Which is exactly in accordance with their training. Their training specifically said that they do not need target confirmation to defend themselves, but always ask for confirmation. This was a carefully designed system that allows the pilots (whose lives, safety, and sanity depend on their confidence in combat) to react without second guessing their every decision.
They have fire-and-forget weapons. They cannot function in battle if they fire a weapon and then spend the next 3 minutes worried that their career is over. They will hesitate to fly into combat if they need someone else's permission to defend themselves - and that someone else is hundreds of miles away, supporting multiple aircraft, and "informed" via satellites and computer systems which are never failsafe. The target confirmation system works marvelously when making an offensive attack. It was never intended to be used for authority to defend oneself.
Now, the pilots thought that they were defending themselves. That was a horrible mistake. These were well trained and experienced pilots. If you punish these pilots for defending themselves according to their orders, what do you expect every other pilot to think? "Those guys followed orders and got shit canned, I guess I'm supposed to sit on my thumbs until some geek 500 miles away says it's ok to shoot back." What's that going to do to their morale? Their ability to perform their duties? Their confidence and sanity when under fire? This situation is wholly unacceptable.
Friendly fire situations like the one we're talking about are awful situations but you cannot treat them like an ordinary crime. Acting in the military is following orders not because it's fun or you think the orders are good, but because that is what you have been told to do. If you follow those orders and something goes wrong, it is absolutely wrong to hold the guy responsible. You can question the system, rebuild the training program, put in checks and balances, but killing the messenger is a bad reaction.
If the pilots in question had not acted according to their training, my response would have been very different.
When you bombed A platoon of Canadian soldiers, US media spun it as an accident, while the rest of the world heard how the pilots were told to "disengage" but decided to be heroes and disobeyed orders.
We can agree to disagree, but this is a pretty dumbassed assessment of the situation. First of all, you know fuck all if you think that Americans didn't hear the story that the pilots were told to disengage. For emphasis, if you think that Americans were not told that the pilots were told to disengage, you know
fuck
all
The pilots were not punished for the incident for one crystal clear reason. If a fighter pilot believes he's being attacked but can't retaliate because he's afraid that the people shooting him (as he believes) are allies, many fighter pilots will die. The fighter pilots in question performed EXACTLY as trained. They believed that they were being attacked, they asked for target confirmation. The confirmation came back negative, they believed that they were still being attacked, so they believed that they were defending themselves. It was a horrible mistake.
Blame the training, blame the procedures, blame the information, blame your goddamned dog. Blaming the pilots tells me that you know fuck all about how a military is run - but don't let that discourage you from blaming the pilots.
The truly moronic thing is to believe that somehow the rest of the world heard the truth while the Americans were lied to. You heard it because we heard it. The difference is that we're willing to give the situation a fair trial rather than just write it off as another crime against humanity committed by the Great White Satan America. It was a tragedy and probably the worst combat incident of the Afghan/Iraq engagements (except perhaps the bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan) but the pilots performed as they were trained to perform.
And all this is to your "best friend" and neighbor. I hate to see how you fuck over your non-friends.
So you don't know shit about how a nation is run, but what's your point?
You find me ONE nation in history that did "the right thing" because it was the nice thing to do. There are none. It must hurt your self respect to act surprised that a government protects the money of its citizens and supporters rather than do nice things for foreigners.
I know this is one giant flame, but I really couldn't care. I'm the type of American who would have empathy with international opinions, but this snot nosed crybaby shit will grate on anyone's nerves. America does not equal bad. Every time I read such a halfwitted post as yours I lose empathy for the world opinion. Fuck'em. They expect us to intentionally run an incompetent military. They expect us to intentionally screw our own workers. Fuck'em. Let the rest of the world hate us, better to be envied than to share their company.
And in case you feel like responding, let me cover the bases. Yes, I'm usually a Republican voter, but I'm not voting for Bush because 1) I think he's doing a horrible job and 2) I fear the candidate the Republican party would promote after Bush served a second term. I have a very expensive liberal arts education and have crossed oceans. Do your worst.
Don't worry about it. As an American, I'm enjoying this opportunity to read posts about how superior Britain is by people who use words like "rediculous", "sence", and other brilliant demonstrations of true mastery of the English language. "It IS their language, after all," I said with noticeable sarcasm.
