I've heard that argument before but I don't put much stock in in, largely because as far as the feild of international relations goes, I'm a realist.
Lets make some quick assumptions.
1 - Saddam had WMD 2 - Everyone and their brother knew he had WMD
If these two things are true, you have to ask yourself, why invade Iraq? The entire POINT of WMD is to deter such an invasion. They are there as a threat, if Iraq has those weapons invasion is out of the question, the chemical and (god forbid) biological retaliation would be unthinkable.
In this scenario we march into Iraq with the country either in possession of or in recent possession of WMD. Saddam's choice to disarm is his own, perhaps he hopes that we won't invade if he does. If he doesn't, he has the WMD to deter an invasion (the US will accecpt casualties, but not civilian attacks with WMD as part of the war). So two possible outcomes.
1 - Iraq threatens US with WMD retaliation if an attack takes place. 2 - Iraq shipps the weapons out of the country, hoping we won't invade.
But we did attack Iraq, we have to ask why it happened. Either one of two realities is the case.
1 - The inspections and the international pressure was a ruse. Invasion was planned all the time, but by indicating that we wouldn't invade if he disarmed we forced Saddam's hand into disarming. Then we went back on our word, because no he had no WMD to deter and invasion.
2 - We knew full well that Iraq had no WMD. The US wanted to invade for other reasons and the WMD argument was a convenient smoke screen. Iraq had no way of proving it had gotten rid of weapons it didn't have. QED we can go in on legitimate grounds.
A few things are for certain. First, that Iraq didn't have any WMD on hand when the invasion began. If they did, the only rational action upon news of US troops marching on Baghdad would have been to launch those weapons at the troops and begin deploying them covertly against US cities. WMD are a deterant, and when the integrity of the state is threatened, a rational actor must use his deterent.
Second, that if Iraq did have WMD in the country before the attack, they must have removed them (otherwise we'd have them now). If that's the case, then we invaded on false pretexts, as Bush stated time and time again that Iraq must disarm or face the consequences. If it disarms and still faces the consequences something isn't right.
Third, that in order to assume that Iraq had these weapons, moved them out of the country before the invasion, and that they continue to elude the US implies that the US intelegence buisness, the best in the world (save the Mossad of course) was duped by a shell trick by a 3rd rate dictator. In short, you're assuming that the US has undergone yet another catestrophic intelegence failure.
If a convoy of large trucks crossed the boarder we'd know where they went. Satellites are powerfull critters and Iraq is one of those places, I imagine, with a fair number of birds over it.
Bottom line, one of two things happened.
1 - We invaded knowing full well that Iraq had never possessed WMD 2 - We invaded knowing full well that Iraq had disarmed just like we asked them to.
This is obviously getting off the path of enlightened discussion of Wikipedia, but since we're on the topic let me respond. I'll put this as simply as possible so there can be no possible misunderstanding.
The following are my personal positions and (mostly) the positions of the left and the democratic party as a whole.
1 - Saddam Hussein is a bad man. 2 - The world is likely a better place now that Saddam is out of power. 3 - Iraq did not, at the time of invasion, present any form of clear and present danger to the United States. 4 - Iraq did not, at time of invasion, possess weapons of mass destruction 5 - The United States invaded Iraq under the pretext that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that these weapons constituted a clear and present danger to the United States. 6 - Since these weapons did not exist and the threat was therefore not present, the invasion was under false pretexts. 7 - Taking your country to war on false pretexts is a bad thing 8 - George W. Bush took the country to war on false pretexts.
Now.... make sure you read and understand all of the above points. I'm a liberal, I support our troops. I know we can't just leave Iraq right now. I think the world is a better place now that Saddam is behind bars. I'm glad (after the fact) that we removed him from power. I'd have been a lot happier about it if the President hadn't deceived the public to get there.
Not true. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the content of your speech does have serious implications as to weather or not it's protected by the first amendment.
The Court has held that speech can be curtailed if the government can demonstrate a "Compelling State Interest" in the censorship of this speech.
Perhaps an example will assist. I can hold up a sign in Central Park that reads "I hate SCO" The state will have a very hard time demonstrating that Compelling Interest. My sign doesn't endanger anyone.
If I stand in the same park with a sign that reads "I have 45 kilos of plastique strapped to my chest. God is Great!" the state will have an easy time proving Compelling Interest. My speech will cause a panic and people could very well be hurt in the panic.
Now, there is a caveat. The Supreme Court holds the state to an unusually high level of restraint when it comes to political speech. In cases like this, the state is required to demonstrate that your speech constitutes a clear and present danger to the welfare of the state. We're talking state secrets here.
Now, if the rules in NYC are even slightly ambiguous when it comes to sidewalk chalk this guy is going to get off scott free. The Courts require very specific and well justified rational for the silencing of political speech. If the state can't provide that rational and justification it will loose the case.
The problem, as you so eloquently point out when you say "The problem is that in so many cases they appear to be reading from a top forty FAQ sheet and cannot solve any problem that the average user can't solve themselves," is that fully half of the users are dumber than that.
That means that fully half of the questions are answered by reading off that sheet. Now, if 1/2 of your job can be done for you by reading the appropriate line off of a piece of paper, aren't you going to read that line? More to the point, if you're paying someone to do a job that, about 1/2 the time can be done by reading a known solution off of a piece of paper, aren't you going to insist that they read that line first?
Sure, there are people out there with legitimate problems. They need legitimate solutions. If there was a way to filter the idiots out of the call queue so tech support could help the ones that actually need help (as opposed to the ones that need help reading) I'm sure they'd do it. As is, we're all at the mercy of the horde of vindictive idiots who insist that nothing can possibly be wrong with [insert product here] because it was working yesterday. Of course it was working yesterday; if it hadn't been working yesterday they'd have called in YESTERDAY. What changed? It broke! What's so hard to understand about this?
Tech support suffers because of marketing and feature envy. People want the newest, fastest, latest whiz-bang contraption out there. Even my mother, who hasn't the faintest clue how to perform even the most basic functions with a PC is talking about how great a tablet PC would be. We introduce more and more complex devices to people who have fundamentally no idea what they're doing with them and then are surprised when they can't make them work!
