Timeglider Software Outlines Rosenberg Spy Case

An anonymous reader writes "Related to the previous story on Slashdot on the release of the Vassiliev Notebooks: the Cold War project has created a timeline on the Rosenberg spy ring (using Timeglider — a web-based, Flash-powered software for creating timelines), integrating the documentation from the Venona Intercepts, the FBI files related to industrial and atomic espionage, the Rosenberg trial papers and the Vassiliev notebooks in a easy-to-digest, complete picture of the evidence on the Rosenberg's involvement in atomic espionage. It can be accessed via the project's webpage. The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case and the newly available documentation more manageable."

Comments

What is treason?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Treason is to act against your own countrymen in the service of another country. But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets? Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?

Many people have protested the Iraq War. And with good reason. It is almost wholly a bad war to have started without a plausible benefit for the American people. In fact, the only thing it has done is to deplete our treasure and kill many of our fine soldiers (not to mention many many of innocent Iraqis). Undertaking the war in Iraq is an act against our beloved American countrymen.

So is George Bush a traitor? Should he be held to such standards and punishment as those who may have, in good conscience, shared state secrets that no doubt hastened the end of the War? It's unfortunate that the little guy doing the right thing is punished for minor transgressions when the leaders of the very same country are allowed to escape punishment scott-free due to their position of power at the time.

Re:What is treason?

[Hal_Porter]

Treason is to act against your own countrymen in the service of another country. But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets? Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?

Meh. What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but it's definitely a serious crime. And I'm sure if the sort of people the Rosenbergs had favoured had ended up running the country there would have been a lot more people executed under treason charges who were just 'acting under their own morality', treason being a popular though spurious charge in Stalinist show trials.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

So is George Bush a traitor?

Perhaps not, but by many metrics, he is a war criminal. More Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Iraqi war than under Saddam's reign. For the things that GW has done to the American constitution ... (And, I am not a USA citizen! If I was, I would be doubly pissed!)

Re:What is treason?

[dwm]

More Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Iraqi war than under Saddam's reign.

Er, documentation? And since you're no doubt including all fatalities, including those inflicted by enemy forces, be sure to include the deaths from Saddam's futile war against Iran.

Re:What is treason?

[magarity]

What is treason? Depends on where you are. I hope you are not a US citizen because you should not have to ask. The definition of treason is clearly spelled out in the US Constitution: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort
 
  But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets?
 
I think you should look up 'dissemination'; it has a much more innoccuous meaning than giving nuclear weapons teachnology to a hostile foreign dictatorship.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find a connection between operating your own foreign policy (which is what Treason is the most extreme example, as providing aid and assistance to an enemy in opposition to your countries' stated aims)and being altruistically generous.

Claiming that the Rosenbergs "prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets" by their private Foreign Policy initiative is a reach; with Nuclear Weapons in hand Stalin could confidently essay supporting the North Korean Army in it's aggression, which was a notable waster of lives.

Can the lives lost in Korea and Vietnam be levied against the Rosenbergs' "prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets"? Perhaps if Stalin hadn't been confident that he'd have his own Nukes he might not have approved Lil' Kims' adventures in Southern Korea?

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you prove that you would prevent more deaths through dissemination? Is your morality just?

If I act upon my own morality, I should be ready to accept the punishment. If I turn out to be wrong, then I should still be punished.

Of course, many people in history have committed "treason", only to be hailed as heroes afterwards.

Therefore, the burden should be on the people to speak out that this person is actually a "hero", and that he does not deserve his punishment. And in America, you are not prevented from speaking out.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I see ...It's not treason if if done by a Liberal.

Re:What is treason?

[wilder_card]

You're seriously equating protesting Gulf War 2 with giving the nuclear bomb to an enemy country? What drugs are you on?

Re:What is treason?

[xouumalperxe]

He's the Bad Analogy Guy. Even then, the analogy you read is too bad even for him. He was equating initiating the second Gulf War with spreading nuclear secrets. His point is that the war itself caused harm to the USA, not the protests.

Re:What is treason?

[inviolet]

Many people have protested the Iraq War. And with good reason. It is almost wholly a bad war to have started without a plausible benefit for the American people. In fact, the only thing it has done is to deplete our treasure and kill many of our fine soldiers (not to mention many many of innocent Iraqis). Undertaking the war in Iraq is an act against our beloved American countrymen.

Other than the oil. The war got the taps going again, and they now provide about 2.5% of the world's consumption, though that could rise as high as 10%.

Perhaps you do not assign any value to that, but the free market sure does. The cost of energy redounds in the cost of everything else, which means that our (everyone's) net quality of life is a function of it.

This is especially relevant becuase the demand curve for oil is highly inelastic. Do you know what that means re: amount supplied? A 2% increase in supply is a very big deal when the demand curve is nearly flat.

Re:What is treason?

[DNS-and-BIND]

But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets?

Ok you lost me there. Arming Joseph Stalin with WMD is "preventing" deaths?

Oh, right - I'm responding to a well-known troll account. Sorry, I usually pick up on this sort of thing. My bad.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is your friend. They have a whole article about casualties of the American invasion and occupation, and some good stuff about the Iran-Iraq war, too, though it's not as well-documented for obvious reasons.

It looks like GP is correct - Bush's war has probably killed more Iraqis than Saddam's did.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

shall consist only in levying War against them

Using war powers to justify committing espionage against American citizens: check.

Re:What is treason?

[plover]

Treason is to act against your own countrymen in the service of another country. But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets? Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?

Ignoring the trolling bits that follow and applying your questions to the Rosenberg's case, I'd say that they are still responsible for future deaths that may not have occurred yet. If a rogue state uses a Russian warhead that was developed in part from information stolen by the Rosenbergs, I would think they're at least partly responsible since they were on the critical path of the device's design.

And you can't say that "Russia would have developed The Bomb anyway" because that didn't happen, and we don't know if it would have. We only know what did happen, and that is the Rosenberg's information was vital to the Soviet bomb making effort.

