How about hot swappable CPU's and memory? I know SGI hardware can do it.
No, it can't, unless something really incredibly drastic has happened in the past few months. IRIX is, in my opinion, the best UNIX operating system out there, but it's not perfect when it comes to dynamically reconfiguring the system. Just hot-plugging a fibre channel device requires re-walking the entire hardware graph, a process on a big machine that can take several minutes.
How about 2TB for a single file on XFS?
You're underestimating a bit. The file size limit on XFS on 64-bit architectures is not 2 TB, but 9 million terabytes.
Just because one thing is broken doesn't mean you should leave other things broken.
Fix what's important first, and worry about the small things later.
Somebody accessed patient data at Indiana University Center for Sleep Disorders through a Trojan horse. Last month, somebody got ahold of 8 million credit card numbers, and while the details of the theft haven't been released yet, you can be sure it wasn't through HTTP.
If you want to waste your time implementing security measures that won't help and ignoring those that will, that's your business. But if you do, don't make the mistake of thinking that you're doing a good job.
No, it's not. Saying that it's a loaded word implies that you buy in to all of that revisionist, deconstructionist claptrap, which, if true, would disappoint me greatly. "Discover" means "to uncover," or "to see or know for the first time." That's all.
People are denied medicine that works and are made to suffer needlessly because a small number rationalist adherents have not (or cannot) measure the effictiveness of these cures that lie outside of thier narrow bands of knowledge and experience.
Um. What the hell? People are denied access to treatments that have not yet been proven to be safe and effective. Why? Because if they weren't our overburdened public health system would be even more overburdened by damn fools who poison themselves after reading on the Internet that a tea made from crab grass and apple cider can cure the common whatever.
In our system, doctors do not have the freedom to turn patients away. A doctor must treat any patient who shows up on his floor, regardless of their condition, their ability to pay, or whether or not they got themselves into this mess. Consequently, we place limits on what people may and may not do in the interest of keeping most everybody mostly healthy most of the time. If you don't like it, come up with another system that works. And don't give me any of that libertarian blah-blah-blah; I said a system that works.
Because someone somewhere has now said that it is "doubtful" that life exists there, (based on a mile high submarine sandwitch of false assumptions) mission plans might be altered and we will not get to see Europa close up.
Maybe, maybe not. If we're going to see the pretty fishies, we'd probably be wiser to spend our money on something else, because it's not too likely that there are any pretty fishies there to be seen.
And by the way, which assumptions are false, anyway? Since you seem to know better than everybody else, I mean.
Why? "Discovered" means "observed for the first time." Saying that a thing which has just been seen for the first time is "newly discovered" is just fine.
You're describing a conspiracy between Queda and Iraq that has *zero* evidence to support it. Who's chasing UFOs?
You are, dude. Just because you deny the existence of evidence doesn't mean it's not there. For those who don't feel like clicking a link, it's a press release from last week from the Department of the Treasury that says, in relevant part:
AI [Ansar al Islam] is a terrorist group operating in northeastern Iraq with close links to and support from al-Qa?ida. Al-Qa?ida and Usama bin Laden participated in the formation and funding of Ansar al-Islam, and AI has provided safe haven to al-Qa?ida in northeastern Iraq. AI?s predecessor, Jund al-Islam, was formed in September 2001. AI came into being with the ?blessing? of bin Laden after its leaders visited al-Qa?ida in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001. Bin Laden provided AI with an estimated $300,000 to $600,000 in seed money.
The connection between Ansar al Islam and Iraqi military intelligence is, of course, well documented.
If Powells pictures of "Queda" bases were really bases, we would have destroyed them already. It's what we do everywhere else.
Were you even listening to the presentation, or did you just look at the slides afterwards? The camps shown belong to Ansar al Islam, which is kind of like a sister group to al Qaeda. It was, as the above quote says, founded with Osama bin Laden's personal seed money, and it has close ties to al Qaeda.
That it's run by a military dictatorship has no bearing whatsoever on whether it is a westernized culture.
I won't presume to speak for what siskbc meant, but when one uses the word "westernized," one is typically talking about more than jeans and fast food. It's tough to imagine any country were you can be arrested, tortured, and summarily executed for no reason at all to be called "westernized."
So no documentation is valid unless it supports your views; a single newspaper article conforming to your expectations is sufficient, but it's clear that the videotape of Saddam conversing with the US ambassador would not be "a fact".
Um. We all know what Ambassador Glaspie said to President Hussein. We've all seen the tapes and read the transcripts. My point is that what transpired at that meeting does not support your thesis, which is that the US greenlighted the invasion of Kuwait.
BTW, for Niven, I think Ringworld should be required reading for all high school physics students.
Mr. Niven's short story "Neutron Star" is a much better reading list item for physics students, both because it explains tidal forces in a way that is pretty visceral and because it includes a serious mistake that Mr. Niven admitted to but couldn't figure out how to fix in subsequent printings. Bonus points to whichever student can figure out what the mistake was. (No cheating; Mr. Niven has explained it in print on a number of occasions, so you can find it easily if you look for it.)
I will point to this link instead of retyping the same data, but this is all well known now.
If by "well known" you mean "oft repeated," then we agree. But oft repeated does not mean correct. The course of events simply didn't unfold the way that web page (which has been copied all over the Internet, incidentally) says they did.
Your case would be stronger if you included the data that does not perfectly fit your views.
Which data? If you're referring to that web page again, I don't see any data on it. I see some absurd accusations-- "You thought he was just going to take SOME of it? But how COULD YOU?!"-- but that's all. So which data are you referring to?
I continue to believe that US attacks on Iraq are driven by economic and political issues in the USA.
You are free to believe whatever you want. The rest of us will base our opinions on the facts instead.
No, it's not. An ad hom attack would be if, for example, I said that you're ugly, or that you're stupid. Instead, I pointed out that you are expressing an opinion that is unsupported by any facts whatsoever, and therefore that your argument is not even worth the time required to address it. (Then I went ahead and addressed it anyway, just proving that I'm not very good at managing my time.)
Dr. Malthus said war is a result of population and economic pressures. You disagree?
Yes. Malthus is a favorite of high school debate team captains, but not particularly well regarded in the real world. The mere mention of the name of Malthus inside the Beltway is snicker-inducing.
Here's a few papers you might want to read, though...
Okay, so we've established that conflict affects the price of commodites. It was not necessary to cite sources to demonstrate that. It's patently obvious. When I asked for sources, I was specifically referring to any sort of source, primary or otherwise, that linked US government policy in Iraq to oil companies in a causal way. Find me one source that says, for example, "Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz received 10,000 shares of oil futures as an under-the-table gift from Exxon-Mobile in January, 2002." Simply saying that oil prices are affected by global conflict does not mean that global conflicts are motivated by people who want to influence oil prices.
Since you accused me of ad hom, I'll throw one right back at you: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
How do US attempts to destabilize the legitimate government of Venezuala fit in with the theory of market manipulation by the President? Quite nicely, thank you.
Actually, you're right. US attempts to destabilize the government of Venezuela do fit in quite nicely with the theory of market manipulation by the president. How? They're both fiction.
Second, inspections worked pretty well from '91-'98, with no real help from Iraq.
On what do you base that conclusion? Between 1991 and 1998, UNSEC passed more than a dozen resolutions condemning Iraq's defiance, and demanding immediate compliance. It finally got to the point in 1998 where Iraq simply declared that they would no longer cooperate with UNSCOM at all. How do you interpret that as "worked pretty well?"
Something near 80% of stockpiles destroyed due to inspections, right?
We haven't the foggiest idea. We have no idea what Iraq's stockpiles consist of. The figure may be 100%, or it may be 10%. We have no way of knowing, because Iraq refuses to tell us.
