This post is a perfect example of why the left is losing power.
George Bush is telling us why we are going to succeed.
The Democrats, "progressives", and Bush-haters are telling us why we are going to fail. Not only that, they are telling us that everything bad that happens is our fault.
Your anger is misplaced. Try focusing it on the real forces of evil in this world.
Actually, I think you make a good point. Bush's detractors learned a lot of this behavior from Clinton. Clinton was always trying to twist words and semantics. Now it has got to the point where people think that "freedom" is a code-word for "baby killing" or something.
The definition of these words is widely known. If you want to know how he defines the word, go find a freaking dictionary.
Sonoma is based on the 915 chipset (Alviso/ICH6). The biggest difference is, of course, PCI Express. There is support for a x16 PCI Express graphics on Alviso, and support for a couple of x1 PCI Express devices on the ICH. This is a major architectural overhaul that more than doubles the bandwidth between the MCH and the ICH. New to Sonoma, the chipset also includes support for: - 533MHz FSB - SATA - DDR2 memory - Next generation integrated graphics that doesn't suck - Hi-def audio (Azalia) - New power management features
So if Iraq had produced twenty 'truck drivers' who all 'drove a bunch of tanks into the desert' where 'guys in rubber suits dumped them out onto concrete' and 'have no idea what was in those tanks, but we were told to stay far away,' you'd take that as sufficient proof?
Why the hell are you asking me that? I'm not a UNMOVIC inspector. I suppose the inspectors would have to weigh the credibility of the witnesses compared to the available evidence.
Note that 24k is the very lower bound of the number of people believed killed in this conflict.
No it isn't. Last time I checked iraqbodycount.net, it was between 15k and 17k. Tragic none the less, but I have noticed that they include Iraqis killed by attacks from insurgents in those counts, and I don't agree with that.
And the 100k number comes from the Lancet study that was discredited almost immediately after release. They relied on a flawed methodology to collect their data, and even with that their margin of error with 95% confidence was +/- 98,000. So they were only able to say that they were 95% sure that there were between 2,000 and 200,000 casualties- not a very strong analysis.
#1- I think you are confusing some terms. There is no evidence that the Saudi government supports terrorism. On the contrary they have been extremely helpful in the War on Terror helping us capture hundreds of known terrorists. It would be foolish to turn on one of our biggest supporters in the area. Now, there are Saudi citizens that promote terrorism, but that is probably true of every country. #2- The first step is not invasion- that is the last resort. In the case of Iraq, we endured over 12 years of failed diplomacy before we resorted to military action.
Its pointless to continue this when you can read exactly what UNMOVIC was asking for. If they couldn't provide direct evidence, UNMOVIC was asking for any documents or a list of personnel that they could interview and permission to actually interview them. It is not trivial to dispose of chemical and biological weapons, and it is laughable that Iraq would not be able to provide any info to support their claims. Iraq never cooperated with this.
For example, Iraq claimed that they unilaterally took 1.5 tonnes of Vx into the desert and dumped it onto some concrete to destroy it (Appendix II, paragraph 16). Later, when inspectors were finally told about this, they went to the site, and they were able detect some traces of Vx. But when they asked if they could interview anybody that was there or loaded the trucks or ANYTHING to verify that it was about 1.5 tonnes, Iraq refused to cooperate. So we know that some Vx was destroyed there, but we have no idea how much. It is not unreasonable to assume that Saddam was lying about the quantity, especially considering his history.
Asking them to let you talk to people that participated in this activity is not the same as saying "Prove you don't have Vx".
The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has said that at least 300,000 people are buried in mass graves in Iraq. Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than 1 million were executed.... The deadliest atrocity associated with Saddam's government was the scorched-earth campaign known as the "Anfal," in which the government killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in Iraq's far north. Many were buried in mass graves far from home in the southern desert. Another 60,000 people are believed to have been killed when Saddam violently suppressed rebellions by Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north at the close of the 1991 Gulf War.
Considering that only UN Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter are binding or enforceable, go back through that list and tell me which of those other resolutions are were passed under Chapter VII.
