Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word, Iraq

notNeilCasey writes "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word (.doc), the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself. 'Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all but the few short passages they needed. Much of the material they were cribbing seems to have come from the kind of sensitive, security-related documents that were never meant to be available to the public. In fact, about half of the 20 improperly redacted documents I downloaded, including the March 28 report, contain deleted portions that all seem to come from one single, 1,000-word security memo. The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories." (The security memo and the last page of the March 28 report can be seen here, along with several other CPA documents that can be downloaded.)'"

Comments

"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

[Silverlancer]

How ironically appropriate...

The deleted section from the sample

[morgan_greywolf]

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention, but I'm not sure why the musings about why attacks stopped in Al-Anbar in early 2004 are so particularly embarrassing. It seems to me that they were just trying to figure out what happened; I guess it might show some degree of cluelessness on the part of Intelligence, but, uh, they gotta figure stuff out at some point, right?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Control Group]

That kind of defeatist attitude doesn't help anyone. We're trying to mock the government, here, and then you show up with your "logic." You're such a buzzkill.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[x_MeRLiN_x]

It only reads that way if you have a preconceived idea of why America invaded Iraq. ;)

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[heinousjay]

Could you point out the key phrase(s) in there that support your theory? I'm having a hard time finding them.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[frazzydee]

yeah, I think you're right..everything became much clearer after actually posting ;)
Actually, a little further down in the document, it even says "the sharp and now continuing drop in attacks does give the coalition a much-needed respite whose continuation will be critical...Reinforcing this trend...will be crucial to ultimate success"

So it looks like I was wrong, sorry. Mods, please mod grandparent down.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[timeOday]

Why do you think it's supposed to have been embarrasing? It's just somewhat interesting. It's history. That said, I'm not sure how much new information it provides. The fact that America had no idea what we were getting into is as plain as a 50-foot banner stretched across an aircraft carrier.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Himring]

I take it you've never been in the military or worked in a large corporation. You NEVER write down anything that you don't want others to know. Malicious dealings are always done voice, behind closed doors. Motives are hidden. Orders are given that totally mask the real intent but achieves the result. The last thing they would do is actually write down something to damn them if for no other reason than what is going on right now on /. with these released documents. No, I have read TFA, but I doubt there's any real incriminating information. Or, if anything, they want your to believe they are incompetent. The rules are few: keep your enemies closer than your allies. Always compromise. Never show true motives. Appear agreeable. Appear incompetent if need be, but never malicious, gaming or ulterior.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[hey!]

Well, it just shows what we already knew, but in more detail. That is, the CPA had no idea what a mess things were going to turn into, even though the signs were there.

It's like watching somebody who has driven off a cliff, speculating as they fall about the lack of damage to the car.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[hal2814]

That this post is titled "Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word, Iraq" leads me to believe that at least the Slashdot editorial staff wanted it to come off as embarrassing. At the very least, a defense that it is not embarrassing is appropriate.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[kalirion]

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention, but I'm not sure why the musings about why attacks stopped in Al-Anbar in early 2004 are so particularly embarrassing.

To play the devil's conspiracy theorist, perhaps the top brass wanted arranged for the attacks in Al-Anbar.

Or far more likely they were worried that Al-Anbar allied with the insurgents.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[chrb]

For a start, one of the given reasons is that many Iraqis thought that the coming handover of authority meant US forces would be leaving Iraq. Hence no reason to attack them anymore. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what Bush has been saying would happen if US troops left. The other reason to be embarrassed is the misplaced optimism that rounding up suspects (including a large number of innocents), bombing towns, and the threat of massive, indiscriminate violence against the people was actually working.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[CmdrGravy]

I think the embarrasment comes from the fact that the situation was handled incompetently.

Incompetently because the report writer doesn't appear to have a clue why the attacks in that province are decreasing which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening. It's possible that it's just the report writer who's in the dark about this but the complete lack of success in dealing with terrorism and insurgency in Iraq since then leads me to believe the problem was more widespread.

If you don't have the correct information or don't understand the situation on the ground then it's very hard to form any effective plan for reaching your goals which is what appears to have happened with Iraq. Given what we were told about how the war was to be fought beforehand and how everything was in place to address the aftermath I would say the handling of the situation which has led to the position we are in now speaks of great incompetence.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[NickFitz]

I don't find anything in the text you quote, or the surrounding text in the original deleted portion of the document, which supports your assertion that "they" wanted the attacks to continue.

For what it's worth, a bit further down they say:

Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don't fully understand things.

Perhaps they were thinking of you?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[NickFitz]

The Slashdot editors very rarely change the headline supplied by the original submitter. Out of several submissions I've had published here, I can think of just one where the headline was changed by one or two words from what I originally said. (The change was an improvement, IMO.)

So the original submitter may have wanted it to come off as embarrassing (which it is) but the fact that the Slashdot editor passed it through without modification just means that they didn't see any reason to change what somebody else had said, not that they themselves were trying to create any particular impression in the minds of the readers.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Deadstick]

Not exactly a smoking gun this time, but care to estimate how many people are searching their drives and backups for *.doc right now?

rj

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[suv4x4]

Or, if anything, they want your to believe they are incompetent.

Oh nice, denial mixed with conspiracy theories. Or how about, they are normal people, like you and me. They breath air, eat food, go to the toilet, and some of them families, kids and so on trivia.

The idea that they concealed fake info in the history of a Word file which embarasses them, so a tricky hacker could accidentally decode it and spread misinformation about the US intelligence service being idiots, while they are actually super smart..

That kinda strikes me as something I'd read next to articles showing evidence green aliens control earth in some tabloid.

They have no benefit to make their nation or their enemies think they are idiots. On the contrary, they keep teaching their soldiers, that the best weapon is the one that makes your enemy give up the fight. They need to look smart, they need to look scary, they need to look like someone you don't want to play with. Those docs work in the opposite direction.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Firethorn]

I'd have to agree. I mean, just think about how much 'incompetence' would be seen if we examined businesses and people's personal lives to this degree.

It'd be like pulling out a first draft of a term paper collected from the trash as 'proof' that a student can't write properly.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[ArsonSmith]

Maybe leave of one word from the article

"Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word"

Iraq was just add to show that the subject also contained information about Iraq. We all know the Incompetence there. It is displayed in bold print and on TV every day, but sensitive information leaked like this???

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Short Circuit]

You should look at the Firehose sometime. Most of the submissions are spun in similar ways.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Anonymous Coward]

They have no benefit to make their nation or their enemies think they are idiots. On the contrary, they keep teaching their soldiers, that the best weapon is the one that makes your enemy give up the fight. They need to look smart, they need to look scary, they need to look like someone you don't want to play with. Those docs work in the opposite direction. Ah yes, but you are making the assumption that they want the fighting to end.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Black-Man]

Incompetence at the intelligence level has always been known. But it also reeks of a coverup by the administration. Obviously nothing illegal like Nixon... but how could someone come across as totally confident of policy after reading an "intelligence" report such as this?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[orielbean]

Or Occam's Razor could apply. No need for a complex conspiracy when simple incompetence is readily at hand.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[sydneyfong]

I'll play the devil's advocate.

For most high profile stories you can imagine that there will be many submissions on the same story. The slashdot editors have a choice on which submission to post, and I'm guessing they look for the one with the "best" headline/summary, i.e. one that they like.

So it's still possible that they are trying to twist the stories a bit, even if they hadn't modified a single bit of your submission. They can simply choose one with the highest level of FUD, which could be better than anything they could come up with themselves.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to start taking some medication and calm the fuck down, tinfoil boy. I know, The Matrix was a cool movie when it came out, but it's just a movie, fatbitchdown.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[ElephanTS]

Or, if anything, they want your to believe they are incompetent.

Exactly. This surely must be the reason for this leak. It's such a great system because if you mention it like you have, you'll be drowned out with 'tinfoil' accusations.

Of course, what they really want for Iraq (possibly this was Plan B after 'shock'n'awe') is civil war as it breaks the national opposition to building of US bases and re-appropriation of oil reserves. I've seen this plan been cynically adhered to for nearly three years. It is 'sold' to the public as incompetence, and guess what, they've done it again.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[NickFitz]

Given the number of duplicate stories, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes that get through the submissions process, to suggest that degree of intentionality on the part of the editors is bordering on the realms of fantasy :-)

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[dAzED1]

Incompetently because the report writer doesn't appear to have a clue why the attacks in that province are decreasing which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening.

"the report writer" != "the administration."

"the report writer" is not a higher up, they just gather data, and make suggestions. The higher-ups then read the reports from all the sources they have - not just the reports from this one writer, but from others as well - and try to make an accurate picture of what is going on.

What makes you think "the report writer" should know all "the administration" knows about what is happening?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Khabok]

Official media paints a picture of good citizens and bad insurgents. This report contradicts that, suggesting that violence is tolerated as understandable, even among the opposition. Even more sacreligious, the report suggests that insurgents are scattered and independent, making decisions based on community sentiment, not organised cells with leaders that can be surgically struck-out.

It's information in the face of disinformation. Not embarassing in itself, but embarassing in the sense that it contradicts what they've been telling us. Remember, please, that censorship is not targetted at the thinking man, but at Joe Sixpack. Mr. Sixpack watches Fox news, drinks Bud Light, drives a Ford, and gets unhappy when the government seems complicated.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[sumdumass]

there are several things that could have happened which lead to the confusion. In all out firefights, if the other side isn't completely obliterated, they try to cart off their dead to hide the identities of their families who might also be supporting them. It could be that another operation inadvertently killed some of the people behind the attacks and we need to asses who, why and where or if this is even the case. It had nothing to do with incompetence, rather an attempt to link unrelated activities to explain the current situation.

We have had serial rapist from other states who were caught in that other state and it took years to put the pieces together and link the two. With modern communication and all this time frame has narrowed a bunch and sometimes it can be linked before they goto trial. But this shows nothing of the incompetence of the investigators who have no evidence pointing to the person in particular and still cannot figure out who is doing it. When the guy get detained in the other state, all they know it the rapes stopped and they need to figure out why. Did someone die? did someone get arrested somewhere and so on?

But that "connecting the dots" is relatively easy compared to the situations in Iraq. You don't know a lot of times when someone dies and their body is carted off and either buried in secrete or mutilated and dropped off in the street to make it appear as if they were attacked by the insurgence or terrorist. In the later case, it makes it appear that the people behind the violence are innocent civilians caught in the cross fire. And to think that any of this shows incompetence really goes to a deeper level of you lack of understanding. Now having the changes inside the word document after it was released to the public shows incompetence. But this isn't any where near the same level as you are intending to imply.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[CannedTurkey]

...That kinda strikes me as something I'd read next to articles showing evidence green aliens control earth in some tabloid... Everyone knows it's the Zeta Reticulans, which are grey. You're probably thinking of Reptiliods, but they're so not in control..

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Analogy Man]

You hit it in one! The President (not just Bush...any President/executive) expresses almost all of his decisions verbally. Take another bit of current events with the revelation about the intensive care shakedown of then Att. General Ashcroft. Who do you suppose sent Card and Gonzolas? Probably the last people on earth that still provide them "full support".

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have the correct information or don't understand the situation on the ground then it's very hard to form any effective plan

I always just make more hydralisks and zerglings. Then I surge them forward.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[sumdumass]

I believe the actual answer is that the leaders of the insurgents ion the area were killed. Not that people expected us to leave. And Bush had always stated they we would be there as long as the New Iraq government couldn't defend itself requested our presence. SO the idea of people thinking we were going to leave directly after the handover of power just shows that they weren't listening or your just guessing because it sounds good.

No one with half a brain is suggesting that if we leave, everything will be peachy king over there. They are saying the problems that will occur isn't of our concern like the way they shrugged off Vietnam when millions of people were exterminated after we left. It is a matter of survival of the fittest to them.

And the optimism, it isn't a matter of thinking you winning, it is a matter control. When we started to bomb and shell a town, we gave opportunity for the enemy to escape before we did this. this means that we killed very few of them and they were able to use our actions to recruit more people. That alternative would be to have a press blackout, shell suspected hideouts for a few hours and then storm the city going house to house to clear any resistance. but then innocent people would be killed and that isn't the sanitary war that everyone wants. And when we take a town, Instead of leaving at night, we need to keep control over it but that is impossible with the state of the Iraqi troops that are left behind. And now with everyone trying to get elected to office by stating we need to leave and let them suffer, we have less people willing to help out makaing the situation even worse.

There always was a concern that people helping us would be killled whenever there was an opportunity. This isn't something new here but it is something people seem to forget really easy. It is like the cops going into the hood and asking how saw the shooting that left three infants and a gangsta (gang member)dead. They fear the reprisal from cooperating with the police more then they do the loss of their loved ones.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Himring]

I never said there isn't just plain ol' incompetence too. It is simply possible that there is more than one explanation for incompetence....

Why does this stir so much resentment?

/boggle

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[twifosp]

which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening.

Of course they have a clear idea what drives the attacks. It's terrorism! It always has been, always will be, and... err whats that you say? Saddam who? Never heard of him. I'm sure he was a terrorist though. That's why we went after Iraq, you know... because of all them damn terrorists. Don't you watch your TeeVee?

These memos are probably the work of terrorists is my guess.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[suv4x4]

I never said there isn't just plain ol' incompetence too. It is simply possible that there is more than one explanation for incompetence....

Douglas Adams said:

"I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me "Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid" - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically."

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[hal2814]

But Slashdot does have an editorial staff (of sorts). If Slashdot's editorial staff is publishing these posts, then that editorial staff is ultimately responsible for the tone of the published post. You can't just hide behind the original poster. The editors dictate (though don't necessarily create) content.

The reason I did not also implicate the original submitter is that I could not determine exactly what the original submitter actually submitted. I can however determine exactly what the editorial staff intended to publish. If I were to wager, I'd wager that the original submitter submitted more or less exactly what was posted and the editorial staff merely posted it but I cannot know that for sure. Hence I can determine that "at least the Slashdot editorial staff wanted it to come off as embarrassing". I should've added that the original poster probably also wanted it to come off as embarrassing.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[notNeilCasey]

I did write this headline. Nobody would that the CPA was competent with Microsoft Word. Very few would argue that they've been competent with Iraq. If you RTFWD, you see that their internal discussions still reflected the rosy point of view that the attacks we're diminishing because they were doing such a great job governing the place. The only theory that bore any resemblance to reality was the last one, which they described as "boring".

A final argument for the downturn in attacks offers what briefly looks like a flash of reality. The "Operational Pause" theory surmises that reduced attacks may be a statistical blip. They may increase again as "terrorists" regroup for future fights against the Americans and "other Iraqis." But then the author calls this "a boring theory," and notes, "There are very few persons we have met who subscribe to this."

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[HiThere]

It all depends on which group you are calling "they". If you are talking about the general troops, up to the rank of, at a guess captain (line officer), then you may well be right. The officers will generally believe that force is justified, but that's not so unusual among normal people. Once you get to the higher ranks, or away from line officers, things start to change. Many of these are people who have risen by gaming the system for their own benefit, and they tend to have less concern about what happens to the people. They have the concern for their troops that a chessmaster has for his pieces.

If you get into the area of intelligence operations...these are people who live in and on deceit. Don't expect them to honest when it's to their disadvantage. They have a great ability to justify, or they couldn't be successful at their job.

These opinions don't require either conspiracy or denial (though it has been said that a group of tradesmen never gather for a beer without conspiring against the general public...you might want to consider that point of view, and it's justice, before denying the reality of conspiracies).

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[dbIII]

Libby's notes said "focus on war" and the election was won with bits of theatre like Bush arriving on the aircraft carrier in costume in a jet especially painted for the occassion. There was more than one mission to accomplish and what was seen as the most important one IMHO was staying in office. It's becoming clear that there were many that did know what America was getting into but they were trumped by those that had already made the choice and pretented to take advice fabricated for them by PR agencies of all things. Remember "there are no targets in Afganistan, there are plenty of targets in Iraq" and plenty of other garbage a few years ago.

In my view the most stupid choice was to pull troops out of Tora Bora when Bin Laden was trapped so that they could be ready to go into the tragic distraction in Iraq. I'm sure there will be many more bits of greater stupidity that will come to light later.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, it reminded me of the argument about Bush's intellect: he is not really be as stupid as he appears to be, instead he is actually just pretending to be stupid so his opponents would misunderestimate him - which in turn would explain how he got elected president. Twice.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[dbIII]

You are forgetting that this war is mostly being run by PR people, draft dodgers and amatuar spooks - the standards of professional military officers do not apply and bold new depths of incompetance are possible.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[George Beech]

Incompetently because the report writer doesn't appear to have a clue why the attacks in that province are decreasing which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening.

Can I just quote you the title of the Report:
Administrator's Weekly Report Economy (emphasis mine)

Why do you think that an economist should have ANY clue as to a mostly military matter? This guy is writing about what is going on in Iraq's economy the only odd thing i see here is why he was even thinking about putting that into an economic report. This could even be a simple problem of someone opening the wrong word document and starts typing without realizing what he is doing. The rest of the "embarassing" changes are formatting changes and the removal of the word "UNCLASSIFIED" in the footer... ooo ahhh.
Someone messed up on a document that doesn't even deserve the UNCLASSIFIED classification ... mountains out of molehills.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Chris Burke]

Or, if anything, they want your to believe they are incompetent. The rules are few: keep your enemies closer than your allies. Appear incompetent if need be, but never malicious, gaming or ulterior.

If making the government and the military appear incompetent is a deliberate goal, then it is the most successfull project that this administration has embarked on.

Not appearing malicious, gaming, or ulterior... that's not working so good. But incompetent? They're spot on!

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Himring]

Never argue by analogy as the very analogy you use will be used to rebutt. The case here isn't rock vs cheese, but granite vs obsidian -- two different rock types.

My gosh, people don't ever fake anything? Haha....

Yes, I'm sure the document IS a result of plain ol' incompetency. I never said it wasn't. I'm just, for the last time, trying to say it is very possible to act incompotent as well. This happens every day in the corporate world. And, for surely and truly, there is just good ol' dumb incompetency as well.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[sgt_doom]

And, in case you've yet to see this, check out this site articel for further cluelessness.....

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't hear about "the surgery" in the US Army have you? We don't have to go to the toilet anymore... what? It boost efficency!

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Nick Number]

I did write this headline. Nobody would that the CPA was competent with Microsoft Word.

I believe you.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[DarkShadeChaos]

It's like watching somebody who has driven off a cliff, speculating as they fall about the lack of damage to the car.
Hurrah! Someone used a car analogy correctly!

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[smilindog2000]

That was a truly insightful post, indicating you have some depth of knowledge of what it is like for the ground forces in Iraq. Maybe the random sample of soldiers I've talked to just happen to fall into a specific group, but everyone I've talked to thinks we should get the heck out of Iraq, and that Bush screwed up big-time. How is it you understand what it's like for the troops, yet don't hold opinions at all like those I've heard from them?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[cpghost]

They need to look smart, they need to look scary, they need to look like someone you don't want to play with.

Not necessarily the best approach in Iraq. Those leaks just make them look more human, and therefore less of a danger that the locals would otherwise need to fight. What's fueling the hatred down in Iraq is exactly this kind of menacing posturing (looking scary) that generates a lot of defiance among a mostly juvenile and very young population. Looking scary doesn't go down well with young people, neither in Iraq nor elsewhere in the world.

Looking silly and incompetent makes them more sympathetic in the eyes of the normal population; the menacing posturing didn't impress the armed insurgents anyway, so what's the point in needlessly enraging the regular population?

And instead of looking smart, being and acting smart would be much more useful.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[suv4x4]

Yea, it reminded me of the argument about Bush's intellect: he is not really be as stupid as he appears to be, instead he is actually just pretending to be stupid so his opponents would misunderestimate him - which in turn would explain how he got elected president. Twice.

I suppose Arnold is really smart too then, and all those terminator quotes are a coverup.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[suv4x4]

Looking silly and incompetent makes them more sympathetic in the eyes of the normal population;

You know, no offense, but did you pull this one from one of the documents too?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

They have no benefit to make their nation or their enemies think they are idiots.

Actually there is considerable benefit to making your enemies think you are an idiot. For example I was recently helping the police with their inquiries on a case (not that I was a suspect or anything), and the detective in question made a point of saying that they had no internet connection at the station, because they were "a bit behind the times". When I made it clear that I understood they had no connection because of security concerns, he grimaced in a kind of "aha got me" sort of way, and nodded.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if you have to come up with theories about why violence in a region has stopped, it means you don't talk to those people.

If you don't talk to people, you can't know what is going on.

If you invade a country and don't talk to the people and develop a proper intelligence network--you're incompetent.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Crazy Eight]

Huh? The Salon article was about a snapshot of the CPA's mindset. You're talking about something else.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Crazy Eight]

The economist's article was culled in part from another article written by someone else who was reflecting on a political matter with military implications.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[SonicSpike]

The GOP said the same thing to US Rep Ron Paul this week.

Always see the bright side.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Very high competance and ability shown in the Documentation Process! Of course the what is documented might be fiascos, fumbles and general incompetance in other areas. But still it would qualify for the ISO 9007 (or whatever is their latest version) certification.

Re:Always see the bright side.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Serves me right for posting without even the summary carefully. Looks like there is incompetance even in the documentation process! Releasing docs without purging history. Wow! Bad Govt Agency! No ISO 9007 for you!

Re:Always see the bright side.

[Opportunist]

You show me one auditing company who would disqualify a gov agency from receiving an ISO certificate and I show you an auditing company that never gets government contracts anymore.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[Prysorra]

It just floors me they feel they have to cover up even the signs of progress.

The level of utter incompetence w.r.t. "controlling the narrative" just terrifies me.

:-(

Microsoft fanboys

[Pig Hogger]

Here are the elusive Microsoft fanboys. We don't notice them because they are so insignifiant and incompetent and unglamorous and dull.

Re:Microsoft fanboys

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Microsoft's whizzo bullshit bites yet another ass.

