> In fact, like the telephone, the airplane is a perfect example of one of those things whose creation is inevitable once the supporting technology is available.
That's the main reason I'm cynical about patents. Technology seems to advance in a wavefront, and and there is an endless list of people who invented the same thing, independently, at the same time. And they always stand on the shoulders of giants.
> Zionism used to be quite secular and was actually despised by Jewish fundamentalists. Then it got hijacked by militant fundamentalists who want to recreate the Israel of Solomon and David. Never mind that particular Israel hasn't existed for over 2000 years
s/2000/2900/
And according to some recent Israeli archaeologists, that particular Israel never existed at all - at least not on the grand scale portrayed in the Bible. Naturally, that claim isn't very popular among the fundamentalists.
> If you don't know how to create a clear, meaningful visual aid, then no amount of software will help you.
Kind of like BASIC enabling people who don't understand what they're trying to do to write programs, WebTV allowing cluebies to use the innerweb, and microwave ovens allowing non-chefs to cook.
> Of course, as a good corporate soldier, I was expected to present this as my idea and pretend I thought it was completely brilliant. She certainly wasn't going to stand up and take the heat for an unpopular decision.
Surely you're smart enough to give a presentation that says, between the lines but clearly audible to the audience, "this isn't my idea" and "the reasons given for it are incredibly stupid".
> another terrorist attack would get people to rally around him. Ever wonder why there has been no followup to 9/11? They're afraid it'd bolster W's stance.
You're assuming people like OBL don't want conflict. I suspect our invasion of Iraq was the best present anyone ever gave OBL, from his point of view. Fundamentalist extremists will be glad to bolster the hands of their most extreme opponents. Nothing would make them happier than having the USA at WWIII with the Islamic world.
> 7. what else? I'm curious to hear others' comments.
Very closely related to what you already said, one of his biggest dangers is the risk of playing reverse boy-who-cried-wolf. He will surely trumpet Saddam's capture to the heavens, but if the killing goes on that will ring as hollow propagandistic rhetoric like his speech on the carrier now looks, and like the crowing over the killing of Saddam's sons now looks.
Similarly with the economy: he has been crying the third-quarter numbers to the high heavens, but if too many people are still unemployed or worried about their jobs when the election draws near, all that crowing will make things worse for him than keeping quiet about it would have.
There's no political margin in giving people hope and having it snatched back away from them. And this president is so desperate for positive news that he tends to overspin every little tidbit. He needs to talk less and deliver more results; even minor results would be very welcome to the public if they were real and enduring, and not seen as just another round of political spin.
> But seriously, when there will likely be a Green candidate snagging ~2-3% of the vote, the true winner could likely win by a margin of like 48.9%-47.6%-3.1% (plus fringe candidates...)
Given what happened in 2000 and what's at stake now, I wouldn't be surprised if the lead Democrat adopts a Green for his running mate.
> And before you start bitching about WW2: The US got involved because Mister Fuhrer sunk a few US ships too many.
Actually, we got involved because we (rightly) disapproved of what the Japanese were doing in China, and imposed an embargo that made it impossible for them to continue that war. By doing so we left them the options of (a) a humiliating withdrawal from China, (b) starving, or (c) grabbing the resources by force. And given even the most rudimentary knowlege about the warlords who were running Japan at the time, anyone with a clue should have seen (c) as the inevitable result of the embargo.
I'm not saying the embargo was wrong, but it should have been (and almost certainly was) undertaken with the certain knowledge that war would be the unavoidable result.
The Japanese tried to disable the US fleet at Pearl Harbor because they calculated (probably correctly) that the US would intervene with military force once they went on their rampage in southeast Asia to acquire the resource base they needed to avoid options (a) and (b).
> Fourthly, health insurance. It costs a lot because of the malpractice suits and drug costs. You want health insurance? Go back to school and get a real education, then a good job. But I refuse to pay for healthcare of low-lifes happy in their burger flipping career.
I'm curious about your sense of entitlement for heathcare that burger-flippers don't have access to. Did you acquire that entitlement by birth? By better luck in your career? Do you suppose that burger-flippers would perversely refuse to trade jobs with you if they had the chance, because the prefer crappy jobs with low pay and no health insurance?
