I don't have figures on how many hundreds of thousands of people had signs saying things like "Mainstream White Guys For Peace" and "How did our oil get under their sand?" and how many dozens had signs saying signs advocating the destruction of the western world, and neither do you.
You need figures? The mere fact that people were marching in lock-step with people calling for the destruction of the western world is enough for me.
If you're marching alongside somebody carrying a "Support Armed Resistance" sign and you're not carrying a "No Armed Resistance" sign, then you might as well be carrying a "Support Armed Resistance" sign yourself.
Your point about Rumsfeld's duties is valid, but it was his idea to go in with a small force over the objection of the generals, which made it difficult to establish security in the earliest days of occupation.
How would more troops have made for a more secure situation. The kinds of attacks your talking about are roadside bombs, explosives driven to checkpoints, and RPGs fired from positions of concealment. Having more troops on the ground would not have made for an inherently more secure situation. It just would have given the Baathists more targets.
We actually *do* have laws that we could charge many of them under.
It's not a question of law. It's a question of jurisdiction. Generally, you can't capture somebody in a foreign country and charge them under US law. If they were in obvious conspiracy to commit an act of war against the US, then yes, but if they were just living at an al-Qaida training camp, then no. The US has no jurisdiction there.
If we're the invaders and acting in defense of our country, it's perfectly reasonable to kill them on the battlefield, but once they surrender, they're nothing more than prisoners of war, the sort we turn loose at the end of hostilities, just like we did at the end of every other war in history.
No, you're talking about guerillas. The Geneva Convention covers guerilla soldiers, and al-Qaida militants don't qualify.
I'm not advocating turning loose the al-Qaeda suspects, I'm advocating trying them for conspiracy to commit (insert crime here, probably murder).
But they didn't commit that crime. In order for you to be found guilty of conspiracy, the state has to prove that you committed an overt act in the furtherance of that conspiracy. Training to carry out terrorist attacks is not an overt act in furtherance of a murder. If we tried al-Qaida members for conspiracy, every last one of them would walk away. And that's not justice by any interpretation.
Because of the circumstances under which we've been interrogating them, we probably can't use many of it in a civilian court, but even a hearing in a military court, with a lawyer, would be a step up.
Before you can be brought before a military court, you have to be a member of a military force. These prisoners are not. They aren't eligible for military trial.
Now tribunals, yes. Which is exactly what they're getting.
We've been holding people who were doing nothing more than escorting their families through a war zone who were committing no crime under any law by carrying an AK-47 to do it.
Carrying an AK-47 through a war zone is enough to get you shot. In a war zone, noncombatants are the ones who aren't carrying weapons.
Look, have you seen the videotape (I think a BBC journalist shot it) of the Iraqi who shouldered an RPG and took aim with it? Before he could fire, he was hit by either rifle or machine gun fire. He dropped the RPG and fell over dead.
He was wearing a dirty grey shirt and brown pants. No insignia, no badges of identification or rank. He was wearing regular shoes, not boots. He was not carrying anything other than the RPG he had been preparing to fire.
Civilian or soldier? Guerilla or terrorist? There's simply no way to tell.
Was Saddam a threat to the United States? Definitely. Abso-fucking-lutely. No question about it. In fact, since we invaded we've learned that he posed a much greater threat than we thought he did before the invasion.
Was that threat imminent? No. And nobody ever said it was.
Now, as to that list you linked to. Let me start with the best, most concrete example of why that list is a fucking lie.
"This is about imminent threat."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
Damning, huh? There it is, right there, he said "imminent threat." That seals it, doesn't it?
QUESTION: What about NATO's role? Belgium now says it will veto any attempt to provide help to Turkey to defend itself. Is this something the administration can live with, or is it a major obstacle?
MR. McCLELLAN: Two points. We support the request under Article IV of Turkey. And I think it's important to note that the request from a country under Article IV that faces an imminent threat goes to the very core of the NATO alliance and its purpose.
QUESTION: What can you do about this veto threat?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, I think what's important to remind NATO members, remind the international community is that this type of request under Article IV goes to the core of the NATO alliance.
QUESTION: Is this some kind of ultimate test of the alliance?
MR. McCLELLAN: This is about an imminent threat.
UESTION: Who's going to do the reminding to NATO?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I just made some comments regarding that and, obviously, we will work through NATO, as well.
QUESTION: So what's the significance of that, it goes to the core -- I mean, what if it's rejected?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, we support the request by Turkey under Article IV.
He was talking about Turkey's request to receive military aid from NATO in the event of an attack by Iraq, a request made under Article IV of the NATO treaty.
He wasn't saying that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States, or to anybody at all. He was saying that if Turkey were facing an imminent threat, the NATO treaty would obligate the United States and the other members to help provide for Turkey's defense.
That's just the most glaring and obvious example of a lie on the part of the people who compiled that list. Well, maybe "lie" is too strong a word. Maybe they just did a search on White House press briefing transcripts for the word "imminent" and got all excited when they thought they hit paydirt.
But then... no. You don't even have to read the whole transcript to know that Mr. McClellan was talking about Turkey and NATO. Just reading a few lines before and a few lines after is enough. Anybody who thought that exchange was about Iraq's threat to the US had to have been deliberately ignoring the context.
So yeah. Lie.
Most of the other quotes are completely orthogonal to the point. "The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American.... Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.... There's a grave threat in Iraq...." (All from the President.) Yes, Iraq was a threat. Saddam was a threat. Nobody every argued that Iraq was not a threat. So when the President says, on the record, that Iraq is a threat, well, that's hardly a smoking gun, now, is it?
Look, maybe we're just looking at pure stupidity here. Maybe you, like some other Americans, just don't know what the word "imminent" means, and so are therefore confused by the difference between a threat and an imminent threat. Well, dictionaries are cheap; there's no excuse for
Given the above, and what is in the rest of the document, it was believed by knowledgeable people that that Saddam still had stockpiles of WMD
See, here's the thing: avoid taking any conclusions at face-value. Look at the actual facts instead. Here we have David Kay, a guy who we now, just a few months later, know got some of his conclusions flat-out wrong. Every day, practically, brings new facts to the table, and conclusions have to be adjusted as we go along.
A decent set of tentative conclusions that are appropriate for 6/23/04 include:
* Iraq did, in fact, have large stockpiles of chemical weapons. Some of those stockpiles have been found and disposed of. Some remain to be found. Some made their way into Syria and from there into Jordan where they were seized. Whether any remain in Syria remains to be discovered.
* Iraq did, in fact, have an active nuclear program, or at the very least a program that was literally hours away from re-activation.
* Iraq did, in fact, obtain uranium oxide ("yellowcake") from Niger. Some of that uranium oxide ended up in a scrapyard in Rotterdam. Whether any of it remains in Iraq or elsewhere remains to be seen.
And so on.
Imagine what new things we'll know tomorrow, and what our conclusions will be then?
Nice phrase Twirlip; it's unlocking all kind of interesting documents on Google. Got any more phrases?
Names. Names are good. Try Abu Wael. Try Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. For that matter, try Stephen F. Hayes and Kenneth R. Timmerman.
Not gonna happen, because cable boxes don't have enough processor performance to run even old codecs like MPEG-2.
Then how does a digital cable box work? A compressed signal comes in, an uncompressed signal comes out, right? Are they not using MPEG?
Wait. Hang on a sec. As a matter of fact, I know you're wrong about this, at least to a certain extent. Set-top boxes decode DTV signals. DTV uses MPEG-2. Ergo, set-top boxes can decode MPEG-2.
for example, to halve the video compression time of iMovie when making a DVD.
Video compression is a difficult task to parallelize. If each frame were compressed individually it'd be easy: just and an uncompressed frame to a node and get the compressed frame back. But that's not how it works.
Now, for something like Pixlet, which is frame-based, there's the possibility of distributing the task. But you will never use Pixlet. It was designed to compress 2K or 1080 material losslessly at a ratio of about 2:1. Very specific tool for a very specific purpose.
So using Xgrid for video compression isn't going to be the wonder that you might wish it could be.
Re:I've been dying to know....
on
Xgrid Agent for Unix
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· Score: 4, Informative
To utilize Xgrid, the application has to be written for it
Not so, not so.
If your problem is embarrassingly parallel, chances are you can use Xgrid to run it right now.
For example, let's say you're rendering a 3D animation. (I haven't done real 3D work since the PowerAnimator days, so pardon me of some of my jargon is antiquated.) You've got a scene file on which you can run a render command. A command-line argument tells the renderer which frame to render.
No problem. Just use use Xgrid's Xfeed plugin. Xfeed lets you set up a job that runs a single command with a variety of command-line arguments. You tell Xfeed that you want to run the "render" command with "-f" and the numbers 1 through 720.
Xgrid goes to the first available machine on the grid and says, "Run render -f 1." Then it goes to the second machine and says, "Run render -f 2." And so on, until there are no available machines. Then it waits until a machine becomes available and says, "Run render -f n."
As each output file (a frame, in this case) becomes available, Xgrid (the client application itself, I mean) collects them in whatever directory you specified when you submitted the job.
The cool part comes when you realize that this isn't a cluster. It's a grid. That means machines can come and go as they please. If this job is running overnight, when I come in the next morning and sit down at my workstation, the agent on my computer stops the job and de-registers itself. The job goes back in the controller's queue for processing on whatever the next available machine is.
And you don't have to have any special software for this. It can be done right now with the tools that already exist in Preview 2.
So, paying someone to commit terrorism is terrorism itself?
Yes. Yes, it is. That's precisely the position of the United States government.