You don't buy a $4,000 amp for your first stereo. You don't buy a Ferrari Testerosa for your kid to learn to drive on. You don't teach a newly hired cook to make baked Alaska before he can make a grilled cheese sandwich. Why do we believe this doesn't hold up for computers?
Damn it, why is it I only have mod points when we're discussing Star Wars and Babylon 5?
These points are well taken and should be observed by all/. readers. There is a xenophobic tendency in this country that is spiraling dangerously out of control. We are drawing lines between American Citizens and Foreigners (I capitalize this as it is rapidly becoming synonymous with "Gaijen" or "Barbarian"). Lest we forget, the overwhelming majority of American Citizens are decedents of immigrants.
As is penned in the Declaration of Independence "All Men are Created Equal." Moreover, as you point out, the Constitution grants only a very few and very specific rights to US citizens. I think voting is just about it. Freedom of speech, assembly, equal protection, all of these are guaranteed to any human being within the borders of the United States.
Yes, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of the President to suspend some of these rights in time of war. Unfortunately for Herr Bush, we are not at war. "What's this" you say? Not at war? What about the War on Terror? The Court has (thus far) only upheld these suspensions when the country is in a state of declared war. Bush has attempted to circumvent the Court's wrath by denying his victims the right to see a lawyer or even appear in court. Fills you with warm fuzzies doesn't it?
Enemy combatant or not, if you're being held by the United States you have the right to an attorney and your day in court. When Congress declares war and we are legally in such a state, then and only then might the rules change. Until then "we're living in a dictatorship, a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes........ help help I'm being repressed!"
As an adendum, we're looking for civilizations that have the will to communicate.
We're not trying to communicate right now. If ET is out there listening to Earth like we're listening to space he won't hear us.
Factions of SETI have talked about building the VLA (Very Large Array) which would be a 1km square array of C-Band sized dishes spaced almost side to side. With this they could pick up transmissions from distant worlds about the strength of a TV broadcast.
As is, unless we've got a radio telescope pointed at us with enough juice going through it to vaporize an airliner we're not going to hear them calling.
Everyone looses jobs. The world economy moves on. People adapt. Admittedly, we pay a price for the national prosperity that this forward motion brings, but that price is well worth the standard of living we enjoy because of it.
Think about it this way. 100 years ago most Americans farmed for a living. 50 years ago most Americans worked manufacturing jobs. 25 a tiny percentage of Americans worked in the IT industry....
As we move up the scale those who worked the jobs that we replace find new employment. At least, that's how the system is supposed to work and how it's worked for the last century. Manufacture replaces agriculture. Sales replace manufacture. Information replaces sales. So on up the scale.
Today though, we're moving up the scale without retraining those who are loosing their jobs. This is a dangerous departure. US companies are shipping jobs overseas and we have no idea what we are going to replace those jobs with. People are loosing jobs with no hope of a future. Don't blame the system, it's worked for longer than any of us have been alive. It's a good system.
The problem is that we're looking short term, not long term. Those at the top of the food chain are more concerned about the next quarters profits than the long term stability and character of their buisness. As a consequence the American economy is in a tail spin.
It's happening to IT workers too. What we need though, is something else for these people to do. For the past century that something else has been there, today it's not. What can we do about that?
The economy benefits more from someone who gets paied to process wheat into flower than it does from someone who's paied to harvest wheat.
Extrapolate that to librarians and robots. Which has a greater net benefit to the economy, people shelving books or people designing robotic systems to shelve books?
The shelving committee will find something else to do with its time. When all is said and done though, the economy will be stronger because of changes like this.
I'm not disagreeing with you on really any of those points. I do maintain that, while Moore's film is factualy accurate, it is important to recognise that it does have a poltical point of view. To present is as otherwise is dishonest.
It irks me when people say it can't be a documentary because of that point of view. Documentaries that have an agenda are valid, but if you don't recognise that agenda, you're not going to walk away better informed.
Bush has unquestionable ties to the Saudi government and the bin Laden family. This is bad.
The bin Laden's were flown out of the country. When doesn't matter so much as that the FBI didn't get to interview them. This is also bad.
There were fewer troops on the ground in Afghanistan, the only place occupied by US troops that is KNOWN to have trained al Queda memebers, than there are cops on the island of Manhattan. This is really bad.
There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor have there been since after the first Gulf War. In the President's letter to Congress asking for the Congress' endorcement of the "war" WMD was the rational used (check the congressional record yourself if you don't belive this). That's extrordinarily bad.
We've killed thousands of innocent civilians, droped tons of highly radioactive depleted Uranium onto a country that has never attacked the United States of America, created untold thousands of new terrorists, destabilized the most dangerous place in the world, and pissed off nearly every ally and friend we've made since world war II. I can't begin to communicate how bad that is.
Moore makes good points, no doubt about it. Remember though, that he's not objective, he's not trying to be objective, he's not even claiming he's trying to be objective. Moore has an agenda and you should expect him to arange facts, words, and phrases to support that agenda. Remember that and this is a very educational film.
There's a few tricks Moore uses. For example, there's the bit about flying the bin Laden family out of the country.
Moore drops that little tidbit right after discussing how the federal government shut down the airports. He talks about how even Ricky Martin couldn't fly. In the same breath he indicates that the federal government was willing to authorize a plane to take the bin Laden's out of the country.
You'd -=think=- that the plane was flying when everyone else was grounded. You'd think that the FAA had been nudged into clearing the jet and that it was cruising through empty skies. This wasn't the case, the airports were back up and running when the bin Laden family left the country. Moore doesn't -=say=- the airports were closed, but the viewer is lead to that conclusion.
It's brilliant, and while misleading, not strictly inaccurate.
Wow, thanks for answering your own question. Philosophers have argued for years over what truth is. The reason they argue is that truth, by its very definition, exists outside the frame of reference each of us exists within. Our world is little more than subjective observations, while truth is an objective existence. As such, discovering truth in a subjective framework is all but impossible. Indeed, to do so we must first find out what, within our subjective framework, truth really is.
