Fox News' FTP Password Anyone?

An anonymous reader writes "While browsing around the Fox News website, I found that directory indexes are turned on. So, I started following the tree up, until I got to /admin. Eventually, I found my way into /admin/xml_parser/zdnet/, in which, there is a shell script. Seeing as it's a shell script, and I use Linux, I took a peek. Inside, is a username and password to an FTP. So, of course, I tried to login. The result? Epic fail on Fox's part. And seriously, what kind of password is T1me Out. This is just pathetic." It's already been changed of course, but that's still pretty amusing.

Comments

Wasted chance

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Dude, why didn't you look around for the bug that makes them misreport the news so horribly that a majority of FOX News viewers still believes Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and Saddam had WMDs when the US invaded?

Re:Wasted chance

[mwvdlee]

Because now we know; it was just some hacker prank.

Re:Wasted chance

[niceone]

Hey, that's not a bug - it's a feature.

Re:Wasted chance

[Cryophallion]

Fox news definately has some perspective issues - but WMD's isn't one of them. Even CLINTON believed they were there. Not trying to start a war - I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there. Iraq as the cause for 9/11 though - that's a crazy concept.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied. htm

Re:Wasted chance

[MindKata]

... And when they get hacked, they can get ton's of free publicity telling the whole world of the dangers of hackers... They would probably be only too happy to get hacked, for all the extra free news coverage it would get them on other networks.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"T1me Out"... that's the kind of password an idiot would use on his luggage!

Re:Wasted chance

[jrumney]

Clinton believed they were there, because at the time Saddam was refusing to let UN inspectors do their job. By the time Bush had invaded, the UN inspectors had already been in and found nothing.

Re:Wasted chance

[include($dysmas)]

the usual call to RTFA ... this is from the lame "the DoD are after me for using vista" site, who approved it ffs? read the article they link to (and link directly next time, stop paying them in ads!), its an account to grab files from zdnet, not an account into fox news, does it even have write access? dont let the facts get in the way of alarmist bs tho

Re:Wasted chance

[slimshadow]

remind me to change the password on my luggage!

Re:Wasted chance

[N8F8]

Or the brainwash program over at CNN that convinced 2/3 of the country the reason we invaded Iraq the second time was WMD. Can we say staw man?

Re:Wasted chance

[Aexia]

After Operation Desert Fox in 1998, Hussein's remaining WMD programs were finished off.

It's rather disengenuous to cite quotes from 1998 when he did have WMD programs to justify actions taken in 2003 when he did not have any WMD programs.

Re:Wasted chance

[Rakshasa Taisab]

There's also a difference between 'believing they're there' and 'going to war cause you know they're there, no matter what others think about your plans'.

Re:Wasted chance

[World.Pop(MPAA)]

I even heard Iran and North Korea had them too! You know what's even crazier???? None of the 9-11 hijackers had any connection to Iraq, and Saddam didn't care for radical Shiite Islamic Fundamentalism! Why is it only certain countries have the explicit right to own/maintain WMD? If America wants to encourage countries not to proliferate, would it not make sense to disband our own arsenal? Who are we going to use it on anyway?

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there"

I didn't - and neither did millions of others across the globe; but then we don't get Fox news...

Re:Wasted chance

[mh1997]

Clinton believed they were there, because at the time Saddam was refusing to let UN inspectors do their job. By the time Bush had invaded, the UN inspectors had already been in and found nothing.

Actually, Clinton and Bush both new that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because the USA sold them to him (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.h tm). However, what they did not know is if he still had them at the time of the invasion (although best guess is Bush did know that Saddam did not have them anymore), where they were, and if they were degraded to the point that they were no longer weaponizable.

Not defending Bush, I didn't vote for him, but I am tired of this WMD crap also.

Re:Wasted chance

[LurkerXXX]

*we* all thought they where there? Bullshit. I didn't. The U.N. inspectors told us they weren't there. Yes, Saddam occasionally would kick the U.N. inspectors out for a few weeks, but they'd keep going right back in. In fact, we had to specifically order the inspectors OUT, so they wouldn't get killed during the invasion.

Re:Wasted chance

[okinawa_hdr]

I didn't think they were there, but then again, I require something called "proof".

Re:Wasted chance

[thethibs]

Damn, I'd love to have the tinfoil franchise for Slashdot.

Re:Wasted chance

[Legion303]

"Even CLINTON believed they were there."

Yep. In 1998. Then we invaded, destroyed stockpiles, and ushered in the inspection teams.

What that has to do with GWB's claims in 2003 I don't know, but I'm sure that completely unbiased and non-partisan site you linked to has an answer.

Re:Wasted chance

[dcollins]

This isn't about believing in WMDs before the invasion. This is about believing that we found WMDs AFTER the invasion. In an October 2003 poll, for example, 7 months after the invasion, 33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion. That's 10% higher than the next most confused media viewership. This is what some of us would really love to see explained by you "nothing to see here" apologists. Or else, it sounds like you still maintain that's a reasonable belief today?

http://www.americanassembler.com/issues/media/docs /Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf

Weapons of Mass Destruction
As discussed, when respondents were asked whether the US has "found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" since the war had ended, 22% of all respondents over June-September mistakenly thought this had happened. Once again, Fox viewers were the highest with 33% having this belief. A lower 19-23% of viewers who watch ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN had the perception that the US has found WMD. Seventeen percent of those who primarily get their news from print sources had the misperception, while only 11% of those who watch PBS or listen to NPR had it.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"We all thought they were there"? Sorry, but you must be so deep in it you can't smell it anymore. Following international news at this time, from outside the US should I add, it was blatant that it was complete FUD. You may want to reajust your tinfoil hat, it's leaking.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't the GP's point now was it? He says Fox has a perspective issue on WMD's and ties between Iraq and 9/11 because they are still convincing their viewers that they existed, long after the facts have been known.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

A deal was made with Sammy the Bull to bring down John Goddi. That didn't make Sammy the Bull a saint. And you only need learn a little about Sammy the Bull to really get that analogy....

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Here it is. Unfortunately, they marked the bug report WONTFIX.

Re:Wasted chance

[Thrip]

Wow, you are seriously rewriting history, dude. Don't you remember all those statements by the administration claiming they had proof they couldn't show us, and then coming out with a few lame fuzzy satellite photos of trailers and shit? A lot of people didn't buy it at the time -- including me and most of the people I know. I mean, no one doubts that Iraq had once had some hairy weapons programs (find me a government that hasn't), but it was seriously hard to believe they had anything that would threaten the US. Just because you were suckered, you're saying "we all thought..."? Come on, learn from your mistake and move on.

Re:Wasted chance

[mhall119]

None of the 9-11 hijackers had any connection to Iraq, and Saddam didn't care for radical Shiite Islamic Fundamentalism! I minor detail, but the 9/11 hijackers were not shiite muslims.

If America wants to encourage countries not to proliferate, would it not make sense to disband our own arsenal? Absolutely not! One of the best tools we have to stopping proliferation is saying the USA will use its arsenal as a deterrent force so those countries will not need their own. That is why most European countries do not have their own nuclear weapons program, because during the Cold War we used our arsenal to extend the MAD principle to protect them.

Re:Wasted chance

[iapetus]

If America wants to encourage countries not to proliferate, would it not make sense to disband our own arsenal? Who are we going to use it on anyway?

Oh sure. Let's shed all our defenses and leave ourselves vulnerable to an attack by Canadia. That would be a good idea. I say we nuke Ontario now, just to be on the safe side.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

they can get ton's of free publicity

Now, is that "ton is of free publicity", or does Mr. Ton have a lot of "of free publicity" that he could potentially give to you?

Re:Wasted chance

[Martin Blank]

The US is in the process of destroying its remaining chemical and biological weapons, and would be done with it were it not for environmentalist lawsuits. One of the project sites completed its work years ago, and the others should be finished in a few years. The Russians are far behind their own obligations, but are slowly making progress.

Re:Wasted chance

[Chmcginn]

They did leave index on by default, though. So here's all the images they had in their macro/thumbnail list as of earlier this morning. Some quite amusing stuff.

(As you might note, this isn't on foxnews.com anymore, because they did disable it. However, all the links go to still-accessible images on foxnews.com.)

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there.

All? Speak for yourself you naive little boy. Not everyone drank the gov't kool-aid. Some of us noticed the log of shit at the bottom of the glass...

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

Fox news definately has some perspective issues - but WMD's isn't one of them. Even CLINTON believed they were there. Not trying to start a war - I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there. Iraq as the cause for 9/11 though - that's a crazy concept. No, you colossal boob, not everyone thought there were WMD's. First, don't lump chemical and biological with nuclear. Yes, I know analysts do it but I think it unfairly magnifies the threat level of the BC in NBC.

The specific charge Bush used to get our panties in a wad was nuclear weapons. "We don't want the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud." Yellow cake uranium, lie. Aluminum tubes, lie. The CIA was giving Bush solid intel but he and his team refused to accept it. Cheney and his cronies cherry-picked raw intel for the most sensationalistic shit they could find, regardless of whether it was true or not.

When you say "most people assumed Saddam had WMD" you really mean "Most people assumed he had some leftover chemical or biological shit", not that he had nukes ready to strike the west in 45 minutes. The consensus before 9-11, a consensus backed by Powell, was that the US policy of Iraqi containment was working.

I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Exactly,

From a strict military pov, Saddam will go down in history as one of the worst warmongerers. He was extremely active militarily, worked hard to attain any type of munition possible to wage war and, on top of that, used 'em. He never had a weapon he didn't use. He even hired a Canadian scientist who specialized in super guns to build one when all other countries, including the U.S., had turned him away. He had convinced the scientist that it would be used to attain orbit and launch satellites (the dream of Professor Bull). Some call it, "The Babylon Gun." When Bull discovered Saddam instead wanted to lob rounds at Israel with it, he became disenfranchised and told the Israelies. Evidence shows Saddam then had him killed. Like I said, trying to get, and use, every type of weapon available.

Saddam will also go down as the only modern-military and sovereign state to invade another -- barring civil war -- since WW2.

The dude was just bad and was nothing but a throw back to a 1000 years ago where despots did nothing but seek global domination via constant militarism.

Using Saddam to hurt Bush is like using Sammy the Bull to bring down John Goddi, and you only need to know a little about Sammy the Bull to see the meaning of that.

Iraq did 9/11? Who cares. Saddam gone is good for the world dudes. Just ask the Saudis how they feel about it....

Re:Wasted chance

[Cryophallion]

Is Snopes unbiased enough for you?

If so: http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

The site is not biased, it is merely confirming the truth of the quotes, although I assume the original writer of the email in questions was biased. Then again, everyone has some bias, whether right, left, secular humanist, etc.

As for my other comments, when I refer to we all, I meant we as in American government. I apologize to any non-Americans, it was not meant to to allude to you, as I am pretty sure you don't get Fox news anyway, although I admit I am pretty sure Britain's government had the same belief in WMD's. As for everyone else, I don't know what you thought, or what the inspectors did or did not tell you. What I am sick of is people saying they never believed they were there before the war, when there was a prevalence of "common knowledge" (not correct, but common) that there were.

As for the below comment that it is about believing there were WMD's now, that I agree with. Everything I heard was that none were found. Anyone who thinks they were found, is misinformed. Whether they ever existed, exist, or whatever, I don't think we will ever know beyond a reasonable doubt.

Re:Wasted chance

[PFI_Optix]

It also bears pointing out that we *did* find evidence that suggested a number scientists were pretending to be running a weapons program and pocketing the cash. That would indicate that Saddam was seeking some level of WMD capabilities and was being conned out of his money. It would also create a substantial paper trail and conversations that would be interpreted to mean Iraq had a weapons program.

There was a lot of bad information in the days before the invasion. The problem was compounded by the fact that the intelligence community seemed to be largely composed of yes men who were looking to tell the president what he wanted to hear. I honestly believe the president simply didn't have all the facts at hand because he was so keen on invading Iraq and none of his advisors wanted to tell him it was a bad idea.

Re:Wasted chance

[hung_himself]

I didn't believe it. Many if not most people outside the US believed that there were no or no substantial WMDs, hence the small size of the coalition of the coerced. If you had read any of the news sources outside the US rather than depending on Fox and Michael Moore, you might have known this - but then again what happens in the rest of the world is not very important...

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

Anyone looking just at the inspectors' reports would not believe that Saddam had "stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction" as was claimed by some. You don't get stockpiles from "losing track of the actual truth". you don't get mass destruction from a few ancient chemical weapons.

Using the advantage of hindsight, the answer is obvious; just follow the money. The Bush administration had a significant financial motivation for the invasion, so they hyped it in any way they could. (Example: Nigerian yellowcake scandal) It appears that the systematic distortions caused you to lose track of the actual truth.

But I don't expect you to learn any life lessons from this. People like stories with comic book villains and if seeing Saddam as evil, omnipotent, and omniscient makes your universe make sense, whatever. [Here's where I make some insulting generalization about you, but even I have too much good taste for that.]

Re:Wasted chance

[good soldier svejk]

Yes, Saddam occasionally would kick the U.N. inspectors out for a few weeks

Actually that isn't true. Saddam never expelled the UN inspectors. UNSCOM was expelled from Iraq in 1998, but it was Clinton who kicked them out, not Saddam. Iraq did temporarily expel American inspectors in 1997 after they learned that CIA infiltrators in UNSCOM had passed intelligence which the US used to facilitate a coup attempt. In response, UNSCOM chief Richard Butler withdrew all his teams to Kuwait. But the crisis was short lived and everyone was back to work in a week. Inspections limped along until December 1998, when Clinton decided his purposes were better served by bombing. The US then told UNSCOM they needed to evacuate for safety reasons and Director Richard Butler happily obliged. Go back and read the news reports of the day and you will see no mention of Saddam expelling non-American UNSCOM members. That factoid developed later. Several UNSCOM officials, including director Rolf Ekeus and David Kaye, have admitted that the US illegally used the inspection program for espionage.

"As time went on, some countries, especially the US, wanted to learn more about other parts of Iraq's capacity." The US even tried to find information about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. [Rolf Ekeus, Director of UNSCOM 1991-1997, Financial Times, 7/29/03]

Re:Wasted chance

[hey!]

Although I personally was against the invasion, I don't doubt that Sadaam was interested in acquiring WMD, and may have been interested in "fast break out" when vigilance wavered.

The answer, of course, was not to let vigilance waver.

The President famously didn't want to follow through on Richard Clarke's anti-terrorism efforts because he was tired of "swatting at flies". Well so? If they're flies, swat 'em.

Somethings that need to be done are best done with regular doses of attention. It is more realistic in the long run to pick your room up a little bit every day than to fight an epic battle in which clutter is banished forever.

Re:Wasted chance

[Cryophallion]

I have never heard that before. Do you have any evidence of this? If so, I would like to look into it. I have no problem with people proving me wrong... but I prefer proof. The proff that people in Washington believed there were WMD's is what I was pointing to, regardless as to the veracity of the belief.

As a side note - do you mean that since the program's were finished, that the items made from those programs also were gone?

Several quotes are much more current than 1998, which is why I included that link. As I said in one of my other replies, the belief they were there was "common knowledge" among the people in Washington - but "common" is not equal to "Correct"

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"The specific charge Bush used to get our panties in a wad was nuclear weapons."

No it wasn't, and you can't find a single piece of evidence that says so.

In light of the fact that you'd so openly, brazenly lie like that, I stopped reading your post.

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

Let's get this straight. Are you saying that Saddam Hussein had WMDs at the time of the invasion? I'd like to see your citation for that. Last I checked, only conspiracy nuts and Fox News viewers still believe that.

Re:Wasted chance

[Cryophallion]

Since when does Michael Moore agree with Fox? ... Or anyone for that matter...

In fact, you list complete opposite sides of the spectrum here. Although, if you are saying that both are wrong, but the truth is in the middle, THAT I agree with. However, there is no truly unbiased news agency (even the revered BBC has been shown to be biased at times), so I am not sure that being somewhere else would truly help. Less biased, maybe, but certainly not unbiased.

I am not saying this about you, but as a general rule, people believe something is unbiased only when it agrees with their own bias, and that it is overly biased when it doesn't agree with their Worldview.

And I do care about the rest of the world, and it is certainly important. Hence the reason Darfur needs to be a more pressing matter, at least here in the states. I don't know what foreign news sources are saying about it, but here it is not enough - else people would be up in arms over it.

Re:Wasted chance

[drinkypoo]

Do you really believe that? There's no transparency, and thus no real oversight, and thus no reason to believe that it is true. Also, "we would have destroyed our stockpile but the big mean environmentalists won't let us" is the biggest pile of shit I have ever heard. Yeah, the hippies are going to stop the elimination of these materials, right. If they are even complaining you can be sure that there is a reasonable complaint to make, such as that the disposal process is doing environmental damage - which would be par for the course with the US government. Go check out some "superfund" sites if you don't believe me.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary believed they were still there in 2002.

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002"

Maybe they're not speaking to each other these days? :-)

Nice try, though.

A bit of advice: Bush isn't going to be running in 2008. Less dullwitted conspiracy theory screeching about Bush, more effort on scraping up a viable Democratic candidate would seem to be the best strategy here. Hint: try to find someone who isn't a senile hippie this time.

I'm not sure what "then we invaded and destroyed stockpiles" means -- we didn't invade Iraq until 2003. Are you trolling, or just stupid?

Re:Wasted chance

[Dog-Cow]

Unless Saudi Arabia stops being an Islamic state, Iraq under Saddam was better than Saudi Arabia will ever be.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

biological and chemical weapons aren't the sort of things you just throw out. If he disposed of them he should have had proof (disposal facilities, appropriate waste by-products, etc.) He had none of those.

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

It's not a Straw Man unless they misrepresented someone's argument in order to attack it. The term you're looking for is "government propaganda".

Re:Wasted chance

[imkonen]

"Not defending Bush, I didn't vote for him, but I am tired of this WMD crap also." Well too bad, because until this administration realizes the futility of trying to re-write history in the internet age, this is going to come up again and again every time Bush|Cheney|Snow|Whoever tries to tell us we invaded Iraq to establish a peaceful Democracy. I'm sure the whole truth is a little more complicated than either Clinton=Bush or Bush=completely, psychopathically evil, but the fact is at the time of the invasion the stated reason was WMD, a fact that gets ignored every time a Bushie defends starting the war.

Re:Wasted chance

[GrayCalx]

Anyone looking just at the inspectors' reports would not believe that Saddam had "stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction" as was claimed by [the MI5, the Mossad, and the CIA].

Just to be accurate as possible I've updated that sentence for you.

Re:Wasted chance

[ajs]

"Even CLINTON believed they were there."

Yep. In 1998. Then we invaded, destroyed stockpiles, and ushered in the inspection teams.

What that has to do with GWB's claims in 2003 I don't know, but I'm sure that completely unbiased and non-partisan site you linked to has an answer. You didn't read the linked article, obviously. The site he linked to is a snopes-like rumor debunking site. It's quite true that the quotes listed (between 1998 and 2003) are all true. The congress really did believe that WMDs would be found in Iraq. The question is: why did they think that? The answer is that the CIA was used as a tool to make the case for war. Tenet's book has made that pretty clear. He was somewhat complicit, and the CIA certainly did get some things wrong, but it's clear that the Bush administration was eager to go to War, and eager to convince the Congress and U.N. that there was a valid reason to do so, even if that was questionable.

Re:Wasted chance

[GrayCalx]

This is what some of us would really love to see explained by you "nothing to see here" apologists.

You want someone to explain to you why 19-23% of Americans think WMD were found in Iraq? I'm not sure you'll ever get an answer for that. And if you did it would not be satisfying to you, as I'm sure the answer is either the age old adage "Americans are stupid." or "The media is corrupt."

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a lot of bad information in the days before the invasion. The problem was compounded by the fact that the intelligence community seemed to be largely composed of yes men who were looking to tell the president what he wanted to hear. I honestly believe the president simply didn't have all the facts at hand because he was so keen on invading Iraq and none of his advisors wanted to tell him it was a bad idea.

So the president surrounds himself with people who only tell him what he wants to hear, then you excuse his mistakes because he was surrounded by people who only told him what he wanted to hear? Here is a suggestion, maybe the president should take responsibility for surrounding himself with people who tell him the truth. Maybe people who tell something he doesn't want to hear shouldn't have been gagged, ignored etc. You reckon he didn't notice when every shred of evidence they presented to the UN was shredded within days that maybe, just maybe, they had it wrong?

Re:Wasted chance

[TheLink]

Really? Where's the report from the UN weapons inspectors that the US is actually getting rid of the stuff? ;)

Re:Wasted chance

[AndersOSU]

I'm not the OP, but I believe it.

Having biological and chemical weapons lying around is a liability waiting to happen. They're hard to control, and hard to account for. (Sir, the warehouse reports that we have 5,347,761 moles of VX gas available.)

Disposing of them is environmentally hazardous. For instance, you don't really know that much about the products of the disposal reaction. Check out one story about how the disposal is problematic. (check out how many related stories there are in the side bar.)

Besides, if we needed to, how hard would it be to make more?

Re:Wasted chance

[quanticle]

Let's shed all our defenses and leave ourselves vulnerable to an attack by Canadia.

I'm so sick of hearing that argument. Disarmament of nuclear weapons != complete disarmament. Even if we get rid of all our ICBMs and chemical and biological weapons, we'll still have enough nukes to destroy any other country three times over, backed up by the finest conventional military in the world.

Face it: with the fall of the Soviet Union, there is no reason for America to be spending so time and money maintaining weapons of mass destruction. We should decommission half of them and spend that money on parts of the military that actually need the attention - like the Marines and Army.

Re:Wasted chance

[Mike_ya]

We invaded Iraq in 98?
You speaking of Operation Desert Fox which was a 4 day bombing campaign? I would hardly call bombing Iraq with cruise and air to ground missiles for 4 days an invasion.

"Clinton administration officials said the aim of the mission was to "degrade" Iraq's ability to manufacture and use weapons of mass destruction, not to eliminate it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Desert_Fox

While some stockpiles were surely destroyed, the bombing wasn't meant to fix anything, besides maybe taking the media's attention off of impeachment hearings or push the problem over to the next administration.

The inspection teams were not ushered back in until 2002, almost 4 years later.

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

If accuracy is your aim then you should have listed Bush, Blair, and Sharon. I think Putin was on board for a while too. I'll leave it as an exercise to determine what each one of them stood to gain from the invasion.

Re:Wasted chance

[background image]

Saddam will also go down as the only modern-military and sovereign state to invade another -- barring civil war -- since WW2.

Err...there is at least one other country that's done this...

Re:Wasted chance

[iapetus]

It's possible that I'm not entirely serious about the impending Canadian threat. It's also possible that I agree that it might be possible to let a nuke or two slide without a massed invasion of WMD-bearing Canucks swarming across the US bringing mandatory ice hockey and poutine.

It's even possible (though highly unlikely) that I don't actually advocate pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Ontario.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost my leg in Vietnam, you insensitive clod!

Re:Wasted chance

[indifferent children]

Bush didn't tell the American people that he 'believed' that Saddam had WMDs. He said, "I guarantee that Saddam has WMD's". I just want to know if that was a money-back guarantee, 'cause, if so, my future grandkids have one hell of a rebate check coming.

Re:Wasted chance

[Daychilde]

No, I'm pretty sure Canadia will invade as soon as we get rid of our nukes.

Don't trust `em!

(ps: I like Canada)

Re:Wasted chance

[Elminst]

It is more realistic in the long run to pick your room up a little bit every day than to fight an epic battle in which clutter is banished forever.

I disagree. You can actually win the epic battle against clutter. Because your neighbors aren't sneaking insurgents in to throw more clutter in your face.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this alarmist exactly?

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Good one. Didn't see that coming, but you list "countries" and I said "country." I should have added "unprovoked." History links events of ww2 going back to 1932 in SE Asia with Japanese activities. Some even link WW1 and 2 as one. History will undoubtedly link the Gulf and 2003 wars in Iraq accordingly. The politics of the day (Bush bashing) will most likely be a footnote, just as it is with all other wars....

Re:Wasted chance

[ednopantz]

>a significant financial motivation for the invasion

Lay off the bong hits and stop watching X-Files reruns. Wouldn't an obscure piece of tax legislation be a lot easier than concocting a war? The fifteen years of public and private debate over whether to crush Saddam was just a front? Where was the secret meeting where this was all decided? Were there donuts?

And you do get stockpiles when people lie to weapon inspectors:
"We built x shells"
"We used y shells"

Ergo, there are now x-y in the stockpile. Change x and y a bunch of times, run equipment out the back door of army bases when inspectors visit, stall, delay, lie, and prevaricate, and the simplest explanation becomes "They have (x-y) plus or (minus some uncertainty factor) weapons in their stockpile and the reason they keep lying to us is they don't want us to catch them."

It turns out the truth was:

"They don't have crap (but some think they do) and the boss wants everyone to believe they are armed to the teeth."

My vision is Saddam was an evil, nearly omnipotent within his own sphere (wood chippers...wood chippers), and unfathomably stupid and misinformed.

Re:Wasted chance

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yeah, but Clinton didn't invade. He bombed anything tht vaguely looked like a weapons plant and in 2002-2003...

we found no weapons.

Re:Wasted chance

[An Onerous Coward]

In her defense, Clinton only believed as much because the Bush Administration only gave Congress that portion of the intelligence findings that bolstered the case for WMDs. Had the Bushies played honestly, and not hidden the internal dissent within the CIA, Clinton would never have made that statement, would never have voted to authorize force, and Iraq would probably be stable and thoroughly inspected by now.

It still pisses me off that Clinton refuses to apologize for her vote authorizing the war.

BTW, which of the Democratic contenders do you consider "senile hippies?" I can tell you which of the Republican candidates I consider "warmongering", "bloodthirsty", "autocratic", "sellouts", "anti-scientific", "racist", and "corporate shills". But given the current crop of candidates, plus the non-candidacy of Al Gore, I see Mike Gravel as maybe-kinda-sorta-senile-in-the-absolute-loosest-s ense-of-the-word, and an unfortunate lack of hippies.

Of course, you're probably using "hippie" in the right-wing talk radio sense, which is to say "anyone to the left of Sean Hannity should be called a hippie." Being pro-environment, anti-war, and anti-poverty is hardly akin to quitting your job, joining a commune, and raising hemp. Show me a candidate on either side whose personal hygiene isn't up to snuff. C'mon, name one.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

when we all thought they were there

Speak for yourself. Not everyone was fooled.

Re:Wasted chance

[operagost]

Who cares? Suggesting that the war must have been solely motivated by greed is a circumstantial ad hom.

Re:Wasted chance

[Deadplant]

about WMD's, when we all thought they were there. I'm so tired of hearing that.
Nobody I know thought there were WMDs. It was always obvious that your government was lying to you. If you thought there were WMDs you need to re-examine how you gather information. Your news sources are probably shit.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Clinton and Bush both new that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because the USA sold them to him (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.h tm). However, what they did not know is if he still had them at the time of the invasion (although best guess is Bush did know that Saddam did not have them anymore), where they were, and if they were degraded to the point that they were no longer weaponizable.
Not defending Bush, I didn't vote for him, but I am tired of this WMD crap also

I'm tired of that defense of Bush... USA failed to get UN support and resolution for war, mostly for that reason, lack of evidence... Inspectors went and saw nothing. Some Americans are trying to downplay this as "hey no one knows", but I remind you that Iraq War triggered the largest worldwide protests ever, see here, so about 36,000,000 of people in the world at least had a more informed opinion than the president of the USA.

Re:Wasted chance

[mcpkaaos]

Hint: try to find someone who isn't a senile hippie this time.

Why not? A senile puppet worked for the Republicans.

Re:Wasted chance

[dintech]

Rolf is my friend's dad. I've met him. :)

Re:Wasted chance

[Don853]

But I don't expect you to learn any life lessons from this. People like stories with comic book villains and if seeing Saddam as evil, omnipotent, and omniscient makes your universe make sense, whatever. [Here's where I make some insulting generalization about you, but even I have too much good taste for that.]

Idle curiosity: Do you think a smart-assed remark about how you, unlike the other guy, are too good for personal attacks is something other than a personal attack?

Re:Wasted chance

[enjerth]

What, you thought that they were going to go in there with guns blazing and then, when there is no government or law left, just leave town?

The plan to establish a democratic government in Iraq was a part of the plan from the start. And now it's just what they have left to do.

Re:Wasted chance

[autOmato]

Actually, he was talking about staw men.

Re:Wasted chance

[D-Cypell]

In an October 2003 poll, for example, 7 months after the invasion, 33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion.

Ever see the ST:TNG episode where Picard is captured by the Cardassians and tortured?

"There are FOUR lights!"

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that most of the insurgents in Iraq are natives? It is surprising how pissed off one can get at the people who come in and knock your country back to stone age and pretend it's for your own good. Not to mention the more personal effect of having family members killed/tortured/raped by the invaders.

Re:Wasted chance

[jimicus]

My memory may be faulty and I can't be bothered to search for a citation, but didn't it come out before the war started that all of those intelligence agencies were basing their information on a single, discredited source?

Re:Wasted chance

[damiam]

No, an explanation for why people who watch Fox News tend to believe these things disproportionately.

Re:Wasted chance

[rk]

I didn't think they were there and all it took was about 10 hours of me poking around semi-random articles in a research library (Arizona State's Hayden Library) and the internet to come to that conclusion. That the 60 billion a year we spend on intelligence couldn't come to the same conclusion I did using only unclassified data for what amounted to a day of work by a single bright but no means brilliant guy (who is also untrained in intelligence) reading in his spare time was very troubling to me.

Re:Wasted chance

[LWATCDR]

Actually the US did find small stock piles of gas agents and one centrifuge that is used to enrich uranium. Not the massive infrastructure that was claimed to be sure but that statement that NO WMD where found is also false. The claim is that the gas agents where miss placed when the Iraqis where destroying them under UN supervision.
I know that I will get flamed for this but it is the truth.