Surely you'll agree then, that the US is guilty of funding terrorism? Witness the US support of Isreal's repeated and ongoing attacks on Palestinian civilians.
The word "terrorism" has an accepted definition. It doesn't mean "anything that you don't like, especially if it involves the Jooos."
Allowing a terrorist to take refuge is terrorism itself?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Once again, the US has harboured and sheltered individuals which other nations/cultures openly denounced as terrorists. For example, Salomon Rushdie.
Is this a put-on? Writing a book does not make you a terrorist. Not even the most fundamentalist of all Islamist regimes, Iran, ever accused Salman Rushdie of being a terrorist. An apostate, yes, but not a terrorist.
The US has also secretely sponsored covert military operations aimed at toppling governments and influencing foreign policy, through threats, assassinations, and other methods.
It's called the Reagan Doctrine. It says that the United States will provide financial and material aid to anti-communist insurgencies anywhere in the world. We can have a whole conversation about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. (Hint: it's a good thing because communism is worse.) But that policy is not terrorism. Because, remember, terrorism has a definition. And these things are not included.
What is terrorism, you ask? Good question. Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of noncombatants with shocking covert attacks with the intent of intimidating a populace for the larger goal of achieving political or social change.
Is Israel's policy of retaliation terrorism? No, because there's no intent to intimidate involved. Israel fires rockets into buildings to kill the specific individuals in them, individuals that the Israeli government believes are a threat to Israeli security. Do they follow the same rules of engagement that we follow? No, but that doesn't make them terrorists.
Is writing a book terrorism? Fucking stupid question. Next.
Is providing support to anti-communist insurgents terrorism? No, because there are no noncombatants involved. Unless the insurgents themselves adopt the tactics of terrorism, of course, in which case continued aid is definitely wrong.
Is the embargo of Cuba terrorism? No, because there's no violence involved at all.
Come on - are you really going to deny that the US has assassinated "troublesome" foreign nationals? Not a single one, you're telling me?
I take no position on it one way or the other. Since it's not terrorism in any way, shape, or form, I'm not that worried about it in the context of this discussion.
Besides, let's for sake of argument say that the United States has assassinated ten people in history. Was that good or bad? Well, it depends on the ten people, doesn't it? If one of the people was Mother Teresa, that's bad. If one of the people was Josef Mengele, that's good. So simply waving your hands and saying "assassination" is hardly persuasive even if the underlying claim is true.
The US is just as guilty as "terrorism" as any other nation out there.
Only if you redefine the word "terrorism" to mean something other than what it means. If you stick to the actual definition of the word, the working definition that governments use, then you're wrong.
Not a little wrong, either. Wrong like crazy.
You remember your SAT's? (I'm assuming you're old enough to have taken them at some point in the past. That's not necessarily a given, but I'll throw you a bone.) You know how, since they're multiple choice, just guessing at random will get you a score of around 20%?
Just guessing at random, you would have said at least ONE correct thing by this point. In order to be as wrong as you have been, I'd think you
At 7 AM on September 11, 2001, I would said, "How is Osama bin Laden's group a threat to the US?"
Waiting until a threat is dire is no longer sound foreign policy. Gone are the days when spy planes and satellite see enemy troops massing on the border. Death can come to us now in the form of a steamer trunk filled with plutonium or an unassuming gentleman with a box cutter.
Saddam Hussein supported terrorists. Financially, materially, and morally. He sponsored the people who want to kill us.
That's why we considered him a threat.
Only against the US airplanes that were flying overhead, daily, in Iraqi airspace!
No, not only. Haven't you been following along?
Are you telling me that if China started flying spyplanes over Washington and New York, that the US wouldn't open fire?
If we invaded Mexico, got into a war over it with China, surrendered, agreed to terms, and then opened fire on a Chinese over-flight, I wouldn't blame the Chinese for being a bit truculent about it.
Don't you see how silly that is?
Look, I'll tell you what I told Dumb and Dumber up-thread: pointing at one aspect of the war on terror--Saddam's engagement of our overflights--and trying to minimize it is ridiculous. You have to look at the whole picture. Saddam was a threat to the United States, our allies, and all peace-loving people. Now he's not.
Iraq was not the only country with terrorist ties, not by a long shot.
True.
Moreover, other hostile nations have engaged in far more threatening anti-US "chatter", and posess far more dangerous weapons. Pakistan, Syria, Libya, and North Korea, to name but a few examples.
OK, let me explain what's wrong with your examples.
1. Pakistan. Pakistan has a lot of problems, but the sitting government in Pakistan is our ally. They're fighting the terrorists who set up camp inside their borders. Not as aggressively as we want them to, and not as wholeheartedly as we'd prefer, but they're in it with us. So no, Pakistan is not a sponsor of terror, and no, it makes no sense to compare Pakistan to Iraq.
2. Syria. Syria is definitely a sponsor of terrorism, but to a far lesser extent than Iraq. As far as we know, Syria had no direct contact with al-Qaida. Iraq did. As far as we know, Syria has no chemical, biological, or nuclear programs. Iraq did. So comparing Syria to Iraq makes no sense.
3. Libya. Libya has renounced terrorism. Why? According to Qaddafi himself, it's because he saw what happened in Iraq and feared US military force. So what we did in Iraq accomplished our purposes in Libya without the firing of a single shot or the loss of a single life. So Libya stands as the strongest justification yet seen for why the invasion was the right idea.
4. North Korea. North Korea is not a sponsor of terrorism. It has no known ties to al-Qaida or any Islamist group, or to Hamas or Hizbollah or any anti-Israel group. While North Korea does sell weapons on the black market, and while we have a serious counterproliferation problem in North Korea, they are not in the same category as circa-2002 Iraq.
Finally, there were/are equally or more vicious tyrants out there than Saddam.
Name one. Seriously: name a currently sitting dictator who can approach Saddam's body-count. It's believed that Saddam's secret police were killing at least 36,000 Iraqis a year. For thirty years. That's not my number; that number comes from the Red Cross. As a murderer, he's among the worst in modern history.
And then we're back to the part about sponsoring terrorism and threatening his neighbor states and building and acquiring large-scale weapons, and... on and on.
They just don't have oil.
Oh, right. I forgot. All about the oil.
Seriously: do they keep you useful idiots packed in styrofoam and haul you out once a month to spew your a
There's only one place to go for information about upcoming movies, and unless you've been living in a cave on Mars, you already know what it is: http://apple.com/trailers.
A motion JPEG stream of a NTSC signal takes about 8Mb/s.
Wow. Flashback.
The last time I even heard the words "motion JPEG" was about 1995. Nowadays, the standard for broadcast is MPEG-2 (plus lots of stuff about levels and profiles that I can't even keep straight). For a single NTSC stream, you're looking at about 4 Mbps. HD streams range from 15 Mbps to 25 Mbps.
Just a couple of months ago, there was a demo at NAB of a new codec, H.264, that was used to deliver HDTV (1080i) at 8 Mbps. Looked pretty darned good. Better than or the same as MPEG-2 at 19 Mbps, depending on the program content.
H.264, if I remember correctly, has been chosen as the codec for HD-DVD9. Also, it's gonna be in QuickTime next year.
So here's my question... are OpenCable set-top boxes programmable? That is to say, can the cable head-end flash an OpenCable box with new firmware to add support for new codecs? Because it's safe to assume that we're going to keep refining codecs as time goes by, and I bet cable carriers would love the ability to roll out a new or upgraded codec by flashing their customers' equipment overnight. You wake up the next morning and poof. You've got twice as many TV channels. Or the same number of channels looking twice as good.
Oh, I don't know. In my experience, if I like any of the music on a given album, I probably will enjoy most of it.
Good examples: Mogwai's "Young Team" which I'm listening to right now. The Shins' "Chutes Too Narrow." The Postal Service's "Give Up." Lo-Fi Allstars' "How to Operate With a Blown Mind." Pretty much anything Garbage has recorded. Groove Armada. Morcheeba. Chicane's first two albums. Crystal Method's "Vegas." Massive Attack's "Mezzanine."
These are all albums I bought based on my having heard and liked one or two tracks. And they're all albums I can listen to all the way through over and over and over.
He, in fact, has recently admitted that when they decided to write iTunes for Windows, they gave up on using the iPod to convert people to Macs.
That's a pretty serious distortion of what was actually said. The part about "admitted" and "gave up" in particular.
Here's what he actually said in the interview:
NM: When the iPod was launched, you said it might lead people to the Mac platform. Does you still believe that?
SJ: "No. We brought the iPod to Windows. That was a big decision. That was basically a decision not to use the iPod to drive people to Macs. We're going to use it as a music device, and we're going to put it on Windows. The majority of iPods we sell are used on Windows."
He didn't "admit," and he didn't say anything about "giving up." He said it was a business decision.
I know this isn't really here or there, but it just really gets under my skin when people use words like "admitted" to distort somebody else's position. It's done intentionally so often that people are started to do it without meaning to, which for all I know might be what you did.
I assume you've seen Steve Jobs give his iTunes pitch. He's done it several times now at various events.
It basically goes like this:
People want to get their music one track at a time off the Internet. We know this because people are doing it like crazy, using these various underground services.
We want to give people what they want. But just giving them music-over-the-Internet isn't enough. Subscription services suck, too-restrictive licensing sucks, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's why illegal downloading is cool: (At this point he lists five or six key things. It's free, it's convenient, whatever.) But here's why illegal downloading sucks: (No art, bad encoding, hard to find stuff, and it's also stealing.)