To discuss what happiness is or "ruining" something is across subjective frameworks requires the same kind of metaphysical reasoning. We like to use examples because there are some things that are so universally appalling that they convey the same idea across frameworks. Nonetheless, why they convey that idea may be different for each individual.
It is a fallacy to attempt to measure happiness or measure ruining someone's life. Only the person experiencing the happiness or whose life is being ruined can give you any measure of their emotions, and only in reference to other emotions they've felt. There is no science behind this, nor will there ever be. To imply that it is invalid without this science only demonstrates your own pitiful lack of understanding both of the human condition and your own Self (note to philosophy people, capital Self is different than lower case self).
Well, that was an easy way out! Doesn't it suck when people ask you the nitty-gritty details of your belief structure and you find you can't defend it?
The remark is well chosen despite your decision to ridicule it. How can he debate subjective philosophy with someone who demands objective truth as a defense but then refuses his own definition of objective truth (science) when it comes to topics such as human health?
If you want to get into the HIV -> AIDS (use the right notation, HIV implies AIDS, it does not equal AIDS... if this confuses you read up on Discrete) I'm ready to go. Virology is a hobby of mine, and I'm obsessive about reading the stuff. Countless clinical observations have confirmed a causality relationship between HIV and AIDS. Mitigating factors such as human genetics exist, and the study of those factors is fascinating, but as yet no credible scientific study that I'm aware of has failed to substantiate the hypothesis that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (aka HLV3) causes an Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome in homo-sapian-sapian unless countered by radical drug therapy or a mutant genome affecting the protein coat of WBCs.
1 - Until Kerry accepts the nomination there exist no federally imposed limits on his spending. Those that exist after the nomination are voluntary though candidates are monetarily encouraged to accept them. Therefore, even if 911 ended with "I'm John Kerry and I approved this message" it's still perfectly justifiable as far as political speech goes.
2 - Documentaries have an opinion. We're socialized to believe otherwise because our first exposure to documentaries is generally in elementary school with a discussion of how babies are made, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, or the formation of stars or some such. Of course, all these documentaries have an opinion as well. Many would argue that the babies films indicate a difference between a fetus and a baby. It's worth noting that Columbus wasn't even the first European to set foot in the Americas and that many prefer Genesis to the gravitational condensation of gas as the reason stars form. (Wow, worst run on sentence ever)
3 - Integrity? Moore said he was producing a film that accused Bush of all kinds of insidious things. He produced the film. Gotta at least take the man at his word. Bush, on the other hand, pledged to reduce the size of the federal government and refrain from engaging in "Nation building." Hmmmm.... guess one of these two has been caught in a lie to two.
I'm not saying Moore's film isn't misleading. I'm not saying it's not propaganda. There is an art to arranging facts in a certain way so as to prove a point. There is a finesse in accomplishing that task in such a way as to leave your audience with an opinion that you never actually stated. Moore is a master of this technique. Nothing, and I say that after an appreciable amount of investigation, in Moore's film is untrue. Nonetheless, he has artfully arranged things to imply more than he says. Those implications are opinion, not fact. A wary observer will note the difference.
As for journalistic... your local newspaper publishes an editorial section. That's journalism too.
It would take several months to manufacture smallpox vaccinations for the population at large. Of course, you wouldn't start manufacturing with case 1, you'd start with case 20 or so. By that time there are between 20 and 60 seed patients each infecting between 10 and 30 new individuals with the virus. Those individuals will experiance flu like symptoms and during that time of relitive peace, infect between 10 and 30 individuals themselves...
Given that well before the virus kills, you can travel anywhere in the world, the possibility for a global pandemic is real.
Smallpox killed roughly a billion people over its burn through human civilization. That was a naturaly occuring strain of the virus. What the Russians have is a bio engineered plauge that has been specificly designed to circumvent every known route for treatment and kill with the greatest possible efficiency.
Soviet pox was created by the ton. It was loaded into ballistic missiles. It was pointed at the United States. A nuclear weapon kills everyone in the city you drop it on. Smallpox has the very real possibility of killing everyone on the planet (or at least a really sizeable portion of the population).
The smallpox strain the Soviets put in ICBMS was called India1. It's an extrodinarily "hot" strain of pox gathered in India shortly before eradication was complete.
The Soviets then "heated" the India1 Strain up, probably by introducing the human IL4 gene to it. IL4 acts as a jammer against the human immune system, as the pox replicates it generates a huge volume of human immune signal chemicals.
A independent tests have shown IL4 mousepox to blow through vaccinations that in mice as well as natural immunity to the virus. The only mice that survived an IL4 mousepox were naturaly immune mice that had been infected with a less dangerous strain of the pox within a week or two.
Because mice and mousepox are reasonable models for humans and smallpox, this is terrifying.
Furthermore, WHO stocks about 1 dose of smallpox vaccine for every 17,000 people on earth. Since smallpox has a multiplication rate of somewhere between 10 and 30 (i.e. each patient infects between 10 and 30 other people) a massive infection such as an ICBM delivery of the disease would be completely uncontainable using the ring vaccination methodology employed by the WHO eradicators.
For more information on smallpox check out Richard Presonton's "The Demon in the Freezer."
India 1 is still out there by the way, and the Russians have told us they know that Iran and North Korea have it as well as a few other countries.
Yea.... I suck. I actualy had Nestle in there and couldn't remember if it was spelled with 1 or 2 "e"s. So I went ahead and changed it to Hershey and then forgot to change the bar from Crunch to Krackle.
No.... it's a freebee. If Hershey works out a deal with General Mills to have a Crunch bar in every box of Cocoa Puffs it's not anticompetitive towards some other chocolate manufacturer. It's a business arrangement.
If a music vendor wants to work out an arrangement with Apple wherein people who buy their CDs get the iPod file for free it's their prerogative.
Anticompetitive would be the aforementioned music company refused to sell tracks to Napster because it had the (also) aforementioned deal with Apple.
Whoever moderated this as Troll needs to be dragged out into the street and shot.
