man until that man kicks him.
If he continues to kick the dog, he only pisses off Fido and Spot down the block too.
Like you, I wish (at least in hindsight) that Congress should have checked Bush. And I agree that Congress has that role and responsibility.
But let's be realistic about what happened. A) There *was* token dissent. The problem was that it didn't go beyond being token. B) Congress can't be trusted with highly secret info because they leak it to satisfy their own political agendas or due to their own incompetence. It's happened over and over. C) Because of B, both citizens and Congress presume that the Executive branch has info they do not release to Congress. D) Because of C, when there is a really critical, intelligence-driven decision to be made, the US citizens and the Congress will tend to trust the president due to the additional information available to him but not to us. Plus for a congressperson there is the following pragmatic logic. For a congressperson to buck the tide, they risk a career-ending looking-foolish moment if the intel turns out to prove the Executive correct. And if the congressperson goes along with the ride, the worst they suffer is having to claim the Executive duped them and they run on the issue in the next election.
This is a structural problem with Congress. While you might claim its a moral or ethical failure of many many congresspeople, it's tough to argue they are not acting in a perfectly rational way.
The solution for this problem it to vote out your local duped congresspeople, Republican or Democrat. If they face getting voted out in either case, maybe they'll start taking responsibility for knowing what's going on and they'll start taking keeping confidential info secret more seriously.
--LP
I say who cares. Clinton lied, Bush lied, they learn how to do it from very early on in politics.
Here's what should really be focused on.
The US and the World should have a ZERO tollerance policy towards genocide of any kind. WMD's should never have been the reason that got america to go to war. But for some reason, the US and it's allies (and some partial allies like France) seemed to be fine with this prick ruling a country the way he was. Kerry says he think we should have gone down more of a diplomatic road. Well, I ask what they hell we are supposed to call the entire decade of the 90's. Was that not diplomatic? Time and time again we let him get away with shit and never said enough is enough. EVERY single time we said, "do that again and that will be it"
We can't let countries be ruled by terror. All they do is create environments where terrorists are born and thrive. And terrorist's just love to place blame for their problems on anything but the real cause. Pretty much every country in the Middle east is ruled badly. 9-11 should have made the world say enough is enough.
That brings up other questions though. Was Iraq our biggest threat? Probably not. It is probably North Korea and our friendly allies in Saudia Arabia. The problem facing the US government though was that our more immediate threats were not and are not as easy of a situation as Iraq. We've had a good amount of troops posted in Kuwait for some time to deal with Iraq. Every time in the 90's that Iraq did something that caused us to respond, it cost the US billions of dollars. (every time we redeploy troops to show a show of force costs a hell of a lot) So something had to be done. Oh, must I not forget to mention, that Saddam was a mass murderer.
Iraq was the easiest conflict for the US to choose as a next step in the war on terror that actually could have a result in the entire war. It accomplished several things. It gives the terrorists a battlefield. (and we needed more than just afghanistan) It also got rid of a dictator who caused the middle east and the world a great deal of trouble for many many years. And, even the odds are tough, creating a democratic Arab country, if successfuly, would be a HUGE thing. If Iraq can rise from the ashes, then it will give hope to millions of oppressed Arabs all over the world. Remember, hope is something most Arabs only get when coming to the US. (this being from my conversations with them)
So, put your anti-Bush aside. Focusing on the WMD issue is not only a waste of time but it turns the worlds attention from something greater.
I write this in recognition that the world taking a stance against genocide is going to be a issue where the world turns its back on issues that are to complex for it to deal with. I also write this in recognition of how anti-Bush slashdot is. Please take a minute to put politics aside and truly think about whats going on in the world outside of our own borders.
Anyway, there is much more I can say but I'll leave it at that. This probably won't be modded up anyway to make any difference.
so when something like 9/11 happens, don't be surprised if the us responds militarily. in what world do you live in where a military response from the us is not appropriate or just, to prevent something like 9/11 from ever happening ever again?
You're assuming the claimed result before such has been established.
At the moment, it looks as if our military actions have created MORE terrorists. Which makes the possiblility of another attack on the US even more likely.
please be intellectually honest people: the us does good and bad in the world.
You seem to like that phrase. Such a pity it is meaningless in this discussion.
Rather than rant about "intellectual honest people", ask yourself this:
"Was our invasion of Iraq the best use of our resources for reducing terrorism?"
At the moment, it seems that it was not. There are more terrorists now, in more countries, with more attacks and al Queda has become a world-wide symbol to rally them.
It's redundant, but could use repeating.
.org
From Fair
What a Difference Four Years Makes
Why U.N. inspectors left Iraq--then and now
The U.N. orders its weapons inspectors to leave Iraq after the chief inspector reports Baghdad is not fully cooperating with them.
-- Sheila MacVicar, ABC World News This Morning, 12/16/98
To bolster its claim, Iraq let reporters see one laboratory U.N. inspectors once visited before they were kicked out four years ago.
--John McWethy, ABC World News Tonight, 8/12/02
Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night--at a time when most members of the Security Council had yet to receive his report.
--Washington Post, 12/18/98
Since 1998, when U.N. inspectors were expelled, Iraq has almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological weapons,
--Washington Post editorial, 8/4/02
With the mentality that you and lot of others have, we would have lost World War II. Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in a horrible loss of life, but it was necessary to end the war. Were our American civilian lives more important than the Japanese civilian lives? You damn well better believe so!
Welcome to the real world, not the sugar- & candy-coated ones you are presented in high school and college. Every successful nation, every successful cilization, is always trying to stay ahead. Did you know that in all of recorded history, we humans have spent more years at war than that peace? Do you honestly think we are going to change now? No, we aren't. So since there will be war, we better make sure we are victorious. "You are either with us, or against us."
I'm sorry, but those are just some really bad reasons. They seem (IMHO, etc.) to indicate precisely the sort of warhawk thinking that starts world wars. Germany had a desire for liebestraum, America has a hankerin' for oil. Following your suggestion, we'd be walking right into inciting a global conflict.
t ml?id=110002133
#1 "WMD's were just a floater to get us into Iraq and prepare for the next targets." It's appalling that you think it's acceptable for a nation's leaders to give the country's citizens outright lies to justify an unprovoked war. Were the United States to move on to "the next targets," it would incite phenomenal anti-American sentiment worldwide, and exacerbate the problem of terrorism. Furthermore, it... Ach, I'm not even going to bother to refute all your points. Just look here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.h
George HW Bush's National Security Advisor breaks it down for you and explains things pretty well.
Eh?
This is getting depressing. We are in a similar position. Our Government put us into a war, basicly by lying, in order to gain approval from your American Government. Government Ministers get the sack of using their Credit Cards inappropriately, but starting a war on dodgey info? That seems to be okay. So here we are a week away, and the biggest issues seem to be who is going to bribe us with the biggest wad of money. Basic honesty seems to a minor issue. People dont seem to care!
all arab's problems, of a history going back thousands of years, has to do with british colonialism.
this is a common problem of simplistic patronizing racist thinking: you can only conceive of other people's motivations as they relate to your own past actions. you can't conceive of original sin or heroism in someone else. you can only look at what other people do and understand it only terms of "they did this because i did that." very self-centered. never in your understanding of the world did a culture do something good or bad all on their own, having nothing whatsoever to do with the west.
it's a big world out there. you're only a small part of it.
no, dorothy, the entire world does not revolve around the us.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Bush didnt need to know this information, geeze, the president isn't the person gathering this information, their are thousands of trained professionals working on data gathering, and hundreds of people who had information about this project before it happened. The fact is this information would have been discussed, and was most likely considered not important.
TruePunk | Games
There are intelligent people on both sides, so why are so many people acting like anyone that votes for someone besides your candidate is an idiot? That's just rude, and it's not going to help anything except for civil war.
Look I'd like to vote for someone better than Bush, but I don't think Kerry is the man, if you think Bush lies, guess what, so does Kerry. People are attracted to voting for Bush because we always know where he stands, and yes I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks (and yes I do know somewhat of the sacrifice military people make, my dad was in the military, and was half paralyzed and half brain dead from the time I was 7 due to his injuries in the service).
Does anyone remember September 11th? Does anyone remember Osama declaring war on the U.S.? Does anyone remember the feelings they had that day, or the day after 9/11,... the feelings that justice must be done for these several thousand people that died, and we must prevent it from happening again. Look, Kerry voted for this war too, he supported it. Bush just stuck to his guns, I know where he stands and that's why I'm voting for him.
Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves. He also financially supported the people that want to kill U.S. citizens, which I think most of us are. His sons would torture their own Olympians after they returned to Iraq if they didn't perform well. There's more, but I'm not going to continue on the tyranny for now. I don't care if he had WMD's or not, there were several other reasons to go to war with him (supporting terrorists, being a tyrant and killing his own people). There are too many parallels between Saddam and Hitler. Remember what happened when we tolerated Hitler, it cost over 50 Million lives to stop him. If we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. We have learned from history that 'dictators that kill their own people because they don't like their point of view' are dangerous, and need to be stopped. So we learned from history, we took him out before he got out of hand. And yes, this means we should be at war with other countries now too (i.e. North Korea, Iran), but I'm pretty sure we can't support that many war fronts without reinstating a draft.
Now you may say we're stuck in Iraq. Does anyone remember how long we were in Japan after WWII? about 7 years. How about the U.S.'s own revolution how long was it before the 13 colonies could agree... 11 years if my memory serves me correctly. Remember history, the rapid progress in Iraq is unprecedented. Yes it costs human lives and that is horrible, but it is a choice between less people dying now or more people dying later. It's a tough choice to make, but we made the right one.
And if you don't think that the media is slanted left, why is it that they call President Bush "Mr. Bush" and they call President Clinton, "President Clinton." or any other former president, is called "President." It's just one more way they undermine him. Just something interesting to think about. Also why is it that the media only reports the bad news and the deaths from the war, they never tell about power being restored, or schools being built, I've never heard a letter from a soldier who's actually in Iraq on the media on the T.V. I have heard several of their letters on the radio, and they paint quite a different picture from the one we see every night on the evening news. I'd talk more about their slant to the left, but I've been too long winded already.
Here here!
sheesh.
You thinking that I'm upset is pretty amusing, too.
And, you're welcome.
Once again, "9/11-Iraq, 9/11-Iraq" Haven't we seen enough of this? Isn't it enough that Kerry bitch-slapped Dubya for it the other day? Over and over, the same thing.
If the Invasion of Iraq had had anything to do with responding to 9/11, you would have a point of some sort. But it didn't. There were plenty of other actions to be taken that had much more to do with 9/11, and they weren't taken, because the admin wanted to use it as an excuse to do what it's been wanting to do from day one anyway. This has nothing to do with 9/11. It's a strategic move, nothing more, and not a defensive one either.
How does the invasion of Iraq reduce terrorism again? How does it help deal with the causes of terrorism? How does it, in fact, do anything but stir up more hatred against the US, while providing an ideal breeding ground for terrorist networks?
Of course the US does good and bad in the world. At the moment, it happens to be doing bad, and we have to stop it.
If you really want to be intellectually honest, you need to look at the global strategic realities and realize that power systems need to do whatever it takes to keep them in power. At some point, maintaining dominance becomes the overriding priority of any dominant power system. At this point, it will do anything to justify its strategically necessary moves to maintain dominance. This has nothing to do with the goodness and badness of the people involved, it's a simple institutional reality.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
So you supported the war, but you didn't buy in to their evidence? Care to explain?
What do you get when you cross a mountain-climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scaler with a vector.
You know, we had more evidence of Iraq's WMD programs then we did of mass-graves and genocide in Kosovo (which is turning out to be nowhere near any kind of numbers to justify the term "genocide"); yet I don't see the mainstream media even touching it.
Oh, that's right; it's probably because Wes Clark and Bill Clinton, who acted unilaterally, only killed white people.
Government Storm Troopers successfully supressed an ever increasing number of people/officals across a number of fields for two solid years before the story just happened to break less than 60 days before the Elections -or- They were simply wrong like everybody else and this story is being blown way out of porportion.
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There isn't any news in this "news" for anyone, it seems like just another excuse to be able to trashtalk Bush, rewrapping an old story using people "all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity" (NYT quoted). In addition the NYT article states "American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes", it should seem obvious for all that choosing which point of view or arguments to believe is not lying even if you are later proved wrong.
For all those who are tired of loudmouths endlessly repeating their favourite rants ("Bush/Kerry is a liar" etc.) here's a link to FactCheck.org: http://factcheck.org/.
Go - Read - Think - Think some more - Read some more - Doubt your assumptions - Think again - Vote (if you're an US citizen) for whoever you agree the most with but please respect that others do not see the world through your eyes, heart and brain (observations/feelings/thoughts).
Please differentiate yourself from the Moore/Limbaugh crowd and be proud of it. Please don't base any vote on who shouts the loudest or for that matter on whoever shouts less.
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
No, what is really being objected to is the political slant of this story. /. never claimed to be objective about politics. It's clear from the way the mods are falling in this discussion how the majority of slasdotters feel about the subject. We should be able to express our opinions about this just like anything else.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
you mean 9/11?
;-P
;-)
i see what you mean then
how can you filter out the negative actions others take on you and only see the negative actions you take others?
it's stupid to see only your heroic acts and be blind to your sins, no?
well, it's equally stupid to see only your sins and be blind to your capacity for good
you can only characterize the us in the middle east as a crusade only if nothing came before: that the us just launched into iraq on religious reasons, and the middle east was just minding it's own business
when the truth is, it was largely religious reasons that caused some middle eastern madmen to execute 9/11.
which perciptated iraq and afghanistan
but not in your mind: you filter out all that obvious cause and effect and come to the breathtaking conclusion: the us is on a crusade
and that you can say "sounds like a grand crusade" and not see the irony of your maladaptive pov, that the opposite is the truth
wow
jokes on you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hope you lose both your nuts to testicular cancer. I hope you lose your job. I hope you try to get medical coverage on your own while on unemployment. Then come back here and tell me your vote for Bush was a smart move, you uninsured, dipshit. And don't even try to get insurance from another insurer. They won't touch your cancer-prone ass for any amount of money.
Investing in alternative methods of energy production would be a lot cheaper and have a much better end result than killing people to take their oil.
Although the above statement is 100% true, few people wanted to hear that song ten years ago when it would have made a difference in the world today.
We have a crapload of oil stored away already for emergencies.
It may be a crapload, but it'd be gone in 2 months if we used it exclusively.
Were it a true emergency, we would tap that [reserve], and not start a war.
We did indeed tap it in the early 90's when Saddam made the oil prices jump, until our first Gulf War successfully drove the prices back down. But those high prices are back with a vengence, and the current administration has signalled a willingness to tap the Strategic Reserves yet again. And, we are again at war. What more is there to say?
If we tap the reserves AND have this war, would you finally believe that an emergency exists?
They need to get it right, not way too far on one side or the other!
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I wish I had mod points for you sir. Beautifully put.
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but we couldn't deal with a lot of body bags then. we now know a basket case of a middle east is bad for the us, and so we can stomach the body bags, because it's better a couple hundred dead servicemen in iraq than a couple hundred thousand dead civilians in washington dc.
It's better a couple hundred dead servicemen in iraq (oh, and a few tens of thousands of arabs dead, but who cares?) than a couple of hund^H^H^H thousand dead civilians in washington dc.
Just for curiosity, what's the equivalence of foreign people's lifes in american's lifes? It must be something like 1 american dead = 5 brits dead = 50.000 arabs dead, isn't it?...
when confronted with 9/11, how can it get worse?
in other words, you submit to me the spectre of stirring up a hornets nest of terrorists in the middle easty
oh? you must have forgotten the hornets nest already there?
your analysis is not useful if you present to me a negative consequence that preexists my actions
you can't threaten me with the spectre of armies of religious madmen responding to my actions when my actions are the response to armies of religious madmen
you seem to have some issues with logic there
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here's a well thought out 30 sec. TV ad of Bush-isms. Enjoy. http://www.bushin30seconds.org/view/06_large.shtml
Whoever wins will institute the draft. They have no choice so long as the military stays in stays in Afghanistan and Iraq. Recruitment is at an all time low and all sorts of tricks are in play to keep existing personnel in place.
Talk to a liberal someday. You'll probably find that this hype about gun control is a fiction created by the NRA for their own job security. Getting rid of guns is so low on the liberal agenda, that radical liberals don't even waste their breath on it. The NRA claims that the democrats are going to take our guns away in order to get more money from paranoid gun-owners. This paper tiger tactic has been working great for them.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
we have an argument based on semantics, not logic
;-P
you seems to have gotten angry that i implied afghanistan is in the middle east when it is in asia
i apologize oh mightily for my poorly chosen words
i substitute the word "islamic world" for "middle east" in my arguments above
the islamic world is basket case that exports its extremists to nonislamic countries
thereby, making the islamic world's problems our problems, whether we like it or not
therefore, invading iraq fits naturally in with the context of solving the problem we are confronted with
happy now?
do we agree then now?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The WMD fiasco is nothing but a sideshow to keep you from seeing the real underlying issues here.
Ever since Vietnam the Presidents have totally pissed on the Constitution they swore to uphold. The President has NEVER had power to declare war, that was granted to the Congress. I don't recall Congress declaring war against Iraq, for whatever reason.
The Congress does not want the political heat of declaring war. So they attempt to push that over to Bush by signing a letter of "support for our troops". They can then blame the President for whatever goes wrong, or take credit for whatever goes right. This way, they keep their offices relatively unspotted in the view of the people. Offices which in reality consist largely of shoveling money towards corporate interests.
All this reeks of the same corruption that occurred when the Senators of the Roman Republic shoveled all their power over to Octavian... making him Caesar. Those Senators did not want to risk alienating the people by taking stands on issues, they would rather let Augustus do it, and then blame him when things went sour. Thus, those Senators could hide their incompetency and accountability from the people, while continuing their corrupt business dealings.
We read in Article I Section 8 that Congress has power...:
Article I Section 8 (Powers granted to Congress):
"...To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;...."
In Section 1 or Article II we read: Article II Section 1 (Executive branch, office of President):
"...Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now that Congress has no gumption and represents corporations instead of the people-- the President does whatever he wants. So we go to war at his say so, over whatever he wants us to fight and die for. The leaders of our country swore to uphold the Constitution, yet they piss on the balance of power that was built into it for their own political and personal gain.
And these people are going to bring "freedom" to Iraq. Physicians... heal thy selves.
"I'll liberate you peoples' fate
Spoke the Burnin' Bush
But the song of beasts
Growl with oil soaked teeth
Their dollar is mighty and true
Now the eagle soars the sky
Over refugee and child
And to all there is no end
Another day in perfect Hell"-- Flogging Molly
In this case, Iraq is actually a made-up country, divided along arbitrary lines because of the details of British imperialism. It shouldn't even be one country at all. In order to maintain it as one country, the west has installed a series of dictatorial regimes. And then we wonder why it's fucked up.
I give all kinds of credit to the people of the Middle East. The way I see it, they've been trying, off and on and with much difficulty, to achieve some sort of progress. But every time, we just keep fucking with them, making it harder, and we need to take responsibility for that.
More importantly, though, blame is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, that's not my point. My point is that historically, western intervention has not improved matters in the Middle East. In practice, it has made them worse. Why should we think it will be any different this time?
What we are doing in Iraq is not making the situation better, and there is no reason to think it will. This is not fixing the problem. When the British did similar things, that did not fix the problem either. You should always beware of solutions which cause more problems than they solve.
"Each and every problem we face today is the direct and inevitable result of yesterday's brilliant solutions" - Henry Bergman, architect
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Let's try real hard and stretch our imagination a little, shall we? The dog had already been kicked repeatedly by the time 9/11 came along - and no, Iraq didn't attack us. I'd love for you to complete your bold text there for me. "We were attacked on 9/11 [by ........]"?
In case you missed the question, all you have to do is fill in the blank. Just go ahead and tell me who attacked us. I can't wait for your enlightenment.
i honestly submit to you that when confronted with the madness of 9/11, fixing the problem that made such a thing possible: ie, the basket case that is the middle east, is of greater importance than absolutely every single issue you bring up above
seriously
it's easy for you to judge drily on economic affairs from yonder ivory tower afar
believe me, the problem that is a world where 9/11 is possible looks a lot different from manhattan
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's actually pretty simple really. If there were wmds in Iraq and forces capable of using them, I doubt the Coalition of the Willies would have invaded. It was only because 10 years of sanctions had degraded the Iraqi armed forces, which were probably not much of a match anyway, that an invasion was even contemplated. Would the US have been able to withstand casualties, probably numbering in the thousands, in the first few days of the war? For a cause that had nothing to do with 9/11 or terrorism? For a country that posed no significant threat to anyone other than it's immediate neighbours? My guess is NO! The answer to questions about Iraq is rooted in the neo-con agenda, fuelled by the self-licking ice-cream cone.
For those who keep saying that they don't understand why some people vote for who they vote, it comes from many different ways. Such as and believe it or not but people mostly vote from what they see in television ads on TV, They watch that and determine how their gonna vote weather it makes Kerry or Bush look bad or good. The second most common reason why people vote the way they do has sometimes to do with their religion or a part of a union their with, voters could have churches who tell them how they should vote and why, and the same goes for unions, so basically people just vote by what they see on TV or what their organization tells them to.
The Sad truth is, that most americans are ignorant in elections.
We don't need more of your obfuscation. It's killing America.
Anyone with mod points, look up Shah Reza Pahlavi, then mod this guy down.
TSG
that al qaeda is more than osama bin laden?
that al qaeda is a systemic problem created from various socioeconomic, geopolitical, theohistorical problems?
that al qaeda is a symptom, not a cause?
then you agree that the patient, the middle east, is the real issue, and that you have to confront the problem of a world that created something like 9/11 as a long range problem, with many long range steps, including invading iraq to serve as a base for fixing the sick patient that is the middle east
got it?
iraq is but step 1, there are many steps to go before we have a middle east that does not launch it's madmen around the world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We said "enough", and sent in the inspectors, who found nothing - because they weren't there. Then Bush tired of losing that game, so he cancelled the inspectors, rushed to war, destroyed the country and our reputation, and found nothing - because it wasn't there. The sanctions worked to disarm Hussein. Even invading the country didn't stop him from being an insane liar, but he's certainly got no monopoly on that business.
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make install -not war
1. Looking up your 9-digit Zip code
2. Then use said Zip code to find your representatives
3. Email all your representatives for U.S. Senate and U.S. House.
You might also want to write the editor of your local newspaper.
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the turks are reponsible for everything in the middle east vis a vie the ottoman empire too, but that analysis is just as useless
the middle east exports its madmen
therefore, the middle east makes its problems our problems
the entirety of the region needs fixing
iraq is simply step 1
this is not a good thing or a bad thing, it just is: the middle east will continue madrid, bali, chechnya, 9/11, etc., until SOMEONE does something about it
you can say iraq was the wrong thing to do, but i say back to you that you are right: because it's not about iraq, it's about the middle east, stop focusing on iraq, when the middle east is the issue
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh gee, thanks for the history lesson. And in this recorded history, oh scholar of scholars, how many nations have been victorious? Surely there is an empire that this strategy worked out for, right? Let me try and give you another example, grasshopper. Ever know anyone with a triple black belt? Nobody will fuck with them. However, if he/she goes around kicking peoples asses for fun then enough green belts get pissed off and together and have a green belt ass kicking field day complete with sack race and tug of war.
We were attacked on 9/11 by Osama bin Laden and Al Quada. These are people that Saddam Hussein did not care for anyways and did not cooperate with. What's your point? Read my very first post. We need to be in Iraq for strategic military reasons and to ensure a supply of oil for the US. I have no problems with that.
Who do you think funds Al Qaeda? Countries do not want to get into a direct conflict with the US so they instead fund terrorist organizations to attack us. It's sort of like money-laundering. And where do you think those countries (Iran) reside? Yup, flanked on the west (Afghanistan) and east (Iraq) by US forces. I say that is smart planning by Bush and the Pentagon.
Let me guess you believe in the bible as well. Must be hard to be so gullible
Help fight continental drift.
are toothless
you can't help them fight terror when those regimes are a lot fo the reasons why such terror exists
and the us can't do whatever it wants, but after 9/11, it will do whatever it thinks is necessary so that something like that doesn't happen again
this isn't a popularity contest, this isn't an empire building project, it's about changing the middle east so the middle east doesn't breed that which created 9/11, got it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm Korean.
I am always curious whether the Americans really didn't know that GWBush was lying when he started invasion over Iraq. Didn't you really know? There is no WMD there. American bombers drop huge amounts of bombs over Iraq almost weekly-base since operation desert storm.
Were you really not aware of that? or you just don't care about diying people just because they were not visible to you?
Please open your eyes and see what's happening there. Everybody in the world knows about GWBush's cruel invasion and massacre hurts world peace. American people are only people unaware of the truth blinded by there media companies.
Mercy please. Stop killing innocent people of the world. Don't just drop your bombs anywhere you want.
Some of the lies which helped beat the drums of war came from the New York Times and Judith Miller. In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press", Vice President Cheney referred to the Times' coverage while spreading his own lies to justify the war. The New York Times is quite an influential newspaper; it has been known to set the agenda for other media. The Times fired Jayson Blair for his repeated lies about far less consequential things. The Times printed a multi-page expose detailing Blair's lies. When it came to their coverage on the invasion of Iraq, The Times has issued a semi-apology to the public that never mentions Miller by name. Amy and David Goodman took the Times to task for the lack of coverage of and appropriate apology for what they call the Times' lowest point in its 152-year history. Miller, however, continues to work at the Times.
Digital Citizen
Your point 4 is, in fact false, and your point 3) is strange.
Regarding point 3), a list of people interested in buying Iraqi oil is sort of a "duh". I mean, you know the US was already buying almost half of the oil sold by Iraq through the oil for food program, right?
And regarding point 4) you need to show that Cheney A) was making "mad cash" from i) "salary" and ii) "stock options". I suspect you'll have a hard time because B) Halliburton stock is actually down since Cheney took office, and C) Cheney sold all his stock and options during the 2000 campaign just so critics wouldn't carp on it. Foolish guy, eh? It didn't stop people like you from either lying or being uninformed, did it?
I'll be charitable though and proactively admit Cheney *is* getting money from Halliburton. In fact, he's continues to receive annual payments of "deferred compensation" of about $150,000 per year through 2005. This may offend your income-disparity sensibilities but I submit that it's not that unusual for a CEO of a Fortune 200 company. And you still haven't shown how the swings in Halliburton stock would affect that or otherwise get him "mad cash". I'm sure it's his evil buddies all cashing in, isn't it?
If you want a more accurate picture, I'd suggest putting together more than 4 dots next time. It's more than "1. X 2. Y. 3. ??? 4. Profit" you agree, right? And I'm not even a conservative!
--LP (who listens to both right-wing talk radio and Air America and that Liberals are so stupid when it comes to Halliburton... see this old post on this topic for supporting evidence)
I just prefer to post anonymously. Sheesh.
Furthermore, I think we clearly disagree on the causes of the problem. If the Middle East were just sitting there being sick, that would be one thing, but it's not. It sounds a little fishy if you mug a man, beat him up, then say that you have to perform radical surgery to fix the wounds you've caused him, don't you think?