Then he proceeds to explain how iTunes addresses those points, one by one. iTunes isn't free, but it's cheap. On the other hand, it's way easier to find things, the quality is much better, you get art with your tracks, and it's "good karma."
He actually builds the business case for iTunes from scratch, right there in front of you. It's a really cool presentation.
Whether you're an Apple fan or not, whether you're an iTunes fan or not, you have to admire Steve Jobs' ability to give shareholders, investors, partners, and end-users a well-thought-out, persuasive presentation.
All those dumbasses who think PowerPoint is the second coming could learn a lot from him.:-)
It would appear that whoever these artists are they just admitted that their albums aren't good enough to buy as a whole and they are just carried by one or two songs.
I don't think that's necessarily what they're saying.
Let's say we're talking about popular music, music that gets radio play. Maybe two or three songs on an album do well on the radio. Now, does that necessarily mean the other songs on the album are bad? No, it just means they're not radio material. Maybe they're too long, or too quiet, or whatever.
When music is available a la carte, people can go out and buy just the track they heard on the radio. But in doing so, they might miss out on some other really good music.
This has happened to me many time. I've bought an album because I wanted this track or that one, and in the end some of the other tracks became my favorites.
(Of course, some albums just aren't that great. But I don't think that's universally true. For every album you can name that's got one hit song on it, somebody else can name one that's solid all the way through.)
iTunes gets around this by giving you nice, long, high-quality previews of every available track. So when I saw the Garden State trailer and I wanted to get the song used in it, I listened to 30-second slices of the other songs from the album and discovered that they were all pretty darned good. So I bought the whole album.
You are the one that made the preposterous claim the ISG had found stockpiles of nerve gas precursors.
Preposterous, indeed. Your mantra evolves, doesn't it? Now it's, "If I haven't heard of it, it's preposterous!"
God forbid you should take five damn minutes to ponder the limits of your knowledge and sound the depths of your ignorance.
Kay's statement, and he wrote this report, directly contradicts your ridiculous claim.
Okay. Whatever you say, man.
Iraqi "programs" and "desires" that didn't produce anything don't equal WMD stockpiles.
Well, that's certainly true. I mean, we've already covered the stockpiles; that's old news now. They've been found. But setting that aside, you are aware aren't you that programs--not actual weapons, but merely weapons programs--would have been sufficient to put Iraq in material breach and justify the invasion? Let's ignore terrorism, let's ignore brutality, let's ignore illegitimacy, let's ignore the various plans and schemes Saddam had concocted to attack the United States itself. Let's ignore all of that.
One weapons program ALONE would have been enough to justify the invasion. One program hidden from the prying eyes of the world, one program conducted entirely in secret, one program carried out with the goal of producing a chemical warhead or an atomic bomb or ballistic missile.
Just one would have been enough.
We found several.
But that doesn't matter, right? Because you've shifted your position from "NO WMD!!!" to "NOT ENOUGH WMD!!!" or maybe it's "WMD DOESN'T MATTER!!!"
Your position is that it's okay that Saddam had weapons, weapon components, weapon programs, weapon purchasing arrangements with rogue states. And let's not even dust off the fact that Saddam had sponsor-client relationships with al-Qaida, Jund al-Islam, Ansar al-Islam, Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Abu Nidal Organization. Let's not even mention that, you know, because everybody knows the invasion of Iraq was just a distraction from the real war. Except it's not a real war, is it? It's a "fictitious war." It's a "war of choice." It's "Bush's folly." It's all about the oil. It's all about the economy. It's all just racism anyway: the white people versus the brown people. We're really no better than they are. We're actually worse than they are. What happened at Abu Ghraib was worse than a thousand Holocausts. Bush is a murderer. At least Saddam was an honest murderer. The draft. Martial law. A stolen election. The PATRIOT Act. American imperialism. The PNAC. Rumsfeld. Ashcroft. Wolfowitz. Perle.
In all the rambling and incoherent invective from the left--and from you--there's one item that I find conspicuous by its absence. On little event, one little moment, that the left seems to have forgotten.
September 11.
That's why we're doing this. That's why we're fighting this war. In 1996, when Osama bin Laden declared war against the United States, Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we thought he was a flake. We thought he was just a raving lunatic with no real ability to threaten us. At worst, we thought he was an international criminal. He just wasn't that important.
Even after his organization carried out devastating attacks against American soldiers and citizens--the Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the USS Cole--we thought of Osama bin Laden and of al-Qaida as a nuisance, not as a threat.
Then, on a Tuesday morning, everything changed.
Terrorism, once believed to be something that happened to somebody else, over there, is now understood by the American people and our leaders to present a clear and present danger to us and to our way of life. Not just Osama bin Laden, not just al-Qaida, not just Islamists. All terrorism everywhere.
But the problem lies not just with the men who shoot the guns or set off the bombs or fly the planes. The problem also lies with everyone who helps, finances, harbors, or supports them. The problem lies
You were supposed to be producing reports that corroborate your ridiculous claim the ISG had found stockpiles of VX precursors.
I what? I don't recall ever telling you that I was going to produce anything. In point of fact, I've repeatedly told you that I AIN'T CHER MOMMA and that it's your responsibility to read for yourself.
David Kay submitted it and then admitted that the stockpiles of WMD's the Bush administration said "we know Iraq has" haven't been found and probably won't be, and then he resigned.
Well, you've certainly got a good grip on the intricacies of the situation.
There were some 6,000 words in the interim report of October, '03. How many of them did you read? Did you read these?
Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any on-going prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons.
So, if nothing else, Saddam was actively working on chemical weapons. We now know that that wasn't all, not by a long shot. But even eight months ago, we knew this much.
In the delivery systems area there were already well advanced, but undeclared, on-going activities that, if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km. These missile activities were supported by a serious clandestine procurement program about which we have much still to learn.
He's talking about the deal between Iraq and the DPRK which was still classified at the time of this report.
In the chemical and biological weapons area we have confidence that there were at a minimum clandestine on-going research and development activities that were embedded in the Iraqi Intelligence Service. While we have much yet to learn about the exact work programs and capabilities of these activities, it is already apparent that these undeclared activities would have at a minimum facilitated chemical and biological weapons activities and provided a technically trained cadre.
And that's just the old news. That's just the old stuff. That's just the stuff that we knew even BEFORE the invasion. What we know now vastly overshadows those conclusions.
Of course, since you haven't heard of it, it must not be true. Right?
To my knowledge they haven't found anything with those leads or if they have they are keeping it secret, as you said this report is ancient now.
Right, because there couldn't possibly have been any, you know, new developments in the past eight months. If there have, they've been keeping it secret because nobody showed up at your house with a three-fucking-ring binder.
(Incidentally, this is precisely what I predicted you'd do. I said:
What happens then? One of several things. You (1) ignore it, (2) try to discredit it, (3) try to misinterpret it, (4) try to spin it, or (5) say something blindingly stupid like "the shells weren't loaded so nobody cares anyway." Net result? A waste of my time that leaves you with a false sense of smug satisfaction.
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what you've done. Neat, huh?)
Here's something that's really going to bust your noodle: reading the first couple of paragraphs of one news story about one report does not make you an informed member of the popul
Everything you post screams out for a rebuttal but you aren't worth the effort.
OK. Whatever you say.
As I said before, though: I'm glad you finally moved off of the "NO WMD!!!" thing. Baby steps. Going from "NO WMD!!!" to "OKAY, YES, WMD, BUT I DON'T REALLY CARE THAT MUCH!!!" is progress.
Whether Google has a link to your "reports" isn't subjective.
Nope. Sure isn't. Googling for "ISG interim report"... well, let's just say it produces marvelous things. Old things, things eight months out of date, but that's the wonderful thing about doing research on the Internet: a couple click on from there, and woosh! A whole world of primary source material opens itself up to you. Incredible, huh? Amazing.
Of course, I must have imagined it all. Because Google, "in all its omnipotence," can't help you. I must have just made the whole thing up. Right.
You seem to be the only one thats seen the reports on these huge stockpiles of VX precursors the ISG has found.
Uh-oh. You're slipping back into old habits again. You said "you seem to be the only one" when what you really meant was "you're the first person I've encountered." Remember our little lesson from earlier in the week? Just because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't true.
Google in all its omnipotence hasn't seen these reports unless I'm searching in the wrong place.
By Jove, I think he's got it. Say it with me now: "Just because I haven't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't true."
If you could corroborate even a little of the BS you are shoveling maybe I'd hang in.
Look, man. I'm an easy-going fellow. If you're happier believing that Saddam was a kindly old grandpa who would never have thought of hurting a fly, go right ahead. Just don't say nobody ever told you any different.
Instead you tell me to "read the reports" though you are apparently completely incapable of producing any URL's for any of these mysterious reports, only you seem to know about.
We've covered this before: I ain't your momma. You're a big boy. Go read for yourself. I'm not going to do your research for you. Why not? Let's assume I spend five minutes finding just the right piece of information for you. Not private information, not confidential information, information that's right out there in the public record that anybody can find in the same five minutes it took me. But let's say I'm a sap and I spend the five minutes and I give you a link.
What happens then? One of several things. You (1) ignore it, (2) try to discredit it, (3) try to misinterpret it, (4) try to spin it, or (5) say something blindingly stupid like "the shells weren't loaded so nobody cares anyway." Net result? A waste of my time that leaves you with a false sense of smug satisfaction.
So why should I bother? If you're interested in new information, you'll seek it out. If you aren't, you won't, and it's no skin off my nose.
Besides, this way you get your false sense of smug satisfaction for free. At least as long as you keep rejecting the key premise here: Just because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't true.
