Slashdot Mirror
Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq
jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."
So do they need a bunch of big trucks so they can start laying down the tubes?
One of my questions would be. Who out there is still hiring, what are the wages like, and who here on slashdot would be willing to sign up?
We take a lot of our technology for-granted. Bringing modern technology to a war-torn, outdated country could be both a dream and a nightmare.
So these are the guys who should be credited for downloaded photos of Prince Harry from the internet
"We have printed out many photographs of him from the internet and given them to all other groups. They know the Prince is their main objective and I have every confidence he will be targeted and attacked."
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
But the Internet, as a series of tubes used to sell wood, was designed to withstand a nuclear holocaust, and last time I checked the main problems that Iraq has in terms of the internet is not the actual wiring per se, but a distinct lack of power plants and continual power sources.
... my family does sell wood.
If we had just shipped Aramco-backed (aka Saudis, the people paying for Americans to be shot) solar cells and UPS systems to Iraq, we would have created more Net usage than with this approach.
Sometimes low tech is the way to go.
My dad gets the Net from a house he built in Vermont on his tree farm, using solar power to charge car batteries and run a laptop with. Cheaper than running power lines through his 42 acre tree farm. And I was serious about my brother writing the insurance law - he's an international lawyer based in NYC. I wasn't serious about the tubes or the selling wood part
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If it is sensational journalism, at least it's reported from the other end of the spectrum from the unending series of "Everything in Iraq is fine" articles we get from American mainstream media.
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
Where are these positives articles about Iraq which you speak of?
Spencer Ogden
Beating your kidnapper to death with his own AK-47. Glad I'm not in Iraq.
This guy did an excellent presentation at Notacon about running a non profit isp in iraq. Available in mp3 or video format.
mp3 aviDavid Coughanour - HajjiNets: Running an ISP in a War Zone
Hacker Media
Tell me more about how you can get wood from the Internet.
Certainly, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the facts are wrong. It's definitely written with an eye to entertain and as such plays up the violence, because, well this is America, we like violence - especially violence of the wild west variety, which was a definitely a parallel the author of the article was trying to draw.
... If they'd had electricity working within a month or two of the invasion, there probably wouldn't have been near as much violence." The idea that large US corporations, who made their fortunes working within a more or less reliable national infrastructure, could actually do a decent job building infrastructure where what little that is there already is unreliable - seems to me to be a really bad idea. What's really interesting is the causality implied by Lackey (the author of that quote), i.e. that had the US not tagged massive corporations for outsourcing their rebuilding effort, Iraq would not be in the state that it's in now.
. To sum it up in a sentence: agility and flexibility is the necessary quality in organizations responsible for providing basic services in Iraq, and it's not a quality of *any* big corporation I've ever seen.
To digress from my point (if I really had one) I thought this quote from the article was very interesting: "But the US solution was to give large US companies business here
This seems to be to be very insightful. Given the management structure of these large corporations - rapidly deploying anything as complex as telecommunications infrastructure doesn't seem to me to be something they can actually do. The reality in situations like Iraq is that if you want the citizens to be happy, you must give them the basic necessities: food, water, and shelter (and, since the late 19th century, electricity). Given the instability in Iraq, the way to provide these things is not through the massive beauracracy of American corporations, but rather with small, self-sufficient modules - mobile power stations, mobile communications stations. I kind of envision it as the guerilla warfare method of providing basic services. After all - it's been shown time and time again that the guerillas can give the massive beauracracies a run for their money *cough*vietnam*cough*iraq*cough*afghanistan*cough
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Asshole!
This is really a rather moving article, in the sense that it makes me wonder what I have doing with my life and the things that I am being complacent about. It also makes me wonder how robust--in the macro-evolutionary sense--that our technological projects and infrastructures really are. The power and communications networks have always struck me very fragile and resistant to both change and attack (you would think that we would have learned from WWII Europe). Communications networks we can probably shore up by moving into stronger forms of wireless communication, although this opens the question of wide-spread jamming. However robust power networks present no obviously good solution until localized power (such as solar and wind) becomes cost competitive with centralized power.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
Of course, you need the skills, and the connections.
You also need balls, since Iraq IS a war-zone you are essentially risking your life every minute you are there.