Re:Poker Allows Escape from Geekdom
on
Geeks and Poker?
·
· Score: 1
I've found that playing for fun or for pennies among drinking buddies is a very fun evening. It's interesting how different people will play. The computer scientists tend to play the game very systematically - if they have a weak hand and chances are good someone can beat them, they are loathe to bet high. Those who studied the humanities tend to play the opponent more, but the CS people don't always recognize this and think they're just being unpredictable.
It's an exercise in both problem solving AND social engineering. You can pull a royal flush (I got it once at PartyPoker and kept the log;) and make $3 off it if you bet like a chump. You can triple your money with a high ace if you're perceptive enough to read your opponents.
For truly competitive people, especially competitive computer scientists, master of Texas Hold'em should be seen as a true achievement because it is a interdisciplinary skill.
It's like, uh, multi-classing your D&D nerdy wizard with a charming bard. You can be mediocre with either, but you need both to excel.
So sorry but what in the world are you talking about? What is a "rolling piece of luggage"? I carry a bag that was actually sold as a diaper bag but is very stylish (solid black and carries some name brand; my girlfriend bought it for me) and has a single shoulder strap. Are you talking about a Jansport style backpack that is so popular in the states (and elsewhere(?))?
I hope you succeed in the VBA functionality. I know this doesn't represent a majority opinion, but for me the VBA in Excel is the killer feature that precludes me from using any other spreadsheet. As I'm sure you know, this will also be a great selling point for corporate customers who often make extensive use of macros.
In addition to competing with a great Office feature, including scripting capability in your spreadsheet and word processor is an independently incredible idea. Just think twice about porting the ability to fark the whole machine, right?:)
I've got to second this. For me, Excel is little more than a feature-rich data structure for VBA. In fact, I hardly consider Excel a useful tool (above and beyond any generic spreadsheet) without the VBA.
Bah! Humor foiled by the infinitely complicated nature of the italics tag yet again! This "markup language" is just fad; it's a solution looking for a problem and needlessly complex!
This is probably required by the fire code so that people are not trapped in a burning building.
Ah yes, yet another example of how high tech inventions are modeled after comfortable and familiar low tech versions.
We interface with our computers using comprehensible "desktop" metaphors. We implement our electronic locks to behave like steel locks - that is, in case of a fire, they default to unlocked status to prevent people from dying in fires. Um, wait a minute. Nevermind, that's merely totally farking crazy.
That's a good point. It might make better sense marketability-wise to stick with 3 burners and a hard drive per machine, then you could probably stick to the standard IDE controllers on the motherboard. Of course, I'm assuming that a digital audio multitrack recorder would sell like hotcakes which could be a mistake. But thanks for pointing that out - I didn't even consider for a moment that you could dupe to multiple CDs on one machine.
I helped a friend digitally record a show his band did. While the second act was on, he was able to make a couple CDs of the recording. There were only a handful of people interested in the CDs so it all worked out. (Very small band.)
I have to wonder about the prices of cheap networked computers with 40x+ CD burners. For $1000, you could easily have 10 such machines networked and be able to pump out 10 CDs in about 5 minutes. This obviously isn't a solution for moderate to large shows, but for smaller bands it might make a lot of sense.
With a little extra work, those machines could each double as a cheap digital audio multitrack recorder which could have a significant value to plenty of band members who don't get to rehearse as much as they would like.
Hell, I may be blathering away my future plans to develop a marketable product. Way to go Slashdot, I blame you for my future poverty.
But if I speed down the highway, I could be easily jeopardize the safety of 1,000 people in 15 minutes. Rather than be sentenced for making 1,000 death threats, I'm given a fine of about $100, give or take. It's a nice idea to make the punishment fit the crime, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy to come up with an appropriate penalty.
True, but I don't think it's a condition at all peculiar to the United States. It does happen that our current position in history as the world's single super power makes the "political fall-out" side of the equation far less influential than it would for, say, Belgium. Moreover, as you look back through history, there is no shortage of other nations who asserted their power internationally.
Anyhow, I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, but in this day and age I feel compelled to point out that we Americans didn't actually invent Machiavelli.