But look, because you've taken that first step I talked about before--climbing down off of your "NO WMD!!!" soapbox at last--I'll throw you a bone. Here's a roundup, a sort of executive summary, a state-of-the-WMDs-for-dummies. It was written a couple of months ago by a really bright guy and an excellent journalist, Ken Timmerman. You're almost certainly going to disregard it or try to discredit it or ignore it or whatever it is that you do to feel better about your preconceived notions, but what the hey. Maybe there's an off chance that something in there--one of the pictures or something--will stick in your brain and inspire you to start thinking.
Then again... no. Probably not. You'll probably just sit there fat and happy on
Once again if you just once posted a URL from a reputable source supporting your bullshit I would cut you some slack.
Once again, if you read the reports for yourself you wouldn't need to go begging people to show you where to find information.
Google shows absolutely nothing that supports your claim
Well, that's not the way I see it, but whatever.
The limit was 150 km and they could be made to go 180-193 km, in a simulation, with a light payload.
Right... and that's greatly in excess of 90 miles. I mean, we're not talking about 93 miles here. We're not talking about 90 miles plus a foot. We're talking about range greatly in excess of 90 miles. What's your complaint?
I don't think the fate of the world hinges on 7 miles.
Fortunately you're not the one tasked with making those decisions.
The U.N. was destroying them which is how the inspections were supposed to work
Sorry, but that's simply not correct. I'll say it again: go read the reports for yourself, or at least the newspaper articles written about the reports.
There you go again. Making something innocuous sound sinister and engaging in a bold faced lie in the process.
Sorry, but I think you're going to have a hard time convincing people that the raw materials to construct atomic bombs in the hands of a tyrant with a penchant for attacking his enemies and a grudge against the West is innocuous.
Its not like its ever been a secret or Iraq is somehow in breach of anything for having it.
Wrong twice. Iraq declared, repeatedly, that they did not have unprocessed uranium. They declared, repeated, that they didn't have any. But they did have some. They concealed the fact that they had some, which means they kept it secret.
And Iraq was specifically ordered after the 1991 cease fire to declare and produce all (among other things) unprocessed uranium, and uranium processing equipment. They failed to do so. Which means they were in breach for having it.
I guess your position has shifted from "Iraq didn't have any weapons" to "Iraq only had a few weapons, and everybody knew it anyway, besides they were really heavy, so it's no big deal."
Well, at least you're off the "Iraq didn't have any weapons" kick. That was getting really old.
You're still acting like I ran over your puppy though. Why are you so disappointed to learn that Saddam really was the bad guy and that we Americans really are the good guys? Why does that make you so upset?
You are saying the ISG found some EMPTY chemical shells in a dump and blew them up, right?
Among other things, yes. Artillery shells that (1) Iraq was not allowed to have, (2) Iraq agreed to turn over in 1991, and (3) Iraq swore up and down until the very DAY of the invasion that they didn't have.
But there's more. ISG also found the stuff that goes in the shells. See, what you put in artillery shells are liquids called "binary agents." These agents mix when the shell is fired and produce a chemical weapon. For example, if you put methylphosphonic difluoride, isopropyl alcohol, and isopropylamine into an artillery shell and fire it, what you get on the other end is sarin gas.
ISG found huge quantities of methylphosphonic difluoride and isopropylamine/isopropyl alcohol solution.
Add it up and what did Iraq have? Chemical weapons. Which they swore they didn't have.
(It doesn't begin and end with sarin. ISG found precursors to VX, tabun, and mustard as well.)
But wait! That's not all! ISG also found 500 tons of unprocessed uranium at Iraq's main uranium storage facility south of Baghdad. Uranium that, again, Iraq SWORE they did not have. They also found equipment for turning unprocessed uranium into weapons-grade enriched uranium. All they needed to do was screw in a couple of fittings, flip the switch, and start producing enriched uranium.
The Iraqis evidently thought they wouldn't get caught if they stored the uranium and the centrifuge equipment hundreds of miles apart. And for a while they were right. But those ISG guys are tenacious.
If they are empty then no one, including the ISG and CPA cares, nor should you.
Excuse me? The presence of a SINGLE EMPTY CHEMICAL ARTILLERY SHELL anywhere inside Iraq would have been sufficient to declare that country in material breach of the 1991 cease-fire and UN Security Council resolutions. Those terms said that Iraq would declare and produce ALL chemical weapons, among other things. Yes, that includes chemical shells, with or without reagents in them.
It also includes things like ballistic missiles. Iraq was prohibited from possessing or developing ballistic missiles with a range greater than 90 miles. What did they do to comply with that prohibition? Why, they designed, tested, and manufactured the al-Samoud 2, of course, a ballistic missile with a range greatly in excess of 90 miles. (Including, you guessed it, chemical warheads. They hadn't figured out how to perfect those yet, thank God.) Al-Samoud 2 was in ACTIVE PRODUCTION until the DAY of the invasion. In fact, we have videotape of an al-Samoud 2 missile being carried through Baghdad on a truck to a launch facility somewhere south of the city. It's right there on the back of a flatbed under a tarp, plain as day. On videotape. Day one of the invasion.
But that's not all. Saddam covered his bets. In addition to building al-Samoud 2, Iraq also made arrangements with the DPRK to purchase the medium-range Nodong 1 missile, a weapon with a range of nearly TEN TIMES the 90-mile limit.
But because they didn't actually launch any of these at Washington, the ISG and the CPA don't care and neither should I. Right?
If you actually think the ISG has been finding and blowing up dumps full of loaded chemical shells and just not telling the world
No, they're telling. Read the reports. There's no secret information here. No conspiracy, no cover-up. Just some incredibly ignorant people who haven't taken the ten damn minutes to read the reports for themselves.
They've admitted the yellowcake from Niger story was bullshit
Nope. As I already explained, some folks believe that ONE of the documents related to that investigation was forged. The British, in contrast, stand behind all the documents. And that one document wasn't even critical. It was just corroborating evidence. So even if it was forged, the evidence is still overwhelming.
I'm going to ignore your accusations that the majority of the protestors hate American troops, because it's not getting us anywhere.
That's not really cool, man. If you aren't happy with an outrageous accusation, either refute it or do something to fix it.
If you are opposed to... whatever the hell the protesters are opposed to this week but you don't support people who want to kill our troops and our citizens, then say so. Get out there and denounce the people who DO want to see dead US soldiers on the evening news. Go hold up a sign that says "PLEASE DON'T KILL AMERICANS."
If you can manage to do it without getting mugged by your fellow "activists," that is.
First, I'd let the generals run their own damn war. They know how to do it better than Rumsfeld.
That's an oft-repeated refrain. I won't bother going into all the reasons why it's unreasonable, but let me gloss it over by saying that the SecDef is responsible for carrying out a different set of orders and achieving a different set of goals than the generals are responsible for. You might just as well say "let the sergeants run their own damn war; they know how to do it better than the generals." Makes about as much sense.
Second, none of this "enemy combatant" bullshit.
I thought you were being constructive. That's not constructive. Here you have (let's pick a random number) 1,000 individuals who have been caught doing various terrorist-type things. Some of them have been smuggling weapons, some have been funneling money, some of them have actually been caught with a gun in their hands. What do you do with them?
They're not criminals, by any definition. There's no jurisdiction in the world that can handle them. And they're not prisoners of war, because they belong to no army. So what do you do?
For the first time since we started distinguishing between soldiers and civilians, we have a group of people who don't fit into either category.
These people are out there. Some are in custody, many are not. What do you do with them?
Third, repeal the PATRIOT act.
I don't agree with repealing a law just because you don't like the press surrounding it. The PATRIOT Act is a vital part of our effort to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur.
(Besides, what you should have said here is "let the PATRIOT Act sunset." It won't be repealed, but it may not be reinstated after its sunset date.)
Fourth, ban torture.
It's already banned. Torture is not accepted by our military or law enforcement forces. Of course, interrogation is not the same thing as torture. Keeping somebody uncomfortable is not torture. Keeping somebody awake is not torture.
And we sure as hell can't ban interrogation.
Fifth, money up front.
Okay, seriously: this is the part where you started to absolutely fucking sicken me. People are MURDERING Americans, Australians, Israelis, Spaniards and others and your suggestion is that we GIVE THEM MONEY? That's fucking disgusting.
Sixth, multilateralism.
Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands -- (applause) -- Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq. (Applause.) As we debate at home, we must never ignore the vital contributions of our international partners, or dismiss their sacrifices.
The war on terror is, right this very minute, one of the most multilateral international efforts that's ever been undertaken. It's way up there, man. The fact that your personal favorite "laterals" aren't participating isn't the same as saying that the effort isn't multilateral.
The U.N. doesn't just authorize war, sometimes it even goes to wa
Frankly, I don't see the failure of chips to be a big issue.
Spoken as only somebody who's never had a RAID controller fail on them can.
And if you're that concerned, you shouldn't count on one storage device anyway. There's always *some* one thing that can fail inside one box.
Well... actually no. In a well-built RAID--not just Apple's, but anybody's--there is no single point of failure. Two totally separate and redundant power supplies. Two totally separate and redundant controllers. Two totally separate and redundant environmental modules (fans, filters, sensors, etc.)
A passive backplane means there are no components on it to fail, and of course the drives are redundant, thanks to the RAID controllers. So... no. Nothing in the box can fail in such a way that the whole RAID will become unavailable.
I didn't see anything specifically about fans but the power supplies are redundant and hot swappable.