Re:Wasted chance

[crawling_chaos]

Yes, but it appears that the Cheney/Bush method of clutter elimination is to burn down the house and blame the neighbors for the fire. We call that fraud where I'm from. In fact, one might argue that it is at the very least a misdemeanor, if not a high crime.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite this, no nation was persuaded to muster a military force and send it to Iraq's defense.

Re:Wasted chance

[seriesrover]

Just for further clarification USA and Britain sold relatively small amounts. Germany sold 90% of chemical\biological weapons to Iraq. Further it was France, Russia and China (the remaining 3 seats on the security council) that sold Iraq 80% of its conventional weapons to.

Re:Wasted chance

[LoveGoblin]

Not only that, but in the case of the chemical weapons: even if they had still been there, they would have expired. Those things have a limited shelf life, and would have turned to mostly-harmless sludge by the time of the invasion in any case.

Re:Wasted chance

[MartinG]

Haven't you worked out yet that Bush invaded because he knew the weapons *weren't* there?

He had wanted a reason to invade for a long time and scaring the public with talk of weapons and vague connections with terrorism made it acceptable to them. Once he knew there were no weapons it was the perfect time to strike because the retaliation would be weak and a victory apparently easy.

Re:Wasted chance

[PFI_Optix]

Did the president pick the joint chiefs and the top-level CIA people? (serious question, I don't know off the top of my head).

Not everyone who has the president's ear is appointed by him. He showed some bad judgment prior to the invasion and obviously some of his appointees were poor picks given our post-9/11 hindsight. My point is that there wasn't a crystal-clear picture either way prior to invasion, and Bush's vision was even more filtered because those he most trusted were unwilling or unable to tell him the whole story.

Iraq was big stupid mess from day one, no doubt about that. But let's not try to paint the whole administration as malicious warmongering tyrants when in all reality they're just inept shoot-from-the-hip bureaucrats.

The sad thing is, I really don't believe we'd have been much better with either of our presidential alternatives: I think Gore would have found a completely different way to bungle things after 9/11 and make someone miserable (probably us) and Kerry would probably have really fouled up the occupation...yes, even more than Bush.

Re:Wasted chance

[plague3106]

Iraq did 9/11? Who cares. Saddam gone is good for the world dudes. Just ask the Saudis how they feel about it....

Well using 9/11 to invade Iraq isn't really that great of a cause; if you had so many good reasons, why did Bush try to link Saddam to 9/11? Just use one of the many good reasons already there.

As far as asking what the Saudis think, I really don't give a shit what they think. When a government can arrest and kill a woman because you saw her ankle, I don't really care if that government feels "safe" or not.

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

Wouldn't an obscure piece of tax legislation be a lot easier than concocting a war?

Tax legislation? That makes no sense. The rest of your post is even worse.

Re:Wasted chance

[robbiethefett]

Bush as evil, omnipotent, and omniscient
Honestly; how many of said bonghits would it take, exactly, to conclude that President George W. Bush is omnipotent?

Re:Wasted chance

[the not-troll]

The problem was compounded by the fact that the intelligence community seemed to be largely composed of yes men who were looking to tell the president what he wanted to hear.

Yeah. Though if he hadn't just always shoot the messenger on bringing bad news, they might have told him the truth - namely, that his country was in no way fit to fight this war - and would quickly left for somewhere else.

Or aren't you talking about Saddam?

Re:Wasted chance

[GodfatherofSoul]

Saddam was fronting a bogus WMD program to scare off his neighbors. All of this was easily discredited by the pre-War UN inspections. Citing these kinds of reports without context was a part of the cherry picking that the administration used to legitimize the War.

I no longer subscribe to the "Bush as Mr. Magoo" story line. There's too much evidence that they wanted invade Iraq from day 1.

Re:Wasted chance

[vtcodger]

***Fox news definately has some perspective issues - but WMD's isn't one of them. Even CLINTON believed they were there. Not trying to start a war - I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there. ***

This is utter and completely unmitigated nonsense. 'We' most certainly did NOT all know that Iraq had WMDs. In fact most of the people in the world except those systematically misinformed by the American Media were pretty sure Iraq did not have such weapons. That's why (unlike Afghanistan) the US was largely unable to cajole, extort, intimidate, bribe, or con any major country except Britain into strongly supporting the invasion of Iraq. The 'Coalition" had less than 50 members. Many of them have no meaningful presence and the majority of them are places like Palau and Moldova with GDPs smaller than South Dakota. For example, officially Turkey is a member of the coalition. But in fact, Turkdy turned down a whopping bribe to participate meaningfully in the fiasco. Even Canada -- which usually sticks with the US -- passed on this one.

There were UN inspectors on the ground from November 2002 on until they were directed to leave for their own safety just before the US invasion in March 2003. Their efforts were not being impeded. They found no sign of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons or of programs to make them (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/17/iraq/ma in544280.shtml )

You should be asking why you did not know in early 2003 what most of the world knew. If you were getting your news from Fox News, that would explain part of the problem. (Surely you are not still listening to those clowns?). But that's only part of the problem.

Re:Wasted chance

[imkonen]

Obviously nothing I wrote implies that. But if your reading comprehension is as bad as your interpretation indications, I'll spell it out for you more clearly:

Planning for the war is not the same thing as justifying it. I would argue, and I'm sure you'd agree, that we had good reasons to enter WWII. I would not argue that establishing democracies in Germany and Japan was among them. It was certainly an added bonus and as you point out essentially a required part of any plan that involves dismantling the previous governments, but we entered the war because of active aggression by those countries against us and our allies. The neocons could not have convinced the public to support a war whose main purpose was to establish a democratic government in Iraq, and congress certainly wouldn't have passed a war authorization bill giving Bush the option to invade if Saddam doesn't voluntarily begin the formation of a democracy in Iraq. They had to play up the fear of WMDs and terrorism and make disarmament the justification for invasion. Bush himself repeated numerous times that going to war was a last resort...until the war started. The resulting democracy in Iraq was supposed to be an added bonus, not the justification. Now that it is abundantly clear the administration was at the very least exaggerating their estimates of Saddam's WMD arsenal if not completely aware of how bogus the whole story was, they insist that the single most important reason we invaded Iraq was to establish Democracy. No explanation of why Iraq was singled out over other brutal regimes with real WMD programs or real ties to Al-Qaeda.

Re:Wasted chance

[smitth1276]

We did find WMDs on multiple occassions... they were pretty much all small caches of old shells filled with mustard or sarin and which were probably were no longer effective, but it is a bit disingenuous for the pollster to take those answers and then arbitrarily say "oh, well those don't count... so Fox News viewers are dumb!". If the question was simply "Has the US found Iraqi WMDs?" then the Fox News viewers appear to be the only ones who were properly informed of those developments.

And, of course, there were also incidents where the insurgent groups got ahold of some lingering chemical weapons (mustard gas, I think) and tried to make bombs out of them--luckily, that also was old and non-effective. Those were widely reported at the time.

In other words, get off your uninformed, sanctimonious high-horse. :-)

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

There is nothing of an ad hominem fallacy in suggesting that the war was motivated solely by greed.

It's a bit sad to see people throw latin words around as if they were actual arguments without having even bothered to look up the corresponding Wikipedia page to see if they mean something barely close to what they think they do, let alone get an actual book on logic and read it...

Re:Wasted chance

[geekboy642]

Romney and his dog?

Re:Wasted chance

[asc99c]

Who is 'we'? If I remember, the weapons inspectors had found no decent evidence, had said they had encountered some difficulties in accessing suspected sites, but that the difficulties were being removed and they needed some more time to confirm that Iraq had no weapons.

I think some people suspected weapons might be present, but no-one had evidence. That's not a great reason to start a war. How would you feel being given the death sentence for suspected murder with no evidence?

Re:Wasted chance

[BlackCobra43]

Or, you know, he could have just left them to degrade considering the extremely short half-life of most chemical/biological (bio = life. You HAVE to sustain it or it DIES) weaponry. You know, like he did with all the decayed chemical shells you found in Iraq and trumpeted as "proof" that Saddam had a working WMd program.

I love how any moron with an AC account suddently thinks he can outsmart Hans Blix with his mind-shattering revelations of "Hey, there should be byproducts!". No shit, Sherlock. The inspectors didn't just land, look around and then shrug, going "Who knows?"

Re:Wasted chance

[mr_mischief]

In fact, the victory over Saddam's forces and the effort to remove him from power was a cakewalk. It's keeping order in the aftermath that's proving difficult.

Re:Wasted chance

[Samus]

Saddam will also go down as the only modern-military and sovereign state to invade another -- barring civil war -- since WW2.

Not sure what you mean by modern-military. I'm guessing you mean mechanized or they had guns. Either way, modern history is full of examples that disprove this statement. China invaded Tibet and Vietnam. USSR invaded Afghanistan. US invaded Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, North Korea* and of course Iraq. Israel was involved in several wars in its early years. Sometimes it was the aggressor and other times not. This is not an exhaustive list but should be sufficient enough disprove that statement.

*North and South Korea were pretty much separate countries with the agreed upon border being the 38th parallel. The North invaded and the US stepped in. Mac Arthur wanted a total victory as he had achieved in pacific theater during WW2 and pushed the North to the Chinese border.

Re:Wasted chance

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

First, don't lump chemical and biological with nuclear. Yes, I know analysts do it but I think it unfairly magnifies the threat level of the BC in NBC.
Just for fun google 1919 flu pandemic, or think back to the halycon days of Avian Flu 0wns j00!!!! Before thinking that biological weapons are overrated in terms of lethality or terror.

Re:Wasted chance

[gfxguy]

I think this is a key point and something a lot of people misunderstood. The weapons inspectors jobs was not to seek out and destroy weapons of mass destruction. They were merely supposed to verify the proof that the Iraqi government gave them that the Iraqi government had destroyed the weapons. When they turned it into a game of hide and go seek, the Iraqi regime really put the nails in their own coffins.

This is not in support or against support of what the result was; I'm just saying that the world shouldn't have had to put up with such shennanigans to begin with. The whole thing was a tragegy of errors, both on the part of the Iraqi government and the U.S. government. Either one could have prevented what happened.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Utter bull shit.
Clinton(both) and were calling for action and so was John Kerry.
Now go improve the jene poll by stepping in frount of a bus.

Re:Wasted chance

[Artifakt]

Yellow cake uranium, lie. Aluminum tubes, lie

You could add the presentation Powell gave on the Iraqi UAV design. Discussing how much open internal volume was on board to possibly hold a nuke as payload, but not mentioning how those open areas were divided and in some cases irregularly shaped, and totally avoiding the question of whether the tiny aircraft could still fly with such an added payload in an off center of mass location.
      This was also used as a proof by circularity in some government arguements.
1. Saddam will soon gain the ability to put something nuke sized aboard an unmanned observer aircraft and thereby get a basic (prop driven) cruise missile THEREFORE building a UAV helps prove Saddam has a nuke program. (Essentially the argument Powell presented to the UN).
2. It would have to be a very small, efficient design, THEREFORE Saddam must be extremely committed to having nukes, to try and hide all the intermediate stages of development needed.
(the argument Donald Rumsfield presented when reporters here in the US asked what kind of nuke the UAV might carry, after Powell's presentation))
3. Saddam would have to devote all the resources of his country to achieve such an ambitious project as developing a 3rd or better generation thermonuclear device small enough to fit in this UAV, especially with no intermediate model testing. THEREFORE he must plan to actually use it against a target that could detect a missile launch.
(Again Rumsfield in response to reporters at press conferences)
4. THEREFORE He also must have a massive network of spies in the western nations, trying to steal much of our nuke technology. (Homeland security whitepapers, various interdepartmental press releases. AFAIK, this is the one point where no single name like Rumsfield's, really stands out)

Re:Wasted chance

[Courageous]

Nukes are by far my favorite weapon. "Nuke" is the shortest spelling there is for n-a-t-i-o-n-a-l s-o-v-e-r-e-i-g-n-t-y I can possibly think of. I freaking love nukes. Of course, really our nuclear sub fleet is the balz, and all we need. We should keep those babies hot.

Now, the rest of our military, well, I think we should decommission about half the army, keep the navy hot, and spruce up the marines by quite a lot. The Marine Expeditionary Force force organization concept is also the balz. They were back doing 'joint' when it wasn't a word. Joint by design and all that shit.

C//

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

You don't know what 'circumstantial' and 'Ad Hominem' mean. And you might be surprised how many politicians are motivated by greed. They want us to think that they're purely altruistic, but that's hardly ever the truth. Call me cynical.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Good points, and I was waiting for a reply like yours. I could very well be wrong, but the key word is sovereign, meaning permanent. Civil war negates that, and in each example -- especially Israel -- sovereignty wasn't that long-lasted at all. In most cases, governments were changing hands regularly. I will admit, I just don't know enough about Tibet. Also, in about each case there was some claim or stake to be made by the aggressor -- land lost in history or some other thing -- especially Israel.

Kuwait, I think we all can say, was hardly in question as a sovereign, long-lasting and stable government. It seems I remember some farce of a claim Saddam made about some claim, but still. It is, at least, a stark example of invasion above most, if not all, others....

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

So you are saying that the invasion of Iraq was `provoked'?!

Re:Wasted chance

[CodeBuster]

33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion

Unfortunately, the issue is not as black and white as the pundits on either side would like you to believe. There is, unfortunately, some wiggle room that gets used to support either one side or the other depending upon the speaker. The problem lies in the strictness of one's definition of WMDs and the categorization by some people of certain chemical weapons as WMDs despite the fact that such weapons are orders or magnitude less destructive than say the nuclear weapons that they are grouped with. Now, having said that it *is* true that US forces in Iraq have, from time to time, come across the odd Artillery shell filled with mustard or even a binary form of sarin in one case (used as a roadside bomb and a couple of US soldiers experienced minor symptoms, but no deaths). At best one could say that such finds are execeedingly rare and do not in and of themselves constitute evidence of a vast and active program on the part of Saddam to develop and use these weapons in the years immediately prior to the invasion. However, proof is proof and if even one shell is found then the number of "WMDs" was not zero and that is why the pundits continue arguing the points. This is splitting hairs maybe but if one argues that there were absolutely *no* WMDs in Iraq prior to the invasion then strictly speaking that person would be wrong. The problem lies in the use of absolutes in argumentation where even one counter-example disproves the argument.

Re:Wasted chance

[Mr_Magick]

As far as asking what the Saudis think, I really don't give a shit what they think. When a government can arrest and kill a woman because you saw her ankle, I don't really care if that government feels "safe" or not. Do you really think that this will change? The laws of the country are still made by a religious base, and according to their beliefs seeing a woman's ankle is causation for death. I don't see that taking out a militant leader is going to change the fundamental laws of the country when those laws are based on an unwavering religious doctrine.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Lol! Of course it was. Saddam did nothing BUT provoke everyone else. Dunno what to tell you. Ask the Iranians. He locked them into 10 years of bloodshed for what? My gosh, what people won't do to for politics. It reminds me of that Churchill quote, "if germany invaded hell in the morning I'd have something good to say about the devil by lunch." Or something to that effect....

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"...there is no reason for America to be spending so time and money maintaining weapons of mass destruction. We should decommission half of them and spend that money on..."

Unfortunately, safely decommissioning nuclear weapons COSTS money, it doesn't save money.

Re:Wasted chance

[drinkypoo]

Disposing of them is environmentally hazardous. For instance, you don't really know that much about the products of the disposal reaction. Check out one story about how the disposal is problematic. (check out how many related stories there are in the side bar.)

I refuse to believe that they cannot be disposed of in a safe fashion.

If it's actually being done safely, then there's no reason to complain.

But historically, the military has always done things unsafely, like sandblasting the irradiated paint off destroyers which were used in nuclear weapons tests, and then mixing the sand (plus paint chips) into concrete in schools. YEAH BABY! Good thinking there.

Re:Wasted chance

[smitth1276]

Right... it was a binary question posed to the Fox News viewers, and the only correct answer is "Yes". If they had asked if huge stockpiles had been found, I'm sure the Fox News viewers would have said "No", as they appear to be the only people polled who seem to have been informed of the finds.

I do remember, at the time, wondering why none of the other networks bothered to mention it, and I remember thinking that it smacked of partisan bias to ignore those stories.

Re:Wasted chance

[gfxguy]

No flames from me... I agree. I think many of the poll questions and the analysis is completely wrong, which is why I hate when politicians and pundits use them so much.

Example: Did Iraq have WMDs before the 2003 invasion?

Then make fun of the people who said yes, even though "before" is not qualified. Certainly Iraq had, at some point before the invasion, WMDs.

Example: Were any WMDs found in Iraq since the invasion?

Then make fun of people who said yes, even though that's the truth. It wasn't, perhaps, the stockpiles we were "promised", but the question is not clear on that fact, either.

Example: Do you approve of the job the U.S. military is doing in Iraq?

Then claim that because most people answered "no" that this means we should withdraw. Well, I'd have said "no," too, but that doesn't mean I care for the long term dissaster that will happen if we just leave.

As usual, for most of these things, my personal belief is that the answer, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. Was Iraq a threat if left to it's own ends? I believe the answer is yes. On the other hand, they weren't exactly being left to their own ends. Did they have WMDs? Some old ones, sure. Perhaps they had more that they subsequently got rid of. I don't know. Again, I think the problem is if they were left to their own ends.

Re:Wasted chance

[GrayCalx]

My memory may be faulty and I can't be bothered to search for a citation, but didn't it come out before the war started that all of those intelligence agencies were basing their information on a single, discredited source?

Yeah, I'm not sure either but I have a similar memory. I mean the point that proves they were wrong the most is simply that nothing has been found in Iraq. I definitely wasn't trying to say that they were right... only that several of the world's intelligence agencies believed the same thing.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

So the fuck what? Anyone with any sense has always known that Hillary is a tool.

Re:Wasted chance

[CodeBuster]

Clinton and Bush both new that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because the USA sold them to him

There were certain American companies that sold him (Saddam) precursor chemicals (those dual use ones that can be used to make any number of products from plastics to fertilizer to chemical weapons depending upon one's intent). It was a gray area since most people in the know knew what he (Saddam) was *probably* going to do with those precursors, but it is not quite as bad as the United States handing him finished and fully functional weapons, which we did not do. In fact, the United States had long since scrapped our own offensive chemical and biological weapons programs at that point in favor of concentrating our WMD efforts on our nuclear weapons (although the Soviets continued full swing well into the the 1980s and the programs did not finally completely go away until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and the chaos of the early 1990s). The other thing to remember is that following the hostage situation, Iran is famous for its hostage taking after all, nobody in the United States was going stand up for Iran (the target of chemical attacks by the Iraqis) if and when someone else wanted to give the Iranians a black eye.

Re:Wasted chance

[Marty_Krapturd]

I mean, no one doubts that Iraq had once had some hairy weapons programs (find me a government that hasn't),

Costa Rica

Re:Wasted chance

[AndersOSU]

Read my link. The people (DuPont) who would be doing the disposal think that they can do it safely. The problem is that the people in Delaware (especially the newspaper who owns the website I linked to) don't have a lot of faith when it comes to DuPont and environmental impact (when you add the government it becomes a trifecta).

This may isn't a case of whether or not it can be done safely (although it might be.) This is more a case of NIMBY, which is just as big a deterrent to the disposal of the waste as potential environmental impact.

Besides, you said:

Also, "we would have destroyed our stockpile but the big mean environmentalists won't let us" is the biggest pile of shit I have ever heard.

which is demonstratively false.

Re:Wasted chance

[Myopic]

I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.

Me too. I just wish we were a majority. If elections are evidence, then the evidence suggests that populations in all democratic countries LOVE lying liars.

Re:Wasted chance

[gfxguy]

Agreed 100%... not only can questions be misleading ("Did Iraq have WMDs before the invasion?" Of course they did... maybe immediately before, but certainly 10 and 20 years before, but there's no context to the word "before"), but the analysis (which is usually what they print in the headlines) can be totally wrong...

Most people, for example, disapprove of the handling of the war, and CNN concluded that people want us to abandon Iraq. Well, I'd have said we're doing a bad job; but I also don't advocate making it worse by leaving.

Re:Wasted chance

[GrayCalx]

Oh, I think theres an answer to that. Simply that the majority of those who do watch Fox News are more likely to defend the administration whether the argument is based in truth or not.

I think a good validation of that argument would be your statistic that PBS and NPR percentages are lower because they are listened/watched by a more intelligent section of Americans and thus know that nothing was found.

I actually do think its interesting that anyone at all believes that WMDs were found. Obviously those who are uninformed and don't read the news might, I don't know, for some reason still hold on to that. But I'd think that anyone who has been paying attention to the news would realize that hey nothing has been found. Nothing on that scale at least.

Re:Wasted chance

[HiThere]

If there were people living there at the time the arson was committed, then it's an "atrocious felony", which is worse than just an ordinary felony.

Misdemeanor? To burn down the place where someone else is living? I don't want to live in your town.

Re:Wasted chance

[thc69]

Ergo, there are now x-y in the stockpile. Change x and y a bunch of times, run equipment out the back door of army bases when inspectors visit, stall, delay, lie, and prevaricate, and the simplest explanation becomes "They have (x-y) plus or (minus some uncertainty factor) weapons in their stockpile and the reason they keep lying to us is they don't want us to catch them."

"We hear that you've got weapons of mass destruction. You better not have any."
"We heard that you still have them. Don't make us come in there!"
"We're coming, and you better not have weapons of mass destruction when we get there!"
"We'll be there in 10 days, you better not have weapons of mass destruction!"
"We're here, you better not have weapons of mass destruction!"
"Hey, where'd the weapons of mass destruction go?"

Duh. Kinda like:
"This is the police. We've heard you've got drugs in there."
"We're going to come and find your drugs."
"You better not have drugs when we get there."
"Okay, we're coming on the 25th to get your drugs."
"Knock knock! We're here! You better not have drugs."
"Hey, where'd the dugs go?"

Of course if the cops repeatedly warn a drug dealer that they're coming on a specific day to raid his place, he's going to get the crack factory out of there and destroy all evidence that there ever was anything illegal going on. Why wouldn't Saddam do the same?

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

Lol! Of course it was. Saddam did nothing BUT provoke everyone else.

That does not really make him all that special...

Dunno what to tell you. Ask the Iranians. He locked them into 10 years of bloodshed for what?

Well... Strictly speaking, during those 10 years it was good that he did so. At least, one would imagine it was from all the sponsiring he got from the US.

My gosh, what people won't do to for politics.

Indeed. It really reaches the skill of an art when you see them forgetting the things they forget!

Re:Wasted chance

[xeno-cat]

I lived through it all, read as many sides of the arguments as I could find, and let me tell you, Bush lied. He and his administration lied bold faced and with full knowledge of what they were doing. I see that it pretty much breaks down as follows:

1. There are the double talking scheming lying bastards who run the current US administration, and those who support them

2. There are the voices of reason and logic

3. There are the confused masses in between

Finally, there is a rather uncomfortable addition for those in category #1, namely, the facts. The facts as the were and the facts as they are. None of them supporting anything camp 1 proclaims largely because they spend most of the time touting their "alternate interpretation of reality" theory.

This is the worst bunch of cronies to land in government in my life time. And I lived through Contra Gate and S&L. And really this is the same group as they were all tied to the two aforementioned scandals as well. These guys should be arrested, tried and exiled.

Kind Regards

Re:Wasted chance

[HiThere]

I suspect that Kerry would at least have supported our own troops, rather than sending the off to battle without weapons and defenses. And would have prevented them from being fed slop while the contractors charged for restaurant grade meals.

I wish that I could disagree with you on other fronts...but I think we were set up, and not by the Iraqis. The evidence seems to point to a plot internal to the government. (Look at how quickly the PATRIOT bill was presented and passed. Notice where the anthrax came from, and who the targets were...and contemplate that the ineptitude in it's delivery may have been intentional. That may have been a public warning. Notice that the target has since died. [Damn...my memory's spotty here. I haven't been paying attention because there wasn't anything I could do and it just depresses me. What was his name? Did he die of "natural causes" or an airplane crash?])

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

>>"when we all thought they were there"

Speak for yoursef, simpleton. There's a shitload of us who in March 2003 were sick and fscking tired of hearing about WMD. If most people bothered to pay attention to news sources that have a high degree of journalistic integrity (read: not the major cable TV sources with their special brand of "news"), then most would have been against the invasion from the outset. You were one of the brainwashed.

>>"Even CLINTON believed they were there"

Btw, what the hell does Clinton and his beliefs have to do with any of this? Who cares what Clinton thought. The reasoning used by those who invoke Clinton when it comes to justifying the invasion (or, when it comes to soothing the internal dissonance brought on by the realization that they voted for a "leader" that fscked up on an epic scale) is beyond flawed into the realm of absurd. Think about it: for what other issues/topics do the administration and its supporters bring up the tired "well Clinton believed it to be true, so that adds validity to our decision" ???

Re:Wasted chance

[AK Marc]

We did find WMDs on multiple occasions... they were pretty much all small caches of old shells filled with mustard or sarin and which were probably were no longer effective,

So, if there was fissile material in a bomb configuration that was in a missile-like object, would that be a WMD even if the priming charge was bad, the fissile material had decayed to the point where critical mass could not be achieved and the missile would have exploded on the pad if someone would have tried to launch it?

Simply saying "we found canisters marked 'sarin' which appeared to be good at one time and of unknown status now" to indicate that actual WMDs were found is not logical. Were the chemicals found still at full strength? Was there an available delivery method? Did the government have records of them and the ability to deploy them?

Of course Saddam would lie about WMDs. He thought that there would be no uprisings if people thought he had them, and he thought there'd be no invasion if people had them. So he wanted everyone to think he had them in large quantities with his finger on the button. For some reason, the same people (Fox News watchers) who claim that all politicians are liars, seem to think that Saddam should have been believed when he implied that he still had them.

And, of course, there were also incidents where the insurgent groups got ahold of some lingering chemical weapons (mustard gas, I think) and tried to make bombs out of them--luckily, that also was old and non-effective. Those were widely reported at the time.

Again, confirmed reports of non-WMDs, further confirming that anything that he had laying around was useless and that there were no functioning WMDs in Iraq at the time of the invasion.

Re:Wasted chance

[cayenne8]

"Clinton believed they were there, because at the time Saddam was refusing to let UN inspectors do their job. By the time Bush had invaded, the UN inspectors had already been in and found nothing."

Errr...no, Saddam still wasn't cooperating with the UN after Bush took over. He kept kicking them out, blocking access, etc. If Saddam had fully cooperated, and allowed the full access he was mandated to do, he'd still be alive and in power.

Re:Wasted chance

[lowflying]

Sovereign means permanent? By that definition, a successful invasion, resulting in assimilation or destruction could not have occurred against a sovereign nation.

Your assertion is bullshit, even with your redefinition. Wikipedia has an incomplete list, the most glaring absence is the 1962 Sino-Indian extravaganza during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody I know thought there were WMDs.

That's exactly what Saddam wanted you to believe, even after he hadn't accounted for his WMD's which he had previously been known to have and to kill his own people with.

Re:Wasted chance

[Marty_Krapturd]

I should have added "unprovoked."

What provocation?
Grandstanding and acting macho? Squandering resources on luxury goods? Aspiring to military might? Using Weapons of Mass Destruction on civilian populations? War Crimes?
If these are ground for invasion I think the US might want to re-think its priorities. ;)

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Am I the only one who sees the stupidity of these politics? Saddam is propped up like Bernie from weekend at Bernie's, a rotten corpse, to show how bad a guy bush is.... I honestly, and really, believe that clinton or gore or mccain or whoever would have made the same decisions. I really don't see any of these guys being better than anyone else, and that's what gets me. They are all equivalent to godfathers -- men with power deciding life and death on a whim as it suits them. A tyrant is bad no matter what, and although all of these guys could be described as much, saddam was a real case. It's like describing that really hairy man with the really big beard among the troops of a civil war army (psst, they all had beards). Saddam was heads and shoulders above the rest. Using his corpse to bash bush is stupid. No matter what, if were still here, left alone and in power, the dude WOULD have kept building and WOULD have used whatever he got his hands on -- he always did....

But, folks -- especially here -- really seem to get off on the bush bashing, so, have at it. Just remember, the next dude -- no matter what party he's from (or dudette) will be the same thing man. It's the same thing all over again.

I guess you have to 40 before you stop believing in politicians....

Re:Wasted chance

[MartinG]

What makes you think keeping order is Bush's goal? If the country is in order, it might turn against him. A chaotic country is an unthreatening one.

Re:Wasted chance

[Samus]

Sovereign usually means independent. Puerto Rico while a nation is not really a sovereign nation as it is a US territory but unlikely to become a full member of the US any time soon. Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Israel were all nations recognized by the UN during the wars of the 60's, 70's and 80's.

As for making the claim for war, its always done as justification. Politicians will always dig up some kind of reason to justify going to war even though it is usually to further their own interests.

On the point of Kuwait it could be argued that it should have been part of Iraq. When the British relinquished control of the land and formed the country of Iraq based on lines drawn on a map (thanks Churchill) they held onto Kuwait to extract some more oil. The territory was supposed to be part of Iraq and it was generally understood that it would become part of Iraq when the British left. It didn't happen. Iran and Iraq however are a different story.

Still I don't see anything that refutes the claim that Saddam is not the only leader since WW2 to invade another country. Hint look at the US examples as all of them take place in countries that we don't share a border with.

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

Idle curiosity: Do you think a smart-assed remark about how you, unlike the other guy, are too good for personal attacks is something other than a personal attack?

You're confused. I didn't mention personal attacks in my post at all. I mentioned insulting generalizations. I do believe I refrained from making an insulting generalization, which would have been in poor taste. Was that not clear from my post?

