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How About a Nice Game of Global Thermonuclear War?
Loconut1389 writes "According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."
My original submission was early this morning and also had a few extras like "Doesnt anybody remember the W.O.P.R.?
...Johnny, and remember if those mean boys on the playground even think of taking your Tonka trucks, make sure to kill them first!
FLR
"Mutual"? Who has the means anymore, besides the U.S.?
if we're NEVER going to use it, how can we mean business?
I dont want to glow in the dark...
And with the snap of a finger... NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST!! Seriously, I doubt it'll be used.
DxBlog - It's where you want to be
I'll be moving to Canada.
Oh, wait, that probably isn't far enough. How much is a space vacation now? $20 Mil?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"Shall We Play A Game?"
Yes, because pre-emptive strikes have worked so well in this country before. Oh, wait a minute...
They will never stop until somebody makes the
There are still 3 people in Congo who think Bush is the best President the world has ever seen. This will teach them.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Its much harder to dig through glass than sand.
How typical, this country which "preaches" tolerance and peace to the world, never ceases to amaze me. Talk about hypocritical. How typical of the US.
....this whole Iraq mess in the first place by nuking them all? After all they "did" have weapons of mass destruction and intended to use them, right?
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
...scientists today believe they have finally solved the Fermi paradox. "Where are the aliens? Dead, all dead, in piles of radioactive rubble."
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
A preemptive nukular strike, sir.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
Why should we worry? It's not like we have a hair-trigger cowboy with his finger on the button...
This is so bad. Seriously, next time N. Korea decides to toy with us diplomatically we have more to worry about than negotiations breaking down. Next time W. says someone has WMD's, we could have him launching nukes?
printable version, all one page
coral cache
I want to be near Ally Sheedy when it happens. It may not be the best way to go, but it ranks up there!
Captain, the hypocrometer is going through the roof!
The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations.
Ah yes, because the People In Charge have been so very accurate about this in the past. This is a GREAT idea! I TRUST MY PWESIDENT COMPLETELY.
Of course, since W's administration doesn't seem to think the Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, this won't stop them.
And Congress doesn't seem to hold it in any higher regard these days. The Constitution says that Congress has the power to declare war, not the power to issue an "authorization of force".
I think this is a good idea.
Now congress needs to get off its ass and fund more nuclear weapons research, specifically, the neutron bomb, theater nukes, and the earth penetrating.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
New Orleans may be rebuilt but there are good reasons to continue the trend and empty the cities. A pandemic in the coming weeks may make this all too obvious. Information technology has largely changed the neolithic basis of civilization and additional innovations will usher in a postcivil era of much richer human choice and sustainability. Postcivil society is coming. The transition will be rough. Empty the cities now to minimize human suffering during the transition...
Seastead this.
Err... anything else dumb.
What's that? We had that opportunity? November 2004, you say? Oops.
The president already has the authority to launch a pre-emptive strike.* What the article is about is a new policy statement by the US (i.e. an international "FYI") about when the president will haul off and nuke something
*This, like the policy discussed in the article, depends on the situation being one where the President doesn't have to wait for Congress to declare war.
Once upon a time the US Army developed an atomic artillery shell that could be fired from your standard 155mm Howitzer. I have heard rumors that authority to use atomic shells was (to be) vested in field commanders, possibly as low as the regiment level.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
North Korea at the very least? Lots of places, sheesh. And there are a lot of old Soviet scientist with nothing in their wallets but nuclear warhead schematics. Come on, open your eyes a little bit.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
If a small group of evil men want to kill Johnny and his family and destroy his country and his way of life, then yes, maybe he should see about stopping them ahead of time.
The arguments for pre-empting action can be made long and hard, but in the case of nuclear weapons it just seems like a bad decision. The sheer destruction of these payloads, and devastating after effects they cause are not something that (in my opinion) be used without fully justified action. There's literally just too much at stake for the world community as a whole.
Business Voyeur
George W Bush reminds me of the thug who was going to become President in "The Dead Zone"!
(Me? Cynical?)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As long as no other country builds an automatic retaliation system without telling us. I wonder where that idea would come from?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Actually... we have gone from MAD ( Mutually
Assured Destruction ) to
INSANE ( INStant ANhilation Everytime )
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/wiki/2nd_Bi-annual _Linux_Gaming_Fest
oh sugar snacks.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
You think the wacko in charge of that nation gives a shit about doing it to us? Watch the BBC special on N. Korea and you'll understand that the ruling class of that country has less compassion than those in Orwell's '1984' (and they seemed to have borrowed a lot of tactics from him as well).
Seriously, N. Korea is a cancer and a WORLD security problem.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It may be boring but hey no hates the Canadians, well except the French-Canadians, everyone hates them. Even the French. Still, if we WMD someone, I'm moving. Anywhere. Deepest darkest Africa sounds great.
Now seen as how we use money we cant possible be living in democracy. We live in facism cause facism is corporatism, imperialisam and militarisam.
Untill that changes and people seaize to be slaves for the few. WE ARE FUCKED!!!
Happy times,
Ahhhhhhhh!!! Motherland!!!!!
End of the World
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end.php
Watch it, its great!
"Nuke them over there so we don't have to deal with the fallout over here."
make world, not war
China threatened us with nuclear attack if we tried to stop them from taking over Taiwan. I know it was a low level general that said it but that's how the Chinese do things. And having lived in China I have no doubt that they would do it.
Due to the hard-lined quotes from N. Korea about also being reserved the right to "First strike", and the obstinate Iran, this really should come to no surprise. What the announcement does is officially flex our muscle to the rest of the world along these lines of "Do NOT even fuck with us".
So to Iran and N. Korea, you better not be playing games. Nuclear proliferation will never be tolerated. If you sell those bombs on the black market, expect your nuclear reprocessing plants to be obliterated. And if you're lucky, we will spare your regime too.
Life is not for the lazy.
Read about how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Remind me again how having stupid people be in charge of weapons that could potentially destroy us all is something to laugh at?! GAAH...
The biggest threat is the fact that the soviets had/have (may still?) sell weapons to other countries so long as the price is right. On top of that, many soviet scientist could be bought for a price.
That's the reason NASA can't pay Russia to launch more Soyuz's to station to compensate for grounded shuttles, the nonproliferation laws state that the US can't exchange money for services to countries that supply arms to our enemies...
-everphilski-
By destroying the entire city the small group of evil men may or may not be in? What a winning strategy.
This is one of those things that history classes 100 years from now will look back upon and someone will ask: "Why would they ever give the president so much power?" :-)
"The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations."
GW was sure they had WMDs.
With China making recent threats of using nuclear weapons during a confrontation over Taiwan, this could get a little scary. Cold War II?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
I fear for we are Babylon and we (the U.S.)shall be the villians of this upcoming world war whether we the people want it or not.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/dod/jp3 _12_1.pdf
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Is this really necessary? Can't we just threaten to place our enemies under the protection of FEMA? That seems to achieve the mass casualty effect just fine, and yet the environmental mess it creates will only take a few decades to clear...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
While we're at it, we should spend another trillion or few on space-based neutron beams, nucular suppression fields, and of course don't forget to build an underground city well-stocked with a high ratio of (beautiful) women to men!
Ahh! Mental image of G Dubs with a cowboy hat riding a nuke over Russia!
Send in the GLG20s.
I'm not a big fan of MAD. It's fundamentally immoral to threaten to kill everybody. If it were possible for a first strike attack to be "successful", then a first strike doctrine might be morally superior to a MAD doctrine. Those are some big "if"s, of course, and obviously people will disagree about what constitutes "success", but it seems plausible that the current administration might believe that it has the ability to make what it considers to be a successful first strike attack.
To some people, the lesson of 9/11 is that ignoring international enemies doesn't cause them to go away, so you need to get them before they get you. The administration already has a "first strike" doctrine for the use of conventional military forces against perceived enemies, so it's only logical that they'd extend their doctrine to the use of nonconventional forces as well.
So, we give the authority to launch a nuclear strike (possibly starting the end of the world) preemptively to the president... no voice from the people, et al.
I mean, nuclear weapons have worked FINE as a deterrant, but I don't think others are goign to go along with the..
"Do as we say or we'll nuke you back to the stone age" philosophy
anti-american sentiment will rise... how does a policy that seems so illogical (Use a nuke... a huge huge huge bomb, to preemtively strike someone) get through?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Awesome, use the guise of the proliferation of weapons to further the proliferation of hatred for the PEOPLE of your country...I can hear 2 words echoing on the wind across the planet even louder tonight...
FUCK america
which of the seven nations Bush wants to nuke, is going to get it first? Of course, doing so may incite people to commit regicide, but I can imagine it will be enjoyable for people possessing a morbid sense of humor to watch.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
This is very scary. Bush and company have already shown how to botch a terrorist capture, attack a totally unrelated country, allowing an islamist theocracy to erupt, and sleep in while a major city is flattened by nature. Hell, doing something stupid with a nuke is about all that's left on the "to do" list. This group has already proven beyond a doubt they don't have what it takes to handle this sort of responsiblity.
Here's a scenario for you. Saudi Arabia is virulently anti-American and even anti-Non-Muslim. It is the seat of Wahabi Islam, a sect of Islam that calls for systematic elimination of the Shia and Sufi Muslims as well. Now, a bunch of Saudi terrorists drop a backpack nuke in NYC and kill 80,000 Americans and foreigners.
What do we do, aside from wringing our hands and saying we can't kill large number of civilians to fight terrorism? The terrorists bomb us, tens of thousands of Americans or Brits or French or Japanese, etc. die. No massive response against the popular terrorists' home base. The result is a population that sees the attacked country/ethnic/religious group as weak, vulnerable and in the case of Islamic terrorism, which is the majority of terrorism today, it is a "sign from Allah that the enemy is going to lose."
So we don't nuke Riyadh and kill a bunch of the people who gave their moral support to the enemy. This is the best option we have short of getting ourselves either into a guerrilla war or just letting the enemy kill us. And here's something that the hand-wringing pacifists will never accept: our enemy knows us and hates us. People who are as dedicated toward killing you as most terrorists are cannot and will not be reasoned with or otherwise be converted to liking you. Either they die, or you and your children die because after you're dead, chances are damn good they'll kill every last one of yours that they can get ahold of.
We have to kill people who even just strongly SUPPORT terrorism overseas if we can to drive home the point we are serious. If we don't, then many of those people will be saying "sign me up" right after the American paper tiger has been defanged by the "martyrs." The Iranian government is already openly boasting that we are weak and totally exposed thanks to our blithering idiots in government from Nagin to Blanco to Bush to almost all of the bureaucrats in between.
The threat is real, and it can indeed be better solved through the threat of military force, especially mass destruction by nuclear weapons. In 1992, the only way we were able to keep Saddam from hitting us and the Israelis with bio weapons was we told him we were prepared to fire off a few of our nuclear weapons against Iraq.
It really does suck that we are pushed to this point, but how else are we going to intimidate the governments and populations that would whole-heartedly jump into the terrorism game? Huh? I'd like to see some serious proposals that don't revolve around us sacrificing all of our rights and sending massive amounts of aid to these groups on a regular basis like some sort of tribute in exchange for not bombing us. And let's cut the bullshit. The Muslim terrorists whine and bitch and moan not just about the fact that we support Israel and have/had troops on their holy grounds, but that *gasp* Spain is actually ruled today by the Spanish and not those imperialist Moores. Repeat the same claims about Greece, Romania, a few other countries in Europe occupied by the Ottomans, India and well... you get the idea. Pretty much any country where the non-Muslims gave their Muslim overlords a swift kick in the ass right out the door.
Blame the enemy, not us. Most Americans do not want to rule the world. Hell, most Americans would really be happy if the rest of the world would just leave us alone and we could get our government to reciprocate to them. But I can say this, as much of an isolationist, live-and-let-live southerner as I am, if my girlfriend and our families were killed in the Northern Virginia area by an Al Qaeda nuclear weapon, I wouldn't care about freedom of speech or conscience in Saudi Arabia. Like many, I'd support anyone who would drive a nuclear bomb right into the middle of those fuckers dancing in the streets celebrating "The Great Satan(tm)" getting nuked.
For the love of God, terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality. A population that supports it and encourages it doesn't deserve to be let off the hook when it unleashes that on another group.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I imagine the reason for this clause is to destroy biological (and possibly chemical) threats quickly and easily--relatively speaking. A small warhead would do it; you just need lots of heat, and most things wither up and die (chemical bonds break and such--I think they burn off Vx over in Newport). Using a nuke ensures that you get it all.
Not that I support the idea. Let's all just assume that this means that Iran has isolated a biological organism from some sort of "scoop" satellite, and nobody at the Pentagon has read "The Andromeda Strain."
hurricanes just have to behave.
MAD referred to the Soviet-USA standoff. They both had enough nukes to kill everyone repeatedly. Their power was equal, hence the "mutual". This preemptive thing by contrast is intended to be very asymmetric - less MAD, more like a license to swat flies with a sledgehammer.
The story name seems to be a bit of a non sequitur designed to instigate FUD. There is no information whatsoever that the Pentagon has decided it might be a good idea to get into a good game of ICBM tossing with, say, France or Germany. Basically, it seems to indicate that the US may use tactical nuclear weapons (these are small nukes, and aren't generally a part of nuclear holocaust scenarios that makes good cheesy sci-fi) on stockpiles of biological, chemical or biological weapons that are under the control of hostile entities, such as Iran, Islamists, or New Jersey. If anything, the use of small nukes in these desolate wastelands can only improve the landscape, and would eliminate dangerous substances that, in the US, would send the EPA and its cronies into an apoplectic fit. If you thought naturally occurring lead sitting in the dirt was a problem, you won't want to tolerate the existence of a WMD sitting around in the open just ready for deployment. We don't want to be hypocritical, do we? So I'm all for cleaning up the environmental disasters waiting to happen in places like North Korea, Syria and Berkeley, California, before we have a real human tragedy on our hands.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
For those who are dumb enough to think that this is such a good idea, first read the article Apocalypse Soon, written by the man who was the person came closest to presssing that button in US history, R obert McNamara AKA Kennedy Administration's Secretary of Defense during the Cuban missile crisis.
Only fucking idiots can't figure out what better, productive improvements to spend tax payer dollars on.
Making the world a place nobody wants to blow up is a better goal than tempting self destruction.
The worlds population, what percentage of it is in a position to blow it up?
Hmmm, we know who the idiots are, but what to do about it.........
I'm in for a thermonuclear flaming for so much as suggesting this on slashdot, but here goes:
The Pentagon is charged with defense and defense planning. Drawing up plans like this is their job. They are there to plan for every contingency and to present every option. They are also there to carry those plans out when so ordered. They are not there to carry those plans out without authorization
The United States is a second-strike nuclear power--its weapons are both so numerous and so dispersed that no single strike could easily knock out all of its retaliatory capability. Emerging nuclear powers, in contrast, are usually first-strike powers: their weapons are few and concentrated, geographically.
Given the knowledge that such an emerging nuclear power is preparing to fire its weapons on the United States or its allies, the warplanners are faced with the following choice:
Consider the costs and the benefits: a targeted, pre-emptive strike could neutralize a military target and eliminate a threat, all in a single stroke. Striking after the fact, your choice of targets is less optimal--do you hit some *other*, less-crucial part of the enemy's military infrastructure? Or do you retaliate in kind against a civilian target?
Tough choices. But somebody has to make them, eventually.
Now we can teach those damn hurricanes a lesson they wont forget!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Is a fact after 60 years nobody would use one of those again, every country that has one knows that using them would be the end of man kind, water and food supplies so even if a country "wins" it'll lose at the end, nukes have no sense anyway you see it.
Historically things worse than those that unchained both world wars have happened and there you have it no Nuclear wars, just mini wars that have yielded more death than the sum of the biggest wars altogether.
Ren and Stimpy dont have to guard any red button again.
Look on the bright side. This should make Civilization a lot more fun. No more worries about Congress stopping my nukes when I have a democratic government.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
If the US decides to nuke arab nations because as we all know, the source of 2/3rds of evil come from the middle east, and all those nukes turn sand into glass thus making oil extremely difficult to aquire.
Yeah, I'd sit back and laugh at the irony
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
In other words, if the USA got itself into a war that was wholly conventional, against an opponent that had no WMDs whatsoever and where no claims of WMDs were even made, but where that opponent was simply better at fighting, the President of the USA will have the right to nuke that opponent off the face of the planet.
Translated: America WILL win every war it fights, because if it loses, it'll utterly obliterate whoever beat it, and then it'll declare itself the winner anyway.
That is a very dangerous policy and doesn't dissuade places like North Korea at all. If anything, they'll now take the line that America is going to nuke them no matter what, so there is absolutely no point in holding back. If they're dead anyway, then why not pull the trigger?
That is NOT a way to make the world safer. Never play chicken with paranoid schizophrenics, particularly not after you've told them that you're prepared to cheat to win.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cause I'm going to San Diego for Toorcon, and when it's done I'll stay the heck away and they can sign up for thermonuclear war all they want
It's time to get a suit of power armor, your Vault 13 shirt, and prepare for the Chinese take-over of San Francisco.
You sound like a moron and nothing else. I will provide you the stones for the WWIV commander.
"Pre-emptive" is a bit of a worry - whats to say that the US won't be wrong about WMDs or whatever *again* somewhere else?
smash (now don't confuse the above with support of Saddam - he's a prick. totally seperate issue though).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It SHOULD go without saying, but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".
If you consider what either side offers in this conflict, I think you would be led to conclude that there ARE no good guys. Consider a few points:
Whereas Muslim terrorists want to enslave the WORLD to their retarded religious extremism, the neocons want to ENSLAVE the world to their retarded religious extremism.
Whereas Muslim terrorists want to keep their women in the home covered from head to toe and pregnant, neocons want to keep their women in the home BAREFOOT and pregnant.
And whereas Muslim terrorists hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing white people, neocons hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing Muslims.
My greatest hope is that the Rapture comes soon and hoovers up all these assholes so that the world can be left to rational people.
Remember a few years ago, when we gave Bush the ability to go to war to "Show that we mean business", then went to war? Prematurely and illegally I might add. I think this is something to consider, but not with this "We don't just talk like 2 year olds, we act like it too" administration.
These are NOT the mental giants I pictured to responibly wield such authority.
--
This sig is available via p2p
Gotta leave town, gotta destroy the continent,
Spent all my capitol, girl you know he enjoyed it,
Gonna hang around till there's nobody standing,
I Wanna hold hands and talk to a saudi prince alright
Chorus:
Cold hard bush, just a twist of his lips, he'll have you on yer knees, president give me,
Cold hard bush, he was crackin' the whip, and that was all that I need, president give me,
Cold hard bush, just a kiss on the lips, and I was on my knees
Interlude:
Gonna float oil stocks, they're my latest attraction,
Gonna short 'em down, get a market reaction, yeah!
Wanna take cheney home cause he's so sycophantic,
Don't wanna hold hands and talk about the gulf coast, alright!
Cold hard bush, just a twist of his lips, he'll have you on yer knees, president give me,
Cold hard bush, he was crackin' the whip, and that was all that I need, president give me,
Cold hard bush, just a kiss on the lips, and he was on my knees
RIFF 2
Yeah my taxs!
Yeah my taxs!
Yeah my taxs!
Yeah!!
Cold hard bush, just a twist of his lips, he'll have you on yer knees, president give me,
Cold hard bush, he was crackin' the whip, and that was all that I need, president give me,
Cold hard bush, just twist of his lips, and I was on my knees
I heard a nuclear missile launched from Russia will only take 9 minutes to get to the US. Did you guys know that during the cold war both countries kept their ICBMs targeted at each other all the time? That there was a plan that in the case of nuclear war nuclear warheads would get blown up over the Missisipi river sequentially to cause a giant wave and amplify devastation? I'm sure US had similar plans, maybe not related to rivers.
This is a dangerous game these fellas are playing. I'd rather see them concentrate on nonproliferation efforts than on brandishing weapons and flexing muscle, because all it takes is one madman that gets elected as president in a country that has nuclear weapons. Press a few buttons, break an ampule with cyanide, you won't be around 18 minutes later when response comes in.
What many people who giggle at the idea of the 'giant being killed by a thousand mosquito bites' forget is that asymmetric warfare works both ways.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I don't know how many of you grew up with the Cuban Missile Crisis and neighbors digging bomb shelters in their back yards; most of you probably just had scary TV specials instead. But we really don't need to put up with this kind of crap from an Administration that says it's doing it to make us *safer*.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For the love of God, terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality. A population that supports it and encourages it doesn't deserve to be let off the hook when it unleashes that on another group. ... that your words are essentially identical to bin Laden's.
An eye for an eye, indeed.
Terrorists? They are such a small target that the chances for anyone to "nuke 'em" is pretty slim.
Foreign powers? Why would they be interested in threatening the US?
Politics it is, let's try to scare the people so that they forget about... Oh, the WMDs in Iraq (not), or Katrina and the aftermath.
Geeez.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Be careful with that word "never". It may not mean what you think it means.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
is not to play
There were 2 test towers in place that were mothballed in 1992 when the testing moratorium went into effect, but they seemed like they could be returned to service if needed.
It was interesting to train in such a "hot" facility, and if you are learning to respond to radioactive emergencies, there isn't a better place in the country to get hands on experience.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Would the US have used nuclear weapons on Iraq if they did it over again given the "proof" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
Does this mean that it's acceptable now for other nations/groups to pre-emptively use weapons of mass destruction if they believe the US is threatening them?
The deep and serious problem I have with the US's vision of a new world order is that it isn't symmetrical: the US is allowing itself to say things and do things it would never accept from others. It might be good game theory for maximizing influence at this moment in history, but it's not really in the spirit of the free and democratic ideal.
Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Anyways, I personally don't think its a great idea, but I'd be willing to go along with it... just not under this President. He's a little too trigger happy and I really don't want him to start another shitstorm in the Middle East or in Asia.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You believe in fairy tales don't you?
It was a project funded by DARPA. These "shells" are fired from a mobile walking tank's rail guns. Theoretically, it could fire a nuke that is untracable and therefore cannot be stopped.
Summary : Metal Gear?!?
Since the iron curtain fell the world hasn't really have to worry about some wacko killing every lifeform on the planet. Glad to see Bush and co have stepped in to fill the wacko position.
Why does ther rest of the world even talk to, trade with, or visit the US anymore?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
your first mistake was letting such a dull lad play around with the oval office desk buttons.
The War Powers ACT DID NOT APPLY to Granada, Panama, or anywhere else that even Clinton sent troops. Nice try, bud.
r eme_court_war_powers_act.htm
http://www.themoderntribune.com/united_states_sup
May we can stump bush with Tic Tac Toe. He'll realize he can never win!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Killing and destroying property is the least sophisticated way of relating to other people.
And: MOD PARENT UP. The U.S. government seems to be regressing to an infantile way of relating to the world.
OPLAN's and CONPLANS exist by the hundreds, you are just hyperventilating over the idea that given the unthinkable, we might actually act unthinkably, given a huge amount of extremely unlikely circumstances, not the least of which is an extremely reactionary President, and cabinet, and Senior Military Leaders who most often would advise against it.
We have lived with the Nuclear Genie out of the bottle in this country for 60+ years now. I would think that we are pretty safe from Dr. Stranglove.
Despite the idea that there are truthfully folks (read many third world countries by todays standards) who try to bury secrets, several hundred feet underground, with many entrances and exits, and multiply redundant power and communications, and nearby nuclear, or chemical plants who produce precursors for VX, or biological agennts (think: genetic engineering facilities). These facilities are completely impervious to even our smart bombs. They cannot be explained, nor do the boogie men who build, and run them for their little crews of mad scientists have any intent of explaining them. Now without giving away any secrets, suffice it to say that there are many ways to learn tidbits about these little bunkers. What would you advocate we do about this knowledge???? Let's examine this little chess puzzle?
1) We could ignore it (the facility and all that goes on).
2) We could demand the UN invoke sanctions unless the boogie men quit whatever we know they are doing, but that we cannot fess up to knowing about.
3) We could try and form a coalition of other boogie men who are making billions selling technology to the boogie men in the first place. Optionally we could enhance this scenario by demanding a UN Security Council Resolution (of course again knowing that all the folks who are making money from the illegal sales of technology (and dual use stuff) are voting members of the UN Sec Council). By this time we know full well that half the economy of boogieville is wrapped up in "defense", and particularly in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical technologies which would in the hands of most sane individuals rid the entire world of bugs (SuperVX), or kill every primate on the planet (Howbout SuperAIDS), or possibly even throw a little Nuclear FOBS into orbit on short notice and then detonate the thing over a major metropolitan area leaving an EMP'ed Stonhenge. All this coupled with the problem that the pitifully poor third world country hates our guts because the government, or religious zealots have been pumped full of lies and half truths by our own press.
4) Or after quiet diplomacy, some arm twisting, let a very delicately worde plan leak to the press that if some psychotic would decide to try the scenario above... let him know in no uncertain terms, that a small NUDET (a few KT or less) will be more than enough to destructively penetrate to his 700 foot deep little hideaway, rendering it useless as a hidden laboratory, launch facility, etc. All the time ensuring that the proper literature is available to ensure that there is less risk of this underground NUDET becoming any more danger to the pitiful residents of ashcanistan than smoking one of the heroin laced cigarettes they have smoked for their whole lives. And that since the penetrator ensured that it was several hundred feet deep before it detonated, no appreciable fallout, no appreciable collateral damage (beyond a couple hundred yards), etc...
5) Or we could put a multi-megaton, multistaged, MARV warhead one each on all of the stupid countries who sold them the technology? Or if we were feeling particularly kind, just several air bursts, about 1-5 miles up. It would change hundreds of miles into an electronic wasteland. Read up on EMP sometime.
6) Maybe the leader of the World could come up with some options I have not listed. Maybe we could bribe boogie man? How bout assasination (hey Pat Roberts got fried for suggesting that assasination could be a tool of statesmanship)? Hey I'd love to hear somebody even
Even a cursory look at American foreign policy shows we are anything but isolationist, and that these people, despicable as they are, have POLITICAL reasons behind their actions.
This is true. BUT THIS IS NOT REFLECTED IN OUR DAMN GOVERNMENT, AND REPUBLICANS ARE LARGELY RESPONSIBLE. Here's a quick example. Guess how Iran went from a democratically elected government to a dictatorship? WE HELPED. And then we tried to give the Shah of Iran nuclear technology! Way back in the day! WAS THAT FREAKING ISOLATIONIST? Is giving nuclear technology to India something that Pakistanians won't be worried about? There are many other examples of current, topical, and serious concerns beyond your little "Oh God they want Spain back" spiel.
Please, read a goddamn paper or history book.
You want the quote from The Dead Zone:
"The missiles are flying. Hallelujah!"
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Like, for instance, the weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Iraq.
Prez: These New Zealanders have banned all our Nu Clear ships - what are they hiding
Aide: But they are our Allie.
Prez: they MUST be hiding WMDS.
Aide: *slap on forehead*
Prez: *Presses Button*
later....
Aide: there are no signs of WMDS in New Zealand's smoldering wreakage. the 3 remaining people over there are quite upset
Prez: See I tol you that those Nu Clear Missile would Obliterate those WMDS! My policy works, Nuke those 3 remaining NZlanders. they might know how to make a WMD.
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
I want all you moozlim ayrab terrists who don't pray to Jesus like we do here in 'Marika and godless commie russkies and chinks to know one thing: We are perfectly willin' to use our nookyooler weapons first! God Bless 'Marika, and God bless our Nookyooler arsenal!
How ya like dat?
While there are a lot of nations that I feel especially uncomfortable about having WMDs, I cannot honestly say that if the nation I led was at odds with the U.S. (Which is not a difficult position to find oneself in) a crash weapon development program would be my first priority.
The U.S. relishes their ability to project power anywhere, at any time, and takes the attitude of being offended if someone is in a position to counter that. Not "We are pissed you are developing weapons" but "That's not FAIR!! No one is allowed to counter us! Mommy!"
With preemptive invasions and a long history of questionable covert operations, we have truly made a name for ourselves with our disregard of consquences for anyone but our people and even that is a receeding threat, as our technology puts said consequences further away than at any time in history.
It is too easy to launch a war now that Congress has largely rolled over on the issue of war powers and we feel that we can use "Cruise Missle Diplomacy" at the drop of a hat.
"Screw talking, send a carrier group" is the order of the day.
No longer do we find ourselves sending large numbers of troops into harms way 99% of the time. Our risks have been minimized to the point where considering the human costs doesn't give us the pause it used to.
The technological advantage is so far on our side, that non-conventional weapons and tactics are quickly becoming the ONLY option for everyone else.
Greg Stillson?
So, what constitutes a pre-emptive nuclear strike anyhow? The whole idea of a pre-emptive strike being to defang an enemy before they can use their weapons against you. That isn't going to work with nukes though (ICBMs anyway) since as soon as you launch, people will be able to tell which country you're after based on their vectors, and responses will be launched accordingly. Surely the US doesnt have enough stealth bombers to take out every missle site in a given country either? so what's the point of making the claim? Any nuclear strike would involve horrendous casualties back on US soil.
That's because the article isn't about the president's war powers - it is about the president (through the pentagon) announcing when he will engage in pre-emptive nuking. This article assumes that readers have some background knowledge on how this stuff works in the US.
If you want to know more about the president's powers as commander-in-chief, check out the debates before the passage of the "War Powers Act" from the early 1970's. Also, just about every other issue of the various American journals of political science will have an article on the president's war powers.
As for Bush, man, don't get me started...
I don't know if you've ever studied the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it came about because we elected John F. Kennedy. Now, I'm not saying that Kennedy was incompetent. Hardly, just the opposite. The problem was that Kennedy was percieved as being a spoiled rich boy by Nikita Khrushchev, someone the Soviet Premiere thought he could easily push around. Well, thankfully, Khrushchev was wrong, Kennedy was willing to go to war, and the Soviet sphere didn't gain a permanent nuclear strike base just off our coast. The key to international security is to show that you are willing to fight those who threaten you, otherwise your weakness is going to be exploited for all it's worth until it's too late for you to do anything but go to war.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Slashdot has migrated from tech news to "Tech News and Anything We Can Bitch At Bush Over"
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Who brings nukes to an Ice-9 fight?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I don't see how they think they have the authority to let the president authorize a first strike.
