The problem is not the amount of power the engine can produce, but rather the amount of electricital power it can produce.
No current fighter has the electrical capacity to shoot this bad boy, but for reasons explained in this comment the non vertical take off versions of the F-35 are good canidates.
Actually the F-22 Raptor already has a laser system that's been designed for it and [I think it] fits in place of bombbay doors.
It is the F-35 or the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that has a laser on the drawing boards.
The thing about a laser system like this is that it need a lot of electricity to run, and the vast majority of fighter aircraft do not produce the kind of juice needed to run one of these. The thing that makes the JSF capable of handling a system like this, is the way the VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) version of the aircraft was designed. Unlike previous VTOL fighters (AV-8 - Harrier and the Boeing consept for JSF) which use a series of nozels to redirect thrust the engine was already making to get vertical thrust, the Lockheed JSF (the one that was selected) has a secondary fan, driven by a shaft from the main engine and door that open above and below the fan.
Using the lift fan in the VTOL plane means that the engine in the CTOL (Conventional Take Off and Landing) and CV (Carrier Varient) has the capacity built in to drive a shaft, and the aircraft themselves have a lot of room right in front of the engine/behind the cockpit. This shaft can then drive a large generator to fire the laser.
I used to be an analyst at the company that builds the engines for the F-22 and the JSF. I worked on both programs.
The laser is ultraviolet, thus it would allow an F22 to loiter in an area and attack ground targetes (Geneva conventions state that we can't attack people with lasers) However, we can cut the truck they're driving in half and thus detonating the fuel tank...
Conventional fuels (gas/diesel) do not detonate unless they are vaporized, or atomised. They will burn pretty fast though.
Niether of them make claims that are falsifible. Time being cubic would not have any observible affect on the world around us. And being created, rather than randomly evolving points to no observable results.
Going to Mars would be the cancer cure. The increase in cancer rates would just accelerate the evolution of humans who don't get cancer from radiation - on Mars. After some generations, people new to Mars would still have a 10% cancer rate, while the locals wouldn't have to worry.
That arument fails because cancer tends to strike late in life, after you have had kids, who have your cancer prone genes...
And I would guess it would as long or longer than a trip to Mars to build a moonbase. So wouldn't the people building the moonbase die of cancer due to prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation?
You would be able to dig a few tunnels to spend most of your time in. The moon would block the rays...
Moral? What in your mind is moral about allowing a murderous dictator promote terrorism, develop lethal weapons, torture and kill his own people, and defy the UN?
I am an atheist, but I still like a lot of christian philosophy.
A couple of my favorites are: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. and Judge not least ye be judged.
We execute our own citizens, there have almost certainly been innocent people put to death in this country. Sure Saddam did it more often, but it is a difference of degree, we are still guilty of state sanctioned murder in our own society.
We have developed more lethal weapons than any other country in history with one possible exception.
Many international human rights organisations consider our prison system torturous.
and defying the UN... Personally I respect defiance. If our founding fathers were not defiant, we would still be British.
When our house is in order, then we can go after others. But until we stop supporting terrorist acts, I don't think it is moral to tell others to stop.
P.S. Have you thought about the military? Honestly? I considered it after 9/11. I Almost joined the marine reserves, but then I thought about it, and decided something like Iraq was likely, and changed plans.
Never really considered it.
You seem like a good man, I disagree with you about many things, but I still like you.
The military needs good men who believe in this mission right now.
Even if he could have complied, and the invasion was was authorized, I would still oppose it, on moral grounds, rather than legal, so lets skip to the end... (I don't think either of us is going to convince the other of anything on those maters).
Ok- so when is an attack imminent? At what point did the 9/11 hijackers become enough of a threat to you that you would feel ok about taking action? When they planned the attack in Malaysia? When they entered the US? When they enrolled in flight schools? When they arrived at the airport? Boarded the plane? Pulled out their box cutters?
What would have been wrong with stationing air marshalls on the the flights in question, and taking them down when the cutters were pulled?
Not to belittle the experience of thse who lost loved ones (I lost a member of my childhood soccer team), but... Do you have any idea how minor the loss of life on 9/11 was? It was insignifigant compaired to traffic fatalities. Exposing ourselves to risks like this is hardly a suicide pact. I'll keep my freedom thank you.
P.S. Have you thought about the military? Honestly? I considered it after 9/11. I Almost joined the marine reserves, but then I thought about it, and decided something like Iraq was likely, and changed plans.
I am told that the military loves engineers (one of my old weight lifting budies was a retired marine recruiter), because we are good at making desisions, and solving problems. We make excelent infantry officers.
his is just silly. When would you have dealt with the 9/11 hijackers? After the plane took off and they pulled the knives out?
Until it is clear that their plan is in motion, they are innocent. Unless they are here ilegally, then you could pick them up for that to interupt their plan...
If you had good intel that they were going to try to hijack flight X, you could also put air marshalls on that flight...
Do you think that cops shouldn't be able to stop bank robbers until they pull a gun out and point it at a bank teller?
If they own the gun legally, and have a permit to carry it, they have commited no crime until they pull the gun on the teller.
We shouldn't stop rapists until they have committed their first rape?
How can one who has never commited rape be a rapist?
What you don't seem to understand is that inaction puts far more innocent lives at risk.
What you don't seem to understand is freedom requires risk. I am willing to risk death or bodily harm in order to live free. And I am not willing to take other peoples freedom, to reduce my risk, becasue I expect the same from them. Sounds like you would prefer a police state procecuting thought crime (how else could you arrest a rapist before he has raped?).
