The Elxsi compiler in the mid 80's actually implemented the comefrom statement (and several variants) as a continuation of this spoof. It wasn't documented, but I found out about it when Ralph Merkle (one of the developers) suggested that I might be amused by looking at a certain area in the compiler executable file. When I did so, I found a list of strings containing mostly familliar Fortran keywords. Amidst those, I spotted comefrom. A quick check verified that the statement actually compiled and worked as "expected".
I later heard that the statement was pulled from the compiler after a customer submitted a bug report (I think it was a performance/optimization issue) related to the comefrom statement implementation. The joke wasn't worth actually investing scarce support resources on.
The truth isn't what you claim. In the conflicts you reference the US has bombed targets (like a rocket launcher) in cities, not the cities themselves. It isn't trying to destroy the city but rather the military targets in it. Using modern precision guided weapons makes this possible. The goal is not to frighten or terrorize the civilians but to destroy the enemy's military forces. The US often avoids attacking particular targets due to their being located on a protected facility (such as a mosque or hospital), or when there is a strong probability of excessive civilian casualties. There are times when the presence of enemy forces or equipment is sufficient to justify attacking anyway, but it will at least be considered. The point is that the US is not deliberately targeting civilians in an attempt to cause large numbers of civilian noncombatants to be killed.
Al Qaida and various other terrorist organizations take a very different approach. They deliberately target civilians engaged in ordinary routine to try to kill as many as they can. That is why they explode truck bombs in city markets - they are trying to kill innocent people to create terror.
There are consequences to being confused on that point, one of which is making it harder to condemn actual terrorism and the deliberate targeting of civilians. That makes it harder to achieve consensus and try to effectively address the problem.
However, that still doesn't make Saddam Hussein a part of the Soviet bloc, no matter how you dislike this stubborn fact.
I never claimed that Saddam's Iraq was part of the Soviet bloc, only that they bought their weapons there. It is sort of like you don't have to be an employee of Tesco to buy goods there.
When Iraq attacked Iran, Saddam had good relations with the West, because the West was in a disposition to beat the shit out of Iran. Iraq used the said good relations to get loans and import weapons. Lots of weapons, for a lot of shooting, at Iran, at the Kurds, et cetera. These are the facts.
So then, we agree that Saddam attacked Iran for his own reasons? Good, since those are the facts.
You don't even know the names of the countries you write about, this is how ignorant you are. Just like Dubya, who kept eye-racking Iraq until he got out of office. Did he ever learn how to pronounce it correctly?
And yet you understood the entire time what President Bush was referring to, and what I was referring to, and decided to avoid discussing the substance of the argument and quibbled about minor things. You aren't proving yourself to not be an idiot there.
I expect that you understand that there is a difference between raw commodities like 10 tons of titanium and manufactured finished goods such as an aircraft. The US used the raw materials to build its own aircraft, not manufacture copies of Soviet aircraft generally equivalent to its own high performance aircraft to provide Iraq.
That might work for relatively limited numbers of small arms to equip guerillas, but not for modern tanks and aircraft, artillery, surface to surface missiles like the SCUD, and antiaircraft missiles and radar used to equip the Iraqi armed forces.
Saddam was mainly armed by the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and China.
USA has received a shitload of Soviet designed weapons - and I don't mean just small arms, I mean tanks, helicopters, airplanes - starting 1989. From Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary.
And in the 1960s, 1970s and early to mid 1980s, when Saddam and Iraq were arming, the US didn't have those weapons. So, guess where they came from? That's right, the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and China.
LOL. Whatever, lying douchebag, the facts around that war are well documented. You can deny them, but they won't disappear because of that.
That's right, the facts won't disappear, and I've just presented them.
You possess the aggressive ignorance of Dubya and O'Really. Go learn about the sad fate of the Iraqi communists and come back to us with your fantasies about the "socialism" of Saddam's regime.
Why don't you look into the fate of the parties that competed with the Bolsheviks in Russia, and the Nationalist Socialists in Germany and see if you can extrapolate.
Maybe the "United Soviet Socialist Republics" exist in whatever online game you've cut your strategic teeth, but in the real world there was no such entity.