Yeah, but the controllers and environmental components aren't./me raises hand
Oook. Oook. Me kill cheetah, hit with big rock, poke with stick til fall over. Oook.
We don't need shared storage, the data only needs to be accessed from one server.
No kidding? What's it like all the way back there in 1885? Is it true that you have to shod your own horses? What do you do about plumbing? Where does your hot water come from?
Performance is not a big issue, uptime is not an issue.
Hmm. I don't buy it. If neither performance nor reliability is an issue for you... why are you using a computer at all? I mean, you either need your data to be available fast or you need it to be available consistently.
I think either you're misrepresenting your requirements, or you don't understand them yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have figures on how many hundreds of thousands of people had signs saying things like "Mainstream White Guys For Peace" and "How did our oil get under their sand?" and how many dozens had signs saying signs advocating the destruction of the western world, and neither do you.
You need figures? The mere fact that people were marching in lock-step with people calling for the destruction of the western world is enough for me.
If you're marching alongside somebody carrying a "Support Armed Resistance" sign and you're not carrying a "No Armed Resistance" sign, then you might as well be carrying a "Support Armed Resistance" sign yourself.
Your point about Rumsfeld's duties is valid, but it was his idea to go in with a small force over the objection of the generals, which made it difficult to establish security in the earliest days of occupation.
How would more troops have made for a more secure situation. The kinds of attacks your talking about are roadside bombs, explosives driven to checkpoints, and RPGs fired from positions of concealment. Having more troops on the ground would not have made for an inherently more secure situation. It just would have given the Baathists more targets.
We actually *do* have laws that we could charge many of them under.
It's not a question of law. It's a question of jurisdiction. Generally, you can't capture somebody in a foreign country and charge them under US law. If they were in obvious conspiracy to commit an act of war against the US, then yes, but if they were just living at an al-Qaida training camp, then no. The US has no jurisdiction there.
If we're the invaders and acting in defense of our country, it's perfectly reasonable to kill them on the battlefield, but once they surrender, they're nothing more than prisoners of war, the sort we turn loose at the end of hostilities, just like we did at the end of every other war in history.
No, you're talking about guerillas. The Geneva Convention covers guerilla soldiers, and al-Qaida militants don't qualify.
I'm not advocating turning loose the al-Qaeda suspects, I'm advocating trying them for conspiracy to commit (insert crime here, probably murder).
But they didn't commit that crime. In order for you to be found guilty of conspiracy, the state has to prove that you committed an overt act in the furtherance of that conspiracy. Training to carry out terrorist attacks is not an overt act in furtherance of a murder. If we tried al-Qaida members for conspiracy, every last one of them would walk away. And that's not justice by any interpretation.
Because of the circumstances under which we've been interrogating them, we probably can't use many of it in a civilian court, but even a hearing in a military court, with a lawyer, would be a step up.
Before you can be brought before a military court, you have to be a member of a military force. These prisoners are not. They aren't eligible for military trial.
Now tribunals, yes. Which is exactly what they're getting.
We've been holding people who were doing nothing more than escorting their families through a war zone who were committing no crime under any law by carrying an AK-47 to do it.
Carrying an AK-47 through a war zone is enough to get you shot. In a war zone, noncombatants are the ones who aren't carrying weapons.
Look, have you seen the videotape (I think a BBC journalist shot it) of the Iraqi who shouldered an RPG and took aim with it? Before he could fire, he was hit by either rifle or machine gun fire. He dropped the RPG and fell over dead.
He was wearing a dirty grey shirt and brown pants. No insignia, no badges of identification or rank. He was wearing regular shoes, not boots. He was not carrying anything other than the RPG he had been preparing to fire.
Civilian or soldier? Guerilla or terrorist? There's simply no way to tell.
But he was carrying an RPG,
That's simply untrue. You're spreading lies yourself.
Was Saddam a threat to the United States? Definitely. Abso-fucking-lutely. No question about it. In fact, since we invaded we've learned that he posed a much greater threat than we thought he did before the invasion.
Was that threat imminent? No. And nobody ever said it was.
Now, as to that list you linked to. Let me start with the best, most concrete example of why that list is a fucking lie.
Damning, huh? There it is, right there, he said "imminent threat." That seals it, doesn't it?
Well, no, it doesn't. Because Mr. McClellan wasn't even talking about Iraq: he was talking about Turkey.
He was talking about Turkey's request to receive military aid from NATO in the event of an attack by Iraq, a request made under Article IV of the NATO treaty.
He wasn't saying that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States, or to anybody at all. He was saying that if Turkey were facing an imminent threat, the NATO treaty would obligate the United States and the other members to help provide for Turkey's defense.
That's just the most glaring and obvious example of a lie on the part of the people who compiled that list. Well, maybe "lie" is too strong a word. Maybe they just did a search on White House press briefing transcripts for the word "imminent" and got all excited when they thought they hit paydirt.
But then... no. You don't even have to read the whole transcript to know that Mr. McClellan was talking about Turkey and NATO. Just reading a few lines before and a few lines after is enough. Anybody who thought that exchange was about Iraq's threat to the US had to have been deliberately ignoring the context.
So yeah. Lie.
Most of the other quotes are completely orthogonal to the point. "The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American.... Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.... There's a grave threat in Iraq...." (All from the President.) Yes, Iraq was a threat. Saddam was a threat. Nobody every argued that Iraq was not a threat. So when the President says, on the record, that Iraq is a threat, well, that's hardly a smoking gun, now, is it?
Look, maybe we're just looking at pure stupidity here. Maybe you, like some other Americans, just don't know what the word "imminent" means, and so are therefore confused by the difference between a threat and an imminent threat. Well, dictionaries are cheap; there's no excuse for
That's all well and good... but in discussing potential uses for Xgrid, can we please make a concerted effort to stay away from stuff that illegal?
Maybe. I don't know enough about the internals of how compression works, but that sounds plausible enough to fool me.
Given the above, and what is in the rest of the document, it was believed by knowledgeable people that that Saddam still had stockpiles of WMD
See, here's the thing: avoid taking any conclusions at face-value. Look at the actual facts instead. Here we have David Kay, a guy who we now, just a few months later, know got some of his conclusions flat-out wrong. Every day, practically, brings new facts to the table, and conclusions have to be adjusted as we go along.
A decent set of tentative conclusions that are appropriate for 6/23/04 include:
* Iraq did, in fact, have large stockpiles of chemical weapons. Some of those stockpiles have been found and disposed of. Some remain to be found. Some made their way into Syria and from there into Jordan where they were seized. Whether any remain in Syria remains to be discovered.
* Iraq did, in fact, have an active nuclear program, or at the very least a program that was literally hours away from re-activation.
* Iraq did, in fact, obtain uranium oxide ("yellowcake") from Niger. Some of that uranium oxide ended up in a scrapyard in Rotterdam. Whether any of it remains in Iraq or elsewhere remains to be seen.
And so on.
Imagine what new things we'll know tomorrow, and what our conclusions will be then?
Nice phrase Twirlip; it's unlocking all kind of interesting documents on Google. Got any more phrases?
Names. Names are good. Try Abu Wael. Try Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. For that matter, try Stephen F. Hayes and Kenneth R. Timmerman.
Not gonna happen, because cable boxes don't have enough processor performance to run even old codecs like MPEG-2.
Then how does a digital cable box work? A compressed signal comes in, an uncompressed signal comes out, right? Are they not using MPEG?
Wait. Hang on a sec. As a matter of fact, I know you're wrong about this, at least to a certain extent. Set-top boxes decode DTV signals. DTV uses MPEG-2. Ergo, set-top boxes can decode MPEG-2.
What am I missing here?
for example, to halve the video compression time of iMovie when making a DVD.
Video compression is a difficult task to parallelize. If each frame were compressed individually it'd be easy: just and an uncompressed frame to a node and get the compressed frame back. But that's not how it works.
Now, for something like Pixlet, which is frame-based, there's the possibility of distributing the task. But you will never use Pixlet. It was designed to compress 2K or 1080 material losslessly at a ratio of about 2:1. Very specific tool for a very specific purpose.
So using Xgrid for video compression isn't going to be the wonder that you might wish it could be.
To utilize Xgrid, the application has to be written for it
Not so, not so.
If your problem is embarrassingly parallel, chances are you can use Xgrid to run it right now.
For example, let's say you're rendering a 3D animation. (I haven't done real 3D work since the PowerAnimator days, so pardon me of some of my jargon is antiquated.) You've got a scene file on which you can run a render command. A command-line argument tells the renderer which frame to render.
No problem. Just use use Xgrid's Xfeed plugin. Xfeed lets you set up a job that runs a single command with a variety of command-line arguments. You tell Xfeed that you want to run the "render" command with "-f" and the numbers 1 through 720.
Xgrid goes to the first available machine on the grid and says, "Run render -f 1." Then it goes to the second machine and says, "Run render -f 2." And so on, until there are no available machines. Then it waits until a machine becomes available and says, "Run render -f n."
As each output file (a frame, in this case) becomes available, Xgrid (the client application itself, I mean) collects them in whatever directory you specified when you submitted the job.
The cool part comes when you realize that this isn't a cluster. It's a grid. That means machines can come and go as they please. If this job is running overnight, when I come in the next morning and sit down at my workstation, the agent on my computer stops the job and de-registers itself. The job goes back in the controller's queue for processing on whatever the next available machine is.
And you don't have to have any special software for this. It can be done right now with the tools that already exist in Preview 2.
So, paying someone to commit terrorism is terrorism itself?
Yes. Yes, it is. That's precisely the position of the United States government.