There is also no evidence to suggest that by "sharing" the bomb with the Soviet Union that any deaths were prevented. The United States never killed again with an atomic bomb, and you can't say that's due to the USSR maintaining warhead parity. You might argue that the U.S. would have risen to become the single world-dominating order without an opponent to keep them in check, but it seems that was able to happen (briefly) even with the USSR having nuclear capabilities.

Finally, as for it being a capital crime, I think it should have been life in prison instead. I personally think death is the easier punishment. A long, healthy life in prison with no chance of parole would be worse (it keeps you away from the 72 virgins for that much longer.)

Re:What is treason?

[dbrutus]

You don't even understand what treason is. Riddle me this, what other country would Aaron Burr have been serving were he convicted in his treason trial?

In case you didn't notice, nobody's going after the NY Times for disseminating state secrets. The only conviction lately seems to have been Scooter Libby's perjury conviction even though it was not Libby but Armitage that first blabbed about Plame.

Burr was in part acquitted because there were no two witnesses available to document his treason in court. We have a very high standard in this country against treason prosecutions (with good reason on the basis of past bad practice in England). You're going down a road that, while perfectly legal, is profoundly unamerican.

The Iraq war, if the present Iraqi republic does not devolve into a tyranny, will have destroyed Israel's claim to be the only Mid East democracy. It already has generated more productive political evolution in Saudi Arabia than 5 previous decades of US constructive engagement, and it has created a profoundly dangerous religious situation for Iran's ugly mullahs who have, in Sistani, an opponent who fundamentally thinks them heretics and who is quietly taking their theological regime apart from the inside.

Was our invasion of Iraq a bad war? Possibly. It does tend to look a bit better if you have a reasonably informed view of the benefits we are currently reaping and which I hope the current administration does not throw away.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

More Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Iraqi war than under Saddam's reign.

False.

Re:What is treason?

[dbrutus]

If you trust Wikipedia on controversial political matters, you're naive beyond belief. But just for fun, the Saddam launched Iran-Iraq war killed 1.3 million (using high estimates and adding both sides casualties just like the high counts do to the US in this conflict). That's twice the unbelievably high and already discredited Lancet figures. So believe Lancet or not but apples to apples please.

Re:What is treason?

[TapeCutter]

"Oh, right - I'm responding to a well-known troll account."

Nah, BadAnalogyGuy is parody.

Re:What is treason?

[dbrutus]

Without the Korean war, there might not even be a DPRK so some poor korean kid starving to death today can be laid on the Rosenberg's doorstep.

Re:What is treason?

[dbrutus]

The post war Saudi Arabia adjustments on liberty and modernization provoked by the Iraq war (the Kingdom's answer to the question "if the Iraqis can vote, why can't we") likely also preserves the KSA fields under a geopolitically reasonable regime. We've paid the piper already and are just starting to reap the benefits, if we don't sabotage the current success in a snit (like Congress' refusal to give air support and fund S. Vietnam's munitions needs in 1974-5).

Re:What is treason?

[HighOrbit]

Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?

We are a democracy. We make our decisions collectively and/or have duly elected representatives subject to periodic elections make the decisions. What makes you think your or Rosenberg's morality in matters of public policy is greater than the wisdom of the democracy? Rosenburg had no right to endanger the ENTIRE population of the country by giving atomic secrets to Stalin. No one man has a right to substitute his opinion for that of an election of the people. Rosenberg wasn't engaged in civil disobedience by waving a sign in the park, he enabled a ruthless genocidal dictatorship (Stalin) with the power to destroy the country in a nuclear holocaust.

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang on there - why are you now adding Iranian casualties? We are talking about Iraqi casualties here. Most (by far) of the losses in the Iran-Iraq war were on the Iranian side.

Re:What is treason?

[fifedrum]

s/country/world/g

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that they are still responsible for future deaths that may not have occurred yet. If a rogue state uses a Russian warhead that was developed in part from information stolen by the Rosenbergs, I would think they're at least partly responsible...

And you can't say that "Russia would have developed The Bomb anyway" because that didn't happen, and we don't know if it would have. We only know what did happen, and that is the Rosenberg's information was vital to the Soviet bomb making effort.

Dude - this was 60 years ago! How long are you going to hold the Rosenbergs responsible for some hypothetical future nuke? In perpetuity?!

Making a nuke is not all that hard, and of course the Russians could have done it without help in far less than 60 years' time.

The United States never killed again with an atomic bomb, and you can't say that's due to the USSR maintaining warhead parity.

Can't I? Just watch me! The US has always has a military doctrine which includes the first-use of nukes, and specific plans for nuking enemy states were made but never put into action. Maybe without a nuclear-armed counter-balance those plans would still have remained just plans, but it's just as speculative as the speculation about the Rosenberg's saving lives.

Re:What is treason?

[vertinox]

Meh. What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but it's definitely a serious crime.

Ironically, the Soviets having nukes when they did might have prevented a US invasion of mainland China or the use of nukes on North Korea and China in the 1950's during the escalation of the Korean War.

My guess such an invasion and protracted war would have been economically disastrous for the US leading the Soviets to simply to win by default once they made nukes later on.

It is a big "what if" and the Rosenberg's never really had that idea in mind, but it is something to ponder if history had been different.

Re:What is treason?

[argStyopa]

Your question is absurd.

If I understand your first point, the superficial one is "if your action demonstratably saves more lives than it cost, is it really wrong?"
As far as the Iraq war, you seem so certain. I'd ask: in what scope? According to varied estimates, there are something like 500,000-1 million Iraqis that probably would have wished Saddam was ousted earlier. This grossly overshadows the (high) estimate of 100,000 Iraqi civilians slain as a result of the current war plus the (trivial, in a military sense) number military deaths.
Of course, the point you're making is about the Rosenbergs. How did them selling secrets to the Soviets "save lives"? One could argue that having the bomb, and feeling secure against any serious military opposition allowed Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders to embark on their later actions without fear. One could thus logically lay ALL the deaths of the Cold War - all the internal Soviet purges (no real American analogue there, for you moral relativists, sorry) and all the brushfire proxy wars - at the feet of the Rosenbergs. So how many lives did their actions "save" again?