KarmaMB84 (and what the hell kind of a username is that?) is simply restating the opinions of a Mr. Alexis de Toqueville. de Toqueville argued that one of the inherent dangers of democracy was the tyranny of the majority. In short, that those who are in the majority can and will create laws which are designed not only to keep themselves in the majority but to oppress those that disagree with them.
While it's a stretch to argue that this really applies in the case of television viewership, it certainly does apply in cases like the War on Terror (PATRIOT by its very nature stifles opposition).
Troll indeed. Next thing you know we'll be modding Thomas Jefferson and John Locke down for "All men are created equal."
Hate to reply to the reply to my post. Hate to do it even more when it's really directed at the two people replying to the parent of my reply (wow... that's confusing).
The Battle of Britain was important on several levels. None of those levels involved an aerial invasion of the UK by the Nazis. The heavy lifting capacity just didn't exist at the time.
The Battle of the Atlantic, not the Battle of Britain, was about keeping the Brits supplied. The Battle of Britain was fought over the Channel, and no one in his right mind would take a ship through that contested strip of water without good reason.
No the Battle of Britain was about air superiority. You see, the destroyer and battleship didn't fair that well against air power. The bulk of the British fleet at this time was made up of these heavy gunships.
Both the Germans and the Brits knew that whoever held air superiority over the Channel had the ability to field battleships and other heavy gun ships into that channel. Anyone who could do that could bombard the hell out of coastal defenses and eventually win through against them.
In short, air superiority was necessary to begin an invasion across the channel, in either direction.
The Battle of Britain was aptly named; whoever lost air superiority over the channel would ultimately loose their land overlooking the channel. For the allies, the prize was Great Britain.
Easy. Unless the invention is some major breakthrough in naval warfare the Brits don't loose interest.
Since you need either boats or a well trained swim team to invade the UK they're good to go for the most part as long as they maintain naval superiority.
That's why the battle for the Atlantic was so important.
Why is it that this comes up so much and why is it that I have to explain it so often?
The "McDonald's Case" as it's called was only one in a series of cases in which courts had repeatedly ruled that McDonald's coffee was being served too hot.
The company had been ordered by the courts numerous times to serve coffee at a lower temperature but refused to do so. When this woman sued the court decided to actualy make the company take notice.
The huge judgement awarded against the McDonald's Corporation was largely a way for the court to punish McDonald's for its repeated failure to comply with previous decisions.
Now, does the stupid woman need the huge quantity of money? Of course not. Those funds would be better awarded to a burn unit at a local hospital or some other worthy cause. Unfortuantely the US legal system does not make provisions for judgements like that, and punitive damages must be awarded to a plaintiff.
The amount has to be huge because the McDonald's corporation isn't going to give a shit if you award $20,000. It needs to be a big enough judgement that the company has to declare it as an item on its SEC filings.
Of course the legal system shouldn't be the slot machine it is today. At the same time, billion dollar corporations should not be able to hold themselves above civil judgements by virtue of their excessive wealth.
What I mean is that none of those earlier attempts to raise the bar on the user's experiance with the OS succeeded because they were backed by companies without the market clout to make the product fly. Like it or not, MS has a history of brining out products which prompt people to buy new hardware to run it.
Look at figures for computer sales around the time Win95 came out. Look at those same figures for when XP came out. When MS brings out a new OS and it's a major change (or when they say it's a major change) people make an effort to bring themselves up to date.
I'm not addressing this as a good or bad thing, but I am saying that as the interface becomes glitzier and snazier you'll start to move away from the taboo of the computer as a device of academic or work related function and more towards something that is designed as an integral portion of home entertainment.
Of all the futurist sci-fi authors out there, the best and (in my opinion) most realistic rendition of future societies is given in Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Disfunction series.
Note: Think away the energy manipulating poltergeist possession thing to get my point.
Human society divides along two lines, Adamists and Edenists. Adamists embrace nanotechnology and information technology. Edenists embrace biotechnology. While the division isn't that plausable, most of the tech described from the Adamist side of things is a real possibilty in the distant future. We're allready seeing the beginings of it.
My predictions: 1.) Augmented Reality will be the killer app that moves the personal computer from your desktop into the category of wallet, watch, and keys that you need to leave the house.
2.) Increases in display technology and plumeting memory and processor costs continue to push more embded devices into the marketplace.
3.) Computer interaction will edge out human interaction as the primary means of doing buisness. How this happens will depend on the particular industry. It has allready happened to the banking industry. Some of this will be online interaction, an appreciable portion of it will be based on biometrics and customer tracking. The privacy people will object to this, but will be overcome by the allmighty dollar.
4.) The computer applications we use will continue to become more abstract and seperated from the data they handle. The reason this occurs is the cycle that drives hardware also drives sofware. Hardware sells because people want to run the latest software. Software sells because people who have the latest hardware want things to run that pushes their system to the limit. Programers thus write applications that allows a more sophisticated rendition of the same dataset. Not to use Microsoft as an example, but compare Excel 95 to Excel XP. What's the difference?
5.) Longhorn will begin a trend in operating systems that SGI first demonstrated with the Onyx. The OS is the redheaded stepchild of the mainstream software market right now. It is untilitarian, focusing more on getting its job done and less on looking slick. Apple has tried to change this, SGI has tried to change this, Enlightenment has tried to change this. Microsoft will succeed.
Most of these predictions are more like 10 years down the road instead of 30. What's really interesting are the social change that this kind of technological integration will bring about. What will happen as the governments of the world lag further and further behind the corporations as providers of the day to day services that people depend on?
The next 30 years of computing promises more than just faster system and bigger drives, it promises radical changes in where computers are found, what computers do, and how human beings interact.
Thirty years is a long time, and while I wouldn't put a bet in for me being able to get an 802.11 jack for my head in that time frame, it's only because I don't think the FDA would allow it by then.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard that argument before but I don't put much stock in in, largely because as far as the feild of international relations goes, I'm a realist.
Lets make some quick assumptions.