(hint: none of them were) (another hint: all of those 17 resolutions against Iraq were passed under Chapter VII, so they are binding and enforceable) (hint #3: you might want to try to educate yourself about a subject before you try to debate it- otherwise you look like a fool)
Not quite. Iraq had WMD. There is no question about that- we even saw Iraq use them. So after the first Gulf War, UNSCOM presented them with a list of all known WMD that needed to be destroyed (Iraq accepted this list). Iraq was required to let UNSCOM monitor the destruction of these weapons, or at minimum, Iraq was to provide UNSCOM with enough information to verify that they were actually destroyed (records, interviews, locations, etc). UNSCOM did monitor the destruction of many of these weapons, but Iraq was never able to fully account for all of the weapons on the list- instead they were caught deceiving UNSCOM dozens of times.
This is clearly not proving a negative. UNSCOM, and later UNMOVIC, were looking to resolve specific questions about Iraq's disarmament.
The justification for invading was that Iraq presented a threat.
Correct- "grave and gathering threat", IIRC.
Not finding WMD or any programs proves that the invasion was unnecessary for dealing with the threat.
Whoa there. Have you read any of the ISG report? We did not find the WMD stockpiles that we were expecting- instead we found infrastructure, materials, and documentation to restart mass production of WMD as soon as we turned our back. We found over a dozen WMD programs that the UN had no idea existed. The inspections WERE NOT WORKING.
No intelligence organization actually believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the US or it's allies.
Your attempt to equivocate Saddam's future intentions with the evidence is part of the intellectual dishonesty and weakness that got us into this mess.
Let's look at Saddam's history. He has attempted to illegally invade 2 of his neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), one of which led to the 3rd most deadly war this century (Iran). He launched unprovoked attacks against two other nations (Israel and Saudi Arabia). He launched chemical weapons attacks on multiple occasions- even attacking his own people. He was in violation of 17 unanimous UN Security Council resolutions. He fired on US aircraft almost daily for several years. He directly supported and collaborated with numerous terrorist groups, including several that target US interests (this earned him a spot on the US State Department list of State sponsors of Terrorism as far back as 1979). He tried to assassinate a former US president. He commissioned several direct terrorist attacks on the US during the 1990s that we were able to foil, including an attack on the US run Radio Free Europe. Intelligence (both from us and from our allies) indicated that he was trying to attack us more. He had successfully concealed over a dozen WMD programs from the UN for 12 years, and clearly had no intention of living up to his cease-fire agreements.
You claim that this is not a threat. Who is being more dishonest?
Personally, I dislike George Bush, because I hate tyranny and totalitarianism.
Guess what? George Bush dislikes tyranny and totalitarianism. So do "neocons" and Republicans. My bet is that you made up your mind years ago that you hated him, and ever since you are stubbornly trying to justify that hatred.
* I think the most distressing part of the presidential campaign was when Kerry caught Bush in a debate justifying the Iraq war since "we were attacked on 9/11," and yet that didn't make much difference to the voting public. Clearly that lie was proclaimed loud and long enough for many people to buy in...
There was no lie. Bush was motivated to act against Iraq because of 9/11. This does not mean that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, it just means that you cannot prosecute a war against terrorism while ignoring one of the biggest supporters of international terrorism.
Iraq was not a new problem- they had been a festering threat for the entire decade before 9/11. 9/11 just showed us what can happen if you ignore a festering threat for too long.
Dozen or more Iraqis die each day at presently in bombings. The violence is worse than ever.
Uh, no it isn't. Conservative estimates are that Saddam killed between 200,000 and 2,000,000 people during his 20+ year reign. Even using the low end of that estimate, that averages out to about 2 dozen people per day. This is not meant to minimize the current suffering in Iraq- it is only meant to demonstrate that there was no status quo.
A friend of mine told me that her 85 year old grandmother in Baghdad has registered to vote for the first time in her life, and she is excited as hell about it. Why can't we talk about the good along with the bad?
Iraq even allowed the weapons inspectors in to prove they didn't have anything.
Bull crap. They let inspectors back in only because we parked 150,000 troops at their doorstep. Why did we do that? Because Iraq was in blatent violation of over a dozen unanimous UN resolutions as he had not allowed the mandated inspections to take place since 1998.