Re:Wasted chance

[cayenne8]

"Misdemeanor? To burn down the place where someone else is living? I don't want to live in your town."

You'd feel safer in AR then. When I took my CCW testing there, I learned that it was perfectly legal to shoot someone you saw in the act of committing arson. Seriously, the law is on the books there.

I never was 'lucky' enough to catch someone in the 'act'....

Re:Wasted chance

[AaronW]

Did the president pick the joint chiefs and the top-level CIA people? (serious question, I don't know off the top of my head).

He did pick the head of the CIA George Tenant. Also, Cheney and Rumsfield created their own group inside the Pentagon to go through all the evidence that was separate from the CIA. The people in that group were not experienced analysts and were not able to effectively separate the wheat from the chaff, plus they had an explicit agenda as to what they wanted the outcom to be, which may or may not have been the truth. Time has shown that it was not the truth. The CIA didn't have the best intelligence, but they were not totally off. Bush had an agenda from day one from the Project for a New American Century which many top people in the Whitehouse belonged. Also, Bush made the comment about Saddam by calling him "the guy who tried to kill my dad" which should also be telling.

Re:Wasted chance

[Xtravar]

Kerry would have flown to Iraq and fought the war himself! He is, after all, a Vietnam veteran.

That was the reason we were supposed to vote for him, right?

Re:Wasted chance

[Martin Blank]

Destruction activities of chemical weapons are overseen by the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which inspects and certifies sites at all stages, including the destruction of CW production sites. This was undertaken as a result of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), signed by President Bush in 1993 and ratified by the Senate in 1997. Prior to this, the United States and Russia agreed to inspect and certify each other's disposal work under accords worked out in 1989.

As for the lawsuits, they held up activities at Umatilla, OR; Pine Bluff, AR; Anniston, AL; and Pueblo, CO. There are a couple of other facilities either operational or under construction, and they have been delayed as well. The original plan was to start disposal of the chemical weapons stockpile beginning in the middle 1980s (the first tests were performed around 1981), but due to repeated lawsuits this was not started until Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) came online in 1990, taking a decade to finish its work, after which almost everything except the runway on Johnston Atoll was disassembled and removed, and the site turned back into a wildlife sanctuary. A few searches will find many articles about the series of lawsuits that have led to the delays, largely over concerns that the Army was not thorough enough in its protections of local civilians. In some cases, these concerns were justified, and in others they were overblown. This has caused the expected overall cost of the disposal to balloon from $1.7 billion to more than $32 billion, according to the Department of Defense and the GAO.

I was wrong on one point, though. The US was originally granted until 2007 to complete the work, but due to the ongoing lawsuits requested a five-year extension to 2012, the latest date allowed under the CWC. Recently, suggestions were made by the DoD to extend that even further, possibly to 2023. This move has been criticized by both sides of the aisle in Congress, which seems amenable to a small delay beyond 2012, but by and large wants chemical weapons completely out of the US as quickly as possible.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Lol. You forgot the Civil and Revolutionary wars. Don't forget how rotten the U.S. was in those!...

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the the families of the thousands of americans who died there is in greater need of compensation, some coupple of 100k Irakis also deserver it, not to mention the rest of the Irakis who has to live in a country without a working goverment. Atleast there is now a promise of no more torture (guess they know what they need).

Re:Wasted chance

[cayenne8]

"The Bush administration had a significant financial motivation for the invasion, so they hyped it in any way they could."

What exactly are these 'significant financial motivations'??

Re:Wasted chance

[Adambomb]

I minor detail, but the 9/11 hijackers were not shiite muslims. This is one question I wish was asked more often, despite knowing the answer, is why Saudi Arabia has been untouched by agression when the largest percentage of the hijackers were Saudi. In fact the hijackers were ALL from countries with which the oil companies...er....the US is friendly with (with Egypt being the longest stretch by that definition), primarily Saudia Arabia and the UAE.

Has anyone looked at the development of Dubai over the past 10 years? or the wealth of the royal family in Saudi Arabia? Money is flowing to someone from somewhere over there that is for sure.

Now I'm not saying that Saudi's or UAE citizens are evil by default, simply that there has been absolutely 0 backlash against these regions while the US uses 9/11 to justify everything else it has been doing everywhere else.

Wheres the puzzled slightly-tilted looks of hwhaaa?

Re:Wasted chance

[AaronW]

He may have, but he was more afraid of Iran than the US. If Iran wasn't sure if there were WMDs or not that would be an incentive for them not to attack Iraq. Iraq was weak and Saddam knew it.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Good points on "sovereign" and I will relinquish the argument. I'll admit, it was the weakest of everything I originally said.

I was very impressed with your response until the final part. The U.S. is indeed an empire, a global bully, but as far as empires go, it's the best one so far. It has this bad knack for conquering aggressive nations, rebuilding them, turning them back over to the population, and then allowing it to compete, even dominate, in the world economy. That's hardly a comparison to what the likes of Saddam tried to do. Does anyone doubt that he conquered Iran (10 year war) or been left alone with Kuwait that he would have done nothing less than raped, pillaged and devoured?

As of yet, I don't think the U.S. is claiming to have historical plots in the parts of the world wherein it has troops, nor has it long left them there without good reason (Korea).

Or, as my philosophy professor used to always ask, have you ever considered that you could be wrong?

Re:Wasted chance

[brianary]

What problem?

Re:Wasted chance

[gad_zuki!]

Rotting shells from the iraq-iran conflict is not at all why Bush claimed to go to war. playing them up to be "WMDs found in Iraq" is willful ignorance. Removing the context from the claim is as good as lying. Again.

This is like the local police saying 'We're going to raid every home in your town because of illegal arms.' They end up finding a broken revolver pistol from the 50s buried in a garbage pile. Claiming 'SEE THEY FOUND GUNS' is being a complete idiot.

Re:Wasted chance

[cayenne8]

"He had wanted a reason to invade for a long time..."

Okayyyy.....and what exactly was this reason for 'wanting' to invade?

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

Why wouldn't Saddam do the same?

Because he has no self-interest in getting deposed.

Re:Wasted chance

[will.perdikakis]

But... all those innocent beavers. :(

Re:Wasted chance

[ConceptJunkie]

No, that would be "000".

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

You know, it just really cracks me up. I mean, you have a guy who went as far as tricking this scientist into building his reeeeeally big gun (The Babylon Gun) in Iraq on the pretense that he would finally get to try and launch satellites into space using artillery, and Saddam was like, "would you mind pointing it a bit more east of here [to hit Israel]." Just think about that, he was using anything ... ANYTHING, he could -- even a huge useless gun that would have been destroyed in the first air assault -- anything he could get his hands on, and then all you bozos sit back and talk about what a decent fella he was just so Bush can look bad. Lol!

Re:Wasted chance

[Adambomb]

WMD-bearing Canucks swarming across the US bringing mandatory ice hockey and poutine. And we've trained our army with subliminal clockwork-orange-esk musical triggers in the form of arena organs!

Nahh, no worry there. The US has already ruined the NHL, and even canada outside quebec cant make a proper poutine, let alone trying to explain to americans what "squeaky cheese" curds are supposed to be like.

And no, its NOT the same as those damned bricks of curd foam sponge crap you get from time to time =).

Re:Wasted chance

[drinkypoo]

A few searches will find many articles about the series of lawsuits that have led to the delays, largely over concerns that the Army was not thorough enough in its protections of local civilians. In some cases, these concerns were justified, and in others they were overblown.

At the heart of my assertion is a belief that if they didn't blow it so often - which is to say, if they were worthy of trust - then there would be less "overblown" concerns to deal with.

Also, what does overblown mean in this case? Are you using it to mean "unfounded" or "worthy of concern but not so much of it?" (Or both?) Because if it's the latter, there's lots of room for subjectivity.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

The specific charge Bush used to get our panties in a wad was nuclear weapons.

Sorry to do this, but you're wrong. I distinctly remember Powell holding a vial of something when speaking to the UN, and I don't think it was radioactive....

Re:Wasted chance

[GundamFan]

Accusing someone of having a simple child like mind is a personal attack, it changes nothing that you immediately denounced that practice (which in it self was a personal attack the way you phrased it).

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yeah, Saddam wasn't going to look stupid when the inspectors came to look for his WMD's. He'd make sure they're not found. What would you do if some authorities said they suspected a large amount of marijuana was in your home(which actually was) and that they will inspect it in 6 months? You'd make sure no marijuana would be found, of course, if only to save your own hide. It's pretty clear this was how Saddam's thinking, and even made Bush look worse in the process. So the question should be: What did Saddam do with his WMD's?

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

Am I the only one who sees the stupidity of these politics? Saddam is propped up like Bernie from weekend at Bernie's, a rotten corpse, to show how bad a guy bush is.... I honestly, and really, believe that clinton or gore or mccain or whoever would have made the same decisions. I really don't see any of these guys being better than anyone else, and that's what gets me. They are all equivalent to godfathers -- men with power deciding life and death on a whim as it suits them.

I do not think that all would have taken the same decisions. Not at all. Pretending there are no real differences is probably the biggest mistake one can make in judging political events.

A tyrant is bad no matter what, and although all of these guys could be described as much, saddam was a real case. It's like describing that really hairy man with the really big beard among the troops of a civil war army (psst, they all had beards). Saddam was heads and shoulders above the rest.

The problem is, that he was a tyrant (which he was, of course) was of no real consequence in the events that occurred. There are many other tyrants and there have been many more (I lived in a country under an US-sponsored set of tyrants---less `colorful' but not a bit less deadly than Saddam---for example, and we are still trying to get the catastrophic and dramatic outcome of it all out of our minds). It is absurd not only in view of what eventually actually occurred but it was also absurd at the time these events were in the making, to pretend that the motivations were not very much others than removing a tyrant.

Even if one wants to argue that at least there is one less tyrant around, one can to take into account the complete picture. In terms of global security, the well-being of iraqi people, the stability of the middle east... I'd say, in terms of any minimally reason criterion, the situation is much worse that before.

Using his corpse to bash bush is stupid. No matter what, if were still here, left alone and in power, the dude WOULD have kept building and WOULD have used whatever he got his hands on -- he always did....
But, folks -- especially here -- really seem to get off on the bush bashing, so, have at it. Just remember, the next dude -- no matter what party he's from (or dudette) will be the same thing man. It's the same thing all over again.

I could not be less interested in bashing Bush. He is, and has been for quite a while now, nothing more than a historical circumstance. The thing I have a problem with is the way events have come to pass, the way people have reacted to them, and the absolute certainty that this same stupid plot can and, probably, will happen again.

Pierre Bourdieu, a sociologist, wrote somewhere that there is nothing more subversive than understanding how things came to be and to happen, because being aware of that carries the knowledge that things might have been different.

Bashing Bush is stupid, because he is already history. Understanding how he came to be and do what he did (at least, what he was the visible head of) is quite important.

I guess you have to 40 before you stop believing in politicians....

Not really. Not at all.

Re:Wasted chance

[Dragonslicer]

Suggesting that the war must have been solely motivated by greed is a circumstantial ad hom. Of course it is. It's not like there have ever been any wars in human history that were started by some greedy bastard that wanted land/animals/wives.

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

Hmm. You are judging the events with the perspective that `he was doing stuff so that Busg can look bad', when actual people, lots and lots of them! (and not only US soldiers...) have been killed as a consequence of what happened. I would imagine Bush could withstand some badmouthing, specially if it came from someone with such a low standing in everyone's view as Saddam, don't you think?

Re:Wasted chance

[enjerth]

So umm, when did Bush|Cheney|Snow|Whomever try to tell us that establishing a democracy in Iraq was the reason when invaded, and not just name it as a primary goal?

Re:Wasted chance

[elBart0]

"The Bush administration had a significant financial motivation for the invasion, so they hyped it in any way they could."

What exactly are these 'significant financial motivations'??

Perhaps you need to look into the Carlyle Group, what they own, who the investors are and who runs the company.

Re:Wasted chance

[Samus]

Don't worry I'm no Saddam sympathizer. I just don't think that we can use the justification that since he was a bad guy the war was justified. There are so many more bad guys out there that we'll never get them all. How do we choose which ones go down and which ones can stay around? Oil or other natural resources? You're absolutely correct that we helped build up Japan and S. Korea and western Europe for that matter. However we tend to do that kind of thing when it suits are whim. Why else would we send the CIA to countries to incite revolutions and coupes in freely elected governments that we don't like (notably Chile). Why else would we have propped up bad governments like Saudi Arabia? We do good things and bad things. In many cases I wish we would just keep our noses in our own business and only stick it out when there are times that we can't stand idly by like with Dar-Fur (spelling I know). I love my country and know it has done good things, but I wish it was a better citizen in the world and had far less black marks.

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

>>The specific charge Bush used to get our panties in a wad was nuclear weapons.

>Sorry to do this, but you're wrong. I distinctly remember Powell holding a vial of something when
>speaking to the UN, and I don't think it was radioactive....

There were other lies told then as well. See below:

Fresh evidence emerged last night that Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was so disturbed about questionable American intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he assembled a secret team to review the information he was given before he made a crucial speech to the UN security council on February 5.

Mr Powell's team removed dozens of pages of alleged evidence about Iraq's banned weapons and ties to terrorists from a draft of his speech, US News and World Report says today. At one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to intelligence claims that he declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit," according to the magazine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,968581 ,00.html

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

I think bush, clinton, gore and donal trump all deserve badmouthing, but of them all, saddam deserves the most. Again, Jimmy the bull and John Goddi. Look it up....

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

First, don't lump chemical and biological with nuclear. Yes, I know analysts do it but I think it unfairly magnifies the threat level of the BC in NBC.
Just for fun google 1919 flu pandemic, or think back to the halycon days of Avian Flu 0wns j00!!!! Before thinking that biological weapons are overrated in terms of lethality or terror. Show me someone with credible weaponized stocks and I'll be fearful. I know the ruskies had some fearsome stuff back in the day, the kind where a leak in the filtration system at the factory killed people in a town miles away. But I'm talking about people out there today and what they have to use. As far as we've heard, no terrorist actor has a nuke yet even though many nations have powerful and effective weapons.

The whole WMD thing was just used as a pretense for jerking us around and getting involved in the neocon's own private little war.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

I wish we would just keep our noses in our own business

Now you're back to pre-ww2/post-ww1 isolationism. The isolationists before ww2 had very good points that were tough to argue with. Still, we had to get involved. WW2 isn't a good comparison though because germany made for a really clear-cut bad guy. Things have been fuzzy ever since.

I went to lunch with a fella not from this country a bit back (yes, I'm an American too). He was taking the line of how rotten we were for being over there, always over somewhere, always sticking our nose where it doesn't belong. I explained we're darned if we do and darned if we don't. We keep getting drug all over. When we do nothing we're hated for doing nothing. When we do something we're hated for doing something. We can't win.

He wanted to know if I agreed with the Iraq war and I was like, "that's what empires do. They always are at war. That's what the Romans did and the French and the Russians and name it. Why is it just now wrong?" And he was like, "how can you justify current policy based on ancient barbarism" and I was like, "I'm not justifying anything. Empires are always at war because they are always being attacked or feeling attacked or needing to bolster an ally or whatever. It's what they do. That's like asking me why I'm ok with that bee stinging you. It's what it does." We went back and forth and he was amazed at my attitude. But my attitude is just that. I'm neither for nor against. I just accept it, but I realize that the U.S. is still the best meat eater amongst all the meat eaters in history and that my fate is tied to it.

Re:Wasted chance

[Guuge]

For the second time, I did not mention personal attacks in my post - not even once. Read it again. I did not denounce personal attacks. I did not praise them. I did not say that they are good with ice cream. I said absolutely nothing at all with regard to personal attacks. I did not mention them in a box. I did not mention them with a fox. There is not a shred of insinuation of making the slightest reference to personal attacks in that post. The post may have contained a personal attack, but the fact of it was not related in any way to the subject matter of said post.

You people are very silly!

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

Well put, well put.

Re:Wasted chance

[cheezedawg]

No, you colossal boob, not everyone thought there were WMD's.

Okay- name one country that didn't agree that Saddam was in violation of Resolution 687. You are probably right that not "everybody" believed it, but you will find that the list of countries that did not is pretty short.

First, don't lump chemical and biological with nuclear. Yes, I know analysts do it but I think it unfairly magnifies the threat level of the BC in NBC.

You think its unfair? Saddam wasn't allowed to have any of these weapons, and it was the UN that decided that. It was decided by unanimous UN Security Council mandate with an explicit authorization to use force to get Saddam to disarm, and that was reconfirmed over a dozen times in the following 12 years.

The specific charge Bush used to get our panties in a wad was nuclear weapons.

President Bush's case for war against Iraq was that they posed a threat to our national security. Their blatent (and 100% confirmed) violation of their cease-fire disarmament mandate was a big part of that, along with their longstanding support of international terrorism and their repeated attempts to use terrorism against the United States.

Yellow cake uranium, lie.

This is another myth perpetuated by the Bush-hating anti-war crowd. The Bush Administration claimed that Iraq had been sending out feelers for for uranium deals in Africa. This was based mostly on information shared from British intelligence (that they still stand by, btw), and strengthened when Joe Wilson went to Niger where they confirmed that Iraqi representatives had been there to form a "business relationship", which Niger understood to be about uranium sales. This is also 100% uninteresting to the debate about the war because these uranium deals were insignificant to the CIA's key assessment about Iraq's nuclear capability (because Iraq already had over 500 tons of yellowcake that we knew about).

Aluminum tubes, lie.

How was this a lie? Iraq did in fact purchase restricted-use aluminum tubes without declaring them to UNMOVIC, which itself is a gross violation of their cease-fire mandate, and many intelligence agencies thought they were heading for uranium enrichment. Where's the "lie"?

The CIA was giving Bush solid intel but he and his team refused to accept it. Cheney and his cronies cherry-picked raw intel for the most sensationalistic shit they could find, regardless of whether it was true or not.

There is no evidence outside of the wet dreams of the rabid Bush-haters that this is based on any truth. On the contrary, there have been a few official reviews that concluded the exact opposite- that the Bush Administration did NOT manipulate pre-war intelligence.

When you say "most people assumed Saddam had WMD" you really mean "Most people assumed he had some leftover chemical or biological shit", not that he had nukes ready to strike the west in 45 minutes. The consensus before 9-11, a consensus backed by Powell, was that the US policy of Iraqi containment was working.

Wow. Did you read any of the ISG report on Iraq's WMD programs? Hell- did you even read the key findings? After the invasion, the ISG found over a dozen hidden, active, and illegal weapons programs in Iraq that the UN had no idea existed. Yes, they didn't find the decades-old decaying WMD stockpiles that they thought would be there. Instead they found hidden and illegal infrastructure, procurement systems, and research in place to build brand new weapons. If you take a deep breath, you might realize that this is actually worse! Containment? I think not.

I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.

Indeed.

Re:Wasted chance

[nephridium]

I don't understand how many war critics can't stop mentioning the fact that not finding WMDs would take away all the "legitimacy" of the invasion. The reason Iraq was invaded was definitely NOT that they had WMDs and much less that they threatened the US with using it; that was just a turkey and everyone with a few brain cells knows it.

The reason why it was used and repeated over and over while the troops were assembling in the Gulf was that it was actually a rather safe bet (since it was the US itself that provided him with those!) and that you could scare uninformed folks to death by exaggerating what the evil guy from half way around the globe could to to them.

The invasion was wrong not because Saddam had no WMDs, but (among so many other reasons) because the hawks in Washington used their power and the gullibility of the people (the same people that actually empower them by paying taxes, building stuff, working, inventing... - those same people that actually carry the US forward) to bring war to a country that did not deserve it. Their motive was to intimidate by displaying military strength, to establish control on an oil rich region and ultimately to fill their own bank accounts (if you don't believe this I suggest you read up on privately funded mercenaries "working" in Iraq, e.g. Blackwater and about the huge profits companies like Halliburton are making through Iraq in a war funded by tax dollars while no end or even an improvement of the situation is in sight (intentionally?); there's also a documentary about this).

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

The Marine Expeditionary Force force organization concept is also the balz. They were back doing 'joint' when it wasn't a word. Joint by design and all that shit.

I wonder if it has to do with envy... even the USAF copied the concept of the MEF, with the Air Force version being the Air Expeditionary Force which is a worldwide deployable force used to conduct operations in the full spectrum of conflict.

Re:Wasted chance

[ookabooka]

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. Happen to have any links to documents that support your assertions? No offense but I find it difficult to take your word for it after reading many arguments. People can argue all day long and say whatever they want and it doesn't necessarily have to be true. I'd much rather see memos, testimony, reports, etc.

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

>>I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and
>>then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.

>Me too. I just wish we were a majority. If elections are evidence, then the evidence suggests that
>populations in all democratic countries LOVE lying liars.

Or it could just be proof that if you own the voting machines, it doesn't matter how the people vote.

Re:Wasted chance

[Maltheus]

Sadaam never kicked the inspectors out, he simply stop cooperating after it became clear that we were using the inspection program to send in CIA agents. Not to mention all the continual bombings and Albright saying flat out that we would not lift the sanctions as long as Hussein was in power, regardless if he had cooperated. Now say what you want about Sadaam (I agree he was evil), but all countries would do the same in his situation. The inspectors had been in a long time and most had believed Iraq was reasonably cooperating. They found nothing. I believed it too since why wouldn't they cooperate at least as long as was necessary to get us to leave? And guess what? We were right (contrary to how often the press tells me we all believed). I wouldn't have been surprised if they found something ancient that the Iraqis forgot about, but perfect compliance is logistically impossible and I accepted that they were trying. However, it was very much in the interest of some that Iraq been seen as not cooperating. Those same people were the ones who gave us fairy tales about yellow cake.

Re:Wasted chance

[jafac]

The President famously didn't want to follow through on Richard Clarke's anti-terrorism efforts because he was tired of "swatting at flies".

well to continue on with that analogy (beating that dead horse) -

. the horse was tired of swatting at flies, so it kicked down the barn, trampled its owner, who previously fed and took care of it, and then the horse, still penned in, starved to death.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Saddam Hussein backed an attempt on the life of W's dad after George Bush became an ex-pres. W had also tried to convince his dad to takeover Baghdad in Gulf War I, but daddy said no so there probably was, for a lifelong screw-up, a need to show his father he could succeed where daddy couldn't. Plus Cheney wanted it so his executive buddies at Halliburton could make a mint on a no-bid contract.

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

Honestly; how many of said bonghits would it take, exactly, to conclude that President George W. Bush is omnipotent? Depends on the weight of the bong and how hard they hit you with it.

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

Utter bull shit.
Clinton(both) and were calling for action and so was John Kerry.
Now go improve the jene poll by stepping in frount of a bus. *giggle*

Re:Wasted chance

[ebvwfbw]

Yellow cake uranium, lie.

You should have said true. Look here - http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/nuclear/nuclear-mater ial-found-in-iraqi-homes-and-schools . Or simply type in "Iraq yellow cake greenpeace india" into google and read it. The AL tubes was also true, however that one is up for debate unfortunately. I wouldn't call it a lie, however. If you were the guy looking at the evidence you would have believed they were what he said too. Unless you think you are that much better than all the Congressmen that looked at it too. Some of them know what they are looking at. Also keep in mind the CIA - George Tenent was appointed by Bill Clinton. So unless you want us all to believe that somehow Bush got Clinton to go along with this, admit it is BS. The lying liars are on the left that couldn't stand Bush to begin with. Again, hard to dismiss the photographs Greenpeace has of the yellow cake, in Iraq, in Baghdad. Unless you want us to believe that Greenpeace is a friend of Bush. Only a fool would say the yellow cake stuff is lie after looking at what is out there documenting it. Only the ignorant keep repeating it without checking it out.

Where is the "news"? How come they didn't report this "nuclear disaster"? They don't report anything that would help Bush unless they have no choice. Same thing happened in nowheresville USA, I bet most men, women and children in the world would know about it. People still know about TMI even though more radiation is put into the atmosphere every day by coal burning plants. Turns out coal veins are often right next to radioactive deposits.

So now if you have been reading other responses, you also know WMDs were found in Iraq, over 500 of them. Now you know Yellowcake was also found and by Greenpeace. You should also know by now that we did put Saddam before a court, he was convicted and hung in less than 5 years. We also found buried jets, schools with munitions to the ceiling and on and on and on.

Don't flame/mod me down. Let the truth set you free. Look at the pictures. Read the articles. Even if some of them claim yellowcake can't be used for nuclear weapons. I think everyone knows it can be. It was there and we have proof that isn't even disputed.

Re:Wasted chance

[Darby]

Iraq was big stupid mess from day one, no doubt about that. But let's not try to paint the whole administration as malicious warmongering tyrants when in all reality they're just inept shoot-from-the-hip bureaucrats.

How about we actually pay attention instead of your course of ignore all the facts to try and excuse the administration for their premeditated malicious actions?

Go read the 2000 paper by the Project For a New American Century titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" signed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, George Bush Senior and many other members of Bush's original administration and hangers on. Pay attention to the parts where they talk about their plan to invade Iraq to "ensure future US economic world domination in the coming century", their understanding that the American people wouldn't buy their bullshit, so they would need to hope for an attack on the US on the level of Pearl Harbor which they could then misuse as an excuse to invade Iraq.

How about you stop talking about the subject when you obviously don't know a damn thing about it since you couldn't even be bothered to read the position papers published by the very people you're attempting to defend.
Think about how stupid that makes you to do something so completely ridiculous.

In short, since their own published plans paint them as exactly malicious warmongering tyrants how about you stop making up complete nonsense in order to defend them from their own fucking words which you never even read?

That would actually be the sane, reasonable position which is pretty much diametrically opposed to your own.

Re:Wasted chance

[Maltheus]

I don't understand how many war critics can't stop mentioning the fact that not finding WMDs would take away all the "legitimacy" of the invasion.

Because that was our only legal basis for the war and it goes back to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. That invasion gave us a legal basis to invade in 1991 and the terms of the surrender called for the elimination of WMD. This was a minor provision at the time, but it was enough for us to use as an excuse to go in this time. This is all very important for people to consider because we won't have this excuse if we invade Iran. A violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is not a valid basis for war. There will have to be a 'pretext' for Iran, let's hope they don't find one.

Re:Wasted chance

[Maltheus]

Given the gas was well past the expiration date and there was only a miniscule quantity, I think you can hardly categorize that as an actual weapon of mass destruction. Their conventional weapons were likely capable of far greater destruction. I think you know those crumbs were likely an oversight on Sadaam's part, these things happen in any massive effort. Same goes for the reactor parts. There's truth and then there's lawyer speak. A WMD must be capable of mass destruction by definition.

Re:Wasted chance

[HAKdragon]

Don't you remember all those statements by the administration claiming they had proof they couldn't show us, and then coming out with a few lame fuzzy satellite photos of trailers and shit?

To quote Lewis Black:

Colon Powell is at the UN and he's got PICTURES! This could be a weapon of mass destruction, or...an ice cream truck. WE DON'T KNOW! WE DON'T KNOW!!

Re:Wasted chance

[workindev]

Show me someone with credible weaponized stocks and I'll be fearful.

The point is to prevent people from getting credible weaponized stocks, not wait around until they have them before deciding to do something about it.

Thankfully, because we took action in 2003, we can now rule Iraq out as a possible source for weaponized BW.

Re:Wasted chance

[localman]

I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there.

We did not all think they were there. Where did you get that idea? UN inspectors told us they were not there. There were a large number of people in the US (not a majority) who did not think there were WMD in Iraq. I didn't think there were any WMD after the UN report. Same goes for a lot of people I talked with at the time. Just because you and the people you were listening to at the time thought there were WMDs doesn't mean everyone did.

Your leaders were wrong and so were you. It's okay, I can forgive you. All you have to do is admit that this is probably the most fucked up thing America has done since Vietnam and that next time you'll listen a little more carefully to the dissenting voices, like the UN, the majority of the rest of the world, and maybe me and my friends... those people who did not believe there were WMD in Iraq.

Cheers.

Re:Wasted chance

[Darby]

The plan to establish a democratic government in Iraq was a part of the plan from the start. And now it's just what they have left to do.

Bullshit. As far as we know there is *still* no such plan.
Maybe you don't actually understand what a plan is. They'll love us and greet us as liberators is not a plan it's a fucking delusion. Now, try to keep those things straight in future ok?

Thanks.

Re:Wasted chance

[PFI_Optix]

Lay off the youtube videos. We've all heard Loose Change's arguments before.

And if you think I'm defending the administration by calling them a bunch of inept bureaucrats and yes men, I'd hate to know what it takes for you to consider something criticism.

Re:Wasted chance

[AshtangiMan]

Personal attacks are not good with ice cream. Why would you say they are?

Re:Wasted chance

[workindev]

No, the UN inspectors had already been in and had found that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance - not even today - of the disarmament, which was demanded of it", and they issued this 175-page Unresolved Disarmament Issues Report in March 2003.

Re:Wasted chance

[localman]

Iraq did 9/11? Who cares.

I do. And you should to, regardless how you feel about the outcome. It's not good that our country makes erroneous decisions based on lies and misrepresentation. That's just a painfully stupid way to run things, even if you like what happened in this case.

Saddam gone is good for the world dudes.

I shed no tear for Saddam, but what a glorious and wonderful world we've been able to realize in Iraq without him. Thank God, eh?

Re:Wasted chance

[Just Some Guy]

Simply saying "we found canisters marked 'sarin' which appeared to be good at one time and of unknown status now" to indicate that actual WMDs were found is not logical.

But the important part is that it is possible to answer the question, "did we find WMDs in Iraq?", in the affirmative without being an ignorant slob. I'm aware of the subtleties on either decide of the question and understand the reasoning behind saying that we did not. On the other hand, after hearing both arguments, my opinion is that the answer more closely falls to "yes" than "no".