I second that. Took me a good 10 seconds to derive any meaning out of that grammatical traffic accident. Of the six words in the headline, 4 of them could be verbs in a different context. If there's anything I hate more than dry, subtle humor, it's got to be repetitive use of certain types of words. I'm infuriated! It's time to get on up out of here.
Oh, so how much has Halliburton made in Iraq? Here's one link. Do you really want me to believe that there aren't qualified organizations based in the Middle East for working in oil fields? How about the rest of Europe?
You have got to be shitting me. Would you trust the oil supply for your armed forces to a foreign country?
Also, ever hear of OPEC? You know, the guys setting oil production rates in the Middle East?
Yes. Have YOU heard of OPEC? You know, those guys who work with Venezuela to set oil prices? By the way, Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico are in the top four nations who export oil to the US.
Stands to reason that, if the U.S had Iraq ignore the production limits set by them, you could reduce their control on oil prices, even halfway around the world in the U.S, let alone in Saudi Arabia.
Sing along! "US doesn't buy oil from Iraq! Iraq needs to sell oil more than we need to buy it! Our biggest oil supplier is Canada! The US defeated OPEC's price control abilities in the 1970s by finding non-OPEC suppliers and giving them plenty of incentives to stay that way!"
Your ignorance, as well as your patriotism, is stereotypical.
My ignorance? Are you crazy or are you nuts? You seem to be very emphatic about your argument but rather uninformed about how oil is actually bought and sold around the world. You also seem to think that patriotism is a bad quality - I'm guessing you're a proud Democrat, if you are American. I'm sure as hell not voting for Bush in 2004, but the zeal with which the left clings to fantasy makes it painful to vote for Kerry.
Yes, I agree, except that I still hear a great many people who insist that the was was about "getting oil", exactly the argument I've hopefully destroyed.
In contrast, nobody talks about the American Civil War as being fought for Northern industrial dominance, or WW2 for control of industrialized Europe, or Vietnam as a war for economic influence over that peninsula.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but this is what I believe.
Bush is not an international politics ace. He firmly believed Iraq was the number one threat after Osama bin Laden despite any argument to the contrary.
Bush felt he was resolving the issue which cost his father re-election. He thought that on the streets, there was a significant feeling of "We should have ousted Saddam in 1991" which he thought would still apply in 2003 and make him incredibly popular.
The American economy was struggling. War is good for business whether the enemy has oil or not.
And that about sums it up. "Getting oil" is an outright ridiculous conclusion, in my opinion. "Seizing Iraq's economy" is not far from the truth - look at Afghanistan. Those guys don't have any resources to fund their recovery from war and we're doing everything we can to leave that country without causing a disaster. American companies aren't moving to Afghanistan en masse. There's no reason to. Iraq, on the other hand, has economic potential that America can benefit from.
The fact remains that America always has and still does buy very little oil from the Persian Gulf, and even less from Iraq. The Persian Gulf sells most of its oil further east - China, Russia, Japan. The United States is not about to engage in passive-aggression against those countries - especially not to the extent of screwing with their oil supplies in the long term.
The economic reason for going to war with Iraq is that Iraq can continue to sell its oil (to non-US buyers) and use that money to pay for reconstruction (with profits going to primarily American contracts.) There were a myriad of political reasons, almost all of which backfired on Bush, in my opinion.
I'm not arguing that Bush is a good president - I believe quite the opposite. I'm arguing that Bush's popularity does not mean that the larger federal government should spend its time apologizing or compensating for Bush's unpopularity. That doesn't even make sense.
Yes, all that and more. America also spends loads on its military and when we use that military it justifies more spending on defense, which boosts our domestic economy. War is good for business - it always has been - I'd never argue against that. This war wasn't fought so that the US could "get its hands on Iraq's oil," despite how many times people pronounce it true. We got our hands on their economy, their development, and so on, but getting their oil is hardly a concern. The fact that they have the oil is what ensures that they'll be able to pay for all this reconstruction, but taking that oil was not a goal.
By the way, are you an American or from elsewhere?
Yes, it's dumb to think that invading Iraq has anything to do with oil! America's foreign policy is all about making the people of other countries happier. We all know that.
