People (pseudo-skeptics) keep saying this, hand waving at the unspecified research they haven't read that supposedly backs them up, but the meta-analyses keep refuting their gut beliefs.
If a major drug company had a patent on a pill that had the same test results as many of these treatments, there is no doubt in my mind that it would be on the market, and that it would be less likely to cause problems than many of the other pills currently on the market. But if it can't be put in a pill, the economic incentives run precisely in the other direction.
"...then obviously the treatment doesn't work, does it?"
err... no. Perhaps the treatment wasn't amenable to setting up a blind test. (e.g. DMSO - can't do a blind test because any route of administration causes an intense garlic-like flavor perception by the subject that nothing else can match. Many of the attempts to create placebos are also faulty - the fake acupuncture needle may nevertheless stimulate in the same way as the real thing. Placebos vary wildly in their effects, and better placebos can be engineered. The relegation of all psychological effects to the outer darkness is a primary flaw of today's "double blind" dogma.
If medical science were I.T., they'd insist that only hardware was properly real, and that while software might arguably exist (at least machine code - not that woo-woo talk of OSes, let alone the other stuff) it should be regarded as a mere confounding factor to diagnosing proper problems which obviously means testing empirically verifiable things such as transistors and wires and voltages and stuff.
I'd mod you up but I already commented. It's sad how so many otherwise interesting sites are infested with these self-appointed guardians of scientism such as the A.C. you replied to and the troll authority who "answered" you... they seem to crawl out from under their rocks whenever a story like this comes up.
This sounds like a turf/money battle started by a mainstream academic apparatchik who doesn't want to actually sort through the existing pile of evidence, let alone continue evaluating. Some of the methods listed in the article actually work reliably for some things. Others may actually cause harm. Yet others are placebos so advanced that modern medicine may take decades to catch up. The important thing is to keep using actual evidence to make decisions rather than to just accept the word of reactionaries who gesture vaguely at supposed piles of evidence which, on closer inspection, often say the opposite of what the pseudo-skeptic reactionary claimed.
It's a 1/1.2inch sensor = 2/3inch sensor, in which these are not actual inches but nominal inches related to the sizes of old TV camera sensor tubes, which had a sensitive area only in the center, but were specified by the outer diameter of the tube. The nominal diameter in inches is about 1.5 times the real sensor size on the diagonal.
Type / Diag. / W / H (mm) / Area (mm^2) 1/3.2" 5.680 4.536 3.416 15.49 Phone camera 1/2.3" 7.700 6.160 4.620 28.46 compact camera 1/1.2 13.10 10.80 7.500 81.30 Nokia 808 41Mpix 4/3" 22.50 18.00 13.50 243.00 a.k.a. micro 4/3" 1.8" 28.40 23.70 15.70 372.09 a.k.a. APS-C 35mm 43.30 36.00 24.00 864.00 ratio of diagonals gives 35mm crop factor (above information calculated from http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Camera_System/sensor_sizes_01.htm )
You read that wrong, apparently. The lens is more than good enough for the sensor. Your point about shutter speeds is wrong, too. The light falling in any given area is the same as it would be for any other f/2.4 lens, and the sensor has a mechanical shutter, too, so readout times are not determining shutter speed. The problem is not a lack of sensitivity, either, as the pixels are the same size as regular cameraphones and the effective pixel size can be increased (and noise can be reduced) by using a 5-8Mpix downsized version. There is a slight penalty to be paid in higher readout noise relative to signal (lower light per pixel, same readout noise as a big pixel), but is a relatively small price. In fact there is also a neutral density filter that can be switched in front of the sensor to reduce the light and allow longer shutter speeds in bright light (allows blurring moving objects a little.)
The unprovoked, cowardly act of war that wiped out Sudan's pharmaceutical plant with no investigation or warning? The one where there was no evidence that it was making weapons? The one that murdered an innocent janitor and probably thousands of Sudanese who couldn't get the medicines made by the plant? The one that the US has refused to apologize for or even to investigate?
Right. In moderate, predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey there is broad, liberal public support for banning the wearing of headscarves in parliament and in other places. This keeps the fundamentalists from enforcing a dress code for women via social and extra-legal means and results in more real freedom for women. Banning the hajab isn't about cultural discrimination but about keeping religious nuts from running everybody else's lives.