Surely you'll agree then, that the US is guilty of funding terrorism? Witness the US support of Isreal's repeated and ongoing attacks on Palestinian civilians.
The word "terrorism" has an accepted definition. It doesn't mean "anything that you don't like, especially if it involves the Jooos."
Allowing a terrorist to take refuge is terrorism itself?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Once again, the US has harboured and sheltered individuals which other nations/cultures openly denounced as terrorists. For example, Salomon Rushdie.
Is this a put-on? Writing a book does not make you a terrorist. Not even the most fundamentalist of all Islamist regimes, Iran, ever accused Salman Rushdie of being a terrorist. An apostate, yes, but not a terrorist.
The US has also secretely sponsored covert military operations aimed at toppling governments and influencing foreign policy, through threats, assassinations, and other methods.
It's called the Reagan Doctrine. It says that the United States will provide financial and material aid to anti-communist insurgencies anywhere in the world. We can have a whole conversation about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. (Hint: it's a good thing because communism is worse.) But that policy is not terrorism. Because, remember, terrorism has a definition. And these things are not included.
What is terrorism, you ask? Good question. Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of noncombatants with shocking covert attacks with the intent of intimidating a populace for the larger goal of achieving political or social change.
Is Israel's policy of retaliation terrorism? No, because there's no intent to intimidate involved. Israel fires rockets into buildings to kill the specific individuals in them, individuals that the Israeli government believes are a threat to Israeli security. Do they follow the same rules of engagement that we follow? No, but that doesn't make them terrorists.
Is writing a book terrorism? Fucking stupid question. Next.
Is providing support to anti-communist insurgents terrorism? No, because there are no noncombatants involved. Unless the insurgents themselves adopt the tactics of terrorism, of course, in which case continued aid is definitely wrong.
Is the embargo of Cuba terrorism? No, because there's no violence involved at all.
Come on - are you really going to deny that the US has assassinated "troublesome" foreign nationals? Not a single one, you're telling me?
I take no position on it one way or the other. Since it's not terrorism in any way, shape, or form, I'm not that worried about it in the context of this discussion.
Besides, let's for sake of argument say that the United States has assassinated ten people in history. Was that good or bad? Well, it depends on the ten people, doesn't it? If one of the people was Mother Teresa, that's bad. If one of the people was Josef Mengele, that's good. So simply waving your hands and saying "assassination" is hardly persuasive even if the underlying claim is true.
The US is just as guilty as "terrorism" as any other nation out there.
Only if you redefine the word "terrorism" to mean something other than what it means. If you stick to the actual definition of the word, the working definition that governments use, then you're wrong.
Not a little wrong, either. Wrong like crazy.
You remember your SAT's? (I'm assuming you're old enough to have taken them at some point in the past. That's not necessarily a given, but I'll throw you a bone.) You know how, since they're multiple choice, just guessing at random will get you a score of around 20%?
Just guessing at random, you would have said at least ONE correct thing by this point. In order to be as wrong as you have been, I'd think you
But how did that make it a threat to the US?
At 7 AM on September 11, 2001, I would said, "How is Osama bin Laden's group a threat to the US?"
Waiting until a threat is dire is no longer sound foreign policy. Gone are the days when spy planes and satellite see enemy troops massing on the border. Death can come to us now in the form of a steamer trunk filled with plutonium or an unassuming gentleman with a box cutter.
Saddam Hussein supported terrorists. Financially, materially, and morally. He sponsored the people who want to kill us.
That's why we considered him a threat.
Only against the US airplanes that were flying overhead, daily, in Iraqi airspace!
No, not only. Haven't you been following along?
Are you telling me that if China started flying spyplanes over Washington and New York, that the US wouldn't open fire?
If we invaded Mexico, got into a war over it with China, surrendered, agreed to terms, and then opened fire on a Chinese over-flight, I wouldn't blame the Chinese for being a bit truculent about it.
Don't you see how silly that is?
Look, I'll tell you what I told Dumb and Dumber up-thread: pointing at one aspect of the war on terror--Saddam's engagement of our overflights--and trying to minimize it is ridiculous. You have to look at the whole picture. Saddam was a threat to the United States, our allies, and all peace-loving people. Now he's not.
Iraq was not the only country with terrorist ties, not by a long shot.
True.
Moreover, other hostile nations have engaged in far more threatening anti-US "chatter", and posess far more dangerous weapons. Pakistan, Syria, Libya, and North Korea, to name but a few examples.
OK, let me explain what's wrong with your examples.
1. Pakistan. Pakistan has a lot of problems, but the sitting government in Pakistan is our ally. They're fighting the terrorists who set up camp inside their borders. Not as aggressively as we want them to, and not as wholeheartedly as we'd prefer, but they're in it with us. So no, Pakistan is not a sponsor of terror, and no, it makes no sense to compare Pakistan to Iraq.
2. Syria. Syria is definitely a sponsor of terrorism, but to a far lesser extent than Iraq. As far as we know, Syria had no direct contact with al-Qaida. Iraq did. As far as we know, Syria has no chemical, biological, or nuclear programs. Iraq did. So comparing Syria to Iraq makes no sense.
3. Libya. Libya has renounced terrorism. Why? According to Qaddafi himself, it's because he saw what happened in Iraq and feared US military force. So what we did in Iraq accomplished our purposes in Libya without the firing of a single shot or the loss of a single life. So Libya stands as the strongest justification yet seen for why the invasion was the right idea.
4. North Korea. North Korea is not a sponsor of terrorism. It has no known ties to al-Qaida or any Islamist group, or to Hamas or Hizbollah or any anti-Israel group. While North Korea does sell weapons on the black market, and while we have a serious counterproliferation problem in North Korea, they are not in the same category as circa-2002 Iraq.
Finally, there were/are equally or more vicious tyrants out there than Saddam.
Name one. Seriously: name a currently sitting dictator who can approach Saddam's body-count. It's believed that Saddam's secret police were killing at least 36,000 Iraqis a year. For thirty years. That's not my number; that number comes from the Red Cross. As a murderer, he's among the worst in modern history.
And then we're back to the part about sponsoring terrorism and threatening his neighbor states and building and acquiring large-scale weapons, and... on and on.
They just don't have oil.
Oh, right. I forgot. All about the oil.
Seriously: do they keep you useful idiots packed in styrofoam and haul you out once a month to spew your a
There's only one place to go for information about upcoming movies, and unless you've been living in a cave on Mars, you already know what it is: http://apple.com/trailers.
A motion JPEG stream of a NTSC signal takes about 8Mb/s.
Wow. Flashback.
The last time I even heard the words "motion JPEG" was about 1995. Nowadays, the standard for broadcast is MPEG-2 (plus lots of stuff about levels and profiles that I can't even keep straight). For a single NTSC stream, you're looking at about 4 Mbps. HD streams range from 15 Mbps to 25 Mbps.
Just a couple of months ago, there was a demo at NAB of a new codec, H.264, that was used to deliver HDTV (1080i) at 8 Mbps. Looked pretty darned good. Better than or the same as MPEG-2 at 19 Mbps, depending on the program content.
H.264, if I remember correctly, has been chosen as the codec for HD-DVD9. Also, it's gonna be in QuickTime next year.
So here's my question... are OpenCable set-top boxes programmable? That is to say, can the cable head-end flash an OpenCable box with new firmware to add support for new codecs? Because it's safe to assume that we're going to keep refining codecs as time goes by, and I bet cable carriers would love the ability to roll out a new or upgraded codec by flashing their customers' equipment overnight. You wake up the next morning and poof. You've got twice as many TV channels. Or the same number of channels looking twice as good.
Oh, I don't know. In my experience, if I like any of the music on a given album, I probably will enjoy most of it.
Good examples: Mogwai's "Young Team" which I'm listening to right now. The Shins' "Chutes Too Narrow." The Postal Service's "Give Up." Lo-Fi Allstars' "How to Operate With a Blown Mind." Pretty much anything Garbage has recorded. Groove Armada. Morcheeba. Chicane's first two albums. Crystal Method's "Vegas." Massive Attack's "Mezzanine."
These are all albums I bought based on my having heard and liked one or two tracks. And they're all albums I can listen to all the way through over and over and over.
Yes. Yes, it is.
(Were you trying to bring the funny? Because I think you left it somewhere.)
That's a pretty serious distortion of what was actually said. The part about "admitted" and "gave up" in particular.
Here's what he actually said in the interview:
He didn't "admit," and he didn't say anything about "giving up." He said it was a business decision.
I know this isn't really here or there, but it just really gets under my skin when people use words like "admitted" to distort somebody else's position. It's done intentionally so often that people are started to do it without meaning to, which for all I know might be what you did.
I assume you've seen Steve Jobs give his iTunes pitch. He's done it several times now at various events.
:-)
It basically goes like this:
People want to get their music one track at a time off the Internet. We know this because people are doing it like crazy, using these various underground services.
We want to give people what they want. But just giving them music-over-the-Internet isn't enough. Subscription services suck, too-restrictive licensing sucks, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's why illegal downloading is cool: (At this point he lists five or six key things. It's free, it's convenient, whatever.) But here's why illegal downloading sucks: (No art, bad encoding, hard to find stuff, and it's also stealing.)
Then he proceeds to explain how iTunes addresses those points, one by one. iTunes isn't free, but it's cheap. On the other hand, it's way easier to find things, the quality is much better, you get art with your tracks, and it's "good karma."
He actually builds the business case for iTunes from scratch, right there in front of you. It's a really cool presentation.