Re:Microsoft fanboys

[VagaStorm]

What I cant figure is why this function where turned on by default.... When do you whant to distribute a document where anyone can go back and see what has been corrected in it....

Re:Microsoft fanboys

[orclevegam]

Makes a bit of sense in the context of crap-tastic laws like Sarbanes-Oxley. Instead of putting real auditing in place, just mandate that this feature always be turned on, and your ass is covered without actually having to do anything, or providing a genuine audit trail.

I learned a long time ago...

[multipartmixed]

C-A, C-C, C-N, C-V, A-F, A

(create new document that looks like, but is not, the old one)

before sending onward. Otherwise, somebody WILL find something untoward, even if it's not track changes, it could be a now-unused hunk of crap in the OLE2 file, etc.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Stavr0]

I prefer
^A ^C ^N AltV U AltF A

This way, any hidden formatting is destroyed.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found all kinds of stuff in Word documents by simply dumping the files. I think Word just saves everything in memory. It's really a pretty lousy word processor.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[VertigoAce]

Alternatively, from the main menu, select Prepare -> Inspect Document. That will check for "Comments, Revisions, Versions, and Annotations", "Document Properties and Personal Information", "Custom XML Data", "Headers, Footers, and Watermarks", "Hidden Text" (you choose which ones you want to look for and it will report.

It doesn't show you the exact text that it found, but does let you remove all instances of each category. The idea is that you have a document that you actually edit and then use this tool on the copy you intend to distribute.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[SCHecklerX]

The NSA publishes some very useful guides for dealing with sensitive information here:
http://www.nsa.gov/snac/

Specifically, how to properly redact a Microsoft Word .doc is detailed in this document:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/nsa-redact.pdf

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[DavidWeight]

Or the convert to pdf before sending out - makes sure it can't be changed and removes all extra information

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

removes all extra information

HAHAHAHAH. No.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[ohzopants]

That pdf link is very interesting. But it's a bit hard to take a document seriously when the ms word screenshots they used have the animated cat (for help) turned on.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[spun]

I can't be the only one who finds it funny that the first page of a document on redacting documents claims, "This page intentionally left blank," can I?

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[massysett]

Yikes, how to safely redact Word documents? I'm not sure that is possible. It's actually scary that NSA would dare publish guidance on this topic. Word is a proprietary black box, and all I can do is shake my head if NSA is dumb enough to keep any sensitive information in Word and then release the documents!

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[gEvil (beta)]

Putting a black bar over black type (which is what that article was about) is far different from retaining information that was "deleted" from the file. Moran.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Homr Zodyssey]

What's a Moran?

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[SlamMan]

NSA publishes guides on a number of different things, including how to secure operating systems and routers. It falls under part of their infosec mandate.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[gEvil (beta)]

Moran

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Skapare]

Sheesh! I know these steps and I don't even use Windows (I prefer Linux, usually text console command line).

They will never be able to understand how to follow your steps. You'd have to show them how to do this in terms of pull down menus and mouse clicks, with full illustrations of every step. I bet some of them haven't even taken the coffee shield off their keyboard by half way through the day. They only understand mouse and graphics.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[megaditto]

Why would you need a keyboard when you can use voice recognition to double the killer delete select all?

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moran?

And exactly what is that word supposed to mean?

Fucknut

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[CrimsonScythe]

C-A, C-C, C-N, C-V, A-F, A

Hey, a fellow Emacs user! For those who don't know Emacs, that was the command for inserting an "A" into the document.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Tacvek]

I prefer
^A ^C ^N AltV U AltF A

This way, any hidden formatting is destroyed. Hmm. Select-All. Copy. New-Document. View-menu. Fullscreen. File-Menu. Save-as.

I suppose that gets rid of hidden formating, but the document has no text either. At least thats what would happen in Word 2003.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[commodoresloat]

It looks like you are trying to erase evidence of your bumbling and murderous incompetence.

Would you like help with that?

[ ] Get Help
[ ] Turn on paper shredder
[ ] Fire high profile staff members in effigy
[ ] Print resignation letter
[ ] Self-destruct
[ ] No, Thank you.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[Stavr0]

Doh... I have Alt-V bound to Paste Special... and the U is for unformatted.

but the document has no text either.
That's the safest option indeed.

Disallow MS Word

[gr8_phk]

This is a great reason to disallow the use of MS Word in government. Does ODF support this change tracking stuff? Or should they stick to ASCII files?

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Anonymous Coward]

ODF as used in OpenOffice/StarOffice supports change tracking, in arguably less flakey fashion than MS Word - so long as you're not roundtripping the documents between MS Word .doc files and Open Office file conversions, that is! That's a recipe for disaster. This is, as usual, largely microsoft's fault (I've had similarly negative experiences roundtripping change-tracked documents through different versions of MS Word, really).

Re:Disallow MS Word

[symbolic]

Actually, it's a great reason to continue using Microsoft word.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Timesprout]

Government use of MS Word should be disallowed because some numpty pencil pusher doesn't know how some of its features work? What a compelling argument that is.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[eck011219]

No. This is a great reason to have highly sensitive agencies like the CPA job out IT based on something other than lowest bid. This is is simply an example of an IT protocol that is ignorant of a very well-known and well-documented security concern.

Track changes works well for some, and is not a flaw. Writers love it, lawyers fear it. And therefore each should set it up differently. The fact that the CPA is a bunch of security (and culturally, and politically) ignorant yahoos does not make it necessary to replace Word with something else. It makes it necessary to replace the CPA with something else.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[gr8_phk]

Government use of MS Word should be disallowed because some numpty pencil pusher doesn't know how some of its features work? What a compelling argument that is.

It's a perfectly good argument. Using a tool or designing a part that doesn't allow a critical mistake is standard practice. Google for Poka Yoke.

There is all type of sensitive information floating around the government. It goes to congress critters, their aids, through email, etc. Do you know another way to ensure that none of these people ever accidentally create documents with change tracking turned on? I didn't think so.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Rakshasa Taisab]

There's probably no better way to leak information than 'fucking' up a redaction. You then have a document from official sources and the leaker can feign incompetence with technology.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[andy_t_roo]

"It makes it necessary to replace the CPA with something else" after all the bother you went through to put them there in the first place?

Re:Disallow MS Word

[jfengel]

I've found OpenOffice's change tracking to be more flaky than MS Word's. I particular miss Word's "Accept this change" feature; OO.o's version of it is a dialogue box listing the changes and is far less helpful.

That said, they're both flaky. They both dramatically slow down operation. And they both lead to weird formatting glitches.

I wish the feature worked better. I use it for editing down Shakespeare plays. It's useful to be able to look back and see what I've cut, and sometimes I change my mind about the cuts. That's something plain old undo doesn't really handle well. I've used both Word and OO.o for it. I use OO.o because it's about equally buggy and therefore the price is right.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Timesprout]

User incompetence is a poor argument for disallowing something. Should we ban cars because some people are crap drivers? presumably we should by your logic because the car allows them to crash and kill people. How about planes? They cant be foolproof when they can crash due to pilot error. Medical care. Should we disallow that because some doctors are useless or because the implements and machines they use are not perfect and people die in theatre?

Do you know another way to ensure that none of these people ever accidentally create documents with change tracking turned on? I didn't think so

Who cares if documents are created with change tracking on, most users actually want this and FYI word easily extended to prevent this and I would guess the same is true for OpenOffice. The issue here is distributing the document with the changes still embedded. Its easy to remove this information and tools are provided for this very purpose. I would be surprised if there was not a release process in place for this precise scenario which clearly was not followed. The fact that someone failed to do their job properly is the issue here, not the tooling.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[MazzThePianoman]

The government should fear its people, not its software.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[budgenator]

Yeah, what a bunch of pansie ass girly-men, those kinds of yahoo's are what destroying my Military. Real men edit documents with vi or emacs, format with LaTeX and use CVS for revision control. Hell the missile I worked on only had one transistor, the rest were all electron tubes, mostly 5704's and some 5707's. My computer had ferrite core memory and all the chips were wire-wrapped, motherboard, we didn't need no stinking motherboard.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Anonymous Coward]

V for Version Tracking.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[El Torico]

Luxury. We used to pull rank to use a single IBM Selectric typewriter and the lowest ranking Soldier in the office has to make copies with a hand-cranked mimeograph machine. I even worked on a warhead that had no electronics and had a two digit serial number.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Anonymous Coward]

User incompetence is a poor argument for disallowing something. Should we ban cars because some people are crap drivers? presumably we should by your logic because the car allows them to crash and kill people. How about planes? They cant be foolproof when they can crash due to pilot error.

Poor comparisons. If there were foolproof cars that functioned much the same as existing ones, they would probably be mandated. Same for planes. To require government officials and employees to use more secure tools - or just more foolproof ones - when they are readily available is not unreasonable.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[IthnkImParanoid]

I'm all for banning cars and planes when the imperfections inherent in cars and planes could potentially reveal information critical to national security. Argument by analogy is dumb.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[Control Group]

I disagree. Arguing by using analogies is like showering with the Swedish National Bikini Team.

JUST LIKE IT, I TELL YOU.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[nomadic]

Yeah, what a bunch of pansie ass girly-men, those kinds of yahoo's are what destroying my Military. Real men edit documents with vi or emacs

Yep, when I think manly men I think UNIX coders.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[budgenator]

Did you guys have a scanner to burn mimeograph stencils? We had one in Bn. and I used to use the hell out of it.

Track Changes...

[hejog]

I remember when I had a job offer and could track the changes of the contract they emailed me, was interesting to see the changes they made! (in a good way, suprisingly) Is track changes on by default? I assume so...

Re:Track Changes...

[svendsen]

it is off by default (on a clean install). Companies may have turned it on as a corporate setting though.

Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[parvenu74]

This is outstanding news for the F/OSS community! My hope is that the "there's got to be someone else I can blame this on" politicians file charges against Microsoft under provisions of the Patriot Act for leaking vital government secrets. The irony in such a case would be delicious: charges without real justification leveled against a monopolistic company who markets software that doesn't really work. With each side forced to disprove a negative proposition, this should give the F/OSS community a little more time to charge forward while MS pukes all over themselves.

Re:Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

Haven't you read the Patriot Act (I or II)?

Brother, you can charge anybody with the Patriot Act. Your grandma bitching about taxes? Mind control terrorist. Bill Gates giving vaccines to Africa? Funding terrorists. You for posting about the US government online? Cyberterrorist.

They got labels for everybody.

Government lawyers don't investigate whether or not someone's violating the Patriot Act, government lawyers find someone they don't like and then use general wording of the Patriot Act to jail them.

Haven't you heard? It's the new way. Senator McCarthy was a pioneer & George Bush is the new prophet to lead us.

Re:Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[lilomar]

NOOO! Then I would be morally obliged to take Microsoft's side in a battle! I don't think my poor brain could handle that.

Re:Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[n0dna]

Wouldn't it make more sense to Court Martial the dipshit behind the memos? How is his inability to work editing and change tracking the fault of MS? I've never had changes bite me in the ass, instead I learned to use the feature correctly. The truly incompetent can even keep a PUBLIC version of the file maintained without change tracking. By all means flame-on, as this is clearly a case where F/OSS is a better solution. *rolls eyes*

Re:Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[Obsi]

What about WordPerfect, you insensitive clod!

History repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when that Cat Schwartz girl from TV posted a cropped photo that accidentally had her boobs in the embedded Photoshop thumbnail? This is just like that, except Photoshop has been replaced with Word, the TV hostess has been replaced with the US Military, and the sweet sweet woman parts have been replaced with the absolute idiocy of those in charge of an ostensibly conquered nation.

I for one was happier about the tits.

Re:History repeating

[spamking]

Remember when that Cat Schwartz girl from TV posted a cropped photo that accidentally had her boobs in the embedded Photoshop thumbnail?

Link?

Seriously, this is a pretty common issue in my office (I may or may not work for Uncle Sam). I think most folks probably have "track changes" set to "on" by default and those of us who don't are greeted with all of the comments and track changes dialogue when we open up the attached MSWord file.

The potential is there to find out some pretty funny stuff about your coworkers when this happens.

Re:History repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, a few years ago a police officer here in Australia got in trouble when he sent a Word document around to schools in with cropped kiddie porn photos in order to try and identify the victims. The news report intimated that the receivers were able to see the entire photos. I suspect the author simply used the Word photo cropping tool, which of course can be easily undone.

Re:History repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, in a sense you can say that this mistake exposed some tits as well.

Re:History repeating

[soundhack]

I think the world would be a significantly better place if more people were happier looking at breasts than waging war.

I'm not a "make love not war" hippie, but in this current example I think it fits.

Re:History repeating

[pipingguy]

Ever notice how the word, "fits" looks like the word, "tits" onscreen? Ok then, tit's just me that notices this.

A Good Book About the CPA

[eldavojohn]

Right now, I've taken a first glance but I don't even want to read this document as it'll just lead to a bad day (I'll read it all later).

But if you're interested in stuff about the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), I would highly recommend a book I read a few months ago entitled Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Pretty much details what's going on there, doesn't shove a lot of ideas down your throat but does do a good job of selectively relaying details that starts one thinking.

I could rant for hours on the information in this book but I'll try to relay one or two things that stuck with me. My biggest problem with how things were handled out there (one of the many issues the book covers) is that we had people more suitable for the job of handling post war Iraq but either sent them home or blocked their attempts to help because they didn't avidly support the person we wanted to take control of post-war Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi. If anyone was seen as competition for Chalabi, they were replaced with someone who was loyal to the American Republican party. The author reports that interview questions consisted of things like views on abortion or even your voting record. People with little or no past experience were put in charge of insanely high level authority.

We went into Iraq with the only plan to overthrow the government. In my opinion, we have the best army in the world and they did their job better than anyone else could. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we have some of the worst leaders in the world and, as a result, what ensued from overthrowing said government is a pretty bad debacle. I heard this author speak on NPR and was impressed so I hope you read this book to hear what Chandrasekaran experienced visiting Iraq. The information in this Word document doesn't even begin to describe what Chandrasekaran details in his book.

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprising.

The republican party weekly newsletter has been renamed Pravda.

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[demachina]

"support the person we wanted to take control of post-war Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi."

Charlie Rose had an interview recently with 3 Iraqi journalists, all of whom are currently in the U.S. studying Journalism, or really escaping the oppressive violence and smoldering pit that is their homeland thanks to George W, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Rummy and Wolfy.

One of them spelled it out, pretty much all the Iraqi exiles who swept in to take over Iraq after the invasion are viewed as "thieves" by the Iraqi people. Chalabi is at the top of the list since he is still under indictment in Jordan for a gigantic bank fraud.

One of facts about Iraq a lot of people seem to gloss over is there is a gigantic pool of oil riches in that country and the people who gain control over the government can enrich themselves and their friends with that control. EVERYONE jockeying for control there, Iraqi and American alike, is angling for control over its oil wealth because they know if they get it they will end up like Saudi princes. This simple reason is why the Shia have zero incentive to pass legislation to equitably share the oil wealth with Kurds and Sunnis and without that there is ALWAYS going to be a civil war there. I'm not sure you will every strike a deal everyone will consider fair.

A recent report suggests large quantities of Iraq's oil is disappearing in to the black market to enrich the people who have gained control over the wells or pipelines, who are mostly Shia in the South and Kurds in the north (though its also possible oil production is also being exaggerated).

I'm not really sure Iraq will ever find peace as long as there is oil wealth to fight over. The fight for control of oil is a source of strife everyplace it is found today. The original Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was for control of oil, and I'm not sure the corrupt Emir of Kuwait has any more right to control it than Saddam did. The genocide in Darfur is largely over the oil fields there. A key element in the coup attempt in Venezuela was over oil fields which were recently nationalized. In Russia a bunch of kleptocrats suckered Yeltsin in to giving them control of the oil and gas fields and they got rich, Putin threw the ring leader in jail and seized control of the oil for himself and his dictatorial government. The Saudi royal family rules Saudi Arabia with an iron fist to insure they get the lions share of the oil riches. Not much chance of real Democracy in Saudi Arabia because the Saudi royal family wouldn't get most of the oil revenue in a real Democracy. Iran is in the mess its in after an American backed coup threw out a popular leader who nationalized the oil fields at Britain's expense. The U.S. installed the Shah as dictator who gave U.S. companies control over the oil fields to Britain's dismay. The Shah was so hated he was overthrown in favor of the Ayatollah so there is a repressive theocracy there that hates the U.S. to this day as a result. Its kind of routine in countries on the west coast of Africa with oil wealth for the people in power to pocket much of the oil wealth while most of their countrymen starve.

Not sure you will find Peace in Iraq until you just partition the country, let the ethnic cleansing finish, and let each of the three factions control their own oil fields. The Sunnis were the odd man out but recent oil discoveries in their base in Anbar province suggest all three groups could have their own oil fields. The down side to this is Turkey will probably never tolerate an independent Kurdistan waging a guerrilla war to try to seize the Kurdish regions of Turkey.

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[feed_me_cereal]

Your post should be required reading for every american citizen. Seriously, I'm bookmarking it as a reference for others!

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[More Trouble]

I agree with the required reading comment. The real question is this: did the US plan to turn Iraq into another Saudi Arabia, or was there some other plan?

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[demachina]

Expanding Iraq oil production, preferably under the influence of U.S. oil companies was certainly a motivator in the invasion. Not sure anyone real knows all the motives outside the inner circle of the Bush administration. They obviously tipped the fact it was one of their priorities by guarding the oil ministry, oil fields and oil infrastructure after Saddam fell and letting a museum full of priceless artifacts from the cradle of civilization be looted along with just about everything else.

With Iraq embargoed under Saddam it was significantly under producing. It peaked at 3.7 million barrels in 1979 and was down to 2.6 million barrel in 2003 before the invasion. The oil fields were under a mix of Russian, French and Chinese companies under Saddam as I recall which may be one reason they were cool to the idea of toppling Saddam. It certainly would have eased current oil shortages and price spikes if Iraqis had welcomed us with the roses and oil production had gone up instead of down, or barely held even.

The company that announced the big Anbar reserves is a U.S. company, Colorado based IHS, according to this article though its not clear yet which oil companies are going to get to develop the new fields. U.S. and British companies certainly have an inside track at the moment since the U.S. has the Iraqi government by the jugular. As I recall Poland's foreign minister admitted a key reason Poland joined the coalition of the willing in 2003 was to gain an inside track on some oil business.

The discovery of oil in Anbar probably is the single best shot there is for peace in Iraq. It is a seismic shift in Iraq more important than the misguided troop surge or anything else that's happened since 2003. This discovery may be why Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar have turned on Al Qaeda recently. Those tribal leaders are now realizing they are sitting on their own gold mine and its in their interest to work with the global oil establishment to develop it and cash in on it. Prior to this it appeared the Kurds and the Shia were going to keep their oil fields to themselves and the Sunnis were facing long term poverty, which was a driving force behind the Sunni insurgency. The Iraqi government could, if they are wise, let each of the three factions have control of their own oil reserves and go their own way and Iraq could suddenly become a peaceful success story. If the Shia try to screw the Sunni's out of the new oil revenues from Anbar the war in Iraq will never end. People who are poised to reap billions in oil revenue have very little motivation to wage a guerrilla war.

The whole dynamic of Saddam's Iraq is the Sunni were reaping the lion's share of the oil revenue while the Kurds and Shia were screwed, and currently that situation has been completely reversed. If all three factions have their own huge oil fields and revenues from them the whole dynamic changes.

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[MadUndergrad]

Damn, I wish I hadn't already posted so I could mod you up.

The "U.S".?

[sycodon]

So a handful of people don't know about or how to use the track changes features in Word and that means the "U.S." is incompetent?

Then, they are discussion the reasons for success and they means are incompetent?

I suspect if the original poster held him/herself to the same standards they would hold everyone else, they would probably just kill themselevs for being incompetent.

Re:The "U.S".?

[slowhand]

Ditto for me! If I had mod points I'd mod down the original for Bozo headline, not meaning to disparage Bozo.
A little vague handwaving can often save hours of tedious explanation.

Re:The "U.S".?

[sycodon]

I actually have mod points, but ddn't notice in my rush to post. At least I didn't say "First!"

Re:The "U.S".?

[Toon Moene]

> So a handful of people don't know about or how to use the track changes features in Word and that
> means the "U.S." is incompetent?

No, it just means that *when people care* (i.e., on Wall Street) they know about this feature.

If you're just a drone in the streets of Baghdad - well, who cares ...

Re:The "U.S".?

[smittyoneeach]

We're so quick to:

• Accept whatever the media publishes as gospel
• Believe any negative report about the US government
• Understand that no good whatsoever can come of US involvement in the Middle East

but they still want us to somehow vote for candidates that promise extend government meddling in areas such as retirement and health care.
Hm. Not as flexible with these mental gymnastics as I used to be. Request additional kool-aid here.

Re:The "U.S".?

[stinerman]

No need for kool-aid. Facts objectively show that government sponsored health care systems (as they have in Canada, the UK, and most of Europe) are more efficient than our private/public amalgamation here in the US.

Now, the real question is what you seek from your health care system. My goal is to see that people get the care they need without regard to their ability to pay. I hear concerns about waiting lists. Waiting lists are fine when you have to choose between waiting 2 weeks to see a doctor and not seeing him at all. Perhaps your goals are different than mine. Perhaps you enjoy the liberty of choosing your health insurance plan or have constitutional objections to universal health care. These are valid concerns.

What is not valid is the idea that the government cannot run health care programs when most other governments in the industrialized world have such programs and run them comparatively well.

Re:The "U.S".?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Hm. Not as flexible with these mental gymnastics as I used to be. Request additional kool-aid here.

In the New Regime, re-education centers will be a free benefit for you (after your wages are garnished by 85%).

Re:The "U.S".?

[BendingSpoons]

We're so quick to... understand that no good whatsoever can come of US involvement in the Middle East but they still want us to somehow vote for candidates that promise extend government meddling in areas such as retirement and health care.

