1. that link is dead; 2. capps is dead, as the other poster pointed out; and 3. capps was about airline profiling; there is little or no overlap with TIA. Other than that, everything you said is accurate.
One unique difference between what TIA was working on and the typical surveillance that is going on and will continue is that TIA was administered by a convicted felon who was charged with crimes inimical to American security, including lying to Congress and facilitating the transfer of arms to known terrorists. TIA was a stupid idea from the very beginning (you may recall that's when Poindexter released a logo for the organization that looked like the SS logo); I'm glad to see its coffin nailed shut.
It's incredible, really. Here I was reading slashdot, trying to procrastinate doing some work, but it's the same stories I read earlier.... just when I am almost forced to stop reading/. and actually do some work, along comes slashdot not only with a new story for me to procrastinate more, but a story that involves looking at pictures of other people doing work! Thank you slashdot!!
I see you have not yet been modded troll. I find this odd, because I thought the whole purpose of your post was to get people to respond as if you were serious. Then you can waste the time of the people who actually care about the topic. Trolls are ridiculous after all.
The interface is little different from a web browser. I imagine it wouldn't have been too much trouble for Apple to have iTMS work with a web browser in the meantime while they work on iTunes for Windows.
Which iBook are you talking about? My experience with two (one white one and a yellow "purse" design) is quite the opposite -- these things manage to be both elegant and rugged.
He said a company not traditionally involved in the music business. And we all know that Apple has been in the music business ever since they were distributing Beatles records.
Beyond that... what happened to the idea that a company had to actually produce something or do something useful in order to make money? Lawsuits may have their place, but not in a business plan.
To be fair, that article *is* talking about the American CIA. It says something about "South Central British Columbia"; you don't see me jumping up and down and pointing because we have no British Columbia in L.A.
Nope. If I were Bush I probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq. I was very unconvinced that the war was necessary back in March and am not entirely surprised we haven't found WMD evidence.
Then we agree. It's not clear to me why you continue to defend Bush. I realized you started this thread to bash Clinton rather than defend Bush but you seem to be defending Bush here (and I certainly don't want to defend Clinton). It's difficult to argue with you because you keep changing your arguments, so who knows. This probably will be my last participation in a debate I've spent too much time on anyway...
At some point you have to say "This has gone on long enough." I think 12 years was plenty of time.
At some point you have to say, what has gone on long enough? The UN trying to enforce its rules with uncooperative governments? Like we've been doing with Israel? That's what the UN does. It shouldn't escalate to war unless there is a real threat to national sovereignty. Iraq wasn't threatening anyone. All it was doing was being intransigent. Not a helpful thing, but hardly the end of the world.
I consider France spineless because of its history, and precisely because its president listened only to his citizens rather than considering the international implications of his action or inaction. Chirac, as far as I can tell, like Clinton was more worried about what the polls said his people thought rather than doing what needed to be done. The right thing isn't always the popular thing.
So you're saying French leaders should have made decisions totally at odds with public opinion in France (and pretty much everywhere else in the world) because those leaders, blessed with the wisdom of the likes of Colin Powell, knew better than their people? I know right doesn't = popular but nonetheless I consider democracy very important in national decisionmaking for nations that call themselves democratic. I think it's the height of hypocrisy for the US to prattle on about democracy while asking almost every government in the world to so blatantly disregard the express desires and views of their citizens.
1. Iraq has a history of aggression against its neighbors.
Huh? Not since 1991. How does this justify war? Lots of nations have histories of aggression, many more recent than that. It hardly makes Iraq the kind of threat to US interests that justifies our soldiers fighting and dying. I'm sorry, but when somebody fights and dies or kills under the American flag they'd better be doing it for a damn good reason; Iraq's "history of aggression" ain't cutting it.
Iraq and its neighbors are in a very sensitive part of the world--politically, economically, and religiously.
that's hardly any more reason to attack Iraq than any of its neighbors.
3. The world was convinced enough that Iraq had illegal weapons programs to pass U.N. resolutions demanding inspections to confirm they no longer existed.
No it was precisely not convinced of that; hence no UN resolution supporting war. The world, at least as expressed through UN votes, was convinced that inspections and sanctions were an effective way to contain whatever threat Iraq might pose.
4. Iraq dragged its feet and did not comply with these resolutions for 12 years.
Again, this hardly justifies a war. In 12 years Iraq attacked none of its neighbors, exploded no nuclear weapons, committed no major terrorist actions, gave no WMD to al Qaeda, and did nothing else to harm US national security. If nothing has happened in 12 years, why the sudden urgency in 2003? Gimme a break.
