I remember vividly when this happened (ten years ago, when "the Internet" usually meant USENET as opposed to the WWW). Before, "bad behavior" meant poor "netiquette"- crossposting to a dozen or so USENET groups. That was what pissed people off. But even the crossposters were flabbergasted by this. It seems trite now, but back in 1994, nobody had even dreamed of posting a message to every single USENET newsgroup in existence. The very idea was crazy. Posts were things you typed into newsreaders. You'd need to write a script to crosspost to every single newsgroup. Who would ever do that? It was just too incredible to believe.
Anyway, that one spam post was all anyone could talk about for a week! And on hundreds of groups, people were posting followups to the original post, warning any foreigners that might be reading that the service being offered (they were selling an opportunity to enter the INS green card lottery, IIRC) was available from the U.S. Government for free. (Didn't help- they still made a fortune.) I remember the green card lottery post being mentioned prominently in the Cyberscope column in U.S. News (the print version). Everyone was just stunned that someone would do this.
The posters wrote a book on how to make a fortune on the "Information Superhighway" (this is what the Internet was called during 1994, before everyone learned its real name). It was full of lovely quotes:
"...some starry-eyed individuals who access the Net think of Cyberspace as a community with rules, regulations and codes of behavior. Don't you believe it! There is no community....Along your journey, someone may try to tell you that in order to be a good Net 'citizen,' you must follow the rules of the Cyberspace community. Don't listen. The only laws and rules with which you should concern yourself are those passed by the country, state, and city in which you truly live..."
These are the kind of lawyers who keep meth lab guard dogs in their apartments. Now we should resist lawyer-bashing. There are a lot of asshat lawyers around, and it's a real struggle sometimes to keep in mind that most of the rights we hold dear in this country would be empty, unenforceable, and meaningless if we were to give in to our desires to round them up and keep them in concentration camps. My own wife is a lawyer and never made more than $30k as a public defender (before she quit the profession entirely- she's a stripper now). But it's really striking how you can be a lawyer and be a total scumbag, too. It seems scumminess does not interfere at all with lawyering.
Anyway, this is getting away from my point, which is to reminisce about the end of the spam-free days, and to impress on you young kiddies that this was a really big deal when it happened. The second guy who did it didn't get one tenth as much attention. The first one you see is the one that makes you say, "well, there goes the Internet".
Despite what the company does, after interviewing with them, I felt like it would be a good solid company to work for. They had a great dot-com atmosphere, used open source technology, and paid well - my position was for Perl programmer. And they even allowed you to work from home.
If you exit Claria's building and turn left, then walk two blocks down Douglas Ave, you reach my company which has all three of these attributes. Except we're much smaller, but unlike Claria we sell a real product that people knowingly install, and they pay thousands for it. (We probably have to do way more tech support than they have to, though.) We're a private company and not even thinking of doing an IPO until a good time to do it comes again (ha, ha).
How do they interview people? We ask a few general algorithm questions to see how people think, and figure you can learn the specific language we use here after you start. (The language is the easy part- the codebase is the bigger learning curve.) We were interviewing recently but not any more- we found a couple of unemployed schmucks we like.
Unfortunately, we're in a crappier neighborhood than Claria. There's an auto auction place across the street and customers from pharmaceutical companies sometimes hear the auto auctions going on when they visit. It was really hard to find office space during the dot-com era, and we're still bound by the six-year lease we signed in 1999 for what is basically a converted print shop. I bike through the empty parking lots of several empty office buildings on the way to work, and they're so much nicer. (The people in those buildings were all laid off at the beginning of 2002, and the FOR RENT signs aren't going away.)
One thing they revealed to me was that they did actually track what you were searching in Google. This part I didn't like. If they can watch you on Google, they can capture data from any form you fill out - although they claimed Google was the only form they captured data from.
Good thing they didn't hire you, or you wouldn't have said anything about this! Maybe you'll get a 5, Informative out of it though.
You're right. Although of course the kid's killing himself hurt his mother even more.
True, although extremely irrelevant since the suicide happened first. You're completely disregarding the order of events, and the order in which things happened makes all the difference here. The cops came after the fact, and made an already grieving mama even more miserable by turning a tragedy into a public spectacle.
