Remember the missiles they destroyed? Those were classified as WMD.
No, they were not. "WMD" means nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Those missles were "banned" because of their range. They were not "WMD's".
That anyone thinks Iraq did NOT have WMD is odd. Of course, there is no reason to think Iraq had a "major" WMD program, but they did have actual WMD.
You're channelling MoJo JoJo.
As to support for al Qaeda from Iraq, it is true that the 9/11 Commission did not conclude there was such support, but it is also true the Commission said there was evidence of a connection.
No, they did not. They said that there were reports of contacts between the two, but not connections.
As if you ask some woman for a date and she turns you down. You had contact, but no connection.
But both sides are absolutely wrong when they say Bush said Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. It never happened. That both sides think this shows that neither side is particularly bright.
Check out what Bush actually said to Congress. http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/ 19/sprj.irq.bush/
Look for the bit involving the WTC attack.
They are at best peripherally related to the primary justification and reasons we went to war: violation of UN resolutions (which is the actual basis for the Congressional approval of the use of force, and which is not in dispute whatsoever) and the stabilization and transformation of the region in the long run.
No. Again, look at what they actually said. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09 /08/ira q.debate/
Lots about nuclear programs and aluminum tubes and Iraqi nuclear scientists.
Now we know that it was all lies.
Also, it would be interesting to see what the Kerry supporters thought about what KERRY'S views are. I presume the reason they didn't ask is because the pollsters could not agree on what Kerry's positions are.
This isn't about views. This is about facts. Not whether Kerry thinks such and such, but whether such and such happened or did not happen.
It seems that your post supports the findings of that article.
a. To some extent I find it hard to blame the Army/Marines on some of the above mentioned points as no one told them about the need to fight the kind of war they know are fighting.
I find it impossible to blame them (except for #9). We did not ramp up our troops or equipment levels and the US population still has not been asked to make any sacrifices for the troops in the field.
Compare this to WWI and WWII. You'll see the difference. We should have had all the kevlar vests, bullets and vehicular armour before we went it and it should have been a massive, country-wide push to get it.
Take a look at history, from major conflicts to minor ones. Name me a single conflict, that has had one country defeat and then occupy another for over a year, and taken just 1000 casualties?
Falkland Islands Grenada Panama
I study history and nothing comes to mind.
Well then.....
There are many people on Slashdot that just hate Bush, and Americans in general, those people are hopeless useful idiots and they will complete ignore the fact that American and British Planes(The French sent only one plane, that flew rarely if ever), were being shot at daily. That should have been enough to resume hostilities as it was.
We invade Iraqi airspace and you claim it is their fault?
Add to that Mass Graves, the support of terrorists (this is 100% true, you can't deny it), and you have a major wild card out their that you just can't have in a post Sept. 11 world.
Iraq has never supported anti-US terrorism.
Why couldn't we leave Iraq? The containment was working. Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone.
I could go on and on, about the UN oil for weapons... err... food program, but I really don't see the point.
RTFA. Those "weapons" you're talking about sure did a lot, didn't they?
To quote Indian Jones: "Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall."
Each person has his/her own "reality" (small "r") which is based upon his/her experiences, opinions and beliefs.
Two people can have the exact same experience, but view it in completely different ways based upon their past experiences and their opinions and beliefs. Example: the woman who went into a panic because she was on a plane with Syrian musicians.
Our realities generate filters which we perceive the events through. You see a plane full of people, she sees a terrorist threat.
These filters also block facts which would contradict our individual reality. This makes them pretty much self-sustaining.
It takes a MAJOR event to alter someone's reality. A good example is the mom in Michael Moore's movie who was happy to support Bush until her son was killed in the war. She could have also turned against anyone opposing the war as encouraging the enemy to kill her son.
So, no. The truth is not the truth. Each person has a "truth" that is unique to that person. They know it is the "truth" because it is consistent with reality (small "r").
Facts are facts. But not everyone will accept that a fact is a fact because their filters won't let them.
Many times, opinions, fantasies and fears get through the filters as "fact" and are incorporated into the individual's "reality".
It's a bit complicated. But each person is living in his/her own "reality". Even when you're both walking down the same street, seeing the same sights, hearing the same sounds.
I was not responding to the article. I was replying to PMF's statement:
In this case, it's absolutely more correct that Kerry supporters have got more going on in the brain-use department than Bush supporters.
The ability to recognize reality and facts does indicate "more going on in the brain-use department".
Since the article shows that Bush supporters got more of the facts wrong than Kerry supporters, his statement is correct.
Now, a very intelligent person could STILL vote for Bush, but that would still not contradict his statement.
The question is: How well would you score on that survey?
You might think you're very intelligent ("...smarter than 99.8% of Kerry supporters...") but what you think about yourself is not the question here. It's what you think about the facts under discussion.
Even someone as smart as yourself can be completely ignorant of the facts.
He brings up attacks on Apache as being proof that Linux is attacked as much as windows, but virtually all security breeches these days are done on the desktop and Windows does get attacked here more verociously than Linux because of it's ubiquitouness(SP?).
Then do not count the desktop issues.
Compare Windows/IIS to Linux/Apache and check the following:
#1. Which is exploited more frequently.
#2. What level of access is gained. (root is different than defacing a webpage)
#3. How was that access gained. (Local escalation of rights vs remote crack)
You'll still find that Linux/Apache is more secure if only because Linux/Apache is modular and you can easily identify and remove services and access you do not need (killing services you don't need is the second step in security, right after physical security).
If you really do pay attention to Security Focus and to the security bullitins of your favorite distro, you'd be hard pressed to say that Windows or Linux had any demonstrative lead in security patches.
Determining security by the number of patches released is beyond stupid. Yet lots of people do so. By that standard, MS-DOS is one of the most secure OS's available. Also, that leads into the Forrester "report" when holes are not counted unless (and until) the are formally recognized/patched by the vendor.
The best approach (IMO) is simple, Real World statistical analysis. Count the machines compromised and weight them by their marketshare (estimated in Linux's case).
100 million Windows machines, with 1% cracked == 1 million cracked Windows boxes.
5 million Linux boxes, with 1% cracked == 50,000 cracked Linux boxes.