> With him captured, you can expect to see the vast majority of the domestic Iraqi resistance disappear.
I doubt it. We thought killing his sons would make a difference, and things actually got worse. The pyramidal organization of the Ba'ath party has surely been decimated, but that just makes space for others to move up. And the nature of the guerilla attacks in Iraq (not the suicide bombings) suggests that Ba'ath or some other anti-US organization has been repairing itself. I think after a temporary blip we won't see any difference at all.
For that matter, things might get worse if his capture allows would-be guerillas to feel like they're fighting for Iraq rather than some hated dictator.
> Of course it is wrong and immoral to blow up innocent people and I cannot understand their mentality. However, they do NOT see it as wrong!
The human mind is remarkably flexible when it comes to justifying one's own actions and vilifying the actions of others. We probably killed more innocent Iraqi civilians in this war than al Q has killed Americans in total, but by the American value system "collateral casualties" are a sad but necessary side effect of necessary regime changes. Some Iraqis, OTOH, probably see it as no different from poping a bomb on a bus full of schoolchildren. (Or rather, a lot of buses, since the best guess is that several thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed so far.)
You certainly don't have to agree with the other side, but until you take the trouble to understand them you will never be able to get along with each other.
> We went for years where we used to increase the agression in pursuing them IRA and Loyalist terrorists. We were more brutal, we policed harder, we vowed never to give in. They tried to blow up our Government, we stepped up the patrols and made life harder. We killed people who protested sometimes and sometimes killed people at checkpoints. Still the attacks continued. The only thing which has helped the situation is by talking, engaging and starting to dismantle the reasons which fire their anger and aggression. If you think that bombing and hunting people solves the problem I can tell you from our experiences that you bettre get used to facing years and years of terrorist actions.
Yes, unfortunately the hardliners on both sides have been calling the plays recently. (In Israel/Palestine as well as in the USA's relationship with the Arab world.) People forget that the goal isn't to 'win' as in boxing, but to 'win' by getting the two sides to quit throwing punches.
And of course, so long as both sides claim a right to get the last swing in, a simple inductive argument shows that the conflict will never stop.
What the world needs is politicians (and voters) who are willing to give the other side some of what it wants. Certainly not everything the Osamas and Cheneys of the world want, but enough to undercut the grassroots support for murder as a legitimized tool of international politics.
> Exactly. An excellent way to begin solving many of those problems is to create a strong, stable democracy in place of a brutal dictatorship, in a pivotal Middle Eastern country.
> Historically, as people worldwide have been exposed to democracy, they've wanted it for themselves. It's happening in Iraq right now.
And of course... Iraq was a democracy as recently as a couple of generations ago. Since then they've enjoyed a military coup and rule, rule by the Ba'ath party, and rule under Saddam's dictatorship.
Installing a democracy where its roots don't run deep is not going to be an easy task. The Bush Administration would be well advised to look at where it has historically worked and where it hasn't. (Of course, they don't want to hear it, because the short answer is that success correlates strongly with international involvement and an occupation force in proportion to the population about four times what we've got over there right now.)
But I'm skeptical that the USA has any intention of installing a true democracy there now anyway, since our only consistent message to the Governing Council has been "you can do anything you want, so long as it's what we want".
And given the factional nature of the country, it's doubtful that any government can hold it together without becoming as brutal as Saddam was. Democracy in Iraq is a Bush fantasy, or more likely a cynical yarn to get the US public to support the invasion.
> This is like being angry that we let a burglar go to catch a rapist. Osama is not anywhere nearly the problem Saddam is. Open a history book that goes back more than three years.
The reason Americans don't want to do that is because it uncovers the embarrassing fact that he committed most of his crimes while he was our puppet in the region.
A notable exception is the killing of 300,000 Shiites after the Gulf War, but even there we don't come out smelling of roses: we deliberately stirred them into rebellion in hopes of getting a regime change for free, and when it didn't work out we left them to die at his hands. I.e., we used them, and discarded them when they were no longer convenient.
If the USA puts him on trial for past crimes, you can bet they won't be showing the pictures of Rumsfeld shaking his hand.