And have you even read any of the Duelfer report? I have only had time to read through about 200 pages of it, but it is very clear that Iraq had no intention of honoring its cease-fire obligations to disarm. To quote Duelfer himself:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
No, Iraq did not let the inspectors back in to "prove" that they had disarmed. And on Jan 27, 2003, Hans Blix made it clear to the UN Security Council that Iraq was not fully cooperating with the inspections.
Remember how reasonable, rational people said there was no proof Iraq had WMDs?
You remember incorrectly. There was little dispute about if Iraq had weapons- the only dispute was what we should do about it. We knew he had them- we had seen him use them for cryin out loud. He was required to prove that he had fully disarmed, and he refused. And after 12 years of deception and uncooperation, the only safe assumption we could make was that he still had them. The fact that the guy apparently did get rid of the WMD in secret has no bearing on the decision.
Of all of the bogus reasons people have to justify their hatred of George Bush, the fact that he thought that Iraq had WMD is one of the more asinine ones.
Actually, I just got a squeezebox (set it up over the weekend), and I just fired off an email about this problem to support@slimdevices.com this afternoon. AM radio stations above ~1000KHz on radios in the house are pretty bad sounding while the squeezebox is plugged in. I searched the mailing list archives, and I found some references to other people having the same problem. I have even noticed it on my car radio as soon as I pull into the garage, and the squeezebox is located on the second floor at the opposite end of the house as the garage!
You just pulled all of that straight out of your butt. The US State Department placed Iraq in the list of Terrorist Supporting States in 1979. The cease-fire resolution from the Gulf War (UNSEC Resolution 687) specifically demanded that Iraq cease their support of terrorism as a condition of the cease-fire (this was passed in 1991- thats pre-No-Fly-Zone).
Saddam's Iraq has directly supported many major terrorist organizations throughout the years, including the Abu Nidal Organization, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Hamas, Carlos the Jackal, Ansar Al Islam, and the PKK. He established Salman Pak, a terrorist training camp southeast of Baghdad complete with biological weapons research, in the mid 1980's. Saddam's plan to attack the US run Radio Free Europe in Prague was foiled, as was his attempt to assassinate George HW Bush on a visit to Kuwait. The guy even went on TV and handed out checks to terrorist bombers, for cryin out loud.
Nothing you said is even remotely connected to the truth. It is amazing to me what lengths people will go to justify their irrational hatred of the United States.
Except, of course, that the errors were in Bush's favor.
The lost votes that this article is referring to were in Carteret County. Carterey County is heavily Republican (Bush had about 70% of the vote there), so lost votes in that county hurt Bush and the GOP. In other words, you are full of crap.
Look man, I'm a Democrat because the GOP has become so jaw-droppingly criminal and almost cult-like.
I think it is sad how irrational and hate-filled the Democrats have become. Seriously.
As for "supporting terrorism", yes Iraq supported Palestinian groups, groups the U.S. has unilaterally labeled as "terrorist", but I don't recall that being the subject of the original surrender terms or any U.N. sanctions.
Thats because you obviously have not read any of the relevant UN resolutions.
Paragraph 32 of Resolution 687:
32. Requires Iraq to inform the Council that it will not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory and to condemn unequivocally and renounce all acts, methods and practices of terrorism;
Oh, and Iraq has supported many terrorist groups- not just Hamas.
When they design a chip like the P4 that does less usefull work per clock cycle than the P3 before it for no apparent reason other than "mhz marketing", yeah, why not fault them?
I know you are not going to like this, but the design choice to increase the P4 pipeline depth was based on a lot more than just marketing. Here is some of the research behind it:
I have 2 pens on my desk. I could count them repeatedly for years without any sort of weird quantum effects creating any uncertainty in my measurement.
Ok- now try counting 115,409,172 "pens" on your desk. Keep in mind that some people might give you a chewed up pen, or a half of a pen, or even a pencil, so you have to decide in advance just what exactly you are going to count as a pen. Do this, without error, within 3 weeks. Ready, set, Go!
You pointed to a dissenting opinion, not the commission's report.
My mistake.
Many supervisor's still used the list and people were disenfranchised.