Yet if we see 10 million cracked Windows boxes and 1,000 cracked Linux boxes, it is not because of marketshare.
Marketshare != security.
Circles within circles. Look within the numbers to find the facts. A remote root exploit on Linux, in a module that isn't used by anyone is not the same as a remote system exploit on Windows which most people don't even know they're running (or why).
According to my calculations, this still meets the 99.9999% reliability that MS claims the server to be able to provide, on enterprise-grade hardware (and what I am running on is decidedly not enterprise-grade, unless eMachines has recently broken into the enterprise market and I forgot to read the press release.)
Nope.
Reboots take about 4 minutes to shut down, restart, wait for the services to resolve themselves, and try again.
4 minutes/month == 48 minutes/year.
99.999 availablility means 5.26 minutes of downtime per year.
At best, you've got around 99.99% availability.
However, 4 minutes a month isn't a hardship, and anyone who says it is needs to either look into something transparently redundant, fault-tolerant, or reevaulate why they are so dependant on that one system in the first place.
It isn't about "hardship". It's about reliability. Getting that last.009% is very difficult and really doesn't give you much in terms of real world reliability for MOST business needs.
But for those that require it, it is available. And because it is available to those, it is available to everyone. Even those who do not need it.
Sure, my print server probably doesn't need 99.999% reliability. But because it has it, I don't have to worry about it.
In my experience, it's the reboot that causes the hardware failures. The fewer reboots, the fewer chances for hardware failure.
I understand what you are talking about and where you are coming from. But now we are playing Monday morning quarterback based on things they only let the public know.
Hardly. I've been saying this since before our invasion. All the facts were there and Bush & Co's "evidence" had been disproven.
I support a transparent government, but in matters of national security, I can see where we sometimes must have a very limited view of what's going on.
Irrelevant. This is not a case of national security.
If it were just Bush with some kind of weird vendetta, Congress wouldn't have voted to give him the authority to act if Saddam was in material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441.
Why not? Remember, there were people who voted against it.
John Kerry voted for that... how almost everyone felt.
Irrelevant. John Kerry is not God. Because he supports something does not make it right.
I think one of the most positive things Bush accomplished was to get inspectors back in Iraq in early 2003. If you recall they were all kicked out in 1998.
I do recall. And they were not kicked out. They left because we were threatening to bomb. Then Saddam did not let them back in.
Bush placed an artificial deadline on the inspectors' work by saying we needed to go in and kick Saddam out before it got hot, because our troops would be in more danger when the weather was hitting 120 degrees regularly. While that's certainly true, I think it made the timing bad. Another 6 months might have changed a lot of things.
The problem was that Bush "placed an artificial deadline on" finding something to support his agenda. Not on finishing their work.
When they couldn't find anything to support his agenda, he and his administration started questioning the competence of the inspectors.
However, regardless of the veracity of the evidence invoked by Bush and his advisors (none of which was really big, and many of which are now shown to be false), if Saddam didn't have any weapon stockpiles, what was he hiding?
Why do you believe he was hiding anything? The UN inspectors could go where they wanted, when they wanted.
Now we know he had no weapons. So why did he put on the big show? What were we supposed to conclude with all the cloak and dagger deception and burying information in tens of thousands of pages of reports?
Again, what "deception"? Those thousands of pages were about his past weapons programs and the disposition of the stuff they could account for. There was no "burying information" there.
If the U.N. passed 1441, what did they intend to do to back it up? I'm betting nothing... many of them were on the take from this so-called Oil for Food program.
Again, why does that matter? If they do nothing, what damage does that cause us?
France, who had been bought off, possibly convinced Saddam we would never attack and he could stall and jerk everyone around long enough to finally get sanctions dropped, at which time his clear intention was to get the nuclear program back on track... even if it was further behind than we knew.
Again, there was no nuclear program. None. It was not "further behind than we knew". It did not exist.
I'll be honest, in retrospect, my support for the war isn't as strong as it was last year, although I still support what we are trying to do and support our troops helping the Iraqis prepare to govern themselves.
The Iraqis were governing themselves. Saddam was an Iraqi. His cabinet was Iraqi. His army and police were Iraqi.
I believe you meant an "Iraqi democracy". But if that was our goal, then we've gone about it completely wrong.
I believe there are long-term and far-reaching effects which will be beneficial to us and people in the Middle East and the world at large for decades to come from two legitimate democracies in Afghanistan
I understand that, but I never thought that these kinds of folks never had more than a small minority following them.
They're numerous enough to take over and hold entire cities. It isn't just the fighters. The fighters need support from the local populace.
It's always been my understanding is that most folks just want to be left alone to get on with their lives.
Yep. The same as most people everywhere. But that doesn't mean that the majority of voters won't support a Theocracy. And the most motivated Iraqis seem to be the ones following the religious leaders.
Well, then it's a matter of semantics, if I understand you correctly.
Only because both instances (lie, truth) are matters of words and "semantics" deals with words.
You cannot be lying unless you are deliberately saying something incorrect and you know it is.
Possibly. Like when Bush and Co. say that we KNOW Saddam has "WMD's"?
Well, we did not know it because it seems that he did not have them.
So that was a lie.
And all the evidence that they used to support that lie (yellow cake, aluminum tubes, etc) had been individually debunked by experts.
By that definition, you are not lying when you say Bigfoot exists... except that what you really should be saying is that ytou believe Bigfoot exists.
Actually, it would be a lie. Because the evidence I'm using to support it has been disproven and I know that it has.
Furthermore, once the evidence used to support a specific claim is disproven, you must go back and re-evaluate your position. Bush did not. He had a goal (attack Iraq) and he grasped at any "evidence" available (even if disproven) to "support" his goal.
It it was just money involved, that would be irresponsible.
When the lives of our troops (and Iraqi civilians) are involved, that goes way, Way, WAY beyond irresponsible.
With regard to the religious leaders gaining power in Iraq, are these the people that the Hadid Sixpack would vote for?
Vote for. Fight for. Die for. Those are the leaders heading up the various insurgencies.
They would have been eventually... the biggest effect they were having was a lack of food and medicine for the citizens.