The article has it backward.
This is not the pentagon giving the president authority he didn't already have.
This is the pentagon, under the president's authority (and likely at his direction) preparing a document describing the president's current policy and the procedures for implementing it.
When they get it phrased to his liking he'll sign it, at which point it becomes an order to the military from the president.
The authority always was the president's. This is the military setting up the machinery and getting all the ducks aligned. Then if the president decides to "push the button" the mill grinds the enemy exceedingly fine with no further micromanagement required from the oval office.
For the last half of the twentieth century such procedures were in place for the cold-war scenarios: Nuclear war with certain superpowers, retaliation for chemical or biologic attacks by less-super powers, retaliation for nuclear/chemical/biological attack on non-nuclear signatories of the non-proliferation agreements, and so on.
Now the other superpowers aren't so super (though China is getting back into the game). But some lesser powers are joining the nuclear club: North Korea, maybe Iran. And other potential enemies are showing willingness to use nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks. Some of them are directly targetable. Others get major support from targetable sources.
As a result the use-of-nukes doctrine is due for an update. Looks like this is it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This means if some profiteering (read: Republican) administration has an agenda they can dummy some information and then let the nukes fly while claiming some legal justification. There would be no embarisment about the lack of WMD in Iraq as we could say they were destroyed in the fireball. There would also be no Iraqi people anymore but most of the oil would be safe.
Ronald Reagan was actually in favor of nuclear war, asserting that 'more than 2%' of the world would survive. The extremest 'Christians' that currently run the US government are literally praying for the end of the world. Rather omnicide than gay and womens rights. What's left would be a Christian American empire. Never thought I'd be happy that the French and Chinese also have the H Bomb.
that if Iraq joins the U.N., they can invade America because it's in posession of "Weapons of Mass Destruction"?
Gee, since when the US became North Korea?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/wmd-a-painful-bl
(tried to find US coverage of this story on Google News, but it seems the maintstream US media isn't interested ...)
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Every day it seems, we read about more and more people dying, more and more terrorists murdering innocent people, and we let them get away with it. Here in the US, we have been attacked so many times, and so many times, this sleeping giant has not been awakened. We are a country that talks a lot of talk, but has yet to truly back up our talk with any walk...
It is great if the President has this kind of control, yet what good is having all this horsepower and ability, if we leave this country in park??? What good is all these nuclear devices that are scattered across the globe, sitting there rusting away, collecting dust, circuits decaying, plutonium decaying and losing potency???
This country is needing to stand up for itself once and for all, and stop letting the other nations of this world bully us. We are the MOST POWERFUL country on the planet, with the largest and most powerful armed forces. We have the MOST ability to knock this Earth into pieces, yet we use NONE of this power...
If America is going to be worth anything, we need to STAND UP and take charge for once. We need to let these oil kings know that we are sick of paying such high oil prices, while they sit back and rake in TRILLIONS each year, and let them know that those days are over now... We need to fight back when we are attacked by a terrorist group, dealing such horrific attacks as a countermeasure, that no terrorist group will EVER consider attacking America again.
In the movie Swordfish, John Travolta was the leader of a group who was in charge of protecting the US. He said that whenever a terrorist group attacked our soil, they would retaliate ten-fold. His whole purpose of everything was to fight the fight that the government has chosen to sit back and watch, yet not participate in at all.
Here in the USA, we need to take charge, and show these other countries that we mean BUSINESS. We need to stop being little cowards, and step up to the plate, and take CHARGE of this...
I've posted an informal poll on my website, http://www.entertainmentwatch.com/
Feel free to stop by and cast your vote, on how you think we should handle this in the future. Feel free to reply to this posting, with additional poll choices, and I'll gladly add them. Lets see what we all think should be done, to stop this from happening anymore, and show this world we mean BUSINESS.
As far as I am concerned, America has laid dormant way too long, taking too many punches, and is on the mat. We need to get a second wind, and come back for a knockout...
Christine
Entertainment Watch
http://www.entertainmentwatch.com/
It is my understanding - which could certainly be incorrect, and I am more than willing to be corrected - that a nuclear (or nuklar, depending upon your political affiliation - I guess I'm a nuklar man myself) strike would be necessary to ensure the complete destruction of massed biological or chemical weapons under certain conditions.
It is also my understanding that conventional explosives could only serve to spread the chemical/biological agent. Therefore, the only reasonable way to neutralize the threat would be to nuke the weapons.
Am I correct on this matter? If not, like I said above, I'm certainly open to correction.
http://mediagoblin.org/
To read the full document, just
i nt+Nuclear+Operations%22
google("Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations");
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Doctrine+for+Jo
I read it carefully,
and it does not look very encouraging.
I hope that Americans will do something about it.
And now he's about to pick up SuperFlame.
Now, many Bomberman experts will tell you that despite the amazing offensive firepower of SuperFlame, your best chance of ultimate survival is to not use it...
The POINT, as *I* see it, is NOT whether the Pentagon should, or should not be thinking about and investigating every contingency...
BUT...
Do we give this power to the President as an option without having to go through Congress? with NO checks and balances?
This is insane! We have already given the executive branch of the government FAR to much power. When our government was designed it was designed WELL. There were a few tweaks that were necessary to PROVIDE civil liberties and freedom to slaves and women... See the difference here?
PROVIDE not TAKE AWAY... (civil liberties being the subject)
BUT this adminisstration has done far more damage to our government and society then ANY Terrorist could EVER have done...
I understand the need for the military to prepare for and plan for every possibility in terms of the defense of our nation...
BUT the decision to take these kinds of actions require the decision of not one single person. It is FOOLISH to do so.
Just like telling the police to use DEADLY FORCE to clear CIVILIANS out of New Orleans. Thank the POWERS that be that some of them had sense enough to see the severity and stupidity of those kinds of actions.
WOW!!! I simply cannot believe how far we have fallen...
If you give a monkey a loaded gun do you blame the monkey when he shoots some one? The current adminstration has proven wildly irresponsible with their current war powers. If you give them first strike rights you might as well plug your ears.
Parent very nicely summarized the issue at stake. I'd write it a bit differently, but that'd be duplication of effort, so mod the parent up instead -- I posted here, so I can't mod myself.
Jobs? Which jobs?
In 1985 the New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange , at the Oxford Union Debate has already won the debate regarding nuclear weapons:
http://publicaddress.net/default,1578.sm#post
Everything that needed to be said about nukes was said then, and nothing further need be added today.
The debate was won, and all arguments for nuclear weapons rendered useless.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Why can't the US use nuclear weapons if it feels its interests are threatened? I don't remember them asking anyone before nuking Japan back in WWII, and I don't remember anyone in western countries complaining then. In this day and age, one can never be to careful when it comes to North Korea and terrorists.
You've lost every war that you got involved in since the last time you dropped a nuke, and that was 60 years ago. Is winning so important that you'd do it again?
At least if he had nuked Iraq, there wouldn't have been any ackward questions about where the WMDs actually WERE. It could all have been swept under the carpet of nuclear holocaust.
Like it or not, nuclear weapons are of the most advanced pieces of technology humans have.
It's not like on 24. You actually have to be kind of brilliant to put one together.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Maybe next time Bush will authorize a strike against a Category 5 hurricane before it hits the US coast. As we all now know, standing water is a biological weapon, and we can't let the terrorist hurricanes win. (Or something)
I guess he was deprived of playing with firecrackers when he was a kid. So now he has to get it out of his system. Look daddy! I got to play with the biggest firecracker ever!
He'll probably use it to nuke an innocent villiage and he will just say "Oh they were terrorists stockpiling nukes." When asked for proof he could just say "Sorry, the proof got vapourized when the bomb went off."
He likely has also figured a way of making more money from it too.
I'm sorry, but I've been to the VRWC meetings, and those points never came up. I'm also confused, as I thought NeoCons were all Zionist, Christian-blood drinking Jews, like Wolfowitz, so where does the Rapture fit in?
And you're right, it should go without saying that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," because it's a load of crap.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Anybody else notice how they use "Weapons of Mass Destruction" when speaking off the "enemy", but off "nuclear weapons" (not WMDs I guess!) when speaking about the americans?
Please, stand up and, for the sake of humanity, don't let this happen!
So... Muslims Neocons have a foot fetish? That explains a LOT. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
In other words, not very much. Not all prisoners will ever be given the opportunity for a review - the Pentagon has already said as much and has said that it expects some to remain prisoners for life with no possibility of any court review, even on an internal level.
Those who have been "processed" have been denied knowledge of the charges against them or the evidence against them. Indeed, nobody other than the top brass and the judges themselves know if any charges or evidence even exists in these cases. That falls a bit short of a right to a hearing.
Nor have any of those "processed" been allowed to bring witnesses of any kind, challenge testimony presented, challenge the impartiality of any of the tribunal, or carry out any kind of investigative process whatsoever. They can't even question any hearsay the DoD wishes to use as "evidence".
I'm from England, and I know English history pretty well. England had a time like that, under the ruthless dictates of King John, where any person could be arrested on suspicion of an unspecified crime, on the basis of the accuser's uncorroborated "eyewitness testimony". So horrified did England become that it rose up in rebellion and demanded a written constitution (the Magna Carta).
America has a written constitution - although GWB tends to ignore it, and it hasn't been (for the most part) American citizens who have suffered - although there are exceptions. In consequence, there is virtually no chance of any kind of revolt against abuses of power. Nobody who is in a position to has enough to lose or enough to gain. Those who do - well, they're just labelled terrorists and carpet-bombed.
The whole "war on terror" is one huge unholy mess. Hey, fighting terrorism is a good idea, but you can't fight terrorism with the weapons of terror. You've got to use other methods, where at all possible. The problem is, GWB has no interest in "other methods", which makes me think that he is more interested in the fighting than in the resolving.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Seems more like a desperate move to me, considering total failure in the Middle East and everywhere else.
The "shock and awe" tactic he attempted earlier in this unnecessary war only made more desperate and determined enemies. Let's see how many more we can make all around the world.
Open your eyes. The terrorists have already won. And now your officials play on your paranoia for their own gain.
Who thought giving an old man who's waiting for the rapture keys to the apocolypse was a good idea ?
Sheesh. Sounds like the end of the world type stuff. I thought everyone had to carry the mark of the beast and such before that happened, but last time I checked most people don't even believe in that book.
Besides a few nukes going off here and there will mostly hit blue state population centers.
My advise, buy a nice nuclear-war-hedge fund for your 401(k) and you will most likely be ok.
Dead now, dead 50 years from now, and how? Do you think anyone will care in 50,000 years?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Hmm, 20 women to each men eh Dr. Strangelove? :)
Mod me as a troll, I don't care... I have to say it.
Those stupid motherfuckers.
Nice story... Tell it to Reader's Digest!
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Actually, the new strategy to take, is to hold the country who host or export terrorism as being responsible for their own action/inaction.
This makes global society well-behaved. A country that harbors and base such terrorists without identity is solely to blame themselves and nobody else.
This is called diplomacy.
Behold them to be responsible for their own land and people (terrorist or not).
Propaganda their people into thinking that slaughtering children and women are bad, unless they too also harbor misbehaving terrorists.
Geneva Convention is still effective today, once that mindset sinks in.
Then when all diplomacy fails, make white smoldering glass out of them. Then they'll pause.
The key to international security is to show that you are willing to fight those who threaten you
I would say the key to National Security is being able to fight those who threaten you. So far, we're not doing so good against Bin Laden. That's not to say that we won't improve in the future, but right now, it appears that the ball is in his court.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
I was cheering your post all the way until I read that last sentence. Is the concept of Rapture rational?
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
If you guys don't like him to shoot back you shouldn't have started it, should you?
Answer: Each thought that if they invented a weapon powerful enough, it might actually end war because the weapon would spill so much blood that no one would use it. That we would finally wake up and realize what we've done.
Did anyone bother to ask the customers what they want?
The irony of the Cuban missile crisis is that we had nukes in Turkey facing the USSR. So it's not like a Cuban base would have upset the balance of power. We already had an equivalent close base.
That being said, I'm very glad Cuba doesn't have nukes today.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
And increase funding for computers. Look at all the trouble that damn CRM-114 caused!
Well, we've had a good run. We've began reaching out into space and some of us are still interested in continuing on, but I just don't see it happening. Goodbye individuality, goodbye clean air and water. Goodbye mind. Goodbye humanity. It really was starting to look good there for awhile.
If anyone actually reads my anonymous cowardly message, that is..
/. for a long time - informative and well thought out.
Parent post is probably the best one I've read on
I don't know how many of you grew up with the Cuban Missile Crisis and neighbors digging bomb shelters in their back yards
no, but i did grow up with the big y2k computer crisis and neighbors digging bomb shelters in their back yard and riotting when the hardware store ran out of generators
The problem then is not turning into a bully and picking fights that you don't need.
Blog
The Pentagon is pretty sure that North Korea has a couple of nukes already but they don't have the ballistic missle technology to reach the United States. Currently, they are more of a threat to South Korea and Japan. They are selling their Taep'o-dong 1 boosters to Iran though, which is not good. If Iran develops nuclear weapons they can use these boosters to reach nations such as Israel. They estimate North Korea could develop booster technology necessary to reach the United States in a few years though.
with the way this president stepped up to the plate Command and Control-wise with Katrina, it's only natural that he be given more authority.
just wait till he realizes that TiVO doesn't stand for anything nuke-u-lar.
the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."
a q.us/
I think I would be more hopeful if Congress didn't also give the president the ability to authorize war against Iraq back in 2002. For some, this was seen as a way to show Iraq that we mean business. In fact, it was a means to invade Iraq. I certainly hope Bush doesn't follow the same pattern here as he did with Iraq.
October 11, 2002: "In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions." http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/ir
That's an intelligence issue mostly. It's going to take us a while to build the human resources necessary to do the job. If you are refering to the insurgency, they take twelve years, on average, to be pacified, and military action is mostly a holding action while the true battlefield is in the domestic (for the insurgents, I mean) political structure. I recomend Misagh Parsa's States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions for more information, or Jeff Goodwin's No Other Way Out. They aren't perfect, but they're a good start on knowing what it takes to win in these situations.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
the pasword is "Joshua"
Since when does Nuclear Weapon == Tonka Truck? We're not talking about a little kid (presumably the US) taking toys from anyone. We're talking about the toddler's leverage against the bully with the brass nuckles. I agree that we're not handling things the way we should be, but I think that no matter who is president, there are always things that no one will like and things that half of the people will hate. What I'm deathly afraid of, and what seems to be becoming a reality day by day, is another civil war. It seems that the democrats and the republicans are getting further and further apart and at the same time increasing the hatred and the generalizations. I live in a very democrat heavy town (and in Iowa no less) and the bumper stickers, posters, newspaper articles, everything all seem to have degenerated into an us versus them thing where everyones backed into thinking the President is a schmuck with no regard for humanity nor a single shred of intelligence, or thinking that he's doing everything 100% right. The dissent is growing, the economy is going down the tubes, gas prices are going through the roof, a fair chunk of the country is now a 3rd world disaster area, and I don't see things getting better anytime soon. We're spending Billions on disaster recovery every year, if it isn't Katrina, it's Ivan or Andrew, or tornados in the midwest, earthquakes in the west, blizzards in the east. I am starting to believe that if OPEC squeezes their fist just a little tighter, the overall stress level in the country will go up just enough to bring us to the brink of some kind of internal war- perhaps not with guns however. I think that if you add up the stress of gas, race relations, democrats versus republicans, terrorism, and the job market, we're being torn apart at the seams and the terrorists are winning. I keep getting visions of $6-8+ gallons of gas, inflation, and chaos. Maybe this is all a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly seems like things are heading for certain disaster. Anyway, for the good of all of us, please stop, research and let go of your pre-conceptions before you join into the us versus them choir.
This is only half the key. You need discretion and judgment to know when it's worthwhile to fight as opposed to when it's better to pursue other options. It certainly seems true that there are world leaders who understand only the language of force and who must be faced stalwartly. But taking that approach at the wrong time can convince others that you have become the threat, and solidfy diffuse opposition into fierce hostility.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
You should have a look at the Cuban regime to determine how it would affect the balance of power. Castro was not easily controled by Moscow, so it wasn't simply a case of Russia having nukes in Cuba, it was Castro having nukes. But you're right, we had missiles in Turkey, which we quietly agreed to withdraw to bring an end to the conflict.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. So, would these be the same WMD we found in Iraq???
I figured Bush just wanted to nuke the Blue States
After all which country in the world is the only with a track record of nuking countries they are at war with ? Very scary that the US is run (and largly populated) by yeehaw style numpties :-(
As long as the world turns and we share the same atmosphere, nuke fallout is everyone's problem.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
mother fuckers.
Duck and Cover!
http://www.archive.org/details/DuckandC1951
Even if EVERY Windows user went to the next generation and accepted Microsoft DRM, and even if THAT were the mark... AND 300 MILLION people did that, and the worlds population is 6 BILLION...
That is 5%
And, I can't beleive that Mac users would be saved anyhow, so I am not stressing over the end of the world happening any time soon.
Thanks for feeding the troll. (uuuurp)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Given the fact that the US/NATO would've had to fight a two front war (one against the Warsaw Pact and one against Communist China), anything less than nuclear usage would've meant defeat, if not stalemate, in favor of the USSR and its allies. (Manpower superior China and North Korea armed with surplus Russian tanks and artillery overrun South Korean and US forces on the Eastern front, with Europe turning into a large scale replica of Germany circa 1945 with guerilla fighting breaking out across the continent only with larger guns, more people and more ammo. US can't respond quickly enough to either front due to sheer distance, a much smaller army/navy/air force and there is little equipment that can be moved quickly enough to rival battle tanks.)
For people that don't look at nuclear weapons from a military standpoint. Here is some info on CEP, this is vital to understanding the capablities of various nuclear weapon delivery devices.
b le
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_proba
"For example, an ICBM warhead with a CEP of 100 meters will impact within 100 meters of the target point in at least 50 percent of all attempts.
Another important thing to remember about CEP is that if 50 percent of rounds land inside the circle, then 50 percent land outside it! Generally, if CEP is n meters 50 percent of rounds land within n meters of the target, 43 percent between n and twice that distance and 7 percent between two and three times that distance. If misses were exactly normally distributed as in this theory, then the proportion of rounds that land farther than three times the CEP from the target is less than 0.2%."
Your American Minuteman and SLBMs have a CEP under 10m with GPS and 50-75, without GPS, the French M-45s, which will be considerablly more accurate than anything Chinese or DPRK has a CEP of 350m. Against a hardended target, 350m with a 350kt warhead is of questionabl effectivness.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
All preemptive strikes are preventive, but not all preventive strikes are preemptive.
Preemption stops an action after it has been set in motion but before it has borne fruit. In order for an attack to be preemptive, the enemy must be engaged in an attack, albeit at a very early stage. When the gunfighter is going for his six-shooter, and the friend you've prudently stationed on the roof of the blacksmith's drills him with his winchester, that's preemption. When you shoot a guy in the back on the theory he might shoot you some day, that's merely prevention.
True preemption requires evidence, not of capability, not of hostility, but actual action being set in motion. Nobody who believes the self-defense is justifiable can deny that preemption is equally justifiable. But most forms of prevention are morally reprehensible.
Having a doctrine of preemption only means you prepare for the eventuality. I'd say it should be pretty uncontroversial, except that prevention/preemption distinction is one which many people aren't aware of. Unfortunately, the administration likes to blur the lines between these two things, giving mere prevention the status of preemption. The Iraq war was a preventive war, not a preemptive one, but the administration did its best to make it look preemptive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They don't have to survive the first strike. They have to detect the missiles en route and return fire before they land. That technology (RADAR) is not that hard. ICBM's and cruise missiles have a very loud heat signature and is easily detected at long range.
-everphilski-
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you assume that because the Soviet Union did break up that it was always going to be so. Within its limits, the SU was able to crank along adequately, even with the enormous burden of 20-25% GDP going to military spending. Western European historians, given the opening to poke around files and interview officials more or less at will during the Soviet withdrawal from eastern Europe, found that the forces, infrastructure, and written plans suggested an ability and will to roll over their opponents, whatever the trigger.
I'd suggest that the Soviet problem was much the same as many a usx large US corporation, that the leadership grew chrysler old and lazy, and their replacements' were att inept in their attempts to turn things around.
windowsSuccess and scofailure in any endevour is always obvious in retrospect.
Luke, help me take this mask off
What I like to call a "we-know-they-know-that-we-know-what-they-know" situation.
"Our pre-emptive-emptive-emptive strike will fool them!"
WTF is wrong with our government?!?!?
I'm in the middle of studying for my Chemistry quiz, when I figure, hey, I haven't check slashdot in the last couple of seconds, so lo and behold, out of the bloody blue, there's a story talking about my government giving a moron the power to nuke whoever he wants. WHY???? Where they bored? Did they feel they didn't fuck enough things up? Nuclear war is no joke! It doesn't matter what the reason or who you're bombing; nuking someone is wrong!
There's no reason and entire city of innocent people needs to be wiped out just because these idiots can't get along...
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Do you have any evidence to back up this claim, or are you just speculating?
The key to international security is to show that you are willing to fight those who threaten you, otherwise your weakness is going to be exploited for all it's worth until it's too late for you to do anything but go to war.
That's all well and good, but what do you think preparing pre-emptive nuclear strikes will cause other nations to do? If the two remaining members of the "Axis of Evil" are any indication, I'd say it causes them to develop their own nuclear stockpiles ASAP in order to deter American aggression. It's the same old MAD game we played with Russia, only this time we're playing against a number of small countries. So a major consequence of this policy is increased nuclear proliferation, and thus more chances for Bin Laden and friends to get their hands on a stolen/donated nuke.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This is actually a kind of complicated intersection of several forms of insanity. For example, Dubya's flavor is that he buys into religious forms of Armageddon, so he thinks America needs lots of nuclear bombs to join the party "properly". The neo-cons have delusions of recreating a new Holy Roman Empire, with nuclear bombs replacing the legions. Cheney is the best example of the most toys faction, as in "He who dies with the most toys wins."
In reality, might does NOT make right, and trying to sustain modern civilization with the law of the jungle is going to produce a whole lot of dead Tarzans. The more nuclear weapons one side plays with, the more weapons the other sides will want to play with, and it's the richest players who wind up with the most to lose, and the poorest players who can roll for broke. No blinking allowed.
I'm not a pacifist, by the way. I know that the nuclear genie is not going to go back into the bottle, and the only way to have real peace is if you are ready to use sufficient force against anyone who wants to become violent. However, "sufficient" does not mean "absolute and overwhelming", because there is no such thing. What the world really needs is enough good nations that are capable of working together to face down the threats--which is almost exactly the situation that existed in Iraq in the '90s.
However, I also think that the "just use of force" has an even more important aspect than keeping it to the sufficient level. That's a matter of personal attitude. The just use of force should be done with the proverbial heavy heart and in the face of true necessity. It shouldn't be imagined as a real-life version of a video game or some kind of cowboy romp, which is how most of the Rusheviks and Busheviks see it. You can actually map this all the way down to your local policeman: Of course you want your local policeman to know how to quickly and efficiently apply enough force for each situation, but I do not want a policeman who enjoys the use of force, or even one who has become indifferent to the use of it.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I think the doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strike is simply crime against humanity.
I think any politician signing a doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strike should be considered as a criminal and should stand trial.
The timing is quite interesting. Mr. Bush clearly fall asleep at the tragedy of New Orleans. He clearly missed the opportunity to show ANY leadership.
Is he trying to re-establish his leadership with making pre-emptive nuclear strike as his official policy?
Give me a break. Mr. Bush, and everyone else, who stole away money for building an appropriate levees for New Orleans should be held responsible in court for the death and damage, caused by their careless greed.
Irresponsible people like him should not be allowed to play with fire.
The whole idea of Mutually Assured Destruction has always been insane. You had the U.S., England, France, USSR, and China with nukes and the fate of the world rested in the hands of the least stable leader. Somehow we have survived for close to fifty years like that.
Now, with the launch codes and proceedures that have been in place during that time it has always been possible for the President to launch a pre-emptive strike. In a nuclear situation it was never considered possible for Congress to declare war, the birds would fly then, if anyone survived, Congress would be informed. This is just window dressing.
Yes, I served on a Nuclear Submarine in the late Seventies, I am a cold warrior.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
are never a pretty site.
Would you like to play a game?
Hmmm, in a world that lacks the big state Nuke "terrorism" to coin your characterization - the game is now open to two-bit players - AKA today's "terrorism".
Having lived through the Bay of Pigs crisis - the sound of the air raid sirens, pulling over to the side of the road, as if there were an emergency vehilcle trying to get through, and doing the cover drills into the concrete shelter below my grade school auditorium stage - replete with C-rations; I think I would rather play nuclear chess with Russia any day. At least there was some measure of reason back then.
Respectfully, please choose your poison
All your base are belong to us.
So are our enemies.
Count on them to strike first.
That's what I would do if I were threatened.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Except "nuclear proliferation is tolerated". I'm not thrilled about our relationship with Israel either. But I do have to ask a question:
What would we do to indicate proliferation is not tolerated?
Perhaps the reason it happens isn't because we tolerate it, but because there is nothing we can do to stop it?
We first made a bomb 60 years ago. Can you think of anything else that we could do in the US 60 years ago that is still technologically difficult to do today? Building a bomb just isn't that tough. We're going to have to face this some day. Perhaps the only way to reduce our chances of getting nuked is to not make so many enemies?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This is not a good power to give to someone who started a war over nothing but his own personal suspicions which then turned out to be wrong. And whose closest personal advisor commited treason by exposing the identity of an undercover intelligence officer for political gain.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
What worries me is that there are many many groups that think that an apparent isolated bomb here and there which is
conviently denied by their sponsering country/countries will not eventually lead to a full scale no holding back massive retaliation aginst the country/countries that sponsors them.
But perhaps you were thinking with all this new communication technology we'd all be able to just stay home and telecommute. That way we'd never have to go to those old, outmoded city concepts. And just like all the kinds of geeks who come up with these hair-brained concepts, we'll never get to meet anyone else cuz we never get out of the house.
Sheesh. I happen to actually *like* being around people, the bustling big city, with it's myriad entertainments and amusements, it's craziness, etc. So no, *don't* empty any cities - make them strong and alive with diverse cultures and actually learn to *live* yourself.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Sept. 11, 2005
It would have been almost impossible to imagine, during the days and weeks that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that we might someday look back on that depressing time with a tinge of nostalgia. For Americans, and especially for those of us who live in New York City, those autumn memories are filled with rage and horror, fire and smoke, loss and death; but they are also filled with a spirit of courage, community and real patriotism. United we stood, even behind a government of dubious legitimacy, because we knew that there was no other way to defend what we valued.
In a strange way, Sept. 11 -- despite all the instantaneous proclamations that things would never be the same -- represented a final moment of innocence.
Now catastrophe has befallen another American city, with horrors and losses that may surpass the toppling of the twin towers. And while many people in New Orleans have shown themselves to be brave, generous and decent, this season's disaster has instilled more dread than pride, more anger than unity. Why is the mood so different now? At every level, the vacuum of leadership was appalling, but especially among the national leaders to whom all Americans look at a time of catastrophic peril. As rising waters sank the city, summer vacations in Texas and Wyoming, and shoe-shopping on Madison Avenue, appeared to take priority over the suffering on the Gulf Coast.
Four years after 9/11, we know much more than we knew then about the arrogance, dishonesty, recklessness and incompetence of a national government that was never worthy of its power.
We saw how the White House squandered, all too quickly, the uplifting national response to 9/11. Within a few months, Karl Rove was heard telling the Republican National Committee exactly how he planned to betray the Democrats who had unanimously lined up behind President Bush in the aftermath of the attack by using the "war on terror" as a domestic political weapon.
Rove replayed his cynical maneuver at the GOP convention last year, when New York served as the backdrop for more patriotic posturing -- while the Republicans in the White House and Congress refused to provide adequate funding to protect New York from another, possibly even more devastating attack. Disproportionate millions went from the Department of Homeland Security to rural towns that will never be threatened, while city and state officials continue to lack the money and manpower to protect ports, power stations and chemical plants. The same neglectful and perverse priorities withdrew funding from the levees protecting New Orleans.
We learned how the Bush administration misled the nation into invading Iraq to suppress a nonexistent threat from "weapons of mass destruction," while assuring us that the war would be cheap, easy, and almost bloodless. The administration's predictions have proved uniformly false and its prescriptions entirely useless, costing thousands of Iraqi and American casualties and hundreds of billions of dollars. The resulting damage to our national prestige, among both allies and enemies, may well be irreparable. And after all the sorrow and destruction, Iraq may end up as a hellhole of warring ethnic and religious groups, a haven for Islamist terrorists, and an instrument of the mullah regime in Iran.
We found out why the president, the vice president, and their aides wanted no investigation of the circumstances leading to the 9/11 attacks. For nine months they'd ignored the warnings of danger, first from the former officials of the Clinton administration, then from White House national security officials, and finally from the CIA itself in the notorious presidential daily briefing of Aug. 6, 2001.
More recently, we have discovered how they failed to act on an ominous report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, just weeks before 9/11, that pointed to the grave likelihood of a terrorist attack on New York City -- and of a deadly hurricane destroying New Orleans.
And we can have n
Manufacturing the latest Intel or AMD CPU is much more technologically challenging (and expensive to set up the infrastructure for) than a nuclear weapon.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
In the hands of a President with an IQ that could be bested by a mouldy hard boiled egg and a VP and defense administration with all the moral fortitude of an LA pimp. How do I get off this rock?
...to pre-emptively strike the United States with their full nuclear and all other capability before this document goes into effect.
