However, no one currently is broadcasting a full 1920x1080i signal.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You're thinking of certain MPEG-2 encoders that interpolate a 1920x1080 raster to 1440x1080 before encoding. This is the exception, not the rule.
I thought the whole point of interlaced is that it updates half the lines at one time. So why would the signal send more data then the TV needs?
I'm confused. Here's how the signal looks: the TV gets 540 lines in 1/60th of a second, then 540 more lines in the other 60th of a second. Each of those lines contains 1920 pixels. The TV draws the first set of lines on the odd lines of the picture tube, and the second set of lines on the even lines of the tube. After 2/60ths (or 1/30th) of a second, the screen is displaying a 1920x1080 frame, with a total of 2,073,600 pixels. In total, after one second, 62.2 million pixels have been drawn in 30 frames.
A 720p signal works slightly differently. The TV gets 720 lines in 1/60th of a second; each of those lines contains 1280 pixels. The TV draws all 720 lines, from top to bottom. After 1/60th of a second, the TV gets another set of 720 lines and it draws those. After 1/30th of a second, the TV has drawn two complete 720p frames, or a total of 1,843,200 pixels. After one second, 55.3 million pixels have been drawn in 60 frames.
There's the difference: 1080i displays 30 high-resolution frames per second with the motion artifacts inherent in interlaced scanning, and 720p displays 60 lower-resolution frames per second with no motion artifacts.
Some people prefer 720p, some prefer 1080i, but 1080i is definitely a higher-spatial-resolution format.
IF thats true then there really are few benefits with this interlaced technology except the tv/monitor making cheapness.
More importantly, it's a matter of bandwidth. Not in terms of bits per second, but in terms of megahertz. You can squeeze a 1080i signal into a 6 MHz frequency band. You can't get a 1080/24p signal into the same band.
I certainly didn't see any semblance of US diplomacy reported in the media...
How do you define "diplomacy?" Every senior official in the administration spent pretty much every minute of their day in contact with administration officials from other governments. The president spent most of his time on the phone and in face-to-face meetings with heads of state of nations large and small alike. Every day right before lunch, Ari gets up at the podium and tells the pool what the president has been doing that morning. His briefings in the weeks leading up to the recent ultimatum were a laundry list of diplomatic efforts.
Instead, I saw the US "defiance" in refusing to believe that inspections were working.
Um. Inspections weren't working, in any meaningful sense of the word "working."
There would never be a moment, "even for a second," when Iraq would be able to comply with the Safwan Accords.
We gave Iraq an opportunity to do just that back in November, with 1441. They refused yet again.
Resolution 687 turned into a trap that we could spring on Saddam any time we wanted, as there was no way for him to satisfy us with his compliance if we didn't want to be satisfied.
You say again and again that the United States kept "moving the goalposts," and that we would never have been satisfied. What evidence to you have to support that idea? When have the goalposts ever been moved, short of early this week when we said that regime change was inevitable?
Let me ask this question again. When has Iraq ever come anywhere even close to compliance?
I could've been satisfied with the surrender terms if there was some sort of incentive for the Iraqis
Iraq had an opportunity to haggle over the cease-fire, in March, 1991, at Safwan. They didn't. They said "okay."
That said, if you want to argue that the world could have handled this situation better, you're not going to get much of a fight from me. Hindsight is always 20/20; it's easy to think that if we'd done this differently, or that differently, or if we had zigged when we zagged or what have you that the present situation might have been averted. But I don't really find that to be a very useful position to take when discussing what we ought to be doing right now. When we look back on this and collect the lessons of history, it'll be a good time to think about what we could have done differently. But sitting on your ass-- no offense-- and saying "The US blew it" doesn't get us anywhere in the present circumstance.
So why the disregard for diplomacy, and the rush to war?
One: because the diplomatic process was not accomplishing our goal. Our goal was compliance, and the diplomatic process wasn't getting that done. And as for a "rush to war," the past dozen years surely constitutes the slowest rush to war in all history.
it became obvious to any observer, Saddam included, that we were simply going to have our war, no matter what.
Friend, that's bullshit, and you know it. In September, 2002, President Bush upbraided the UN for not bringing the Iraqi conflict to a peaceful conclusion: disarmament according to the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. In response, UNSEC passed resolution 1441 which yet again reiterated the terms with which Iraq had already agreed to comply. Iraq never complied, even slightly, with those terms.
The idea that war was inevitable simply doesn't jive with the facts.
We could use our permament membership in the (broken) Security Council to ram through resolutions loaded up with any proof-burdens we wanted...
Is that so? Funny, we didn't have a very easy time "ramming through" a resolution that did nothing more than declare that Iraq wasn't in compliance with resolution 1441. Even such a simple resolution as that, one consisting of less than a page of whereas's and therefore's and concluding only with a simple, unequivocal statement
By what metric? Resolution? No, a 1080i picture has more spatial resolution than a 720p picture. A 720p signal has more temporal resolution, in terms of more complete frames per second, but less spatial resolution.
Bandwidth? No, a 1080i signal requires more bandwidth than a 720p signal. A 1080i signal includes one 1920x1080 frame (or two 1920x540 fields) thirty times per second. That's 62,208,000 pixels per second. A 720p signal includes one 1280x720 frame sixty times per second. That's 55,296,000 pixels per second.
Now, 720p does require the picture tube to do more work per unit time, but that has to do with the speed at which the gun has to scan to draw sixty progressive frames per second. It's more expensive to build a tube that can scan at 60 progressive frames per second than one that can scan 60 interlaced fields per second, so most consumer sets upconvert 720p to 1080i for display.
And for that matter they generally show 1080i at 540p anyway, unless you are ready to spend extra.
I certainly am not familiar with every set, but I've never seen one that downconverts 1080i to 540p. Maybe the very low-end ones do.
Yes, that's what I was talking about. Thanks for the clarification.
Don't misunderstand my point, though. I bought my KD34XB2 for $3,000 last summer, and I wouldn't go back for all the tea in China. Anybody who has any interest in watching sports or drama programming in HD and who has the wherewithal should make the investment.