My response is that what we've done in the Middle East so far has always made the problem worse, and right now I don't see us doing anything different, just more of the same.
This is perfectly analagous to the "war on drugs." We have a drug problem. So we have a "war on drugs," which has the net effect of making the problem worse. So then we say, "hey, the problem is getting worse, so we need to fight the war on drugs harder."
That's completely backward thinking. If what you're doing is making the problem worse, you don't need to do more of the same, you need to do something else.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
The fact is that Hussein destroyed the weapons because we forced him to. Another fact is that we pulled our inspectors out and invaded because their demonstration that no WMDs existed got in the way of our invasion. Then there's the question of an insane, paranoid tyrant defending himself from not just American flyovers and domestic attempts at freedom, but serious threats from neighboring Iran and Israel, both of which successfully attacked him from the air in the 1980s, and both of which likely have The Bomb. So he said he had one, too, in a way that wouldn't violate his house arrest, but which put those enemies on notice.
Here's another fact: NO WMDs. The inspections worked, because there were NO WMDs after they got underway shortly after Iraq War Sr. And, there were NO WMDs.
--
make install -not war
If Iraq had WMDs Bush administration wouldnt dare go in. Because they would have used it on us. Why do you think they didnt go after North Korea and China.
fucktards
" Is this another one of those 'reports' from Dan Rather?"
Nope.
Although in all fairness even Rather got his story right, it was just the prop that was wrong. Imagine for a moment though if as everyone agrees that the facts and spirit of the memos are right. Where is the investigation into who sanitized G.W. Bush's records? Oh yes they were fakes, so there is no reason to go there even if their contents were vouched for as being consistent with the principals.
The most amazing part of this news is that the NYT actually published bad news about Bush. As if some other scheme is going to take place for which the NYT first must gain credibilaty again.
/ 10/17/ret.afghan.redcross/
In 10 years they will report that the US intentionally bombed the red-cross buildings in afghanistan. They were a threat, because they could boost morale.
(If you think about the fact that this is a US news source, and at that moment CIA people infiltrated CNN:)
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central
Maybe in 50 years we might learn (Bush administration has changed the law regarding publicizing documents, so don't count in it) that the ones behind 9-11 are the same that planned operation northwoods. And in another 50 years the NYT would publish it.
you have an interpersonal issue
because you are incapable of understanding other people's actions without understanding how they relate to you
you can't conceive that someone would do something because of their own agenda, regardless of what you did or did not do
example: what happened in bali to the australian tourists and the balinesians? in madrid on 3/11? in chechnya in the schoolhouse?
how do those relate to to the us?
exactly, they don't
get it?
i don't think you do, i think your understanding of the world speaks volumes about your own maladative psychology: "people only do this or that because of me"
you have issues, you don't have solutions to these problems
you can't conceive that al qaeda does not revolve around the us, that it has its own agenda, and it invovles the us, but is not centered on the us
you are centered on the us
i am centered on the world, i see many players
you see nothing until it has to do with you
you have issues
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So we invaded, and found out there were NO WMDs. Thanks for playing "geopolitical catastrophe". Hey, get out the joysticks for Quagmire!
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make install -not war
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
1706--1790
Letter to Josiah Quincy
Sept. 11, 1773
Paraphrasing the article, while three different government agencies made assertions about the nuclear threat, careful reading reveals that the assertion of each agency is contradicted or rejected by those of the others.
What we have is an administration - Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, that:
Pushed an agenda for war
Ignored, dismissed, and suppressed evidence to the contrary
Told our intelligence agencies to come up with evidence when it was apparent that we had not adequate to justify war
Either lied to the people of this country, or if not lied, are absolutely incompetent and unfit for office
This administration, when it became clear that the evidence was inadequate, rather than step back to assess the situation, suppressed dissent, misled the people of this country, and rushed to war before anyone could do anything about it.
At the same time, the Senate failed to do its duty. Kerry did not read the National Intelligence Estimate. Instead, he relied on a briefing by George Tenet.
When it is so clear now, as quoted by the article, that this National Intelligence Estimate is the most factually flawed document in the history of American intelligence, one wonders what it is that our representatives do.
They were played, we were played, we trusted them to go to washington to look out for us, and they failed us. They were the ones who had access to this intelligence information.
It was their duty to act on behalf of the 280 million people in this nation, and they failed.
They were taken advantage of by a deceitful administration, and rubber stamped its ill-fated agenda for war.
This is a country of bumbling idiots, who deserve the worst tyrant.
For a good discussion of centrifuge enrichment plants see this brochure for a German centrifuge plant. This gives the basic design formulae for sizing rotors and cascades, and has pictures of a large centrifuge cascade. There are more advanced designs, but they are experimental. That 1991 plant is proven. So that's probably what someone would try to copy.
Public reports are vague on what materials are actually used for centrifuge tubes in existing plants, but high-strength steels and carbon fibre are mentioned. Still, if you're willing to accept lower performance, aluminum could work. That German plant is commercial, and has to be cost-effective. A country that only wants a few bombs need not be as efficient.
That analysis is useless because Turkey isn't doing much of anything right now.
However, if Turkey were trying to repeat the mistakes it made during the Ottoman Empire which caused problems in the Middle East, that analysis would be pretty relevant, wouldn't you say?
Once again, it's not a matter of whose fault it is, it's a matter of what sort of actions have, historically, made the situation worse, and which ones have made it better. In the past, invading, occupying, and colonizing the middle east has created far more problems than it solves, and you still have not given us any reason to think this time around will be different.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I liked the Service Captains
"Officer Jones, you did a wonderful job of tackling that shoplifter."
"Thanks for the compliment, Service Captain Bligh. I hope you aren't planning to supplant my work."
"Indeed not, Officer Jones. That would violate the Kerry Code, which I am sworn to uphold."
Saddam Hussein was a socialist. There is more to tyranny than merely bipolar duality. Fascists are corporate, as Mussolini innovated in Italy. The difference is that Hussein controlled all the state corporations for his sole, personal benefit, while fascists control the government for the benefit of the corporations (and their owners).
--
make install -not war
drugs, terrorism, pedophilia
;-)
what do these problems have in common?
they are wars that will never end, ever
as long as there is civilization, we will need to fight hard drugs (i actually think marijuana should be legalized), pedophilia, and terrorism
through simple statistical inevitbility, there will ALWAYS be created in this world sleazes who find children sexually appealing
through simple triumph of ego over common sense, there will ALWAYS be those who will seek pleasure and relief in hard drugs and think addiction won't hurt them or their society or their family or friends
through simple inevitable anger and arrogance, there will always be groups who think surprise violence against civilians will advance their cause
we will ALWAYS be waging war on terror, hard drugs, pedophilia
it's simply the wages of civilization
get it?
but does this fact mean we stop fighting pedophilia? stop fighting hard drugs? stop fighting terrorism?
no, we redouble our efforts
that is called reality
no simple answers, no silver bullets
got it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't know why people are so upset that Bush took Saddam out of power. We know he gassed his own people. We know he tried to invade countries around him. We know he supressed his own people. The reasons he went to war may have been off, but I can't argue with the goals of democracy that Iraq is now trying to acheive.
in other words, history is an important guide and font of knowledge, but you can't find in it any answers that define current problems
you simply find sugestions, indications, but not definitive answers
something like 9/11 is so unprecedented, you can't simply go to history book, find chapter 23, page 26, chapter 4, and say "see? there's the reason, and your answer"
so your overdependence upon historical interpretations is misguided
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pray, do tell. So what did 9/11 have to do with Iraq? Only facts please!
In other news, the National Enquirer reports... Forget it. Next article please.
Now, how is this going to help the Iraqi nation? All the proof brought up in the last 10 years show that the United States are ready to receive a treatment close to what the natzy got half a century ago. Split the country, judge the leaders, long lasting embargo, the right to sell the minimum to buy _some_ of the medicine needed, chemical factories and anything large like a car manufacturing plant dismantled and finally every bearer of US passport bashed in the customs and treated like a common criminal.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
What if I could prove to you that Iraq had storehouses of yellowcake?
3 66 32
5 /p osts
i cl e_id=3739
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/118910
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?art
Reports are that Iraq had enough yellowcake to build 100 nuclear warheads. There is no known peaceful use for yellowcake.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
no really, i mean you're kind of low intelligence
there's no nuance in your words or arguments
just "kill all the palestinians!"
wo said that? who remotely was talking about that?
japan, germany- once scary, unstoppable forces in the world. did we kill every japanese, or german to stop them?
i feel as if saying any words past that obvious simple observation is wasted breath on you, that any more nuanced arguments might be wasted, because you are so prone to simplistic hyperbole and jumping to frankly downright stupid conclusions ("kill every palestinian!"=just plain stupid) that you're almost not worth talking to, because you can't seem to talk in reasonable tones, only jump to idiotic extremist simplsitic things: "kill every palestinian!"
who is even remotely talking about that?
only you
you're kind of... dumb
really, your observations seem genuinely low intelligence
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Politicians lie all the time, as said above."
The Bush administration corruption is the worst in U.S. history. At least read the reviews of 3 movies and 35 recently published books that say the corruption is extremely intense: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
You cannot develop an accurate opinion by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another. Remember, the media exists to make money. Unfortunately, we don't have directly supported media, only ad supported media, and advertisers, understandably, are careful not to alienate anyone.
--
Bush: Borrowing money to try to make his administration look good.
Hey buddy,
do you love fanatic zionists with nukes.
They are basically as religiously insane
as your mullahs, if not more?
Yes, we were. By whom? This is the important question you're missing. The main problem with your line of reasoning is that you're conflating Al-Qaida with Iraq or perhaps the entire Middle East. If you cannot distinguish between enemies and neutral parties, or even between different enemies, or even keep track of which enemy was responsible for which offense, then you cannot know how to react. The enemy who attacked us on 9/11 was Al-Qaida, an international terrorist network based in Afghanistan but with operatives in several different countries worldwide. Al Qaida was not in league with Saddam Hussein, because Al Qaida saw him as a "secular infidel." And "Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army." (9/11 Commission Report, page 61). They were two quite separate enemies. (In fact, America wasn't an object of Hussein's aggression; his problem with the U.S. was that we stopped his aggression against his neighbors.) Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to George HW Bush, laid the situation out pretty well here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.h
Top U.S. military commanders argued against invading Iraq because it was at best tangential and at worst entirely counter-productive to the war on terror. These include General Anthony Zinni, http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html, General Joseph Hoar, http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/s803482.htm, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded U.S. forces in the first Gulf War http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2705275.stm.
Yes, we absolutely need to get the guys who attacked us. But to do that, we need to get the guys who attacked us. This "hit 'em where they ain't" strategy is just bloody stupid. Afghanistan is a justifiable war. Iraq is not.
Heh, well, at least you didn't forget Poland. But you did neglect to note something about Poland: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1069242.ht
"[Polish President] ALEKSANDER KWASNIEWSKI (translated): They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
Eh?
Getting a piece of the oil field action was a big part of it, but there's also another aspect: Poland feels threatened by Russia, and it needs alliances, both economic and military, to help defend itself. Going into Iraq proved to be a bad strategic move, since it managed to get most of Europe pissed at Poland, without getting anything tangible from the US.
4 &s=ost
And Bush's chummy comments about his buddy "Vladimir" were definitely not reassuring to his Polish allies.
On a related note, here's a report from Warsaw by an old professor of mine:
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=2004100
Regardless of the severity of the problem, continuing to do what in the past has made it worse is not a reasonable attempt at a solution. Indeed, it is exactly the opposite.
To simply throw out everything we know about history, and then turn around and make the same mistakes again, all the while saying "but it's different this time!' is sheer folly.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I remember reading this story when it was happening more that 2 years ago. At that time it was reported that experts were highly doubtful that the tubes were for nuclear refinement.
Why does it seem that nobody listens to what anybody else says if the president claims something contrary. Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's -- even if they are experts on the issue?
Grow up, Americans! It's time you got over your infantile fixation on hero figures and giving them divine, infallable status.
I don't know what it is like in other countries, but here in Canada, even people who generally like the Prime Minister will treat things he says with a measure of healthy scepticism. And if a bunch of experts line up saying the PM is full of shit, people will listen to the experts, not the PM.
When this was in the news 2 years ago, it was easy enough to conclude that the White House was off base in its assertions. Why is it just now that people are thinking "Hey! Maybe the experts were right and the president was wrong"?
Ideology is for ideots.
no, we redouble our efforts
Of course we need to continue fighting the ills of society. But we need to do so in a way that is effective, i.e., one which actually reduces the problem.
If you are "fighting" in a way which makes the problem worse, or even in one which fails to make it any better, you need to change your approach. It's no good to keep beating your head against a wall harder and harder just because it didn't knock the wall down the first time.
Of course we need to continue making an effort. But we need to make right effort. We need to try very hard to do things which will make the problem better, not worse.
Got it? ;-)
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Based on what I'm reading that you write, I now understand where Bush and the administration gets all of their support: Some comes from the conservatives, the rest from colonialists like you.
Why is this even posted to Slashdot? First, this is at least nine months old. The only reason why it's in the NY Times yet again is the election is near and they have a very well known bias. There's nothing new in the story. Secondly, this has nothing at all to do with technology. I could have sworn Slashdot recently set up a separate area for politically slanted news. Crap like this needs to stop.
As you said, the lies are extremely extensive. The Bush administration corruption is the worst in U.S. history. Read the reviews of 3 movies and 35 recently published books that say the corruption is extremely intense: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another. Remember, the media exists to make money. Unfortunately, we don't have directly supported media, only ad supported media, and advertisers, understandably, are careful not to alienate anyone.
--
Bush: Borrowing money to try to make his administration look good.
I should append this with a small correction. I didn't believe Saddam was close to getting operational WMD. One little omission, one large change....
I believed one of three things. He either had them but hid them well (not out of reach given the conditions in the region), he was going to get them eventually, or he wanted them but his scientists weren't competent (either on purpose or innocently). In either case, he couldn't use WMD for some time and didn't pose a threat for at least 5-10 years.
Sorry.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
the seriousness of the situation is perhaps expressed best in an old Guns N' Roses song. Listen to it, it's very powerful.
[snip]
Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they've always done before
Look at the hate we're breeding
Look at the fear we're feeding
Look at the lives we're leading
The way we've always done before
My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can't deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars
[snip]
Follow the money...
Yes, yes, yes... we knew that already. So, what's new?
/waiting anxiously for the "real" news
Bush and Cheney and the cabal of Zionist crooks are the worst thing to hit this country since the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Nuff Said!
Buh-Bye!
I know another huge country that stockpiles shitloads of chemicals and take pictures of their torture victims.
I think you are goddamn crazy, and am glad you only get one vote, just like everyone else.
You're referencing something you're calling the "Clinton Gun Ban of 1994." Were guns banned? No. But you've worked in a concerted effort with the folks at that website to exaggerate the Assault Rifle Ban to sound like a ban on guns in general. And in fact, the legislation Clinton got the Republican-dominated House to pass was a restriction on the sale of certain newly-manufactured or imported guns that look like military weapons. Functionally, this law didn't limit people's access to military-styled weapons.
It's understood amonst themselves. They don't need to talk about it.
I strongly recommend that you actually talk to one of these liberals of which you seem to assume a lot about. If it's understood amonst [SIC] themselves, then why is it that liberals talk about other issues that should be understood amonst [SIC] themselves? Like gay rights? Or recycling? Or protecting our forests, wetlands and other animal habitats? Seriously, I hang out with a lot of wacko liberals and consider myself one, and we're never talking about banning guns. In fact several of my friends own guns. One guy even shot a nazi skinhead with a 22-caliber rifle.
Talking to people who seem different from yourself can help you understand that they aren't all that different. It can also help you be less afraid of those same people.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
But if they really re-elect the current criminal (mind you this is from a dutch who used to be pro US and rather favour republicans over democrats) I think the former allies won't be so forgiving anymore.
At the moment I think many in europe (also in countries such as england and holland, traditional allies of the US) feel that many US citizens really can't be blamed: they didn't exactly know who they were putting in power 4 years ago, and also the election result was exactly 50-50.
However, reelecting the same man with todays knowledge, that will really be seen as a crime, as willingly choosing isolation, aggression, disdain for former allies and insulting the rest of the world. It would be a sign that the US and the majority of its inhabitants does not care for the former good ties between them and the former allies, and thinks it can rule the world alone.
the us is a stable democracy
but such obvious bedrocks of reason and truth mean nothing against your stilted propaganda apparently
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
What BS this title is!
Did anybody actually take the time to read this article? It clearlly stated that the CIA group statment was that Saddam was using these tubes for nukes! The article clearlly stated that Bush and the rest of the crew where relying on the CIA. The CIA blew and Bush and congress choose not to look beyond what the CIA stated.
I know it's a long article, but it would be good if you actually read it before you buy into the thick brown pile that people are throwing around....
1. According to the NYTimes story, Kerry and the rest of congress did NOT have access to the same depth of information that the White House did.
2. Again, according to the NYT story, The white house (Rice, Cheney in particular) grossly mischaracterized the intelligence, even going so far as to lump the dissenters of the nuclear centrifuge theory with terrorists.
3. Voting to give the president authorization to go to war is not the same as actually starting a war. To NOT vote for authorization would have been to take the teeth out of the president's negociating stance w/Iraq.
4. As Kerry very clearly explained in the debate, the president lied about the circumstances under which he would use Congress' authorization. He took us to war and got us in this tragedy because of his own arrogance, impatience, and because of his caving to Cheney's corporate-interested pressure.
Breath some free, objective air yourself.
how can it get worse?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
All of you are getting angry at the wrong reasons...
Bush truly believes what he is doing is good for the world.
No one really plans to screw up America on purpose.
The problem is not just about Bush. It's the people around him.
I don't think it's right to vote for Kerry just because you hate the other guy.
You should be voting for who you support, not because you hate the other guy.
I'm confused. That's what I am. Kerry or Bush? Bush or Kerry?
Wait a minute, what is Kerry gonna do if he becomes prez?
What is Bush gonna do if he get re-elected?
Maybe that might help me decide,
but I still don't have the answers to these questions.
considering the incredible lengths Cheney and Bush go to link Saddam and 9/11 on regular basis by putting the two in the same sentence, it is clearly not an exageration or an extremist view to say that the Bush administration is fond of trying to mislead those who aren't clever enough to avoid being misled by meaningless tricks of rhetoric.
They don't say "Saddam caused 9/11" but they come as close to saying that as they possibly can, as often as they can, despite the fact that there is no truth to it whatsoever. (thank you 9/11 commision for proving that.)
Overused, but true. Many comments have already pointed out that disputed evidence does not necessitate that the administration boldly lied to us, so I won't go into that here. But I would like to point out...
The clarity of hindsight still has some convinced that the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor was deliberately ignored so that the USA's govt. administration would have an excuse to enter the war. Do you really believe that?
I have no delusions that what I've said has any bearing on the present issue of the war in Iraq. I only bring it up to add some historical perspective to the situation.
To balance your decidedly un-funny characterization of republican supporters, here is my own summarization of Kerry supporters (or really, Bush Haters).
Several were. Guns that I owned at the time could no longer be legally manufactured or imported.
And in fact, the legislation Clinton got the Republican-dominated House to pass was a restriction on the sale of certain newly-manufactured or imported guns that look like military weapons.
Check your facts. The House and Senate were firmly in the hands of Democrats in the spring of 1994, when the ban passed. It was in November of 1994 that the Republicans were elected en masse.
Remember Clinton's 1995 state of the union speech?
Here's a quote for you.
- I think everybody in this room knows that several members of the last Congress who voted for the assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill lost their seats because of it.
That vote was the reason why Democrats lost Congress.One guy even shot a nazi skinhead with a 22-caliber rifle.
Hopefully he shot him in the face.
You seem to take great delight in the fact that missed a "g" in my last post. Why is that?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
In Afghanistan, women were beaten and sometimes executed for showing even their naked ankles in public. Here is a website created by Afghan women where they describe the restrictions placed on them by the Taliban. So, probably those women were psychologically harmed by their fundamentalist abusers.
It is up to you to prove that naked breasts are detrimental to our society if you are going to advocate that women be restricted from baring their breasts in public. I submit that you oppose women baring their chests in public because you are uptight about a woman's body. If you disagree, then tell me how it's bad for a woman's breasts to be displayed.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Interesting story, but the problem is all the right wing pundits have been working their asses off for the last few years (not unlike what they're doing with CBS now) to promote the impression that the New York Times is a "liberal publication" that can't be trusted to report anything accurately.
This presents an easy opportunity to dismiss whatever they write whenever it isn't supportive. This seems to be a fundamental tenet of the conservative agenda: discredit the messenger and ignore the issue.
I don't know of any media that hasn't made mistakes, but you would think based on what gets the most attention (NYT, Dan Rather, Michael Moore, etc.), that this is exclusively limited to entities which have the audacity to promote items that aren't unconditionally supportive of the right-wing agenda.
I don't see how any non-right-wing-biased news source can ultimately survive when you have hoards of conservative pundits like Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and others with hours and hours of broadcast time each and every day spewing their unchallenged contempt for any institution which disagrees with their agenda.
It's really frightening how this notion of objectivity gets pushed further and further to the right.
I guess that means the war was unjustified.
Except for those 17 U.N. resolutions that Saddam violated, but no one cares about those.
You have yet to explain how invading Iraq is a means of changing the Middle East in this way. Given all the lies the Bush admin has told us, might it not be wise to be a little skeptical on this count?
How does the invasion of Iraq make us safer? How does it lead to a Middle East which doesn't breed terrorism?
If your answer is simply that we're "building democracy," again I suggest you look beyond the Bush rhetoric and propaganda. In order to create our version of democracy in the Middle East, it will have to be imposed and maintained by military occupation. It will collapse if we turn our back on it (every indication shows that a truly democratic government in Iraq would be vehemently anti-US, thus unacceptable), and while we maintain it, it will consist essentially of puppet dictatorships operating in the name of "democracy." So you are talking about the perminant military occupation of the entire Middle East, which will certainly cause more resentment, resistance, and terror than we've ever seen. How does this help?
As I've said, invasion, occupation, and colonization of the Middle East has always led to increased strife, violence, and terror. Give us one reason to believe it will be different this time.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I don't know about the rest of you but as far as I was concerned the rest of the world already knew this, hell even Blair (UK) has been caught for this already.
Its hardly going to be the case that Blair was lying but Bush was telling the truth, I mean who do they think there kidding? (the american public apparently)
In the end this news is not going to do anything, they'll still say they had terroristsTM and that is reason enough to attack the country.
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
Anyone have this in print?
I'm hoping this made the front page, and maybe the ~10% swing votes that are currently towards Bush will see it (and use their collective 2 brain cells to comprehend it).
Don't want to open a can'o'worms, but Kerry could use Nader's 2% about now.
"Why do the liberals in this country totally and absolutely ignore 9/11, like it never happenned? I fully support the president's decision to invade Iraq, regardless of faulty intelligence, or not;..."
They don't "totally and absolutely ignore 9/11" they just want to see those responsible captured or killed just like real conservative and and true patriots. It is only Bushies that ignore 9/11 and use it as justification for knocking on every hornets nest so we as a country can neither adequetly defend or respond to threats and transgressions. Right now we are closer than ever before to having to use nukes because of lack of man power. Further as someone who has declared themselves a Bush loyalist, I am not sure you should be speaking for his opponent.
"Put simply, we gave Saddam 18 months of dipomacy, he ignored it,"
Hardly but I guess that is what you want to believe. Turnning over your WMD's is not possible if you do not have them. As for turning over doctumentation Saddam even got that in on time.
"WTF is the president to think after 9/11 when a ruthless dictator refuses to let inspectors into verify the existence of WMD, after an attack on the USA?"
Here is the litmus test. Would you as a world leader allow weapons inspectors in who were on the payroll not of the UN but other countries. Now how about if said inspectors were documented as spies. These things really happened in Iraq and the US, UK were the ones implicated. US newspapers even gleefully reported these facts in 1999. Then three years later they played "Saddam says" on these real allegations. Remeber it was a complete colition under a UN banner that bombed Iraq. Yet inspectors were in Iraq all the same although they were stemmied in what Saddam rightly feared were attempts to locate and track him.
The real problem is no US politician (yes that even includes Clinton) would drop Iraqi sanctions until there was regime change. So Bush went under the false guise of WMD's and changed the regime. This was not enough although he could now drop sanctions. So now we are in the middle of nation building because we broke the country (deposed the strongman we helped in office, sanctioned, and bombed the hell out of several times) and now we have to fix it. Oh yes and dot Iraq with the bases we are moving out of Saudi Arabia just like the terrorist Osama Bin Laden wanted.
"It's Saddam's fault for being so stupid and arrogant. If he let the Weapons inspectors in, none of this would have happenned."
The US kicked out the weapons inspectors not Saddam. As the example above shows us he could have with some justification. He did not because he feared winding up in a body bag.
"Having a prescence in Iraq is not a bad thing right at this moment."
Either you are liberating or creating staging bases. As the first debate showed us the premise is as much on the latter as the former. When the focus is split as it is, you run the risk of failing at both or just doing both poorly. Also don't say we are a big country and can do both, because the facts on the ground show us
1) troop fatigue
2) over extention of resources
3) additional problems with 1 as insurgents lop off the private contractor/foriegn aid worker/NGO spigot
"Having a prescence in Iraq is not a bad thing right at this moment."
Also you seem to think the cost to American lives is justified to have just over a dozen bases in Iraq. I call that disgusting.
"Iran is actively pursuing a Nuke program and essentially telling the world "F.U." If we were not so hopelessly bogged down with Iraq, we should just invade Iran."
One more reason to have choosen the right country to have gone to war with, you know the one with WMD's.
"The president would have a much better leg to stand on as Iran is most certainly a terrorist state."
So is Iraq now, when before it was merely a state held by a strongman who oppressed his people and rattled sabers and got hit each time he did. Now it is he
Welcome to 2 years ago!
No, seriously, that's rather old news (out of the U.S. anyways) and the rest of the world always had strong doubts about the administration's claims. Powell's Powerpoint demo to the UN was fun too...
Come on, get over it: assholes rule the world.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Bet Kerry would have, having announced there were some and all.
open your eyes, guys.
Maybe you should click on this link: Bush Campaign Offices Burglarized
Here's the intro:
DesScorp writes "The Washington State offices of the Bush campaign were burglarized, and computers with sensitive campaign data were stolen. The computers belonged the executive director and officer in charge of the 'get out the vote' campaign; one was set to be delivered to another office within the state. The staff says that secret strategy information and voting data are on the computers, and ironically, they're comparing it to Watergate. The staff blames Democratic Party activists intent on stealing the information. Of course, they deny this."
I'm YAPH. My Ruby critiques are crusty OOD/P pontification, not really useful for learning the language. Better to Google for archives.
--
make install -not war
Guns that I owned at the time could no longer be legally manufactured or imported.
Yes, and those guns were still lawfully posessed by you throughout the existence of the Assault Rifle Ban. But you and the NRA are happy to exaggerate the bill as if it took guns out of the hands of Americans.