And Saddam would have died of old age or assassination, eventually. The question is, which would happen first and what restrictions would be placed upon Iraq after the sanctions were lifted. This is not an all or nothing deal.
I still don't see how you can say Bush "lied", since everyone else in the world was saying the same thing.
But they weren't. Here's the New York Times' article on the tubes: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html ?res=F60 D10F73B5C0C708CDDA90994DC404482
The attempted purchase of yellowcake had been discredited also, by one of our people sent over to check it out.
If I claim Bigfoot exists because someone took a picture of him (shown to be fake) and someone else has hair samples (determined to be from a dog) am I telling the truth or a lie when I say that I have evidence that Bigfoot exists?
If you attack the someone supporting terrorists, of course they are going to strike back.
You must have missed what I wrote. We are losing this fight because we cannot afford the deficits and the number of attacks are increasing.
We attacked Iraq. The only terrorists that Iraq was supporting were anti-Israeli ones. We're still not under attack from those (although they seem to be willing now).
I mistyped. I meant "Screw with the U.N.".
Whatever. It still looks like we went in to control the oil. If the UN wasn't worried, why did we have to go in?
If the war was for oil, why am I paying more for gas now?!
Again, because we are losing this "war". We're making more terrorists than we're ending and those terrorists know the vulnerabilities of the oil suppliers. On terrorist can take out one pipeline for days.
Like they had prior to Saddam Hussein? (Not.)
No. Look at the current leaders over there. See how they're all directly linked to religion? Saddam was brutal in keeping them down. Which is one of the reasons given for getting rid of him. Now that he's not there...
Here's where I differ from the spittle-producing bickering ideology-spewing/. masses. I know what I'm talking about. Sit back and enjoy some tasty facts.
I've read it. And NO WHERE does it say that Iraq had the (and here I'll quote you)...WMDs in Iraq (overemphasized like I stated), proven out in the fact that David Kay, et al, concluded the desire was there and no one seems to mention the 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium that can be purified into enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
Just for the record, the only relevent bit you quote is actually on page 13 of the Nuclear section.
Of course, page 14 shows just how useless most of the uranium is for nuclear bombs.
In summary, Iraq had been allowed to retain this yellowcake uranium because it wasn't seen as an "imminent" threat by the IAEA, as the refined stuff was.
Dat's da fact, jack. Now, in order for Iraq to build a nuke, the following steps need to be followed:
#1. Iraq purchases the equipment to build a reactor.
#2. Iraq builds the reactor.
#3. Iraq refines the uranium in the reactor.
#4. Iraq uses the refined uranium in a nuclear bomb research program.
#5. Iraq develops a nuclear bomb.
So there is definately no "imminent" threat about that material.
However, it is also clear that he was playing nice to get sanctioned lifted (buying off France, for one) while maintaining the bluff that he was the badass owner of WMD's, because of his perpetual pissing contest with Iran over who had the bigger, um, weapons.
And yet the sanctions still were not lifted.
He felt he could walk this thin line until sanctions were lifted ("Oil for Food" was a good start since it was really "Oil for Bribes"), at which time he wanted to reconstitute the enrichment.
Noooooo, that would be skipping over steps #1 and #2 and going directly to step #3. That's just not possible. A nuclear program require infrastructure. And Iraq did not have that infrastructure since 1991.
There was no "imminent" threat, and the entire world was duped, but Bush stated that we needed to act before there was an imminent threat otherwise it was too late.
In other words, Bush lied. Particularly because he used the fake "evidence" of those aluminum tubes to support his claim that Iraq was working on step #1.
We could act at step #1 and still there would be no problem.
We could act at step #2 and still there would be no problem.
We could act at step #3 and still there would be no problem.
That's what the Israeli air force did. And Iraq didn't get a nuke.
I'm sure this won't convince you of anything, but I was right about the yellowcake. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!
Ummm, no. There wasn't enough material there to be refined into (another quote)...enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
#1. Terrorist attacks have increased around the world since Bush took office. Far from winning the war against terror, we seem to be losing it (look at our deficit).
#2. If you count attacks on US citizens, there has been a huge increase in terrorist attacks against us. Sure, they're mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the terrorists don't have to travel too far.
Destroying terrorist training camps and other operations in Iraq.
Prior to our invasion, there was only one confirmed training camp. And we were protecting it. It was in our "no fly zone".
Doing the U.N.'s work for them, despite its corruption and weakness.
Strange how the UN inspectors came to the conclusion that Iraq did not have "WMD's" before Bush did. In fact, Bush and Co. still spout off about "WMD's" that Iraq had (and moved or destroyed before we invaded or whatever).
Setting an example that if you screw with the U.S., we'll kick your ass.
Yet Iraq did not "screw with the U.S.". Rather, it appears that we did so to control their oil.
Put political pressure on Iran by surrounding it with two liberated countries with newly-created democracies.
Rather, wait until Iraq elects a Theocracy. Or will we go in and overthrow their legally elected government?:)
WMDs in Iraq (overemphasized like I stated), proven out in the fact that David Kay, et al, concluded the desire was there and no one seems to mention the 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium that can be purified into enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
No yellow cake was in Iraq. The reason no one mentions it is because it does not exist.
All of this was clearly stated before 2003, it's just that Bush made the mistake of stressing the WMD issue more.
That wasn't a "mistake". That is what regular people call a "lie".
It is the only solution when the ISP will do nothing to stop the spammer on their network.
In some cases a single spammer causes a/24 and then a/16 to be blocked.
That is rather difficult without the ISP's assistance (or them repeatedly ignoring the complaints).
Btw, do you understand that changing ISP may not be an option?
Sometimes that is true. In which case, you should get on the phone and make sure that your ISP understands that they have customers who will be upset if the ISP doesn't handle its spammer problem.
Those lists, by themselves, do not block any email at all. Those lists are used by people who are fed up with trying to get ISP's to deal with their spammers.
Now I am going to get pummled by Mods I know:) I see my comments go up and down from +4 to +0 in the course of a single hour as Slashdot is overwhelminingly a left-wing Noam Chomsky echo chamber but here goes:
Don't blame others for your faults and do not attempt to catagorize people you've never communicated with.
I read the transcript and I didn't see John Stewart actually say anything.