I know of one contractor who was kidnapped in Iraq and subsequently released once his company payed an undisclosed 'ransom', although that was more than a year ago. Lets just say after than incident they beefed up their security just a tad. Kidnapping is a big money maker in Iraq/Afghanistan. Of course, that entails you surviving an attack long enough to be kidnapped in the first place! Most likely death would be as quick as hitting an IED and its GAME OVER.
Then there are others who are smart. They go over there and stay in their armored compounds (as opposed to foolishy driving around in the open) and are protected by security. They do their assignments, stay for a few months, and make a nice chunk of change at the end.
Truthfully, many contractors are getting rich there but the majority of them are not accomplishing much of substance. All of it is dictated by the whims of the Americans. The Iraqis have little real input. Most of it is completely unsustainable. As the linked article states, even these Internet gurus are under no illusion that what the US is doing is only aggravating the civil war.
So essentially it's all blood money. Frankly, if there is a choice between making the 'easy' money or keeping your integrity intact by not 'selling your soul' to the man for a quick buck, I would say it's not worth it in the long run. I mean, you still have to live with yourself years from now. Right?
PS. There are good jobs in Afghanistan and its not nearly as dangerous as Iraq...though that is now changing. A few years ago suicide bombings in Kabul were a rare occurrence, but things seem to be hotting up there more every day - unfortunately.
God bless the American tax payer.
While perhaps their technical expertise is slightly exaggerated...All descriptions of life in general and surroundings are right on. Actually with a fairly light hearted point of view - very healthy. Their synopsis at the end is also right on.
--
Just my 2 cents...which is probably worth more than your 2 cents...
I work Communications. Satellite, phone, computer, solaris, microwave, voip, teleconferencing....everything he did. In the same place. Anaconda is ok...if you can ignore the irritating mortars that DO come in every single damn day(usually while you are sleeping or on the can it seemed). Unfortunately, I was military, and my pay was much less than his.
That 703 area code from viginia....yeah, try calling somebody else on base with that damn army phone. If you call from an army phone to an air force phone...it goes thru the satellite hop and fiber to get back to virginia, then runs around the world on the DNS phone network to the air force side. Calling from the army side to the air force side or vise-versa was significantly more laggy than calling back to the states.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
He died there in a car crash after 2.5 years.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What about a dessert in the desert?
Once they clean the oil pipelines and get them connected, Iraq will have the largest, clog free, bandwith on the Internets.
Note to self: get a sig.
My best friend was a cybercafe manager at LSA Anaconda during his stay. Way I hear it, they could use the pipe. The nickname his associates had for the drop they had to their quarters was "Ghetto Telecom"... the photos of how they got stuff rigged are hilarious from an IT perspective.
Winning hearts and minds of the Iraqi people through the universal medium, Asian porn.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Good start; however, it's much too late to ask for no jokes about the internet tubes.
Not releasing products & changing the world.
I hope this guy doesn't end up on an Al Jazeera video getting his head sawed off with a dull sword. No amount of money is worth that.
This might be a naive question, but how do all these problems and reports that the "insurgents" rely on cellular networks and the internet to coordinate their attacks go together? If some terrorist's Nokia works in Baghdad, why wouldn't a contractor's?
There are obvious differences between military and civilian applications, for example, you don't want your coms go down when you hit an ambush, but Iraq seems to have some semblance of a basically/occasionally working cell phone system.
I serve in the Arizona Army National Guard. I just got back last November from a one-year stint in Iraq.
We used to get our internet access from an internet trailer that we had. We also had a (barely usable) wireless network set-up from our internet tent. As far as I know, a lot of the internet providers we used were satellite providers. In fact, we got so sick of the really crappy internet, that we shelled out money to buy a satellite dish, a satellite modem, and internet access. Split between the members of one platoon, it was about $60 a month. Our contact was an Iraqi who ran his business from off-base. He had a contact on-base that would help us out if we had any issues. It worked fine most of the time (unless we had severe dust-storms). The contact that the internet guy had on-base was actually an Iraqi electrical engineer. From what I heard, most businesses (and most people on the base) got their internet from satellite internet providers. It was pretty pricey and the only way you could manage it is if you got a huge bunch of people to sign up. In fact, that's what they used at the Internet tent. It was called FUBI Internet (For Us/US By Iraqis Internet).