1 - Saddam had WMD
2 - Everyone and their brother knew he had WMD
If these two things are true, you have to ask yourself, why invade Iraq? The entire POINT of WMD is to deter such an invasion. They are there as a threat, if Iraq has those weapons invasion is out of the question, the chemical and (god forbid) biological retaliation would be unthinkable.
In this scenario we march into Iraq with the country either in possession of or in recent possession of WMD. Saddam's choice to disarm is his own, perhaps he hopes that we won't invade if he does. If he doesn't, he has the WMD to deter an invasion (the US will accecpt casualties, but not civilian attacks with WMD as part of the war). So two possible outcomes.
1 - Iraq threatens US with WMD retaliation if an attack takes place.
2 - Iraq shipps the weapons out of the country, hoping we won't invade.
But we did attack Iraq, we have to ask why it happened. Either one of two realities is the case.
1 - The inspections and the international pressure was a ruse. Invasion was planned all the time, but by indicating that we wouldn't invade if he disarmed we forced Saddam's hand into disarming. Then we went back on our word, because no he had no WMD to deter and invasion.
2 - We knew full well that Iraq had no WMD. The US wanted to invade for other reasons and the WMD argument was a convenient smoke screen. Iraq had no way of proving it had gotten rid of weapons it didn't have. QED we can go in on legitimate grounds.
A few things are for certain. First, that Iraq didn't have any WMD on hand when the invasion began. If they did, the only rational action upon news of US troops marching on Baghdad would have been to launch those weapons at the troops and begin deploying them covertly against US cities. WMD are a deterant, and when the integrity of the state is threatened, a rational actor must use his deterent.
Second, that if Iraq did have WMD in the country before the attack, they must have removed them (otherwise we'd have them now). If that's the case, then we invaded on false pretexts, as Bush stated time and time again that Iraq must disarm or face the consequences. If it disarms and still faces the consequences something isn't right.
Third, that in order to assume that Iraq had these weapons, moved them out of the country before the invasion, and that they continue to elude the US implies that the US intelegence buisness, the best in the world (save the Mossad of course) was duped by a shell trick by a 3rd rate dictator. In short, you're assuming that the US has undergone yet another catestrophic intelegence failure.
If a convoy of large trucks crossed the boarder we'd know where they went. Satellites are powerfull critters and Iraq is one of those places, I imagine, with a fair number of birds over it.
Bottom line, one of two things happened.
1 - We invaded knowing full well that Iraq had never possessed WMD
2 - We invaded knowing full well that Iraq had disarmed just like we asked them to.
This is obviously getting off the path of enlightened discussion of Wikipedia, but since we're on the topic let me respond. I'll put this as simply as possible so there can be no possible misunderstanding.
The following are my personal positions and (mostly) the positions of the left and the democratic party as a whole.
1 - Saddam Hussein is a bad man.
2 - The world is likely a better place now that Saddam is out of power.
3 - Iraq did not, at the time of invasion, present any form of clear and present danger to the United States.
4 - Iraq did not, at time of invasion, possess weapons of mass destruction
5 - The United States invaded Iraq under the pretext that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that these weapons constituted a clear and present danger to the United States.
6 - Since these weapons did not exist and the threat was therefore not present, the invasion was under false pretexts.
7 - Taking your country to war on false pretexts is a bad thing
8 - George W. Bush took the country to war on false pretexts.
Now.... make sure you read and understand all of the above points. I'm a liberal, I support our troops. I know we can't just leave Iraq right now. I think the world is a better place now that Saddam is behind bars. I'm glad (after the fact) that we removed him from power. I'd have been a lot happier about it if the President hadn't deceived the public to get there.
Not true. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the content of your speech does have serious implications as to weather or not it's protected by the first amendment.
The Court has held that speech can be curtailed if the government can demonstrate a "Compelling State Interest" in the censorship of this speech.
Perhaps an example will assist. I can hold up a sign in Central Park that reads "I hate SCO" The state will have a very hard time demonstrating that Compelling Interest. My sign doesn't endanger anyone.
If I stand in the same park with a sign that reads "I have 45 kilos of plastique strapped to my chest. God is Great!" the state will have an easy time proving Compelling Interest. My speech will cause a panic and people could very well be hurt in the panic.
Now, there is a caveat. The Supreme Court holds the state to an unusually high level of restraint when it comes to political speech. In cases like this, the state is required to demonstrate that your speech constitutes a clear and present danger to the welfare of the state. We're talking state secrets here.
Now, if the rules in NYC are even slightly ambiguous when it comes to sidewalk chalk this guy is going to get off scott free. The Courts require very specific and well justified rational for the silencing of political speech. If the state can't provide that rational and justification it will loose the case.
The problem, as you so eloquently point out when you say "The problem is that in so many cases they appear to be reading from a top forty FAQ sheet and cannot solve any problem that the average user can't solve themselves," is that fully half of the users are dumber than that.
That means that fully half of the questions are answered by reading off that sheet. Now, if 1/2 of your job can be done for you by reading the appropriate line off of a piece of paper, aren't you going to read that line? More to the point, if you're paying someone to do a job that, about 1/2 the time can be done by reading a known solution off of a piece of paper, aren't you going to insist that they read that line first?
Sure, there are people out there with legitimate problems. They need legitimate solutions. If there was a way to filter the idiots out of the call queue so tech support could help the ones that actually need help (as opposed to the ones that need help reading) I'm sure they'd do it. As is, we're all at the mercy of the horde of vindictive idiots who insist that nothing can possibly be wrong with [insert product here] because it was working yesterday. Of course it was working yesterday; if it hadn't been working yesterday they'd have called in YESTERDAY. What changed? It broke! What's so hard to understand about this?
Tech support suffers because of marketing and feature envy. People want the newest, fastest, latest whiz-bang contraption out there. Even my mother, who hasn't the faintest clue how to perform even the most basic functions with a PC is talking about how great a tablet PC would be. We introduce more and more complex devices to people who have fundamentally no idea what they're doing with them and then are surprised when they can't make them work!
You don't buy a $4,000 amp for your first stereo. You don't buy a Ferrari Testerosa for your kid to learn to drive on. You don't teach a newly hired cook to make baked Alaska before he can make a grilled cheese sandwich. Why do we believe this doesn't hold up for computers?