Now that we've successfully conquered Iraq, we can enjoy all the oil-icious fruits of war! Finally! American gas prices are higher than they have ever been in history! YES!!! The plan to invade Iraq for oil has succeeded! It was cheaper to get oil from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico, but now that we invaded Iraq, it's cheaper to get oil from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico!
Yes, as a matter of fact, it is dumb to think that invading Iraq had anything to do with American oil. We don't get our oil from Iraq and we don't want our oil from Iraq. Why don't you do a little research and find out where Iraq's oil actually goes.
It's the first time I'm being called ignorant by such a humour-impaired republican-loving uber-patriotic....... person.
Who gives a shit about humor. If you were joking about America bombing Europe, then I'll have to point out that jokes which require explaining are the worst.
I don't love republicans, I'm not a republican voter, and I'm voting against Bush in the upcoming election. Surprise! It would have been really convenient to dismiss as a slow-thinking fanboy of the Republican party, but the reality is that my first response was quite correct that you don't understand American politics but don't have any trouble hating American politics. Way to be!
As for "uber-patriotic", and I won't even comment on how stupid such a phrase sounds, I must point out how this follows the greater international trend of being shocked that Americans don't suffer from self-hatred. This in turn makes me wonder how anybody can criticize the American educational system. Slashdot is a lot like America - anybody can voice their opinion despite their utter lack of qualifications for doing so. Really, attempting to insult a person for being patriotic? Pity for you, pity for you.
I'll be the first to agree with most complaints about the current President's administration, but if you expect the State Department to not even complain when a major economic force is taking a beating in Europe, you're demanding that the American President be ineffectual. I hope that the EU slashes the heck out of Microsoft, and I think they deserve such, but to insist that Powell turn a blind eye is really astounding.
It's getting really hard for an American like myself to not believe the rest of the world is an inferior, uneducated pit of American envy when all I hear is demands that the American government strive to be incompetent and self-defeating. I don't mean that as flamebait, but put yourself in my shoes. How am I supposed to respect the international opinion when it so frequently amounts to, "Yeah, but your society isn't utopia and that didn't make your leader shoot himself in the face, so TALK TO THE HAND."
I really can't understand how you could be afraid of being bombed while holding such a misunderstanding of American politics. Not to be all arrogant, but if the world is going to hate America, I will demand that they have half a clue what the hell it is they hate.
1. Colin Powell is the Secretary of State. He represents the US in the world arena.
2. Powell and Rumsfeld don't have one tiny thing to do with each other unless the US is already attacking a foreign nation. That is the ONLY relationship they share.
3. Rumsfeld never came up with "excuses". He works for the President's administration. He comes up with plans for military action. He doesn't have anything to do with the political situation except to play TV Star with the reporters.
4. What perversion of good sense makes you think that a company which represents one of the foundations of the American economy can take such a beating internationally and the Secretary of State would twiddle his thumbs? This strikes me as not only ignorant of politics but of world history for the last 300 years as well.
5. Even the dimmest of wits who believe against all odds that the US attacked Iraq for oil (despite the fact that the Persian gulf contributes not even 25% of American oil imports, and of that oil, almost all of it comes happily from Saudi Arabia) could not explain what American could gain by attacking Europe.
So in conclusion, you're scared of America attacking Europe, and I'm scared of what would happen if Europeans had laser beams for eyeballs and mechanical arms that could cut a(n) (American) car in half. My fear is slightly more likely to be realized than yours, thanks for asking.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is exactly in accordance with their training. Their training specifically said that they do not need target confirmation to defend themselves, but always ask for confirmation. This was a carefully designed system that allows the pilots (whose lives, safety, and sanity depend on their confidence in combat) to react without second guessing their every decision.
They have fire-and-forget weapons. They cannot function in battle if they fire a weapon and then spend the next 3 minutes worried that their career is over. They will hesitate to fly into combat if they need someone else's permission to defend themselves - and that someone else is hundreds of miles away, supporting multiple aircraft, and "informed" via satellites and computer systems which are never failsafe. The target confirmation system works marvelously when making an offensive attack. It was never intended to be used for authority to defend oneself.