If I were forced to give a strictly boolean answer as the poll respondents were, I would say that we found WMDs in Iraq. If asked for further explanation, I'd happily explain about quantities and qualities of what we found and why I came to my decision, but the poll didn't ask for that.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

"War's hell." -Sherman

Re:Wasted chance

[volpe]

I think Gore would have found a completely different way to bungle things after 9/11

With Gore, 9/11 wouldn't have happened, because Gore would have read his Presidential Daily Briefings, and wouldn't have ignored Richard Clark for 9 months while he was jumping up and down about Al Qaeda.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely not! One of the best tools we have to stopping proliferation is saying the USA will use its arsenal as a deterrent force so those countries will not need their own. That is why most European countries do not have their own nuclear weapons program, because during the Cold War we used our arsenal to extend the MAD principle to protect them. That's nonsense. The USA will not be able to stop proliferation among hostile countries by offering them a nuclear umbrella. Do you honestly think the Iranians would trust the USA to provide them with a nuclear deterrence?

Your argument may hold for stopping proliferation among allied countries, but why should the USA care if allied countries develop nuclear weapons? They're called allies for a reason. To have any semblance of credibility when asking hostile nations to disarm, the USA will have to dismantle its own nuclear arsenal. Anything else is hypocritical, on the most basic level.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

If a weapon is no longer capable of causing mass destruction, wouldn't it be disingenuous to call it a WMD?

Re:Wasted chance

[Marty_Krapturd]

You forgot the Civil and Revolutionary wars.

No, just didn't think they required mention in the framework of the disucssion. "lol" What's your point?
I also didn't mention World War I, Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, Gulf War I, The Spanish American War, the Cold War, CIA interventions in Central and South America, the War of 1812, the wholesale slaughter of the pre-Colombian peoples, the MkUltra program, etc.
My original point is the usage of the term "unprovoked.". There was not provocation on the part of Iraq in reference to the U.S. If provocation is required for one country to attack and occupy another then the U.S. is WAY out of bounds in this whole affair.
If possession and willingness to use WMDs is required for one country to attack and occupy another, then the U.S. is a HUGE hypocrite on the global scene, considering we are the only country, in history, to "go nuclear." And we did so not on a standing army, but on a civilian population. TWICE!
What is the meter stick that makes full-scale attack and invasion "OK"?
Genocide? If that's the case then where the hell was the rest of the world when Yugoslavia was falling apart? Or Darfur? Or the Congo? Or? Or? Or?(Too little too late now.)
Lack of Democracy? If that's the case then why the hell are we friendly with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?
Racial Inequality? BWAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!!!!!!!!!
Just admit it. Some people in this world get a hard-on for war. And many of those people are in positions of power and in positions to make a handsome profit from war. The bullshit excuses just give me a headache.
"No, I'm not addicted to herion, I just need it to sleep."
"No, I'm not addicted to bombing the shit out of (fill in populace here), it's just in the National Interest."

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, George Tenent was appointed by Clinton in 1997.

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

Just admit it. Some people in this world get a hard-on for war

You nailed it.

Go read The Prince and watch 300 then get back to me.

Dude, you so totally admitted to heroin addiction....

Re:Wasted chance

[xeno-cat]

Actually, you are the one that needs to provide proof. There never was any proof that weapons existed. There was proof that they did not exist (see the UN report). Bush was the one making extraordinary claims (check his record). He is the one who needs to provide the proof. Or at least he should have been forced to. Where were you when Bush was making his extraordinary claims? Front and center asking for a link?

The proof is obvious and not hard to find (search Google, read reports from the day, reports from now, etc.). basically, go do your own research. Or is it simply not important enough to you to spend a little time each week checking the facts behind the assertions?

Kind Regards

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that, in your opinion, we technically found WMD's in Iraq, even though they were of no use to anyone except an executive branch trying to defend its useless invasion and a troll on slashdot attempting to defend Fox News.

Re:Wasted chance

[mhall119]

That's nonsense. The USA will not be able to stop proliferation among hostile countries by offering them a nuclear umbrella. Do you honestly think the Iranians would trust the USA to provide them with a nuclear deterrence? No, but it probably has stopped the Saudis from developing a nuclear weapons program to protect them from Iraq and Iran.

Your argument may hold for stopping proliferation among allied countries, but why should the USA care if allied countries develop nuclear weapons? They're called allies for a reason. To have any semblance of credibility when asking hostile nations to disarm, the USA will have to dismantle its own nuclear arsenal. Anything else is hypocritical, on the most basic level. Well of course it will only work on our allies, but when our allies in a region aren't developing nuclear weapons, that reduces their regional enemies' urgency to develop nuclear weapons. It doesn't stop proliferation, but it reduces the desire, and therefore makes it harder to justify the cost of proliferation, to our allies and adversaries alike. The only other way to prevent our adversaries from developing nuclear weapons is by force, which I gather you would be against.

Re:Wasted chance

[Marty_Krapturd]

I know, I just wish I knew how to stop. Wonder Woman, Huntress, female cops and firefighters...you name it. My bread and butter.

Re:Wasted chance

[hachete]

that MI5 sexed-up report - what a doohickey that was. One dead weapons inspector (suicide) and a disgraced BBC dg later, and we're still none the wiser if the report was either good at source or good at source then worked over by Nr 10's spinmeister.

Don't take it as read that info from either MI5 or Mossad (who have their own axes to grind) is solid. Taken in the round, everything seems to be a pile of poo, with all leads pointing to a whitehouse stitch-up with some help from their friends.

Re:Wasted chance

[Washizu]

"The sad thing is, I really don't believe we'd have been much better with either of our presidential alternatives: I think Gore would have found a completely different way to bungle things after 9/11 and make someone miserable (probably us) and Kerry would probably have really fouled up the occupation...yes, even more than Bush."

You can't go to war with the President you'd like to have, only the one you've got.

In all seriousness, I know this is just an opinion but what could you possibly base this on?

Re:Wasted chance

[Himring]

That would be with an "e" -- heroine....

FYI

Re:Wasted chance

[Kayamon]

> come across the odd Artillery shell filled with mustard

That certainly is an odd shell.

Re:Wasted chance

[mosb1000]

"You HAVE to sustain it or it DIES"

Obviously you have never heard of spores.

Re:Wasted chance

[Marty_Krapturd]

Did you know that silent e can turn a cap into a cape?
It's spooky.

Re:Wasted chance

[Fallingcow]

Thank god someone said this so I didn't have to.

If you didn't realize that Bush was lying (not merely incorrect, but lying) before the war, you were either grossly ignorant and negligent of your duty as a citizen, or just goddamn stupid. Own up to one of the two, because it was blatantly obvious that the dude was full of shit. FFS, the Powell presentation, to which questioning journalists were directed for the ultimate "slam dunk" of evidence in the weeks before it occurred ("I can't answer that question now; Powell will cover that to your satisfaction at the upcoming conference blah blah blah") was, in context, one of the funniest things I've ever watched. Comedy gold.

I was drooling and soiling diapers during Contra, so this ridiculous debacle has served as my first "wake-up call". If the people rule in a democracy, and this is representative of the level of responsibility we can expect the people to take in performing their duty of running the country, then the American people are wholly unfit to lead.

Prior to this, I had a fairly humanistic and optimistic view of the world and of modern government and society. I assumed that any new person I might meet was aware of his or her surroundings and generally capable, and only changed that opinion if a given individual failed to live up to those assumptions.

These days I just hope that the handful of people who are actually paying attention--not even necessarily unusually intelligent, just paying attention--can keep things together long enough to save the retarded and/or uninterested population which comprises the bulk of humanity from destroying itself. I now assume that anyone I meet is far less aware of the world in general than I am, not to mention far less intelligent in a practical sense (this speaks not of capacity for knowledge or reason, but of actual application and leverage of that capacity; I still believe that most people are quite able to be far "smarter" than they are, though I may one day find that to be another happy fiction of mine) and only change that opinion in the (very, very rare) cases when a person proves themselves to be otherwise. All-in-all, this model has served me better than my previously-held one, but it is far less comforting and makes me feel very isolated.

I guess what I'm really saying is:
Thank you, America, for showing me how wrong I was.

(can you tell I'm kind of bitter?)

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a look at the Carlyle Group if you are missing a piece of your puzzle. They don't call it the Ex-Presidents' Club for nothing.

Look at how Blackwater was the first set of boots on the ground after Hurricane Katrina; they were protecting oil interests.

Anyone know if Bush still is buying up ranch property outside the US? Last I heard, he had a big spread in South America somewhere

Re:Wasted chance

[hachete]

Saudi Arabians killed 3000 Americans.

If these Americans were my countrymen, I wouldn't give a good god-damn about the Saudis either. Apparently, Bush does, as he withdrew US troops from Saudi Arabia. Bin Ladin 1, Americans 0. That's right, Bush fulfilled one of Bin Ladin's objectives by pulling out of Saudi Arabia.

Under his watch, Bush stopped the searches for Bin Ladin. I watched and listened as sock-puppet republican commentators on Fox say this doesn't matter. This makes me sad, and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. If I was an American, I'd want to hunt down and kill the Saudi Arabian Bin Ladin, and wouldn't stop until I completed the job.

Saudi Arabians killed 3000 Americans.

Re:Wasted chance

[plague3106]

I don't think it would have changed, but leaving Saddam in would likely have continued to annoy the countries there, as he was pretty secular.

Re:Wasted chance

[mr_mischief]

A chaotic country may be militarily unthreatening.

One that's in constant turmoil, has ineffective police, is largely under the control of people wanting to kill US citizens on US soil, and gives those people the chance to hoard weapons and money by terrorizing the populace without a visible command and control structure the US can destroy is more dangerous to the US than Saddam ever was.

Re:Wasted chance

[overunderunderdone]

33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion.

To be fair those 33% of Fox viewers were technically correct, while the larger majority would be technically incorrect.. Real, live, physical WMD's had in fact been found in Iraq amounting to a few hundred artillery shells containing Sarin and Mustard gas. The caveat being that these were left-overs in various stages of degradation from Saddams pre-Kuwiat invasion WMD program that was dismantled and not from an ongoing WMD program.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

First, don't lump chemical and biological with nuclear. Yes, I know analysts do it but I think it unfairly magnifies the threat level of the BC in NBC.

Right, because a weapon only needs to be a giant explosion in order to kill tens to hundreds of thousands of people, or maybe a nerve gas agent dispersing over a large city by way of a ballistic missile? Any of the NBC's are capable of killing entire cities.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

A typographical error occurs when you hit the wrong keys by accident. What you did was not a typo, it was simply stupidity. Didn't they teach you how to properly use an apostrophe in grade school? I bet you still mix up "they're" with "their", and "to" with "too".

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, why didn't you look around for the bug that makes them misreport the news so horribly that a majority of FOX News viewers still believes Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and Saddam had WMDs when the US invaded?

God, you are an arrogant fuck. It's the condescending "I'm so much smarter than redneck Fox viewers" attitude that makes you such an ass. Maybe with your great intellect you'd care to comment on your boy John Kerry's recent comment that there was no bloodbath after the US left Vietnam. Or is that just more Fox propaganda?

Re:Wasted chance

[sumdumass]

Un report? Have you even read them? Or are you just repeating what someone who supported your position has said?

At best, the UN reports say they havn't found anything and it isn't likely they would with the amount of cooperation Iraq was giving them. It doesn't say they don't have any. As a matter of fact, if Iraq didn't have any WMDs and the UN along with the inspectors believed this, then why are they still over there now making claims that some chemicals got loose and are probable the source of the recent chemical attacks by terrorist around the world? Read the may 29th of 2007 report.

Common, your talking to people who have the internet and know the reports are on the internet. Don't make them out to be something they aren't. Anyone with some spare time can read then and tell your making shit up. Of course anyone paying attention to the event before going into Iraq would know that the inspection reports were cited regularly in the build up just before going in. Your either twisting something, have been lied to and never checked for yourself or just lying to make your point. Either way, it is wrong.

Re:Wasted chance

[AK Marc]

But the important part is that it is possible to answer the question, "did we find WMDs in Iraq?", in the affirmative without being an ignorant slob.

Only if you think that a canister labeled "sarin" that once contained a WMD but no longer does to be a WMD. We did find evidence that he had them. We found evidence that he stored them. We did find "evidence" all over the place. My understanding is that there was not one functional WMD found in the entire country. If that is an incorrect understanding, please let me know what was found where that was an assembled and operational WMD. Otherwise, I'll continue to think that anyone that states or implies that we found Saddam's WMDs is an ignorant slob. And yes, that means that Fox News has 50% more ignorant slobs watching it than other news outlets do.

Re:Wasted chance

[jrumney]

Saddam still wasn't cooperating with the UN after Bush took over.

The official reports of the UN inspectors do not appear to agree with that statement.

Re:Wasted chance

[Rosonowski]

You do have to admit, though, given the choice between a personal attack, and a personal attack with free sundae, you'd probably go for the latter...

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

and THAT, my friend, is Air America in a nutshell, and exactly why they went bankrupt. Only the fringe of the looney left actually believe this and there aren't enough of them to keep the station afloat.

Re:Wasted chance

[GrayCalx]

Just wanted to clarify that I didn't change the original poster's word "claimed" because thats exactly what it was. A report of information claimed by three separate countries intelligence agencies. Definitely possibly that the three countries were in cahoots, or that they all used the same source, or maybe that they were all just flat out wrong.

And the unfortunate part is that since all we, the public, get is filtered through the bias of the media (biased in both directions mind you) we really have nothing to go on. The media told me the three intelligence agencies were in agreement... but who knows where they got that from, or who knows what they did with the real information before it got to us. There are so many layers where information can be corrupted and changed who knows what we are actually reading.

Re:Wasted chance

[sumdumass]

I'm not sure Wikipedia is an accurate source of anything except a starting point in additional research. So much on that site is wrong, loaded and manipulated towards agendas it isn't funny. Then you have the entire issue of the Harvard professor who lived in mom's basement in KY.

and even more to the point, the op was correct in this usage. The president and members of the country out forth compeling reasons for war and the blaming it on greed crowd is attempting to attacked the creditability of the people in question in order to make a claim that their reasons are invalid. This is the ever definition of ad hominem.

Now, you may think it is barely close to something because it doesn't support your blinded views, but that doesn't make you any more correct.

Re:Wasted chance

[RobBebop]

Has anyone looked at the development of Dubai over the past 10 years? or the wealth of the royal family in Saudi Arabia?

One 9/11-esque attack could change that.

And for those without a sense of humor, I would never actually suggest this. It's funny, laugh.

Re:Wasted chance

[Master of Transhuman]

No, we did not all think they were there. A LOT of people KNEW they were not there based on the simple fact that a) they could NOT be there based on Iraq's capabilities (and lack of same subsequent to 1991), and 2) the inspectors who were there could not find them, even when it was clear to them that Saddam WAS cooperating fully, as he was once it was clear to him that Bush meant to invade.

Even Colin Powell delivered a speech a year or so before 2001 stating that Saddam's capabilities had been eviscerated. Which is why Powell should have known the case was full of shit before he made his UN speech. And if you listen to Colonel Wilkerson, Powell pretty much had his suspicions that was the case. But he decided to "obey orders".

Citing Clinton is not particularly kind to your argument either.

You're mistaking the consensus of a brainwashed media and the bulk of an ignorant population with "everybody".

The same applies today with Iran. Iran has no "nuclear weapons program." The IAEA has stated that REPEATEDLY in every single report they've issued. But you wouldn't know it by reading the MSM or any lying word out of Dick Cheney's mouth.

Re:Wasted chance

[Master of Transhuman]

"The answer, of course, was not to let vigilance waver."

And you're right. In fact, that was the plan. Once the UN inspectors certified that Saddam had no nuclear weapons program, they intended to install a monitoring system that would have guaranteed that Saddam never would have one (without deliberately throwing out the monitoring system, which would have been a red flag in itself.)

But Bush's throwing out the inspectors and invading ruined that plan.

Re:Wasted chance

[lessthan]

(I'm in the military, I have a bias, but...) We were and still "fit" to fight a war. The problem is that we aren't fighting a war, we are subjugating a conquered territory. Unfortunately, most of us Americans haven't read our evil overlord handbooks or aren't willing to admit that we are the overlords. Stuff we need to be doing has not been done. How do you get an indigenous population to go along with their own conquering?

Re:Wasted chance

[Master of Transhuman]

Because he was a "yes man".

And that's why Bush kept him on.

Same thing.

Re:Wasted chance

[dcollins]

From the very article that you link:

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions "in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for."

Do completely inactive shells that cannot be used count as WMDs? Note that "all the weapons" are in such a state, according your own referenced article. The amount of hypocrisy among you neo-cons is of truly astounding, Orwellian proportions.

Re:Wasted chance

[Darby]

Lay off the youtube videos. We've all heard Loose Change's arguments before.


So you have no possible way of defending your ignorance so you make up a totally unrelated strawman and pretend that it was my claim?
Hint: I didn't say that the administration had anything to do with 9/11. I encouraged you to go read *what they themselves wrote* or continue looking like an ignorant fool.

You took the ignorant fool course and ran with it. Bravo.


And if you think I'm defending the administration by calling them a bunch of inept bureaucrats and yes men, I'd hate to know what it takes for you to consider something criticism.

Something that deals with the actual facts of the matter without ignoring the single biggest piece of evidence for their actual premeditation of the Iraq invasion and the lies leading up to it *in their own words*.
It's just basic honesty and common sense. A very rare quality in these country these days.

Instead of actually being honest, you didn't like hearing basic facts so you made up a bullshit strawman and kicked it over. Again, bravo.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

The WMD's this administration frightened us with were NUKES. Over time, they started mixing terminology, so that by now, it involves anything chemical or biological. They find a portapotty with extra methane, oh - there's them WMD's we were looking for.

Remember the evidence presented: yellowcake from Nigeria - for nukes. Aluminum centrifuge tubes for creating radioactive material. "We have to act before the smoking gun becomes a mushroom cloud," again NUKES. We knew they probably had some chemical capacity - and so what - those chemicals were far too dangerous and unstable to transport to the US in any quantity; heck, they could've sent a few agents over here and raided one of the facilities here/planted a bomb on a train track carrying chlorine gas through cities and the casualties would've been far greater than ANYTHING they could've reasonably carried over from Iraq.

If you want to invade every country that might have something dangerous to us - prepare to invade every last country on the planet. There was NO IMMINENT danger, and that's the bottom line.

Re:Wasted chance

[famebait]

Wow, an actual spelling flame without a single spelling error in the response! I thought those were purely mythical.
(yes, the double "of" is in fact correct)

Re:Wasted chance

[xeno-cat]

"At best, the UN reports say they havn't found anything and it isn't likely they would with the amount of cooperation Iraq was giving them."

The problem was that the CIA was illegally using the inspection teams as a method for gathering information for a coup attempt. Iraq ejected the US members of the team. The UN team was satisfied that Iraq posed no threat.

"At best, the UN reports say they havn't found anything and it isn't likely they would with the amount of cooperation Iraq was giving them. It doesn't say they don't have any."

Nor could it as they can't prove that kind of negative. All they can say is that after thorough investigation, they found nothing. Which is what they did and they were 100% correct in their findings. Note that to counter the avalanche of real data from people on the ground Bush used forged papers from Nigeria, which he might have got away with if Willson did not step up and call his bluff. WTF is wrong with people? A forged document against years worth of effort and data.

"Either way, it is wrong."

You are in a said sorry state if your going to believe, even at this date, with all the mountains of truth that now exist in reports, books, news articles, etc. that Bush somehow really thought Saddam posed a clear and present danger to the USA, and had WMDs.

Kind Regards

Re:Wasted chance

[ArsonSmith]

"but the fact is at the time of the invasion the stated reason was WMD, a fact that gets ignored every time a Bushie defends starting the war."

Actually in the presidential speech on the matter of "why" there was a list of 11 things. WMDs I believe is #7.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

ONE centrifuge? You are aware that it takes hundreds and thousands of them, set up in a cascade, to actually produce uranium of suficient purity to detonate? It's taking Iran YEARS to get to even reactor-use grade of uranium, with thousands of centrifuges.

This is kinda like accusing somebody of bomb making because they had a match on them. Matches have sulphur, and that's one of the ingredients of dynamite.
Riiiight.

Re:Wasted chance

[scapermoya]

except that we have something called "western medicine" that is much more able (not completely, though) to handle pandemic-type situations. not to mention the lightyear jumps we have seen in sanitation, public health, education, etc. when it comes to disease and treatment. this is simply not the case for nuclear weapons. there is no antidote, there is no vaccine, there is nothing. nuclear weapons are SEVERAL orders of magnitude more destructive, especially when you consider how long an area remains contaminated.

Re:Wasted chance

[xeno-cat]

"All-in-all, this model has served me better than my previously-held one, but it is far less comforting and makes me feel very isolated."

heh :)

      There will always be people smarter and dumber than you. So learn and teach :).

      As for government, if you live in a democracy, the government is yours. But you need to participate, and not be alone and isolated. Any form of participation counts. Even just showing up at a town meeting. And of course, vote.

Kind Regards

Re:Wasted chance

[GundamFan]

LOL

Your under-educated! ...Would you like sprinkles and a cherry?

Re:Wasted chance

[quantaman]

I minor detail, but the 9/11 hijackers were not shiite muslims. This is one question I wish was asked more often, despite knowing the answer, is why Saudi Arabia has been untouched by agression when the largest percentage of the hijackers were Saudi. In fact the hijackers were ALL from countries with which the oil companies...er....the US is friendly with (with Egypt being the longest stretch by that definition), primarily Saudia Arabia and the UAE. Because a country isn't responsible for the actions of every single one of its citizens?

Of course why terrorists tend to come from countries with US backed governments is another issue...

Has anyone looked at the development of Dubai over the past 10 years? or the wealth of the royal family in Saudi Arabia? Money is flowing to someone from somewhere over there that is for sure. Yeah, I think it comes this black kinda gooey stuff called oil :)

Either way I'm not quite sure what you're saying there, are you alleging corruption as how they got their wealth, or that they have so much money they must be funding terrorists?

Now I'm not saying that Saudi's or UAE citizens are evil by default, simply that there has been absolutely 0 backlash against these regions while the US uses 9/11 to justify everything else it has been doing everywhere else.

Wheres the puzzled slightly-tilted looks of hwhaaa? Again there's a big difference between holding a country responsible for the actions of a subset of its population and holding a country responsible for the actions of its government. Also note that the Saudis don't exactly need any encouragement to combat al-Queda and other terrorists.

Re:Wasted chance

[Adambomb]

Heh, Thats not all i was referring to, check out the crazy palm frond penisula + breaker setup and the new hotels going up.

HUGE cash involved.

Re:Wasted chance

[Frostalicious]

Is it still a WMD if it is incapable of being used as a weapon, or destroying anything?

Re:Wasted chance

[Rosonowski]

In that case, why don't you educate me on what I did wrong, or is this one of those 'I found a typo on the internet' things?

Re:Wasted chance

[TigerTime]

If you find a cannon on an old pirate ship at the bottom of the ocean, do you just call it a hunk of metal since it doesn't work anymore? Or do you call it a cannon?

Did we find Sarin Nerve Agent? Yes
Did we find weapons that were meant for the dispersal of Sarin (WMD)? Yes
Did we find weapons which contained Sarin? Yes
Did we find fully functional WMD? Maybe, but they were old and we weren't going to test them.
Did we find new WMD? No

See the clarification? Hell, some of our soldiers were even exposed to the effects of one. So to say they were useless or not considered WMD is hogwash.

There are plenty of reports outside of Fox News that say Sarin (WMD) was found. Here are a few:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4997808/
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?i d=15918
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation /archive/200606/NAT20060621e.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/06/iraq/mai n627580.shtml
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=40754

Re:Wasted chance

[GundamFan]

I'm sorry I didn't mean you directly (check my post history I have no right to judge others)... I just found your post amusing.

I, for one wouldn't mind ad hominem attacks coming with desserts, though I may gain a few ponds the way the fly around here.

Re:Wasted chance

[srw]

The US HAD TO invade Iraq for financial reasons. The US dollar is no longer backed by any resource. The United States is a net importer and doesn't have enough natural resources to back up the number of US dollars in circulation. The only thing propping up the dollar is the fact that oil is traded worldwide in USD. (If you want to buy oil, you must first buy US dollars.) The word is that Saddam was preparing to trade oil in Euros. If the United States allowed that to happen, the US dollar would collapse and inflation would soar out of control. Of course, the average American wouldn't understand a bit of this, so it's much easier to cook up some WMDs or other abstract threat.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar _vs_euro.html

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but no. Your bad.

Re:Wasted chance

[Danathar]

"I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup."

Get used to it. Whomever wins (Democrat or Republican) the whitehouse will

1. Blame the previous administration for anything that goes wrong domestic or foreign for I predict at least 2 years and probably 3.

2. Spin Spin Spin until you puke like riding that thing that kids ride at parks.

3. Probably keep 90 to 95% of every executive order that Bush signed to use for their own political advantage.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"...along with quiting the rule that was broken."

Now is that some weird British spelling of "quitting the rule", or has "quite" become a verb?

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha you used "sell-out."

That's the mating call of a fourteen year old mentality.

Re:Wasted chance

[labnet]

why Saudi Arabia has been untouched by agression Ahhh.. well done for using your intellect. It seems most people have switched theirs off.

I remember a satarical sketch that had our then treasurer Paul Keating, wearing a live chicken on his head. By the end of the sketch we finally found out why when he said .. 'you haven't asked me one question about the economy stupid' WMD is the same scenario, a smoke screen to distract form the real issue, which is not just control of IRAQ's massive oil reserves, but keeping those reserves priced in $US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_warfare

In regards to 9/11, I recommend you read "Debunking 911 Debunking" by David Griffin.

Re:Wasted chance

[Adambomb]

Wow you really took that and ran. I have no idea where you got half the crap you tried to put into my mouth there.

What i was referring to is that they are obviously NOT in a situation of embargo or having severe problems with foreign intereference. Where is the pressure being applied? Afghanistan Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The rationale behind most of this to get most americans in line was "NEVER FORGET".

Never forget what? Never forget who? It seems they forgot before they ever remembered.

Explain to me please how the vocal group of the American populace is completely unable and unwilling to form their own opinions, or question ANYTHING, is more where i was going with this.

Why is America in Iraq again? How about Afghanistan? If you say Tyranny keep in mind the number of tyrants in Africa that get along great with the white house, Democratic white house OR republican for that matter. Its just as cocked up as when the US FIRST GOT INTO ALL THIS BY ARMING REZA SHAH (leader of what would become Iran...) and then subsequently arming Iraq.

All this ranting simply boils down to one thing; America is easily distractable, and I am expressing a disbelief into how much people seem to prefer being distracted to knowing anything. This has nothing to do with questioning whether they ARE being distracted, its the fact that most DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING THAT WILL MAKE LIFE HARDER TO DEAL WITH, truth or not.

Re:Wasted chance

[sokoban]

But let's not try to paint the whole administration as malicious warmongering tyrants when in all reality they're just inept shoot-from-the-hip bureaucrats. But you see, those in the Bush administration have not become wealthy by being just "inept shoot-from-the-hip bureaucrats". They've done that by having oil and defense industry interests. The amount of money a president or vice president makes as his salary from the US government is a small fraction of that which they can make by causing their investments in energy and defense contractors to increase in value.

Re:Wasted chance

[i_finally_got_an_acc]

SPIN ALERT. Weapons that are old and no longer effective don't really fit my definition of Weapon of Mass Destruction. Maybe what we found were WMDs at one time.

Re:Wasted chance

[whoop]

In Slashdot style, I can refute that quite simply. I don't consider Sarin "massive" enough to be a WMD. A WMD should be REALLY massive.

There, now you're whole post is pointless and everybody here is free to continue on about how evil Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, Capitalism, the healthcare system, guns, the CIA, warrantless wiretaps, the NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, and the Man are. ... wait, did I include Microsoft? Damn, that's too much to go back and re-read it.

Re:Wasted chance

[Poromenos1]

It's a meta-personal attack!

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget everyone's favorite: loose and lose.

Re:Wasted chance

[Plutonite]

That is not correct, because the only kind of country Bush will allow to remain "in order" will be one that sides completely with his view of what a "free country" should be like. Bush does not benefit from the thousands of Iraqi civilians and American soldiers dying..it is embarrassing; a failure. Leaders do not like to fail, especially in war. What Bush ultimately wants (beyond the Haliburton deals) is hard to achieve even if insurgency and extremism are rooted out, and that is why I hate this administration - if you can't see far enough to judge the consequences of your actions you should not be in charge of the Greatest Nation on Earth(TM).

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

even more to the point, the op was correct in this usage. The president and members of the country out forth compeling reasons for war and the blaming it on greed crowd is attempting to attacked the creditability of the people in question in order to make a claim that their reasons are invalid. This is the ever definition of ad hominem.

If you read what the GGP wrote, you'll see that that is not what he said. He said: "Suggesting that the war must have been solely motivated by greed is a circumstantial ad hom."

An ad hominem argumentation would be something along the lines of "because they are people that are usually motivated by greed (and therefore evil) this thing they did (wage war) is wrong". It is a completely different thing to say that "because they did this thing (wage war) solely motivated by greed, then what they did is wrong." In the first case, you are trying to base rejection of the actions on the persons that carried them; in the second, on their motivations to carry them. If you cannot tell the two apart, well, I can't do much about it.

Another clear example of an ad hominem argument is provided by your own post:

I'm not sure Wikipedia is an accurate source of anything except a starting point in additional research. So much on that site is wrong, loaded and manipulated towards agendas it isn't funny. Then you have the entire issue of the Harvard professor who lived in mom's basement in KY.