5. 9/11 happened which made the U.S. very keen to anything that could be a threat.
Yeah I remember; we were scared of our own shadow for a while. But my very point is this fear and paranoia is misplaced. Iraq wasn't a threat and had nothing to do with al Qaeda during this time.
6. Saddam continued to drag his feet and give ever
white 700mhz iBook, connected to the net with ethernet, no problems with connectivity or the system that I've seen so far. Also no problems on a dual 867 g4 mirrored doors which is connected via ethernet to DSL.
I've used the ibook quite a bit since I updated it and everything seems fine so far. The battery indicator has the same problem someone else here mentioned of showing only half as much battery power as you would expect, but my battery has been flaky lately anyway due to another problem so I didn't attribute that to 10.2.8 until I read the comments about it. All in all, I'm having problems with these computers but I haven't noticed anything significant due to 10.2.8 yet. (keeping fingers crossed...)
I recently was having problems that required me to reinstall OS X without saving users and network settings. I did this, and it all went fine, except now Classic will not run. It didn't work in 10.2 (which I installed from CD) and it didn't work after updating to 10.2.8; the preference pane tells me there is no usable classic system on the drive. Yet I can boot into OS9 and Startup Disk reports a working 9.2.2 system there. Is there some way to get my computer to recognize 9.2.2 and let me run classic mode when I need it?
Again I don't feel like going tit for tat here because you're obviously disingenuous, you just want to support the bush policy and will make any argument that is expedient in spite of contradicting yourself. Hans Blix made the statement that he didn't need Saddam's support to continue inspections well before the first shot in the war was fired; it's easy enough to verify this but I don't expect you to. You consider France spineless for listening to her own citizens rather than being bullied by Bush; whatever, don't tell me Bush is promoting democracy while he's telling most world leaders to go against their constituents' will and side with Bush. You did call Saddam's massacres "terrorism"; go back and read your own posts. You say we went to war to enforce UN resolutions but then when the UN didn't support us you say we went to enforce our interest, which you still refuse to define in any meaningful way, which just happens to coincide with enforcing UN resolutions (which were already being enforced in other ways, i.e., inspections, which other countries, e.g. France and Germany, exhibited a strong inclination to help beef up, yet of course we rebuffed them).
I agree with you that our policy shouldn't be based on fear of terrorism, but there's no question that reducing terrorism should be a significant goal (not appeasing it or running from it as you seem to imply). I think it's a more important goal than enforcing UN resolutions that the UN doesn't need our help with. And stop acting like Iraq was any kind of threat to us when you haven't answered a single argument in that regard -- there was no WMD, and no threat to us or even his neighbors, since 1991, and our administration has to have known that.
Finally, re chemical weapons -- they were used in WWI. After that war Churchill used them in the Middle East (slaughtering Kurds, ironically) as an "experiment." They were used in WWII. In Vietnam the US used napalm extensively, as well as other chemical weapons, which were also used in the 1991 Gulf War. The US stockpiles many more dangerous chemicals and even biological agents like anthrax. My point is not that it's right or wrong, but like it or not, chemical weapons have been part of conventional military arsenals for a century, and armies train to deal with them. My point was simply that it was propagandistic for Bush to act as if chemical weapons represent the same kind of threat as nukes. Certainly not to defend Saddam's use of them in the 80s or argue that his having them wasn't illegal. It is telling, however, that we haven't even found that in Iraq -- I surely expected we would at least find some illegal chems that would be used to justify this war, but every single lead has turned into a dead end.
Iraq was a threat to his own people, his neighbors, the region and by extension the U.S. with or without WMDs. He was in violation of numerous U.N. resolutions, including the cease-fire Sadadm agreed to to end hostilities back in 1991. Simply being in violation of that cease-fire was more than sufficient justification to take action.
Then should we attack Israel and every other country that breaks a UN resolution? Iraq has been by no stretch of the imagination any threat to the US or even to its neighbors since 1991. They could barely contain the Kurds. I don't pretend to whitewash Saddam's murderous regime, but we pick and choose which thugs to go after. And Saddam was no threat to us. If we were enforcing the UN resolutions why the hell wasn't the UN on board? Because the UN inspectors made it clear that they didnt need an invasion to do so. Look up "Hans Blix" on google if you want more information, but you should know this since you claim to read the news.
The fact that Saddam was uncooperative with U.N. weapons inspectors was worrisome regardless of what was known. You'd think he'd want to prove he was clean so sanctions would be lifted and Iraq could get on with normal life.