Now, the pilots thought that they were defending themselves. That was a horrible mistake. These were well trained and experienced pilots. If you punish these pilots for defending themselves according to their orders, what do you expect every other pilot to think? "Those guys followed orders and got shit canned, I guess I'm supposed to sit on my thumbs until some geek 500 miles away says it's ok to shoot back." What's that going to do to their morale? Their ability to perform their duties? Their confidence and sanity when under fire? This situation is wholly unacceptable.
Friendly fire situations like the one we're talking about are awful situations but you cannot treat them like an ordinary crime. Acting in the military is following orders not because it's fun or you think the orders are good, but because that is what you have been told to do. If you follow those orders and something goes wrong, it is absolutely wrong to hold the guy responsible. You can question the system, rebuild the training program, put in checks and balances, but killing the messenger is a bad reaction.
If the pilots in question had not acted according to their training, my response would have been very different.
We can agree to disagree, but this is a pretty dumbassed assessment of the situation. First of all, you know fuck all if you think that Americans didn't hear the story that the pilots were told to disengage. For emphasis, if you think that Americans were not told that the pilots were told to disengage, you know
fuck
all
The pilots were not punished for the incident for one crystal clear reason. If a fighter pilot believes he's being attacked but can't retaliate because he's afraid that the people shooting him (as he believes) are allies, many fighter pilots will die. The fighter pilots in question performed EXACTLY as trained. They believed that they were being attacked, they asked for target confirmation. The confirmation came back negative, they believed that they were still being attacked, so they believed that they were defending themselves. It was a horrible mistake.
Blame the training, blame the procedures, blame the information, blame your goddamned dog. Blaming the pilots tells me that you know fuck all about how a military is run - but don't let that discourage you from blaming the pilots.
The truly moronic thing is to believe that somehow the rest of the world heard the truth while the Americans were lied to. You heard it because we heard it. The difference is that we're willing to give the situation a fair trial rather than just write it off as another crime against humanity committed by the Great White Satan America. It was a tragedy and probably the worst combat incident of the Afghan/Iraq engagements (except perhaps the bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan) but the pilots performed as they were trained to perform.
And all this is to your "best friend" and neighbor. I hate to see how you fuck over your non-friends.
So you don't know shit about how a nation is run, but what's your point?
You find me ONE nation in history that did "the right thing" because it was the nice thing to do. There are none. It must hurt your self respect to act surprised that a government protects the money of its citizens and supporters rather than do nice things for foreigners.
I know this is one giant flame, but I really couldn't care. I'm the type of American who would have empathy with international opinions, but this snot nosed crybaby shit will grate on anyone's nerves. America does not equal bad. Every time I read such a halfwitted post as yours I lose empathy for the world opinion. Fuck'em. They expect us to intentionally run an incompetent military. They expect us to intentionally screw our own workers. Fuck'em. Let the rest of the world hate us, better to be envied than to share their company.
And in case you feel like responding, let me cover the bases. Yes, I'm usually a Republican voter, but I'm not voting for Bush because 1) I think he's doing a horrible job and 2) I fear the candidate the Republican party would promote after Bush served a second term. I have a very expensive liberal arts education and have crossed oceans. Do your worst.
Don't worry about it. As an American, I'm enjoying this opportunity to read posts about how superior Britain is by people who use words like "rediculous", "sence", and other brilliant demonstrations of true mastery of the English language. "It IS their language, after all," I said with noticeable sarcasm.
It's an exercise in both problem solving AND social engineering. You can pull a royal flush (I got it once at PartyPoker and kept the log ;) and make $3 off it if you bet like a chump. You can triple your money with a high ace if you're perceptive enough to read your opponents.
For truly competitive people, especially competitive computer scientists, master of Texas Hold'em should be seen as a true achievement because it is a interdisciplinary skill.
It's like, uh, multi-classing your D&D nerdy wizard with a charming bard. You can be mediocre with either, but you need both to excel.
So sorry but what in the world are you talking about? What is a "rolling piece of luggage"? I carry a bag that was actually sold as a diaper bag but is very stylish (solid black and carries some name brand; my girlfriend bought it for me) and has a single shoulder strap. Are you talking about a Jansport style backpack that is so popular in the states (and elsewhere(?))?