Sure- probably about 45 counties used the list. That means that the county supervisors in those counties took the list, attempted to verify the names on the list, and notified and removed the voters that they were able to verify as convicted felons. It doesn't mean that everybody on the list from those counties was prevented from voting. And note that the Miami Herald concluded that the biggest problem with the list is that it allowed 6,500 convicted felons to vote (because the list was bad enough to cause 22 counties to ignore it).
The USCCR has a couple of pages of people they interviewed on their reports. Maybe you should read the report instead of the dissenting opinion.
Well, yeah. They interviewed a lot of people, but they still were unable to find a single person that would testify that they were wrongly prevented from voting because of the felon list. When the USCCR Commission Chairman was asked how they could still conclude that "countless" people were disenfranchised even though they couldn't find any, she dismissed it as being ok because they "knew" that bad stuff had happened anyway. They didn't let a pesky thing like evidence get in the way!
Now turn your open eyes to the work that list was put to. They sent the list to polling places to keep tens of thousands of eligible Floridians from voting.
You are confusing stories here. He was referring to the list of 1,886 voters that the Bush campaign allegedly has collected in Florida (and, shockingly, the Bush campaign has refused to deny that this list was made to intimidate voters! I heard that they also refused to deny that Bush is a robot! Scandal!).
Governor Jeb's elections office hired Hank Asher's database company for an unprecedentedly high fee to create just such a list for just such a use.
DBT was hired before Jeb Bush was even in office. Doh! And the "unprecedentedly" high fee was "unprecedentedly" high because the list was unprecedented in Florida- the 2000 election was the first election after the 1997 law that required the list to be made. Doh again! But don't let these little facts get in your way. Carry on.
Any decent American hates the destruction of democracy that you Republicans are counting on to "win" the election next week.
Oh brother...
Let's see a citation of any reasonable challenge to Palast's investigations, beyond the empty contradictions and denials like your post.
I already cited the USCCR Report. The dissenting opinion is a must-read. So, lets see, here are some of Palast's charges.
Claim: Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris conspired to disenfranchise minority voters using the felon scrub list. Reality: The felon scrub list was mandated by 1997 law passed by the Legislature (yes, the Governor and Secretary of State cannot pass laws) before Jeb Bush or Katherine Harris were even in office. Neither Katherine Harris nor Jeb Bush could even remove anybody from the voter registrations- that responsibility lies solely on the County Election Supervisors.
Claim: DBT, the firm that was hired to make the felon scrub list, is a "Republican" firm, and they conspired with Harris to add false matches of minorities and democrats to the felon list to try to disenfranchise them Reality: The firm was hired before Harris was in office by the then Supervisor of Elections Ethel Baxtor, who is a Democrat. The law recognized that the list would not be perfect. Instead, it intended for the list to flag as many "possible" felons as it could, and let the individual County Election Supervisors verify the names in each county. If somebody was incorrectly removed from the voter registration, it is the County Election Supervisor of his/her county that is to blame.
Claim: Over 90% of the names on the felon list were incorrect. Reality: The USCCR heard testimony that of the ~58,000 names on the list, about 4,000 (or less than 7%) were incorrect. Also, the error rate of whites on the list was double the error rate of blacks on the list. Its also important to point out that being included on the list did not mean that you lost your vote. It was still up to the county election supervisor to verify the names before taking action, and at least 22 counties didn't use the list at all.
Claim: Thousands of Democrat voters were disenfranchised because of the felon list. Reality: The USCCR was unable to find a single person that could testify that they were incorrectly identified as a felon and actually prevented from voting. On the contrary, the Miami Herald concluded that the biggest problem with the list was that it ended up allowing 6,500 convicted felons to vote in the 2000 election!
You see, Palast went into this trying to prove his preconceived idea that Bush had stolen the election. Similarly, the USCCR Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry is on record saying that even though the commission had not seen any evidence to support their conclusions, they could justify them because they just "knew" that bad stuff had happened. I don't see how you can consider this "investigative reporting" when he ignored so many basic facts!
BTW, I note that you quote Al Capone in your.sig. You've got the wrong set of heroes - gangs of criminal thugs.