Saddam killed as many as 2,000,000 people before we took him out. If we didn't act, IIS agents would still be kidnapping dissidents and throwing them in jail never to be heard from again, or tossing them over a rooftop, or dipping them into an acid bath, or raping their wives in front of them. Saddam would still be developing weapons capable of killing far more innocent people than have died as a result of the invasion.
Similar actions have gone on for quite some time in south america with the approval of our government, the difference is only a mater of degree. I would feel a lot better about our taking action to prevent this type of thing, if we did so in areas where it is our friends commiting the atrocities as well. Now it just feel hypocritical.
Terrorists would still be operating and killing innocent people with the full support and training of Iraq.
The full support and training of Iraq didn't seem to be doing to much for them, they are operating just fine with out it...
And 25,000,000 innocent Iraqis would be living under the oppressive rule of a brutal tyrant.
And now they live under the rule of a foriegn military. Most people actually prefer their own tyrant to someone elses military...
If you were truly concerned about innocent civilians, it seems you would support removing people like Saddam.
I just think that we need to get our own house in order before we go around the world telling others to fix theirs.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone... Judge not, least ye be judged...
This might be my last reply to you; you are obviosly not reading the most central part of what I am writing.
The Security Council did approve of military action over a dozen times.
The security council threatened over a dozen times, it never approved use of force. There are good legal minds on both sides of this debate, but almost all of them on your side are American or British.
Iraq was ordered to unconditionally accept under international supervision the destruction of all of their WMDs and all related subsystems and components, research, and manufacturing facilities. This was not a detective work- Saddam was required to bring us to his weapons sites and let us watch him destroy them. He never did. Here is a chronology of events during the 1990's to see what he did instead. Iraq was NOT in compliance with the UN mandate, which was confirmed by the 1200 page ISG report.
snip tammman2000 paragraph
Once again, I refer you to the documents that UNSCOM and UNMOVIC sent to Iraq which clearly detailed what Iraq needed to do to satisfy the commissions. Iraq was supposed to be an active participant, but instead they blatantly lied to and obstructed the inspectors for 12 years.
This is what you are not hearing:
I never said they were in compliance! Show me where I did. I infact stated that their failure to comply was inevitable, due to the condiditons required for compliance. It is not a mater of moving goalposts. The problem is that the onus was on Saddam to prove he was WMD free. This is imposible to do.
I would love to know where you got this "information" about the operation of a secret training facility.
I realize this will probably not score points with you, but... Chomsky, and Zinn.
Who else in the world was in defiance of over a dozen unanimous Chapter VII Security Council resolutions?
Violation of a resolution doesn't mean a severe threat.
Who else had illegal WMD capabilities and had shown a willingness to use these weapons in the past?
There are a lot of counties with WMD, Iraq didn't have signifigant amounts (yeah, they could have begun making it again... so could anyone).
As far as using WMD: USA, Germany, China, France, England, Spain, Italy, and Japan to name a few
Who else had supported dozens of terrorist organizations for 25 years and had tried to direct terrorist attacks against us multiple times over the past decade?
We have been supporting terrorism in south america for about 25 years...
Sure, there are other threats, but Saddam was pretty high up on that list.
That is one opinion, I, and many non-GOP experts, disagree with it.
Seeding democracy in the Middle East has a huge likelihood of long term positive results.
I hope it happens. Don't think it is too likely though...
The ISG reported that Iraq had the supplies, procurement systems, and infrastructure in place to go to full scale mustard gas production within 2 months. Our allies warned us that Saddam was plotting more terrorist attacks against us- how long would you have liked to wait?
Our allies also told us he was buying yellow cake in Africa. Inteligence is a highly foulable art form, forgive me for being sceptical.
As for how long to wait. I don't think it is morally OK to attack anyone because of their ability to attack. In short, I don't think preventive warfare is OK. If it is OK to attack a nation because it has the ability to attack you, and even a demonstrated willingness to attack others, think of what that means if the shoe is on the other foot. Iran and North Korea are justified in attacking the US by the moral standard we hold ourselves to.
That said, if an attack is eminent, war is no longer preventative, and is thus justifiable. So to use the Pearl Harbor analogy. If we had intel that said an attack on Pearl was coming soon. I would wait until there was a wave of bombers in the air coming
The security council voted 17 times to approve the use of force to get Iraq to comply, and never voted to revoke this authorization. Each of these 17 resolutions were passed under the 7th chapter of the UN charter which makes enforcement compulsory for member states.
Kofi Annan, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali disagree. Both have stated that the invasion of Iraq violated international law.
You'd better read 687 again to refresh your memory. It affirmed the authorization of force given in 678 for the purposes of 1) Kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, 2) Forcing compliance on WMD, and 3) Restoring peace and security to the region.
Compliance on WMD is imposible to satisfy, that was the subject of most of my argument.
Considering that nobody knows exactly what training took place at the School of Americas, it is interesting how you claim to know what was taught and what the results were from this training.
Most who have studied it, spoken to graduates and followed the actions of many graduates agree with my assesment, thougt I will admit that it is all foggy.
I disagree with your assessment. Information was being gathered on Iraq well before they violated international law and invaded Kuwait. The universal conclusion from this information was that Iraq was a threat, which is why the UN security council unanimously voted 17 times to disarm them. Iraq was clearly a top priority threat as well. There were no other countries that were in open defiance of chapter 7 UN resolutions, had a history of attacking non-hostile nations, and were on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. And 9/11 taught us that inaction to these kinds of threats is not acceptable.