> The Bush government never actually *said* that Hussain was behind 9/11, but various officials, press announcements, State of the Union Addresses, etc, implied it rather strongly. Since our "liberal" media wouldn't dream of correcting the Bush government's insinuations the image of Saddam as the 9/11 mastermind stuck in the public's mind.
What's sad is that the Bush Administration has admitted that there is no connection, but still turns around and tries to push that button at every opportunity. As recently as his speech in England, as a matter of fact.
The irony of this approach is that it is a very clintonesque "technically, I didn't lie" approach to mendacity.
They will surely charge him with violations of US and international law, and pretend that US law holds in Iraq and the USA is the authorized agent of retribution for the international community.
If they handed him over to the UN court they could surely get a legitimate conviction on crimes against humanity, but it's not likely that the Bush Administration will start cooperating with the international community at this late date.
> There is enough evidence to support the view that most of the attacks in Iraq are not ex-sadaam loyalists, but are new Al Qaeda who will be happy to keep doing what they have been doing all along.
More likely, IMO, are that the suicide attacks are being carried out by members of al Q or some other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group, but the guerilla attacks are being carried out by Saddam/Ba'ath loyalists and other ordinary resistance/insurgence types.
And there are probably many factions on both sides of that fence, with an "enemy of my enemy" truce that will keep them from fighting each other (very much) until their common enemy has withdrawn.
> More international help would doubtless be tremendously helpful. Unfortunately, the Bush government managed to waste all the goodwill the US had worldwide by starting this war the way he did... The general attitude among other nations seems to be: "He started this war on his own, why should I help now?" I can't say I really blame them for having that attitude, it'd be nice if the other major powers would just forget about all the insults, etc, that the Bush government has smacked them with, but that isn't going to happen.
The problem isn't just past insults, it's the Bush Administration's determination to have everything our way in post-war Iraq.
If we had actually invaded Iraq for any of the stated reasons, there would be absolutely no reason not to turn its governance over to the UN. The fact that we are not willing to do so is all the evidence the world needs for the fact that we are not actually there for the stated reasons.
> A brutal dictator has been taken down as the result of a relatively mild war. This is obviously a major victory.
Only if you qualify that with "if all else were equal". In fact, the USA has gone from having a record high standing in the world's good will to having a record low. We'll be paying for this war for generations in terms of the world's goodwill, soured international relations, and probably increased terrorist activity as well.
> > if tomorrow the US decided to spend 100 billion dollers to rebult all of iraq
> Ahem. The US is already spending $87 billion rebuilding Iraq,
Actually, the $87,000,000,000 is the second installment, after an earlier one of $79,000,000,000. Though those include the military costs and probably a bit of pork, so it can't all be counted as being for rebuilding Iraq. IIRC something like $20,000,000,000 was being kicked around as the share of this installment to be used for rebuilding, prompting the debate over whether it should be treated as a loan.
> and current estimates indicate that it will cost at least tripple that overall.
You can bet that the Administration debated long and hard how much was the minimum amount they could ask for without having to go back for more before the elections. Expect the next installment to come in Novermber or December 2004. It would be a political disaster if they went back for more during the run-up to the election.
> If we have not found ANY trace of WMD by now - then there just plain are none.
Worse yet, the US intelligence community was not willing to commit to an unqualified 'yes' even before the shooting started. For that reason it was clear to some of us, even then, that this was a simple case of 'scumming' the evidence to find support for the invasion.
I am against the war because it was undertaken on false pretexts. The continual redefinition of the mission since then does nothing to change my mind.
> With all that said, any points about WMD are really moot points. US is in Iraq now. Those of you on the left who think we should withdraw immediately, that is a mistake. If we do so, the region will end up a bigger mess than when we entered.
And of course, that's what's going to happen when we leave anyway... but if we don't leave, those who suspected our motives will be all the more assured that we aren't there for the stated reasons.
We've set ourselves up with a tiger-by-the-tail scenario. An that is as good an argument for the folly of the invasion as the lack of WMD is.
Slashdot Mirror
> In fact, like the telephone, the airplane is a perfect example of one of those things whose creation is inevitable once the supporting technology is available.
That's the main reason I'm cynical about patents. Technology seems to advance in a wavefront, and and there is an endless list of people who invented the same thing, independently, at the same time. And they always stand on the shoulders of giants.