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This post is a perfect example of why the left is losing power.
George Bush is telling us why we are going to succeed.
The Democrats, "progressives", and Bush-haters are telling us why we are going to fail. Not only that, they are telling us that everything bad that happens is our fault.
Your anger is misplaced. Try focusing it on the real forces of evil in this world.
Actually, I think you make a good point. Bush's detractors learned a lot of this behavior from Clinton. Clinton was always trying to twist words and semantics. Now it has got to the point where people think that "freedom" is a code-word for "baby killing" or something.
The definition of these words is widely known. If you want to know how he defines the word, go find a freaking dictionary.
Sonoma is based on the 915 chipset (Alviso/ICH6). The biggest difference is, of course, PCI Express. There is support for a x16 PCI Express graphics on Alviso, and support for a couple of x1 PCI Express devices on the ICH. This is a major architectural overhaul that more than doubles the bandwidth between the MCH and the ICH. New to Sonoma, the chipset also includes support for:
- 533MHz FSB
- SATA
- DDR2 memory
- Next generation integrated graphics that doesn't suck
- Hi-def audio (Azalia)
- New power management features
1.) 1 X 2300 5*500
Actually, as other people have pointed out, you can get them for $450.
So if Iraq had produced twenty 'truck drivers' who all 'drove a bunch of tanks into the desert' where 'guys in rubber suits dumped them out onto concrete' and 'have no idea what was in those tanks, but we were told to stay far away,' you'd take that as sufficient proof?
Why the hell are you asking me that? I'm not a UNMOVIC inspector. I suppose the inspectors would have to weigh the credibility of the witnesses compared to the available evidence.
Note that 24k is the very lower bound of the number of people believed killed in this conflict.
No it isn't. Last time I checked iraqbodycount.net, it was between 15k and 17k. Tragic none the less, but I have noticed that they include Iraqis killed by attacks from insurgents in those counts, and I don't agree with that.
And the 100k number comes from the Lancet study that was discredited almost immediately after release. They relied on a flawed methodology to collect their data, and even with that their margin of error with 95% confidence was +/- 98,000. So they were only able to say that they were 95% sure that there were between 2,000 and 200,000 casualties- not a very strong analysis.
Two things.
#1- I think you are confusing some terms. There is no evidence that the Saudi government supports terrorism. On the contrary they have been extremely helpful in the War on Terror helping us capture hundreds of known terrorists. It would be foolish to turn on one of our biggest supporters in the area. Now, there are Saudi citizens that promote terrorism, but that is probably true of every country.
#2- The first step is not invasion- that is the last resort. In the case of Iraq, we endured over 12 years of failed diplomacy before we resorted to military action.
so, we ignored North Korea, and attacked Iraq?
What gave you the silly idea that we are ignoring North Korea?
not even through this mysterious "attempt on ghwb's life"
Its not that mysterious
Iraq has never been a threat. Never.
Tell that to Iran. Or Kuwait. Or Israel. Or Saudi Arabia. Or the Kurds. Or the Iraqi people. Or Russian intelligence.
In fact, I bet you wouldn't recognize a threat even if it hijacked your planes and flew them into your buildings...
Its pointless to continue this when you can read exactly what UNMOVIC was asking for. If they couldn't provide direct evidence, UNMOVIC was asking for any documents or a list of personnel that they could interview and permission to actually interview them. It is not trivial to dispose of chemical and biological weapons, and it is laughable that Iraq would not be able to provide any info to support their claims. Iraq never cooperated with this.
For example, Iraq claimed that they unilaterally took 1.5 tonnes of Vx into the desert and dumped it onto some concrete to destroy it (Appendix II, paragraph 16). Later, when inspectors were finally told about this, they went to the site, and they were able detect some traces of Vx. But when they asked if they could interview anybody that was there or loaded the trucks or ANYTHING to verify that it was about 1.5 tonnes, Iraq refused to cooperate. So we know that some Vx was destroyed there, but we have no idea how much. It is not unreasonable to assume that Saddam was lying about the quantity, especially considering his history.
Asking them to let you talk to people that participated in this activity is not the same as saying "Prove you don't have Vx".
