from my perspective, the government should own the network but let the phone companies provide the service.
Why would you want that? You see, in general, the government sucks at doing things. They have a guaranteed revenue that the population is forced to pay no matter what, so they are fundamentally different than a competative business. They have no incentive to do things efficiantly or quickly. Think about it- when was the last time you went to the DMV or post office or any other government office and were happy with the service that you received?
There are a few main responsibilities that a government should have (national defense, enforce the rule of law, etc), but aside from those, get them out of the frickin way.
I hope you arent trying to imply that the US is not justified in pursuing rouge WMDs today because of the limited actions of a few members of the military almost 250 years ago. Hell- that was even before there was an understanding of basic germ theory, and almost 150 years before the Geneva convention that outlawed the use of chemical and biological weapons.
Ok- as other people have pointed out, you are trying to read more meaning into those numbers than is actually there. Our unemployment rate is 5.6%, and while this is not a perfect measurement, that is the closest estimate that we have of the people that are actually looking for jobs and cant find them. And while 5.6% isn't anything to get excited about, historically we have had much worse.
So, comrade, what is your solution (besides sitting around waiting for the proletariat to revolt)?
Starbucks has built a business that is profitable. They provide a product that people want and charge a price that people are willing to pay. They don't have any problems finding employees that are willing to work for the wages that they offer. There is nothing wrong with this.
Yep, sounds like yer average 'crats good repubs evil hippycrat. Yes, sirie.
This is not rocket science. Take 2 seconds at his website. His blatent hatred of President Bush is obvious.
Palast... distinguishes himself from many other advocacy journalists both left and right with his near obsession with documentary evidence
This obsession wasn't enough to keep him from screwing up his article.
I seem to remember international elections investigations being denied. But, since I can't find any proof atm... well... Funny, Palast reports internationally. And I seem to remeber other media that discussed the antics involved. But no specific sources, sorry.
There were thousands of journalists in Florida to cover the election fallout. Any one of them would have loved to blow open a story that proved misconduct by Harris or Gov. Bush. Instead we only have Palast tooting his horn to promote his own books because he somehow thinks that Katherine Harris complying with a law that was passed before she even took office is scandalous.
So was Halliburton. What's your point?
No- whats your point? The parent was suggesting that Choicepoint/DBT was a "Republican headed company" that was in on a huge conspiracy with Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush to disenfranchise voters. That whole theory kind of goes out the window when you realize that neither Bush nor Harris were even in office when the company was hired, and that the company was hired by a Democrat. Was Ethel Baxtor (the Democrat that hired Choicepoint) in on this conspiracy to steal votes for Bush?
And I will save my rant on Haliburton for another day. Somebody somewhere decided that Haliburton was a big liability for the Bush administration, so we have seen a steady stream of allegations against them for the past three years. Never mind that none of the allegations have stuck.
And Mr. Insan...err...Hussien said 99% of Iraq voted for him. Again, what's your point?
If you have evidence that Jeb Bush acted improperly during the election, then why don't you share that with us (or maybe Palast- I'm sure he would love it). And no, the fact that he is related to the winning candidate is not evidence. It is not illegal, afterall, to be the President's brother.
For the first part, please sight your sources.
Ok- fair enough.
Here is the USCCR report on the elections. Allow me to quote the executive summary:
The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred.
Here are the election laws that were in effect during the 2000 elections (see 98.0977).
(e) Upon hearing evidence at the hearing, the supervisor of elections must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to strike the persons name from the registration books. If the supervisor determines that there is sufficient evidence, he or she must strike the name.
The county election supervisors were required by law to verify the names before any action was taken. So if a mistake was made, it was made by the county election supervisor.
That is not a "good" write up. It is a partisan attack that isn't even factual.
the head of the Bush campaign in Florida also happened to be the person in charge of Florida elections
And every action she took has held up against 3 years of intense international scrutiny.
and worked with a Republican headed company
That was hired by a democrat before either Harris or Bush were in office
and George Bush's brother Jeb
Jeb recused himself from anything related to the election
have ~51,000 people wrongfully taken off the voter rolls who where later found to 90% Democrat.