1. Our current administration is bungling its ill-advised occupation.
2. A federal healthcare system would be more efficient than a patchwork of private insurers. Additionally, a person could lose his job without worrying that a serious injury/illness would bankrupt his entire family.

You may disagree with the factual validity of those arguments, but there is no logical inconsistency between them.

Re:The "U.S".?

[Scrameustache]

We're so quick to:

• Accept whatever the media publishes as gospel
• Believe any negative report about the US government
• Understand that no good whatsoever can come of US involvement in the Middle East

but they still want us to somehow vote for candidates that promise extend government meddling in areas such as retirement and health care.

Hm. Not as flexible with these mental gymnastics as I used to be. Request additional kool-aid here. Extend government medling in health care?
This from the country that spends the most per-capita on healthcare in the entire world, yet still has 20% uninsured?

Maybe if you spent your taxes on healthcare instead of on no-bid contracts to haliburton? No? That's not an option?

Re:The "U.S".?

[Bob-taro]

Facts objectively show that government sponsored health care systems (as they have in Canada, the UK, and most of Europe) are more efficient than our private/public amalgamation here in the US.

Okay, we're off topic here, but what are these facts and how do you define efficiency? If by efficient you mean equitable, then by definition a system that guarantees everyone the same healthcare would be more equitable. That does not prove it will be cheaper for the same quality of care.

Re:The "U.S".?

[smittyoneeach]

Your use of the word "current" in this context is interesting.
It's all one giant blob of government, with a wee ice-berg tip coming up for public review at election time.
For an amusing take on a government across the pond that reveals why hope for change is rather optimistic, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080306/ and the sequel, Yes Prime Minister.
While you'll readily show that your point #2 is indeed true (economies of scale being a no-brainer), think about the tight coupling with your government, and both the explicit and implicit loss of personal sovereignty involved.
Hence the stiff resistance to the idea, especially at the federal level, where too much power is concentrated in the hands of the few, which point I think you were making in #1.

Re:The "U.S".?

[smittyoneeach]

This from the country that spends the most per-capita on healthcare in the entire world

When enslaving the masses, it is most pleasant to a) feed them poison, and b) chase the poison with more medication to stabilize them.
Oh, and start with the kids. Pills for the little ones. Mwahahahahaha.

Re:The "U.S".?

[stinerman]

To be exact, I meant that you can get more care with the same amount of money by switching to a government-sponsored system. Our overhead with Medicare is, IIRC, about 3%. Most private insurers have overheads in the 20% range (again IIRC).

Numerous studies show that if we adopted a Canadian-style health care plan, we could cover everyone at a cost less than what we pay for Medicare now.

Re:The "U.S".?

[Anonymous Coward]

>are more efficient than our private/public amalgamation here >in the US.
Most health systems in Europe are such a private/public amalgamation at the very least much more than in Canada.

Don't get me wrong I think guaranteeing some minimum amount of health care to every one in society is very important, but as a Canadian I believe it would be better to look else where for a good health care system.

We have waiting lists in some cases very long waiting lists for critical procedures such as cardiac care.

Resource always seem to be stretched very thinly nurses with far more patients than they would if they worked on the same floor in American hospitals, which burns them out and leads to a poor working environment.

I hear anecdotes about Canadian nurses returning from working in the states (exchange rate isn't so great after all) who describe the Canadian system as "archaic" and "primitive" we are a lot slower at adopting new technologies, some of these technologies that really have positive effects on patient outcomes such as medical imagery and "simple" things like stryker drains.

Those that can pay should and if it means a private parallel system so be it it should reduce waiting times in the public system. But of course everyone should have access to that public system.

Re:The "U.S".?

[stinerman]

By no means is the Canadian system perfect. I just think it's better.

And by your comment you seem to imply that there is no parallel private system. I would certainly not put private practice out of business. Those who want better care or to bypass the waiting lines can use their money to do so. I don't have any problem with that. What I have a problem with is people who get sick and have to declare bankruptcy.

Similarly, people who can't afford to see a doctor, so they wait until their condition is an emergency and then are forced to go to the emergency room. Obviously they can't pay so those people who do have insurance (and can pay) bear the costs.

If we're going to require hospitals to treat people without regard to their ability to pay, the cost is going to be socialized in one way or another. I happen to be of the opinion that we should use preventative care to lower the total cost of health care. A government sponsored system is the best way to do that.

Re:The "U.S".?

[Bob-taro]

This is interesting (from this article)...

Medicare describes administrative costs as a ratio of processing costs divided by claims. In 2003, says the study, the average medical cost for a Medicare beneficiary per year was $6,600. The average medical cost for someone with employer-sponsored health insurance was $2,700. "Because of the higher cost per beneficiary," writes Matthews, Medicare's method of calculation makes administrative costs, albeit unintentionally, appear to be lower than they really are."

Also, I've heard that part of the reason that (for example) drug costs are higher in the U.S. is that in other countries there are price caps, so that the U.S. is effectively subsidizing foreign health care systems. If the U.S. also enforced price caps, the drug companies may decide to abandon some drug research because they don't think they will recover the research cost.

As I see it, free market competition almost always works best for the most people. The best way to "fix" health care in this country might be to introduce some competition.

yet another reason for published formats

[mikey_boy]

Had they not heard of PDF?! Why anyone would publish Word, ODF, or anything like this I don't understand. Convert to PDF, and job done.

Re:yet another reason for published formats

[The MAZZTer]

The last time they tried PDF we just selected the text UNDER the black rectangles, remember?

Re:yet another reason for published formats

[gosand]

Convert to PDF, and job done.

A prime opportunity to point out that OpenOffice.org can write directly to PDF while MS Word cannot, and you blow it! For shame.

Re:yet another reason for published formats

[Shados]

Funny, my version of Word has a "Save as PDF", that was provided by MS no less. OH! You meant the -previous- versions. Oupsies.

Re:yet another reason for published formats

[goatpunch]

Had they not heard of PDF?!

PDF isn't idiot proof either. I saw some sensitive letters published online as PDFs, with the names blacked out. Only problem was the 'blacking out' was simply black rectangles drawn on a different layer from the background image- anyone with Adobe Acrobat could extract the image underneath and read all the names.

yay for OO

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it THAT hard to distill in a PDF? I mean, OO has it from the get go. What abou-....never mind.

always always convert to text then polish

[RobertLTux]

of course if you use a format that you can just link the formatting in at the end then you are gold but
all final documents should always be converted to text to break the meta data chain.

even if you have to save the document to a cdrw and then shred the disc when you are done remove the meta data
or replace the meta data with the "correct" public data never have a document with privileged meta data "floating around"

Re:always always convert to text then polish

[mph]

But most Americans can't read Polish. Or is that the point?

Re:always always convert to text then polish

[jez9999]

Why would you convert to polish? There are people who could translate it, you know. Security by obscurity.

Someone didn't follow policy

[Tridus]

Any government branch that releases information to the public (both "sensitive" and more mundane information) has a policy for how that information is to be released. That may be a set of instructions for how to make sure you're not unintentionally releasing extra information, or for more secured cases simply that the file must go through a group that does the process for you.

Obviously somebody skipped a step. Whats actually in the file is more interesting then how it got there, given that all we're talking about is human error.

Control the Metadata

[felixdzerzhinsky]

Try contoling the Metadata with a tool that even Microsoft provides for free. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA011400341 033.aspx It can happen with .pdf as well: http://news.com.com/U.S.+military+security+defeate d+by+copy+and+paste/2100-1002_3-5694982.html Not sure about .odf

Looks like some competent analysis there.

[wiredog]

In this excerpt the last bit (Item 2, at the bottom of the page) looks like a pretty good analysis.

Re:Looks like some competent analysis there.

[Anonymous Coward]

In this excerpt the last bit (Item 2, at the bottom of the page) looks like a pretty good analysis. Salon cannot set a cookie on your browser

Yep. 100% correct.

Or just convert it to a PDF

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone has access to MSWord, after all. Meanwhile, PDF readers are free.

Re:Or just convert it to a PDF

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

This assumes that whatever you use to publish to PDF doesn't export any extraneous stuff that you don't want to be in the final document. The problem is that the "level of data exported" might vary by document. For example, some people might want annotations in the PDF, some might not. If I'm working on something that's sensitive, I'll do as much work as possible externally and only paste into the final "publishing" program (whatever that is) at the last minute, and also keep in-document formatting to a minimum (do it in the template instead if possible). Because I do this, obviously I've no idea what might get exported if I didn't minimise extraneous data in the original document.

Also, it annoys me when people who really should know better say "I've converted it to a PDF document so that no-one can edit it". Sure, it's more difficult to create an ever-so-slightly different but similar looking PDF, but it's not impossible. The parent wasn't saying this, of course, but it's why the comment above seems the way to go to me.

Re:Or just convert it to a PDF

[Anonymous Coward]

My technique:

$ vim document.tex
$ pdflatex document.tex
$ pdflatex document.tex

And you get document.pdf

Re:Or just convert it to a PDF

[graphicsguy]

Not everyone has access to MSWord, after all. Meanwhile, PDF readers are free.

I also prefer PDF distribution. But MS does distribute a free viewer for Word 2003 (I don't see one for Word 2007 yet, though).

Silly Bureaucrats

[killmenow]

Whenever I want to publish something in redacted form, I just change the color of the redacted text to black on black, then export to PDF. Duh!

Re:Silly Bureaucrats

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you by chance work for the Justice Department?

Re:Silly Bureaucrats

[TheMediaWrangler]

Have you tried opening your redacted (black text on black background) PDF file in a text editor? I suggest you try it. ;)

Re:Silly Bureaucrats

[bill_mcgonigle]

Have you tried opening your redacted (black text on black background) PDF file in a text editor? I suggest you try it. ;)

I think you missed his sarcasm.

Re:Silly Bureaucrats

[killmenow]

That sound you hear is the clue train. You just missed it.

Re:Same thing

[Farmer Tim]

Volume and quality of information is scarce, often due to decisions from people at the top. Support is never what you expect. Cost overruns across the board. Bloat. Local insurgencies.

So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?

Summary

[N8F8]

I hate (US/Bush/Republicans/US Military) and I'll believe anything (Iran/Chirac/Democrats/Liberal Reporters) say they reinforces my beliefs without questioning anything. Lots of pinheads write lots of reports for other pinheads while other people do real work.

Re:Summary

[JoeZeppy]

I hate (US/Bush/Republicans/US Military) and I'll believe anything (Iran/Chirac/Democrats/Liberal Reporters) say they reinforces my beliefs without questioning anything. Lots of pinheads write lots of reports for other pinheads while other people do real work. --

Or conversely:

I hate (brown-skinned foreigners/Hillary/Democrats/liberals) and I'll believe anything (Gonzalez/Bush/Republicans/Fox News) say they reinforces my beliefs without questioning anything. Lots of pinheads write positive spin for other pinheads while other people do criminal acts and gut the constitution in the name of freedom and Jesus.

Ain't political discourse fun?

My Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

[remove by GWB] Without the propaganda spin, the majority of the US population would NOT want our tropps to be there at all. Even with massive amounts or mis information, it is still very unpopular. Imagine if we all knew the entire truth? [end remove]

I am in full support of [remove by GWB] pulling out of [end remove] [addition by GWB]our governments decision to stay in[end addition] Iraq.

Re:Same thing

[Farmer Tim]

Fo coruse, I maent "MCSE".

Wrong tool for the job,

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The military is designed to attack and subjugate an enemy. It is trained fundamentally to kill the enemies and destroy their country. Take a machine like that use to build a country? To build friendship and cooperation? What a stupid idea. Military is designed to inspire fear and respect, and may be hatred as a side effect. But dont blame the politicians. Blame the Generals. The way the admin thinks, "Someone has to do it. And we have only military over there. So let them do it".The Generals should have stood firm and said, "We are not trained to get municipal sewer system running. We are trained to bomb sewage treatment plants. Dont give this shitty job to us. Send someone else".

An officer is supposed to protect the soldiers under his command. It is the duty of the Generals to make sure that the job given to his division is within the capability of his troops. Just because the civilian authority orders "Find a cure for cancer", they should not embark on ordering their colnels and majors to mess with test tubes.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[flyingsquid]

The military is designed to attack and subjugate an enemy. It is trained fundamentally to kill the enemies and destroy their country. Take a machine like that use to build a country? To build friendship and cooperation? What a stupid idea.

The American military used to be pretty good at this sort of thing. Think post-WWII Japan and Germany. But I think you accurately describe the situation with the modern U.S. military. There are other nations that are better at policing and nation-building, so perhaps if we'd gone in with more international support, this wouldn't have been such an issue.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[josecanuc]

The military does have units whose jobs are to engineer and build infrastructure. Part of the problem is that they were trained to build infrastructure for the rest of the military where that infrastructure would thereafter be guarded by well-armed soldiers.

Instead, they (and the other non-military contractors) are building infrastructure for use by the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan and therefore not guarding it with the same intensity they would if it was critical for military operations.

I agree with you that putting a group of men and women who have been trained to kill the enemy are not being as effective when put in their current position.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[Anonymous Coward]

Now Germany... there is a country who can subjugate... er, nation build. I wonder if we can give Germany a government contract to pacify and rebuild Anbar? Maybe the what remains of the Russian machine would sufice.

Seriously however, the primary problem with not paying for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afganistan with American blood is simply American Intrests would then have to take a back seat. We went in to Afganistan for revenge, and we got it. Unless you consider that we have yet to acheive our primary objective of capture or kill Osama bin Friend-o-Bush and Regan. Iraq was simply about resources. No one should pretend otherwise, it won't help come to a resolution of the situation. The most oil hungry nation in the world doesn't occupy the country with the 2nd(?)largest known oil reserves on the planet for fear that their desimated military industrial complex is a danger half a world away. If China hadn't started to westernize in earnist we wouldn't be in such a pinch.

If there are only 50 years worth of oil left underground,( and ofcourse estimates range widely however we may have already hit the peak of world oil production) we want that oil under friendly flags. Maybe Blackwater will be our best bet, but I don't think another nation will be, unfortunatly.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[Jack9]

I'm betting the US Military just got BETTER at it's job of killing and destroying. Was never a good idea to have the engineer corps build a country's infrastructure while in the middle of a civil war.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[radtea]

so perhaps if we'd gone in with more international support, this wouldn't have been such an issue.

Unfortunately there is very little international support for invading and destroying a sovereign nation that is not at war with anyone, does not support Islamic terrorism, had no role in the September 11th attacks, and has in the past been considered a secular bulwark against rising Islamist powers.

So unlike Gulf War I, which was fought to defend the principle of national sovereignty, Gulf War II was fought in opposition to that principle. This explains why so few nations were willing to join in to Gulf War II, even if one assumes that most governments believed that Iraq had or might soon have WMDs.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[jimicus]

Speak for yourself.

The UK military has been trained in keeping the peace as much as handling battle - mainly as a result of how sensitive Northern Ireland was for so many years.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[dbIII]

Take a machine like that use to build a country?

What was done instead was to send in a bunch of young party hacks with huge budgets. It's scary that a random selection of people reading this site would have on average given them a better educated, more experienced and even older group of people with more management experience (ie. more than just babysitting) than what they got. There is private eneterpise carrying out military actions and the military doing what is often contracted out even on bases - and a lot of money is not unaccounted for amid obvious signs of corruption.

As disaster relief around the world shows clearly - the military DO this job all the time and often do it well. We can't blame this mess on the troops - the mismanagement is a bigger mess than even incompetant military leadership is capable of. There's criminal activity mixed in.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[pipingguy]

"We are not trained to get municipal sewer system running."

I've had this document linked at my site for a long time:
http://www.usace.army.mil/publications/eng-manuals /em1110-1-4008/c-3.pdf

I think the US Army had something to do with its creation, and I don't expect you to read or understand it.

Re:Wrong tool for the job,

[mvdwege]

The American military used to be pretty good at [nation building]. Think post-WWII Japan and Germany.

There's two reasons for that:

1. The American military of WWII had an officer corps that was largely selected on merit, not political appointees. Where's the equivalent of a Marshall or an Eisenhower now? Brilliant staff officers specifically appointed and promoted due to their ability to organise? Instead the best the U.S. had was an ex-press officer (who, admittedly, appeared to be a pretty sharp guy), who got the sack as one of the scape goats for the Iraq debacle.
2. In the reconstruction effort of Germany (I can't speak for Japan, as I haven't studied the history on that), the U.S. Army made it a policy to appoint and commission relevant civilian experts to help, instead of relying on the expertise of the occupation troops alone.

Mart

Move along. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[PHAEDRU5]

Obviously the *entire* US is incompetent, the evidence being (a) its use of Microsoft Word, and (b) Iraq, *or* (c) both.

Thanks. I understand. Thanks. No need to keep beating the drum. Thanks.

(Where would I be without /.? The mind boggles.)

Re:Same thing

[Buelldozer]

Oh thanks, I just spewed coffee into my keyboard!

The deleted text

[brian0918]

Here's the deleted text that was repeatedly copied/cropped in their documents. This shows how absurdly inept those in charge were. Note that the most likely theory is the one the administrator rebuts as "a boring theory".

Why are the Attacks Down in Al Anbar Province - Several Theories

1. Over the past month attacks against Coalition Forces in Al Anbar province have gone from over 20 per day to next to none. There are a number of theories for why this is. It is entirely possible that it is merely a blip on the screen or a statistical aberration and we will return to larger numbers of attacks, but it has held for nearly five weeks now and both military commanders and Anbar's citizens are starting to openly talk about it and offer their theories for why it is happening. Among the reasons given:

Rounding up the Bums: MG Swannack and all military commanders (as well as GC) believe that the many high yield raids of the past weeks have made a difference both in getting off the streets some of the leaders and financiers of the resistance and especially some of the technical experts that attackers rely on to carry out their attacks. This has had the spin off effect of causing others to go underground out of fear that they might be next. Most raids also leave in their wake a number of innocents who were either rounded up and detained or had their houses busted up. These can conceivably lead to bitterness over the occupation and spawn new attacks. But there appears to be sufficient care in how the attacks are carried out, adequate information in the community about the mild reality of detention, and sufficient civil affairs clean up afterwards that this has not been a major factor.

Crossed the Line: Violence in Iraq is a form of political discourse as well as being culturally acceptable for settling disputes and scores. Thus for a people which is nearly universal in its opposition to being occupied, attacking the occupier is a natural reaction and is widely accepted, even by those who are friendly to us. "It is nothing personal," one businessman told me, "I like you and believe you could be bringing us a better future, but I still sympathize with those who attack the coalition because it is not right for Iraq to be occupied by foreign military forces." Thus a low level of violence has been widely accepted in Al Anbar and those carrying out the attacks have even been the recipients of admiration and praise. But with the spate of attacks in mid to late November, culminating with the shootdown of the Chinook, there may have been a sense that the insurgents had crossed a line. This was reinforced strongly by General Abizaid when he came here on the heels of that incident and told some 70 Sheikhs and community leaders that he planned to unleash hell if they kept it up. It was further reinforced by the dropping of several JADMs which may have served to get the attention of the province. It is possible that Anbar's leaders realized they had crossed a line and reeled the attacks in.

Operational Pause: A boring theory is that the terrorists are in an operational pause, needing to regroup after the recent spate of roundups. There are very few persons we have met who subscribe to this.

Occupation Ending: A number of individuals have expressed satisfaction at the announcement of the new political calendar, although they don't appear to fully understand it. What has caught their attention is the simple expression that in June a sovereign Iraqi government will be in place. What they have gotten wrong is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks. Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don't fully understand things. By June, when there is a transition of the force rather than a pullout, we will have a new set of challenges anyway, but if this bought us some months of peace it will be worth the confusion.

Project Money Flowing: Some individuals have expressed satis

Re:The deleted text

[Nuffsaid]

Most raids also leave in their wake a number of innocents who were either rounded up and detained or had their houses busted up. These can conceivably lead to bitterness over the occupation and spawn new attacks.

No! This can't be! Keep for yourself your wild hypotesis! Delete it from the document!

Re:The deleted text

[Anonymous Coward]

"some of the leaders and financiers of the resistance"

This document is about a different Iraq.
There are only insurgents, not resistance in the one I normally read about.

Re:The deleted text

[Ambidisastrous]

Interesting. This actually makes the higher-ups look much more inept than the author of this report. I'm noticing the following:

For a people which is nearly universal in its opposition to being occupied, attacking the occupier is a natural reaction and is widely accepted, even by those who are friendly to us. "It is nothing personal," one businessman told me, "I like you and believe you could be bringing us a better future, but I still sympathize with those who attack the coalition because it is not right for Iraq to be occupied by foreign military forces."

Wildly in conflict with the Bush Administration's talking points, especially in 2004. Iraq isn't the colony of bloodthirsty lunatics that right-wing news makes them out to be, and it's not a matter of a few opium-mad terrorists ruining it for everyone else. They're all fighting a foreign occupation, and everyone on the ground there, U.S. soldiers included, appears to know it.

A number of individuals have expressed satisfaction at the announcement of the new political calendar [...] What they have gotten wrong is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks.

So, the attacks may have dropped because the Iraqis thought they won. Interesting. So, the key to peace is a scheduled withdrawal from the southern areas of Iraq? This may be true, but it's easy to see why it would be redacted once it passed through the Pentagon's hands.

There is also the sense among many Sunnis that we are clearly a temporary presence and other Iraqis are the real enemy so in the long term it might be better to begin to gear up and position themselves for the fight to come. This would not in the end make the reduction in attacks a good news story. In short there is plenty of fight left in the Sunnis here and plenty of weapons to carry on that fight.

I.e., it's acknowledged in the Sunni areas that the will be immediate civil war as soon as the U.S. leaves; they're in a holding pattern until then. This is an addendum to the previous point, which effectively reverses it.

The only positive remark I see in this memo is Project Money Flowing: The occupation may be causing as much violence and madness as it's preventing, but public works projects still work, getting people back to work rebuilding their country and pulling an income. So, what solution does this suggest? Dump as much money into Iraq public works and infrastructure as the U.S. did during the Great Depression; split the country between Kurd/Shi'a and Sunni (Turkey will never stand for a 3-way split) to curb the impending civil war and possible genocide; and schedule a withdrawal. Is any of this politically feasible for the Bush administration? In 2007, is anything?