I can't account for Saddam's twisted thinking but as I said it is not our job to enforce UN resolutions, and the UN wasn't pressing for our assistance here.
Me: our intelligence agencies knew their WMD were nonexistent from the beginning and there was no threat to US national security.
You: Wow, you must have access to information that no-one else has access to.
Yeah, I do, really obscure sources like the New York Times. Even Fox news was reporting on this. I guess you missed it. The CIA (prior to the recent fuss about "yellow cake") was telling the Bushies they couldn't find an al Qaeda link and that they thought most of the evidence for WMD was weak. The Bush Administration wound up creating a separate intelligence agency in the Pentagon whose sole purpose seems to have been to produce a different intelligence estimate than the CIA. Here's an article about some of this from the Washington Post. I don't feel like doing more of your research for you; suffice to say that if you don't believe any of my claims you're free to look them up. Some links might be easy to find on the warblog I was keeping on the war for a while, if you care to look (though a lot of the links have probably expired). Also I would recommend The Agonist; he does a really good job of culling a lot of this information from mainstream news sources. I'm not in the habit of making stuff up or believing everything I read on the internet.
So it's not terrorism, it's guerilla warfare.
Talk about self serving definitions -- you define Saddam's attacks on his own people as terrorism but suicide bombers attacking the UN building and American soldiers as guerrilla warfare. I don't particularly care what you want to call it; my point is that our involvement in Iraq has increased the threat and power of Islamist fundamentalist organizations who wish to do harm to the US and who wish to institute theocratic goverments in the Middle East. Call it what you will, but I see that as a much greater threat to US national security than Saddam gassing his own people twenty years ago (as horrible as the latter admittedly is).
So how is the U.N. supposed to know if any particular dictator is just being a pain in the ass or really has something to hide? Saddam *HAD* WMDs, that's common knowledge and accepted.
If you define chemical weapons as WMD, fine, but those kind of WMD are hardly a threat to anyone (except someone who invades Iraq), and they have been an accepted part of conventional warfare since WWI. But the UN inspector Hans Blix made it clear that he was confident of the inspectors' ability to keep Iraq's WMD t
He's got a good point nonetheless. You should be able to maintain Apple machines for flexible purposes since they are selling them as flexible UNIX machines. It wouldn't be that hard for them to do this; add an "expert update" option to the preferences and most users will ignore it but the ones who really need it will be able to pick and choose what to update. They separate the iCal and QuickTime updates; why couldn't they do this with security patches? There should be an option to keep the machine secure without adding the potential instability of new features.
I don't have time or inclination to debate this point by point; suffice to say you've left no reason to actually have attacked Iraq. You cite WMD yet as I've said before we haven't even found chemical weapons (hardly a WMD despite the propaganda) much less the bioweapons or the nukes Bush scared us with. The evidence points to the fact that his administration lied about those things. So I don't see "the whole Iraq" thing as the problem you do -- our intelligence agencies knew their WMD were nonexistent from the beginning and there was no threat to US national security. Meanwhile, we do nothing about real WMD threats like Pakistan and North Korea. Then you say the increase in terrorism after Iraq is short term and arguable. I hope you're right about it being short term; that seems wildly optimistic to me... but it's not arguable; we've been losing people in Iraq every day, and we would not be losing those people if they weren't in Iraq. I know people who are stuck out in that desert and as an American citizen I want to believe that they're risking their lives for something meaninful in terms of US national security. Unfortunately most of them don't even believe it any more. You cite long term costs of not invading Iraq as if they're obvious. I think there was a stronger case for war in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and we had international support. I'm not a pacifist. But since then he hasn't threatened any of his neighbors, he did not make WMD, the worst he did was lie and be a pain in the ass to the UN and inspectors. Even then the inspectors stated clearly and unambiguously that they did not need Saddam's cooperation in order to fulfill their mission of enforcing the resolutions. Still, we pushed on with war. The WWII analogy is way offbase.
I'd love to believe along with you that this war will make Iraq a peaceful democracy, but I just don't see any evidence to support that. And I'd love to believe along with Bush that it is possible to pay for this war and cut taxes at the same time. We're gonna spend money to develop the health care and education facilities in Iraq that the Bush Admin refuses to develop in America. That's just sad, and as someone who considers myself fiercely patriotic, it sickens me.
If so, why did the Clinton administration not seize the opportunity to have Sudan hand over Bin Laden when they had the chance on numerous occasions?