Here you are not arguing against the definition provided by Wikipedia for ad hominem argumentation. Instead, you are saying that, because Wikipedia is not an accurate source all the time and it gets things wrong all the time, and beause it is filled with agendas and some wikipedian turned out to live in his mom's basement, then the description it provides for what an ad hominem argument is wrong.

While the Wikipedia page for Ad Hominen could certainly take a general make-over to make it clearer, more precise and so on, the actual description of the phallacy is correct. You seem to miss that.

Finally, I mentioned Wikipedia because that's probably available to the person I was responding to. I have a copy of Aristotle's Organum at home, and I think that'd make for a much more authoritative source in his/her view and in yours (not in mine, actually) but I would think assuming people have a copy of the Organum at hand while reading Slashdot is a bit off-base. Any reasonable good book on logic and argumentation would do just as well, though.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArsonSmith]

What I did was intentional to see who, and more importantly how people would respond to it. What the poster in question did was miss typed by adding an ' in a word where it shouldn't be. It is a typo because the single apostrophe becomes far to easy to hit. I doubt the original poster would have written the apostrophe by hand or intentionally meant to put it in at all. Therefore it is a typo. "They're", "their" and "there" or "two" "too" and "to" is typically either a careless mistake and therefore a typo or an admission of ignorance. It is quite simple in posting to an internet forum to pronounce "They're" and type "there" in your head. This would mean it was a typo. If someone doesn't know which form to use and/or why then they are ignorant to the point of possibly being call stupid. Of course being that we are on the internet it is also very possible that the person is in early grade school or legitimately mentally handicapped.

No mater the reason there are three things you can do about it. Ignore it and move on. Politely correct the person and educate them of the error of their ways. Or you can be a dick.

Re:Wasted chance

[quantaman]

Wow you really took that and ran. I have no idea where you got half the crap you tried to put into my mouth there. I got it from your post though I may have interpreted it differently then you intended :)

What i was referring to is that they are obviously NOT in a situation of embargo or having severe problems with foreign intereference. Where is the pressure being applied? Afghanistan Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Is your claim that Saudi Arabia and UAE being subject to less foreign interference from the US than the places the US has either invaded or threatened to invade? I would argue that there is a fundamental difference in that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are more or less willingly cooperating with the US before 9/11 and in fact are kept in power in part due to assistance from the US, this is a source of motivation for terrorist groups.

The rationale behind most of this to get most americans in line was "NEVER FORGET".

Never forget what? Never forget who? It seems they forgot before they ever remembered.

Explain to me please how the vocal group of the American populace is completely unable and unwilling to form their own opinions, or question ANYTHING, is more where i was going with this. That may be your intended point but it wasn't the one I got from your post. Do you want people to question the US's relationship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE specifically, do you believe that those governments are deserving of sanctions or embargos? Or are you merely bemoaning the general ignorance and false conceptions that most people seem to have about terrorism and the middle east in general?

Why is America in Iraq again? How about Afghanistan? If you say Tyranny keep in mind the number of tyrants in Africa that get along great with the white house, Democratic white house OR republican for that matter. Its just as cocked up as when the US FIRST GOT INTO ALL THIS BY ARMING REZA SHAH (leader of what would become Iran...) and then subsequently arming Iraq. For Afghanistan I'd say a mixture of revenge, some general desire to help the people (though more on the part of the international community), and an opportunity to increase US influence in the Arabic world. For Iraq I'd say mostly a chance to increase US influence.

All this ranting simply boils down to one thing; America is easily distractable, and I am expressing a disbelief into how much people seem to prefer being distracted to knowing anything. This has nothing to do with questioning whether they ARE being distracted, its the fact that most DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING THAT WILL MAKE LIFE HARDER TO DEAL WITH, truth or not. I won't argue with that, though I think it also has to do with the fact that most people think it won't affect them and even if it does they can't affect it so why bother forming coherent opinions about it.

Re:Wasted chance

[TheNetAvenger]

Clinton believed they were there, because at the time Saddam was refusing to let UN inspectors do their job. By the time Bush had invaded, the UN inspectors had already been in and found nothing.


And Clinton took action against Iraq for the removal and obstruction of the inspectors and withing a few months, inspectors were back on the ground.

The dirty little secret is Bushies keep telling people that prior to Bush's war, Iraq threw out the inspectors; however, Bush is the one that pulled the inspectors out of Iraq to force the war, not Saddam.

Go read any book or article by any of the inspectors, the US yanked them, not Saddam prior to the war.

Re:Wasted chance

[AK Marc]

Then finding ammonia and bleach in someone's kitchen would be a WMD, since if you took enough of the two and mixed them in a subway you could kill hundreds. I am not saying that leftovers weren't found. There wasn't a single functional WMD found. No one is disputing that he had lots of pards of WMDs that the US supplied him with. No one is disputing that he used them previously. The simple question is, did he have any that he could have deployed? The answer to that is a very simple "no."

And yes, I looked up some of the links, but found only things that support my statements that there were no working WMDs in Iraq at the time of the invasion. "The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added."

Re:Wasted chance

[windex82]

>>about 36,000,000 of people in the world at least had a more informed opinion than the president of the USA.

Just because they were at a protest doesn't mean they are more informed.

Re:Wasted chance

[Hucko]

Is it democracy when the leaders deliberately ignore the known position of the voters? This is/has occurred in Australia. Fortunately as of yet, it has not been necessarily detrimental.

Re:Wasted chance

[OakDragon]

If elections are evidence, then the evidence suggests that populations in all democratic countries LOVE lying liars.

Witness November 2006, as an example.

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

The point is to prevent people from getting credible weaponized stocks, not wait around until they have them before deciding to do something about it.

Thankfully, because we took action in 2003, we can now rule Iraq out as a possible source for weaponized BW. Brilliant! Now we only have to look forward to Iraq being the greatest source of anti-American jihadis for the foreseeable future. Remind me, how much weaponized BW did it take to knock down the WTC?

Re:Wasted chance

[World.Pop(MPAA)]

Absolutely not! One of the best tools we have to stopping proliferation is saying the USA will use its arsenal as a deterrent force so those countries will not need their own. That is why most European countries do not have their own nuclear weapons program, because during the Cold War we used our arsenal to extend the MAD principle to protect them.

MAD doesn't work! Look at all the problems we're having now trying to put up a Ballistic Missile Defense! The Russians are pissed because they are afraid it will be used as a counter to their arsenal. It makes more sense to at least decommission out own nuclear arsenal (or reduce to about 500 warheads) than it does to keep however many online (last time I checked, around 8,000). Recycle the nuclear material; we could be start and follow France's lead by using Breeder reactors. We have an energy crisis on our hands as it stands.

Furthermore, I concede the 9-11 hijackers weren't Shiite. But look at the consequences of our war in Iraq. We've lit a match under the power keg that is the middle east. If you think Iraq is a better place because of us, take a little trip through Nasiriyah, Hillah, Fallujah, Ramadi, Amariyah-Ferris; I think you'll find people will admit they were safer under Saddam's regime than ours.

Re:Wasted chance

[xeno-cat]

"Is it democracy when the leaders deliberately ignore the known position of the voters?"

Yes, as long as the people can throw them out. Apathy is the enemy of democracy. The problem I see with the left wing is that they tend to see the government as the enemy so they work from outside the government trying to change things. The left needs to take control of the government and never let it go. It's where the power and money is, something the right wing understands. Anyway, in history, it's been worse :).

Kind Regards

Re:Wasted chance

[Kreigaffe]

Well, no, he didn't lie.

We know Saddam had WMDs that were unaccounted for, because we had the damned receipts.

Thing is, we DID find them, too. Some of them. They were completely inoperable, deteriorated, rotted away, due to improper storage over the past 20-some-odd years.

The rest? Possibly the same, possibly had been sold previously to god knows who, possibly are hidden away somewhere safe.. who knows. But the fact of the matter is, when you know someone had 10 apples, when you have reached an agreement that you must be allowed to inspect and destroy those apples or you'll punch them, and then they only produce 7 apples and claim that's all they have.. there's 3 apples missing, whether or not you can find them, and they are in violation of your agreement unless they can document what happened to those 3 missing apples.

And those pre-war UN inspections, that's a joke. They were rebuffed often, were not allowed to look around as freely and unannounced as would be required to actually catch anything going on. I've seen food production plants here in the States go into a panic mode when they know the food inspector is coming -- it's amazing how much you can clean up, hide, or get rid of temporarily, when you can plan ahead.

Re:Wasted chance

[GodfatherofSoul]

I agree and disagree. We had to if you view our economy through a neocon lens. The neocons don't have faith in the traditional values that made our country strong, so they've decided to rely on Wall Street magic. To hell with investing in and protecting the middle class, we'll strong arm our way to world dominance.

Re:Wasted chance

[Donut Zeke]

Actually, it is "Grammar." Don't correct someone if you have no idea what you are talking about.

Re:Wasted chance

[Barny]

Failed attempt at web2.0?

Any user could have logged in and modified the content...

Why didn't they advertise the feature?

Re:Wasted chance

[bckrispi]

Mod parent "revisionist bullshit".

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

Don't bother trying to speak with this guy. He can't defend his position so he'll hurl insults at whoever he thinks his foe is. Trust me, you will have better luck with a "I know you are but what am I" preschooler.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

Forgive me for being off topic, but when I see something like this, I have to respond.

Go read the 2000 paper by the Project For a New American Century titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" signed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, George Bush Senior and many other members of Bush's original administration and hangers on. Pay attention to the parts where they talk about their plan to invade Iraq to "ensure future US economic world domination in the coming century", their understanding that the American people wouldn't buy their bullshit, so they would need to hope for an attack on the US on the level of Pearl Harbor which they could then misuse as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Oh! My! Fucking! God! You have got to be kidding me! Wait, first I have to confirm this. A former president (Bush Sr.), a man running for president (W), the governor of Florida (Jeb), a man running for Vice President (Cheney), the former defense secretary from 1975 (Rumsfeld), and the dean of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (Wolfowitz) and other unknown members of this super secret society all got together, wrote out their plans for world domination, and... hang on, let me get a straight face... OK, I'm better... then they all SIGNED IT and gave it to Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.

(Since we are speaking of The Weekly Standard, do you read that magazine? Do you hold the words written their as absolute fact? Why is this modern day Mein Kampf any different? I mean, you can't cherry pick stuff from Bill Kristol and say "this is truth, the rest is bullshit". It's either a valid source, or it's not. Sorry, got distracted. I needed a break before I started cracking up again anyway.)

Anyway, so where were we? Oh yes. The Evil Republican Playbook of 2000. Funny how this supposed manifesto has been published since 2000 and has survived two presidential elections, four congressional elections, one gubernatorial election, the largest terrorist attack in history, a war, and seven years of the press and political opponents trying to dig up whatever dirt they can to bring down Bush and/or all Republicans.... and no one saw it? No one? Really? Not John Kerry, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Dan Rather, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Stabenow, John Murtha, Howard Dean, Michale Moore..... and the list goes on... none of these people found this and decided hang the President with it? (I see MoveOn.org has it, but they're batshit-crazier than you are, or so I thought)

You really believe this? You really typed up that statement, with the 100% confidence that what you were saying was the absolute truth. This is not a joke or anything, right? Well, there is the distinct possibility that you are just dishonest, but I wouldn't suggest such a thing of one with your integrity.

BTW, I found the article titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" on the PNAC site. Jeb Bush did not sign it. For that matter, none of the Bushes signed it. The only mention of the Bushes concerns the Bush41 presidency. The only mention of Iraq was the first gulf war. So, yeah, the article exists. Still, it's not the "My Plan to Conquer the World by Dr Evil+minions" you claim it to be.

I tried to look up a logical fallacy like red herring or something for this, but there wasn't one listed for "batshit-crazy bullshit".. Really, you should read this stuff before you post it. You just make yourself look ridiculous. And whoever up-modded it looks even worse. Moderators should know better. I mean, you don't have to be from Texas to know what Bullshit smells like.

Re:Wasted chance

[dwarfsoft]

Be careful! They might hurl a bag of milk at you to silence your insolence.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

HERE is the link (pdf warning). Where's the part about faking a terrorist attack to invade Iraq? You spew bullshit this deep and accuse this guy of being dishonest? You are projecting yourself onto him.

You accuse him of using a strawman fallacy, when all he did was call you out on what you said. Then you deny saying it. Let's see what you are denying:

How about we actually pay attention instead of your course of ignore all the facts to try and excuse the administration for their premeditated malicious actions?
Go read the 2000 paper by the Project For a New American Century titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" signed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, George Bush Senior This one is my favorite. You lied when you said the Bushes signed it. No Bushes signed it at all. And you sat there and accused this guy of lying? Like I said, you are projecting. You accuse the other person of being guilty of the crime you are committing. It cheapens their argument when they say, "I'm lying, YOUR the liar!" It looks like they are simply echoing your accusation back at them. While I can't find it linked, we'll call it the Fallacy of Projecting (Trademark, ArcherB).
Now lets' get back to what you said:

Pay attention to the parts where they talk about their plan to invade Iraq Not in there

to "ensure future US economic world domination in the coming century", their understanding that the American people wouldn't buy their bullshit, so they would need to hope for an attack on the US on the level of Pearl Harbor which they could then misuse as an excuse to invade Iraq. Sounds like a truther's argument to me, except at least truther's are honest, although misguided. You're just making stuff up. I'd call it lying, but this doesn't quite make it to that level. It's almost like a six year old making up a story as she goes along.

See, and then you end it with something like this:

How about you stop talking about the subject when you obviously don't know a damn thing about it since you couldn't even be bothered to read the position papers published by the very people you're attempting to defend.
Think about how stupid that makes you to do something so completely ridiculous. First of all, the guy was on your side, but don't let the facts get in your way. Next, everything you tell him not to do is EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Let's see what we have here:

stop talking about the subject when you obviously don't know a damn thing about CHECK

couldn't even be bothered to read the position papers published by the very people you're attempting to defend. and CHECK
You obviously didn't read the 90 page document you alluded to. Hell, I had to look it up myself because you couldn't even be bothered to link to it. Then again, if I were making stuff up about a document, I wouldn't provide a link either. That would be like telling the cops where you hid the body.
Now I will agree with you when you say "Think about how stupid that makes you to do something so completely ridiculous.", but as I've just shown, it is actually YOU that are doing it.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

So umm, when did Bush|Cheney|Snow|Whomever try to tell us that establishing a democracy in Iraq was the reason when invaded, and not just name it as a primary goal?

First, there is no difference between reason and primary goal. There were several reasons, each a primary goal.

From President's Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, September 2002

If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis -- a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty, and internationally supervised elections.

The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq. From President Bush Addresses United Nations General Assembly, September 2003

First, we must stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq as they build free and stable countries. The terrorists and their allies fear and fight this progress above all, because free people embrace hope over resentment, and choose peace over violence.

Re:Wasted chance

[sumdumass]

If you read what the GGP wrote, you'll see that that is not what he said. He said: "Suggesting that the war must have been solely motivated by greed is a circumstantial ad hom."

The significant part of that is must. He supposed the word "must" into the sentence which means that despite the reasons, it is greed. This is the correct usage. And the reference to the president is what this comment is ultimately about. He is referring to, or at least in the progression of the conversation as I seen it, that people are shooting the messenger with attacking them for their greed instead of actually consulting the reasons. War for oil is a prime example, It does nothing to the claims for why and imposed their own claims in the process.

While the Wikipedia page for Ad Hominen could certainly take a general make-over to make it clearer, more precise and so on, the actual description of the phallacy is correct. You seem to miss that.

No, I didn't miss it, I didn't even look at it. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source for accurate information. I believe that is what I said and then cited reasons for it. It is no different then me writing something down and claiming it was correct to support my position. I wasn't making any claims to the accuracy of the definition, just that I wouldn't use that as a source except as a starting place to look elsewhere.

Finally, I mentioned Wikipedia because that's probably available to the person I was responding to. I have a copy of Aristotle's Organum at home, and I think that'd make for a much more authoritative source in his/her view and in yours (not in mine, actually) but I would think assuming people have a copy of the Organum at hand while reading Slashdot is a bit off-base. Any reasonable good book on logic and argumentation would do just as well, though.

You would be correct in assuming I don't have that book. I cannot speak for the other person. However, from the sources I have availible, I believe it was the correct usage in the context it was used in. Again, I stress the importance on the word must.

Re:Wasted chance

[will_die]

Yea it is rated funny but whats really funny about it is the truth.
The majority of people of people who believe that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 are not Rebuplicans. The number of people who believe that is now at a low. It's believe followed the release of the Michael Moore film Farhenheit 9/11 it increased as the film gained popularity dropped when the film left the theathers then regained popularity when the film was released on DVD and TV.
As for WMD they were found, however the large quantities and variety of types that almost all the worlds' countries believed he had, Iran said he didn't, were not found. So the real question is did he not have them and all the communications by Iraq scietists and military was fake and all the research and intel work by all the major countries in the world was just wrong or he had them and and hide them.

Re:Wasted chance

[will_die]

And if you listen to what Mrs. Bill Clinton and other Democrats have said they did not read thoses reports.

Re:Wasted chance

[abbamouse]

You're right BUT we had not found them at the time the survey was taken (less than a year after the war began). So the survey is valid, subsequent events notwithstanding.

Re:Wasted chance

[abbamouse]

You're right about the artillery shells BUT we had not found them at the time the survey was taken (less than a year after the war began). So the survey is valid, subsequent events notwithstanding. When the question was asked, we had found NO WMD in Iraq, not even the rusty mustard gas shells we later stumbled across. But because FOX had reported every false lead as OMFG WMD FOUND!!! viewers came to believe it was true, even though there was always a muted acknowledgement later on that it was a false finding.

Re:Wasted chance

[the not-troll]

Uh. I think you misunderstood what I meant. I wanted to point out how Saddam was told he would win the war like the US government was told that Saddam had WMDs because that was what they wanted to hear. Forcing people to tell what one wants to hear rather what is true is indeed the hallmark of any stupid government. (Which, of course, resonates well with your point about them not having read their evil overlord handbooks.)

Also, I think that the intelligent thing to do for the US would have been to stick to Afghanistan, because thats where 100% of the world stood behind them. But because the Bush family had "unfinished business" with Iraq, it was a given from the start that they would go to Iraq, they just needed an excuse.

However, while the US was able to fight the war (which I, as I said, did not want to dispute), it is very doubtful whether it could handle any additional fights before the occupations are brought to conclusion. Of course, I don't know any details, but it seems very much like the US is in danger of overstretching itself, both in terms of manpower and financially, because war doesn't have any positive economical effect because the only things it produces are death and terrorists.

Also, the best way is taking care that they don't know they are conquered. The US indeed had perfected this over its history: Instead of sending in the troops (which they still did more often than is healthy), they just exported their "culture". For example: Nearly everyone uses Windows (or eats at McDonalds or Burger King, but that's no /.ty example). When it is paid for, the money flows to the US (of course, it isn't always paid for, which is a problem to the US like the thirteen colonies not paying taxes to the queen was a problem for England).

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

And there were many people in those agencies who didn't think Iraq had WMD, but the Bush government decided not to listen to them.

Captcha: "martyrs", does Slashdot use context sensitive captchas?

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

then they all SIGNED IT and gave it to Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.

They published it on their own website. It is genuine.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

And those pre-war UN inspections, that's a joke. They were rebuffed often, were not allowed to look around as freely and unannounced as would be required to actually catch anything going on.

That was only in the beginning. In the last months when it became public that the war was coming, Saddam gave the inspectors more freedom and the authority to do surprise suspections. If he hadn't complied, the UN would have authorized a war.

He did comply and the UN didn't authorize a war, but Bush invaded anyway

Re:Wasted chance

[nephridium]

"Excuse" - you used the correct term. If you remember, back in the day when the invasion into Iraq/Afghanistan was still fresh you could hear a lot of saber rattling by the US government against Iran - which coincidentally (or should I say conveniently?) lies exactly between both those countries. Now that the Taliban has regained strength in Afghanistan and Iraq's situation is deteriorating (every single day there are dozens of people killed, even though it's 110+ degrees F outside!) Washington's rhetoric has toned down. The strategy has not worked because of the ignorance and short-sightedness of the perpetrators and against all opposition they will try to remain there because it's not only about Iraq, but about the whole region.

I'm pretty sure if the invasions had gone as "planned" there would be no big problem for the administration to find a pretext, an excuse if you may, to attack Iran - with the same support it got from congress that it got for the Iraq invasion; and I believe that this time they would have ignored the UN all together (remember, last time Rumsfeld was still running around with a vial of "anthrax" and displaying satellite images of Iraq's WMD production facilities to the UN). While Desert Storm and even the invasion of Afghanistan were sanctioned by the UN (i.e. had international support) the 2003 attack on Iraq wasn't; the administration was able to convince the American people of Saddam's threat, it was not as successful convincing people of other countries who are not under the influence of US media.

Re:Wasted chance

[msuarezalvarez]

If you read what the GGP wrote, you'll see that that is not what he said. He said: "Suggesting that the war must have been solely motivated by greed is a circumstantial ad hom."

The significant part of that is must. He supposed the word "must" into the sentence which means that despite the reasons, it is greed. This is the correct usage. And the reference to the president is what this comment is ultimately about. He is referring to, or at least in the progression of the conversation as I seen it, that people are shooting the messenger with attacking them for their greed instead of actually consulting the reasons. War for oil is a prime example, It does nothing to the claims for why and imposed their own claims in the process.

Well, as I said before, I cannot do anything if you fail to see the point that I tried to make, more than provide the explanation I already gave.

While the Wikipedia page for Ad Hominen could certainly take a general make-over to make it clearer, more precise and so on, the actual description of the phallacy is correct. You seem to miss that.

No, I didn't miss it, I didn't even look at it. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source for accurate information. I believe that is what I said and then cited reasons for it. It is no different then me writing something down and claiming it was correct to support my position. I wasn't making any claims to the accuracy of the definition, just that I wouldn't use that as a source except as a starting place to look elsewhere.

In other words, you are shooting the messanger ;-)

Well, the general accuracy of Wikipedia as a primary source, as a secondary source, as a starting place or anything else is quite irrelevant, when one is discussing the correctness of a description of what an ad hominem argumentation is. Wikipedia can be the worst source ever and still provide the correct description. And it does.

If you are, for some reason, discussing the reliability of Wikipedia, then I have just to pull myself from the conversation, as I am not discussing that. Before doing that, I'd suggest that when you do argue that Wipipedia is not a reliable source, you do not use the article on Ad hominem argumentation as an example of incorrectness.

Finally, I mentioned Wikipedia because that's probably available to the person I was responding to. I have a copy of Aristotle's Organum at home, and I think that'd make for a much more authoritative source in his/her view and in yours (not in mine, actually) but I would think assuming people have a copy of the Organum at hand while reading Slashdot is a bit off-base. Any reasonable good book on logic and argumentation would do just as well, though.

You would be correct in assuming I don't have that book. I cannot speak for the other person. However, from the sources I have availible, I believe it was the correct usage in the context it was used in. Again, I stress the importance on the word must.

Oh well.

Re:Wasted chance

[GodfatherofSoul]

You don't account for what the inspectors DID find. Firstly, WMD have shelf lives for the most part except for stuff like anthrax spores and require facilities to maintain them. When you find unaccounted for WMD still in the same bombed out warehouse from 1991 or their facilities abandoned. And the inspections were not a joke. In fact, they were working TOO well which is why Bush decided to go ahead with the invasion before his silly rationale was completely discounted. You fail to account for the fact that after 4 years and millions in reward money offered, there has been no evidence offered up that the inspectors missed anything.

Re:Wasted chance

[BiggerIsBetter]

Has anyone looked at the development of Dubai over the past 10 years? or the wealth of the royal family in Saudi Arabia?

One 9/11-esque attack could change that. The Burj Dubai? Genius! Finally we have a use for the new Airbus A380!

Re:Wasted chance

[iapetus]

Actually, they were my primary target.

Re:Wasted chance

[good soldier svejk]

He strikes me as an interesting and capable man. If I were you I would be full of questions.

On a related note, I had a friend who went out with Colin Powell's daughter. He was also friends with Kenny Inouye. Speaking of Colin Powell (totally OT, but funny), two years ago year my dad got a voice mail message for the then Secretary of State. Turns out they were next to each other on my uncle's (by marriage) speed dial. It would be a lot funnier if you knew my dad, who among other things, is quite proud of completeing his Army career without advancing beyond the rank of Private First Class. Same planet, different worlds.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

They published it on their own website. It is genuine.

Sure the document is genuine, but so is the Declaration of Independence. Strangely enough, it contains the exact same amount of information about Bush's Dastardly Plans for World Domination as the PNAC document does and was signed by the exact same number of Bushes (Zero). Just because the document exists, doesn't mean that what was said about it is true.

Re:Wasted chance

[enjerth]

First, there is no difference between reason and primary goal. In a very basic way that is correct. Goals are justified. Building a new government is justified by the fact that we destroyed the old government. But we're talking about the justification for destroying the old government.

While I would agree that these are statements showing that it was justified (at least partly) on the basis of building a democratic government in Iraq, does it precede the justification for stopping Saddam's weapons programs? The poster (imkonen) is arguing that someone is stating (post-Saddam) that [neocons] "insist that the single most important reason we invaded Iraq was to establish Democracy". My question was really (in that context) to that point.

Frankly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that "the single most important reason we invaded Iraq was to establish democracy". I must have never met any of these "neocons". Do they only exist on an imaginary plane? It seems politics have become quite slanted due to straw men. Straw men who make politics an idiot's game. Instead of imaginary friends many people have imaginary enemies. Just don't super-impose your imaginary political enemy on me.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

While I would agree that these are statements showing that it was justified (at least partly) on the basis of building a democratic government in Iraq, does it precede the justification for stopping Saddam's weapons programs? The poster (imkonen) is arguing that someone is stating (post-Saddam) that [neocons] "insist that the single most important reason we invaded Iraq was to establish Democracy". My question was really (in that context) to that point.

You are correct. The primary reason to go into Iraq was to stop the various weapons programs. While the intelligence this was based on was not as flawed as we are led to believe, it was flawed nonetheless. There were chemical and bio weapons and programs in Iraq, just not the stockpiles or gangbuster programs we were led to believe.

Either way, that was then, this is now. We have to make the best of the situation over there. We can not leave it worse that we found it. We have the opportunity to something wonderful over there or something disastrous. Doing the right thing will time time, effort, blood and money, but I feel it will be worth it in the long run, especially when compared to the alternative.

Re:Wasted chance

[sumdumass]

Well, as I said before, I cannot do anything if you fail to see the point that I tried to make, more than provide the explanation I already gave.

I should have proof read that a little better and caught the bold problem. It was only supposed to be the word must.

I saw your point, I just don't think it applies in this case. I'm probably reading too much into what he said but I think using the word must gave that sentence the meaning of it doesn't matter what you say, it will eventually be turned into a work of fiction bound by northing but circumstance centered around greed as the reasoning. I don't think he was talking about the person objecting or supporting statement in itself. They will subjugate it all down to greed in order to make the claims that are formed by coincidental evidence.

His statement (at least the way I interpreted it), it has the same meaning of saying it just doesn't matter, they will say the mayor has an agenda of greed and that is his reason when he says he hired additional police officers to attack the escalating crime rates because we all know the police profit from crime. Or when they say that Welfare agents and democrats will never fix poverty because it will take their jobs and key election positions away from them, or this is a war for oil or the military industrial complex organized it because they benefit the most from it and you are just a puppet for going along with their plan.

In other words, you are shooting the messanger ;-)

No, not really, I am not seeking the messenger out and I am not hiring him to give a message. A small distinction but important distinction.

Well, the general accuracy of Wikipedia as a primary source, as a secondary source, as a starting place or anything else is quite irrelevant, when one is discussing the correctness of a description of what an ad hominem argumentation is. Wikipedia can be the worst source ever and still provide the correct description. And it does.

If you are, for some reason, discussing the reliability of Wikipedia, then I have just to pull myself from the conversation, as I am not discussing that. Before doing that, I'd suggest that when you do argue that Wipipedia is not a reliable source, you do not use the article on Ad hominem argumentation as an example of incorrectness.

Yea, I'm saying I wouldn't use it or be very careful in doing so. As to the defining of Ad Hominen, I'm not disagreeing with their version or explanation of it, I'm just not going to use it. And that was the point of that part.

Re:Wasted chance

[Maltheus]

If the pretext is significant enough, they'll still go in and likely have increased support for Iraq and Afghanistan given their strategic adjacency to Iran. We've been sending cruiser after cruiser to the region. That's an expensive bluff if they weren't convinced they would use it. Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to remove language from an Iraq spending bill reasserting the need of the president to go through congress before attacking Iran. The dems have given him a blank check on that one. It may seem like support is building against the war, but it's all a dog and pony show in policy circles. I'd say there's still a really good chance we're going into Iran, even if it has to wait for a democrat to drag us in (since it would be difficult for a republican to do so at this point).

Re:Wasted chance

[An Onerous Coward]

The "lie" part of the yellowcake issue is the lie Bush put in the State of the Union address, which said that Iraq was seeking to import yellowcake from Nigeria. Yellowcake itself is a pretty common substance, created by any uranium mining process. Simply having yellowcake is a far, far cry from having the desire or ability to detonate a nuke within the United States.

Nobody disputes that hundreds of degraded shells and canisters of sarin and other chemical weapons were found in Iraq. Are these the "500 WMDs" you're talking about? If so, what a pathetic cry from what we expected to find.

If you think George Tenet -- by the mere fact of being a Clinton appointee -- somehow puts the Seal of Clintonian Approval on everything to come out of the CIA in the run-up to the war, well, your thinking is far too muddled for me to understand or to repair.

Re:Wasted chance

[crawling_chaos]

You misunderstand. The crime I was refering to was the fraud. I was presupposing all of the required permits were in place for said burning. Sorry for the confusion.