Our fearless leader has adopted the tactics of his chum Osama. I'm just waiting for the announcement, "And then me said to me-self, if you can't find him, become him; then you don't have find him, you see. You see us Texans know you can't BE a terrorist unless you ACT like you are it. See that's some home good wisdom; you can take that to the [pause] savings and loan debacle, you see."
why should you have to "flex your [nuclear] muscle" unless you feel weak? unless you don't have faith in any other strategy, or your cunning, diplomacy, alliances, and traditional military power?
(by a similar token, when you see a fascist poster that says "NO READING!", you know exactly what they're weakpoint is. (not quite the same, but provocative nevertheless))
the idea that this policy flexes our muscles is absurd. just like how somebody flexing their muscles is absurd; on the other hand, somebody demonstrating the speed and fighting efficiency of bruce lee is not absurd, and is pretty menacing. the necessity of having to suddenly "flex our muscle" probably means america has fallen a little behind on How Strong We Look. we're in the middle of at least one (or at least i only hear about one-- but i feel like i'm missing something, maybe it's long over?) war right now. so it seems clear that the administration knows that we're not impressing anyone with our military efforts. (and we haven't made up the ground on any domestic fronts, the fed.government can't/won't even get on top of a major disaster area
like somebody already said, trumpeting first-strike authority just prompts all of our enemies to get more serious about their first strike capabilities SO THAT THEY CAN PRE-EMPT OUR PRE-EMPTION. is it really going to come down to nuking somebody's nukes or proto-nukes?
hell if we'd nuked iraq, we wouldn't have all the evidence of ZERO WMD CAPABILITY staring us in the face. we wouldn't even have to bother with cooking up faulty intelligence.
i'm sure some trolls are going to come out now and say that the consequent arms race will bolster our economy, eliminate poverty, improve technology, bla bla bla. maybe i'll get trolled anyway, because i'm not chest-thumping, and because it actually concerns me that the advancement of nuclear technology in the last few decades has not coincided with any advancement of human civility. unfortunately, we're talking about weapons that are destructive on such a massive scale that they're only possible use is endless slaughter of civilians. the stakes are a little too high. (we already invaded a WMD-boogeyman, they had nothing, president declared "mission accomplished" with a flight suit on-- the war-mongering was bad enough, but at least it didn't involve using nuclear weapons.)
i don't want to antagonize you, but "If you sell those bombs on the black market, expect your nuclear reprocessing plants to be obliterated." is a pretty telling point. it was said that terrorists would gain nuclear weapons (and other wmds) from iraq-- but in truth they didn't, weren't, and couldn't possibly have done so because iraq didn't have anything, but iraq was invaded anyway. so it seems like we're just upping the psychosis here, and moving to a policy of nuclear attack, rather than conventional, for boogeyman nations that don't pose a threat to anybody. (or at least no more than anybody else)
can't say that "low-yield" "tactical" nuclear weapons make me any more comfortable.
Does it make any sense at all?
... given that we now know that there was absolutely no trace of WMD's whatsoever? ... Or would you have even known how big a mistake your country had made, given that some dumbass like Bush would just tell you that the WMD's were destroyed in the blast.
.... and may just force that myth to become a reality at your expense.
Lets use a WMD in a pre-emptive strike against groups that MAY have WMD's!
How proud would you as an American be if you had nuked Iraq
Bush and his cohorts are the problem, not the answer. They are the terrorists bent on destabilizing the world's security. He is a firm believer in the book of Revelations and Armeggedon
IRAN is the new target.
Within 5 years Iran plans to have the bomb.
Iran is too big for Dubyafucker to invade in a conventional manner, without massive conscription.
Iran will be pre-emptively nuked by the time they are ready to test their first bomb. Hopefully it won't result in the immediate retaliatory destruction of the USA by the nations of the world whom this attack will anger.
The preparations are happening, this is not a troll, this is not flamebait.
Go ahead and ask your local representative why your airforce just ordered new flight simulators programmed specificaly for the topography of Iran.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The Iraq war was a preventive war, not a preemptive one, but the administration did its best to make it look preemptive.
What was it trying to prevent?
The current US administration seems to be dead set not only on bringing the planet to ruin, but making sure that every body knows it and reviles the US as a result. Between it's unconscionable scorn for global warming, its war mongering, its lack of progressive values by increasing the disgusting disparity between rich and poor, and now this, I have seen American-loving people become anti-American almost universally. Hell, I've seen tons of *Americans* become anti-American.
Any use of nuclear weapons is about as bad for the planet as it gets. Even letting the most repressive regime you could imagine would have limited duration.
They'd never ever use it. ...
you had me at #!
All this tension for years on who's going to push it first. In the end it will be the cockroaches version of history that will tell the tale. So you better be nice to them now, because they could be your slave master tomorrow.
Seriously. Why not simply evacuate the tribes loyal to the Afghan regime living near the border with Pakistan and after that takes place, DTB (drop the bomb)? It would kill off a bunch of Taliban groupies and Bin Laden with them.
But I guess that makes too much sense to actually be carried out.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Eh, plenty of people wish death on every citizen of the US, the place the fairy tale falls apart is them having the real means to do so, which is generally a prerequisite for the whole 'preemptive' thing.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it...
will never have the desired effect until its used.
American justification for refusing the pledge during the Cold War was that we needed the nuclear deterrent to prevent the Soviets from invading Western Europe.
According to this article, the issue came up within NATO as recently as 1999 and NATO refused to make such a pledge. A 2002 Pentagon report also looked into new first-strike uses for mini-nukes. Modern Russia continues the no-first-strike policy.
Whether you think no-first-strike is a good policy or a bad one, I think the subject is interesting because (as this Slashdot article implies) most of my fellow Americans have an image of themselves and ourselves as a nation such that they would assume no-first-strike to be our policy - with Soviet and other "bad guys" refusing to agree. As usual, the truth is more complex.
The goal is obviously to make rogue states clamp down on potential terrorist nuke suppliers... by doing this, they will earn the right to continue terrorizing their own population until the US can get around to putting their dictator to the sword.
That will take time... and the lower the terrorist nuke threat, the longer time it will take the US to do this. So it is to these dictatorships benefit to stop the terrorist nuke proliferation schemes.
I'm not willing to wait for a nuke to blow up in Manhattan, even though it's just a blue state.
So yeah, lets just bring that back so that our kids can grow up with the same sense of impending dread looming at all times. That's a great idea...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...someone told Dubya about the big red button?
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
This sounds like it could be perceived as an act of aggression. If any nation on earth other than the UK were to consider such a policy, I bet the US would consider it an act of aggression and take action (pre-emptively?) accordingly.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
The tsar bomba, as it was tested was one of the cleanest weapons fired.
The full bomb, however would have made a very big mess, though.
BTW, something that can cause third degree burns at 100km away is pretty impressive (even if that monster bomb was impractical).
GPG 0x1B479C78
I expect you be flamed by the violence-hating idealists in this forum. The problem is the left-leaning /.'ers don't realise how violent the world is and that sometimes people need to be smacked with a big stick. They somehow think that violence can be solved with talking to an enemy who is beyond rational.
/. groupthink).
/. leftists THE WORLD ISN'T WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE, IT JUST 'IS'.
The thing that cracks me up the most is somebody will pull up a Gandhi quote about peace on this story and be modded up +1000 (that's a good ol' boy lefty). Yet if someone pulls out the story about Gandhi being a racist (google it for cognitive dissonance) they'll be modded down -1000 (interfering with
Here's a wake up call
PS. I'm not a right-winger, I despise them as well, but you left-wingers have got another thing coming if you think that somehow the 'people' are going to listen to you. You've become a party of hatred and not vision as you were in the past. Everything you do now is 'against' something. Against Bush. Against Corporations. Against War. And anybody who says otherwise is somehow spreading 'propaganda' against YOU.
What happened to standing for something new? New visions?
I laugh my ass off at you leftists on this forum you guys resemble the conservatives of the 80's. Cranky old men who hate. Until you become a movement of vision again, as you were in the pas,t there is no way in hell I'll support you and neither will the people.
The revolution isn't coming if you guys resemble a bunch of hate-mongerers yourselves.
The Pentagon only gave gave him exactly what he asked for: the capability to order a "nucular" first strike.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
With Iraq as a glass parking lot, who could prove Bush wrong? With this law passing, it looks like GWB is learning from his mistakes, and Iran and North Korea have much to fear.
typically you american's can't see past your own ego's. america is the enemy of the rest of the world, and your president is going ot have a policy of shooting first ask questions later? congradulations you just more unpopular
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations."
Hello Irak ! You don't seem to have weapons of mass destruction right now...
Don't move, we send you some !
***
"Hans M. Kristensen, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council, who discovered the document on the Pentagon Web site, said yesterday that it "emphasizes the need for a robust nuclear arsenal ready to strike on short notice including new missions."
Message to the world : You bad people stop playing with that dangerous stuff! We need it all for our own experiments !!!
***
And last, but not least, I would like to remind people of a few things about a thing called "succession"
There is this theory that some laws, made especially to serve some particularly strong leaders, can be quite abused by the successors of the strong man.
So the two problems I see are :
how can you garantee your future leaders won't abuse that power ("We had a terrorist attack in city XXX"-"bye bye Syria !")?
How could you consider Bush Junior (the man who almost died on a bretzel AND LET IT BE KNOWN) a strong man...?
Let start a war
Start a nuclear war
At the gay bar gay bar gay bar
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
This sounds like a bad turn in the plot develpment of The Dead Zone, The Series:
Johnny's adversary gets ahold of the presidency and convinces all the dumbasses that he put in position to give him the First Strike authority in order to "show the world he means business" and quickly launches the nuclear war that Johnny has been seeing since the day he first shook his hand.
Or is it fiction?
--
Place sig here
Both policies allow pre-emptive stikes. Pre-emptive strikes are those against targets that are intending to strike you. This is "do unto others before they do unto you."
France is not saying they will only strike in retaliation - they may hit first if they think someone is about to hit them. The US is not saying they will hit without provocation - but that they may hit to stop an incoming attack before it gets started.
The problem is that the US is forsaking 60 years of carefully built credibility over the WMD issue - as though the war in Iraq wasn't bad enough. This measure (the new policy) does NOT increase American security. Nation-states already weren't going to attack us because we'd reduce them to smouldering rubble. Terrorists will not be deterred because we will never see it coming, and there is no place to productively bomb in response to a first strike.
There is a bare chance that this will make a pre-emptive strike against N. Korea legal if the President feels an attack is imminent. But it doesn't seem likely to make any meaningful difference to the other stakeholders in the N. Korea question. If the US bombs N. Korea with nukes to stop an attack, Seoul will still be gone in the morning. Is this a sign that the US does not believe that a diplomatic solution to the N. Korean WMD issue will be found?
Uncheck the box on your preferences that says "Politics". Problem solved.
"A new "ramping up" of the nuclear weapons program is underway, with program funding at the highest level ever - even higher than during the Cold War..."
h tml
http://www.sfbayview.com/091504/ucregents091504.s
it's not just that they're getting more active with the nukes that they've already got
they plan to expand their arsenal and its capabilities in a way the world has never before seen
i suspect that they realize america's position as economic superpower is starting to fall apart underneath it and realize the military is the only way to maintain their position. which is insane.
while they can manage it, they could easily decide to make a grab at total global domination or as close as they can manage. while its obvious that conventional war against enemies who use guerilla tactics is something america is terrible at winning, the nuke factor really does change things quite a lot.
america has no resources left? america can't make jobs any more? then expand the definition of america, not to mention globalizing manifest destiny.
Russia and China just held first joint military exercises.
China attempts to buy US oil company and is rebuffed.
US having problems in Iraq, perhaps Russia/China see possible takeover bid (maybe with UN approval), or perhaps they are posturing over Iran.
China refers to Taiwan as "terrorists", Chinese general recently threatened to "N-word" the US over Taiwan. Chinese officials back down. (Perhaps this document is our version of this sort of posturing.)
The Bush administration has pushed policies that blur the line between nuclear and conventional war-- i.e. tactical nukes to be used "in theater". This document may be referring to those nukes as well.
China's military spending found to be much higher than previously thought. Rumsfeld muses publicly (i'm paraphrasing) "one wonders why they spend so much when they have no enemies."
There's the issue of Peak Oil (if you believe it to be an issue.) People used to fight wars over salt...
There's also the argument of the "Old Guard". i.e. the Chinese Old Guard is overreacting. (The same argument holds for GWB/GOP versus liberal American youngsters. Gay marriage is a done deal in twenty years folks.)
There's also issues with currency, world economy, and America's out-of-wack personal debt and federal deficit. A lot of that debt goes back to China and Japan.
I suspect all will be well as long as there's no total economic collapse. As long as everybody who's got a finger on the button is feeding from the same trough a war will be counterproductive. Hopefully all the Old Guard will die of Old Age before they can destroy this young man's world.
Russia, France, UK, China... anyone of those can obliterate all of North America at the push of a button
you forgot the most likely nation to wipe out the USA.....the USA
people love to see a nice police who uses the gun to fight for justice, rather than a thief to use the gun to fight for his own good.
people hate US not just because it is the most powerful nation on the earth. it is because it is powerful but also extreme selfish in these years. (sorry for most of the US. you won't aware it except you read the foreign news issued by foreign countries.)
See if Bush & Rummy had this option then, finding the WMDs in Iraq would not heve been a problem now would it? It would simply have demonstrated how good Rummies people were at destroying the WMDs.
But wasn't one of the major issues of the Cuban Missile Crisis about both parties getting out of it without losing face? Hence the installation of a hotline between the US and USSR.
Just imagine if this law existed then. It would have been seen as stated policy that the US would HAVE to attack Cuba.
Of course, this could be a good or bad thing for the art of Brinksmanship.
The scary thing in my mind is when people like this come into power. But I think it scares me even more when people who come into power would be expected to act accordingly.
Just to round out this gratuitous linking, consider the implications on MAD under a first stike policy.
But, in general, I think we agree on one thing. It's bad to look weak in front of the enemy. And reversing position is one of the worst things a leader can do. Given that, and that leaders are creatures motivated by staying alive and in power. Isn't it in their best interest not to be forced to play any card? But to have flexibility.
"Won't somebody please think of the children!"
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
People didn't generally come out and put it that way, but the people who counted tanks didn't have much hope of stopping the Warsaw Pact using only conventional weapons. NATO defense plans depended on "tactical" nukes and the threat of strategic strikes. The code phrase used it public was that an attack on Europe would be treated as an attack on the US.
"In other news today, Bush accidentally bumped the little red button on his desk that the Thermo-Nuclear act allowed to be placed there. In the following holocaust, all of China and a few dogs from greenland died. Our hearts go out to those poor canines in their last moments of suffering" No, come on seriously. Theres gonna be so many more safeguards on this damn act thats its NEVER going to be used. Can you count how many times the Patriot act has been invoked? Bet you can do it one one hand. I mean that thing has like no failsafes against it being abused, and yet it never had been to this date. No, I don't think its a good idea to be able to use nukes as a FIRST answer in any war. Yes, I do think it should be an acceptable means, as some people have explained earlier. And wtf are so many people worried about this? Do you ACTUALLY think that the politicians in Washington, at this time or any time in the future are actually going to allow ANY President the power to nuke someone preemptively? I mean in Japan we had a horrible time justifying the use of nukes, and we didn't know they would have any sort of long range effects, or of the mass devastation it would cause. And now we have nukes thousands of times more powerful and destructive. Point being, I'm glad as I'm reading through these slashdot posts that slashdot isnt as much of a "Blame-it-on-Bush" place as I thought, and theres still some clear thinkers here. Just because I support Bush does that mean I agree with everything he does? Of course not. Nobody should be 100% aligned with ANYONE, because EVERYONE has individual personalities and beliefs. It doesn't work that way. Anyway sorry for getting off on those tangents, but thats whats on my brain tonight.
"Potpourii doesn't taste as good as it smells." - Dark_Link2135
having not even read any of the other comments, im doomed to repeat something, but preemtive striking is completely wrong.
Otherwise, it would be wild west all over.
I think u r going to screw me - bang
u think I think u r going to screw me - bang
I think u think I think u r going to screw me - bang
Where does the recursivity stop?
Now imagine that with nuclear weapons.
I for one wouldn't feel safe having the trigger happy US of A going preventivily nuclear striking anyone.
They do enough damage with conventional weapons already.
With conventional weapons, other than china or the rest of the world in alliance, do you think we could beat (or even want to try!!!) the usa?
I'm trying to get modded "Interesting Flamebait Informative and Insightful Redundant Troll" *-* Please Help *-*
Killing millions of civilians just to wipe out a dozen or so people who may or may not be planning to smuggle a nuke into your country and set it off? How is that better than terrorism? Even if you know they're trying to nuke you, you can still just shoot the bastards. We have the technology to kill individual people from many miles away. Nuking them first means you not only hate the them, but you hate their country, their race, their culture, and you want to wipe them off the face of the planet, because that's the only thing nukes are good for.
> It SHOULD go without saying, but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".
Yes it should becuase its not true.
Thats like saying "one man's serial killer and baby rapist is another man's nice neighbor who doesn't make too much noise."
Your an idiot.
Well how else are we supposed to protect our precious bodily fluids?
The Soviets wanted parity. We had nuclear weapons stationed in Western Europe which gave us the exact kind of strike capability that the Soviets hoped to achieve by basing missiles in Cuba. It doesn't even have to be malevolent intent. In order for their nuclear weapons to be a deterrent, they have to be able to strike us before our nukes can take theirs out. That's all. No evil empire conspiracy necessary.
Lets play chess.
"If there's a world left when this is all over, I'd like to buy you a beer. "
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Oh wait. Try that again.
In Soviet Russia nuclear bombs fight you. Damn, that doesn't work either.
Anyone for a beowolf cluster of nuclear bombs?
Global Thermonuclear War
As opposed to what? nuclear war with Canada?
Yep that worked out so well for empires in the past. There's a reason why the US is hated and it isn't jealousy.
Osama Bin Laden is a multi-millionaire but he's jealous of you yeh right.
You know how the UK stopped Irishmen blowing up our cities. We spent nearly 30 years of getting ever more draconian and then after actually negotiating with the terrorists we've had virtually no trouble with them at all in the last 10.
It may turn some people's stomachs to see Gerry Adams being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but up until our ass-kisser leader dragged us into a pointless war, UK citizens didn't have to worry about being blown up anymore.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
So does this mean that the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illegal? Or is this a retrospective authorization?
just trolling...
"one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,"
Read a book, start with the American revolution.
Kevin Mitnick's hack into NORAD inspired the film.
For the love of God, terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality.
And, may we know, WTF do you call preentive nuclear striking? Or have you american developed smart nuclear weapons that spare women and children?
Sad how by you own words you reveal the atrocity of the idea, tsk tsk tsk
I'm trying to get modded "Interesting Flamebait Informative and Insightful Redundant Troll" *-* Please Help *-*
and you're not?
Politically there's no group in America more committed to Israel than the Evangelicals. Why? Because the Bible says that Jews must return to their homeland before Jesus will return:
[Jer 30:2-7] : 'For, behold, days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.' The Lord says, 'I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers, and they shall possess it.'
And in Ezekiel [37:21]: "This is what the sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land."
Unless we are expecting an attack from Russia, Great Britain, France, or China, we are not talking about MAD.
t ml/
t h_nuclear_weapons more carefully than some apparently have.
Read http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp3.sh
Then read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_wi
Apart from the above countries, it is unlikely that any of these so-called rogue states have anything much more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy. The first site above lists the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Note in particular:
-- No casualties were suffered as a result of any persistent radioactivity of fission products of the bomb, or any induced radioactivity of objects near the explosion.
-- The blast totally destroyed everything within a radius of 1 mile and caused significant damage out to about 3 miles.
Anyone who thinks that North Korea is going to figure out a way to send a missile across the Pacific, accurately, and manage to destroy all 465 square miles of Los Angeles, is not checking the facts.
China could destroy Los Angeles.
France could, probably.
Great Britain, most likely.
India, with 60-90 weapons, would have to place them carefully.
North Korea just can't do it
Which is not to say that hitting Los Angeles with even one nuclear warhead wouldn't hurt.
But consider the situation about a day after that, when the country that launched against Los Angeles isn't there anymore, and the US has used perhaps 5% of its arsenal.
MAD indeed.
The moderators will go absolutely apeshit on my ass here, but what the hell:
Consider the USA as a third-world dictatorship with an overabundance of natural resources/wealth.
How would such a dictatorship behave?
When it needs oil, what would it do? Would have a phenomenally high prison population? How would it treat its poor? How would it treat corporations that were investing in its country? Would it put more money into its military than in public services?
When it needs cheap fruit, would it set up bananna republics? Would it sign any global laws/mandates that would require it to make concessions? Would it pay back any tariffs it stole from its neighbours? Would it support the UN? Would it start wars based on lies? Could it use religion to suppress the masses? Would its education system be very good? Would it offer socialized healthcare?
Being the biggest badass on the face of the planet, what sort of nuclear policies would a US-sized dictatorship hold?
Things that make you go hmmmm.
For the record, I don't think the USA is a dictatorship. But many of its behaviours seem to closely parallel those one would expect of a dictatorship.
At any rate, I find it an interesting intellectual exercise.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
My grandparent -- your parent -- was a total troll and you're right to satirize him. For shame. Slashdot is so predictably knee-jerk liberal that the only reasonable explanation can be that the median posting age is 15.
Who is the enemy here? I hope they don't intend to use nukes on countries "which we know almost for certain have weapons of mass destruction" or something similar vague.
It seems to me that the US is acting like they have a clearly defined enemy, like the Soviet Union back then.
This move is more like a world-police / aka fascist state descision.
Greetings, Professor Fuck-up.
In Sweden the gas prices is already $6 bucks a gallon, but that may be because about half of that is 'environment' taxes :) It's about this high all over europe though. But we don't kill each other at the gas station over that, so dunno about chaos :) :)
Oil is still our only viable source of energy except nuclear (as in powerplant)
It's still so here in sweden even thou about 50% of our electric power comes from hydro/water powerplants wich is very very high percentage, but those last 50 or so % needs to come from other sources, hydroplants aren't environmentfriendly exactly (takes up alot of land wich it 'engineers') neither are the coal and oil plants we build/run in other countrys, coal/oil kills, the cost in human life is pretty high, its not a good thing, but when nuclear is 'banned' here and the remaining reactors are shut of every couple of yours the powercompany have no choise. I wonder what w'll do when we have no nuclear and no oil
Where not moving away from oil as powersource a bit. Hydrogen is powerstorage, we need electric power from a nuclear plant to make it, Ethanol biodiesel and other renewable 'fosil'fuels are even bader for the environment, it takes up way to much resources, it releases co2 and destroys soil and cost many times higher to produce.
Oil, nuclear, beta voltaics (aka fusion batteries) is really the only things we got except hydro, solar and wind wich don't cover to whole consumption.
One thing is sure thou the time of virtually free gasoline (it's still really cheap in us) and free gas is over.
The president could declare that [insert country here] has WMD that 'according to confidential intelligence which will remain classified indefinitely' are an imminent threat to the US. Then he nukes whoever he feels like, and there will be no way to know whether there actually were any WMD, except waiting the 50 years or so for the radioactivity to die down enough. Had this been in place during the recent war in Iraq, Bush could have used this to nuke Iraq, and no one would ever have know for certain that he'd lied about the danger.
If this is what freedom and democracy is like, maybe we ought to reconsider dictatorships.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
True; and this plan is not designed against countries with more than a handful of missiles. This plan is written against a country that has only one or two "sites" that may or may not have contained the missiles, after the neutrons settle. Such an attack can be easily done using bombers. Even cruise missiles are not reliable enough.
But even if you were right, deterrence will still inevitable fail for 5 Reasons. (That is, no good can come from US Nuclear Threats). Scott Sagan, Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University "The Commitment Trap" _International Security_ 2000 p. 85-ff (http://openurl.ingenta.com/content?genre=article& issn=0162-2889&volume=24&issue=4&spage=85 )
What is relevant, however, is to think through how deterrence might fail despite the United States' having made a credible threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Although it is not possible to assign relative probabilities to such scenarios,
That has to be the most ignorant thing I've ever heard anyone say. Well, aside from pretty much anything Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell have to say.
Well, 2003 actually. The US had troops in Saudi Arabia to enforce the no-fly zone in iraq. Then the Iraq war broke out and we essentially moved those troops (and many more) to Iraq. Yeah...I'm sure that made those muslims who were so protective of their land happy and they have no more reason to feel like they're being invaded, right?
Not that I support removing troops from Iraq now. I was against the war back before it started, but the only thing that would be worse than that ill-conceived invasion would be to now wash our hands of the incident and tell the new government to go deal with their own problems. We dug ourselves into one big hole out of which there's no easy way. Essentially, the grandparent was right though...instead of trying to gain these people's support and stop terrorism by removing the incentive and Osama's excuses, we went and pissed them off more. Now we can't leave, and just have to weather it out until someone smarter than I am can come up with a better solution.
However, if you're thinking the better solution is to go and nuke anyone pre-emptively...well, you're just nuts, and I'm glad you don't have the power to do so (I have to believe even Bush understands that, if for no other reason than optmism).
I always find it funny to analyze the pro-war people, like the one in the post that started all this. They say things like "terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality. A population that supports it and encourages it doesn't deserve to be let off the hook when it unleashes that on another group." while at the same time saying things like "I'd support anyone who would drive a nuclear bomb right into the middle of those fuckers dancing in the streets celebrating "The Great Satan(tm)" getting nuked." Dude, you are obviously NO DIFFERENT. When something disastrous like 9/11 happens, as much as it is painful to us, the virtuous thing to do is to get out of the "we must have our revenge" mindset and into the "how can we prevent this from happening again" one. You can't bring the dead ones back to life, and killing people who didn't have anything to do with it because they bought into the propaganda that we are 'The Great Satan' is just going to enforce the notion that we are indeed 'The Great Satan' to anyone that survives.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I hope you're refering to your grandparent, other wise I'd suggest that you read a book about the American revolution. Learn about Richard and William Howe, sent by the British to meet with representives of the Continental Congress to reach a compromise at the start of the rebellion (Surely something a country would do if they considered their enemies terrorists). And while American revolutionaries were considered traitors by many British, "traitor" is not a synonym for "terrorist."
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
So hows that working out for you?
So John Titor was right?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
[the President calls the Soviet Premier]
President Merkin Muffley: [to Kissoff] Hello?... Ah... I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes... Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri... Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha... Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb... The *Bomb*, Dmitri... The *hydrogen* bomb!... Well now, what happened is... ah... one of our base commanders, he had a sort of... well, he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... he went and did a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes... to attack your country... Ah... Well, let me finish, Dmitri... Let me finish, Dmitri... Well listen, how do you think I feel about it?... Can you *imagine* how I feel about it, Dmitri?... Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello?... *Of course* I like to speak to you!... *Of course* I like to say hello!... Not now, but anytime, Dmitri. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened... It's a *friendly* call. Of course it's a friendly call... Listen, if it wasn't friendly... you probably wouldn't have even got it... They will *not* reach their targets for at least another hour... I am... I am positive, Dmitri... Listen, I've been all over this with your ambassador. It is not a trick... Well, I'll tell you. We'd like to give your air staff a complete run-down on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes... Yes! I mean i-i-i-if we're unable to recall the planes, then... I'd say that, ah... well, ah... we're just gonna have to help you destroy them, Dmitri... I know they're our boys... All right, well listen now. Who should we call?... *Who* should we call, Dmitri? The... wha-whe, the People... you, sorry, you faded away there... The People's Central Air Defense Headquarters... Where is that, Dmitri?... In Omsk... Right... Yes... Oh, you'll call them first, will you?... Uh-huh... Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitri?... Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Omsk information... Ah-ah-eh-uhm-hm... I'm sorry, too, Dmitri... I'm very sorry... *All right*, you're sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well... I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are... So we're both sorry, all right?... All right.
(Source: imdb quotes)
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Davy-Croc kett-(nuclear-device)
The Davy was a recoilless rifle that fired 1 kiloton nukes and was developed years ago. Yes, there are 155mm nuclear rounds (some are rocket propelled and laser guided) in addition to VX, blister, mine deploying, etc. Do not be surprised at the disgusting genius of weapons designers. There exist some truly horrific means of mass murder and nuclear munitions is just one. Personally nukes don't scare me as much any more. They are fairly easy to track, difficult to build and deliver and suffer from scalibility and engineering issues to make the big ones. There is also a certain stigma attached to them.
Biological weapons scare the living shit out of me. They are difficult to develop, but can be easily mass produced and delivered. They kill indescriminately and can be made self sustaining. What is worse is that to defeat them, you have to devlopment them in the first place (this is the conundrum of any weapons research).
Let's all just try to get along, okay?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
People should be scared shitless that the man who wants this kind of power is the same man who says that he talks to God and that God told him to invade Iraq.
And people pay to subscribe to this shit! ROFL...
Somehow I doubt that if I drew some of my favorite comparisons between terrorists and secular progressives I would get +5 insightful...
But what the hell:
-Both hate Bush
-Both hate Christians
-Both are saved by the ACLU
Massively informative.
To say nothing of the fact that the scariest scenario vis a vis Pakistan is NOT a Pakistani publicly-state-sanctioned nuke attack but rather the leaking of fissile materials into the hands of Islamists.
Pakistan's terrorist training camps are legion; how many of the UK bombers logged time at one or another of these? [Point: state-sponsorship of terrorism would not be a new charge against that country].
And after that you'd go out in the streets waving the American Flag, celebrating all those fuckers getting nuked?
That sound you just heard? It's the sound of a million neurons firing in your brain, causing you to finally understand what the motivation behind the actions of those crazy fuckers are. They're idiots just like you who want to act on their immediate emotions rather than reason. With that one sentence you proved that if you had been born elsewhere, you'd be the one strapping explosives to yourself.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that you can step back, and realize how complex the problem is and that violence alone can't solve it. Military strikes on people and organizations doing something against us: yes. Killing innocents for speaking their minds regardless of whether they actually did anything against us or not makes you as bad as the terrorists.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
and the Soviet sphere didn't gain a permanent nuclear strike base just off our coast
Let us discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis. The REAL reason why the Soviets went ahead to put nuclear missiles into Cuba was that the Soviet Union was merely returning a favor.