But yes, it's obvious why this was mostly redacted, and I think we can all agree that the military should be using plain text editors for important information.

Re:The deleted text

[mvdwege]

This was reinforced strongly by General Abizaid when he came here on the heels of that incident and told some 70 Sheikhs and community leaders that he planned to unleash hell if they kept it up.

So if I read this right, an American general has threatened military repercussions against an entire civilian community because some members engage in acts of violence against his troops?

Let that sink in. Not since the occupation of Europe by the Nazis have such words been openly uttered by a Western general. And rightly so: holding civilian populations hostage against acts of resistance is a war crime, flat out; a precedent set by the U.S. in the denazification courts after WWII. Yet here we have an official U.S. document proving that the U.S. Military is willing to engage in exactly these war crimes they used to hang Germans for.

Mart

I thought this was an Slashdot article...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it turned out to be another example of Zonk's attention whoring...

Secrets?

[cybermage]

I'm all for the Nelson-esque "Ha, Ha!" on this one, but isn't this Salon article revealing state secrets in some way.

I'm not looking to troll here. I'm serious. Wouldn't it have been better to quietly bring it to their attention than to go public. If this is typical government ignorance, who knows how wide-spread the problem is. Could revealing something like this to the public be considered treason?

I don't think the fact that the articles are right out in the open is any defense. Anyone who's close enough to see troops knows where they are, but it could still be considered treason to pick up a phone and call the enemy and tell them where troops are.

Re:Secrets?

[Thanatopsis]

No. Because they didn't actual reveal the information - the government did. No pointing out that the government has published documents that reveal them to be inept isn't treason. It would be treason if the author were actively collaborating with the enemy. It has become fashionable by the right in the last 30 years to accuse the media of treason. Re-publishing something the government has published already in the public domain isn't treason.

Re:Secrets?

[Control Group]

No.

The authors of the Constitution were very wary of the word "treason" being thrown around, and so were highly specific in what treason is. Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Salon certainly hasn't levied war against the United States. I don't think a reasonable case can be made that releasing these documents in any way aid or comforts the US' enemies (except in the loosest possible sense that they might enjoy some schadenfreude).

Re:Secrets?

[DeadCatX2]

but isn't this Salon article revealing state secrets in some way.

They may be state secrets, but they're Iraqi state secrets.

Re:Secrets?

[HBI]

The document is FOUO and should never have been released to the public, but FOUO is not classified. Read more on FOUO here.

Re:Secrets?

[SoulRider]

No, if any American discovers incompetancies in our government, I would consider it their patriotic duty to expose it. All governments run at a certain level of ineffeiciency, it is up to the people to find those ineffeiciencies and point them out so they can be fixed, at least it is suppose to work this way in a free society.

Summary of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 scared me shitless and I'll believe anything (The Bush administration/DOD/GOP/Rush Limbaugh) says that reinforces my beliefs without questioning anything.

Re:Summary of the summary

[mobby_6kl]

Is that you, Dennis Miller?

It happened because they did not use emacs or vi

[Anonymous Coward]

For the good of the people the US Government should ban Word and other Windows software and switch to UNIX text editors.

One has to wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how previous wars would have fared had they been subjected to the microscopic scrutiny of today...

Re:One has to wonder...

[PhxBlue]

Maybe our current administration should have thought of that before they went gung-ho into Iraq.

Re:One has to wonder...

[t0rkm3]

Or perhaps one should consider the damage done to a child by an overbearing micro-managing parent. Maybe you could even consider that sort of relationship between manager and working stiff.

It tends to make people uninsightful, fearful, and unimaginative. So, what do you get by over-scrutinizing the gov'ts every move? A gov't peopled by lackeys and lickspittles who lack the courage to do what is necessary to prevail.

You get what you ask for I suppose. It just saddens me to know that most people are officious enough that they can't see how they've been played into making the political process a soap-opera.

captcha: treasury

Oh...

[Evil Cretin]

When I read the title I thought they'd written everything in Comic Sans MS.

Don't blame Microsoft...

[dpbsmith]

...the risk* of finding embarrassing, hidden information by using Word's "track changes" feature wasn't widely known until 2000.

They've only had seven years to address it.

----
*Search on string "nego" for Avi Rubin's posting, "The scary MSWord residue feature"

Re:Don't blame Microsoft...

[RetiredMidn]

You're right; we can't blame only Microsoft, the whole industry is to blame for promoting the common practice of publishing documents in editable formats. Apple has done (very) slightly better by making it straightforward to produce PDF from the normal workflow, but common practice is still to distribute documents in their original editable format.

Distributing documents in editable format is as stupid as providing source code with applications...

Oh, wait, wrong audience, skip that...

Seriously, when the average user wants to publish their own work, it should be clear whether the product should be an immutable representation of the author's intent, or open to collaborative modification by others. And the interfaces and common practices promoted by computer systems should make it straightforward and obvious to establish that distinction.

Re:Don't blame Microsoft...

[Kingrames]

"They've only had seven years to address it."

By "it" do you mean "Bush"?

Re:Disallow MS Word (I take back what I said)

[eck011219]

Okay, I just did a quick search and found out that you can't really turn off change tracking. You can hide it, of course, but it's still in there tracking. So the only way to get rid of those changes is to accept or reject each one individually. The information is here (this is for Word 2007, but I assume it's the same for previous versions as well). This is a silly and cumbersome thing to have to do, and you're right -- it makes it a bad way to distribute documents.

Now, the suggestions elsewhere around here that they simply standardize on PDF would solve everything, and they could still use Word if they're used to it. But posting .doc files (which has never seemed like a good idea in any area of business or government for countless reasons anyway -- why distribute something that can be so easily edited?) is rife with peril.

Trusted Opensolaris +ODF (was Re:Disallow MS Word)

[Anonymous Coward]

There are certainly better solutions to this problem in the open source world. Sun isn't very good at explaining what "trusted JDS" is, but this screenshot on an engineer's blog gives you a clue that it might help in cases such as this. In the screenshot, someone tries to cut and paste text from a high security classification document into a lower security classification and an error popup warns that this isn't posisbl. In this particular instance you'd disallow this document's author from ever cutting and pasting anything!

Re:Move along. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[Guuge]

Exactly! Someone once told me that the US is occupying Iraq, but that's clearly ridiculous. Imagine the *entire* US occupying Iraq! Insane! We wouldn't fit!

This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[NeverVotedBush]

I don't even remember how many years ago that there were lots of news stories on how MS Word stores "deleted" text within documents. When the story originally broke, lots of people went looking at company/government Word documents and found all sorts of embarassing stuff.

Those who don't learn from history...

Anyone using Word in any kind of sensitive capacity needs to know how to make sure the changes are all really gone. Training should address this specifically. Other word processors also store deleted text within a document and users of those need to also know how to make sure deleted text is really deleted.

Perhaps it is time that word processors kept twin files - one the actual document, and if the user wants to track changes, another that stores deleted text. Or maybe encrypt the deleted text. It wouldn't keep everyone out of it, but it would keep most people from reading the deleted passages.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Aesiq]

We routinely provide final/external documents as PDF files. On OS X this is trivial but even on Windows based systems this is not altogether difficult and defintely eliminates the "track changes" issues and other problems. Also guarantees a easily printable copy when passing across multiple platforms.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[PopeRatzo]

Perhaps it is time that word processors kept twin files - one the actual document, and if the user wants to track changes, another that stores deleted text. Or maybe encrypt the deleted text.

Or, just publish your documents as PDF files, no?

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[homer_ca]

There's another risk with PDFs. The army released a PDF that had redacted text blacked out, but the text was still in the document, just covered up with a black stripe. It was easily extracted from the file. It was also a report about Iraq, the incident where an Italian intelligence agent and the hostage he was rescuing were shot at a checkpoint.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Rei]

If I wasn't so overloaded with other personal tasks, I'd be sorely tempted to write a spider to dig through government websites, download files that might have hidden content (.doc, .pdf, etc), strip out any hidden content, and look for suspicious words that are found close together. Non-hidden content on the subject would be weighed negatively to help filter out, say, uncensored reports on a scandal. The suspicious word list could be gotten by compiling a list of all scandals within the past years, both congressional and executive, and looking for key people's names, events, places, etc. The docs could then be presented in order of suspicion for manual perusal.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[OECD]

We routinely provide final/external documents as PDF files

You still have to be careful. There was a case (probably several) a few years ago where PDF files were redacted with black boxes drawn over the withheld text. It worked fine if viewed casually, but of course the text was still actually there.

Even better, OSX's Preview (the default PDF viewer) didn't support whatever they used to make the boxes at that time , so they just didn't show up at all.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Aesiq]

You still have to be careful. There was a case (probably several) a few years ago where PDF files were redacted with black boxes drawn over the withheld text. It worked fine if viewed casually, but of course the text was still actually there.

Agreed and recall the redacting incident as well, however most (all?) businesses don't redact. The major issues are "track changes" and printing.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Acuram]

Acrobat Pro 8 has redaction functionality built in, so this shouldn't happen too much more. That is unless people will use text boxes instead.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[toriver]

As I recall, it was readable to anyone using 1) an older version of Acrobat Reader without the feature, 2) Adobe Acrobat (where you could remove them), or 3) other PDF-viewers without the Adobe-specific feature, like Ghostscript/-view. Or using "strings" or the like in Unix I guess.

Security through application and version requirement.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Wog]

The Germans were denied their right to own weapons near the beginning of Hitler's reign.

Americans have no such limits on their capabilities.

Have fun with that invasion. :)

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[sumdumass]

I think this is funny. And of course the author just had to put insert Iraq when saying something about Incompetence.

But the fact is, Word and most likely other microsoft products shouldn't be used by government at all. The US government has has a history of neglecting this and letting things slip as you said. This is just yet another example of hiring people that aren't really qualified to do the job and could possibly be linked to using other countries in hte process of getting the job done.

Half this incompetence is directly related to people who are not responsible for their actions demanding certain things are done in certain ways then backing off and distancing themselves when it doesn't work. You had congress critters claiming there wasn't enough troops and then when we added more, those same people claimed there was too many. We have had presidential candidates who ran for office on the notion that they had a plan but refuse to share anything about this plan with us because he didn't get elected, You got segments of congress working against the troops by inciting all the resistance towards our efforts and then running political campaigns on their failures. It is no wonder that Al Qeada came out in support of a few democrat leaders last election. And this is all from within our own government. There is tons more working outside.

Armchair quarterbacking and second guessing with the knowledge of hindsight doesn't make anyone smarter then the people doing it, and getting something wrong when you didn't want to do it in the first place doesn't make it incompetence. This article is nothing but a one sided political piece packed with more opinion then fact. It really dismays me when seeing stuff like this on the front page of slashdot and makes my wonder why they have let slashdot degrade into political opinion speech. Maybe it is the goal of the site, to become some political mouth piece for one sided politicking, maybe it is incompetence and lack of oversight.

But as the story goes, this isn't anything new. and we are still having problems with it.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Jeremi]

The Germans were denied their right to own weapons near the beginning of Hitler's reign.
Americans have no such limits on their capabilities.

If only that were so.... I tried to buy a simple tactical nuke the other day (just to defend my family against burglars, of course), and you wouldn't believe the paperwork you have to fill out! Then after all that, my application was denied. Land of the Free, my ass!

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Anonymous Coward]

LMAO!

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[sumdumass]

Really, I was granted my approval and now have the suitcase sized device sitting in my living room. Maybe your problem was you went for the self propelled version. I hear the rocket fuel used is dangerous tothe environment and they might be trying to save the environment.

However, I think the government still lets you buy targets for $20 a pop with it's Millions of warheads still in operation or operational. They would probably lower this to less then that when we start seeing things from Germany's perspective at the end of ww2. Maybe they will let us push a symbolic button in the process too.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[sumdumass]

People are already doing this. If you have the same political beliefs as they do, you will see everything in the news eventually. But if your looking for an unbiased review, You better clear your schedule and start making it happen yourself.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[networkBoy]

When I'm publishing a world readable document from sensitive source (NDAs can be really sticky things) after I have all my text that I want I copy and paste the whole load into notepad, save as a file, close all editors, re-open file, copy and paste back into (sigh) word and format it.
I like my job and if I was the reason "track change" text got into the wild I'm sure my job would be at risk.
More often than not I've gotten information I shouldn't have because of higher managers not understanding what track changes really does.
-nB

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[nine-times]

Perhaps it is time that word processors kept twin files - one the actual document, and if the user wants to track changes, another that stores deleted text. Or maybe encrypt the deleted text. It wouldn't keep everyone out of it, but it would keep most people from reading the deleted passages.

In many circles, the way to deal with this is to do your editing in word but to only release documents in PDF. It also has additional benefits: it protects formating, keeps people from making further changes to the distributed version, and PDF is an open format that everyone can read.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[mOdQuArK!]

PDF is not exactly an "open" format - it _is_ Adobe's proprietary format after all. The basics of it are fairly standardised, however, so it tends to display & print with reasonable consistency on most platforms.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Synn]

WTF? Did you contact the NNA, National Nuclear Association?

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[msuarezalvarez]

The details of PDF are (completely?) specified in an extremely open way. Moreover, Adobe is in the process of ISOing the standard.

While it is true that (at least before it becomes an ISO standard) it is under the control of Adobe, it would be hard to come up with an example of a more open privately-controlled standard...

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[RainierSnow]

here's a previous slashdot story on the same thing. And here's another.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Speare]

Er, I hope you meant that in jest-- there have been a number of incidents with PDF files that had virtual "blackout" rectangles floating over the text, but the actual redacted text was still stored in the PDF as well. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/05/pdf_ radacting_f.html

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[jimicus]

Anyone using Word in any kind of sensitive capacity needs to know how to make sure the changes are all really gone. Training should address this specifically. Other word processors also store deleted text within a document and users of those need to also know how to make sure deleted text is really deleted.

There's a school of thought in software design which says "When lots of users keep on making the same mistake, the problem lies with the software, not the user".

Myself, I'm thinking it makes some sense to be able to nail Word to never keep changes and roll this setting out across an entire network - perhaps through Group Policy or similar. If you need to track changes that badly, store the document in a proper document management system.

No idea how easy this is, though.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[fugue]

Yes! Your word processor should re-implement Subversion (or at least CVS) because it should be a standalone operating system.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[jimicus]

Don't know if you're trying to invoke Godwin's law or what, but I would point out a few things:

1. For most of the second world war, Germany wasn't invaded. Germany did the invading.
2. Citizens owning guns is not in any way related to whether or not the government can be either persuaded to surrender or otherwise toppled. In fact, if the government is toppled it could work against the country as a whole by fostering warring factions - cf. large parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[PopeRatzo]

Oh, OK. didn't know that. I guess it means that you have to be more careful when you publish documents.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Sique]

The Germans were denied their right to own weapons near the beginning of Hitler's reign.

That's just plain bullshit. Beside the fact that the common people in Germany never had a general right to bear arms (arms were a means to make a distinction in rank. State clerks for instance always had a saber, so even the station clerk at a train station was wearing a saber at his uniform), it was especially the both militias Hitler had (The SA and the Leibstandarte, later SS), which were defying any weapon restriction laws. (There were others, Leo Jogiter's troup, the Rote Ruhr Armee and several others, which were one of the reasons Germany's democracy between the two World War was failing so utterly. Sometimes having too much "well organized militias" is the dead of a democracy.)

In fact the "right to bear arms" was a political reaction to the european rank system, where each social group had to stick to a certain set of tools and arms they could own. The newly founded U.S. should never fall back into a similar discriminative system.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Anonymous Coward]

what if you're trying to defend yourself from a government that's increasingly intrusive and indifferent to fundamental individual rights? isn't that what the right to bear arms was intended for? seems almost pointless, the way it's implemented today. the military has ridiculously powerful weapons which civilians are barred from owning. what good is a pistol or a shotgun when there's guys with m16s and f16s coming after you?

From the 1833 book "Commentaries on the U.S. Constitution" by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Joseph Story, regarding the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution (the right to bear arms):

"The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people."

sounds painfully clairvoyant. today the military eats half of our federal budget and has secured exclusive rights to bear arms. the pea-shooters that ordinary citizens are afforded cannot even be considered arms in this context, as we would be effectively powerless were any type of real (read: armed) conflict arise. take a look at the founding principles of this country, as they were conceived of at the time, and you'll see that the core values of america were eroded beyond recognition a long time ago. now we're at the mercy of our rulers, which seems to me the very situation that the founding fathers were trying to avoid above all.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[asninn]

This gets modded funny, but the poster actually has a point. "Back in the day" when the USA were founded, a militia of sufficient size made up of random armed citizens would've been able to hold back any army, or at least - depending on the exact numbers on either side - slow them down severely and decimate them quite a bit. The right to bear arms was supposed to ensure that things would stay this way.

Today, nothing could be further from the truth anymore. Does that mean that people should be able to just buy tactical nukes at Wal*Mart? Of course not (well, at least *I* don't think so), but it's an interesting thing to keep in mind. Next time someone drones on about "from my cold, dead hands", you may wish to consider this.

(And just for the record, I'm not even against gun ownership, myself; I'm just against irresponsible gun owners.)

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Sique]

Sorry. I got a name wrong. I meant "Leo Schlageter" and the "Freikorps".

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why any docs I send out electronically are first saved as RFT then re-converted back to doc format....Strips out all changes.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[enmane]

It's funny that I was thinking of this just the other day. I'm always amazed at the foresight of our forefathers. They chose specifically to give us the right to bear "arms" and not specifically "guns", "rifles", "pistols", "muskets", etc.

It left me asking, why not? In short, I believe that they foresaw arms escalation and that the people should have the right to escalate "arms" also. At that time, a pistol or musket sufficed in leveling the playing field. I believe that they knew this would escalate the arms race.

IMHO, our forefathers wanted the citizenship to be just as well armed as the military - just in case, the military (gov't) wanted to suppress the people again.

We have now reached a time where our right to bear arms no longer matters. Go ahead and try to purchase anything that would compete with the gov'ts arsenal of weapons. Sure, M16s can be purchased and modified but that's just about it. Nobody would stand a chance against a tank rolling down their street.

I've heard it before and there is truth to it... The US is becoming more like our European counterparts day after day.

I would LOVE to enter the way-back machine to hear what our forefathers think of the current state of affairs. How could such a small window of time create so many geniuses?

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[linguizic]

Why not delete (by highlighting the text and hitting the "delete" button) what you don't want others to see and then export to pdf? Is there still hidden data in that?

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[fucksl4shd0t]

You use emacs, don't you?

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[davidsyes]

A couple ways to deal with this shit:

1. Copy and paste the contents to a new wp file
2. Copy and paste the contents to a .txt file to strip out all sorts of metadata, then copy the text from the .TXT FILE (not the effing windoze buffer) to a new wp file.

Also, learn to turn off document tracking (I use Lotus WordPro whenever possible... I don't need that stinkin' word....)

Remove user login and other identifying information from the registry AND from the damned wp application. Doing so can reduce author or machine-identifying information from the distributed or created document.

Also, when deleting a one-of-its-kind document, don't simply delete it.

1. Open it first,
2. Then select all the text and replace it with gibberish, or new text, or the content of a new document.
3. Save it.
4. Reopen it and copy the text to a .txt file
5. Save the file blank.
6. Reopen it and paste in gibberish or non-buffer stuff, trying to compress the file size
7. Close the file
8. Rename it
9. Then delete it

Those steps assume no copies exist elsewhere or locally.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Ziest]

What is this country coming to? I tried to exercise my 2nd Amendment right to bear arms but they took away my RPG-7. No where in the Bill of Rights does it say "You can't own an RPG". I was just exercising my rights. I can't believe they are taking me to court over a few RPGs. When RPGs are outlawed then only outlaws will have RPGs. And the worst part part of all this is the NRA is doing nothing to help me. Those fuckers, after all the money I sent them.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Anonymous Coward]

PDFs are great because it's so convenient to redact secret, inflammatory, embarrassing, etc. information: you just use that tool to drag little black rectangles over the naughty bits!

To be safer with PDFs, print the document with the unhappy parts already removed then load the printout in to a sheetfeeder on a scanner and save the scanned pages in PDF format. There won't be very much interesting metadata that way...unless maybe your scanner model is somehow incriminating.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Alsee]

I take it that you don't live in Illinois and your name is not Bubba.

-

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[belmolis]

The idea that the word processor should store previous versions in the same file is bizarre. Emacs doesn't do this, and many of us do just fine with emacs and TeX. If automated versioning is needed, have the filesystem do it like in TOPS-20, or use a version control system.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[belmolis]

PDF is an "open" format in that the full specification is published. I know - I've read it. You can download it here. Adobe owns the trademark, but anyone can implement PDF.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[ultranova]

I tried to buy a simple tactical nuke the other day (just to defend my family against burglars, of course), and you wouldn't believe the paperwork you have to fill out!

You could use electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water and build your own. Just remember that hydrogen comes out of the cathode (the electrode connected to the postive end of the power source) and you'll do fine.

People who don't assemble their own nuclear weapons should just return their geek cards. They likely by Dell computers, too.

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Mr. Hankey]

That's the case only if you included the redacted items in the PDF to begin with. If you create a new PDF from your source document instead of modifying the PDF, you should be fine.

The embarrassing (or rather annoying) part:

[Opportunist]

That we, the general population, have to endure severe cuts into our civil liberties, up to the point of the creation of a veritable police state, that the US government puts pressure on other countries to release sensitive data for them to peer into, that civilists are being pulled in front of military courts because they might have said or released something, while at the same time the people who beat us with the big bad "loose lips" club are negligent beyond belief when it comes to securing their own information distribution.

That irks me. Not the data itself, but the carelessness.

And THOSE people should be entrusted with our personal information? HAH!

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

"So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?"