That is just 100% false. 51,000 people were not removed from the voter rolls. The (Democrat majority) USCCR commission struggled to find 5 people that were actually removed from the voter rolls, and 4 of them were allowed to vote anyway. And by law, the responsibility to remove somebody from the voter registration falls on the county election supervisor- Harris and Jeb Bush don't even have the legal authority to remove a name from voter registration.
The fact that she was sued does not prove anything. People can get sued at any time for any reason. And the NAACP has settled their lawsuit already.
You are still ignoring the facts that don't fit into your "alternate reality":
- The law requiring the felon voter scrub list was passed before Harris (or Jeb Bush, for that matter) was even in office - Local county election supervisors are the only ones with the authority to remove a name from voter registration (not Harris or Bush) - The counties with the highest vote spoilage rate were all administered by Democrat election supervisors - The USCCR report was not able to identify a single person who actually was falsly prevented from voting because of this list
In retrospect, our alliance with Saddam in the 80's was bad- hindsight is always 20-20. But if you look at the situation we were in, it is understandable why we looked to work with Saddam. The Iranian revolution changed the dynamic of the region. Suddenly we had a radical Islamic theocracy that was openly anti-American and had taken hundreds of US citizens hostage. Iran quickly became enemy #1.
So we look next door. Instead of a radical Islamic government, we see a secular leader, and we falsly assume that this means Iraq will not be subject to the same volitility as Iran. We also see a leader that is against the new Islamic government in Iran (our new enemy). We obviously underestimated Saddam.
Its not like we sat back and did nothing about his war crimes. We sent Rumsfeld to Iraq in the early 80's to urge Saddam not to use chemical weapons. We voted for almost a half a dozen UN resolutions condemning Iraq for it's chemical weapons use. And the chemical weapons he was using were not American anyway. Finally it became painfully obvious that we could not trust Saddam, so we started working to disarm him.
An institution that is unwilling to enforce its own decisions has no credibility. Saddam had spent the past 12 years writing a playbook for other 3rd world dictators to defy the UN. The United States proved that there is at lease some muscle behind the UN's decisions.
Yes- veto power in the security council is important. But guess what- the 17 resolutions passed against Iraq over that 12 year period were all passed unanimously, and every single one of them cited Chapter VII of the UN charter which explicitly authorizes military force. There was no veto. Enforcing the resolutions was not only authorized by the UN, but it was required.
Voting for 17 resolutions, and then cowaring at the prospect of actually enforcing them- now THAT violates everything that the UN stands for.
One of the reasons that I oppose Bush so strongly is that when he took office, he scrapped Clinton's anti-terrorism plans (which had foiled numerous plots). Then after 9/11 and Afghanistan, he comes off looking like some kind of hero.
Yes- Clinton's anti-terrorism plans were a HUGE success at the WTC in 1993, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, US troop barracks in Saudi Arabia, our embassies in east Africa, and the USS Cole. I especially liked his strategy of blowing up powdered milk factories in the Sudan and firing missiles at empty tents in Afghanistan. Very effective.
Maybe if Bush didn't invade Iraq, he could have given that 87 Billion to Nasa instead.
Ok- on one hand, we can spent the money to free 25 million people from a brutal and oppressive dictator, give credibility to the UN, provide a catalyst for the democratization of one of the most volatile regions in the world, and eliminate a threat to our national security.
but I think that under typical, multi-tasking usage, the deep pipelines are even more painful than benchmarks suggest.
Ok- lets say that you get really unlucky and you miss 100 branch predictions in a row. If each branch miss costs you 30 cycles at 2.5 GHz, those 3000 cycles cost you about 400ns. You are not going to notice anything under several milliseconds. Thats only 6 orders of magnitude different. In other words, that has nothing to do with your CPU.
Intel's pipeline depth was a conscious design choice. In fact, they have done research and concluded that the current P4 pipeline depth is not deep enough (sourcesource). According to this research, the optimal pipeline depth for x86 is between 40 and 50 stages. There are tradeoffs to a deeper pipeline, but rest assured that Intel has considered them in their design decisions...