Your second is stated more clearly: "Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?"
I'm staggered by the naivete and simplistic egoism that would fuel this question. More accurately, one might ask what sort of a society one would create if everyone (not just you, remember) were allowed to act according to their own morality? Remember, not everyone has your set of life rules: there's the Austrian guy who imprisoned his own daughter for what, 30 years? meanwhile impregnating her several times. Can he act according to HIS morality? Is that fine? What about the fellow who feels its perfectly justifiable to take the goods of others, because he NEEDS them more to support a really strong drug addiction?
There are LOTS of moral compasses out there, and despite how simple it might look to some, it doesn't take a lot of life experience to see that they don't all point toward the same "north". To suggest that people should just be able to follow their own morality is tantamount to a Hobbesian state of nature "red in tooth and claw" where the strongest get to do what they want simply because they are the strongest or most brutal.

To explain it simply, a society is a collective of people who generally agree on a set of behavioral norms. If you violate those norms, you're subject to the punishment of the society as a whole. American society - a vocal minority aside - has settled on the idea that the worst offenders shall be killed. Like it or not. Fortunately, in modern western culture, one of the norms is that you can say "I don't agree with this set of values" and LEAVE, seeking something better.

The irony (in my view) is that most of the people in the US who complain about how they don't like this or that, tend not to understand that comparatively, they're going to have a hard time finding another society that has the combination of physical conveniences, economic opportunities, and political freedoms, so they end up just staying here and filling the internet with pointless whinging.

Re:What is treason?

[Mr. Slippery]

What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason.

In the U.S., treason is narrowly defined as "levying war against [the U.S.], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The Rosenbergs did not make war against the U.S., and no state of war existed between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., so we were not enemies. We were rivals in a geopolitical game including nuclear brinksmanship and other brutal and stupid behavior on both sides, yes, but not enemies. (Indeed, at the time the Rosenbergs started their activities, we were allies with the U.S.S.R. against the Nazis.)

As for the Vassiliev notebooks -- they're crap:

Vassiliev, who acted as his own lawyer, was not an impressive witness. On the arcane but crucial question of whether, in his unfettered trawl through KGB archives, he'd ever seen a single document linking Alger Hiss with "Ales"--the code name of a Soviet agent in the 1940s who, Weinstein and Vassiliev insisted, had to be Hiss--he admitted he hadn't. He also failed to provide a satisfactory account of just how he'd managed, despite being required to leave his files and notebook in a safe at the KGB press office at the end of each day, to smuggle out the notebooks with his extensive transcriptions of documents, which, he explained, he couldn't even ask to have photocopied, because the contents were considered Russian state secrets.

So Vassiliev did what crank authors due when presented with criticism: brought suit under the U.K.'s libel laws.

Re:What is treason?

[Lars T.]

Well, let's put it this way - Saddam killed less people when he was America's enemy, then when he was America's darling - coincidence?

Re:What is treason?

[Lars T.]

Hang on there - why are you now adding Iranian casualties? We are talking about Iraqi casualties here. Most (by far) of the losses in the Iran-Iraq war were on the Iranian side.

Don't worry, as soon as the US attacks Iran, he will count all of them as the victims of Iranian violence.

Re:What is treason?

[Knitebane]

Yes, and Roosevelt's war with Japan killed more Americans than Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

Which means absolutely nothing, just like the ludicrous notion that somehow the war to topple the Hussein regime was somehow about stopping him from killing Iraqis. It wasn't. It was about stopping him from killing any Iraqi he wanted to because he could, because he held power via terror.

The difference, in case you really are as naive as you act rather than just having an advanced case of BDS, is that the people living in Iraq post-Saddam don't have to fear becoming a victim of Saddam any more.

The people of Iraq are now free. That a great many died in the process is unfortunate but that's sometimes what it takes to liberate entire societies from the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, the National Socialist German Worker's Party or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Re:What is treason?

[Wyatt Earp]

How was the Second Iraq War/Operation Iraqi Freedom, a bad thing?

Do the Iraqi people now have a freely elected government? Yep. Is Saddam and his sons in power? Nope.

Explain how it was a "almost wholly bad war"?

Re:What is treason?

[Wyatt Earp]

No, the Soviets having nukes was not why the US didn't invade China or nuke the DPRK and/or China in 1950.

The US didn't do those things because the civilian leadership of the US didn't want to get into a massive war with China and some of the military leadership did, so the failure to invade/nuke is due to reigning in MacArthur and not because the Soviets had a handful of fission bombs

Re:What is treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Soviets having nukes when they did might have prevented a US invasion of mainland China or the use of nukes on North Korea and China in the 1950's

Which is exactly why Truman and Acheson did NOT want MacArthur to push beyond the Chinese border. They did NOT want to start a nuclear exchange in Asia or Europe.

Re:What is treason?

[icebike]

They weren't worried about a Nuclear Exchange, they were worried about a conventional one, of massive Chinese infantry.

Of course no one here on Slash dot will ever concede the US never had any territorial ambitions in China, but that, in fact, is the case. After just completing world war 2 and a huge cost no one wanted the Korean war, not even the Military.

Re:What is treason?

[afabbro]

In the U.S., treason is narrowly defined as "levying war against [the U.S.], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The Rosenbergs did not make war against the U.S., and no state of war existed between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., so we were not enemies.

While we're quoting the constitution, please quote the part that defines "enemy".

Oh.

Gosh, I guess that means it's up to the courts to interpret...

By the way, you do realize that your whole point is invalid because the Rosenbergs were not charged with treason, right? They were sentenced for espionage, not treason. And by the way, they took oaths not to reveal secrets and were aware that any illegal revelations carried the potential of the death penalty.

Re:What is treason?

[RockDoctor]

How was the Second Iraq War/Operation Iraqi Freedom, a bad thing?