I think you mean MCSEs -- Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers

And besides, you're wrong. The Iraqis are way too smart to fall for that crap.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Some Concealed Explosives-of-mass-destruction?

(I'll get my coat)

Linkie linkie

[Ayanami Rei]

http://kellyanncollins.com/cat_schwartz_nude_photo shop.htm

Wow, poor IT configuration

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I opened up Word 2k3. It seems that under Options -> Security (I know, a crazy place to expect the government to look). There is a checkbox that reads

Warn before printing, saving or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments.

I just tested it, and yes this feature seems to work.

Oh, sorry, what I meant is for a large no-bid contract, I can help the military prevent this in the future via real-time user warnings.

It's a really stupid feature.

[Jessta]

lol
I Predicted this sort of thing in 2005.
It's a really stupid feature.
CVS shouldn't be part of the document.

Re:It's a really stupid feature.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you must be the smartest person in the known universe, especially since this feature has been available since Microsoft Word Version 2.0 from 1985. Your predictive powers are just staggering.
Also its a great feature when working in a team. Just always make a nice cross platform PDF file from the final version of your document for digital distribution.

Those who don't learn from history...

[benhocking]

Those who don't learn from history...

Are loyal Bush supporters!

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

It seems rather foolish to think that ignorant people are all bush supporters. Keep on living in this world and blame Bush for everything you let go wrong with your life. After all he is at the same time the dumbest president alive that was able to conspire and outsmart most of the people in the US including all the opposing congressional leaders who non bush supporters seem to support. So it really doesn't say much about the big picture and neglect a lot of the little picture.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[N3wsByt3]

"It seems rather foolish to think that ignorant people are all bush supporters."

I agree. Let's say the vast majority of the most ignorant people are Bush supporters.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Analogy Man]

I agree it is foolish to assume all idiots are Bush supporters...there are so many idiots and so few Bush supporters left. His approval rating is down to the hardcore loyalists that would eat glass before they spoke ill of any Republican from Texas.

I commend you for not going down the "when Clinton was president path" with your response. That is also an equally flawed bit of logic along the lines of a 9 year old justifying throwing rocks at cars with "Jimmy did it too!"

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Scrameustache]

he is at the same time the dumbest president alive that was able to conspire and outsmart Why is there people in this world unfamiliar with the concept of a "front man"?
You really think the Bush Administration is a one-man show?

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

The really scary ones aren't the idiots who support Bush... it's the genuinely intelligent ones. My extended family contains an inter-racial (Jewish, Asian) couple, both with advanced college degrees from great schools, and neither is religious. The absolutely love Bush, and are convinced that every Bush backed idea is the gospel truth (no global warming, the Iraq war is good, AT&T should be able to charge Google a toll to reach it's customers, etc). They also are convinced that Bush's Supreme Court will not reverse Rowe vs. Wade (oddly, my Republican friends who are very religious feel otherwise). They absolutely believe that all those terrible appointments, from Brown of Hurricane Katrina fame, to Wolfowitz, were great appointments, and that Democrats are to blame for their failures. They think Colin Powell was fired for his own incompetence.

In other words, they believe whatever Bush tells them, even though they are super-smart. It's a crazy world. A few such guys even seem to hang out here on /.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[YrWrstNtmr]

His approval rating is down to the hardcore loyalists that would eat glass before they spoke ill of any Republican from Texas.

And even more telling, the approval rating for Congress is even lower. The new, Democrat controlled Congress.

The entire government sucks.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

His approval rating is down to the hardcore loyalists that would eat glass before they spoke ill of any Republican from Texas.

Funny! But I think most of the remaining Bush supporters like him because of their religious beliefs. According to that oh-so-unbiased news station, Fox News, 78 percent of evangelical voters, who made up 23 percent of the electorate, voted for Bush. Assuming they haven't changed their minds, that would account for about 18% of his support (more than half). That leaves only around 15% of the population who I would call glass eaters :-)

It's interesting to guess what Bush could possibly do to become yet less popular. For example, his Supreme Court could over-turn Rowe v Wade. He could institute a draft for the Iraq war. We could catch him in felony voter fraud (like forcing US attorneys to turn a blind eye while he drops minority voters from the voter registration). He could shoot someone during a hunting accident. I doubt all of those combined would erode his remaining base of support much. True glass eaters and true believers are all who remain.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[spun]

We don't blame Bush for the things that have gone wrong with our lives. We blame him for invading a sovereign nation on trumped up charges, dismantling constitutional protections of our most basic and precious rights, providing welfare in the form of tax relief to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, usurping power for the executive branch, presiding over the most secretive administration in US history, botching the job in Afghanistan, letting Osama escape, botching the job in Iraq, fucking up the economy, raising the deficit to undreamed of heights, fucking over the environment, billions of dollars of cash missing in Iraq, no WMDs, increased threat of domestic terrorism, fucking up on port security, firing republican DAs midterm for investigating republican wrongdoing and/or not investigating democratic wrongdoing, squandering international good-will and alienating our allies, setting back the progress of science in America, pandering to the religious right, imposing un-republican ideals of Federal power over States rights, borrowing against future generations of citizens to fund his fiscally irresponsible policies, and being a smarmy, self congratulatory, ignorant frat-boy with a track record of business failures and DWI convictions.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sgt_doom]

Silly wabbit! Bush supporters don't even know such a subject as history even exists.....

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[hardburn]

And if congress was a single person instead of a collective entity, that would be relevant.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

Heck, that's the short list. You didn't even mention stealing two elections in a row, his oh-so-qualified appointments, or his role as puppet for truely scary neo-cons. You missed pandering to Big Oil, the Katrina fiasco, and 3,000 dead soldiers in Iraq. I guess it's hard to get all the really horrible stuff in only one short paragraph...

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[spun]

Cry me a river, coward. Better a Slashbot than a Bushbot.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[d34thm0nk3y]

And even more telling, the approval rating for Congress is even lower. The new, Democrat controlled Congress.

From your article:

Although ratings are quite low, Americans have been more positive in their assessments of Congress this year than last year, when an average of just 25% approved of Congress.

And...

Approval ratings of Congress are higher among Democrats than Republicans,

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Cerebus]

You're confusing "bias" with "opinion," dipshit. Opinion is "I think..." whereas bias is "No matter what, I believe..."

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[olehenning]

Am I the only one who finds it odd that so many anti-war people use the ammount of dead american soldiers as an argument instead of the ammount of dead iraqi civilians and combatants?

Not criticizm to you, just an observation :)

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[shredthrashgrind]

Or, also appropriate, would be that all bush supporters are ignorant people.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[mikael]

It does exist, but only for the past six thousand years.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

Very true... I sometimes quote Iraqi dead, but estimates vary all over the map. I hope that estimates of > 100,000 are wrong. I'd like to say I'm sorry to the Iraqi people, but I think that the worst is yet to come - after we pull out.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[The New Stan Price]

1. You mean "invading a sovereign nation that invaded a sovereign nation, and then signed a surrender agreement with us after we kicked them out of that sovereign nation." One of the agreements was to show the world that they had dismantled their weapons programs. Twelve UN resolutions were passed and ignored. Bill Clinton had even ordered an air attack on Iraq prior to leaving office. Most Democrats signed the war resolution. Hillary Clinton was recorded saying to Code Pink that "she had done 10 years of research and that invading Iraq was the right thing to do." John Kerry, during the 2004 election run, said that he would have voted for the war even knowing what he knows now.

2. Democrats signed on to the Patriot Act. The Echelon spy program was a Clinton program. FDR had people's mail read during WWII, put Japanese in camps, etc. Al Qaeda beheads its prisoners, yet you don't seem to mind that they do not apply the Geneva conventions to our soldiers. Nobody seems to care if our borders are secure.

3. Tax relief was the only reason why the excesses of Clinton's dot com and Enron boom did not kill our economy. The government has been gaining tax revenue as a result. The top 1% foot over 60% of the bill, how much do you feel they should be footing?

4. The Taliban were defeated in days without the need for foot soldiers. It was brilliant. Kudos to Bush.

5. You mean "alienating socialist so-called allies that want to weaken us using the UN and EU."

6. George Washington was more religious than George Bush. If anything, others pander to the godless left, not the other way around.

7. The democrats are spending like drunken sailors now. Are you happy?

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're confusing "Facts" with "opinion". Not sure which is better.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Bemopolis]

Well, that's just nitpicking, in'nit.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[spun]

1.) You obviously missed the part where I mentioned the trumped up charges, meaning, he lied, people believed him, and voted to go to war based on the lied. Where were the WMDs?

2.) The old, "Yeah, well, other people did it too!" argument, a staple of any six-year-old's argumentation, and on par for most right wing "debaters."

3.) Remember when the top tax bracket was 90% and the economy was booming? You know, greatest generation and all that? Thought not. The rich unjustly reap the lion's share of the country's wealth, they should pay the majority of taxes.

4.) WTF? Taliban? Where did I mention them? If I recall, it was Al Qaeda that attacked us. What happened to them, where's Osama, why don't you address the real issue rather than a straw man?

5.) Fuck you. That is all the response that that statement warrants.

6.) Washington was a Deist, look it up. The left is not Godless, we just don't believe in your fire-and-brimstone, psychopathic God.

7.) Got any numbers on that, some comparisons maybe? Thought not.

It must suck being stuck worshiping a failed ideology and making excuses for a pack of con artists and incompetent charlatans because you are too proud to admit you were conned.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Anonymous Coward]

And even more telling, the approval rating for Congress is even lower. The new, Democrat controlled Congress.

Hey, the new, Democrat controlled Congress has only been around for less than 5 months, give it a year before we can drive confidence in the government to zero, so we can get on with the process of starting over with a new government.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we blame OURSELVES for voting for him in the first place? THEN re-electing him? But nooooo, that's too close to home, isn't it.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Anonymous Coward]

"no global warming" Yes, because global warming is real...

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

IF congress was moving ideas forward and getting shot down from the top, I would agree. They aren't and the only thing that has been vetoed was a bill about funding the troop that got turned into a political football game. And this alone could be a big reason for the opinions.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

I'm sorry, I never bought into random evil conspiracies. But if there is any concrete evidence to show any truth to this, I would like to see it. Of course the same things were being said about Clinton when he was in office. I even heard that he was kidnapped by an alien race and replaced by an intelligent robot that looks like him to do their bidding. If you look around long enough, there is always some conspiracy behind the scenes pulling the strings like the Wizard Of OZ. Oh yea, There was enough conspiracy theories back then that the wizard of OZ was actually a political protest and the wizard was the people pulling the strings behind the scenes. The ruby red shoes were actually silver shows and the intent was to show that if we go back to backing the dollar with silver, all the problems will be gone when they go home.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

Lol.. The problem is that we don't have to lose. And we don't have to pull out. This is something I find really funny from the anti-war people. We don't have to win in the sense that we occupy the country. We are already past that stage. All we have to do is hold the violence down enough so that the political process can proceed and the Iraqi people can defend themselves. This is why no matter how hard you try, it will never be a Vietnam.

If you have listened to any of the Bush commentary or the military generals talking about this objectively, you would see it. But as long as the Iraqi people think we are leaving, And Murtha started the surrender and pull out bit back in 2004-05 right after the country was handed over and the political process got started with more and more people jumping to his side, the Iraqi people will only support who they think will be in control after we leave. This means that the work from the political process over there is going to be a lot harder then it would if we were unified. Right now, they are getting the message, we support the troop but don't give a damn about the Iraqi people.

And every time the president or one of his lackies are asked, they say Iraq is now a sovereign nation and if they ask us to leave today, we would comply. When asked, if Iraq turns sectarian or into a dictatorship, would we do anything to stop it, the answer has always been no, as long as the people of Iraq had a choice in the matter and agreed on it.

But back in America, the problem is that bush touched it and now it is inherently evil by any means. We want nothing to do with it and we are perfectly happy in pulling the troop out to let the genocide ensue that will follow just to prove bush shouldn't have done something in the first place. Forget that we scrambled an egg and it is our duty to do something with it like make an omelet. But winning doesn't mean we have to kill everything, all we have to do is make the two sides ineffective at killing each other and point to the part were the outside instigators are the root of the problem, and let the Iraqi people take care of their own country. We will leave soon enough, but only when the Shiite and the Sunnis are comfortable with each other and the governing of the country that they can work together to expel outside forces. And to do that, it will only take a few years of letting them know they can work this out in a political arena instead of a shootout or suicide bombing. And they won't come to any of those conclusions as long as there are political leaders over here threatening to remove the only resemblance of hope for a sane system and workable system.

But don't get me started in the war, I have a lot of opinions based on ground pounding facts that most won't agree with. I may not be proud of bush, I disagree with a lot of what he has done. But I'm not self centered enough to ignore everything because the hatred lets me do anything possible to destroy anything he touches.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

Most of the stuff you just rambled off aren't bad in itself. Everyone who is willing to look past their hatred of bush knows that the Katrina mess was because of the breakdown in local governments and the lack of planning or follow through with the plans. And Sure, Brown wasn't able to deal with such incompetence on a local level but that doesn't mean anyone else could have. Global warming is still suspect in the causes, effect and suspected continued effects, but worst of all, all the solutions tend to be failed and rejected liberal policies form the past that have been resurrected for various reasons. There is a good cause to be suspect of the political pushing on it.

And even though the Iraq war might not be going good, Plenty of people supported removing Saddam from power well before Bush was a tickle in the presidential dream. In fact, they though it was a good idea, As for the At&t screwing Google, I don't think that is a good idea, But I don't think I have ever heard Bush comment on it outside the FCC chairman saying he wasn't apposed to it as long as customers got what they paid for. In this, he means that they cannot slow the connection down to speed below what the customers has paid for but google can pay more to be delivered faster then what the customer has purchased. Of course we know that SBC and all will slow the customers connection down just to offer faster services to companies who pay, but there are other companies who will provide faster service (or should be anyways).

Finally, The supreme court cannot reverse Roe v Wade is it's basis is rooted in the constitution. Thats the entire Idea of the republican choices, a strict interpretation of the constitution. And if you agree with changing the way we view it to suit our own needs, then don't complain when someone view it in ways contrary to how you like it.

In other words, Just because someone supports something like this doesn't mean they are ignorant, it just means they might believe differently then you do. And that in itself doesn't make it right or wrong. And neither does any of their opinions.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[MadUndergrad]

http://www.gop.com/

I wouldn't call it random, but there's your evidence. I'm sure there are a few decent members, but on the whole....

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

I honestly hope you're right. I'm not so confident in my own beliefs as to think that there is exactly zero chance of pulling off a political reform in Iraq. I just think that getting a Middle Eastern population like that in Iraq to come around and be good world citizens is highly optimistic. I like making long-term predictions. For example, in 1996, I predicted that Israel would build a fence around the Palestinians and unilaterally withdraw from both the West Bank and Gaza, while taking over much land that they had not occupied before the '67 war. Simple reasoning made this a fairly obvious result. There are random events that are hard to predict, like a nuke going off somewhere, but assuming linear progression in events, it's easy to predict.

Iraq has been easy to predict for years. The Sunni will never agree to be ruled by the Shiites, no more than we white Americans would agree to give up our citizenship and be slaves to African Americans. That's how the Sunni see sharing power with the Shiites, except that they feel God wants them to oppress the Shiites (oh, wait.. that's not so different than we were). Therefore, all our efforts to build a unified Iraqi government representative of all Iraqis is doomed. At best, we will not piss off the Shiites, and support them well enough to not be defeated by the Sunnis. If we succeed, even the Shiites will hate us for screwing up their country, but at least they will have normal relations with the US. The Sunnis hate us now passionately, and we can expect that to continue. We will leave Iraq one day, the only question is when. On that day, the Sunni resistance (a bunch of murdering psychopaths) will take over control of the Sunni areas, bringing the worst possible elements into power there. If we fail the Shiites, then the psychopathic Sunni leaders will conquer them, and God help them when that day comes. Alternatively, Iran might invade the Shiite areas to prevent it's falling to Sunni advances. Either way, we lose any sort of ally in Iraq. Iraq is seriously screwed. Too bad Bush didn't listen to any of the guys who know 100X what I think I know about the Middle East before invading. What a dumb-ass.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

Everyone who is willing to look past their hatred of bush knows that the Katrina mess was because of the breakdown in local governments and the lack of planning or follow through with the plans.

Obviously you don't know people who lived through the mess. Those of us who know even a tiny bit of what really happened know that Bush's incompetence screwed up the Katrina aftermath big-time (though other incompetence compounded the problem). For example, my father-in-law is a skilled and well respected doctor. The day after the hurricane, he flew to a medical ship, and waited for about a week while the US government (specifically NOT local government) refused to let it enter New Orleans to help. Eventually, the doctors all gave up and went home. None were allowed to help in any way. In contrast, Al Gore chartered a jet and evacuated a hospital personally, because a doctor there called him, begging for help.

I don't mind if you support Bush, but please don't reject what really happened after Katrina. People died because of Bush.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[toddestan]

That's not too surprising. I'm pissed at Bush for the last 6 years, and I'm currently pissed at Congress for not making any serious attempts to hold him accountable for it.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

6. George Washington was more religious than George Bush. If anything, others pander to the godless left, not the other way around.

Bull. The founding fathers from George to Jefferson were wise men, religious, but not born-again Christians. Jefferson was Unitarian, like me. He had serious doubts about the literal truth of the King James translation of the Bible, so he wrote is own (a great translation). On his gravestone, he states only three accomplishments, of which he is most proud. One was crafting America's separation of Church and State.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

You might as well say you believe in the tooth fairy too.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

The first time around, I blamed the Supreme Court, Congress for allowing such a system to happen, etc. The second time around, Bush may have conned his way into the office through some dubious and probably illegal actions, but he won the popular vote fair-and-square. I have no quarrel with an election that won the popular vote. We Americans elected him twice. Now the world has cause to ridicule us.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

DO you think that the breakdown in communication or the failure of the new Orleans government to follow the disaster plan or the failure of the governor to allow federal intervention had anything to do with the screwed up mess we were in?

I mean what would your doctor dad do when we cannot even account for injured or missing people? We don't let civilians run into a burning building to save people trapped for a reason, Why do you think we would let them go into a disaster area that we are still trying to get people out of?

I'm not saying Bush is 100% innocent here. But I am saying that if Nagan had followed the disaster plan put in place and the governor had done the same, there wouldn't have been a problem. Mississippi have worse devastation then New Orleans, entire towns were gone forever, But there wasn't the same craved news coverage as there was in NE for a reason, They followed their plans of action and did what they were supposed to do so there wasn't a news story for the ratings. The people who were injured in the other states were cared for and they weren't trapped because thier local governments let them down.

And if you want to put al the blame on Bush, fine. But your not doing anyone a service with that misinformation. And BTW, if your doctor dad was so concerned, then why didn't he register and offer services before the disaster. I know that he might not have thought it would never be needed like it was after Katrina, but at least his services could have been part of the plan instead of trying to pick up the slack where others failed and make heads or tails out of the mess. And right about the time they started doing this, doctor dad went on home as well as many others which made things even more confusing because some of the relief just disappeared.

Look were the problems were, look at why the problems were there. And It wasn't because of bush. BTW, did you know there are laws limiting what the federal government can and cannot do without the express consent of the governor of the state? And guess what else, The governor expressly waited to decide if she was going to give control of the state malitia and resources to the feds while attempting to wrestle control away from them. And after this was decided, there was resistance in the help offered by both the governor and the mayor of New Orleans. I'm confused at how this is bushes fault. Rejecting fantasies based on uninformed opinion is the reality too often. Sure more could have been done. But the need for more would have never existed if the preperation had been followed through with.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[N3wsByt3]

"Just because someone supports something like this doesn't mean they are ignorant, it just means they might believe differently then you do. And that in itself doesn't make it right or wrong. And neither does any of their opinions."

All opinions are equal. True. That's why you are nothing with mere opinions on themselves, if they are not backed up by facts and logical reasonings (and thus, valid argumentation). Of course, it is true that every political party will try to distort facts and use demagogic tricks to lul people into 'believing differently', but one can not deny that, at least for the moment, the Republicans are doing the most of this (maybe because they are currently in power, I don't know).

When people support something, I would hope they do it on another basis then just because they 'believe' in something, since, if that belief is based on not much more *than* their opinions (or the opinions of politicians) then they ARE ignorant. For instance, if a report comes out that says global warming IS happening, and we ARE the main cause of it - agreed on by a concensus of the majority of scientists - then it IS ignorant to disregard that, because Bush and some lone scientists he diggs up are saying it isn't. It can be your *opinion* that bush is right, and all the rest is wrong, but that opinion is based on ignorance (or willfull disregard of the closest approximation of the actual facts one can get). Since all opinions, viewed on themselves, are equal, it is clear you need something else to substantiate any claims made besides 'It's my opinion'. Opinions can only be shown to be right or wrong, when the basis for those opinions are shown to be right or wrong...but that means one has to agree on some things, such as accepting scientific research as being more worth then mere opinion, that any arguments given must exhibit logical reasoning, that hypocritic and contradictory statements or reasonings weakens the position or claim that is being made, etc.

In all this, one can not exactly say the Republicans (certainly not the Bush-crowd) are making a strong case for themselves and their 'opinions'.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Crazy Eight]

That's because noone believes Iraq war supporters would listen to such an argument. In fact, suggesting that as a matter of consideration would only weaken every other argument that doesn't involve reckoning with blood. It's like trying to win the girl by telling her that you "like her". As soon as the words hit her ears she'll think you're a fag.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[westyx]

The whole point of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is to take over a disaster situation that is not being adequately managed by local personnel. Irrespective of the incompetancy of both the new orleans government and the state government, fema should have put things right.

Another person may not have been able to significantly improve the situation, but as someone trained and experienced in managing similar situations would have done much better than someone fired from the position of a Judges and Horses Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

LOL.. So all the disaster plans, rehearsals and everything that FEMA mandates with he full faith and credit of congress is just a big waist of money. FEMA should stop requiring all these preparations, studies into th most likely disasters for the areas, Studies for the most appropriate responses and just come in to take over whenever they feel like it.