And these secret back-door meetings helped out the energy companies soooo much that Enron filed for bankruptcy within a year and the entire sector dropped by almost 50% over the 2 years following it. Either Cheney really sucks at helping out his buddies, or he didn't help them as much as you seem to think.
A paper trail would have made no difference in this election. The people turned in "blank" ballots. A paper receipt would show just that- no votes. Even with a paper trail, you can't assume that they really wanted to vote. You can only assume that they didn't vote for anybody. Voting is binary, after all. You either voted or you didn't. There is no in-between.
What does that have to do with anything? Of course they work for us. They would have been remiss to NOT hear from energy companies while formulating an energy policy. It is their responsibility to gather as much information as they can on the subject.
The Bush administration, along with Howard Dean, all of the past US Presidents that have claimed excutive privilege, as well as anybody that has been in a leadership position knows that you will get the most honest advice when people can talk in confidence. It would be detrimental to their ability to do their jobs if they lost this, especially just so their political opponents could go on a fishing trip to try to find ammo for the next election.
Either you can claim executive privilege, or you cannot. All of the benefits of getting privileged advice would be negated if the privilege could be overturned on a whim. Who decides how important something needs to be to be protected?
You say that as if it is a bad thing. Meetings with the President or Vice President have never been public record. Even Howard Dean understands this, in spite of what he is ranting about now.
The point is that WE CAN'T live on a dollar an hour -- and Carly sure won't.
Right- so find a job that pays more than that. You either pick a job that you like and hope the pay is enough, or you pick a salary that you like and hope the job is ok. If everybody could pick what job they wanted AND how much they got paid for it, then we would only have a bunch of rich lazy people. Throwing a tantrum because you want to work in engineering AND get paid a lot for it won't help anything.
Corporations are LICENSED by the people to exist for their benefit.
Corporations exist for 1 and only 1 reason- to make a profit.
Unrestrained, they will destroy our economy. That means jobs and salaries, not the stock market.
You have some pretty big misconceptions about basic economics. Unrestrained business is what has created our economy! Why else do you think the US economy is the largest in the world? We have one of the most business friendly economies in the world. Artificial market forces, like salary floors, hurt everybody.
Great. A claim from an ex-Wall St Journal reporter (why did you leave the Journal, Jude?) that knows an Iraqi in Britain who is openly anti-US and has "no ties with any intelligence service", but somehow has more knowledge of the Iraq body count than the 1000s of AP reporters in Iraq.
If the UN passes a resolution is only up to the UN to enforce it.
Please take 2 seconds a browse the UN charter. The UN has no executive branch. It has no means of enforcing anything. Thats why they mandate member states to enforce the resolutions. Read Chapter VII Article 45, 48, and 49 for more information. Starting with 687, the 12 resolutions that were passed by the Security Council to disarm Iraq were specifically passed under Chapter VII of the charter, and they therefore specifically authorize the use of military force.
No member country should prempt the policies of the UN and no country has the moral or politcal authotiry to decide to enforce any resolutions unilaterally
What in the hell are you talking about? We didn't preempt any policies of the UN! Did you forget about the 12 resolutions unanimously passed under Chapter VII that specifically authorize the use of military force? We were acting with full legal authority from the UN! Your talk of unilaterally enforceing the resolutions is laughable- these resolutions were passed unanimously under Chapter VII.
Thats interesting, especially considering his tanks, missiles, and aircraft were all soviet made, and his chemical weapons were either German or Japanese. If we did give him weapons, it wasn't very many I guess.
2) Saddam used weapons on - well, on everyone in range.
The US voted for 5 resolutions in the 80's that condemned Iraq for its chemical weapon use.
3) USA stopped giving saddam weapons. He was a good friend to the people of america, but he didn't need any more weapons. 4) Saddam's weapons were gone, because he used them all
Wow! You have solved the mystery! Now we know where the unaccounted weapons went. He used them all! How silly that we didn't think about that before.
And by the way, am I the only one that remembers that the UN inspectors NEVER FOUND ANYTHING?