I said "more robust," not perfect. We agree that neither Clinton nor Bush can be blamed for 9/11. The blame there lies with bin Laden. All I was saying is that Clinton's Admin took the OBL threat more seriously than Bush's. This really isn't a comment on either of the men, Bush or Clinton, so much as their administrations, but that's neither here nor there.
Uhm, I never said that Clinton dealing with Iraq would have stopped 9/11. The issue of Bush and Iraq was raised by a previous post and I simply commented that the whole thing wouldn't have even been an issue for the Bush administration if the Clinton administration had done its job regarding Iraq back in 1998.
Uhm, then I'm not sure what you're saying. What "whole thing" would not have been an issue for Bush? Terrorism? 9/11? When Iraq was not clearly involved in either?
But there were state-sponsored chemical attacks on entire towns and genocide committed against Iraqi citizens near Basra after 1991 that filled the mass graves that are now being excavated. That's not terrorism? That's brazen state-sponsored terrorism against its own people which I personally think is worse than Iraqis taking shots at what they may consider an invading army.
That kind of terrorism (if you want to call it that) is not suicide bombers attacking US forces, and as bad as it is, it is not a threat to US national security. I agree the Iraqi government was absolutely despicable toward it's own people, and Saddam and his henchmen were the lowest kind of murderous thugs. I have vocally opposed Saddam Hussein's regime, by the way, for a long time -- much longer than (for example) Donald Rumsfeld, who shook hands with Saddam Hussein shortly after his government gassed a large number of his own citizens at Halabja. I opposed vehemently the Reagan Administration's support of Saddam's murderous regime. I am also glad to see Saddam removed from power. But I do not equate his regime with a threat to US national security and I wonder whether removing him and making ourselves responsible for rebuilding Iraq is in our national interest at all. You're right, the Iraqis see us as an invading army. That will get worse as the occupation continues, and we can expect to lose more Americans (and Iraqis) and spend more money. Was it worth it? I think it's probably too early to tell; we don't know whether the future will bring democracy, another autocrat like Saddam, or a theocracy that is potentially more murderous and more dangerous than Saddam's dictatorship. But if Saddam's crimes justified a US invasion, why do we not invade other brutal dictatorships that are just as bad and in some cases are greater threats to the US -- e.g. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan?
I will agree that by mid- to late-2002 it was obvious we were going to get Iraq. That wasn't the case before 9/11, however. And when 9/11 happened the primary issue was Afghanistan.
I pointed to a Wolfowitz document from October 2001 naming Iraq; most accounts of the meetings in the Admin after 9/11 indicate that the neoconservatives advising Bush felt that 9/11 presented the perfect opportunity to invade Iraq.
Personally, I think 9/11 happened and Bush said, "Ok, Afghanistan is history, obviously. Who else is on the board that is either a problem now or could give us grief in the next decade?" They told him and that's where the Axis of Evil nations came from. And I think he said, "Ok, well, the gloves are off. Screw it. We're going to deal with this before 9/11 happens again." That approach might not be popular, but I'm certainly not in a position to say it's wrong.
You may not be but you would be if you read the news. It's pretty obvious that it has been the wrong approach if our goal is to increase US national security and decrease the kind of Islamic terrorism we sa
There are so many problems here I don't know what to begin responding to. Blaming Clinton for 911 is as silly as blaming Bush. But it is fair to say that the Clinton Administration had a much more robust antiterrorism policy and took the OBL threat in particular much more seriously than the early Bush Admin; the best example of this is FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill being told by the Bush Admin to back off investigation of al Qaeda while Bush negotiated with the Taliban. O'Neill wound up resigning from his post in August 2001 and ironically got a desk job in the World Trade Center, where he died. Meanwhile, John Ashcroft was cutting FBI antiterrorism funding by $58 million. Even after 911, investigation shows that the FBI was deliberately dragging its feet about translating important documents in order to appear overworked (so they could qualify for more funding).
You cite Clinton's "failure to deal with Iraq" and then you admit that Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda, 9-11, or terrorism. Why would his dealing with Iraq in 1998 have stopped 9-11? I would argue (and the evidence is quite clearly on my side here) that Bush's handling of Iraq has dramatically increased terrorism; there were no Iraqi suicide bombers prior to April 2003. I would also argue that the Bush Admin was well aware of this.