All 9/11 taught us is that we are vulnerable. It is still possible, and MUST be considered that the cost of inaction might be lower than the cost of action.
In a perfect world, war would never be necessary. A quick reading of any history book will quickly tell you that we are living in a world that is far from perfect.
I agree completely. It was not necissary on this occasion though.
Why? Because TamMan2000 says so? You are going to have to do better than that.
Does the charter not state that war should not be waged without the approval of the security counsel? (Don't try to agrue that it was a legal war becasue we were enforcing the resolutions of an organisation whose laws say that our acts of enforcement were illegal, there is just too much cognitive dissonance there)
That is baloney. Have you read resolution 687 or any of the subsequent resolutions? How about this 1999 letter that UNSCOM gave Iraq about how to satisfy the commission. Or the 175 page Unresolved Disarmament Issues document that UNMOVIC delivered to Iraq in 2003. Iraq's requirements to resolve these issues were very clearly communicated to them- they just ignored them.
Honestly it has been a while since I read 687... You are going to have to refresh my memory as to how it is concretecompliance is possible. If I recall correctly that is one of them that calls on Iraq to prove it is free of weapons by allowing inspections. Well, the inspectors didn't find anything (significant) and yet many were convinced that Iraq had banned weapons.
So how exactly is it possible to prove that you don't have something when the accuser can simply claim that you must be hidding it?
No, I don't consider the SOA as supporting terrorism, because there is no evidence that they do. Sure, some people affiliated with it later turned out to be criminals, but if this is your standard, then places like the Univ of Michigan, UCLA, Wichita State, and pretty much any institution in the world "support" terrorism.
SOA has gone alot further than having graduates that became criminals. SOA explicitly trained people in the use of guerilla tactics against populations to inspire fear as a means to influence elections. When Sunni's do that we call it terrorism.
The authorization to use military force was given in resolution 678. You should read it sometime.
See charter above...
No, you are dodging the issue. Iraq was a country that in the recent past had illegally tried to expand its borders (twice), launched unprovoked missile attacks on 3 of its neighbors, used chemical weapons against its own people and against Iran, was in open defiance of international orders to disarm, directly supported dozens of terrorist organizations, had tried to direct terrorist attacks against the United States multiple times, and was trying to plan even more attacks against us up until the invasion. If you can't see this as a unique threat, then I am glad that you are not in charge of our national security.
Some of this is true, some is almost hyperbolically exadgerated. But I will say that if I were in charge of national security, I would go through this process:
1. Gather information 2. Identify threats 3. Prioritize threats 4. Determine what action has the best likelyhood of positive results 5. Determine if the likely results of that action are better than the likely results of inaction 6. Act (if applicable under step 5)
I think this is a perfectly reasonable algorithm. Would you disagree with this?
In my accessment the Bush admin skipped steps a large chunk of 1,3,maybe 4, and definately 5.
In addition to this threat, there were a number of strategic goals of the invasion, with countering the hate and oppression in the area with freedom and democracy at the top of that list. For lots of reasons, Iraq was the best place to start with these goals. It isn't perfect, but war never is.
Your right war is never perfect, it is also rarely necessary.
Chapter VII resolutions are the only UN resolutions that are enforceable in any context. The United States has never been the subject of a Chapter VII resolution. Iraq, on the other hand, was in violation of 17 of them. Try to keep your comparisons on topic.
We are in violation of the freakin' charter! And the fact that we have a security counsel veto is the only thing that has kept chapter VII resolutions off our ass. That and the fact that nobody wants to try to enforce one on the sole remaining super power, Iraq is easy to pick on, the US, not so much... In addition to that, many of the 17 resolutions Iraq was in violation of were written specifically so that compliance was either impossible or subjective (cheezedawg, you have WMD, prove otherwise), in other words they were written so that their garaunteed violation could be political capital.
It has never been US policy to support terrorism or use terrorism to achieve its goals. Your moral equivalence is crap.
Does the phrase Salvadoran death-squad mean any thing to you? How about School of the Americas?
Are you unaware of these, or are these not considered supporting terrorism to achieve our goals in your book?
The UN security council sat down 17 times and unanimously decided that Iraq's weapons were a threat to international peace and security, and they specifically authorized the use of military force to disarm them of those weapons. This is not some story that President Bush cooked up to justify an invasion- this is documented history. Why are you trying to downplay that?
The use of force was threatened, and the demands went unheaded, but the resolution to back up the threat was never passed, correct?
Besides, you are dodging the real issue on this question. I did not say Iraq was not a threat. I said everyone is a threat. The point is that if you set out to prove that any group is a threat, and you have a decent spin/research staff, you will suceed. Of course Iraq was found to be a threat, it is a forgone conclusion...
I think it is more of a goverment knows what's best for your children because we want them growing up dependent on us so we can become more powerful... And typically a liberal view...
No.
That is an evil view.
Actual liberals have peoples best interests at heart.
*sigh* Rockstar is already admitting that the scenes in question were already in the game. They were disabled. The accusation is that the code that enabled them was leaked to modders, and that the whole thing was planned to circumvent an AO rating. This is the subject of the investigation.
Thanks, I didn't realize that there were allegations it was planned.
But frankly I still wouldn't give a damn if that were all true... You still have to mod the game to expose the dirty stuff...