You see, the USA had already planted nuclear missiles into Turkey. Did you know that? And the location of Turkey happens to be just outside the Russian border.
So the Soviet Union was merely extending the courtesy of hauling nuclear missiles next to the other guy's border, and then having had a taste of their own medicine, USA freaked out. When the missile crisis ended, USA agreed to pull out their missiles in Turkey (a little bit delayed though, so that it wouldn't seem that it was the real reason).
The key to international security is really just common sense and respect from all parties. Hauling up nukes to someones backyard and expecting them to accept it is not common sense. Crying wolf when they do the same to you is also not common sense (since you sort of asked for it)?
For more information, have a read.
I do not moderate.
I'm not saying that a first strike option should be completely off the table for it certainly wasn't during the time of the great Soviet standoff but thank god cooler heads prevailed on both sides. I for one certainly don't think Bush or his regime represents cooler heads. Quite to the contrary in fact. The Bush administration has indeed used the capabilities of the United States in a most irresponsible and capricious manner. The world suffers as a consequence and on that basis this administration asks for more power? This is a matter for serious consideration? If Bush was my kid he would be grounded indefinitly.
But this president and his core group should not be held totally to blame. Considering Iraq, where was the intelligence community and perhaps more important, where was the Congress? What happened to the checks and balances? What happened to meaningfull debate and diliberation? And how could such a relatively small group hijack our government and short ciruit due and prudent process in their rush to war? In light of the post invasion reality and the improved clarity of hindsight, a substantial arguement could be made that these United States should not have Weapons of Mass Destruction for we can't be trusted with them.
Does not the world tremble at the prospect of this Bush Regime pulling yet another boner and unleashing nuclear hell upon the planet for reasons ill-defined and poorly understood if not outright the result of some baseless paranoid delusion. Worse that this latest Iraq Attack was an act of misdirection, a perverse hatchling of a scheme taken wing on the opportunity of 911. Given our understanding of circumstances as they exist today, and in our continual quest to better that understanding, we simply must turn our attention inward and ask just what resident evil has invaded the body politic securing the Whitehouse with such malignancy and how in America could this happen.
If I were to fear that upon due consideration the American people in their absolute anger rose up pitchforks and torches to the lamp posts with corpses, my greater fear would be that they wouldn't. That this spoiled prince of paranoia, perversion and propoganda is allowed even greater liberty in defiling America once Beautiful as she lays chained upon the sacrifical alter of Empire. A citizenry frozen in disbelief and dibilitating denial at the debauchery as her blood turns the landscape surreal. The dream was for suckers after all.
1: Define "neocon".
2: Cite some specific examples of whom you are referring to.
3: Cite some specific quotes by these people backing up your childish, absurd claims about them.
4: Demonstrate that these particular fools have both the power and will to execute their idiotic claims.
5: Demonstrate that the public support for such people is great enough that their words are likely to result in actions by others.
Until you can do this, your absurd cries of "moral equivalence" are meaningless. Note that all of these unquestionably apply for Osama, if you substitute "neocon" with "Muslim Terrorist".
Hey - not just Poland! A lot of countries count themselves in on the war on Iraq. Gleaned from a Google cache of the White House's own pages (which seems to have been pulled with no trace now), here's a list of some of the powerful nations lending their brave support: Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Micronesia, Mongolia, Palau, Uzbekistan
Dude, they've got the descendants of Genghis Khan on their side. You don't want to mess with that shite.
Particularly pleasing was the statement at the bottom: "all Coalition member nations understand the threat Saddam Hussein's weapons pose to the world". I mean I think most are crystal clear on that -- none at all.
Iran is planning to sell its oil in Euro rather than US dollars, undermining the dollar hedgemony:
Will we see fireworks in Iran before March next year?
Eh, plenty of people wish death on every citizen of the US
Nope plenty of people wish death on the US Government because of their absolutely fucked foreign policy. And since tha US of A loudly proclaims it's a democracy for the people, of the people, yada yada, the terrorists assume (and rightly so 50% of the time) that the US citizens are 101% behind their government, thus, putting the blame squarely on US citizens. And this is why they want to kill you. I'm not saying it makes it ok. But I think this point needs to be clarified. They are NOT after you because of your "way of life" despite what OBL yells about all day long. They are basically after you because they think you are responsible for their loss of life and limb.
The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Let me see if I've got this right. WMDs are bad. In order to prevent people from stockpiling WMDs, the US stockpiles WMDS to use to destroy anyone else's stockpiles. Yep, makes perfect sense.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Osama Bin Laden is a multi-millionaire but he's jealous of you yeh right.
Osama bin Laden is a psychopath. But you have a point. His supporters are often wealthy too. They have no reason to envy the US.
I have traveled the world over. I have lived in Muslim nations as a non-Muslim. I have traveled to countries which have seen the brunt of US covert actions. I have never met anyone who hated *me* because I am an American. Yet many people are frustrated and even outraged at our government.
In May of 2002, I was in Quito Ecuador. I used to go to an Indian restaurant, and once I started talking with one of the owners. Turned out he was from Iraq. He asked me where I was from and I told him "Los Estados Unidos" (the US). I will never forget the look in his eyes. Not hatred or anger. But pain and sorrow. Yet I am sure he was in Ecuador not because of my country but because of trying to get away from Saddam.
We in the US are often incredibly insensitive to the suffering our country causes all over the world. The problem is that once you are hurt enough, you may start to do little things to fight back. These may involve looking the other direction when a charity you give money to spends some of its money on donations to militant and/or terrorist organizations. It may involve actually willfully aiding such organization, or it may even involve volunteering into such groups.
Yes, we are the most powerful country the world has ever known. But the hardest lesson to learn is that, to quote an old Norwegian saying, the "Sheath is for Swords." Real power is best kept in reserve, always close at hand but rarely if ever used. Ever since WWII, however, we have been militarily involved in one place or another more or less constantly. We have caused immeasurable sorrow in the world, and consequently we have earned powerful enemies. People forget the lessons of Iran, or Chile, or Guatamala.
Do a google search for September 11, 1973 and see what shows up.... The result of that action by the CIA killed *more Chileans* than Al Qaeda did on the 28th anniversery of that event (if you assume that the 1100 or so that were "disappeared" were probably summarily executed in custody.
The truth is that we are hated for the same reason that we hate Al Qaeda. We are hated just as they are for our crimes against humanity. And those of us who truly love our country have an obligation to try to turn this around.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think it it the US who is educating the masses in the world to hate the US.
How? By action or inaction that is based entirely around self serving interests damned if it matters with respect to international law or common human decency!
Action in iraq when the desire to nation build and secure oil was the primary concern, inaction while sadam was gassing his enemies with US supplied chemical WMD and was obeying his US suppliers. Inaction (moreso support via vetos in the UN) while the jews in israel embarked on their own ethnic cleansing regime. Action with respect to locking up people without following normal/international expectations with respect to teh geneva convention and right of appeal against imprisonment.
That and levels of hipocrasy that keep getting higher as the weeks march on. e.g.
* Osama and Sadam were ex poster-boys for the US in their meddling in world affairs in the 80s.
* the right wing christian taliban-equivalent and bush pushing their views on abstinence in the 3rd world despite an AIDS problem requiring condom use first and foremost.
* The abortion issue being a major source of outrage while the death penalty, torture and imprisonment without trial is going on.
* Inaction on global warming, sabotage of potential international treaties and flat out denial that it even exists because it might mean a change from the "fuck the environment" attitude that is seen everywhere in America. Yes: you SUV driving eco terrorists: I'm talking to you.
Pretty much the attitude put out there by US foreign policy is that the rest of the world can kiss it's arse or else we'll turn your country into a carpark because 9/11 says we have a mandate to do whatever the hell we like to protect our interests.
"You're either with us or against us" is not something a world leader should ever say.
Does it matter? I'll pray to lawn gnomes that the FSM and his midget army descend and cleanse the earth of religous asshats if that's what it takes.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
+100 WORTHWHILE
Does anybody think Bush is going to attack a country with a second strike capability? This is not going to happen, folks, although he is not going to be re-elected in 2008 anyway (thank god).
On the other hand a "mutual assured destruction" would be the quickest way to rid the world of this oil-driven military junta. Some collateral damage would be okay IMHO, preferably in the country whose "citizens" elected Bush (remember - each country has the government it deserves). They could use the remainders of New Orleans as a test site - most whites were evacuated in the meantime so no big problems with life insurances etc.
</cynical>
So what they are saying is - next time we are not just going to lie at the world regarding alleged WMDs in a certain country as in Feb 2003, we are going to nuke this country right away. And while we're at it, we'll eat up all the energy resources and create more CO2.
Please somebody stop these morons.
I'm sure I won't be the first to say that George W Bush is a fucking crazy warmonger with less intellect than a pile of steaming shit. And thats the most pleasent euphamisn I can think of :-)
IANAL....
But I understand that there is this thing called "International Humanitarian Law" that includes such things as the Geneva Conventions. Real freedom fighters should confine themselves to standards that are at least defensible under interational rules of war. Those that do not are terrorists, state sponsored or not.
For example, when I look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, lets look at acts of terrorism:
* Blowing up busses
* dropping 1-ton bombs on apartment buildings
* Indescriminant razing of neighborhoods in refugee camps
* Blowing up supermarkets
* Using ICRC relief workers as human shields
* Firing on PRC medical personnel and equipment with PRG's etc.
etc...
The *only* group which has a legitimate claim not to be a group of terrorists is Tanzim. Not Fatah, Not Hamas, Not the IDF. And Tanzim is only questionably so (it depends on whether Settlers are protected noncombatants under the Geneva Conventions). So a terrorist is a terrorist.
Back to the US.
Look up "September 11, 1973" and you will see what I mean. Personally I think that if Pinochet is to be tried for his crimes against humanity than his CIA buddies should be too. Same in El Salvador, same in Guatamala, same in Ecuador, same in Iran.
Strategic nuclear weapons IMO are terrorist impliments and the use of them ultimately qualifies as a terrorist attack.
A terrorist is a terrorist. It should go without saying that we should be willing to police our own government as much as we want to fight those who perpetrate crimes against humanity (though in revenge for what we have done) against us.
Those who truly love our country have a moral duty to try and turn things around before it is too late (it may be too late anyway but we have to try). I don't pledge allegiance to the President. I pledge allegiance to the *flag.* I don't owe allegiance to the president. I owe allegiance to my *country.* This is the essence of true American patriotism, deeply rooted in a mistrust for those who run our government.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Not gonna happen.
w s/1126539690860_121948890
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe
The christofundies can play hide-and-go-f***-themselves too. No special treatment.
You really need to keep up with the times, troll.
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Is it just me or is GWB trying really hard to get Godwin to make a law about him?
Oh, Why can't we all just get along?
I propose legalizing marijuana.That's a start.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Hey, guys -- I'm a furrigner -- it's your country, your Constitution. But you make us furrigners (Australia here) nervous sometimes.
What happened to Section 8 Powers of Congress to declare war ? Isn't that part of your democracy ?
Tell me a preemptive nuclear strike wouldn't be a declaration of war? Sure! It's like a pat on the head!
Or maybe, like Pearl Harbour, it'd just be an act of infamy ?
Where'd you get these Pentagon brains ?
WTF is wrong with our government?!?!?
In a democracy, people get the government they deserve. It is the responsibility of USA citizens to stop the madman in the Whitehouse. If you do not, you are part of the problem. As things stand, the majority of USA citizens that can be bothered to vote want Bush. You guys had the ability to kick him out of office last year, and you didn't. He represents you. Your fault. Do something about it.
The difference could vey well be that there is one big dictator family controlling it all and taking turns being chief. Some of them is against abortion, some for. Some against death penalty, some for. All raving lunatics hell-bent on absolute supreme power, wealth and oil. Or something.
A two-party system is a joke as any means of ensuring democracy. There are just two very similar parties to actually choose from, now how different is that from the evil one-party systems that are in place in dictatorships? It must be soooo much better.
I can't remember where first I saw it - Doonesbury, perhaps? - but I think it's time it re-surfaces:
"A pre-emptive nuclear counter-attack means never having to say you're sorry."
An old Chinese curse also applies:
"May you live in interesting times."
Yikes.
Lemon curry?
Very informative!
But entrusting someone with nuclear capability who is allegedly 'leading' a superpower nation, necessitates a true leader with great wisdom and foresight. Somehow I don't see a former alcoholic who can barely give a speech without sounding like he just had one too many as someone who qualifies. First, there was the intelligence debacle that allowed 9/11 slip through the cracks, the perpetrator was allowed to escape and was never captured, an attack on the country of origin proved very costly and without the intended result, and to top it off, there is a continuation of the so-called 'war on terror' marked by a 'pre-emptive strike' on a nation for something that turned out to be a complete falsehood. This is not the kind of record I'd use to justify the use of nuclear weapons.
The problem is that once they are used, there is no going back...it may trigger all manner of unintended consequences and be be just the beginning of a hell we never imagined possible.
What happened at New Orleans?
How many people died for being not evacuated? How many other countries gave support to the USA?
Watching on TV the images for the disaster didn't make a big difference with images of asia when the tornados passes by...
And now, as a measure of distraction: let's fight again my invisible enemy, now, instead on spending mone on reforcing protections of cities against natural disasters or well improving life quality: medical insurances, charity, education, inmvestigation, etc, they decide that the best option is to improve military budget to allow the "preemptive" use of nuclear weapons...
I hope that this will not hurt any people affected by 11/9, but I'm pretty sure that USA foreign politics doomed american people to what happenend. As a previous poster said, increasing nuclear weapons and allowing is "preemptive" use, would make more and more people angry about USA... and really... how many americans still recognize the "country of freedom" in a country where you've permanent violations of laws about prisoners right, personal freedom, etc...
Maybe the problem right now, if this becomes true, is that many other countries in the world would "align" against a fool putting in danger human lives arguing nonsenses....
what would you think if Sadam Hussein proposed to get nuclear weapons to preemptive-self-defense?
And no argument saying that Sadam is evil and Bush is good, because on both countries there were people dying on lack of food, medical help, people being tortured while "the man on the top" was living in a big "palace", plenty of people working for him, big cars, planes, and so on... what does USA president different of Sadam right now?
Would it make sense to allow them both to get nuclear "daily" use?
Wouldn't it better to spend money on improving so much social conditions, and state helps to people that would make anyone to get envy on what USA has and no more countries have? Wouldn't that money help better people that's suffering for example people of New Orleans instead of being wasted on killing more people?
I'm worried about USA giving the rest of the world "news" like this... instead of giving news about science advances, raising funds to help other countries, increasing education, giving more scholarships to citizens, and so on...
and what would you prefer?
Pablo Iranzo Gomez (https://iranzo.github.io/)
..and the US looks like it's abrogating that responsibility. Somehow the US has become the self-appointed police force of an unwilling world. For all the talk and pressure on other countries to disarm, the US forgets that it is the only country in the world to have actually used nuclear weapons - twice. And now it wants carte blanche to slip on the brass knuckles??
Quote from De-Alerting Strategic Forces by Bruce Blair, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies:
[...] A similar ["dead hand"] system actually exists in Russia. A legacy of the Cold War, its existence was unknown to the West until 1993.
The motivating fear behind the construction of Russia's doomsday device was the sudden de-capitation of Moscow by Western missiles with short (ten-minute) flight times -- NATO Pershing II missiles slated for deployment in Germany in the early 1980s, and of U.S. submarine missiles lurking in waters close to Soviet territory. To defeat this threat, the Soviet Union built an underground doomsday machine south of Moscow (underground radio transmitters linked to mobile and silo-based command rockets), code-named 'Perimeter'. After becoming operational in 1984, this 'dead hand' would virtually automatically transmit the launch order to all strategic missile and bomber forces if three conditions were met: (1) the General Staff sends a special code to Perimeter before incoming enemy missiles hit Moscow, (2) all communications links between Perimeter and the General Staff fail (a possible outcome of a nuclear attack on Moscow), and (3) Perimeter's special sensors detect nuclear explosions in the Moscow vicinity.
Q: How does a full-partner lawyer protect his 10th story corner office from a nuclear holocaust?
A: Boilerplate.
Seastead this.
Unfortunately Europe is relatively close to those muslim countries and we dont want the fallout here.
I say we (Europe) should work together with Russia and China and preemptively strike america with nukes . America is just too dangerous, it starts war in countries it doesnt like and in doing so creates worldwide problems (expensive oil and terrorism). By that time the oil will be finished and we dont have to deal with arabic countries any more and we could build a wall to keep them out.
One of the oddities in Israeli politics that I see pop up from time to time is this pattern where those in power see distant antisemites as harmless allies...
Politically there's no group in America more committed to Israel than the Evangelicals. Why? Because the Bible says that Jews must return to their homeland before Jesus will return
The part you left out is that the Jews that don't convert will be destroyed.... Antisemitism at its best.....
But this isn't a problem really. Yitzak Shameer was one of the senior counsil of the ELHI brotherhood which in 1942 spent a good deal of time trying to negotiate an alliance between the Jewish "freedom fighters" in Israel and Hitler. The ELHI brotherhood had indeed no shortage of praise for the Nazis, and even claimed that it was good for them to round up the Jews where at least they were goverened by other Jews.... In this view Hitler, though he claimed to hate Jews was a harmless visionary who could be trusted by the Zionist revolutionaries... Fourty-someodd years later, the Israeli public saw fit to punish him for his treason by electing him prime minister.
So things don't always make sense....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Death To women's Rights
1. Your proposal is invalid. US policy has always retained the option of first strike
2. It's not a law. It's a policy. Congress hasn't voted on the matter. Therefore it can change whenever the president feels like it.
3. Every couple of years they revise this policy just to remind everybody.
I don't read AC A human right
Your an idiot.
Get a brain. Moran.
Yes, unfortunately, the majority of the country seemingly believes that creation myths have the same quality and quantity of supporting evidence as evolution, that hurricanes are the result of gay people and that crippled people don't deserve to walk again or move their arms, if it means utilizing stem-cells.
I think I heard a statistic on a television show the other night stating that 20% of adults think the Sun revolve around Earth.
And, unfortunately, the numbers of these people are such that they over-ride those with - you know - common sense on their side.
It's a little dishonest to say that "Americans get the government they deserve". No - 100% of the country gets the government 52% of the country is ignorant enough to choose. That, my friend, is democracy.
I for one welcome our mineshaft dwelling overlords...
Get your Unix fortune now!
*Especially if you like the food. Now, that could actually be considered proof of a suicidal mentality.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is probably designed to scare Iran into submission. Problem is, that sometimes bluffs get called. Then we will have to go through with it. Then how will the world (esp the muslim world) regard America to be the only nation to drop the bomb? Twice.
This is going to backfire badly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
even if I agreed that iraq was preventative, and I don't, all you have done with your argument is solidify my opinion of distrust towards those in the administration presently today.
Why the hell would someone want to give them more power when they clearly are criminals who just want to drop bombs on anyone and come off smelling of roses.. well try to at least..
That sounds pretty assured, and pretty destructive, to me...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
> their weapons and live a peacefull life, or we hunt them down in their neighborhood.
Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative:
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.
Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIA says our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:
The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.
The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.
It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
Get your facts straight.
Even if we had started a new levee 10 years ago it wouldn't be finished today.
Why the fuck should the feds pay for it? Let all the fuckers who stupidly moved into nature's flood buffer pay for it. Yah they don't want to cough up the money either. Why don't you personally pay for it? Surely all the bullshit you've got is worth something.
The National Guard was ready to go and they were not engaged elsewhere. FEMA cancelled a lot of National Guard because there wasn't enough organization to lead the National Guard already down there effectively.
liberal asshat.
As if the brits care if Belfast burns?
Come on, they tried it themselves plenty. This way they can blame it on those nigh uncontrolable loyalists.
Then the IRA gets to blame the retaliation on the provos.
A blog about stuff.
Well said! Many people I know (I'm from England) don't dislike the US; they dislike the Bush administration. I would add that they also dislike the Blair administration almost as much, quite often.
PS: Charlie Vernacular posting as anonymous coward because I've lost my password!
I foresee that criminally insane bastard causing destruction such as the world has never seen. Expect casualty counts in the hundreds of millions. Expect a return to the Dark Ages. If your family survives at all, expect your children to lead short, tragic lives.
Religions that claim the end of the world is nigh are laughable, up until the point where men in high places are given the means to directly bring it about.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
The world has finally gone totally insane.
What are they THINKING?
President Bush with preemptive strike powers... I will be having nightmares for weeks.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
While it's interesting to see the reactions of people to nuclear weapons policy, the fact is that this is absolutely nothing new. It has been the policy of the US to strike back with nuclear weaponry against anyone using Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons for decades. Indeed, it was the stated policy of the United States that Nuclear weapons would be used against a conventional invasion of Europe by the Soviet Bloc, due to the incedible numerical superiority of those forces. They didn't even have to launch their nukes on us first, all they had to do is roll over into West Germany.
I don't think anyone, particularly me, likes the idea that there is a plan out there to nuke anyone, but the fact is that there are states out there that that need some reassurance that they will be living in a radioactive wasteland if they start wondering why they can't just a lob a few at us.
If you think it can't happen, think again. All it takes is one leader with nukes who thinks that the world will let him get away with it to ensure continued peace, and you've got a disaster waiting to happen. And don't think it couldn't. It takes a lot more planning to launch a full scale invasion of Europe than it does to launch a ballistic missile. The only way to forestall that is a policy that cuts out the realm of uncertainty that brinksmanship thrives on.
This sucks, but we managed to avoid blowing up the world for 60 years with such a policy in place, I don't think a revision is going to make that much of a difference.
Quote from De-Alerting Strategic Forces by Bruce Blair, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies:
[...] A similar ["dead hand"] system actually exists in Russia. A legacy of the Cold War, its existence was unknown to the West until 1993.
The motivating fear behind the construction of Russia's doomsday device was the sudden de-capitation of Moscow by Western missiles with short (ten-minute) flight times -- NATO Pershing II missiles slated for deployment in Germany in the early 1980s, and of U.S. submarine missiles lurking in waters close to Soviet territory. To defeat this threat, the Soviet Union built an underground doomsday machine south of Moscow (underground radio transmitters linked to mobile and silo-based command rockets), code-named 'Perimeter'. After becoming operational in 1984, this 'dead hand' would virtually automatically transmit the launch order to all strategic missile and bomber forces if three conditions were met: (1) the General Staff sends a special code to Perimeter before incoming enemy missiles hit Moscow, (2) all communications links between Perimeter and the General Staff fail (a possible outcome of a nuclear attack on Moscow), and (3) Perimeter's special sensors detect nuclear explosions in the Moscow vicinity.
Great post, seriously. Let me fix that typo there though:
They have no reason not to envy the US.
All that money and wealth and power and what-not. Anyway, thanks.
I don't understand why this is so hard to get across to other Americans. It's as if the phrase "having your family killed by {bombs|bullets}" simply doesn't mean anything.
Can't we all just get along? Sadly, the answer is no: the people pulling the big strings have no vested interest in getting along.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
What happen if a Terrorist get hold of the controlls to fire one of these things?.. Please disarm right NOW.
I never said it was perfect, however it's been a very long time since an Irishman planted a bomb in this country. At least the Protestant and Catholic leaders are talking to each other now, a situation we didn't have even ten years ago.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Nobody said an entire city. Nukes can be of the miniature kind too you know, in the order of .1 kilotons which sounds like what this policy is looking to endorse. These small nukes can be used to destroy hardened underground bunkers under several meters of concretes far underground. Not the city-busting nukes Russia and US already have.
Speaking of googling for it...
2 005.html
http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot1_07
Hmm. How about that? July 18th, giving India nuclear expertise--civilian expertise, but as we all are told by the rhetoric surrounding Iran, civilian and military nuclear technology has such a broad overlap... Mixed messages there.
You are forgetting the economical and political terror and manipulation that US has been involved in the Middle-East at least since WWI and WWII. What country do you think are sponsoring the dictators in the Middle-East? Who funded Saddam Hussein in the first place? He's just one of many skeletons in your closet. Heck, even Bin Laden has been on your payroll!
Sadly, the average American knows very little what their government is doing in foreign countries. There's a reason people paint pictures of the president as the devil there, not just for religious reasons, but for the misdeeds that you are supporting through economic support and political pressure. Now, it's coming to bite you back.
So if the CIA fakes together some report for the sake of convincing a mentally challenged but adrenaline-heavy president (something the Americans are prone and proud to vote for), this now can even lead to a "preventive" nuclear strike?
The Merkins really don't want to be left out of the initiative for the third World War.
rofl
Well said.. most informed, well written post i've seen on here in some time.
Quite surprisingly, modern nuclear balance is not about the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, or at least not in its original form. Indeed, few countries (if any) except Russia would have the power to completely wipe out the United States from the planet.
The logic behind the British and French nuclear arsenal size is the following : make sure that under any circonstances, the disasters caused by the nuclear retaliation of these countries would greatly overthrow the possible gains of initiating a nuclear war against them.
That is why the raw number of nuclear heads each country is having is not really important. That is why the nuclear arsenal of France and the United Kingdom is rather low on number. And that is why treaties between the US and Russia such as START have been able to be negociated.
I were in Europe, thinking to myself: "These people are lying to us! They just want to use any excuse to go to war and take over Iraq, for some unfathomable reason, but it's probably got something to do with oil."
I never thought the good Americans would fall for all this BS, but sadly I was mistaken. I guess it's a bit different when you live in the US and have to live under the propaganda-machine.
You had a chance to vote last time. But your ego and pride didn't like it when Europe clearly said it didn't want Bush. Big egos fall hard.
Have economic trade sanctions in the name of peace, human rights or otherwise noble aims ever worked? No, really, I own a few history books and am probably more educated than you're average fire hydrant in matters of history, but I don't recall one ever working--can someone who has a better recollection of history please point one such event out?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Ok guys...that's it...the tragicomedy is over. Now remove the clown from office and let's get a real president back in there.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Just tell Rove or Libbey that there are democrats in each and every location of our nukes. They will gladly share the info with the enemy.
Ok, I could understand that one would think about measurements like this when one feels threatened. However, what do people feel threatened by? Other than terrorists, I can't think of anything. And it's not like a pre-emptive strike is going to help - after all, terrorists are usually stealthy and you only get to know where they are after they hit.
So what's this new bill for? Just strengthening the powers of GWB so he can visit some more destruction on the heads of whoever the heck crosses his mind? What good does that accomplish? It seriously sounds like a very dangerous law introduced for no reason at all.
Damn, I almost wish some other countries would show some backbone and state that they will launch their missiles if the USA passes this law. But, of course, it's hard to stand up against the big bully.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
So are you saying that IRAN/China should Nuke America before they nuke them?
Pre-emptive is a big problem, because if you go pre-emptive, then so will them, then you pre-empt that, then they pre-empt that, until basically you need to nuke them tomorrow before they nuke you in 100 years.
The only possible outcome is death for whoever the US feels might be a problem in general.
Looks like we're set for another stupid situation like in the 60s - Hey wasn't that you guys (US) again?
Problem is here that people almost ALWAYS fails to see danger from which way it comes. And you know - violence won't stop anything, it will create an circle, which will never stop. Until you will be dead.
If someone wants to kill you, appearantly you have done something wrong (if it is not because of criminal case). We don't answer about our decisions we make. If you done something wrong and something have hate for you - well, you screwed. You have to protect yourself, but you must understand why someone hates you.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
"the place the fairy tale falls apart is them having the real means to do so, which is generally a prerequisite for the whole 'preemptive' thing."
Mmmmm... just like clear and present danger of WMDs was be required to go into Iraq, right?
I can't believe anyone still falls for bullshit like this.
Not content with invading countries in defiance of international opinion and signally failing to produce one scrap of justification, not content with failing miserably to install a democratic government and leaving some Iraqi citizens actually regretting the USA's involvement, now Bush is itching to re-start the cold war and MAD by posturing and waving his cock-compensating "nukerler" weapons at anyone who might have WMDs? And who decides who has them? Oh yeah, the same fuckwits who hallucinated the WMDs in Iraq.
Unfair? That's how the rest of the world sees Bush and the USA at the moment.
My only question is this: Is Bush actually fucking insane? We've only just finished the public nuclear standoff and MAD bullshit that occupied us for most of the 80s and half the 90s, and now he wants to start it again?
I hate to flame, but just what the fuck is wrong with him?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
The only winning move is not to play.
Stop supporting dictators and manipulating politics in the Middle-East, overthrowing governments, supporting tyrants like Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, etc, would be a good start. Also diplomacy can reach a long way. Act with your heart, not your muscles.
Hint: Instead of making martyrs, you can make yourself martyrs. Now, you only seem like a big, insecure and scared bully. Honestly, as a European I see USA self-destructing itself and the rest of the Western world with it if you don't change course asap.
And don't forget to wait a few years and nuke the cities that will then fill up with evil men who irrationally hate the USA for killing their wives, sons, daughters, parents and housepets!
Seriously, now - cynically using 9/11 for political gain... Iraq... Bleeding the army dry... Fucking the economy... New Orleans... Now seriously trying to restart the world-wide nuclear standoff for the sake of a bit of cock-waving.
Just what does Bush actually have to do before you Americans fucking get rid of him for being an incompetent criminal madman? Inadvertantly show his nipple during the superbowl? Say "shit" in front of a small child?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I'm a Muslim , and I've heard my share of ignorant anti-Muslim bashing ( regarding both fanatics and 'normal' Muslims) but this one beats them all.You're either flame baiting or very, very ignorant.
Who said Muslim fanatics want to enslave people? even Osama Bin Laden, the most infamous fanatic, only talks about driving the so called 'western evil' outside muslim land.
What do you mean by keeping women inside, covered, and pregnant? Why cover themselves if they're going outside? and whats the pregnant part about? birth control? for what its worth, there is nothing in Islam against birth control, I think even fanatic terrorists know they can't use this issue in their propaganda.
Ahh, so you mix racial descrimination into the issue, although it has nothing whatsover do do with it.