He said that the "debate" shows were useless as far as actual news or discussion or debate. He said that such shows were tools of the political parties and did nothing to inform their audience. He said that their shows were pure entertainment.
Knock of the "Dialectical" and "Dualism" crap. Both are wrong. The fact is that every single person in the US has his/her own viewpoint and values and so forth. In the end, it comes down to how to spend a limited amount of money/time/people on all the different goals of all the different people.
This evolved from the Judeo-Christian idea of origional sin. That we are not perfect. That we will never be absolutely perfect though we can strive to perfection. The political process for a dualist is a constant war of ideas, compromise and experimentation, moving more slowly toward a better political organization.
Great, whatever. Why does anyone care what this mythical idiot thinks?
If you ask 100 random people to rank 100 goals in order of priority/importance/value, you'll get 100 different answers.
How to attain the goal is not know to a dualist, he realizes that much debate, experimentation and examination of details must occur before things improve.
That's great if there are only two people to be considered. There is no "right" or "wrong". There are only goals and the means by which you attempt to achieve those goals.
The dialecticist on the other hand is far more arrogant believing he can put together the whole solution and all that remains is to push aside the debaters and doubters and implement his vision.
Pay close attention to current politics. Do you see that happening a lot? I thought so.
Yet it seems that you favour your "Dualism" approach.
Here's some advice. Pull yourself out of the crap you learned in Philosophy 101 and look around the world today. Talk to people. LISTEN to people.
Stewart was presenting his beliefs on that show. One of his beliefs is that their show was of a specific format, when it should have been of a different format. He stated that point and illustrated that point very well.
What good is revenging 3,000 civilian lives when the response causes the deaths of five times that many? When will we realize that our lives are no more precious that those of people in other countries?
First off, I don't believe this. This is just the "rational" that I've heard.
Killing those people will make the world safer (and the US is part of the world) because it "stabilize" the mid-east. A "stable" mid-east is, in theory, more likely to adopt a Western-style democractic government. And terrorists tend to come from countries without a Western-style democracy. (The current terrorist threat. I'm not talking about Weathermen or so on.)
Therefore, it doesn't matter how many civilians are killed (we rarely kill innocent civilians, but we do tend to get "supporters" or the "human shields" of our enemies). In the end, it will all be worth the sacrifice (not our's, their's) because everyone will be safer.
Listen to Bush and Co talk about it. It doesn't matter how many "insurgents" are killed (actually, killing more is a "good thing" (tm)) or "supporters" or "terrorists" or "foreign fighters". All that matters is that any violent opposition is eradicated.
In theory, if we kill enough people who violently oppose us, then the majority of the people who are left will support us and implement a Western-style democratic government.
In practice, people are related to other people and have friends. We cannot kill the "bad" people without alienating segments of the "good" people who support us. Which turns them into "bad" people (whom we must kill). Which turns more "good" people into "bad" people (again with the killing).
By saying American businesses shouldn't work with Indians, you're effectively saying that they should be kept poor.
I didn't say American businesses shouldn't work with Indians. I said we shouldn't send our jobs over there. Am I going to fast? Should I slow down for you?
Maybe you see other ways to help them develop, but I doubt any are as good as free trade.
Free trade is a recent practice. All throughout history we've had barriers. Yet many other countries have managed to develop themselves. Why do you think India cannot do the same?
Some individuals will suffer, yes but MORE won't (firing one American can enable a business to hire 5 Indians for example).
The question is, why should ANYONE suffer more than they do right now? Why can't we raise people without lowering others?
I'm suggesting that America losing 100,000 software engineering jobs, and Indians creating 1,000,000 can be good. It's a net of 900,000 people with new jobs.
And what evidence do you have to support your claim that business would hire 10x as many Indians and not just let the CEO's pocket the savings?
I agree with you on the environment and worker protection issues too. Any American business should have to ensure that all of its workers (both local and outsourced) are treated with American standards. The US should also lobby other Governments of the world to meet high standards for the environment and human rights. Again, this is a different problem then outsourcing, and blocking outsourcing doesn't solve the problem.
No, that is exactly the problem with outsourcing. You can pay them less because their country has fewer protections so it is less expensive.
There is no lobbying in this. If a country does not meet our minimum protections, then there is no "free trade" with them.
There are other problems with outsourcing. Let's say a company makes toasters, and the end up outsourcing all of the development of the toaster to India and just skim all of the profits for themselves. In a free market, how long will it be before some company in India decides that they don't need the American company and starts making their own line of toasters? Not long I'm sure. So yes, outsourcing can be suicide for a business. Outsourcing with uneven regulation can be bad for a whole nation. But if that's the case, fix the regulations.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Look at any non-computer consumer electronics you have (TV, stereo, etc). Look at where they're made. Then look for US companies making similar products.
Slashdot Mirror
Iraq did actually have WMD.
/ 19/sprj.irq .bush/
9 /08/ira q.debate/
No, they did not.
Remember the missiles they destroyed? Those were classified as WMD.
No, they were not. "WMD" means nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Those missles were "banned" because of their range. They were not "WMD's".
That anyone thinks Iraq did NOT have WMD is odd. Of course, there is no reason to think Iraq had a "major" WMD program, but they did have actual WMD.
You're channelling MoJo JoJo.
As to support for al Qaeda from Iraq, it is true that the 9/11 Commission did not conclude there was such support, but it is also true the Commission said there was evidence of a connection.
No, they did not. They said that there were reports of contacts between the two, but not connections.
As if you ask some woman for a date and she turns you down. You had contact, but no connection.
But both sides are absolutely wrong when they say Bush said Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. It never happened. That both sides think this shows that neither side is particularly bright.
Check out what Bush actually said to Congress.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03
Look for the bit involving the WTC attack.
They are at best peripherally related to the primary justification and reasons we went to war: violation of UN resolutions (which is the actual basis for the Congressional approval of the use of force, and which is not in dispute whatsoever) and the stabilization and transformation of the region in the long run.
No. Again, look at what they actually said.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/0
Lots about nuclear programs and aluminum tubes and Iraqi nuclear scientists.
Now we know that it was all lies.