You can get a pretty good 34" HDTV set that'll show the full res for about $2000.
The best direct-view HDTV on the market is Sony's; I don't recall the model number, but I have the slightly older KD34-XBR2. It has the highest actual resolution of any direct-view tube in the consumer market. It resolves about 800 lines of vertical resolution. That's not too shabby: 800 lines out of 1080. Pro tubes in studio monitors can resolve 1000 lines, but they're ten times more expensive.
So you can get a really good 34" HDTV for about $2,000, but it won't show everything there is to see in the HD picture.
Most HDTV broadcasts are two seperate pictures of 540 lines high (interlaced).
That's not really how it works. A 1080i picture captures a full 1080 lines of spatial resolution, sacrificing temporal resolution in order to do it. Each frame is 1080 lines high; the fact that the frame is captured and drawn in fields doesn't change the spatial resolution.
Compare a 1080i picture to a 480p picture on the same, high-quality monitor, and you'll be able to see the difference. It's like night and day.
Watching Football or Basketball on the flickering 540 line high displays is painful.
Oh, no it's not. During the season I watched SEC football and some NFL playoff games on CBS in 1080i. It was very, very easy on the eyes. In fact, thanks to CBS's investment in gear and experienced production engineers, it looked a heck of a lot better than ABC's 720p Superbowl broadcast.
And did you watch the Grammys in 1080i? Wow. An amazing, reference-quality broadcast. Possibly the best program in terms of overall picture quality ever broadcast over the air.
"Reverse 3/2 pulldown" - yuck. Movies originated as 24FPS film, when encoded as HDTV, should be in 24FPS 1080p.
Once you pass a 1080/30i signal through reverse 3:2 pulldown, it is a 1080/24p signal. Once you remove the extra frames that 3:2 adds, and resuffle the fields back into their original order, you end up with precisely what the camera recorded.
And most current TVs don't display anywhere near 1920, more like 1440 or 1280.
That's not quite accurate, at least when it comes to direct-view HDTV's. Some HDTV's down-sample a 1080i signal to a 720p signal, but most of them actually display the full 1080i picture. The thing, though, is that the picture tube isn't capable of resolving a picture that fine. The best consumer picture tubes on the market can resolve about 800 lines of resolution; these sets cost $2,000-$4,000. The best professional tubes can resolve about 1,000 lines, but they cost, literally, ten times more.
So the TV tries to display the full 1920x1080 picture-- it scans all the pixels-- but the tube isn't capable of resolving it.
This is kinda funny -- obviously, they're not pros, or our diplomatic efforts would've been more effective.
You don't write for the Times, do you? The position that this war is the result of a failure of diplomacy cannot be argued with. The position that the failure was on the part of the United States is as absurd as it is widespread.
Iraq has never, not even for a second, been in compliance with the Safwan Accords. On a foundation of defiance, diplomacy cannot succeed. Even if the entire world had done everything perfectly every time, diplomacy still would have failed, because Iraq still would have been in blatant defiance of the cease-fire to which they agreed.
Basically the diplomatic process was doomed from the start here. We started with the position that the terms of the cease-fire were not open for negotiation, and that Iraq was unwilling to comply with those terms. From there, there's simply nowhere to go but down.
It's our fault for getting caught telling lies and fabrications on the floor of the UN
Sorry, but that never happened. It turns out that one piece of information that the US turned over to the IAEA was false, but we simply passed on what we knew in good faith. It's unfortunate that everybody was equally fooled by that document.
and for not finding any of the "obvious" WMD that would've provided a pretext
Are you familiar with the concept of burden of proof? I'm not trying to be pedantic; it's entirely possible that you may not have heard the term. In a criminal trial, people often talk abou the burden of proof. What they mean is that it is the responsibility of the prosecution to demonstrate that a crime took place, and that the defense is under no obligation to prove that one didn't. If the prosecution fails to prove their case, the defendant is acquitted.
This wasn't a criminal trial; the burden of proof was flip-flopped in this case. In this case, the burden of proof, as established by Security Council resolutions, was on Iraq to prove that they had no proscribed weapons. They didn't do that. There was no burden of proof on the US or any other party to prove that they did; it was, put simply, not the responsibility of the United States or any other nation to prove that Iraq had proscribed weapons. It was the responsibility of Iraq to declare their weapons and weapons programs, and then submit to their destruction under UNSCOM supervision. That process never even got off the ground.
and for prolonging policies of thumbing the nose at UN resolutions in some parts of the world (Israel-Palestine?), while sanctimoniously demanding letter-of-the-law adherence to UN resolutions in others.
This gets back to the issue of the way the UN works. There are three kinds of UN resolutions as defined by the Charter. General Assembly resolutions carry no authority; they are binding on the members to which they apply, but neither the member states nor the Assembly itself has any authority to enforce GA resolutions. Security Council resolutions adopted under chapter VI of the Charter are the same way: they're technically binding, in the sense that the member states of the UN agreed to abide by them when they signed the Charter, but neither the member states nor the Council has any authority to enforce its resolutions. If UNSEC adopts a chapter VI resolution that a country (say, Israel) fails to abide by, nobody can legally do anything about it except shrug and say, "Well, that sucks." This is a design feature, if you will, of the UN Charter.
Chapter VII of the Charter, on the other hand, provides for a different type of resolution. Resolutions adopted by UNSEC under chapter VII are not only binding, they're also enforceable. If UNSEC chooses, it can call on the member states to act, either with military force or through other means like sanctions, to enforce chapter VII resolutions. When that happens, the members of the Council are not only authorized but actually required, by the Ch
Yeah, her and every other news source that's reporting the same story.
Again: like who? If you've got evidence, provide it. Let's see it, so we can look at it and evaluate it critically. Let's leave the conspiracy theories at the door and deal with facts, okay?
It does NOT logically or legally follow that the "Alliance" may take it upon it self at any time to act without the sanction of the UN.
You're mistaken in a small way and a big way.