And even if inspections aren't good at finding secret caches of buried weapons, they seem pretty good at preventing new development.
According to Iraqi defectors, this is not the case. According to defectors, Iraq's nuclear program in 1994 was stronger than it had been before the war:
Four years later, the international agency was so certain that it had eradicated the Iraqi nuclear program that it wanted to end aggressive inspections in favor of passive "monitoring." Then a slew of defectors came out of Iraq ? including Hussein Kamel al-Majid, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who led the Iraqi program to build weapons of mass destruction; Wafiq al-Samarrai, one of Saddam Hussein's intelligence chiefs; and Khidhir Hamza, a leading scientist with the nuclear weapons program. These defectors reported that outside pressure had not only failed to eradicate the nuclear program, it was bigger and more cleverly spread out and concealed than anyone had imagined it to be.
In the late 1990's, American and international nuclear experts again concluded that the Iraqi nuclear program was dormant: yes, the scientists were still working in teams; yes, they still had all of the plans; and yes, they probably were hiding some machinery ? but they were not making any progress. Then another batch of important defectors escaped to Europe and told Western intelligence services that after the inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Saddam Hussein had started a crash program to build a nuclear weapon and that the Iraqis had devised methods to hide the effort.
I do agree that it would be a lot easier with genuine Iraqi compliance, but that's a lot to expect of any country in a region so volatile.
I'm a little unclear on this point. Are you saying that we (by "we" I mean both the Allies and UNSEC) should back down from our demands on Iraq which have stood since 1991, and which Iraq has accepted in full, because they're a lot to ask?
Given that any government must have the at-least-tacit approval of its people, what is so unnatural about democracy?
Your premise is incorrect. A government does not need the approval of its people. The Taliban did not have the approval of its people; it stayed in power as long as it did through domination and intimidation. The Baath government does not have the approval of its people; it has stayed in power as long as it has through domination and intimidation. (Incidentally, the House of Saud doesn't have the approval of its people either, but it's stayed in power through appeasement rather than through violence. Better, but still hardly legitimate in the western sense of the word.)
Any time these two things coexist, democracies sprout like weeds.
Democracies have never sprouted like weeds. Ever.
I don't buy that a single man, or the Ba'ath party, can forcibly subjugate an entire country.
I mean, seriously, the documentation is another straw man.
Um. The documentation is the key point here. UN resolutions going all the way back to 687 require Iraq to produce a complete and accurate declaration of their weapons programs. The inspectors would then use this declaration to destroy or verify the destruction of all of those assets. Without a declaration, the inspectors have nothing to do.
(UNSCR 687, incidentally, called for this declaration to be submitted within 90 days. As of today, it has been 4,348 days. The declaration is slightly overdue.)
Iraq's failure to produce a full and accurate declaration is not a straw man. It is the absolute center of this conflict.
At this point, unless God himself rides down from the heavens...
Blah, blah. Hyperbole and misrepresentation. The US will accept three outcomes. Either (1) Iraq will immediately comply fully and completely with relevant UN resolutions, (b) Saddam Hussein and his staff and family will accept exile and leave Iraq forever; taking their place will be a new regime that will immediately comply fully and completely with relevant UN resolutions, or (iii) the US will lead a coalition, with or without UN approval, to remove Saddam Hussein and his Baath government by force and replace them with a new regime that will immediately comply fully and completely with relevant UN resolutions.
There are two easy ways to avoid war. Mr. Hussein is free to choose either of them, or he's free to sit back and watch while Allied forces march into Baghdad. He does not, however, have any other options available to him at this time.
You left out the part where US Ambassador April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein the green light to attack the nasty little slave-trafficking dictatorship of Kuwait. Kind of a key moment I think.
Once again, a history lesson is in order. It continues to amaze me how events that happened a mere dozen years ago could be so misremembered and misinterpreted now.
In the days leading up to the invasion, the United States asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to visit Baghdad and ascertain President Hussein's intentions. During his visit with Mr. Hussein, Mr. Mubarak asked him if he planned to invade Kuwait. He responded that he did not, and that he expected the crisis over oil prices to be averted soon. Mr. Mubarak asked him again, and Mr. Hussein said again that he would not, under any circumstances, send his troops into Kuwait.
Mr. Mubarak left Baghdad later that day, and immediately relayed that information to Washington. During the same period, similar messages were sent to Washington by Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. All signs pointed to the conclusion that the build-up of troops along the Kuwaiti border was nothing more than saber rattling, that the Emir would soon give in to Iraq's demands, and that the crisis would soon be over. Richard Haass, National Security Council director for Near East and South Asian affairs, prepared a report outlining three possibilities: one, that Iraq was simply trying to intimidate the Emir; two, that Iraq was preparing to seize one or more northern Kuwaiti oil fields; three, that Iraq was preparing for an all-out invasion. He concluded that the third scenario was by far the least likely.
Ambassador Glaspie knew these things when President Hussein summoned her on the 25th of July. When he asked her about the US position, she replied with the now famous line, "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts." Why? Because everybody in the US government, from Glaspie to the president, believed it was just a simple dispute that was, in fact, already well on the way to a resolution.
We blew it. We completely misinterpreted Hussein's intentions. (Then again, so did the rest of the Arabian peninsula.) Did we give Hussein a green light to invade Kuwait? Absolutely not.
No, the Gulf War was about using the military to artificially manipulate the price of domestic oil.
Oh, whatever. It's funny the way the world works. You think you're talking to somebody perfectly normal and reasonable and rational, and then the next thing you know he's on about how the Jews are at the center of an international conspiracy, or how space aliens built the pyramids, or how the Gulf War was about oil prices.
Kinda sad, really. There are so many people in the world who are healthy, productive citizens except for the fact that they're raging nutballs.
Just to give at least a cursory pass at the thesis of your post: can you produce one document, one interview, one photograph... hell, let's skip the primary sources. Can you even produce one credible news story-- i.e., not one printed opposite a story about the Zionists or the pyramids-- that links the 1991 Gulf War with oil producers in any way, shape, or form?
Because just making stuff up and then citing Occam's Razor is not the same as understanding history.
Oh, that. Mark Phillips, huh? Are you familiar with his other work? He's the correspondent who reported Baghdad's claims that an epidemic of cancer was caused by the Allies' use of depleted uranium shells in the war. He's well known in the journalistic community for not being afraid of running an unconfirmed story for the headline value of it.
Way back in 1990, he ran a story claiming that damage to the Earth's ozone layer, unless repaired, would lead to plagues of cancer and turn much of the Earth into desert, all behind the CYA of "scientists predict." Of course, that was completely untrue.
I pulled this one out of my files. In the summer of 2001, he linked bad weather (now believed to have been caused by El Nino) to the Kyoto treaty. "Around the world, the anger runs as deep as the floodwaters being blamed on the global warming the Kyoto treaty was supposed to fight. President Bush says he's putting American economic interests first in rejecting Kyoto and in Britain, where they're having their wettest winter ever, they sadly agree."
The list goes on and on. The point is, this story has been picked up and widely repeated, but not independently confirmed. Given Mr. Phillips's history as a journalist, I would not be terribly surprised to find that he-- most likely inadvertently; I'm not accusing him of anything, but he does have this habit-- based his story on the opinions of one or two highly biased individuals without bothering to get confirmation of their assertions from other sources.
If we get independent confirmation of this, let me know. Until then, I'm not convinced.
Now, on the other point, let's ignore the whole Scott Ritter thing for a second. (I mean, the guy isn't exactly the most credible individual, you know?) What did he say in that Kyodo News article?
One: he said that the evidence presented in Secretary Powell's report was circumstantial. Mr. Ritter was confused. The United States wasn't trying to present evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We were presenting evidence of Iraqi non-compliance with the inspections program. In that context, the evidence was not circumstantial; it was quite damning. But since Mr. Ritter has been saying for years that the burden of proof should be on the Allies to demonstrate that Iraq does have WMD's, it's easy to understand why he would be confused on this point.