You remember incorrectly. The inspectors found and destroyed some weapons shortly after going into Iraq in the early 90's. In 1994, after some defections of high level Iraqis, they discovered a secret nuclear weapons program and that Saddam had restarted some research projects on chemical weapons. When confronted with this evidence, Saddam even admitted to this.
But I guess its ok. No need to worry. I mean, he wouldn't lie about it more than once, would he?
And what about the US's inability to produce even a single chem/bio/nuclear weapon, despite scouring the country for months, and despite capturing and questioning hundreds of iraqis?
Iraq is a big place. I mean, it took us 6 months to find is air force buried in the sand- how long will it take us to find a few drums of chemicals? They could be anywhere.
The whereabouts of the (alleged) iraqi WMDs are not a mystery - there simply aren't any in the country.
You are entitled to that opinion.
PREDICTION: now that saddam is caught, the US will as if by magic produce a large stockpile of weapons that look to be well-hidden and very nefarious.
PREDICTION: People like you won't accept anything found in Iraq no matter what.
Has it occurred to you that if the Bush administration was lying about Iraq's WMD's, we probably wouldn't know about it because they would have immediatly "found" them? I mean, why would they lie about the weapons, then proceed to invade the country when an invasion is the only thing that will finally bring out the truth? It doesn't make any sense to only lie halfway like that. I think the fact that we haven't found any weapons yet is proof that the Bush administration wasn't lying about the WMD's.
We became his sworn enemy only when he invaded Kuwait and we realized that oil would be far cheaper in the hands of people we saved from invasion.
Ok- he tried to illegally expand his borders, and we kicked is ass back out. Even if we did just do it for oil, it was the right thing to do. And do you realize that we only get about 2% of our oil imports from Kuwait, right? If the was was just about oil, we would have probably gone after Canada or Mexico or Saudi Arabia instead.
Before or after we invaded Iraq? Nobody had any proof to this speculation before we invaded
If Saddam had complied with the UN, we would know now, wouldn't we...
A capitalistic Iraq will allow those who participated in the invasion to profit immensely from transforming the middle east into a "western" country.
The Iraqis themselves are very optimistic about their future after Saddam. Why aren't you?
African nations in which we can lord impossible debts over their heads and force them into low wage labor.
Yeah- lets blame the US for everything. Many African nations are struggling with poverty- must be our fault. Theres no other explanation.
North Korea did react by announcing their intentions to blow up South Korea and Japan
North Korea's actions have just confirmed why we have regarded them as a terrorist supporting rouge nation for years now.
BUT, you had the possibility of owning one. So, I had to shoot you.
If you had seen me shoot people in the past with a gun, and you had no evidence that I had got rid of my gun, then yes, you should shoot me if I threaten to kill you. That is the smart thing to do. We are not suicidal, after all.
If you're going to use UN resolutions as a justification for anything, please enforce them in numerical order....
Its a lot more complicated than that. I assume you are talking about resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions passed regarding Israel and the Palestinians, but you cannot compare them to resolution 687.
Basically, there are 3 types of resolutions that can come out of the United Nations: - General Assembly resolutions, which carry the same authority as a suggestion and are not enforceable by the UN - Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 6, which are cease-fire agreements, and again are not enforceable by the UN - Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 7, which not only are enforceable, but the UN charter mandates that member states do enforce them
Resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions against Israel/Palestine were passed under Chapter 6 of the charter. 242 was a cease fire that basically stated that Israel should give up some occupied territory and Palestinians should stop threatening Israel. Now Israel has given up over 90% of the territory that it originally occupied, but they are still very much threatoned by the Palestinians. Either way, the resolution is not enforceable under the UN charter.
On the other hand, all of the resolutions against Iraq, starting with 678 in 1990, were passed under chapter 7, and as such they are enforeable by the member states of the UN. You really cannot compare them.
Slashdot Mirror
from my perspective, the government should own the network but let the phone companies provide the service.
Why would you want that? You see, in general, the government sucks at doing things. They have a guaranteed revenue that the population is forced to pay no matter what, so they are fundamentally different than a competative business. They have no incentive to do things efficiantly or quickly. Think about it- when was the last time you went to the DMV or post office or any other government office and were happy with the service that you received?