The small way is this: the United Nations does not have an exclusive license to wage war. In point of fact, the Security Council has only authorized military action twice in all history: in 1950 the Council authorized what was to become the Korean War, and in 1990 the council passed 678 to authorize the forceable ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. In fact, we only got an UNSEC resolution in 1950 because of a quirk of fate: the Soviet foreign minister wasn't in the room, and wasn't given an opportunity to veto, which was their declared intention. Kind of a cheat, but that's the stuff that history is made of.
But there's a bigger way in which you're mistaken: the Security Council has already provided explicit authorization for all members of the Security Council to use force. Resolution 678 says:
The Security Council... Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area.
(You can read the whole thing yourself by typing "687" into Google and clicking "I feel lucky." The first hit is this link.)
The resolution authorizes the use of force to "restore international peace and security." UNSEC has agreed, on numerous occasions, that the area has not been restored to peace and security; Iraq was most recently declared, in November, to be in material breach of its obligations, and a criterion was established by which to measure Iraq's immediate cooperation. Iraq did not meet that criterion: the declaration they submitted on December 7 was neither complete nor accurate. The authorization still stands, and has never been rescinded. Not only has it never been rescinded; nobody's even suggested that it should be rescinded.
The logical and legal authority for this war is crystal clear.
Resolution 678 says that "all necessary means" are allowed to enforce resolution 660.
S/RES/678 (1990) 29 November 1990
RESOLUTION 678 (1990) Adopted by the Security Council at its 2963rd meeting on 29 November 1990
The Security Council,
Recalling, and reaffirming its resolutions 660 (1990) of 2 August (1990), 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 662 (1990) of 9 August 1990, 664 (1990) of 18 August 1990, 665 (1990) of 25 August 1990, 666 (1990) of 13 September 1990, 667 (1990) of 16 September 1990, 669 (1990) of 24 September 1990, 670 (1990) of 25 September 1990, 674 (1990) of of 29 October 1990 and 677 (1990) of 28 November 1990.
Noting that, despite all efforts by the United Nations, Iraq refuses to comply with its obligation to implement resolution 660 (1990) and the above-mentioned subsequent relevant resolutions, in flagrant contempt of the Security Council,
Mindful of its duties and responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance and preservation of internationalnd peace and security,
Determined to secure full compliance with its decisions,
Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter,
1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and decides, while maintaining all its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwil, to do so;
2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;
3. Requests all States to provide appropriate support for the actions undertaken in pursuance of paragraph 2 of the present resolution;
4. Requests the States concerned to keep the Security Council regularly informed on the progress of actions undertaken pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3 of the present resolution;
The fact that words can be misused is not at issue here. There are terrorists and there are soldiers, organized or guerilla. Terrorists are a fundamentally different class, criminals of the highest order. Under no circumstances should the line between the two be blurred. Legitimate fighters should never be called terrorists, though as you point out sometimes they are, and terrorists must never be confused for actual warriors.
Besides, I've heard the same story being reported by several other news sources and agencies.
Like who? I don't know Ms. Adie, I have no intention of slandering her, but she's the "odd man out." She says X while everybody else in the pool says Y. The only way to reconcile that, in the absence of additional evidence, is that she's mistaken. So if you've got additional evidence, let's hear it.
Please, let's not make the truth any more a casualty of this war/invasion than it already is.
None of us has a monopoly on truth, here. All we can do is look at the facts, separate them from the opinion, and try to infer the truth. Ms. Adie's assertion is more opinion than fact.
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 41:
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures.
Article 42:
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 48:
The action required to carry out the decisions of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the Security Council may determine.
Article 51:
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.
Resolution 678:
The Security Council... Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter... Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area.
Both 678 and 687 were adopted under chapter VII. Resolution 687 includes the line, "Conscious of the need to take the following measures acting under Chapter VII of the Charter." But other than that, yes, you've got the right idea.
Heresay of the worst kind. A reporter says that she was told something that was obviously misunderstood, if it was ever said at all. Why obviously? Because that is the exact opposite of the Pentagon's oft-repeated policy.
Hell, controls on reporters are so lax right now that a journalist speaking on Liddy's radio show today revealed operational details of the unit in which he is-- or maybe was-- embedded. He said, live and over the air, where they were staging, what their target was, and what kind of resistance they expected to meet, leaving no detail out. Hardly the iron-fist approach that Ms. Adie claimed.
Probably what happened is this: a Pentagon official, speaking on background, told her about one of the weapons in our arsenal, a radiation-seeking missile called HARM. Fire one of those and it homes in on the strongest radio source it can find. We use those missiles primarily to take out radar facilities, but we can also use them to sever wireless communications links. She probably misunderstood and asked, "What if it's a journalist broadcasting on television?" To which the Pentagon official replied, "Well... they've been warned." Or something like that.
That's a much more likely scenario than the thought that there's a secret plan to kill unruly journos and only Ms. Adie knows about it. Occam's Razor, don't you know.
It's hard to be in violations of UN laws when you can just veto any resolution that you don't agree with.
If you want to assert that the Security Council is broken by design and badly in need of remodeling, you'll get no argument from me. But the question was whether the US is in defiance of the Council, and the answer is a most resounding "no."
No, you're missing the point. I'm not sure what Iraq is signatory to and what it isn't, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that in March, 1991, Iraq agreed to the terms of a cease-fire agreement that would eventually pave the way for a peace treaty ending the war. One of the terms of that cease-fire, embodied in UNSEC resolution 687, was that Iraq had to disarm itself. (There were others, notably one on the repatriation of Kuwaiti citizens, of which Iraq is also in defiance.)
If one of the terms of the cease-fire had been that Saddam Hussein had to put on a grass skirt and read "Goodnight, Moon" in front of a warmly applauding audience, then that's what he would have had to do. Nonprolif. treaty or no nonprolif. treaty.
So the 1991 war was a war crime? You remember, the one called for by the UN, which the United States led? Even though the United States hadn't been attacked, or even threatened?
