I'm going with the military tradition that you show respect to the rank or office not the man temporarily holding it. Also go back an re-read my post, I'm referring to respect as in respectful and courteous treatment not respect for one's ideas or actions.
He allowed his "signature legislation" to be gutted...
How did he allow **his** signature legislation to be gutted? **He** never offered any legislation. He mentioned some broad guidelines during the campaign and immediately upon election turned it over to the Democratic Party leadership who immediately grabbed Democratic party supporters and lobbyists and went into the back rooms to draft the legislation in private. He immediately abandoned his leadership on the issue.
As President he deserves respect, nothing more. Everything else he has to earn. We should politely disagree and politely avoid our agenda being blown off in a meeting, but we do not have to move off of our agenda at a meeting because he wishes it so.
If the tech industry's #1 concern is NSA overreach then they are correct to stay on that topic until satisfied with the President's response. The tech industry is not obligated to fix his healthcare IT and personal PR problems.
He did not hijack your meeting. It was always his. Get over yourself.
"If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time?" -- Jeff Spicoli
If anyone needs to get over himself it is the President. He is not a dictator. If he wants the support of the people he needs to listen to the people. If he wants the support of industry he needs to listen to industry. The people and industry are not here to do his bidding. He works for us.
Actually, all non-exchange compliant health plans are doomed under the ACA. The "you can keep your plan" statement was known to be a lie by anyone who understood economics. All health insurance plans are designed to have younger healthier members to offset the older sicker members. Once the ACA goes into effect no one will be allowed to join these existing non-exchange compliant plans. Without new members a health plan is doomed. Its population just gets older and sicker and premiums will no longer cover costs. Whether it was 1 year or 5 years or 10 years anyone who looked into this would understand old insurance plans were to be canceled. Why would anyone be surprised that the insurance companies are canceling these doomed plans earlier rather than later to maximize profit?
Getting on the renewal list could be made difficult, something that both major parties would have to agree upon. That would help limit the list to the non-controversial. And if congress gets bogged down renewing all the controversial stuff, good, they are obviously not doing their job and passing a lot of crap legislation. Tying them up with old crap to prevent new crap has some merit.
That said, I agree not everything would need to be renewable.
Perhaps non-renewable laws could require a super majority, say 75%. Simple majority passed legislation, 50%+, would be renewable.
You keep arguing with me but you also point out that everyone claiming Iraq had WMDs was lying. So, if everyone making the claim of something's existence is lying the intelligent person comes to only one conclusion which is that they didn't exist. Only someone using tortured logic or had some agenda could come to any other conclusion.
Your logic is terribly flawed. Condition X may have three states: true, false or unknown. If a person lies about X being true you still do not know whether the actual state is false or unknown.
If you re-read my posts you will find that I said that both sides lied, those claiming true lied, those claiming false lied, the true factual state was unknown.
The US gov't lied about WMD. If WMD had been found, it the US gov't was accidentally correct, would that have made their original statements any less of a lie? Well that is why happened with the "no WMD" side, they were accidentally correct.
Now add to this the fact that many against the war were at the time saying there is "no evidence of WMD" (the unknown state), not that there was "no WMD" (the false state). To claim there was a large body of people claiming the false state prior to invasion is a lie. In truth there was a large body claiming the unknown state and saying the inspectors should have more time.
And yet...nobody is in jail, being fined, or even refunding all that money they were paid to develop it.
Its not really contractor's fault. I'm sure they did some pretty screwy things but the epic fail really comes down to time and specification. The contractors were only given months to implemented it, despite the administration knowing they needed it over 3 years ago, and the administration was making last minute changes, can't show plan prices from the insurance company have to connect to a bunch of different gov't agencies in order to calculate a subsidy.
Wait, so you mean this is the second guy to "step in and fix it" since October? That would seem to indicate this is truly an enormous disaster.
Its not just fixing the front end user interface. There is the 40% of the project that is back end and has not even been implemented at all according to recent testimony to congress.
Saddam had both air forces and artillery. They merely were restricted in their operations as part of the post Gulf War 1 cease fire, which also brought in the UN weapons inspectors. With a clean bill of health from these inspectors the UN and US would have left and Saddam would be free to rebuild his WMD capabilities.
Thanks to another contributor to a related thread:
"The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman." http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/
The selective evidence, exaggerations and such were certainly part of the SELLING of the war to the public.
However the underlying decision to go to war was the fact that no one really knew if Saddam had WMD or not. Given his past use of WMD and being in a post 9/11 environment the government decided to act as if he did. They had to either determine if he did (ala UN inspectors) or assume he did not or assume he did. Inspections were failing and it was unsafe to assume he did not. Furthermore, Saddam, by his own admission, still had the capability to build more once the inspectors leave.