And if you ask me, any game that is modded, is not the game that was rated.
On the other hand, if you said that Iraq was in violation of its UN mandated disarmament requirements, that Iraq was supporting terrorists, and that Iraq posed a threat to our national security, those were not lies because they are all true.
Are you aware that the United States is in violation of UN mandate? Are you aware that the United States has recently supported (perhaps currently supporting) terrorists? Did you know that to some degree, every nation on the face of the earth is a threat to every other nation's national security?
Isn't amaizing how pointless and misleading true statments can be?
Parents make decisions based in part on the ESRB's rating. If a game company is suspected of deceiving the ESRB and (thereby parents) then it's the role of gov't to step in and investi>gate.
GTA, as sold, has the correct rating. If someone downloads and applies a patch, that is not from the manufacturer of the game, how can that be the manufacturer's responsibiltiy?
I could download a smurfs video, and splice porn into it, does that make the smurfs X rated? No. It makes the video that I made X rated.
GTA doesn't have a sex game in it, unless somebody modifies the game to put it in.
Some Centerists, the ill-informed, and "a woman should be pres" feminists like Hillary, most liberals hate her, of course that doesn't mean that she wouldn't get the liberal vote if running against Frist or some other neocon... If she wins the democratic primary, it will be purly on "electability", which is the best way to get somebody who pleases nobody...
Cornell University has a highly respected computer graphics program. I am not too familiar with it, other than the fact that I share a building with them...
I can tell you Ithaca NY, where Cornell is located, is wonderfull, unless you hate gloomy weather and long winters.
So you don't think that we, as voters, are responsible for the acts of our government?
Also, if the public had not been behind Bush on the Iraq debacle, there is no way in hell we would be there now. Do you honestly think otherwise?
If public opinion had been in the 70% strongly oppose war neigbhorhood, Bush would have been impeached before the start of the war, but all of the sheep that I share this country with bought his lies and said I was crazy when I compaired WMD to the gulf of tonkin.
It sure is convinient for people like you to say "oh it's not my fault I picked a warmongering ass hole to be president", well I got news for you, it is your fucking fault!
Haha, you obviously never got in a fight. The best thing you can do is go down in glory fighting with the bully. The next day you get pats on the back from all of your peers, and you come out on top in your mind, you don't go through the rest of your life asking yourself "Why didn't I just try to beat that bully? Why?". If you stick out your chest, you are asking for another slugging, what the bully wants you to do is turn tail and run. That is the worst advise I've ever heard. Kids don't listen to him.
I assure you I have (though not for the last 12+years).
when you stick your chest out and ask for another, the bully ussually does nothing. You are right though the bully does want you to run, but in a close second is the paniced look in your eyes while you are swinging at him. They just want to see fear, deny them that, and they will leave you alone.
I actually tried your method a couple times before standing proud. I assure you the later was more effective in preventing future violence. Also, the one time I did get a second slugging while standing proud (never got a third, unless I was trying to hit back), the bully got ridiculed for weeks over the ordeal by his peers (I think I even saw him with a black eye)...
With all due respect, you've never taken on a bully in your life and it is obvious. Otherwise you'd realize you'll just keep getting kicked in the nuts until you stop them.
I was on our junior engineering technocial society challenge team in highschool, my subjects were math and physics.
I was on the speach team.
I was in the marching band.
I was on a state champion quiz bowl team.
I was 6'1" and 115 pounds (I am much bigger now).
I have a big mouth.
Do you really think I never had to deal with bullies?
I suspect maybe you dealt with them, but you never tried the stratagy I put forward? I can tell you that I was no fun for the bullies to pick on, they love the fear in your eyes, I didn't show it to them. Once they figured that out, I was left alone.
All I need to know about islamofascists like bin Laden is that they want to kill innocent people, and they do kill innocent people, for their religious reasons.
I don't know that I have answers for all of the questions I am about to ask, but, I am just gonna float a few for us to think about.
Who is a more legitimate target? A) a conscript in the army of a dictatorship (with bad foreign policy). B) a voter in a country with representative government and bad foreign policy.
Initially I leaned toward A, but then the the more I thought about it, I started thinking B. B is esentially a desision maker, and A is order taker, a messenger, if you will... Though the message may be a bullet, the soldier is not the source of the bullet, he just delivers the bullet, the source is the government, and in representative governed nations, the government is of the people for the people and by the people... The people are self governed... The people are the source of the foreign policy, and the bullet.
So while I agree completly that the Taliban soldiers were legitimate targets, I am less sure that, morally, the Iraqi army was a more legitimate target than the US civilian.
I guess ultimatly the questions are Where the victims in the towers truly inocent? and did the islamofacists kill inocents, or their percieved oppressors?
You haven't stated what you believe his TRUE ulterior motives are.
I claim not to know, only to know that all who claim to know are overconfidant in their own knowledge. (Rumsfeldian engough for ya ?:)
I don't know what makes you tick, you don't know what makes me tick... We don't know what makes him tick. We can have insights and suspicions, but I am very sceptical of any claims anyone makes as to knowledge of the motivations of another human.
Yes but when they strike us it gets us the support to fight back. It's a vicious circle.
No Shit Sherlock! That is my fucking point, we can break it, or let it go on for decades to come, the choice is ours.
Are you joking? They will hate us as long as we keep our way of life. They have been killing innocent people and blowing things up long before we did anything to them. Even if we no longer are a target they will attack others and that means they must be taken down.