You have a very naive view of what constitutes a legal war, my friend.
There is no evidence that Saddam gassed his own people.
Okay. I don't agree, but for sake of argument, okay. So?
How do the US know he has these weapons? They checked the receipts. UK and US are who sold them to him.
Again, okay. I don't agree-- in point of fact, many countries, including France and Russia, have provided Iraq with weapons and weapon precursors that are now proscribed; Iraq got their first weapons-related nuclear reactor from France, and all those fancy-schmancy Scud missiles that Iraq had in 1991 came from the USSR. But okay. Again, so? You have successfuly demonstrated that the United States of America is not perfect. Whoopty-shit.
The attack is without UN backing.
As a matter of fact, it isn't. The United States, along with all the other members of the UN Security Council, is authorized explicitly under UNSCR 678 to use "all necessary means" to resolve the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. Because Iraq has never, not even for a split second, been in compliance with the terms of the cease-fire that temporarily ended hostilities in 1991, the Security Council members are fully authorized by the UN to use whatever means they see fit, including war, to achieve Iraqi compliance.
Speaking as an American who thinks that an act of aggression against a supinely compliant nation of children bombed and blockaded into disease and starvation for 12 years is a war crime...
Um. Which nation are you talking about, exactly? Iraq? Iraq isn't supinely compliant; they're openly defiant. They're obviously not a nation of children, and they haven't been blockaded into disease or starvation. Iraq's imports of food and medicine are not now and have never been affected by any of the various sanctions regimes imposed by the UN or the US. In fact, on many occasions representatives from the UN have pleaded with Iraq to import more food and medicine, but the Iraqi government refuses.
As for the rest of your post, it's unsubstantiated folderol. Would you care to provide an example, please, of "lies, propaganda, subterfuge, bribery and bullying threats" perpetrated by the Bush administration? And remember, this is a discussion of fact, not of opinion; simply posting a link to an editorial that accuses the administration of one of those things without substantiation is not going to convince anybody. Let's hear some facts, or let's drop it.
I have actually heard a high placed member of the Bush administration threaten to attack 'un-authorized' satelite links.
Who? Assuming you're not making this up-- no offense intended; I'm just being honest-- I probably know him. So who was it? Feel free to email me privately if you would prefer not to reveal the name in this forum.
There are three major ethnic groups with no particular mutual loyalty.
Two. There are two main ethnic groups in Iraq: Arabs, comprising 75%-80% of the population, and Kurds, comprising 15%-20%. All other ethnic groups add up to about one in twenty individuals.
There are, however, three main population groups: the Kurds, the Shiites, and the Sunnis. The Shiites are the majority with 60%-65% of the population, but the Sunnis make up the Baath party and most of the government and the officer ranks of the military.
The Kurds want to remain in Iraq as part of a new federal state; they have made great progress in their democratic, free market experiment of the last 12 years, and they are in no hurry to see that change. Besides, they're realists; they understand that Turkey is so opposed to a Kurdish state that it makes it possibility of one nearly nil.
The Iraqi Arabs have no particular hatred for each other; they disagree on religious issues, but not in a way that leads to separatism or acts of genocide.
All three main groups have committed to participation in the Iraqi Interim Authority and the new federal government.
You do know about the IIA, right? It's not like we'd go into this blind; we already have the framework for the post-Baath Iraq in place and ready to go. It's not going to be anywhere near as difficult as you think.
Long term US military occupation to hold the country together? We could be there for decades.
The plan calls for a military or military/civilian occupation of no more than two years, and probably considerably less. The plan is to keep most of the Iraqi ministries intact during the transitional period, then create a constitution and establish a new federal republic over the coming months.
We have the support of all the major Iraqi opposition groups in this; we've been meeting with them both in secret and openly over the past several years, and have built a consensus since about last December.
Iran may invade the south to protect its own stability
The Iraqi Shiites have no particular tie to Iran. They are from a different ethnic group-- the Iraqis are Arabs, and the Iranians are Persian and other groups; Arabs make up only 3% of Iran.
Turkey may invade the north for similar reasons
That was a real possibility until just recently. As long as there is no sovereign Kurdish state, the Turks will be satisfied with the post-Saddam situation.
The middle could either remain independent & feeble, or be absorbed by a neighbor.
Jordan. In fact, a proposal was floated early this year to partition Iraq into Kurdistan in the north, a sovereign Shiite state in the south neighboring Iran, and for the central part of the country (including Baghdad) and the western desert to become part of Jordan. Everybody-- everybody-- rejected the plan. The Turks hated the idea of a sovereign Kurdistan, because of their own troubles with KADEK; the Iraqi Kurds, on the other hand, have no particular love for KADEK-- KADEK is a Stalinist organization that advocates terrorism, while the Iraqi Kurds are dedicated to democracy and the free market-- so they're not eager to gain their own state, either. The Shiites and the Sunnis were equally unhappy with the idea, for their own reasons.
Basically, the idea that Iraq might break apart into separate countries is one of the least likely of all the possible endgame scenarios.
When your kids ask why we're constantly occupying chunks of the middle east, and why we're constantly worried about new terrorist incidents, why nobody can afford to buy gasoline anymore, etc -- remind them that this was the night it all started.
Geez, guy. Lighten up. Take a deep dose of facts, calm your fears, and relax. The State Department is not staffed entirely by idiots. They've already thought of all of this stuff, as well as plenty of things that you haven't even considered yet. They're pros; they know what t
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
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Strike on Iraq
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Read up on the bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, for example.
Where the targets were military and industrial targets, yes. And where many civilians died, yes. See, there was an important word thrown in there that you might have missed: deliberate. Something else was important as well: for the purpose of affecting political change through the infliction of mass casualties. If I bomb a city to destroy a port or an industrial district or a stronghold, and thousands of civilians die, that is a tragedy. But it's not terrorism. If I bomb a city for the sole purpose of inflicting terror, through which I hope to achieve my political goals, that's terrorism. And it is unacceptable.
War is evil. People engaged in war do evil things.