The point of FEMA is to bring resources that wouldn't normally be available into areas that need them. It can only do this once the governor asks for the help. This is because of several laws that say the federal government troops cannot be used in domestic affairs unless there is a constitutional duty or a specific act of congress. Some of these laws are the posse comitatus act and the Insurrection Act. Fema is restricted by these laws and the laws authorizing FEMA specifically states that it needs to be requested in.

But furthermore, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 93-288) as amended states that the purpose of FEMA is to

(b) It is the intent of the Congress, by this Act, to provide an orderly and continuing
means of assistance by the Federal Government to State and local governments in
carrying out their responsibilities to alleviate the suffering and damage which result
from such disasters by -
(1) revising and broadening the scope of existing disaster relief programs;
(2) encouraging the development of comprehensive disaster preparedness and
assistance plans, programs, capabilities, and organizations by the States and
by local governments;
(3) achieving greater coordination and responsiveness of disaster preparedness
and relief programs;
(4) encouraging individuals, States, and local governments to protect
themselves by obtaining insurance coverage to supplement or replace
governmental assistance;
(5) encouraging hazard mitigation measures to reduce losses from disasters,
including development of land use and construction regulations; and
(6) providing Federal assistance programs for both public and private losses
sustained in disasters

If you think it is anything else, you have been watching too many movies. And when FEMAs responce plan is centered around all of the above, and all of the above is neglected, then you have problems that will take longer then a week to fix. Too many people don't know what FEMA is or what they are supposed to do and too many people seem to think that FEMA is some autonomous agency that can come in, pull control of any situation at their liking and do whatever they want. You and people like this are sadly mistaken and will suffere the same effect as Louisiana when disaster hits. Louisiana had participated in the preparation, New Orleans had a plan that it ignored, and during the time frame immediately after the disaster, Nagan couldn't be found because he went to a hurricane party in a hotel instead of the disaster command centers the plan dictated and all communications to him were lost for a good bit of time. And then the governor who can use national guard troop without asking congress sat there doing nothing but attempting to decide if she would give control of the resources to another organization headed by a political enemy or fight to retain control herself. FEMA wanted to take over and it wasn't until the fourth day that SHE gave the ok and it wasn't until the third day after an aid informed her in a press conference that she still needed to ask for FEMA to enter the areas as prescribed by law.

Another person may not have been able to significantly improve the situation, but as someone trained and experienced in managing similar situations would have done much better than someone fired from the position of a Judges and Horses Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association.

Being a judge for some horse association has nothing to do with being the head of the emergency management task force. Nothing at all. It in no w

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

opinion is politics. OR should I say opinion on ideal is politics. I agree with this part of your statement except I wish to add that most people are ignorant by default. Many of the programs are several layers deep and they will never see the facts behind the ideas being perpetuated. They in effect have no other option but to believe what they are being told by whoever is being told it. And this goes directly to global warming too. The vast majority will not be able to look at any of the data and come to any conclusions that aren't pushed in them just as they see a person in need and don't look at the reasons for the need so they give something away instead of fixing what placed that person in need in the first place. And I dumbing that down to not point to one party over the over so don't take it that way.

As for the Global warming. There is some legitimate speculation on the causes and concerns or effects of it as it is being represented. There are people claiming it is the sun and everything will be ok after a few years. There are people claiming the ICE core sample and the proxy data aren't appropriate from comparing Co2 levels with direct measurements because of natural anomalies in the processes of the data accusation. It is like taking your temperature on different parts of your body and declaring an illness without taking into consideration that differen't parts of the body are warmer or cooler then others especialy after activities. But I'm not even disputing global warming in this post, that isn't the point.

The point is, the only effort to do anything about global warming pretty much enacts policies that were rejected during the time frame of the Kyoto treaty that have nothing to do with reducing Co2 emissions or curing global warming. It even exempted major Co2 polluters from the treaty in order to get them signed on and to say look at how many people have signed up. If you don't see that as suspect, I have some land deal we should talk about.

But seriously, more then three quarters of the countries that signed on to global warming don't have to limit their emissions levels. The entire treaty isn't about global warming at all, it is about scaring support to give money to other countries (third world) in a effort to forgive their debt. And the end hops are to bring them to industrialized statuses like the modern world so they don't become dependent on loans from other countries again.

Global warming might be real, it might have real consequences, it might even be caused by Co2 emissions from fossil fuels. But it was hijacked and used to push political and social agendas on an international level and I applaud congress for not jumping on the same wagon. Notice I said congress and not Bush, because even if bush does sign it, like Clinton did, congress has the final say in it. And when last attempted, very few democrats voted to bring it to the floor for a vote. But I will acknowledge that this might be because they were afraid of the debate that would come from it (the democrats were pushing for the forgiveness of third world debt at the time of it's conception) or they could have been afraid to have it outright permanently rejected.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[westyx]

Did you read my post? Nagan et al were incompetant, stupid, and short sighted. Noone disputes this. The issue about FEMA is that when they were given the go-ahead, they screwed it all up. They had qualified people sitting on their asses waiting for FEMA to give the green light, and it never came. They hired cruise liners for housing (which was good) at rates far above what they could have gotten.

Being a judge for some horse association has nothing to do with being the head of the emergency management task force. Nothing at all.

Well, gee, I think everyone found that out, didn't they. The head of FEMA should be someone used to directing and managing a crisis management team, not someone who got fired from their old job that didn't have anything to do with high visibility crisis management.

It in no way reflects ones abilities to do something outside that arena.

If working for some horse association doesn't reflect on one's ability to head a crisis management team that needs strong leadership, then why was he picked to lead FEMA? What skills did he transfer from the horse association that meant he was better qualified than everyone else to head FEMA?

nd had the plans that FEMA worked with them on, been actually followed, you wouldn't have anything to whine about right now.

Well, duh. Except they weren't, because the leadership of FEMA had no clue what to do. Now, if had something to with horses, then i'm sure FEMA would have excelled.

Do you understand why schools practice fire or tornado drills? It is so when there is an emergency that requires it, people can be safe and the rescuers can concentrate on less people. If a school ever caught fire and several classes ignored the warnings and done everythign possible to impeade the response that had been practiced, you would blame the teachers or principle for the incompetence, not the firefighters and first responders. But here, you purposely fail to look at anything other then FEMA and the president because of some blind hate for them. I hope you aren't that stupid in other things in you life. If you are, you will be one of these people whining that the economy is crap and you life sucks. And I will let you in on a secrete, It has nothing to do with who is in office and more to do with your understanding of how things work.

Are you normally this blind? I said:

The whole point of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is to take over a disaster situation that is not being adequately managed by local personnel. Irrespective of the incompetancy of both the new orleans government and the state government, fema should have put things right.

I've bolded the parts where I point out the incompetancy of both the new orleans government and the state government, so you can actually read what I said this time.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

Did you read my post? Nagan et al were incompetant, stupid, and short sighted. Noone disputes this. The issue about FEMA is that when they were given the go-ahead, they screwed it all up. They had qualified people sitting on their asses waiting for FEMA to give the green light, and it never came. They hired cruise liners for housing (which was good) at rates far above what they could have gotten.

No, the problem was that when they were given the go ahead, the situation was already so bad that anything they did would take time before it would have results. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that they had to reassess the problem and redeploy accordingly. FEMA acted appropriately but wasn't prepared for the situation that was 100 times worse then if everything had been followed. They might have been able to do some things differently but this only from hindsight. The problems coming from Katrina were directly related to the breakdown on the local levels. Look at the rebuilding plans, all the other states effected have stuff in place and working to go ahead with life, New Orleans is still arguing over the definition of a chocolate city. Mississippi's coast was hit two hundred times worse then New Orleans and you don't hear complaints about the FEMA resonce from them. This is because their governments were competent enough to follow the plans and the response FEME planned for according to those plans were enough at the time. This has nothing to do with FEMA rather then pratical limitation placed on the logistics of moving supply to the areas needing them the most, assessing the situation and rescuing the people in the most danger. Then when rescue workers get fired upon with small arms fire by the crowds of people, it made it go even slower. You cannot relegate a situation like Katrina to the inaction of a group that had to rewrite their plans of action on the fly because the two key elements of the plans never held up. I could put you in a similar situation and you would do no better. At the end of it, everyone would be taking political potshots at you to protect their own shortcomings and there will be stupid people believing it and repeating everything like it was the gospel.

Well, gee, I think everyone found that out, didn't they. The head of FEMA should be someone used to directing and managing a crisis management team, not someone who got fired from their old job that didn't have anything to do with high visibility crisis management.

The guidance and policies were solid. The ability and mentality of the people implementing them weren't. This isn't FEMA's fault or anyone working for them. They did their best and their best wasn't good enough. Having someone else at the head of FEMA while not having the hindsight of incompetent local governments who won't follow the plans designed to keep the people safe wouldn't have changed a thing. If the plans were followed, even with problem in it popping up, The FEMA director shouldn't need to show up on sight one bit at all to make thing happen the way they should. The people who make the plans and practice everything do so without any input of the FEMA director at all unless he thinks it is lacking somewere. You could have a third grade dropout running any government office and as long as the people under them do their jobs, the job will get done. In this case, the most important people consisted of a mayor and state governor who was lacking when it meant the most.

The whole point of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is to take over a disaster situation that is not being adequately managed by local personnel. Irrespective of the incompetancy of both the new orleans government and the state government, fema should have put things right.

No, it isn't. It is to provide resources that aren't available. Taking over the situational response is one of the tools they use. The governor could have retain complete control of the response

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[MadUndergrad]

You don't believe in the GOP? What's next, you're going to tell me you don't believe in any political parties? Oh, the naivete.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[westyx]

I just said that he local and state governments were incompetant, yet you keep repeating this: If you ignore the hindsight of knowing the local governments were useless by decisions they made instead of capacity to respond, the exact same thing would happen today without regard to who is in power.

I'd put it in *marquee* and *blink*, and you still wouldn't get it. Katrina hit louisiana on august 29th. The president of the united states declared a state of emergency on the 26th (that's 3 days before), (see the official press release here on the whitehouse press site http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20 050827-1.html . Quoting that article The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . Note the "coordinate all disaster relief efforts" bit. Louisiana declared a state of emergency on the 26th as well. http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&t mp=detail&catID=1&articleID=776&navID=3.

Again: If the local situation is screwed, FEMA is there to step in and take control and call the shots. Not http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/03/national /main1009209.shtml worry about wether his sleeves are rolled up or not, "feel trapped", stating that he's a "fashion god".

No, I wouldn't do any better than brown. Then again, I don't accept positions for which i'm incredibly under qualified for.

No, I couldn't put anyone else as head of FEMA - do i look like the president of the united states? If i was, however, I'd pick someone who knew something about crisis management, someone who had lead an organisation approaching the 2600 that FEMA is.

And as for having to reasses the situation - what planet are you on? There was wall to wall coverage on every news station on how everything was flooded, how a significant proportion of the populace hadn't left, how law and order had broken down into chaos. The united states has satellites in orbit than can view every square meter of the earth, and yet FEMA was supposedly unable to know what was going on. The only reason the national guard wasn't sent in division size is that they were pretty much all over in iraq.

The fact that every other state managed to have it's act together doesn't excuse the fact that FEMA was unable to get a handle on the chaos, even with the resources of the federal government, along with a very large contingent of volunteers and supplies coming from every other state.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

I believe in the GOP. Well as in it exists. I don't believe it has magical powers or that it is some grand conspiracy head shelling orders to GW by the minute. If they did, and the orders were anything like the party platform, we would be in a lot better shape right now. But as it stands, quite a few of the republicans aren't happy because the republicans in power aren't acting like republicans.

Speaking of republicans, Did you hear that with all the tax cuts and all, the FEDs have raked in record tax collections this last tax season. Maybe the deficit spending isn't as bad as we once thought is was. (as in the deficit might not be as high of a deficit once we calculate the extra tax dollars accounted for).

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

I'd put it in *marquee* and *blink*, and you still wouldn't get it. Katrina hit louisiana on august 29th. The president of the united states declared a state of emergency on the 26th (that's 3 days before), (see the official press release here on the whitehouse press site http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20 050827-1.html . Quoting that article The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . Note the "coordinate all disaster relief efforts" bit. Louisiana declared a state of emergency on the 26th as well. http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&t mp=detail&catID=1&articleID=776&navID=3.

I don't think you understand. A state of emergency doesn't allow FEMA or the federal government to arbitrarily take over and do something when dealing with a civilian population. All the state of emergency does in make additional resources available but they still need to be asked for.

That national response plan which is limited by the insurrection act and the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act specifically state that the governor has to ask for help when it is clear that they state and local efforts aren't good enough.

When State resources and capabilities are
overwhelmed, Governors may request Federal assistance
under a Presidential disaster or emergency declaration.
Summarized below are the responsibilities of the
Governor, Local Chief Executive Officer, and Tribal
Chief Executive Officer.
and
As a State's chief executive, the Governor is responsible
for the public safety and welfare of the people of that
State or territory. The Governor:
Requests Federal assistance when it becomes clear
that State or tribal capabilities will be insufficient or
have been exceeded or exhausted.

The feds cannot just walk in and take over any situation unless there is already federal jurisdiction. A state of emergency doesn't give that jurisdiction. It only set the framework so the local government can request the feds to come in. Anyone who told you differently is either lying to you, misleading you, or you are assuming something you saw in a movie is fact when it isn't. On rare occasions, the feds can step in but that requires an invasion which an act of terror might qualify.

Now, both the state and the feds declared a state of emergency 3 days before the storm, and thre days after when the city was flooded, the governor still didn't follow through with the paperwork/request for assistance and nothing could be done legally. And everyone including congress knows this because those quotes came directly out of the NRP that is current for today and was accurate from 2006. The changes in this section aren't anything significant and congress hasn't amened any of the laws limiting the powers of the federal government. The changes were mostly in how FEMA offices interact with each other and give the secretary (of state? It just say secretary) some power to combine overlapping efforts.

No, I couldn't put anyone else as head of FEMA - do i look like the president of the united states? If i was, however, I'd pick someone who knew something about crisis management, someone who had lead an organisation approaching the 2600 that FEMA is.

If you were president, I would hope you knew a little more about how federal response is actually handled. Read the laws, read the NRP, it is all public accessible, And it wouldn't matter who you had in charge, when the local governments broke down and the governor didn't request the help officially like it is required by law, they wouldn't have done much if any better. It isn't a matter of someon

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[westyx]

I thought that was the whole point - a state of emergency is declared by both sides, and FEMA coordinates (you go there) the response.

After a google search I found http://www.northsidejournal.com/special2.htm, and it seems indeed I was talking out of my ass. Mea Culpa

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[Scrameustache]

Of course the same things were being said about Clinton when he was in office. There was a card game with a card for "political puppet" with Bill as a puppet and Hilary pulling the strings.
The smear campaign changed tone when it turned out he wasn't whipped... something about cigars... anyway, I thought he, his supporters, and his detractors were tools from "I did not inhale"; because the crime is holding the joint, not enjoying the high.

Nice of you to come up with a "but Clinton" argument though, what would a mention of Bush be without you bots replying with that, huh?

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

The state of emergency only allows special conditions to exist so things that aren't normally allowed to happen can. It really has to do with the state's rights were the constitution says all power not vested into the the federal government are reserved to the states along with some problems we have had with federal troops supposedly rigging elections and such when they were "monitoring" them back in the 1800's.

You don't need to be embarrassed, You weren't talking out your ass, but many other people's asses. Many people have turned this into a political battle and you have heard just as many people on both sides pointing the blame and misconstruing everything. It is easy to come to the same understanding you had. Truth be known, If FEMA had worked with these people better in planing or setting the NRP up and instilled the confidence and sense of urgency relating to any disaster, the entire situation might have turned out different. But I fear that no one would have learned a lesson and it would just have happened somewhere else. Now at least, there is a representative from DHS/FEMA that informs every governor or local politician in charge of where the "book on what to do" is located and what options are available to them and when they are available. Before Katrina, this would seem like a redundant waist of money because it is covered in the comprehensive response plan. But after Katrina, it is clear that the way politicians poor through office, Not all of them will be equipped to handle something like this (they would sleep through the meetings and such).

I have tried to refrain from using political distinctions to signify the differences unlike many others who feel the need to defend their favorite party at all costs. It is something easy to get caught up into and does have the advantage of getting votes come November. I don't think any mistakes on any levels here had anything to do with political party affiliation rather then the type of people who were in office. (The type who view it as a popularity contest and a status symbol more then a servant's job). It is sad that people can get the wrong impression on many things of this nature and importance because of this. It does nothing to fix the problems and one of which fix might be to automatically allow FEMA to step in at their discretion as soon as states of emergencies are declared. But I think this would just confuse states into not being ready for some disaster or expecting everyone but them to do the preparedness and end up costing even more lives.

I'm sorry our conversation turned so wicked. It forced me to check the changes in our national response plans and do some other light researching that I wanted to do for quite a while so I am excited that it happened. I am also under the impression that the FEDS set money aside to improve the levee's that failed causing the worst damages years before Katrina hit but the money was diverted to build canals and bridges. Some accuse the purpose of it as only to line the pockets of certain business's with connections to the government in that area. I guess we will never know if it would have been enough but I'm puzzled as to why it is ignored with everything that has happened.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

Nice of you to come up with a "but Clinton" argument though, what would a mention of Bush be without you bots replying with that, huh?

This is amazing. I didn't realize that not automatically beliving in random blidn conpiracies and pointing to all the ones with the last administration that turned out to be nothing of the sorts they were made out to be made be a BUSH BOT.

Bush bot, Ia that anyone who doesn't hate bush enough by default to believe anything ever said about him as long as it is negetive? Please define what a bush bot is for me. Historically, when someone was considered a bot and prefixed by a name, it meant they were blind supporters of that name. I don't believe I made that case in any way shape or form. But I did make the case for not supporting mere accusations with little to no basis in reality. And for that, I'm a bush bot.

Wait, this isn't a trick were you redefine a word in order to make it seem desirable so more people will become bush bots and you can claim a larger representation is it?

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[durin]

In other words, they believe whatever Bush tells them, even though they are super-smart

Wheee. Massive oxymoron-warning.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[mink]

"Judges and Horses Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association."

Dont forget that Mr. Brown drove that organization to bankruptcy when he was screwing it up.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[mink]

"Being a judge for some horse association has nothing to do with being the head of the emergency management task force. Nothing at all. It in no way reflects ones abilities to do something outside that arena."

You are correct. It should be noted that he drove that previous organization he was running into bankruptcy. So there is a track record of incompetance and mismanagement that should have been visable and indicative of his management style.

Ignoring his monumental incompetance and the fact he was placed there because it was a political favor. I agree with the rest of what you say about planning and doing.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[mink]

There are a few reasons one might use the 3K number. For people who believe that that war (in Iraq) was a bad idea (some because it blurred our focus from Afganistan) it is around the same number of people killed on 9/11 (or just in the WTC).

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[MadUndergrad]

It's true that a lot of Republicans are unhappy with Bush and co. Even so, party loyalty seems to have more influence than that dissatisfaction, thus part of my disdain for political parties in general. That point granted, it's undeniable that Washington is the mother of all networking circles and that people are attracted to power like flies to shit. There are tons of people involved with the administration (lots of neo-cons, especially), including his cabinet, who could (do, probably) tell Bush every move to make. That man couldn't lead his way out of a wet paper bag without someone to point him in the right direction.

I suppose I should have specified that the set of all people who are involved conspiracy-like with him overlaps significantly with, but isn't exactly the same thing as, the republican party.

As to your other point, at most points in recent history one could make that point, that "the FEDs have raked in record tax collections this last tax season", notably most of Bush's terms notwithstanding. Also note that the tax receipts are growing more slowly than in Clinton's terms. I hardly see this as proof that the cut-taxes-and-spend policy is working.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

The growth tax collections under Clinton's term were directly related to tax cuts. Well, the tax cuts (capitol gains cut for investments held over 1 year) and the Roth IRAs which were a tool intended to get out of paying higher taxes. Don't get me wrong, people paid more taxes and taxes were collected at a hirer rate then before, but the growth that you speak of were directly related to two investments tools that were tax cuts, and some would say tax cuts for the rich.

Also, Clinton had a recession on the last year of office that followed bush into office with 9/11 complicating things. If you compare the differences in collections between those situations, it would be higher and faster. If you stretch it past Bush's terms, it would be slower.

So, your correct but it doesn't invalidate anything I said. And it doesn't necessarily point any policy that would effect it either.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[sumdumass]

His incompetence had nothing to do with the response for Katrina. The director doesn't call the shots and one government agency or company is bigger then any one person working at it. They change leadership at the whim of newly elected presidents and none of them have collapsed in the process.

Back to the response issues, It wouldn't matter who was in charge or if they weren't good at anything, By the time FEMA was given control of the situation, the problems weren't anything near what the plan called for or the preparedness for the original plan of action. The problems had already compounded and increased in scope to the point that entire objective needed to be replanned and considered. This isn't something anyone could snapp their fingers and make happen as well as equipment and such needed to be relocates and all. Anyone in this particular situation with everything else being true and not having the hindsight of the experience and lessons learned from Katrina would have had the same problems. You can't say they wouldn't and you can't say with any certainty that anyone else would have anything different enough to make any substantial differences.

And this is why...

[ericferris]

This is why it's hard to subscribe to these huge conspiracy theories about anything involving the Federal Government. I mean, if you want to successfully lead a conspiracy, you have to be competent and you have to cover your tracks.

This latest example of bumbling incompetence shows us that you cannot trust the Feds to do either.

That's why we should fear the Feds when they want to help us: considering their track records at taking care of their own problems, only a suicidal madman would trust them to manage other people's lives.

Re:And this is why...

[Glowing Fish]

Unless...they are just pretending to be incompetent to lull you into a false sense of security?

Re:And this is why...

[ericferris]

I stick to my version of the truth.

Feel defensive much?