Also, it would be interesting to see what the Kerry supporters thought about what KERRY'S views are. I presume the reason they didn't ask is because the pollsters could not agree on what Kerry's positions are.
This isn't about views. This is about facts. Not whether Kerry thinks such and such, but whether such and such happened or did not happen.
It seems that your post supports the findings of that article.
I agree with everything but this one.
a. To some extent I find it hard to blame the Army/Marines on some of the above mentioned points as no one told them about the need to fight the kind of war they know are fighting.
I find it impossible to blame them (except for #9). We did not ramp up our troops or equipment levels and the US population still has not been asked to make any sacrifices for the troops in the field.
Compare this to WWI and WWII. You'll see the difference. We should have had all the kevlar vests, bullets and vehicular armour before we went it and it should have been a massive, country-wide push to get it.
Here's the site on minimums/maximums for enlisting.
u ir ements.html
Min age 17 / max age 35.
http://www.armedforcescareers.com/enlistmentreq
It's the same for officers (except doctors who can be almost 50 before accepting a commission).
Information. And the best information comes from the soldiers on the ground being friendly with natives who actually want you to succeed.
Yep.
Bomb from UAVs and you're just a faceless enemy drumming up new recruits.
Without the information you mentioned in your first paragraph, the UAV's won't be able to hit the real insurgents.
As long as we're dropping bombs, the people will know we're at war with THEM.
The WAR has to END and the PEACE has to begin. And PEACE does not involve UAV's bombing apartment houses. It involves police work and arrests.
We're stuck in war-mode and war-mode will never win the peace.
Take a look at history, from major conflicts to minor ones. Name me a single conflict, that has had one country defeat and then occupy another for over a year, and taken just 1000 casualties?
Falkland Islands
Grenada
Panama
I study history and nothing comes to mind.
Well then.....
There are many people on Slashdot that just hate Bush, and Americans in general, those people are hopeless useful idiots and they will complete ignore the fact that American and British Planes(The French sent only one plane, that flew rarely if ever), were being shot at daily. That should have been enough to resume hostilities as it was.
We invade Iraqi airspace and you claim it is their fault?
Add to that Mass Graves, the support of terrorists (this is 100% true, you can't deny it), and you have a major wild card out their that you just can't have in a post Sept. 11 world.
Iraq has never supported anti-US terrorism.
Why couldn't we leave Iraq? The containment was working. Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone.
I could go on and on, about the UN oil for weapons... err... food program, but I really don't see the point.
RTFA. Those "weapons" you're talking about sure did a lot, didn't they?
http://slate.msn.com/id/2087768/
"Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq."
Tech can help you take out the enemy on the battlefield.
Tech will not help after the war.
To re-establish order, you need people on the ground. Lots of them. You need leadership. You need a strategy.
Destruction is easy. It's re-building that is the problem.
Whether the original decision was right or wrong is really not the issue--everyone agreed to it, and it is in the past.
Maybe you missed the massive protests? I know I didn't. I was one of those protesting.
To quote Indian Jones: "Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall."
Each person has his/her own "reality" (small "r") which is based upon his/her experiences, opinions and beliefs.
Two people can have the exact same experience, but view it in completely different ways based upon their past experiences and their opinions and beliefs. Example: the woman who went into a panic because she was on a plane with Syrian musicians.
Our realities generate filters which we perceive the events through. You see a plane full of people, she sees a terrorist threat.
These filters also block facts which would contradict our individual reality. This makes them pretty much self-sustaining.
It takes a MAJOR event to alter someone's reality. A good example is the mom in Michael Moore's movie who was happy to support Bush until her son was killed in the war. She could have also turned against anyone opposing the war as encouraging the enemy to kill her son.
So, no. The truth is not the truth. Each person has a "truth" that is unique to that person. They know it is the "truth" because it is consistent with reality (small "r").
Facts are facts. But not everyone will accept that a fact is a fact because their filters won't let them.
Many times, opinions, fantasies and fears get through the filters as "fact" and are incorporated into the individual's "reality".
It's a bit complicated. But each person is living in his/her own "reality". Even when you're both walking down the same street, seeing the same sights, hearing the same sounds.
You don't like Kerry (but no details given).
You "despise" Edward's work as a lawyer.
You don't like Nader (but no details given).
You don't like all of Badnarik (but no details given).
You like some of Badnarik (but no details given).
You don't like all of Bush (but no details given).
You like some of Bush (but no details given).
So, the original question was:
Your answer: empty air.
The ability to recognize reality and facts does indicate "more going on in the brain-use department".
Since the article shows that Bush supporters got more of the facts wrong than Kerry supporters, his statement is correct.
Now, a very intelligent person could STILL vote for Bush, but that would still not contradict his statement.
The question is: How well would you score on that survey?
You might think you're very intelligent ("...smarter than 99.8% of Kerry supporters...") but what you think about yourself is not the question here. It's what you think about the facts under discussion.
Even someone as smart as yourself can be completely ignorant of the facts.
He brings up attacks on Apache as being proof that Linux is attacked as much as windows, but virtually all security breeches these days are done on the desktop and Windows does get attacked here more verociously than Linux because of it's ubiquitouness(SP?).
Then do not count the desktop issues.
Compare Windows/IIS to Linux/Apache and check the following:
#1. Which is exploited more frequently.
#2. What level of access is gained.
(root is different than defacing a webpage)
#3. How was that access gained.
(Local escalation of rights vs remote crack)
You'll still find that Linux/Apache is more secure if only because Linux/Apache is modular and you can easily identify and remove services and access you do not need (killing services you don't need is the second step in security, right after physical security).
If you really do pay attention to Security Focus and to the security bullitins of your favorite distro, you'd be hard pressed to say that Windows or Linux had any demonstrative lead in security patches.
Determining security by the number of patches released is beyond stupid. Yet lots of people do so. By that standard, MS-DOS is one of the most secure OS's available. Also, that leads into the Forrester "report" when holes are not counted unless (and until) the are formally recognized/patched by the vendor.
The best approach (IMO) is simple, Real World statistical analysis. Count the machines compromised and weight them by their marketshare (estimated in Linux's case).
100 million Windows machines, with 1% cracked == 1 million cracked Windows boxes.