Sure. But painting the tragedy of war and the sheer monstrousness of terrorism with the same broad brush is wrong, wrong, wrong.
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However, no one currently is broadcasting a full 1920x1080i signal.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You're thinking of certain MPEG-2 encoders that interpolate a 1920x1080 raster to 1440x1080 before encoding. This is the exception, not the rule.
I thought the whole point of interlaced is that it updates half the lines at one time. So why would the signal send more data then the TV needs?
I'm confused. Here's how the signal looks: the TV gets 540 lines in 1/60th of a second, then 540 more lines in the other 60th of a second. Each of those lines contains 1920 pixels. The TV draws the first set of lines on the odd lines of the picture tube, and the second set of lines on the even lines of the tube. After 2/60ths (or 1/30th) of a second, the screen is displaying a 1920x1080 frame, with a total of 2,073,600 pixels. In total, after one second, 62.2 million pixels have been drawn in 30 frames.
A 720p signal works slightly differently. The TV gets 720 lines in 1/60th of a second; each of those lines contains 1280 pixels. The TV draws all 720 lines, from top to bottom. After 1/60th of a second, the TV gets another set of 720 lines and it draws those. After 1/30th of a second, the TV has drawn two complete 720p frames, or a total of 1,843,200 pixels. After one second, 55.3 million pixels have been drawn in 60 frames.
There's the difference: 1080i displays 30 high-resolution frames per second with the motion artifacts inherent in interlaced scanning, and 720p displays 60 lower-resolution frames per second with no motion artifacts.
Some people prefer 720p, some prefer 1080i, but 1080i is definitely a higher-spatial-resolution format.
IF thats true then there really are few benefits with this interlaced technology except the tv/monitor making cheapness.
More importantly, it's a matter of bandwidth. Not in terms of bits per second, but in terms of megahertz. You can squeeze a 1080i signal into a 6 MHz frequency band. You can't get a 1080/24p signal into the same band.
I certainly didn't see any semblance of US diplomacy reported in the media...
How do you define "diplomacy?" Every senior official in the administration spent pretty much every minute of their day in contact with administration officials from other governments. The president spent most of his time on the phone and in face-to-face meetings with heads of state of nations large and small alike. Every day right before lunch, Ari gets up at the podium and tells the pool what the president has been doing that morning. His briefings in the weeks leading up to the recent ultimatum were a laundry list of diplomatic efforts.
Instead, I saw the US "defiance" in refusing to believe that inspections were working.
Um. Inspections weren't working, in any meaningful sense of the word "working."
There would never be a moment, "even for a second," when Iraq would be able to comply with the Safwan Accords.
We gave Iraq an opportunity to do just that back in November, with 1441. They refused yet again.
Resolution 687 turned into a trap that we could spring on Saddam any time we wanted, as there was no way for him to satisfy us with his compliance if we didn't want to be satisfied.
You say again and again that the United States kept "moving the goalposts," and that we would never have been satisfied. What evidence to you have to support that idea? When have the goalposts ever been moved, short of early this week when we said that regime change was inevitable?
Let me ask this question again. When has Iraq ever come anywhere even close to compliance?
I could've been satisfied with the surrender terms if there was some sort of incentive for the Iraqis
Iraq had an opportunity to haggle over the cease-fire, in March, 1991, at Safwan. They didn't. They said "okay."
That said, if you want to argue that the world could have handled this situation better, you're not going to get much of a fight from me. Hindsight is always 20/20; it's easy to think that if we'd done this differently, or that differently, or if we had zigged when we zagged or what have you that the present situation might have been averted. But I don't really find that to be a very useful position to take when discussing what we ought to be doing right now. When we look back on this and collect the lessons of history, it'll be a good time to think about what we could have done differently. But sitting on your ass-- no offense-- and saying "The US blew it" doesn't get us anywhere in the present circumstance.
So why the disregard for diplomacy, and the rush to war?
One: because the diplomatic process was not accomplishing our goal. Our goal was compliance, and the diplomatic process wasn't getting that done. And as for a "rush to war," the past dozen years surely constitutes the slowest rush to war in all history.
it became obvious to any observer, Saddam included, that we were simply going to have our war, no matter what.
Friend, that's bullshit, and you know it. In September, 2002, President Bush upbraided the UN for not bringing the Iraqi conflict to a peaceful conclusion: disarmament according to the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. In response, UNSEC passed resolution 1441 which yet again reiterated the terms with which Iraq had already agreed to comply. Iraq never complied, even slightly, with those terms.
The idea that war was inevitable simply doesn't jive with the facts.
We could use our permament membership in the (broken) Security Council to ram through resolutions loaded up with any proof-burdens we wanted...
Is that so? Funny, we didn't have a very easy time "ramming through" a resolution that did nothing more than declare that Iraq wasn't in compliance with resolution 1441. Even such a simple resolution as that, one consisting of less than a page of whereas's and therefore's and concluding only with a simple, unequivocal statement
Actually, 720p > 1080i.
By what metric? Resolution? No, a 1080i picture has more spatial resolution than a 720p picture. A 720p signal has more temporal resolution, in terms of more complete frames per second, but less spatial resolution.
Bandwidth? No, a 1080i signal requires more bandwidth than a 720p signal. A 1080i signal includes one 1920x1080 frame (or two 1920x540 fields) thirty times per second. That's 62,208,000 pixels per second. A 720p signal includes one 1280x720 frame sixty times per second. That's 55,296,000 pixels per second.
Now, 720p does require the picture tube to do more work per unit time, but that has to do with the speed at which the gun has to scan to draw sixty progressive frames per second. It's more expensive to build a tube that can scan at 60 progressive frames per second than one that can scan 60 interlaced fields per second, so most consumer sets upconvert 720p to 1080i for display.
And for that matter they generally show 1080i at 540p anyway, unless you are ready to spend extra.
I certainly am not familiar with every set, but I've never seen one that downconverts 1080i to 540p. Maybe the very low-end ones do.
Yes, that's what I was talking about. Thanks for the clarification.