When do you think they started blowing things up, and when do you think we did something to them? (I suspect you might be missing historical details largely ignored in western education...)
I played soccer with someone from the towers as a kid, so take that argument somewhere else...
Ask the Brits if they think Ghandi was a pussy.
And lastly, our striking back at them is what gets them the continued support they need ot function. Muhammad 6 pack (I know, it's terrible...) doesn't think all westerners are inharantly evil. He just lost his brother/son/father/sister in an attack by US forces, and hates our foreign policy. Give him no reason to hate us, and Al Queda loses the vast majority of their esential support, and therefor loses ability to conduct operations.
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The problem is not the amount of power the engine can produce, but rather the amount of electricital power it can produce.
No current fighter has the electrical capacity to shoot this bad boy, but for reasons explained in this comment the non vertical take off versions of the F-35 are good canidates.
Actually the F-22 Raptor already has a laser system that's been designed for it and [I think it] fits in place of bombbay doors.
It is the F-35 or the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that has a laser on the drawing boards.
The thing about a laser system like this is that it need a lot of electricity to run, and the vast majority of fighter aircraft do not produce the kind of juice needed to run one of these. The thing that makes the JSF capable of handling a system like this, is the way the VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) version of the aircraft was designed. Unlike previous VTOL fighters (AV-8 - Harrier and the Boeing consept for JSF) which use a series of nozels to redirect thrust the engine was already making to get vertical thrust, the Lockheed JSF (the one that was selected) has a secondary fan, driven by a shaft from the main engine and door that open above and below the fan.
Using the lift fan in the VTOL plane means that the engine in the CTOL (Conventional Take Off and Landing) and CV (Carrier Varient) has the capacity built in to drive a shaft, and the aircraft themselves have a lot of room right in front of the engine/behind the cockpit. This shaft can then drive a large generator to fire the laser.
I used to be an analyst at the company that builds the engines for the F-22 and the JSF. I worked on both programs.
The laser is ultraviolet, thus it would allow an F22 to loiter in an area and attack ground targetes (Geneva conventions state that we can't attack people with lasers) However, we can cut the truck they're driving in half and thus detonating the fuel tank...
Conventional fuels (gas/diesel) do not detonate unless they are vaporized, or atomised. They will burn pretty fast though.
Timecube and ID have something in common.
Niether of them make claims that are falsifible. Time being cubic would not have any observible affect on the world around us. And being created, rather than randomly evolving points to no observable results.
They are, perhaps, equally valid.
Going to Mars would be the cancer cure. The increase in cancer rates would just accelerate the evolution of humans who don't get cancer from radiation - on Mars. After some generations, people new to Mars would still have a 10% cancer rate, while the locals wouldn't have to worry.
That arument fails because cancer tends to strike late in life, after you have had kids, who have your cancer prone genes...
And I would guess it would as long or longer than a trip to Mars to build a moonbase. So wouldn't the people building the moonbase die of cancer due to prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation?
You would be able to dig a few tunnels to spend most of your time in. The moon would block the rays...
Moral? What in your mind is moral about allowing a murderous dictator promote terrorism, develop lethal weapons, torture and kill his own people, and defy the UN?
I am an atheist, but I still like a lot of christian philosophy.
A couple of my favorites are:
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
and
Judge not least ye be judged.
We execute our own citizens, there have almost certainly been innocent people put to death in this country. Sure Saddam did it more often, but it is a difference of degree, we are still guilty of state sanctioned murder in our own society.
We have developed more lethal weapons than any other country in history with one possible exception.
Many international human rights organisations consider our prison system torturous.
and defying the UN... Personally I respect defiance. If our founding fathers were not defiant, we would still be British.
When our house is in order, then we can go after others. But until we stop supporting terrorist acts, I don't think it is moral to tell others to stop.
P.S. Have you thought about the military? Honestly? I considered it after 9/11. I Almost joined the marine reserves, but then I thought about it, and decided something like Iraq was likely, and changed plans.
Never really considered it.
You seem like a good man, I disagree with you about many things, but I still like you.
The military needs good men who believe in this mission right now.
Even if he could have complied, and the invasion was was authorized, I would still oppose it, on moral grounds, rather than legal, so lets skip to the end... (I don't think either of us is going to convince the other of anything on those maters).
Ok- so when is an attack imminent? At what point did the 9/11 hijackers become enough of a threat to you that you would feel ok about taking action? When they planned the attack in Malaysia? When they entered the US? When they enrolled in flight schools? When they arrived at the airport? Boarded the plane? Pulled out their box cutters?
What would have been wrong with stationing air marshalls on the the flights in question, and taking them down when the cutters were pulled?
Not to belittle the experience of thse who lost loved ones (I lost a member of my childhood soccer team), but... Do you have any idea how minor the loss of life on 9/11 was? It was insignifigant compaired to traffic fatalities. Exposing ourselves to risks like this is hardly a suicide pact. I'll keep my freedom thank you.
P.S. Have you thought about the military? Honestly? I considered it after 9/11. I Almost joined the marine reserves, but then I thought about it, and decided something like Iraq was likely, and changed plans.
I am told that the military loves engineers (one of my old weight lifting budies was a retired marine recruiter), because we are good at making desisions, and solving problems. We make excelent infantry officers.
his is just silly. When would you have dealt with the 9/11 hijackers? After the plane took off and they pulled the knives out?
Until it is clear that their plan is in motion, they are innocent. Unless they are here ilegally, then you could pick them up for that to interupt their plan...