Here are a couple of links:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/09/co
http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2003/ajan/27_s
Considering that only UN Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter are binding or enforceable, go back through that list and tell me which of those other resolutions are were passed under Chapter VII.
(hint: none of them were)
(another hint: all of those 17 resolutions against Iraq were passed under Chapter VII, so they are binding and enforceable)
(hint #3: you might want to try to educate yourself about a subject before you try to debate it- otherwise you look like a fool)
Not quite. Iraq had WMD. There is no question about that- we even saw Iraq use them. So after the first Gulf War, UNSCOM presented them with a list of all known WMD that needed to be destroyed (Iraq accepted this list). Iraq was required to let UNSCOM monitor the destruction of these weapons, or at minimum, Iraq was to provide UNSCOM with enough information to verify that they were actually destroyed (records, interviews, locations, etc). UNSCOM did monitor the destruction of many of these weapons, but Iraq was never able to fully account for all of the weapons on the list- instead they were caught deceiving UNSCOM dozens of times.
This is clearly not proving a negative. UNSCOM, and later UNMOVIC, were looking to resolve specific questions about Iraq's disarmament.
The justification for invading was that Iraq presented a threat.
Correct- "grave and gathering threat", IIRC.
Not finding WMD or any programs proves that the invasion was unnecessary for dealing with the threat.
Whoa there. Have you read any of the ISG report? We did not find the WMD stockpiles that we were expecting- instead we found infrastructure, materials, and documentation to restart mass production of WMD as soon as we turned our back. We found over a dozen WMD programs that the UN had no idea existed. The inspections WERE NOT WORKING.
No intelligence organization actually believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the US or it's allies.
Oh really?
Your attempt to equivocate Saddam's future intentions with the evidence is part of the intellectual dishonesty and weakness that got us into this mess.
Let's look at Saddam's history. He has attempted to illegally invade 2 of his neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), one of which led to the 3rd most deadly war this century (Iran). He launched unprovoked attacks against two other nations (Israel and Saudi Arabia). He launched chemical weapons attacks on multiple occasions- even attacking his own people. He was in violation of 17 unanimous UN Security Council resolutions. He fired on US aircraft almost daily for several years. He directly supported and collaborated with numerous terrorist groups, including several that target US interests (this earned him a spot on the US State Department list of State sponsors of Terrorism as far back as 1979). He tried to assassinate a former US president. He commissioned several direct terrorist attacks on the US during the 1990s that we were able to foil, including an attack on the US run Radio Free Europe. Intelligence (both from us and from our allies) indicated that he was trying to attack us more. He had successfully concealed over a dozen WMD programs from the UN for 12 years, and clearly had no intention of living up to his cease-fire agreements.
You claim that this is not a threat. Who is being more dishonest?
Personally, I dislike George Bush, because I hate tyranny and totalitarianism.
Guess what? George Bush dislikes tyranny and totalitarianism. So do "neocons" and Republicans. My bet is that you made up your mind years ago that you hated him, and ever since you are stubbornly trying to justify that hatred.
* I think the most distressing part of the presidential campaign was when Kerry caught Bush in a debate justifying the Iraq war since "we were attacked on 9/11," and yet that didn't make much difference to the voting public. Clearly that lie was proclaimed loud and long enough for many people to buy in...
There was no lie. Bush was motivated to act against Iraq because of 9/11. This does not mean that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, it just means that you cannot prosecute a war against terrorism while ignoring one of the biggest supporters of international terrorism.
Iraq was not a new problem- they had been a festering threat for the entire decade before 9/11. 9/11 just showed us what can happen if you ignore a festering threat for too long.
Dozen or more Iraqis die each day at presently in bombings. The violence is worse than ever.
Uh, no it isn't. Conservative estimates are that Saddam killed between 200,000 and 2,000,000 people during his 20+ year reign. Even using the low end of that estimate, that averages out to about 2 dozen people per day. This is not meant to minimize the current suffering in Iraq- it is only meant to demonstrate that there was no status quo.
A friend of mine told me that her 85 year old grandmother in Baghdad has registered to vote for the first time in her life, and she is excited as hell about it. Why can't we talk about the good along with the bad?