Don't misunderstand my point, though. I bought my KD34XB2 for $3,000 last summer, and I wouldn't go back for all the tea in China. Anybody who has any interest in watching sports or drama programming in HD and who has the wherewithal should make the investment.
You can get a pretty good 34" HDTV set that'll show the full res for about $2000.
The best direct-view HDTV on the market is Sony's; I don't recall the model number, but I have the slightly older KD34-XBR2. It has the highest actual resolution of any direct-view tube in the consumer market. It resolves about 800 lines of vertical resolution. That's not too shabby: 800 lines out of 1080. Pro tubes in studio monitors can resolve 1000 lines, but they're ten times more expensive.
So you can get a really good 34" HDTV for about $2,000, but it won't show everything there is to see in the HD picture.
Most HDTV broadcasts are two seperate pictures of 540 lines high (interlaced).
That's not really how it works. A 1080i picture captures a full 1080 lines of spatial resolution, sacrificing temporal resolution in order to do it. Each frame is 1080 lines high; the fact that the frame is captured and drawn in fields doesn't change the spatial resolution.
Compare a 1080i picture to a 480p picture on the same, high-quality monitor, and you'll be able to see the difference. It's like night and day.
Watching Football or Basketball on the flickering 540 line high displays is painful.
Oh, no it's not. During the season I watched SEC football and some NFL playoff games on CBS in 1080i. It was very, very easy on the eyes. In fact, thanks to CBS's investment in gear and experienced production engineers, it looked a heck of a lot better than ABC's 720p Superbowl broadcast.
And did you watch the Grammys in 1080i? Wow. An amazing, reference-quality broadcast. Possibly the best program in terms of overall picture quality ever broadcast over the air.
"Reverse 3/2 pulldown" - yuck. Movies originated as 24FPS film, when encoded as HDTV, should be in 24FPS 1080p.
Once you pass a 1080/30i signal through reverse 3:2 pulldown, it is a 1080/24p signal. Once you remove the extra frames that 3:2 adds, and resuffle the fields back into their original order, you end up with precisely what the camera recorded.
And most current TVs don't display anywhere near 1920, more like 1440 or 1280.
That's not quite accurate, at least when it comes to direct-view HDTV's. Some HDTV's down-sample a 1080i signal to a 720p signal, but most of them actually display the full 1080i picture. The thing, though, is that the picture tube isn't capable of resolving a picture that fine. The best consumer picture tubes on the market can resolve about 800 lines of resolution; these sets cost $2,000-$4,000. The best professional tubes can resolve about 1,000 lines, but they cost, literally, ten times more.
So the TV tries to display the full 1920x1080 picture-- it scans all the pixels-- but the tube isn't capable of resolving it.
This is kinda funny -- obviously, they're not pros, or our diplomatic efforts would've been more effective.
You don't write for the Times, do you? The position that this war is the result of a failure of diplomacy cannot be argued with. The position that the failure was on the part of the United States is as absurd as it is widespread.
Iraq has never, not even for a second, been in compliance with the Safwan Accords. On a foundation of defiance, diplomacy cannot succeed. Even if the entire world had done everything perfectly every time, diplomacy still would have failed, because Iraq still would have been in blatant defiance of the cease-fire to which they agreed.
Basically the diplomatic process was doomed from the start here. We started with the position that the terms of the cease-fire were not open for negotiation, and that Iraq was unwilling to comply with those terms. From there, there's simply nowhere to go but down.
It's our fault for getting caught telling lies and fabrications on the floor of the UN
Sorry, but that never happened. It turns out that one piece of information that the US turned over to the IAEA was false, but we simply passed on what we knew in good faith. It's unfortunate that everybody was equally fooled by that document.
and for not finding any of the "obvious" WMD that would've provided a pretext
Are you familiar with the concept of burden of proof? I'm not trying to be pedantic; it's entirely possible that you may not have heard the term. In a criminal trial, people often talk abou the burden of proof. What they mean is that it is the responsibility of the prosecution to demonstrate that a crime took place, and that the defense is under no obligation to prove that one didn't. If the prosecution fails to prove their case, the defendant is acquitted.
This wasn't a criminal trial; the burden of proof was flip-flopped in this case. In this case, the burden of proof, as established by Security Council resolutions, was on Iraq to prove that they had no proscribed weapons. They didn't do that. There was no burden of proof on the US or any other party to prove that they did; it was, put simply, not the responsibility of the United States or any other nation to prove that Iraq had proscribed weapons. It was the responsibility of Iraq to declare their weapons and weapons programs, and then submit to their destruction under UNSCOM supervision. That process never even got off the ground.
and for prolonging policies of thumbing the nose at UN resolutions in some parts of the world (Israel-Palestine?), while sanctimoniously demanding letter-of-the-law adherence to UN resolutions in others.
This gets back to the issue of the way the UN works. There are three kinds of UN resolutions as defined by the Charter. General Assembly resolutions carry no authority; they are binding on the members to which they apply, but neither the member states nor the Assembly itself has any authority to enforce GA resolutions. Security Council resolutions adopted under chapter VI of the Charter are the same way: they're technically binding, in the sense that the member states of the UN agreed to abide by them when they signed the Charter, but neither the member states nor the Council has any authority to enforce its resolutions. If UNSEC adopts a chapter VI resolution that a country (say, Israel) fails to abide by, nobody can legally do anything about it except shrug and say, "Well, that sucks." This is a design feature, if you will, of the UN Charter.
Chapter VII of the Charter, on the other hand, provides for a different type of resolution. Resolutions adopted by UNSEC under chapter VII are not only binding, they're also enforceable. If UNSEC chooses, it can call on the member states to act, either with military force or through other means like sanctions, to enforce chapter VII resolutions. When that happens, the members of the Council are not only authorized but actually required, by the Ch
Yeah, her and every other news source that's reporting the same story.
Again: like who? If you've got evidence, provide it. Let's see it, so we can look at it and evaluate it critically. Let's leave the conspiracy theories at the door and deal with facts, okay?