People have this wrong idea that suicide is just an easy way out, no strings attached.
So what's the big deal? The Faces of Death commercial videos have featured stuff like that for years.
You mean that all these surveillance cameras in my apartment building are actually generating potential footage for whatever moviemaker might be interested in what goes on in my hallway? How about red-light cameras? Is someone using those to shoot movies too? We'd better stop scratching our noses at red lights.
If I pull out a gun at a press conference and shoot myself in the head, I should expect to appear in Faces of Death. But if I shoot myself in my apartment hallway, I would not be expecting to be downloadable afterwards. Someone here crossed a line.
For what its worth, I will be givng the new Gmail a shot. We'll see how good it is (I expect it to be great) before I start to decide how I feel about the privacy issue.
Agreed- I think it is going to be successful enough for Microsoft to copy it. And Google is not yet known for privacy abuses.
Okay... it's really simple. If Intel implants a tracking number in the CPU's, buy AMD. If A bios manufacturer hard-codes DRM into it's motherboards, don't buy those motherboards. If (free) Gmail violates your privacy, don't use (free) Gmail. what exactly is the problem?
The problem is when-
All CPU manufacturers include tracking numbers
All BIOS manufacturers hard-code DRM into their motherboards
All (free and non-free) web-based mail services violate your privacy
This "vote with your feet" argument works for pizzas, but not markets where there are high barriers to entry. A web-based email system isn't a very good example (who can't code up one of those over a weekend?) but the other two are.
This would be really convenient. A bonus would be if they still worked after being lit on fire!
In a perfect world they could park themselves underground in an automatic parking garage. Although this would require a hole in the ground large enough to fit a Humvee into, which might not be possible with today's technology. Maybe we can set one up once we have a working space elevator.
Kinda like how you can't hijack a plane with a boxknife?
I thought this was debunked by the 9/11 commission several months ago. The boxcutter meme spread like wildfire, and everyone "knew" before the day was out that this was done with boxcutters. But it turns out that only one plane had a boxcutter sighting (relayed via cellphone). They actually used Mace, knives, and bomb threats. I suppose it's possible that "knives" might have been a reference to boxcutters, but we have no further evidence to support it.
My wife and I sometimes have to leave a dog in a car. We leave the engine running with the AC on and park in the shade. And still we come back to a flyer on the windshield after only a couple minutes. (This is in Silicon Valley.) My theory is that dogs in cars are uncommon enough that if you're running around with a stack of flyers, you're happy to find any unattended dog in a car, even if the AC is on, since you can get rid of a flyer. Although I was in Death Valley a week ago (which was unseasonably warm for March) and passed two dogs locked in an SUV parked in the sun with the windows rolled all the way up. And there I was, with no flyer to put on it.
This sounds great for dog owners. Not only can you park and leave your dog in the shady underground, no animal rights people will be able to get to your windshield to leave a flier explaining what a bastard you are.
Well what do you know? It appears that a DVD restoration of THX-1138 is due out in June. Lucas has been promising additional special effects. Hopefully this does not mean airbrushed walkie talkies.
Unfortunately, this little gem is only available on VHS. Hey George Lucas! This is the best movie you ever made. Release it on DVD!
THX is about a bleak futuristic society that lives underground following some unmentioned apocalypse. (The movie doesn't elaborate on this, but the people that still live on the surface- "shell-dwellers"- are short little bearded mutants who grunt instead of talking, so I guess the movie takes place after a nuclear war.) Life underground is highly efficient and regulated, sex is illegal, daily ingestion of sedatives is required of everyone by law, and the police are polite but ruthless nuclear powered robots. LUH-3417 was hot (I forget the actress who played her). SEN-2541 was a great bastard too. And it's a delightful showcase of early seventies technology. My father was a mainframe programmer and loved this movie. He would point something out every few minutes (look look, it's FORTRAN!).
The end is awesome. After you watch this movie, you'll want to go outside more often.