The US didn't use Saddam to fight Iran. Saddam chose to invade Iran and various nations helped prop up Iraq to prevent Iran from rolling over them and taking control of Iraq and possibly the rest of the Middle East.
The Baathists were socialists, and were mainly armed by the bloc of nations controlled by the United Soviet Socialist Republics.
... keep up appearances by letting them bus/use someone else's weapons to keep up appearances,...
That's hilarious, and nonsense.
Maybe you could explain how the US got all of those Soviet, Warsaw Pact, and Chinese weapons during the height of the Cold War - enough to equip the armed forces of an entire nation? That is utter rubbish. You're grasping at straws.
Here's a bit of news for you: there are Muslims of every race. If your explanation of things centers around "brown people" in some fashion you completely misunderstand the issues.
And yes, ISIS does exist. It is an offshoot of al Qaida.
No, Saddam wasn't involved with funding al Qaida as far as we know. He was funding other terrorists, including paying money to the families of suicide bombers, and providing refuge for various terrorists.
Saddam did have an advanced nuclear program, and built and used large amounts of chemical weapons. He also built biological weapons.
Saddam's weapons came overwhelmingly from the Soviet Union & other Soviet Bloc countries (69% during this period), followed by France (13%) and China (12%) and a string of smaller suppliers. (For example, according to a 1984 SIPRI report, "During 1982-83, Iraq accounted for 40% of total French arms exports.") The figure for the US is 1%.
(The link above is a good bit of background that covers much more than that short extract.)
There are still a lot of Soviet Bloc weapons being used in Iraq. The Interior ministry stuck with AKs, and the armed forces were only partly rearmed with American and Western weapons.
ISIS formed in Syria and moved into Iraq and controls territory in both. ISIS is only part of the regional struggle of Islamic extremists centered around al Qaida to overthrow the governments in many of the countries. Many extremists from the region came to Syria to overthrow the government there as part of the civil war, and now they are expanding into Iraq. If you don't understand that then you're missing key parts of the issue and will have little useful to add to the discussion.
It's not 2003 any more. Iraq has a democratically elected government, and has for about 10 years now. The Iraqi army was rebuilt and rearmed with large amounts of weaponry. ISIS is mainly coming from Syria, not Iraq. You've got this pretty much wrong.
If Saddam was still in power, he would be major american ally in "fighting terrorists". Orwell would laugh his ass out if he lived to this day.
No, he wouldn't. Saddam was funding and assisting terrorist, not fighting them.
The present democratically elected Iraqi government is the one fighting terrorists. That government wouldn't exist if Saddam was still in power. It is worth noting that the present government is hampered by widespread corruption, a problem that Saddam made far worse in Iraq than it was.
That is nonsense. The US government provided arms to the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government lost control over them due to the attacks that they weren't able to stand up to. They probably would have made it if the US still have a meaningful presence there. The US left Iraq in no small part due to the stupid claims detached from reality that the US was there for the oil when it is European and Chinese companies getting the oil contracts.
This struggle will be going on for decades (if we're lucky, longer if not), until the extremists get tired of it and want to live in peace. Until then any talk of "ending the war" is as silly as claiming you can tear down a dam because the river stopped flowing. It stopped flowing because of the dam. Tearing down the dam while the water is still there will have the obvious consequence.
I don't think anyone could describe you as "constrained," or "dumbed down." But when it comes to "ridiculous extrapolation," on the other hand.... I wonder what the genesis of that is? Cot case, or something else?
Slashdot Mirror
Elxsi Fortran had it long ago.
Richard Maine in FORTRAN IV program illustrating assigned GO TO on web site
The Elxsi compiler in the mid 80's actually implemented the comefrom
statement (and several variants) as a continuation of this spoof. It
wasn't documented, but I found out about it when Ralph Merkle (one of
the developers) suggested that I might be amused by looking at a certain
area in the compiler executable file. When I did so, I found a list of
strings containing mostly familliar Fortran keywords. Amidst those, I
spotted comefrom. A quick check verified that the statement actually
compiled and worked as "expected".
