You have to do things wrong before you realize why things must be done a certain way to do them right. You may have to write some more C++ in order to "relate" to that book.
If gold or diamonds were found in Antarctica, people would be down their digging it (for 2 months per year).
The problem is that the place is so INCREDIBLY inhospitable that prospecting is almost impossible. Life in Antarctica is tenuous at best. Getting in and out of the place in winter is near impossible.
But as outrageously inhospitable and hard to reach as Antarctica is, it's WAY more hospitable and easy to reach than either Mars or the Moon.
I'm trying to give you some scale and scope of the problem. You people seem to want to justify space travel with space travel.
SPACIE: We need to go to the moon. TERRAN: Why go to the moon ???? SPACIE: So we can go to Mars!!! TERRAN: Why go to Mars ??? SPACIE: Because that will justify the cost of building a $200,000,000,000 moon base. Oh and some day the earth will die. TERRAN: Yeah, but that's like in 40 million years. SPACIE: But we have to be prepared. Best to start early. Besides, what if we get hit by an asteroid. We can survive the impact by living in closed terrariums on mars. TERRAN: Couldn't we just dig those terrariums deep underground here on earth to survive a meteor impact??? SPACIE: UHHH, But we want the space technology to DESTROY the asteroid. TERRAN: Well fine, but that's basically just robotics. We can develop that right here on earth. We don't NEED a moonbase to develop an asteroid deflection system. SPACIE: What about mining. There is plenty of Helium-3 on the moon that could fuel fusion reactors. TERRAN: Well, first of all those reactors don't exist yet. And even if they DO exist, we have plenty of Helium-3 right here on earth. SPACIE: Well don't you want to go to the stars. TERRAN: Physics tells us that it's currently impracticle to travel between stars due to relavitistic concerns. SPACIE: Well, you don't know that. There could be a way. TERRAN: Than find the physics first. SPACIE: Well we could freeze people. TERRAN: That doesn't require a space program, plenty of cryo-biologists are working on this problem for earth-bound applications. And they're failing miserably. SPACIE: You're just a luddite. TERRAN: No we favor earth bound scientific exploration. We also support space exploration through remote observance and robotic probes. SPACIE: Just think of how much we learned about the moon by sending men. Robots aren't nearly as fast. TERRAN: How much do you NEED to know about Mars?? Is discovering the geology of Mars somehow going to enhance the standard of living here on Earth. Will it cure disease??? SPACIE: Yeah, just think of all the derived technologies!!! TERRAN: Directed research is far more effective and CHEAPER than "trickle down" research. If we need an application, the scientific and inventing community is usually pretty good at working it out. You act like nothing was ever invented before the Apollo program. SPACIE: Well we have to beat the Chinese to the moon. TERRAN: Why, what are the Chinese going to do there??? SPACIE: They're going to build mass drivers and that would give them a military strategic advantage. TERRAN: Can their mass drivers knock ICBMs out of the sky??? If not, nothing has changed in the "mutually assured destruction" equation. If they bombard us from space, we destroy their country with nukes. Personally I'm far more worried about Chinese in the Sea of Japan and the Taiwan straights than Chinese in orbit. I'm far more concerned about all that Chinese crap we're shipping into the country every day. If you're worried about the Chinese taking over stop shopping at Wal-Mart. SPACIE: Well, space travel inspires Americas youth. TERRAN: It must sure inspire Indian and Chinese youth too. And I know their countries weren't launching space shuttles. Perhaps we could put more teachers into classrooms rather than astronauts in space. That might help with the education situation. That or start beating kids with bamboo sticks for poor grades and misbehavior like they do in Asia.
The more I read this, the more shrewd I think Apple is being. Apple is making a product that is more appealing to PC users than their traditional customers.
How many people have wanted to go to Apple (or BACK to Apple) but didn't want to lose their PC software??? These new Macs could run OSX on top and run Windows apps (or a a VMWare XP installation) in the background.
What are existing Mac customers going to do, switch to PC??? Well, that's effectively what Apple is offering now. Switch from Apple TO Apple. Apple is offering the product THEY need to switch TO PC while maintaining Apple compatibility.
Apple could make a PCI card that "unlocks" a standard PC to run Mac OSX. They would sell the card and software together at say $300. They would make more margin selling their "upgrade cards" than selling genuine Apple hardware.
No doubt that Apple will ship Win32 native emulation. Perhaps we'll see Microsoft suing Apple for a change???