You're mistaken in a small way and a big way.
The small way is this: the United Nations does not have an exclusive license to wage war. In point of fact, the Security Council has only authorized military action twice in all history: in 1950 the Council authorized what was to become the Korean War, and in 1990 the council passed 678 to authorize the forceable ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. In fact, we only got an UNSEC resolution in 1950 because of a quirk of fate: the Soviet foreign minister wasn't in the room, and wasn't given an opportunity to veto, which was their declared intention. Kind of a cheat, but that's the stuff that history is made of.
But there's a bigger way in which you're mistaken: the Security Council has already provided explicit authorization for all members of the Security Council to use force. Resolution 678 says:(You can read the whole thing yourself by typing "687" into Google and clicking "I feel lucky." The first hit is this link.)
The resolution authorizes the use of force to "restore international peace and security." UNSEC has agreed, on numerous occasions, that the area has not been restored to peace and security; Iraq was most recently declared, in November, to be in material breach of its obligations, and a criterion was established by which to measure Iraq's immediate cooperation. Iraq did not meet that criterion: the declaration they submitted on December 7 was neither complete nor accurate. The authorization still stands, and has never been rescinded. Not only has it never been rescinded; nobody's even suggested that it should be rescinded.
The logical and legal authority for this war is crystal clear.
Resolution 678 says that "all necessary means" are allowed to enforce resolution 660.
S/RES/678 (1990)
29 November 1990
RESOLUTION 678 (1990)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 2963rd meeting on 29 November 1990
The Security Council,
Recalling, and reaffirming its resolutions 660 (1990) of 2 August (1990), 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 662 (1990) of 9 August 1990, 664 (1990) of 18 August 1990, 665 (1990) of 25 August 1990, 666 (1990) of 13 September 1990, 667 (1990) of 16 September 1990, 669 (1990) of 24 September 1990, 670 (1990) of 25 September 1990, 674 (1990) of of 29 October 1990 and 677 (1990) of 28 November 1990.
Noting that, despite all efforts by the United Nations, Iraq refuses to comply with its obligation to implement resolution 660 (1990) and the above-mentioned subsequent relevant resolutions, in flagrant contempt of the Security Council,
Mindful of its duties and responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance and preservation of internationalnd peace and security,
Determined to secure full compliance with its decisions,
Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter,
1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and decides, while maintaining all its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwil, to do so;
2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;
3. Requests all States to provide appropriate support for the actions undertaken in pursuance of paragraph 2 of the present resolution;
4. Requests the States concerned to keep the Security Council regularly informed on the progress of actions undertaken pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3 of the present resolution;
5. Decides to remain seized of the matter.
The fact that words can be misused is not at issue here. There are terrorists and there are soldiers, organized or guerilla. Terrorists are a fundamentally different class, criminals of the highest order. Under no circumstances should the line between the two be blurred. Legitimate fighters should never be called terrorists, though as you point out sometimes they are, and terrorists must never be confused for actual warriors.
Besides, I've heard the same story being reported by several other news sources and agencies.
Like who? I don't know Ms. Adie, I have no intention of slandering her, but she's the "odd man out." She says X while everybody else in the pool says Y. The only way to reconcile that, in the absence of additional evidence, is that she's mistaken. So if you've got additional evidence, let's hear it.
Please, let's not make the truth any more a casualty of this war/invasion than it already is.
None of us has a monopoly on truth, here. All we can do is look at the facts, separate them from the opinion, and try to infer the truth. Ms. Adie's assertion is more opinion than fact.
687 (Chapter VI) is NOT enforcable
Both 678 and 687 were adopted under chapter VII. Resolution 687 includes the line, "Conscious of the need to take the following measures acting under Chapter VII of the Charter." But other than that, yes, you've got the right idea.
Heresay of the worst kind. A reporter says that she was told something that was obviously misunderstood, if it was ever said at all. Why obviously? Because that is the exact opposite of the Pentagon's oft-repeated policy.
Hell, controls on reporters are so lax right now that a journalist speaking on Liddy's radio show today revealed operational details of the unit in which he is-- or maybe was-- embedded. He said, live and over the air, where they were staging, what their target was, and what kind of resistance they expected to meet, leaving no detail out. Hardly the iron-fist approach that Ms. Adie claimed.
Probably what happened is this: a Pentagon official, speaking on background, told her about one of the weapons in our arsenal, a radiation-seeking missile called HARM. Fire one of those and it homes in on the strongest radio source it can find. We use those missiles primarily to take out radar facilities, but we can also use them to sever wireless communications links. She probably misunderstood and asked, "What if it's a journalist broadcasting on television?" To which the Pentagon official replied, "Well... they've been warned." Or something like that.
That's a much more likely scenario than the thought that there's a secret plan to kill unruly journos and only Ms. Adie knows about it. Occam's Razor, don't you know.
It's hard to be in violations of UN laws when you can just veto any resolution that you don't agree with.
If you want to assert that the Security Council is broken by design and badly in need of remodeling, you'll get no argument from me. But the question was whether the US is in defiance of the Council, and the answer is a most resounding "no."
No, you're missing the point. I'm not sure what Iraq is signatory to and what it isn't, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that in March, 1991, Iraq agreed to the terms of a cease-fire agreement that would eventually pave the way for a peace treaty ending the war. One of the terms of that cease-fire, embodied in UNSEC resolution 687, was that Iraq had to disarm itself. (There were others, notably one on the repatriation of Kuwaiti citizens, of which Iraq is also in defiance.)
If one of the terms of the cease-fire had been that Saddam Hussein had to put on a grass skirt and read "Goodnight, Moon" in front of a warmly applauding audience, then that's what he would have had to do. Nonprolif. treaty or no nonprolif. treaty.
Unprovoked attack=War crime in my book.
So the 1991 war was a war crime? You remember, the one called for by the UN, which the United States led? Even though the United States hadn't been attacked, or even threatened?
You have a very naive view of what constitutes a legal war, my friend.
There is no evidence that Saddam gassed his own people.