This is the first time I'm hearing about this guy, or the company. I was stationed on Camp Liberty, which is a huge base in its own right. We were some hours away from Anaconda (I think 12? I don't remember rightly anymore). All the stuff we used there (that I know of, and my scope is just our internet trailer, internet tent, and platoon internet; the division MWR used internet but it was some connection from USAREUR (US Army Europe)) was from gulf (or greek or italian) satellite providers.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
At least some of the facts are wrong.
For instance, the claim of 75 net cafes nationwide prewar is bogus, there were more than that in Iraqi Kurdistan alone. They say the Erbil office failed because there's not enough business. Closer to the truth would be to say it failed because there was already an entrenched network of trusted local operators.
South of the Kurdish line, there were (and are) huge numbers of little ISPs. They arrange for satellite service from Jordan, then bring the dishes into Iraq. In the old days, when banking was still a total catastrophe, they paid their bills by sending people with cash strapped to their bodies overland into Jordan, where they'd wire the money to their upstream provider. These days it's a little easier.
Ultimately, I think this article - like so many others about Iraq - is written from the perspective of someone who is hiding in the green zone behind soldiers and armoured cars and doesn't have a great idea of what's really going on.
P.S. Just arrived in Dubai for a little R&R. It's 2:30am and they're blasting the call to prayer at my hotel balcony while I'm trying to sit out here peacefully and post to Slashdot. What the hell?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Links didn't work for me. Here is a video that might be the same one. And more vids and PDFs from his site.
I'm all for entepreneuership and making a buck, but there are a couple things that bother me about this. First the likely clients will be the ones who were wealthy before Sadam was ousted, so more than often than not they will be supporting the same ones who helped keep down the people we are supposed to be trying to help. Second, on the likely chance that one of them is taken hostage or killed you can bet the news will be splattered with sob stories about them as if they were heroes helping the common man while dozens of real heroes die with no mention beyond a tally of bodies. There should be a list that separates the civilian humanitarians from the opportunists just so the media will know which ones to ignore.
Would this mean "blue" as in "blue" Texas or Oklahoma? We do know that only certified Republican rightwingers were allowed to do business in Iraq (oh, go Google it yourselves), usually recruited from Young Republicans in campaigns, so is the name a kissy-kiss for Bush's people?
Internet access in your "trailer room" was about 3 grand a month. Absolutely insane. Some went in on it together in groups and shared via wifi, but it was still super expensive. I don't know how any enlisted member could possibly afford it. Priorities, I guess.
It isn't mentioned until well down in the article, but many Slashdot readers may remember Ryan Lackey as part of the team that founded Sealand/HavenCo, the offshore data haven that was featured on the cover of Wired in 2000. Sealand's launch and struggles were discussed here on /. The guy clearly has an appetite for adventure.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
A company that shall remain nameless once pinged me about a role providing linux cluster admin and field engineer/developer support for a visualization project designed for military use. I would have been stationed in central Baghdad and paid on the order of two hundred and fifty thousand base pay plus hazard pay, full relocation, etc. etc. etc. amounting to probably on the order of four hundred thousand to half a million a year after all the calculations were done.
I turned them down.
Yes, it sounded like a technically sweet gig. Yes, the pay and benefits were very, very solid. Could I handle a morning and evening commute that includes pitched gun fights and car bombs? Would the security where I sleep be as good as where I would work? Would I adapt well to wearing body armor and carrying at least one if not several weapons to do something as simple as buying toilet paper? Would I want to get beheaded for my troubles? Would I want my next of kin to profit from blood money should I bite it; would I feel comfortable accepting money for supporting something I found morally abhorrent? Would I have gone through those paranoid years of deployment without becoming irrevocably changed in ways that would make it difficult to reintegrate to mainstream society (PTSD is No Fucking Joke)? I asked myself questions like that and got too many negative answers to feel comfortable taking them up on their offer. Maybe other people would have a different situational calculus, I don't look down on them for asking themselves questions and coming up with different answers.
It was a near thing for me. I almost said yes. That money could have put my SO through grad school without loans. It could have bought my ailing mother a house. It could have done a lot of things. I still sometimes wonder if I made the right choice.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I hope the next article I read about him is how his car ran over an IED
Boy, you're a bitter, jealous bitch, aren't you?
The opposite of progress is congress
that's be DSN phone network, not DNS phone network....
oops. AC is correct: DSN - Defense Switched Network
tough going between them both all the time.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
That depends on what toots your horn, doesn't it?