In addition to competing with a great Office feature, including scripting capability in your spreadsheet and word processor is an independently incredible idea. Just think twice about porting the ability to fark the whole machine, right? :)
I've got to second this. For me, Excel is little more than a feature-rich data structure for VBA. In fact, I hardly consider Excel a useful tool (above and beyond any generic spreadsheet) without the VBA.
Fix Debian Installation Mistakes
Bah! Humor foiled by the infinitely complicated nature of the italics tag yet again! This "markup language" is just fad; it's a solution looking for a problem and needlessly complex!
Ah yes, yet another example of how high tech inventions are modeled after comfortable and familiar low tech versions.
We interface with our computers using comprehensible "desktop" metaphors. We implement our electronic locks to behave like steel locks - that is, in case of a fire, they default to unlocked status to prevent people from dying in fires. Um, wait a minute. Nevermind, that's merely totally farking crazy.
That's a good point. It might make better sense marketability-wise to stick with 3 burners and a hard drive per machine, then you could probably stick to the standard IDE controllers on the motherboard. Of course, I'm assuming that a digital audio multitrack recorder would sell like hotcakes which could be a mistake. But thanks for pointing that out - I didn't even consider for a moment that you could dupe to multiple CDs on one machine.
I have to wonder about the prices of cheap networked computers with 40x+ CD burners. For $1000, you could easily have 10 such machines networked and be able to pump out 10 CDs in about 5 minutes. This obviously isn't a solution for moderate to large shows, but for smaller bands it might make a lot of sense.
With a little extra work, those machines could each double as a cheap digital audio multitrack recorder which could have a significant value to plenty of band members who don't get to rehearse as much as they would like.
Hell, I may be blathering away my future plans to develop a marketable product. Way to go Slashdot, I blame you for my future poverty.
But if I speed down the highway, I could be easily jeopardize the safety of 1,000 people in 15 minutes. Rather than be sentenced for making 1,000 death threats, I'm given a fine of about $100, give or take. It's a nice idea to make the punishment fit the crime, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy to come up with an appropriate penalty.
Anyhow, I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, but in this day and age I feel compelled to point out that we Americans didn't actually invent Machiavelli.
I second that. Took me a good 10 seconds to derive any meaning out of that grammatical traffic accident. Of the six words in the headline, 4 of them could be verbs in a different context. If there's anything I hate more than dry, subtle humor, it's got to be repetitive use of certain types of words. I'm infuriated! It's time to get on up out of here.
You have got to be shitting me. Would you trust the oil supply for your armed forces to a foreign country?
Also, ever hear of OPEC? You know, the guys setting oil production rates in the Middle East?
Yes. Have YOU heard of OPEC? You know, those guys who work with Venezuela to set oil prices? By the way, Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico are in the top four nations who export oil to the US.
Stands to reason that, if the U.S had Iraq ignore the production limits set by them, you could reduce their control on oil prices, even halfway around the world in the U.S, let alone in Saudi Arabia.
Sing along! "US doesn't buy oil from Iraq! Iraq needs to sell oil more than we need to buy it! Our biggest oil supplier is Canada! The US defeated OPEC's price control abilities in the 1970s by finding non-OPEC suppliers and giving them plenty of incentives to stay that way!"
Your ignorance, as well as your patriotism, is stereotypical.
My ignorance? Are you crazy or are you nuts? You seem to be very emphatic about your argument but rather uninformed about how oil is actually bought and sold around the world. You also seem to think that patriotism is a bad quality - I'm guessing you're a proud Democrat, if you are American. I'm sure as hell not voting for Bush in 2004, but the zeal with which the left clings to fantasy makes it painful to vote for Kerry.
In contrast, nobody talks about the American Civil War as being fought for Northern industrial dominance, or WW2 for control of industrialized Europe, or Vietnam as a war for economic influence over that peninsula.
Bush is not an international politics ace. He firmly believed Iraq was the number one threat after Osama bin Laden despite any argument to the contrary.
Bush felt he was resolving the issue which cost his father re-election. He thought that on the streets, there was a significant feeling of "We should have ousted Saddam in 1991" which he thought would still apply in 2003 and make him incredibly popular.
The American economy was struggling. War is good for business whether the enemy has oil or not.