There are a few main responsibilities that a government should have (national defense, enforce the rule of law, etc), but aside from those, get them out of the frickin way.
IIRC, eventually neither AGP nor PCI will be on PCI-Express boards.
AGP will not be available, but PCI will still be there via a bridge (similar to the old moon ISA bridges when PCI took over).
I hope you arent trying to imply that the US is not justified in pursuing rouge WMDs today because of the limited actions of a few members of the military almost 250 years ago. Hell- that was even before there was an understanding of basic germ theory, and almost 150 years before the Geneva convention that outlawed the use of chemical and biological weapons.
Ok- as other people have pointed out, you are trying to read more meaning into those numbers than is actually there. Our unemployment rate is 5.6%, and while this is not a perfect measurement, that is the closest estimate that we have of the people that are actually looking for jobs and cant find them. And while 5.6% isn't anything to get excited about, historically we have had much worse.
So, comrade, what is your solution (besides sitting around waiting for the proletariat to revolt)?
Starbucks has built a business that is profitable. They provide a product that people want and charge a price that people are willing to pay. They don't have any problems finding employees that are willing to work for the wages that they offer. There is nothing wrong with this.
This is not rocket science. Take 2 seconds at his website. His blatent hatred of President Bush is obvious.
Palast... distinguishes himself from many other advocacy journalists both left and right with his near obsession with documentary evidence
This obsession wasn't enough to keep him from screwing up his article.
I seem to remember international elections investigations being denied. But, since I can't find any proof atm... well... Funny, Palast reports internationally. And I seem to remeber other media that discussed the antics involved. But no specific sources, sorry.
There were thousands of journalists in Florida to cover the election fallout. Any one of them would have loved to blow open a story that proved misconduct by Harris or Gov. Bush. Instead we only have Palast tooting his horn to promote his own books because he somehow thinks that Katherine Harris complying with a law that was passed before she even took office is scandalous.
So was Halliburton. What's your point?
No- whats your point? The parent was suggesting that Choicepoint/DBT was a "Republican headed company" that was in on a huge conspiracy with Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush to disenfranchise voters. That whole theory kind of goes out the window when you realize that neither Bush nor Harris were even in office when the company was hired, and that the company was hired by a Democrat. Was Ethel Baxtor (the Democrat that hired Choicepoint) in on this conspiracy to steal votes for Bush?
And I will save my rant on Haliburton for another day. Somebody somewhere decided that Haliburton was a big liability for the Bush administration, so we have seen a steady stream of allegations against them for the past three years. Never mind that none of the allegations have stuck.
And Mr. Insan...err...Hussien said 99% of Iraq voted for him. Again, what's your point?
If you have evidence that Jeb Bush acted improperly during the election, then why don't you share that with us (or maybe Palast- I'm sure he would love it). And no, the fact that he is related to the winning candidate is not evidence. It is not illegal, afterall, to be the President's brother.
For the first part, please sight your sources.
Ok- fair enough.
Here is the USCCR report on the elections. Allow me to quote the executive summary:
Here are the election laws that were in effect during the 2000 elections (see 98.0977).The county election supervisors were required by law to verify the names before any action was taken. So if a mistake was made, it was made by the county election supervisor.
Greg Palast has a good write up on it.
That is not a "good" write up. It is a partisan attack that isn't even factual.
the head of the Bush campaign in Florida also happened to be the person in charge of Florida elections
And every action she took has held up against 3 years of intense international scrutiny.
and worked with a Republican headed company
That was hired by a democrat before either Harris or Bush were in office
and George Bush's brother Jeb
Jeb recused himself from anything related to the election
have ~51,000 people wrongfully taken off the voter rolls who where later found to 90% Democrat.
That is just 100% false. 51,000 people were not removed from the voter rolls. The (Democrat majority) USCCR commission struggled to find 5 people that were actually removed from the voter rolls, and 4 of them were allowed to vote anyway. And by law, the responsibility to remove somebody from the voter registration falls on the county election supervisor- Harris and Jeb Bush don't even have the legal authority to remove a name from voter registration.