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, possibly approaching a million depending on how you count the bodies and who you consider a casualty ; a coalition of hostile FOREIGNERS have effective control of the country ; much of the country's infrastructure is in a worse state than it was before GW2 (Gulf War 2 ; perhaps GWB for it's main proponent and "Gulf War B") ; and those fucking foreigners are STILL here, treating Iraqi citizens like sand niggers and raping the natural resources of the country for their own use. Transpose those elements to your own society (as if I couldn't guess which one you live in), and see how you'd feel about the invaders.

Do the Iraqi people now have a freely elected government?

That is an arguable point. It would be at best optimistic to describe the current Iraqi government as "untroubled", or as "wholly accepted". The country is still likely to split into several, and some of the fucking foreigners would find that highly convenient.

Yep. Is Saddam and his sons in power? Nope.

"Are", not "Is" - but yes, you've found the point that puts the "almost" into the next phrase.

Explain how it was a "almost wholly bad war"?

You have put your finger on pretty much the only point that makes it an "almost wholly bad war" instead of a "wholly bad war". Well done. Welcome to "International Relations 1.0.1".

Oh, you were looking from your own society's perspective? Oh, well, in that case, GW2 (GWB) still isn't a wholly good thing. You've probably generated several generations of people who'll be willing (and, of course, able) to attack and kill you, and your children, and your children's children ; you've had significant casualties yourself (so has my country too, but of course none of my friends have been injured because I treat militaristic thugs with the contempt they deserve) ; you may, or may not, have successfully gained access to significant natural resources belonging to other people (this is as-yet undecided ; there's nothing to prevent the oil fields from being nationalised back to their owners) ; you've had a cathartic exercise on beating up someone because of 2001/11/9, even though it was a country unrelated to those events.

What other benefits have you gained? Oh yes, triumph and acclaim. As they don't say in Germany any more, "Seig heil!"

Re:What is treason?

[Lars T.]

There is also no evidence to suggest that by "sharing" the bomb with the Soviet Union that any deaths were prevented. The United States never killed again with an atomic bomb, and you can't say that's due to the USSR maintaining warhead parity. You might argue that the U.S. would have risen to become the single world-dominating order without an opponent to keep them in check, but it seems that was able to happen (briefly) even with the USSR having nuclear capabilities.

The American Hawks have urged for a nuclear attack on the USSR numerous times, and the only obvious reason why that hasn't happened was the USSR also had nukes. Next you are going to tell us that the A-bombs on Japan were needed to win the war and not a demonstration of power to the USSR.

Re:What is treason?

[Mr. Slippery]

While we're quoting the constitution, please quote the part that defines "enemy". Oh. Gosh, I guess that means it's up to the courts to interpret...

No more so than it's up to the courts to interpret any other word. In the context "levying war against..or in adhering to their enemies", it means a group at war with the U.S. Full stop.

By the way, you do realize that your whole point is invalid because the Rosenbergs were not charged with treason

Would you care to look upthread and see how the topic of treason came into the discussion? Thanks.

they took oaths not to reveal secrets

Julius might have signed some such nonsense when in the Army, but when did Ethel Rosenberg ever take such an oath? Please provide a citation or retract this claim.

There is no evidence that Ethel Rosenberg engaged in espionage. Greenglass long ago recanted his testimony.

It was a queer, sultry summer

[Threni]

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

Re:It was a queer, sultry summer

[Zontar The Mindless]

Parent is not off-topic.

It's a quote from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar .

This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Chrisq]

(using Timeglider â" a web-based, flash powered, software for creating timelines) ... The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case, and the newly available documentation more manageable."

Yes we get the picture

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[idlemachine]

And it's almost identical to the 3+ year old Simile Timeline project, other than its dependence on Flash over Javascript.

http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/

The Timeline sample project covers the Kennedy assassination, incidentally.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[plover]

(using Timeglider â" a web-based, flash powered, software for creating timelines) ... The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case, and the newly available documentation more manageable."

Yes we get the picture

Actually, I don't get the picture. It wants me to install some new version of Flash to get the picture, and I don't want to.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Will.Woodhull]

I got the same message ('you need to install a new version of Flash') when I visited. After telling NoScript to allow wilsoncenter.org, and then timeglider.com, I had access without the need to load another Flash reader.

I don't know what that site is doing to test for Flash on the browser, but I don't like its dishonesty.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a guy in there named "Semen Semenov." January 13, 1966. I'm not even kidding.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I noticed that too. it has to be a joke, that can't be real

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

I don't know what that site is doing to test for Flash on the browser, but I don't like its dishonesty.

I'd agree with Bernard Ingham on this one - cockup before conspiracy every time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dishonesty" is a bit strong. It's just an oversight. Like this classic:

<div id="container"><a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">Get the Flash Player</a> to see this player.</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var s1 = new SWFObject("mediaplayer.swf","mediaplayer","300","185","8"); // --snip--
    s1.write("container");
</script>

Another variant of "update your Flash" (doesn't apply here) is when a site is actually checking for an older version of Flash, say Flash 9, and fails to recognize Flash 10. I get that a lot.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, at a time when Javascript is becoming more and more powerful it's an utter failure to go back to Flash.

But Simile seems a bit opaque too. A Javascript-generated, purely presentational div soup. The source data aren't directly accessible -- apparently it parses a CSV file! Wouldn't it be much better to have the data embedded in the page in XML, or even better semantic HTML (a <datagrid>, say) for accessibility, fallback and robots? OK, the downside is reading from the DOM.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Will.Woodhull]

Yeah, its probably a matter of incompetence rather than evil intent, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. You can regard evil behavior as something separate from the person who uses it and then you can sometimes get them to mend their ways.

But there's not much you can do about incompetence, except hope that the person grows out of it. And unless the person is still a teenager, it is not realistic to entertain high hopes about that.