Don't confuse the selling of the war with the decision to go to war.
How does the fact that the US government lied tell us whether Saddam had or did not have WMD?
Simple: various intelligence agencies warned that Chalabi was lying and the Bush Administration propagated the lie. That's how we know that the lies meant Saddam didn't have WMDs. Or did you not hear the memo that he fabricated his supposed evidence?
You need to seriously reexamine your logic. The fact that the US lied or was lied to does *not* indicate that Saddam was WMD free. There were people lying and guessing on both the pro and anti WMD sides, none of this lying or guesswork is evidence of anything. Only boots on the ground by outsiders could prove things one way or the other. Ideally that would have been UN weapons inspectors receiving full cooperation from the Iraqi government. Regrettably Saddam didn't like that plan.
Our governments certainly lied but they did not know what Saddam had. Not until there were US/UK boots on the ground did we really know one way or the other.
Sorry, but no. Many other foreign countries had a look at the evidence and they voted "no WMD". Only US lapdogs went along (coalition of the willing), everyone else took a pass. So people were able to tell "one way or another".
You are confusing "no evidence he has any" with "evidence he has disarmed". The two are not the same. In the first case, the case these countries support, there is still a question. The truth is that not even senior people in Iraq knew Saddam had no WMD. Here it is from Saddam himself:
Once those pesky real journalists that insist on facts and sources start digging into this...
Been watching movies again? Dedicated and knowledgable journalists who are paid to dig into things in great detail, yeah right.
Why not just go to the source? Have a large number of geeks look at BIOS software from system that originated in China during the time period in question. Don't they have these old systems in their closets running Linux?
Our governments certainly lied but they did not know what Saddam had. Not until there were US/UK boots on the ground did we really know one way or the other.
Saddam in fact worked hard to maintain the IMPRESSION that he still had WMD. He feared Iran would attack if they knew how truly weak he was. So he fed the rumors that he had WMD stashed away, that he had secret programs under way and hampered UN inspector to give credibility to the rumors.
Saddam eventually admitted these things. He explained it all to his FBI interrogator who built confidence and trust with Saddam and used old fashioned psychology to persuade him to cooperate. There is a great documentary on Saddam's interrogation.
Lies! Iraq had WMDs! Didn't you see the 3D renderings of the mobile port-potties that Saddam had?!?
How does the fact that the US government lied tell us whether Saddam had or did not have WMD? It doesn't. It merely shows that the US gov't did not know but wanted to sell the war to the public. The truth is Saddam worked to maintain the IMPRESSION that he had WMD, he was scared of Iran and thought the fear of WMD could keep them at bay. He was afraid to admit he no longer had any. He explained it all to his FBI interrogator. It was a proper humane interrogation where the interrogator builds confidence and trust and uses psychology to persuade. A documentary was made. Its often cited as an example that "enhanced" interrogations are not needed.
The truth is that no one KNEW on way or the other whether Saddam had WMD or not. He had them at one point, he used them on his own people, he agreed to get rid of them in the first Gulf War cease fire and then he kept the world GUESSING. He hampered the UN inspectors. He worked to maintain the IMPRESSION that he still had WMD.
Yes. Saddam worked to maintain the IMPRESSION that he still had WMD. His WMD may have been lost in the desert (hastily buried as US/UN forces approached during the war and the precise location lost), degraded over time without maintenance, or in fact been destroyed. He fostered rumors about programs and capabilities that did not exist.
How do we know this? Saddam told us after his capture. He explained it to his FBI interrogator. A documentary was made about this interrogation. It was the "good" type of interrogation, again note FBI not CIA. Using psychology, not "enhanced techniques", to slowly gain the confidence of the prisoner and convince him to cooperate.
The truth is both sides were guessing, both the "he has WMD" and the "he does not have WMD" camps. No one outside of high ranking Iraqi authorities knew the truth. The UN inspectors failed to make a determination. Only US troops on the ground eventually made the determination on Iraqi WMD.
Don't confuse the SELLING of the war to the public with the actual facts of the war. The fact that the US government lied about evidence does not tell us anything about what Saddam actually had or did not have.
No offense, but we were the poster child for Cold War proxy war site. We were playing both sides, and both sides were actively playing on our territory.
Who were the Finnish proxies that were fighting or willing to fight? It seems to be more of a NATO v WP fight on Finnish soil. That is something very different.