5 million Linux boxes, with 1% cracked == 50,000 cracked Linux boxes.
Yet if we see 10 million cracked Windows boxes and 1,000 cracked Linux boxes, it is not because of marketshare.
Marketshare != security.
Circles within circles. Look within the numbers to find the facts. A remote root exploit on Linux, in a module that isn't used by anyone is not the same as a remote system exploit on Windows which most people don't even know they're running (or why).
According to my calculations, this still meets the 99.9999% reliability that MS claims the server to be able to provide, on enterprise-grade hardware (and what I am running on is decidedly not enterprise-grade, unless eMachines has recently broken into the enterprise market and I forgot to read the press release.)
.009% is very difficult and really doesn't give you much in terms of real world reliability for MOST business needs.
Nope.
Reboots take about 4 minutes to shut down, restart, wait for the services to resolve themselves, and try again.
4 minutes/month == 48 minutes/year.
99.999 availablility means 5.26 minutes of downtime per year.
At best, you've got around 99.99% availability.
However, 4 minutes a month isn't a hardship, and anyone who says it is needs to either look into something transparently redundant, fault-tolerant, or reevaulate why they are so dependant on that one system in the first place.
It isn't about "hardship". It's about reliability. Getting that last
But for those that require it, it is available. And because it is available to those, it is available to everyone. Even those who do not need it.
Sure, my print server probably doesn't need 99.999% reliability. But because it has it, I don't have to worry about it.
In my experience, it's the reboot that causes the hardware failures. The fewer reboots, the fewer chances for hardware failure.
I understand what you are talking about and where you are coming from. But now we are playing Monday morning quarterback based on things they only let the public know.
... how almost everyone felt.
Hardly. I've been saying this since before our invasion. All the facts were there and Bush & Co's "evidence" had been disproven.
I support a transparent government, but in matters of national security, I can see where we sometimes must have a very limited view of what's going on.
Irrelevant. This is not a case of national security.
If it were just Bush with some kind of weird vendetta, Congress wouldn't have voted to give him the authority to act if Saddam was in material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441.
Why not? Remember, there were people who voted against it.
John Kerry voted for that
Irrelevant. John Kerry is not God. Because he supports something does not make it right.
I think one of the most positive things Bush accomplished was to get inspectors back in Iraq in early 2003. If you recall they were all kicked out in 1998.
I do recall. And they were not kicked out. They left because we were threatening to bomb. Then Saddam did not let them back in.
Bush placed an artificial deadline on the inspectors' work by saying we needed to go in and kick Saddam out before it got hot, because our troops would be in more danger when the weather was hitting 120 degrees regularly. While that's certainly true, I think it made the timing bad. Another 6 months might have changed a lot of things.
The problem was that Bush "placed an artificial deadline on" finding something to support his agenda. Not on finishing their work.
When they couldn't find anything to support his agenda, he and his administration started questioning the competence of the inspectors.
However, regardless of the veracity of the evidence invoked by Bush and his advisors (none of which was really big, and many of which are now shown to be false), if Saddam didn't have any weapon stockpiles, what was he hiding?
Why do you believe he was hiding anything? The UN inspectors could go where they wanted, when they wanted.
Now we know he had no weapons. So why did he put on the big show? What were we supposed to conclude with all the cloak and dagger deception and burying information in tens of thousands of pages of reports?
Again, what "deception"? Those thousands of pages were about his past weapons programs and the disposition of the stuff they could account for. There was no "burying information" there.
If the U.N. passed 1441, what did they intend to do to back it up? I'm betting nothing... many of them were on the take from this so-called Oil for Food program.
Again, why does that matter? If they do nothing, what damage does that cause us?
France, who had been bought off, possibly convinced Saddam we would never attack and he could stall and jerk everyone around long enough to finally get sanctions dropped, at which time his clear intention was to get the nuclear program back on track... even if it was further behind than we knew.
Again, there was no nuclear program. None. It was not "further behind than we knew". It did not exist.
I'll be honest, in retrospect, my support for the war isn't as strong as it was last year, although I still support what we are trying to do and support our troops helping the Iraqis prepare to govern themselves.
The Iraqis were governing themselves. Saddam was an Iraqi. His cabinet was Iraqi. His army and police were Iraqi.
I believe you meant an "Iraqi democracy". But if that was our goal, then we've gone about it completely wrong.
I believe there are long-term and far-reaching effects which will be beneficial to us and people in the Middle East and the world at large for decades to come from two legitimate democracies in Afghanistan
I understand that, but I never thought that these kinds of folks never had more than a small minority following them.
They're numerous enough to take over and hold entire cities. It isn't just the fighters. The fighters need support from the local populace.
It's always been my understanding is that most folks just want to be left alone to get on with their lives.
Yep. The same as most people everywhere. But that doesn't mean that the majority of voters won't support a Theocracy. And the most motivated Iraqis seem to be the ones following the religious leaders.
Well, then it's a matter of semantics, if I understand you correctly.
Only because both instances (lie, truth) are matters of words and "semantics" deals with words.
You cannot be lying unless you are deliberately saying something incorrect and you know it is.
Possibly. Like when Bush and Co. say that we KNOW Saddam has "WMD's"?
Well, we did not know it because it seems that he did not have them.
So that was a lie.
And all the evidence that they used to support that lie (yellow cake, aluminum tubes, etc) had been individually debunked by experts.
By that definition, you are not lying when you say Bigfoot exists... except that what you really should be saying is that ytou believe Bigfoot exists.
Actually, it would be a lie. Because the evidence I'm using to support it has been disproven and I know that it has.
Furthermore, once the evidence used to support a specific claim is disproven, you must go back and re-evaluate your position. Bush did not. He had a goal (attack Iraq) and he grasped at any "evidence" available (even if disproven) to "support" his goal.
It it was just money involved, that would be irresponsible.
When the lives of our troops (and Iraqi civilians) are involved, that goes way, Way, WAY beyond irresponsible.
With regard to the religious leaders gaining power in Iraq, are these the people that the Hadid Sixpack would vote for?
l ?res=F60 D10F73B5C0C708CDDA90994DC404482
Vote for.
Fight for.
Die for.
Those are the leaders heading up the various insurgencies.