Two: he said many things in the presentation should be properly investigated. That's when he talked about the modified vehicle mentioned in the intercepts. Again, those intercepts were not evidence that Iraq has modified vehicles. They were evidence that Iraq is not complying with UN resolutions. The point was not that they should be investigated. The point was that Iraq is concealing things from the inspectors, and is therefore not in compliance with UN resolutions.
Three: he talked about anthrax and about satellite imagery. He said that there's no evidence that Iraq has dry anthrax, and that (apparently) he doesn't know how to interpret a satellite photo. These are also examples of his missing the point.
Four: Okay, now we get to the good stuff. "You know who came up with the idea of mobile trucks? The inspectors... We sat back one day and said, 'If we were the Iraqis, how would we hide biological production? We'd put them on trucks."' So Mr. Ritter is asserting, with no foundation whatsoever, that the information we received from Iraqi defectors was completely false, based on the idea that he claims to have come up with the idea himself? Gee, Mr. Ritter, you know it's not that complex, or even that new, an idea. Has it occurred to you that both you and the Iraqis might have stumbled upon it independently?
Evidently not. "You can never expect the inspectors to find these 18 trucks," he said, because "these trucks don't exist."
Well, okay, then. Scott has spoken, everybody! Inspectors out of the pool!
Five: Finally, Mr. Ritter pointed out that information from defectors might be misleading. Okay. And it might not. How do you tell the stuff that is from the stuff that isn't? If Iraq were in compliance, it would be easy. Since they're not, it's very hard, and we have no choice but to treat every piece of information as if it were gold-plated. The question is not which pieces of information are true; it's which pieces are credible. You can't just look at credible intelligence and say, "Nope, isn't true. Don't buy it. Those trucks don't exist."
The bottom line is this: let's say I went to the UN and said, "They come in pretty colors, and they sing sweet songs." Scott Ritter got up the next morning and said, "Twirlip's presentation included absolutely no conclusive evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." Does that make sense? No, because I wasn't arguing that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. I was arguing that birds are nice.
Secretary Powell was not arguing that Iraq has WMD's. He made this point perfectly clear within the first two minutes of his presentation. He was arguing simply that Iraq is not in compliance with UN resolutions.
That's the position of the United States of America, and that's why we're getting ready for war.
My argument, which you did not bother to refute...
As I said, your argument is irrelevant. If you have a personal pet cause, that's fine. Good luck with it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq conflict, which is the topic of our little discussion.
A gradual assault will force these assets to come into the open, where they can be targeted and destroyed.
Yes, sir, General. A hundred years of military theory disagrees with you, but what do they know? Sorry I ever doubted you, sir.;-)
No, my goal is to protect myself from terrorist attack.
Wrong. We're not pursuing Iraq because of the Bush Doctrine. We're pursuing Iraq because they invaded Kuwait. We're pursuing Iraq hard, now because of the Bush Doctrine, but that's not the same thing.
It will be difficult to have an intelligent conversation on this subject until you get a grip on the why of this conflict.
Rushing into a war like this will encourage anti-American sentiment for the next 40 years.
Twelve years: longest rush ever.
Rushing into war will encourage anti-American sentiment. Not rushing into war encourages anti-American sentiment. Putting ketchup on a hot dog encourages anti-American sentiment.
People are going to hate America. They're going to hate us because we're the most affluent, the most free, the strongest, the most successful. Pick a reason, and somebody's going to hate us for it. Letting the fact that somebody is going to hate us if we act dictate American policy decisions-- especially in light of the fact that somebody's also going to hate us if we don't-- is foolish.
My goal- for no one to see the US as an enemy- is well served by the No-Fly Zones, where life is a vertiable paradise.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you? Veritable paradise? Are you joking?
I have learned the hard way that the "I know this is true for reasons I can't or won't discuss" argument doesn't really work too well. I also am privy to a great deal of information that I don't feel comfortable-- or simply can't-- discuss here. But I've learned that the best approach is simply to keep that information to myself and argue with only the facts that are already in the public domain.
The bottom line here is that the leadership of the Department of Defense disagree with your assessment. They think a hundred-hour battle and an up-to-two-year occupation is the way to go to accomplish our goal. (Compliance, remember?) If you can demonstrate that you're more qualified than the leadership of the Department of Defense, or that you've got some information or insight that they lack, then I will be happy to listen to you and give due consideration to what you have to say.
Heck, you may even change my opinion.
Now, that said, we most certainly do know where the targets are. We know where the Special Republican Guard barracks are. (We also know which ones are near which elementary schools.) We know where the telephone switching stations are. We know where the secret police headquarters is. We know where the ministry of propaganda is. We know where Muthena airfield is. We know where the Baath party headquarters is. We know where the Karada and Jumhuriya and Ashudad bridges are. We know quite a bit about Baghdad in particular, and Iraq in general.
If Saddam does this to fellow Muslums, what would he do to infidels like us?
That raises an interesting point. Mr. Hussein has never been a devout Muslim. He once sent two mullahs-- holy men-- to negotiate with the Kurds. They carried concealed bombs, which were detonated remotely. It's never been clear whether the two men knew they were carrying explosives or not; they may have been willing suicides, or they may not have been. In either case, nothing even remotely like that could be said to be compatible with Islam.
But in recent years, basically since the Gulf War, Mr. Hussein has tried to project the public persona of a devout Muslim. He's been seen praying at mosques, he's been on a hajj and had his picture taken kissing the black stone. During a recent interview with Dan Rather of CBS News-- broadcast tonight; a transcript is available in my journal-- he made frequent reference to Allah and even stopped the interview when it was time to pray.
Has Saddam Hussein found Islam? If so, its principles obviously haven't influenced him too greatly. He still lies, he still tortures, he still murders. Is it possible that Mr. Hussein is simply trying to put on the appearance of being Muslim in order to influence public opinion about him? Whose public opinion? The Shiite fundamentalists in his own country, or the Wahhabist fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere?
There are many questions about this man who claims to be a follow of Islam and yet conducts himself as if he were the anti-Christ.
(Actually, after b comes Roman-numeral iii. It goes 1, b, iii. It's a thing I do. It amuses me, and only me. And I'm okay with that.)
How does maintaining vigilance over Iraqi airspace achieve our goals? Remember, the goal-- the one and only goal-- is to get Iraq to comply with UN resolutions. How does your plan achieve that?
Expecting all useful air targets to be found in 48 hours- even 48 days- is stupidity.
We have these neat things called satellites, and also other high-altitude aerial reconnaissance assets. We already know where the targets are. Fixed targets, like buildings, are identified by lat and long. We'll know generally where the moving targets are-- we'll know that the fourth (armored) brigade of the Special Republican Guard is deployed on the eastern side of the river between Khulafa and Shaikh Omar streets, for example-- and they will be killed by pilots equipped with LANTIRN and other optical technologies. Tanks and other armored vehicles soak up the sun and then glow like little lightning bugs in the infrared after the sun goes down.
A partial ground incursion- enter Iraqi terrortory, but stay well inside the NFZ- would be safer.
Maybe, maybe not, but it still wouldn't accomplish our goal: compliance. Remember that?
Meanwhile, the further the Iraqi forces get from Baghdad, the less control Saddam has over them.
The government will have zero control over their forces about 30 minutes after the war begins. Our cruise missiles and other ordinance will eliminate the government's C3I capabilities almost immediately. We did it in 1991 with weapons that by today's standards seem almost incomprehensibly primitive.