Hey, then Iraq would finally have WMD's!
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
Um, huh?
Don't know if you do, but I live in America, and I've yet to get that impression from our media. It's a whole lot of "Oh dear lord, we're stuck in a quagmire" - and I don't think that comes from an anti-war slant so much as a consistent barrage of bad news there's no way to spin in a positive way. The closest to "everything is fine" that we get is Fox telling us things are bad, but not nearly so bad as everyone else says.
Dubai rocks.
Thanks for the info. My one quibble right now is whether or not Iraqi Kurdistan should even be considered part of Iraq at this point. Given what I've read, it seems that the (remarkably separate) Iraqi Kurdistan government has done a great job of keeping the peace. While I can't speak to the situation pre-war, it seems to me that Iraqi Kurdistan would be the more organized party, simply as a result of it's separatism and relative cultural homogeneity. Then again, they could have their shit together simply because they've been influenced the least by the American government. Not that I'm saying anything negative about America's ability to meddle oversees...oh wait, yes I am.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
"He is 26 years old."
26 and going on 46. (more images)
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Absolutely. These guys are lauded like humanitarians in this article, but bullshit. Show me the Iraqi that can pay US$3000 a month for Internet access. There isn't much going on in Iraq but shameless profiteering from the rampant destruction (oh, and the small matter of death and carnage) - so forgive me if I fail to be in awe of anyone mentioned in this article, other than their utter gall and lack of remorse?
Well, reading articles such as this give hope yet.
Life is not for the lazy.
PTSD is the main concern here ( I noticed you put it in parenthesis). Sure, all those things you could have done with the money would have helped you materially, but imagine going through the rest of your life, unable to get a good night's sleep, haunted by nightmares. Or a car back-firing triggering your nervous system to high-alert. Looking at Arab men on the street, wondering if they have an IED under their shirt. Could you get through grad school like that? You might never be able to rebuild your psyche after that. It would probably permanently change the course of your life.
I've spent some time overseas. While that's nowhere near a war experience, but it was intense enough that it made me an outsider amongst my friends. Their world was so small. I had to find a new contingent of friends who had broader backgrounds. Fortunately some of my other friends have since traveled; now we can relate better. There's a reason vets hang out at the VFW. It's to be with the other guys who have lived through that experience. You would become a totally different person and you would have a new community. I'm not saying that's bad; I'm just saying that all the benefits you would imagine having as a result of becoming a contractor might have to be completely re-evaluated in light of your new path. Hopefully with your practice you would be able to find healing and mental health for yourself and other vets if/when you came back.
My grandpa was in the invasion of Normandy. He never talked about it. A decade after his death, I heard this story: He was trapped behind enemy lines. There was a guard that he had to get past to get back to the allied front. For hours, he bid his time. Finally, the guard relaxed, and sat down to read. My grandfather snuck up and strangled him with a piece of barbed wire. He look at what the guard had been reading -- a handwritten letter and a picture of a young woman. He was so distraught by the time he got back to the front, he couldn't speak. The allies were about to kill him on the spot, because they thought he was a German spy, dressed up in an American uniform as a cover.
I don't know to what extent this story is dramatized. The biggest problem is that he never talked to *anyone*, *ever* about the war. I don't know in what circumstances he told this story. My Uncle told my mom after my grandfather had died, years after, but he doesn't remember where or when he heard it. It was sort of common knowledge among the men in my family.
My mom's family would go out to picnics, and my grandfather would sometimes disappear for hours. My male relatives were hunters; even they couldn't find him. When he came back, he would have no recollection of having disappeared. Everything was normal to him, nothing odd had happened. In my dark times, I imagine him trapped behind enemy Axis lines in some Ohio field, hiding, biding his time a few yards away from a ghostly guard.
I don't think you made the wrong decision at all.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Ryan may have been 26, but I did that when I was 24 working as a contractor for CSC. Anyone in the military uses the term drug deals to describe the shake of the hand barter system that gets you going day to day. Back in 2003, I traveled around to military installation setting up VSAT sat dishes to just to provide Internet Cafe's and VOIP access to the troops. Although this wasn't my actual job, I provided my expertise on a "free basis" to aid our troops. General Conway at the time deemed it enough of a priority to at least throw some money at it to get more sites up and running.