Seems a little strange to be more pessimistic than a curmudgeonlyoldbloke. Maybe this cold is affecting my normally sunny nature.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[plover]

Ah, that did it, thank you. It didn't occur to me that it was displaying that warning as a result of JavaScript. And I have NoScript set up to permit base second level domains, but didn't think to enable timeglider.com.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Chrisq]

There's a guy in there named "Semen Semenov." January 13, 1966. I'm not even kidding.

He sounds like a slippery character to me. You know a real slimy type of guy.

Re:This whole article is an advert for timeglider

[Lars T.]

"Semen" is a false transliteration of "CEMËN", a better one would be "Semyon" or maybe "Simon" or "Simeon". "Simon Simonson" - not half as stupid as "Anonymous Coward".

Perfect Example of Bad, Unnecessary Flash

[deliciousmonster]

5 years ago this would have still been relegated to a kiosk in a learning center somewhere... but a little investigation into how to write javascript could have made this lighter, more usable, and less frustrating. Unless they were going for a "technology of the times" feel...

Timeglider, eh?

[dangitman]

Doesn't seem to work very well. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it didn't do anything to enhance my experience or make the information easier to digest. If anything, it made it more confusing and less informative.

Re:Timeglider, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just you. This timeglider thingie does an excellent job of confusing the user.

The Zoom-out feature is especially silly: When you zoom out to see an overview of the timeline, it hides all but one event, and creates the illusion that almost nothing happened. why it doesn't simply make the data smaller I have no idea.

Great way to get lost in data with no way to find yourself. Well done Timeglider folks!

Yay for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay for proprietary tech! Yes, it runs as opaque blob on linux, if you have an x86. But what if not? So much fun people. Open standards are for chumps.

This is a job for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider the following far-more-useful timeline presentations...

http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/examples/religions/religions.html
http://www.timerime.com/ ...The shame of it all is that Timeglider fails to beat the above three technologies, and NONE of them use Flash.

Re:This is a job for...

[Captain Cabron]

http://www.timerime.com/ ...The shame of it all is that Timeglider fails to beat the above three technologies, and NONE of them use Flash.

eh, then why does that last one say
"You will need Flash Player 8 (or higher) to view this website."

Re:This is a job for...

[Anonymous Coward]

That second one can't be accurate. I got back to 15000 BC before getting bored. I thought Christianity had the world as not existing back then. Also, where is the bit where the dinosaurs and man roamed the earth together?

Re:This is a job for...

[TimeGlider]

Well, I'm biased (being a founder of TimeGlider), but none of these other tools provides a user the ability to quickly, with a nice ui, start making and sharing timelines. Timerime.com IS actually flash-based, Mr. Grumpypants. There's also Dipity.com, which is not Flash-based. Each has its strengths and flaws. We're getting lots of positive feedback today, as well as lots of helpful bug reports : ) Thanks /. !

Re:This is a job for...

[plover]

OK, so you're trolling for feedback. Here's some.

Now that I'm viewing it, it looks pretty straight-forward. I was kind of expecting a more two-dimensional approach, perhaps interconnected lines that would refocus me on a different path or view of the network. I could imagine having the main timeline change focus from primary topic to primary topic. Not that this isn't usable as is, but I was trying to follow my interests, rather than the interests of the article author. And I can see where the "author's viewpoint" attribute might be more important for a schoolteacher.

I've noticed that I can't easily follow a particular trail: for example, you have blue triangles representing Venona decrypts, but clicking the blue triangle is ineffective. I can't just click on a blue triangle and see all the Venona decrypts. (Yes, I later found the "legend" icon after returning to the site a few times.) I can go to the legend and use that as the filter, but that's not intuitive.

I also found that when using the filter to display just Venona related items, I still had to zoom in before I could find them. There's no reason to go to such great lengths to hide information. Alternately, you could put a second slider that shows you more or less detail, rather than strictly more or less time.

If you wanted to get all Appley about this, perhaps a longer click, a double click, or a right click menu on a topic could make that topic glow, or rise in importance.

Oh, and the legend box doesn't have a "close (X)" button, and I suspect others don't as well. Consistency of the gadgets is going to be expected by your users.

Three clicks on a single story item gave me three identical copies of the box to close.

The number on the slider is meaningless. It's not "months" or "years", it's just a random number I don't need or want to see. You have a date range displayed above the slider (1960-1963 or whatever) but it's not clickable. You have a go-to beneath it, which is nice, but I clicked the 1960 hoping to drag the displayed range back to 1949-1963.

I'm sure you don't want to outright steal from Google, but I like their time slider arrangement on their financial pages, like this one: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AMSFT Note how when you get the mouse in the lower pane, the "width" grabbers appear, allowing you to stretch the range to whatever you need? Intuitive, isn't it?

Good luck. I like the overall graphic layout, your tool is very pretty. It's just that it works like a v0.98(beta) and needs a bit more polish in the functional areas.

Massacre or fight for freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me help you. What he meant was, that more people had died in the war which ensued following the US invasion of Iraq than had died in peacetime under Saddam's regime. He's right.

If you believe Amnesty International's figures, there were fewer than 200 hangings in Iraq per year before the invasion (some might say that's enough), and even as his regime responded to uprisings, they killed fewer Iraqis than were killed as a direct result of the US invasion.

The difference is that when Saddam's regime killed people to put down the uprising, the US called it a massacre. When the US killed thousands of Iraqis during and since the invasion to suppress opposition, it is described as a necessary but tragic consequence of ridding Iraq of a dictator.

I am not an admirer of Saddam or his yobbish sons, but the story is not as clear cut as you would like to believe.

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[dbrutus]

Did those 200 deaths include the girls that Uday Hussein make dissapear after he'd finished with them? I think not. Did those 'peacetime' deaths include the deaths from diverting medicines for the people under Saddam to regime stabilization toys like Playstations for the kids of the ruling class? Of course not. AI is lying with statistics. A lot of people are. Apples to apples please.

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe Amnesty International's figures

WHY would you do that?

Amnesty International's numbers for civilian deaths in Iraq are an order of magnitude greater than all other estimates, were compiled by a person who was actively involved in trying to prevent any invasion, were deliberately released right before a US election in order to influence the results, and the raw data used to come up with the estimate still has not been released.