The Dept. of Labor says the only sector losing jobs this month was "information services", which shed 1000 jobs. Factories lost and gained no jobs. March shows zero gains and losses for sectors hammered by job losses in the past three years.
Yes, surprising numbers from the Dept. of Labor this morning, being attributed to an ended grocery store strike and construction hiring bouncing back on better weather. I hope it doesn't turn out to be spin, and that it lasts.
Why worry about the jobs situation? You don't need a job. A rise in GDP means the economy is "better". So we all win!
And GDP is delicious, and nutritious. I'm eating fried GDP with Jobless Recovery hot sauce, and this weekend it's GDP with Consumer Confidence Index noodles, followed by GDP pie. And it's Atkins friendly (no carbos)!
Just kidding. I'm not having my GDP and eating it too, although I hear from 1% of the population that it is very good.
The monetary increase was proposed for the budget, approved, and was to be instituted in the new budget year beginning Oct 2001.
Yes. And do you remember what happened, then, while we were waiting for that new budget year to start in Oct 2001?
But that's besides the point. This is not the 'government' declassifying and putting forth these statements, but rather Clarke himself.
Clarke is a private citizen, so he can't declassify anything. And the 'government' is selectively declassifying his testimony, documents, and emails with an intent on catching him in a contradiction. Bill Frist even threatened a perjury charge against Clarke and withdrew it hours later, just to get the words "Clarke" and "perjury" into newspaper headlines together. This is just thuggish behavior. It's an abuse of government power.
Again, I ask..."which truth"?
Generally, I was referring to these two charges: -That the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue. -That by invading Iraq, the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.
Well..I guess you have a different definition of contradiction than I do. "increase resources to go after Al-Qaeda" and "didn't take the threat seriously" sure sound different to me.
As vague cherry-picked sentence fragments, these "sound different" but that doesn't mean anything. It's a far cry from a "contradiction". The 2002 statement refers to a decision made in February 2001. The 2004 statement refers to the failure to implement that decision in the period between February 2001 and September 4, 2001. Do you get it now? Bush can plan a fivefold increase in counterterrorism resources- hell, he can plan a hundredfold increase- and until he implements the increase, it's all talk that does nothing to stop terrorism.
A government with the luxury of selectively declassifying the classified statements of its political opponents should be able to come up with something better than this.
I don't see any contradiction here. Is this the best they can come up with?
[August 2002]"So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda."
While it was decided in February that resources would be increased (by whom? Note passive voice), according to Clarke now, from an operations standpoint nothing was done until September. All that happened between February and September was Powerpointing and meetings to rearrange the war on terror as a formal process, during which time no action was taken on it. Meetings and Powerpoint presentations don't stop terrorists. But when doing spin for the White House, especially the loyalty-obsessed Bush White House, you might want to leave that part out. The omission doesn't make any of the rest of it inconsistent with what he is saying now.
[60 Minutes, March 2004] "Clarke was the president's chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn't until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn't take the threat seriously."
Yep. Clarke has dared them to release all his testimony. But they won't do it. The White House has the CIA reviewing his testimony, looking for politically useful sound bites to declassify and use against him politically. Makes me wonder if this happens in France. Does the French government use its intelligence agencies for petty domestic political purposes?
Which time? Before Congress or in his book. I'm afraid they are mutually exclusive.
Oh really? Why don't you produce some evidence to support this assertion, and I'll change my sig. What specifically did Clarke say in his book and testimony that was "mutually exclusive"?
("Evidence" does not mean links to people simply parroting the same assertion you did without giving specifics. I know you could provide hundreds of links like that.)
I don't believe you. If you had really been to France you would have mentioned the cigarettes. I didn't realize how much progress we've made against smoking until I saw people in France. I was there for a week in September, and twice I almost got hit with flaming butts tossed out of windows onto the sidewalk. And the damn cellphones- it's worse than here! Cigarettes and cellphones appear as props on every cafe table. Part of a well-balanced French breakfast, I guess.
There are fat people in France. You do have to look around for a bit to find one. The cigarettes and the cellphones might be keeping them from eating.
Billions of barrels of free, high-quality oil and thousands of dead Muslims as a bonus? How can you possibly call that a "waste?" I'd say it was worth every penny.