I can imagine that Apple will be a LOT closer to that scenario once all their software (and 3rd party software) is compiled and working on Intel processors.
Buying OSX for x86 wouldn't do you much good right now. There is no software.
If it comes down to it, Apple could be in a position to turn Apple into "software only".
How long will it take the "mod squad" to turn perfectly generic PCs into Apple compatible boxes???
Apple may have signed their PC death warrant.
On the other side, I imagine that PC emulation will get a LOT easier from now on. Having a Apple that will run Visual Studio may very well be what many geeks need to buy Apple.
Oh yeah, and I bet that.net compatibility now becomes a cinch as well.
Who knows. All I'll say is that Steve Jobs has a HUGE pair to take this risk. If it doesn't work, Apple could soon strictly be a consumer electronics company.
The SAME people who are running THIS administration are the SAME people who were peddling power during the first Bush administration.
The people criticizing deep throat in the media were the ones committing crimes in the 70s on behalf of the Nixon administration. Pat Buchanan gets unlimited airtime to spew his fascisism and somehow the media is "biased" against conservatives.
Jeesh, if only they gave Hitler admiring fascist ex-FBI felons nationally syndicated radio shows. THAN, there would be fairness. If only defense contracters controlled 1/5 of the nations mass media, than the media would lose it's O so obvious 24 hours of bias against warfare. If only the animated corpse of a popular cartoonist's frankenstein media empire was beholden to the president's brother for tax breaks for a theme park, THAN the media would be fair. If only the "Clinton News Network" would put on countless conservative journalists and shun dissident liberal voices like Randi Rhodes or Mike Malloy than the media would be fair. If only a man more conservative than Newt Gingrich who killed his secretary could get his own program on MSNBC, than the media would be fair.
Oh lord oh mercy, some day their time will come when conservatives will have their own station dedicated to 24 hours of propoganda run by a political hack with no media experience. Oh lord how we pray. Oh lord, if only it would loose 130 million in it's first two years of operation. Oh lord, if only we had the risen christ who ran a right wing conservative paper in the nations capital that has lost 1 BILLION in it's printing lifetime. If only this man would commune with the spirit of Hitler and by a News wire service and then prompty oust Helen Thomas. Oh lordy, lordy, some day we'll have a "Fair and Balanced" media.
The earth has the machining and labor, and sustinence capacity to produce the advanced machinery necessary to make spacecraft.
You would have to duplicate all those mechanisms on the Moon to get things going. Good luck funding that bill of goods when all those materials are available on Mother Earth.
Every colonization model to date has been based on getting to raw materials. But it also has a component of sustainability. You could bring people off ships to work in the new world. They could farm the land or fish for sustinence.
It could very well be feasible after spending multiple TRILLIONS of dollars to eventually get something self-sustaining. But... WHY??? So we can live in boxes on a lifeless rock???
I think the moonies will have to finance this one. I suggest the formation of extra-terrestrial exploration companies financed by private bonds (independent of the US Treasury). The Terrans would rather concentrate on upkeep and maintenance of the spaceship we already have... EARTH!!!!
The most pragmatic thing would have been to KEEP the sanctions going and keep Saddam in his box. Less Americans would have died (1500 and counting) and less IRAQIS would have died (100,000) and counting.
Oh, I have no doubt that one has multiple motivations for ones actions. Especially when it comes to national policy. There are the motives you state, and your REAL motives.
The REAL motives of the Iraq war was to acquire the Iraqi oil resources (it was the ONLY asset protected after the invasion), and to create permanent bases with which to frighten and intimidate Iraq's Arab neighbors.
Hey, I was FOR the war when it started. I parted from my liberal colleagues because I believe that Saddam was a threat. I didn't believe ANYTHING Bush said. I believed COLIN POWELL. Jeesh, he sure spoiled his credibility with me.
The only acceptable reason for risking American lives is SAVING American lives. You seem to think this little Iraq excursion is protecting Americans. I think you've been watching too much Fox News.
There is NOTHING about the occupation of Iraq that will deter terrorist action. To the contrary. The Iraq invasion is only heightening anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. We have effectively EMPOWERED Osama Bin Laden by assuming the role of arch villian that he FALSELY painted the US as.
The Bush administration is systematically undermining pro-American, pro-Democracy dissdidents in the Arab world. Iran was a country on the verge of liberal Democratic transformation from within UNTIL we invaded Iraq.