Try re-reading the news for the first 8 months of Bush's presidency. There was no significant talk of Iraq at all. Nothing. Even after 9/11 the target was Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Wrong. The Bush Admin was gunning for Iraq from 9/11 on, and it is clear from statements by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and even Bush. I don't have time to do your homework for you, but a quick look at the Defense Department website turns up this example. And whether or not you think Bush wanted to go after Iraq from the beginning, it was obvious by mid- to late-2002 that attacking Iraq was on America's agenda whether we found a good reason to do so or not. And despite all the claims we haven't even found a single chemical weapon there, not to mention the dreaded biological and nuclear weapons Bush scared America into believing existed.
If Bush knew there was no threat in Iraq and sent us to war anyway, he should be impeached. But so far there is no evidence of that.
Actually, there's quite a bit of evidence that his administration lied, starting with his claims of an IAEA report on Saddam's nuclear weapons that didn't exist, the claim that there was evidence Iraq was involved in al Qaeda (which he has since backed off of), and the Nigerian yellow cake uranium documents that were such obvious forgeries they could only have been included in the Bush Administration's "evidence" for propaganda purposes. If the Administration didn't know these things were lies, then they are beyond incompetent. I won't even get into the half-truths his administration has been snowing us with; the above are the demonstrable lies.
Now, that said, I really don't think impeachment hearings are the best thing for this nation, and I probably wouldn't support them. But there's surely more than enough evidence to justify them then there was during the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Lying about an affair in front of your wife is a very different thing than lying about national security issues to the American people while supporting policies that you are well aware make us less secure as a nation.
But in a worst-case scenario we have one less ruthless dictator in the middle east.
And you have a massive increase in chaos, death, and terrorism in the middle east. And some ten attacks on American soldiers per day. And a billion-dollar per week price tag, not to mention the $87 billion more Bush asked for.
Slashdot Mirror
how many MSCE's does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. MS simply declares darkness the new standard.
Did Linux ever wash the blue dress from that night?
French Conspiracy Theorists Hate US
or
French media encourage a robust and informative debate about US policy
1. that link is dead; 2. capps is dead, as the other poster pointed out; and 3. capps was about airline profiling; there is little or no overlap with TIA. Other than that, everything you said is accurate.
One unique difference between what TIA was working on and the typical surveillance that is going on and will continue is that TIA was administered by a convicted felon who was charged with crimes inimical to American security, including lying to Congress and facilitating the transfer of arms to known terrorists. TIA was a stupid idea from the very beginning (you may recall that's when Poindexter released a logo for the organization that looked like the SS logo); I'm glad to see its coffin nailed shut.
It's incredible, really. Here I was reading slashdot, trying to procrastinate doing some work, but it's the same stories I read earlier.... just when I am almost forced to stop reading /. and actually do some work, along comes slashdot not only with a new story for me to procrastinate more, but a story that involves looking at pictures of other people doing work! Thank you slashdot!!
yeah but how many buttons on that mouse?
I see you have not yet been modded troll. I find this odd, because I thought the whole purpose of your post was to get people to respond as if you were serious. Then you can waste the time of the people who actually care about the topic. Trolls are ridiculous after all.
The interface is little different from a web browser. I imagine it wouldn't have been too much trouble for Apple to have iTMS work with a web browser in the meantime while they work on iTunes for Windows.
Which iBook are you talking about? My experience with two (one white one and a yellow "purse" design) is quite the opposite -- these things manage to be both elegant and rugged.
He said a company not traditionally involved in the music business. And we all know that Apple has been in the music business ever since they were distributing Beatles records.
Beyond that... what happened to the idea that a company had to actually produce something or do something useful in order to make money? Lawsuits may have their place, but not in a business plan.
To be fair, that article *is* talking about the American CIA. It says something about "South Central British Columbia"; you don't see me jumping up and down and pointing because we have no British Columbia in L.A.
That said, this Icke guy is a fucking loon.
Then we agree. It's not clear to me why you continue to defend Bush. I realized you started this thread to bash Clinton rather than defend Bush but you seem to be defending Bush here (and I certainly don't want to defend Clinton). It's difficult to argue with you because you keep changing your arguments, so who knows. This probably will be my last participation in a debate I've spent too much time on anyway...
At some point you have to say "This has gone on long enough." I think 12 years was plenty of time.
At some point you have to say, what has gone on long enough? The UN trying to enforce its rules with uncooperative governments? Like we've been doing with Israel? That's what the UN does. It shouldn't escalate to war unless there is a real threat to national sovereignty. Iraq wasn't threatening anyone. All it was doing was being intransigent. Not a helpful thing, but hardly the end of the world.