The oil infrastructure is a mess and is not producing oil to pay for the invasion as was promised. Saddam Hussein is commonly blamed for this state of affairs, but seriously, if you're going to make a major long-term investment in a country by invading it, you should at least kick the tires first to see if 20 years of sanctions and corruption have affected its ability to produce oil. No due diligence was done on Iraq before the invasion, and as an oil producer it has turned out to be a lemon.
Your "thousands of dead Muslims as a bonus" comment needs no response- it speaks volumes about you. Figures you would post AC, you pussy.
The only screw-up Bush made in Iraq was waiting so long to get started.
I wish he'd waited longer, since it's been costing us one billion dollars per week. Why not just do a targeted assassination, or a snatch, which would have been cheaper? Now we're saddled with rebuilding a country where they drag our dead bodies through the streets.
"plenty of evidence exists linking Libya's capitulation to overtures made by the previous administration."
Please provide some sources to support your claim.
Oh no, a homework assignment! I'll give you the very first hit in the first Google search I tried. It is a story from the Christian Science Monitor, dated September 13, 1999, discussing Libya's attempts to shed its pariah status and the diplomatic overtures that were then taking place between the U.S. and Libya. Looks good enough for you. If you want more, there are additional links in that Google search results page that I didn't look at.
I might ask you for some sources to support the claim that we have the Iraq War to thank for Libya's concessions.
The timeline you are drawing attention to constitutes necessary but not sufficient evidence to support your primary claim, i.e. that the credit for Libya should go to the president who started a nearby war for what amounts to no reason. However, the developments in Libya had been taking place over a timescale of years, and plenty of evidence exists linking Libya's capitulation to overtures made by the previous administration. The timing might make a nice anecdote, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Saddam also had ties with multiple terrorist organizations. While we can not prove, yet, that Saddam had ties with Al Qaeda, there is plenty of interesting evidence.
If there were "plenty of interesting evidence" then you'd be able to prove it. The fact that this oft-repeated falsehood remains unproven merely demonstrates that the "plenty of interesting evidence" alluded to is at best interesting garbage.
Oh yeah? As a loyal Bush voter I have complete faith that four years from now I'm going to be downloading gigabytes of porn in my oversized RV parked on the edge of Bonneville crater. And the deficit is going to be cut in half by then too- I can't wait! President Bush promised.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, that one spam post was all anyone could talk about for a week! And on hundreds of groups, people were posting followups to the original post, warning any foreigners that might be reading that the service being offered (they were selling an opportunity to enter the INS green card lottery, IIRC) was available from the U.S. Government for free. (Didn't help- they still made a fortune.) I remember the green card lottery post being mentioned prominently in the Cyberscope column in U.S. News (the print version). Everyone was just stunned that someone would do this.
The posters wrote a book on how to make a fortune on the "Information Superhighway" (this is what the Internet was called during 1994, before everyone learned its real name). It was full of lovely quotes:
These are the kind of lawyers who keep meth lab guard dogs in their apartments. Now we should resist lawyer-bashing. There are a lot of asshat lawyers around, and it's a real struggle sometimes to keep in mind that most of the rights we hold dear in this country would be empty, unenforceable, and meaningless if we were to give in to our desires to round them up and keep them in concentration camps. My own wife is a lawyer and never made more than $30k as a public defender (before she quit the profession entirely- she's a stripper now). But it's really striking how you can be a lawyer and be a total scumbag, too. It seems scumminess does not interfere at all with lawyering.
Anyway, this is getting away from my point, which is to reminisce about the end of the spam-free days, and to impress on you young kiddies that this was a really big deal when it happened. The second guy who did it didn't get one tenth as much attention. The first one you see is the one that makes you say, "well, there goes the Internet".
I want you to find out whether Iraq did this. P2P worm! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.
Despite what the company does, after interviewing with them, I felt like it would be a good solid company to work for. They had a great dot-com atmosphere, used open source technology, and paid well - my position was for Perl programmer. And they even allowed you to work from home.