The NRA profits off of manipulating people into an "It's us vs. them" mentality. Look, I'm trying to get through this fog to tell you that us liberal wackos don't give a shit about your guns. There's plenty of political support for private gun ownership on both sides of the aisle. Hence, the Assault Rifle Ban did not get renewed. And as you have clarified for me, the lawmakers who originally voted for it paid a political price for doing so.
Don't write people off assuming you disagree with them. If you do, then you will suffer from a closed mind for the rest of your life.
As for the nazi skinhead shooting, it was in Dallas in the late eighties. Some skinheads were beating up another skinhead girl. A liberal wacko guy I knew who owned a punk rock club where the attack took place shot at the crowd of skinheads. He ended up shooting a skinhead girl through her back and the bullet came out of her nipple. She survived and the shooter pretty much didn't get into any legal trouble over it.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").
... for sexual purposes.
Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.
Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest
But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.
Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.
The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.
American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!
Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex. http://milkofhumankindness.org/
That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.
(Yes, I'm an American man too.)
1. I work for a DoD component.
2. Your SF-86 was most likely transcribed into the EPSQ "Subject Edition" by your security manager if you didn't fill it out yourself electronically. I know that by me we have to do it ourselves because it's a lot of typing. Also, the EPSQ has a 'password' feature that lets you hide parts of your information from your security manager but not from the investigators - this is for privacy reasons.
In any event, it needs to be in electronic form nowadays for submission.
3. They ask a lot of questions on the form, but I have actually sat in front of a DSS (Defense Security Service) investigator multiple times and have been present at a hearing. They are looking for financials and court records in an investigation. I have had to provide the same shit (meaning, list of employers, prior residences, drug use details) with the exception of the selective service question for a bank background check, which I suppose was because I was a bank officer on the books. I also had the same shit when I was working for the Fed. It's nothing special. I even had to take the same piss test.
The DSS guys come into the room with a copy of your credit report in their hand, and a sheaf of court documents (if any) relating to you that they searched electronically. They do not spend their time beating feet around your home or calling all your relatives/friends/associates for a Secret investigation. If they had any reason to do so, you'd be denied the clearance purely based upon the discrepancies identified in the public records.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
How John Kerry could make Shrub look Stupid and win the female vote, all with a Diet Coke...
(Kerry steps to the podium, tranquilizers eating away at the patrician's stiffness...he's feeling good. He looks out on the crowd and gets higher. He begins to speak...)
My fellow Americans, we were sent to Iraq because George Bush was sure that Saddam Hussein was going to use aluminum tubes to go nucular on us. Our best national security advisors were...(incredulous...err, no, no)...DARN SURE they didn't have any nukes, let alone aluminum tubes that would magically make them some. Now I've got an aluminum tube right here (raises diet coke), and the only thing magically nucular about it is the taste (cracks, sips, and wins). Coek is happy. Kerry wins. America prospers. Goddam fucking stupid moron out of white house.
No shit sherlock!
Remember, Bush is another word for C...
M.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd argue that Moore does more damage than good. Rather than present facts as such and allow for them to be discussed, he presents bits of facts here and there and packages them as propoganda. This serves only to inflame a small group of fellow nuts while inticing the vast majority to discount the entire topic as senseless rhetoric even when there might be some truth to it.
While Moore may have become rich from his productions, his lack of credibility has damaged the legitimate story that could be told from the facts he uses. It's a shame, really.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I have been talking with many military officers as well as political scientists, diplomats, US special forces members, and even foreign delegates to the UN - generally people much more intelligent, educated, and aware of the situation than myself. I have been able to piece something together which is just a theory, but a plausible one.
/ 20/1423219&tid=11&tid=219
Consider this possibility:
-N. Korea has a crude fuel embargo.
-Saddam had a nuclear weapon but no fuel (uranium).
-Saddam and N Korea barter to exchange crude oil for refined uranium.
-N Korea attempts to manufacture its nuclear material for the trade of crude oil (remember the N Korean nuclear reactor issue?)
-Saddam has sworn to push Israel into the ocean
-The US is not sure if N Korea has actually manufactured the uranium
-The US is also not sure that if the uranium has indded been manufactured, if it has made its way to Saddam (our intelligence in Iraq was very poor).
-Israel has nuclear weapons
-Israel vows to venomously attack the Arab world should Israel be attacked from the east
-The US knows there is a good possibility and even a decent probability that Saddam has a nuclear weapon and fuel thus giving him a complete working bomb
-The US also knows that it is unlikely that Saddam will attempt to attack America nor would he likely succeed if he tried
-The US comes to conclusion that he would more than likely use that bomb to attack Israel
-The US knows that if Saddam detonates a nuke anywhere near Israel that Israel will not hesitate to turn the entire middle east into a lake of glass for the next 10,000 years thus killing many many many innocent people.
-Short of an invasion and the overthrowing of Iraq, the US knows there is no way to get the weapon out of the hands of Saddam because 1) his army is too powerful, 2)the US does not have enough ground based intelligence in Iraq to attempt to recover this weapon and 3) Diplomacy and negotiations are futile with Saddam.
Also keep in mind that Saddam was the master of hiding stuff in the desert. Iraq is the size of California. If he had a nuclear weapon, it could be buried in the desert for hundreds of years before it is found, assuming it ever is. The other more scary possibility is that they went across the border or they were sold prior to the invasion.
Based on this plausible theory I could certainly understand why the invasion of Iraq took place. I am not saying that beyond a reasonable doubt that the above is the only explanation, however it is a possibility.
If oil is what we were after, we could've eaisly occupy Quwait and call it a "protective occupation".
I do not agree with a progressive international policy and being a libertarian I take a more isolationist approach to US policy however given the post-9/11 hysteria and the set of international conditions that existed at that time, and if the above possibility is even remotely accurate, then I think any reasonable president (Dem or Rep) would've done the same thing.
Personally I will be voting for the Libertarian canididate Badnarik - http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09
Libertas in infinitum
I find the sources you quote pretty right-lovin'.
So I remain unconvinced. GW is just not cool, anyway you slice it. He's not my pal, and sources that unapologetically defend him don't help.
I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks
You mean like the ones in Afghanistan that he's been ignoring to carry on this vendetta against Saddam Hussein?
Saddam Hussein was already "taken out" by the other President Bush, who said that invading Iraq then (even when they had more resources and better support from the neighboring countries) would have been a mistake?
I feel sorry for him. President Bush Sr., that is. He must be mortified.
Disappointed that the tit they showed was friggin *Janet Jackson* - couldn't they have at least sprung for Britney Spears or one of the Olsen Twins?
God. Jackson is kind of old and nasty.
Yes, and those guns were still lawfully posessed by you throughout the existence of the Assault Rifle Ban. But you and the NRA are happy to exaggerate the bill as if it took guns out of the hands of Americans.
Everyone unlucky enough to turn 18 after the spring of 1994 didn't have the same options I did.
Look, I'm trying to get through this fog to tell you that us liberal wackos don't give a shit about your guns.
Perhaps you do not, there are many who do.
I could throw scores of quotes at you from liberals who hold office where they do most certainly care about banning guns.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
the USians for having an (effectively) two-party system, but people who perpetuate it by voting tactically deserve everything they get.
That it's not having money that's the strong predictor. Rather its having made it oneself, as opposed to having been born into it.
Look I'd like to vote for someone better than Bush, but I don't think Kerry is the man, if you think Bush lies, guess what, so does Kerry.
Oh, absolutely. I doubt that there's a potential presidential candidate that absolutely refrains from lying.
However, Bush is in hot water not for lying (Clinton, for instance, lied about his sex life and the public didn't care) but for lying to convince the public that we needed to declare war on Iraq. Clinton's lie maybe set a bad example, but that's about it -- Bush's had a lot of lives, international relations, and money at stake.
People are attracted to voting for Bush because we always know where he stands, and yes I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks (and yes I do know somewhat of the sacrifice military people make, my dad was in the military, and was half paralyzed and half brain dead from the time I was 7 due to his injuries in the service).
Do you? What's Bush's timeline for Iraq over the next four years? What, in detail, does he intend to do with alternative fuel research? I don't know, because Bush hasn't announced anything. I don't really know much about Bush's specifics. I know that:
* His VP is very hawkish.
* Bush is willing to invade and occupy countries for reasons that I do not consider sufficient to invade and occupy countries.
* Bush backs changing the Constitution to ban gay/lesbian marriage. I don't like this.
* Bush has pushed NASA into reallocating a huge amount of their funds towards a manned Mars mission, not something that I view as worthwhile as other projects that were replaced.
* Bush has said that he supports the Assault Weapon Ban (one of the few reasons I could see voting for Bush instead of Kerry would be that Republicans tend to be better about protecting gun rights).
* Bush has made my nation very unpopular internationally over the span of his presidency.
* Ashcroft is Bush's appointed AG -- and Ashcroft pushes his conservative religious values on the nation, is an advocate of monitoring and eliminating oversight of the Department of Justice.
Does anyone remember September 11th? Does anyone remember Osama declaring war on the U.S.? Does anyone remember the feelings they had that day, or the day after 9/11,... the feelings that justice must be done for these several thousand people that died, and we must prevent it from happening again. Look, Kerry voted for this war too, he supported it. Bush just stuck to his guns, I know where he stands and that's why I'm voting for him.
That many people die each week from smoking or each month from car crashes. Both problems cause much more economic on a *recurring*, *yearly* basis. Yet most of Bush's presidency has been spent prioritizing the "War on Terror" over everything else, and allocating my money to fight this "War on Terror". Said "War on Terror" could be taken directly from 1984. I don't like it.
Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves.
He killed those people *after* we encouraged them to rise up against him. It's a little difficult to call him out on that point. Besides -- I expect that with the proper media coverage, the skeletons in just about anyone's closet can be made pretty awful -- I don't want a leader to declare war and try justifying it afterwards on very flimy grounds. By this logic, if we find Bush's grounds for war to be legitimate, we also need to allow him to declare war on a large number of other regimes around the world, and try to use military force to cause change. I think that this is a bad idea -- I don't accept the "well, Saddam was a nasty guy" justification. Besides, if Saddam is *that* bad, don't you think it'd be better for the Iraqis to rise up and remove him, rather than us? Look at our Revolutionary War. We had enough people get fed up with the leaders
May we never see th
Yes, because we all know that all laws are just.
Look,
I was in the Army when Bush took office. Within about eight or ten weeks of him taking office, we were told to be combat-ready at all times, and had to be ready to deploy within 24 hours. They put us "Level-A" alert, and gave no reasons. The fact is that Bush wanted to go to war from the start: he wanted to play with his military toy. And no man like that should be in office.
Rice Defends Iraq Weapons Characterization5 78&e=3&u=/nm/20041003/pl_nm/iraq_bush_tubes_dc
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=
"But I did know at the time that the -- the DCI and the intelligence community had said, the intelligence community as a whole believed that these were for centrifuge parts" involved in nuclear weapon production.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
How do the lies of our politicians fit into the International Section of the NYTimes?
I agree with many that it should be FrontPage news, however even if it's not... Why the International Section? This is Domestic.
where was this scandal coverage in 2002
All over the place, if you actually read the newspapers.
"What an absurd statement. Thousands of aluminum pipes, and we're going to go to war over thousands of aluminum pipes? Even the ISS report that you cite says that if Iraq was to have trying to do uranium enrichment, it would take them many years before they could do it. This is patently ridiculous." - UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter on CNN in September, 2002.
The coverage from the "liberal media" in the drumbeat months leading up to the war, though, was all "ha ha, those dumb UN weapons inspectors, they couldn't find the Playboys under my son's mattress!"...
Well, damn, now it looks like those were National Geographics after all.
Its now completely absurd to talk about the Bush Administration and intelligence in the same sentence. The two obviously don't go together.
The new "global test" bullshit is more of the same. Disinformation and outright lying about what Kerry said. I'm amazed that with all the lying they have already done, they won't think that folks will have noticed the previous sentence out of Kerry's mouth, the one immediately before the one they quote out of context. These guys are really falling into some kind of perverted pattern of compulsive prevarication.
No wonder I laughed so hard when Karl Rove said of Bush's performance in the debate "You have to put this into context. Things don't happen in a vacuum".
But, Mr. Rove, what are Americans to think if the president keeps forcing them to conclude that the vacuum you are talking about is right between the president's ears?
Next time I suggest you make the letters on the idiot cards bigger and don't use words with more than 5 letters. "Its hard work", you know and all your spin is making the president dizzy.
What makes you think oil companies want cheap oil?
If you're going to be accused of blood for oil whether your profiteer or not, why not take a bunch of iraqi oil and use it to lower the cost of gasoline?
How do the oil companies benefit from cheap oil? They make more money with less work if they take expensive oil and turn it into expensive gasoline than if they take cheap oil and turn it into cheap gasoline.
Was Iraq our biggest threat? Probably not. It is probably North Korea and our friendly allies in Saudia Arabia.
Your reasoning here is fundamentally flawed. Neither nation was a "threat" to the United States. As it stands, or at least how it stood before we invaded Iraq, was that no country on the planet was ever an 'imminent threat' to the U.S.
The "war on terror" is analagous to the "war on drugs" - it's conceptual. And it's ridiculous, dangerous and naive to treat the issue as anything otherwise. You'd think by now that humans would realize that hitting people over the head with clubs is only a temporary method of maintaining order.
Technically speaking, many from around the world believe the attack upon the U.S. was not a "threat" from any specific entity, nor a declaration of war between nations; it was an inevitable "consequence"; the latest in a long string of cause-effect incidents that have been happening for years. It just happened that this event was the prick that awoke the giant and now he's mad.
Among many other things, central to the conflict, that virtually everyone else except your average US citizen knows, is the Israel/Palestine problem. The United States for many years has been manipulating both sides of a religious civil war between the Jews and the Muslims. This is a cultural/ideological conflict that transcends political boundaries. It was inevitable that at some point there would be repurcussions, and the conflict partially subsidized by the United States, would come here.
I'm not sure how you can point a finger at a map and say, "They are the enemy" in this situation. No specific nation really threatened the U.S. A group of people attacked targets in the country as a protest of the country's intervention in a pre-existing conflict. These people may or may not be subsidized by specific governments, and that's worthy of exploration, but Iraq certainly would be low on the list of such suspects.
The potentially fatal mistake this administration has perpetrated is to grossly simplify the matter and treat the "enemy" as if it were some specific place or regime that can be neutralized. The problem is this is an ideological conflict. You can't realistically destroy ideas or opinions via physical force, but that hasn't stopped the administration from trying, and to add insult to injury, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this tactic is not getting us anywhere near our objective, the "stay the course" mantra continues to be repeated.
Yet as Americans, we demand instant gratification for the attacks upon us. We seek to vent our frustration towards something tangible. It's too troubling to contemplate anything more elaborate. But there is no specific target, so we lash out at whatever convenient target is available, and that happened to be Iraq.
As we do this, we rationalize that even if we're not hitting the enemy head-on, we're "sending a message to the terrorists."
Now maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time believing that we can intimidate a group of people who are so passionate in their beliefs that they can, without hesitation, sacrifice their own lives to send us a similar message.
Do you know any American who would willingly take on a suicide mission just to send a message to the terrorists? Until the majority of those who believe the U.S. is doing the right thing in the middle east, can make the same claim, I fear we're destined to underestimate this "enemy" and how to effectively deal with them. This "war" will never be winnable under the current circumstances because we refuse to recognize the real threat.
And in an ironic twist, the administrations actions have spawned a perverse self-fulfilling prophecy of a legitimate "threat".
Our actions in the wake of 9/11 have given virtually every nation on the planet great motivation to consider the U.S. a threat. A pre-emptive invasion of a non-threatening country is a whole different matter.
The U.S. has sent
...that stuff like that takes Americans about 4 months longer to realise than the rest of the world? You should start reading non-American newspapers if you want the real information about what's going on in the world.
-> More Tolerance Is Less Extremism <-
Does Bush always have to be either lying or telling the truth? Could it be perhaps that for once we were mistaken? It's not like we were the only country to be fooled by the WMD. Even France/Germany/Britain/Israel/Yemen/Japan/South Korea/Poland/Australia, (hell even Nigeria) were all fooled. When it all comes down to it, even if we found nuclear weapons in Iraq, there would still be some published report from the NYTimes about not finding ENOUGH warheads or not finding them quickly enough or not finding them in a neat yellow box with labels beside them. There will always be conspiracy theories how Bush manipulated (or didn't manipulate enough) the intelligence to bring about justification for the war. Saddam brought it upon himself, all he had to do was disarm. In this post 9/11 world, we can't wait for threats to develop, and can't wait till years later to really see if that Uranium some dictator wanted was just for 'research' purposes. We should just kickass and take names. One day all of you will realize that this whole Iraq war was just a dress rehearsal for going after Iran. Atleast thats what I hope it was for...
Here's the big difference between Bush and Kerry:
Kerry can change Bush's policies without losing face.
Bush considers losing face justification to go to war.
Even if you're absolutely right about him, even if Kerry would have gone to war with Iraq, even if Kerry were as inflexible as Bush, he would still be a better choice simply because he has more room to maneuver.
Bush is a puppet. Period. It is Cheney that does the actual policy decisions. Remember that it is always better to rule from behind the throne, than on it.
Ok....I love how the democrats are all trying to find a way to point out something bad about Bush and keep getting it turned back around. My favorite is the CBS debacle regarding Bush's guard service. Personally, I don't think they lied so much as they made a decision. Sure, the decision may have been based, in part, of these tubes. That does not mean they lied. They made a decision that they hoped would be backed by things they may have found and now they have not found much.....but they have found somethings.....mostly remnents. The thing is a democrat could have done the same thing. I guess Clinton did not try to wag the dog with the ineffective bombing runs in Iraq during his administration. The same thing would have happened. Of that I am convinced. Saddam has repetedly denied access to places we asked to get access to. He repeatedly made it hard for the inspectors to do their jobs. Last I checked, he lost Gulf War I pretty bad and when you sign a treaty to end hostilities or make some agreements, then you need to bend over backwards to follow them. If you don't, then your asking for trouble. Just like if a cop caught you speeding and wanted to check for alcohol use. The cop caught you and hes going to check for as many things as he can. You were in the wrong and you are the suspect. If you did not screw up then you'd have a point. Same goes for Saddam. Saddam did not play by UN rules even and the UN refused to press the issue.
Gorkman
How does that Republican cake taste now?
news for nerds?
shouldn't it be : links that state the bleadin obvious...
The US has constently had this happen. Geez, thinking quickly I don't think we have ever gone to war in a 100% just matter.
Here, before I get a bunch of flames I'll take care of the obvious ones right now.
WWII: Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because the US forced everyone to stop selling them oil and steel in reponse to Japan's bullshit in China. We could have done something diplomatically instead of forcing them into a war.
American Revolution: A bunch of rum runners and various shady businessmen (for the most part, Paine, Jefferson, Henry obviously aren't including in this group) decided that wanted free reign on the colonies. Think the Boston Tea Party was about freedom? The tea they threw into the bay was cheaper then the smuggled tea being sold in the city.
WWI: Britin conned us into this war, Zimmerman letter aside, although what the fuck was Mexico gonna do against us?
Damn, those are only ones I can think of that are even close. What wars has the US, or any country in the world for that matter, gotten involved in that weren't built upon complete crap?
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Hello, anybody there?
It has taken 2 years and a war for Americans to know that what their government told them about Irak was "just a lie"?
International cooperation. Why did you think Bush's team failed to get a UN approval?
But do you actually pay less taxes (i.e. siginificantly less, like 1 grand less) or do you just think you do? It seems the only people who should be happy about Bush's tax breaks are Paris Hilton (inheritance tax) and Bill Gates (dividend/capital gains).
anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
Let me fix your statement to make it a bit more accurate:
anybody who claims that the government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
#1 - Iraq is a strategic location flanking Iran on the west. We are also in Afghanistan flaking Iran on the east. WMD's were just a floater to get us into Iraq and prepare for the next targets. The Pentagon and CIA know much more than we do and know that all of our media is watched by the enemies. So due to national security, they cannot disclose all information.
So if Kerry wins the election, gets into the White House, appoints non-Republican Supreme Court justices, and makes a bunch of decisions that you don't agree with and appear corrupt and ill-thought-out to you given your available information, will you still stick to your "the government knows better what's good for me than I do" line?
#2 - Peak Oil (and natural gas). Just Google for Peak Oil. China is now the #2 importer of oil behind the US. Our entire economy and way of living depends on oil. There is no way at all we can just switch to solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power in a decade. Further, we use natural gas for fertilizers for food. We use oil to power the machines which harvest and transport food. Without oil, the US economy and population will die. So you liberals can cry me a farking river about Iraq. We are better off now and in the future by securing oil in the Middle East. That is, unless you want to starve and die.
That is a slippery slope fallacy, and one of the most extreme I've ever seen. Vote for Bush -- or *starve and die*!
#3 - US Dollar. If oil is allowed to trade in a currency other than the US Dollar such as the Euro or Gold, the US Dollar will collapse, our economy will grind to a halt, and we will be in a Greater Depression. We must ensure that oil transactions will continue to take place in the US Dollar currency.
See above. Seriously, where do you *get* this stuff? This is absurd! The strength of a currency depends on the stability of the government backing it and the inflation rate. How is the US keeping fingers in the Middle East particularly important to either?
#1 - I really like this guy. He's a no-nonsense guy who won't take BS from anyone. Just watch the VP debate on Tuesday. Cheney is a great business leader and enhances the Bush ticket.
He's also corrupt, a hawk, pushes for secrecy and lack of oversight, has lied about his corporate ties and has had his fingers in Middle East wars for too long.
#1 - Clinton's "Assault" Weapon Control Act expired! You liberals can take my guns from my cold, dead hands. If you really want it, I'll give it to you, one bullet at a time.
Ah, yes. The act that Bush said he supported? That one?
It's either us or them, kill or be killed.
The hell it is. When Saddam Hussein represents a greater risk to you of anything other than paying a quarter cent more a gallon at the gas pump, *then* you can talk.
We were attacked on 9/11 and now it's time to kill everyone involved.
And, apparently, Iraq, just for the hell of it?
May we never see th
"You are either with us, or against us."
Have you ever read 1984? I admit that I'm kind of curious.
May we never see th
Like THIS for example ... and how about THIS as well..
.. the answer is, of course, the FEMA Act.
What you should be saying you 'dont get' is how this White House Administration has its grips on so-called "American Free Media", and is suppressing all news about criminal investigations, currently ongoing, into the current Administration
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Seems like much ado about nothing, right? But this is the cornerstone of the Administration's belief that Saddam was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. These tubes were the only hard evidence they had going for them.
Bush also claimed that Sadam was trying to buy uranium from Africa, even though the administration knew there was no evidence of that. And the scandal goes even deeper than that. When the man they assigned to investigate the uranium rumors (retired ambassador Joseph Wilson) revealed the truth (that the evidence was forged), the administration retaliated against him by revealing to the world that his wife was a CIA agent (thus placing her life in danger and risking American security).
And before you discount this as liberal spin, the reported who outed Wilson's wife is Robert Novak, a well known conservative reporter, and he has confirmed that his sources were a pair of senior whitehouse staff member. This assertion is backed up by additional investigation from the Washington Post. A special investigator has been appointed, and even the President has been questioned. The rumors abound now that the two staff member have already been identified (the names have even been leaked), but the Bush administration has put pressure on the FBI to hold off on the arrests until after the election.
Of course there is no proof that Bush himself ordered the retaliation against Wilson, or that he even knew about it, and in fact I believe it very possible that he did not. The evidence so far indicates a couple of staffers reporting directly to Vice President Cheney. It is entirely possible that Cheney took this action upon himself without consulting with the President. Either way, a couple of alarming things remain: The administration used the uranium evidence to support their case for the Iraq war even though they had been told the evidence was bunk. Furthermore, senior staffmembers in the whitehouse broke the cover of an undercover CIA agent (an agent involved in the hunt for weapons of mass distruction no less)... a treasonous act by any measure.
The Bolachek Journals
Not only did Slashdot run the *exact* item that you're discussing -- and it showed up on *my* front page, not sure what variables might not make it appear on yours -- but I posted to the story.
I agree that Slashdot has bias different from the mainstream public, but i'd say that it's bias caused by a disproportionate number of educated, professional users.
May we never see th
Not that I want to get embroiled in a flame war but...
If Israel wants to pull back to it's original borders, as mandated by the UN and defined at the time of its creation, close those borders, and build the biggest frickin wall in history, NO ONE WILL COMPLAIN. If they want to shoot any Palestians who try to cross that wall, that would probably be tolerable too. If they really want to, they can build a giant dome over the whole of Israel and not let anyone in or out. Fine, fine fine.
The problems are:
(a) Israel is building a big fuckoff wall *way outside* those borders, conveniently annexing large swathes of territory that do not belong to Israel with NO JUSTIFICATION
(b) Israel is pursuing a systematic policy of colonising a foreign territory with 'native' Israelis
(c) Israelis forces are performing violent operations against civilian, terrorist and militia forces alike with no real concern as to which is which, outside its own territory, with no international sanction and indeed against international law and consensus
(d) the Israeli government actually talks about maintaining the genetic purity of Israel (ah the irony) in the sense of making sure that at least 50% of Israelis are Jewish so that there can never be a 'democratic coup' inside Israel at election time
(e) Israel, unlike other nations, is completely ignored in all the hubbub from the west about nuclear proliferation despite possessing 100-200 nuclear warheads.
Most of these things are contrary to international law (which Bush and Blair now spit on but which still matters to most countries); some are contrary to domestic Israeli law; all are contrary to basic standards for ethical behaviour.
Incidentally, I genuinely like the Israeli people and I fully support their right to live free from the fear of suicide bombers or invasion by their neighbours. But the way Israel is going about its business at the moment is just atrociously bad.
Read Pynchon.
Didn't the DMCA legislation slide through while the media obsessed about whose jizz stain was on Lewinsky's dress?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
You can step down from your god forsaken Ivory tower now. Professors may be smart in their own craft, but that does NOT mean they are current on events.
And in case you haven't known, the liberal movement started in the 60s. Guess how many of them decided to become professors? Also, there is momentum built up around this "movement" of bullshit, that unless you believe this bullshit, your not in the "in-crowd" of ivory elites.
Life is not for the lazy.
I just checked and it seems that second link is a bit of a dud, so there's this one instead..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
And yet, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Osama is a Saudi prince by birth. Saudi charities were funding terrorism. Saudi Arabia makes their women wear hoods, teach and endorse radical fundamentalist Islamic religion, and have no problem with slavery. Afghanistan was just a terrorist camp ground. By the time we got there, the terrorists were gone and the Taliban was left holding the bag.
So where did we go after Afghanistan? That's right, Iraq. Who's next? Iran maybe? We aren't going to win the war on terrorism, because we keep invading the wrong countries.
If the maintenance of our lives means we must take the lives of others, than our lives are not worth living. That is not being a coward. That is being responsible.
Alas, alternative energy (windmills, solar cells, hydrogen, biodiesel etc.) remains a pipe dream.