And that about sums it up. "Getting oil" is an outright ridiculous conclusion, in my opinion. "Seizing Iraq's economy" is not far from the truth - look at Afghanistan. Those guys don't have any resources to fund their recovery from war and we're doing everything we can to leave that country without causing a disaster. American companies aren't moving to Afghanistan en masse. There's no reason to. Iraq, on the other hand, has economic potential that America can benefit from.
The fact remains that America always has and still does buy very little oil from the Persian Gulf, and even less from Iraq. The Persian Gulf sells most of its oil further east - China, Russia, Japan. The United States is not about to engage in passive-aggression against those countries - especially not to the extent of screwing with their oil supplies in the long term.
The economic reason for going to war with Iraq is that Iraq can continue to sell its oil (to non-US buyers) and use that money to pay for reconstruction (with profits going to primarily American contracts.) There were a myriad of political reasons, almost all of which backfired on Bush, in my opinion.
I'm not arguing that Bush is a good president - I believe quite the opposite. I'm arguing that Bush's popularity does not mean that the larger federal government should spend its time apologizing or compensating for Bush's unpopularity. That doesn't even make sense.
By the way, are you an American or from elsewhere?
You are right about Powell. I originally said he was a paper tiger and eternally at odds with Bush, but it was edited out before I posted.
Now that we've successfully conquered Iraq, we can enjoy all the oil-icious fruits of war! Finally! American gas prices are higher than they have ever been in history! YES!!! The plan to invade Iraq for oil has succeeded! It was cheaper to get oil from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico, but now that we invaded Iraq, it's cheaper to get oil from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico!
Yes, as a matter of fact, it is dumb to think that invading Iraq had anything to do with American oil. We don't get our oil from Iraq and we don't want our oil from Iraq. Why don't you do a little research and find out where Iraq's oil actually goes.
Who gives a shit about humor. If you were joking about America bombing Europe, then I'll have to point out that jokes which require explaining are the worst.
I don't love republicans, I'm not a republican voter, and I'm voting against Bush in the upcoming election. Surprise! It would have been really convenient to dismiss as a slow-thinking fanboy of the Republican party, but the reality is that my first response was quite correct that you don't understand American politics but don't have any trouble hating American politics. Way to be!
As for "uber-patriotic", and I won't even comment on how stupid such a phrase sounds, I must point out how this follows the greater international trend of being shocked that Americans don't suffer from self-hatred. This in turn makes me wonder how anybody can criticize the American educational system. Slashdot is a lot like America - anybody can voice their opinion despite their utter lack of qualifications for doing so. Really, attempting to insult a person for being patriotic? Pity for you, pity for you.
It's getting really hard for an American like myself to not believe the rest of the world is an inferior, uneducated pit of American envy when all I hear is demands that the American government strive to be incompetent and self-defeating. I don't mean that as flamebait, but put yourself in my shoes. How am I supposed to respect the international opinion when it so frequently amounts to, "Yeah, but your society isn't utopia and that didn't make your leader shoot himself in the face, so TALK TO THE HAND."
I really can't understand how you could be afraid of being bombed while holding such a misunderstanding of American politics. Not to be all arrogant, but if the world is going to hate America, I will demand that they have half a clue what the hell it is they hate.
1. Colin Powell is the Secretary of State. He represents the US in the world arena.
2. Powell and Rumsfeld don't have one tiny thing to do with each other unless the US is already attacking a foreign nation. That is the ONLY relationship they share.
3. Rumsfeld never came up with "excuses". He works for the President's administration. He comes up with plans for military action. He doesn't have anything to do with the political situation except to play TV Star with the reporters.
4. What perversion of good sense makes you think that a company which represents one of the foundations of the American economy can take such a beating internationally and the Secretary of State would twiddle his thumbs? This strikes me as not only ignorant of politics but of world history for the last 300 years as well.
5. Even the dimmest of wits who believe against all odds that the US attacked Iraq for oil (despite the fact that the Persian gulf contributes not even 25% of American oil imports, and of that oil, almost all of it comes happily from Saudi Arabia) could not explain what American could gain by attacking Europe.
So in conclusion, you're scared of America attacking Europe, and I'm scared of what would happen if Europeans had laser beams for eyeballs and mechanical arms that could cut a(n) (American) car in half. My fear is slightly more likely to be realized than yours, thanks for asking.