[spun]

Uh, wow. Just... wow. Feeling a bit defensive, are we? Nobody said anything about the US, Bush, Republicans, or the military. This is just an interesting story about the perils of redacting electronic documents.

I mean, I understand why you'd be feeling so defensive. It must suck, feeling like you have to defend the indefensible just so you don't have to admit that you were taken in by a pack of incompetent con artists.

Don't worry, this is the military...

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll make sure Gate's gets his due.

MS Plugin...

[ian13550]

Along the same lines -- Is it so hard for these guys to use the MS provided plugin?

Close, but no cigar.

[replicant108]

So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?

Actually, it was liberated by MBAs.

Can you data type a whole document?

[gelfling]

Seems to me what's lacking is security taxonomy overlay for classes of documents. If you assign a document to a class of security then there are certain operations which are required and others which are prohibited.

Re:It happened because they did not use emacs or v

[gatkinso]

Notepad.

Suggestion for how to do this in the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello military, I shall provide my consultancy service at a cost of $0 because I am feeling good today:

Create an email address that it is possible to send Word or PDF (or any other) documents to. The documents are automatically treated and returned instantly, according to:

- Word documents have all comments stripped out
- PDF documents have all the "censored" sections (read: sections where the black text has been made unreadable by adding a black background) be truly removed from the document and replaced by black boxes

The document gets renamed accordingly, e.g. REDACTED-[previous document name].

If you want to be truly generous you could also allow for putting a number in the subject line, where the number allowed different levels of treatment - e.g. for a Word document also stripping out all details of author, last modified, etc.

Re:Suggestion for how to do this in the future

[grimdestripador]

I believe that SMTP is not encrypted.
It would be easier to have an online form (somewhat encrypted), like a .cgi browswer uploader utility.

Hey, if your really good, you could link some VBA scripting and have it automatically post the document to the cgi.

Re:Disallow MS Word (I take back what I said)

[Thag]

No, turning off tracking TURNS OFF TRACKING. What it doesn't do is remove the existing tracked changes that were in the document from before you turned off tracking. To get rid of those, you can either accept them one at a time, or do an "Accept all changes."

FWIW, I don't use the Track Changes feature in Word, because it causes problems with Word's already screwed up automatic numbering system.

Re:Disallow MS Word (I take back what I said)

[Xemu]

So the only way to get rid of those changes is to accept or reject each one individually.

This is faster: Select All, Copy, Create New Document, Paste, Save. Done.

Your attempt at humor falls flat.

[PHAEDRU5]

The only thing worse than a bad joke is a bad joke bad followup.

Remember this folks,

[Anonymous Coward]

The next time the extremist right wingers get all wordy about how incompetent the United Nations is.

Re:Remember this folks,

[Anonymous Coward]

To respond to the the globally-totalitarian fundamentalist socialists here, I think the criticism goes a bit beyond incompetence.

For example, how the United Nations displays a pride in itself and portrays the extent to which it deserves support that would be called 'extreme nationalism stretching well into fascism' if a country displayed it equally.

You can also add that an exampel of this is is its proudly displayed charter and principles, of which an example is the obligation to take action if faced with genocide. Then, when confronted with what looked like a case of it, the United Nations found that, yes indeed, this very much seemed like genocide, in that it was large-scale mass murder of a specific ethnic group. However, genocide must be systematic, i.e. coordinated and planned, while this was a case of unsystematic murder, i.e. lots of people performed seemingly-genoicdal acts on their own and in small groups and only in an uncoordinated and irregular fashion, and hence it was not genocide and no action was required. More recently you can also welcome Zimbabwe as chair of the Sustainable Development commission.

I cannot quite see how forgetting to remove comments from a Word document measures up.

War is Hell

[huckamania]

I would like someone, anyone, to show when in the past a country has deposed two governments on the other side of the globe and had as few combat related deaths. The idea that mistakes were made and therefore those running these wars are incompetent completely ignores that mistakes have been made in every war.

Afghanistan has been particularly thorny throughtout history, going back to the Mongols. Saddam Hussein had survived countless wars and uprisings before this one.

I don't mind arguing about the senselessness of the war or the futility of trying to enact democracy in chaos, but don't try to tell me that this war has been waged badly.

Re:War is Hell

[joss]

> I don't mind arguing about the senselessness of the war or the futility of trying to enact democracy in chaos, but don't try to tell me that this war has been waged badly.

Why not ? Iraq wasnt in chaos before we invaded. Before the war a couple of generals were sacked for saying we needed several hundred thousand troups to secure the country. Rumsfeld was sure we could secure Iraw with 100,000. He was wrong.

Re:War is Hell

[ravenshrike]

Eh, at times it has, but that can be said of any major war, and in fact, this one is much, much better than most as it relates to our side fragging civilians.

Mod parent hilarious!

[Rob T Firefly]

That made my day.

Re:Disallow MS Word (I take back what I said)

[Locklin]

Is there really any reason why these simple documents need to be in anything but plain text? In the odd case that figures and tables are required, they can be included as separate files.

Allot of this communication was probably done with email in the first place, so it started out as plain text. ASCII test is readable by anyone, anytime, and everyone gets the same information from it. No information is hidden.

Plain text also looks more professional than a document in large colourfull "puppy" font anyway.

Re:Disallow MS Word (I take back what I said)

[Skapare]

Apparently the people who prepared this document didn't graduate to the "Advanced Word for Dummies" course :-)

The NSA doesn't

[pavon]

Of course the NSA doesn't release MS Word files - they know better. The guidelines are not for the NSA they are for all the other government agencies in the US, most of whose employees are not technical in nature, and certainly not computer security experts. The NSA knows that guidelines that no one will follow are worse than having no guidelines at all.

In the last 10 years, I have never seen a government document, sensitive or not, that wasn't generated in MS word. Given that they are using Word to generate their files, they need to know how to clean them up before distributing them - even internally.

DMCA violation

[jridley]

Wouldn't that make the reporter guilty of circumventing an access control mechanism?

That DMCA sure is a versatile tool, isn't it?

Re:DMCA violation

[goodmanj]

Notice that in the article, it was the author's 8-year-old son who actually "circumvented the access control mechanism". This is a suspiciously convenient alibi, but I'm not complaining.

That's actually a pretty good analysis

[DG]

Having read my share of int briefs, that's actually a pretty good analysis with what looks to me like an honest attempt at figuring out what is going on.

I see no incompetence there - I see good, honest staffwork. Perhaps a touch informal in places, but that's about it.

Intelligence is a slippery fish, not an exact science. It is normal to have a great deal of uncertainty.

DG

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[brian0918]

You may want to read Salon.com's analysis, which contradicts your empty review.

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[Jonas the Bold]

The analysis you linked is extremely slanted and unfair. Seriously, the writer just comes off as a jerk.

The memo acknowledges collateral damage, but is blithely unaware of the implications. "Most raids also leave in their wake a number of innocents who were either rounded up and detained or had their houses busted up ... But there appears to be sufficient care in how the attacks are carried out, adequate information in the community about the mild reality of detention, and sufficient civil affairs clean up afterwards that this has not been a major factor." By April 2004, the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures had begun to surface, visual evidence of how the military had been alienating the Iraqi civilian population.

No it isn't unaware at all, it says the implications are mild. I'd like to know how the author knows exactly what the impact is of the collateral damage. They are thinking about this stuff, and have concluded the impact is mild. And Abu Graib- it isn't concievable that the Iraqis know that was an abberation, since many may know peole who were detained and released, who told everyone it wasn't so bad?

A second explanation hinges explicitly on an old ethnic stereotype about how Arabs only understand force. The "Crossed the Line" argument insists that violence is intrinsic to Arab culture: "[It] is a form of political discourse as well as being culturally acceptable for settling disputes and scores." The memo then argues that the violence in Anbar was quelled once the Americans proved they could be more violent. The Americans brought out a bigger stick, namely Gen. Abizaid's threat to "some 70 Sheikhs and community leaders" in Anbar "to unleash hell," twinned with the U.S. Air Force dropping some timely Joint Direct Action Munitions on the province.

The writer of the memo wasn't be racist at all. Saying Iraqi culture is very violent is not the same as saying anything about arabs. It maybe very well be true that Iraqi culture is very violent. If you say that american culture is very literate, it doesn't mean all white people can read. The analyst is the one being racist, equating Iraqi with arab.

"A third explanation, "Occupation Ending," says that the insurgents are backing off because they think the U.S. is about to depart. "What they" -- meaning the Iraqis -- "have gotten wrong," says the memo's author, "is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks. Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don't fully understand things." Supposedly, the CPA's June 2004 deadline for handing over sovereignty to the Iraqis was misread by some locals as implying the withdrawal of American troops, and thus caused the number of insurgent attacks to decrease. (Four years later, the Bush administration often says any deadline for troop withdrawal would increase attacks.)"

Bush is not the military. Military analysts are not Bush. Don't equate the two.

A fifth theory, "Engagement," says that Iraqis have begun to have hope thanks to sustained contact with Americans. "We'll take some credit here. We have been engaging widely with ... ex-Baathists, ex-Army. While many are tiring of the refrain that if you stay with us things will get better, for some they actually have improved and that many have given hope to entire groups." The author calls these people "the various groups of losers in the New Iraq."

Yes, losers, as in, people who had position and power in the old Iraq, but have little in the new Iraq. People who lost as a result of the invasion. Perfectly fair.

Nowhere in any of these theories, including the "boring" one, does the author address the dissolution of the Iraqi Army as a major contributor to the violence.

That's because this is about why violence has stopped, not why it's been happening in the first place.

Nowhere, in fact, does the author seem to know which "bums" or

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[DG]

And having read Salon's analysis... I stand by my assessment.

What the Salon author is missing - actually, misreading - is the military tone. Taken at face value, yes, it comes off as arrogant and even a little clueless. But when read by a person accustomed to the military tone in writing (which is usually heavy in irony and black humour) one sees the actual intent. For example, I can tell that the author is more than a little frustrated at his inability to nail down the precise cause of the reduction of the attacks. He *knows* he doesn't know the exact answer. When he calls the idea of an operational pause "boring", this is an acknowledgment that this isn't the answer that anybody wants to hear, but is quite possibly the most likely answer. And he genuinely thinks they are doing a better job of engaging the local people, although he subtly hints that barging into the homes of innocents isn't doing them any favours.

I like Salon; I read it almost daily, and agree with a large part of what I read there. But this time, they're off base.

DG

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[Chris Burke]

Well, I could find fault with the line "By June, when there is a transition of the force rather than a pullout, we will have a new set of challenges anyway, but if this bought us some months of peace it will be worth the confusion." on the basis that it ignores the fact that if the insurgents were being quiet because they thought the U.S. was pulling out, then they were going to be doubly pissed and resume hostilities with gusto when they realized it isn't happening.

But you're right, it is just a staff reporter who isn't necessarily tasked with deciding whether any of these things were "good" or not, and that line there is probably an example of the "informalism". Even more so, were I living in a place where suicide bombs and masked gangs with assault rifles roaming the streets were common, I'd consider any period of peace as "worth it" even if in a long-term view that is foolish.

I'll give this staffer a pass for not being incompetent. But the overall message of the redacted sections is of the larger problem with the occupation: Those in the Green Zone just didn't have a solid grasp on what was going on outside, and that affected all planning. Even when Iraqis told them that the insurgency would continue as long as they were there, it just didn't stick. Ultimately, it's the people at the top that are responsible for this blindness.

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[DG]

I'll buy that assessment.

DG

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[Chris Burke]

And Abu Graib- it isn't concievable that the Iraqis know that was an abberation, since many may know peole who were detained and released, who told everyone it wasn't so bad?

Um... actually, long before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke many Iraqis who had been detained were saying that it was very bad, that torture and rape were common -- especially women saying they had been raped, which at least if I recall the Taguba Report correctly was only a minor part of the actual Abu Ghraib scandal. Accusations of rape have continued since Abu Ghraib. Of course U.S. officials said they were lying, but I suspect many of their stories were true enough to get their fellow Iraqis riled up.

In other words, Iraqis don't think it was an abberation. The reason there was not a massive increase in violence (only a relatively small one) when the scandal broke is because most of them already knew and their anger was already accounted for in the scale of attacks.

The writer of the memo wasn't be racist at all. Saying Iraqi culture is very violent is not the same as saying anything about arabs.

So because the context was Iraq (nation) not all Arabs (race), it isn't racist. Fine, but that's a pedantic argument that ignores the clear meaning of the sentence. Is there a word for "prejudiced about those of a specific nation"? Racism may not be the word, but it is something very similar only applied to a nation instead of a race. In its place "racism" is perfectly clear, if not perfectly, 100% pedant-approved precise.

That's because this is about why violence has stopped, not why it's been happening in the first place.

Yet it does include some speculation about why violence is occuring as this is clearly necessary to understanding why it has stopped. Ignoring a significant source of violence is to fail to understand why it stopped.

Anyway, I think a lot of the anger of the analyst comes from the fact that we are looking at this analysis with the benefit of 3 years of hindsight so it's very easy to see what they weren't aware of and how that related to subsequent decisions that lead to the problems of today. I'm sure he's much more level-headed when he's reading diaries of wars long past.

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[Jonas the Bold]

What Iraqis think the condition of detention is, or what the condition of detention in Iraq actually typically is, is something neither you nor I can know. It could be a situation where eveyrone has heard of someone who was raped or turtured, but nobody has met one and the three people they met who actually were detained said nothing happened. We don't have enough information to know this stuff. The soldier writing it seems to think that Iraqis think the reality of detention is pretty mild. I'm inclined to believe him, because there is no reliable data. Speculation from people thousands of miles away and attempts at opinion poles in a war zone don't convince me.

You're right the racism thing was pedantic, but that's not exactly what I meant. I meant it's ok to generalize about cultures. It's useful. Certain cultures have different attitudes toward violence than others. Certain ones are more literate. Certain ones are more religious. These are useful generalizations, and when you're talking about reactions of populations, you have to take into account the general trends of attitudes and beliefs of that population. Even though it says nothing about an individual, it will give you useful information about a population.

About the ex-iraqi army contribution, maybe there's no plausable theory regarding the ex-iraqi sodiers which would explain why the violence stopped in the last five weeks. What exactly changed five weeks before writing that which effects them? If nothing changed regarding them they can be left out of the speculation.

Personally I thought this war was a terrible idea, but I don't fault the military on the way it went. As I see they were given an impossible job. War is ugly and we should have learned in Veitnam that you can't have a clean one. I'm certainly not going to fault the soliders for being slightly insensitive in an internal memo, non-PC concepts don't fit well into PC language. Concepts like "Iraq has a violent culture and widespread hatred between sunnis and shiites." I'm also by no means think the Army is stupid. And I certainly trust what they have to say about the condition on the ground over there more than I trust analysts thousands of miles away or the lying politicians that sent them in the first place.

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Your right, its fine to make generalizations about a society and it helps to understand situations. Like Americans are only motivated by greed, hence the invasion of Iraq was for greed, Iraq's primary resource is oil -- ergo the invasion was about oil.

Where it stops being useful is when you try to apply it in more narrow focus. The smaller the group the less useful such generalizations are. You may be an American. And you may not be motivated solely by greed.

thoromyr

Re:That's actually a pretty good analysis

[Jonas the Bold]

What the hell- get over yourself. You are allowed to generalize about societies. You HAVE to.

Americans are richer than Indians. Are all Americans richer than all indians? No. But on average, we are a lot richer. We're also more educated and get better healthcare. If you try to understand the difference between american society and indian society without these basic facts because those facts are un-PC, you'll get nowhere.

In some cultures it's acceptable to stone a woman to death for having sex before marriage. And if you try to understand why honor killings take place in Saudi Arabia but not in France without acknowledging this basic fact because you consider it un-PC, you'll end up with an extremely bullshit reason and I'll call you a moron.

Cultures are different, in deep ways. It extends past food and music to core values. We do not all believe the same things or feel the same way about them. If that's un-PC, don't blame me, the world is the one that's like that and it won't change just because you decide to stick your fingers in your ears and sing "lalala".

You remind me of women who think it's sexist to say that men are physically stronger.

Re:It happened because they did not use emacs or v

[slazzy]

Think about how much they'd save on software!

Need is relative

[DragonHawk]

Is there really any reason why these simple documents need to be in anything but plain text?

Depends on how you define "need". They probabbly don't need to be written using a computer. But it makes it easier. Likewise, depending on the nature of the document, it may easier to do things like auto numbering, indenting, tracking changes (on purpose), reviewing, and so on using a more sophisticated file format. I cannot speak for the people doing this work, of course.

Kind of like how I'm using "rich text" (i.e., HTML) to format this post to be more useful. I could just type the text. But adding some quotes improves the context in the discussion. Needed? No. Useful? I'd say yes.

You also have to consider that most Windows systems don't have a decent text editor. (You can sort-of use Word, by saving as plain text, but that tends to loose a lot of the stuff you were trying to do.)

Allot of this communication was probably done with email in the first place, so it started out as plain text.

You've obviously never worked in a large organization where everyone is using email systems with "rich text" (e.g., Exchange/Outlook, Lotus Notes, even HTML mail in Thunderbird).

Does anyone really

[Bobby Mahoney]

need to see documents to figure this out? -- And doesn't using the word "reveal" imply that our government's gross incompetence has been a big secret until now? Debacles and massive failures aside, how about our civil rights? Wiretaps, secret prisons, censorship, gun laws, intermingling of religion and government, the complete trouncing of the tenth amendment (powers not specifically named to the feds are powers of the states and/or people)... There was a time in my life when I was proud to be an American-- Now I just feel like the embarrassed dinner companion of the US in the restaurant of the world, as Uncle Sam walks around spewing tourettes outbursts, and shitting on the tables of the other patrons.

No one reads NSA documents anymore...

[Clockworkalien]

Ah, yet another agency that did not read NSA's guide to publishing "Sanitized" reports. Read it here.

I agree (with your first bit), it was just a joke

[benhocking]

Yes, there are a lot of ignorant people who are not Bush supporters. However, I am not sure how many hard-core Bush supporters are not either quite ignorant or extremely self-serving. Just to be clear, "hard-core Bush supporters" does not include people who don't like Bush, but think he was a better choice than Kerry.

Mainly, it was a joke. Don't take it too seriously.

Personal incompetence, first draft

[lenski]

You have an excellent point. My first drafts, first versions, are not intended for external view. Note, however, that when I do release something to "the world" (usually co-workers), I've made sure to dot the I's and cross the T's. This includes making sure that documents contain what I intended. The author of the Word document in question did not finish the job.

The embarrassment here is that someone with serious responsibility failed to finish the job correctly.

Back then, we could only hope that others with greater responsibility were doing their jobs. As far as I can tell from the news, there are too many cases where people did a slapdash job, with "life changing effects" for too many. A nice euphemism there: "Life changing"... like "life ending", or "no more legs", or "no more father", things like that.

This stuff is very very important to large numbers of people. This is one of those examples where we expect people to get the bloody details right.

Yep.

[bill_mcgonigle]

So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?

Yes, actually. They outfitted entire trailers full of Windows networks and shipped them over there to fight the war. The MCSE's who built them were stateside contractors, but I'm sure there are military or civie MCSE's over there to keep them patched and reboot things.

To paraphrase what another commenter said, this is the kind of war you get when it's run by MBA's and MCSE's.

Not only that!

[N3wsByt3]

Not only that, but they're actually so good in their disinformation-game that they succeeded in convincing the american, nay, the world-public at large to believe they've lost the war in Vietnam, while, in fact, it was a huge successtory!

They also want you to believe the insurgency in Iraq is due to their incompetence, but in reality they wanted Abu Graib and the Sadr-uprising to happen! That's how unbelievably smart they are! And you are *all* falling for their little game!

Documents have been removed from CPA site

[Lawrence_Bird]

Not Found Sorry, that web page doesn't exist.

Guess they still fear sunshine

Stupid Media

[TrashGUY]

If a country was completely competent informed and knew what there enemy was doing, there wouldn't be a war in the first place. Its war nothing can be for sure, but its always someones fault for not knowing everything.

Something else...

[audi100quattro]

Google shows 60 other MS Word files which aren't press releases or "Daily Power System Highlights" (60+ of the latter): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=utf-8&safe=o ff&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-18%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=inurl%3 A.doc+-inurl%3Aarabic+-inurl%3Apressreleases+-%22D aily+Power+System%22+site%3Acpa-iraq.org+&btnG=Sea rch

Didn't Comey give enough evidence for impeachment already yesterday?

Avoiding embarassment.

[Malkin]

See, this is one of the reasons I keep my resume in RTF.

(On a quick survey of the last three resumes I received from job candidates, none of them dropped the ball. Bravo!)

Re:Avoiding embarassment.

[multipartmixed]

That reminds me once, of a resume I got in word format.

"Track Changes" revealed that he was either lying to me, or to the other employer he'd recently sent it to.

Either way, it spared me from having to schedule him an interview...

Re:Avoiding embarassment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or ... he had used a word doc from a friend to use as a template, and all of the old entries were from that friend's resume.

It's tough to get information in the interview process, but you need to be really careful with the info you do get.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[dbIII]

It just floors me they feel they have to cover up even the signs of progress.

I've heard that nearly all of Bagdad is under control now - an encouraging sign but there is still a lot to do. It really is a pity Bush, Cheney et al did not pay attention during the Vietnam war.

How to become less popular

[benhocking]

It's interesting to guess what Bush could possibly do to become yet less popular. For example, his Supreme Court could over-turn [Roe] v Wade.

Actually, I think that'd increase his popularity - as a percentage of people who support him, that is. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of people who would be upset by Roe v. Wade being overturned already don't like him. However, there are several people who think he isn't conservative enough, and would therefore begin to like him if he overturned Roe v. Wade.

He could institute a draft for the Iraq war. We could catch him in felony voter fraud (like forcing US attorneys to turn a blind eye while he drops minority voters from the voter registration). He could shoot someone during a hunting accident.

Those might cut into his popularity. Of course, on that last one, it might depend on who that someone is.

Best practices for preventing this?