This is not the idiot-savant underming his own efforts. This is PLANNED CHAOS!!! The plan is to stoke terrorist hatred and stoke US fear at home so that Republicans can keep claiming that they are "protecting" Americans from the menacing terrorist threat. The reality is that Republicans have little or nothing to strengthen domestic security. All they have done is spend money on boondoggle projects to enrich their chronies.
Iraq is NOT on the verge of Democratic transformation. They are on the verge of CIVIL WAR!!! Like it or not, the Kurds, Sunnies and Shiites dislike each other. The Sunnis and Kurds want to rule the entire country. The Kurds just want their own country (and to expel Sunnis from Kirkuk). Until the US leaves, they will kill us instead of each other. Than once WE leave, they will commence to killing each other.
If space aliens came down from the skies tommorow to impose a benevolent society based on peace, freedom and advanced technology the alleviated all disease and hunger, both you and I would probably be setting off roadside bombs to kick their asses off our planet. One identifies with their own group. And the leader and policy makers of that group (even bad ones) are preferable to leadership under foreign influence.
As bad as it sounds, I would choose Bush over a benevolent, liberal, enlightened alien. And that's probably the same reason why Iraqis would choose Saddam over US occupation. And it's ESPECIALLY why they would choose civil war over US occupation. How many fighting couples really want the cops to knock on the door????
The right is as deluded about Iraq as they were Vietnam. We're stuck in the same quagmire of policy. We cannot leave because we will lose face. We cannot win because the people don't want us there. So we will keep sending American GIs to suffer and die there with idealistic notions of "helping Iraqis" and the grim realization that most of the Iraqis resent the "help" so much that they want to kill Americans.
They will come home angry bitter and confused. Some will blame the war planners. Others will echo the absurd rhetoric of conservatives that somehow a "liberal media" unduly affected and rallied a population without access to mass-media (limited access in Iraq's case).
You believe your own delusions. In the end we will have another "Nixon Plan". We will forcefully withdraw military aid and let the domestic government collapse.
They worship a false image of Christ that is cast out of war, conflict and dominance. They cannot reach salvation by their own definition because they have no faith in CHRIST. They only have faith in a false image that they project from their own id.
That was when Saddam was on the payroll. Saddam's (and Noriega's) fatal mistake was getting independent minded.
The Bush Admin could give a rip less about Democracy in the Middle East. They probably care just about as much as they cared about Democracy in Vietnam or all the Socialist Democracies they overthrew and destabalized in Central and South America.
They didn't care about Democracy in Haiti when they kidnapped the rightfully elected president and forced him into exile. They didn't care about Democracy when they backed a coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in return for him publicly blasting CAFTA and the World Bank.
The only thing those creeps care about is getting their way. When it comes to foreign relations, it's all about setting up a puppet strongman that they can pay off and carting the resources off in boatloads without compensating the country. The new angle is to take over the water systems and public utilties than jack up all the rates so that they are barely useable.
In America, we have fascists in our midst. And they have influenced policy for quite some time. Shrub himself is descended from a man who helped finance Hitler's war machine and Moussilini's rise to power (Prescott Bush). The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
Till now, the American fascists have contained their activities to the brown people of the world. Now they're going after America itself. They are exporting our jobs overseas to strip the middle class of it's economic (ergo political) independence. They WANT us dependent on the new fascist China ruled by an authoritarian government.
They WANT to destabilize the US dollar and our full faith and credit. They WANT the US Treasury to go broke so they can pull the same scheme on the US that they've played on countless countries across the world. We are "restructured" and the international corporations take over.
THAT is what Bush and his Neo-cons care about. You are just a sheeple in his plan. You are a liberal, but you don't know it. You buy their liberal rhetoric hiding their evil, yet you've been systematically conditioned to hate the very mention of the word. To LIKE Bush you either have to be a cunning rat bastard, or a liberal. REAL conservatives don't like Bush. They're honest.
Oh yeah, I KNOW Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. And I don't like him either. Vietnam was WRONG!!!
Bush I set up Saddam Hussein by giving tacit endorsement to his plans to re-acquire Kuwait.
The Grenada "incident" was complete BS cooked up by the Reagan administration.
Korea was a REAL conflict and a true multi-national effort to stop China from taking over the Korean peninsula.
WWII was not started on a lie. We were attacked.
In WWI Germany DID sink the Lusitania.