> > There's only one real Austin, just as there's only one real Paris. Both are in Texas.
Ditto for Moscow!
> The real Austin is an aging ex-astronaut.
No, a time-shifted spy.
And according to some recent Israeli archaeologists, that particular Israel never existed at all - at least not on the grand scale portrayed in the Bible. Naturally, that claim isn't very popular among the fundamentalists.> Zionism used to be quite secular and was actually despised by Jewish fundamentalists. Then it got hijacked by militant fundamentalists who want to recreate the Israel of Solomon and David. Never mind that particular Israel hasn't existed for over 2000 years
> If you don't know how to create a clear, meaningful visual aid, then no amount of software will help you.
Kind of like BASIC enabling people who don't understand what they're trying to do to write programs, WebTV allowing cluebies to use the innerweb, and microwave ovens allowing non-chefs to cook.
> The problem is, as has been pointed out, it's not PowerPoint it's PHBs. I have wondered if the two terms overlap in more than mnemonic ways....
Powerpointy Haired Bosses?
> Of course, as a good corporate soldier, I was expected to present this as my idea and pretend I thought it was completely brilliant. She certainly wasn't going to stand up and take the heat for an unpopular decision.
Surely you're smart enough to give a presentation that says, between the lines but clearly audible to the audience, "this isn't my idea" and "the reasons given for it are incredibly stupid".
> 10) the audience is NOT wearing any clothes.
Not recommended if you're the headmaster at a girl's school.
> another terrorist attack would get people to rally around him. Ever wonder why there has been no followup to 9/11? They're afraid it'd bolster W's stance.
You're assuming people like OBL don't want conflict. I suspect our invasion of Iraq was the best present anyone ever gave OBL, from his point of view. Fundamentalist extremists will be glad to bolster the hands of their most extreme opponents. Nothing would make them happier than having the USA at WWIII with the Islamic world.
> 7. what else? I'm curious to hear others' comments.
Very closely related to what you already said, one of his biggest dangers is the risk of playing reverse boy-who-cried-wolf. He will surely trumpet Saddam's capture to the heavens, but if the killing goes on that will ring as hollow propagandistic rhetoric like his speech on the carrier now looks, and like the crowing over the killing of Saddam's sons now looks.
Similarly with the economy: he has been crying the third-quarter numbers to the high heavens, but if too many people are still unemployed or worried about their jobs when the election draws near, all that crowing will make things worse for him than keeping quiet about it would have.
There's no political margin in giving people hope and having it snatched back away from them. And this president is so desperate for positive news that he tends to overspin every little tidbit. He needs to talk less and deliver more results; even minor results would be very welcome to the public if they were real and enduring, and not seen as just another round of political spin.
> But seriously, when there will likely be a Green candidate snagging ~2-3% of the vote, the true winner could likely win by a margin of like 48.9%-47.6%-3.1% (plus fringe candidates...)
Given what happened in 2000 and what's at stake now, I wouldn't be surprised if the lead Democrat adopts a Green for his running mate.
> And before you start bitching about WW2: The US got involved because Mister Fuhrer sunk a few US ships too many.
Actually, we got involved because we (rightly) disapproved of what the Japanese were doing in China, and imposed an embargo that made it impossible for them to continue that war. By doing so we left them the options of (a) a humiliating withdrawal from China, (b) starving, or (c) grabbing the resources by force. And given even the most rudimentary knowlege about the warlords who were running Japan at the time, anyone with a clue should have seen (c) as the inevitable result of the embargo.
I'm not saying the embargo was wrong, but it should have been (and almost certainly was) undertaken with the certain knowledge that war would be the unavoidable result.
The Japanese tried to disable the US fleet at Pearl Harbor because they calculated (probably correctly) that the US would intervene with military force once they went on their rampage in southeast Asia to acquire the resource base they needed to avoid options (a) and (b).
> Fourthly, health insurance. It costs a lot because of the malpractice suits and drug costs. You want health insurance? Go back to school and get a real education, then a good job. But I refuse to pay for healthcare of low-lifes happy in their burger flipping career.
I'm curious about your sense of entitlement for heathcare that burger-flippers don't have access to. Did you acquire that entitlement by birth? By better luck in your career? Do you suppose that burger-flippers would perversely refuse to trade jobs with you if they had the chance, because the prefer crappy jobs with low pay and no health insurance?