If alternative energy really would amount to anything, the economy would already have jumped in full force, without the need for subsidies. In the western world the economy has taken care of exploiting feasible resources, even alternative ones, a long time ago.
The populace, and that includes the administration, just simply does not understand what huge quantities of energy are required to keep the world running. Kilowatts, megawatts, lightyears and gigahertz, it's all the same to them. They don't understand the energy balance between the fertilizer required to grow canola/corn/sugarcane for biodiesel/ethanol, and the energy output of the obtained fuel taking into account all inefficiencies. They don't understand that hydrogen just isn't condensating out of thin air. They don't understand that the costs and inefficiencies of smoothing the output of wind energy exceed the installation and maintenance costs. Repeat after me: if it would really address needs, it would have been done already.
As to peak oil, that's very real. That fact, like the fact that there were no WMD in Iraq and that Saddam was not responsible for 9/11, is now very slowly sinking in. Unfortunately, once everybody and their cat realizes it, there will be a massive overreaction. Assume the worst.
The only technology, short of hydrocarbons, that can cope with global energy needs is nuclear. And that is, in the current geopolitical climate, a tough sell. Unfortunately the viability and consequences of fusion are not yet understood, and fission is also problematic in the long run because the easily and cheaply obtained uranium will run out too.
On a global scale, both the war for oil and the strategic reserve are insignificant. While the Iraq war IS a war for energy, in the form of oil, the current administration is buying some time for the US in the hope that something unexpected will turn up in the meantime. Which won't. The crapload of reserves is just that, crap. It's barely enough for a few months, and when it's gone, it's gone.
What to do ?
1. Lower energy needs per person drastically - to 1% of current usage. An enormous and worldwide depression will unavoidibly follow. You can go slowly, like socialist governments in Europe are doing (at the cost of depressed active people who see their capital and the outlook for their children dwindle) or wait till reality sets in and cope with the crash. And no, saving energy with fluorescent lamps, hybrid cars and public transport is not going to cut it, as it is completely insignificant. Even if you would be able to save 50% of all energy needs, that isn't nearly enough in the long run.
2. Lower the number of people in the world. In western countries the birthrate and the population were declining until recently, but unfortunately immigrants and increased breeding caused by fears for a greying population are counteracting. On a global scale the natural trend has a negative but small third-order derivation (meaning that the speed of poulation growth is slowly decreasing), it is not enough to lower the population quickly enough to avoid mass starvation and/or wars that wil inevitably ensue.
3. Profit ? Not. Anyway you go, it's downhill from here. If you're not well-off today, don't smicker at seeing those that are well-off now being less well-off in the future, because you are going to have to carry an even heavier burden. Famine and war suck.
i'm sorry to rain on your parade, but humans are the catalysts for eternal war.
i could drop your sorry ass of in any number of locations around the glove, and right before they shoot you in the head (or worse), they'll laugh at your ignorance.
First off, the US didn't have to kick anything to get the Middle East pissed off at it. There's this thing called radical Islam that hates the west and everything from it, and the US is the corner stone of western civilization. They hate the US for what it is, not for anything it's done. These radicals would have the world in chains forged from their extreme religios views, if they were given the chance. That's there goal. That's what they want. The US doesn't have to do a thing to provoke them.
Secondly, nothing could be better than a free Iraq. Where do terrorists get their recruits from? The poor, the hopeless, young guys who have no other way of making a name for themselves. In a free Iraq, two things happen. You introduce a system where the poverty the these people come from is reduced. They have this thing called HOPE. The other thing is that the terrorists lose a large chunk of money that Saddam used to feed them.
And the end of this wise saying:
Some dogs will bite your ass anyway.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Bush is from New Haven, Connecticut.
"The American people don't mind violence, even extreme violence..."
Actually, lots of us enjoy violence, especially extreme violence.
Think about it like this: you're on a mountainside, and you want to get to the top. Every decision you make is either a step uphill, a step downhill, or a step horizontally. The top is a democratic world where all people live without fear and with access to the services and freedoms that constitute basic human rights. At the bottom of the mountain is a hideous 1984-like morass of oppression and tyranny, where the poor and ignorant masses are abused and manipulated to serve the whims of their invisible taskmasters.
Re-electing Bush is a big step downhill, at least it is in my opinion. Ask yourself if at the very least Kerry might not be a step uphill, or at least a horizontal one. Vote accordingly.
Harm minimisation - make it work for you!
Read Pynchon.
.. What part about "Aluminum Tubes", "Rocket Launcher", and "Uranium Centrifuge" isn't interesting to your typical nerd?
.. its "Deliberately Off-Topic, Diversionary" to avoid the real issue: That the Republic Party is in big trouble, because its leaders are about to get bitchslapped (hopefully) by the American Legal System.
Also, news like this is BIG NEWS. IT FREAKIN' MATTERS THAT YOUR WHITE HOUSE LIED TO YOU!! News like this can affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of nerds everywhere, whose lives are irrevocably tied to the health and prosperity of the American Empire.
You're just tryin' to bait away from the subject. Your post isn't "Insightful"
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Seriously, I dislike Bush. A lot. I think that Kerry is infinitely more qualified for the Presidency. I think that Bush supporters tend to spread around more bullshit than Kerry supporters. However, this post was at least as good as the parent, and deserved to be modded up as Funny if nothing else, not modded down.
Those with a real political position can accept criticism (and explain why they do things). If there is harsh criticism in this post, you could either answer the criticism or mod it down. Answer the criticism instead.
May we never see th
I would be curious to see a poll of what party most slashdot'rs identify with?
I for one feel that 75% or more of slashdot'rs would say they are Democrats.
Republicans are not geeks perhaps?
I would love to see this as a poll question.
It appears to me that the story appears under politics.slashdot.org; that's why it gives the section name before it on the front page.
Have you turned your political bit off? If not, stop being a luser, and fix your settings.
Get off my launchpad!
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have exposed Senator and Presidential candidate John Kerry as a fraud and a liar in regards to his termination of his military service in Vietnam on scrupulous circumstances, as well in the manner with which he received his three purple hearts and silver star.
According to history, John Kerry is the greatest military person ever, having served less than 4 months with three purple hearts and one silver star - the most achievement in such a small amount of time of ANY military personnel in U.S. history - including George Washington.
Further, John Kerry voted twice FOR the resolution to use force against Iraq. So Mr. Kerry - also having known the cirumstances by which you claim these tubes were fraudulently used to circumvent the American Public into going into war - also through his vote of approval to use force against Iraq - twice - LIED to the American people.
We seem to have the same problem in Australia but to a lesser extent than the US. During the build-up to the War SKY,CNN,FOX,TEN,SEVEN & NINE were playing the same tune while BBC,ABC & SBS were showing stuff similar to Farenheit 911. I even remeber George Tennent saying Iraq was not a credible threat to the US and the "missing Saudi pages". You are spot on about Tennent being the fall guy (I thought they were setting up C.Powell). Few people remember that Powell visited Arafat when the IDF put his headquaters under siege. Arafat is still "confied to his headquaters" and nobody seems to know what was said? Study how Stalin came to power by "restructuring agencies" then compare his actions to Cheney's. If the US decays into facisim, (ironically the Isralies seem to be doing this), it will be hard to avoid the continous war as portrayed in "1984".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It is probably too late now, anyway:
All this happened while USA's ally Pakistan WAS and IS a major proliferator. I can't imagine what screwed up state that country is going to get in a few years!
Thank you for respecting my culture enough to accept that a bare breast may seem sexual. I hope you will also accept that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that a breast is an organ that is part of human sexual response and arousal. Now that we've dispensed with that petty argument, let's get on to your questions about harm, etc.
I do not claim any harm to the one or two kids who noticed a five-pixel breast on their TV screens for a period of under 1 second. My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point.
While I do not expect a rational skeptic such as you seem to be to adhere to that particular moral choice that we wish to make, I hope you will grant us the freedom to pursue our choices, and some respect for our desire to have a shared understanding of what is going to appear on the TV.
I call it "truth in advertising" or "good product labeling." I recognize a concerned more liberal friend would caution me that labeling content leads to censorship, and being a good reader of 1984 I am not ignorant of those perils, although I think they are overblown if applied in this case. More information about the content, more metadata is good. It's really a matter of courtesy and good expectation-setting within any medium.
Let me explain this in a slashdot metaphor. Just as I do not want to see the goatse guy without adequate warning, despite the fact that I do not find it particularly titilating, sexual or "deeply offensive", I'd just rather not see it while in the middle of reading slashdot without a little warning first.
So it is with tits at the superbowl at church parties.
I am asking for courtesy, not for the world to adopt my sexual ethics.
--LP, who has also lived in Austin btw
This is kind of old news, I mean, we heard that one year ago.. in the so called "old-europe" news papers and on TV...
American people beware, the last year was a very dark year for true information in the US, at last with the presidential election coming, you are coming back from propaganda to real stories.
And FYI:
- Sadam was not involved in sept 11 even if the guy deserve to die a thousand time.
- Bush said that he prefer fighting terrorism outside the US... so, concidere that US Soldiers in Iraq are just there to create a terrorism playground and be killed.
Right thing or wrong thing, the US has never been trusted.
Energy flows through our country like water flows through the ocean, while most of the world hasn't enough energy to pump water where they need it for their day-to-day.
We send our drug enforcement agents and our Peace Corps volunteers around to turn every one into little Americas, then when they've got the windowdressing in place, we disappear with whatever valuable things they had.
We are the problem. We put up with the Congressmen, the lawyers, the Bushes and Clintons and Kerrys and on and on, because we like selling each other the idea of selling.
This whole thread is just like it is on the streets. Everbody beefing, nobody willing to get to work and do the one thing they personally could do to change the world today. And we wake up and it's the same world tomorrow.
If you guys can handle calculus, can you handle the calculus of making the world a better place one person at a time? Quit beefing.
If you don't like who's in power, don't vote for the scum the opposition offers, get out and get good people into office. Then get them back out when their terms end, so they don't end up corrupt like the bunch we have now.
And quit trying to protect your stupid standard of living from the illusion that the poor people who live in other countries are all after your job.
I thought the time difference between the US and Europe was just a couple of hours.
This evidence was shown in a documentary on Belgian public television some months back (sorry, don't really remember exactly when), I believe it was a British documentary. It really scares me that apparently some Europeans are better informed about the US foreign policy than US state citizens.
I would like to know some international news sources that don't have an American spin. Can anyone suggest some?
So expect the US to NEVER formally declare war unless there either is no choice (that is, there is a real threat against the survival of the US) or whatever president attempts it wants to move the US towards a military dictatorship...
In other words, you should be bloody thankful that Iraq wasn't used as an excuse for a formal declaration of war.
The administration received relatively little criticism in the media once they started beating the drums of war. This story in the Times is old news. Frontline demonstrated a year ago that Cheney knowingly lied ad nauseum about the nuclear threat (see "Truth, War, and Consequences"). If the discredit due to the administration never gathered steam back then it's only for the same reasons they never had their feet put to the fire in the first place. People were more willing to go along with another war than they were to have their leaders vetted by skepticism.
If Canada doesn't want Bush to be president then they should either send their electoral votes to Kerry or leave the Union.
He wasn't. Getting a BJ is not a crime. He was impeached for perjury, which is a crime, and a serious one.
The British, while Winston Churchill was with the War Office, routinely bombed Iraqi villages and gassed the peasants who were reluctant to pay taxes. At the time, the area was part of Britain's Palestine Mandate: they were citizens of a British colony, but did that mean that they weren't British citizens?
And if possessing pesticides is considered equivalent to possessing WMDs, you can invade right about any country that you don't particularly fancy.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
I think they are cementing them into the Wall in order to carry on negotiations with the Palestinians.
Clinton lied under oath in a deposition related to the Paula Jones civil lawsuit alleging him of a Sec. 1983 violation of her civil rights under color of authority. He stated he had never met Paula Jones and had never gone to a hotel room with her and exposed himself. While it is concievable that he didn't pull out his cock... he clearly knew Jones and totally lied under oath and deserved to have his law license suspended. After I read the transcripts of the depositions in their entirety in my Civil Procedure course in law school... I saw this in a whole different light.
PS I think Bill Clinton was an awesome President... but he DID fuck up on this one.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
Wolfowitz: WMD Chosen as Reason for Iraq War for 'Bureaucratic Reasons'
0 305/30/ se.08.html
It was not valid threat, it was just a compromise.And then they had to prove it. But this is sooooo old news:
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/
I still have my bets on Rovey though. Kerry's team has no chance against Rovey.
Liberals are closet communists.
You scream about the right wing ideology of Bush et al, but fail to look at the real enemy and see the enemy for what it is.
The enemy is militant Islam, and the way to defeat it is to have free muslims. Iraq is part of that.
Also reading the NYT article, its funny that libs don't realize that of course you can come up with different scenarios by asking different gov't agencies. It seems to me though that if I am asking about another country's nuclear ambitions, I am not going to ask the energy dept, I would ask the CIA.
But hey thats just me.
Besides, we need Iraq so we can invade Iran next year. Look at a map. We have them on 3 sides now. Afghanistan, Iraq and the ocean. They are fucked, and they know it.
The US administration lied to the citizens in order to start a war that has killed at least 10,000 innocent people so far, destabilized a moderate-sized country, and caused the United States to become almost universally hated outside its borders; and you think it doesn't matter?
I can understand somebody who argues it isn't true; I can sort of understand somebody who argues it was the right thing to do anyway.
But I can't understand somebody who thinks it just doesn't matter.
Geeks and academics are the amongst the first groups targeted by facist states. That is why it is relevant to slashdotters. No need to panic though, you are probably near the bottom of thier list.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ahem, I think the reason that Bush and the neo-goons don't steam into Pakistan is BECAUSE they are known to hold WMD. Invading Iraq started to look a lot more attractive when it became obvious they had no credible weaponry to deflect an invasion (by the largest holder of WMD, of course). Naturally, the disappearance of any good reason to invade Iraq was awkward but nothing serious strong arm neo-goon spin couldn't handle. FUD reigns, saddam doesn't.
Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's
A significant number of people in the US think GWB was placed into his current position by "God" himself. So that's at least one large chunk of the group who blindly follows whatever he says.
I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.
You hit the nail right on the head!
I remember images of GWB standing at a press conference with the bible in his hand offering it as a guidebook for everyday life and politics. And there's the executive order to launch the faith-based charity initiatives, slashing through your first constitutional amendment - the same constitution he swore to protect as the President of the United States. Following 9/11 and the war on terror, there's the "good vs. evil" and the "crusade" references.
How about the previous (?) presedential debate where he said he viewed Jesus as his inspiration? When he was asked to elaborate he said that people wouldn't understand unless they'd experienced - I guess - his touch? I can't remember his exact words, but in any case he said he had had a religious experience that changed his life.
This is a guy who must believe he was chosen by his own god to be the President of the US. He openly discussed his religious motives during the presedential campaign, and it must surely have played a huge part in him getting elected - that makes him practically a religious leader.
All this is very disturbing to me! When you view the bigger picture, it turns out that the war on terror, etc. is basically a holy war wagered on both sides. It's truly saddening that the human race hasn't evolved beyond religion. We're still very much primitive in this regard.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
If you were right, they'd never have got to the White House. Having got there, they'd be easy to defeat.
Bush is easily the worst President I can remember (I'm 58); he has no respect for the traditions of freedom on which the United States was built; it is probably not stretching a point too far to call him an evil man.
But if you think he's a "half-wit", you just haven't been paying attention. A lot of pols say stupid things they don't believe; they say what will get them re-elected, not what they think.
Having fun I see... I'm continually amazed at just how much of this crap you can type up. I guess not using the Shift key helps, but still... amazing.
- A fan.
> > In Austin, Texas, where I live, women are free to walk around topless if they so choose ... If you choose to respond to this question, please cite as many scientific studies as possible
> I'll settle for some cited references to your scientific study.
Study my arse! I'll settle for some family photos!
(Sorry for reposting... Slashdot ate my markup...)
... If you choose to respond to this question, please cite as many scientific studies as possible
> > In Austin, Texas, where I live, women are free to walk around topless if they so choose
> I'll settle for some cited references to your scientific study.
Study my arse! I'll settle for some family photos!
He's trolling. And quite succesfully I might add.
Way late and will never be read, but what the hell... Since Bush and his cohorts lied in order to invade a country, resulting in many deaths, could they not be accused of murder in the first? Premeditated, cold blooded, and callous? To run by Georgie's own state of Texas' laws, if found guilty, well...
Hang him high, boys...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
...If Israel wants to pull back to it's original borders, as mandated by the UN and defined at the time of its creation...
1. Do you support this initial definition only because enough time passed since then? Then wait few years and you'll have no problem with this 'wall' as well - both share the same justification.
2. Except the 'wall', do you have any other bright ideas of how to protect civilians from suicide bombers?
3. Did you see the 'wall' you're talking about? I invite you to visit Israel and take a look yourself. Till then - pleaaaaaase - don't believe the press that much. Often they lie just as politicians.
Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.
Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican's would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host's keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn't tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don't need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I'm a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have".
Remember that Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship also - and you will NEVER EVER see the US invade that country to get rid of its dictator. (that is because that country is US-friendly) :)
I believe that the invation of iraq is more about oil than anything else, since the US does not really seem to mind dictatorships in the world if they are US-friendly.
(And then there are examples on dictatorships put in power BY the US, when the democratically elected does not suit the americans)
Deal with it.
If our President feels obligated to live within a moral standard of "not lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, etc", because of his religion, then so much the better.
How about his views on same sex marriages? Abortion? And his executive order to launch faith-based initiatives - overruling your congress, violating your constituion?
What if it was another religion, say one that wasn't so keen on women's rights for example?
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Catbeller wrote: "After the WMDs and all the other nonsense was finally shown to be just that, guess who became the fall guys? YESSSSSSSSSS, Neo, the intelligence services. They very people who screamed that they were being overruled were being set up for suckers."
Exactly right, but consider the consequences of their becoming the fall-guys: Bush proposed increases in funding to intelligence agencies and a massive reorganization.
The people in power just play musical chairs. There's no real accountability. It's just a game of appearances, and few people seem to notice who's getting tit for tat in the game.
Those who ever believed Bush was misinformed or the intelligence was botched are being fooled big time.
They picked out data which supported their campaign to sell the war they desired. There was plenty of stuff which was known publicly to have been discredited (such as the Nigerian yellow-cake intel which was discredited 4 months before GWB cited it in his SOTU address).
The American media failed to report anything which countered the official word from on high. They saw the dollar signs too -- Iraqi civilians be damned.
The ultimate aim, beyond the Neocon vision, has been to funnel The People's money through the defense industry to Bush's cronies concentrated mostly in Texas, and a large amount to the Evangelicals.
Bush has been shilling for the weapons industry and the oil industry, and there has not really been a president in the White House for the past 4 years. Just a bunch of thieves.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Don't worry -- it's a very well calculated risk, he's nothing to lose there.
Kerry is a practicing Catholic...who is pro-choice.
BTW, doesn't he have Jewish roots?
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Thanks for the thoughtful comments...
The wife and I are doing our part with your point #2, as we have remained permanently childless by choice. (There are far too many people in this world already for us to want to invest two decades of our lives creating yet another.)
Regarding your point #1, radically reducing energy consumption, that is going to be a real problem for us. We are average American consumers, completely unaccustomed to scarcity. Though I have long aspired to achieve a sustainable lifestyle, the sacrifices required to make it truly succeed are going to be difficult. We have 2 cars... we ride planes... most of that's going to have to change. Even my house itself is probably consuming more than a kilowatt of power right now, and that's without any heating or cooling taking place. Things are really going to have to change.
I am fortunate in that I probably have the financial resources and the creativity required to enact most of the requisite changes for us as individuals; I'm lacking only in motivation. But what about the other 99% of the population who have none of the above? Virtually EVERYBODY needs to reduce their consumption, but it's just not going to happen. Famine and war are indeed the inevitable results of our society.
Right NOW I may be motivated to "git" myself out of this crazy consumerist culture while the "gitting" is still good. But I suspect that tomorrow I may largely forget about this.
Please God, grant me the discipline and motivation necessary that I might end my reliance on this self-destructive society. Amen!
Ie, UN gave Israel only a tiny piece of land, and after the Arab neighboring armies attacked and Israel miraculously defended itself (in spite of lack of UN intervention and even a British arms embargo on Israel) more land was taken.
It's interesting because I do think that once Israel withdraws back to the green line, the Arab League will start pressuring the world to make it withdraw back to the original UN partition plan line, before the War of Independence.
make world, not war
Just curiously seeking consistency...
http://www.loveliberty2004.com
Cheney holds 433,000 options on Haliburton stock. That is, if Haliburton goes up one point, Cheney makes $433,000. Please explain how this does not constitute a conflict of interest.
You're a bit misinformed:
(a) Israel seized the West Bank (and much of the Sinai penninsula) in a war over shipping access though the Straits of Tiran and water for irrigation from the Sea of Galilee. In the terms of the cease fire to the 6-Day War, it was legally accorded to them; they do have claim to the land.
Even assuming they lacked legal claim, your "*way outside*" its original boarders is less than 110 meters (360 feet), and still within the existing terms and conditions of the War World II DMZ, completely legal under any standard of international treaty and law.
Israel has since returned every peice of land it was, again, legally accorded, in return for peace, some 70% of its entire country, with 2 exceptions. The disputed areas now are the Gaza Strip, literally a ribbon of land on the Med, and the West Bank, lying NW of Jerulsalem. Both were turned over to the PLO for peace, but Israeli settlers to the region have refused to relocate.
Read this, an excellent and well documented account: http://www.mideastweb.org/israelafter1967.htm
(e) The doctrine of Nuclear Nonproliferation seeks to halt the spread of nuclear capabilities to unstable and/or underdeveloped nations in exchange for equal or greater forms of energy and humanitarian aid. Israel is one of the participants in the program on the giving side.
We went to war because the sum of the available facts and inferences led to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a threat that we could no longer tolerate.
Can you point to any evidence in support of this view that was any better quality than the "aluminum tubes".
Saddam was a fucking terrorist who was building weapons that could devastate an entire city. These facts are not disputed.
Well, that's the point. They are.
I think the parent is disturbed by people who equate seeing a naked breast to seeing the goatse guy. I know I am.
And the point is not that a tit was shown at the superbowl without warning, the point is that it's impossible to show a tit with warning, because it's illegal to show that tit, because people like you have imposed their personal morality on everyone else.
I am asking for courtesy, not for the world to adopt my sexual ethics.
Well, why ask for what you already have. If the rest of america hadn't adopted your sexual ethics already, there would be no fine for janet's tit.
The sarin attack in Tokyo was thankfully a failure because the terrorists incorrectly mixed the sarin. Had they mixed it correctly the death toll would have been far higher.
This is on /.?
!
He did not lie, he said there was a strong indication, which there were WMD's. Ten years of thumbing there noses at the UN was the reason we are in Iraq.
But hey, if you want to be all you can be, vote Kerry. He promises to enact the draft to you young liberals can truly see the Armry for your self.
First Twirlip of the Mists, now Horza. What's next, Louis Wu and a Jophur or two? "Hexapodia!" "Shapeshifter!" "MY RINGS RULE!" "Uh, can't we just get along?" "Death to Vermin!" "Uh, OK, I'll just go talk to the Kzin... it's safer..."
Man, you are not keeping up with the story. Joseph Wilson (the husband of the CIA agent) was not the only guy who investigated stuff in Africa, nor were famous forged Niger doucments the only ones describing Iraqi interest and discussions with African countries about obtaining uranium.
There was a lot of evidence that Wilson knew nothing about. In fact, Wilson himself was able to obtain confirmation from the Nigerians that A) Iraqi ministers had visited Niger, and B) Iraqi ministers were interested in obtaining uranium. Wilson didn't find that particularly interesting, but the people putting his intel together with other pieces found it quite interesting.
This all became public in July 2004, got some coverage but not nearly as much as the "bush lied" stuff. I googled around for a good source to pass on to you but I presume you can google yourself. A good analysis/summary of the story based on current facts can be found factcheck.org. Side note on factcheck.org: In terms of factcheck.org I haven't been able to figure out if they are biased a particular direction or not but I presume you can try to figure out for yourself.
That link you gave is worth reading for the replies and link given by The_Reader_David.
Gives you the creeps. Never anger a farmer !
"When in panic, fear or doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."
IMHO Iraq did stick to the rules given to them, if there is still something dangerous to be found, maybe the rules where bad.
I bet we would have heard by now if Iraq had had the wargear to actually use the pesticides as a warhead.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
"It seems to me that US just wanted to have their little war. "
Afghanistan whas a little war 2 - 3 months of real fighting , 200 + million in cost
Iraq is going in its second year , even if bush declared the war over , the others did not get the memo , and its 200 BILLION in cost so far
Blah blah blah, A whole story, based on bollocks, posted by a bitter democrat user, and posted
by fuckwits at Slashdot
Listen up fucktards, interpreting intelligence
is just that "INTERPRETING INTELLIGENCE".
Its a fucking guessing game, they've guessed wrong.
GET THE FUCK OVER IT DIPSHIT, BY THE WAY GW WON IN FLORIDA HA HA HA
LIVE WITH IT FUCKING >:(.
First rule of war is that you can predict it.
Anyone who believes in a "plan" with hard dates to end the conflict in the Iraq is pretty ignorant of history.
"President Roosvelt: we demand a detailed plan as to how soon our troops will be out of Europe and those horrible pacific islands!"
Yeah, right.
...students graduate with a high debtload. ...many IT companies refuse to pay overtime. ...DNF is still in development.
Umm... while this may be true of chemical weapons (such as Sarin nerve gas), AFAIK nobody has ever even tried to use biological agents such as viruses "in battle" (so to speak). They could be absolutely devastating, but the problem with them is that it's very hard to ensure that the virus/whatever doesn't spread back to you -- and secretly immunizing a whole population before an attack is (almost?) impossible. Unfortunately, some terrorists may just be mad enough to not let this deter them.
(I mean people who carry out terrorist attacks are pretty far off their rocker/desperate... who's to say they won't try to use biological agents...?)
HAND.
Something coming from this White House would be less than the absolute truth?
What _real_ American could conceive the possibility?
The New York Times (well noted for responsible journalism, in a class with say, CBS!) is about as likely to write a 'fair and balanced' article regarding George W. Bush as Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry.
To quote from a nice paragraph at factcheck.org:
The "Gift Trust Agreement" the Cheney's signed two days before he took office turns over power of attorney to a trust administrator to sell the options at some future time and to give the after-tax profits to three charities. The agreement specifies that 40% will go to the University of Wyoming (Cheney's home state), 40% will go to George Washington University's medical faculty to be used for tax-exempt charitable purposes, and 20% will go to Capital Partners for Education , a charity that provides financial aid for low-income students in Washington, DC to attend private and religious schools.
The agreement states that it is "irrevocable and may not be terminated, waived or amended," so the Cheney's can't take back their options later.
The actual PDF of the agreement can be found here.
That's what you're talking about, right?