"Remember that the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars, as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N."
I have spent many hours analyzing the IRS statistics, and while in absolute dollars the rich do pay more, the richest ($10M+/yr AGI) actually pay a lower percentage of their income than those in the next lower income brackets ($500k-$10M). When payroll taxes, sales taxes and other taxes are taken into account and a nominal allowance is made for necessary expenses ($7k/yr), with the tax rate is calculated on the remaining income, the US tax structure is quite regressive, with tax rates actually falling as a percentage of income until one gets above $200k, then remaining constant +/-1.1% of income before dropping about 2% for those in the $10M+ category. On the basis of percentage of income after covering $7k of living expenses, the total tax rate remains well above 50% for all returns below $30k AGI (a majority of all returns), and above a 2/3 share for those earning less than $17k (well over 1/4 of all returns).
The apparent unfairness of the fact that the rich pay more in absolute dollars is vitiated by the fact that they also have a wildly disproportionate share of income. Looking at federal income tax alone, the bottom 46.8% of returns have 10.6% of the income (AGI,2007), while the top 0.1% have 12.7%. (After all taxes about 11.8% bottom vs. 11% top.)
Where did you get that idea? It is a listed numerical specification on many parts - tires, mechanical switches, camera shutters, and supercapacitors, for example.
Absolutely - the price is the most important information about nearly any product. If the price depends on various factors, the company website should be able to calculate it - packages, specials, volume discounts, shipping, credit, options, whatever. And it should make it easy to find and compare similar and related products.
So many companies think they are enticing you to call their sales-weasels by acting coy, but in reality they do nothing but repel 90%+ of their potential customers.
"nobody's mind is going to be expanded by making PowerPoints" True, but their minds will be expanded by learning how to fully use a spreadsheet program. It's by far the most widely practiced form of programming and beyond its applicability to exploring and learning all sorts of other programs, and its potential business use, it helps with learning about and applying: mathematics, statistics, database ideas, visual presentation of information, personal finance, and fundamental programming concepts such as variables, functions, data types, absolute and relative memory addressing, conditionals, and even events, properties, and the perils of spaghetti code (giving a motivation to move on to "real programming").
Well, Mistral has aircraft rotaries that get 0.42-0.51 lb/hp-hr specific fuel consumption, which is comparable to other aircraft engines that get about 0.4 -0.5 lb/hp-hr. Their planned diesel/Jet-A rotary should have even better efficiency. They do that at around 2000 RPM / 80% of rated power, too, which should reduce wear a great deal. The weight isn't as low as one would expect for a rotary - 1.17 - 1.46 lb/peak hp, depending on model, but this may be a sign of robust construction. Better seal materials and designs have also made rotaries much more reliable than they used to be.
I don't know why so many commenters have brought up this absolutely irrelevant point.
Honda likely gamed the EPA test by testing a different version of the car than was sold to the public, most likely by using different ECU settings than they used on the cars sold to the public. Many reported that they got ~40mpg right off the showroom floor when the EPA numbers were 48/51. That is substantially more variation than expected from the published numbers.
Even ignoring that, later Honda reprogrammed the engine control computers in customer's cars, causing them to drop another 10mpg. This was solely to reduce the warranty costs to Honda for the design defects in the battery system which could not stand up to the charge/discharge rates needed for higher efficiency. Many current users report mileage when driving normally of around 30mpg, which is 60% higher fuel consumption than the lower EPA figure of 48mpg. That is excellent grounds for a lawsuit.
It's even more illegal for the manufacturer to change the engine software long after purchase to use 20-60% more fuel, as Honda did. That's why they are getting sued.
Honda changed the programming of the engine long after the cars were sold which cut 10mpg+ off the existing mileage. This was to reduce the warranty costs to Honda of a design defect that caused the batteries to fail prematurely. If the EPA tests were repeated with the new programming the old numbers would be too high by ~10-20mpg. As fuel consumption per mile is the inverse of mpg, users driving normally are using 20-60% more fuel than expected (closer to 60%).
Honda is required to test car models substantially as they are sold; Honda is not in compliance with EPA / DOT regulations and consumer protection laws when it changes software in this way. As many customers reported that the cars were getting 10mpg less than advertised even when new, which is well outside the usual variation from the EPA estimates for other cars, it also seems possible that the original EPA testing was done on a car that was not substantially the same as what customers bought, even before the software change dropped an additional 10mpg off the efficiency.