Uh, if there is "illegal content" (whatever that means) on your TV, then they are going to go after the person broadcasting that content.
The fact that she was sued does not prove anything. People can get sued at any time for any reason. And the NAACP has settled their lawsuit already.
You are still ignoring the facts that don't fit into your "alternate reality":
- The law requiring the felon voter scrub list was passed before Harris (or Jeb Bush, for that matter) was even in office
- Local county election supervisors are the only ones with the authority to remove a name from voter registration (not Harris or Bush)
- The counties with the highest vote spoilage rate were all administered by Democrat election supervisors
- The USCCR report was not able to identify a single person who actually was falsly prevented from voting because of this list
In retrospect, our alliance with Saddam in the 80's was bad- hindsight is always 20-20. But if you look at the situation we were in, it is understandable why we looked to work with Saddam. The Iranian revolution changed the dynamic of the region. Suddenly we had a radical Islamic theocracy that was openly anti-American and had taken hundreds of US citizens hostage. Iran quickly became enemy #1.
So we look next door. Instead of a radical Islamic government, we see a secular leader, and we falsly assume that this means Iraq will not be subject to the same volitility as Iran. We also see a leader that is against the new Islamic government in Iran (our new enemy). We obviously underestimated Saddam.
Its not like we sat back and did nothing about his war crimes. We sent Rumsfeld to Iraq in the early 80's to urge Saddam not to use chemical weapons. We voted for almost a half a dozen UN resolutions condemning Iraq for it's chemical weapons use. And the chemical weapons he was using were not American anyway. Finally it became painfully obvious that we could not trust Saddam, so we started working to disarm him.
Hopefully we can learn from mistakes like this.
An institution that is unwilling to enforce its own decisions has no credibility. Saddam had spent the past 12 years writing a playbook for other 3rd world dictators to defy the UN. The United States proved that there is at lease some muscle behind the UN's decisions.
Yes- veto power in the security council is important. But guess what- the 17 resolutions passed against Iraq over that 12 year period were all passed unanimously, and every single one of them cited Chapter VII of the UN charter which explicitly authorizes military force. There was no veto. Enforcing the resolutions was not only authorized by the UN, but it was required.
Voting for 17 resolutions, and then cowaring at the prospect of actually enforcing them- now THAT violates everything that the UN stands for.
One of the reasons that I oppose Bush so strongly is that when he took office, he scrapped Clinton's anti-terrorism plans (which had foiled numerous plots). Then after 9/11 and Afghanistan, he comes off looking like some kind of hero.
Yes- Clinton's anti-terrorism plans were a HUGE success at the WTC in 1993, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, US troop barracks in Saudi Arabia, our embassies in east Africa, and the USS Cole. I especially liked his strategy of blowing up powdered milk factories in the Sudan and firing missiles at empty tents in Afghanistan. Very effective.
Maybe if Bush didn't invade Iraq, he could have given that 87 Billion to Nasa instead.
Ok- on one hand, we can spent the money to free 25 million people from a brutal and oppressive dictator, give credibility to the UN, provide a catalyst for the democratization of one of the most volatile regions in the world, and eliminate a threat to our national security.
-OR-
We can hurl more crap up into space.
Thats a pretty tough choice.
but I think that under typical, multi-tasking usage, the deep pipelines are even more painful than benchmarks suggest.
Ok- lets say that you get really unlucky and you miss 100 branch predictions in a row. If each branch miss costs you 30 cycles at 2.5 GHz, those 3000 cycles cost you about 400ns. You are not going to notice anything under several milliseconds. Thats only 6 orders of magnitude different. In other words, that has nothing to do with your CPU.
Intel's pipeline depth was a conscious design choice. In fact, they have done research and concluded that the current P4 pipeline depth is not deep enough (source source). According to this research, the optimal pipeline depth for x86 is between 40 and 50 stages. There are tradeoffs to a deeper pipeline, but rest assured that Intel has considered them in their design decisions...