--LP
Historically speaking, the greatest threat to the world when it comes to WMD is the United States - the country with the largest stockpile and the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons to wage war. If you ask me, it is only logical that the US should thus disarm before any other country to make the world a safer place. Hypothetically, if the US have never used nuclear weapons and they want the world to disarm they should lead by example and get rid of their own weapons first anyway.
Just realized that people have actually used biological agents in warfare (albeit 'by accident'): The Europeans who arrived in America in 1492 did carry diseases which they were (well, almost) immune to, but which proved disasterous for the indigenous peoples. So much for biological agents not being effective.
HAND.
You forget the most critical import, the bright immigrants that are actually what made America great in the first place. With a bad USA-Brand you're quite fucked up, the brain drain goes in the reverse and you'll eventually drown in your own stupidity. Just google for reverse brain drain to see how worse the things already look.
There are a number of things I'd like to say about this article in the NYT, the American Public(TM) and GWB's policies.
/. where the same old emotional debate between faithful right and cynical left rages. In short, I think it will have a serious impact on GW's reelection chances, but that's possibly a good thing.
Firstly, what amazes me, truly, on a website meant for above average technically interested people is that almost no comments have been made on the actual technical contents of the NYT article itself as regards the Aluminium tubes and their suitability for use as Uranium centrifuges. The NYT went out of its way to explain to the layman (along with a very good graphic) how the tubes fit the use of small tactical rockets and were totally unsuitable, without extra manufacturing, for the use as centrifuges. I mean, come one, 60 000 tubes for centrifuges! Even the USA, the world's largest nuclear power, doesn't have or need that many centrifuges! It would be nice if people noticed this fact and then took note of how almost the whole American establishment basically went along with the analysis of ONE man (The guy called Joe), ignoring the majority's dissenting voices!
Secondly, this NYT article may well have been timed to be a political time bomb, since it appeared now, after the TV debate, but the NYT, to give it some credit (which the right does not do), explains very well in the same article that it itself was as guilty as almost everyone else in ignoring the evidence available during the highly emotional bullshit campaign that Bush and Co. conducted in the run up to the war. The NYT, for all its failings and left leaning political bias, has explained in a number of editorials that it made a mistake. How often does the favourite of the right, Fox news, do that?
Thirdly, I've seen a number of comments here about what the real motivations were for going to war, be they oil, control of the middle east, liberating Iraq, bring democracy to the middle east, furthering an agenda in wake of the 9/11 attacks. etc. My answer would be the Falklands War in 1982, when the right wing military Junta in Argentina used the issue of the Falklands, by invading them, to bring the nation behind them in the rush of patriotism in wartime, when they were politically starting to lose support. I think that the main reason for this war was a domestic political agenda in the USA, used by the very intelligent people behind Bush, such as Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld etc, in order to bring the American people in line with their way of thinking by starting a war. I feel most sorry for Collin Powell, who despite his actual opinion, suffered the consequences for being true to his President. I hope he gets a decent job in the future where he is repsected and not treated as the house nigger.
Fourthly, despite all the nuances of the aluminium tubes, such as the fact that this was not unknown in 2002 and the faked yellow cake uranium from Niger, none of which stopped anyone from believing the most astounding things about Iraq at the time, such as Iraqs supposed ICBMs capable of threatening the USA, I think that this article will be treaed by the American Public as being new and novel. I seriously doubt the ability of the public to distinguish the facts, and I am buoyed in this opinion by the comments here on
If i had modpoints, I would mod Slashdot -1 offtopic.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Blairs no liar - no more so than any other Bristish politician, anyway. I wonder when people are going to wake up to this fact.
Probably when that opportunist Kennedy is in No.10 busy implementing his tax-and-waste policies. As for Blunkett, I agree.
I thought no Home secretary could be worse than Michael Howard. Then Jack Straw came along. I thought no home secretary could be worse than Straw. Then "ID-Card, national database" Blunkett came along. Can anyone be worse than him? Menzies Campbell sounds like a good contender.
My experience of Lib Dems in local government has been that they're illiberal and undemoratic.
They're wasteful and authoritarian. A bunch of tax and spend social engineers. I fell out of love with the "Liberal" "Democrats" a long time ago.
That's why I'll be back to voting for Blair next time.
I'm glad Slashdot has finally shown its colors to be a truly left-bent political engine rather than sticking strictly to "News for Nerds".
He didn't kill his own people, that's just another sound-bite Bush wants everyone to believe.
0 40 702181241227
The Kurds died from Iranian gas, not Iraqi, this was pointed out by the New York Times years ago.
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php?story=20
It is not completely clear what happened that day, but it's unlikely Saddam directly ordered their deaths.
There were several other reasons to go to war with him, I agree, and if Bush had gone to the UN and said "He's a bad man, but the sanctions containing him are killing too many people, we have do something about it" then I would have supported it, maybe more of Europe would have too, and maybe some Iraqis would have been less pissed off at the invasion if it's whole underlying premise was humanitarian instead of a pre-emptive military strike against an evil nation - before the WMDs turned out to be fantasy, Blair was the only one talking about the humanitarian possibilities.
And as for defending the nation from terrorists, in the short term yeah, things will be safer, but in 10 years we'll face a whole new generation of terrorists thanks to this Yeehaaa foreign policy.
If Iraq disintergrates into civil war...
What's new ? The rest of the world knew that this whole war is based on lies, it's sad that the american people is blind from the fact that this is the way america has been playing it games for many decades now, history DOES repeat itself, so does american stupidity and hypocritical prudence
Just Another Comment, lets see if we breake any current record
"Bush knowingly lied to attack Iraq,
Unless like SCO he's smoking crack"
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
It's easy to tell when michael has the duty: crap like this on the main page.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
In a pub near my work they have some nice americans running the place, with themed food etc. The place is empty despite other local bars being packed. I do wonder if business would pick up if they plastered a few maple leafs around the place.
-1 Flamebait... /. now??!? ...as if the article isn't flamebait...welcome to the dustbin of bias dorkdot...
WOW...does dan rather work at
this "flaimbait" is the truth, but truth hurts
I believe the UN was preparing to allow awarding of contracts by Iraq, to restore infrastructure and oil production. This was occuring prior to 9/11 and the majority of contracts were slated to be awarded to, in order, France, Germany, Russia and China. The Brits and US were at the bottom of the list with 2 and 1, respectively.
So sanctions were to be lifted, and it was going to be business as usual, except the US was going to be out of the running for anything and all that oil was going to go to someone else, as well as all the lucrative oil development and support contracts.
This was all clearly visible on the UN site. Suddenly the new Bush administration creates a side show after 9/11, thanks to the rogue family member of their good friends the Bin Laden's, and the US and Brit's are going to war! Never mind it was okay when Saddam was using all those weapons on Iranians.
All you youing Americans get ready to experience life with the draft. It's going to be Vietnam all over again. Do you suppose they will be drafting the females as well this time around?
Remember, not ALL of the American people support Bush. In fact, we didn't even elect him.
Your complaints are applicable to Bush supporters, but not to the rest of us. And Bush more than any other President in history has divided the electorate based on intellect alone; discounting the relatively small "smart, but rich and evil" vote, almost all of Bush's support comes from the least intelligent 50% of our population. The only smart Republicans I know are voting for Kerry this time around.
So don't blame America for the actions of Bush. Many of us hate him and are doing everything in our power to get him out of office. The blame for his actions rests squarely on the shoulders of the conservative idiots who support him. They're a minority in America.
You are missing my point. The issue (to me at least) is not one of modesty due to my religious beliefs. The issue is that I was expecting all those things you mention. But not the S&M-style strip show culminating in a naked breast.
Lest you think I'm dodging your question, I'd add that it seems pretty consistent to me that provocative nudity is more sexually explicit that provocative non-nudity...
--LP
Can we keep the Political Stuff out of Slashdot?
Also let's please refrain from any Religous Discussion too. There are too many Opinions on these things...
People, even inteeligent ones, keep denying.
How is tha not a fantasy world nad has anything to do tiwh lofty political ideals?
You are confussing the issue and try to muddle it with fakingly complex political drivel.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You could look down to africa and see what they think about France invading one of their countries, and inciting the public revolt in rwanda [yes that WAS France's fault](they do this to get an upper hand in trade and to promote the french culture).
/not/ want to give up on the huge debts Iraq had to France.
Also regarding the UN decision: There are 2 reasons why the second motion did not get passed - a) Germany decided to use anti-americanism in their election campaign, one of the ministers even compared Bush to Hitler - b) France did
While one can definitely find faults in the logic for going to war, please do not take this as a first on anything or try and claim that the other nations in the un council was any better. Atleast the U.S. does sometimes contemplate the impact of it's decisions on other countries, while France doesn't care. Germany does to some degree but their opinion is definitely influenced by having half the country thrown into communism for 50 years.
I hate these black and white pictures people try to paint - the world is indeed grim - whether the world would have been better if Gore had been president? I doubt it - he might not have attacked Iraq, but in the big scheme of things this is definitely not the worst thing that could've happened.
Atleast we are starting to get UN inspectors in Iran, this wouldn't have happened otherwise.
I read the NYT article. Here are quotes: ... had been sent two C.I.A. reports about the tubes. Each cited the tubes as evidence that "Iraq currently may be trying to reconstitute its gas centrifuge program." Neither report, however, mentioned that leading centrifuge experts at the Energy Department strongly disagreed, ...
But on March 12,...Cheney
-and later-
The Energy Department helped solve the problem. In meetings on the estimate, senior department intelligence officials said that while they still did not believe the tubes were for centrifuges, they nonetheless could agree that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons capability.
You've killed at least 10000 iraqis which, by my mind, kind of evens of the score. But none of them were Saudis. Bin Ladin is a Saudi. Most of the men on the hijacked airliners were Saudi. So, when are you going to invade Saudi Arabia? Why is the US letting the real culprits go?
BTW, one of Bin Ladin's demands was that US forces withdrew from Saudi Arabia. The US has cravenly caved in and acquiesed to that demand. There are now 14 permanent US bases in Iraq. Just when do you declare Iraq a US Protectorate?
Only Bush is man enough to attack other nations who support terrorists and give the UN, an evil socialist organization, the finger.
The US hasn't attacked Iran yet. Or North Korea. Oh, wait, they have nuclear weapons. They can defend themselves. Now theres a signal to send out to people across the world.
As for the UN, I believe the US starving them of funds is the equivalent of giving them the finger.
As for being "socialist", bits of the UN are rabidly capitalist. Isn't WIPO under UN auspices?
I used to like the US. I used to respect the US. No longer.
h
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
If i had modpoints, I would mod Slashdot -1 offtopic.
Ya, or -1, Reduntant for posting a 2002 NYT article just to prove to their political minders that they are one with the party.
When it comes to politics, slashdot editors are not interrested in presenting a wide survey of opinions. Rather they will only post what their party believes will help their political campaign.
Have a pleasent news-cycle citizen.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
"You're being sarcastic, but what I don't understand is how they straight-up lied about WMDs and whatnot (and knew about it), yet not a damned thing is happening about it. Clinton gets a BJ, and everyone starts screaming "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!?""
But every Republican will tell you that nuclear weapons are "clean", blow jobs are "dirty"!
If so, feel free to take issue with any part of it here. We can then debate the issues and come to some sort of a resolution. Simply saying: "They have a {liberal|conservative} bias, you cannot trust anything you read." is the easy way to evade addressing any issue and doesn't lead to a very informed public.
-- john
Kerry is a practicing Catholic...
... practicing what, cognitive dissonance?
who is pro-choice. That is a very strong indicator that he is a man of his own mind and doesn't support a particular position just because his church says so. I find that very reassuring.
I always find this line of thought bizarre. It's actually much harder to hold yourself to an external standard, and requires much more thought and discipline. It's easy to just say you do ("why, I'm a practicing Catholic ...") and then just adjust your actual actions and beliefs to whatever is comfortable or expedient.
nice try donald
At this point I think Kerry deserves to win the election. He probably is the better candidate - but I honestly believe he can't win. Here is why Kerry hasn't slammed the door on Bush: This election isn't about 2 years ago or 30 years ago. It's about the next four years.
Kerry is making the same mistakes that Bob Dole and George HW Bush. Kerry is reliving the past. I wish Kerry would stop reliving the past and give us a reason to look at the future. His vision for the future will not sell to most of Americe: Higher taxes and a half-hearted attempt at winning "a grand diversion". Bush has always been very adept at dealing with domestic policy, an I fear that while Kerry will be pointing out past mistakes, Bush will be pushing future solutions... just like he did in 2000 with the drug benefits, no child left behind, etc... like the laws or not, the ideas sold well enough to get him a hair less than half the popular vote...
At the end of the day, I'm not delighted by four years of either of the candidates. They both stink.
-- $G
The NYT has given up any pretense of being policially impartial. When a real news source runs the story then I'll consider it.
It's been a long time since I've accepted anything from the NYT or CBS. Other sources can be questionable, but those those two can't even pretend to be unbiased.
Compared to the NYT even the Washington Post looks centrist and unslanted.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
This should be a politics.slashdot.org only post. Keep this crap off the main page. Or post it to liberalbullshit.slashdot.org.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Its all about oil and controlling the supply. Control the worlds oil supply and you control developing nations such as China - the demand for oil in China is increasing rapidly. The USA went into Iraq for nothing more period. It is good? It is bad? Persinally I don't know - probably not for good the people of Iraq. Good for Ameraican's ? Well some of them are getting rich out this affair and will do for sometime to come yet.
So stop being blinded by the "spin" from the left and the right and lets do what nerds do best solve problems i.e. lets get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels!!!
...brainwashed, unable to think for themselves republican. Have fun whilst america goes down the toilet for the next four years.
I am NaN
I totally agree that Bush thinks WAY to simplistic and allows his aids to manipulate him like a puppet...BUT
/Korea....Kerry would do it.
I am TOTALLY angry at the Dem's for stacking the primary process so that they had a candidate so early in the primary process. So very FEW states decided for the rest of the country who was going to be their candidate that the vetting process was not fully completed. AND as a result I'm of the opinion that Kerry is one of the WORST if not THE WORST candidate they could of fielded.
Mind you I don't like BUSH...but don't think that Kerry is anything more than a Political opportunist who has no values other than the collection of POWER. Say what you want about Bush and I'm likely to agree with you.
Bush is stuck up in moral self-righteousness
Kerry is stuck up on an Elitist attitude that he should be prez because everybody else is "little people" and "HE" knows whats "right"
If Kerry wins....mark my words he'll be just as much in bed with Corporations as Bush. AND he'll change his position at a moments notice if he thinks public opinion is against him.
Don't think Kerry would go to war for stupid reasons. I think that if Kerry were in the same position and as Bush was and the public just happened to be screaming for war against Iraq/Iran
So who do you want? Somebody who does not give a rats ass about public but uses his own hard religious convictions(Bush)? Or somebody who is so fickle that he'll follow the masses wherever they lead....right off the cliff (Kerry)!
To all you German/French/Russian citizens....there is enough hypocracy to go around. Where were you when your countries ignored the sanctions and sold everything under the sun including WEAPONS to Saddam during the sanctions.
I've never seen a worse set of canidates to vote for. I hate ALL of them!
well put
"Can we keep the political stuff out of slashdot" Not really. Supress it here and it will emerge elsewhere. Besides, when does political begin and other choices in life, including about technology and technological society, end?
The difference between
Here's a clue f-maggots. Americans LOVE WAR. We crave the violent catharsis that stomping the carp out of weaker countries brings. We REVEL in seeing our victories chronicled on television. Who the flock cares if Saddam had WMDs. We KNOW it was a weak and flimsy rationalization at best, and we LOVE George W for having thr bulls to use it as an excuse for an attack. The important thing is, we WON, we KICKED ARSE. and it gives us a Hugh G. Rexxion just thinking about it. And after W is reelected, we're gonna STOMP Iran. And then N Korea. Why? Because we LOVE IT. So either learn to love war, or move to France, wuss!
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
What part of
The President is authorized to use military force in whatever way he sees fit
Do you not understand? Or are you one of these idiots whose grasp of the English language is so feeble that war is only authorized if the word war is actually used in the congressional resolution?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Iraq did not attack you either. Al Qaida did --- and yet Bush went after Saddam Hussein rather than getting Osama Bin Laden.
The rest of the world supported the U.S. attack against the Taliban in Afghanistan because they were connected with the Sept. 11 attacks. But rather than finishing the job in Afghanistan, Bush has diverted resources to attacking Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and which, it is now clear, was no threat at all to the U.S.
>If Israel wants to pull back to it's original
> borders, as mandated by the UN and defined
>at the time of its creation, close those
>borders, nd build the biggest frickin wall
>in history, NO ONE WILL COMPLAIN.
You can't really believe that. You really
believe that Arafat, Hezbollah and the rest
are just going to say, "well, OK then" and just
become peaceful little lambs?
If oil is allowed to trade in a currency other than the US Dollar such as the Euro or Gold, the US Dollar will collapse
That's why the Euro is stronger than the Dollar right now?
You seem to have missed the very next line after news for nerds on the /. masthead.
Stuff that matters.
This matters.
Given the number of posts I would say: maybe we can but we probably shouldn't.
Is this a new Slashdot record ?
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
fake it.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
It's a correlation, but an equally valid interpretation is that American sexual/religious conservatism and certain psychological theories popular in the first half of the 20th century combined to temporarily universalize the notion that breast-feeding should be minimized or eliminated from the rearing process.
This conservatism can be identified directly with, or at least blamed for, the fetishization of the breast in modern mainstream America. Hence, mere correlation or even reverse causation.
What's sexual about a tit? --Slashdot poster, 2004
I mean come on, The National Enquirer has a better record of late than the Times.
There was a time, pre-Iraq invasion, when a US citizen could live in Saudi Arabia.
That time is over. If you are a US citizen in Saudi Arabia (and not a Muslim), you are far more likely to be killed or kidnapped now than in 2001.
you can't threaten me with the spectre of armies of religious madmen responding to my actions when my actions are the response to armies of religious madmen
There weren't "armies" of them.
Our actions have created those armies.
your analysis is not useful if you present to me a negative consequence that preexists my actions
It's called "degree". There is a huge difference between 100 terrorists spread throughout the world and 10,000 terrorists living in the same area.
you seem to have some issues with logic there
Hardly. I understand that 10,000 terrorists hating us is a WORSE situation than having 100 terrorists hating us. And that is what we've created.
Buy or aquire a copy of Robert Kane Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in His Grave".
I saw in some pro-Bush advertisement a picture of U.S. soldiers standing in front of crates full of what looked like shoulder fired missiles. The large caption said something like "And some say Iraq had no weapons"
My jaw hit the floor. They were a soverign nation, with an army. Of fucking COURSE they are going to have weapons! Hell, we probably sold them those rockets. The Bush supporters have gone from twisting the truth to twisting lies!
I remember when we invaded Iraq, because my wife and I had already had a weeklong trip planned for Paris. We had to decide whether we wanted to go or not, because the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Thursday, and we left for Paris on Sunday. We had to question whether it would be safe. It was of course, and we received zero ill treatment there. I got 10x worse treatment here at home, in O'hare airport. One NASCAR following, Bush-loving idiot at work asked me when I got back if I asked for any "Freedom Fries" while I was there, and I just stared blankly at him. He also asked if I got enough to eat, because the French eat just tiny little portions. (another blank stare)
But I digress... I remember, and some people seem to forget, that Saddam DID let weapons inspectors into Iraq. Yes, for years he dodged them, but when the threat was made by the U.S., he let them in. They didn't find anything, and before the inspectors could finalize their work and come out and officially say "Iraq has no WMD", Bush decided to invade. I remember specifically, he said the inspectors should leave because we were going in. And now the Bush supporters somehow forgot all of that and like to say that Saddam wasn't cooperating with UN weapons inspectors.
I just don't get it. Even after something like 9/11 (which again, has NOTHING to do with Iraq - even GW said so after 9/11) doesn't wake up the American people to the fact that we are not invulnerable. We can't go pushing around other countries without reprocussions. Bush had nothing to do with what caused 9/11, but he is setting us up for the next one. He is making sure that we are hated throughout the world, and that makes me nervous.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The SS existed before the Reichstag was set on fire and it wasn't the German secret police (that would have been the GeStaPo). The SS was a para-militaric organization within the NSDAP (the ruling party at that time) which had organized the genocide and owned the concentration and extermination camps.
Bad news for you, Joseph Wilson, Kerry-Edwards, foriegn-policy advisor (well, he was as of the end of July, not sure as of today), was completely discredited by the bi-partisan Senate Itelligence Commitee's report. It's pretty bad when his wife won't even back up his testimony.
/.? Times like these with so many geeks falling for conspiracies
and out right lies, makes it so hard to be identified as a geek in public.
Do you have any more shrilled loony left propaganda to spread on
at least the half of the time that he was for the war because of Iraq's WMD.
I am Polish, I have supported the war against Saddam at the beginning (there were some analogies with the lack of action against Hitler by France and England in WWII).
But now I can agree with every word of the article linked by parent post.
Oh sorry. "Politics for nerds." You'll never see an anti-Democrat, anti-Libertarian, anti-Green, or anti-Independant story here.
Stick to NPR.
*turns off the politics section*
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
Frasier: Cliff, what color is the sky in your world?
...
Peasant: We've found a witch! May we burn her?
Sir Bedivere: How do you know she is a witch?
Peasant: She looks like one! And she insists on believing in so-called 'reality' instead of the right-wing propaganda! Plus, she turned me into a newt!
SB: A newt?
Peasant: I.. I got better. Anyway she is a witch!
LBArrettAnderson, which two of these four characters do you most resemble?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Complaining about a dictator is easy.
Yep, that's right.
Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.
Yep, that's right.
But it isn't applicable in this case because that wasn't how the war was sold to the US citizens.
We didn't go in to remove a dictator.
We went in because a dictator with terrorist connections was hiding "WMD's" and preparing to use them against the US.
Telling so many lies (and continuing to tell them) to sell your war does NOT show "moral character, will, and resolve".
Rather it shows the opposite. Too bad for your side.
Google for "American Century" and Iraq.
The cycnics may not have withdrawn it yet.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
chode
"I do not claim any harm to the one or two kids who noticed a five-pixel breast on their TV screens for a period of under 1 second."
"My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl."
I'm not sure I understand, was there actually a strip show during the superbowl or just a tiny glimpse of a breast for a fraction of a second ?
If it was indeed a strip show then it should certainly have been advertised as such but if it was just a very quick flash of a single breast which was over in a second then I can't see any problem with that and I see no need to specifically advertise that beforehand.
Despite what you say it does seem rather like you are trying to impose your moral views on other people by requesting that such minor things are made such a big fuss of.
If Clinton would've done this the dittoheads would've taken to the streets to riot. But when it's their guy doing the lying...not a negative comment out of them. In fact, they're defending it. If that isn't hypocrisy in action then we might as well take the word out of the dictionary.
Just amazes me that there are still people supporting Bush and these right wing liars. Not all Republicans are dishonest, but it seems like the party is infected and controlled by a militant vein of people with no moral character. This isn't the Republican party I grew up supporting. That party had people that were tough and committed but still maintained ethical standards.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"The tubes represented a scientific puzzle and rival camps of experts clashed over the tiniest technical details in secure rooms in Washington, London and Vienna. The stakes were high, and they knew it."
Because he's a compassionate, genuine, human being - who stands firm on his convictions (don't get me started on waffles and flip-flops) and has a moral compass. I'm conservative, and may not agree with everything W says but at the core of it... I agree with his philosophy and ideology.
Yes - we're safer today than 4 years ago, the world will never be the same after 9/11, and it's time to wake up and smell the terrorists (ewww). I honestly wish we could just close our borders to anyone from the middle-east region(s), and other known terrorist regions... but that won't happen, so the next best step is vigilance, and a pre-emptive policy of defense.
. . have more proof than the NY Times. Gee, there's a bastion of journalistic integrity. Not.
You know, if you'd stayed awake in history class, or even bothered to take a polysci course at the community college, you'd understand that policy-makers have to make decisions without having all of the facts.
Because, if you wait for all of the facts to become known, you usually have to find out about them at the bottom of the smoking hole left by 3000 of your closest friends dying.
Try thinking for yourself for a change. Geeks are bad enough, but a geek who can't think is a waste of protein.
Brilliance doesn't need a sig.
This will help you understand liberal eyes.
http://archives.warroom.com/quickstartguide.mp3
Well, there isn't any one country to invade. The mid-east terrorists are in every country in the mid-east. The US plan isn't too bad actually. Right now, they don't have to spend a lot of time trying to find the terrorists. They have moved our military close enough for the terrorsts to come to them. Right now, all of the middle east terroists are swarming into Iraq. It is unfortunate that the US soldiers are being used as bait, but, at least they are expecting it and they are trained & equipped to handle it.
Also, even if we stop buying oil from the mid-east, we will still end up giving tons of money to mid-east countries for off-shoring of IT. So, that won't work.
If Israel wants peace then they can have it; give the Palestinians equal rights. Until then the Palestinians will struggle against oppression as is their right. Most of the world backs them in this struggle, in time so will America.
When you hear of bombings in Israel, do not cry for the Israeli's, they live in a world of their own making. Israel continues to believe that they can have peace through oppression, they cannot. Israel is the worlds last standing racist state and time is running out for them. I hope that they see this reality and change. Until they do, I will support the Palestinian struggle.
Please post to "I'm a crybaby" instead.
the spice channel [...] with anal sex and cumshots
Clearly you've never actually seen the "Spice Channel". It's non-porn porn. When I was younger, and porn-deprived, I stayed up all night watching it, from 10 PM to 6 AM or so, at a friend's house.
Everything of interest happened *just* offscreen. They didn't even show bush. It may have been the most disappointing eight hours I've ever had.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yes, I do know how much Cheney has made from Halliburton since entering office: NONE
There was a long review of this recently. He got all his payments before he became vice president to specifically make sure there was no way for him to profit from the former relationship. This is standard operating procedure, by the way. Some people didn't realize that the new administartion takes office after the first of the year, and assumed that the payments had been made after he became VP, and because that fit their inclination, they didn't investigate further.
"If civil war erupts..."
:
I would say that that is a virtual certainty given the number of highly armed factions who control their own armies of dedicated followers.
The Americans aren't going to be there for ever and everyone who wants to rule Iraq must surely realise that and think to themselves
"Let's see if we can get elected properly and if not let us just gather together our supporters and take power, in the meantime lets not let the Police become such an effective force they could ever stop us."
This will certainly lead to a power struggle of some sort and with every chance that whoever comes out on top will be every bit as hostile to the US as Saddam ever was.
Sissors sharp, fire hot...
...except for that little "go to Vietnam and shred some VCs with your machine gun" schtick.
isn't it obvious?
I mean, geez, is the contributing author Jason Blair too?
(Score:-5, Conservative)
FACT: If we leave the EU, all British trains will run on time. And the tickets will be free. And everyone will have a legrest.
FACT: If we leave the EU, all mail will be on time. And stamps will cost half as much. And they'll have the queen's head on them again.
FACT: If we leave the EU, Britons will pay 120% less taxes than today. Poor people will no longer need to pay taxes, and we will remove the tax burden from the middle class will ceasing to punish the rich for their productivity. And everyone will get three times as much social support money, we will increase pensions by 400% AND we will pay off the national debt.