The calculation is more complicated than that. Israel gets that money for free, whereas the spending in the US is a transfer from US citizens to other US citizens, with some leakage out to foreign bondholders (about 4% of overall spending, roughly $450 per capita).) Also, while the aid to Israel is mostly (not all) spent on US armaments, they often get them at deep discounts, much lower than the US DOD would pay. This is done by writing off nearly new equipment as surplus, as with a substantial fraction of Israel's fighter aircraft.
Your way of doing the calculation is like comparing rearranging the furniture in a house (US domestic spending) with giving away some of that same furniture.
The Raspberry Pi includes no data storage (thus no software), no enclosure, no screen, keyboard, mouse, cables, or power supply. It is not a usable computer system without at least $200 in extra gear.
No, you don't have to do two years with the NHS; working abroad, particularly as a licensed specialist in a Commonwealth country, is sufficient. OTOH it's much easier for a Pakistani anesthesiologist to get GMC credentials than for an American pathologist. Mostly the GMC leaves the decision up to the individual specialist Royal Medical Colleges, who in turn mostly set things up so that they won't have to admit qualified non-EU, non-Commonwealth doctors who might compete with the RMCs' UK members.
Very adept combination of the first cause ploy with the argument by semantical gymnastics, 125 Pope-Points(TM) for you. (Some restrictions may apply. Epic poetry not included. Not valid in Delaware or Guam.)
The SOCRATIC APPROACH is most successful when confronting the ignorant. The "socratic approach" is what you call starting an argument by asking questions. You approach the innocent and simply ask "Did you know that God's name is ERIS, and that He is a girl?" If he should answer "Yes." then he probably is a fellow Erisian and so you can forget it. If he says "No." then quickly proceed to: THE BLIND ASSERTION and say "Well, He Is a girl, and His name is ERIS!" Shrewedly observe if the subject is convinced. If he is, swear him into the Legion of Dynamic Discord before he changes his mind. If he does not appear convinced, then proceed to: THE FAITH BIT "But you must have Faith! All is lost without Faith! I sure feel sorry for you if you don't have Faith." And then add: THE ARGUMENT BY FEAR and in an ominous voice ask "Do you know what happens to those who deny Goddess?" If he hesitates, don't tell him that he will surely be reincarnated as a precious Mao Button and distributed to the poor in the Region of Thud (which would be a mean thing to say), just shake your head sadly and, while wiping a tear from your eye, go to: THE FIRST CLAUSE PLOY wherein you point to all of the discord and confusion in the world and exclaim "Well who the hell do you think did all of this, wise guy?" If he says, "Nobody, just impersonal forces." then quickly respond with: THE ARGUMENT BY SEMANTICAL GYMNASTICS and say that he is absolutely right, and that those impersonal forces are female and that Her name is ERIS. If he, wonder of wonders, still remains obstinate, then finally resort to: THE FIGURATIVE SYMBOLISM DODGE and confide that sophisticated people like himself recognize that Eris is a Figurative Symbol for an Ineffable Metaphysical Reality and that The Erisian Movement is really more like a poem than like a science and that he is liable to be turned into a Precious Mao Button and Distributed to The Poor in The Region of Thud if he does not get hip. Then put him on your mailing list.
"there's no knowledge of calculus" Archimedes was actually very close to inventing integral calculus. He calculated areas, volumes and centers of mass using limits.
The biggest thing missing from ancient math was the positional notation system using zero. The next biggest was the printing press.
Actually there is no evidence that he bombed his own people, which was the justification used for the so-called "no-fly zone", which somehow immediately morphed into a full-scale air/special forces invasion with the rebels tagging along for the ride. (The US can't say the same - look at Philadelphia's aerial firebombing of MOVE in the '80s) The NATO bombardment, OTOH did verifiably kill many hundreds of Lybian civilians, and worse, intentionally bombed Libya's water supply and the pipe factories that produced spares. Taking out the water supply leads to the risk of killing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly children under the age of five, as the US did in Gulf War I and the sanctions which followed. Dysentery is not a nice way to go. Bombing water supplies is a war crime of the first order.