They would have been eventually... the biggest effect they were having was a lack of food and medicine for the citizens.
And Saddam would have died of old age or assassination, eventually. The question is, which would happen first and what restrictions would be placed upon Iraq after the sanctions were lifted. This is not an all or nothing deal.
I still don't see how you can say Bush "lied", since everyone else in the world was saying the same thing.
But they weren't. Here's the New York Times' article on the tubes:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm
The attempted purchase of yellowcake had been discredited also, by one of our people sent over to check it out.
If I claim Bigfoot exists because someone took a picture of him (shown to be fake) and someone else has hair samples (determined to be from a dog) am I telling the truth or a lie when I say that I have evidence that Bigfoot exists?
If you attack the someone supporting terrorists, of course they are going to strike back.
...
/. masses. I know what I'm talking about. Sit back and enjoy some tasty facts.
...WMDs in Iraq (overemphasized like I stated), proven out in the fact that David Kay, et al, concluded the desire was there and no one seems to mention the 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium that can be purified into enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
...enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
You must have missed what I wrote. We are losing this fight because we cannot afford the deficits and the number of attacks are increasing.
We attacked Iraq. The only terrorists that Iraq was supporting were anti-Israeli ones. We're still not under attack from those (although they seem to be willing now).
I mistyped. I meant "Screw with the U.N.".
Whatever. It still looks like we went in to control the oil. If the UN wasn't worried, why did we have to go in?
If the war was for oil, why am I paying more for gas now?!
Again, because we are losing this "war". We're making more terrorists than we're ending and those terrorists know the vulnerabilities of the oil suppliers. On terrorist can take out one pipeline for days.
Like they had prior to Saddam Hussein? (Not.)
No. Look at the current leaders over there. See how they're all directly linked to religion? Saddam was brutal in keeping them down. Which is one of the reasons given for getting rid of him. Now that he's not there
Here's where I differ from the spittle-producing bickering ideology-spewing
I've read it. And NO WHERE does it say that Iraq had the (and here I'll quote you)
Just for the record, the only relevent bit you quote is actually on page 13 of the Nuclear section.
Of course, page 14 shows just how useless most of the uranium is for nuclear bombs.
In summary, Iraq had been allowed to retain this yellowcake uranium because it wasn't seen as an "imminent" threat by the IAEA, as the refined stuff was.
Dat's da fact, jack. Now, in order for Iraq to build a nuke, the following steps need to be followed:
#1. Iraq purchases the equipment to build a reactor.
#2. Iraq builds the reactor.
#3. Iraq refines the uranium in the reactor.
#4. Iraq uses the refined uranium in a nuclear bomb research program.
#5. Iraq develops a nuclear bomb.
So there is definately no "imminent" threat about that material.
However, it is also clear that he was playing nice to get sanctioned lifted (buying off France, for one) while maintaining the bluff that he was the badass owner of WMD's, because of his perpetual pissing contest with Iran over who had the bigger, um, weapons.
And yet the sanctions still were not lifted.
He felt he could walk this thin line until sanctions were lifted ("Oil for Food" was a good start since it was really "Oil for Bribes"), at which time he wanted to reconstitute the enrichment.
Noooooo, that would be skipping over steps #1 and #2 and going directly to step #3. That's just not possible. A nuclear program require infrastructure. And Iraq did not have that infrastructure since 1991.
There was no "imminent" threat, and the entire world was duped, but Bush stated that we needed to act before there was an imminent threat otherwise it was too late.
In other words, Bush lied. Particularly because he used the fake "evidence" of those aluminum tubes to support his claim that Iraq was working on step #1.
We could act at step #1 and still there would be no problem.
We could act at step #2 and still there would be no problem.
We could act at step #3 and still there would be no problem.
That's what the Israeli air force did. And Iraq didn't get a nuke.
I'm sure this won't convince you of anything, but I was right about the yellowcake. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!
Ummm, no. There wasn't enough material there to be refined into (another quote)
#1. Terrorist attacks have increased around the world since Bush took office. Far from winning the war against terror, we seem to be losing it (look at our deficit).
:)
#2. If you count attacks on US citizens, there has been a huge increase in terrorist attacks against us. Sure, they're mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the terrorists don't have to travel too far.
Destroying terrorist training camps and other operations in Iraq.
Prior to our invasion, there was only one confirmed training camp. And we were protecting it. It was in our "no fly zone".
Doing the U.N.'s work for them, despite its corruption and weakness.
Strange how the UN inspectors came to the conclusion that Iraq did not have "WMD's" before Bush did. In fact, Bush and Co. still spout off about "WMD's" that Iraq had (and moved or destroyed before we invaded or whatever).
Setting an example that if you screw with the U.S., we'll kick your ass.
Yet Iraq did not "screw with the U.S.". Rather, it appears that we did so to control their oil.
Put political pressure on Iran by surrounding it with two liberated countries with newly-created democracies.
Rather, wait until Iraq elects a Theocracy. Or will we go in and overthrow their legally elected government?
WMDs in Iraq (overemphasized like I stated), proven out in the fact that David Kay, et al, concluded the desire was there and no one seems to mention the 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium that can be purified into enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
No yellow cake was in Iraq. The reason no one mentions it is because it does not exist.
All of this was clearly stated before 2003, it's just that Bush made the mistake of stressing the WMD issue more.
That wasn't a "mistake". That is what regular people call a "lie".
I see lots of machines with lots of spyware that the user doesn't even know they had.
They only complain when it re-directs their browser or causes it to crash.
As long as the machine is still usable, most users won't even know anything was installed, much less call tech support about it.
If they were worried about spyware, they'd have installed ad-aware and spybot.
I think this more along the lines of an explosion of badly written spyware rather than an explosion of infections.
Netblock blacklisting is a really poor solution.
/24 and then a /16 to be blocked.
It is the only solution when the ISP will do nothing to stop the spammer on their network.
In some cases a single spammer causes a
That is rather difficult without the ISP's assistance (or them repeatedly ignoring the complaints).
Btw, do you understand that changing ISP may not be an option?
Sometimes that is true. In which case, you should get on the phone and make sure that your ISP understands that they have customers who will be upset if the ISP doesn't handle its spammer problem.