I later heard that the statement was pulled from the compiler after a
customer submitted a bug report (I think it was a
performance/optimization issue) related to the comefrom statement
implementation. The joke wasn't worth actually investing scarce support
resources on.
The truth isn't what you claim. In the conflicts you reference the US has bombed targets (like a rocket launcher) in cities, not the cities themselves. It isn't trying to destroy the city but rather the military targets in it. Using modern precision guided weapons makes this possible. The goal is not to frighten or terrorize the civilians but to destroy the enemy's military forces. The US often avoids attacking particular targets due to their being located on a protected facility (such as a mosque or hospital), or when there is a strong probability of excessive civilian casualties. There are times when the presence of enemy forces or equipment is sufficient to justify attacking anyway, but it will at least be considered. The point is that the US is not deliberately targeting civilians in an attempt to cause large numbers of civilian noncombatants to be killed.
Al Qaida and various other terrorist organizations take a very different approach. They deliberately target civilians engaged in ordinary routine to try to kill as many as they can. That is why they explode truck bombs in city markets - they are trying to kill innocent people to create terror.
There are consequences to being confused on that point, one of which is making it harder to condemn actual terrorism and the deliberate targeting of civilians. That makes it harder to achieve consensus and try to effectively address the problem.
No, they don't. It was conventional military operations, not terrorism.
However, that still doesn't make Saddam Hussein a part of the Soviet bloc, no matter how you dislike this stubborn fact.
I never claimed that Saddam's Iraq was part of the Soviet bloc, only that they bought their weapons there. It is sort of like you don't have to be an employee of Tesco to buy goods there.
When Iraq attacked Iran, Saddam had good relations with the West, because the West was in a disposition to beat the shit out of Iran. Iraq used the said good relations to get loans and import weapons. Lots of weapons, for a lot of shooting, at Iran, at the Kurds, et cetera. These are the facts.
So then, we agree that Saddam attacked Iran for his own reasons? Good, since those are the facts.
You don't even know the names of the countries you write about, this is how ignorant you are. Just like Dubya, who kept eye-racking Iraq until he got out of office. Did he ever learn how to pronounce it correctly?
And yet you understood the entire time what President Bush was referring to, and what I was referring to, and decided to avoid discussing the substance of the argument and quibbled about minor things. You aren't proving yourself to not be an idiot there.
I expect that you understand that there is a difference between raw commodities like 10 tons of titanium and manufactured finished goods such as an aircraft. The US used the raw materials to build its own aircraft, not manufacture copies of Soviet aircraft generally equivalent to its own high performance aircraft to provide Iraq.
That might work for relatively limited numbers of small arms to equip guerillas, but not for modern tanks and aircraft, artillery, surface to surface missiles like the SCUD, and antiaircraft missiles and radar used to equip the Iraqi armed forces.
Saddam was mainly armed by the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and China.
USA has received a shitload of Soviet designed weapons - and I don't mean just small arms, I mean tanks, helicopters, airplanes - starting 1989. From Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary.
And in the 1960s, 1970s and early to mid 1980s, when Saddam and Iraq were arming, the US didn't have those weapons. So, guess where they came from? That's right, the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and China.
LOL. Whatever, lying douchebag, the facts around that war are well documented. You can deny them, but they won't disappear because of that.
That's right, the facts won't disappear, and I've just presented them.
You possess the aggressive ignorance of Dubya and O'Really. Go learn about the sad fate of the Iraqi communists and come back to us with your fantasies about the "socialism" of Saddam's regime.
Why don't you look into the fate of the parties that competed with the Bolsheviks in Russia, and the Nationalist Socialists in Germany and see if you can extrapolate.
Maybe the "United Soviet Socialist Republics" exist in whatever online game you've cut your strategic teeth, but in the real world there was no such entity.
Close enough to say yes: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
The US didn't use Saddam to fight Iran. Saddam chose to invade Iran and various nations helped prop up Iraq to prevent Iran from rolling over them and taking control of Iraq and possibly the rest of the Middle East.
The Baathists were socialists, and were mainly armed by the bloc of nations controlled by the United Soviet Socialist Republics.
... keep up appearances by letting them bus/use someone else's weapons to keep up appearances,...