As noted initially the article in question is written for a US essay competition. As a result, it dodges the nastier parts about NATO quite nicely.
That is a gratuitous assumption. I grew up in the cold war. The evil uncaring nature of the "other" side was always grossly exaggerated. I expect that NATO was exaggerated by politicians to help promote the neutral stance of the country. Note that the Finish military, those in the best position to evaluate NATO, seemed to be some of the more pro-NATO folks in the country.
Realities of the Cold War on the other hand were pretty clear. NATO and Warsaw Pact avoided direct conflict with one another at all costs, to the point of claiming that their people dying in proxy wars...
The situation in Finland seems about as far from a proxy war as there can be. No internal conflict with pro-NATO and pro-Warsaw pact factions willing to battle it out. **Everything** written about the spying and planning is in the context of a WW3 style mass invasions of the west by the east or nuclear exchange between the west and east. This proxy war notion just does not make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
To further clarify I am referring to how to act when interacting or communicating with the President.
I'm going with the military tradition that you show respect to the rank or office not the man temporarily holding it. Also go back an re-read my post, I'm referring to respect as in respectful and courteous treatment not respect for one's ideas or actions.
He allowed his "signature legislation" to be gutted ...
How did he allow **his** signature legislation to be gutted? **He** never offered any legislation. He mentioned some broad guidelines during the campaign and immediately upon election turned it over to the Democratic Party leadership who immediately grabbed Democratic party supporters and lobbyists and went into the back rooms to draft the legislation in private. He immediately abandoned his leadership on the issue.
As President he deserves respect, nothing more. Everything else he has to earn. We should politely disagree and politely avoid our agenda being blown off in a meeting, but we do not have to move off of our agenda at a meeting because he wishes it so.
If the tech industry's #1 concern is NSA overreach then they are correct to stay on that topic until satisfied with the President's response. The tech industry is not obligated to fix his healthcare IT and personal PR problems.
He did not hijack your meeting. It was always his. Get over yourself.
"If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time?" -- Jeff Spicoli
If anyone needs to get over himself it is the President. He is not a dictator. If he wants the support of the people he needs to listen to the people. If he wants the support of industry he needs to listen to industry. The people and industry are not here to do his bidding. He works for us.
Actually, all non-exchange compliant health plans are doomed under the ACA. The "you can keep your plan" statement was known to be a lie by anyone who understood economics. All health insurance plans are designed to have younger healthier members to offset the older sicker members. Once the ACA goes into effect no one will be allowed to join these existing non-exchange compliant plans. Without new members a health plan is doomed. Its population just gets older and sicker and premiums will no longer cover costs. Whether it was 1 year or 5 years or 10 years anyone who looked into this would understand old insurance plans were to be canceled. Why would anyone be surprised that the insurance companies are canceling these doomed plans earlier rather than later to maximize profit?
Getting on the renewal list could be made difficult, something that both major parties would have to agree upon. That would help limit the list to the non-controversial. And if congress gets bogged down renewing all the controversial stuff, good, they are obviously not doing their job and passing a lot of crap legislation. Tying them up with old crap to prevent new crap has some merit.
That said, I agree not everything would need to be renewable.
Perhaps non-renewable laws could require a super majority, say 75%. Simple majority passed legislation, 50%+, would be renewable.
You keep arguing with me but you also point out that everyone claiming Iraq had WMDs was lying. So, if everyone making the claim of something's existence is lying the intelligent person comes to only one conclusion which is that they didn't exist. Only someone using tortured logic or had some agenda could come to any other conclusion.
Your logic is terribly flawed. Condition X may have three states: true, false or unknown. If a person lies about X being true you still do not know whether the actual state is false or unknown.
If you re-read my posts you will find that I said that both sides lied, those claiming true lied, those claiming false lied, the true factual state was unknown.
The US gov't lied about WMD. If WMD had been found, it the US gov't was accidentally correct, would that have made their original statements any less of a lie? Well that is why happened with the "no WMD" side, they were accidentally correct.
Now add to this the fact that many against the war were at the time saying there is "no evidence of WMD" (the unknown state), not that there was "no WMD" (the false state). To claim there was a large body of people claiming the false state prior to invasion is a lie. In truth there was a large body claiming the unknown state and saying the inspectors should have more time.
... cumulatively over time you're spending a bigger and bigger portion of your time renewing previous laws to make them still active ...
No. Uncontroversial laws that seem to be working can be put into a single renewal bill to be voted upon.
And yet...nobody is in jail, being fined, or even refunding all that money they were paid to develop it.