Damn it, why is it I only have mod points when we're discussing Star Wars and Babylon 5?
/. readers. There is a xenophobic tendency in this country that is spiraling dangerously out of control. We are drawing lines between American Citizens and Foreigners (I capitalize this as it is rapidly becoming synonymous with "Gaijen" or "Barbarian"). Lest we forget, the overwhelming majority of American Citizens are decedents of immigrants.
.... help help I'm being repressed!"
These points are well taken and should be observed by all
As is penned in the Declaration of Independence "All Men are Created Equal." Moreover, as you point out, the Constitution grants only a very few and very specific rights to US citizens. I think voting is just about it. Freedom of speech, assembly, equal protection, all of these are guaranteed to any human being within the borders of the United States.
Yes, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of the President to suspend some of these rights in time of war. Unfortunately for Herr Bush, we are not at war. "What's this" you say? Not at war? What about the War on Terror? The Court has (thus far) only upheld these suspensions when the country is in a state of declared war. Bush has attempted to circumvent the Court's wrath by denying his victims the right to see a lawyer or even appear in court. Fills you with warm fuzzies doesn't it?
Enemy combatant or not, if you're being held by the United States you have the right to an attorney and your day in court. When Congress declares war and we are legally in such a state, then and only then might the rules change. Until then "we're living in a dictatorship, a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working
classes....
As an adendum, we're looking for civilizations that have the will to communicate.
We're not trying to communicate right now. If ET is out there listening to Earth like we're listening to space he won't hear us.
Factions of SETI have talked about building the VLA (Very Large Array) which would be a 1km square array of C-Band sized dishes spaced almost side to side. With this they could pick up transmissions from distant worlds about the strength of a TV broadcast.
As is, unless we've got a radio telescope pointed at us with enough juice going through it to vaporize an airliner we're not going to hear them calling.
Everyone looses jobs. The world economy moves on. People adapt. Admittedly, we pay a price for the national prosperity that this forward motion brings, but that price is well worth the standard of living we enjoy because of it.
Think about it this way. 100 years ago most Americans farmed for a living. 50 years ago most Americans worked manufacturing jobs. 25 a tiny percentage of Americans worked in the IT industry....
As we move up the scale those who worked the jobs that we replace find new employment. At least, that's how the system is supposed to work and how it's worked for the last century. Manufacture replaces agriculture. Sales replace manufacture. Information replaces sales. So on up the scale.
Today though, we're moving up the scale without retraining those who are loosing their jobs. This is a dangerous departure. US companies are shipping jobs overseas and we have no idea what we are going to replace those jobs with. People are loosing jobs with no hope of a future. Don't blame the system, it's worked for longer than any of us have been alive. It's a good system.
The problem is that we're looking short term, not long term. Those at the top of the food chain are more concerned about the next quarters profits than the long term stability and character of their buisness. As a consequence the American economy is in a tail spin.
It's happening to IT workers too. What we need though, is something else for these people to do. For the past century that something else has been there, today it's not. What can we do about that?
Value Added Profitability genius.
The economy benefits more from someone who gets paied to process wheat into flower than it does from someone who's paied to harvest wheat.
Extrapolate that to librarians and robots. Which has a greater net benefit to the economy, people shelving books or people designing robotic systems to shelve books?
The shelving committee will find something else to do with its time. When all is said and done though, the economy will be stronger because of changes like this.
I'm not disagreeing with you on really any of those points. I do maintain that, while Moore's film is factualy accurate, it is important to recognise that it does have a poltical point of view. To present is as otherwise is dishonest.
It irks me when people say it can't be a documentary because of that point of view. Documentaries that have an agenda are valid, but if you don't recognise that agenda, you're not going to walk away better informed.
Bush has unquestionable ties to the Saudi government and the bin Laden family. This is bad.
The bin Laden's were flown out of the country. When doesn't matter so much as that the FBI didn't get to interview them. This is also bad.
There were fewer troops on the ground in Afghanistan, the only place occupied by US troops that is KNOWN to have trained al Queda memebers, than there are cops on the island of Manhattan. This is really bad.
There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor have there been since after the first Gulf War. In the President's letter to Congress asking for the Congress' endorcement of the "war" WMD was the rational used (check the congressional record yourself if you don't belive this). That's extrordinarily bad.
We've killed thousands of innocent civilians, droped tons of highly radioactive depleted Uranium onto a country that has never attacked the United States of America, created untold thousands of new terrorists, destabilized the most dangerous place in the world, and pissed off nearly every ally and friend we've made since world war II. I can't begin to communicate how bad that is.
Moore makes good points, no doubt about it. Remember though, that he's not objective, he's not trying to be objective, he's not even claiming he's trying to be objective. Moore has an agenda and you should expect him to arange facts, words, and phrases to support that agenda. Remember that and this is a very educational film.
No, I mean discrete... as in discrete mathmatics. Rene Decartes was a drunken fart "I drink therefore I am."
There's a few tricks Moore uses. For example, there's the bit about flying the bin Laden family out of the country.
Moore drops that little tidbit right after discussing how the federal government shut down the airports. He talks about how even Ricky Martin couldn't fly. In the same breath he indicates that the federal government was willing to authorize a plane to take the bin Laden's out of the country.
You'd -=think=- that the plane was flying when everyone else was grounded. You'd think that the FAA had been nudged into clearing the jet and that it was cruising through empty skies. This wasn't the case, the airports were back up and running when the bin Laden family left the country. Moore doesn't -=say=- the airports were closed, but the viewer is lead to that conclusion.
It's brilliant, and while misleading, not strictly inaccurate.
I'll step in.
Wow, thanks for answering your own question. Philosophers have argued for years over what truth is. The reason they argue is that truth, by its very definition, exists outside the frame of reference each of us exists within. Our world is little more than subjective observations, while truth is an objective existence. As such, discovering truth in a subjective framework is all but impossible. Indeed, to do so we must first find out what, within our subjective framework, truth really is.