Terrorists (muslim or otherwise) are bloodthirsty murdering scum and this post is not intended to defend them from you...it's just that I hate people who talk with that much authority about something they know nothing about.
Hoping that a Christian corrects the other half of your facts
Gerry Adams wasn't awarded the Peace Prize, it was given to John Hulme, leader of the SDLP, in 1998.
England, under Sven Goran Eriksson's direction has recently exceeded themselves in their efforts to unite Belfast. Sven for PM!
NI 1-0 England
Hate to reply to my post, but I meant in the second paragraph Why cover themselves if they're not going outside?
sorry if it sounded confusing.
Listen, your post is well written and i'm glad you own a passport unlike 80% of us (or whatever). I do too. I've listened to anti-US tirades in bars, and the opposite. It depends on where you are and the person.
Despite all that, your post sets up a straw man, and also discounts the lust for power.
Your mistake is that you blame your own country for these issues and that isn't so. The problem isn't a US problem. The problem is human nature. No one is going to sit down and be killed or held hostage by external forces when they can do something about it, and there will always be external forces that will want to exert power over significant reaches of (or the entire) world.
Moreover, someone like OBL isn't motivated precisely by envy of the US, though that is there in terms of the power we can wield. One almost gets the impression you think desire of money is the only motivator for humankind. His attack on the US was motivated by the needs of local politics and establishing his bonafides as an enemy of the imperialist oppressor that shows up in Arab schoolbooks as the supporter of the Zionists. It was a piece of a plan to provoke revolution in his home country, more than anything else. He exploited a weakness that the Saudis have in their own ideology. He probably has Pan-Arab ambitions like a modern day Nasser, also. This is lust for power.
Explain to me exactly how anything except fighting and killing are going to get rid of a ready-made foe like that? (taking him and his minions collectively)
Leaving that aside for now, the fact that little people get ground into the dust by exercise of the power of a nation like the US. Truth - and in retrospect the Allende situation perhaps wasn't the Communist revolution that it seemed to be to people like Kissinger. Gotta love that 20/20 hindsight.
The point is that even today, the Allende thing had a meaningful realpolitik objective that we can discern. It might have been a bullshit reason. We'll never know now, though, because all anyone has is conjecture about the future actions of an Allende regime. There was a real force in the world that plotted our demise via proxy. We had lost a lot of fights against that force in the recent past (or were about to, in Southeast Asia). Those fights resounded far more strongly in importance then than they truly had. Yet, though the events in Southeast Asia were somehow unimportant to us (though they were very important to the inhabitants thereof who suffered from privation and extermination, depending on geography and timeframe), they certainly did their part to assure that the Iranians, sensing our weakness, felt few qualms about kidnapping the occupants of our embassy in 1979. Note that they didn't take over our embassy because of Mossadegh or hatred of the Shah. They took over our embassy because they could. What was Jimmy Carter going to do about it? (one can hear the laughs from the back of the audience)
The lesson to draw: Carter's 'niceness' and perceived weakness was the cause of those hostages enduring a year plus in captivity. Reagan got them out simply because they feared his reprisal should they remain captive. Fear for your own survival is a far better motivator than some abstract moral sense. In fact, the abstract moral sense barely registers in comparison.
When you recount our supposed 'evil' without giving it contextual backing, you are bashing your own country. This is why I call people like you anti-American. You'd rather see your own country humbled because of some misplaced humanitarian notion that doesn't work in the real world. That's a seditious attitude whether you understand that - or not.
The only measure of a nation at war is that you survived. I point to Dresden or Hamburg or Tokyo or even Hiroshima/Nagasaki. If the war had turned the other way, we might talk about war crimes trials for these wanton killings of civilians, rather than for concentration camps. Both the Soviets and the Germans raped, pillaged and murdered the
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Actually, the next step is lucrative contracts for American companies for the design, building, testing, and maintenance of these anti-bunker and anti-bioweapons nuclear bombs. Which will boost the economy and create lots of geek-related jobs.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
No-one was tortured at Abu Ghraib - not while it was under American control. Hundreds were tortured to death there under Saddam's regime. The worst that happened after he was removed was some naughty pictures.
Those were pictures of torture. Forcing islamic men to simulate sex with eachother? An insult and degradation beyond description. Threatening with dogs biting the nude prisoners.. I think I will stop here.
And yes, prisoners died there.
Just because somebody acts worse, doesn't give you permission to do bad actions.
As for the "gulag" in Cuba: Millions of people, millions, were worked to death, or starved, or froze, in the real gulags in Russia. The Gulag administration was the single largest employer in Europe.
Torture there too, and treatment breaking the Geneve conventions. People being held prisoners for life without any trial and fair hearing.
How do you know nobody died there? Oh right, you don't, because you can't. It's all secret, and nobody knows who is really imprisoned either.
Just because somebody acts worse, doesn't mean you can do bad acts. This rhetoric is misused so much, it hurts to read it over and over again.
Your logic is flawed. It passes intelligence, but not the heart. Neither of your examples of OTHER'S wrongdoings, justify your own crimes.
Who is terrorising the entire world with their nuclear warheads?
No, 70% of the country has decided to let the other 30% choose a government. If they get something they don't like, it's too late now to complain.
This is completely fucking disingenuous, and you know it.
Sure the GPP was a bit over the top, but by seriously suggesting you don't understand where they're coming from you're more stupid than you appear. Sure, the liberals hate Bush and the religious right, but they also hate the terrorists. It's Republicans vs. The Terrorists, and the Democrats are merely stuck in the middle (all too often huddling on the ground in a puddle of urine with their hands over their ears).
The "liberals" think the right are similar to "the terrorists" because they have the same level of vitriol, prefer the same strategy (violence[1]), are motivated by paranoia or religious extremism, happily and easily reject facts (and greater reality) whenever convenient, and are completely incapable of rational, detatched self-analysis or self-questioning.
The right think "the liberals" are similar to "the terrorists" because they see the world in black and white - they literally believe "if you're not with us, you're against us". This is so fucking simple a child can understand it - it's the concept of "compromise" or taking the middle road. It is, however, useful to pretend they don't so they can accuse anyone faintly less extremist than them of being a traitor.
Nevertheless, you can't deny that it's extremely hypocritical to loudly condemn one type of religious fundamentalism (Muslim) for:
Unnecessary violence and invasive aggression
Repression of civil liberties
Causing civilian deaths
Repression of women
Possibly researching nuclear weapons
while your own fundamentalist-lead (Christian) leadership and population promotes:
Invasive foreign policies that risk turning the world against you
Police-state interior policies (PATRIOT act, etc)
Anti-abortion legislation
And actively threatening to nuke countries
Even reducing it to your stereotypes:
Any denomination of religious nutter with a nuclear fucking weapon is far more dangerous than any number of "terrorst sympathisers".
Footnotes:
[1] Although not the same tactics, due at least in part to the massive disparity in their material resources.[2]
[2] Reading it back, this sounds like I'm implying that the American Right might use terrorism tactics if it wasn't the overwhelmingly dominant party in the conflict. We can actually empirically test this - when the economy starts slipping, natural disasters deplete their resources, they can't afford (or recruit) a large enough army to continue the conflict and they generally perceive a slipping of their power, what do they do? Start waving the "fuck with us and we'll nuke you" card.
Setting off a nuclear weapon, killing the opposition but also killing hundreds of thousands of civilians... Exactly how is this different from (say) terrorists nuking the Whitehouse? They take out the people they hate, plus hundreds of thousands of civilians. Seriously - what's the difference?
And no, I don't buy into that whole "it's the government, so it's alright". The Taliban were a government, and they weren't "alright". This argument simply devolves into "it's us, so it's alright", and the same argument is used by fanatics, liars and psychopaths the world over.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I would have thought that the "no WMD in Iraq" debacle would have clearly shown why preemptive attacks are a Very Bad Idea(TM). (and to those who argue that it's a good thing that the world got rid of Saddam Hussein, I totally agree, except that in this case that wasn't the reason why Bush started the war)
Now preemptive nuclear attacks... How could that ever be proportionate to anything?!
roughly 40 years of economic sanctions? And it will all end if you attack your "enemy". N Korea does nog have 1 enemy, but multiple. Still, I do not think they can or will attack anybody from their current state. Looking at the developments between S Korea and N Korea, I would even say that they are looking for a graceful way out of the current situation.
What if there would have been no sanctions, and N Korea would be as prosperous as the USSR, or China (their closest relatives in vision). That would not make them a superpower: They are just to small. But would it give them any reason to launch an attack on the US? Not really. They might try to intimidate S Korea, but with more to loose, most likely nothing will happen anyway (look at China vs Taiwan: Lots of threats, and not even one shot fired).
Yes, N Korea has a dictatorship which tries to build certain weapons.
To be afraid of that: No, they will probably not succeed anytime soon, and to use such a weapon is not a good idea anyway.
There actually is only one danger left with this: Hard cash: Sell the bomb which you create to some extremist group, let them play with it.
Somehow I think however that even extremist groups are not that crazy. They have seen by know what 2 airplanes can cause in counter actions: The leaders are not taken, but two countries have lost their goverments, and taking out a third or a fourth is no serious problem for the US. The US goverment has also shown that they will not obey human rights anymore in such a situation. The step to a complete masacre has become a lot smaller. A second holocaust could be the result of an extremist organization using a nuclear bomb.
Looking in general at countries with a dictator or similar goverment: They do attack their neighbours, bot only if they think they will gain something from it.
Looking at wealthy democratic countries: They do attack countries all over the world if they think they can gain something from it.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
You are saying that one or two nukes for any country should be enough. Clearly not for america or Russia. If i can draw your attention to Here, America have the second largest nuclar arsenal in the world only second to the Russians.
"believed to consist of between 21,000-40,000 warheads (2001 Estimate). Even using the lowest estimates of the Russian nuclear arsenal, the Russians currently possess an arsenal consisting of at least three times as many nuclear warheads as the United States."
Just the American arsenal alone is enough to blow up the world 800 times over (no reference its from my bad memory (however prove me wrong)). And to add a nother sence of fear as one grows the other grows too. Face it neither country is going to surrender their right to stockpile nuclar WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (notice the hyppicrtical emphesis) and now the US has a way to fire off nukes without any concent a hell of a lot of people are going to die by nukes. Im not saying in 6 month or even a year but in the next 40 years somthing is going to go horribly wrong. "Maby they could start with Redmond."
I almost agree this opinion :)
You thing the americans are hated? Or that the americans are loved? This would mean that the world cares about America. Actualy the world cares most of the time about food, drink, sex, work and stuff. People do not want war and no country will start a war. People want money. Only America itself can do such a silly thing as starting a war (but there is a little chance of it either). They spend a lot of money fighting with someone, but they can just give him that money and this way make him friend (and a slave!). The terrorists are POOR. They are a people that have nothing to lose. Give them a credit card and they will sit still in front of their TV watching serials and munching chips. The rich funders of the terrorist organizations will not grab a bomb and go to a kamikadze mission.
And something else. I support the theory that the nuclear weapons bring peace. No one will start a nuclear war, considering the consequences. Actually they make any kind of war senseless, because the classical war weapons and tactics are of no use in the nuclear war.
Let him who hath understanding reckon
the number of the beast
for it is a human number,
it's number is Six hundred and sixty six
This bunch of 5 gallon cowboys in 10 gallon are going to leave this country in a real mess. Watch real closely once Karl Rove's think tanks come up with the catch phrase (probably "Operation Compasion" or something) who ponies up to the trough following Katrina...Haliburton and the usual suspects are already there. REALLY pay close attention when the word for the day is mentioned 14 times in a carefully test grouped speech and displayed on a big blue screen behind the President. It's worked for 6 years...why not now.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Wow, that is a great post. Clear, accurate, and compassionate. The ending is beautiful:
The truth is that we are hated for the same reason that we hate Al Qaeda. We are hated just as they are for our crimes against humanity. And those of us who truly love our country have an obligation to try to turn this around.
Most people in the US are quite compassionate (look at the results of the Tsunami), but are afraid of the rest of the world, and frequently don't understand it. Perhaps the solution is to help our fellow citizens understand that the rest of the world isn't so different than ourselves, and understanding will be a catalyst for compassion.
When the world is full of compassion, the dictators will melt away.
Ha, what a utopian vision. But if we don't try to achieve it, we never will.
Qxe4
As things stand, the majority of USA citizens that can be bothered to vote want Bush.
The current situation is the result of the choice between:
a) bad and worse
b) dumb and dumber
c) unelectable and less than unelectable
d) funny joke and not so funny joke
e) all of the above
When the democrats have someone who is marginally electable, they win.
-- $G
with the advent of scalar electromagnetic wave weapons, having nuclear weapons is no longer an advantage. its a disadvantage!!! because your enemies can explode your nukies right on their silos there is no "mutual destruction".
This now gives our enemies the moral right to use pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
If we go around saying "Oh God, North Korea is going to nuke us," even if North Korea had no intention of actually using nuclear weapons against us, it now basically has to as US nuclear weapons are probably inbound. The action would even be justified. If Saddam Hussein actually had nuclear weapons, he would have been justified in using them against US stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical wepons, and it isn't much of a stretch to extend that to our other weapons of mass destruction (like our largest-army-in-the-world)
The problem with the current administration, is that it doesn't realize that by choosing a policy it is giving all of the rest of the countries in the world the right to use those policies as well. China now has the right to confine enemy combatants indefinitely without trial. Pakistan can nuke India whenever tensions run high.
It's a brave new world, soon to be ruled by cockroaches.
The ______ Agenda
Gerry Adams was never awarded a nobel peace prize. John Hume and David Trimble were jointly awarded the prize in 1998.
See http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1998/
John Hume is the leader of the SDLP (a catholic party not affiliated with terrorisim).
David Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionist party lost his seat in the last general election and was forced to resign from the party.
I don't think giving the nobel prize to a man affiliated with terrorisim is a great idea.
The opportunity to really, truely, terrify everyone on the whole planet! What a master stroke! OH JOY -- WHEN WILL IT EVER END???
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It angers me so much. The people that live there are the same as us. Hopes, dreams, family and friends. I am a US citizen. I am proud to be in the country that devloped the internet. This is a direct result of Nuclear weapons. Atomic technology should not be feared and weapons do have there place.
These oil producing countries are aware of the unsustainablity of oil. As a sane person would see nuclear power is the only way of producing power for the eventual population increase of the world. Allready in allot of these places, especialy Iraq, even in a large part of the USA power is a scarse resource. I say as an American no too pulling out of Iraq or any where in the world. Instead we should do some good instead of destroy. Have the entire country vitalized in a campaign too provide power and communications infastructure too every corner of the world. I say welcome to my friend the atom. I say cheers to the new nuclear/hydrogen ipv6 overlords.
Well, no matter, we can guarantee that he'll never use it, and furthermore, should other countries decide to use this kind of attack against us, we can be guaranteed that we'll all have ample opportunity to be radiated to ashes before he wanders off the putting green to see what all the noise is about.
Like I've been saying for five years now, the only thing that saves us from their evil is their incompetence.
Wow!
The Age of Aquarius was nice... Too bad it was so short...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The last time I looked Isreal had the third or fourth biggest
nuclear arsenal in the world - but somehow no-one seems
to mention that. They have at least 100 warheads and
long range missiles. Since they are in breach of more UN
resolutions than the rest of the world put together, you might
think the mighty US would have some words to say about their
prime minister having a questionable war record, and a policy
of shooting journalists and children in the back. Does not
sound like the sort of leader I would want with their finger on
the nuclear button...
someone just needs to preemtively blow USA to hell and dont anyone dare call me a terrorist for saying so without calling the american government a fu*king murdering bunch of terrorists first!
If they actually sign this I'm gonna have to start supporting the idea of my nation becoming a nuclear nation and frankly I'd really much rather not, but with a bunch of murderers with so many weapons already, getting this kind of idea into their heads, its going to become a neccessity.
I'm so bloody sick and tired of USA this USA that.. USA the biggest pile of selfcentered bullshit! Just blow up and go visit that "God" you trust so much. Europe at least has some BRAINS upstairs!
if you believed in the rapture then you would realize that it means that only the evil non-believers would be left on the earth...but your post reads like you don't buy into religion? dude your last line makes not sense.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
So the president won't need any advisors to agree with him? I understand that you can never wait to know everything about a situation before you respond, thats military doctrine as old as Alexander the Great, but we don't need any gut reactions ending civilization either.
I didn't see the movie "Sum of all Fears", but if you've read the book, the situation at the end is exactly why more than one person should have to agree on the usage of nuclear weapons even in a retaliatory case.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Someone should do a little preemptive nuclear strike to the Washington to prevent the stupidity from spreading.
They are fuckwits who just want to blame anyone better off for their miserable self-made condition.
And you are completely different than this of course.
They tolerate despotic leaders, they embrace ignorance, and they subscribe to inhuman interpretations of their holy book,
Are you talking about you and your relationship with the overzelous christain right?
not to mention falling for every impossible conspiratorial theory invented by some hashish-blasted towelhead. I say fuck 'em all and the camels they rode in on.
This is the same aditude that they are using on you. "Fuck them right in the gas tank of the SUV they drove in on".
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
This statement tends to fall apart when you realise that the freedom the terrorist is fighting for is freedom from your existence.
If you consider what either side offers in this conflict, I think you would be led to conclude that there ARE no good guys. ...
That's cruel hard. Even President Chirac would concede that the USA is less bad than al-Qaeda.
Whereas Muslim terrorists want to enslave the WORLD to their retarded religious extremism, the neocons want to ENSLAVE the world to their retarded religious extremism.
The Terrorists seem a bit more forward to me; The Neocons hardly ever kill you for not converting.
Whereas Muslim terrorists want to keep their women in the home covered from head to toe and pregnant, neocons want to keep their women in the home BAREFOOT and pregnant.
I read that if it continues at this rate barefoot/pregnant women will soon outnumber sasquatches in North America.
And whereas Muslim terrorists hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing white people, neocons hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing Muslims.
I checked the minutes of our Neocon meeting and we definitely had it down as "indiscriminantly killing *terrorists*".
My greatest hope is that the Rapture comes soon and hoovers up all these assholes so that the world can be left to rational people.
But where will you end up?
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
The Declaration basically says that if we don't like our government, we should overthrow it, which is what our fore fathers did. But in today's America, to try and do such a thing would likely get you labeled as a terrorist, with no legal recourse.
The only thing left to do is try to work within a broken system. Once again, our fore fathers left means to fix it, but I am sure any attempt to do so would get a label of unpatriotic, or a terrorists, or both.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. God bless America.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Typically someone that either has opinions as part of their identity and any attacks on their position are attacks on them personally or that have opinions like sport fans root for their teams.
Which was very obvious, imho.
Do you really consider it wrong to use "religious" as an insulting synonyme for "having opinions based on something else than intellectual thinking based on facts"...?! No, don't answer that question, on closer consideration.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
They'd be called terrorists today.
If we limit our nuking to third, and perhaps the occasional second, world nation, will the handful of nations capable of nuking us back take action? Almost certainly not. That's what they've concluded, isn't it, and they are almost certainly right.
However, if the rest of the world thereafter shunned the U.S. like apartheid South Africa (who incidentally probably wish they had maintained their nuclear program now), things would get interesting because the real war is economic.
The Day After [link: IMDB]
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
No, by (for instance) destroying the cave complex they're in. One of the main areas of DoD research with nuclear weapons is making low-yield versions. I've read several things that indicate a ~1 kt. bunker-buster either exists now or is actively being developed . That's the equivalent explosive power of over a thousand of the 5000 lb. bunker busters they have now, in one small, convenient (and hopefully deeply-penetrating) package.
If the scenario were dropping a bomb with 1/20 the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb in the middle of the desert to kill OBL and friends with 80% probability, would you be so averse?
I know it's fun and profitable to knee-jerk Bush/America bash, but consider that there might be circumstances where a "nuclear first strike" would be an attractive option - and not a precursor to Armaggedon.
Well you laugh or you cry. Bottom line is I'm not a U.S. citizen and don't live in the U.S. I have next to no power to do anything against that cowboy you elected. To make matters worse our prime minister wants to be his best buddy.
Or you do both. Bottom line for me, I am a US citizen and I do live in the U.S. I have next to no power to do anything against that cowboy the other half of the population elected. To make matters worse, I am surrounded by idiots of the first order.
I may not be able to emigrate to safety, but since my wife is an EU citizen, we can at leat emigrate to a place where people are reasonably intelligent and not quite so far to the right of Adolf Hitler (although Pope Benedectine should have us all quaking in fear at leat on par with Baby Bush). When the next Christian holocaust happens we may all be wiped out, but at least the last few years will have been spent among progressive people, trying to build a semblance of a future, and therefor vastly more fulfilling than spending time among arrogant, self-centered neanderthals earning good money but supporting a political and social system that is systematically dismantling all semblance of civilized society, human rights, science, and ultimately, humanity.
There is some evidence about voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida that suggest that Bush may ot have won the most recent election (not to mention the questions around the first election), so it is still possible that the majority of Americans aren't stupid. Regardless, it is a pretty sad state of affairs that enough Americans voted for him that he could even plausibly win.
--- SER
Doctrine is what's written down. Back in the 1960's when Curtis Le May was head of SAC, he flatly told most anybody who would listen that he reserved the right to do whatever he pleased with SAC. He knew it was quite possible for a few SLBM's to wipe out Washington without any warning. He wouldnt promise to wait until the Secretary of the Interior or whomever was left could be found before launching a strike.
This is BY FAR the most intelligent and thought out response I've seen yet
I don't know - a nipple slip might up his popularity! Seriously though, as an American I believe two things will have to happen - more election reform and a fuckload less ignorance on the part of middle America. Basically, our masses fell victim to a FUD campaign - and, in the last two presidential elections in a row, massive voting 'irregularities' and widespread disenfranchisement (including the very un-American voting right loss following a felony conviction) - in shit ass poorly run States like mine, Florida, also run by - yes, you guessed it!
"And you know - violence won't stop anything"
It stopped the Germans. And the Japanese.
Need I go on, or are you sufficiently humbled?
You think Bush is the "dumb" of "dumb and dumber"?
What the hell? Have you noticed anyone loitering near your head with a sledgehammer, because it seems like you've taken a hit there...
I agree with you post all the way to Iraq. From day one, all I remember hearing was nations who harbor terrorist will pay (presummably for 9/11). For that is was retaliatory, not even preemptive. WMD was an excuse, but Iraq was for 9/11 AND an 10 year old unfinished family feud.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
And something else. I support the theory that the nuclear weapons bring peace. No one will start a nuclear war, considering the consequences. Actually they make any kind of war senseless, because the classical war weapons and tactics are of no use in the nuclear war.
Which, however, only works if everyone hat nukes because as long as there is someone who can't turn your capital into a puddle of molten glass you can still wage war on him.
Unfortunately, we can't give everyone nuclear weapons as there are lots of nutjobs who don't care about consequences.
It's a nice theory and it works for some cases but it's not applicable to large parts of the world.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Nicely said...as as a side note to your old Norwegian saying:
As a student of iaido, the Japanese have an exactly similiar saying:
"...saiya no naka ni..."
"...keep (the sword) in the scabbard..."
The best warriors are thought to do everything they can to keep the sword in the scabbard...
They would be terrorists by any definition of the word. And you're a moron by any definition of the word.
How it made a world a better place?
Temporary solution is always one - shoot. It won't solve problem why violence had to be used in the first place.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Don't forget the Anthrax mailer. They've done and excellent job of finding him/her (yes it may be a her) or them.
Our government cannot do the one thing it is truly created to do, protect its citizens. Time for radical change.
It's too horrific to imagine.
One thing I would love to see is some of the anti-nuclear organizations put together stunning, photorealistic animations of what a "limited" nuclear exhange might look like. There's lots and lots of data and video to work from to get very close, I think. The images would be so brutal I don't think you could find a television network willing to air it.
People have a hard time imagining what a million of something looks like. Let alone a million lives ended in 30 seconds. It's a fundamental comprenhension problem.
I don't recycle. I'm not particularly worried about running out of oil. The very fact governments are even still considering "first use" doctrines leads me to believe we will be back to sticks, stones, and crossbows in the forseeable future. Human nature, like karma, is a bitch.
..don't panic
To me, this seems like evolution doing what it does best: weeding out experiments that have proven to be unfit. We have evolved intelligence as an adaptive trait, with it has come our ability to shape our environment, and now even our genetic future. Along with that has come the power to annihilate ourselves. We will either learn to choose correctly, or our choices will correct the problem, and evolution will try something different, as it should be.
A nuke first strike policy is a violation of the non proliferation treaty. Typically hypocritical of the US.
Does this mean that at some point since the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush has (somehow) learned that it is necessary to obtain proper legal authority before committing the US military?
This is news; though I'm not sure I like to have to read real news about stuff that actually matters on slashdot.
Can we just get back to the gadgets and overzealous MS bashing, and leave the politics 2 teh grow3d up ppl?
boakes.org
The Israeli's have it right: keeping silent on the matter shows you are more about action than words.... and it is far scarier to potential enemies (atleast I think so).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Not if we nuke them first
My UID is prime... is yours?
Live under an oppressive regime, or die?
Live in a world of limited freedom, or see the land scortched?
Die today but know the society, and your children may live on to be free another day, or destory all hope for mankind and civilization?
If a preemptive strike has the possibility of leading to mutual assured destruction, then isn't any totalitarian nightmare better then that?
Discuss
Geoffrey Peart McMaster University Sfwr Eng Coast of Araska
It does make sense.
He doesn't believe in the Rapture, but he wishes that it will happen just so we can be rid of all the religious idiots in the world.
The person saying this is white, mature, educated, well travelled, and not american.
I deliberately said "not american" as opposed to "european" or "english", because that is fast becoming the only distinction required.
the USA, that is the people, need a wake up message, perhaps a wake up message in the form of your entire congress including the president chimp being nuked.
the WTC obviously wasn't a clear enough message.
"9/11" was ___NOT___ an attack on the american people or way of life or anything else, it was an attack on USA foreign policy as driven by USA monetary policy, hence hitting two buildings full of financial institutions.
If I wanted to slap the face of the USA ___PEOPLE___ I'd fly a jet into the Statue of Liberty, the one true global symbol of all that is american.....
if this has been done it would have killed maybe a hundred people, but rocked every citizen in the USA back on their heels as a personal insult.
no way lady liberty was "Overlooked" as a possible target, no chance in hell, ergo the perpetrators werem't after slapping you all personally across the face.
3 jetliners could have been crashed into three electricity stations around new york and thrown the city into anarchy, same as new orleans, but it wasn't done.
bottom line is it is really hard to think of targets that are more clearly and obviously specifically USA financial / foreign policy related than those that were hit
and yet you lot still do not get it
bush is still there, getting worse every day.
we don't care too much if he ruins america, we're sorry for you as citizens, but then you keep voting him in and who are we to interfere?
we do care if he ruins our countries.
bush is the village psychopath, as time passes and his behaviour worstens, more and more of the villagers are going to turn against him
sure, in the ensuing fight much of the village may be razed to the ground, but some of it will survive, if we don't do something about the village psychopath he will desroy ALL of the village.
USA citizens need to wake up and ask themselves is living in a destroyed US economy, like post katrina new orleans or a kurt russell vision of new york, is the future they really want, if not, it's time to cut loose, very publicly, from the insane chimp and his money men backers.
I guess we'll tell how blinkered you all are from how quickly this message is modded as "troll", if slashdot had regional modding you'd find non USAians modding it differently....
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
The key to international security is really just common sense and respect from all parties. Hauling up nukes to someones backyard and expecting them to accept it is not common sense. Crying wolf when they do the same to you is also not common sense (since you sort of asked for it)?
No sane person purposely lets a potential enemy gain such a close striking position. Any war you get involved in, or might, isn't about a fair fight, it's about winning with the fewest casualties to our own side.
Really, do you think the American public would be okay with not even trying to stop russia from putting nukes in cuba? Nukes aimed at us?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The US was wrong about the presence of WMD in Iraq. Therefore, the US will always be wrong, can never rely on any intelligence, and will always be unjustified in any future conflict.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
How far have we fallen.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Unfortunately, this country was never designed to be a democracy, no matter what you think you remember from US History class. This country was created by rich white people who thought that it might be a good idea to protect thier own property.
We live in a REPUBLIC. We vote for representitives that vote for "us". Sure, some systems in our goverment are democratic in nature, it doesn't make it a democracy.
I can't just march up to Congress and help change public policy now can I? Is that a democracy?
I don't care about how precisely the government should be run, but I want to have a say when they are doing something that I object to.
... a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction.
What part of preemptive does the author not understand intends to alleviate the "mutual" in MAD? As in, we nuke them before (read: preemption!) they nuke/chem/bio us.
Pyschobable at its best. You clearly choose the extremists ends of both ends, which usually make up only about 10% at most, but the loudest 10%. To be rational you would see the difference, to be prejudice you only see everything as the same even though it is not. Overgeranlized statements are not rational but elitist.
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
And whereas Muslim terrorists hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing white people, neocons hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing Muslims.
Wow, bad time to be a white muslim -- which is a rapidly growing group here in the UK due to people converting when they marry.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
. . . is I hope the guy with the backpack sits down next to you.
Go fuck yourself.
What?
I still can't get over the fact that most people believe a two-party system is in any way a democracy. A four-yearly choice between two individuals choosen from the same secret cults does not represent "the will of the people".
There will be a Muslim/Gay/Black child molestor president years before there is ever an athiest one. Personally, I believe there should be a law preventing people who believe in doomsday scenarios (e.g. the rapture) from having access to weapons that could bring it about. That's just asking for trouble.
For example; Bush has said before:
How long before "god" tells him to take out N. Korea or China? And he is seeking first-strike capability? In world where M.A.D. is no longer the case? I'm getting a little worried here, could the American readers out there please do something to stop this madman? Before he fucks up the whole world and makes us all hate your childrens children just for being from the same place that started WW3? At the very least it's bad for business...
For everyday that goes, the US, Iraq and the old Soviet is becoming a little more similiar to each other.
How about change it to "We wont fire the first nuke" ?