Its not really contractor's fault. I'm sure they did some pretty screwy things but the epic fail really comes down to time and specification. The contractors were only given months to implemented it, despite the administration knowing they needed it over 3 years ago, and the administration was making last minute changes, can't show plan prices from the insurance company have to connect to a bunch of different gov't agencies in order to calculate a subsidy.
Wait, so you mean this is the second guy to "step in and fix it" since October? That would seem to indicate this is truly an enormous disaster.
Its not just fixing the front end user interface. There is the 40% of the project that is back end and has not even been implemented at all according to recent testimony to congress.
Saddam had both air forces and artillery. They merely were restricted in their operations as part of the post Gulf War 1 cease fire, which also brought in the UN weapons inspectors. With a clean bill of health from these inspectors the UN and US would have left and Saddam would be free to rebuild his WMD capabilities.
From Saddam's FBI interrogation:
"After several months, Saddam started to talk. There were no longer weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said, although the capability to build them remained. But Saddam said he kept up the ruse that those weapons still existed to preserve his power and protect Iraq against Iran, which Saddam viewed as his country’s biggest threat. Not even senior leaders within his government knew that there weren’t any weapons, Piro said." http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/fbi-agent-saddam-interrogation-was-unique-historic-opportunity/article_6306f1c9-b9c0-5fc7-b4ff-398cf04ad103.html
Thanks to another contributor to a related thread:
"The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/
The selective evidence, exaggerations and such were certainly part of the SELLING of the war to the public.
However the underlying decision to go to war was the fact that no one really knew if Saddam had WMD or not. Given his past use of WMD and being in a post 9/11 environment the government decided to act as if he did. They had to either determine if he did (ala UN inspectors) or assume he did not or assume he did. Inspections were failing and it was unsafe to assume he did not. Furthermore, Saddam, by his own admission, still had the capability to build more once the inspectors leave.
Don't confuse the selling of the war with the decision to go to war.
How does the fact that the US government lied tell us whether Saddam had or did not have WMD?
Simple: various intelligence agencies warned that Chalabi was lying and the Bush Administration propagated the lie. That's how we know that the lies meant Saddam didn't have WMDs. Or did you not hear the memo that he fabricated his supposed evidence?
You need to seriously reexamine your logic. The fact that the US lied or was lied to does *not* indicate that Saddam was WMD free. There were people lying and guessing on both the pro and anti WMD sides, none of this lying or guesswork is evidence of anything. Only boots on the ground by outsiders could prove things one way or the other. Ideally that would have been UN weapons inspectors receiving full cooperation from the Iraqi government. Regrettably Saddam didn't like that plan.
"After several months, Saddam started to talk. There were no longer weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said, although the capability to build them remained. But Saddam said he kept up the ruse that those weapons still existed to preserve his power and protect Iraq against Iran, which Saddam viewed as his country’s biggest threat. Not even senior leaders within his government knew that there weren’t any weapons, Piro said."
http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/fbi-agent-saddam-interrogation-was-unique-historic-opportunity/article_6306f1c9-b9c0-5fc7-b4ff-398cf04ad103.html
Here is another link for you collection. http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/fbi-agent-saddam-interrogation-was-unique-historic-opportunity/article_6306f1c9-b9c0-5fc7-b4ff-398cf04ad103.html
Our governments certainly lied but they did not know what Saddam had. Not until there were US/UK boots on the ground did we really know one way or the other.
Sorry, but no. Many other foreign countries had a look at the evidence and they voted "no WMD". Only US lapdogs went along (coalition of the willing), everyone else took a pass. So people were able to tell "one way or another".
You are confusing "no evidence he has any" with "evidence he has disarmed". The two are not the same. In the first case, the case these countries support, there is still a question. The truth is that not even senior people in Iraq knew Saddam had no WMD. Here it is from Saddam himself:
"After several months, Saddam started to talk. There were no longer weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said, although the capability to build them remained. But Saddam said he kept up the ruse that those weapons still existed to preserve his power and protect Iraq against Iran, which Saddam viewed as his country’s biggest threat. Not even senior leaders within his government knew that there weren’t any weapons, Piro said."
http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/fbi-agent-saddam-interrogation-was-unique-historic-opportunity/article_6306f1c9-b9c0-5fc7-b4ff-398cf04ad103.html
It's not a subject I know much about. Can you point me in the direction off the documentary? Thanks in advance.
Saw it on TV, did some googling ...