Okay. I don't agree, but for sake of argument, okay. So?
How do the US know he has these weapons? They checked the receipts. UK and US are who sold them to him.
Again, okay. I don't agree-- in point of fact, many countries, including France and Russia, have provided Iraq with weapons and weapon precursors that are now proscribed; Iraq got their first weapons-related nuclear reactor from France, and all those fancy-schmancy Scud missiles that Iraq had in 1991 came from the USSR. But okay. Again, so? You have successfuly demonstrated that the United States of America is not perfect. Whoopty-shit.
The attack is without UN backing.
As a matter of fact, it isn't. The United States, along with all the other members of the UN Security Council, is authorized explicitly under UNSCR 678 to use "all necessary means" to resolve the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. Because Iraq has never, not even for a split second, been in compliance with the terms of the cease-fire that temporarily ended hostilities in 1991, the Security Council members are fully authorized by the UN to use whatever means they see fit, including war, to achieve Iraqi compliance.
Speaking as an American who thinks that an act of aggression against a supinely compliant nation of children bombed and blockaded into disease and starvation for 12 years is a war crime...
Um. Which nation are you talking about, exactly? Iraq? Iraq isn't supinely compliant; they're openly defiant. They're obviously not a nation of children, and they haven't been blockaded into disease or starvation. Iraq's imports of food and medicine are not now and have never been affected by any of the various sanctions regimes imposed by the UN or the US. In fact, on many occasions representatives from the UN have pleaded with Iraq to import more food and medicine, but the Iraqi government refuses.
As for the rest of your post, it's unsubstantiated folderol. Would you care to provide an example, please, of "lies, propaganda, subterfuge, bribery and bullying threats" perpetrated by the Bush administration? And remember, this is a discussion of fact, not of opinion; simply posting a link to an editorial that accuses the administration of one of those things without substantiation is not going to convince anybody. Let's hear some facts, or let's drop it.
I have actually heard a high placed member of the Bush administration threaten to attack 'un-authorized' satelite links.
Who? Assuming you're not making this up-- no offense intended; I'm just being honest-- I probably know him. So who was it? Feel free to email me privately if you would prefer not to reveal the name in this forum.
There are three major ethnic groups with no particular mutual loyalty.
Two. There are two main ethnic groups in Iraq: Arabs, comprising 75%-80% of the population, and Kurds, comprising 15%-20%. All other ethnic groups add up to about one in twenty individuals.
There are, however, three main population groups: the Kurds, the Shiites, and the Sunnis. The Shiites are the majority with 60%-65% of the population, but the Sunnis make up the Baath party and most of the government and the officer ranks of the military.
The Kurds want to remain in Iraq as part of a new federal state; they have made great progress in their democratic, free market experiment of the last 12 years, and they are in no hurry to see that change. Besides, they're realists; they understand that Turkey is so opposed to a Kurdish state that it makes it possibility of one nearly nil.
The Iraqi Arabs have no particular hatred for each other; they disagree on religious issues, but not in a way that leads to separatism or acts of genocide.
All three main groups have committed to participation in the Iraqi Interim Authority and the new federal government.
You do know about the IIA, right? It's not like we'd go into this blind; we already have the framework for the post-Baath Iraq in place and ready to go. It's not going to be anywhere near as difficult as you think.
Long term US military occupation to hold the country together? We could be there for decades.
The plan calls for a military or military/civilian occupation of no more than two years, and probably considerably less. The plan is to keep most of the Iraqi ministries intact during the transitional period, then create a constitution and establish a new federal republic over the coming months.
We have the support of all the major Iraqi opposition groups in this; we've been meeting with them both in secret and openly over the past several years, and have built a consensus since about last December.
Iran may invade the south to protect its own stability
The Iraqi Shiites have no particular tie to Iran. They are from a different ethnic group-- the Iraqis are Arabs, and the Iranians are Persian and other groups; Arabs make up only 3% of Iran.
Turkey may invade the north for similar reasons
That was a real possibility until just recently. As long as there is no sovereign Kurdish state, the Turks will be satisfied with the post-Saddam situation.
The middle could either remain independent & feeble, or be absorbed by a neighbor.
Jordan. In fact, a proposal was floated early this year to partition Iraq into Kurdistan in the north, a sovereign Shiite state in the south neighboring Iran, and for the central part of the country (including Baghdad) and the western desert to become part of Jordan. Everybody-- everybody-- rejected the plan. The Turks hated the idea of a sovereign Kurdistan, because of their own troubles with KADEK; the Iraqi Kurds, on the other hand, have no particular love for KADEK-- KADEK is a Stalinist organization that advocates terrorism, while the Iraqi Kurds are dedicated to democracy and the free market-- so they're not eager to gain their own state, either. The Shiites and the Sunnis were equally unhappy with the idea, for their own reasons.
Basically, the idea that Iraq might break apart into separate countries is one of the least likely of all the possible endgame scenarios.
When your kids ask why we're constantly occupying chunks of the middle east, and why we're constantly worried about new terrorist incidents, why nobody can afford to buy gasoline anymore, etc -- remind them that this was the night it all started.
Geez, guy. Lighten up. Take a deep dose of facts, calm your fears, and relax. The State Department is not staffed entirely by idiots. They've already thought of all of this stuff, as well as plenty of things that you haven't even considered yet. They're pros; they know what t
Read up on the bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, for example.
Where the targets were military and industrial targets, yes. And where many civilians died, yes. See, there was an important word thrown in there that you might have missed: deliberate. Something else was important as well: for the purpose of affecting political change through the infliction of mass casualties. If I bomb a city to destroy a port or an industrial district or a stronghold, and thousands of civilians die, that is a tragedy. But it's not terrorism. If I bomb a city for the sole purpose of inflicting terror, through which I hope to achieve my political goals, that's terrorism. And it is unacceptable.
War is evil. People engaged in war do evil things.
Sure. But painting the tragedy of war and the sheer monstrousness of terrorism with the same broad brush is wrong, wrong, wrong.