If you exit Claria's building and turn left, then walk two blocks down Douglas Ave, you reach my company which has all three of these attributes. Except we're much smaller, but unlike Claria we sell a real product that people knowingly install, and they pay thousands for it. (We probably have to do way more tech support than they have to, though.) We're a private company and not even thinking of doing an IPO until a good time to do it comes again (ha, ha).
How do they interview people? We ask a few general algorithm questions to see how people think, and figure you can learn the specific language we use here after you start. (The language is the easy part- the codebase is the bigger learning curve.) We were interviewing recently but not any more- we found a couple of unemployed schmucks we like.
Unfortunately, we're in a crappier neighborhood than Claria. There's an auto auction place across the street and customers from pharmaceutical companies sometimes hear the auto auctions going on when they visit. It was really hard to find office space during the dot-com era, and we're still bound by the six-year lease we signed in 1999 for what is basically a converted print shop. I bike through the empty parking lots of several empty office buildings on the way to work, and they're so much nicer. (The people in those buildings were all laid off at the beginning of 2002, and the FOR RENT signs aren't going away.)
One thing they revealed to me was that they did actually track what you were searching in Google. This part I didn't like. If they can watch you on Google, they can capture data from any form you fill out - although they claimed Google was the only form they captured data from.
Good thing they didn't hire you, or you wouldn't have said anything about this! Maybe you'll get a 5, Informative out of it though.
You're right. Although of course the kid's killing himself hurt his mother even more.
True, although extremely irrelevant since the suicide happened first. You're completely disregarding the order of events, and the order in which things happened makes all the difference here. The cops came after the fact, and made an already grieving mama even more miserable by turning a tragedy into a public spectacle.
People have this wrong idea that suicide is just an easy way out, no strings attached.
Yeah, imagine that! Some people are mentally ill!
So what's the big deal? The Faces of Death commercial videos have featured stuff like that for years.
You mean that all these surveillance cameras in my apartment building are actually generating potential footage for whatever moviemaker might be interested in what goes on in my hallway? How about red-light cameras? Is someone using those to shoot movies too? We'd better stop scratching our noses at red lights.
If I pull out a gun at a press conference and shoot myself in the head, I should expect to appear in Faces of Death. But if I shoot myself in my apartment hallway, I would not be expecting to be downloadable afterwards. Someone here crossed a line.
For what its worth, I will be givng the new Gmail a shot. We'll see how good it is (I expect it to be great) before I start to decide how I feel about the privacy issue.
Agreed- I think it is going to be successful enough for Microsoft to copy it. And Google is not yet known for privacy abuses.
it's really simple.
If Intel implants a tracking number in the CPU's, buy AMD.
If A bios manufacturer hard-codes DRM into it's motherboards, don't buy those motherboards.
If (free) Gmail violates your privacy, don't use (free) Gmail.
what exactly is the problem?
The problem is when-
- All CPU manufacturers include tracking numbers
- All BIOS manufacturers hard-code DRM into their motherboards
- All (free and non-free) web-based mail services violate your privacy
This "vote with your feet" argument works for pizzas, but not markets where there are high barriers to entry. A web-based email system isn't a very good example (who can't code up one of those over a weekend?) but the other two are.This would be really convenient. A bonus would be if they still worked after being lit on fire!
In a perfect world they could park themselves underground in an automatic parking garage. Although this would require a hole in the ground large enough to fit a Humvee into, which might not be possible with today's technology. Maybe we can set one up once we have a working space elevator.
Kinda like how you can't hijack a plane with a boxknife?
I thought this was debunked by the 9/11 commission several months ago. The boxcutter meme spread like wildfire, and everyone "knew" before the day was out that this was done with boxcutters. But it turns out that only one plane had a boxcutter sighting (relayed via cellphone). They actually used Mace, knives, and bomb threats. I suppose it's possible that "knives" might have been a reference to boxcutters, but we have no further evidence to support it.
My wife and I sometimes have to leave a dog in a car. We leave the engine running with the AC on and park in the shade. And still we come back to a flyer on the windshield after only a couple minutes. (This is in Silicon Valley.)