Bull crap. They let inspectors back in only because we parked 150,000 troops at their doorstep. Why did we do that? Because Iraq was in blatent violation of over a dozen unanimous UN resolutions as he had not allowed the mandated inspections to take place since 1998.
And have you even read any of the Duelfer report? I have only had time to read through about 200 pages of it, but it is very clear that Iraq had no intention of honoring its cease-fire obligations to disarm. To quote Duelfer himself:
No, Iraq did not let the inspectors back in to "prove" that they had disarmed. And on Jan 27, 2003, Hans Blix made it clear to the UN Security Council that Iraq was not fully cooperating with the inspections.
Remember how reasonable, rational people said there was no proof Iraq had WMDs?
You remember incorrectly. There was little dispute about if Iraq had weapons- the only dispute was what we should do about it. We knew he had them- we had seen him use them for cryin out loud. He was required to prove that he had fully disarmed, and he refused. And after 12 years of deception and uncooperation, the only safe assumption we could make was that he still had them. The fact that the guy apparently did get rid of the WMD in secret has no bearing on the decision.
Of all of the bogus reasons people have to justify their hatred of George Bush, the fact that he thought that Iraq had WMD is one of the more asinine ones.
Actually, I just got a squeezebox (set it up over the weekend), and I just fired off an email about this problem to support@slimdevices.com this afternoon. AM radio stations above ~1000KHz on radios in the house are pretty bad sounding while the squeezebox is plugged in. I searched the mailing list archives, and I found some references to other people having the same problem. I have even noticed it on my car radio as soon as I pull into the garage, and the squeezebox is located on the second floor at the opposite end of the house as the garage!
You just pulled all of that straight out of your butt. The US State Department placed Iraq in the list of Terrorist Supporting States in 1979. The cease-fire resolution from the Gulf War (UNSEC Resolution 687) specifically demanded that Iraq cease their support of terrorism as a condition of the cease-fire (this was passed in 1991- thats pre-No-Fly-Zone).
Saddam's Iraq has directly supported many major terrorist organizations throughout the years, including the Abu Nidal Organization, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Hamas, Carlos the Jackal, Ansar Al Islam, and the PKK. He established Salman Pak, a terrorist training camp southeast of Baghdad complete with biological weapons research, in the mid 1980's. Saddam's plan to attack the US run Radio Free Europe in Prague was foiled, as was his attempt to assassinate George HW Bush on a visit to Kuwait. The guy even went on TV and handed out checks to terrorist bombers, for cryin out loud.
Nothing you said is even remotely connected to the truth. It is amazing to me what lengths people will go to justify their irrational hatred of the United States.
Except, of course, that the errors were in Bush's favor.
The lost votes that this article is referring to were in Carteret County. Carterey County is heavily Republican (Bush had about 70% of the vote there), so lost votes in that county hurt Bush and the GOP. In other words, you are full of crap.
Look man, I'm a Democrat because the GOP has become so jaw-droppingly criminal and almost cult-like.
I think it is sad how irrational and hate-filled the Democrats have become. Seriously.
Thats because you obviously have not read any of the relevant UN resolutions.
Paragraph 32 of Resolution 687:Oh, and Iraq has supported many terrorist groups- not just Hamas.
When they design a chip like the P4 that does less usefull work per clock cycle than the P3 before it for no apparent reason other than "mhz marketing", yeah, why not fault them?
I know you are not going to like this, but the design choice to increase the P4 pipeline depth was based on a lot more than just marketing. Here is some of the research behind it:
Increasing Processor Performance by Implementing Deeper Pipelines
The Optimum Pipeline Depth for a Microprocessor
I have 2 pens on my desk. I could count them repeatedly for years without any sort of weird quantum effects creating any uncertainty in my measurement.
Ok- now try counting 115,409,172 "pens" on your desk. Keep in mind that some people might give you a chewed up pen, or a half of a pen, or even a pencil, so you have to decide in advance just what exactly you are going to count as a pen. Do this, without error, within 3 weeks. Ready, set, Go!
You pointed to a dissenting opinion, not the commission's report.
My mistake.
Many supervisor's still used the list and people were disenfranchised.