In other words, those estimates are about as biased as they could possibly be.

The bias in and of itself doesn't mean their numbers are wrong, but the fact those numbers are so out-of-line with every other estimate when combined with the obvious bias means anyone who cites them either has an agenda or is woefully ignorant. Or both.

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[ruin20]

Ok, so he hung 200 people publicly a year. From 1991 to 2003 is 12 years so 2400 people.
Then add a conservative 5000 (Probably closer to 10000 since many of the injured died of complicationis) from the Halabja poison gas attack and we're just getting started. That was just one part of the Al-Anfal Campaign where he killed roughly 100,000. That's just violence against the Kurds which is the most well documented. And the hangings don't account for the shootings and killings post Gulf War when he quelled the Shiite Rebellion. Body count puts the Iraq war collateral damage total at about 100,000. So in fact we haven't killed as many Iraqis as Saddam.

Motivations for war aside, the operation has been exceedingly poorly executed, and may be inexcusable. But lets not delude ourselves into thinking "Well, Saddam wasn't that bad". He was worse.

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[tsm_sf]

The bias in and of itself doesn't mean their numbers are wrong, but the fact those numbers are so out-of-line with every other estimate when combined with the obvious bias means anyone who cites them either has an agenda or is woefully ignorant. Or both.

I'm trying to think of when these 'numbers' would be mentioned by someone without an agenda.

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[Lars T.]

If Saddam was worse, why did all those people fleeing Iraq waited until the invasion?

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[DNS-and-BIND]

If you believe Amnesty Internationals figures

I would no sooner believe them than I would a tramp on the street. AI and the US government are just two sides of the same coin.

Re:Massacre or fight for freedom

[weaseldaddy]

The hangings were public. How many people were taken in the night, and their bodies ended up in unmarked graves? According to this USAID report there are around 300 mass graves in Iraq that can be tied to the Baathist regime. http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/pdf/iraq_mass_graves.pdf

Mod parent up

[Chrisq]

It is always good to highlight open-source alternatives in an "advertising" story.

Re:Mod parent up

[IBBoard]

True, especially when said Flash-based version fails to load any of the data with Swfdec on my Fedora 11 Linux box while the JavaScript version is light and responsive and probably a hell of a lot more accessible to boot.

Good...easy...free software?

[Raindog]

I am a teacher (former geek) and I have struggling to find good timelining software for use by both me and my students...my needs are:

A. Must be free
B. Easy to add events
C. Exportable to a file
D. Multiple user support would be nice

Simile Timeline looks nice but is certainly not easy, and probably requires more skill to implement than I am capable of. Plus, I don't have a server to run it on. Timeglider are Timerime look fine as easy to use software, but are ultimately commercial services and I suspect will ultimatly cause problems. Anyone have any suggestions? Non-web based freeware is also fine, but it needs to be free so I can have students use it as well. That would also pretty much mandate Windows as well. An suggestions would be dandy. Thanks!

Re:Good...easy...free software?

[TimeGlider]

Hey @Raindog, as long as we're in business, we'll keep a robust free version of TimeGlider available â"Âand this is with classrooms in mind. A "Plus" layer (currently free) will cost roughly $60 per year, so a teacher could then manage timeline collaborations, export to CSV, etc. We've had great success with classrooms collaborating. Yes, we'll pursue "enterprise" (commercial) clients, but will also make sure it's easy & free (and free of ads) for educational use. I'd be happy to help you set up some group timelines, and I'd also be happy to field any feedback you have. Michael Richardson co-founder, lead developer TimeGlider michael (at) timeglider (dot) com

We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Philip K Dickhead]

And ours are documented - not some MOSSAD provided "baby incubator"-type monster-propaganda, disseminated to dehumanize an enemy of Israel.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 7 -- A U.S. soldier charged with the rape and murder of a teenage Iraqi girl and the deaths of three of her relatives described to army investigators how he and his comrades hatched the plot during a morning of drinking whiskey, playing cards and hitting golf balls, an Army investigator testified Monday.

Spec. James P. Barker, 23, made the graphic admission in an interview and sworn statement, Special Agent Benjamin Bierce said at a hearing in Baghdad to determine whether the soldiers should face a military trial.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700780.html

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Philip K Dickhead]

Skaret told jurors that a group of soldiers, including Green, were playing cards and drinking whiskey at a checkpoint near Mahmudiyah, about 15 miles south of Baghdad.

Talk turned to having sex with Iraqi women, when one soldier mentioned the al-Janabi family, who lived nearby, Skaret said. Soldiers then went to the home where, according to prosecutors, Green pulled the father, mother, and daughters ages 6 and 14 into another room, then pushed the 14-year-old out.

Skaret said Green used a shotgun to kill the three in the room with him and told the soldiers that the family was dead.

He then raped the girl and shot her, according to Skaret.

As the girl lay helpless, "Steven Green went over to the wall and picked up a gun and he shot her in the face again and again," Skaret said.

Later, Green would talk about the killings to superior officers, other soldiers and even civilian friends, Skaret said.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/07/national/main5000038.shtml

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[belmolis]

Israel doesn't need to make things up to dehumanize its enemies: they openly advertise their depravity. Islamic anti-semites loudly proclaim their bigotry, explicitly state their genocidal aims, and take "credit" for war crimes up to and including the deliberate murder of little girls.

The "incubator" stuff did not come from the Mossad. It came from Kuwait, not a big buddy of Israel.

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Philip K Dickhead]

Hey, Hasbara astro-turfer, who boast of killing babies? The IDF! They even print T-Shirts, that laugh about killing pregnant women.
Israeli Army T-Shirts Mock Gaza Killings of Women and Children

Of course, they don't usually use bullets. Internationally banned chemical warfare agents, like White Phosphorus will kill a neighborhood full of children, so much easier.

Per your deception on the origin of the Incubator smear of Iraq? Kuwait is a client of the USA. The USA is a client of Israel.