My theory is that dogs in cars are uncommon enough that if you're running around with a stack of flyers, you're happy to find any unattended dog in a car, even if the AC is on, since you can get rid of a flyer.
Although I was in Death Valley a week ago (which was unseasonably warm for March) and passed two dogs locked in an SUV parked in the sun with the windows rolled all the way up. And there I was, with no flyer to put on it.
This sounds great for dog owners. Not only can you park and leave your dog in the shady underground, no animal rights people will be able to get to your windshield to leave a flier explaining what a bastard you are.
Well what do you know? It appears that a DVD restoration of THX-1138 is due out in June. Lucas has been promising additional special effects. Hopefully this does not mean airbrushed walkie talkies.
Unfortunately, this little gem is only available on VHS. Hey George Lucas! This is the best movie you ever made. Release it on DVD!
THX is about a bleak futuristic society that lives underground following some unmentioned apocalypse. (The movie doesn't elaborate on this, but the people that still live on the surface- "shell-dwellers"- are short little bearded mutants who grunt instead of talking, so I guess the movie takes place after a nuclear war.) Life underground is highly efficient and regulated, sex is illegal, daily ingestion of sedatives is required of everyone by law, and the police are polite but ruthless nuclear powered robots. LUH-3417 was hot (I forget the actress who played her). SEN-2541 was a great bastard too. And it's a delightful showcase of early seventies technology. My father was a mainframe programmer and loved this movie. He would point something out every few minutes (look look, it's FORTRAN!).
The end is awesome. After you watch this movie, you'll want to go outside more often.
The Dept. of Labor says the only sector losing jobs this month was "information services", which shed 1000 jobs. Factories lost and gained no jobs. March shows zero gains and losses for sectors hammered by job losses in the past three years.
OTOH, unemployment is up 0.1% from last month.
Yes, surprising numbers from the Dept. of Labor this morning, being attributed to an ended grocery store strike and construction hiring bouncing back on better weather. I hope it doesn't turn out to be spin, and that it lasts.
Why worry about the jobs situation? You don't need a job. A rise in GDP means the economy is "better". So we all win!
And GDP is delicious, and nutritious. I'm eating fried GDP with Jobless Recovery hot sauce, and this weekend it's GDP with Consumer Confidence Index noodles, followed by GDP pie. And it's Atkins friendly (no carbos)!
Just kidding. I'm not having my GDP and eating it too, although I hear from 1% of the population that it is very good.
The monetary increase was proposed for the budget, approved, and was to be instituted in the new budget year beginning Oct 2001.
Yes. And do you remember what happened, then, while we were waiting for that new budget year to start in Oct 2001?
But that's besides the point. This is not the 'government' declassifying and putting forth these statements, but rather Clarke himself.
Clarke is a private citizen, so he can't declassify anything. And the 'government' is selectively declassifying his testimony, documents, and emails with an intent on catching him in a contradiction. Bill Frist even threatened a perjury charge against Clarke and withdrew it hours later, just to get the words "Clarke" and "perjury" into newspaper headlines together. This is just thuggish behavior. It's an abuse of government power.
Again, I ask..."which truth"?
Generally, I was referring to these two charges:
-That the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue.
-That by invading Iraq, the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.
Thank you for the keen interest in my sig.
Well..I guess you have a different definition of contradiction than I do.
"increase resources to go after Al-Qaeda" and "didn't take the threat seriously" sure sound different to me.
As vague cherry-picked sentence fragments, these "sound different" but that doesn't mean anything. It's a far cry from a "contradiction". The 2002 statement refers to a decision made in February 2001. The 2004 statement refers to the failure to implement that decision in the period between February 2001 and September 4, 2001. Do you get it now? Bush can plan a fivefold increase in counterterrorism resources- hell, he can plan a hundredfold increase- and until he implements the increase, it's all talk that does nothing to stop terrorism.
A government with the luxury of selectively declassifying the classified statements of its political opponents should be able to come up with something better than this.
I don't see any contradiction here. Is this the best they can come up with?
[August 2002]"So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda."