...and lower autocratic authority (the army will be more willing to surrender)
The army will be-- is, in fact-- willing to surrender because the enlisted ranks of the regular army corps are made up of Shiite conscripts. These are the soldiers who surrendered in droves in 1991. The officer corps, as well as the entire Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, are staffed with Sunnis who are, nominally at least, loyal to the Baath party and to Mr. Hussein personally, but in '91 we saw these soldiers surrendering left and right as well.
Why isn't Bush willing to go for the slower, safer plan?
Keep in mind, please, that President Bush is not planning this war. The overall strategy of the war is largely the brainchild of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and the actual planning comes from the Joint Chiefs. That pretty much nullifies 1 and 2 from your list. With all due respect, 3 just doesn't make any sense.
The reasons are essentially these:
Anything less than a complete invasion of Iraq and the deposition of the Baath government will not achieve our goal of compliance.
Given that a complete invasion and deposition is inevitable, a blitzkrieg will put fewer lives, both American and Iraqi, at risk than the tentative approach you suggest.
Desert Fox was a few days of airstrikes, which were terminated because it was believed they were successful.
Actually, Desert Fox was terminated because we hit, literally, everything we could find to hit. If we had wanted to continue, we would have been forced to either (1) expand our targets beyond those of a purely military nature to attack civil or, God forbid, civilian facilities, or (b) bounce rubble.
If something doesn't work, there are 2 options: more of the same, or something else.
What leads you to believe that more of the same will work? And by "work" I mean accomplish our goals, that is, force the Iraqi government to comply fully and completely with UNSEC resolutions?
The US military is superior to Iraq's, but it's biggest advantage is in air power (16,000,00% stronger) than land (400%). Take advantage of what you do best.
We have a battle plan on the table right now that calls for the complete destruction of every fixed and mobile target on our list within 48 hours. "Shock and awe," they're calling it. Fixed targets-- like buildings-- will be hit with JDAM or BGM-109 Block 3's that are so accurate it's almost unfair, while moble targets-- like tanks-- will be hit with laser-guided GBU's from F-117's. All told, the plan calls for something like 800 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of B-2 bombing runs hitting upwards of 3,000 targets.
After we execute this plan, what would you suggest we do for the rest of the 3-4 months you talked about? Find more targets or bounce the rubble?
3/5s of UNSEC is against a resumption of an Iraq war. Certainly seems like they've withdrawn support, even if it's not down on paper.
UNSEC has 15 members, not 5. It remains to be seen exactly what their positions are. That said, if UNSEC wants to try to pass a resolution declaring all resolutions pertaining to Iraq between 687 and 1441, inclusive, to be null and void, that's their prerogative. (The US may or may not choose to veto such a resolution; chances are we would.) Until they do so, the existing resolutions stand, even if the other UNSEC members lack the political will to enforce them.
Remember, chapter VII resolutions, as these are, are binding on all members of the Security Council. The other members have an obligation to enforce the resolutions. If they are unwilling to do so, then that's a failure on their part.
If they thought this case was compelling--legally, yes, but especially morally--they wouldn't be engaged at the UN.
Please go read the draft resolution. It says only that Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded by 1441. This is incredibly significant. If the Coalition had thought that their case for war-- their legal case, not the moral or pragmatic one-- were even a little shaky, they would have asked the UN to approve "all necessary means." They didn't, specifically because the administration and our allies in the Coalition believe that no such authorization is necessary.
It's not a technicality.
I can't really say whether or not Powell is technically right on this technical point, but I do believe that if he is, this is little more than exploiting a loophole.
Does it change your opinion to know that we have been actively engaged in military action in Iraq every single day since the war began? Some days it's overflights, some days it's actual engagement. Just yesterday we attacked and destroyed a surface-to-surface missile site in northern Iraq.
Not a technicality, not a loophole.
To say a notion of deterrence that doesn't include all three levels of weapons is "uselessly narrow" is dangerous.
Look, I see your point, but I don't think this is worth making a big deal over in context of the rest of the discussion. Yes, Iraq had CBW in 1991. No, as far as we know they didn't use them. (Some of Iraq's CBW were so primitive, it's possible that they might have been used in such a way that nobody noticed.) Was Iraq deterred from using CBW in 1991? Looks like it, yes. Were they deterred from invading Kuwait, then invading Saudi Arabia, then attacking Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain with ballistic missiles? No. Do we have any reason to believe that Iraq will be deterred from those sorts of tactics in the future? No.
If they flipflop and sign on to a war that only three members are pushing for, they will be irrelevant by virtue of becoming yes-men for the USA.
Huh? I don't see it that way at all. If UNSEC signs the present draft resolution, they will have chosen to do the right thing after all these years of doing the wrong thing. They won't be irrelevant; they'll be at least partly redeemed.
Of course, as we see in your later points, disarmament is not the point here, which is probably why UNSC was not given the option of enhanced or more forecful inspections regimes.
(sigh) I'm getting pretty tired of repeating this. You seem like a reasonable fellow; why don't you get it? Inspections cannot disarm an unwilling participant. We have a model for voluntary, unilateral disarmament: South Africa. South Africa had a nuclear weapons program and they constructed a number of bombs. They made a full and complete declaration of their program to the IAEA, then cooperated without exception with the IAEA inspectors. Iraq is nowhere close to doing this. More inspectors, more time for inspections, more inspectors with more time... none of these things can work if Iraq is unwilling to declare and cooperate.
He is also living in a country that is completely incapable of acting on these ambitions.
That's what we thought in 1988, too. We were wrong. By 1990, he had an army that was poised to dominate the entire peninsula. Given that Iraq's oil exports are up to pre-war levels now, thanks to "smart sanctions," how long do you think it will be before their military is ready to invade another of their neighbors?
And, more importantly, how willing are you to trust that they won't?
Continued inspections can insure that he doesn't develop new weapons
As I've explained time and again, no, they can't.
Surely there must be thousands or millions in his own country who are plotting overthrow or assissination.
After enough of them got themselves and the families summarily executed, the rate of attempted coups dropped off significantly. Surprisingly, torture, imprisonment, and mass executions work extremely well as a subjucation strategy.
Has anyone really made the claim that German culture was incapable of accommodating democracy?
Yes. It was a point of serious and heated debate in 1943 and 1944. The idea was that because democracy failed so miserably in the 1930's, maybe we should take the hint and realize that the Germans simply weren't capable of ruling themselves that way. Of course, that idea was wrong.
I am all for promoting and encouraging freedom and democracy around the world. But I do not believe these things can be externally imposed.
Freedom and democracy are not the natural order of things. The natural order is for the strong to subjugate the weak. If we don't impose freedom and democracy on Iraq, it will never happen.
Besides, as the president pointed out, you're demonstrably incorrect. Imposed democracy in Germany and Japan were the true national success stories of the 20th century.
First strikes against countries that might someday develop a weapon that they might someday decide to give to a terrorist group is not only morally wrong, it is bad public policy.
When you know that a state has connections to terrorist groups-- both within its own borders and in neighboring states-- and you know that that state has an agenda that puts you squarely at the top of their enemies list, and you know that that state has produced or is attempting to produce a weapon of mass destruction, sitting idly by and waiting to take the first punch is both morally wrong and incredibly stupid.
Remember, we are not speaking of Iraq in hypotheticals or subjunctives. We know that Hussein has relationships with Ansar al Islam, the Palestinian intifada, and other terrorist groups. We know that Hussein considers the US to be his enemy; he tried to have President George H.W. Bush assassinated. We know that Iraq has developed CBW and is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Do you want to wait for them to connect all of those dots?
Bush is not going to be willing to keep a garrison of 100,000 controlling Iraq.
That's exactly what President Bush is going to ask Congress for. (Well, not the number. The interim government.) And it's two years, not eight or nine months. I respect your opinion, but it's completely contrary to reality on this point.