If you had good intel that they were going to try to hijack flight X, you could also put air marshalls on that flight...
Do you think that cops shouldn't be able to stop bank robbers until they pull a gun out and point it at a bank teller?
If they own the gun legally, and have a permit to carry it, they have commited no crime until they pull the gun on the teller.
We shouldn't stop rapists until they have committed their first rape?
How can one who has never commited rape be a rapist?
What you don't seem to understand is that inaction puts far more innocent lives at risk.
What you don't seem to understand is freedom requires risk. I am willing to risk death or bodily harm in order to live free. And I am not willing to take other peoples freedom, to reduce my risk, becasue I expect the same from them. Sounds like you would prefer a police state procecuting thought crime (how else could you arrest a rapist before he has raped?).
Saddam killed as many as 2,000,000 people before we took him out. If we didn't act, IIS agents would still be kidnapping dissidents and throwing them in jail never to be heard from again, or tossing them over a rooftop, or dipping them into an acid bath, or raping their wives in front of them. Saddam would still be developing weapons capable of killing far more innocent people than have died as a result of the invasion.
Similar actions have gone on for quite some time in south america with the approval of our government, the difference is only a mater of degree. I would feel a lot better about our taking action to prevent this type of thing, if we did so in areas where it is our friends commiting the atrocities as well. Now it just feel hypocritical.
Terrorists would still be operating and killing innocent people with the full support and training of Iraq.
The full support and training of Iraq didn't seem to be doing to much for them, they are operating just fine with out it...
And 25,000,000 innocent Iraqis would be living under the oppressive rule of a brutal tyrant.
And now they live under the rule of a foriegn military. Most people actually prefer their own tyrant to someone elses military...
If you were truly concerned about innocent civilians, it seems you would support removing people like Saddam.
I just think that we need to get our own house in order before we go around the world telling others to fix theirs.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone...
Judge not, least ye be judged...
And so on...
This might be my last reply to you; you are obviosly not reading the most central part of what I am writing.
The Security Council did approve of military action over a dozen times.
The security council threatened over a dozen times, it never approved use of force. There are good legal minds on both sides of this debate, but almost all of them on your side are American or British.
Iraq was ordered to unconditionally accept under international supervision the destruction of all of their WMDs and all related subsystems and components, research, and manufacturing facilities. This was not a detective work- Saddam was required to bring us to his weapons sites and let us watch him destroy them. He never did. Here is a chronology of events during the 1990's to see what he did instead. Iraq was NOT in compliance with the UN mandate, which was confirmed by the 1200 page ISG report.
snip tammman2000 paragraph
Once again, I refer you to the documents that UNSCOM and UNMOVIC sent to Iraq which clearly detailed what Iraq needed to do to satisfy the commissions. Iraq was supposed to be an active participant, but instead they blatantly lied to and obstructed the inspectors for 12 years.
This is what you are not hearing:
I never said they were in compliance! Show me where I did. I infact stated that their failure to comply was inevitable, due to the condiditons required for compliance. It is not a mater of moving goalposts. The problem is that the onus was on Saddam to prove he was WMD free. This is imposible to do.
I would love to know where you got this "information" about the operation of a secret training facility.
I realize this will probably not score points with you, but... Chomsky, and Zinn.
Who else in the world was in defiance of over a dozen unanimous Chapter VII Security Council resolutions?
Violation of a resolution doesn't mean a severe threat.
Who else had illegal WMD capabilities and had shown a willingness to use these weapons in the past?
There are a lot of counties with WMD, Iraq didn't have signifigant amounts (yeah, they could have begun making it again... so could anyone).
As far as using WMD: USA, Germany, China, France, England, Spain, Italy, and Japan to name a few
Who else had supported dozens of terrorist organizations for 25 years and had tried to direct terrorist attacks against us multiple times over the past decade?
We have been supporting terrorism in south america for about 25 years...
Sure, there are other threats, but Saddam was pretty high up on that list.
That is one opinion, I, and many non-GOP experts, disagree with it.
Seeding democracy in the Middle East has a huge likelihood of long term positive results.
I hope it happens. Don't think it is too likely though...
The ISG reported that Iraq had the supplies, procurement systems, and infrastructure in place to go to full scale mustard gas production within 2 months. Our allies warned us that Saddam was plotting more terrorist attacks against us- how long would you have liked to wait?
Our allies also told us he was buying yellow cake in Africa. Inteligence is a highly foulable art form, forgive me for being sceptical.
As for how long to wait. I don't think it is morally OK to attack anyone because of their ability to attack. In short, I don't think preventive warfare is OK. If it is OK to attack a nation because it has the ability to attack you, and even a demonstrated willingness to attack others, think of what that means if the shoe is on the other foot. Iran and North Korea are justified in attacking the US by the moral standard we hold ourselves to.
That said, if an attack is eminent, war is no longer preventative, and is thus justifiable. So to use the Pearl Harbor analogy. If we had intel that said an attack on Pearl was coming soon. I would wait until there was a wave of bombers in the air coming
The security council voted 17 times to approve the use of force to get Iraq to comply, and never voted to revoke this authorization. Each of these 17 resolutions were passed under the 7th chapter of the UN charter which makes enforcement compulsory for member states.
Kofi Annan, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali disagree. Both have stated that the invasion of Iraq violated international law.
You'd better read 687 again to refresh your memory. It affirmed the authorization of force given in 678 for the purposes of 1) Kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, 2) Forcing compliance on WMD, and 3) Restoring peace and security to the region.