In the end, I didn't live in a tent. I was in an actual buidling complete with amenities most would envy in Iraq. Between all of my contacts, I was rocking it with a TV, DVD Player, Sat Cable and Internet, Refrigerator/freezer, microwave, xbox and ps2 at the time, and above all else AC. The hardest part was getting the transformers but much like everyone else the engineers scratched my back as well for what services I rendered in off time.
Traveling between bases, I flew. Forget doing a convoy where it takes you 14 hours to drive 30 miles. Helo rides were what it was all about, and I spent many nights either sweating my @$$ off or freezing to death just waiting for them to touch down to grab me.
Again, like others had said it's sensational journalism. What he did isn't all that impressive and some of the security procedures handled by SSI are negligent at best. I also have a problem trumping up his bad@$$ card for being logistically irresponsible.
I'd have taken that in a heartbeat. Life is too easy here. I probably have the skills for it too.
Sadly, the positive stories never make it to the news.
I served in Iraq for a year. I just got back last November.
So the Stars and Stripes that we got there did tell us about explosions and deaths going on outside. We also got CNN at the chow hall and from that we heard about what's going on outside too.
But let me tell you what people back home never hear of.
The mobile hospitals that the military takes around Iraq, curing Iraqi children and adult Iraqis of diseases. The media probably never showed the stories of the mobile eye-hospital that went around Iraq curing children with eye-ailments that would have made them blind unless they got proper medical attention. I bet the media hasn't even told you guys about the schools, hospitals, and bridges that the military builds.
Nope. You will never hear about these, because "150 Iraqis die in a car-bomb blast" is more sensational than "15 Iraqi children have their sight restored due to help from US military doctors".
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
I am the Tyler Wagner from the article. At the risk of exposing myself (further) to the flames of Slashdot, I'd be happy to answer questions.
Pictures:
http://www.tolaris.com/gallery/Iraq
The Mohammed story:
http://giantlaser.livejournal.com/56797.html
http://giantlaser.livejournal.com/56863.html
The article is primarily about two Americans. One of them trained, worked with, socialised with and employed a team of Iraqis.
How exactly is he shamelessly profiteering?
Sadly, coming from a military background myself, you hit the nail on the head.
There are many good things that have happened downrange, but hardly anyone hears it because "Good News" doesn't sell unless you're some pop-idol that just got a face lift - or, you're Sanjay and just got voted off AI...
Now, AFN does show this type of stuff, but it's not picked up by the main media (I'm guessing it's shown to them..) The bad side of this is that AFN plays mainly OCONUS (overseas for those of you that haven't a clue) and only shows informational things to troops. So I see safety commercials 24/7 with Good and Bad news thrown in. The Good news is normally played over and over and over, to the point where we can mute the TV and say exactly what they are (That should be a Security question for all military personnel - "Who is Squeakers?"). The families overseas normally get excited when a normal commercial gets into the mix...
But, back on topic, good news doesn't sell. People only want to hear the bad things. Sadly, I know several people that refuse to watch the news (my wife, being one) specifically because it's only the bad stuff. The American public is so ignorant (in the true sense of the word) of whats going on down there. All they hear is X soldiers died...X Civilians died. They don't hear how many water plants are operational, they don't hear how we're attempting to fix the power but the locals keep cutting down towers so they sell the metal....
if any parent has ever deserved modding up, it's this one.
What exactly makes them "cipherpunks"?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Duh, yep, it was screwed up. Flew through Egypt and changed my clock there. Spent the entire evening thinking it was 2 hours earlier than it was.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Yeah, yeah.
1. Who said I was American?
2. I've been living in Muslim countries for many years. Just never had the call to prayer at 2:30 before; the rhythm of the normal times is deeply ingrained by now so it seemed very weird to me. As someone else correctly deduced, I had messed up my clock and was totally off on the time.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Another potential factor: They had a lot to prove. The power vacuum in northern Iraq provided them with their first opportunity at autonomy in modern times, and it's no doubt important for them to demonstrate that the Kurdish people can run a unified and viable state given the opportunity.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Unless he lied about his age when he wrote this.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
We have Lackey's side of the story and the plan that someone wanted to set up a pirate internet radio station there last year but now the fort is apparently for sale and Sealand is proposing a 'change of custodianship'. Does HavenCo have any customers?