And the location of Turkey happens to be just outside the Russian border.
s/just outside the Russian/on the Soviet/
We will either learn to choose correctly, or our choices will correct the problem, and evolution will try something different, as it should be.
Right on. I'd mod you up if I had points.
-kgj
-kgj
Apparently, people are forgetting that there are other types of nukes that aren't the "strategic" kind. There are generally "strategic" and "tactical" nukes. Strategic = city/infrastructure busters (not what would be used for a bunker). Tactical = battlefield operations. These were of the nature that NATO commanders would use when the overwhelming numbers of the Warsaw Pact countries would attack. They wipe out large swaths of tanks and soldiers, but are confined to a relatively small area. In other words, these are small enough that they could just take out a block but hot enough to vaporize chemical, biological, and other nuclear devices. Oh, and leave a city standing.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
"Inadvertantly show his nipple during the superbowl? "That was a wardrobe malfunction - that means there was a malfunction with mah wardrobe." (Wardrobe sure is a funny-looking word...)
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
I know what you mean! I love the GrandParent Poster's idea, too!
Along with killing the genuine "evil men", we should be really should be sure to kill their families, since they all almost certainly share their ideologies.
The same goes for their neighborhood, and maybe even the whole damn city. Even if the whole city, neighborhood or relatives are not guilty/evil, people really shouldn't complain because it's all for the cause of:
1) Fighting Terrorism
2) Preserving the American Way if Life
3) Making the World Safe for Democracy
4) Stopping Religious Extremism
5) Keeping that oil flowing so we can still drive our SUV's in the face of rising gas prices and global temperatrures (some say this bears a close simililarity to #2, but they're just pinko hippie communists)
6) Deposing those evil/misguided leaders who we either put into power in the first place, or aided, so that they could fight another evil/misguided leader.
So what if killing one evil man, and maybe his wife/family/brother/cousin, causes three or more to take up arms against us! So what if they aren't actually the ones who attacked us in the first place! God and morality are on OUR side! Our religious and government leaders say so!
So you can see there is no room for (intelligent) diplomacy, compromise or alternatives!
DIE! DIE! DIE! YOU EVILDOERS!
(cough cough)
ahem.
We know return to our regularly schduled broadcast of the 700 club.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
To be more accurate, the majority of Diebold machines that can be bothered to vote want Bush. Many of them several thousand times.
Your definition of premption is correct.However, prevention is not in any way moral. The next time its game over, you don't need to be a genius or a rocket scientist to know thats it. Iraq was not prevention of anything other than enforcing the doctrine that US will rule the world by force-that falls in neither prevention or premption.A country has to be totally defenseless and very weak to attack it.A huge propaganda campaign has to be established, remember Iraq did'nt become a threat to the "world" until just right before the war, miraculously.Then GI JOE American hero saves the day,"Mission Accomplished". The only prevention in Iraq that happened was to let other countries (particularly EU) do business there. We as in the US want exclusive control over those resources and American companies should only be able to benefit from it according to foreign policy.
Meh. The reality is, someone will always be willing to shoot. If you embrace a pacifist ideal, then the next guy who comes along who doesn't is going to take you down without even thinking twice about it.
And sometimes there really isn't anything you can do about the problem. You make something someone else wants. They take it, violently if need be. You live where someone else wants to live. You have food when someone else wants to eat.
Sure you can give up something every time someone asks for it, but how long will you last in that case?
Competition is the way of the world, and all the creatures on it do it all the time. If you decide you don't want to play the game, then you need to be glad that there are people with guns whose job it is to make sure you have that right.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
American soldiers were not terrorists. They engaged in guerilla warfare, but they did not kill innocent British civilians. There is a difference.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Nah, for my money you're in for more of the same. Bush's handlers are too good, the media doens't even try to challenge him, and without events being reported popular opinion isn't an effective tool to oust them.
The republicans and neocons have spent decades investing in their infrastructure, pet "intellectuals" and media glovepuppets, while the democrats have pissed about and played by the rules.
Until the republicans stop dominating all three arms of your government, even if a democrat president got in he's be hanstrung by lack of support.
For my money it's Jeb Bush next time (now George has run out of terms), and he'll lurk in the Whitehouse until the Republicans push through the ammendment and Arnie can step up. I've got some vague hope at that point (Arnie's a republican, but appears a vaguely sensible one), but TBH I think by then twelve or sixteen years of unchecked neocon-influcneced republican rule will have fucked your economy and civil liberties to the point you're irreversibly on the way to third-world-nationhood.
Sorry to be pessemistic, but I think unless something's done at the next election, we'll have seen the peak of the American empire, and the beginnings of the rise of the Chinese one.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Really, do you think the American public would be okay with not even trying to stop russia from putting nukes in cuba? Nukes aimed at us?
No, I do not think the American public would be okay with that. And no, I also do not think the government and people of Soviet Union were okay with the missiles in Turkey.
Once more, I reiterate the point: USA put nuclear weapons into Turkey first and had them aimed at the Soviet Union. Why do you think the Soviet Union should have accepted US nuclear missiles next to them, aimed at them?
Like you said: "no sane person purposely lets a potential enemy gain such a close striking position". The Soviet Union did to USA exactly what USA did to them, i.e. they positioned some nuclear missiles near the US border. The result was the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I would say that the correct action in this case would have been to exercise some common sense and NOT to position the nuclear weapons into Turkey in the first place. Eisenhower was very correct in noting that the step would be considered as "provocative".
I do not moderate.
"When it comes to terror and devestation, actual terror and devestation, America is strictly in the little leagues."
q i-guerrilla-war-rate.html
Really, and how "actual" must terror be before you take it serious? Or does "actual" mean "We didnt do that"?
But, actually, the good ole US of A is right up there with Saddam:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/12000-dead-in-ira
And, of course, youre forgetting the meager 50,000-300,000 deaths as a result of the Cambodia carpet bombing runs.
You disgust me.
VON.
The whole preemptive line of thought has a very old taste to it.
In Hitler's own speeches he justified invading Czechoslovakia as a preemptive measure of it being used as a military base to attack the heart of the fatherland... and to liberate the poor Germanic who were being lead by an inferior culture...
And that certainly would have happened, as he was planing a war.
Obviously, the only sane thing to do is
Nuke the Moon! (A Realistic Plan for World Peace)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I think the problem is, that a portion of the global population has no interest in making the world a better place. And they have a tactical advantage in that attitude.
I beleive he was saying that he wished all these religious people who want to convert the wolrd to their religion (Muslim, Christian - whatever) would leave the planet any means possible and leave us alone.
I can appreciate how much everyone else pays for gas outside of the U.S., but it's a different situation over here than in a lot of places in Europe.
For one, the U.S. is as big as western Europe. So we have to travel longer distances for a lot of things. Plus, our national passenger train system is, being generous, poor. It's slow and more expensive than flying. Mass transit in all but the largest cities is also very poor. Probably all consequences of always having cheaply available gas. Everyone could afford to have cars and drive around.
I hope one good thing that comes out of the rising fuel prices is establishment of better transit systems here.
I like bread.
From the article:
'Another scenario for a possible nuclear preemptive strike is in case of an "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."'
Thank God they're finally taking the Xenomorph threat seriously.
I would say that the correct action in this case would have been to exercise some common sense and NOT to position the nuclear weapons into Turkey in the first place. Eisenhower was very correct in noting that the step would be considered as "provocative".
Yeah, no disagreement there. The USSR should have bitched about us putting nukes in turkey. Basically it was a game of taking what advantages you could, and denying your opponent the same.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
.... Indeed.
A wardrobe malfunction that lead to Jackson inadvertently showing her nipple.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
They are fuckwits who just want to blame anyone better off for their miserable self-made condition.
Uh, yes, I can't imagine why a 16-year old Arab boy who watched his mother and sister get blown into pieces by a US missile from an Apache helicopter wouldn't hate the US - it's his own fault, the situation. Sure. OK, that's a hypothetical example, but that kind of thing happens nearly every day now in the middle east. Where do you think terrorists come from? Where do you think the hate comes from?
Yes, absolutely I'd be averse. Because that deep penetrating package will almost certainly spew a lot of fallout which will be a problem for anyone (likely innocent anyones) for many miles downwind. Sheesh, think before you lob nukes please.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Yes, unfortunately, the majority of the country seemingly believes that creation myths have the same quality and quantity of supporting evidence as evolution, that hurricanes are the result of gay people and that crippled people don't deserve to walk again or move their arms, if it means utilizing stem-cells.
Or we don't believe any of that crap and just thought he'd do a better job than the other guy. Many people, and I'm saying 'many' based on an informal survey of group containing 'people I know who voted in 2004', thought that it was a choice between a bad and worse candidate. Neither were terribly appealing, and both had lots of negatives. Some (lots) of us who voted for Bush did so because we disliked Kerry, not because we thought Bush was right on everything.
--trb
Having recently watched a few shows and read some articles on the nuclear weapons used in Japan, I got to thinking nuke's are almost a purely terroristic weapon.
If you use them against terrorists you have very little chance of getting them. Even if you hit the city they are in most will survive. In Japan some girls working in a bank less than a mile from where the bomb went off are still alive to talk about it. Key to their survival was not drinking the toxic rain that fell afterwards.
The bomb creates tremendous heat and on large populated areas is so terrifying (terroristic weapon) that it scares your enemy into surrender. Which is exactly why we used them against the Japanese.
Anyway I just think the principles of the United States and what we advertise to the world should not be "we have nuke's and we can use them at a moments notice", but instead be "we want to help create a world where it is clear to everyone that fascist, expansionist empires are not a good idea and will not be tolerated".
Being a fascist, expansionist regime ourselves is not what the United States is about IMHO.
"How it made a world a better place?"
Well, I'd say France was pretty happy about it. And the UK, and Poland. And Germany and Japan are reasonably pleased with the outcome.
But, you're not willing to acknowledge a point are you, you just plan to cling to your pacifist ideal, despite the fact that I've proven you wrong.
Or are you willing to admit you have no idea what you're talking about?
Freedom fighters don't attack civilians.
I like bread.
That was well said.
That is why the raw number of nuclear heads each country is having is not really important.
It was never that important really. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the Russians only had about 50 warheads that could be delivered to the United States. The United States had several thousand and the bombers to deliver them. But that didn't really matter now did it? Even if you could take out 95% (pretty optimistic) of the Russian force with a first strike that still leaves two or three warheads that could have hit the US. If you were Kennedy would you have risked NYC/DC/LA on that dice roll?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If I wanted to slap the face of the USA ___PEOPLE___ I'd fly a jet into the Statue of Liberty, the one true global symbol of all that is american.....
Actually, the Statue of Liberty was designed by and given to the US by the French (and the US wouldn't even pay for delivery initially, until Hearst and some others got in the act). I was kind of depressed watching the post-9/11 "Freedom Fries" debacle and lots of shots of politicians insulting the French while being interespersed with shots of the Statute of Liberty "still standing tall, despite the terrorists".
I guess it makes sense. Most people in this country have damn little education, and the Statue of Liberty makes a good rabble-rouser, but seriously, it was damn depressing.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Oh absolutely they killed innocent civilians. Not British because they couldn't get to England but take a look at the campaign against the Iroquois sometime. Ordered by George Washington to destroy as many villages (and the people in them) as possible.
Just a nit. There is no such thing as a former alcoholic.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Gee, it sure is a good thing the end of WWII didn't precipitate five decades of near-constant petty warfare and general unrest! Whew! Dodged that bullet!
Another one bites the dust
He's the Antichrist.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
We're talking about the toddler's leverage against the bully with the brass nuckles.
Based on the comparitive military capabilities, I think the more accurate description would be: "We're talking about the bully's leverage against the toddler with the brass knuckles."
It's still amazing to me that y'all thought Bush, given his first 4 years, was worse than anything the DNC could provide. Bush was a loser from the beginning, and we asked for more! I guess we really do deserve what we get.
Ever notice how WMD now describes anything larger than a hand grenade?
I think we should call them what they really are, chemical agents, biological agents, radiation dispersing device (dirty bomb), or nuclear wepons. Of those the only truely WMD is the nuke, maybe a chemical agent like VX might qualify.
Dirty bombs, and most chem wepons can maybe take out a few blocks, and bio wepons are finiky at best. Things like anthrax are definately not WMD.
It's the ultimate object lesson in why preemptive war is bad idea. As soon as the policy was announced, war planners all over the world immediately started creating thier own plans for pre-preemeptive strikes in the event of an (apparent) US move agaist them. The end result is that each miltary MUST strike first and hit the hardest. War planning becomes a slave to timing. It's a guaranteed disaster.
I agree with you, (and I am Mexican so my country may be affected by the nukes). You should fucking nuke the ass of USA (not all America is that bad okey ;-).
Not to kill them all, not to kill their people or whatever, just to turn down its self-inflated ego. For some time they have been proclaimed the "most powerful country in the world" and they are using that to create an empire of tyrany over the world, not only in the politic side, but also on the economic side (USA enterprises and chains like walmart or even MS).
It is time to fuck them so much that they again remember that the world do not belong to them and that they better live in peace with the world than to go and get their asses in whichever place they want.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
"The bomb creates tremendous heat and on large populated areas is so terrifying (terroristic weapon) that it scares your enemy into surrender. Which is exactly why we used them against the Japanese."
How exactly does one end a war without convincing one's adversary that defeat is imminent? When is the threat of defeat in war not terrifying?
If this policy were in place before Iraq II, would Iraq now be a radioactive crater? I'm sure some of you wouldn't mind, but I think it would have been a truly horrible tragedy. And, just think, how would we know whether the act was justified? A nuke would completely wipe out any evidence. This policy would lower the barrier to deployment of nuclear weapons and I don't trust the Bush Administration, or any other administration that acts as recklessly as they do, enough to condone the lowering of such a barrier. This is insanity.
They are educated on womens rights and don't consider it fair to put a women through a life of frequent child bearing, ave no problems with abortions to save a career path, and find it unethical to overpopulate the planet. But when your at evolutionary war with people of lower consciousness you have to adapt or fall. If your intelligent and enlightened, for gods sakes breed, breed alot, put reproduction above personal comforts, it will soon be too late.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
The difference is that if you do do something about it, you are damned, and if you don't do something about it, the whole world is damned.
Linux is not Windows
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well, the Quran is pretty explicit in it's world view. There's Muslims and non Muslims. There's the House of Islam( Dar-ul Islam ) and the House of War( Dar-ul Harb ). Furthermore, it is incumbent upon all Muslims to engage in Jihad to spread the Muslim faith to all corners of the word. And, non Muslims are not equal to Muslims in Muslim societies. They are second class citizens. Slavery is also explicitly endorsed in the Quran. Extremists, as you call them( I prefer fundamenalists ), are simply drawing upon the ample theological and historical record that Islam provides.
And with regards to Women, again, the record shows that Islamic societies have never treated women as equals to men( what society has? ). Women have their 'place' so to speak, and it's usually barefoot and pregnant.
Why Afghanistan? Bunker busting nukes is why.
For a while now there has been a discussion of using nukes as a method of bunker busting. If I understand it correctly the bunker busting nuke buries itself into the ground and a nuclear equivalent of a shaped charge blasts even the deepest bunkers.
USA intel believes Osama and his band of trained apes are hiding deep in the caverns of Afghanistan where we cant get at him with our super special high tech stand off weaponry. We could get them by sending enough troops in on the ground and actually taking control of the place, but our troops are a little busy elsewhere fixing a clusterf*ck brought on by Bush and his band of trained apes.
So the next <airquoute style="sarcasism:high;">"logical"</airquote> step is to ask for and get authorization to use nukes. The only way that this could be done covertly is to seek authorization for a blanket preemtive use of nukes.
This is one of the dumbest ideas ever...not that the pentagon actually has the power to grant powers to their boss but it's still a dumb idea. Premeptive nuclear war is ignorant not because it's Bush like so many people are writing but because it's anybody from Bush on. Regardless of what you think of the current leader there will be another and another and another and eventually you get a bad one or at least one you don't like the policies of. Putting this kind of power in the hand of one man no matter who he is is ignorant and short sighted.
In this day and age given the proven track record of the government using every inch of the nice, new power we've given in (thank you, PATROIT act, what makes us think that this isn't so much of a sabre-rattling as a sort of heads-up to the world that we're making the legal justification to ourselves for a nuclear strike? Ok, so technically the President has the power to do this already, but look at the timing of the issue: Iran, who we can't touch with conventional weapons, North Korea (same), and the whole China/Taiwan issue (which will come to a head someday. Soon.).
You don't request such powers just to have them in your hip pocket. You request such powers because you already have a plan in mind and need legal and "just" reason to use them.
Consider: Dubya wanted to invade Iraq. Wanted to topple Saddam. Invented the 9/11 - Iraq link. Invented the WMD angle. Invaded Iraq. Scenario 2: Dubya wants to prevent Iran from becoming a stronger nuclear power. Invents a "they are a threat to our freedom, and have WMD's" angle. And by his newly-given powers, uses the atom.
Not so far fetched. Congress would never go along with such a thing. But who cares about Congress when you can can have them sign their powers away to you?
Chris Knight is my hero.
The Quran? Hadith? Read them sometime.
What the h*ll makes you think this is a democracy? Its a republic representing corporate interests. Do you have any idea how the president is (officially) selected? Surely you are aware that his first term was by appointment and not election. Surely you are aware of the leaked administrations plans to "win" the election no matter what?
I voted against Bush, but it doesn't really matter. Even if there were no issues about him having become president your assertion is still absurd. Someone can belong to a sizable minority that opposed the election and by your view its that persons fault he is in power?
If you subscribe to the "mob rule" interpretation of democracy and if the USA were really a democracy you stance would have merit. But all it takes is the fact that the USA is not a democracy to make that fall apart.
IMO the main failing of our presidential system is that it is all or nothing. At best you have one party controlling the executive branch and the "other" party controlling the legislative branch. In a contentious situation nothing gets done. In the worst case you have one party controlling both and there is no check or balance (the judicial branch's "check and balance" is after the fact in special cases -- too little, too late and ignores the fact that they are selected for partisan views).
The truth, short of a revolution, this is not changing. Why? Because the problem is the government, its very structure. With both parties having gravitated to the same stance (with some superficial difference decoration) there is no way they, or the corporations they represent, will allow that level of change. It would require re-writing the Constitution for crying out loud.
And advocating revolution is treason. So combining your logic with reality you are saying its the fault of the USA citizens for not committing treason and revolting?
Perhaps, but I'm not going that far out on a limb.
Nazism killed many more people than that, 6 million is the count for Jews alone. But Nazism is a socialist doctrine, the name itself is an abreviation for "National Socialist German Workers' Party". Nazism was socialist both in its emphasis of government control of the economy, and social protection and welfare for the workers. Check for instance their "Kraft durch Freude" program.
Nazism may be called "right wing", but that's just an attempt of the "left wing" to differentiate. Actually, Nazist Germany and Socialist Russia were close allies at one time. Remember the so-called Ribbentropp-Molotov treaty by which the Soviet Union and Germany agreed on how they would split Europe among themselves. If Hitler hadn't coveted the natural resources of Russia, they would have continued to be allies. The proof that Stalin had no intention of attacking Germany is in the events from July through December 1941, when it became clear that the Soviet army was absolutely unprepared for war against Germany.
Therefore, the real distinction is not among "left wing" Socialists vs. "right wing" Nazis. If you want to distinguish between political streams, a better classification would be "socialist" vs. "capitalist", or the government taking care both of the economy and welfare, vs. a system where everyone takes care of himself.
"You know how the UK stopped Irishmen blowing up our cities. We spent nearly 30 years of getting ever more draconian and then after actually negotiating with the terrorists we've had virtually no trouble with them at all in the last 10."
My own conscience would bother me a lot if I condoned negotiating with folks who blew up cities and the people in them. Then again, I actually have a conscience to bother me about that sort of thing.
"It may turn some people's stomachs to see Gerry Adams being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize... "
...my own stomach included.
"...but up until our ass-kisser leader dragged us into a pointless war, UK citizens didn't have to worry about being blown up anymore."
Yes, but you're kindasorta making it look as if he kissed the wrong ass as if "ass-kissing" ought to have anything to do with how civilized people deal with terrorists.
And that's more response than you deserve, filth.
"The Bush administration can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen it determines to be an enemy combatant in the war on terrorism, a federal appeals court ruled."
Please do not confuse "America", which is a continent on which many countries are, and "the US", which is one country in America.
I am a Canadian, because I am from Canada, but I am also an American, because I am from the continent of America, just like you are an European because you are from Europe. However, I am not a "United-Stater". I am just so friggin sick of being ashamed to say I am American just because some dumb country couldn't find a name.
Somehow, I think the US arrogance started the day they decided to name themselves after the whole damn continent.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
If you were Kennedy would you have risked NYC/DC/LA on that dice roll?
:p
He did. Word is he had intel that the Russians wouldn't actually be able to launch, but it was still a hell of a gamble.
Oh, you mean, would he launch against Russia first? Why? It was the Soviets who had the doctrine of taking over the whole world for communism, or had you forgotten? Despite what Soviet propoganda had to say, I don't think the Americans ever really considered a first strike. Well, MacArthur probably did. But no one with real power
Some (lots) of us who voted for Bush did so because we disliked Kerry, not because we thought Bush was right on everything.
I can't believe you voted for Turd Sandwich. Giant Douche was clearly the better candidate.
(Thank you, South Park.)
Education is the silver bullet.
So, it's OPEC who is squeezing our gas prices? Or is the "capitalistic" lords of American Energy companies that are in fact controlling our pump prices. Doesn't the Bush family have a stake in Exxon? I guess one most love the "benevolent" corporations who's job isn't to make the share holders wealthier but to ensure that OPEC doesn't charge to much to the American consumer. In your excercise, who's the Bully and who's the Toddler? Fittingly, there has only been one person, one nation, and one group ever to use Atomics against the fellow denizen's of the world. And it' wasn't Al Queda.
I swear there were terrorists there!! Of course if you care to go there to look for factual evidence or WMD you'll find only dust...Cause we did our job so damn well!
Like someone else said, follow where the money goes.
Iran has announced plans to create its own oil exchange to trade oil in Euros. The target is to have it running by March/April 2006. Currently all oil trading is done in US dollars, either in New York city or London. What impact will this have on the USA, does anyone care to speculate? If the US dollar no longer becomes _the_ currency, how will this affect the US economy? Apparently Iraq was making similar plans, before the US invasion, to trade oil on Euros and what happened there? The USA made up some bullshit excuse to invade and take over the country.
I can't help but wonder, which friends of congress benefit from the US military needing to replenish its stocks when it goes to war.
Diebold Election Systems chose the government. We just pressed useless buttons.
As for the pre-empt them before they pre-empt us, that's ridiculous. Given the response of the US to the sneak attack in Pearl Harbor, the sneak attack in Korea, and the terrorist action on 9/11, a sensible person would come to the conclusion that the United States tends to respond with overwhelming force only when provoked. (Johnson administration overlooked.)
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
But in today's America, to try and do such a thing would likely get you labeled as a terrorist, with no legal recourse.
Indeed an interesting point. Let's see the options:
- You can camp in front of the White House with a sign that says you're unhappy. You'll look like a nut and you're utterly useless to whatever cause you are defending.
- You can organize some movement and demonstrate in the middle of a city, shouting your opinions with hundreds of like-minded people. Then you'll piss the average citizen that has to go to work, get bored, get back home and eat TV-diner and he'll end up blaming you for the traffic jams and hate whatever message you're trying to pass.
- You can wirte to your represen... Forget that, waste of time.
- You can blow shit up. But hey, look at McVeigh. Whatever the ideas behind his actions, he killed innocents. Oh, and he's dead too now. not efficient.
So, I'm asking the question: what is there to do in a democracy to change things? Does democracy exist at all, now that mass-media can select what to talk about and present the news the way they want? Do citizens have any opinion? Does it matter who you vote for?
IMO, there's no democracy. Democracy is a buzzword, and that's all there's left of it. And I feel very sad when, in another post, I follow a link to Michi Kaku's website where I read about the future of mankind and what great discoveries are waiting to be done and then, I look around me, I look at the news and I see dumb people in charge of our countries. I think I believe Mankind will get out of this mess, but I truly wonder how. How can you stop a system that controls you? How can you hope to accomplish anything great when you do not have the courage to take a walk outside? Why would you want to change things anyway when the rest of the world is shown to you as barbaric wastelands?
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
The Holy Roman Empire had no legions. The vanilla Roman Empire had.
The Holy Roman Empire was called like that for a thousand years, even though it was not Holy (it was at war with the Pope most of the time), it was not Roman (it was—mostly—German, the name Roman suggested mostly an idea of heritage; it was actually the first Reich), and it was not an Empire, since it was mostly an honorific title with decreasing degrees of power through the centuries.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
-kgj
I would say that it is more ignorant to think that those few issues you describe are the only deciding factors for choosing a presidential candidate.
What would killing Osama Bin-Ladin do to alleviate the threat from his organization? Nothing.
The beauty of organizations like al-Qaeda is that they are a loosely organized organization of largely autonomous cells focused on a single goal. They can survive the capture and killing of their leaders as well as massive campaigns to round up and imprison or kill the membership. As long as there are believers in the cause, the organizations roots remain in tact ready to sprout to life at any opportunity.
When the West, and most notably the US, stop interfering in the affairs of the Islamic world, this organization no longer has a reason to exist. Until then, the struggle will continue. Force is not the answer. Justice is.
Or we don't believe any of that crap and just thought he'd do a better job than the other guy.
So the question is, do you still think Bush is doing a better job than Kerry or Gore would have done? 'Cause I gotta say, the state of the world today is about what I expected each time Bush got elected.
In what areas did you think Gore or Kerry could possibly have been worse? Taxes? Foreign policy? Civil liberties?
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1;
This is a well-thought-out, aggressive (but not unduly so) evisceration of religious fanaticism of any stripe, and specifically goes after American fundamentalists.
So how come none of the otherwise prolific posters here who disagree with this line of reasoning have responded to it?
Aaaaah. That makes sense.
;-)
After you with the holy water, then
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Throwing tea into a river != Blowing up buildings
why? forty-two.
a. Because Bushitler can't pronounce "nuclear" to my satisfaction.
b. Because I'm descended from fools too stupid to get on a boat a two hundred years ago.
c. Because I think I'd like to be forced to get on my knees and pray five times a day.
d. Because CowboyNeal is an American
What?
This past Sunday was the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings that destroyed the World Trade Center.
,speech by President Bush that he would capture him.
Osama Bin Forgotten, um... Bin Laden, is still at large despite a very firm, clear
I can't help but have the intuition that all of this cold war era recycled talk of big missile nuclear is the rattling of sabers so that the US doesn't feel like a paper tiger.
In under 6 years we went from the most powerful, prosperous, and confident nation in the world to a country that can not ( or will not ) catch a grown up spoiled child in the middle east, to a country with red/yellow/whatever alerts, and to a country that gets offered foreign aide ( and needs it ) after a natural disaster.
Maybe we need a new administration( republican or democrat ) instead of a new nuclear war doctrine.
A preemptive strike is in other parts of the world known as "starting a war".
If the US is looking for legal clout in the only court in the world it somewhat recognises (its own, and damnation to international law), the rest of the world should be worried.
Or do we want another "There are weapons of mass destruction!!!, and terrorists, and Saddam! --- OK, there weren't any WMD's, and we've actually given terrorism a new cause and training ground, but we got Saddam, so we've done pretty great don't you think?"
I think, therefore I am...I think.
What we REALLY need is a decent candidate for president. I think Bush's victory was because people didn't trust Kerry. Maybe the democratic party should actually present a decent leader next time, if they want to avoid another Bush (PLEASE, not another Bush). Like that's going to happen.... *packs bags and books flight to NZ*
The Declaration basically says that if we don't like our government, we should overthrow it
No it doesn't. It sets a much higher standard than simply not liking the government.
For your dining pleasure:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
I'm not really interested in why they want to kill me. If they want to kill me, I want them dead first. Want to know the difference between Americans and Islam? When 1000 Islamic worshippers died because of a terrorist action, Americans were mortified and tried to help. When 3000 Americans died because of a terrorist action, the Islamic community cheered and threw a street party.
Kill all the terrorists, and kill all the people that support those terrorists (even if only through silence).
(This is why I will never run for a public office - I don't think I could have responded to 9/11 by creating a democracy in Iraq, and honestly that may work with fewer deaths)
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The Iroquois decided to pick sides. They got no worse than any axis nation in WWII.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"the USA, that is the people, need a wake up message, perhaps a wake up message in the form of your entire congress including the president chimp being nuked."
You just threatened our country. Expect to be visited by our military soon. I suggest you kneel on the floor, place your weapon in front of you, and put your hands in the air. I also suggest staying as far away from military hardware as possible.
If you don't speak English as you native language, the key phrase is, "I Surrender! Don't shoot!"
Thanks and have a nice day.
And we have already had a wake-up call, thank you very much. The wake up call said, as it said to every world power since the beginning of the world, "If you plan on keeping your position of power, you have to take any and all threats seriously, even if it's coming from backwards barbarians who don't even know how to properly bathe."
It sounds like it's time the rest of the world had a wake-up call. It goes like this: "You are either with us or against us." That is all.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Propperly applied violence is extremely effective - the Japanese went from being one of the most warlike cultures to being one of the most peaceful. The roman method worked - if there is a war you need to end, pick a side at random and exterminate the other side. The key is that extermination is necessary - otherwise the circle is not broken.
Or, you could do what Bush did and try to create a Democracy - because people in a democracy have a tendancy towards peace and stability.
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> Who said Muslim fanatics want to enslave people?
THEY DID.
> even Osama Bin Laden, the most infamous fanatic,
> only talks about driving the so called 'western
> evil' outside muslim land.