Civil War hostilities WERE started with an assault by confederate forces on Federal Army installations.
The Maine WAS sunk in a harbor by an explosion that was (at the time) indistinguishable from a mine. Modern investigations have shown that the powder magazine went up.
Starve the "beast" was supposed to be about SHRINKING the federal government. It was a battle cry of Republicans wanting to paint themselves with a Libertarian stripe.
As we see, Republicans LIKE deficits, they LIKE out of control spending. They like pointless wars, and they like spending money without ANY accountability.
So WHO is the BEAST??? Well, upper class taxes were cut. Therefore, the bulk of all these unfunded liabilities will be schewed toward the lower classes. The BEAST is the middle class. Like ALL fascists the beast are an empowered class of citizens with rights that could actually thwart their plans to own and control EVERYTHING!!!!
The Republicans are at war with the US middle class. They have co-opted liberal rhetoric to lead people down their path of fascism and a 30s economy.
They have the media in their hip pocket and their own propaganda channel that runs on every satellite and cable plug (Fox News). They are lying about EVERYTHING!!!!
This space boondoggle is just another way to appropriate TONS of resources that will be gobbled up by administration chronies. The middle class will get stuck with the bill via the deficit. The super-rich will simply export their profits the the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes on it.
Meanwhile, the IRS will continue their war against poor people inappropriately taking the Earned Income Tax Deduction while ignoring people with lawyers.
Granted physical education is important, but schools are spending WAY too much money on athletics vs funding teachers and getting classroom sizes down.
But then again, the local communities LIKE football. And they like cool athletic facilities. So does the school board serve the community or the kids???
The triumph of liberalism is conveyed in it's purity when conservatives hide all their ugly hate filled philosiphies in liberal rhetoric.
The neo-cons are about as interested in Iraqi Democracy as they were Vietnamese Democracy. Iraq is NOT a Democracy. You cannot have a Democratic election when the candidates are all SECRET!!!
The Bush administation was not interested in Haitian Democracy when they kidnapped Jean-Betrand Aristede. They weren't interested in Democracy when they attempted a coup against Hugo Chavez. They certainly aren't interested in Democracy in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. They most certainly aren't interested in Democratic reforms in the slave state of China where US executives are cleaning up by outsourcing the jobs of free laborers with rights to exploit Chinese troglodites.
Both countries could annihalate the other. The precludes preventing access.
If it DID come down to that (which it wouldn't because both governments are run by FASCISTS!!!!) we could simply explode a couple hundred "flack bombs" in orbit that would chew EVERY satellite to smithereens rendering orbit unusable.
Material fabs cost money. The push towards smaller computational devices was ECONOMIC!!!! Smaller means FASTER.
It's also as simple as making digital calculators that could sit on your desk. That was already in the IBM business plan. They made business machines.
No doubt the NASA money quickened the pace. But don't think that ANY commercial consumer product would be available without NASA. That's a load of BUNK!!!!
It's not a question of "volume". It's a question of "value".
Does harvesting raw materials on the moon (and or manufacturing) make economic sense. Just look how much it costs to get there and back, and you'll understand why this isn't feasible. All the materials we need are right here on earth.
If the space elevator concept comes to fruition (doubtless from advaned in long stranded carbon nano-tubes) than orbital enterprises will become a lot cheaper. And even venturing outward to the moon would become cheaper. But I doubt you'll ever see any advantage from harvesting materials from the moon and carting them back to Earth.
As far as Mars goes. Antarctica is a far more hospitable climate for colonization. Besides a few outposts (supported completely from the outside) no one has colonized Antarctica.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to do things wrong before you realize why things must be done a certain way to do them right. You may have to write some more C++ in order to "relate" to that book.
If gold or diamonds were found in Antarctica, people would be down their digging it (for 2 months per year).
The problem is that the place is so INCREDIBLY inhospitable that prospecting is almost impossible. Life in Antarctica is tenuous at best. Getting in and out of the place in winter is near impossible.
But as outrageously inhospitable and hard to reach as Antarctica is, it's WAY more hospitable and easy to reach than either Mars or the Moon.
I'm trying to give you some scale and scope of the problem. You people seem to want to justify space travel with space travel.
SPACIE: We need to go to the moon.
TERRAN: Why go to the moon ????
SPACIE: So we can go to Mars!!!
TERRAN: Why go to Mars ???
SPACIE: Because that will justify the cost of building a $200,000,000,000 moon base. Oh and some day the earth will die.