That's funny; 2:30 AM is the normal time for a car crash of a "visiting" Saudi in Manama, Bahrain. Fortunately, this is only once a week. On a side note, I swear that BF2 uses a sound clip of the call to prayer by the muzzien of the Al Fateh mosque in Juffair, Manama.
Enjoy Dubai; it's the Arab Disneyland. I'd like to work there.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
A lot of good things happened in America last Monday, but you didn't hear about them because 33 people were killed on a university campus. The fact is that the good things that you mention that are happening in Iraq are just people doing their job, and a lot of the good things we are doing (rebuilding) wouldn't have been necessary if we hadn't fucked the place up to begin with. It deserves mention, but seriously tragic events like car bombings are more newsworthy simply because they are more newsworthy. It is quite disturbing that a tragedy that stopped the US dead in it's tracks (the VA tech shootings) is an everyday occurrence in Iraq. One can not possibly fathom what it must be like as a resident of Iraq (one of the 99% who are not violent insurgents), and trying to carry on your day to day life, working and raising a family.
You call this a sig?
I'm not knocking you or anything, but how is a car bomb not very much more important? I mean, that sounds like having a story about firemen rescuing a cat from a tree in the middle of a war. I'm just saying that we could be saving children's eyesight without guns. All the nonsense about the media not reporting the "good news" is absolute horseshit. If anything they don't report enough about the real war taking place.
Signed, bitter Iraq combat veteran
You'd prefer it if the media dwelt on the n people saved from blindness, rather than the 10n people killed? Strange priorities you have there.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
truly a very interesting story about your Grandfather, i had to read it twice cause i was so intrigued about it. i'm happy you chose to share it with the world.
Waiting for you by the bridge
Hell, if I'm in that situation you better expect me to torture my enemy for information or perhaps for the . No way I'm going to let one person fail to suffer some pain if it means I can find the cache of weapons or the leader of the enemy (let's ignore WMD's shall we).
And how much crap did the people who did the torturing get into?
That said, if anyone invades my country and tortures people I'll be reall annoyed, so I'm thinking I may be a teensy bit hypocritical here.
Mod me flamebait or insightful as you wish. I'm happy to lose my Karma over this, so long as at least one person realises that despite the Geneva convention (or whichever one prevents torture) it is sometimes the only thing you can do to save more lives...
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Wow! they are progressing so fast even their names are changing in the blink of a click. It's a nice idea, and a good way to allow people to educate themselves. I'd warn subscribers of the liberalism and content that is available though. That first goatse pic is going to be enough for them to blow up the noc.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Geneva does not cover non-uniformed combatants or combatants from non-Geneva nations. If I recall correctly, most of the trouble that people were getting into centered around US law and military code.
END OF LINE.
They STILL have problems keeping the power on for more than a few hours a day. I'm so tired of these cheerleading articles praising the beautiful new paint on the outside of the house, while the foundation crumbles to dust.
Blar.
It's not that people don't appreciate the things that the military is accomplishing there.
But you have to put it in context.
The 150 Iraqis who died in the car bomb are in fact a bigger story. We had a huge story here in the US when 32 people were killed by a terrorist at VA Tech. When a hundred people are killed in Iraq, a country with less than 1/10 our population, it's like 1000 people being killed in the US.
In 2006, 24000 Iraqis civilians were killed as part of the civil war there. That roughly 461 per week. That would be like over four thousand people being killed per week if it were over here in the US.
The reason that the good works of the Coalition forces aren't major news stories is that the most important policy issue in Iraq is the progress Iraq is making towards being able to govern itself. Yes, we are aware that Coalition military units are doing many good things. We are getting the message. The documentary Baghdad ER just won four Emmys. It shows how 86th Combat Support Hospital doctors fight to save the lives, not only of US soldiers, not only of civilians, but even of enemy combatants, without prejudice or favor. It is a tremendous testament to the professionalism and fundamental humanity of our armed forces.
So yes, the news about the good things the Coalition is doing is coming out of Iraq. It is news. But it is not news about Iraqi progress to independence. We know that our soliders, marines and sailors do great things over there. We know that for every Haditha, there are hundreds of stories of selflessness and decency to set against it. We are getting that news.