I consider France spineless because of its history, and precisely because its president listened only to his citizens rather than considering the international implications of his action or inaction. Chirac, as far as I can tell, like Clinton was more worried about what the polls said his people thought rather than doing what needed to be done. The right thing isn't always the popular thing.
So you're saying French leaders should have made decisions totally at odds with public opinion in France (and pretty much everywhere else in the world) because those leaders, blessed with the wisdom of the likes of Colin Powell, knew better than their people? I know right doesn't = popular but nonetheless I consider democracy very important in national decisionmaking for nations that call themselves democratic. I think it's the height of hypocrisy for the US to prattle on about democracy while asking almost every government in the world to so blatantly disregard the express desires and views of their citizens.
1. Iraq has a history of aggression against its neighbors.
Huh? Not since 1991. How does this justify war? Lots of nations have histories of aggression, many more recent than that. It hardly makes Iraq the kind of threat to US interests that justifies our soldiers fighting and dying. I'm sorry, but when somebody fights and dies or kills under the American flag they'd better be doing it for a damn good reason; Iraq's "history of aggression" ain't cutting it.
Iraq and its neighbors are in a very sensitive part of the world--politically, economically, and religiously.
that's hardly any more reason to attack Iraq than any of its neighbors.
3. The world was convinced enough that Iraq had illegal weapons programs to pass U.N. resolutions demanding inspections to confirm they no longer existed.
No it was precisely not convinced of that; hence no UN resolution supporting war. The world, at least as expressed through UN votes, was convinced that inspections and sanctions were an effective way to contain whatever threat Iraq might pose.
4. Iraq dragged its feet and did not comply with these resolutions for 12 years.
Again, this hardly justifies a war. In 12 years Iraq attacked none of its neighbors, exploded no nuclear weapons, committed no major terrorist actions, gave no WMD to al Qaeda, and did nothing else to harm US national security. If nothing has happened in 12 years, why the sudden urgency in 2003? Gimme a break.
5. 9/11 happened which made the U.S. very keen to anything that could be a threat.
Yeah I remember; we were scared of our own shadow for a while. But my very point is this fear and paranoia is misplaced. Iraq wasn't a threat and had nothing to do with al Qaeda during this time.
6. Saddam continued to drag his feet and give ever
10. Gain US citizenship
20. Move to California and become body-building movie star
30. Run for governor without even bothering to wait until the last one's term is up
40. PROPHET!!!
I've used the ibook quite a bit since I updated it and everything seems fine so far. The battery indicator has the same problem someone else here mentioned of showing only half as much battery power as you would expect, but my battery has been flaky lately anyway due to another problem so I didn't attribute that to 10.2.8 until I read the comments about it. All in all, I'm having problems with these computers but I haven't noticed anything significant due to 10.2.8 yet. (keeping fingers crossed...)
I recently was having problems that required me to reinstall OS X without saving users and network settings. I did this, and it all went fine, except now Classic will not run. It didn't work in 10.2 (which I installed from CD) and it didn't work after updating to 10.2.8; the preference pane tells me there is no usable classic system on the drive. Yet I can boot into OS9 and Startup Disk reports a working 9.2.2 system there. Is there some way to get my computer to recognize 9.2.2 and let me run classic mode when I need it?
I agree with you that our policy shouldn't be based on fear of terrorism, but there's no question that reducing terrorism should be a significant goal (not appeasing it or running from it as you seem to imply). I think it's a more important goal than enforcing UN resolutions that the UN doesn't need our help with. And stop acting like Iraq was any kind of threat to us when you haven't answered a single argument in that regard -- there was no WMD, and no threat to us or even his neighbors, since 1991, and our administration has to have known that.
Finally, re chemical weapons -- they were used in WWI. After that war Churchill used them in the Middle East (slaughtering Kurds, ironically) as an "experiment." They were used in WWII. In Vietnam the US used napalm extensively, as well as other chemical weapons, which were also used in the 1991 Gulf War. The US stockpiles many more dangerous chemicals and even biological agents like anthrax. My point is not that it's right or wrong, but like it or not, chemical weapons have been part of conventional military arsenals for a century, and armies train to deal with them. My point was simply that it was propagandistic for Bush to act as if chemical weapons represent the same kind of threat as nukes. Certainly not to defend Saddam's use of them in the 80s or argue that his having them wasn't illegal. It is telling, however, that we haven't even found that in Iraq -- I surely expected we would at least find some illegal chems that would be used to justify this war, but every single lead has turned into a dead end.