Re:Wasted chance

[Darby]

Where's the part about faking a terrorist attack to invade Iraq?

Nowhere. As I stated in my response to the reply to my first post here I'm claiming nothing of the sort.

You spew bullshit this deep and accuse this guy of being dishonest?

Let me see if I understand where your twisted little mind is trying to mislead us now:

I made a simple statement of fact. That was responded to with a gross misrepresentation of what I said. I then clarified my point to demonstrate that that, in fact, had nothing at all to do with what I said as is quite obvious.
After all of that, you then step up and make the same exact false claim as to what I said when it's all right there to see.

Now, we've had long discussions about your problems with honesty and reasoning skills, so I'll just point out that this is yet another clear cut example of you lying.

You are projecting yourself onto him.

No, that would be you onto me.


You accuse him of using a strawman fallacy, when all he did was call you out on what you said. Then you deny saying it. Let's see what you are denying:

No, I *never* said that the administration planned or was in any way involved with 9/11. Where did I say that? Let's see it, liar.

Oh that's right, I didn't. Hence his claim that I did *is* a strawman. I deny saying what I didn't say, and that is all.
No surprise you fail to understand the distinction given your well established problems with critical thinking skills.

When are you going to start claiming it's the same as raping children. That's one of your favorites.

Re:Wasted chance

[ArcherB]

Where's the part about faking a terrorist attack to invade Iraq? Nowhere. As I stated in my response to the reply to my first post here I'm claiming nothing of the sort. I quoted it once, now I'll quote it again since you chose to ignore it:

Pay attention to the parts where they talk about their plan to invade Iraq to "ensure future US economic world domination in the coming century", their understanding that the American people wouldn't buy their bullshit, so they would need to hope for an attack on the US on the level of Pearl Harbor which they could then misuse as an excuse to invade Iraq. These are YOUR words. Words you've denied saying, twice now, all the while calling others liars. Well, here is the proof that we are honest and you are the one lying when you deny saying it.

Let's see what other lie you ignored from my original post:

"Rebuilding America's Defenses" signed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, George Bush Senior... If you look at page 90 of the document, you'll see that no Bush signed it. PROOF, not just an accusation, that you lied, and then have the 12 lb balls to accuse other of lying. THIS is what I mean by projecting. Every time someone presents an argument you can't counter, you call it a lie, and then make up your own lies trying to disprove it.

Your lies have been proven by your own posts, and YOUR words have been used against you. Before you deny saying these things again, please read your own posts. I've only used one post as that is all I have needed, and the link is posted above for your convenience

Re:Wasted chance

[NoOneInParticular]

Apart from the obvious oil connection, touching the Saudi connection would also bring to light that the dominant fundamentalist Wahabi sect that took control over religious life in the Arabic world was actively promoted by, amongst others, the US to cull the threat of socialism.

Frankenstein and all that, you know.

Re:Wasted chance

[Sunburnt]

You can actually win the epic battle against clutter. Because your neighbors aren't sneaking insurgents in to throw more clutter in your face.

Nice, but how about: You can win the battle against clutter because you fight in in your own room, as opposed to that shared by three other individuals who, during the absence of ther abusive father, only pause in their hurling of clutter at one another to hurl more clutter directly at you for shutting off the power, water, and phone line while clumsily and violently attempting to "clean" their room.

Re:Wasted chance

[Adambomb]

1790 early that year Wahabis raid southern Iraq THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE!

Re:Wasted chance

[zerkon]

Mr. Tenant was appointed by President Clinton in 1995.

Can't speak to the rest of you post since a lot of it is factually unverifiable, but without a doubt, President Bush did not appoint Mr. Tenant.

Re:Wasted chance

[ebvwfbw]

The "lie" part of the yellowcake issue is the lie Bush put in the State of the Union address, which said that Iraq was seeking to import yellowcake from Nigeria. Yellowcake itself is a pretty common substance, created by any uranium mining process. Simply having yellowcake is a far, far cry from having the desire or ability to detonate a nuke within the United States.

Are you serious? You doubt Saddam wanted a nuclear bomb and detonate it here? I bet you said that with a strait face too. You really have no clue who Saddam was, do you? Sorry, your thought was just so.... I'll say amazing I can't believe it. As for the State of the Union propagada from the left about the yellowcake - Factcheck did an analysis on it here - http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_16_words_on_iraq_ur anium.html . You obviously don't understand what was known at the time, by whom and why something is believed and when something is a lie. It wasn't a lie and if you look at what fact check says I think you will have to agree. I could be wrong on that, however I can hope you will understand what they wrote. (insert Geico caveman joke here)

Nobody disputes that hundreds of degraded shells and canisters of sarin and other chemical weapons were found in Iraq. Are these the "500 WMDs" you're talking about? If so, what a pathetic cry from what we expected to find.

Are you serious? Plenty of people still dispute a WMD of any kind was ever found, indeed the guy I was responding to it seems by what he wrote. I don't know what you were expecting. Are you even aware that we invaded based on Saddam violating the 1992 cease fire? The same agreement he was violating on a daily basis? We invaded for exactly those WMDs because that is what was specified in the 1992 agreement. Clearly you have been reading far too much propaganda from the left. The administration did mention that Saddam had yellowcake (Shown in my previous reply), a nuclear facility (Readily verified by thousands of sources), and nuclear scientists (again verified all over the place). Gee, someone might think he wants to build a nuclear device. Imagine that. As for the "degraded" shells you talk about, a number of them have been used as IEDs and were still very much effective. Regardless, the US just finished up destroying old chemical weapons from the 1950s. That is right, 1950s - does that sound depleted to you? From time to time they still find old chemical weapons in Washington DC from when they used to make them there during WW I. That is right, nearly a century ago. They are still very dangerous. Saying they are "depleted" is a joke. They would still kill you just as dead.

If you think George Tenet -- by the mere fact of being a Clinton appointee -- somehow puts the Seal of Clintonian Approval on everything to come out of the CIA in the run-up to the war, well, your thinking is far too muddled for me to understand or to repair.

Yea, I should have worded that a bit better reading what I wrote. I can see why you would think that. What I meant is it goes to show that Bush didn't "install" his man at the CIA to push his agenda as so many seem to think. Further, he didn't "make up" the evidence or Tenet would have seen to it Bush was hung out to dry. It also shows there was no change in thinking from the Clinton years - bombing Iraq on a daily basis during the Clinton administration to the Bush administration's handling of Iraq in the early days. Same people over there, same advice. Advice the rest of the world believed as well. Something you don't seem to understand. A lot of people on slashdot seem to think Bush came to office hell bent on going to war with Iraq. Some even say it was over oil which is very logic challenged. We already owned those fields by the food for oil program that was in place for nearly a decade. Iron fist security provided by Saddam. We got cheap oil, no hassle. B

Re:Wasted chance

[hung_himself]

Of course I was saying that both Fox and Moore are wrong (though Moore less so - and with a fresher set of untruths) - and every news agency out there too. The point being that in the US you get a very limited set of views. In order to make up your mind you need to judge the evidence that they present not whether they are biased or not and whether any of it makes any sense and what the motivations might be for lying. This is impossible with the polarized drivel that is found in the US media with all their agendas.

As for WMDs - from what I remember - the information was out there at the time for any with the eyes to see it. For example, the Economist had a pretty good analysis of what was happening, as did Gwynne Dyer. Again, I'm not saying that these sources are unbiased but although they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they at least try to get at the complex Realpolitik behind the scene - something that is sorely missing in the US where everything seems to boil down to whether this supports abortion or not...

I also apologize for impugning your interest in the world - it (flaming) is an old BBS habit and I really should read up on Darfur...

Re:Wasted chance

[Legion303]

Sure I read it. His claim was that Clinton believed Saddam had WMD. My response was that Clinton made this claim when Saddam actually had WMD, shortly before we destroyed them.

Pretty fucking simple, really.

Re:Wasted chance

[Legion303]

Sure we invaded. 4 days of bombing is not an invitation to high tea. As for degrading WMD capabilities, I'd say we did a pretty fucking good job of it, since the resumed UN inspections found nothing that could threaten us or our allies. We didn't find anything after the 2003 invasion either. Sounds like 1998 was fairly effective.

The UN inspectors ushered back in in 2002 (you may want to jot down the fact that this is still before GWB's posturing on the matter) also noted that Saddam's WMD capabilities had been utterly devastated in 98-99 and that he couldn't produce shit in the current environment.

Regardless, the fact that Clinton believed Saddam had WMD 9 years ago is irrelevant.

Re:Wasted chance

[CheShACat]

affected / effected than / then PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF....!

Re:Wasted chance

[An Onerous Coward]

You know, I don't care if Saddam had a dream of detonating a nuke in Times Square or not, because the simple fact is, he didn't have the programs or the infrastructure to pull it off. Plus, there is a good probability that, however insane he was, he still had enough of a grip on reality to know that such action would lead to the complete annihilation of his regime. So talk of "mushroom clouds" was mere fearmongering by the President. If he really thought it would be a good idea to reduce the risk of nuclear detonation, he wouldn't be drastically underfunding programs to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union (as Kerry so rightly criticized him for during the 2004 debates).

So be as amazed as you like when I say, I do not believe that Hussein's regime ever posed even a remote nuclear threat to the U.S. or its allies. I really couldn't care less.

As for the sixteen words, I'm aware of the wider debate over the factuality of the statement, and who knew what and when they forgot it. I was simply bringing it up to counter your ill-informed assertions about what anti-war activists are claiming. Nobody has claimed that there was no yellowcake in Iraq (and if you knew how easy it is to make the stuff, you'd understand why nobody is claiming it). So the fact that yellowcake was found proves nothing other than that Iraq had access to uranium ore and concentrated acid. As evidence for a determined nuclear weapons program, the stories you pointed to were laughable.

Back to the whole "George Tenet proves Bush made the right call" thing. You're still saying what I thought you were saying initially: the mere fact that Bush didn't install Tenet proves that he was independent, and would have acted as a brake on any attempts to doctor the evidence. That's utterly false. Stop focusing on the guy who appointed Tenet, and start focusing on the man himself. All the insider accounts (even that of Tenet himself, in his recent book) show that he either went along with the misuse of intelligence, or was unable to stop it.

I don't know why the hell you're dragging up the Scooter Libby case, unless you're simply trying to muddy the waters. But here are the facts: Richard Armitage was never charged with a crime because Fitzgerald couldn't find evidence that Armitage knew about Plame's covert status when he leaked the information. Such evidence would have been necessary to qualify for a conviction. You also appear to believe that it's impossible for more than one person to be the source of a leak, which is false.

You're right. A lot of people *do* believe that Bush came to office hell bent on invading Iraq. Maybe there's a reason for that, a reason which also explains why we've captured and executed Saddam Hussein (who didn't plan the 9/11 attacks) but not Osama bin Laden (who did).

Re:Wasted chance

[TigerTime]

"The simple question is, did he have any that he could have deployed? The answer to that is a very simple "no.""

I can agree with that. Unfortunately, that was not the originally asked question. It was "Were WMDs found in Iraq?". Not "Were deployable WMDs found in Iraq?".

That is where the different views and different results come from. How people view the question and their presupposition of what the question is referring to will lead to very different answers even though they know the same facts. Neither side is wrong because the question is not clear enough on what exactly their referring to.

Re:Wasted chance

[AK Marc]

That is where the different views and different results come from.

I do not understand how a non-functioning device is a device. A weapon of mass destruction must, by definition, have the ability to cause mass destruction. A "WMD" incapable of mass destruction is a "W" or a chemical weapon, or a biological weapon. If you look under my sink in the kitchen, there are chemicals I could use to kill as many people as any WMD-like device found in Iraq. That does not make my kitchen a WMD. I think that WMD came to be a term to substitute for NBC. The problem is that there were chemical weapons found. But they weren't mass-destruction capable. So they couldn't have been WMDs. Or am I missing something there?

I think that people are going back and changing definitions of words in order to make their side look better. One side makes it sound like chemical weapons weren't found. They were. The other makes it sound like Saddam had weapons capable of mass destruction. He did not. Both are wrong. And the language and people are caught in the middle.

Re:Wasted chance

[ebvwfbw]

You know, I don't care if Saddam had a dream of detonating a nuke in Times Square or not, because the simple fact is, he didn't have the programs or the infrastructure to pull it off. Plus, there is a good probability that, however insane he was, he still had enough of a grip on reality to know that such action would lead to the complete annihilation of his regime. So talk of "mushroom clouds" was mere fearmongering by the President. If he really thought it would be a good idea to reduce the risk of nuclear detonation, he wouldn't be drastically underfunding programs to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union (as Kerry so rightly criticized him for during the 2004 debates).

Again, it looked like he did have the ability to do it. Everyone in the world thought that, for years. This is like saying the Soviets wouldn't do it because it would lead to their complete annihilation and likewise extend this to Israel, India, Pakistan and all the other nations that we know have the bomb. It is the "nuclear club" and they want in. Iran wants in, N. Korea wants in. Do you doubt N. Korea was trying to make a bomb too? Bill Clinton nearly went to war with them in the 1990s over that. You don't seem to realize these guys lose touch with reality. Saddam was doing other things that would lead to his demise and indeed did lead to his demise. He even killed members of his own family. He thought he was absolutely safe, especially when we fell back in 1992. After all, Castro has managed to survive all of these years right in the US's backyard. It is easy to think they are safe and we are a paper tiger.

As for the sixteen words, I'm aware of the wider debate over the factuality of the statement, and who knew what and when they forgot it. I was simply bringing it up to counter your ill-informed assertions about what anti-war activists are claiming. Nobody has claimed that there was no yellowcake in Iraq (and if you knew how easy it is to make the stuff, you'd understand why nobody is claiming it). So the fact that yellowcake was found proves nothing other than that Iraq had access to uranium ore and concentrated acid. As evidence for a determined nuclear weapons program, the stories you pointed to were laughable.

Odd, I know some of the original anti-war people and they still dispute that. Even after photographic evidence. They claimed it was staged or it wasn't really Iraq. Anything but admit the truth. I'm often amazed at how they can "connect the dots" even when they aren't there when they want to and yet can't in other situations when it is painfully obvious. Ok, you lost me. So those 16 words COULD have been in there because they are of no consequence and by extension not a lie after all? That was the original statement, that it was a lie. Now you seem to agree with me? You should make up your mind. I also obviously totally lost you with the Libby case and I knew I would because you don't know what you're talking about. Libby was accused of outing Valerie Plame (A supposed undercover CIA agent, here in the states) because her husband said Iraq wasn't trying to get Yellowcake from Niger (which by the way is a crazy argument anyway - why not do something to him directly?). Actually he in fact did confirm what the Bush administration was saying in a CIA report and his assertion that a letter from Iraq about this was a fake was shown to be a lie because he couldn't have possibly ever seen it to begin with. We also know from subsequent investigation it is highly likely Iraq was trying to buy Yellowcake from Niger as we know for sure they did meet, where they met, who was there from both sides and Niger doesn't have any other product that Iraq would be interested in. You also don't find Yellowcake in the wild, you seem to think you can. It is the intermediate step in refining it. I.e. it is a refined product. Clearly it is a concern if it is found in a country that has nuclear ambitions. If you disagree with that, then you are disagreeing with very long

Re:Wasted chance

[bobc4012]

"I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup."

You must be puking daily over your own words. Obviously, you have not read all that has been published over the years. I also recommend you watch the History Channel when they repeat the episode on Iraq and Saddam and his sons, including the videos of his sons who had camera crews following them around recording their antics for posterity. Of course, someone like yourself, who lives in constant denial would not believe the truth.

HaHa

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to jail and slashdot is getting shut down. It's a federal offense to interfere with an official government propaganda outlet.

Re:HaHa

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just waiting for Fox News to run a story revealing Slashdot server admin passwords.

Re:HaHa

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever, fox news can't figure out how to work their own cameras let alone something as complicated as a computer.

Nice...

[x3rc3s]

Enjoy your stay in gitmo!

Okay

[elrous0]

Somehow I doubt the FBI will find it amusing.

oblig SpaceBalls

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same password to my locker!

Changed by whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the question is, was it changed by Fox or someone else.

Great all we need.

[forgotten_my_nick]

That is all we need, months of stories how "evil hackers got into Fox network"

Followed up with "Hackers: Evil and must be stopped?" to linking hacking to Obama, a danger to your kids and finally Hackers gone wild at Spring break.

Re:Great all we need.

[hoggoth]

Chris Hanson is moving to FOX to host Dateline: To Catch A Hacker.

Re:Great all we need.

[Red Flayer]

and finally Hackers gone wild at Spring break.

If that video is similar to any of the other Spring break videos I've "heard about", I do not want to see it.

Either that, or we need to begin teaching nubile drunken 22-year-olds to hack.

Re:Great all we need.

[sammy baby]

You missed another possibility: that we'll be throwing beads at pasty, flabby geeks to get them to put their clothes back on.

Re:Great all we need.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are some titties I dont wanna see!

Re:Great all we need.

[TerranFury]

linking hacking to Obama

Nice typo. Confusing a Democratic candidate with Al Quaeda's head demagogue? Apropos, given we're talking about Fox.

Re:Great all we need.

[TuxBeej]

Hackers gone wild at Spring break Just what we need - a bunch of fluoro-bleached, scruffy-lookin' dudes hanging around on the beach, flashing us their ttys...

Re:Great all we need.

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the sound of the Sarcasm Bird flying way, WAY over your head....

what's wrong with T1me Out

[wheretheicegrows]

I'm not that much into security, so I hope I don't sound "pathetic", but I was wondering what's wrong with the 'T1me Out' password. I'd say all company passwords I've ever had were no harder than that, and none of them had a space in it. And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[AlHunt]

>And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Great - now I have to go change all my passwords.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Enry]

> And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

<joke>That's on my luggage.</joke>

Seriously, though, that's the form you should be using for passwords, especially critical ones or ones that are public-facing. Get yourself a good password manager (TealSafe, SplashID) and just keep generating new passwords for all your systems.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D

Thanks, jerk. Now I have to go change the combination on my luggage.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Dammit! Now I have to change it!

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[realkiwi]

And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D? Me. You realize you can't use that password anymore?

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Errtu76]

I do; caps/numbers/special chars. But i agree, 'T1me Out' would be a good choice. Even Microsoft's own Password checker thinks it's a pretty good choice ;)

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Dictionary words with letters replaced by numbers: not enough entropy. In this case however, not even a completely random password would have saved them.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

> And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

My account passwords are nothing like that and my root passwords are > 24 chars.

At the very least create a random string of 4-8 chars and use it as a (pre|post)-fix to your standard passwords.

Here's some for the lazy...

tVx1x%65
T9uOL0;{
]3HUk2:w
SWg7E1K*

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[TodMinuit]

Seriously, though, that's the form you should be using for passwords, especially critical ones or ones that are public-facing. Get yourself a good password manager (TealSafe, SplashID) and just keep generating new passwords for all your systems. I think it's a moot point. Here, the password wasn't the failure. It could have been d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e and it wouldn't have made a difference.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[asliarun]

I agree, and my personal experience with corporate passwords has been the same. I'm sure this would disturb security geeks at various levels (or get them salivating!), but I don't see this as a *huge* loophole since most of the systems are inside the corporate firewall anyway. IMHO, this is about as big a security threat as an employee or a contractor copying sensitive data (which the password is protecting) and trying to profit from it illegally.

A system that I was managing once started crashing, and further investigation revealed that the password of an upstream system had been changed. When we contacted the admin team of the offending application, they informed us that they had upgraded the password from 123 to the "highly secure" (in their words) 234.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[ndixon]

There's nothing really wrong with the password (though a smart dictionary-based search could discover it).

There is something very wrong with writing the password down, in plain text, on a public-facing server and assuming that no-one will be able to see it.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Paulrothrock]

I use my own password generator (source code) to generate secure and easy to remember passwords. It's really handy because I have accounts on a bunch of machines at work and I can't use passwords that are too hard to remember in case I need to scp from one machine to another.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as soon as you look deeper in the site structure you find better passwords, like:

                ftp://ftp.g.ziffdavis.com/2pu8r/overture.xml

(And a host of others...)

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[akkarin]

Wha.. but.. how the hell did you know my password!?!

*Rushes to change password*

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Opportunist]

Current "dictionary crackers" already take care of "leet speak". I.e. they do contain "words" like h8, sk8er and so on. And of course they do try single character replacements like 1 for I and 2 for Z and so on.

In other words, yes, this password was prone to be dict'ed.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not that much into security, so I hope I don't sound "pathetic", but I was wondering what's wrong with the 'T1me Out' password. I'd say all company passwords I've ever had were no harder than that, and none of them had a space in it.

Yeah, no kidding. At one of my previous employers (double checking that I have ticked "Post anonymously"....check), which we might call "Chinese national insurance" (I am not Chinese, nor have I ever worked at a insurance company), Linux root or Windows admin password for all computers were either "Chinese" or "national insurance". When asking the senior sysadmin if that was a good idea, he said "we have a lot of firewalls, so it's fine".

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

>>And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?
Look what you went and did!

I have to change all my root passwords now...

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooops. I meant:

And, as soon as you look deeper in the site structure you find better passwords, like:

                ftp://Altavista_1:H1S!uwro@ftp.g.ziffdavis.com/2pu 8r/overture.xml

(And a host of others...)

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

'T1me Out' is a stupid password, because it's a cinch to remember, even if you only see it once. You're not going to remember something like 'AHM3E&IR' unless you have a while memorise it. pwgen is a fantastic utility for generating passwords like this.

Passwords like this are not that hard to memorise once you've been doing it for a while.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Legion303]

"And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?"

Great--now you've got 8 people making the same joke.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[screeble]

Great, now I have to change my OS.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[tehcyder]

>And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Great - now I have to go change all my passwords.

Me too!

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[mewyn]

Well, the main problem with using "T1meOut" is it's very easily attacked by a weighted dictionary attack. All dictionary attacks take care of common numerical replacements and capitalization. The next issue is weight of the words. Time and out are rather common words in the english language, and even more common when used together. In the case of a full random password, or a word password with randomness interjected, it'd be a lot less crackable than "T1meOut". A much better password would be something like "t&iM-eoUt3". In that case, the words are still there, you just have to memorize the capitalization and non-word components, which honestly isn't hard, people just think it is.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[jollyreaper]

>>And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

>Great - now I have to go change all my passwords.

Don't feel bad, I had the same combination on my luggage.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[ArcadeNut]

Not even close! HA! Mine is poEw34285z!

Oh damn it...

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a long post on this, but deleted it as it was covered but if someone has points mod parent up. This is very true and a lot of people don't understand it.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[viperblades]

one of the old passwords on a server i managed was m37gt19s. typically i make passowrds by typing random letters and numbers with my eyes closed. then shorten the most complex part of the sequence to the password length needed. for trivial passwords, you just store them on paper and in digital format in a lock box. and by digital format i mean , external drive. pda with sd card, etc.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[CelticWhisper]

You know, they'd never have known if you didn't just say you had to change them.

Take me, for example: I don't let anyone know that my root password is...ohhhhhhhhhhohohohohohoho, that was close. I don't think so.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Lord of Hyphens]

And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Actually, most of my passcodes resemble that--I have a general algorithm for devising my own passcodes which includes liberal sprinkling with buckybit characters. It's secure enough for my uses, uses no discrete words, is easily modifiable, and--most importantly--lets me figure out what the heck I last used.

And (obligatory) Now I have to go change my passcode.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[alxbtk]

Nah, actually the trick is to announce that you now have to change it, but to then keep it as it was! Muahahahaha evil security!!1

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[iapetus]

Not exactly, but that's only because it's a little short for one of my passwords. The same seemingly random mixture of upper and lower case and numeric values appears in my passwords, though. All you need is to define a way of converting between some memorable (to you) source data and a password of that form, and not only do you never have a problem finding and remembering strong passwords, but you can actually write down the source information and you'll be able to reproduce the password any time you need to, whereas it'll be next to useless for someone who doesn't know the encoding mechanism.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[eth1]

YwMCU07D?

Wimp. Real men use
dd if=/dev/random bs=1024 count=1 | passwd --stdin

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

I do! Nobody would ever guess "p455w0rd"!

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[drinkypoo]

And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Well, I'm not going to tell you how like that it is, but all of my passwords are semi-random. I hash on the keyboard a bit (taking care to not favor home keys, which I don't normally rest my fingers on anyway) and then if it's clearly not random then I fiddle around with it. The idea is to make a string that looks like a garble to me. Then I take ages to memorize it, and burn the paper (or I lose it, and start over from the password recovery stage, which means generating a new password anyway.)

My important passwords, like for the bank or paypal, are eight characters or more, highly random, mixed-case, with numbers, and contain punctuation. The idea is to expand the character set used so that it greatly enlarges the search domain and makes brute-force password cracking utterly impractical when combined with account lockouts etc. So yes, ALL my passwords look like the above, and the important ones are even long enough to provide some benefit.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[starwed]

I don't know; my password to log into the physics department network is mandated to be way harder than that. (No sequential letters, for instance.)

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[DeeKayWon]

> Great - now I have to go change all my passwords.

Don't worry about it. I just did it for you.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Midnight Thunder]

Mine's just a little tougher: 12345. -- oops did I just say that.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[russellh]

And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

I do. I only use rememberable passwords for my essential day to day things which I am willing to change frequently. Everything else gets a long randomly generated password. At last count, I have 296 such passwords, and they are, except for a few, all at least 10 characters. stored on an encrypted disk image. So yes, hack my computer and decrypt my .dmg and you'll have them all. That's a lot less likely than me actually changing those passwords all the time though, and a lot safer than me using the same password all over the web. Passwords are a trade-off and the whole system is starting to suck in ways I never imagined when I was putting serious thought into solving the problem (in 1999).

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[otis wildflower]

I actually use passwords I can rarely even spell out, but have become almost purely muscle-memory based. At least 12 characters with (\S) characters. If I try to type them with one hand or one finger at a time, I will often fail.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[The One and Only]

No way is Fox News going to do that. That's Al Gore's strategy!

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[kypper]

Thanks a lot... now I have to change my password too.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[guzugi]

http://us.md5.crysm.net/find?md5=d41d8cd98f00b204e 9800998ecf8427e

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[joshuac]

Hey, how did you guess my password?

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Erskin]

And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

My passwords are more complicated than that, actually, since I'm assuming you are using the question mark as punctuation rather than part of the password.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[ningjing]

My last password was "Watmmwatdod,wblsbsbds.Wlawfowtpmg,bwatmasotwfit." So what was your question again? And no, I'm not joking, that really was my last monthly password.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[gknoy]

Actually, only 7 of them were joking .... but which seven? :)

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[owlstead]

"what's wrong with the 'T1me Out' password"

Simple, there is too little entropy in the password. It's pretty much a given that a password tool will find it after a while (checking words and doing some basic substitutions). Hell, you can be pretty sure that T1me Out is in the default dictionary tested by the tools, it sounds like a password that will be used pretty much by (dumb) sysops. For this, the tools should have unlimited access to the FTP server. If some sort of timeout is introduced or if a limited amount of passwords can be guessed, it will be much harder.

"YwMCU07D" has too little entropy in it as well (~47 bits if well distributed, and if I am not mistaken). I use really hard to guess passwords for those passwords that can be guessed off-line, or unrestricted online. My PGP key is pretty well protected, for instance. Many computer accounts and things like that have introduced timeouts or maximum number of tries (blocking). That's why a PIN may only be 4 digits: you only have 3 tries (or 5 or 6 if you have a chip in it, saved me once). Of course, less sensitive data may be protected less well, but you must remember that there is no true password protection, just a small deterrent.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[sh3l1]

Don't post my password on the internet! just kidding, but i do have a complex password such as YwMCU07D.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[RealGrouchy]

I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.

No, but I noticed your signature.

- RG>

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[kayditty]

It's dictionary, but that's not even a big issue, really. You can use dictionary words if the password is sufficiently long (ideally including permeations of said words [and ideally multiple instances of said permeations {of a different word each}]. The real problem is that passwords are mostly obsolete. That's just an eight character password, which is absolutely nothing. If I got ahold of your hash database, I could crack it pretty quickly even on my few and relatively home computers.

Most websites actually use unsalted MD5 to store passwords, of which 9 chars a-zA-Z0-9 could be cracked by BlueGene/L in roughly 3 hours, were it properly suited to such a task. You'd have to be using something like brcypt with proper salting to be safe, unless you used 20 character passwords regularly, which isn't really a big deal as people make it out to be. If I can remember the first 100 digits of pi without even trying, why, exactly, will it be a problem for me to remember my 15-20 digit password? I don't think I'm particularly special, either. My memory is actually relatively crap.

Nevertheless, as computer complexity increases, the hash complexity has to increase or else the password complexity does. Bcrypt attempts to accomodate the former, making the letter somewhat unnecessary, but it is inevitable that eventually a secure password will consist of some 50 characters a-zA-Z0-9. It's probably time we just give up the dated concept all together. I don't see why we can't use RSA cards or something similar. Much more secure and probably more efficient.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[kayditty]

how's the weather in wales?

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Fred Ferrigno]

In that case, the words are still there, you just have to memorize the capitalization and non-word components, which honestly isn't hard, people just think it is. Define "hard". Since I know I'm me, passwords are an annoying speed bump in the best case scenario. In the worst case, a password I can't remember is worthless, no matter how strong it is.

Password Nazis these days are really frigging annoying. The most annoying rule I keep coming across is "no more than N letters in a row". Obviously that's meant to make it harder to use a dictionary word, but it trips me up frequently even though I never use dictionary words. I'd wager most people use mostly the same non-alpha characters and the current push for "strong" passwords likely makes them just as common as Q or X.