The issue of Kurdish sovereignty, to me, is something that should be resolved before any invasions proceed.
It already has been. The Iraqi opposition leaders are meeting in Salahuddin today in an effort to hammer out the details of the post-Baathist government, and the Kurds are among them.
Really? I haven't heard a word breathed of such a plan.
Slashdot Mirror
which SCSI commands? Is that really needed often?
Diagnostic, halt, start, inquiry and so on. Refer to this manual page for more information. And yes, it's really needed often.
As for resetting, do you really need that often?
Yes, especially when you deploy fibre channel. Sometimes an adapter reset is the only way to get your HBA to recognize new LUN's, short of a reboot.
How about hot swappable CPU's and memory? I know SGI hardware can do it.
No, it can't, unless something really incredibly drastic has happened in the past few months. IRIX is, in my opinion, the best UNIX operating system out there, but it's not perfect when it comes to dynamically reconfiguring the system. Just hot-plugging a fibre channel device requires re-walking the entire hardware graph, a process on a big machine that can take several minutes.
How about 2TB for a single file on XFS?
You're underestimating a bit. The file size limit on XFS on 64-bit architectures is not 2 TB, but 9 million terabytes.
Just because one thing is broken doesn't mean you should leave other things broken.
Fix what's important first, and worry about the small things later.
Somebody accessed patient data at Indiana University Center for Sleep Disorders through a Trojan horse. Last month, somebody got ahold of 8 million credit card numbers, and while the details of the theft haven't been released yet, you can be sure it wasn't through HTTP.
If you want to waste your time implementing security measures that won't help and ignoring those that will, that's your business. But if you do, don't make the mistake of thinking that you're doing a good job.
Would you trust important, internal financial data using a switched network as your only safety net?
Probably. If anybody wanted to gain access to your data, they would do something more direct than simply sniffing the network and seeing what goes by.
Hell, have you ever considered the possibility that somebody might just call the main office and ask for it?
Stressing over HTTP versus HTTPS is, in most cases, putting bolts on your windows while leaving your door off its hinges.
"Discovered" is a loaded word.
No, it's not. Saying that it's a loaded word implies that you buy in to all of that revisionist, deconstructionist claptrap, which, if true, would disappoint me greatly. "Discover" means "to uncover," or "to see or know for the first time." That's all.
People are denied medicine that works and are made to suffer needlessly because a small number rationalist adherents have not (or cannot) measure the effictiveness of these cures that lie outside of thier narrow bands of knowledge and experience.
Um. What the hell? People are denied access to treatments that have not yet been proven to be safe and effective. Why? Because if they weren't our overburdened public health system would be even more overburdened by damn fools who poison themselves after reading on the Internet that a tea made from crab grass and apple cider can cure the common whatever.
In our system, doctors do not have the freedom to turn patients away. A doctor must treat any patient who shows up on his floor, regardless of their condition, their ability to pay, or whether or not they got themselves into this mess. Consequently, we place limits on what people may and may not do in the interest of keeping most everybody mostly healthy most of the time. If you don't like it, come up with another system that works. And don't give me any of that libertarian blah-blah-blah; I said a system that works.
Because someone somewhere has now said that it is "doubtful" that life exists there, (based on a mile high submarine sandwitch of false assumptions) mission plans might be altered and we will not get to see Europa close up.
Maybe, maybe not. If we're going to see the pretty fishies, we'd probably be wiser to spend our money on something else, because it's not too likely that there are any pretty fishies there to be seen.
And by the way, which assumptions are false, anyway? Since you seem to know better than everybody else, I mean.
A newly observed [not discovered] gas cloud...
Why? "Discovered" means "observed for the first time." Saying that a thing which has just been seen for the first time is "newly discovered" is just fine.
You are, dude. Just because you deny the existence of evidence doesn't mean it's not there. For those who don't feel like clicking a link, it's a press release from last week from the Department of the Treasury that says, in relevant part:The connection between Ansar al Islam and Iraqi military intelligence is, of course, well documented.
If Powells pictures of "Queda" bases were really bases, we would have destroyed them already. It's what we do everywhere else.
Were you even listening to the presentation, or did you just look at the slides afterwards? The camps shown belong to Ansar al Islam, which is kind of like a sister group to al Qaeda. It was, as the above quote says, founded with Osama bin Laden's personal seed money, and it has close ties to al Qaeda.
That it's run by a military dictatorship has no bearing whatsoever on whether it is a westernized culture.
I won't presume to speak for what siskbc meant, but when one uses the word "westernized," one is typically talking about more than jeans and fast food. It's tough to imagine any country were you can be arrested, tortured, and summarily executed for no reason at all to be called "westernized."
So no documentation is valid unless it supports your views; a single newspaper article conforming to your expectations is sufficient, but it's clear that the videotape of Saddam conversing with the US ambassador would not be "a fact".
Um. We all know what Ambassador Glaspie said to President Hussein. We've all seen the tapes and read the transcripts. My point is that what transpired at that meeting does not support your thesis, which is that the US greenlighted the invasion of Kuwait.
BTW, for Niven, I think Ringworld should be required reading for all high school physics students.
Mr. Niven's short story "Neutron Star" is a much better reading list item for physics students, both because it explains tidal forces in a way that is pretty visceral and because it includes a serious mistake that Mr. Niven admitted to but couldn't figure out how to fix in subsequent printings. Bonus points to whichever student can figure out what the mistake was. (No cheating; Mr. Niven has explained it in print on a number of occasions, so you can find it easily if you look for it.)
I will point to this link instead of retyping the same data, but this is all well known now.
If by "well known" you mean "oft repeated," then we agree. But oft repeated does not mean correct. The course of events simply didn't unfold the way that web page (which has been copied all over the Internet, incidentally) says they did.
Your case would be stronger if you included the data that does not perfectly fit your views.
Which data? If you're referring to that web page again, I don't see any data on it. I see some absurd accusations-- "You thought he was just going to take SOME of it? But how COULD YOU?!"-- but that's all. So which data are you referring to?
I continue to believe that US attacks on Iraq are driven by economic and political issues in the USA.
You are free to believe whatever you want. The rest of us will base our opinions on the facts instead.
That's what we call ad-hominem attack, Misty.
No, it's not. An ad hom attack would be if, for example, I said that you're ugly, or that you're stupid. Instead, I pointed out that you are expressing an opinion that is unsupported by any facts whatsoever, and therefore that your argument is not even worth the time required to address it. (Then I went ahead and addressed it anyway, just proving that I'm not very good at managing my time.)
Dr. Malthus said war is a result of population and economic pressures. You disagree?
Yes. Malthus is a favorite of high school debate team captains, but not particularly well regarded in the real world. The mere mention of the name of Malthus inside the Beltway is snicker-inducing.
Here's a few papers you might want to read, though...
Okay, so we've established that conflict affects the price of commodites. It was not necessary to cite sources to demonstrate that. It's patently obvious. When I asked for sources, I was specifically referring to any sort of source, primary or otherwise, that linked US government policy in Iraq to oil companies in a causal way. Find me one source that says, for example, "Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz received 10,000 shares of oil futures as an under-the-table gift from Exxon-Mobile in January, 2002." Simply saying that oil prices are affected by global conflict does not mean that global conflicts are motivated by people who want to influence oil prices.
Since you accused me of ad hom, I'll throw one right back at you: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
How do US attempts to destabilize the legitimate government of Venezuala fit in with the theory of market manipulation by the President? Quite nicely, thank you.
Actually, you're right. US attempts to destabilize the government of Venezuela do fit in quite nicely with the theory of market manipulation by the president. How? They're both fiction.