But the news is not a ledger in which you tote up good stories and bad stories to see what the balance is. It is a source of information which you turn to when you want to answer questions. The question "Are Coalition forces on the whole doing a professional and honorable job?" is a different question than "Is Iraq able to govern itself?" which is a different question than "Is US strategy creating progress towards true Iraqi independence?"
We know that our forces are capable of curing diseases, of building schools and hospitals. We know our troops are risking their lives to provide security for Iraqi civilians. We are neither forgetting nor ignoring this. But it does not tell us whether Iraqis are ready to do these things themselves.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This morning, CNN's Jason Bellini takes us to the Iran-Iraq border. Washington Post: "Everyone here is excited. The mood and busyness are so much better than before when we just waited to see what would happen," said B.B. Abdul Qadir. [concerning elections] New York Times In the wave of lawlessness and frantic self-interest that has washed over this war-weary nation, small acts of pure altruism often go unnoticed.
Like the tiny track suits and dresses that Najat al-Saiedi takes to children of displaced families in the dusty, desperate Shiite slum of Shoala. Or the shelter that Suad al-Khafaji gives to, among others, the five children she found living in a garage in northern Baghdad last year.
But the Iraqi government has been taking note of such good works, and now, more than three years after the American invasion, the outlines of a nascent civil society are taking shape. If there's not a lot of good news coming out of Iraq, maybe that's because there aren't a lot of good things happening in Iraq? (I find it telling that the Good News in Iraq blog has been updated twice in the last year.) Rather than floating the tired old liberal media conspiracy canard, maybe it's just a sense of proportionality that keeps the bad news on the front page? Viz: for every one of those 15 Iraqi children who had their sight restored, probably five times that number has died as a direct on indirect consequence of our occupation of Iraq. Such is the scale of the disaster we have visited on that country.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I would totally go to Iraq and work at a job like this. I have already been there once, since I am in the Army, and I am about to go again, (still in the Army). But to be able to go and get way more than military pay, oh my gosh, that would be sweet. Plus have my personal broadband satellite web connection, and be able to go running, then I'd be set! I had no problem with Iraq last time, I thought it was really nice, then again I was in Southern Iraq and it was pretty chill there. A paid vacation to a very sunny place!
Unfortunately, you can't get blood from a turnip. In this case, you can not get information about WMD's in a country that doesn't have any.
This is really the reason torture and the death penalty and other things are cruel and unusual punishment -- there is virtually no way to get it 100% right. If you imprison someone for 20 years in humane conditions, at least if it was wrong, you can take them out and apologize. Not if you've destroyed them physically or psychologically, however.
Because CLEARLY this worked in Vietnam (now a world superpower...just give them another century), Afghanistan after Russia pulled out, Iraq (the first war), Somalia and a dozen other countries. The ones who suceeded are the ones we STAYED in such as West Germany, and Japan to name a couple.
> Education may expand your knowledge, but it cannot bestow wisdom. Like you, I am lacking in both, but I WILL admit it!
"And then I'll tell you that you're an uneducated idiot for not sharing my opinion anyway" is the unwritten part of that sentence that appeared to come from your post.
So I guess you'd have no problem if, say, France came over here, bombed the shit out of us, then traveled the country curing children of diseases? Hey, they're HELPING!
Seriously. Work here in the states is dull and uninteresting. Working over there setting up new frontiers, new boundries, establishing new modes of what works and what doesn't to me seems like a breath of fresh air. Something more than the dull crap that I have to putup with on a day to day Admin job. I'm tired of being a maintainer of dead and boring products, I want to be a true engineer and do stuff that was meant to be done as only engineers do.
If anyone knows how one can get a job over in that area or work with these guys post here or have them email me: bigdady at gmail dot com.
Resumes, references, and certs as well as Target shooting scores are all available.
P.S. yes I have family in the military too if that helps.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
The torturers got into exactly zero crap.
The few token scapegoat sexual deviants got busted to draw attention away from the torturers.
The torturers did as they were ordered by their leaders. All the way up the military chain to the civilians, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Don Rumsfeld, etc.
The fact is - it is well documented that torture is not an effective method of extracting actionable intelligence.
The one thing that torture excels at (as a technique) - is terrorizing people, and whipping up popular support at home.