I've often wondered if all these rules designed to make passwords harder to guess actually limit the search space, making it easier to guess passwords. For example, when my university introduced its new password rules, they offered the example password "hP!bD;825" for Happy Birthday 8/25. How many people do you think simply used hP!bD; and their birthday? How many people will use an otherwise vulnerable password but tweak it in a completely predictable way to pass the filter? qW!eR!tY anyone?

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[hackstraw]

In other words, yes, this password was prone to be dict'ed.

Who cares?

I have yet to of heard about a successful "dict'ed" account crack.

This type of issue is actually the most common. Leaving a password laying around.

Its also common for passwords to be given away via social engineering, man in the middle attacks, sniffed when being proudly displayed in plaintext, or similar (So the passwords complexity does not matter here).

Default passwords are a common source of breakin.

Its also common for a password to be compromised because it is being reused, and one of the hosts that it was used on was compromised.

In summary, passwords are a weak form of authentication. No matter how "good" they are. I have yet to of heard of a guessed or dictionary password break aside from the movie Wargames. I have heard of some people from ISPs who have had people that knew people guess easy to guess passwords though. But 99.999% of all password compromises are not due to weak passwords. Its from either still using passwords, or from weak password management.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

I do.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm not going to tell you how like that it is, but all of my passwords are semi-random. I hash on the keyboard a bit (taking care to not favor home keys, which I don't normally rest my fingers on anyway) and then if it's clearly not random then I fiddle around with it.

Humans are not good at creating random patterns. We like to think we are, but we're not.

For passwords that I don't need to type in or rarely access, I use EPG (Extended Password Generator). The plaintext password gets tossed in a text file with the contents encrypted using my PGP/GPG key. Those text files are easy to back up, can be copied around freely or e-mailed to a backup e-mail box and are as secure as the security of my PGP/GPG private keys.

Random passwords via EPG (or other tools) are also good for websites. Create an unique password for each website without much effort, then just have the browser keep track of it. (Well, maybe not for the bank website...) Even if someone manages to use a browser vulnerability to get your password to site X, they won't have the password to site Y. I still store website passwords in GPG/PGP encrypted text files, just like the rest of my passwords.

Now, coming up with a master password to protect the others? That's trickier.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

>they informed us that they had upgraded the password from 123 to the "highly secure" (in their words) 234.

Damnit. Now I have to go and change the combination locks on all my luggage. 345 should do it ...

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Threni]

> The most annoying rule I keep coming across is "no more than N letters in a row"

I've never heard of that one. N clearly can't be 1, and if it's 3 then it's hard to think of any words which it applies to. And even 2 isn't really much of a problem either, what with the millions of alternatives. Unless you're using non-dictionary words.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Fred Ferrigno]

I just checked my university's current password policy and it's actually N != 3. As in 1, 2, 4 or more. That seems even more odd to me. I'm fairly certain it used to be N < 3, because when they first instituted it (some years ago, I've since graduated) I had to change my password which had more than three letters.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[imemyself]

You can go hunter2 my hunter2ing hunter2!

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Great - now I have to go change my joke

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[antic]

"I have yet to of heard about a successful "dict'ed" account crack."

Have had client sites get done. Upgraded passwords to 12-character strings of random characters.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[__NR_kill]

I cannot show you guys a few of my passwords. Slashdot thinks I'm a troll and is not letting me do it.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Kopretinka]

Hey, my password is... er was YwMCU07D! Damn you hackers!

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[Anonymous Coward]

"Great - now I have to go change all my passwords." You too? You weren't peeking over my shoulder when I chose that PW, were you?

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shut the fuck up, you Gentoo fanboi. If they used Gentoo, the server would still be recompiling from a kernel update six months ago. Take your Genntoo, and jam it up your ass sideways and backwards. It's 0.038% more optimized for that.

What can they do to you?

[Anonymous Coward]

What can Fox or the police do? Will this guy be charged with some sort of crime? The password and username were freely available to anyone that actually went to the site. What are the laws in a situation like this?

Not a horrible password

[BHearsum]

That password would've been satisfactory if it was kept better.

Not really going to harm Fox

[SilentChris]

In all fairness (do they even deserve it?), the password listed in the script is for ZDNet's FTP, not Fox. Still pretty embarrassing, but it's not going to hurt Fox at all (I imagine it could have hurt CNet/ZDNet). And it definitely could've hurt the relationship between both corporations' IT departments.

There seems to be a string of these lately between content aggregators. About a month ago there was that page on MS's site endorsing Linux. Turns out the content was from another site (I think, actually, CNet).

Not to say I'm not totally surprised. In this day when about 50% of someone's site is content from somebody else, it's not surprising there's snafus. I'm just waiting for the day when one of the sites leaves up SSH logins for another.

Re:Not really going to harm Fox

[btellier]

In all fairness (do they even deserve it?), the password listed in the script is for ZDNet's FTP, not Fox. Still pretty embarrassing, but it's not going to hurt Fox at all (I imagine it could have hurt CNet/ZDNet).

Not sure what you mean here. There was nothing wrong with ZDNet's FTP server, or their password policy. The problem is that the dopey Fox News website programmers/admins left a plaintext password on a server with indexing enabled. News organizations, where integrity and truth in reporting (should) be most important, (should) care about their public perception. If this happens again, it will compromise their readers' belief that they're reading factual stories, and not a subtly hax0red version of the news.

The fact that it was an IIS admin and not a reporter who screwed up isn't the issue: it's the end result that the news could be altered.

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[BHearsum]

NOT +1 interesting. The FTP service is "Microsoft FTP Service".

I would love to make my own headline

[koan]

I spent my morning wondering what my headline would be if I had access to change FOX's web page...impeach...hours of fun thanks for the post.

I'm no lawyer, but...

[TodMinuit]

Just because you find the key to my car lying on the street doesn't mean you can go for a joy ride.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but...

[vulgrin]

Yeah, but if you were a total dick (like Fox News) then I might move it to another level of the parking garage to teach you a lesson.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, we get a horrible computer/car analogy submitted by a buffoon.

Cars are private property. The laws are quite clear that you can't simply take one just because you found a way to start it. Or even if it is sitting in front of a house or store with the engine running and doors open.

Cyberspace is different. A web site is a public space, with the implied permission to wander around it, and look at various items. A good analogy here would be if someone was shopping in a large store and found a "secret place" that the store owner didn't want anyone to see. But all the customer had done was follow the hallway beyond the restrooms, made a right turn, and stumbled upon the secret place. Not exactly the sort of thing to shoot a man over.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but...

[LeadSongDog]

You sure aren't a lawyer, or you'd know the difference between 'can' and 'may'.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but...

[TodMinuit]

Good thing we're talking about logging into the private FTP site, not wandering around the public website.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but...

[juanillodgn]

Hummm... not so private if it wasn't firewalled.

It Works

[Eddi3]

Actually, as of this post, the ftp server can still be accessed with the same username and password from the script.

Let's see here

[Anonymous Coward]

Random corporation has bad security: Brief blurb about how corporations should take better care of their security infrastructure in order to make sure that leaks/intrusions don't happen. Perhaps even a person or two giving advice in the form of which files to edit and what to change.

Corporation that people don't like has bad security: Note after note about how evil the company is and that they're idiots in the highest sense.

Ridiculous summary

[the computer guy nex]

1) The password has probably been around for awhile with no one guessing it. What exactly was wrong with it? Uppercase/lowercase/numbers, combination of multiple words, it is at least moderately strong.

2) Why the hell are you blaming Fox? You think the entire company sat in a conference room and decided on a security scheme and a password?

3) Why did this deserve front page news? Exploits like this are found on a daily basis, and ones much more humorous/interesting/newsworthy.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"3) Why did this deserve front page news?"

Because it serves as a catalyst for political rhetoric spewing slash-drones -- anything remotely negative, stupid, etc. about the administration (or links there to) as a means to post rambling, incoherent, nazi-comparing critiques.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[pzs]

I'm guessing that this is an excuse to rag on Fox and bitch about the war and Dubya some more.

At least the story had "ftp" in it, making it slightly more "for nerds".

Peter

PS. I was against the war, I'm against Bush and I think Fox sucks, but even so (and as the parent post points out), this is a bit tenuous.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The password has probably been around for awhile with no one guessing it. What exactly was wrong with it?

It was hardcoded into a shell script which was available to anonymous FTP users?

Re:Ridiculous summary

[goldspider]

I think you already know the answers to your questions. This is one of many reasons why Slashdot is barely readable anymore.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

"Wikipedia and YouTube are the most egalitarian media sources.... AND YOU HAVE A LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS."

  - Lewis Black.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the Nazi posts? Other than a reference to Operation Desert Fox, I've not seen any.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[pzs]

Well done GOP propaganda drone. Have a cookie.

I think Bill Moyers said it best when he said this:

"[Ruper Murdoch] worst offense with Fox news is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he's made of its journalism. Fox news huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims, but does little serious original reporting."

Peter

Re:Ridiculous summary

[fishbowl]

"1) The password has probably been around for awhile with no one guessing it. What exactly was wrong with it? Uppercase/lowercase/numbers, combination of multiple words, it is at least moderately strong."

What kind of dictionary attack *wouldn't* find it?

"2) Why the hell are you blaming Fox? You think the entire company sat in a conference room and decided on a security scheme and a password?"

I'm betting the head of IT Security at Fox is on the right side of the salary curve. Wonder if that person reads slashdot?

"3) Why did this deserve front page news? Exploits like this are found on a daily basis, and ones much more humorous/interesting/newsworthy."

Fox is the propaganda arm of the wildly unpopular political party currently in control of the USA. As a political target, it could have the most significant impact of any information system in the world. It seems that nobody there was clueless enough to have something on this webserver that would have implicated anyone in a crime, blown apart a conspiracy, indicated media complicity in a government cover-up, or even, shown something that the news channel chose not to report, or showed different information than was reported. But this is the sort of thing you'd be looking for if you infiltraded Pravda^W Fox News.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[Gzip Christ]

What kind of dictionary attack *wouldn't* find it? One that uses a Spanish dictionary.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[deets]

I wish I could get half my admins to create passwords this strong.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[Maltheus]

At least the story had "ftp" in it, making it slightly more "for nerds".

Wannabe nerds maybe, the rest of us are using Sftp. ;)

Re:Ridiculous summary

[that this is not und]

scp, dude.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[that this is not und]

Fox is the propaganda arm of the wildly unpopular political party currently in control of the USA.

Humorously, one of the few US political bodies with lower popularity ratings than the White House at the present moment is the Democractic-run congress.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[that this is not und]

Fox news huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims,

Every dumb punk who flunked out of calculus, couldn't even get into the English deparment, and so transferred to J-School 'huffs and puffs and pontificates.' It goes with the territory. It's a shame, too, that we can't go back to the old salty days when 'reporters' worked their way up the rungs of journalism from a start as copy boys.

Because, frankly, the whole profession is full of effete egotists with incredibly stuffed shirts nowadays. Jeez.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[E 99]

"Wikipedia and YouTube are the most egalitarian media sources.... AND YOU HAVE A LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS."

1) Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a "media source". 2) What in hell is an "egalitarian media source" supposed to mean? 3) Wikipedia and YouTube necessarily have whatever biases that are possessed by their respective contributor populations. If the fact that the contributors comprise a larger group than, say the contributors to CNN or Fox News, in no way implies that the average bias expressed in them is less than the bias in expressed in CNN or Fox. On the contrary, there are very limited mechanisms on these "egalitarian sources" to filter out expressions of extreme bias.

Re:Ridiculous summary

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

it's a joke. IN the context, Lewis was ranting about Conservapedia and some conservative video site(Which was just a content aggregator on YouTube; leading him to rant that "The conservative answer to YouTube... IS YOUTUBE"). Yes, there's a strong bias on the part of the community as a whole, but if conservatives want to stop it, they need to step up.

The info still works....

[Setral]

If it hasn't been mentioned already, it still works, but I wouldn't recommend using it.

Re:The info still works....

[Capt James McCarthy]

The question is, are you or the original poster able to determine if it's a honey pot or not?

Completely random password, whatever!

[morgan_greywolf]

Dictionary words with letters replaced by numbers: not enough entropy. In this case however, not even a completely random password would have saved them.

Bingo! Never, ever, ever! NEVER store a password in plaintext in a script. Not ever. That's always a huge security issue, because you never know who is going to read the file. If you need unattended logins, there's SSH, Kerberos/GSSAPI, whatever.

Re:Completely random password, whatever!

[ctr2sprt]

Unfortunately, SSH and Kerberos won't save you. Pretty much nothing will. In order for the script to authenticate itself as you without user intervention, the script needs your credentials. And if the script can read your credentials, then anyone who can run the script can read your credentials as well. In the case of a password hardcoded into the script, you can just cat the script; if you're using SSH, you can cat the private key; if you're using Kerberos, you can look at the keytab or cat the expect script which feeds your password to kinit.

The typical way around this is e.g.:

# groupadd sandbox
# useradd -g sandbox -r sandbox
# chmod 750 /usr/local/bin/riskyscript
# chown root:sandbox /usr/local/bin/riskyscript
# echo "%adm ALL=NOPASSWD: (sandbox) /usr/local/bin/riskyscript" >>/etc/sudoers

You can do slightly better using MAC and such, but your time is better spent elsewhere. Like by making sure that riskyscript is bug-free, locking down the user account it's authenticating as so it can only perform the tasks it needs to, etc.

Re:Completely random password, whatever!

[morgan_greywolf]

Unfortunately, SSH and Kerberos won't save you. Pretty much nothing will. In order for the script to authenticate itself as you without user intervention, the script needs your credentials. And if the script can read your credentials, then anyone who can run the script can read your credentials as well.

Huh? Maybe you haven't heard, but they have this wonderful, brand-spanking-new, cutting-ege technology called multi-user cron. It was released with Unix System V in 1983 -- talk about the ink not drying yet! In multiuser cron, cron jobs run as you, but guess what? You don't even have to be there! Amazing technology! It's available in two separate implementations for Linux -- Vixie Cron and Anacron.

Re:Completely random password, whatever!

[weicco]

And how many web applications are run as cron jobs? I don't know a single one...

Or are you suggesting that Apache should run with user's credentials (isn't there some patch that does this where Apache suids to user?) and DB authentication is done by using same credentials without password at all?

It's the same problem with DRM. You need to store the authentication/decryption key somewhere as cleartext (it can be somehow obfuscated on disk but it needs to be cleartext at least in memory when it is needed, just reverse engineer the deobfuscation process) and when it's stored, it can be found by others. If you have solution to this, please let me know.

Re:Completely random password, whatever!

[morgan_greywolf]

And how many web applications are run as cron jobs? I don't know a single one...

If you're aggregating content like Fox News does with ZDNet material, you probably don't grab it on the fly, but at scheduled intervals.

Re:Completely random password, whatever!

[weicco]

Ah yes, that I understand. But still... Where do you put DB's password or would you use passwordless authentication (I sure wouldn't)?

PMITA-prison galore

[Anonymous Coward]

"News from people fucked in the ass on a regular basis and who fear showers" jailhouse-title no different than that of today.

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[muindaur]

I'm asking if that truly is Ubuntus default or if the fuckheads at Fox changed it. I'm not saying that Gentoo is superior I'm just saying that its default is to turn it off to establish a basis of comparison since that is the Linux version I am most familiar with. Each person has their own flavor and I'm just curious if this is a security hole since I feel that if the directory tree is on by default that is a major security hole because I wouldn't want others to browse the site tree with files such as the one mentioned in the article.

Lern an Gramur

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fox News'" is incorrect pluralization. Bastards think they're Jesus.

UP UP UP

[newr00tic]

way up!

4chan

[stick-boy]

this originated on 4chan.org's /b/ late last night (NSFW.) the shell script was a small script for uploading to a ziff-davis ftp server, it wasn't actually a fox ftp password (look at the directory name the shell script was found in, and i'm sure z-d appreciates this too.) also, there was an image directory that had directory listing turned on too. i didn't stick around long enough to see if any /b/tards found anything interesting in there, but i know an image dump was being made.

Re:4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to break rules 1 and 2.

Re:4chan

[dosle]

He did it for the lulz~

Re:4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

he will become an hero just like voldemort

Re:4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies, it was ebaumsworld.com!

Re:4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

He's going to wish he became an hero after ebaums gets ahold of him.

Re:4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone on, er, another site made an archive of everything, you can get probably find it on rapidshare or something if you know where to look.

Re:4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

there was much win to be found

OHHHHH SHIT!

[thatskinnyguy]

PWND!

T1me Out Isn't Bad

[Bryan_W]

What's wrong with using T1me Out as a password? It has everything that qualifies it to be strong: upper case, lower case, numerics, and even a special charater (space). The only possible thing I could see wrong is that it does contain a dictionary word, but other than that, it's solid.

Re:T1me Out Isn't Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a common phrase, and is l337ified. Many brute-force password crackers will do l337ified variations on words in the dictionary to get passwords just like this one.

Re:T1me Out Isn't Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

because that one trait would make a dictionary attack tool crack it in minutes. But, as had been said before, the choice of password pales compared to having it readable in a file.

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[228e2]

this is too funny for troll . . . c'mon mods!

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[muindaur]

http://www.foxnews.com/admin/xml_parser/zdnet/ Apache/2.2.3 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.1 Server at www.foxnews.com Port 80 This is the page the author of the article said he accessed to get the shell script which he would not have gotten if the settings had the directory tree turned off and I feel is the authors point.

Pity or natural selection

[Opportunist]

I dunno... should I feel pity for their webmaster or consider it natural selection that he will most likely get a "you won't find a job in this country anymore" letter?

Re:Full Disclosure?

[tgatliff]

Talk about a crappy news day...

This is the closest Fox News will ever get...

[TheReallyMadScientis]

...to doing 'fair and balanced' journalism.

Something like this?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://download.qlogic.com/api/719.981

My guess

[coren2000]

531g h41l

Re:My guess

[lanswitch]

That should be: "513g H41l".

Re:My guess

[coren2000]

Mod me up anyways b17c43s! mwhahahahha

No doubt they will not

[Anonymous Coward]

FOX is nothing but their mouthpiece as it is ran by republicans.

Another Example of /.'s Political Bias

[dammy]

This story is worthy of /. news? What was I expecting this morning, more tech reports/stories on technology? Silly me, instead I get some silly liberal biased non-story instead.

Dammy

OMG that's my password!!!1!oneone!eleventy!!1!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha Ha fooled you. MY KEYBoARD IS sTuCk ON AWESOMES!

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[pete.com]

that's just what they want us to think

Re:Full Disclosure?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you posted as anonymous to set up the joke and then post under your name to deliver the punchline?

Ladies and gentleman, the Sockpuppet Straight Man.

Re:Fox news runs Ubuntu

[youngerpants]

I'm really sorry, but I don't think that word means what you think it means.

If instead this were the server that updates Fox News with all of Microsoft's latest FUD about Linux insecurities, then you have irony my friend.

Wasted chance

[oldmacdonald]

But people like simple stories with comic book villains...

Oh the irony!

Wrong

[Chmcginn]

That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

Wait, did I just feed the intentionally-screwed-up movie quote troll?

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

consider that subject on GP is "oblig SpaceBalls"..............

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[mhall119]

I'm just curious if this is a security hole since I feel that if the directory tree is on by default that is a major security hole because I wouldn't want others to browse the site tree with files such as the one mentioned in the article. Good security generally requires that you do not put files containing passwords (especially clear text passwords) in the web server's document root. Turning off directory listing would not prevent the file from being accessible to anyone on the internet, it's just security through obscurity.

Password

[eebra82]

"And seriously, what kind of password is T1me Out. This is just pathetic."

What's wrong with it? Uppercase, lowercase and numbers. Looks safe to me. If you had a thousand years to figure it out on your own, would have succeeded?

I would say it's safer than 'xXsa425Vff', because 'T1me Out' is easy to remember. That way, you don't have to ask your co-workers what it is in case you forget it. Plus, I'm sure they're changing the password from time to time. It's unlikely 'T2me Out', however. :)

Re:Password

[PhxBlue]

What's wrong with it? Uppercase, lowercase and numbers. Looks safe to me.

Please. A dictionary attack would have nailed it in a couple of hours, tops -- especially given that most of the software used for dictionary attacks also attacks numbers used as letters (i.e., "t1me" instead of "time").

Re:Password

[Carewolf]

So someone, somewhere is telling people that passwords that contain upper and lower-case and numbers are good passwords?? They _just_ forget to tell you that if the upper-letter is the first letter of a word, and the number is an easily predictable substitute, when you gain ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Yes, this password would be cracked in 5-20 seconds by an average password cracker.

Re:Password

[eebra82]

Is it even possible to do this? Can you make hundreds of thousands of attempts in a short amount of time? I mean, is it not likely that the system will restrict access from the IP address(es) and perhaps even shut down access temporarily?

Re:Password

[Big_Al_B]

Is it even possible to do this? Can you make hundreds of thousands of attempts in a short amount of time? Trivially.

I mean, is it not likely that the system will restrict access from the IP address(es) and perhaps even shut down access temporarily? You just may be the most naive computer user with a /. account that I've ever encountered.

Can you provide a list of FTP servers and or host operating systems that you believe behave this way?

Re:Password

[Anonymous Coward]

If you honestly believe that you're going to brute force that password in 5-20 seconds by using the ftp server to authenticate, I think it may be you who is the most naive computer user with a /. account. There is no way a dictionary attack will get that password in 20 seconds, much less 20 minutes. You probably could over some length of time, but not that quickly.

Re:Password

[wikinerd]

Can you make hundreds of thousands of attempts in a short amount of time?

I hear an inventor in the orient recently developed an apparatus named "for loop" which does exactly that. Too bad we can't copy it, since they just filed for a software patent.

Re:Password

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe... if it was so difficult..
The FTP protocol is unencrypted, so anyone listening between the server/client can just read the password.

Even for dictionary attacks, it's not so difficult. The general idea is to precompute the hashes. With a modern computer you can hammer through passwords and build up several gigs of hashes/plaintext in a matter of days. Once you find a hash, it's a simple matter to recover a usable clear password (it may not be the original password, but it can generate the same hash which is all that matters in most cases).

If they are smart, the least the could do is to lock the account after a few failed attempts...

Or use something that stores a reversible "hash" instead of a password...

Re:Password

[PixelScuba]

[new paragraph]Enough of this bickering [italic]CLEARLY[end italic] there are people with a slashdot user account who are more naive.[enter][enter] Why do people feel like they have to be the best at everything, even on the intranets using their unbunto.

Re:Password

[Random832]

Right. And how many iterations can you make in 20 seconds, making a round trip to an FTP server on each iteration? Screw 20 seconds, how many can you make before getting caught?

Re:Password

[SuiteSisterMary]

Or before the server software notices a cracking attempt, and starts tarpitting or refusing the connections?

Re:Password

[Anonymous Coward]

FTP servers that behave this way? Are you so stupid as to think that an FTP server sits on the wire with nothing between you and it?

Our IDS automatically blocks traffic to the FTP server after you fail to login 3 times. No more traffic from your IP to our network for 5 minutes. So every 5 minutes you get 3 whacks at a password. Do that enough and it'll even email us, so we can start taking a real interest in your system. There's rules for distributed attacks too, so flipping off to another system every 3 attempts will get blocked too.

Going to take a little longer than 20 seconds, isn't it?

Re:Password

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound pretty confident for somebody with no balls to post their FTP server address...

Re:Password

[Random832]

I intended the phrase "getting caught" to include that.

Re:Password

[Big_Al_B]

FTP servers that behave this way? Are you so stupid as to think that an FTP server sits on the wire with nothing between you and it? I'll get to thinking that all FTP servers on the interweb are safely nestled behind effective IPS's the day after I'm convinced that every PC and server on the interweb has the latest patches installed. But feel free to hold your breathe waiting for me to get there.

Our IDS automatically blocks traffic to the FTP server after you fail to login 3 times. No more traffic from your IP to our network for 5 minutes. So every 5 minutes you get 3 whacks at a password. Do that enough and it'll even email us, so we can start taking a real interest in your system. [Yawn] Very impressive and scary. Can you also configure it to email you a clue? That'd be pretty useful. Because, presumably, then you'd at least know the difference between IDS and IPS.

Re:Fox news runs Ubuntu

[xgr3gx]

HA! Nice. :) Hey, it is pulling XML feeds from a few different places, so that may very well be the case.

From the same people who ruined finger

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, crap. Now there'll be another round of armchair security experts saying "You should turn off directory indexes!" and easily-led sysadmins actually doing it, and we'll have that many fewer sites where you can bypass the broken navigation to actually find things through the directory indexes.

Directory indexes, on a properly-run site, are a Good Thing and should be encouraged. They are and should be turned on by default in real httpd software. Anything secret that's accessible through a directory index would also be accessible by guessing the URL - so security has to be enforced by 403 Forbidden, not by "nobody will know the URL," anyway. Don't disable directory indexes unless you have a really good reason - and if you think you have a really good reason, especially if you think it has something to do with some kind of "security," then you're probably wrong.

NEWS FLASH: Left-Wing Fascists mod parent off-topc

[E 99]

A post on the newsworthiness of the main article is not off-topic. Should be modded back up.

Employee information leaked

[Anonymous Coward]

There was over 4GB of employee data on the FTP, including username, name, email, password, address, etc.

Re:Employee information leaked

[realdodgeman]

Do you think they mind if I delete all the files containing Bill O'Reilly?

Ditto on all accounts

[benhocking]

There was a recent podcast from This American Life (hardly the bastion of conservative thought) where a (former) teenager whose job it was to spread propaganda from Saddam's government said he was afraid about what would happen when the war started because he wasn't sure whether or not his government had chemical weapons, etc. Yes, there's a difference between some teenager (even if he and his father worked for the government) and our intelligence community. Yes, fundamental flaws exist/existed in our intelligence community, partly no doubt due to our administration's tendencies to promote "yes men". Yes, there's a difference between thinking they're there and declaring that you know exactly where they are. However, I'm still going with Hanlon's razor on this one.

Re:Ditto on all accounts

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I'm sure that our news reporters have all of the data on what our military is capable of.

If you disbelieve the above statement, how likely do you think it is that a person in similiar employ in a militaristic and secretive society will know?

The issue isn't that he's a teenager; the issue is that governments like to keep secrets, especially from other governments.

Re:Ditto on all accounts

[DrVomact]

The whole WOMD discussion was pointless from the start. What difference would it have made if Saddam did have WOMDs? Would he have posed a threat to the United States, or anyone else, solely on that account? Sure, he could have used poison gas on his neighbors...in fact Iraq did use gas during Iran/Iraq war...and so did Iran. Did the world end? Did it make a difference to the outcome? Did anyone outside the region even complain? No.

As for nukes...well if Saddam had possessed them, he would have been in the same boat as every other government that has them: he couldn't use them because for a state to actually use nukes is suicidal. Though nukes do buy you one very desirable thing: immunity from aggression by another nation-state, because nobody wants to make a nuclear power really desperate. In other words, he would have been safe from attack by the U.S.--or Israel. Iran has noted this, of course, which is why they're working like mad to join the nuke club: they saw what happened to the place next door because it did not have nukes.

Gentoo and reverse marketting

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo's main optimization is a social one.

Mentioning Gentoo on Slashdot is guaranteed to bring out the clueless from their cubbyholes, a very worthwhile property on a site now overrun by tech wannabes. That makes article pre-filtering very easy.

Gentoo users know what properties really matter to them, but that doesn't go on the marketting/advocacy blurb. The references to speed optimization are there ... for other reasons, and they target other people. I call it Darwinian De-selection.

And it works just great: the Gentoo forums are almost entirely free of the clueless.

Enjoy!

Correlation != causation

[benhocking]

I had to bring out that tired old saw. However, in all fairness, there are other explanations for that 33% figure than to blame it on Fox News. Out of politeness (to Fox News viewers), I won't go into what those explanations are... ;)

Re:Correlation != causation

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. It might not be that Fox News turns people into idiots. It could be that idiots are attracted to Fox News.

That's a shame...

[benhocking]

In light of the fact that you'd so openly, brazenly lie like that, I stopped reading your post.

That's a shame, because the very next sentence backed up his statement...

so much for that blog

[mgabrys_sf]

Tit's up - and outa there!

"mysql_pconnect() [function.mysql-pconnect]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111) in /home/linuxin/public_html/site/admin/db.php on line 50
Warning: mysql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/linuxin/public_html/site/admin/db.php on line 50
Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111)"

We have meltdown - I repeat we have meltdown. Now someone get that pile of circuts and goo off the rack and get a new one in here pronto.

Not to be a spelling *nazi*...

[benhocking]

But, you misspelled "h31l". Just sayin'... ;)

Re:Not to be a spelling *nazi*...

[KiltedKnight]

Just as he misspelled "513g"...

Re:Not to be a spelling *nazi*...

[Anonymous Coward]

A spelling nazi correcting nazi spelling.

Who'da thunk it?

In Soviet Russia, you spellcheck nazis?

Here's some for the lazy

[weighn]

tVx1x%65
T9uOL0;{
]3HUk2:w
SWg7E1K* yeah, use passwords as suggested on public domain tech sites - I add them to my dictionary scripts. If you don't like that, try one from here.

Congratulations!

[davidbrit2]

You've won an all-expenses-paid trip to a federal PMITA prison! You'll be enjoying a 1,825 night stay at an all-inclusive resort featuring a mattress, a metal toilet with a sink in it, and evening turn-down service provided by your own personal bellhop named Scar. Travel and accommodations courtesy of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Re:Congratulations!

[joschm0]

Don't forget the free food and medical care.

Re:Congratulations!

[that this is not und]

I was reading the McMaster-Carr website awhile back at work and found that they have a section of 'Penal Plumbing Fixtures.' They even sell an all-in one toilet-sink combo in shining stainless steel that is described as 'Suicide Resistant.'

I thought it was interesting enough to bring up in a 'PMITA Prison' thread, which is startlingly more interesting than the "Fox_News/BushKilled" thread up front there which has rendered this whole article's discussion almost without merit.