Sure- probably about 45 counties used the list. That means that the county supervisors in those counties took the list, attempted to verify the names on the list, and notified and removed the voters that they were able to verify as convicted felons. It doesn't mean that everybody on the list from those counties was prevented from voting. And note that the Miami Herald concluded that the biggest problem with the list is that it allowed 6,500 convicted felons to vote (because the list was bad enough to cause 22 counties to ignore it).
The USCCR has a couple of pages of people they interviewed on their reports. Maybe you should read the report instead of the dissenting opinion.
Well, yeah. They interviewed a lot of people, but they still were unable to find a single person that would testify that they were wrongly prevented from voting because of the felon list. When the USCCR Commission Chairman was asked how they could still conclude that "countless" people were disenfranchised even though they couldn't find any, she dismissed it as being ok because they "knew" that bad stuff had happened anyway. They didn't let a pesky thing like evidence get in the way!
Now turn your open eyes to the work that list was put to. They sent the list to polling places to keep tens of thousands of eligible Floridians from voting.
You are confusing stories here. He was referring to the list of 1,886 voters that the Bush campaign allegedly has collected in Florida (and, shockingly, the Bush campaign has refused to deny that this list was made to intimidate voters! I heard that they also refused to deny that Bush is a robot! Scandal!).
Governor Jeb's elections office hired Hank Asher's database company for an unprecedentedly high fee to create just such a list for just such a use.
DBT was hired before Jeb Bush was even in office. Doh! And the "unprecedentedly" high fee was "unprecedentedly" high because the list was unprecedented in Florida- the 2000 election was the first election after the 1997 law that required the list to be made. Doh again! But don't let these little facts get in your way. Carry on.
Any decent American hates the destruction of democracy that you Republicans are counting on to "win" the election next week.
.sig. You've got the wrong set of heroes - gangs of criminal thugs.
Oh brother...
Let's see a citation of any reasonable challenge to Palast's investigations, beyond the empty contradictions and denials like your post.
I already cited the USCCR Report. The dissenting opinion is a must-read. So, lets see, here are some of Palast's charges.
Claim: Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris conspired to disenfranchise minority voters using the felon scrub list.
Reality: The felon scrub list was mandated by 1997 law passed by the Legislature (yes, the Governor and Secretary of State cannot pass laws) before Jeb Bush or Katherine Harris were even in office. Neither Katherine Harris nor Jeb Bush could even remove anybody from the voter registrations- that responsibility lies solely on the County Election Supervisors.
Claim: DBT, the firm that was hired to make the felon scrub list, is a "Republican" firm, and they conspired with Harris to add false matches of minorities and democrats to the felon list to try to disenfranchise them
Reality: The firm was hired before Harris was in office by the then Supervisor of Elections Ethel Baxtor, who is a Democrat. The law recognized that the list would not be perfect. Instead, it intended for the list to flag as many "possible" felons as it could, and let the individual County Election Supervisors verify the names in each county. If somebody was incorrectly removed from the voter registration, it is the County Election Supervisor of his/her county that is to blame.
Claim: Over 90% of the names on the felon list were incorrect.
Reality: The USCCR heard testimony that of the ~58,000 names on the list, about 4,000 (or less than 7%) were incorrect. Also, the error rate of whites on the list was double the error rate of blacks on the list. Its also important to point out that being included on the list did not mean that you lost your vote. It was still up to the county election supervisor to verify the names before taking action, and at least 22 counties didn't use the list at all.
Claim: Thousands of Democrat voters were disenfranchised because of the felon list.
Reality: The USCCR was unable to find a single person that could testify that they were incorrectly identified as a felon and actually prevented from voting. On the contrary, the Miami Herald concluded that the biggest problem with the list was that it ended up allowing 6,500 convicted felons to vote in the 2000 election!
You see, Palast went into this trying to prove his preconceived idea that Bush had stolen the election. Similarly, the USCCR Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry is on record saying that even though the commission had not seen any evidence to support their conclusions, they could justify them because they just "knew" that bad stuff had happened. I don't see how you can consider this "investigative reporting" when he ignored so many basic facts!
BTW, I note that you quote Al Capone in your
Who said Al Capone is my hero?