"After several months, Saddam started to talk. There were no longer weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said, although the capability to build them remained. But Saddam said he kept up the ruse that those weapons still existed to preserve his power and protect Iraq against Iran, which Saddam viewed as his country’s biggest threat. Not even senior leaders within his government knew that there weren’t any weapons, Piro said."
http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/fbi-agent-saddam-interrogation-was-unique-historic-opportunity/article_6306f1c9-b9c0-5fc7-b4ff-398cf04ad103.html
Have been known for years. The problem is you have to gain admin access to the machine first, so basically you are bricking your own botnet.
Why is that a problem? If the machines are far more valuable to your enemy than to you then yeah, brick 'em at an a very useful moment in time.
Once those pesky real journalists that insist on facts and sources start digging into this ...
Been watching movies again? Dedicated and knowledgable journalists who are paid to dig into things in great detail, yeah right.
Why not just go to the source? Have a large number of geeks look at BIOS software from system that originated in China during the time period in question. Don't they have these old systems in their closets running Linux?
Our governments certainly lied but they did not know what Saddam had. Not until there were US/UK boots on the ground did we really know one way or the other.
Saddam in fact worked hard to maintain the IMPRESSION that he still had WMD. He feared Iran would attack if they knew how truly weak he was. So he fed the rumors that he had WMD stashed away, that he had secret programs under way and hampered UN inspector to give credibility to the rumors.
Saddam eventually admitted these things. He explained it all to his FBI interrogator who built confidence and trust with Saddam and used old fashioned psychology to persuade him to cooperate. There is a great documentary on Saddam's interrogation.
Lies! Iraq had WMDs! Didn't you see the 3D renderings of the mobile port-potties that Saddam had?!?
How does the fact that the US government lied tell us whether Saddam had or did not have WMD? It doesn't. It merely shows that the US gov't did not know but wanted to sell the war to the public. The truth is Saddam worked to maintain the IMPRESSION that he had WMD, he was scared of Iran and thought the fear of WMD could keep them at bay. He was afraid to admit he no longer had any. He explained it all to his FBI interrogator. It was a proper humane interrogation where the interrogator builds confidence and trust and uses psychology to persuade. A documentary was made. Its often cited as an example that "enhanced" interrogations are not needed.
And Iraq had WMDs.
The truth is that no one KNEW on way or the other whether Saddam had WMD or not. He had them at one point, he used them on his own people, he agreed to get rid of them in the first Gulf War cease fire and then he kept the world GUESSING. He hampered the UN inspectors. He worked to maintain the IMPRESSION that he still had WMD.
Yes. Saddam worked to maintain the IMPRESSION that he still had WMD. His WMD may have been lost in the desert (hastily buried as US/UN forces approached during the war and the precise location lost), degraded over time without maintenance, or in fact been destroyed. He fostered rumors about programs and capabilities that did not exist.
How do we know this? Saddam told us after his capture. He explained it to his FBI interrogator. A documentary was made about this interrogation. It was the "good" type of interrogation, again note FBI not CIA. Using psychology, not "enhanced techniques", to slowly gain the confidence of the prisoner and convince him to cooperate.
The truth is both sides were guessing, both the "he has WMD" and the "he does not have WMD" camps. No one outside of high ranking Iraqi authorities knew the truth. The UN inspectors failed to make a determination. Only US troops on the ground eventually made the determination on Iraqi WMD.
Don't confuse the SELLING of the war to the public with the actual facts of the war. The fact that the US government lied about evidence does not tell us anything about what Saddam actually had or did not have.
Were the tensions still bad enough in the 50s or 60s that the civil war might renew?
No offense, but we were the poster child for Cold War proxy war site. We were playing both sides, and both sides were actively playing on our territory.
Who were the Finnish proxies that were fighting or willing to fight? It seems to be more of a NATO v WP fight on Finnish soil. That is something very different.
As noted initially the article in question is written for a US essay competition. As a result, it dodges the nastier parts about NATO quite nicely.
That is a gratuitous assumption. I grew up in the cold war. The evil uncaring nature of the "other" side was always grossly exaggerated. I expect that NATO was exaggerated by politicians to help promote the neutral stance of the country. Note that the Finish military, those in the best position to evaluate NATO, seemed to be some of the more pro-NATO folks in the country.
Realities of the Cold War on the other hand were pretty clear. NATO and Warsaw Pact avoided direct conflict with one another at all costs, to the point of claiming that their people dying in proxy wars ...
The situation in Finland seems about as far from a proxy war as there can be. No internal conflict with pro-NATO and pro-Warsaw pact factions willing to battle it out. **Everything** written about the spying and planning is in the context of a WW3 style mass invasions of the west by the east or nuclear exchange between the west and east. This proxy war notion just does not make sense.