Then should we attack Israel and every other country that breaks a UN resolution? Iraq has been by no stretch of the imagination any threat to the US or even to its neighbors since 1991. They could barely contain the Kurds. I don't pretend to whitewash Saddam's murderous regime, but we pick and choose which thugs to go after. And Saddam was no threat to us. If we were enforcing the UN resolutions why the hell wasn't the UN on board? Because the UN inspectors made it clear that they didnt need an invasion to do so. Look up "Hans Blix" on google if you want more information, but you should know this since you claim to read the news.
The fact that Saddam was uncooperative with U.N. weapons inspectors was worrisome regardless of what was known. You'd think he'd want to prove he was clean so sanctions would be lifted and Iraq could get on with normal life.
I can't account for Saddam's twisted thinking but as I said it is not our job to enforce UN resolutions, and the UN wasn't pressing for our assistance here.
Me: our intelligence agencies knew their WMD were nonexistent from the beginning and there was no threat to US national security.
You: Wow, you must have access to information that no-one else has access to.
Yeah, I do, really obscure sources like the New York Times. Even Fox news was reporting on this. I guess you missed it. The CIA (prior to the recent fuss about "yellow cake") was telling the Bushies they couldn't find an al Qaeda link and that they thought most of the evidence for WMD was weak. The Bush Administration wound up creating a separate intelligence agency in the Pentagon whose sole purpose seems to have been to produce a different intelligence estimate than the CIA. Here's an article about some of this from the Washington Post. I don't feel like doing more of your research for you; suffice to say that if you don't believe any of my claims you're free to look them up. Some links might be easy to find on the warblog I was keeping on the war for a while, if you care to look (though a lot of the links have probably expired). Also I would recommend The Agonist; he does a really good job of culling a lot of this information from mainstream news sources. I'm not in the habit of making stuff up or believing everything I read on the internet.
So it's not terrorism, it's guerilla warfare.
Talk about self serving definitions -- you define Saddam's attacks on his own people as terrorism but suicide bombers attacking the UN building and American soldiers as guerrilla warfare. I don't particularly care what you want to call it; my point is that our involvement in Iraq has increased the threat and power of Islamist fundamentalist organizations who wish to do harm to the US and who wish to institute theocratic goverments in the Middle East. Call it what you will, but I see that as a much greater threat to US national security than Saddam gassing his own people twenty years ago (as horrible as the latter admittedly is).
So how is the U.N. supposed to know if any particular dictator is just being a pain in the ass or really has something to hide? Saddam *HAD* WMDs, that's common knowledge and accepted.
If you define chemical weapons as WMD, fine, but those kind of WMD are hardly a threat to anyone (except someone who invades Iraq), and they have been an accepted part of conventional warfare since WWI. But the UN inspector Hans Blix made it clear that he was confident of the inspectors' ability to keep Iraq's WMD t
He's got a good point nonetheless. You should be able to maintain Apple machines for flexible purposes since they are selling them as flexible UNIX machines. It wouldn't be that hard for them to do this; add an "expert update" option to the preferences and most users will ignore it but the ones who really need it will be able to pick and choose what to update. They separate the iCal and QuickTime updates; why couldn't they do this with security patches? There should be an option to keep the machine secure without adding the potential instability of new features.
I'd love to believe along with you that this war will make Iraq a peaceful democracy, but I just don't see any evidence to support that. And I'd love to believe along with Bush that it is possible to pay for this war and cut taxes at the same time. We're gonna spend money to develop the health care and education facilities in Iraq that the Bush Admin refuses to develop in America. That's just sad, and as someone who considers myself fiercely patriotic, it sickens me.
You want security, just display your secret text in the Symbol font.
I said "more robust," not perfect. We agree that neither Clinton nor Bush can be blamed for 9/11. The blame there lies with bin Laden. All I was saying is that Clinton's Admin took the OBL threat more seriously than Bush's. This really isn't a comment on either of the men, Bush or Clinton, so much as their administrations, but that's neither here nor there.
Uhm, I never said that Clinton dealing with Iraq would have stopped 9/11. The issue of Bush and Iraq was raised by a previous post and I simply commented that the whole thing wouldn't have even been an issue for the Bush administration if the Clinton administration had done its job regarding Iraq back in 1998.
Uhm, then I'm not sure what you're saying. What "whole thing" would not have been an issue for Bush? Terrorism? 9/11? When Iraq was not clearly involved in either?
But there were state-sponsored chemical attacks on entire towns and genocide committed against Iraqi citizens near Basra after 1991 that filled the mass graves that are now being excavated. That's not terrorism? That's brazen state-sponsored terrorism against its own people which I personally think is worse than Iraqis taking shots at what they may consider an invading army.