While it was decided in February that resources would be increased (by whom? Note passive voice), according to Clarke now, from an operations standpoint nothing was done until September. All that happened between February and September was Powerpointing and meetings to rearrange the war on terror as a formal process, during which time no action was taken on it. Meetings and Powerpoint presentations don't stop terrorists. But when doing spin for the White House, especially the loyalty-obsessed Bush White House, you might want to leave that part out. The omission doesn't make any of the rest of it inconsistent with what he is saying now.
[60 Minutes, March 2004] "Clarke was the president's chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn't until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn't take the threat seriously."
Yep.
Clarke has dared them to release all his testimony. But they won't do it. The White House has the CIA reviewing his testimony, looking for politically useful sound bites to declassify and use against him politically. Makes me wonder if this happens in France. Does the French government use its intelligence agencies for petty domestic political purposes?
Which time? Before Congress or in his book. I'm afraid they are mutually exclusive.
Oh really? Why don't you produce some evidence to support this assertion, and I'll change my sig. What specifically did Clarke say in his book and testimony that was "mutually exclusive"?
("Evidence" does not mean links to people simply parroting the same assertion you did without giving specifics. I know you could provide hundreds of links like that.)
I don't believe you. If you had really been to France you would have mentioned the cigarettes. I didn't realize how much progress we've made against smoking until I saw people in France. I was there for a week in September, and twice I almost got hit with flaming butts tossed out of windows onto the sidewalk. And the damn cellphones- it's worse than here! Cigarettes and cellphones appear as props on every cafe table. Part of a well-balanced French breakfast, I guess.
There are fat people in France. You do have to look around for a bit to find one. The cigarettes and the cellphones might be keeping them from eating.
Billions of barrels of free, high-quality oil and thousands of dead Muslims as a bonus? How can you possibly call that a "waste?" I'd say it was worth every penny.
The oil infrastructure is a mess and is not producing oil to pay for the invasion as was promised. Saddam Hussein is commonly blamed for this state of affairs, but seriously, if you're going to make a major long-term investment in a country by invading it, you should at least kick the tires first to see if 20 years of sanctions and corruption have affected its ability to produce oil. No due diligence was done on Iraq before the invasion, and as an oil producer it has turned out to be a lemon.
Your "thousands of dead Muslims as a bonus" comment needs no response- it speaks volumes about you. Figures you would post AC, you pussy.
The only screw-up Bush made in Iraq was waiting so long to get started.
I wish he'd waited longer, since it's been costing us one billion dollars per week. Why not just do a targeted assassination, or a snatch, which would have been cheaper? Now we're saddled with rebuilding a country where they drag our dead bodies through the streets.
"plenty of evidence exists linking Libya's capitulation to overtures made by the previous administration."
Please provide some sources to support your claim.
Oh no, a homework assignment! I'll give you the very first hit in the first Google search I tried. It is a story from the Christian Science Monitor, dated September 13, 1999, discussing Libya's attempts to shed its pariah status and the diplomatic overtures that were then taking place between the U.S. and Libya. Looks good enough for you. If you want more, there are additional links in that Google search results page that I didn't look at.
I might ask you for some sources to support the claim that we have the Iraq War to thank for Libya's concessions.
The timeline you are drawing attention to constitutes necessary but not sufficient evidence to support your primary claim, i.e. that the credit for Libya should go to the president who started a nearby war for what amounts to no reason. However, the developments in Libya had been taking place over a timescale of years, and plenty of evidence exists linking Libya's capitulation to overtures made by the previous administration. The timing might make a nice anecdote, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Saddam also had ties with multiple terrorist organizations. While we can not prove, yet, that Saddam had ties with Al Qaeda, there is plenty of interesting evidence.
If there were "plenty of interesting evidence" then you'd be able to prove it. The fact that this oft-repeated falsehood remains unproven merely demonstrates that the "plenty of interesting evidence" alluded to is at best interesting garbage.
Oh yeah? As a loyal Bush voter I have complete faith that four years from now I'm going to be downloading gigabytes of porn in my oversized RV parked on the edge of Bonneville crater. And the deficit is going to be cut in half by then too- I can't wait! President Bush promised.
He has a LOT of credibility!