>>
>> Whereas Muslim terrorists want to keep their
>> women in the home covered from head to toe and
>> pregnant
Both American and Arab fundies want the ability to subject the local populace to their own interpretation of their corresponding religions. While they might not want to enslave us, they certainly want to do that with their own people.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I hope Iran, North Korea (DPRK) and every other country who views the USA as an enemy is trembling in their boots, crapping their pants, and responding frantically to this threat. I hope so, because those nukes are aimed right at their little heads. And frankly, I hope we use them sooner rather than later. I don't like going to sleep at night wondering if Kim Jong Il is going to press the button and nuke my family. I would much rather have Tony Blair or some other democratically elected, accountable leader at that button.
On the other hand, I hope those countries who engage in free trade with the US, have no reason to feel threatened by the US because they operate above the table with us, and who have a history of supporting the US's actions against bastards like Saddam Hussein and Hitler and Hirohito feel no threat at all. That is, unless they are also dealing with DPRK and Iran and are finding themselves increasingly opposed to mankind's last great hope--the USA.
There was a line drawn in the sand, and it is still there. You are either going to help us eliminate all terrorist threats, or you are going to find yourself on the receiving end of our wrath. It's all up to you.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Selling oil in euros.
We would nuke Mecca.
The terrorists don't get it. Every time they shout "Allahu Akbar!" as they saw off a head, they are reinforcing what Europeans have known since the Middle Ages. Islam is not about peace, it is about enforcing tyrnnay by the sword.
If Muslims find the idea of Mecca turning to irradiated glass repulsive, it's high time they stood up to their imams and shouted, "ENOUGH! We will not be hijacked by sick people like you!"
Christianity went through this process and today, Christianity is very, very different from what it was in the Spanish Inquisition. Now Christianity is the religion of democracy and peace.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Honestly, the world of the nuke is gone. They're simply too expensive, too dangerous, and too damaging.
I'm all for beating the ever-loving-snot out of anyone who picks a fight with us, but nuking them is overkill. You can do more damage, effectively and more safely, with conventional weapons, than nukes. Plus, after you blow something up with regular bombs, you can go live there (or, at least, move troops there). You can't do anything with a place blasted by a nuke. It's a radioactive dump.
Anyway, I foresee this new power being either hampered down by red tape or done away with in the near future. As paranoid as Amaricans are about nukes, and the evidence that dubbya has some mental problems, shouldn't make the idea stay warm very long.
No, about 70% of the county is allowed to vote. About 25% of these bothered to vote. About 50.1% of those voted for bush. These are all rough numbers. Thus, The 52.5% of the country that cannot be bothered to vote, allowed the 8.75% who wanted a wack job in office, to in fact elect such wack job. This imposed the wack job on the 38.75% of the population who either a) cannot vote or b) did not want a wack job for president and voted aginst him. Long live minority rule!
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Leftist commies once again shooting themselves in the foot.
Without LA and New York, this country would be all "Red States".
There was an excellent talk at Cornell a year or two ago by Rob Nelson (a Princeton physicist), who has been researching the potential for these new nuclear technologies. His conclusion about bunker busters is that collatoral damage in a populated area would still be around 10,000-50,000 civillian deaths since a missile cannot penetrate to a depth sufficient for even a low-yield nuclear detonation to be contained underground.
p pt
The talk slides are in powerpoint format, and it would help to have more text explanations, but even as it is these talk slides make a VERY solid case against new nuclear initiatives:
http://www.princeton.edu/~rnelson/papers/cornell.
His results have received a little bit of media attention, but are certainly not widely known. Of course, the neglegence of scientific research is one of the hallmarks of our current administration!
He goes on to invalidate the claim that a nuclear weapon can sterilize biological agents being stored in a building. He concludes that is a catastrophically effective delivery mechanism for the agents rather than a means of sterilizing them!
I'll paste the conclusion here:
* No EPW can penetrate deeply enough to contain a nuclear explosion; it would produce lethal fallout over several square kilometers..
* If bunkers contain stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, the agents would probably not be destroyed and may be dispersed with the fallout.
* New warhead development may require renewed underground nuclear weapons testing, ending the U.S.-Russia moratorium that has existed since 1992.
And yet, it can be shown that the US has *never* had a woman president, while Pakistan (a decidedly Muslim country) has had a woman Prime Minister.
You tell me.
Had a friend from Wyoming, his parents living up there, actually drove less than we do in Tulsa, OK. The town was smaller.
I drive less than the national average, because I live purposely closer to the necessities of life. Work takes 11 mi one way though.
The need for long drives boomed since the 1950-60s. And the big box store concept has not helped. WalMart Super stores are supposed to serve surrounding areas of at least 25-50 miles as I read some where.
The cost of driving vs the cost on margin of smaller retail outlets closer to the shopper don't balance. Particularly if you don't own the oilwell.
American soldiers were not terrorists. They engaged in guerilla warfare, but they did not kill innocent British civilians. There is a difference.
It is not the best possible analogy, but the point about freedom fighters is valid. The American Revolution happens to be an anemic gentleman's affair: 'British citizens' were far away and it was a bit of a side show of a big naval war between the European continental powers and Britain anyway.
In my home town in the Netherlands we celebrate the day in 1572 we liberated ourselves from Spain, the garrison fled, and a mob hanged all Catholic foreigners in town that spoke unintelligible languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese) regardless of whether they were men, women, or children. In WWII our 'resistance heroes' mostly killed native traitors: police officers, civil servants, Nazi 'whores', etc. The Nazis consistently called them terrorists, and justified increasing oppression with it.
In fact, the only wars in which we behaved like perfect gentlemen and didn't resort to any form of 'terrorism' are the ones we started and won without trouble, like the second Anglo-Dutch war. Terrorism is, and has always been, the strategy of the underdog, while the aggressor - who needs a justification - pretends to be a gentleman and claims that God, justice, freedom, democracy, and the tide of history are on his side.
Since most of the world population was not born a citizen of a superpower, it is not very surprising that people tend to put the burden of proof on the superpower and assume that terrorism is somehow defensive in nature unless a convincing case is made to the contrary.
True, OPEC isnt the sole factor in gas prices- the disabling of US refineries in the southeast has been a large factor- but certainly OPEC seems to set the pace and atmosphere.
We are fortunate to have subsidized fuel prices in the US, and I am thankful for that, otherwise I'm not sure I'd be able to afford to drive to work with prices like Europe is seeing.
Whether or not the Bush family has a stake in Exxon (I do not know the answer, do you?), the President is not someone who would jeopardize the livelihood of hundreds of millions of americans for a little profit. This gets right back to the us versus them post I made earlier- you sound like one who is convinced Bush is the devil. Do you give him no credit for anything whatsoever? It is one thing to disagree, and another to make wild accusations of treason and other irreprehensible behavior.
"Bush doesn't care about black people"
"Bush is raising gas prices so he can make a profit"
"Bush is the worst president this country has ever had"
and on and on and on.
This man may not be the worlds most perfect speaker and certainly has a knack for making slip-ups as far as phrasing goes, but you know, I think he truly has good intentions even if his beliefs and priorities don't line up 100% with yours. Millions of people like you are waking up every day and not only saying that they disagree, but that they feel the president more or less has it in for this country. That's exactly what is sending this country down the tubes (you'll have to take a peek at my other post). Just remember, the president is privy to more information than most of us even want to know - think: "You can't handle the truth". I trust that he has our best interests in mind and at a minimum, knows more about the status of the world than I do.
I hope our next president is one that everyone can put their faith in, regardless of whether or not they 100% believe in all of his decisions being what they would do.
"We give them what they want! We get the **** out of Saudi Arabia!"
We already did.
Should we cave into their other demands? Let's list what they want us to do:
(1) Become dhimmis. That means that we can't testify in court against any muslim. If we refuse to worship Islam, then we must pay an annual dhimmi tax.
(2) Stop charging interest. Stop receiving interest.
(3) Stop giving equal rights to women. Women must cover their heads and must be subservient to their husband. If they don't have a husband they are worthless.
(4) Kill all gays and adulterers and pornographers. Bill Clinton is one of the people that Osama bin Laden frequently mentions as being morally reprehensible and eligible for execution.
(5) Adopt Shari'a law in our land. This is far worse than anything you read in the Bible.
(6) Submit to a global caliphate. That would be a world government administered by Islam imams. Think Iran but on a global scale. No, think Spanish Inquisition replacing the blue-helmetted UN.
So we'll just cave into the demans. You're not an adulterer ot homosexual are you? Why don't you just commit suicide and make our job easier in submitting to Osama's demands.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Mass transit is poor because gas prices have been kept artificially low for generations in the US. A good chunk of the federal taxes we pay goes toward keeping gas prices as low as possible, so we pay extra for the gas whether we use it or not. Plus, most people would have to pay twice as much to ride public transportation, and it would take twice as long to get to their destination, so who would use it when it can be avoided?
Worse yet, most US cities and towns have "grown up" around the car because gas has been kept so cheap. The design of our cities (with way too much sprawl) makes good public transportation very impractical. I live in Atlanta, and people commute to work here every day from various towns in 5 different states (Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, plus North and South Carolina). Many drive as far as two hours each way every day to combine affordable housing with a well-paying job. Many of them are dumb enough to drive all that way in a truck or SUV. When gas prices go through the roof, we'll be royally screwed, and it'll be our own fault.
"Let's all just try to get along, okay? "
Okay, you try to get along with me. That means you have to pay me $50 every month for the rest of your life or I come into your home and shoot you dead.
Oh, you don't like that? Well, why don't you just try to get along? Why do we have to fight all the time?
Your hippy ideas are nice but they need a touch more reality. Of course everyone wants to get along, but under whose terms? The question is and always will be under who do we submit ourselves?
Answer that and you'll quickly become a neo-conservative.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
"All preemptive strikes are preventive, but not all preventive strikes are "
Blah blah blah blah....What a crock.
This pontification is meaningless in the face of the facts. Theres a dangerous person there. What do you do? Preventive, preventative those are just words that small minded people use to make their point. Damn those revisionists and their altered history. Damn them to hell!
I am so tired of all you people and your rose tinted world. This action was necessary!
You can mince words and try to massage this point until it looks like a fuzzy bunny rabbit but you know, yes you KNOW, in youir hear of hearts that that ugly, green freak was gonna blow him away any second. Han was totally justified and you and those who think just like you had to go and ruin it...RUINED I SAY! RUINED!
Han shot first....Bitches!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
"What the world really needs is enough good nations that are capable of working together to face down the threats"
yeah the rest of the world is trying but the americans just keep on threatening us. americans keep the threat level high.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
There wasn't a suitable alternative presented.
For example; Bush has said before:
'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.'
This quote has been nearly completely changed from the context of what Bush said; it doesn't have much credibility from the sources it came from.
It's Abu Mazen's(Palestinian authority prime minister) account in Arabic of what Bush said in English, written down by a note-taker in Arabic, then back into English. There isn't even any wiggle room here for a good translation, like a bad rumour going around and it changes from person to person.
Tell you what? Why that is? Seems to me having had a female president doesn't lead to a generalized better treatement of women, as a woman's situation in Pakistani society at large is horrible. There's certainly nothing from stopping a woman in the US from becoming president. There also isn't much from stopping a woman in Pakistan from being stoned to death, having acid thrown in her face, or from being circumcised.
I don't have a problem with religious freedom. I think that is probably the first and most important freedom.
The problem here, I think, is that fascists are hiding behind this mask of religious ideal to get their fascist neo-conservative political agendas accepted by the populace, and rammed into policy.
Unfortunately, too many in the country fail to see what is going on. Too few can see the man for the trouble and shit he's worth. Every single day, he actually poses the single greatest threat to the freedom of the American citizenry.
Open your eyes, folks. The PATRIOT act only works against YOU!
An absolute wolf in sheep's clothing, he pulls the wool over their eyes with things like "I believe in God" (hell, even the devil does too!), and "I get enlightened when I pray" (just like I will when I have the power to nuke my enemies - you included - first, and explain later).
I think it's not the US being overly arrogant so much as Canadians not understanding that it and Mexico are part of the US. We're really not misnamed at all so much as that some ppl can't get themselves together to apply for stathood...
These streams of so-called Capitalist/Socialist discourse should be considered in context. One of my favorite movies from the 60's was "The President's Analyst". In which a simple prediction was made that came true about 20 years later.
"Every day your country becomes more socialistic, my country becomes more capitalistic, Pretty soon we'll meet in the middle and join hands." --V.I. Kydor Kropotkin (played by Severn Darden)
The USSR is gone and in it's place is a rapidly stablising Russia.
The tug and pull of Capitalist/Socialist keep a society from moving too far either way. Too many Neocons you get a president who pulls first responders away from saving lives for a photo-op. Too many Socialists, you get manditory classes in Macrobiotics, Veganism, and firewalking in schools.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I'm guessing the first thing you do in the morning, and the last thing you do at night, is watch Fox "News", right.
Highly enlightening, ain't it?
Just a wild guess. No... really.
He did. Word is he had intel that the Russians wouldn't actually be able to launch, but it was still a hell of a gamble.
I wasn't referring to that. I was referring to the overall balance of power. The status of the weapons in Cuba weren't part of that. The reason there was a crisis was because those weapons were considered destabilizing. But the Russians already had the ability to hit the US.
Why? It was the Soviets who had the doctrine of taking over the whole world for communism, or had you forgotten? Despite what Soviet propoganda had to say, I don't think the Americans ever really considered a first strike.
Umm... I wasn't defending them. I was pointing out the balance of power and the fact that even a "lousy" 50 or so weapons is a creditable deterrence force. We were effectively deterred from striking the Soviet Union because they had the ability to destroy at least two or three American cities in response. To say nothing of what they could have done to our allies in NATO...
That was my point. You don't need "MAD" to have deterrence. Israel can't destroy entire nations but I highly doubt anybody will be invading them anytime soon. Ditto for France, the UK and China.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The problem was that Kennedy was percieved as being a spoiled rich boy by Nikita Khrushchev,
Ah. Sounds like Khruschchev misunderestimated him.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Teach your children not to commit the errors of your parents.
Heh, I graduated from Northeast HS in Lincoln.
You have to treat domestic problems differently from foreign problems. For one thing, we have freedom of speech(and I wouldn't have it any other way).
In criminal matters, you have 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Yes, matters often degenerate to shades of grey, but war, in many ways, is the ultimate grey.
Your enemy could be a fine upstanding individual fighting for his country. As are you. But he's still the enemy, and it's your job to kill him, preferbly before he kills you, your buddies, and everybody else. Collateral damage happens.
But we're the equivalent of a professional boxer, playing by the rules of boxing while we're fighting a street fighter. We're handicapping ourselves.
In many ways, much of the support for the terrorists comes from fear of them. It's simple: The terrorists threaten to kill anybody who aids the americans, talks to the americans, works with the americans, etc... Oh, and we'll harm/kill you if you don't support us.
I hate to say it, but we need to install an equal fear of harboring the terrorists. I mean, as it is, prisoners often eat better than they did while they were on the loose. There's not alot to gain from aiding us, at least in the short term.
I don't read AC A human right
That would be the most likely scenario for a nuclear exchange to wipe out humanity.
Long live our cockroach overlord!
There's obviously no way to definitively prove or disprove the efficacy of that scenario. There are much evidence supporting it, however.
Moreover I would find suspicious anyone who claim that they understand what would happen after an all out nuclear exchange.
In terms of international legality of war, you are correct in your definitions, with one caveat (N.B.). However, that is a distinction that is growing less clear, as you point out in re: Iraq. Unfortunately, might (economic and military) makes right in world relations today, or so it seems to me.
N.B.: Pre-emption just means acting first, due to the belief that your adversary will soon act.
What the Bush administration needed to demonstrate is not that they knew Saddam was going to act, but that it was reasonable to believe that he would act -- and therefore, no one could fault his administration for believing so.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I think I heard a statistic on a television show the other night stating that 20% of adults think the Sun revolve around Earth.
damn that is bad, only 20% of people know the truth! didn't we learn from einstein that motion is relative? since motion is relative, then we are stationary observers...the sun does indeed revolve around the earth, and the earth for all practicality is the center of the universe since it is our point of refference for everything we see in the universe.
Sure you can give up something every time someone asks for it, but how long will you last in that case?
... ;)
France has been around since at least 1958
I fire off my arguments (not normally as vitriolic as this, I must add), wait eagerly for the other side's reply, and watch as they argue until they're backed into a corner, then just stop posting to avoid having to admit they're wrong.
Even worse, I often see the self-same people in other threads advancing exactly the same arguments I'd shot down in previous debates, who then stop posting if I point out the problems again.
I have seen this done so many times it blows my mind. What do you want to bet that the person who posted this will be back at posting his free market solves everything nonsense again even after being repeatedly bitchslapped with the facts.
Some (lots) of us who voted for Bush did so because we disliked Kerry
instead of voting for someone you disliked less, you should have voted for a candidate you did like. there are many great 3rd party candidates out there, the problem is people don't think they could possibly win the election, and so no one votes for them. this has become a self fulfilling prophecy...no one is willing to vote for them, so there is no possibility they will ever be elected. we need to break from this cycle/mentality and start voting for the GOOD candidate, not just the lesser of two evils! if everyone voted for who they precieved to be the good candidate, then some of these 3rd party candidates would indeed be capable of being elected.
by voting for what you perceived to be the lesser of two evils you simply wasted your vote, and now you have to live with the poison you chose yourself
So the question is, do you still think Bush is doing a better job than Kerry or Gore would have done?
It's hard to guess what they would have done, especially Kerry, since one of the reasons I didn't vote for him was that I didn't feel *he* had a firm grasp of what he was going to do. I'm not talking about the flip-flop bull that was flung back and forth, but reading his economic plan, I really couldn't see where he was going to get the money from; the numbers didn't add up. Further, it bothered me that he kept saying he was for this, that and the other and he would push XYZ many bills to accomplish them if we elected him; he'd been a freaking senator for 20 years! If he was so hard up for some of these proposals, why didn't he submit the bill *when he was in a position to do the submitting*?
Gore fell into the same category for me, though I don't remember his specific speeches terribly well at this point. I remember him losing my vote, which he had solidly, during the debates.
Not that Bush is much better, but I did like the tax cuts and I was/am behind the war. I do think it would be interesting to see how the media would portray the war were a Democrat in the WH, but I'm not going to claim liberalism is 100% the reason behind it; if it bleeds, it leads seems to be the media's stance during any presidency.
On civil liberties, I really don't see what the Republicans have done wrong. The Patriot act makes it easier for them to do things that they could already do before, and allows them to do some things that they couldn't before, but that I don't consider violations of civil liberties.
On foreign policy, Bush ain't the best, but I don't think Kerry's solution would have been the right answer either. I didn't have a problem with him going into Iraq, I thought it should have been finished off in 91 or by Clinton.
I gotta say, the state of the world today is about what I expected each time Bush got elected.
I assume you see the state of the world in a negative way? See, maybe that's my problem...I don't. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, the economy is growing. It's not 1999, but it's not bad by a long shot. How do you see it?
--trb
there are many great 3rd party candidates out there
I actually did look at the 3rd party candidates...and thought they were all nuts. Badnarik, Cobb, and Peroutka were all nut jobs; their remarks on their websites scared me, and I'm assuming those are toned down versions of what they stood for. I considered Nader, but I just didn't like his anti-war stance, nor did I think he would be good for the economy. The others, well, the prohibition and people's choice parties just didn't seem...sane.
--trb
i dont know which is more interesting, the fact that you 100% right or the fact that no one will ever listen to you
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
well then i guess it is time to start the "free beer" party! we can probably gather a whole lot of members right here on slashdot.
if together we can bring a server to its knees crying in pain then we must truly be powerful!
No one likes us.
I don't know why.
We may not be perfect,
But heaven knows we try.
But all around,
Even our old friends put us down.
Let's drop the big one,
And see what happens.
Asia's crowded,
Europe's too old,
Africa is far too hot,
And Canada's too cold.
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one,
There'll be no one left to blame us.
Boom! goes London,
And Boom! Paree.
More room for you,
And more room for me,
And every city,
The whole world round,
Will just be another American town.
We give them money,
But are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful,
And they're hateful.
They don't respect us,
So let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one,
And pulverize 'em.
We'll save Australia.
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroos.
We'll build an All-American amusement park there--
They got surfin', too!
Oh, how peaceful it'll be!
We'll set everybody free!
You'll wear a Japanese kimono, babe;
There'll be Italian shoes for me!
They all hate us anyhow,
So, let's drop the big one now.
Let's drop the big one now!
-- Randy Newman, "Drop the Big One"
-PMP-
"The key to international security is to show that you are willing to fight those who threaten you, otherwise your weakness is going to be exploited for all it's worth until it's too late for you to do anything but go to war."
as told by an uncomprimising american bully incapable of understanding anything other than violence.
"You never solve anything with violence" is not only true, but a lesson you should learn.
Met people from other nations, had ANY kind of friendly relation with a person from another country/culture?
Does sleeping with women from a variety of countries count as friendly relations? I know I sure felt friendly with them.
There is a lot of truth to this. Removing the leader of a decentralized network- to the extent it has one- does little to cripple the network. It might even increase the damage a bit by creating several competing terrorist networks.So from a tactical standpoint, removing him isn't important, and the United States needs to do more to win the ideological battle, like the relief effort in Indonesia.
From a strategic standpoint, however, Osama bin Laden serves a much more important role. He is critical to the morale of the enemy. He stands as a symbol of defiance against the West and as a symbol of the power of that terrorist network. Removing him is very important to winning this fight. And while bombing him into a fine red mist of vaporized flesh might be supremely satisfying, it also has the possibility of backfiring, by turning him into a martyr like Che. The best thing to do would probably be to capture him, do a quick military trial, and lock him away in a tiny cell to rot.
"five decades of near-constant petty warfare and general unrest!"
You left out "...which was completely unrelated to the conflict that occurred during the war, and completely caused by events that occurred before."
Whew, it's a good that not everyone is as uniformed as you.
"Bush is the worst president this country has ever had"
You mean you've had worse? How the fuck do you guys pick 'em over there?
IANARS (I Am Not A Religious Scholar), but do not believe that Islamic extremists are the only people to take religious texts out of context.
IIRC, the Bible is quite okay with slavery. Plus, your rights and privileges largely depend on whether you are one of the chosen people or not. I believe that the Bible actually instructs how a man should sell his daughter into slavery.
Are the two religious texts so different, I wonder...
Women do not achieve equal status in a society unless they have access to education and wealth. Deny either (or both) and women are oppressed - regardless of the prevailing political, economic or religious practices.
As with any issue, the problem is with the extremists. The majority of people are quite reasonable, provided that they are sufficiently well-informed.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Will the SlashPowers that be please reconsider my submission asking for help in halting my U.S. citizenship and obtaining citizenship in another country?
I can't be the only one.
All you need is lurv.
If the U.S. had stayed out of WWII, there would never have been a doctrine of containment, nor would there have been a Korean war, a Vietnam war, Bay of Pigs, a Cuban missile crisis, Augusto Pinochet, Osama bin Laden, Grenada, or countless other things. Of course, 75% of Europe would be speaking German and would be mysteriously free of people named Wiesel, and the entire Pacific would be flying the rising sun. Violence stopped that, alright, but it also precipitated much more violence. (Before you or anyone else tries to make the dumbest strawman argument ever, please note that I'm not claiming that we should have stayed out of WWII to prevent all of the crap I listed off.)
And don't even get me started on WWI. WWII came to a pretty clean close, what with reconstruction efforts and all.
Another one bites the dust
Hey, fighting terrorism is a good idea, but you can't fight terrorism with the weapons of terror. You've got to use other methods
You're right... I wish Bush would stop ordering beheadings, blowing up civilian office buildings, hijacking aircraft, kidnapping innocent people, sabotaging infrastructure, and laying roadside bombs.
Because you shouldn't fight terrorism with the weapons of terror.
Instead, I wish Bush would take down brutal dictators and extremist regimes, and funnel billions of dollars toward the reconstruction and democratization of those places.
Oh wait...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
google them and see what comes up. Or you could just click i'm feeling lucky We DID kick him out. They rigged the election results. Still our fault for not rioting in the streets, but cheap hamburger and fear of perpetual incarceration goes a long way towards keeping the population docile.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for.
No religion, too.
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us.
And the world will live as one.
Presumably that's the point. The purpose of a nuclear weapon is to intimidate the enemy. We've used nuclear weapons every day since August 6, 1945. We have a new category of enemies who aren't intimidated by our current nukes, so we're trying to fix that.
A 1 kt deep subsurface burst is still going to be a lot nicer to the surroundings than a 20 MT surface burst, which is our current option.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Have you not been paying attention? Ummm... maybe to the change in US policy on pretty much anything starting in 2001, when ummm... the administration changed from the Democrats to the Republicans?
And if you do not understand why third parties do not advance far, read something on game theory.
SEE!!!! Modded me flamebait...damn those sneaky Lucasites.
No one will admit it now! NO ONE!!!
Lucas goes bonkers and wants to change the freaking world and now he's even got the whole slashdot community modding me down because I SPEAK THE TRUTH!
HAN SHOT FIRST and I have the REAL video to prove it!
Bitches!
(Really...if you're going to mod, read the post and consider that phrases like "ugly, green freak" are about GUIDO, not some member of Al Quedia)
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I'm not as confident about the economy as you seem to be. China is beginning to undercut a huge amount of US manufacturing business, and we are weak right now. We aren't really hurting yet, but we could be soon.
You seem to be happy with tax cuts, and unconcerned with spending. There's a correlation between taxes and spending, you know. We can't just continue to run up the debt forever. We will be forced to raise taxes at some point eventally if we continue current policies. If the Republicans time it right, they will force the Dems to take responsibility for paying for Republican programs with higher taxes. The current administration isn't tax-and-spend, they're borrow-and-spend.
I am sort of OK with what's going on in Iraq now. I was initially very skeptical (and rightly so) about our justifications for invasion. But given the new hope for peace in Israel and the hope for democracy in Iraq, I'm willing to admit that history may justify the lies that got us where we are today in Iraq.
I'm unhappy that many of our boys and girls are still stuck in Afghanistan, most of it is still run by warlords, and nobody's even talking about an exit strategy there. I'm unhappy that our intelligence community has lost its credibility. I'm unhappy with the amount of nuclear sabre-rattling that we're doing. And I'm unhappy that so many US citizens are so blind that they voted for this corrupt blustering puppet twice in a row.
include $sig;
1;
On civil liberties, I really don't see what the Republicans have done wrong.
You're kidding, right? You don't see any problem in locking people up for three and a half years without a hearing, without a trial and without access to legal representation?
I assume you see the state of the world in a negative way? See, maybe that's my problem...I don't. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, the economy is growing. It's not 1999, but it's not bad by a long shot. How do you see it?
The USA is massively in debt and showing no signs of pulling itself out of it. The rest of the world isn't going to bail the USA out indefinitely, but it is scared of what will happen when they stop lending the USA money.
Hey... how come all the other countries in the world have mandatory conscription?
And how come we don't?
Truthfully, that's one of the things that I can never wrap my geek brain around. I mean, we used to have mandatory state militias even... and now we have an all-Pro Military Force (HEH! They are making more than *I* am now, I found out!!!! Lt. Cols. are making 75k just muckin' around on flight sims).
I think I will call up old Duncan's office too... and ask him that, as well as when the FUCK they are gonna finish putting up that fence, and where the sharpshooters will be stationed. Not to mention why our country doesn't do conscription anymore.
Personally, I think it would be *really* good for a lot of these kids graduating from high school to go through 2 years of military training. Even if they got out and went straight to college (partly funded by their stint in the military... the longer the stint, the more school you get). Talk about growing up, becoming an adult (at 20, not 40), and learning allegiance to your country.
Oh, but wait... we're FREE!!! That's right. And no one ever had to sacrifice a thing for that right to be ours. But who's going to be left to defend that freedom once the liberal education system gets done programming our kids to think the military and the government are evil???
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
The amount of raping and pillaging going on between the Russians and the Germans was probably an order of magnitude more common than on the western front. Near the end of the war, German solders were praying that they would get captured by the Western Allies instead of the Russians.
Interestingly, the Germans themselves were much more restrained (subjectively speaking) when they occupied France than when they occupied Slavic countries like Poland and Russia. The same could be said about the Americans actually; the Americans in the Pacific treated prisoners much more harshly than Americans in the European theater.
An unknown number of those 70% non-voters were swindled out of their right to vote. Don't blame them.
It crossed our minds a couple times.
You assume that every person has absolute free will and is not influenced by outside factors. That assumption is not true. People in the USA are manipulated by the media and the average person cannot resist this manipulation any more than he can turn off TV and read a book. The majority of the USA citizens (and people elsewhere on the planet) are mindless zombies, who by some strange twist of fate have voting rights. Democracy wouldn't work on Haiti, because of the voodoo. The US has its own voodoo called "mass-media".
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Do we give this power to the President as an option without having to go through Congress? with NO checks and balances?
Last time I checked there was this thing called "the nuclear football". It's pretty much a suitcase that allows the president to launch nuclear weapons at will. No having to go through congress at all. Implented by JFK I believe.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Oh geez, not THIS fucking whine again...
That was the line they used to justify invading Iraq. It was weak when they used it, but now that we all know what they found (nothing) and what the President was being told (there's not enough clear evidence to go to war), it's clear that the president was pursuing an agenda, not acting on some body of secret information. If this isn't clear to you, you've got blinders on.
"You can't handle the truth"
Yes, I can. Not only can I handle it, I demand it. A government of the people can't work if "the people" aren't informed. It becomes an oligarchy, or a dictatorship.
> I trust that he has our best interests in mind
I did too, when I voted for him in 2000. I was wrong, absolutely wrong. He has no interest in the opinions of little people, none at all. He has made that crystal clear. Haven't you been watching for the last 3 years?
> Both American and Arab fundies want the ability to
> subject the local populace to their own
> interpretation of their corresponding religions.
> While they might not want to enslave us, they
> certainly want to do that with their own people.
The desire for some party to lie bout religion to gain popularity is hardly the fault of Islam ( or Christianity) but you're right in context of the grandparent poster: some fundamantalists are all about control.
You are correct sir.- football.htm
u sh.war.talk/)2 0021007-8.html) ... that occur.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/nuclear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football
It is something I wasn't aware of, I thank you.