I'm sure that one could find at least a few cases where torture yielded good intelligence. And for each one of those cases, you'll find a hundred others where the subject lied to get the torture to stop. The biggest problem anyone should have with torture, is that it amounts to punishing innocents; people who have not had their day in court, who have not been found guilty by a jury of their peers through the preponderance of evidence. This is one of the primary reasons our forefathers rebelled from mother England, and King George III. And I find it deeply disturbing that in this day and age, so many of my countrymen are so ignorant to the basic core concepts of what it means to be an American.
You say this is a War on Terror?
Then why are we funding terrorist organizations, and why do we use terrorist tactics like torture? You can't defend freedom, by destroying it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
+1 for the best post I've seen on Slashdot for a long time. Way to put it in perspective.
If you're so sad about the newsmedia responding to market demand with regard to which types of stories they cover, then maybe you should direct your IRE to the 1982 congressional republicans, with the support of Republican Hero President Ron Reagan, who gutted the Fairness Doctrine, and FCC limits on corporate media consolidation.
That "Free Market" cuts both ways. Am I sad that the Anarcho Capitalists are now getting bitchslapped by the Invisible Hand?
Not one bit.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
How many people did your people have to kill for every child your people "saved"?
Jesus, that story about your grandfather gave me chills. How terrible that anyone would have to live with that.
Web consulting +
Ask yourself some tough questions, and maybe you might come to the conclusion that just as Americans not in the war might get an overly negative view of the war, those getting their news from propaganda central might be getting just the opposite. The truth is somewhere in between.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Let me guess, you forgot to set you watch forward after flying east?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
I'm sure if you found the right mosque in Sweden in the winter...
This afternoon I saw a guy in full bedouin headgear sitting at Starbucks with his fully veiled wife, one table over from a woman in a miniskirt. Where else could I be?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I joined the Navy to become a "Data Systems Technician". This was the obvious best and highest use of me since I was a talented computer person even in my teens. Instead they decided I would make a good catapult operator on the flight deck of the Enterprise. I had three years to regret my mistake. I believe the military is often inefficient because they would rather retrain you than take advantage of skills you already possess. I started out honored to serve my country, but my counry would have been better served by using me in my chosen field of interest (passion). After my Honorable discharge, I returned to my software engineering career, and stayed there ever since. They could have used some of my help in technology, IMHO.
You're absolutely right, I hope. George W always says that we're getting a distorted view of what's going on in Iraq, but never really offers any examples like you just did. As I think everyone else is bound to point out, people in the US just really like their depressing news.
For me personally, it's not that I don't think we're doing some good for the people of Iraq. Enough people like you come back and tell me about it, and I believe them. My anger at the Iraq war is our pretenses for going in, which turned out to be false false false, the fact that the adventures in Iraq are taking troops away from Afghanistan where we really need them to be, the sensationalist sham that was Saddam Hussein's trial, and the fact that I get the distinct impression that our leaders have not thought of a way out. That, there, is what's upsetting to me.
I say all that with no disrespect whatsoever for the troops who are there in Iraq and for those who have already come home. You're all heroes and should be treated as such. I just lament that your lives were risked or lost in this unwinnable war.
Too true, unfortunately...
You are not getting it. The work the military is doing in Iraq is not a good benchmark, because you will have to leave again. Then the Iraqi people will need to be able to cure their own sick, keep their economy going and be able to live in peace. The real benchmark is how well they are doing at that. 15 (or 1500) children with eye injuries cured by US military doctors is not a success. Zero children cured by US doctors and thousands cured by Iraqi doctors is a success. The same goes for security. Policing done by US soldiers indicates failure, Iraq needs a good Iraqi police force who can secure their own people. Iraq needs to be able to build/maintain its schools, hospitals, and bridges itself. And finally, a hundred people dying per day is a clear indication of failure. I don't know whether you consider that normal, but I consider that absolutely horrifying.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
What?
If I haven't actually been to Iraq, raped their women and children, blown up their schools & hospitals & sewerage treatment plants, and profited all the while, you want me to shut the fuck up, right? Amongst other things, that's very undemocratic of you. The best support you can give US troops is to pull them the fuck out of Iraq and get them back home, get them some decent medical care, and probably a lot of psychiatric care as well. There's nothing noble in what they're doing, or what anyone 'supporting' them is doing. Get over it. All previous excuses for being there have evaporated. You have lost the war of words, and you are clearly losing the military side of things too.