On what do you base that conclusion? Between 1991 and 1998, UNSEC passed more than a dozen resolutions condemning Iraq's defiance, and demanding immediate compliance. It finally got to the point in 1998 where Iraq simply declared that they would no longer cooperate with UNSCOM at all. How do you interpret that as "worked pretty well?"
Something near 80% of stockpiles destroyed due to inspections, right?
We haven't the foggiest idea. We have no idea what Iraq's stockpiles consist of. The figure may be 100%, or it may be 10%. We have no way of knowing, because Iraq refuses to tell us.
And even if inspections aren't good at finding secret caches of buried weapons, they seem pretty good at preventing new development.
According to Iraqi defectors, this is not the case. According to defectors, Iraq's nuclear program in 1994 was stronger than it had been before the war:(Kenneth Pollack, "A Last Chance to Stop Iraq," New York Times editorial, February 21, 2003.)
I do agree that it would be a lot easier with genuine Iraqi compliance, but that's a lot to expect of any country in a region so volatile.
I'm a little unclear on this point. Are you saying that we (by "we" I mean both the Allies and UNSEC) should back down from our demands on Iraq which have stood since 1991, and which Iraq has accepted in full, because they're a lot to ask?
Given that any government must have the at-least-tacit approval of its people, what is so unnatural about democracy?
Your premise is incorrect. A government does not need the approval of its people. The Taliban did not have the approval of its people; it stayed in power as long as it did through domination and intimidation. The Baath government does not have the approval of its people; it has stayed in power as long as it has through domination and intimidation. (Incidentally, the House of Saud doesn't have the approval of its people either, but it's stayed in power through appeasement rather than through violence. Better, but still hardly legitimate in the western sense of the word.)
Any time these two things coexist, democracies sprout like weeds.
Democracies have never sprouted like weeds. Ever.
I don't buy that a single man, or the Ba'ath party, can forcibly subjugate an entire country.
Denial is not a valid argument.
I mean, seriously, the documentation is another straw man.
Um. The documentation is the key point here. UN resolutions going all the way back to 687 require Iraq to produce a complete and accurate declaration of their weapons programs. The inspectors would then use this declaration to destroy or verify the destruction of all of those assets. Without a declaration, the inspectors have nothing to do.
(UNSCR 687, incidentally, called for this declaration to be submitted within 90 days. As of today, it has been 4,348 days. The declaration is slightly overdue.)
Iraq's failure to produce a full and accurate declaration is not a straw man. It is the absolute center of this conflict.
At this point, unless God himself rides down from the heavens...
Blah, blah. Hyperbole and misrepresentation. The US will accept three outcomes. Either (1) Iraq will immediately comply fully and completely with relevant UN resolutions, (b) Saddam Hussein and his staff and family will accept exile and leave Iraq forever; taking their place will be a new regime that will immediately comply fully and completely with relevant UN resolutions, or (iii) the US will lead a coalition, with or without UN approval, to remove Saddam Hussein and his Baath government by force and replace them with a new regime that will immediately comply fully and completely with relevant UN resolutions.
There are two easy ways to avoid war. Mr. Hussein is free to choose either of them, or he's free to sit back and watch while Allied forces march into Baghdad. He does not, however, have any other options available to him at this time.
You left out the part where US Ambassador April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein the green light to attack the nasty little slave-trafficking dictatorship of Kuwait. Kind of a key moment I think.
Once again, a history lesson is in order. It continues to amaze me how events that happened a mere dozen years ago could be so misremembered and misinterpreted now.
In the days leading up to the invasion, the United States asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to visit Baghdad and ascertain President Hussein's intentions. During his visit with Mr. Hussein, Mr. Mubarak asked him if he planned to invade Kuwait. He responded that he did not, and that he expected the crisis over oil prices to be averted soon. Mr. Mubarak asked him again, and Mr. Hussein said again that he would not, under any circumstances, send his troops into Kuwait.
Mr. Mubarak left Baghdad later that day, and immediately relayed that information to Washington. During the same period, similar messages were sent to Washington by Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. All signs pointed to the conclusion that the build-up of troops along the Kuwaiti border was nothing more than saber rattling, that the Emir would soon give in to Iraq's demands, and that the crisis would soon be over. Richard Haass, National Security Council director for Near East and South Asian affairs, prepared a report outlining three possibilities: one, that Iraq was simply trying to intimidate the Emir; two, that Iraq was preparing to seize one or more northern Kuwaiti oil fields; three, that Iraq was preparing for an all-out invasion. He concluded that the third scenario was by far the least likely.
Ambassador Glaspie knew these things when President Hussein summoned her on the 25th of July. When he asked her about the US position, she replied with the now famous line, "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts." Why? Because everybody in the US government, from Glaspie to the president, believed it was just a simple dispute that was, in fact, already well on the way to a resolution.
We blew it. We completely misinterpreted Hussein's intentions. (Then again, so did the rest of the Arabian peninsula.) Did we give Hussein a green light to invade Kuwait? Absolutely not.
No, the Gulf War was about using the military to artificially manipulate the price of domestic oil.
Oh, whatever. It's funny the way the world works. You think you're talking to somebody perfectly normal and reasonable and rational, and then the next thing you know he's on about how the Jews are at the center of an international conspiracy, or how space aliens built the pyramids, or how the Gulf War was about oil prices.
Kinda sad, really. There are so many people in the world who are healthy, productive citizens except for the fact that they're raging nutballs.
Just to give at least a cursory pass at the thesis of your post: can you produce one document, one interview, one photograph... hell, let's skip the primary sources. Can you even produce one credible news story-- i.e., not one printed opposite a story about the Zionists or the pyramids-- that links the 1991 Gulf War with oil producers in any way, shape, or form?
Because just making stuff up and then citing Occam's Razor is not the same as understanding history.
Here's the CBS News "intelligence garbage" link
Oh, that. Mark Phillips, huh? Are you familiar with his other work? He's the correspondent who reported Baghdad's claims that an epidemic of cancer was caused by the Allies' use of depleted uranium shells in the war. He's well known in the journalistic community for not being afraid of running an unconfirmed story for the headline value of it.
Way back in 1990, he ran a story claiming that damage to the Earth's ozone layer, unless repaired, would lead to plagues of cancer and turn much of the Earth into desert, all behind the CYA of "scientists predict." Of course, that was completely untrue.
I pulled this one out of my files. In the summer of 2001, he linked bad weather (now believed to have been caused by El Nino) to the Kyoto treaty. "Around the world, the anger runs as deep as the floodwaters being blamed on the global warming the Kyoto treaty was supposed to fight. President Bush says he's putting American economic interests first in rejecting Kyoto and in Britain, where they're having their wettest winter ever, they sadly agree."
The list goes on and on. The point is, this story has been picked up and widely repeated, but not independently confirmed. Given Mr. Phillips's history as a journalist, I would not be terribly surprised to find that he-- most likely inadvertently; I'm not accusing him of anything, but he does have this habit-- based his story on the opinions of one or two highly biased individuals without bothering to get confirmation of their assertions from other sources.
If we get independent confirmation of this, let me know. Until then, I'm not convinced.
Now, on the other point, let's ignore the whole Scott Ritter thing for a second. (I mean, the guy isn't exactly the most credible individual, you know?) What did he say in that Kyodo News article?
One: he said that the evidence presented in Secretary Powell's report was circumstantial. Mr. Ritter was confused. The United States wasn't trying to present evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We were presenting evidence of Iraqi non-compliance with the inspections program. In that context, the evidence was not circumstantial; it was quite damning. But since Mr. Ritter has been saying for years that the burden of proof should be on the Allies to demonstrate that Iraq does have WMD's, it's easy to understand why he would be confused on this point.