TERRAN: Yeah, but that's like in 40 million years.
SPACIE: But we have to be prepared. Best to start early. Besides, what if we get hit by an asteroid. We can survive the impact by living in closed terrariums on mars.
TERRAN: Couldn't we just dig those terrariums deep underground here on earth to survive a meteor impact???
SPACIE: UHHH, But we want the space technology to DESTROY the asteroid.
TERRAN: Well fine, but that's basically just robotics. We can develop that right here on earth. We don't NEED a moonbase to develop an asteroid deflection system.
SPACIE: What about mining. There is plenty of Helium-3 on the moon that could fuel fusion reactors.
TERRAN: Well, first of all those reactors don't exist yet. And even if they DO exist, we have plenty of Helium-3 right here on earth.
SPACIE: Well don't you want to go to the stars.
TERRAN: Physics tells us that it's currently impracticle to travel between stars due to relavitistic concerns.
SPACIE: Well, you don't know that. There could be a way.
TERRAN: Than find the physics first.
SPACIE: Well we could freeze people.
TERRAN: That doesn't require a space program, plenty of cryo-biologists are working on this problem for earth-bound applications. And they're failing miserably.
SPACIE: You're just a luddite.
TERRAN: No we favor earth bound scientific exploration. We also support space exploration through remote observance and robotic probes.
SPACIE: Just think of how much we learned about the moon by sending men. Robots aren't nearly as fast.
TERRAN: How much do you NEED to know about Mars?? Is discovering the geology of Mars somehow going to enhance the standard of living here on Earth. Will it cure disease???
SPACIE: Yeah, just think of all the derived technologies!!!
TERRAN: Directed research is far more effective and CHEAPER than "trickle down" research. If we need an application, the scientific and inventing community is usually pretty good at working it out. You act like nothing was ever invented before the Apollo program.
SPACIE: Well we have to beat the Chinese to the moon.
TERRAN: Why, what are the Chinese going to do there???
SPACIE: They're going to build mass drivers and that would give them a military strategic advantage.
TERRAN: Can their mass drivers knock ICBMs out of the sky??? If not, nothing has changed in the "mutually assured destruction" equation. If they bombard us from space, we destroy their country with nukes. Personally I'm far more worried about Chinese in the Sea of Japan and the Taiwan straights than Chinese in orbit. I'm far more concerned about all that Chinese crap we're shipping into the country every day. If you're worried about the Chinese taking over stop shopping at Wal-Mart.
SPACIE: Well, space travel inspires Americas youth.
TERRAN: It must sure inspire Indian and Chinese youth too. And I know their countries weren't launching space shuttles. Perhaps we could put more teachers into classrooms rather than astronauts in space. That might help with the education situation. That or start beating kids with bamboo sticks for poor grades and misbehavior like they do in Asia.
Sounds like you need to register Anonymous Coward.
Sometimes you think these guys have spent a LOT of time studying the Nazi takeover in Germany and 1984.
Who wants to bet that Co-Intel Pro (or the modern equivalent) is already up and running again.
Me must give up our freedoms to keep our freedoms. Hah, I'll take rampant terrorism over THEIR brand of freedom.
The more I read this, the more shrewd I think Apple is being. Apple is making a product that is more appealing to PC users than their traditional customers.
How many people have wanted to go to Apple (or BACK to Apple) but didn't want to lose their PC software??? These new Macs could run OSX on top and run Windows apps (or a a VMWare XP installation) in the background.
What are existing Mac customers going to do, switch to PC??? Well, that's effectively what Apple is offering now. Switch from Apple TO Apple. Apple is offering the product THEY need to switch TO PC while maintaining Apple compatibility.
Well, if these Macs are running on 4Ghz Intel CPUs, how does that compare to the performance of the 1.6Ghz G5s???
Is it possible that SHEER HORSEPOWER will make up for the difference??? I imagine that Apple took this into consideration.
Apple could make a PCI card that "unlocks" a standard PC to run Mac OSX. They would sell the card and software together at say $300. They would make more margin selling their "upgrade cards" than selling genuine Apple hardware.
No doubt that Apple will ship Win32 native emulation. Perhaps we'll see Microsoft suing Apple for a change???
Apple makes a $200 PCI card that allows PC boxes to run Mac OSX. They could sell a $300 box with the card bundled in
Apple beats the mod squad to the punch AND they get more margins by selling "mod kits" than they do selling actual Apple boxes.