Those lists, by themselves, do not block any email at all. Those lists are used by people who are fed up with trying to get ISP's to deal with their spammers.
Now I am going to get pummled by Mods I know :) I see my comments go up and down from +4 to +0 in the course of a single hour as Slashdot is overwhelminingly a left-wing Noam Chomsky echo chamber but here goes:
Don't blame others for your faults and do not attempt to catagorize people you've never communicated with.
I read the transcript and I didn't see John Stewart actually say anything.
He said that the "debate" shows were useless as far as actual news or discussion or debate. He said that such shows were tools of the political parties and did nothing to inform their audience. He said that their shows were pure entertainment.
Knock of the "Dialectical" and "Dualism" crap. Both are wrong. The fact is that every single person in the US has his/her own viewpoint and values and so forth. In the end, it comes down to how to spend a limited amount of money/time/people on all the different goals of all the different people.
This evolved from the Judeo-Christian idea of origional sin. That we are not perfect. That we will never be absolutely perfect though we can strive to perfection. The political process for a dualist is a constant war of ideas, compromise and experimentation, moving more slowly toward a better political organization.
Great, whatever. Why does anyone care what this mythical idiot thinks?
If you ask 100 random people to rank 100 goals in order of priority/importance/value, you'll get 100 different answers.
How to attain the goal is not know to a dualist, he realizes that much debate, experimentation and examination of details must occur before things improve.
That's great if there are only two people to be considered. There is no "right" or "wrong". There are only goals and the means by which you attempt to achieve those goals.
The dialecticist on the other hand is far more arrogant believing he can put together the whole solution and all that remains is to push aside the debaters and doubters and implement his vision.
Pay close attention to current politics. Do you see that happening a lot? I thought so.
Yet it seems that you favour your "Dualism" approach.
Here's some advice. Pull yourself out of the crap you learned in Philosophy 101 and look around the world today. Talk to people. LISTEN to people.
Stewart was presenting his beliefs on that show. One of his beliefs is that their show was of a specific format, when it should have been of a different format. He stated that point and illustrated that point very well.
What good is revenging 3,000 civilian lives when the response causes the deaths of five times that many? When will we realize that our lives are no more precious that those of people in other countries?
First off, I don't believe this. This is just the "rational" that I've heard.
Killing those people will make the world safer (and the US is part of the world) because it "stabilize" the mid-east. A "stable" mid-east is, in theory, more likely to adopt a Western-style democractic government. And terrorists tend to come from countries without a Western-style democracy. (The current terrorist threat. I'm not talking about Weathermen or so on.)
Therefore, it doesn't matter how many civilians are killed (we rarely kill innocent civilians, but we do tend to get "supporters" or the "human shields" of our enemies). In the end, it will all be worth the sacrifice (not our's, their's) because everyone will be safer.
Listen to Bush and Co talk about it. It doesn't matter how many "insurgents" are killed (actually, killing more is a "good thing" (tm)) or "supporters" or "terrorists" or "foreign fighters". All that matters is that any violent opposition is eradicated.
In theory, if we kill enough people who violently oppose us, then the majority of the people who are left will support us and implement a Western-style democratic government.
In practice, people are related to other people and have friends. We cannot kill the "bad" people without alienating segments of the "good" people who support us. Which turns them into "bad" people (whom we must kill). Which turns more "good" people into "bad" people (again with the killing).
People living in big cities (the bulk of our population) tend to be Democratic.
e nt _to_the_United_States_Constitution
If representation is allocated based upon how many people support you, the Democrats will usually win.
So look for lots of resistance from Republicans and any state with a low population density.
Personally, I'd like to go back to the ORIGINAL plan. The one from 1776.
The President is the one who gets the most votes. The Vice-President is the one who comes in second. Here's the reference.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Twelfth_Amendm
By saying American businesses shouldn't work with Indians, you're effectively saying that they should be kept poor.
I didn't say American businesses shouldn't work with Indians. I said we shouldn't send our jobs over there. Am I going to fast? Should I slow down for you?
Maybe you see other ways to help them develop, but I doubt any are as good as free trade.
Free trade is a recent practice. All throughout history we've had barriers. Yet many other countries have managed to develop themselves. Why do you think India cannot do the same?
Some individuals will suffer, yes but MORE won't (firing one American can enable a business to hire 5 Indians for example).
The question is, why should ANYONE suffer more than they do right now? Why can't we raise people without lowering others?
I'm suggesting that America losing 100,000 software engineering jobs, and Indians creating 1,000,000 can be good. It's a net of 900,000 people with new jobs.
And what evidence do you have to support your claim that business would hire 10x as many Indians and not just let the CEO's pocket the savings?
I agree with you on the environment and worker protection issues too. Any American business should have to ensure that all of its workers (both local and outsourced) are treated with American standards. The US should also lobby other Governments of the world to meet high standards for the environment and human rights. Again, this is a different problem then outsourcing, and blocking outsourcing doesn't solve the problem.
No, that is exactly the problem with outsourcing. You can pay them less because their country has fewer protections so it is less expensive.
There is no lobbying in this. If a country does not meet our minimum protections, then there is no "free trade" with them.
There are other problems with outsourcing. Let's say a company makes toasters, and the end up outsourcing all of the development of the toaster to India and just skim all of the profits for themselves. In a free market, how long will it be before some company in India decides that they don't need the American company and starts making their own line of toasters? Not long I'm sure. So yes, outsourcing can be suicide for a business. Outsourcing with uneven regulation can be bad for a whole nation. But if that's the case, fix the regulations.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Look at any non-computer consumer electronics you have (TV, stereo, etc). Look at where they're made. Then look for US companies making similar products.
Really. Did you bother to read it?
I still disagree. I think it is wrong to single out one group here, whether it be the dems or pubs.
It was put out by the DNC. Did that little tidbit pass you by?
I think it is very reasonable to make a broad statement saying to watch for any interference.
You would be correct if I said that or if any non-partisan organization/individual/whatever said that.
But it was put out by the DNC. Again, did you somehow manage to miss that little fact? It's only in the title of this story.
Your reasoning just expand the rift between the political parties.
Again, it was put out by a political party. The DNC specifically.