Two: he said many things in the presentation should be properly investigated. That's when he talked about the modified vehicle mentioned in the intercepts. Again, those intercepts were not evidence that Iraq has modified vehicles. They were evidence that Iraq is not complying with UN resolutions. The point was not that they should be investigated. The point was that Iraq is concealing things from the inspectors, and is therefore not in compliance with UN resolutions.
Three: he talked about anthrax and about satellite imagery. He said that there's no evidence that Iraq has dry anthrax, and that (apparently) he doesn't know how to interpret a satellite photo. These are also examples of his missing the point.
Four: Okay, now we get to the good stuff. "You know who came up with the idea of mobile trucks? The inspectors... We sat back one day and said, 'If we were the Iraqis, how would we hide biological production? We'd put them on trucks."' So Mr. Ritter is asserting, with no foundation whatsoever, that the information we received from Iraqi defectors was completely false, based on the idea that he claims to have come up with the idea himself? Gee, Mr. Ritter, you know it's not that complex, or even that new, an idea. Has it occurred to you that both you and the Iraqis might have stumbled upon it independently?
Evidently not. "You can never expect the inspectors to find these 18 trucks," he said, because "these trucks don't exist."
Well, okay, then. Scott has spoken, everybody! Inspectors out of the pool!
Five: Finally, Mr. Ritter pointed out that information from defectors might be misleading. Okay. And it might not. How do you tell the stuff that is from the stuff that isn't? If Iraq were in compliance, it would be easy. Since they're not, it's very hard, and we have no choice but to treat every piece of information as if it were gold-plated. The question is not which pieces of information are true; it's which pieces are credible. You can't just look at credible intelligence and say, "Nope, isn't true. Don't buy it. Those trucks don't exist."
The bottom line is this: let's say I went to the UN and said, "They come in pretty colors, and they sing sweet songs." Scott Ritter got up the next morning and said, "Twirlip's presentation included absolutely no conclusive evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." Does that make sense? No, because I wasn't arguing that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. I was arguing that birds are nice.
Secretary Powell was not arguing that Iraq has WMD's. He made this point perfectly clear within the first two minutes of his presentation. He was arguing simply that Iraq is not in compliance with UN resolutions.
That's the position of the United States of America, and that's why we're getting ready for war.
My argument, which you did not bother to refute...
As I said, your argument is irrelevant. If you have a personal pet cause, that's fine. Good luck with it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq conflict, which is the topic of our little discussion.
Thanks for contributing your thoughts, though.
A gradual assault will force these assets to come into the open, where they can be targeted and destroyed.
;-)
Yes, sir, General. A hundred years of military theory disagrees with you, but what do they know? Sorry I ever doubted you, sir.
No, my goal is to protect myself from terrorist attack.
Wrong. We're not pursuing Iraq because of the Bush Doctrine. We're pursuing Iraq because they invaded Kuwait. We're pursuing Iraq hard, now because of the Bush Doctrine, but that's not the same thing.
It will be difficult to have an intelligent conversation on this subject until you get a grip on the why of this conflict.
Rushing into a war like this will encourage anti-American sentiment for the next 40 years.
Twelve years: longest rush ever.
Rushing into war will encourage anti-American sentiment. Not rushing into war encourages anti-American sentiment. Putting ketchup on a hot dog encourages anti-American sentiment.
People are going to hate America. They're going to hate us because we're the most affluent, the most free, the strongest, the most successful. Pick a reason, and somebody's going to hate us for it. Letting the fact that somebody is going to hate us if we act dictate American policy decisions-- especially in light of the fact that somebody's also going to hate us if we don't-- is foolish.
My goal- for no one to see the US as an enemy- is well served by the No-Fly Zones, where life is a vertiable paradise.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you? Veritable paradise? Are you joking?
I have learned the hard way that the "I know this is true for reasons I can't or won't discuss" argument doesn't really work too well. I also am privy to a great deal of information that I don't feel comfortable-- or simply can't-- discuss here. But I've learned that the best approach is simply to keep that information to myself and argue with only the facts that are already in the public domain.
The bottom line here is that the leadership of the Department of Defense disagree with your assessment. They think a hundred-hour battle and an up-to-two-year occupation is the way to go to accomplish our goal. (Compliance, remember?) If you can demonstrate that you're more qualified than the leadership of the Department of Defense, or that you've got some information or insight that they lack, then I will be happy to listen to you and give due consideration to what you have to say.
Heck, you may even change my opinion.
Now, that said, we most certainly do know where the targets are. We know where the Special Republican Guard barracks are. (We also know which ones are near which elementary schools.) We know where the telephone switching stations are. We know where the secret police headquarters is. We know where the ministry of propaganda is. We know where Muthena airfield is. We know where the Baath party headquarters is. We know where the Karada and Jumhuriya and Ashudad bridges are. We know quite a bit about Baghdad in particular, and Iraq in general.
If Saddam does this to fellow Muslums, what would he do to infidels like us?
That raises an interesting point. Mr. Hussein has never been a devout Muslim. He once sent two mullahs-- holy men-- to negotiate with the Kurds. They carried concealed bombs, which were detonated remotely. It's never been clear whether the two men knew they were carrying explosives or not; they may have been willing suicides, or they may not have been. In either case, nothing even remotely like that could be said to be compatible with Islam.
But in recent years, basically since the Gulf War, Mr. Hussein has tried to project the public persona of a devout Muslim. He's been seen praying at mosques, he's been on a hajj and had his picture taken kissing the black stone. During a recent interview with Dan Rather of CBS News-- broadcast tonight; a transcript is available in my journal-- he made frequent reference to Allah and even stopped the interview when it was time to pray.
Has Saddam Hussein found Islam? If so, its principles obviously haven't influenced him too greatly. He still lies, he still tortures, he still murders. Is it possible that Mr. Hussein is simply trying to put on the appearance of being Muslim in order to influence public opinion about him? Whose public opinion? The Shiite fundamentalists in his own country, or the Wahhabist fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere?
There are many questions about this man who claims to be a follow of Islam and yet conducts himself as if he were the anti-Christ.
(Actually, after b comes Roman-numeral iii. It goes 1, b, iii. It's a thing I do. It amuses me, and only me. And I'm okay with that.)
How does maintaining vigilance over Iraqi airspace achieve our goals? Remember, the goal-- the one and only goal-- is to get Iraq to comply with UN resolutions. How does your plan achieve that?
Expecting all useful air targets to be found in 48 hours- even 48 days- is stupidity.
We have these neat things called satellites, and also other high-altitude aerial reconnaissance assets. We already know where the targets are. Fixed targets, like buildings, are identified by lat and long. We'll know generally where the moving targets are-- we'll know that the fourth (armored) brigade of the Special Republican Guard is deployed on the eastern side of the river between Khulafa and Shaikh Omar streets, for example-- and they will be killed by pilots equipped with LANTIRN and other optical technologies. Tanks and other armored vehicles soak up the sun and then glow like little lightning bugs in the infrared after the sun goes down.
A partial ground incursion- enter Iraqi terrortory, but stay well inside the NFZ- would be safer.
Maybe, maybe not, but it still wouldn't accomplish our goal: compliance. Remember that?
Meanwhile, the further the Iraqi forces get from Baghdad, the less control Saddam has over them.
The government will have zero control over their forces about 30 minutes after the war begins. Our cruise missiles and other ordinance will eliminate the government's C3I capabilities almost immediately. We did it in 1991 with weapons that by today's standards seem almost incomprehensibly primitive.
The army will be-- is, in fact-- willing to surrender because the enlisted ranks of the regular army corps are made up of Shiite conscripts. These are the soldiers who surrendered in droves in 1991. The officer corps, as well as the entire Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, are staffed with Sunnis who are, nominally at least, loyal to the Baath party and to Mr. Hussein personally, but in '91 we saw these soldiers surrendering left and right as well.
Why isn't Bush willing to go for the slower, safer plan?