FACT: If we leave the EU, we will triple the British literacy rate to almost 300%. There will be no more school violence, all the teachers will be paid well and the NUT will be banned. We will also ensure that students are no longer taught all those embarrassing things about puberty, either.
FACT: If we leave the EU, Britons won't need banks because they won't need to pay bills anymore. With all the money saved from the Great Satan in Brussels, every Briton will be able to have a private castle in Leeds and a fleet of luxury cars that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger envious.
/. to \. because it slants so hard to the left.
I've read through the comments (at +3, I have my limits), and pretty much all I hear is screaming leftist caterwauling.
I know you all mostly have a political axe to grind, but do you understand the rhetorical construction of a STRAWMAN argument? To briefly review, this is where you posit your opponent's argument in a way that is deliberately weak, so that you can tear it apart on your own terms.
WMDs = strawman argument, see?
When Bush first made his public speech about why we were going to war in Iraq, there were a NUMBER of different reasons why we went to war. Google his speech if you want them all.
But paramount among them was the fact that we never were NOT at war. At the end of GW(I), there was a ceasefire signed, based on certain actions to be performed by the Iraqis. These were not performed. Moreover, as long as we're all 'remembering' so clearly that these tubes were not what the US administration claimed they were, perhaps you could stretch a little further and recall the bluster, the bombast, the shenanigans, the outright duplicity with which the Hussein government dealt with all of these requirements, from the sham "Oil for military suppl...erm..FOOD program" to the inspection program to the sanctions regime.
Whether or not you consider the UN a complete pack of snivelling corrupt toadies, 17 UN resolutions should perhaps slightly suggest even to the fervent Internationalists that perhaps - just perhaps - the 'international community' (or at least the Security Council) agreed that Iraq was not fulfilling their end of the ceasefire. Even France and Germany, those paragons of virtue and justice, supported those resolutions, including the last which warned of 'serious consequences' if it was ignored.
Personally, I've always believed that Iraq was a message aimed at a number of other countries that were and are state sponsors of terrorism. Here we had Saddam Hussein, diplomatically isolated (if not an outright pariah), his military enfeebled by 10 years of sanctions (although not as much as the Oil-for-food enthusiasts would like you to believe). He continued to preach the destruction of the United States, and was beginning to reconfigure himself (not credibly, granted) as a leader of the next Islamist crusade against Israel and the West. Here was a chance to step in, kick the crap out of some dunghill leader that liked to talk very tough, and drag him off under the auspices of the US Army and nobody would lift a finger to help him. This would help our 'big stick' credibility in a part of the world where diplomatic subtleties aren't usually even noticed.
Further, there was the benefit of oil, yes oil. See, our economy runs on oil; to suggest that making it a key element of government and foreign policy decision making is somehow greedy or evil is illustrative of nothing but your own naivete. If someone had majority control of air, or water, would that be serious enough to be the basis of legitimate policy decisions to you? Oil's not far down the list, as much as it hurts the leftist alternative-power seekers* to admit it).
* as long as they aren't power windmills in view of my estate on Martha's Vineyard or where I cruise my yacht.
If it were possible to come out of this with a reliable diplomatic ally, it would also allow us to REDUCE our dependence on the Saudi government as our only Muslim political friend in the region, which in turn would allow us to pressure them more freely for greater democracy there internally.
If, after all this, you STILL require proof that Iraq had WMD's, I'd ask you what Saddam used against the Kurds in Halabja. Tinfoil hattery aside (hard to manage on \., I agree) I'd say most of us would agree that it sure seemed like a gas attack.
I'll not claim that the "lefty media" constructed the WMD-as-primary-motivation for political reasons; no, I rather think it was either the Bush Administration, beltway insiders
-Styopa
What does the NYT know now that it didn't know then?
Nothing!
Why rehash this info?
Let me think.... mmm...
They're a pro-Dem paper,
They hire reporters that make things up for political purposes...
Their boy was getting creamed in the polls and came out dead even in the debate.....
Last week the other left wing news anchors had a meeting with Rather "to show support" (support for publishing a fake report? geez!) and then next thing we see is a coordinated attack on Bush by those 'news' orgs.
Gee... if Bush lied so did Kerry. He saw the same intel, came to the same conclusions (IN 1997, while Clinton was in office and 3 years before Bush was elected!) and voted in favor if invading Iraq. Now he and his allies in the media claim they were 'lied to'? Gimme a break. Do they think John Q Public is that collectively stupid? mmm... they probably do.
Ah yes, the "Bush Doctrine" that allows preemptive action when we deem it necessary. The other Real Problem with the Bush Doctrine is that it doesn't just apply to us. First off, "The US is Right and anyone else who doesn't agree with us is Wrong," just won't fly with the rest of the world. I don't believe that the US would grant that any other single country in the world can define "Right," so I don't believe any other country will confer that right on us.
Taking the first step of unilateralism will force us to do more of it, in the future.
So either ANY country can apply the Bush Doctrine, or perhaps any country with enough weapons.
Allowing the Bush Doctrine to stand is a Danger to all, because it's going to be even harder to prevent from proliferating than nuclear weapons.
One can think first of China or Russia deploying troops based on the Bush Doctrine, but there's something far more insidious. Think about Rawanda, Congo, and the like, all feeling that pre-emptive strikes are in their best interest, and the US has given the idea the green light to do so. For us to disapprove then puts us more squarely into the role of World Police. I doubt we'd have much luck motivating other nations to take action against an "innappropriate Bush Doctrine action," especially once they figure out to call it by that name. So either we have to get in there and police, or we have to let it just happen, essentially giving it our tacit approval.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Have you ever played an RTS (real time strategy) game and had a bunch of little cities in your empire, and suddenly, someone sends over a group of Grunts and they start hammering away at one of your buildings? If you want to win, you get on that shit! In all seriousness though, if I was President of the United States of America and I was informed that the country was UNDER ATTACK (how many Presidents have even gotten this news??) I would be stunned and immediately want details and information. I would not sit for more than 20 seconds and look dumbfounded while reading with some school kids, much less 10 minutes or whatever it was. Just because he couldn't have done anything that moment doesn't mean his reaction isn't mind-boggling. When the country is under attack and he finds out, I want him to DROP EVERYTHING that he is doing (whether he's out golfing, reading to kids, whatever... if he were golfing, would he have finished his round, or just that hole maybe??). Seriously....
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
Just look at the skewed moderation flying around in this very article discussion. It's obvious which party this community leans toward. Both sides have their viewpoints, their evidence, their facts, their proofs. I know a ton of extremely intelligent conservatives who could debate all these left-wing +5 posts off the planet, but they would get modded down by the groupthink going on in this article. This "Politics" section of Slashdot is a bad idea--I'm unchecking it now from my preferences. You'll never have fair coverage here!
I enjoy reading opinions and arguments from all positions, so it is unfortunate you will not be participating any more. Looking at your history, I see your karma went the way of the dodo after only 2 hours of posting, a shame considering your low ID number (38532, wow!).
Little Bricklets
Post something when the White House says something true. There's a limited amount of space on Slashdot. Let's not waste it on things that are blindingly obvious already.
Besides "White House Lied", here are some other events we no longer need to be informed of:
"Geeks Claim Computers are Cool"
"Florida hit by Hurricane"
"Windows is vulnerable to a virus"
"Chicks: Puppies are cute"
"Scientists: Rain is wet"
"Geeks: Sex is fun, rare"
"Violence in Israel today"
"Leno makes a Lewinsky joke"
"Study confirms: British can't cook"
"Industry panics over P2P again"
"Linux Market Share Grows"
"New Tech Standard Proposed"
"American Tech Workers Not Better Off Under Bush"
"Ja Rule's success baffles Beatles fans"
"Reality TV show embarrases humans, animals"
"Technology will be improved in 5 years"
"Concensus eludes Slashdot Posters again"
"Wesley Crusher is cooler than you thought"
"Sun Microsystems is less cool than you thought"
"SCO, RIAA, DRM, DMCA, Diebold sucked again today"
"Privacy Threatened"
"Electricity, Internet, High IQ's: useful"
2. Except the 'wall', do you have any other bright ideas of how to protect civilians from suicide bombers?
Easy: The civilans should stop voting for warmongering nazilike bastards.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
INcluding Iraqi civilians. Enough said.
>>Someone can post complete nonesense about the Evil Republican President without any reprocussions,
Do you sit up at night building your fantasy world? Or are you just psychotic? By the way, it's spelled "repercussions".
>>but the second someone shows any support for the guy, he's marked as flamebait.
It's not because he "showed any support", it's because he's riding the tilt-o-whirl with you in la-la land.
And in this forum, you guys just don't have jack shit to say because you're indisputably WRONG. No amount of "where are your sources" or "liberal bias liberal bias" antics can change the fact that dubya came into office looking for reasons to attack Iraq, and couldn't find any, so he made some up.
On top of that he (bush) used (abused) his power and position during a period of national mourning to jump into an unneccesary and irresponsible war.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.
... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs
...
That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraqis a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom
Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry ( D - MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that
continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover
of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and
others,
December 5, 2001
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the
mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence
reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I
believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years
...our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl
Dude...seriously?
Afghanistan is in a mess worst than Iraq: local warlords have gained control of the country, a taliban guerrilla is growing, the only part that truly remains under control of the US puppet goverment is Kabul.
As for people going to work not making the news, well, it is difficult to go to work when and all out stree civil war is taking place in all major towns in iraq.
What? You did not know?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
former US Marine Officer, a Chiropractor by training and CEO of a technology company by trade. Let me tell you what I've seen in Iraq.
I remember (I believe it was 1988 or '89 or so) I was in the Middle East and saw much of the misery ascribed to Saddam myself.
As an XO of a Weapons company in the 3rd Marines, my company was dispatched initially to Bahrain. From there we dispersed to other points.
I remember both in the initial runs and the subsequent runs we made after the Gulf War had started seeing Women, Children and young boys in prisons in the REGSAT photos.
I then dispatched our TOW, 81's (mortars/observers) and STA (Scout/Snipers) to a region in the north not too far away form that village on orders from my superiors (albeit for different reasons)
We were too late.
I will never forget seeing the sightless eyes of dead children on the streets, looking like broken dolls. Their Skin blistered from the gas.
You as an American citizen can vote for whomever you feel to be the most appropriate representative of your values.
Just remember, the choices you make affect numerous generations to follow.
Those of us who are now parents and have children that are or almost the age of service know this all to well.
It's a choice we don't make lightly.
Think for yourself. Don't listen to the pundits or your buddies. Investigate for yourself. Don't give in to irrational hate or loyalty to any party.
Semper Fi,
Nick
Nick Donovan - CEO
Ioni Corporation
Frisco, TX USA
Thanks for the pictures! I just grabbed some really sweet desktop backgrounds.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've seen very little discussion on that question, and most of that was blather.
It's obvious the Bush Admin. had a reason(s) for invading, and that the WMD concern was a pretext, so this article is about 2 years late.
Slashdot, y'all have to step up, if this politics section is going to amount to anything more than a bit dump.
Ever notice how certain groups love to take the NYT as the gospel? Ever think that they sometimes don't have it quite right?
What about this one, where the NYT got hosed like everyone else?
Let us not forget that the NYT sometimes plays dirty games.
And this.
And this.
And this.
Also do not forget the "journalists" that actually fabricate stories.
The fallout.
Supporting my argument
Any church that wouldn't TURN OFF a half-time show containing Janet Jackson, Kid Rock, and Outkast is not worth its weight in self-sacrifice, IMHO.
Nice spin. Totally inaccurate and ignorant of the logic behind the vote, but nice try anyway.
I was breast-fed 17 days. My younger brother was breast-fed 2 years. Altough we live in Brasil (more butt-lovers than tit-) I give a really higher value to breasts than my brother. Quod erat demonstratum.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
WE WERE ATTACKED ON 9/11
Yes, you were...but not by Iraq but by a group of terrorists who are not associated with a particular country. Those terrorists probably wanted to get rid of Sadam as much as the US did, albeit for the reason that Sadam was an obstacle to fundamentalism.
In a way you could argue the US did the terrorists a very big favour by invading Iraq. Not only has the war given them a foothold in Iraq, the war has also infuriated many people which in no doubt will translate into more recruits and support for organisations like Al Quaida. I wouldn't call strengthening your enemy a very good defensive strategy, would you?
Together, we will root out and wipe out terrorism anywhere, anytime, in any country that threatens us.
Not until the US and its allies realise you can't fight this kind of terrorism as if your fighting a war. Terrorism is fought covertly by taking out the ones that send and train the suicide bombers, by cutting the flow of money etc. It's a job for the likes of MI6, the SAS and simular organisations, not for armies. If they continue as they are now the terrorism will only get worse.
because you're micro-analyzing the tree... or nobody wants to actually come out and say it. This is a war against islamic middle-eastern nations. It's not about WMDs or even [entirely] about oil. Iraq ended up a target because they were already under judgment that the UN would not execute because they were making money off the situation. The goal is obvious and Bush stated it over and over. The US wants to erode militant islamic culture by way of democratic examples in the region. Make no mistake about it, this is a Jihad against Islam. It's just not politically correct to come out and say so. Communism is no longer viewed a threat. Islam is. [BTW, please don't confuse my stating of what I see as being the obvious, with my personal views on the situation.]
One of these things is not like the other
One of these things is not the same...
Tools of the left wing:
-Michael
-Anal Sex
-Welfare Checks
MSDN.com did not make the list! If you answered that you win a banana. Dam shame, slashdot is inferior to microsoft in that regard.
Again, with the WMD debating? Hello? The 9/11 comission's findings are published. Its over. Find a new hobby.
My parent post was a serious attempt to explain how a person could support a politician who was caught in a lie and in bad policies. It's bi-partisan, but at the moment the subject is Bush because he is in power. So I took it from the point-of-view of single-issue Repbulicans. As some of you noted, you can do the same in reverse and find single-issue Democrats. Well done.
No, as one of you surmised, my issue is not abortion. I picked the examples I did because I had heard of them in various news reports over the years. Granted my always-on sense of humor tried to word some of them in funny ways, but that wasn't to troll but just make me laugh (and anyone else who has my sense of humor). Thus the "pappy" word, a word that takes me back to Mark Twain's Mississippi region in my mind. I meant no real disrespect.
I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat. In fact, I find the very concept of political parties to be counter-productive, but I've expressed that before on /. and been shot down mercilessly. In any case, all I wanted to do was to point out how some people think in terms of a single issue and no reasoning can reach that person since reasoning is hardly in play. Thank you to those of you who found my post helpful. To those of you who called me a Troll, please re-read the definition of that word and realize that just because you disagree with a post doesn't make it automatically a troll. Otherwise half the world is made up of trolls to you, and that's a lot of bridges...
Eventually --- People realize that those calling everyone else liars are in fact the one who lies.
Who woulda thunk it.
OUCH! my KARMA!
Yes I suck for doing that.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
If you read the N.Y. Times regularly you would know that they had already done an interview with an Iraqi nuclear scientist who said they were ready to reconstitute their nuclear program when the sanctions were lifted. The tubes are dual use and the administration wasn't ready to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt. Now a Iraqi nuclear scientist has a new book about the the bomb in his backyard. Here's more from the Australian.
_ page/0,5744,10863824%255E31477,00.html
An Iraqi scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country's dormant nuclear program were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.
But their existence, Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq's successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon.
In The Bomb in my Garden, Obeidi details fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's furious, and then abandoned, quest for a nuclear bomb.
"Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the story of how close Iraq came to developing them should serve as a red flag to the international community," Obeidi writes with his co-author Kurt Pitzer.
The Associated Press obtained an advance copy of the book, to be released Sunday.
[...]
While only the former president knows fully why he didn't restart his nuclear program, Obeidi believes Saddam may have realised the scope of the massive undertaking.
United Nations inspectors had dismantled the program, removed the enriched uranium stockpiles and exposed Iraq's international network of suppliers. And Saddam was making a mint off the UN's oil-for-food program, while increasing his control over a population reliant on him for basics such as flour, Obeidi says. To get caught importing components needed to produce a nuclear weapon, the scientist says, would have ended the program.
Yet Saddam kept his Iraq Atomic Energy Commission running, apparently without weapons programs, as late as 2003.
[...]
Obeidi, 60, was the creator of Iraq's centrifuge, a key component in one method of enriching bomb-grade uranium. He considers it the most dangerous piece of nuclear technology because related advances make it possible to conceal uranium enrichment programs inside one warehouse.
[...]
By the late 1980s, Iraq was making breakthroughs. However, the international help dried up as Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The UN arrived after Saddam's 1991 defeat, intent on taking apart his weapons programs.
To hide signs of uranium enrichment then, Obeidi describes a massive demolition and reconstruction program he led to remove everything from the top soil to the coffee makers at his former centrifuge lab.
After the 2003 invasion, Obeidi attempted to take the nuclear secrets buried in his garden to US authorities. He describes disorganisation as the CIA and military intelligence wound up fighting over him.
Only after extensive negotiations involving former UN weapons inspector David Albright, who was in Washington, did Obeidi turn over all of his information.
[...]
Looking back, Obeidi struggles to find words to describe how he could arm Saddam, whose government at one point kept him from his family for six months so he could work and left them fearing the walls had ears.
He says it was a matter of national pride and scientific pursuit, but more than anything, it was fear: "The idea of dozens of nuclear bombs in Saddam's hands is horrifying in retrospect."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story
Please keep in mind that the link between 9/11 and Iraq has no facts behind it, and it is very telling that that link was only used as US domestic propaganda. The 9/11 and Iraq link was not used by the Bush administration internationally because they understood they couldn't fool other countries on that one as they could with WMD.
I'm waiting for someone to post a goatse link and dare you to click it ...
...they're not all bad...
http://alternet.org/
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
i know it's flamebait. but seriously, as bland of a candidate as kerry is can you honestly say, of bush, that you still trust him?
nerds are smart.
people who support bush arent. it's that simple.
bring it on.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
Kerry is a flaming moron, and if i hear of his "combat" experiences one more time i'll puke, hahaha my favorite quote by Kerry is "certainty, can sometimes get you in trouble" what in the world??? so basically we should all just not stand for anything but rather just make whoever happens to be listening to us at the time happy and side with them. i'm voting Bush because the thought of Kerry in any position higher than white house cafeteria janitor just scares me to death. i also love how so many people believe democratic nominees when they say they are "from and for the people" implying their down to earthness -- when in actualty they are about as "down to earth" as the British Royal family. -- in Kerry's case-- yea i think being married to 2 different multimillionaire wives is very "down to earth". just look at the issues, and vote your conviction, yes all politicians fudge fib and flat out lie. its their nature, Bush at least appears to have some sense of morals, he's not afraid to use the word God and prayer and he sounds like he means it unlike Kerry who sounds like the spawn of satan when he briefly mentions anything pertaining to religion. (yea i'm exaggerating, but as do we all when making out soap box ridden points.) God help us all.
Of a simple six-question quiz on stances that the candidates hold on major issues, the average person got less than three questions right.
'Who wants to privatize Social Security?'
Bush. That's a given.
'Which one doesn't like assault weapons?'
Actually both. Kerry is well-known for supporting it, but Bush gives it lip service
'What is the cutoff income for Kerry's tax increases?' (50k, 100k, 200k, or 500k)
I had heard for "the richest Americans". Politicians hate making specifics mostly because they never implement them as specified.
'Who is a former prosecutor?'
My first inclination was John Edwards. We tend to hear about his legal background quite a bit whereas we only hear of Kerry's Senate/'Nam experience. If I answered "Edwards" would I get this wrong?
'Who favors making the recent tax cuts permanent?'
For whom? They both favor making the middle/lower class tax cuts permanent.
'Who wants to make it easier for labor unions to organize?'
Haven't heard Kerry talk about it, but I know he's supported by more unions than Bush and that the traditional democratic platform is pro-union.
So what's the score? Question 1 is fine, question 2 is really all of the above (thus wrong), question 3 is overly specific, question 4 is obscure, question 5 is misleading, and question 6 is OK. So all told, that's 1 decent questions, 4 bad questions, and one completely wrong question.
I am all-for quizes and such, but the answers to these questions are not as straighforward as you'd have us believe. (Speaking of misleading quizes, try my sig;))
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Clinton was being tore apart, even internationally, because he had sex with an intern. He lied about it and "deeply regrets that" (we all know the speech I guess)
Although, Bush killed dozens of people by a lie, not even getting a slap on the wrist. People believe in him as their leader who can justify anything.
So what's the difference between a blowjob and a war? The blowjob didn't kill people, the war killed dozens of people and will probably kill more dozens of people...
Do I call this naivity ?
--- 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..
In other late-breaking news, we have just received word that President Lincoln has signed a proclamation freeing the slaves. No word yet on what impact this will have on Union efforts to win the war.
As someone who would want his children to watch a live sex orgy before watching an violent pointless sport I fail to see your point. Football causes more injuries to the particpants when practiced within the safety paradigm than a person who has multiple sex partners and uses condoms. The idea of monogamy is so recent that there is no evidence of it in DNA and it would of been evident in European human stock if Christianity had ever "worked", which it appearently has failed to do. If you are hoping that those teenagers are not going to have pre-marital sex because you have contributed to censoring reality than you delusional. Are you a recent convert to Christianity and live under such strictures in the vain hope that you can Christianize yourself after a lifetime of debauchery?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The point is, that without a formal declaration of war, we should not have been there. It is suppposed to be difficult to declare war. That is because war is not supposed to be a common thing. Unfortunately it is common, because Congress made an unofficial amendment by never calling the Presidents on their unconstitutional actions.
I am thankful that there wasn't a formal declaration of war. I would be even more thankful if somebody would stand up and say you can't make an informal declaration either.
AoT, you might also want to check out: Conceptual Guerilla
On Rankism
Voyage from Yesteryear
Or my essay: how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
but well just ignore that. If they weren't for nuclear use, then we should have left Hussein alone.
So does this take slashdot for the largest thread?
You're logic is way way off. You first state that you are proud of Dick and Bush for striking Iraq for OIL. Now you are spouting that the entire Middle East needs to be taken out because of their dislike of our culture. I reiterate and append, beliefs like yours show the ignorance, blind racism, and mind-washed foolishness that will bring our entire civilization to an end if left unchecked.
I didn't forget that we were attacked. Further attacks will not bring us ultimate peace, just eternal war. Please, look at history. How many empires still exist in their full glory today? Has there ever been an empire that hasn't been severely weakened given time? Do you really even want peace?
In other news, water is wet and fire is hot. Film at 11.
have faith in the leaders of our country or be labeled unpatriotic
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Scary, huh?
By the way, the intelligence agencies should never present a position paper to the administration. They should always report on intelligence and the best estimation of the meaning of that intelligence. A position paper specifically ignores contradicting evidence, as you point out, and is therefore wildly inappropriate to present as the result of the labor of the intelligence community - especially if, as in this case, the best experts that you have disagree the most with the opinion presented.
Education is the silver bullet.
I for example am an anarchist (believe in direct democracy over the internet) and I am pro-life.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
In war, you need to really know who your enemies are. I would fight for my freedom, but the questions are, today, this very moment: who is my enemy--who will I need to defeat in order to win my freedom? In this battle, what are the acceptable means for achieving victory?
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
As Bush and Kelly I lied to my teacher too, as every /.er. What's your point?.
If you lied and as a consequense you won the football game, almost nobody cares. If you lied and then 1000 Americans died and 10,000 other country people including children died. Most people not Republicans care.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point."
I can't understand your point.
You complain about a "strip show" yet, your church will condone the mass viewing of 22 men who hit each other so hard that they have to wear body armor, literally, beating each other bloody over a leather ball. Yet, your church condones said beating, interspersed with advertisements for drugs that give four hour erections? And you have the audacity to complain about a tit-flash?
Eat me.
Seriously.
And the sanctimonious horse you rode in on.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
No, really? I know Slashdot decided to open a section dedicated to (primarily US) politics that is almost certainly a response to the upcoming US election. Fine. But I guess I thought the main page was for technical/geek/nerd related things. This story is just another story of he said she said among the political shills.
I imagine I'll get modded 'irrelevant', but does Slashdot need to turn into another soapbox for mainstream politic rhetoric? We already have that. There's more than enough places to find it. I watch the news. I get the paper and can access other press websites. I can even seek out opinions to back up any theory I want to believe. Being a reference to the New York Times, I highly doubt you could honestly say Slashdot has added anything to the story or it's relevance to the world. I'm sure we'll be plastered with it on CNN & FNC too.
you can't set your preferences to ignore the politics section actually. or rather you can, but it doesn't do anything. i guess i should just ignore those arcticles. its weird though.. somehow i can't. i keep clicking on them. which is freaking annoying. instead i just started coming to slashdot less.
whatever.
How did that Limbaughian claptrap get modded "informative"?
Its well known that Kerry is a UN supporter. When he says Global Test - he means asking the UN permission and obeying their decision.
C'mon, get real. You want us to accept your interpretation of what Kerry said based on your own paranoid anti-UN conspiracy theories? Let's use this on Bush, and see how it plays:
Its well known that George W. Bush believes that Jehovah is a real and active power in the physical world. When the President says "God speaks through me" - he means that every night while praying he has epileptic seizures and speaks in tongues. Karl Rove interprets the President's delpic utterances and this is how all policy is created.
or how about this one:
It is well known that Bush is a Texas supporter. When he says "Evil-doers" he means those citizens of the USA that live east of the Mississippi - the damn Eastern carpetbaggers!
By putting the biases of the Dems into George's mouth, I can do the same thing you did when you put the biases of the paleo-cons in the mouth of Kerry. Anybody else want to try? It's fun!
At the time of the vote in parliament to approve the war the war British public opinion based on a simple yes-no poll was in favour of the war, and remained so for quite a while afterwards.
Not only is your statement factually incorrect, it is an insult to the memory of the millions of people who died at the hand of the Nazis when you compare Hitler to a minor dictator like Saddam Hussein. If you understood, you would never make such a foolish statement.
Yes, a genocide did occur under Saddam's watch, with his full knowledge and consent. I do not wish to trivialize those crimes in any way, but compare that genocide with the ones committed by Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Each of those dictators is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.
In comparison, Saddam Hussein is the diet coke of evil.
kudos to President Bush and the US MilitaryFor what? GWB has sent thousands of his own nation's youth to death or disfigurement, and killed tens of thosands more - for nothing other than the possibility of cheaper gas for your SUVs.
There is nothing to be proud about here...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Bush eats babies, while mothers watch....
Let's appologize to Saddam (and to liberals), put him back in power, so that he can continue on his mass murdering rampage.
If the resistence in Iraq had been quelled by Summer '03 and we were seeing GWB statues and parades in the street at this point, no one would give a damn about WMD. We'd have gone in, lost a small number of men, and liberated a nation from a brutal dictator
Instead we've gone in, lost a rather large and growing number of men, and started a nation on a course of bloody civil war
"walkies"
A few points.
1. I support Kerry over Bush.
2. However, this is the NY Times, which is biased towards Bush, so I am not taking this report as gospel.
3. This article is pushing 2500 posts/replies. I have never seen an article with this much activity. Does anyone else remember one with this much activity and what the subject matter was.