To discuss what happiness is or "ruining" something is across subjective frameworks requires the same kind of metaphysical reasoning. We like to use examples because there are some things that are so universally appalling that they convey the same idea across frameworks. Nonetheless, why they convey that idea may be different for each individual.
It is a fallacy to attempt to measure happiness or measure ruining someone's life. Only the person experiencing the happiness or whose life is being ruined can give you any measure of their emotions, and only in reference to other emotions they've felt. There is no science behind this, nor will there ever be. To imply that it is invalid without this science only demonstrates your own pitiful lack of understanding both of the human condition and your own Self (note to philosophy people, capital Self is different than lower case self).
Well, that was an easy way out! Doesn't it suck when people ask you the nitty-gritty details of your belief structure and you find you can't defend it?
The remark is well chosen despite your decision to ridicule it. How can he debate subjective philosophy with someone who demands objective truth as a defense but then refuses his own definition of objective truth (science) when it comes to topics such as human health?
If you want to get into the HIV -> AIDS (use the right notation, HIV implies AIDS, it does not equal AIDS... if this confuses you read up on Discrete) I'm ready to go. Virology is a hobby of mine, and I'm obsessive about reading the stuff. Countless clinical observations have confirmed a causality relationship between HIV and AIDS. Mitigating factors such as human genetics exist, and the study of those factors is fascinating, but as yet no credible scientific study that I'm aware of has failed to substantiate the hypothesis that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (aka HLV3) causes an Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome in homo-sapian-sapian unless countered by radical drug therapy or a mutant genome affecting the protein coat of WBCs.
Not that it really matters.
1 - Until Kerry accepts the nomination there exist no federally imposed limits on his spending. Those that exist after the nomination are voluntary though candidates are monetarily encouraged to accept them. Therefore, even if 911 ended with "I'm John Kerry and I approved this message" it's still perfectly justifiable as far as political speech goes.
2 - Documentaries have an opinion. We're socialized to believe otherwise because our first exposure to documentaries is generally in elementary school with a discussion of how babies are made, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, or the formation of stars or some such. Of course, all these documentaries have an opinion as well. Many would argue that the babies films indicate a difference between a fetus and a baby. It's worth noting that Columbus wasn't even the first European to set foot in the Americas and that many prefer Genesis to the gravitational condensation of gas as the reason stars form. (Wow, worst run on sentence ever)
3 - Integrity? Moore said he was producing a film that accused Bush of all kinds of insidious things. He produced the film. Gotta at least take the man at his word. Bush, on the other hand, pledged to reduce the size of the federal government and refrain from engaging in "Nation building." Hmmmm.... guess one of these two has been caught in a lie to two.
I'm not saying Moore's film isn't misleading. I'm not saying it's not propaganda. There is an art to arranging facts in a certain way so as to prove a point. There is a finesse in accomplishing that task in such a way as to leave your audience with an opinion that you never actually stated. Moore is a master of this technique. Nothing, and I say that after an appreciable amount of investigation, in Moore's film is untrue. Nonetheless, he has artfully arranged things to imply more than he says. Those implications are opinion, not fact. A wary observer will note the difference.
As for journalistic... your local newspaper publishes an editorial section. That's journalism too.
It would take several months to manufacture smallpox vaccinations for the population at large. Of course, you wouldn't start manufacturing with case 1, you'd start with case 20 or so. By that time there are between 20 and 60 seed patients each infecting between 10 and 30 new individuals with the virus. Those individuals will experiance flu like symptoms and during that time of relitive peace, infect between 10 and 30 individuals themselves...
Given that well before the virus kills, you can travel anywhere in the world, the possibility for a global pandemic is real.
Smallpox killed roughly a billion people over its burn through human civilization. That was a naturaly occuring strain of the virus. What the Russians have is a bio engineered plauge that has been specificly designed to circumvent every known route for treatment and kill with the greatest possible efficiency.
Soviet pox was created by the ton. It was loaded into ballistic missiles. It was pointed at the United States. A nuclear weapon kills everyone in the city you drop it on. Smallpox has the very real possibility of killing everyone on the planet (or at least a really sizeable portion of the population).
Saddly no, and they're all wrong too.
The smallpox strain the Soviets put in ICBMS was called India1. It's an extrodinarily "hot" strain of pox gathered in India shortly before eradication was complete.
The Soviets then "heated" the India1 Strain up, probably by introducing the human IL4 gene to it. IL4 acts as a jammer against the human immune system, as the pox replicates it generates a huge volume of human immune signal chemicals.
A independent tests have shown IL4 mousepox to blow through vaccinations that in mice as well as natural immunity to the virus. The only mice that survived an IL4 mousepox were naturaly immune mice that had been infected with a less dangerous strain of the pox within a week or two.
Because mice and mousepox are reasonable models for humans and smallpox, this is terrifying.
Furthermore, WHO stocks about 1 dose of smallpox vaccine for every 17,000 people on earth. Since smallpox has a multiplication rate of somewhere between 10 and 30 (i.e. each patient infects between 10 and 30 other people) a massive infection such as an ICBM delivery of the disease would be completely uncontainable using the ring vaccination methodology employed by the WHO eradicators.
For more information on smallpox check out Richard Presonton's "The Demon in the Freezer."
India 1 is still out there by the way, and the Russians have told us they know that Iran and North Korea have it as well as a few other countries.
These people have allready thought of that.
Yea.... I suck. I actualy had Nestle in there and couldn't remember if it was spelled with 1 or 2 "e"s. So I went ahead and changed it to Hershey and then forgot to change the bar from Crunch to Krackle.
No.... it's a freebee. If Hershey works out a deal with General Mills to have a Crunch bar in every box of Cocoa Puffs it's not anticompetitive towards some other chocolate manufacturer. It's a business arrangement.
If a music vendor wants to work out an arrangement with Apple wherein people who buy their CDs get the iPod file for free it's their prerogative.
Anticompetitive would be the aforementioned music company refused to sell tracks to Napster because it had the (also) aforementioned deal with Apple.
Dish doesn't usualy sue people over this sort of thing. They have other methods of preventing piracy.