Compliance on WMD is imposible to satisfy, that was the subject of most of my argument.
Considering that nobody knows exactly what training took place at the School of Americas, it is interesting how you claim to know what was taught and what the results were from this training.
Most who have studied it, spoken to graduates and followed the actions of many graduates agree with my assesment, thougt I will admit that it is all foggy.
I disagree with your assessment. Information was being gathered on Iraq well before they violated international law and invaded Kuwait. The universal conclusion from this information was that Iraq was a threat, which is why the UN security council unanimously voted 17 times to disarm them. Iraq was clearly a top priority threat as well. There were no other countries that were in open defiance of chapter 7 UN resolutions, had a history of attacking non-hostile nations, and were on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. And 9/11 taught us that inaction to these kinds of threats is not acceptable.
All 9/11 taught us is that we are vulnerable. It is still possible, and MUST be considered that the cost of inaction might be lower than the cost of action.
In a perfect world, war would never be necessary. A quick reading of any history book will quickly tell you that we are living in a world that is far from perfect.
I agree completely. It was not necissary on this occasion though.
Does the charter not state that war should not be waged without the approval of the security counsel? (Don't try to agrue that it was a legal war becasue we were enforcing the resolutions of an organisation whose laws say that our acts of enforcement were illegal, there is just too much cognitive dissonance there)
Honestly it has been a while since I read 687... You are going to have to refresh my memory as to how it is concretecompliance is possible. If I recall correctly that is one of them that calls on Iraq to prove it is free of weapons by allowing inspections. Well, the inspectors didn't find anything (significant) and yet many were convinced that Iraq had banned weapons.
So how exactly is it possible to prove that you don't have something when the accuser can simply claim that you must be hidding it?
SOA has gone alot further than having graduates that became criminals. SOA explicitly trained people in the use of guerilla tactics against populations to inspire fear as a means to influence elections. When Sunni's do that we call it terrorism.
See charter above...
Some of this is true, some is almost hyperbolically exadgerated. But I will say that if I were in charge of national security, I would go through this process:
1. Gather information
2. Identify threats
3. Prioritize threats
4. Determine what action has the best likelyhood of positive results
5. Determine if the likely results of that action are better than the likely results of inaction
6. Act (if applicable under step 5)
I think this is a perfectly reasonable algorithm. Would you disagree with this?
In my accessment the Bush admin skipped steps a large chunk of 1,3,maybe 4, and definately 5.
Your right war is never perfect, it is also rarely necessary.
Chapter VII resolutions are the only UN resolutions that are enforceable in any context. The United States has never been the subject of a Chapter VII resolution. Iraq, on the other hand, was in violation of 17 of them. Try to keep your comparisons on topic.
We are in violation of the freakin' charter!
And the fact that we have a security counsel veto is the only thing that has kept chapter VII resolutions off our ass. That and the fact that nobody wants to try to enforce one on the sole remaining super power, Iraq is easy to pick on, the US, not so much...
In addition to that, many of the 17 resolutions Iraq was in violation of were written specifically so that compliance was either impossible or subjective (cheezedawg, you have WMD, prove otherwise), in other words they were written so that their garaunteed violation could be political capital.
It has never been US policy to support terrorism or use terrorism to achieve its goals. Your moral equivalence is crap.
Does the phrase Salvadoran death-squad mean any thing to you? How about School of the Americas?
Are you unaware of these, or are these not considered supporting terrorism to achieve our goals in your book?
The UN security council sat down 17 times and unanimously decided that Iraq's weapons were a threat to international peace and security, and they specifically authorized the use of military force to disarm them of those weapons. This is not some story that President Bush cooked up to justify an invasion- this is documented history. Why are you trying to downplay that?
The use of force was threatened, and the demands went unheaded, but the resolution to back up the threat was never passed, correct?
Besides, you are dodging the real issue on this question. I did not say Iraq was not a threat. I said everyone is a threat. The point is that if you set out to prove that any group is a threat, and you have a decent spin/research staff, you will suceed. Of course Iraq was found to be a threat, it is a forgone conclusion...
I think it is more of a goverment knows what's best for your children because we want them growing up dependent on us so we can become more powerful... And typically a liberal view...
No.
That is an evil view.
Actual liberals have peoples best interests at heart.
*sigh*
Rockstar is already admitting that the scenes in question were already in the game. They were disabled. The accusation is that the code that enabled them was leaked to modders, and that the whole thing was planned to circumvent an AO rating. This is the subject of the investigation.
Thanks, I didn't realize that there were allegations it was planned.
But frankly I still wouldn't give a damn if that were all true... You still have to mod the game to expose the dirty stuff...
And if you ask me, any game that is modded, is not the game that was rated.
On the other hand, if you said that Iraq was in violation of its UN mandated disarmament requirements, that Iraq was supporting terrorists, and that Iraq posed a threat to our national security, those were not lies because they are all true.
Are you aware that the United States is in violation of UN mandate?
Are you aware that the United States has recently supported (perhaps currently supporting) terrorists?
Did you know that to some degree, every nation on the face of the earth is a threat to every other nation's national security?
Isn't amaizing how pointless and misleading true statments can be?
Parents make decisions based in part on the ESRB's rating. If a game company is suspected of deceiving the ESRB and (thereby parents) then it's the role of gov't to step in and investi>gate.