Bush and his Administration don't lie, exactly. They just grossly misrepresent the facts in order to get whatever they want. They knew that there was strong evidence that those aluminum tubes were NOT for a nuclear program. But somebody told them that the tubes maybe could be used in a nuclear program and so they put their spin on it. Not a lie, just the next best thing.
They do this with other things as well. They have been trying to tie Iraq to terrorism for a long time. They have to or Bush would be in danger of having to admit a mistake and his cowboy ego won't allow that. The logic goes that the world is better off without Saddam. Hard to argue against that. Or is it? You see, the flaw in that statement is that it only looks at half the equation. It doesn't take into account that in the balance there are people dead. A lot of people dead. There are over 1,000 American families that have been shattered and who knows how many Iraq citizens. 12,000 - 15, 000 I believe. These were real people too. It's easier if we just think of them as statistics or as "the enemy." So when Bush says that the world is better off with out Saddam I have to say really? Is the world better off with over 1,000 American families destroyed and over 15,000 Iraqi families destroyed? Was kicking this admittedly evil dictator who was completely contained out of his job worth the cost in lives and suffering? I have always been against this war. I said it before the war started and I'll say it now: This is a blood for votes war. Bush is an evil little mental midget who is a disgrace to the American Presidency. Even at the first debate he tried to justify going into Iraq by saying that "We were attacked." Again grossly spinning and twisting the truth to justify his agenda! Yes, we were attacked. NO, NO, NO we were not attacked by Iraq and the attack that we suffered was in NO WAY justification to preemptively attack another nation. Get it Mr. Bush? Yeah, you get it. You have got it all along but you don't care. He's as phony as a six dollar bill.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
He's toast come Nov. 2.
This whole story is bullshit. If I wanted to read liberal idiot propaganda then I'd visit moveon.org, NOT slashdot.
Posting a BS story like this has only one purpose - to try to get people to vote for Kerry. Browse all the comments here at +4 and you'll see a patern of modding even the most insane "BUSH=HITLER" liberal looney tunes up, while any dissenting opinion at all is modded down.
Guess what guys, it's not going to work. People aren't falling for the BS of either side - you aren't convincing anyone to change their vote, you're just wasting your time and looking like fools.
If you're going to keep posting stories like this then change your slogan to "Leftist politics for nerds. Stuff that matters."
Thanks for the news flash!
It makes me feel better to know that Arabs can vote in Israel... Just like how I got over my feelings about Stalin once I learned that everyone in Russia had the opportunity to vote for him, too!
Yay Israel! Yay Stalin! Yay Voting!
It's all simple if you are simple-minded.
Yeah and I'm sure if they supported Bush you'd be saying the same thing.
It heartens me a little bit to know that the rest of the world recognizes our leadership is inept, willfully stupid, and profoundly dangerous to every human on the entire planet.
And that most of us didn't vote for the fuckers and would like to see them locked into Skinner boxes.
Condolessa(sp) Rice just confirmed the story in the Times then she tried to justify the administrations decision to represent the tubes as the administration chose to. Go rant somewhere else.
anyone else notice how in every other posting I can recall, when the NY times is referenced its required registration is referenced. Generally like saying something like (soul-sucking registration required). Now when they post an articale that backs the liberal lenaing /. crowd no mention is given. This is the kind of subtle bias that is common and very dangerous. Why dangerous? It is both done and noticed by the subconscience. I am giving the editors the benefit of the doubt they omitted the usual assault on the NYtimes without actively realizing it. And most readers will likely not notice that the usual "disclaimer" was missing.
All he did was cheerlead for Bush and obfuscate. It was marked flamebait because .. wait for it... he was flamebaiting! *shock!*
He wasn't flaming any more than the thread title.
This isn't about who is right and who is wrong. This is about one-sided craziness and passing off political opinnion as fact. "White House Lied" is someones opinnion being warped into a factual statement.
And in this forum, you guys just don't have jack shit to say because you're indisputably WRONG
Actually, I don't argue with people about why I support Bush. Why? Because no amount arguing is going to sway someone who has already made their decision. Its just not worth it. I have more important things to accomplish, like paying for daycare and your subsidized housing.
Ok everyone, so from now on let's wait until a major city is lying in ruin before we do anything. Or maybe give our enemies another dozen resolutions and another ten years before our plans can pass the "world test". Or, hell, let's just wait until the barbarian hordes are actually at the gates and then give them the keys...
Call me a warmonger but, especially after 9/11, I'm a firm believer in a leaning-forward position. That means taking out - read: kill - growing threats before they become imminent. For those of you Americans who disagree, I've got to say you scare the shit out of me.
The worst case scenario for the Iraq situation is that we've demonstrated you can't bluff. And, given the results, we've been mightily successful. Personally, I can't wait for President Bush's next term to see us with boots on the ground in Syria and Iran. It's about time.
(Score:-5, Conservative Realist)
I'm gonna wait until a more credible source posts this news...like Dan Rather.
Besides, I'm sure Halliburton made money on the deal!
(See what happens when only 10 people own the media?)
Sigh....
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
wow... that hour i just spent reading through this thread just whizzed by...
i'm just curious though... did i miss something?... shouldn't there be about 50% of the 'informative' posts here essentially in support of the bush administration?... i mean... where's the *intelligent* rebuttal?... i keep seeing all these damn polls everywhere that show the two candidates are running neck and neck... but when the debate comes to iraq i hear either rhetoric, discursive rambling, insults, 'crickets', finger pointing at a third part or some other bs...
what i don't see is substantiation of the statements that have been made or an intelligent refuting of specific points...
i read slashdot r-e-l-i-g-o-u-s-l-y!... for the longest time i've considered it a healthy cross section of my analytically inclined peers...
so where the hell are the intelligent repulicans?...
through bush's administration i have gone from right... to fence... to left... i'm sure i'm not alone is saying that i'm REALLY looking for a reason to vote for gw and can't find one...
is slashdot decidedly left then?
All of the news media are rife with gross and subtle bias both ways. The only interesting thing is how little it takes to throw a particular individual into a whine. The more subtle the trigger the more defensive and unobjective the individual.
You bet I would, and unlike our president you'd be sure and correct. :)
If this is news for nerds, where's the thread re: Kerry cheating in the first debate?
(No, I'm not new around here - just satirically pointing out the achingly obvious)
(Score:-5,Conservative)
Clinton didn't just lie -- he lied under oath during testimony at a trial. That's serious, especially for the leader of the Free World.
Bush didn't lie.
Saddam Hussein was a bad guy -- someone the world will be better without. Fact is Saddam's regime never complied with the terms of the Cease-Fire Saddam agreed to after the first Gulf War:
1. Violation of the 'No Fly Zone', continued attacks on U.S. and U.K. pilots.
2. Violation of U.N. Trade Sanctions at every opportunity.
3. Violation of mandatory UN Weapons Inspections
4. Finally, but most significantly, cash sponsorship of terrorism in the region.
Here's detail on how Saddam Hussien thwarted the UN efforts at containment at every opportunity: http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL31641.pdf We now know that he bought the help of the French, German, Russian, Chinese gov'ts, and even people inside the UN, with fat contracts under the Oil-For-Food program.
While these particular tubes might've been dual use, that doen't even fit into the equation. You can place these aluminum tubes where the sun don't shine.
Saddam and his cronies had 500 tons of yellow cake Uranium, which is only used to create enriched Uranium for a Nuclear Reactor or Nuclear weapons. Iraq has had no functioning Nuclear Reactor since the first Gulf War, and was not working on building one. 500 tons of yellow cake is enough to produce enriched uranium for 1 nuclear bomb.
The only reasonable conclusion available is that Saddam DID have their sights on a nuclear weapons program.
Now, thanks to the Coalition, he no longer does.
BTW - Clinton killed thousands by not protecting the American People in the face of Al-Qaeda threats. Lobbing cruise missiles at shadows, State Dept mix-ups and his cut-and-run in Somalia, and various non-responses to the many terrorists attacks abroad during the Clinton administration left terrorists around the world with the impression that the U.S. could be pushed out of the way with terror. If he could've kept it in his pants long enough to think, maybe he could've dealt with terrorists effectively. That whole Al-Qaeda-Afghanistan thing went on while he was in office.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
I suspect Bush is really a muslim extremist. He probably turned a blind eye to activities that resulted in terrorist strikes on US soil, because he knows that the more chaos the better. If the middle east is unstable, then Israel will suffer and may ultimately fall. Just think of how many terrorist activities were going on quarterly pre-Bush, now compare that to DAILY terrorist strikes (labelled insurgent attacks).
Man someone would have to work for years to develop the cover story he has, and must have excellent funding (cough cough
Bush is the ultimate Iranian mole.
Wanna talk about a tragedy?
The United Nations did next to nothing while MORE THAN ONE MILLION people died. Including Iranian soldiers and civilians, Kuwaiti soldiers and civilians, and Iraqi soldiers and civilians.
Then, to add insult to injury, the United Nations failed to properly oversee the Oil-For-Food program, which was supposed to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Iraq, and let it turn into a Whatever-Saddam-Wants-Saddam-Gets free-for-all where Saddam could import whatever he wanted, while the Iraqi people got little in the way of humanitarian aid. Certain French, German, Chinese, Russians, and select people at the UN all got richer, while Iraqi civilians continued to die.
Where were you when all that was going on?
People with short memories should not post on /.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
Dude! You're fucking insane! It's not an opinion, it's not being warped. Or are you one of those "We attacked Iraq because of 9/11" republicans?
>>no amount arguing is going to sway someone who has already made their decision. Its just not worth it.
Wow. Simply wow. So, logic and reality just don't enter into the equation at all with you, huh? It's not worth it to know what happens, because you already made your "decision"? Then please decide that walking in front of a bus is profitable and not dangerous. Like the Dilbert book's title says, "When did ignorance become a point of view?"
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Read your third sentence, aloud to yourself, again. Then think about what you ~just~ said.
Remove politics from slashdot
This is nothing but a hot bed of liberal left ideas, and nowhere are conservative ideas permitted to have any creedence, as they are always marked troll, flamebait, or some other term straight out of the leftist playbook.
The rebellion of these people against the establishment from years of being socially outcast, manifested into a powerful cynicism permeating every aspect of life and skewing observed information to suit their predefined jaded position. After searching for meaning and finally finding a niche in computers, "education", and anti-establishment/anti-mainstream ideas, the newly intellectual elite now come to spread the creed of those who would suppress the "intellectually inferior" ideas, viewed as wrong or archaic, but claim to promote tolerance of ideas and free speech. This along with the intrinsically socialist left ideas of free and open source software, as well as the destruction of property rights, which people here advocate ad infinitum, amounts to a group of people who embrace the ideas of those who would not separate them from those who outcast them, despite their intellectual elitist mentality. Ever the champion of the downtrodden, the democratic party (now hijacked by marxist/socialism) now finds itself ready to assimilate those outcast, oppressed newly intellectual elite; ready to take their cynicism and anti-establishment mentality to the promised land of equality, equality with those who are clearly not equal.... unless you expect to make it into the ruling body.
I am so pissed that this source for breaking tech news is comprised of the remnants of the former Soviet politburo and their indoctrinated youth.
So what percentage of these deaths do you suggest are invalid? 1%, 10%, 50%?
Even at 50%, that's 7500 unnecessary civilian deaths. Twice the number of deaths at 9-11. Feeling any better yet?
The extent of the tragedy here surpasses anyone's ability to quantize. Your quibbling with the numbers is simply an embarrassing distraction.
In 2002, the US Congress voted on, and passed, the "Iraq War Resolution"; go google it. Was it a "Declaration"? No. But it was good enough to satisfy the Congress itself that GWB was granted all the power he needed to wage war in Iraq (via the terminology of simply using the US military). The SCOTUS hasn't even burped on the issue.
BTW, both Kerry and Edwards voted YES on that Resolution (as well did Feinstein, Lieberman, Clinton, Rockefeller, and in total about 77 Senators who really should have known better). Hence, both Kerry and Edwards are equally responsible for the invasion of Iraq, as Bush is. THEY gave Bush a "blank check" for using the US military against Iraq.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
For the longest time I through that Americans where stupid, but instead Americans smart and GREEDY. So anything will cost me more of five cents do not care how common sense the idea is. So that is why Americans vote Republican (they can make money about it). Democrats are poor.
"And uh... if your kid is still nursing at three years of age, you maybe have a problem on your hands. Gross."
In indigenous cultures children breast feed as long as through the fifth year of life (although not for primary nutrition in the later years.)
It is very likely the American sexualization (and to some degree the "Western" sexualization) of breasts that leads people to perceive prolonged breastfeeding as "gross" because breasts are seen as sexual... "simply hot" as you so charmingly say.
The health benefits of nursing through the third year of life are well established. If you should ever have children, I hope you'll take the time to research this, and, at a mininum encourage your wife (or make sure that you do so personally if you are female) to nurse through the first year of life.
But all research suggests that the immune system beneifts, nutritional benefits and psychological value of breast feeding continues through the third year of life at least.
You want a smart kid? Make sure he/she gets his breast milk, for a long time.
(Of course correlation never proves causation, but it can support causation in the presence of other compelling arguments, which you will find if you take the time to study the issue medically, and anthropologically.)
Very well said. It's so rare to see a dissenting opinion get modded up these days, even when it's well thought-out. As others have asked, I'm also curious what you thought of the constant Viagra (or whatever the similar products are) and the at-least-as-lascivious cheerleader shows. Not baiting here, just generally curious how that compares for you...
That's what the "Parent" link at the bottom of the posts is for. The entire parent post to which I replied was some drivel about "liberal Bush bashing" by some media outlets. Some dangerous canard about "if they were / knew they were lying". I blasted that simpering with the truth about these Bush lies, referring to their own language with both quotation marks of their most heinous trick, and reference to their dysfunctional projection. That was apparently good enough for the mods. The mod system has lots of flaws, and I'm too busy ranting to worry about them.
--
make install -not war
You could argue it many ways.
Maybe cultural mysogyny and anti-maternalism reduced the nutritional role of the breast and thus ENABLED them to be sexualized...
OR,maybe sexualization of the breast came first (if you insist on the missionary position in sex, frontal coitus, you focus male atteniton on breasts... if you deprive children of breast contact early on maybe they spend their life seeking it.... just hypotheses to debate ) led to a dislike of breasts as nutritional baby feeding objects. (see the annonomyous guy who said that breast feeding at three years of age is "gross".)
If breasts are "hot" then it is difficult to be comfortable with the nonsexual nutritional sucking of them.
It is an interesting question... but we can say that almost all indigenous cultures do not share this Western sexualiation of the breast, and are much more concerned that women be modest about their lower extremities than they are about their breasts. The idea that breasts are "simply hot" would seem ludicrous in nonWestern cultures... cultures that have not been influenced by Western media, which of course are increasingly few.
What's hot to normal human males in most cultures for most of human history is what's down below.
That post was a weasel wriggle out of these despicable Bush lies about nukes, dragging us into this catastrophic Iraq war, while leaving the snakelike Iran for some other political haymaking later at huge, irreparable cost. Not to mention North Korea's new nuke arsenal. You are spinning like Reagan McNeil's head, while your boys are proliferating nukes around the world, including the US and the web centering on our "ally" Pakistan. But not including Iraq, which didn't have nukes, despite their lies. Their entire fabric of lies. That's all they've got, so I pointed out another, closer to home, almost as egregious as framing a humiliated bully as nuke scapegoat to invade their country, divide both nations, kill thousands of Americans.
And all you've got is repeating that I'm "ranting"? Yes! I'm ranting about demented liars like you, who will cry in their beer about the provenance of their condemnation, rather than even attempt to back up any of their flimsy lies. You are obsessed with "moderation", yet you are an extremist. Who are you kidding? Probably you're only fooling yourself, but your lies are too dangerous to pass unchecked.
--
make install -not war
Since you, computer science undergrads, are going to be earning more than 95% of the country and are going to be the most burdened by democratic tax hikes, you need to be a little fairer to George Bush. When an article says "inherent ambiguity of intelligence" you can't go off and say "White House lied!" When a conservative house of representatives decreases NASA's budget and a conservative senate increases NASA's budget, you can't say "NASA budget reduced!"
You can't make up your own news just because you like disagreeing with the establishment. There has to be a sensible reason. For computer science students, there is no sensible reason to be fighting George Bush. Why only report the news that opposes the president? Why don't you also pay next year's taxes in full? Why stop half way?
"The only real obscenity is war." -- Henry Miller, 1939.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
People with my specialty in the U.S. Army are occasionally required to perform these investigations. A lot more happens than you see on the surface.
I've read the rest of this thread, and I can tell you've gone through the request process more than once. It doesn't surprise me that you haven't been contacted regarding your employees who made clearance requests; as you say, there are higher priorities.
On the other hand, there are two big things that always happen, even with a secret clearance: local and national agency checks. Essentially, the local police are contacted for each area you've lived in, and the FBI is contacted to check on your criminal record. If your record is clean/you've fully disclosed everything on your record, this will never come up in your interview.
Congratulations on your clean criminal record.
However, undisclosed criminal prosecutions (especially convictions) are a quick way to get shown the door. Granted, if you tell them about it in advance it drastically improves your chances of getting cleared (a girl I know admitted to holding the gun in an attempted drive-by-shooting, and she got her clearance) but it's more about honest disclosure than "explaining it away".
Travel the Galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms...
My thoughts exactly, but said better than me!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The constitution doesn't give us any rights.
The bill of rights doesn't either.
We inherently have the rights. The only thing the Bill of Rights is restrict the abilties of the government.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Saddam Possessed WMDs, Had Extensive Terror Ties
This just came out today. And here is the report the media didn't really blast all that much (insert liberal media bias accusations here):
Reports offer support to Bush uranium claim
Incidentally, Bill Clinton said about the uranium thing--"Everybody makes mistakes."
By the way, is anyone not surprised at the skewed moderating in this article? Every +5 is anti-Bush! All opposing are kind of drowned out. Just amusing. I hope this post gets at least a few viewings.
Easy: The civilans should stop voting for warmongering nazilike bastards.
Do you mean USA civilians voting for GWB?
Why don't you start making order in your own country. Then, when it's perfect, we'll gladly listen for your advices.
There's also a strong possibility that Israel operatives planted a car-bomb in another nation. Last time I checked that was called terrorism.
You can say that Israel is our ally but at the same time there was soom hooplah about them actually having an intelligence op in the Rumsfeld office. No one has ever said yay or nay about it.
Saddam was bad, but there are much more imminent threats. What the hell is the States doing there? It's the double-standard that is so fishy.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
Shut up, liberal.
wenis.
Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
[...]
Now, the suggestion to Slashdot coders: Why not create a special section called "Ignore shitty articles by Michael?" After all, it's not that I want to exclude stories as much as I don't like my time wasted by a jackass like him.
BEGIN Translation [Neocon Doublespeak->English]:
Slashdot ran a story linking to information that is damning to my candidate of choice and my own toxic political philosophy. I resent being forced to face facts I find uncomfortable, and doubly resent doing so on slashdot where I expected to read technical articles and keep my political head firmly encased in sand.
Slashdot has a feature to allow me and others to do this, which I am touting here lest other conservatives be exposed to unpleasant facts and possibly vote against My Chosen Candidate(tm).
But this feature isn't sufficiently insulting to those who have exposed me to these uncomfortable truths, so I think the people who code this free site I don't pay for should create a new option that does exactly the same thing existing options already do, but does so in a manner as insulting as possible to those who dared post a story that points out facts which undermine my own ever more fragile filtered view of the world.
END Translation
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And how are you a nerd, and qualified to say whether or not it is news, or matters, even?
... well, there is always the option of a later divorce.
http://www.lickbushmarrykerry.org/Why are people acting so surprised and saying "Oh wow! Bush lied to us!". It was so fucking obvious that they were lying through their teeth when they were saying that Sadam was a threat to the US.
Did any of the opposition actually believe Bush or Blair?
I think he's a terrible president and hopefully won't be reelected. However, I do have what I think would be the perfect job for him and it's a job he would take in a heartbeat.
Commisioner of Baseball.
If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party.
/.tter go to church, watch the super bowl and get aroused with a teeny tiny tit flashed for just a sec?
I find this commentary inflamatory and offensive. How can an
Get a life, get a girlfriend, stop reading this and suck her dry...
I hope you will also accept that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that a breast is an organ that is part of human sexual response and arousal.
I'm not personally aware of the scientific evidence that you're referencing here, but if it does exist, would this research demonstrate that a man's nipples are different in sexual arousal than a woman's nipples? Is there a strong argument for sexualizing a woman's nipples more so than a man's nipples?
I understand your church group is unaccustomed to seeing bare breasts in public unadvertised. It is likely that members of your congregation have not experienced other cultures in countries such as Japan, Argentina, Brazil, or any number of European countries. Within those cultures, people are not ashamed by womens' breasts being displayed in public while women nurse or on posters in subway trains.
My previous example of the Taliban is, of course, a radical example of fundamentalist religion. But it is an accurate exaggeration of the same feelings your church group experiences when it sees a part of the human anatomy in public that they're not used to seeing. I'm not suggesting at all that you and your church are similar to the Taliban. But what I am saying is that it's easy for us to see how uptight they were (are)about female anatomy and how it was used to subjugate women. In other countries, people look at America in the same way over this Jane Jackson morality witch hunt.
Breaking taboos and boundaries is difficult. I can empathize with you and the members of your church. But for the health and maturity of our society, I think it's something that needs to happen. It's just something we're "not used to"-- it's not something that will harm us. Discomforting, but good in the long run.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's.
In the purpely hypothetical choice of a world with Saddam leading Iraq, and a world with someone else preferably democratically elected leading a peaceful Iraq, then there's no comparison. Clearly, the latter universe is better. If the only difference between universes were Saddam vs no Saddam, then everything being said now (as opposed to before) as justifying the war would be true.
However, that is simply fantasy. Reality is that there are more consequences of a U.S. invasion than the removal of Saddam Hussein. Reality is that we have a U.S.-appointed ruler leading an Iraq that is in chaos with violence from kidnappings to suicide bombings to open combat with occupying and national forces. Our real enemy, international terrorists, are now in the country in force whereas before they had essenitally no presence. As a result of this war, we now lack both the manpower and the credibility to deal with the genocide in Darfur or the rising threat of Iran.
So, is the world safer without Saddam? You can't answer that question without realizing that "without Saddam" also means "with the current situation in Iraq and the world". With that understanding, I think the answer is no, we are decidedly less safe.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yes, lets get the facts/complaints straight and maybe the perspective too. Israel has nukes, imprisoned the whistleblower that revealed it, ignored more UN resolutions than Iraq ever did, and launches rocket attacks from Apache helicopters on 'terrorists' in wheelchairs. o_O And now has bunker busting bombs free (technically from the US).
Again, we're supporting a nation that does not follow international law, at all, and never has, and then pointing a finger at a country with far less military resources and saying 'oooo, you guys weren't open enough'.
Puhhlease.
And people wonder why the arab world thinks that the US is an occupier and has double standards.
Just FYI, the New York times posted a similar article to what Fox news has. Just so you know. You know, so you don't accuse the NY times of any bias. Funny, though, that Fox news doesn't have any article critical of the Bush administration in regards to the aluminum tubes.
Now that is bias if you ask me.
They said there was no question. That is what THEY saaid. Nto strong, not pretty good, not a mjority of the evidence... they said NO QUESTION.
I've seen a lot of revisionist history going on around here. Lots of people claiming that everyone knew Iraq had no new WMD and that the only people who would believe such an obvious lie would be the stupid American public. As this is not how I remember it I did a little research.
m - this timeline is interesting. It seems that Iraq liked to play games with throwing weapons inspectors out of the country and letting them back in.
8 ,00.html - this Guardian story is interesting as well. Here's a good quote from the story: Mr Blix, a former foreign minister, prefers to remain sanguine. "By and large my relations with the US were good," he said, reiterating his belief that the Iraqi regime would likely never have complied with any of the UN resolutions around disarmament had it not been for the presence of 200,000 US troops in the region.
/. have axes to grind. They'll latch onto a story like this and ignore anything that threatens their view.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2167933.st
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,97499
So Mr. Blix believes the only reason inspections are going on is because we are making them go on.
And yet he feels it necessary for inspections to continue because more information is necessary: http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm.
So please stop pretending that everyone but the moronic American public knew that Bush was lieing.
When someone has an axe to grind, they grab everything that they can to help them grind it and dismiss the rest. Bush's axe was Iraq and he tried to trump up proof that Iraq had weapons. There was no proof at the time. HOWEVER, that does not mean that there wasn't doubt that Saddam still had weapons. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Oh, and about grinding axes. Too many people on
You've committed a logical fallacy that I call "argumentum ad stultum": argument from stupidity.
Any argument of the form:
X would be stupid.
Therefore no one would do X.
is fallacious because it depends on a hidden premise that is known to be false:
No one would ever do anything stupid.
But we know, for a fact, that people do incredibly stupid things every day. I mean, what president would be stupid enough to have sex with an intern in the Oval Office?
So given that the reasons for believing there was any significant threat from Iraq are all trivially false, and given that the other reasons to invade Iraq are all pretty lame, it is very easy to conclude that Bush et al are either extremely stupid or clinically insane, or some combination of both.
Evil doesn't come into it. Stupidity and megalomania are the only things required, and anyone who knows anything about human history knows that there is no shortage of either, especially in the halls of power.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Wow. Simply wow. So, logic and reality just don't enter into the equation at all with you, huh? It's not worth it to know what happens, because you already made your "decision"?
I was referring to you, not me. Given the evidence I've been shown, I do not think that Bush "lied". If more evidence shows otherwise, I would probably change my mind, but other than people running their mouths about how "Bush Lied" I haven't seen any. What I mean by 'evidence' is the facts that aren't otherwise easily explainable by simpler, less conspiratorial means.
You are the one who has already made his decision and will not sway. Thats why I would not waste my time explaining to you why I support Bush's cabinet. It would make no difference to you. It would simply waste my time.
>>My main objection, as I've stated in another >>reply, was that our current regulatory and >>cultural environment conditioned me not to >>expect a strip show in the middle of the >>superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on >>the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl >>party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our >>differing premises, this point.
Dear rambling, bumbling idiot:
You sir, have obviously not been to many strip shows...you need to get out more...:-) ROTFL
Please take your "burn them at the stake" attitude elsewhere...