"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25,1982:

"The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is therefore redder and their life is preferable."
-- Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva (school of Talmud) in Nablus

"The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew, i.e. a Palestinian, is considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have no compunction about it."
-- Yitzhak Ginsburg, "Five General Religious Duties Which Lie Behind the Act of the Saintly, Late Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, May his Blood be Avenged"

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Anonymous Coward]

"No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs."

"Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings."
-- Richard Stallman

Yeah. Maybe you should practice what you preach, Perfesser!

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Philip K Dickhead]

Why did you sidestep my observation of pervasive human evil, with supported claims of an American devilry being equal to that of any unsubstantiated propaganda about Iraq?

You went straight for a defense of Israel! And used broad - again unsubstantiated by evidence - claims to justify classifying Muslims as a sub-human category! Presumably as justification for their slaughter?

You are piece of work!

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Philip K Dickhead]

Have You Killed a PalestinianToday?

May 22, 2009 5 Comments

1. In the good old days when the Summer and Winter Olympics were hosted in some really odd country, Canada for some reason comes to mind, the hosts used to be able to introduce their own sport to the smorgasbord of increasingly ridiculous sporting events that are the fruit of the Olympic Movement as the rich like to call it. So, maybe the Canadians would have introduced curling but they were beaten to this by the French in 1924. Anyway, a host country could push to have one of its sports as a demonstration sport to further the sports popularity.

Embracing the universalist elitism of the Olympic Movement and keeping in step with the mores of globalism, the tuyuur here at Mantiq al-Tayr very much hope that the Olympics will soon be hosted by Israel or by its satellite country, The United States of America. If the games are hosted in the US, then we recommend that waterboarding be introduced as a demonstration sport. In fact, recent events have provided excellent victims to be publically waterboarded by Israeli-trained CIA contractors and the winner would be the one who gets the most outrageous confession from these four morons who were set up by the FBI. (While Rosen and Weissman get off. Oh, and where the hell is Edward Mosberg? An email from Mantiq al-Tayr to the author of the article sent two days ago asking if Mosberg has come back to the US or not remains unanswered.)

However, in the interests of providing a really entertaining demonstration sport that will stimulate the loins of everyone from AIPAC to Judith Miller, we here at Mantiq al-Tayr held a minyan and bobbed our heads up and down begging Shadai to have the Olympics held in Israels eternal capital (no, not New York you smart asses), Jerusalem.

The Israeli national pass time is finding creative ways to murder Palestinian men, women and children. They are very good at it and probably would take the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. Still, its great fun and Im sure that the US and the UK would at least give the Izzies a run for their money that they took from us.

So, for example, lets take the case of Israeli Border patrolmen Shachar Butbika and Dennis al-Hazub. They won a gold medal in 2002 for abducting a 17 year old Palestinian boy, beating the shit out of him, and then kicking him off the top of their patrol car as it roared down the road at 80 kph. His head smashed into the pavement and the impact killed him. What made this one even more fun was that the boy violated Israeli law by resisting their efforts to toss him off the patrol car kind of like a battle you have when you catch a big fish and real it in. Hahaha-Aretz reports:

He was beaten by Butbika and then forced to jump from the moving vehicle. He resisted, holding onto the jeeps roof, but was eventually forced out. One of the officers shouted hes dead. They drove away, without offering medical assistance, and tried to eliminate the evidence.

The 17 year old boys name is: 'Imran Abu Hamdiya

Here is a photo of him.

Imran Abu Hamdiya

Butbika and al-Hazub also won the silver medal that day as well. For earlier in the day they picked up another Palestinian youth, 20 year old Alaa Sankrut. Sankrut

was hauled onto the jeep, driven to a discreet location and kicked and beaten with a pickaxe handle, sustaining skull fractures

Unfortunately, Butbika and al-Hazub fucked up and the guy lived, much to the

Re:We have our own "Uday Husseins"

[Philip K Dickhead]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/21/734169/-A-Deeply-Unfair-Cast-of-Mind

Thu May 21, 2009 at 08:22:20 PM PDT

May 21, 2009

At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulation, and simple decency. For the harm they did to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice.

And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.

Dick Cheney

• Garrett's diary :: ::

Setting the Conditions

August 31 to September 9, 2003

Major General Geoffrey Miller, commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, leads a survey team to plan intelligence, interrogation, and detention operations in Iraq.

September 5, 2003

A JPRA (SERE) training team arrives in Iraq. Their visit includes Abu Ghraib.

September 6, 2003

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tours Abu Ghraib.

September 9, 2003

General Miller delivers his recommendations. Guantanamo Bay should be used as a baseline. Interrogation in Iraq should be consolidated in one place. MPs should work to set the conditions for interrogation.

Dedicate and train a detention guard force subordinate to the JIDC Commander that sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees. This action is now in progress.

General Geoffrey Miller

I had conversations with MG Miller on a couple of occasions.... Specifically, I recall he discussed the implementation of dedicated MP support to MI.

Captain Carolyn Wood

They [MPs] would be the bad guys and MI would be the good guy to gather information.

Colonel Jerry Phillabaum

Training

October 1, 2003

The 372nd MP Company, a reserve unit, moves to Abu Ghraib. It gets two weeks on-the-job training. Nudity, sexual humiliation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation are all standard procedures when the 372nd arrives.

This is also the deadline date for centralizing and consolidating interrogation and detention at Abu Ghraib. Most other locations in Iraq are now intended as 72-hour holding sites.

October 3 or 4, 2003

3:00 or 4:00 p.m.

Military police transport a prisoner to the hard site.

One of them whispered in my ear, "today I am going to fuck you", and he said this in Arabic. Whoever was with me experienced the same thing. That's what the American soldiers did.... When they took me to the cell, the translator Abu Hamid came with an American soldier and his rank was sergeant (I believe). And he called told me "faggot" because I was wearing the woman's underwear, and my answer was "no". Then he told me "why are you wearing this underwear", then I told them "because you make me wear it."