GTA, as sold, has the correct rating. If someone downloads and applies a patch, that is not from the manufacturer of the game, how can that be the manufacturer's responsibiltiy?
I could download a smurfs video, and splice porn into it, does that make the smurfs X rated? No. It makes the video that I made X rated.
GTA doesn't have a sex game in it, unless somebody modifies the game to put it in.
Hit some of the lefty blogs.
Some Centerists, the ill-informed, and "a woman should be pres" feminists like Hillary, most liberals hate her, of course that doesn't mean that she wouldn't get the liberal vote if running against Frist or some other neocon... If she wins the democratic primary, it will be purly on "electability", which is the best way to get somebody who pleases nobody...
P.S. Liberals hate Joe Lieberman too...
Cornell University has a highly respected computer graphics program. I am not too familiar with it, other than the fact that I share a building with them...
I can tell you Ithaca NY, where Cornell is located, is wonderfull, unless you hate gloomy weather and long winters.
So you don't think that we, as voters, are responsible for the acts of our government?
Also, if the public had not been behind Bush on the Iraq debacle, there is no way in hell we would be there now. Do you honestly think otherwise?
If public opinion had been in the 70% strongly oppose war neigbhorhood, Bush would have been impeached before the start of the war, but all of the sheep that I share this country with bought his lies and said I was crazy when I compaired WMD to the gulf of tonkin.
It sure is convinient for people like you to say "oh it's not my fault I picked a warmongering ass hole to be president", well I got news for you, it is your fucking fault!
Haha, you obviously never got in a fight. The best thing you can do is go down in glory fighting with the bully. The next day you get pats on the back from all of your peers, and you come out on top in your mind, you don't go through the rest of your life asking yourself "Why didn't I just try to beat that bully? Why?". If you stick out your chest, you are asking for another slugging, what the bully wants you to do is turn tail and run. That is the worst advise I've ever heard. Kids don't listen to him.
I assure you I have (though not for the last 12+years).
when you stick your chest out and ask for another, the bully ussually does nothing. You are right though the bully does want you to run, but in a close second is the paniced look in your eyes while you are swinging at him. They just want to see fear, deny them that, and they will leave you alone.
I actually tried your method a couple times before standing proud. I assure you the later was more effective in preventing future violence. Also, the one time I did get a second slugging while standing proud (never got a third, unless I was trying to hit back), the bully got ridiculed for weeks over the ordeal by his peers (I think I even saw him with a black eye)...
With all due respect, you've never taken on a bully in your life and it is obvious. Otherwise you'd realize you'll just keep getting kicked in the nuts until you stop them.
I was on our junior engineering technocial society challenge team in highschool, my subjects were math and physics.
I was on the speach team.
I was in the marching band.
I was on a state champion quiz bowl team.
I was 6'1" and 115 pounds (I am much bigger now).
I have a big mouth.
Do you really think I never had to deal with bullies?
I suspect maybe you dealt with them, but you never tried the stratagy I put forward? I can tell you that I was no fun for the bullies to pick on, they love the fear in your eyes, I didn't show it to them. Once they figured that out, I was left alone.
You don't know me, don't pretend that you do.
All I need to know about islamofascists like bin Laden is that they want to kill innocent people, and they do kill innocent people, for their religious reasons.
I don't know that I have answers for all of the questions I am about to ask, but, I am just gonna float a few for us to think about.
Who is a more legitimate target?
A) a conscript in the army of a dictatorship (with bad foreign policy).
B) a voter in a country with representative government and bad foreign policy.
Initially I leaned toward A, but then the the more I thought about it, I started thinking B. B is esentially a desision maker, and A is order taker, a messenger, if you will... Though the message may be a bullet, the soldier is not the source of the bullet, he just delivers the bullet, the source is the government, and in representative governed nations, the government is of the people for the people and by the people... The people are self governed... The people are the source of the foreign policy, and the bullet.
So while I agree completly that the Taliban soldiers were legitimate targets, I am less sure that, morally, the Iraqi army was a more legitimate target than the US civilian.
I guess ultimatly the questions are
Where the victims in the towers truly inocent?
and did the islamofacists kill inocents, or their percieved oppressors?
You haven't stated what you believe his TRUE ulterior motives are.
I claim not to know, only to know that all who claim to know are overconfidant in their own knowledge. (Rumsfeldian engough for ya ?:)
I don't know what makes you tick, you don't know what makes me tick... We don't know what makes him tick. We can have insights and suspicions, but I am very sceptical of any claims anyone makes as to knowledge of the motivations of another human.
Yes but when they strike us it gets us the support to fight back. It's a vicious circle.
No Shit Sherlock! That is my fucking point, we can break it, or let it go on for decades to come, the choice is ours.
Are you joking? They will hate us as long as we keep our way of life. They have been killing innocent people and blowing things up long before we did anything to them. Even if we no longer are a target they will attack others and that means they must be taken down.
When do you think they started blowing things up, and when do you think we did something to them? (I suspect you might be missing historical details largely ignored in western education...)
I played soccer with someone from the towers as a kid, so take that argument somewhere else...
Ask the Brits if they think Ghandi was a pussy.
And lastly, our striking back at them is what gets them the continued support they need ot function. Muhammad 6 pack (I know, it's terrible...) doesn't think all westerners are inharantly evil. He just lost his brother/son/father/sister in an attack by US forces, and hates our foreign policy. Give him no reason to hate us, and Al Queda loses the vast majority of their esential support, and therefor loses ability to conduct operations.