I can imagine that Apple will be a LOT closer to that scenario once all their software (and 3rd party software) is compiled and working on Intel processors.
Buying OSX for x86 wouldn't do you much good right now. There is no software.
If it comes down to it, Apple could be in a position to turn Apple into "software only".
Bush currently holds the ring
How long will it take the "mod squad" to turn perfectly generic PCs into Apple compatible boxes???
Apple may have signed their PC death warrant.
On the other side, I imagine that PC emulation will get a LOT easier from now on. Having a Apple that will run Visual Studio may very well be what many geeks need to buy Apple.
Oh yeah, and I bet that
Who knows. All I'll say is that Steve Jobs has a HUGE pair to take this risk. If it doesn't work, Apple could soon strictly be a consumer electronics company.
And I'm STILL looking for an Apple PDA.
Meet the new boss
dah, dah, dah, dah,
Same as the old boss
dah, dah, dah, dah,
The SAME people who are running THIS administration are the SAME people who were peddling power during the first Bush administration.
The people criticizing deep throat in the media were the ones committing crimes in the 70s on behalf of the Nixon administration. Pat Buchanan gets unlimited airtime to spew his fascisism and somehow the media is "biased" against conservatives.
Jeesh, if only they gave Hitler admiring fascist ex-FBI felons nationally syndicated radio shows. THAN, there would be fairness. If only defense contracters controlled 1/5 of the nations mass media, than the media would lose it's O so obvious 24 hours of bias against warfare. If only the animated corpse of a popular cartoonist's frankenstein media empire was beholden to the president's brother for tax breaks for a theme park, THAN the media would be fair. If only the "Clinton News Network" would put on countless conservative journalists and shun dissident liberal voices like Randi Rhodes or Mike Malloy than the media would be fair. If only a man more conservative than Newt Gingrich who killed his secretary could get his own program on MSNBC, than the media would be fair.
Oh lord oh mercy, some day their time will come when conservatives will have their own station dedicated to 24 hours of propoganda run by a political hack with no media experience. Oh lord how we pray. Oh lord, if only it would loose 130 million in it's first two years of operation. Oh lord, if only we had the risen christ who ran a right wing conservative paper in the nations capital that has lost 1 BILLION in it's printing lifetime. If only this man would commune with the spirit of Hitler and by a News wire service and then prompty oust Helen Thomas. Oh lordy, lordy, some day we'll have a "Fair and Balanced" media.
Liberalism prevails because you mask all your imperialism inside of liberal rhetoric. You are a liberal without even knowing it.
The tragedy is that you don't have the courage to be a REAL liberal.
The earth has the machining and labor, and sustinence capacity to produce the advanced machinery necessary to make spacecraft.
... WHY??? So we can live in boxes on a lifeless rock???
... EARTH!!!!
You would have to duplicate all those mechanisms on the Moon to get things going. Good luck funding that bill of goods when all those materials are available on Mother Earth.
Every colonization model to date has been based on getting to raw materials. But it also has a component of sustainability. You could bring people off ships to work in the new world. They could farm the land or fish for sustinence.
It could very well be feasible after spending multiple TRILLIONS of dollars to eventually get something self-sustaining. But
I think the moonies will have to finance this one. I suggest the formation of extra-terrestrial exploration companies financed by private bonds (independent of the US Treasury). The Terrans would rather concentrate on upkeep and maintenance of the spaceship we already have
The most pragmatic thing would have been to KEEP the sanctions going and keep Saddam in his box. Less Americans would have died (1500 and counting) and less IRAQIS would have died (100,000) and counting.
Oh, I have no doubt that one has multiple motivations for ones actions. Especially when it comes to national policy. There are the motives you state, and your REAL motives.
The REAL motives of the Iraq war was to acquire the Iraqi oil resources (it was the ONLY asset protected after the invasion), and to create permanent bases with which to frighten and intimidate Iraq's Arab neighbors.
Hey, I was FOR the war when it started. I parted from my liberal colleagues because I believe that Saddam was a threat. I didn't believe ANYTHING Bush said. I believed COLIN POWELL. Jeesh, he sure spoiled his credibility with me.
The only acceptable reason for risking American lives is SAVING American lives. You seem to think this little Iraq excursion is protecting Americans. I think you've been watching too much Fox News.