> With him captured, you can expect to see the vast majority of the domestic Iraqi resistance disappear.
I doubt it. We thought killing his sons would make a difference, and things actually got worse. The pyramidal organization of the Ba'ath party has surely been decimated, but that just makes space for others to move up. And the nature of the guerilla attacks in Iraq (not the suicide bombings) suggests that Ba'ath or some other anti-US organization has been repairing itself. I think after a temporary blip we won't see any difference at all.
For that matter, things might get worse if his capture allows would-be guerillas to feel like they're fighting for Iraq rather than some hated dictator.
> Of course it is wrong and immoral to blow up innocent people and I cannot understand their mentality. However, they do NOT see it as wrong!
The human mind is remarkably flexible when it comes to justifying one's own actions and vilifying the actions of others. We probably killed more innocent Iraqi civilians in this war than al Q has killed Americans in total, but by the American value system "collateral casualties" are a sad but necessary side effect of necessary regime changes. Some Iraqis, OTOH, probably see it as no different from poping a bomb on a bus full of schoolchildren. (Or rather, a lot of buses, since the best guess is that several thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed so far.)
You certainly don't have to agree with the other side, but until you take the trouble to understand them you will never be able to get along with each other.
> We went for years where we used to increase the agression in pursuing them IRA and Loyalist terrorists. We were more brutal, we policed harder, we vowed never to give in. They tried to blow up our Government, we stepped up the patrols and made life harder. We killed people who protested sometimes and sometimes killed people at checkpoints. Still the attacks continued. The only thing which has helped the situation is by talking, engaging and starting to dismantle the reasons which fire their anger and aggression. If you think that bombing and hunting people solves the problem I can tell you from our experiences that you bettre get used to facing years and years of terrorist actions.
Yes, unfortunately the hardliners on both sides have been calling the plays recently. (In Israel/Palestine as well as in the USA's relationship with the Arab world.) People forget that the goal isn't to 'win' as in boxing, but to 'win' by getting the two sides to quit throwing punches.
And of course, so long as both sides claim a right to get the last swing in, a simple inductive argument shows that the conflict will never stop.
What the world needs is politicians (and voters) who are willing to give the other side some of what it wants. Certainly not everything the Osamas and Cheneys of the world want, but enough to undercut the grassroots support for murder as a legitimized tool of international politics.
> Exactly. An excellent way to begin solving many of those problems is to create a strong, stable democracy in place of a brutal dictatorship, in a pivotal Middle Eastern country.
> Historically, as people worldwide have been exposed to democracy, they've wanted it for themselves. It's happening in Iraq right now.
And of course... Iraq was a democracy as recently as a couple of generations ago. Since then they've enjoyed a military coup and rule, rule by the Ba'ath party, and rule under Saddam's dictatorship.
Installing a democracy where its roots don't run deep is not going to be an easy task. The Bush Administration would be well advised to look at where it has historically worked and where it hasn't. (Of course, they don't want to hear it, because the short answer is that success correlates strongly with international involvement and an occupation force in proportion to the population about four times what we've got over there right now.)
But I'm skeptical that the USA has any intention of installing a true democracy there now anyway, since our only consistent message to the Governing Council has been "you can do anything you want, so long as it's what we want".
And given the factional nature of the country, it's doubtful that any government can hold it together without becoming as brutal as Saddam was. Democracy in Iraq is a Bush fantasy, or more likely a cynical yarn to get the US public to support the invasion.
> This is like being angry that we let a burglar go to catch a rapist. Osama is not anywhere nearly the problem Saddam is. Open a history book that goes back more than three years.
The reason Americans don't want to do that is because it uncovers the embarrassing fact that he committed most of his crimes while he was our puppet in the region.
A notable exception is the killing of 300,000 Shiites after the Gulf War, but even there we don't come out smelling of roses: we deliberately stirred them into rebellion in hopes of getting a regime change for free, and when it didn't work out we left them to die at his hands. I.e., we used them, and discarded them when they were no longer convenient.
If the USA puts him on trial for past crimes, you can bet they won't be showing the pictures of Rumsfeld shaking his hand.