Whether you're an Apple fan or not, whether you're an iTunes fan or not, you have to admire Steve Jobs' ability to give shareholders, investors, partners, and end-users a well-thought-out, persuasive presentation.
All those dumbasses who think PowerPoint is the second coming could learn a lot from him.
It would appear that whoever these artists are they just admitted that their albums aren't good enough to buy as a whole and they are just carried by one or two songs.
I don't think that's necessarily what they're saying.
Let's say we're talking about popular music, music that gets radio play. Maybe two or three songs on an album do well on the radio. Now, does that necessarily mean the other songs on the album are bad? No, it just means they're not radio material. Maybe they're too long, or too quiet, or whatever.
When music is available a la carte, people can go out and buy just the track they heard on the radio. But in doing so, they might miss out on some other really good music.
This has happened to me many time. I've bought an album because I wanted this track or that one, and in the end some of the other tracks became my favorites.
(Of course, some albums just aren't that great. But I don't think that's universally true. For every album you can name that's got one hit song on it, somebody else can name one that's solid all the way through.)
iTunes gets around this by giving you nice, long, high-quality previews of every available track. So when I saw the Garden State trailer and I wanted to get the song used in it, I listened to 30-second slices of the other songs from the album and discovered that they were all pretty darned good. So I bought the whole album.
See? It works both ways.
You are the one that made the preposterous claim the ISG had found stockpiles of nerve gas precursors.
Preposterous, indeed. Your mantra evolves, doesn't it? Now it's, "If I haven't heard of it, it's preposterous!"
God forbid you should take five damn minutes to ponder the limits of your knowledge and sound the depths of your ignorance.
Kay's statement, and he wrote this report, directly contradicts your ridiculous claim.
Okay. Whatever you say, man.
Iraqi "programs" and "desires" that didn't produce anything don't equal WMD stockpiles.
Well, that's certainly true. I mean, we've already covered the stockpiles; that's old news now. They've been found. But setting that aside, you are aware aren't you that programs--not actual weapons, but merely weapons programs--would have been sufficient to put Iraq in material breach and justify the invasion? Let's ignore terrorism, let's ignore brutality, let's ignore illegitimacy, let's ignore the various plans and schemes Saddam had concocted to attack the United States itself. Let's ignore all of that.
One weapons program ALONE would have been enough to justify the invasion. One program hidden from the prying eyes of the world, one program conducted entirely in secret, one program carried out with the goal of producing a chemical warhead or an atomic bomb or ballistic missile.
Just one would have been enough.
We found several.
But that doesn't matter, right? Because you've shifted your position from "NO WMD!!!" to "NOT ENOUGH WMD!!!" or maybe it's "WMD DOESN'T MATTER!!!"
Your position is that it's okay that Saddam had weapons, weapon components, weapon programs, weapon purchasing arrangements with rogue states. And let's not even dust off the fact that Saddam had sponsor-client relationships with al-Qaida, Jund al-Islam, Ansar al-Islam, Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Abu Nidal Organization. Let's not even mention that, you know, because everybody knows the invasion of Iraq was just a distraction from the real war. Except it's not a real war, is it? It's a "fictitious war." It's a "war of choice." It's "Bush's folly." It's all about the oil. It's all about the economy. It's all just racism anyway: the white people versus the brown people. We're really no better than they are. We're actually worse than they are. What happened at Abu Ghraib was worse than a thousand Holocausts. Bush is a murderer. At least Saddam was an honest murderer. The draft. Martial law. A stolen election. The PATRIOT Act. American imperialism. The PNAC. Rumsfeld. Ashcroft. Wolfowitz. Perle.
In all the rambling and incoherent invective from the left--and from you--there's one item that I find conspicuous by its absence. On little event, one little moment, that the left seems to have forgotten.
September 11.
That's why we're doing this. That's why we're fighting this war. In 1996, when Osama bin Laden declared war against the United States, Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we thought he was a flake. We thought he was just a raving lunatic with no real ability to threaten us. At worst, we thought he was an international criminal. He just wasn't that important.
Even after his organization carried out devastating attacks against American soldiers and citizens--the Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the USS Cole--we thought of Osama bin Laden and of al-Qaida as a nuisance, not as a threat.
Then, on a Tuesday morning, everything changed.
Terrorism, once believed to be something that happened to somebody else, over there, is now understood by the American people and our leaders to present a clear and present danger to us and to our way of life. Not just Osama bin Laden, not just al-Qaida, not just Islamists. All terrorism everywhere.
But the problem lies not just with the men who shoot the guns or set off the bombs or fly the planes. The problem also lies with everyone who helps, finances, harbors, or supports them. The problem lies
I thought you were done?
You were supposed to be producing reports that corroborate your ridiculous claim the ISG had found stockpiles of VX precursors.
I what? I don't recall ever telling you that I was going to produce anything. In point of fact, I've repeatedly told you that I AIN'T CHER MOMMA and that it's your responsibility to read for yourself.
David Kay submitted it and then admitted that the stockpiles of WMD's the Bush administration said "we know Iraq has" haven't been found and probably won't be, and then he resigned.
Well, you've certainly got a good grip on the intricacies of the situation.
There were some 6,000 words in the interim report of October, '03. How many of them did you read? Did you read these?
So, if nothing else, Saddam was actively working on chemical weapons. We now know that that wasn't all, not by a long shot. But even eight months ago, we knew this much.
He's talking about the deal between Iraq and the DPRK which was still classified at the time of this report.
And that's just the old news. That's just the old stuff. That's just the stuff that we knew even BEFORE the invasion. What we know now vastly overshadows those conclusions.
Of course, since you haven't heard of it, it must not be true. Right?
To my knowledge they haven't found anything with those leads or if they have they are keeping it secret, as you said this report is ancient now.
Right, because there couldn't possibly have been any, you know, new developments in the past eight months. If there have, they've been keeping it secret because nobody showed up at your house with a three-fucking-ring binder.
(Incidentally, this is precisely what I predicted you'd do. I said:
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what you've done. Neat, huh?)
Here's something that's really going to bust your noodle: reading the first couple of paragraphs of one news story about one report does not make you an informed member of the popul
I'm going to ignore your accusations that the majority of the protestors hate American troops, because it's not getting us anywhere.
Oh, incidentally, check these out. These are new.
"Solidarity with Iraqi Resistance Against Occupation by all means necessary LEAVE IRAQ ALONE"
"Call for Mutiny of US FORCES in Iraq"
"Support the Iraqi Resistance Movement!"
"Solidarity with the Iraqi Resistance! Solidarity with Anti-Imperialism Everywhere!"
"Support the Iraqi resistance. Australian troops out of Iraq." (Apparently Oz has problems with traitors, too.)
Gee. I wonder where I could have ever gotten the idea that "protesters" advocate the killing of American troops.
Everything you post screams out for a rebuttal but you aren't worth the effort.
OK. Whatever you say.
As I said before, though: I'm glad you finally moved off of the "NO WMD!!!" thing. Baby steps. Going from "NO WMD!!!" to "OKAY, YES, WMD, BUT I DON'T REALLY CARE THAT MUCH!!!" is progress.
Whether Google has a link to your "reports" isn't subjective.
Nope. Sure isn't. Googling for "ISG interim report"... well, let's just say it produces marvelous things. Old things, things eight months out of date, but that's the wonderful thing about doing research on the Internet: a couple click on from there, and woosh! A whole world of primary source material opens itself up to you. Incredible, huh? Amazing.
Of course, I must have imagined it all. Because Google, "in all its omnipotence," can't help you. I must have just made the whole thing up. Right.
You seem to be the only one thats seen the reports on these huge stockpiles of VX precursors the ISG has found.
Uh-oh. You're slipping back into old habits again. You said "you seem to be the only one" when what you really meant was "you're the first person I've encountered." Remember our little lesson from earlier in the week? Just because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't true.
Google in all its omnipotence hasn't seen these reports unless I'm searching in the wrong place.
By Jove, I think he's got it. Say it with me now: "Just because I haven't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't true."
If you could corroborate even a little of the BS you are shoveling maybe I'd hang in.
Look, man. I'm an easy-going fellow. If you're happier believing that Saddam was a kindly old grandpa who would never have thought of hurting a fly, go right ahead. Just don't say nobody ever told you any different.
Instead you tell me to "read the reports" though you are apparently completely incapable of producing any URL's for any of these mysterious reports, only you seem to know about.
We've covered this before: I ain't your momma. You're a big boy. Go read for yourself. I'm not going to do your research for you. Why not? Let's assume I spend five minutes finding just the right piece of information for you. Not private information, not confidential information, information that's right out there in the public record that anybody can find in the same five minutes it took me. But let's say I'm a sap and I spend the five minutes and I give you a link.
What happens then? One of several things. You (1) ignore it, (2) try to discredit it, (3) try to misinterpret it, (4) try to spin it, or (5) say something blindingly stupid like "the shells weren't loaded so nobody cares anyway." Net result? A waste of my time that leaves you with a false sense of smug satisfaction.
So why should I bother? If you're interested in new information, you'll seek it out. If you aren't, you won't, and it's no skin off my nose.
Besides, this way you get your false sense of smug satisfaction for free. At least as long as you keep rejecting the key premise here: Just because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't true.
But look, because you've taken that first step I talked about before--climbing down off of your "NO WMD!!!" soapbox at last--I'll throw you a bone. Here's a roundup, a sort of executive summary, a state-of-the-WMDs-for-dummies. It was written a couple of months ago by a really bright guy and an excellent journalist, Ken Timmerman. You're almost certainly going to disregard it or try to discredit it or ignore it or whatever it is that you do to feel better about your preconceived notions, but what the hey. Maybe there's an off chance that something in there--one of the pictures or something--will stick in your brain and inspire you to start thinking.