There is NOTHING about the occupation of Iraq that will deter terrorist action. To the contrary. The Iraq invasion is only heightening anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. We have effectively EMPOWERED Osama Bin Laden by assuming the role of arch villian that he FALSELY painted the US as.
The Bush administration is systematically undermining pro-American, pro-Democracy dissdidents in the Arab world. Iran was a country on the verge of liberal Democratic transformation from within UNTIL we invaded Iraq.
This is not the idiot-savant underming his own efforts. This is PLANNED CHAOS!!! The plan is to stoke terrorist hatred and stoke US fear at home so that Republicans can keep claiming that they are "protecting" Americans from the menacing terrorist threat. The reality is that Republicans have little or nothing to strengthen domestic security. All they have done is spend money on boondoggle projects to enrich their chronies.
Iraq is NOT on the verge of Democratic transformation. They are on the verge of CIVIL WAR!!! Like it or not, the Kurds, Sunnies and Shiites dislike each other. The Sunnis and Kurds want to rule the entire country. The Kurds just want their own country (and to expel Sunnis from Kirkuk). Until the US leaves, they will kill us instead of each other. Than once WE leave, they will commence to killing each other.
If space aliens came down from the skies tommorow to impose a benevolent society based on peace, freedom and advanced technology the alleviated all disease and hunger, both you and I would probably be setting off roadside bombs to kick their asses off our planet. One identifies with their own group. And the leader and policy makers of that group (even bad ones) are preferable to leadership under foreign influence.
As bad as it sounds, I would choose Bush over a benevolent, liberal, enlightened alien. And that's probably the same reason why Iraqis would choose Saddam over US occupation. And it's ESPECIALLY why they would choose civil war over US occupation. How many fighting couples really want the cops to knock on the door????
The right is as deluded about Iraq as they were Vietnam. We're stuck in the same quagmire of policy. We cannot leave because we will lose face. We cannot win because the people don't want us there. So we will keep sending American GIs to suffer and die there with idealistic notions of "helping Iraqis" and the grim realization that most of the Iraqis resent the "help" so much that they want to kill Americans.
They will come home angry bitter and confused. Some will blame the war planners. Others will echo the absurd rhetoric of conservatives that somehow a "liberal media" unduly affected and rallied a population without access to mass-media (limited access in Iraq's case).
You believe your own delusions. In the end we will have another "Nixon Plan". We will forcefully withdraw military aid and let the domestic government collapse.
... or as I like to call them "Barabans".
They worship a false image of Christ that is cast out of war, conflict and dominance. They cannot reach salvation by their own definition because they have no faith in CHRIST. They only have faith in a false image that they project from their own id.
... when Saddam was gassing the Kurds.
That was when Saddam was on the payroll. Saddam's (and Noriega's) fatal mistake was getting independent minded.
The Bush Admin could give a rip less about Democracy in the Middle East. They probably care just about as much as they cared about Democracy in Vietnam or all the Socialist Democracies they overthrew and destabalized in Central and South America.
They didn't care about Democracy in Haiti when they kidnapped the rightfully elected president and forced him into exile. They didn't care about Democracy when they backed a coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in return for him publicly blasting CAFTA and the World Bank.
The only thing those creeps care about is getting their way. When it comes to foreign relations, it's all about setting up a puppet strongman that they can pay off and carting the resources off in boatloads without compensating the country. The new angle is to take over the water systems and public utilties than jack up all the rates so that they are barely useable.
In America, we have fascists in our midst. And they have influenced policy for quite some time. Shrub himself is descended from a man who helped finance Hitler's war machine and Moussilini's rise to power (Prescott Bush). The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
Till now, the American fascists have contained their activities to the brown people of the world. Now they're going after America itself. They are exporting our jobs overseas to strip the middle class of it's economic (ergo political) independence. They WANT us dependent on the new fascist China ruled by an authoritarian government.
They WANT to destabilize the US dollar and our full faith and credit. They WANT the US Treasury to go broke so they can pull the same scheme on the US that they've played on countless countries across the world. We are "restructured" and the international corporations take over.
THAT is what Bush and his Neo-cons care about. You are just a sheeple in his plan. You are a liberal, but you don't know it. You buy their liberal rhetoric hiding their evil, yet you've been systematically conditioned to hate the very mention of the word. To LIKE Bush you either have to be a cunning rat bastard, or a liberal. REAL conservatives don't like Bush. They're honest.
Oh yeah, I KNOW Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. And I don't like him either. Vietnam was WRONG!!!