Kasim Hilas (#151108)

October 5

Three Guantanamo Tiger Teams arri

Okay

[copponex]

This is really, really fucking easy. In fact, it's so easy, I'm amazed I even have these conversations, because the facts are so obvious.

Does the American government care if people are denied freedom under fundamentalist interpretations of muslim law? If they did, why did they support the Taleban before 9/11? Why do they continue to support Saudi Arabia? Why aren't they lobbying for human rights in muslim countries in Africa?

Does the American government care if a leader is massacring his own people? If they did, they wouldn't have given Saddam the biochemical agents to gas the Kurds, or given Suharto in Indonesia the arms he needed to kill East Timorese, or stood by while the Rwanda descended into hell in and genocide.

So what is all this bullshit about freedom and liberty? A nice way to sell the lie to the American people that deploying the military is helping someone besides our paranoid military planners and the corporations who are rewarded with tens of billions of dollars when we are at war, and with hundreds of billions of dollars every year in "defense" spending.

What is the truth? The truth is that the Pentagon supports whatever country is doing as they are told. When they lose control, they send in the CIA to foment a coup, or in cases where they can propagandize the public enough, they send in the troops. This is the definition of tyranny, and America has been living it for 60 years.

You want statistics? Add up how many Americans have been killed by foreigners on US soil. Add up how many foreigners have been killed by Americans on their soil. I don't even have to do the math, and unless you are Sean Hannity, you already know what the result is going to be.

And unfortunately, even comparing the embargo before 2003 to the casualties during the war and after will reveal that we did far more damage than Saddam.

The picture in Iraq is not rosy. It will take them decades to get back to where they were in 2002. Watch the video below. Eight minutes in she says, "Everything you see that looks like water is not. It is sewage... According to the GAO, the children who are age 15 and younger are less literate than their parents... over 25% of primary school age children do not attend school."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5519287956645135226

You're missing a moral difference

[MikeRT]

I am not an admirer of Saddam or his yobbish sons, but the story is not as clear cut as you would like to believe.

There is a moral difference between the US killing 5000 civilians who get caught up in the crossfire between US troops and Iraqi insurgents and Saddam killing 50 people because they were "enemies of the state." The "anti-war" movement blurs the distinction between unfortunate facts of war and murder. Plenty of innocent French, Italians and Belgians died as the allies pushed the Germans out of their countries, but there is an extreme difference between those casualties and willfully inflicted murders.

I didn't support the war in Iraq as a matter of principle. I don't believe it's worth American lives, treasure or liberty to get involved in these matters unless either we're going to end up in the aggressors' crosshairs at some point, or the country serves a strategic interest that we cannot ignore. Very, very few conflicts have ever fit those descriptions.

Re:You're missing a moral difference

[ShakaUVM]

There is a moral difference between the US killing 5000 civilians who get caught up in the crossfire between US troops and Iraqi insurgents and Saddam killing 50 people because they were "enemies of the state."

Meh, there's no point arguing with moral relativists on this one. Mainly, they just dislike the US, so they claim that live was all rainbows and rivers of chocolate under Saddam, and that everything bad in the Middle East is somehow our fault.

Re:You're missing a moral difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainly, they just dislike the US, so they claim that live was all rainbows and rivers of chocolate under Saddam, and that everything bad in the Middle East is somehow our fault.

You don't have to claim that life was perfect under Saddam to put blame on the US. Saddam's rise to power was supported by the US in their efforts to install strong anti-communist leadership in the region. The start of US meddling in the region didn't begin with the Iraq war or even the gulf war before it, there's a long history on which to place blame for the US.

But, then again, the UK can shoulder quite a bit of the criticisms too, since much of the strife in the regions can be traced back to their meddling long before the US ever got involved.

Re:You're missing a moral difference

[Lars T.]

Yeah, there obviously is a difference between Saddam killing 50 "enemies of the state" and the US trying to kill 50 "insurgents" and actually killing 5000 civilians as a bonus. Gee, I wonder when you will be able to tell it.

George Koval too

[Anonymous Coward]

George Koval did at least as much, and likely more, than the Rosenbergs did to help Russia with their nuclear technology. An interesting article was recently published in the Smithsonian about him.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Iowa-Born-Soviet-Trained.html

Low Bodycount

[Anonymous Coward]

BodyCount is one source, at around 100 000. The Lancet survey, a fairly well-respected medical journal, puts the number of Iraqis killed at 600 000+ as of 2006. The Opinion Business Research journal puts the number of people killed at over 1 000 000 (update here).

You are keeping in mind that Saddam was supported (including obtaining chemical weapons) by the US throughout the 80s? Also, he and his military were allowed to kill many Kurds at the end of the Gulf War in the 90s (didn't you wonder why General Schwartzkoff gave him permission to fly his bombers?). You're right about one thing, let's not delude ourselves even if we don't like what we find out, particularly if it's about ourselves.

moral indifference

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's talk about morals, which should first bring to mind the most common of all morals, treat others as you want to be treated; as in don't be a hypocrite.

Let's pretend to be ignorant by ignoring the history of US involvement in supporting Saddam (while he killed Iraqis) in the 1980s and 90s. Iraq didn't declare war on the US, and no UN council recommended that anyone go in, so the US invaded for its own purposes. Would you support some country, say Saudi Arabia, invading the US for its own purposes?

You say the US kills some insurgents and 5000 civilians in a crossfire. Another way to put it is an invading force kills 5000+ locals. If Great Britain were to invade California, killing 5000 Californians and some number of Mexicans (who were there to help Californians), would this be OK? Even if the US government had falsely imprisoned or killed some Californians, would that make it OK?

I'm not sure what you mean by "strategic interest," but it's usually a catch-phrase for resource-hording corporations. You're right to beware of blurring, it's a common propagandist technique (see "glittering generalities"). In this case though, "unfortunate facts of war" and "murder" is a distinction without a difference.

My cousin Vinny's Sex Change ...

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL those pictures look like my Cousin Vinny, before and after the sew change !?!?!?!