Actualy, when push comes to shove, DirecTV's content protection scheme is weaker, which is one of the reasons they have such a problem with piracy.
You don't see Dish doing this because there just aren't that many people that actualy pirate the signal.
Whoever moderated this as Troll needs to be dragged out into the street and shot.
KarmaMB84 (and what the hell kind of a username is that?) is simply restating the opinions of a Mr. Alexis de Toqueville. de Toqueville argued that one of the inherent dangers of democracy was the tyranny of the majority. In short, that those who are in the majority can and will create laws which are designed not only to keep themselves in the majority but to oppress those that disagree with them.
While it's a stretch to argue that this really applies in the case of television viewership, it certainly does apply in cases like the War on Terror (PATRIOT by its very nature stifles opposition).
Troll indeed. Next thing you know we'll be modding Thomas Jefferson and John Locke down for "All men are created equal."
Hate to reply to the reply to my post. Hate to do it even more when it's really directed at the two people replying to the parent of my reply (wow... that's confusing).
The Battle of Britain was important on several levels. None of those levels involved an aerial invasion of the UK by the Nazis. The heavy lifting capacity just didn't exist at the time.
The Battle of the Atlantic, not the Battle of Britain, was about keeping the Brits supplied. The Battle of Britain was fought over the Channel, and no one in his right mind would take a ship through that contested strip of water without good reason.
No the Battle of Britain was about air superiority. You see, the destroyer and battleship didn't fair that well against air power. The bulk of the British fleet at this time was made up of these heavy gunships.
Both the Germans and the Brits knew that whoever held air superiority over the Channel had the ability to field battleships and other heavy gun ships into that channel. Anyone who could do that could bombard the hell out of coastal defenses and eventually win through against them.
In short, air superiority was necessary to begin an invasion across the channel, in either direction.
The Battle of Britain was aptly named; whoever lost air superiority over the channel would ultimately loose their land overlooking the channel. For the allies, the prize was Great Britain.
Easy. Unless the invention is some major breakthrough in naval warfare the Brits don't loose interest.
Since you need either boats or a well trained swim team to invade the UK they're good to go for the most part as long as they maintain naval superiority.
That's why the battle for the Atlantic was so important.
Why is it that this comes up so much and why is it that I have to explain it so often?
The "McDonald's Case" as it's called was only one in a series of cases in which courts had repeatedly ruled that McDonald's coffee was being served too hot.
The company had been ordered by the courts numerous times to serve coffee at a lower temperature but refused to do so. When this woman sued the court decided to actualy make the company take notice.
The huge judgement awarded against the McDonald's Corporation was largely a way for the court to punish McDonald's for its repeated failure to comply with previous decisions.
Now, does the stupid woman need the huge quantity of money? Of course not. Those funds would be better awarded to a burn unit at a local hospital or some other worthy cause. Unfortuantely the US legal system does not make provisions for judgements like that, and punitive damages must be awarded to a plaintiff.
The amount has to be huge because the McDonald's corporation isn't going to give a shit if you award $20,000. It needs to be a big enough judgement that the company has to declare it as an item on its SEC filings.
Of course the legal system shouldn't be the slot machine it is today. At the same time, billion dollar corporations should not be able to hold themselves above civil judgements by virtue of their excessive wealth.
What I mean is that none of those earlier attempts to raise the bar on the user's experiance with the OS succeeded because they were backed by companies without the market clout to make the product fly. Like it or not, MS has a history of brining out products which prompt people to buy new hardware to run it.
Look at figures for computer sales around the time Win95 came out. Look at those same figures for when XP came out. When MS brings out a new OS and it's a major change (or when they say it's a major change) people make an effort to bring themselves up to date.
I'm not addressing this as a good or bad thing, but I am saying that as the interface becomes glitzier and snazier you'll start to move away from the taboo of the computer as a device of academic or work related function and more towards something that is designed as an integral portion of home entertainment.
Of all the futurist sci-fi authors out there, the best and (in my opinion) most realistic rendition of future societies is given in Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Disfunction series.
Note: Think away the energy manipulating poltergeist possession thing to get my point.
Human society divides along two lines, Adamists and Edenists. Adamists embrace nanotechnology and information technology. Edenists embrace biotechnology. While the division isn't that plausable, most of the tech described from the Adamist side of things is a real possibilty in the distant future. We're allready seeing the beginings of it.
My predictions:
1.) Augmented Reality will be the killer app that moves the personal computer from your desktop into the category of wallet, watch, and keys that you need to leave the house.
2.) Increases in display technology and plumeting memory and processor costs continue to push more embded devices into the marketplace.
3.) Computer interaction will edge out human interaction as the primary means of doing buisness. How this happens will depend on the particular industry. It has allready happened to the banking industry. Some of this will be online interaction, an appreciable portion of it will be based on biometrics and customer tracking. The privacy people will object to this, but will be overcome by the allmighty dollar.
4.) The computer applications we use will continue to become more abstract and seperated from the data they handle. The reason this occurs is the cycle that drives hardware also drives sofware. Hardware sells because people want to run the latest software. Software sells because people who have the latest hardware want things to run that pushes their system to the limit. Programers thus write applications that allows a more sophisticated rendition of the same dataset. Not to use Microsoft as an example, but compare Excel 95 to Excel XP. What's the difference?
5.) Longhorn will begin a trend in operating systems that SGI first demonstrated with the Onyx. The OS is the redheaded stepchild of the mainstream software market right now. It is untilitarian, focusing more on getting its job done and less on looking slick. Apple has tried to change this, SGI has tried to change this, Enlightenment has tried to change this. Microsoft will succeed.
Most of these predictions are more like 10 years down the road instead of 30. What's really interesting are the social change that this kind of technological integration will bring about. What will happen as the governments of the world lag further and further behind the corporations as providers of the day to day services that people depend on?
The next 30 years of computing promises more than just faster system and bigger drives, it promises radical changes in where computers are found, what computers do, and how human beings interact.
Thirty years is a long time, and while I wouldn't put a bet in for me being able to get an 802.11 jack for my head in that time frame, it's only because I don't think the FDA would allow it by then.