> The Bush government never actually *said* that Hussain was behind 9/11, but various officials, press announcements, State of the Union Addresses, etc, implied it rather strongly. Since our "liberal" media wouldn't dream of correcting the Bush government's insinuations the image of Saddam as the 9/11 mastermind stuck in the public's mind.
What's sad is that the Bush Administration has admitted that there is no connection, but still turns around and tries to push that button at every opportunity. As recently as his speech in England, as a matter of fact.
The irony of this approach is that it is a very clintonesque "technically, I didn't lie" approach to mendacity.
> And what will they charge Saddam with?
What did they charge Noriega with?
They will surely charge him with violations of US and international law, and pretend that US law holds in Iraq and the USA is the authorized agent of retribution for the international community.
If they handed him over to the UN court they could surely get a legitimate conviction on crimes against humanity, but it's not likely that the Bush Administration will start cooperating with the international community at this late date.
> There is enough evidence to support the view that most of the attacks in Iraq are not ex-sadaam loyalists, but are new Al Qaeda who will be happy to keep doing what they have been doing all along.
More likely, IMO, are that the suicide attacks are being carried out by members of al Q or some other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group, but the guerilla attacks are being carried out by Saddam/Ba'ath loyalists and other ordinary resistance/insurgence types.
And there are probably many factions on both sides of that fence, with an "enemy of my enemy" truce that will keep them from fighting each other (very much) until their common enemy has withdrawn.
> More international help would doubtless be tremendously helpful. Unfortunately, the Bush government managed to waste all the goodwill the US had worldwide by starting this war the way he did... The general attitude among other nations seems to be: "He started this war on his own, why should I help now?" I can't say I really blame them for having that attitude, it'd be nice if the other major powers would just forget about all the insults, etc, that the Bush government has smacked them with, but that isn't going to happen.
The problem isn't just past insults, it's the Bush Administration's determination to have everything our way in post-war Iraq.
If we had actually invaded Iraq for any of the stated reasons, there would be absolutely no reason not to turn its governance over to the UN. The fact that we are not willing to do so is all the evidence the world needs for the fact that we are not actually there for the stated reasons.
> If they have a problem with that then they shouldn't have signed up with the military in the first place.
Unless of course you thought you were signing up to defend your country rather than to make the world safe for Haliburton.
> A brutal dictator has been taken down as the result of a relatively mild war. This is obviously a major victory.
Only if you qualify that with "if all else were equal". In fact, the USA has gone from having a record high standing in the world's good will to having a record low. We'll be paying for this war for generations in terms of the world's goodwill, soured international relations, and probably increased terrorist activity as well.
> > if tomorrow the US decided to spend 100 billion dollers to rebult all of iraq
> Ahem. The US is already spending $87 billion rebuilding Iraq,
Actually, the $87,000,000,000 is the second installment, after an earlier one of $79,000,000,000. Though those include the military costs and probably a bit of pork, so it can't all be counted as being for rebuilding Iraq. IIRC something like $20,000,000,000 was being kicked around as the share of this installment to be used for rebuilding, prompting the debate over whether it should be treated as a loan.
> and current estimates indicate that it will cost at least tripple that overall.
You can bet that the Administration debated long and hard how much was the minimum amount they could ask for without having to go back for more before the elections. Expect the next installment to come in Novermber or December 2004. It would be a political disaster if they went back for more during the run-up to the election.
> If we have not found ANY trace of WMD by now - then there just plain are none.
Worse yet, the US intelligence community was not willing to commit to an unqualified 'yes' even before the shooting started. For that reason it was clear to some of us, even then, that this was a simple case of 'scumming' the evidence to find support for the invasion.
I am against the war because it was undertaken on false pretexts. The continual redefinition of the mission since then does nothing to change my mind.
> With all that said, any points about WMD are really moot points. US is in Iraq now. Those of you on the left who think we should withdraw immediately, that is a mistake. If we do so, the region will end up a bigger mess than when we entered.
And of course, that's what's going to happen when we leave anyway... but if we don't leave, those who suspected our motives will be all the more assured that we aren't there for the stated reasons.
We've set ourselves up with a tiger-by-the-tail scenario. An that is as good an argument for the folly of the invasion as the lack of WMD is.