And these secret back-door meetings helped out the energy companies soooo much that Enron filed for bankruptcy within a year and the entire sector dropped by almost 50% over the 2 years following it. Either Cheney really sucks at helping out his buddies, or he didn't help them as much as you seem to think.
A paper trail would have made no difference in this election. The people turned in "blank" ballots. A paper receipt would show just that- no votes. Even with a paper trail, you can't assume that they really wanted to vote. You can only assume that they didn't vote for anybody. Voting is binary, after all. You either voted or you didn't. There is no in-between.
What does that have to do with anything? Of course they work for us. They would have been remiss to NOT hear from energy companies while formulating an energy policy. It is their responsibility to gather as much information as they can on the subject.
The Bush administration, along with Howard Dean, all of the past US Presidents that have claimed excutive privilege, as well as anybody that has been in a leadership position knows that you will get the most honest advice when people can talk in confidence. It would be detrimental to their ability to do their jobs if they lost this, especially just so their political opponents could go on a fishing trip to try to find ammo for the next election.
Either you can claim executive privilege, or you cannot. All of the benefits of getting privileged advice would be negated if the privilege could be overturned on a whim. Who decides how important something needs to be to be protected?
You say that as if it is a bad thing. Meetings with the President or Vice President have never been public record. Even Howard Dean understands this, in spite of what he is ranting about now.
The point is that WE CAN'T live on a dollar an hour -- and Carly sure won't.
Right- so find a job that pays more than that. You either pick a job that you like and hope the pay is enough, or you pick a salary that you like and hope the job is ok. If everybody could pick what job they wanted AND how much they got paid for it, then we would only have a bunch of rich lazy people. Throwing a tantrum because you want to work in engineering AND get paid a lot for it won't help anything.
Corporations are LICENSED by the people to exist for their benefit.
Corporations exist for 1 and only 1 reason- to make a profit.
Unrestrained, they will destroy our economy. That means jobs and salaries, not the stock market.
You have some pretty big misconceptions about basic economics. Unrestrained business is what has created our economy! Why else do you think the US economy is the largest in the world? We have one of the most business friendly economies in the world. Artificial market forces, like salary floors, hurt everybody.
Great. A claim from an ex-Wall St Journal reporter (why did you leave the Journal, Jude?) that knows an Iraqi in Britain who is openly anti-US and has "no ties with any intelligence service", but somehow has more knowledge of the Iraq body count than the 1000s of AP reporters in Iraq.
Sounds pretty reliable.
Oh, and so what if Rumsfeld went to Iraq?
If the UN passes a resolution is only up to the UN to enforce it.
Please take 2 seconds a browse the UN charter. The UN has no executive branch. It has no means of enforcing anything. Thats why they mandate member states to enforce the resolutions. Read Chapter VII Article 45, 48, and 49 for more information. Starting with 687, the 12 resolutions that were passed by the Security Council to disarm Iraq were specifically passed under Chapter VII of the charter, and they therefore specifically authorize the use of military force.
No member country should prempt the policies of the UN and no country has the moral or politcal authotiry to decide to enforce any resolutions unilaterally
What in the hell are you talking about? We didn't preempt any policies of the UN! Did you forget about the 12 resolutions unanimously passed under Chapter VII that specifically authorize the use of military force? We were acting with full legal authority from the UN! Your talk of unilaterally enforceing the resolutions is laughable- these resolutions were passed unanimously under Chapter VII.
1) USA gave weapons to Saddam.
Thats interesting, especially considering his tanks, missiles, and aircraft were all soviet made, and his chemical weapons were either German or Japanese. If we did give him weapons, it wasn't very many I guess.
2) Saddam used weapons on - well, on everyone in range.
The US voted for 5 resolutions in the 80's that condemned Iraq for its chemical weapon use.
3) USA stopped giving saddam weapons. He was a good friend to the people of america, but he didn't need any more weapons.
4) Saddam's weapons were gone, because he used them all
Wow! You have solved the mystery! Now we know where the unaccounted weapons went. He used them all! How silly that we didn't think about that before.