[tji]

I'm not a frequent MS Word user, and I almost never send docs in Word format -- for this reason, among others. But, I sometimes work with other people who prefer Word. Anyone got good links explaining how to make sure I'm not exposing more than I want to?

I think newer versions have more features around warning you about this. But, I primarily use Office 2004 for Mac OS X, is there a way to clean files in that version? How about Office 2000 for Windows? That's the version I have in my Parallels VM, for emergency use.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[Schemat1c]

I've heard that nearly all of Bagdad is under control now It's so under control that a politician can walk through it without an escort or body armor, just ask McCain.

I think you're thinking of Hanlon's Razor

[benhocking]

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

a real security failure

[Jon Kay]

My grumble is that, note, CPA only cared about attacks on Coalition troops, not about attacks on Iraqis, which were steadily increasing the whole time. I mean, generally speaking, the point of an occupation isn't just to have lots of annoying foreign troops arround, but to KEEP THE OCCUPIED PEOPLE SECURE.

And this shows in the document. Lots of speculation and thought about ATTACKS ON THE COALITION. You can't even begin to guess what the security situation for Iraqis on the street is from this document.

Re:a real security failure

[dbIII]

My grumble is that, note, CPA only cared about attacks on Coalition troops, not about attacks on Iraqis

It's only about "maintaining a presence in Iraq" unfortunately.

Re:a real security failure

[nahdude812]

My grumble is that, note, CPA only cared about attacks on Coalition troops, not about attacks on Iraqis

Although I enjoy your cynicism, it's much more likely that the purpose of the document was to speculate on why the attacks against coalition troops nearly disappeared. If the attacks against Iraqi's were consistent through this time, there's nothing really to speculate on about that. If there was something to speculate about on that front, it would belong in a different document, and at most these two documents would reference each other.

Interesting with OpenOffice

[jgoemat]

A company I worked with had decided to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice to save money instead of upgrading to the new version of MS Office. A week later everyone was running MS Office again. Apparently one of the executives sent out a Word document that had some embarrassing comments he made "deleted", but they were still there because of "Track Changes". When you opened up the document in OpenOffice, you could see them easily. I was just a peon, or I would have tried to explain that if he had been using OpenOffice himself it wouldn't have happened, and that someone knowledgeable could have viewed them in MS Office anyway. Instead they decided to spend tens of thousands on new licenses to go back to MS Office...

Poka Yoke

[sean.peters]

I work as a defense contractor in safety engineering. In these parts, we refer to this process as "sailor-proofing". The joke is that every time you think you've got your system sailor-proofed, they come up with a better sailor!

Lest anyone think I'm bashing the fine members of the USN, it should be noted that I was a sailor myself for some 20 years.

I don't agree...

[sean.peters]

... at least, not completely. The US Armed Forces are very good at winning battles and fighting wars. They are also pretty good at doing humanitarian service and peace enforcement (although some others are better; Canada comes to mind). However, no one is very good at fighting a war and doing peace enforcement/humanitarian service at the same time. The problem is that because of political considerations, there were never enough troops alloted to Iraq to provide basic security, and that means it's never been possible for the humanitarian service aspect of the operation to be effective. And now, it's more or less too late.

Bad Inference

[Mateo_LeFou]

The fact that X -- the most powerful person on the planet -- was able to accomplish some snazzy things does not argue for X's creativity or intelligence. If someone with tremendous power "pulls one over" on the whole world, it's usually on account of great wickedness, not wicked greatness.

Those numbers include democrats

[spun]

A lot of us don't think the supposedly democratic congress is doing enough, so those numbers don't mean what you imply they mean.

heh.. he said asses

[Anonymous Coward]

we need to asses who, why It was funny to me. Where are the Grammar Nasi's?

Easy Solution...

[Plekto]

I have no problem writing documents in a simple text editor. And you don't even need to wed yourself to Microsoft, either, to have decent security. Want the text gone? Yep - gone.

And you technically don't even need Windows as an OS.

The old adage comes to mind: "The more complex things are, the easier they are to break." Perhaps our Government and Military should invest in some older, more secure technology?

Slashdot is a left wing hate site, not a tech site

[Anonymous Coward]

Further proof that slashdot has nothing to do with new technology, and is just a platform for the angry left to vent its frustration. How masterbatory....

Re:Disallow MS Word -- MOD PARENT UP --

[eck011219]

Got it -- thanks. I'm on deadline, so I (of course) spent the past hour fiddling with it to test it (after I did the dishes and ran the vacuum and pet the cat). And indeed, you are right.

Track Changes has seemed to me for several versions of Word to be very confusing to the vast majority of people. But then I'm mostly a graphic designer (web for eleven years, print for twenty, doing all the IT stuff for the family publishing business on the side) and deal with Word myself as little as possible. Mostly I deal with authors and copywriters who are more focused on the current words than the past words, and get very confused when they find out they're both in there somewhere.

I guess there are people who know its intricacies and use it well, but it sure seems to confuse some and strike fear into others. In fact, I can see how one would expect that turning off tracking would indeed flush all previous versions -- it's not outside the realm of logic. So while I don't condone more flippin' zero-efficiency popups in Word ("You are viewing a popup message. [OK]"), some type of indication at the point of deactivation that there are still changes being stored might be good.

On that subject, I don't envy the developers of the Office suite (in fact, I have a buddy on the Office team, and while he tells me about a lot of the BS that goes on, he also tells me of some of the really fascinating challenges they face). The range of users they have to anticipate for Word, for example, is ridiculous. Total newbies who use it as a typewriter and don't even save documents all the way up to power users who (now) are building their own OpenXML files on the fly from custom apps. Still, this one seems like a case where you err on the side of caution and somehow indicate that there are stored changes. Don't know how to do it (again, I don't use Word much, and I also am not as good an interface designer as I'd like to be), but there must be a way to make this more clear to the typical user.

Anyhow, thanks again for the clarification -- good points. My wife made the same points moments ago while reading your post (yeah, we have a real firecracker time around here).

Those who do learn from history...

[mi]

In other words, they believe whatever Bush tells them, even though they are super-smart. It's a crazy world.

Has it ever occured to you, that — just maybe — they are right at least on some of the things you listed? Neah, can't be, can it?

Let me first comfort you a bit, though — it is not, that we believe Bush. It is that we agree with what he is saying (wherever he got the information himself).

Let me now infuriate you back again, by rephrasing your list of issues our way (and earning a couple more flamebait and troll moderations):

• we agree, that the concerns over global warming are frequently overblown;
• we agree, that showing the world, that despite the Vietnam catastrophe, America is willing and able to sometimes (not often enough, perhaps) go after vicious tyrants;
• we agree, that government should not be meddling in the market (including the for Internet Service Provision), even if some of us would accept such meddling given a compelling argument for it in a particular case;
• we are also convinced, any risk to Roe vs. Wade is worth the increased likelihood of preserving the integrity of Constitution, threatened by the Justices behaving like philosopher-kings finding new "laws" in the Constitution that the oafs in Congress should've passed (practice often derided as "legislating from the bench").

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

Sorry to have caused any infuriation. I don't easily get upset over posts on /. Please don't consider my following comments as an attack or meant to upset you:

- "Concerns over global warming are frequently overblown" - To me, the scary part about global warming is the massive and highly successful campaign by Bush and friends to convince us that it's a) not happening, and b) we're not causing it. For example, his efforts to corrupt and/or bury the results of his own scientific inquiry scare the heck out of me. Humans making the Earth warmer is just one of the truly scary hurdles in front of us. The Middle East building nukes is another one, as is controlling the world's population before we strip it of all it's resources. From that point of view, I agree, it is sometimes overblown. If that's you're position, it's reasonable. If you think we're not causing it, you should become better informed.

- Almost nobody at this point that I run across thinks that things are rosy over in Iraq. Anyone who thinks we've handled Iraq well should become better informed. If you hold out hope that the world will be a better place than if we'd not invaded Iraq, then I'd say your an optimist, though not unreasonable. If you feel we should stay and try to complete the mission, even if Iraq is a mess, then you agree with many other reasonable people, just not most.

- All the government has to do to keep the Internet neutral is nothing. Even better would be a law enforcing no change. If it meddles with what has been working for over 10 years, the value of the Internet could drastically fall. In particular, we need to insure that ISPs do not discriminate against packets based on their origin. That's all. They can still do traffic shaping, charge more for higher levels of service, etc. But, if they want to block all the Democrat web sites, and only allow through the Republican ones, that's a problem. That's exactly what will happen if Murdoch gets control, and packet origin discrimination is allowed. I find that a compelling argument for keeping the status quo, which has been working so well.

- Are you also upset that the Supreme Court ended segregation? It's the court's job to fill in context when laws are unclear. In Rowe v Wade, they tackled the toughest issue: defining when human life begins. It's a slippery area to rule in, and highly contentious, since many of us believe God gives us a soul at conception, while others of us believe that we gain our humanity as our brain develops and we become conscious of our environment. Jews traditionally believed that God gives us a soul at the quickening. I believe life begins when my kids go to college :-) I bet we would agree that having the Supreme Court rule correctly about when human life begins would be a good thing. We just may not agree about what that correct answer is. Unfortunately, it's not an easy area to find agreement, and it's probably more productive to collaborate on reducing unwanted pregnancies, which is probably common ground.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mentioning Bush in the context of preserving the constitution? Are you a professional comedian?

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[The One and Only]

threatened by the Justices behaving like philosopher-kings finding new "laws" in the Constitution that the oafs in Congress should've passed (practice often derided as "legislating from the bench").

People who complain about this remind me of whiny sports fans who blame the refs every time they lose a game. First off, let's be perfectly clear on one thing--most law is case law, i.e. law that is made by the precedent of judicial rulings. This allows the law to grow organically from case analysis rather than simply being handed down from Congress every so often. This is a vital feature of the system of common law we inherited from Great Britain, so if you have a problem with it, take it up with them.

It also protects us from the tyranny of the majority. The civil rights rulings of the 1960's are a perfect example of this--the "will of the people", the laws Congress did pass, all this stuff you people claim to protect, were in this case part of a horrifically evil system that oppressed people for no reason other than their racial origin. It was the Supreme Court, upholding the principles of the Constitution, which stopped this.

I'm not saying the Court never makes bad rulings--they clearly do, particularly in cases like Kelo. But majority rule makes bad decisions far more often, and it's vital that there be some way to put majority rule in check in situations where it is clearly acting unjustly. And that will necessarily involve overturning what Congress and the President do from time to time.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[db32]

To respond with a little less venom.

Global Warming - The far right is just as dangerous as the far left because they have both managed to turn this into an economic or emotional issue that nothing progressive will ever be seen. Dubya n crew burying evidence isn't much worse than the tree huggers drumming up stupid scenarios. Both are unbelievably dangerous to reason. Most of the neutral scientific minds I have read on the subject basically say this. "Its a real problem, we should start looking for solutions, but its not a doomsday scenario anytime soon and we have plenty of time to enact sane policy that won't destroy our economy or way of life" Too bad the knee jerk reactionary crowd has pretty much drowned out the sanity of that.

Iraq - Its too late to quit now. Hopefully the lesson we learn in vietnam is that when politicians run the war instead of the military there is no possible good outcome. The reasons for being there are sketchy at best. Saddam was a murderous asshat, and the delivering freedom lines are all well n good, except that Rummy was kinda in charge, and Rummy was kinda the one that supported Saddam, so it stands to reason that the locals would be a little confused and distrusting, unfortunately the American people are woefully ignorant of even the most recent past and no one seemed to catch that. In the mean time we have both parties once again playing politics with the war, trying to attach stupidity to funding, and then vetoing funding over said stupidity. The Republicans have the PERFECT scapegoat by letting the Democrats fuck this all up, because now they can say it all fell apart because of the Democrats, and not because of their piss poor planning and execution in the early days of this mess. I'm glad so many lefties are supporting giving the Republicans the free and clear exit strategy on their responsibility but not the war itself. Once again, the knee jerk reactionary crap takes over any rational thought processes and solutions.

Net Neutrality - Honestly I don't even know what to say here. Both sides of this trainwreck are such a mess that its pretty much impossible to sort out in any sane fashion. Personally I figure the best thing to do is stay hands off and let the cable and telephone companies murder each other while various RF technologies advance and eventually negate their stranglehold on things. In the mean time we just have to hope the various "intellectual property" crap doesn't get to far and that Senator "Internet Tubes" and his ilk don't legislate too much other stupidity into the mix. Incidentally I am thinking of a previously undocumented number that if you happen to use any portion of I will sue the shit out of you. Please discontinue the use of the following symbols representing a part of my intellectual property, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 9, thank you.

Supreme Court - This is another one of those things have gotten too stupid to have a simple fix. The belief that the constitution is a living document is dangerous at best. Yes it says "constitutional right to amend it" so yeah, you can change it...BUT it also says "any powers not enumerated here are reserved for the people"...so very simply put this means that you can change it, but only to remove more powers of government, not add them. The government does not have the power to add more powers, it only has the power to remove powers. The arguments that the founding fathers had no idea how technology or whatever would change are irrelevant because they DID know how government would change, it would attempt to grow its powers as every government does. The additions that ended things like slavery or gave the women the right to vote are stupid because all they basically say is "Yeah, we were confused by that 'all men are created equal' bit, sorry" This is why many of the founding fathers did not want a Bill of Rights, because they feared that eventually it would be used to justify the idea that we only have rights that the constitution spells out, when the truth is only the

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[packeteer]

we agree, that showing the world, that despite the Vietnam catastrophe, America is willing and able to sometimes (not often enough, perhaps) go after vicious tyrants;

Is that worth it? Is throwing away thousands of american lives and seriously wounding tens of thousands of soilders worth it? Is it that important that the world knows we are willing and able? What kind of cock waving bullshit is that? Who the fucfk cares what the world thinks we are capable of, i dont give a damn what the world thinks about us, all i care about is american lives and american freedom, my civil liberties are more important to me than the foolish pride of feeling like a powerful country.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[Crazy Eight]

If they believe Powell was fired then you're merely arguing that a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[ricegf]

> I bet we would agree that having the Supreme Court rule correctly about when human life begins would be a good thing.

First, it is Roe v Wade, not Rowe.

Second, not on your life! I believe in democracy and freedom, not dictated law by appointed-for-life jurists with delusions of godhood. The tragedy of Roe v Wade was that it took a politically contentious issue out of the public arena, where debate and compromise have worked so well on so many similarly divisive issues, and replaced it with a "because we said so" legal ruling.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[HuguesT]

As a final note, I think abortion should be legal until 18yrs of age. I bet we wouldn't have nearly as many stupid ass problems if the kids knew their parents could change their mind up until they became legal adults.

You had me until that point. What you suggest is downright inhuman. Suggesting that killing somebody might be the solution to family problems is more than just stupid.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[db32]

I'm a little surprised here. First, my only real point is that the government has basically made it impossible to discipline your kids. If you even so much as yell at them in public these days the cops are likely to show up. The whole kids going wild with crime comes from 1. Parents not actually raising their kids, and the ones that DO are frequently hampered by the government (discipline and abuse are two VERY different things, and its typically only the people without kids or with unholy terror children that confuse the two, if you smack a kid on the ass to hurt him you are wrong, if you smack a kid on the ass to scare the crap out of them and get their immediate undivided attention you are getting it right). and 2. Kids knowing that they can literally get away with murder with little more than a slap on the wrist.

More importantly I'm a little confused as to your upset here. Unless you really believe that I can sue you for the use of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6 ,7, 8 and 9, I fail to see why this part would suddenly be taken so seriously.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[mi]

As a final note, I think abortion should be legal until 18yrs of age. I bet we wouldn't have nearly as many stupid ass problems if the kids knew their parents could change their mind up until they became legal adults.

You had me until that point. What you suggest is downright inhuman. Suggesting that killing somebody might be the solution to family problems is more than just stupid.

The Western civilization claims to hail from Greeks, Romans, and Jews — Romans being the most recent major force.

Yet it Ancient Rome a male child remained his father's property until the father's death. A female child — until marriage. It was perfectly legal for the father to kill the child at any moment. Obviously, this was not practiced often, but it remained legal.

See, we know history. Do you?..

unfair moderation

[SlowMovingTarget]

The parent post does not deserve to be at zero. Also, the grandparent posters reply is childish and unreasonable (see response #5).

Tool to fix that problem

[dave562]

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=144e54ed-d43e-42ca-bc7b-5446d34e5360&displa ylang=en "The Remove Hidden Data Tool" One of the girls upstairs in the PR department ran into the same problem today. It took all of three minutes on Google to find the solution to the problem.

Re: Nothing for you to see here. Ultimate Irony is

[cvos]

The ultimate irony is Microsoft helping expose the tyrannies of untouchables in government and providing a true level of transparency. Combine total MS vendor lock in with data archiving and tech-ignorant workers and you have a solution that, in this instance, has given the people actual real information. Much like Nixon did himself in through a tape recorder, the Bush administration is doing the same thing, aided by Microsoft software.

This would not have happened if presidential staffers were using Linux.

Linux=security
Microsoft=(inadvertent)transparency

Dungeons and Dragons

[IBitOBear]

This is why, in Dungeons and Dragons, Intelligence and Wisdom are separate statistics.

Seriously, it really shouldn't surprise people when someone who has passed through academia, or life for that matter, turn out to be complete bone heads. This is how middle management happens in the first place. Wisdom, or whatever you want to call it, is really the ability to generalize knowledge from the specific. I constantly deal with mathematicians who cannot construct a valid argument from basic statistics and so on.

To para-quote Men In Black: "A person can be smart, but people are dumb panicky animals who are much happier when they don't have to know what is really happening."

The ability to follow a cogent argument through to its rational conclusion is damn rare. The ability to form a cogent argument that is rational through to its conclusion is even more rare.

I am _never_ surprised by the unwisdom of people, even when I find myself doing it... Humanity is not wired for smart, its only wired for short-term cleverness and evasion. Being smart takes a lot of work, and constant vigilance of ones self.

So when people get lazy, they get stupid. If you catch my drift. Always remember to factor in the laziness...

Re:Dungeons and Dragons

[smilindog2000]

You pretty much said it all... I only reply to acknowledge how well your message is received.

people are dumb panicky animals who are much happier when they don't have to know what is really happening.

Our current leadership is wise enough to have understood this truth far better than any administration in my lifetime. Dumb as Bush may be, his administration knows how to pull the strings.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[Simon Garlick]

It really is a pity Bush, Cheney et al did not pay attention during the Vietnam war

Oh they paid attention all right, they did everything they could to ensure they didn't get sent to serve there.

Are you serious?

[Chmcginn]

You're one of the people who thinks that computer security personnel should keep quiet about exploits, because the clueless script kiddies won't find out about them otherwise, aren't you.

This information was already out there, and we don't know if somebody on the real 'enemies of America' list already knew this trick. But we know there's computer-savvy people in terrorist organisations already. It's safer to assume that they already know this trick - in which case publishing it to call attention to the problem might save considerably more damaging information from being released later.

Re: Denial and Conspiracy Theories

[destrowolffe]

While I won't disagree with you that the handling of Iraq reeks of incompetence NOT conspiracies to seem incompetent, lets not forget the great length that powerful men have gone to in order to mask the truth. Gonzales made himself out to be a total incompetent idiot in front of Congress to avoid blame and hide the truth. In his case "appearing incompetent" was the ideal solution. Another prime example would be Nixon "revising" history by altering White House Documents and creatively writing his memoirs.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[bhiestand]

I've heard that nearly all of Bagdad is under control now It's so under control that a politician can walk through it without an escort or body armor, just ask McCain. Yes, rather unlike politicians in America.

Let me show you my favorite part

[ebbomega]

Operational Pause: A boring theory is that the terrorists are in an operational pause, needing to regroup after the recent spate of roundups. There are very few persons we have met who subscribe to this.

The one realistic (albeit pessimistic) option gets sluffed off. Every (EVERY) other plausible explanation was given entire paragraphs to back them up. This one gets dispelled in two lines without any real cause.

The whole document is a bunch of shoulder-patting a la "Mission Accomplished!" and doesn't really serve for much except for a false sense of hope.

Best part is the one that got the least attention and evaluation was the one that was actually right. The writer assumes that because the majority of people don't ascribe to it then he shouldn't either. And when you assume.....

Here's the document the excerpt came from ...

[Derling Whirvish]

Here's the document the excerpt came from:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/ira q/2004/02/administrators_weekly_economic_report_fe bruary_15_2004.doc

It's no big deal. Everyone has their panties in a wad over nothing.

Here's the whole debunking:

http://lamplighternews.blogspot.com/2007/05/poor-r esearch-often-results-in-poor.html

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[Global Justice Allia]

Check out the British Incopetence and coruption in the lead up to the Iraq war here www.thetruthaboutweaponsofmassdestruction.com

some remarks

[N3wsByt3]

First of all, even in the time of the Romans (the late republic) the 'pater familias'-rights were already being weakened.

Secondly, the parent poster made the assertion that it was 'inhumane' (I suppose he means not technically, but morally) or 'stupid'...both have not been disproven by the fact such practises once existed.

I mean, during the time of the Romans, pedofile relationships/acts were not deemed illegal neither - but is this an indication we should re-introduce it? What about slavery?

Mind you, I leave all these questions open and I do not want to debate the merrits of this or that with you, but I do not think one can imply say that because something was there in the past, it was the correct way to do it. Suggesting things would be become better if we introduced the pater familias again, is the same as saying things would be better if we introduced pedofilia as a mentoring tool again. In fact, in that case, the latter would make more logical sense, since in the time of the romans (and the ancient greeks), those pedofilic relationships were often in the form of a mentorship (with he explicit goal of teaching the pupil in all matters by the mentor), and were in those instances, non-violent. The pater familias never had any explicit educational goals.

Yet, I still doubt many of those things - deemed common in that time - would be welcomed back in our current civilisation, and are generally seen as corrupt, immoral, inhumane, or stupid. And maybe rightfully so (though it is extremely difficult and maybe unwarranted to pass judgement on another people in another time).