Very interesting, I still do not like the idea of the President (least of all this President) being able to launch a "football" without checks and balances. That still gives the executive branch more power then I think the position deserves. Especially considering it is being written to allow for "pre-emptive" strikes.
I would HATE to see a scenario like...
"He tried to kill my Daddy." -GWB (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/b
"They have Weapons of Mass Destruction..." -GWB (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/
"I think I'll NUKEM!" - possible GWB (I fear this)
The official stance of the majority of Muslim scolars is , i quote
you may like to read the full info here:
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?page
For the record, it isn't Biblical either and thus is certainly not pan-christian. It is pure, out-of-the-pontiff's-head, Catholic dogma without foundation.
What you say just simply is not true. Whether your perspective is that the Bible is fact, myth, metaphor, or pure fairy-tale, the assertion that believers will be "taken" by Jesus Christ most certainly is Biblical.
"...and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air..." (1Thes.4:16,17)
And also, "...Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed -- in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye..." (ICor.15:51,52)
Though the Canonical texts are slightly different depending upon whether the Bible of reference is Catholic or Protestant, 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians are included within the Canonical works by both groups.
Again, you may not believe that the event known as the rapture will occur, but the Bible most certainly does specifically address the event.
It's not entirely on topic, but otherwise sound arguments (which doesn't exactly fit the GP) are reduced to rubble by silly little factual mistakes such as this. I've seen this particular mistake quite a bit on Slashdot lately and it needs to stop spreading. As soon as you start calling the Romans the Holy Roman Empire around people who know what they're talking about, you're going to get needlessly torn up and your argument will be quickly discounted.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Very well then - inadvertantly (sic).
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
You do realize that fallout happens because of nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, don't you? The US and Soviets tested 1000s of nukes below ground, like these bunker busters, which doesn't produce fallout.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Quite surprisingly, modern nuclear balance is not about the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, or at least not in its original form. Indeed, few countries (if any) except Russia would have the power to completely wipe out the United States from the planet.
The logic behind the British and French nuclear arsenal size is the following : make sure that under any circonstances, the disasters caused by the nuclear retaliation of these countries would greatly overthrow the possible gains of initiating a nuclear war against them.
Well said, but I wouldn't call the doctrine modern though. The doctrine of 'making it prohibitively expensive to attack/occupy us' is as old as warfare and the very reason being small has never really proven an evolutionary disadvantage to countries. Make yourself unattractive to attack or occupation and you are reasonably safe.
Given that Bin Laden's main beef with the US is about military bases in Saudi Arabia, and most of the hijackers were Saudi, I'm going to guess that Bush's father is a better one to blame than Clinton.
But like you hinted, the geopolitics are even more complicated than that.
It *might* be the case that carrier battle groups are sitting ducks for diesel subs, but I don't think we can say that with any confidence based on generalist media reports on military exercises.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I agree with you however I think that the US policies of the last 100 years or so (especially the last 50-75) have caused a lot of our problems.
If we reverted back to George Washington's idea of "trade with all, alliances with none" we would not have a reason for these people to hate us.
Granted we are not the cause for them to hate us in all cases, but a lot of times we are. Some people will hate us regardless of our policies, others will hate us because of our policies. If we make our policies less imperalistic and more libertarian some of the problem goes away.
Libertas in infinitum
Well Extreemists are every where not only in pakistan.
India has both nukes and extreemists.Extreemists murder thousdands of muslims in Indian Gujrat,infact burnt them live,extreemists majority dont accept pakistan`s existance,if they get the nukes,chances are they will blow up pakistan.
Same with israel,israel have enuff nukes to blowup whole middle east
one should keep all facts in mind while making statments rather making religiously biased statments
Ok, lets assume we are facing exactly that sort of situation. We're faced with some country that might try to hit us with a first strike nuclear launch and we want to preempt.
I still find it hard to construct any scenario where we'd actually need to use a NUKE. We have by far the largest and most powerful military capability. Was have single conventional bombs that are damn-near the size of a small nuke. We can put cruise missles through a 3-foot window without scratching the paintjob. We have bombers that can carry enough ordinance that a single plane can pretty well level an entire military base. We have god-knows how many other resources for wreaking overwhelming and/or pinpoint destruction.
Using a nuke serious needs to be a last resort. There is simply no need to use a nuke against some petty third world pest, and a nuclear first strike against a major world power wouldn't prevent a counterstrike anyway. The radioactive fallout from using a nuke would be nothing compared to the global public fallout from using a nuke. A nuke is a handy dandy way for a quick tactical battle win, but a good way to lose out gobally.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Really...if you're going to mod, read the post and consider that phrases like "ugly, green freak" are about GUIDO, not some member of Al Quedia
Actually I got stuck re reading that green freak sentence about four times trying to figure out why the hell you were calling Saddam a green freak... until I broke the loop and finally managed to read the next damn sentence. Heh.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No one has exploded a nuclear weapon in war since 1945. Once the world crosses that threshhold, the door is opened, the stakes will rise, and you will live to see New York City obliterated.
Read more carefully, hHe did not defend the Iraq war. He did not say that a preventative war was reasonable, and even if some preventative wars were reasonable he did not say that Iraq was any reasonable catagory of preventative.
Viet Nam,
Laos
Cambodia
Argentina,
etc,etc,etc
The list of KISSINGER GENOCIDE PROJECTS continues on and on and on and on....
Ah - sorry. Completely misunderstood your first post, and thought you'd misunderstood the word "inadvertently".
Sorry. Long day. My bad <:-)
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
China is beginning to undercut a huge amount of US manufacturing business, and we are weak right now.
One of the greatest and worst things about free markets is that competition drives prices. China undercuts us, so we either adjust the correct way, changing our methods to reduce cost or moving to another industry, or we adjust the wrong way and try to control the market through taxes. Other countries having powerful economies doesn't hurt us; it actually makes everyone more dependant, and thereby more interested in the health of, the international market.
You seem to be happy with tax cuts, and unconcerned with spending.
I don't think that's what I said; I think I said I liked the tax cuts and I was a propponent of the war. That doesn't mean I don't want a balanced budget, that means I want us to cut spending elsewhere. Discretionary spending and entitlement programs get a ton of money that they shouldn't. Bush is a terrible fiscal conservative.
If the Republicans time it right, they will force the Dems to take responsibility for paying for Republican programs with higher taxes.
This is what's happened in the past and it's worked well for the GOP, however, there was also a viable Democrat party that served the GOP's purpose. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore; honestly, I haven't heard a good idea come out of the Democrats in years. I'm not saying this to be a partisan hack; in the year and a half leading up to the 2004 election, I was anxiously trying to find a Clinton-esque Democrat who would 1) actually have a plan, and 2) not just trash all the GOP's ideas/programs. That didn't happen, and as far as I'm concerned the Democrat party line is still "We're not Bush/GOP, so vote for us because of that." The two best options that I consider good candidates in their parties, Lieberman and McCain, will never get their party's backing, which is sad.
It's inconceivable to me, but Howard Dean is actually a worse DNC chair than Terry McAulliffe. He may be firing up the base, but he's alienating those of us that would like to see the parties just come up with ideas, present them and have the country vote on whose ideas are better.
I'm willing to admit that history may justify the lies that got us where we are today in Iraq.
Okay, what lies? Honestly, I see no proof that the administration lied in order to start this war. I see a lot of conjecture and some details that are fuzzy, but there's no definitive smoking gun; each time something is proposed as a definitive smoking gun, it has so many holes in it that it appears people are just crying wolf for the sake of hoping something will stick and tarnish Bush to the point of impeachment. If he's actually done something wrong, there are a lot of people who had to be duped and cover it up...I just don't buy the conspiracy theories. Ocham's razor tears most of them to shreds.
I'm unhappy that many of our boys and girls are still stuck in Afghanistan
Honestly, we still have troops in Germany and Korea, I'm not sure what you were expecting. We establish bases and leave troops there for decades, rotating them in and out over time.
I'm unhappy that our intelligence community has lost its credibility
I'm unhappy our intelligence community is so incompetent sometimes; they deserved the loss in credibility.
I'm unhappy with the amount of nuclear sabre-rattling that we're doing.
I fully agree here. My theory, and it's only a theory, is that we're doing it for two reasons, the first because we protect Israel no matter what they do, and the second to prove how inept and useless the UN is. The UN should be this great bastion of hope that can unite the entire world. Instead it's a corrupt organization with too many parties having too much power and all of them wanting different things. There seems to be no compromise on any issue and no weight behind it's threats.
And I'm unhappy that so many US citizens
Let me guess. You thought I was in favor of going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just for a moment, imagine that you aren't reading a message written by a war-mongering fundamentalist whacko who wants to unilaterally kill 'em all and let God sort them out while we drain them of petrol.
There are other ways of dealing with international terrorists and other criminals than trying to reason with people who don't reason well to begin with. "Declaring war" on them isn't the answer either because the guilty parties are not nation states, they're criminals no matter how well-funded they are. In fact, it rather dignifies them with higher status. We Americans use euphemisms such as "war on poverty", "war on crime", and "war on terrorism" to make solutions to complicated issues more understandable to folks who don't have enough information to have informed opinions.
Unfortunately, you seem to have fallen for it. Law enforcement officers do NOT negotiate with criminals. They apprehend them, then the courts deal with them.
Soldiers implement the military policies of nations. If we mean for them to apprehend the guilty, they should be trained and supported when doing so. I understand the differences between what soldiers do and what law enforcement does. The goals should be to stop, apprehend, and punish the guilty, doing what is necessary to those ends. I understand what should be done and what should have been done up to this point. I voted for and supported knowledgeable people who also know better, thusly my conscience is quite clear.
Your own government decided to fight Irish terrorist criminals as if fighting a war and then negotiated with criminals who will over time, return to crime if the Irish prosperity doesn't hold out.
"...peace in our time", eh Deaddrunk?
I dare you to come to Quebec and tell me it's nothing but another state of the US. Totally different culture. Heck, we don't even speak the same language.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
> the President is not someone who would
> jeopardize the livelihood of hundreds of
> millions of americans for a little profit
What did you smoke, buddy?
The Bush administration has systematically cut the spending on all types of essential infrastructure in the U.S. Not only did they ignore the flawed flood protection systems that New Orleans had but they've done it everywhere else in the nation.
Not only that, Bush was informed by NOAA (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) on August 2nd that there was a 95% to 100% likelihood of a major hurricane in the August-September time frame in the Gulf. Bush and Cheney did absolutely nothing to prepare for a possible Katrina. It had been know for several years that the levees in New Orleans would not be able to sustain a level 3 hurricane.
32 hours before Katrina hit, state and city authorities in Louisiana asked Bush for federal assistance. All they got was a click on the phone.
Only 5 days after the catastrophe was a fact the U.S. military finally was ordered to moved in.
As the Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid asked: "Where were you, Mr. Bush? Were you the President?"
What now is known is that Bush and his ventriloquist, Dick "dick" Cheney, rejected all offers to get refined petroleum from around the world. Many countries offered gasoline to the U.S. but Bush and Cheney wanted the gasoline price to go up in order to loot the American people even more. (In fact, there is no shortage of petroleum in the U.S. or the world and about $40 of the price per barrel is pure speculation.) This was the only executive action they took.
Fortunately, there is a paradigm shift taking place in Washington, D.C. and around the country. People are now calling for great infrastructure projects like a new New Deal, a TVA-style (Tennessee Valley Authority) project for the Gulf Coast, an American Marshall plan to rebuild the nation. This goes for not only Democrats but certainly also for most of all the sane Republicans. Only a small, and now increasingly isolated, group inside the Republican Party are crazy neo-cons. Remember, the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln and many Republicans want to go back to Lincoln's tradition of infrastructure building and real production. Bush is not a Republican, he's an idiot. Hopefully he (and Cheney too) will be impeached soon.
I don't want to turn this into a political diatribe, but this has little do with president, blacks or white, this is purely economics and class issue (as racism is simply a manifestation there of) etc ... etc ... there are 3 truths about human beings and political systems whether they be dictatorship, democracy, monarchy, etc ... etc ...
#1) Those who have power and wealth will rule over the masses.
(When was the last time you saw a poor guy as president, or even a governer, or congressman???)
#2) Those, who have power and weatlh will put at the forefront the concerns of other individuals who have power and wealth.
(The old boy network works all the way from the janitors hanging out together excluding the new guy, to the president being close friends of certain former CEO of Haliburton, ... who is he going to be concerned some poor smuck in east bumble f*ck Carolina, or his old childhood friends welfares? Aside from election time, he could careless about the smuck)
#3) Only a fool would believe in the benevolance of man, and 99% of people are fools, "as they say individuals are smart, but people are stupid" ... people will believe whatever they are told to believe and want to believe. Ask yourself in the last 5 years and beyond how many "halve truths" have you been told. You'd rather believe that some guy 3000 miles away is plotting your demise. See rule #1 about wealth and power, wealthy and powerful, look out for one another period. And this is true across borders as well as with in.
I was being fescicious about the Bushes owning stock in Exxon, the point is that they are wealthy family, who's made money in Oil, Energy, and Defense.
After reading the article, you description for this should have been looked at a bit closer. You said the PENTAGON is drafting policy that Give's the president authority to do something.
In our current form of Government in the USA. The President tell's the PENTAGON what to do. He is the DEFACTO HEAD of the Military. Unless we have had a military coupe that NO one knew about. I would say that the info about the article you gave here is misleading. The article itself is not. But seriously if you are going to post this. Get it right, or face a civic's lesson from those of us that DIDN'T sleep through it.
I can't wait. The way americans live is not sustainable, economically, environmentally, socially, any which way you look at it.
The faster it collapses the faster it'll reduce it's influence on other countries to follow it's lead.
Unfortunately, it's the american gov't, and that means the usual solution which is choose another country to have a war against. Sad times ahead, but always the possibility that we'll come out so much better :)
Gosh darn it, i know he f@cks! up all the time, but i can't help feeling his heart is in the right place. Let's re-elect him!
It's simple psychology (discovered in the US no less) and yet everybody seems to still fall for it.
Things would be different if people didn't wear glasses, but then again, try and convince everybody who wears them that they're not needed and you're fighting an uphill battle.
Remember the american way. Cover up the problem and when we can't see the problem, then we don't worry about it anymore.
The problem with americans is that they're like everybody else, they can't see what their problem is!!!
Why pass up a good opportunity i guess.
Think!!! How is bombing something a way of spreading faith?
Muslims 'terrorists' are concerned with one main thing, and that's preserving their way of life, not subjecting others to it. They are not out there trying to convert americans, they're doing everything they can to stop americans from converting them!!!
Stop and put yourself in the other persons shoes, they're people as well with the same feelings and concerns.
Yes, but the question is, how do you get BOTH the republicans and democrats out of power since taking out their leaders does nothing?
You mean, the translated versions support the notion of something akin to rapture, which suprisingly, came from the translations. Circular reasoning. Look to the jews for the proper meanings.
Of course, if it did happen, i think you would find that the ones left behind were the true idiots.
You must have a very loose definition about what constitutes a lie. Bush repeatedly assured the nation that he had solid evidence that Iraq had WMDs. He was looking for a reason to invade. If they had solid evidence, wouldn't you expect that they had some idea where the WMDs were? How about the yellow-cake uranium story that the administration presented in the State of the Union? Joe Wilson, the guy who was sent to investigate the yellow-cake uranium story, reported to the administration that Iraq never tried to purchase the uranium. Why do you suppose there was a retaliation against Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, immediately after Mr. Wilson went public saying that the State of the Union address contained a lie?
If you think Bush didn't lie, I have a wonderful bridge you might be interested in buying. Prime New York City real estate.
Okay, again, reread my original reply. Some (most?) of us weren't blind, we just chose what we considered the lesser of two evils. Marginalizing us with insults
I apologize, that was over the line.
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Do you have any proof or references at all?
It's very easy to say and believe such things, but is there any real proof? If there is, I'll happily absorb it and become more enlightened.
And how many of the underground nuclear tests were bunker-busting bombs dropped out of an airplane?
Oh, none.
So do you want to bet that none of them will go off before they're far enough in to prevent any blowback, penetrate at an odd angle and blow stuff out the side, or be accidentally dropped on a Chinese embassy?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
# gotta delete those spaces slashdot friggen puts in there /UHeMZ4m98ne9g9G5QIJLgmmR23bNxysu7OtjNRxaGoUGxxZ6t WavsaNjQaE
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Leaving that aside for now, the fact that little people get ground into the dust by exercise of the power of a nation like the US. Truth - and in retrospect the Allende situation perhaps wasn't the Communist revolution that it seemed to be to people like Kissinger. Gotta love that 20/20 hindsight. ....
When you recount our supposed 'evil' without giving it contextual backing, you are bashing your own country. This is why I call people like you anti-American. You'd rather see your own country humbled because of some misplaced humanitarian notion that doesn't work in the real world. That's a seditious attitude whether you understand that - or not.
When I was discussing the lessons of Chile, Guatemala, Iran, etc. I was referring to the pain and suffering we have caused and the way in which this stokes the fires of those who would wish our country harm. My own personal judgement or lack thereof regarding the original decision is another discussion for another time. This is about hindsight (as you touch on) and making sure it can be applied in the future, not about whether any of us would make the same decisions with the same set of facts before us. The ultimate hindsight we have today is a part of that set of facts we can look at today regarding how to go forward from here.
I don't think it should matter what your political views are, but you have to admit that voter apathy is one of the worst threats to our democratic republic than any thing else-- as long as voters are apathetic, then corporate interests will always carry the day. On of our primary duties as Americans is to focus on raising the level of public discourse regarding these topics. By participating in this discussion, I thank you for your part of that. And I do appreciate that you are not simply dismissing my POV for this reason.
I have lived in other countries. My appreciation for what we have in this country in terms of both good governance and civil liberties runs deep, but we should not pretend that it is perfect. And the essence of American patriotism includes a careful scrutiny regarding the acts of our government (to do otherwise renders the democratic on which our republic rests largely meaningless). Open discourse of these issues is extremely important to our form of government.
I will also say that should the basic foundations of our society be changed by the combination of an over-extended executive and an activist court* (4th circuit, Padilla v. Hanft), that I will be the first to say that once the protections of our liberty which have served our society well since before the founding of our country are eviscerated by judicial and executive fiat, then I will at that point reconsider my loyalty to my country.
* I am sensitive to the weight of this accusation. However, for the 4th circuit to rule that an American citizen detained on American soil by ordinary law enforcement officers can be held indefinitely without normal due process rights, and without the possibility of a writ of Habeas Corpus (and in the absense of a Congressional suspension thereof), one is hard pressed to find any interpretation of the opinion in which the court was not seeking to rewrite the basic right to due process written into our Constitution both in the Invasion clause (Article I, Section 9) and in the 4th ammendment. Furthermore, they must have written this with full knowledge that the Supreme Court was largely deadlocked on Hamdi with circumstances far less suspect than those of Padilla. Either the court was negligently wrong or was activist.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Can't we start something? A group in the US, one in Canada, and one in the UK.
We have *some* power in our numbers and the fact that we're better-informed than most. We can't deny it.
Don't we have *some* responsibility?
American politicians have proven they can't be trusted to tell the truth -- let alone be trusted with weapons of mass destruction.
Has this first-use scenario been in place just a bit earlier, right now, Bagdad would be a smoking hole of burnt flesh -- uninhabitable for thousands of years. Millions of innocent people dead and dying.
Of course, as was done in this war -- the oil fields would be 'secured' and under US control within the first 10 minutes of the war. Must get our priorities right -- right???
Bush repeatedly assured the nation that he had solid evidence that Iraq had WMDs.
I'll grant you he was wrong, but stating he lied about it implies that he knew the truth and knowingly offered up something else. The same intel was seen and consensus was given by members of both parties and several other countries. If WMDs were the only reason we invaded, I wouldn't back the war, but since they had a history of breaking UN sanctions, embezzled money from the Oil-for-Food program, didn't work with weapons inspectors for years and committed more than enough human rights violations, I found enough justification that removal of Saddam, with or without WMDs, was a good idea.
--trb
There was actually a very interesting Sci-Fi story along those lines, following the life of the guy in charge for launching the nukes for the US. Something falls from the sky, wiping out half of the population of Washington D.C. including the White House. There's no information on what exactly it is, so the narrative focusses on him trying to decide if he should push the button to launch nukes at the Soviets (this being a Cold War story) and wondering whether his counterpart had already pushed the button, if his counterpart was innocent but would push the button in fear of the US launching nukes, etcetera. Really a very interesting little story.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I'll grant you he was wrong, but stating he lied about it implies that he knew the truth and knowingly offered up something else.
So if I don't like my neighbor, and I tell the cops, the FBI, and all my other neighbors that I know for a fact he's a kiddie pornographer, it's only a lie if I know for a fact that he's not a kiddie pornographer? If I have no real evidence either way, then that's not a lie in your book?
The same intel was seen and consensus was given by members of both parties and several other countries.
Many of which had grave concerns about the administration going on a fishing expedition (see Downing Street memos) or were not convinced by the evidence (most of the UN). I'm surprised you don't talk about Saddam's extensive ties to Al Qaeda. Oh, wait, the administration finally admitted that was all bullshit long after Congress had approved invading. Would you consider that a lie?
If WMDs were the only reason we invaded, I wouldn't back the war, but since they had a history of breaking UN sanctions, embezzled money from the Oil-for-Food program, didn't work with weapons inspectors for years and committed more than enough human rights violations,
Like, for instance, locking people up for years with no trial? How about torture?
I found enough justification that removal of Saddam, with or without WMDs, was a good idea.
I wish you had thought removal of Bush was a good idea last year.
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You didn't specify what you wanted me to give you references to.
On September 2, the 26-nation International Energy Agency agreed to make availabe to the U.S. 2 million barrels of oil per day, half petroleum and half gasoline. In other words, when the gasoline shipments start arriving from Europe in the next week or so, along with 1 million barrels per day from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve the U.S. will be swimming in oil. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) estimates that $7 billion per month are stolen by the major oil companies. Also, the Department of Energy is aware of the fact that Saudi Arabia has significant refining capacity and could send a supertanker a day to the U.S. with 500,000 to 750,000 barrels of gasoline. The price of oil is being set by two institutions: the London-based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). These two institutions is controled by the same oil cartel.
Most of what I originally wrote I think you can find in The New York Times. I know... it's hard to trust them too.
Regarding the paradigm shift in the U.S. politics I mentioned, just check out what some of the senators in Washington are saying. Harry Reid for instance.
Did you read the grandparent? The assertion was that a "rapture" (ie. removal of believers) was not present in the Bible. It made reference to Catholicism so I presumed the author was referencing the Bible as the Canonical Christian collection of books. The author also references "pan-christian" and while I am not specifically sure which groups the GP wanted to include in this group, certainly Catholic and Protestant should be included.
That said, I fail to see your point on circular reasoning based upon the translation. Apart from the King James version, translations of the New Testament are directly from the Greek, and, in the better translations, the Old Testament are translated directly from the Hebrew. (The Gospels, of course, do have, to a small extent, Aramaic.) The Greek Biblical scholars under which I studied never raised the issue of a translation problem concerning the rapture nor did they indicate that the claim of a rapture was contentious, in doubt, or beyond the context of the text. While I do not read historical Greek, the credentials of my professors were impeccable. Sir, I do not know your credentials.
You assert that I should look to the jews for proper meanings. I do not understand what you mean by this. Do you mean Christian Jews? As far as I know, other Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Christ, nor do they recognize the New Testament. Though the New Testament is undisputedly founded upon the Old Testament, what authority would an Old Testament Hebrew scholar have to discuss a topic that is only described in the New Testament that would trump anyone else with equal credentials?
Reviewing the GP, parent, your post, and my response, it occurs to me that I may have mistaken what might be in contention. When the GP stated that
"it [rapture] isn't Biblical either and thus is certainly not pan-christian. It is pure, out-of-the-pontiff's-head, Catholic dogma without foundation,"
I took this to mean the concept of rapture, not simply the word itself. It is correct that the word rapture does not appear. If that was the assertion, I concede.
This is too insaine too believe....
8
(and even scarier, this 6 year old is the US president)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/14/18157/206
When you're lost inside the words, you can't see the bigger picture. Most 'religions' are so focused on the details of their religion that no one seems to know what the original purpose was for!
We have literally become a society of myopics. Literally!
Think about that. And it's only going to get worse because science encourages myopia.
Just because we have a doctrine that allows us to create a preemptive attack with a nuclear warhead doesn't mean that we will use the biggest nuke in our arsenal. Some of the terrorists bunkers are several hundred feet underground. Mulitple shots with smart bombs can't penetrate that much earth. But with the new bunker busting nuke it will be more than possible.
The danger is that once we cross the line of using nukes "in our modern day" we will be more apt to use bigger an bigger ones as the situation requires. This could cause the U.S. to loose support in any future war resulting in - No Coalition in future conflicts. Not that we couldn't or shouldn't do it alone. But with the liberals we have in Congress it would be dangerous to leave them with that kind of power. They have no discretion and could do whatever, whenever they wanted and the American public would pay the price over the years. In fact the world could start to hate us like they hated Nazi Germany. And if we started acting like Nazi Germany then they would be justified in their anger toward us. But it would be the liberal left that would take us to that point not Conservatives.
As long as we the U.S. stay in power using nukes won't be a problem, but as more and more of our freedoms are taken away by the liberal left and as they continue to weaken our national defenses the more open we will be to an attack.
But it comes down to this. If we are being attacked and our citizens are being killed. Then I see no choice but to bring as much force as we can bear and bring it to the enemy. Crush them as quickly and effeciently as possible with minimal loss of life. That sounds like the recipe for nuke to me.
http://www.it-ideas.com/This is a complete tangent, but I'd like to address a the following point in a logically separate thread...
free religion (though that is eroding)
Could you tell me exactly how you think our right to freedom of religion is eroding? And who you would cast as the "villian" in this issue and perhaps why you think they are doing what they are doing?
I have a guess, and I might have some information that may surprise you, but I don't want to present an argument based on a wild speculation about your vague comment.
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Could you tell me exactly how you think our right to freedom of religion is eroding? And who you would cast as the "villian" in this issue and perhaps why you think they are doing what they are doing? I would point the Evangelical Christian movement as the villian in this issue, because they seek to make *everything* faith-based. Live in Kansas? Don't expect your child to be taught evolution. Live in Texas? Don't expect your child to be taught Geology, Evolution, OR SAFE SEX!
t ml (yes, it's from my blog, but it's the text of the article no longer found on gazette.com). I have fought for a decade for us who are not Christian to have a voice. Yet we have none.
I realize that flies directly in the face of what you thought I was saying in my other comments that you flew right on by. But that's ok... I believe our children's minds are formulated and mostly influenced 12 years old and up. And here is where we see the clashes of values, conservatism vs. liberalism, etc etc etc. NOT in grammer school. There is no liberal Math. Well, there wasn't when I was a kid... turns out I guess there is now. But of course, I use this as the most glaring example.
I consider myself to be a Pagan, an earth-worshiper if you will. I do not believe in God or the Devil as any of the Judeo-Christian sects would have you believe in. I could never believe in a God that would willingly strike down every soul on Earth, a city, or even just cuz. I do not believe in an eternal hell, except for those we make for ourselves. But, I am not free to gather and practice that religion without massive protest, argument, and upheaval. So I don't. For example: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jhohanna/53413.h
Add to all of this, all of President Bush's agendas and ideas and funding all have something faith-based attached to them. I think that's wrong. I don't think that one 50c3 should get more funding because they happen to be a Christian organization. I don't believe that Muslim organizations should get passed over for the same funding because they are Muslim (this occurs all the time). I believe in equality of all... not of some.
But all too unfortunately, it becomes an issue of money and power. Who's got it, who wants it, and what do they want to do with it? It's like the 80s all over again. The Southern Christian Baptist Convention is the biggest congregation in the country. They are also the biggest lobbying firm. Hrmph.
And yet, despite all of this, yes, I am still a Republican. Because my faith does not guide my politics. My head does. Maybe a little bit of my heart. And what is now will not always be. Tomorrow is a brighter day... and the current Administration can only hold for 3 more years. *sigh*. Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
Yep, not what I thought you were saying. My guess was that you were going to cite school prayer or something, and possibly tag the ACLU as villians (the ACLU actually supports student's right to pray in school, they only fight school officials abusing their governmental powers to promote religion).
:D
I must admit being a bit confused, with you identifying as Conservative and supporting the Republican party... but pretty much agreeing with me on almost everything that, in my mind, the Right and the Republican party stand for. I now better understand some of your comments that I had trouble interpreting before. Some things were vague/ambiguous, like your initial mention of evolution & teachers. I get it now. Not the position I generally associate with Republicans/Conservatives .
(Ahh, now I see one of your issues is gun laws. I'm pretty much neutral on that.)
I wouldn't call myself myself a Democrat, but I am distinctly anti-Republican... and mainly on issues that we seem to agree on. I consider both parties currupt, but the Republican party seems to be entirely overtaken by Religious Evangelicals and Corporate interests using each other. If you represented mainstream Republicanism (and equivalantly if the Republican party were actually representing you), I would be thrilled
Pagan... [livejournal link / article]
Yeah, I don't know whether to laugh or cry or get angry at that sort of stupidity. That is exactly the sort of thing that really makes me anti Republican/Conservative. You'd never get that sort of insanity here in suburban New York. You could have a Pagan Festival in a public park and hardly anyone would bat an eye.
P.S.
Redheads.... yum. Chuckle.
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If you want bad presidents, Google for the accomplishments of Presidents Tyler, who later became a member of the Confederacy, and Buchanan, whose policies accelerated the U.S. towards civil war. If you want examples of *real* and *catastrophic* indifference to civil rights, go look at the policy of President Jackson towards native Americans. Google for Indian Removal and Worcestor v. Georgia.
Bush is not my favorite president, but he is a far cry from the worst. Every crime that he or his administration has been accused of -- faking evidence to start a war, restricting civil liberties, reckless spending, giving jobs to political connections, etc. -- has been accomplished in a much more dramatic way by presidents who came before him (McKinley, Roosevelt, Roosevelt again, and Grant, respectively).
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.