That's hilarious, and nonsense.
Maybe you could explain how the US got all of those Soviet, Warsaw Pact, and Chinese weapons during the height of the Cold War - enough to equip the armed forces of an entire nation? That is utter rubbish. You're grasping at straws.
Here's a bit of news for you: there are Muslims of every race. If your explanation of things centers around "brown people" in some fashion you completely misunderstand the issues.
And yes, ISIS does exist. It is an offshoot of al Qaida.
No, Saddam wasn't involved with funding al Qaida as far as we know. He was funding other terrorists, including paying money to the families of suicide bombers, and providing refuge for various terrorists.
Saddam did have an advanced nuclear program, and built and used large amounts of chemical weapons. He also built biological weapons.
I'm beginning to think you're never going to get much of this right.
Maybe you can start with this: Who armed Saddam? - Some reality checks
And no, the US is not "the global terrorists." If you believe that you are SERIOUSLY misguided.
It looks like you need an adult to explain things to you.
Who armed Saddam? - Some reality checks
Saddam's weapons came overwhelmingly from the Soviet Union & other Soviet Bloc countries (69% during this period), followed by France (13%) and China (12%) and a string of smaller suppliers. (For example, according to a 1984 SIPRI report, "During 1982-83, Iraq accounted for 40% of total French arms exports.") The figure for the US is 1%.
(The link above is a good bit of background that covers much more than that short extract.)
There are still a lot of Soviet Bloc weapons being used in Iraq. The Interior ministry stuck with AKs, and the armed forces were only partly rearmed with American and Western weapons.
ISIS formed in Syria and moved into Iraq and controls territory in both. ISIS is only part of the regional struggle of Islamic extremists centered around al Qaida to overthrow the governments in many of the countries. Many extremists from the region came to Syria to overthrow the government there as part of the civil war, and now they are expanding into Iraq. If you don't understand that then you're missing key parts of the issue and will have little useful to add to the discussion.
It's not 2003 any more. Iraq has a democratically elected government, and has for about 10 years now. The Iraqi army was rebuilt and rearmed with large amounts of weaponry. ISIS is mainly coming from Syria, not Iraq. You've got this pretty much wrong.
If Saddam was still in power, he would be major american ally in "fighting terrorists". Orwell would laugh his ass out if he lived to this day.
No, he wouldn't. Saddam was funding and assisting terrorist, not fighting them.
The present democratically elected Iraqi government is the one fighting terrorists. That government wouldn't exist if Saddam was still in power. It is worth noting that the present government is hampered by widespread corruption, a problem that Saddam made far worse in Iraq than it was.
Actually it hasn't. Saddam was a murderous butcher that had a body toll well beyond that of ISIS.
You mean the French in Algeria? The Russians in Afghanistan? Who will you blame for what the PLO did in Lebanon, along with Syria?
Islamic extremism has been on the rise for more than 50 years, and is a problem globally. It is a recurring problem through history.
If you don't understand that you are going to go down the wrong path as you were apparently doing just now.
That is nonsense. The US government provided arms to the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government lost control over them due to the attacks that they weren't able to stand up to. They probably would have made it if the US still have a meaningful presence there. The US left Iraq in no small part due to the stupid claims detached from reality that the US was there for the oil when it is European and Chinese companies getting the oil contracts.
It's Europe that is hurting for oil, not the US.
Whew! For a minute I was worried that nobody would make a facile nonsense comment to distract from the real issues. Thankfully you came through.
This struggle will be going on for decades (if we're lucky, longer if not), until the extremists get tired of it and want to live in peace. Until then any talk of "ending the war" is as silly as claiming you can tear down a dam because the river stopped flowing. It stopped flowing because of the dam. Tearing down the dam while the water is still there will have the obvious consequence.
So you've returned to ridiculous extrapolation. Please, explain this "science denial" you imagine I'm engaging in here.
This post is an example of why you should take things posted by ACs on the internet with a big grain of salt.
I don't think anyone could describe you as "constrained," or "dumbed down." But when it comes to "ridiculous extrapolation," on the other hand .... I wonder what the genesis of that is? Cot case, or something else?