Dick Cheney has mod-points?!?!

[weighn]

Remain where you are, illegal enemy combatant. Agents from Halliburton Force Delta are being dispatched to your location for extraordinary rendition and eventual re-education. Your cooperation will be rewarded by extra meal rations and exercise yard time. Thank you for reporting this bug. So this is flamebait? Fair and balanced? Yuh.

Re:Dick Cheney has mod-points?!?!

[Guppy]

Dick Cheney has mod-points?!?! Only for a few hours, while the regular moderator was getting his colon checked out.

And you believed it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, the liebral made this all up.

Where he can see DirectoryIndex is on ?

[mesostructure]

"While browsing around the Fox News website, I found that directory indexes are turned on"...I browse Fox website everyday but I cannot find it out. Was he really reading the news or hacking the site ?

Re:Where he can see DirectoryIndex is on ?

[TodMinuit]

All you have to do is try to view a directory in a browser. If you get an index, you know it's on. If not, you know it's off or there's an index file. Examples: http://www.foxnews.com/story/ and http://www.foxnews.com/i/.

Re:Where he can see DirectoryIndex is on ?

[drpimp]

DirectoryIndex directive handles default file to default to in a particular set of listed files, and will ONLY show all files in directory if there is no file found in the list AND Indexes directive is also present. DirectoryIndex

IANAL, but modifying URL's is not against the law as far as I know. But it's what is done with the found information in the modified URL(s) that could land you in crowbar hotel.

What do you mean "we," kemosabe?

[heritage727]

I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there.

Plenty of people, outside of the government and the mainstream media at least, were skeptical about the WMD claims, if only on the principle that if Bush thought it was true it had to be false.

Re: the sort of things you just throw out

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really?

Fox News has no excuse

[uglydog]

On July 11, 2007, the posted an article that talked about FTP and why it's bad. But they were concerned about anonymous access. Doh.

Flamebait!

[lag00natic]

Yawn... just another opportunity to feed the flames for all the liberals on /. Reading through all the replies that have nothing to do with the original article and just focus on bashing conservatives and the content of the stories run by the network proves my point. It's getting old guys/gals... really old.

Disney's website Security

[youthoftoday]

I was once visiting the offices of a design firm that was doing some work for Disney. As far as I remember, the procedure for adding new content was:

- Email the admins (with password), requesting an upload opportunity giving detail of content and approval reference
- Admins create FTP account on a purpose-built server
- Admins send back time-sensitive FTP details
- Design company uploads to FTP server
- Committees review content, send authorization to admins
- Admins upload content.

And this was for already-approved work. Kinda puts this level of security to shame...

Re:Disney's website Security

[The Queen]

I only WISH some of the sites I'm responsible for were that serious about adhering to graphics standards. Instead, people make their own fliers in MSWord or whathaveyou (instead of going through our Graphics dept.) and I have to upload it as-is, whether it matches the rest of our stuff or not. *shudder*

I'm a nazi, aren't I? Is it so wrong to crave consistency and order?

Speaking of "rewriting history"...

[smitth1276]

It is simply fact that every intelligence agency on the planet thought Saddam had WMDs. The questions only concerned the state of his nuclear program. Go read Hans Blix's report to the UNSC in February, right before the invasion. Inform yourself.

And, contrary to popular myth, the evidence still supports the notion that Saddam was seeking uranium in Niger... Joe Wilson's own report said that the former Nigerian PM interpreted Iraqi overtures to "expand business relations" as a desire to purchase uranium, and the British intelligence still stands by their own independent determination to that effect--indeed, their government investigated it after the whole Wilson debacle and concluded that the claims were "well founded". In other words, simply claiming that it was "a lie", like some uber-partisan cartoon, doesn't win you any points here.

The real question about the uranium is this: Why would Iraq be looking for uranium from Niger when we found 500 tons of yellowcake that they already had laying around?

Mod TRUTH up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I don't belong on slashdot, but mod the truth up. They did have WMD, they were trying to develop WMD, and the scientists were fleecing Saddam. However, that doesn't match the I Hate George Bush mentality, so it doesn't get recognized.

PARENT IS A MORON

[BlackCobra43]

Look buddy, get off your anonymous soapbox with your bullshit.The quote you refer to is attributed to various liberal sources by CONSERVATIVE spin artists, from Madeline Albright to Clinton. IT IS FAKE. IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Now for the love of God, open your damn eyes and LOOK at the world instead of having it spoon-fed to you by FAUX NEWS.

Re:NEWS FLASH: Left-Wing Fascists mod parent off-t

[the not-troll]

While your point is valid, the title of your post irks me.

So I've got a question: How, exactly, can you determine who did the modding and which were their motivations? Because, as far as I can see, there is absolutely no practical way to determine who did it and why. Therefore, I find your interpretation of it being "Left-Wing Fascists" to mod the GP off-topic somewhat doubtful.

Indeed, one would have much more reason to assume it to be "Right-Wing Fascists" - after all, while his main argument is just a rational observation (which only the insanest of the left - which doubtlessly exist - would have taken as slighting them), while his PS notes his position, making him seem left, therefore a target of right-wingers because he doesn't rally behind the president in an unconditional way but thinks for himself, recognizing an error, no matter which side makes it.

Why, then, do you get the idea that it is "Left-Wing Fascists" who did the modding? Well, I didn't want to randomly accuse people, so I read up about you (which is more than you can claim about those who did the modding). The image which resulted demonstrated impressively that you are, indeed, a "Right-Wing Fascist", projecting your own behaviour on others, perceiving them as being "on the other side".

The most interesting point is: As pointed out above, the PS makes the right mod the GP down. However, because the GP dares to criticize "the left stance" (which is why he feels the need to add the PS), you think he is on the right side (because, after all, lefties could never ever criticize themselves - which is exactly what I meant by projection), you side with him and claim that it were lefties who did the modding down.

Do you know whom this reminds me of? Not wanting to invoke Godwins law by pointing out how Hitler started the second world war, I give you the example of Operation Gladio: This NATO stay-behind-organization made, on command of the CIA, terroristic strikes in several countries, especially Europe, and blamed it on the communists.

There's also another thing of note: Here in Europe, we have a balance between left and right (though we became significantly more fascist, i.e. right, in the aftermath of 9/11). From our perspective, the Democrats and Republicans are both as far right as the fringemost right parties we have here. Thus, we can only shake our heads at your irrational fear of any hint of social responsibility, endangering your ability (not freedom, though you righties call it such) to take freedom away.

No dispute

[benhocking]

That's why I mentioned that there's a difference between said teenager and our intelligence community. Although I'd argue that it's an issue that he's a teenager and that governments like to keep secrets. (Cynicism usually increases with age.) My point was simply that I find it quite believable that people in our government (Democrats and Republicans alike) who were inclined to believe that Saddam had chemical and/or biological weapons would find it easy to believe that. Although sad, this is not the same thing as lying.

So he did

[benhocking]

I have to admit that l33t sp33k hurts my spelling skillz. ;)

Re:So he did

[heelrod]

I did actually need a time-space organizer! Thanks for the link

Those sanctions

[toddhisattva]

The sanctions were going to end. Whining about starving Iraqi children and all that crap.

That is why Saddam had to go.

Get it yet?

Re:Those sanctions

[jollyreaper]

The sanctions were going to end. Whining about starving Iraqi children and all that crap.

That is why Saddam had to go.

Get it yet? Is the world safer now with Saddam gone? Not really. Terrorist recruiting and attacks have skyrocketed. Or is this just the sign of how much we're succeeding?

Re:NEWS FLASH: Wing-Nut Upset With Slow News Day

[eltonito]

Slashdot posts a humorous story about a lame password found on a Fox News FTP site. CNN has a headline on Wal-Mart "slashing prices." No idea what Fox News has on their front page, but I bet it's something inane.

Slow news day anyone?

North Korea

[number6x]

You make a very good point.

North Korea is also part of the "Axis of Evil". However they have WMD's and some pretty nasty long range missiles. They may not be able to strike The US, but they could devastate South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. We keep begging North Korea to please, pretty please, come to the negotiating table. No talk of invasion there.

Sadam complied with the U.N. inspections we demanded. Grudgingly but he complied. He ended his weapons programs and allowed us and our allies to control two thirds of his air space. (All of this had to be forced on him, but he complied).

So the moral of the story?

If you are an evil dictatorship, do not comply with The US and its allies. Build up your arsenal and become as powerfull and as dangerous as possible. The US only invades weaklings. The US begs for negotiations with the dangerous crackpots.

I believe Iran watched all of this unfold. The way Sadam and Iraq complied, and were rewarded with invasion. The way North Korea refused to comply and became more dangerous, and gets more and more aid on its terms.

This is why Iran has restarted its nuclear program.

Pretty good foreign policy we have, huh?

Re:North Korea

[Pope]

More like the US invades weaklings that pissed off the President's daddy a decade earlier. ;)

Re:North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty good foreign policy we have, huh?

Thanks for the lazy armchair political analysis. The world's a complicated place, grow up and look around before spouting your junior high textbook opinions.

Re:North Korea

[Himring]

Welcome to diplomacy. Watch out for bad guys.

What I find funny is that it appears most of the folks here think gaming and inveigling in diplomacy and war started when bush took office. News flash: this stuff's been going on for a few years (try millennia). I recommend a good game of Civ. It'll whet the appetite.

What amazes me most isn't that the U.S. is playing ball, hard ball, with the world, it's that all you folks think it started with Bush, that Clinton didn't do it or that the next one won't either -- be it either party.

You have your way with a country that you can. You make peace with the stronger and devour the weaker. You train for war during peace and you ally with strong allies during conflict. We don't invade N.Korea for one reason and one reason only: China. We did that. Bad mojo. China is too much. Even Nixon knew this. He made it pax cuz he knew they were the big time coming up.

These are rules boys. They're just rules. It's just the rules of love. Oh, sure, you can go against the rules of love and you'll pay for it. Get mushy with her. When she says she needs a break, call her more often. When she goes out with another guy, go and cry to her. Yea, they dig that.

Didn't you guys have dad's with backbones? Suck it up. Look at it for what it is. The big dog can't avoid fights cuz they come at him. The biggest nation on earth can't avoid conflicts and will always have them (all other empires always have -- it's what they do).

I read an article that testosterone levels are 20% lower now than they were 40 or 50 years ago. I believe it.

I mean sheez. Go watch 300....

Re:North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, at least you're not a dangerous crackpot, so no negotiating there...

Re:North Korea

[moosesocks]

I wouldn't exactly call Iran an "evil dictatorship".

Granted, things over there aren't exactly peachy, and their past dealings with the US have been less than ideal. However, there are far more corrupt governments closer to our own borders and elsewhere -- the North Korean government, on the other hand probably is completely psychotic.

Iran's foreign policy over the past few years, however, looks like a series of well-calculated moves. In all likelihood, their nuclear program IS designed for peaceful purposes, and exists only to makes the US look bad. They probably also knew the truth about Iraq.

I'm not saying that I support Ahmadinejad or his morals, but there's little doubt that he's a smart, charismatic, and shrewd leader.

Re:North Korea

[wumingzi]

North Korea is also part of the "Axis of Evil". However they have WMD's and some pretty nasty long range missiles. They may not be able to strike The US, but they could devastate South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. We keep begging North Korea to please, pretty please, come to the negotiating table. No talk of invasion there.

The fact that NK is known to have missiles, and suspected of having nuclear weapons is one issue.

The other is that it is a miserably poor and broken country that nobody wants. The South ran the numbers on how much it would cost to bring NK up to South Korean living standards and productivity (similar to what West Germany did with the East post-unification), and concluded that the costs were far above and beyond their ability to pay.

There is also the concern that once lil' Kim exits NK, millions of hungry people will stream across the borders into Russia, China, SK, and possibly Japan. (obviously, they need boats to get to Japan, but hungry people will do pretty extreme things).

So the non-invasion of NK continues, since the only thing that might be worse than losing a skirmish with a nuclear-armed country is winning a war against same said country.

Our friends in the Bush administration believed that with all the oil sitting under Iraqi soil, that reconstruction would pay for itself.

Ah well. You win some, you lose some.

Re:North Korea

[pinkstuff]

Bravo, that is pretty much how most people outside (and maybe/hopefully inside?) the US see the situation. BTW, I think that North Korea has missiles that can reach the US, may need a grain of salt with that article tho.

Re:North Korea

[I'll Provide The War]

How is this comment not modded off-topic in a story about FTP passwords?

I don't click on stories about network security to read peoples daily kos blog.

Re:North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

You're being a bit disingenuous. North Korea has more artillery than the US Army (maybe more than all the branches) pointed at Seoul, our ally. If we were to make any moves on the madman he would wipe out our ally's capital in a matter of a minute.

Re:North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Re read the PP. It makes that point...

"They may not be able to strike The US, but they could devastate South Korea

So if Iran develops enough power to devastate our allies like Israel Turkey or Saudi Arabia, we will deal with them instead of invading them. As we do with N.Korea.

Re:North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some nice macho posturing you got there.
However, the invasion has made us demonstrably weaker not stronger.
But go ahead.
Keep posturing.
See if China cares...

Re:North Korea

[kramulous]

But they won't nuke SK (Japan, however ... ). They (NK) believe that SK has been infiltrated, corrupted and made puppets of the US. The Koreas still share a long lasting history and an amazingly rich culture. There is still a lot of national love and pride there. That China is backing the US on this one is comforting. But it should be the South Koreans that should be doing the negotiations, the US should be sitting this one on the sideline.

Re:North Korea

[onion_joe]

need mod points. Please mod parent up insightful. You nancy boys.

Re:North Korea

[alienmole]

You're confused. The problem with Bush is that he indulges in stupid posturing and bad diplomacy. Try to make sure your high testosterone level doesn't interfere too much with your brain function.

Interesting stuff found

[Anonymous Coward]

http://rapidshare.com/files/44519416/acxiom_member s_weekly_extract_2004_to_present.7z.html

this type of human error can only be fixed with...

[DragonTHC]

training.

Every employee that works at the site needs to have proper training in information security and social engineering counter-measures.
These sound complex and technical but they are not.
what is sensitive information?
You do not store any sensitive information in any place that's not explicitly secure.

you complement your training program with mandatory password restrictions.
Linux already has these restrictions for users.
password is too short, password is based on a dictionary word, password must contain numbers and letters.

Only YOU can prevent social engineering!

Okay....

[theorem4]

So where's the pr0n?

Re:Okay....

[PixelScuba]

.../user/hannity/nudepics/

The 'M' in WMD relates to quantity

[untree]

I think you are missing the point. A few small canisters of chemicals cannot be honestly labeled "weapons of mass destruction." Maybe a tanker full of them could cause mass destruction, but the quantities found were not even capable of killing a couple soldiers. By this same token, it would be inappropriate to call a few grams of uranium a WMD.

Thus, no WMDs were found.

Re:The 'M' in WMD relates to quantity

[smitth1276]

Dude, you're stretching. A canister of sarin could certainly cause "mass destruction"--tens of thousands of deaths--but that's beside the point. You're playing stupid semantic games. The term "WMD" has a broadly accepted meaning that has no stipulations attached... it has come to be used to represent anything that is a chemical, biological, or nuclear (reaction) weapon.

That's like saying "You didn't find a car in my driveway, because the alternator is bad." It's an embarrassingly absurd argument. Just accept the fact that the poll in question in reflective of the bias of the pollster, not Fox News, and is more indicative of uninformed NPR listeners than of uninformed Fox News viewers. It may be painful to someone who has an unhealthily antagonistic obsession with Fox News, but its true.

Once again, nobody is claiming that the WMDs which were found were found in huge quantities or that they were in a potent state.

Re:The 'M' in WMD relates to quantity

[untree]

Afraid we'll have to just disagree, then. I knew all about those remnants of chemical agents found occasionally in Iraq, but I would certainly never classify that as WMD, regardless of what you may think the commonly understood meaning of the term might be. YOU might think that any quantity of chemical used as a weapon is a WMD, but I think that's distorting the meaning of the term. Your analogy is completely wrong, also. If a kid was busted with a couple firecrackers in his pocket, you wouldn't say "teenager found with explosive device."

Re:The 'M' in WMD relates to quantity

[Random832]

It all comes down to whether "weapon of mass destruction" is a descriptive term or a term of art. If I have a car in my driveway lacking an engine, I could certainly claim I do not have on my property a motorized vehicle. I could credibly argue that it's not a "motor vehicle", too, but that'd be on shakier grounds.

The problem is, we _have_ a term that fits the category that people are trying to repurpose "WMD" into a term of art for: "NBC". There were NBC weapons (well, only C, really). However, they were not "of mass destruction", as they lack the mass destruction nature.

Re:The 'M' in WMD relates to quantity

[Fnkmaster]

Don't mess with our Weapons of Moderate Destruction.

Re:The 'M' in WMD relates to quantity

[tiqui]

WMD is a bit of a silly acronym; when I served in the military we generally referred to these sorts of devices as NBC (Nuclear/Biological/Chemical) and it had NOTHING to do with quantities. The idea was that these weapons were in a category that either was too big (nuke) or windblown (nuke fallout/bio/chem) so they were not able to cause precisely aimed military damage and were more likely to be used against large populations of people (troops or civilians). Not sure who came up with WMD and made the term popular, but it gets used the same was as NBC used to (unfortunately IMHO), so when Fox viewers are polled and say that we found WMDs in Iraq they are, in fact, correct since at least one small stockpile of mustard gas loaded shells and many smaller batches of other stuff has been found. I suppose if you are in the mindset that a small stash of pot "for medicinal purposes" is not
"drugs" then you might swallow the MoveOn line and say the Fox viewers are wrong. Too bad we did not all agree on a common terminology for things before the Iraq debate began; then Clinton's CIA man (George Tenet) who was still on-duty after Sept 11th would not have told Bush and Cheney that WMDs were a "slam-dunk" ;-P The more interesting question is actually: why are viewers on ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN so convinced that we found NO WMDs...

Dear Bong Hits

[xeno-cat]

They got their tax legislation too, so whats your point? In case you didn't know, the Bush fortune is tied to oil. Iraq and the middle east in general are full of oil. You can only get so much through taxes. Sometimes you need to mobilize the military.

Kind Regards

look on the bright side

[dweebzilla]

If you are married with kids, you have some things to look forward to that you might not have had in a while...

Good square meals 3 times a day, and sex again on a regular basis.
Course that also comes with all the paperbacks you can read and a cell-mate likely named bubba.

Re:this type of human error can only be fixed with

[wikinerd]

Training isn't enough, it's one half of what's needed. The other half is motivation: People who are entrusted to set passwords have to know what constitutes a bad password and the motivation to use a good one. An underpaid overworked disengaged employee would probably not care whether the passwords they choose are strong or weak, even with training.

Illegal, at least in Kansas.

[supertechnoboy]

I'm not saying I've never done anything like this, but I certainly wouldn't advertise the fact. I'm in Kansas, and I can tell you that Computer Trespass here is:

intentionally, and without authorization accessing or attempting to access any computer, computer system, computer network or computer software, program, documentation, data or property contained in any computer, computer system or computer network. Computer trespass is a class A nonperson misdemeanor.

I think he's got that covered squarely. He may qualify for Computer Crime, which is:

Intentionally and without authorization accessing and damaging, modifying, altering, destroying, copying, disclosing or taking possession of a computer, computer system, computer network or any other property; ...

I'm just saying I wouldn't advertise.

OpSec

[damacus]

It absolutely is a security-conscious thing to do. It's called Operational Security.

Sure, on a 'properly-run' site, that shouldn't be a problem. But can you always guarantee that sensitive or private materials won't be loaded to that site? It is a risk.

Obviously it applies less to very personal 'who cares' kinds of sites, but pretty much everything else should be data driven with deeper access controls, and maybe only enabling directory indexing explicitly on a location-by-location basis, or for certain IP ranges.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

okay, but

[kayditty]

why is this on slashdot (outside of someone's journal)? some of us have been doing this every day for years. I mean it's not like the old alta vista/hot bot "WS_FTP.LOG" or whatever is anything new.

Beware of Owner

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the door isn't locked doesn't mean you get to walk into my house and drink my beer.

It does mean I get to blow your fucking head off for drinking my beer.

I also enjoy the thread jacking that goes on here where 90% of the posts have nothing to do with the original topic and of course it just gives another reason to bash Fox, Bush, etc.

Slashdot gets old quick sometimes.

Asshole! People like you are ruining the Internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Directory listing was once a delightful part of web browsing. There is no more efficient way of finding files.

But now, one after one, sites which do not restrict directory listing are disappearing forever.

Why? Because of snotty punk assholes like "anonymous reader", who stumble upon some quasi-personal file (the same file six dozen other individuals saw but then respectfully moved on from before him) then BITCH and BLATHER about it repeatedly until everybody is made to know just how pathetically COOL HE IS for having found it.

Folks like u still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called 'draining the swamp'. And for god sakes, the 'No WMDs' whining is just passé. Recap:

The course of action that was followed by Congress and the President, and popularly reaffirmed by Congressional and Presidential elections:

(1) Thug dictator threatens superpower with WMDs
(2) Superpower goes to UN
(3) UN condemns thug dictator
(4) Superpower expects thug dictator will use WMDs or give to pyschos, so Superpower squashes thug dictator.
(5) Superpower takes next few years squashing misc. thug holdouts

Your method, which was was declined:

(1) Thug dictator threatens superpower with WMDs
(2) Superpower goes to UN
(3) UN condemns thug dictator
(4) Repeat (1) four or five times while whistling Limahl tune
(5) Thug dictator tests WMD
(6) Superpower declares minimum wage for all illegal residents!
(7) Thug dictator tests another WMD
(6) Superpower declares healthcare for all illegal residents!
(8) Thug dictator invades neighbor, gives WMDs to pyschos
(6) Superpower declares Carbon Dioxide a pollutant!
(9) Pyschos step off bus in Nogales Mexico with WMDs

Good job, idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we can't have nice things. You morons just go and tell the whole fucking world the information whenever we find these things out.

Re: It's called Game Theory

[shpoffo]

We operate relative to N Korea because the dictatory there is irrational, and so will not act in a predictable manner. It makes many actions volatile. Hussein was not irrational; mean, perhaps, but not irrational. One of the best ways for a dictator to avoid invasion is to be irrational - but you have to genuinely be irrational. If one's bluff can be figured out then you're usually twice as screwed. Generally, rational people won't act irrational, as it is destabilizing. The real tricks are when someone is generally rational, but has irrational triggers. AFAIK that was some of the root difficultly with the Cold War.

Re:North Korea, Iran and Iraq - the real problem.

[gnuman99]

The Axis of evil is as follows:

Iraq - Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac that needed to look powerful. That is why he refused inspection. For looks, not because he had anything. Anyway, case closed but Iraq was never really a threat after 1990 war.

North Korea - similar to Hussein's except on more national level. They are not that dangerous because they are not looking to start war. North Korea leadership needs to feel important on the world scale and hence its insistence to deal with US in bilateral way. They view themselves as equal to US. They consider Japan not only on US side, but a puppet of US hence they do not want to talk with them. They believe China is their buddy, but after the last nuclear test attempts and stern talking from China, they are now more co-operative (maybe looking at example of Libya?)

Iran - not like either of the above. Iran is guided by their religion and their own interpretation of it. This makes them very dangerous (unpredictable) because their own self interest is not their primary motivator. The leadership's primary motivator is not their self-preservation or prestige, but prestige in the name of their religion. Like Taliban, the current leaders do not view their destruction as their demise. They will most likely not attack others, but attempt to instigate an attack on them. This will allow Iran to view any aggression against Israel/US (and local allies) as justified not by international standards, but by their scripture's standards.

Iran was *always* the most dangerous of the three. Iran must not be attacked - that is what Iran's leadership wants and is aiming for. Attacking Iran will result in a major regional war and Israel will be one of its casualties.

Anyway, this is my simple, brief assessment of the "Axis of Evil".

PS. Do not forget Libya - they complied and sanctions are getting lifted. War is not the answer. Only in Afghanistan was it justified because that country did not have a functioning government anytime after the Soviets withdrew and definitely not when Kabul was taken by Taliban in late 90s.

Many of our 'Allies' aren't! (e.g. Saudi Arabia)

[HornWumpus]

You think we don't know Saudi Arabia is our enemy? France?

You think Bush doesn't know? (House of Saud not withstanding the average Saudi IS our enemy.)

Just because we're acting like they're our 'friends' (countries don't have friends, only allies) doesn't mean that many of our actions aren't aimed squarely at reducing their influence and/or drawing their more militant population into a meat grinder (Iraq is a tar baby to catch and kill Saudis as much as anything else IMHO). Also to reduce Wahabbists influence in the region by arranging for the Saudis to kill many of their neighbors while attacking the US military and getting themselves killed in the process.

Disarming would be stupid on many levels. Nukes kept Stalin out of western Europe. Peaceniks will never understand that, much less give credit. Nukes will force Pakistan and India to grow up and finally make peace.

Nice detective work

[xant]

Now we finally know who's behind the campaign of deliberate misinformation that's being fed through FOX news.

Damn conservative hacker kids.

Off-Topic - Somebody explain this to me

[Master of Transhuman]

When there are ten pages of comments here, and I read page one, then click on page two - why the hell do I get page one all over again?

And this goes on for pages two, three, four, maybe. At some point I get a new page.

What the hell is going on with this interface?

I'm finally irritated enough to ask WHY.

Re:Off-Topic - Somebody explain this to me

[Fantastic Lad]

When there are ten pages of comments here, and I read page one, then click on page two - why the hell do I get page one all over again?

Hm. And for all these years, I thought it was just me.

My solution was just to use the personal options to put the largest number of posts on one page as possible, and to have the posts listed from most-recent to the oldest. That way you can stay on top of ideas as they develop through a discussion. But still. . , it's a weird problem that I would have thought would be addressed by now. Either that, or you and I are simply not smart enough to grasp something which actually works. I've never taken the time to really sort it out. It seems broken to me.

-FL

Re:Off-Topic - Somebody explain this to me

[that this is not und]

Slashdot got snagged by a very early-on Fox News troll. People smelled the BushMcChimpyHaliburton bait and lept in. I only got past it by selecting the LAST possible page number of comments.

Re:Off-Topic - Somebody explain this to me

[tuxedobob]

Do you browse newest first?

Re:Off-Topic - Somebody explain this to me

[Master of Transhuman]

Nope, I browse oldest first. Why should that matter? I want to follow the development of the discussion. No matter in what order I see the threads, the pages should go in order, either from latest to oldest, or oldest to latest.

I'll try another order here, but this is ridiculous.

I built weapons of mass destruction for the USA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the US did find small stock piles of gas agents and one centrifuge that is used to enrich uranium. Not the massive infrastructure that was claimed to be sure but that statement that NO WMD where found is also false. The claim is that the gas agents where miss placed when the Iraqis where destroying them under UN supervision.
I know that I will get flamed for this but it is the truth. What you've described is not "Weapons of Mass Destruction". I can claim some expertise here as I personally helped construct America's nuclear arsenal; I worked on Harpoon, Peacekeeper and the Navy Standard Missile among others.

What you've described is a sad, pathetic attempt at a weapons system (gas) that's been obsolete for nearly a century and a piece of scientific equipment (a centrifuge).

That's not WMD, by any stretch. You could release all that gas in Washington DC on a busy workday and there'd be a few dozen casualties. An equal volume of dynamite or amatol could do more damage (though in either case delivery would be extremely difficult, since placement would be critical).

I am not intending to flame you, merely to correct you. "Mass Destruction" is not something that any weapon Saddam ever possessed could inflict. He wanted to build superguns and buy nuclear technology, but was prevented from doing so long before Bush II's invasion.

Slashdotted

[Shadyman]

This event has also been WikiNews'd , as "Fox News security hole exposes 1.5 million users' personal information".

FARK.com also reported on WikiNews's article.

Re:Linux Ver Security hole, fox stupidity, or both

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't laughed that hard over anything posted on slashdot in quite some time. Nicely done!

Fox Searchlight

[invispace]

There are a bunch of problems with Fox's other sites as well. Check out Fox Searchlight. Similar issues. But you can see free pre-screenings if you figure it out. If you don't... Shame on you.

so...

[dstrek]

fox news had WMD's on their ftp but when the United Slashdot went to inspect they were denied access?

Heh...

[LuNa7ic]

Anyone for a Fox news wiki?

Re:Wasted chance - no more torture?

[glamb]

Not sure about the 'no more torture' bit.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/21/usint9925.h tm
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/17606prs20050 307.html

The latest round of investigative files released to the American Civil Liberties Union document an ongoing pattern of widespread abuses of detainees by military forces in Iraq, and describe shootings of unarmed civilians at checkpoints, the ACLU said today.

Ftp & Fox

[Vinnyb]

Wow. So he/she/they happened across a web page that shows you the directory index. He/She/they followed the heirarchy till He/She/they hit the admin folder. He/She/they probably used the Linux equiv of Notepad to view the shell script, which, in turn held the password. (bfd - login scripts for an a/d environment use a similar method to automatically map drive shares. The login scripts hold the users id & password, then map the drives) Hardly elite.

Shoulda used it...

[DriveDog]

He should have utilized that ftp to sneak in some real news. What a disaster that would have been.

Fox responds... very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290633,00.html

The Bad, The Worse, The Stupid, and the Orwellian

[Bushido Hacks]

Bad: Fox News has mediocre web security.
Worse: The same level of security that can be easily beefed up was applied to all the MyFox websites.
STUPID: News Reporter from Los Angeles pisses off the hacker community with a bias report by interviewing cowards with dogs and curtains, losers with MySpace accounts, and Eric "eBaum" Bauman in a dark room.
ORWELLIAN: MyFox now requires a 24 hour waiting period for blog and message board posts.
Silver lining: There is always the Usenet.