And by the way, am I the only one that remembers that the UN inspectors NEVER FOUND ANYTHING?
You remember incorrectly. The inspectors found and destroyed some weapons shortly after going into Iraq in the early 90's. In 1994, after some defections of high level Iraqis, they discovered a secret nuclear weapons program and that Saddam had restarted some research projects on chemical weapons. When confronted with this evidence, Saddam even admitted to this.
But I guess its ok. No need to worry. I mean, he wouldn't lie about it more than once, would he?
And what about the US's inability to produce even a single chem/bio/nuclear weapon, despite scouring the country for months, and despite capturing and questioning hundreds of iraqis?
Iraq is a big place. I mean, it took us 6 months to find is air force buried in the sand- how long will it take us to find a few drums of chemicals? They could be anywhere.
The whereabouts of the (alleged) iraqi WMDs are not a mystery - there simply aren't any in the country.
You are entitled to that opinion.
PREDICTION: now that saddam is caught, the US will as if by magic produce a large stockpile of weapons that look to be well-hidden and very nefarious.
PREDICTION: People like you won't accept anything found in Iraq no matter what.
Has it occurred to you that if the Bush administration was lying about Iraq's WMD's, we probably wouldn't know about it because they would have immediatly "found" them? I mean, why would they lie about the weapons, then proceed to invade the country when an invasion is the only thing that will finally bring out the truth? It doesn't make any sense to only lie halfway like that. I think the fact that we haven't found any weapons yet is proof that the Bush administration wasn't lying about the WMD's.
We became his sworn enemy only when he invaded Kuwait and we realized that oil would be far cheaper in the hands of people we saved from invasion.
Ok- he tried to illegally expand his borders, and we kicked is ass back out. Even if we did just do it for oil, it was the right thing to do. And do you realize that we only get about 2% of our oil imports from Kuwait, right? If the was was just about oil, we would have probably gone after Canada or Mexico or Saudi Arabia instead.
Before or after we invaded Iraq? Nobody had any proof to this speculation before we invaded
President Clinton knew about Iraq's terrorist links. According to this recently leaked memo, the CIA has been tracking an al qaeda/Iraq link for over 10 years.
Where exactly are these again?
If Saddam had complied with the UN, we would know now, wouldn't we...
A capitalistic Iraq will allow those who participated in the invasion to profit immensely from transforming the middle east into a "western" country.
The Iraqis themselves are very optimistic about their future after Saddam. Why aren't you?
African nations in which we can lord impossible debts over their heads and force them into low wage labor.
Yeah- lets blame the US for everything. Many African nations are struggling with poverty- must be our fault. Theres no other explanation.
North Korea did react by announcing their intentions to blow up South Korea and Japan
North Korea's actions have just confirmed why we have regarded them as a terrorist supporting rouge nation for years now.
BUT, you had the possibility of owning one. So, I had to shoot you.
If you had seen me shoot people in the past with a gun, and you had no evidence that I had got rid of my gun, then yes, you should shoot me if I threaten to kill you. That is the smart thing to do. We are not suicidal, after all.
If you're going to use UN resolutions as a justification for anything, please enforce them in numerical order....
Its a lot more complicated than that. I assume you are talking about resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions passed regarding Israel and the Palestinians, but you cannot compare them to resolution 687.
Basically, there are 3 types of resolutions that can come out of the United Nations:
- General Assembly resolutions, which carry the same authority as a suggestion and are not enforceable by the UN
- Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 6, which are cease-fire agreements, and again are not enforceable by the UN
- Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 7, which not only are enforceable, but the UN charter mandates that member states do enforce them
Resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions against Israel/Palestine were passed under Chapter 6 of the charter. 242 was a cease fire that basically stated that Israel should give up some occupied territory and Palestinians should stop threatening Israel. Now Israel has given up over 90% of the territory that it originally occupied, but they are still very much threatoned by the Palestinians. Either way, the resolution is not enforceable under the UN charter.
On the other hand, all of the resolutions against Iraq, starting with 678 in 1990, were passed under chapter 7, and as such they are enforeable by the member states of the UN. You really cannot compare them.