Ahh... the mighty rebutal of "They Never did anything to us". Again, my "tiny world veiw" must be standing in the way. In my tiny window, the only nation we could go for with direct ties to Al Qaeda was Afghanistan. We went there, and we deafeated the Taliban and Al Qaeda regime. There is the argument that we have been unsuccessfull of course, however do you honestly believe that we would have complete peace in such a region over a few years ? Highly Doubtfull. Then there is the matter of invading Iraq. As I recall WWI, WWII, Veitnam, The Gulf War, and 9-11 were all caused by ignorant and lazy leaders failing to take initative. You can't live in a world where you rely on homicidal dictators to keep there word. Then the mighty UN, as I recall the UN was, and always will be an arguing body that does nothing. It was created as such in the Yalta agreement, and has served no other purpose. Had this been a "UN sanctioned" invasion the US would have still suffered 90% of the total casualties, like all other UN tasks. And as for Bush's economic paradigm. I find it interesting on two fronts. First, if you wish to asign political accountability to the economy, that Bush managed to pull the stock market from DOW levels at 8000 up to the 10,000 levels seen today. Then, I argue that Bush's politics have little to nothing to do with the economic colapse. Capitalism has cycles, and regression is one of them. The economy which crashed in 2001 was built on a bubble. As strong and large as the bubble was, it colapsed due to weak infrastructure and base. I would also like to address your poor grammar and sentence structure. Please, the next time you comment make words coincide so that they carry meaning and appropriate grammar. That comment is just plain horrible. P.S.: Perhaps my veiw is not narrow, it may just be that I look at more than others, and such results may eclipse your narrow mind ;)
Traitors are hung. But if we have to torture him and commute his sentence to life in prison to find out who in the white house leaked the name, so we can hang them, well it's an imperfect world. Sometimes we all have to settle for imperfect solutions.
Bush didn't really lie about the nukes. He was limitedly skeptical of intel he found desirable. That's why he's not in impeachment trials.
Several news journals, including The New Yorker, have independently identified the "Office of Special Programs." Richard Clarke separately has discussed this Office.
The OSP was put in place when Bush took office. Its charter, publicly, was vague, but the CIA soon found they were competing with it when they were told the OSP had found evidence Iraq may be building a nuke.
The CIA delved into Iraq's programs and turned up no nuclear threat intel. Within 6 months they reported and were told to try harder, because the OSP had separately found even more convincing evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Some members of the CIA, fearful of losing their jobs, scraped together what little they could to support the claim.
That CIA evidence was shown. The CIA was tricked into supporting the claims of the OSP, who used nothing but some forged documents to provide their "intel."
If Bush lied about anything, it was to the CIA about the OSP's charter. But is that treason?
Of course, instead of most Americans reading good, sound investigative journalism like this, they watch Fox or NBC and bury pointers to good info like this post in a deluge of crap about the benefits of Anarchy, and why everyone but them has failed to do enough to fix America.
Maybe you should have sex in front of your kids. There are plenty of cultures where that's automatically a bad thing. Why must sex be a shameful, private thing?
My problem with the whole halftime show was that it was boring. The whole point of the show was to shock, or at least titillate. It did that by being an over-produced, plastic-seeming event showing skin, and bondage-style costumes, etc. I'm not shocked or excited by that -- I'm bored by it. I'm more interested in the commercials than the halftime show. It's not that I don't appreciate skin, but these shows are so carefully produced that they're just not interesting anymore. Besides, the superbowl is interesting to me because of the sport. What does that have to do with football? Nothing.
If the controversy resulted in these big halftime shows being cancelled, I'd be happy. On the other hand, if the controversy results in reinforcing puritanical views, I'd be annoyed.
ou have many good points, but I don't think it is fair to make an issue of the civilian casualties of this war. The armies of Saddam intentionally hid behind and emulated the look of civilians, and use suicide bombs without regard to killing their own people.
This is a KNOWN tactic, which the US army MUST have know would occur. Civilans casualties are expected in a war. The whole point is that they wouldn't been killed if there were no war.
Futher, guerilla-tactic is normal in an invaded country. Civilan casualties should be minimized, but thats very hard.
...it's kind of funny to read all this controversy between liberal vs. conservative. Over here in The Netherlands, the right-wing conservatives are the ones who proudly call themselves liberal!!
Do you mean USA civilians voting for GWB?
Your reading skills could do with some more training (I was clearly not talking about the warmongering nazilike bastard in the US)
Why don't you start making order in your own country.
Not that you know what my country is.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
In 2003, the Iraqis let the inspectors go everywhere, at any time they wanted to, without holding them up. The inspectors said so. So Bush's threat of military force worked! And I thought that was great, right up until the time when he decided to kill thousands of innocent Iraqis and American soldiers (and Iraqi people who had been pressganged into the army) even though it had worked.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
http://ourworld-top.cs.com/mikegriffith1/refute
Did you actually read any of that stuff?
I read through the most promising looking links which purported to debunk claims that a Boeing passenger jet did not strike the Pentagon. I was actually rather surprised with just how illogical and poorly thought out the objections and arguments presented were. Usually, when it comes to this sort of thing, debunkers are somewhat more coherent. Not in this case. It seemed largely that the debunkers were simply hair-splitting to avoid honestly looking at the questions themselves, selectively addressing only a small number of issues, and throwing up very inadequate and superficial answers which break down even under light scrutiny.
I also noted in one case the use of ridicule and rudeness to bully across weak assertions rather than actually answer questions.
But most curious was the fact that one of the links didn't even attempt to debunk, (http://www.montalk.net/pentagon.html), but instead forwarded a variation of the very claim which is now commonly understood to be the best theory regarding the attack; that the object which struck the Pentagon was a small, drone aircraft.
I recommend that anybody who really wants to know what happened do some more reading and some more thinking.
-FL
Thanks for the lesson, but I do actually know how to speak English already. On the proliferation topic, from your own link:
... [t]he purpose of Dimona is widely assumed to be the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, and the majority of defence experts have concluded that it does in fact do that.
Nuclear proliferation is the spread from nation to nation of nuclear technology, including nuclear power plants but especially nuclear weapons.
An Israeli nuclear installation is located about ten kilometers to the south of Dimona, the Negev Nuclear Research Center. Its construction commmenced in 1958, with French assistance.
As for the 'threat' posed by non-Jewish voters in Israel, start here, for example, or here. Quoting the second article: "Even if Sharon wins the national referendum, a part of the Right won't accept its results, insisting that only a "Jewish majority" is legitimate, and that the presence of Arab voters among the Israeli majority invalidates the decision." You will find plenty more about this policy position if you just google for info.
Read Pynchon.
I'm sure Nerds have strong opinions about Anal Sex. That doesn't mean I want to see dick when I load /.
According to the "9/11 Commission Report" (see http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1 1.htm), "...the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management." The US government had "tended to underestimate a threat that grew ever greater...Insight for the future is thus not easy to apply in practice. It is hardest to mount a major effort while a problem still seems minor. Once the danger has fully materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier-but it then may be too late."
Just as the media blasted the Administration for failing to detect and prevent 9/11, folks are now complaining this same administration was too trusting of limited intelligence, which led them to war with Iraq. Given a post-9/11 world, intelligence on possible threats was taken more seriously, because THE RISK OF MISSING A KEY THREAT INDICATOR WAS UNACCEPTABLE!
Place yourself in this situation: someone breaks into your house and steals all your computers (gasp). When the police investigator asks you if you've seen anyone suspicious in the neighborhood, you admit you haven't been watching that closely. The next day, you see an unfamiliar driving in your neighborhood. Honestly, what do you think? Is someone casing your house? Is the driver more a threat now that you've been robbed? You don't know who broke into your house, but I bet you're more aware of the possible dangers!
Now back to the real issue...the US was attacked! After 9/11, lots of critics asked "why didn't you see all the warnings?" Every piece of intelligence was then looked at with a new perspective. Even if the Administration was looking at just shadows and ghosts, their best information they had showed that Iraq was a threat. The "Neighborhood Watch" signs weren't working anymore. The added security patrols weren't working anymore. The perceived threats still existed, and the President AND CONGRESS took the actions they thought were proper!
It seems like everyone is blaming the President for using a level of imagination the 9/11 Commission accused them of not using prior to the attacks in 2001!
Steve Kram skrama@sport.rr.com
You SO fucking owned me! SPANKED my ass, niggah! God-DAMN! Scuse me while I pack my shit up and go live at home again, cuz I am deBASED, motherfucker! HAHAHAHAHA body suit. Shit.
That'll school me to fuck with the MASTAH, won't it?
To totally agree with you on this point, let me give the instance of the Spanish-American war, where the now-deemed-to-be-accidental explosion on the USS Maine was intrepreted to be an act of Spanish sabotage.
Cuba, the Phillipenes, Guam & Samoa are now no longer part of the Spanish Crown.
Even made-up wars have lasting effects.
So where did we go after Afghanistan? That's right, Iraq. Who's next? Iran maybe? We aren't going to win the war on terrorism, because we keep invading the wrong countries.
Hawaii is next!
I've worked on the oil patch, and all the Halliburton crews I've seen were maddeningly subcompetent. Bigger? Yes. Better? Nope. "Come again when you're ready to play ball."
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I suppose that it shouldn't shock me but if you really wanted to protect the US by alliviating the threat to oil by taking out Saddam, one's administration should have a short and long term plan.
ST: protect exisiting oil supplies that could easily by used as bargining chips in "peace" or business negotiations
LT: in coordination with "ST", build a national plan to reduce the threat of foriegn controlled oil on our soverignity by 1) owning the supplies out-right or 2) replacing them with another source that IS friendly to the US or 3) reduce the demand within the US to match our own supplies or lessen the dependence on foriegn sources.
We haven't seen ANY LT plans out of this administration.
The lack of long term planning is where the Bush White House is REALLY failing.
[Unless, of course, Michael Moore is correct in his allegation that Bush was just in this war for the profits. If so, excellent long term planning on his and the Saudis parts.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie
Hold on... are you talking about the pre-Iraq invasion intelligence, or the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing?
Eh, either one. There's a difference between waiting for ALL the facts, and simply waiting for SOME facts.
Waiting for ALL the facts is yes, stupid. It's not gonna happen. Heck, you don't even know what the cat wants right now - how are you going to be sure of everything that's going to happen in the whole world?
Waiting for SOME facts though, is invariable a good idea. Now a fact of course, is something that you know to be true. But if you have an idea, and then you find something that completely contradicts that, you can't call that idea a "fact" anymore.
You think some guy, who has always been the biggest SOB he could be, has or is building some sort of weapon because that's what the evidence points to. Then your best guys says, no, that's not what the evidence points to. Oh sure, you can still believe your idea if you want, but you can longer call it a "fact", because the contradictory knowledge has robbed you of your evidence, and reduced it to a "hunch".
Hunches are good, if one has decent instincts. Hunches can point in you in the right direction to dig up the actual facts about what's going on. But I don't know anyone who's instincts are so good that they can base huge life and death scenarios in motion based on hunches alone. And guess what? Neither do you.
I was using "us" in some abstract, general sense. I have never supported this war, and spoke against it on slashdot at the time. I meant "us" the American people.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
However, the part of the war in which Iraq was actually putting up a fight was over almost immediately. The rest of it was just beating a dead horse.
The UN originally authorized member states to use force to stop Iraq from taking over Kuwait. That was done. The UN certainly never authorized the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Thus under the UN charter the war (or the second part of it, if you want to be picky) was an act of aggression, the "supreme crime" of Nuremburg, and should be treated as such.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Thanks for the plug! Glad you liked them.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I can't believe I waded through this whole thread and found myself at the end. It was a good read and I'm glad I did it. Only took about 10 hours. In fact, I can't believe there weren't more threats.
If you are reading this, you are thinking the same thing; go to bed.
~S
"Lie" implies knowingly distorting the truth. It's not entirely clear whether this is the case or not. Yes, Bush and company are unquestionably guilty of decieving the American public, but they may actually buy into all the nonsense that they are selling. Hell, why the hell else would they go into Iraq with 100,000 troops instead of 300,000 unless they really believed that it would work, that we would be showered with flowers? Yes, I'm sure the money to be made rebuilding the country was a major factor, as was the strategic control of the Gulf region, but these guys are probably so deluded they believe they really are working for truth, liberty, and the Ameri can way.
Your reading skills could do with some more training (I was clearly not talking about the warmongering nazilike bastard in the US)
I was sarcastic (and clearly understood whom you were talking about).
Not that you know what my country is.
Not that I care. Start there, then go for Israel.
I haven't voted for Sharon and do not share his views, at the time I voted for Meretz (radical leftists). However, my point is that I doubt your competence to judge Israel objectively.
How is the parent post flamebait when it's telling the truth? Just curious.
Well, well, well. Now it seems that you're a three time loser. I can't wait to see what you call yourself next. See you at number four, idiot.
Have you seen the post count on this story?
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Now on CNN: Rumsfeld: We were wrong
Perhaps these might help you: Janet Jackson left exposed on TV or Janet Jackson's Super Bowl strip
One of the Democrats' and Kerry's favorite ploys is to harp on is that Saddam had no connection to Al-Qaeda and no weapons of mass destruction. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the left continues to advance the lie. Well, now comes even more evidence of Saddam's ties to terrorism and his weapons of mass destruction. Iraqi intelligence documents taken by U.S. forces show a number of efforts by Saddam's government to work with Al-Qaeda, along with other terrorists. The documents also show that Saddam had mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction. By the way, some of those weapons, artillery shells with sarin gas, have already been found. You did know that, didn't you? The papers also show that Iraq trained terrorists, along with orders by Saddam to attack Americans in Somalia. Remember that? The particular memo in question was written 9 months before the Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu, And if that weren't enough, the documents include lists of Saddam's terrorist buddies that he worked with, including al-Zarqawi and al-Zawahiri. The former is still in Iraq, and is responsible for beheading a number of Americans. The latter's voice is believed to be heard on the latest tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera (where else) calling for attacks on Americans everywhere. No matter how much evidence comes to light that Saddam Hussein supported terrorism and that Iraq was a terrorist state, the Bush-hating media and Islamic terrorist apologists will never concede any justification for the war in Iraq. Why? Because it would help Bush and hurt Kerry...why else?
Good God, if you all think that the New York Times is actually reporting news, think again. Anyone remember the writer for their paper who fabricated stories? If the New York times reported this story, then it must be true, especially since it hurts the president, but if it's about Kerry or a democrat, then the story can't be true. You guys are so gullable.
root@allevil:~#
You're the one who needs to do his research.
Iraq did participate openly in the Cash sponsorship of terrorism. Saddam and cronies openly paid $25,000US cash bounties to the families of Palestinian Homocide Bombers. It's a well known fact. That's cash sponsorship of terrorism.
That said, ongoing investigation into the UN Oil-For-Food program is finding that Iraq was pumping millions into companies that are direct sponsors of Al-Qaeda.
See more on that here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132682,00.html
I know you don't like where the facts lead, but that doesn't give you liberty to misrepresent them ...
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
... depending on your interpretation of the phrase 'isn't Catholic'.
To say it has not been confirmed is just not true. Unless you want to argue the semantics of the phrase 'not been confirmed' ...
We've got the transcript of Clinton's testimony, the testimony of Monica Lewinski, the physical evidence (a dress with Clinton's semen) and the investigation into the matter by a Federal Prosecutor. The only proof we're missing is the conviction of Clinton for Perjury.
Fact is that there was strong evidence that Clinton perjured himself -- the Federal Prosecutor recommended an indictment on the matter. The Congress debated impeachment on the matter. No one who's stated that Clinton lied under oath has ever been prosecuted for liable.
The only reason there wasn't a trial was that he was pardoned by G.W.Bush.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
this is about as right wing a post as I've seen on slashdot and you're at +3 right now...
Now that you've cratered your third account you've gone back to posting from your previous two troll accounts.
To bad you still don't have anything insightful to offer, other than your tired old conspiracy theories and right wing maniacal vomit. Did it ever occur to you that the reason you got modded down is you? I thought right wingers were the champions of taking personal responsibility.
Or maybe they're just pragmatists, simply taking that position when it suits them (much as the left wingers do).
At the end of the day, you just have to face the fact that foo bar baz.
I'll be willing to grant that we had to do something about Iraq *someday*. al Qaida, though, had attacked us just 6 months previous, and we had yet to finish mopping up operations on their structure and support. Now was NOT the time for the United States to go in. Now was possibly the time, if you could get the rest of the nations to agree, for NATO to go in with a token force of American soldiers. Now was possibly the time for Iraq's neighbors to say enough is enough, and let Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan carve up Iraq for themselves. But now was NOT the time for a US invasion unless it could be done using the Colin Powell method.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You raise an interesting point.
There is a lot of research into the psychopathic personality and Bush lines up on all counts.
Psychopaths lie as a matter of course, but there is some argument as to whether or not they actually believe what they are saying. One of the things which makes them such effective liars is that the various physiological tells which occur when a normal person is lying are simply not present with a psychopath. The best way to determine if one is lying is to match up words to actions and see if there is any discrepancy. Psychopaths are very hard to spot, but in Bush's case, there is so much recorded media attention that he is rather like a full case study.
One of the things which make psychopaths so effective is that normal people by their own internal wiring, are complicit in their own abuse. People tend to actually not hear or see or remember when a psychopath displays one of the classic tells. Regular people rush to make up excuses for a psychopath's dangerously irrational behavior because they are measuring the psychopath's actions against the template of their own lives; the template of a person who is not self-destructive and manipulative.
The result is that the people around the psychopath do most of the work in excusing ludicrous behavior.
You can see this now with everybody trying as hard as they can to come up with excuses regarding Bush's, "Lying about WMD's". --The fact of the matter, though, is that almost every time Bush opens his mouth, another verifiable untruth falls out. He tells falsehoods all the time. The list is endless.
But, true to pattern, people look the other way, do not listen, reconstruct their own memories, and generally fall over backwards to make up excuses for the psychopath.
Interestingly, ALL psychopaths seem to be hell bent on destroying lives, destroying systems and creating chaos for not other reason that to create chaos. This is exactly what Bush has done.
-FL
Saddam HAD WMDs. They were there. We know this because HE USED THEM ON THE KURDISH PEOPLE. And what kind of crack are you on? We didn't do weekly bombing runs from 93-01; we only bombed in retaliation for stuff like Saddam's attempted assassination attempt of Bush senior.
Frankly, Bush's invasion is no massacre - we have targetted smart weapons; the Iraqi rebels make this hard by doing stupid shit like setting up bases in hospitals. The Iraqi rebels are the ones who are happy to blow up 30 of their own schoolchildren in order to kill themselves and a single american soldier. How insane is that?
I'd also like to point out that if you're North Korean, you're living in a police state and consume nothing but propaganda from your own media, and if you're in South Korea, then you only have your own country free of military dictatorship because of the U.S. intervening. When there's a free Iraq in 20 years, no doubt someone will post from Iraq saying, "Give us peace!" just like you are, while forgetting that their OWN FREEDOM was born from war.
Americans will hopefully not forget that freedom comes at a price; that price is blood, and thereafter, eternal vigilance. If you're not willing to pay the price then you will not be free, because all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. People will always be trying to take over the reins of absolute power, in the name of religion, ideology, or "the people".
1) The deferred compensation is cash, not options, so I think the reference to the 433,000 options is not referring to deferred compensation. All the stories I've read on both sides of the issue support this interpretation.
2) While the Guardian says that the deferred compensation is "up to 1m a year", I believe the actual figures have been around $150,000/year and *have* been disclosed by the Cheneys at least in some years. The factcheck article cited earlier shows Cheney has received $398,548 in deferred compensation so far (for 2001-2003 tax returns, with a payment coming for 2004 and one for 2005) while VP. (Here's the 2003 disclosure from the Cheneys.)
3) Even being generous and taking the critics' attacks on Cheney via the Congressional Research Service's ethics standards as "still having a financial interest" seriously, when you read the fine print in those same attacks, they are basically arguing that the financial interest is limited to the fact that if Halliburton goes bankrupt then Cheney doesn't get the 2004/2005 deferred compensation. Since Cheney has already earned $20+ million from Halliburton, I personally find it extremely dubious that he would make some decision to keep an extra few hundred thousand... especially given the microscope this stuff is under.
I call it smear, smear, smear. I'm still waiting for some credible evidence.
Thanks for the US government for taking out Saddam from power even if they lied.
However, my point is that I doubt your competence to judge Israel objectively.
We all judge the world subjectively.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
However, my point is that I doubt your competence to judge Israel objectively.
Everybody everything subjectively. But when the majority tells you that you are inhuman, chances are you are.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Subjetive judgement can quickly lead to wrong conlusions + chances are that it's not a majority who tells us so. I'm not justifying the inhuman acts and there are plenty of them from both sides. Life is the only thing that counts for me, I'm far from being religious, I love arabs just as I love jews or any other human, however we have a serious situation here. Very serious. Hence I can't accept suggestions like "Easy: stop voting...". From the very little I know about you I conclude that you're a smart person. Please tell me then if you really believe that there can be such a simple solution as telling 6 millions to vote for someone *you* think should do better for all of us - arabs and jews. Do you have the necessary competence? Do you know enough about the arabs/jews conflict? At the time I took an yearly course in HUJI about it and the facts, loads of facts that I can't quote here, tell that this conflict has very deep roots. Lots of terrible things happened from both sides. We've done and do what should not be done. They do the same. Do we really have to resort to the childish "who started" while exchanging arguments about the conflict?
OK lets imagine we've voted for the most liberal party who truly wants to make peace w/our neighbors. Then what? What they should do? Many quite competent people say there is no quick solution because Arafat has no control over palestinian extremists.
Even at the time of Ehud Barak when he offered a really independent Palestinian state the only answer from Arafat wat the recent Intifada El-Aksa. How would you suggest to continue the negotiations?
I don't know if you all are aware that the weapons of mass destruction they were accused of having were given to them by the U.S. when we were having our spat with Iran. However, it seems that Iraq used them all up and no longer had any. It would be similar to giving someone your stereo and then calling the police on them for stealing!
Urin1diot, don't you have anything better to do? "Call yourself next," what on earth are you talking about?
On the other hand, the news that America is engaging in torture and rape should be astounding and horrifying news to Americans. Even if one assigns equal moral weight to both acts, we have to scrutinize our own actions more carefully and take direct responsibility for them. The idea that the American government feels authorized to engage in such brutality and then to systematically conceal its wrongdoing places a burden squarely on all of our shoulders to try and atone for this crime which we have--even if only with our tax dollars--supported.
Which is part of why this story is not yet "dead". We have heard from members of the Senate that there are many more photographs and much more video than have been published, detailing even more severe abuses. And as long as this documentation is still being kept secret, the government clearly does not understand that the only acceptable solution to bad press is not to cover up the evidence; it is to not commit such despicable acts in the first place.
The majority of the planet, in the form of the UN has time and time again told Israel what to do. Year in year out in decades they ignore it
The leaders of isreal do not want peace, they could have had that a long time ago, they want war and death and destruction because they think they are better than other people, and alas the US is helping them getting away with it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hate to nitpick, but Mr. 1diot didn't say that AC comments were self-evident. I believe that he meant that bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe's comments were self-evident in that what that guy was posting stuck out like a sore thumb, ie. the posts themselves were what gave him away. Nobody was suggesting "lynching a user based on AC 'evidence'" as you so eloquently put it. You yourself said that "the account activity was damning".
Again, anyone with half a brain could "complete the dots" as you say. Anyone, that is, except for the troll who goes by the name(s) of bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe it would seem.
Biotch!
The majority of the planet...
...because they think they are better... .
Everybody on this planet has her/his own interests.
Do you really think that countries like Russia or France vote against Israel because they honestly care for the welfare of Palestinians? Or, perhaps, what really matters is their business relationship with Arab countries?
This accusation is false a priori just like any other generalization in the world. Nobody in Israel thinks so except some religious extremists and garbage like that you may find in any country. I'm Jew, I live in Israel but I don't think that I or anyone from my nation is better than anyone else. So thinks anyone I ever got a chance to talk with. I afraid you're a bit biased and fed up with propaganda. How come nobody blaims Russia for erasing entire cities in Chechnya? Spain has territories belonging to Morocco, Russia has territories belonging to Japan and everybody shut up. But Israel - nooooo, they're the true devil!
Everybody on this planet has her/his own interests.
... I don't think that I or anyone from my nation is better than anyone else.
Do you really think that countries like Russia or France vote against Israel because they honestly care for the welfare of Palestinians? Or, perhaps, what really matters is their business relationship with Arab countries?>br>
I think democracy is the only way to go, of course when one thinks one is better - the majority is always wrong.
Few admit even to themselves they feel that way.
I afraid you're a bit biased and fed up with propaganda.
Because Isreal is always innocent, and anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi.
How come nobody blaims Russia for erasing entire cities in Chechnya?
They do - but that's not relevant here.
Spain has territories belonging to Morocco, Russia has territories belonging to Japan and everybody shut up
No, not everybody. Though most commercial stations are only intersted in promoting news which they think will make them money - and now you are a priori making a false accusation.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The OP made no such assertion. It's called reading comprehension.
Much like you're doing now?
Yeah, sure. Whatever. What are you going to do now, say "I demand that you reply to this post because I control you?" Look bonch, nobody cares what you have to say any more. Go away already.
I think democracy is the only way to go, of course when one thinks one is better - the majority is always wrong.
I guess you're right. Just note that Israel is the only democracy in ME.
Because Isreal is always innocent, and anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi.
I never said so, you know that. My point is that Israel "play" by the rules of this cruel world. We're just as "innocent" as many other countries. We most definitely don't want war but we don't have a solution.
Please note that all I'm saying is that calling our government (hence us who voted or not voted but democratically accepted it) "nazilike warmongering bastards" requires a very solid knowledge of what's going on in ME. Knowledge that no newspaper can provide. In order to be able to judge one should learn the situation from both sides. Have you heard all that both sides have to say? I afraid not.
Please note that all I'm saying is that calling our government (hence us who voted or not voted but democratically accepted it) "nazilike warmongering bastards" requires a very solid knowledge of what's going on in ME. Knowledge that no newspaper can provide. In order to be able to judge one should learn the situation from both sides. Have you heard all that both sides have to say? I afraid not.
While the monkier might be a bit too strong, there is NO excuse which justifies the atrocities, so even if there are stories untold - it is totally irrelevant. (What story could make Hitler acceptable - that he had a hard childhood?)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You're lecturing someone about posting AC while you don't have the balls to post logged in yourself?
'Round these parts, that's what we call hypocrisy.
With the child tax credit ALONE, I get that. Throw in the marriage penalty relief and I get even more. Add in the fact I've never been hired by a poor man, and it's a no-brainer that Bush has done GOOD considering the recession he inherited.
Kerry wants to raise taxes on people that own small businesses. The owner of the company I work for would be directly hit by Kerry's tax hike plan. If it affects my employer, it will affect my paycheck as well.
People who support tax hikes on the "rich" are extremely shortsighted.
Making a decision on the best evidence you have is not the same as lying.
Now, the best evidence I have tells me that michael is a gay socialist. Is that a lie?
there is NO excuse which justifies the atrocities
Both sides do atrocities unless you're justifying terrorist acts on civilians performed by Palestinians (targeted against both arabs and jews).
Once again, this is exactly my point - we have a very complicated situation, there is no white and black side - both are black. This is of course bad and I'm strongly against it, however your solution to vote for somebody else (what I actually did) is oversimplified, to say the least.
Here we are again with the excuses. Rejoice then, in the knowledge that there will never be peace in that region, that you'll keep going for ever and ever.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Conflicts like any other extreme conditions can't go ever and ever. It just takes time to develop a civilized society.
You should see what happened here during the last 50 years. The whole country was desert and marshes and now we have hitech and skyscrapers. It's only a matter of time till we'll make peace in ME.