Then again... no. Probably not. You'll probably just sit there fat and happy on
Once again if you just once posted a URL from a reputable source supporting your bullshit I would cut you some slack.
Once again, if you read the reports for yourself you wouldn't need to go begging people to show you where to find information.
Google shows absolutely nothing that supports your claim
Well, that's not the way I see it, but whatever.
The limit was 150 km and they could be made to go 180-193 km, in a simulation, with a light payload.
Right... and that's greatly in excess of 90 miles. I mean, we're not talking about 93 miles here. We're not talking about 90 miles plus a foot. We're talking about range greatly in excess of 90 miles. What's your complaint?
I don't think the fate of the world hinges on 7 miles.
Fortunately you're not the one tasked with making those decisions.
The U.N. was destroying them which is how the inspections were supposed to work
Sorry, but that's simply not correct. I'll say it again: go read the reports for yourself, or at least the newspaper articles written about the reports.
There you go again. Making something innocuous sound sinister and engaging in a bold faced lie in the process.
Sorry, but I think you're going to have a hard time convincing people that the raw materials to construct atomic bombs in the hands of a tyrant with a penchant for attacking his enemies and a grudge against the West is innocuous.
Its not like its ever been a secret or Iraq is somehow in breach of anything for having it.
Wrong twice. Iraq declared, repeatedly, that they did not have unprocessed uranium. They declared, repeated, that they didn't have any. But they did have some. They concealed the fact that they had some, which means they kept it secret.
And Iraq was specifically ordered after the 1991 cease fire to declare and produce all (among other things) unprocessed uranium, and uranium processing equipment. They failed to do so. Which means they were in breach for having it.
I guess your position has shifted from "Iraq didn't have any weapons" to "Iraq only had a few weapons, and everybody knew it anyway, besides they were really heavy, so it's no big deal."
Well, at least you're off the "Iraq didn't have any weapons" kick. That was getting really old.
You're still acting like I ran over your puppy though. Why are you so disappointed to learn that Saddam really was the bad guy and that we Americans really are the good guys? Why does that make you so upset?
You are saying the ISG found some EMPTY chemical shells in a dump and blew them up, right?
Among other things, yes. Artillery shells that (1) Iraq was not allowed to have, (2) Iraq agreed to turn over in 1991, and (3) Iraq swore up and down until the very DAY of the invasion that they didn't have.
But there's more. ISG also found the stuff that goes in the shells. See, what you put in artillery shells are liquids called "binary agents." These agents mix when the shell is fired and produce a chemical weapon. For example, if you put methylphosphonic difluoride, isopropyl alcohol, and isopropylamine into an artillery shell and fire it, what you get on the other end is sarin gas.
ISG found huge quantities of methylphosphonic difluoride and isopropylamine/isopropyl alcohol solution.
Add it up and what did Iraq have? Chemical weapons. Which they swore they didn't have.
(It doesn't begin and end with sarin. ISG found precursors to VX, tabun, and mustard as well.)
But wait! That's not all! ISG also found 500 tons of unprocessed uranium at Iraq's main uranium storage facility south of Baghdad. Uranium that, again, Iraq SWORE they did not have. They also found equipment for turning unprocessed uranium into weapons-grade enriched uranium. All they needed to do was screw in a couple of fittings, flip the switch, and start producing enriched uranium.
The Iraqis evidently thought they wouldn't get caught if they stored the uranium and the centrifuge equipment hundreds of miles apart. And for a while they were right. But those ISG guys are tenacious.
If they are empty then no one, including the ISG and CPA cares, nor should you.
Excuse me? The presence of a SINGLE EMPTY CHEMICAL ARTILLERY SHELL anywhere inside Iraq would have been sufficient to declare that country in material breach of the 1991 cease-fire and UN Security Council resolutions. Those terms said that Iraq would declare and produce ALL chemical weapons, among other things. Yes, that includes chemical shells, with or without reagents in them.
It also includes things like ballistic missiles. Iraq was prohibited from possessing or developing ballistic missiles with a range greater than 90 miles. What did they do to comply with that prohibition? Why, they designed, tested, and manufactured the al-Samoud 2, of course, a ballistic missile with a range greatly in excess of 90 miles. (Including, you guessed it, chemical warheads. They hadn't figured out how to perfect those yet, thank God.) Al-Samoud 2 was in ACTIVE PRODUCTION until the DAY of the invasion. In fact, we have videotape of an al-Samoud 2 missile being carried through Baghdad on a truck to a launch facility somewhere south of the city. It's right there on the back of a flatbed under a tarp, plain as day. On videotape. Day one of the invasion.
But that's not all. Saddam covered his bets. In addition to building al-Samoud 2, Iraq also made arrangements with the DPRK to purchase the medium-range Nodong 1 missile, a weapon with a range of nearly TEN TIMES the 90-mile limit.
But because they didn't actually launch any of these at Washington, the ISG and the CPA don't care and neither should I. Right?
If you actually think the ISG has been finding and blowing up dumps full of loaded chemical shells and just not telling the world
No, they're telling. Read the reports. There's no secret information here. No conspiracy, no cover-up. Just some incredibly ignorant people who haven't taken the ten damn minutes to read the reports for themselves.
They've admitted the yellowcake from Niger story was bullshit
Nope. As I already explained, some folks believe that ONE of the documents related to that investigation was forged. The British, in contrast, stand behind all the documents. And that one document wasn't even critical. It was just corroborating evidence. So even if it was forged, the evidence is still overwhelming.
And, also as I've already pointed out, there'
That's not really cool, man. If you aren't happy with an outrageous accusation, either refute it or do something to fix it.
If you are opposed to... whatever the hell the protesters are opposed to this week but you don't support people who want to kill our troops and our citizens, then say so. Get out there and denounce the people who DO want to see dead US soldiers on the evening news. Go hold up a sign that says "PLEASE DON'T KILL AMERICANS."
If you can manage to do it without getting mugged by your fellow "activists," that is.
First, I'd let the generals run their own damn war. They know how to do it better than Rumsfeld.
That's an oft-repeated refrain. I won't bother going into all the reasons why it's unreasonable, but let me gloss it over by saying that the SecDef is responsible for carrying out a different set of orders and achieving a different set of goals than the generals are responsible for. You might just as well say "let the sergeants run their own damn war; they know how to do it better than the generals." Makes about as much sense.
Second, none of this "enemy combatant" bullshit.
I thought you were being constructive. That's not constructive. Here you have (let's pick a random number) 1,000 individuals who have been caught doing various terrorist-type things. Some of them have been smuggling weapons, some have been funneling money, some of them have actually been caught with a gun in their hands. What do you do with them?
They're not criminals, by any definition. There's no jurisdiction in the world that can handle them. And they're not prisoners of war, because they belong to no army. So what do you do?
For the first time since we started distinguishing between soldiers and civilians, we have a group of people who don't fit into either category.
These people are out there. Some are in custody, many are not. What do you do with them?
Third, repeal the PATRIOT act.
I don't agree with repealing a law just because you don't like the press surrounding it. The PATRIOT Act is a vital part of our effort to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur.
(Besides, what you should have said here is "let the PATRIOT Act sunset." It won't be repealed, but it may not be reinstated after its sunset date.)
Fourth, ban torture.
It's already banned. Torture is not accepted by our military or law enforcement forces. Of course, interrogation is not the same thing as torture. Keeping somebody uncomfortable is not torture. Keeping somebody awake is not torture.
And we sure as hell can't ban interrogation.
Fifth, money up front.
Okay, seriously: this is the part where you started to absolutely fucking sicken me. People are MURDERING Americans, Australians, Israelis, Spaniards and others and your suggestion is that we GIVE THEM MONEY? That's fucking disgusting.
Sixth, multilateralism.
The war on terror is, right this very minute, one of the most multilateral international efforts that's ever been undertaken. It's way up there, man. The fact that your personal favorite "laterals" aren't participating isn't the same as saying that the effort isn't multilateral.
The U.N. doesn't just authorize war, sometimes it even goes to wa
Frankly, I don't see the failure of chips to be a big issue.
/me raises hand
Spoken as only somebody who's never had a RAID controller fail on them can.
And if you're that concerned, you shouldn't count on one storage device anyway. There's always *some* one thing that can fail inside one box.
Well... actually no. In a well-built RAID--not just Apple's, but anybody's--there is no single point of failure. Two totally separate and redundant power supplies. Two totally separate and redundant controllers. Two totally separate and redundant environmental modules (fans, filters, sensors, etc.)
A passive backplane means there are no components on it to fail, and of course the drives are redundant, thanks to the RAID controllers. So... no. Nothing in the box can fail in such a way that the whole RAID will become unavailable.
I didn't see anything specifically about fans but the power supplies are redundant and hot swappable.
Yeah, but the controllers and environmental components aren't.
Oook. Oook. Me kill cheetah, hit with big rock, poke with stick til fall over. Oook.
We don't need shared storage, the data only needs to be accessed from one server.
No kidding? What's it like all the way back there in 1885? Is it true that you have to shod your own horses? What do you do about plumbing? Where does your hot water come from?
Performance is not a big issue, uptime is not an issue.
Hmm. I don't buy it. If neither performance nor reliability is an issue for you... why are you using a computer at all? I mean, you either need your data to be available fast or you need it to be available consistently.
I think either you're misrepresenting your requirements, or you don't understand them yourself.