That kind of terrorism (if you want to call it that) is not suicide bombers attacking US forces, and as bad as it is, it is not a threat to US national security. I agree the Iraqi government was absolutely despicable toward it's own people, and Saddam and his henchmen were the lowest kind of murderous thugs. I have vocally opposed Saddam Hussein's regime, by the way, for a long time -- much longer than (for example) Donald Rumsfeld, who shook hands with Saddam Hussein shortly after his government gassed a large number of his own citizens at Halabja. I opposed vehemently the Reagan Administration's support of Saddam's murderous regime. I am also glad to see Saddam removed from power. But I do not equate his regime with a threat to US national security and I wonder whether removing him and making ourselves responsible for rebuilding Iraq is in our national interest at all. You're right, the Iraqis see us as an invading army. That will get worse as the occupation continues, and we can expect to lose more Americans (and Iraqis) and spend more money. Was it worth it? I think it's probably too early to tell; we don't know whether the future will bring democracy, another autocrat like Saddam, or a theocracy that is potentially more murderous and more dangerous than Saddam's dictatorship. But if Saddam's crimes justified a US invasion, why do we not invade other brutal dictatorships that are just as bad and in some cases are greater threats to the US -- e.g. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan?
I will agree that by mid- to late-2002 it was obvious we were going to get Iraq. That wasn't the case before 9/11, however. And when 9/11 happened the primary issue was Afghanistan.
I pointed to a Wolfowitz document from October 2001 naming Iraq; most accounts of the meetings in the Admin after 9/11 indicate that the neoconservatives advising Bush felt that 9/11 presented the perfect opportunity to invade Iraq.
Personally, I think 9/11 happened and Bush said, "Ok, Afghanistan is history, obviously. Who else is on the board that is either a problem now or could give us grief in the next decade?" They told him and that's where the Axis of Evil nations came from. And I think he said, "Ok, well, the gloves are off. Screw it. We're going to deal with this before 9/11 happens again." That approach might not be popular, but I'm certainly not in a position to say it's wrong.
You may not be but you would be if you read the news. It's pretty obvious that it has been the wrong approach if our goal is to increase US national security and decrease the kind of Islamic terrorism we sa
You cite Clinton's "failure to deal with Iraq" and then you admit that Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda, 9-11, or terrorism. Why would his dealing with Iraq in 1998 have stopped 9-11? I would argue (and the evidence is quite clearly on my side here) that Bush's handling of Iraq has dramatically increased terrorism; there were no Iraqi suicide bombers prior to April 2003. I would also argue that the Bush Admin was well aware of this.
Try re-reading the news for the first 8 months of Bush's presidency. There was no significant talk of Iraq at all. Nothing. Even after 9/11 the target was Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Wrong. The Bush Admin was gunning for Iraq from 9/11 on, and it is clear from statements by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and even Bush. I don't have time to do your homework for you, but a quick look at the Defense Department website turns up this example. And whether or not you think Bush wanted to go after Iraq from the beginning, it was obvious by mid- to late-2002 that attacking Iraq was on America's agenda whether we found a good reason to do so or not. And despite all the claims we haven't even found a single chemical weapon there, not to mention the dreaded biological and nuclear weapons Bush scared America into believing existed.
If Bush knew there was no threat in Iraq and sent us to war anyway, he should be impeached. But so far there is no evidence of that.
Actually, there's quite a bit of evidence that his administration lied, starting with his claims of an IAEA report on Saddam's nuclear weapons that didn't exist, the claim that there was evidence Iraq was involved in al Qaeda (which he has since backed off of), and the Nigerian yellow cake uranium documents that were such obvious forgeries they could only have been included in the Bush Administration's "evidence" for propaganda purposes. If the Administration didn't know these things were lies, then they are beyond incompetent. I won't even get into the half-truths his administration has been snowing us with; the above are the demonstrable lies.
Now, that said, I really don't think impeachment hearings are the best thing for this nation, and I probably wouldn't support them. But there's surely more than enough evidence to justify them then there was during the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Lying about an affair in front of your wife is a very different thing than lying about national security issues to the American people while supporting policies that you are well aware make us less secure as a nation.
But in a worst-case scenario we have one less ruthless dictator in the middle east.
And you have a massive increase in chaos, death, and terrorism in the middle east. And some ten attacks on American soldiers per day. And a billion-dollar per week price tag, not to mention the $87 billion more Bush asked for.
Nobody will ever need less than 64kbps of audio.