Keep in mind, please, that President Bush is not planning this war. The overall strategy of the war is largely the brainchild of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and the actual planning comes from the Joint Chiefs. That pretty much nullifies 1 and 2 from your list. With all due respect, 3 just doesn't make any sense.
The reasons are essentially these:
- Anything less than a complete invasion of Iraq and the deposition of the Baath government will not achieve our goal of compliance.
- Given that a complete invasion and deposition is inevitable, a blitzkrieg will put fewer lives, both American and Iraqi, at risk than the tentative approach you suggest.
Does that make it any clearer?Desert Fox was a few days of airstrikes, which were terminated because it was believed they were successful.
Actually, Desert Fox was terminated because we hit, literally, everything we could find to hit. If we had wanted to continue, we would have been forced to either (1) expand our targets beyond those of a purely military nature to attack civil or, God forbid, civilian facilities, or (b) bounce rubble.
If something doesn't work, there are 2 options: more of the same, or something else.
What leads you to believe that more of the same will work? And by "work" I mean accomplish our goals, that is, force the Iraqi government to comply fully and completely with UNSEC resolutions?
The US military is superior to Iraq's, but it's biggest advantage is in air power (16,000,00% stronger) than land (400%). Take advantage of what you do best.
We have a battle plan on the table right now that calls for the complete destruction of every fixed and mobile target on our list within 48 hours. "Shock and awe," they're calling it. Fixed targets-- like buildings-- will be hit with JDAM or BGM-109 Block 3's that are so accurate it's almost unfair, while moble targets-- like tanks-- will be hit with laser-guided GBU's from F-117's. All told, the plan calls for something like 800 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of B-2 bombing runs hitting upwards of 3,000 targets.
After we execute this plan, what would you suggest we do for the rest of the 3-4 months you talked about? Find more targets or bounce the rubble?
3/5s of UNSEC is against a resumption of an Iraq war. Certainly seems like they've withdrawn support, even if it's not down on paper.
UNSEC has 15 members, not 5. It remains to be seen exactly what their positions are. That said, if UNSEC wants to try to pass a resolution declaring all resolutions pertaining to Iraq between 687 and 1441, inclusive, to be null and void, that's their prerogative. (The US may or may not choose to veto such a resolution; chances are we would.) Until they do so, the existing resolutions stand, even if the other UNSEC members lack the political will to enforce them.
Remember, chapter VII resolutions, as these are, are binding on all members of the Security Council. The other members have an obligation to enforce the resolutions. If they are unwilling to do so, then that's a failure on their part.
If they thought this case was compelling--legally, yes, but especially morally--they wouldn't be engaged at the UN.
Please go read the draft resolution. It says only that Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded by 1441. This is incredibly significant. If the Coalition had thought that their case for war-- their legal case, not the moral or pragmatic one-- were even a little shaky, they would have asked the UN to approve "all necessary means." They didn't, specifically because the administration and our allies in the Coalition believe that no such authorization is necessary.
It's not a technicality.
I can't really say whether or not Powell is technically right on this technical point, but I do believe that if he is, this is little more than exploiting a loophole.
Does it change your opinion to know that we have been actively engaged in military action in Iraq every single day since the war began? Some days it's overflights, some days it's actual engagement. Just yesterday we attacked and destroyed a surface-to-surface missile site in northern Iraq.
Not a technicality, not a loophole.
To say a notion of deterrence that doesn't include all three levels of weapons is "uselessly narrow" is dangerous.
Look, I see your point, but I don't think this is worth making a big deal over in context of the rest of the discussion. Yes, Iraq had CBW in 1991. No, as far as we know they didn't use them. (Some of Iraq's CBW were so primitive, it's possible that they might have been used in such a way that nobody noticed.) Was Iraq deterred from using CBW in 1991? Looks like it, yes. Were they deterred from invading Kuwait, then invading Saudi Arabia, then attacking Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain with ballistic missiles? No. Do we have any reason to believe that Iraq will be deterred from those sorts of tactics in the future? No.
If they flipflop and sign on to a war that only three members are pushing for, they will be irrelevant by virtue of becoming yes-men for the USA.
Huh? I don't see it that way at all. If UNSEC signs the present draft resolution, they will have chosen to do the right thing after all these years of doing the wrong thing. They won't be irrelevant; they'll be at least partly redeemed.
Of course, as we see in your later points, disarmament is not the point here, which is probably why UNSC was not given the option of enhanced or more forecful inspections regimes.
(sigh) I'm getting pretty tired of repeating this. You seem like a reasonable fellow; why don't you get it? Inspections cannot disarm an unwilling participant. We have a model for voluntary, unilateral disarmament: South Africa. South Africa had a nuclear weapons program and they constructed a number of bombs. They made a full and complete declaration of their program to the IAEA, then cooperated without exception with the IAEA inspectors. Iraq is nowhere close to doing this. More inspectors, more time for inspections, more inspectors with more time... none of these things can work if Iraq is unwilling to declare and cooperate.
He is also living in a country that is completely incapable of acting on these ambitions.
That's what we thought in 1988, too. We were wrong. By 1990, he had an army that was poised to dominate the entire peninsula. Given that Iraq's oil exports are up to pre-war levels now, thanks to "smart sanctions," how long do you think it will be before their military is ready to invade another of their neighbors?
And, more importantly, how willing are you to trust that they won't?
Continued inspections can insure that he doesn't develop new weapons
As I've explained time and again, no, they can't.
Surely there must be thousands or millions in his own country who are plotting overthrow or assissination.
After enough of them got themselves and the families summarily executed, the rate of attempted coups dropped off significantly. Surprisingly, torture, imprisonment, and mass executions work extremely well as a subjucation strategy.
Has anyone really made the claim that German culture was incapable of accommodating democracy?
Yes. It was a point of serious and heated debate in 1943 and 1944. The idea was that because democracy failed so miserably in the 1930's, maybe we should take the hint and realize that the Germans simply weren't capable of ruling themselves that way. Of course, that idea was wrong.
I am all for promoting and encouraging freedom and democracy around the world. But I do not believe these things can be externally imposed.
Freedom and democracy are not the natural order of things. The natural order is for the strong to subjugate the weak. If we don't impose freedom and democracy on Iraq, it will never happen.
Besides, as the president pointed out, you're demonstrably incorrect. Imposed democracy in Germany and Japan were the true national success stories of the 20th century.
First strikes against countries that might someday develop a weapon that they might someday decide to give to a terrorist group is not only morally wrong, it is bad public policy.
When you know that a state has connections to terrorist groups-- both within its own borders and in neighboring states-- and you know that that state has an agenda that puts you squarely at the top of their enemies list, and you know that that state has produced or is attempting to produce a weapon of mass destruction, sitting idly by and waiting to take the first punch is both morally wrong and incredibly stupid.
Remember, we are not speaking of Iraq in hypotheticals or subjunctives. We know that Hussein has relationships with Ansar al Islam, the Palestinian intifada, and other terrorist groups. We know that Hussein considers the US to be his enemy; he tried to have President George H.W. Bush assassinated. We know that Iraq has developed CBW and is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Do you want to wait for them to connect all of those dots?
Bush is not going to be willing to keep a garrison of 100,000 controlling Iraq.
;-)
That's exactly what President Bush is going to ask Congress for. (Well, not the number. The interim government.) And it's two years, not eight or nine months. I respect your opinion, but it's completely contrary to reality on this point.
The issue of Kurdish sovereignty, to me, is something that should be resolved before any invasions proceed.
It already has been. The Iraqi opposition leaders are meeting in Salahuddin today in an effort to hammer out the details of the post-Baathist government, and the Kurds are among them.
Really? I haven't heard a word breathed of such a plan.
Try turning past page one of your newspaper.