Bush I set up Saddam Hussein by giving tacit endorsement to his plans to re-acquire Kuwait.
The Grenada "incident" was complete BS cooked up by the Reagan administration.
Korea was a REAL conflict and a true multi-national effort to stop China from taking over the Korean peninsula.
WWII was not started on a lie. We were attacked.
In WWI Germany DID sink the Lusitania.
Civil War hostilities WERE started with an assault by confederate forces on Federal Army installations.
The Maine WAS sunk in a harbor by an explosion that was (at the time) indistinguishable from a mine. Modern investigations have shown that the powder magazine went up.
The British DID start the war of 1812.
So, not ALL presidents behave the same way.
Starve the "beast" was supposed to be about SHRINKING the federal government. It was a battle cry of Republicans wanting to paint themselves with a Libertarian stripe.
As we see, Republicans LIKE deficits, they LIKE out of control spending. They like pointless wars, and they like spending money without ANY accountability.
So WHO is the BEAST??? Well, upper class taxes were cut. Therefore, the bulk of all these unfunded liabilities will be schewed toward the lower classes. The BEAST is the middle class. Like ALL fascists the beast are an empowered class of citizens with rights that could actually thwart their plans to own and control EVERYTHING!!!!
The Republicans are at war with the US middle class. They have co-opted liberal rhetoric to lead people down their path of fascism and a 30s economy.
They have the media in their hip pocket and their own propaganda channel that runs on every satellite and cable plug (Fox News). They are lying about EVERYTHING!!!!
This space boondoggle is just another way to appropriate TONS of resources that will be gobbled up by administration chronies. The middle class will get stuck with the bill via the deficit. The super-rich will simply export their profits the the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes on it.
Meanwhile, the IRS will continue their war against poor people inappropriately taking the Earned Income Tax Deduction while ignoring people with lawyers.
Maybe you have a point
So it's:
Air America
Democratic Underground
The Nation
vs
Pretty much every tv outlet that is mostly owned by 5 giant media conglomerates run by Republicans.
I suppose that you're a Christian being oppressed in a Christian run society as well
Granted physical education is important, but schools are spending WAY too much money on athletics vs funding teachers and getting classroom sizes down.
But then again, the local communities LIKE football. And they like cool athletic facilities. So does the school board serve the community or the kids???
The triumph of liberalism is conveyed in it's purity when conservatives hide all their ugly hate filled philosiphies in liberal rhetoric.
The neo-cons are about as interested in Iraqi Democracy as they were Vietnamese Democracy. Iraq is NOT a Democracy. You cannot have a Democratic election when the candidates are all SECRET!!!
The Bush administation was not interested in Haitian Democracy when they kidnapped Jean-Betrand Aristede. They weren't interested in Democracy when they attempted a coup against Hugo Chavez. They certainly aren't interested in Democracy in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. They most certainly aren't interested in Democratic reforms in the slave state of China where US executives are cleaning up by outsourcing the jobs of free laborers with rights to exploit Chinese troglodites.
Between nuclear powers, all bets are off.
Both countries could annihalate the other. The precludes preventing access.
If it DID come down to that (which it wouldn't because both governments are run by FASCISTS!!!!) we could simply explode a couple hundred "flack bombs" in orbit that would chew EVERY satellite to smithereens rendering orbit unusable.
Material fabs cost money. The push towards smaller computational devices was ECONOMIC!!!! Smaller means FASTER.
It's also as simple as making digital calculators that could sit on your desk. That was already in the IBM business plan. They made business machines.
No doubt the NASA money quickened the pace. But don't think that ANY commercial consumer product would be available without NASA. That's a load of BUNK!!!!
... because WE are paying for Chinese space exploration every time we shop at Wal-Mart.
It's not a question of "volume". It's a question of "value".
Does harvesting raw materials on the moon (and or manufacturing) make economic sense. Just look how much it costs to get there and back, and you'll understand why this isn't feasible. All the materials we need are right here on earth.
If the space elevator concept comes to fruition (doubtless from advaned in long stranded carbon nano-tubes) than orbital enterprises will become a lot cheaper. And even venturing outward to the moon would become cheaper. But I doubt you'll ever see any advantage from harvesting materials from the moon and carting them back to Earth.
As far as Mars goes. Antarctica is a far more hospitable climate for colonization. Besides a few outposts (supported completely from the outside) no one has colonized Antarctica.