Also, when Gadaffi was killed by a targeted airstrike, he was traveling under a flag of truce which had been negotiated. Anybody else in the world now has no reason to trust the US or European forces to obey the most ancient of the laws of war in any future conflict.
The popular account of Gadaffi, Libya and the Libyan conflict was almost entirely propaganda. He wasn't even exactly a dictator, not being formally a part of the actual government. Libya had a strong direct democracy, a relatively low level of corruption compared to other African nations, a high standard of living due to enlightened policies. Life for the people of Libya will certainly deteriorate as NATO loots the country (the British government is claiming it will make hundreds of billions, about a 1000x profit on the war). The social programs will end, debt, destitution, hunger and disease will spread among the Libyans, and all for "humanitarian purposes".
Iraq did not have chemical weapons at the time of the 2nd US Gulf War, or at least none were ever found, other than perhaps a single rusty shell which the Iraqi government had apparently lost track of back before it destroyed its chemical weapons.
There was a confluence of factors that went into the decision to go into Iraq, and oil was one, but it was not,as many think, to secure that oil for the US, rather it was to keep that oil off the market and to create fear in the market of even greater supply disruptions. Anyone with oil to sell benefited enormously from this, not least Dick Cheney and his many friends in the oil business.
Other factors: *Huge profits for contractors, often cronies *Israel wanted it, (so did Saudi Arabia and maybe Turkey, but they were less of a factor) *Saddam was a former associate of the crew running the US, who had gone off the reservation and needed to be taken down as a warning to others, *Iraq was to be a strategic position along with Afghanistan for controlling Central Asia and the Middle East, surrounding Iran, *Keeping the US military not only trained but blooded
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People (pseudo-skeptics) keep saying this, hand waving at the unspecified research they haven't read that supposedly backs them up, but the meta-analyses keep refuting their gut beliefs.
If a major drug company had a patent on a pill that had the same test results as many of these treatments, there is no doubt in my mind that it would be on the market, and that it would be less likely to cause problems than many of the other pills currently on the market. But if it can't be put in a pill, the economic incentives run precisely in the other direction.
"...then obviously the treatment doesn't work, does it?"
err... no. Perhaps the treatment wasn't amenable to setting up a blind test. (e.g. DMSO - can't do a blind test because any route of administration causes an intense garlic-like flavor perception by the subject that nothing else can match. Many of the attempts to create placebos are also faulty - the fake acupuncture needle may nevertheless stimulate in the same way as the real thing. Placebos vary wildly in their effects, and better placebos can be engineered. The relegation of all psychological effects to the outer darkness is a primary flaw of today's "double blind" dogma.
If medical science were I.T., they'd insist that only hardware was properly real, and that while software might arguably exist (at least machine code - not that woo-woo talk of OSes, let alone the other stuff) it should be regarded as a mere confounding factor to diagnosing proper problems which obviously means testing empirically verifiable things such as transistors and wires and voltages and stuff.
I'd mod you up but I already commented. It's sad how so many otherwise interesting sites are infested with these self-appointed guardians of scientism such as the A.C. you replied to and the troll authority who "answered" you ... they seem to crawl out from under their rocks whenever a story like this comes up.
This sounds like a turf/money battle started by a mainstream academic apparatchik who doesn't want to actually sort through the existing pile of evidence, let alone continue evaluating. Some of the methods listed in the article actually work reliably for some things. Others may actually cause harm. Yet others are placebos so advanced that modern medicine may take decades to catch up. The important thing is to keep using actual evidence to make decisions rather than to just accept the word of reactionaries who gesture vaguely at supposed piles of evidence which, on closer inspection, often say the opposite of what the pseudo-skeptic reactionary claimed.
It's a 1/1.2inch sensor = 2/3inch sensor, in which these are not actual inches but nominal inches related to the sizes of old TV camera sensor tubes, which had a sensitive area only in the center, but were specified by the outer diameter of the tube.
The nominal diameter in inches is about 1.5 times the real sensor size on the diagonal.
Type / Diag. / W / H (mm) / Area (mm^2)
1/3.2" 5.680 4.536 3.416 15.49 Phone camera
1/2.3" 7.700 6.160 4.620 28.46 compact camera
1/1.2 13.10 10.80 7.500 81.30 Nokia 808 41Mpix
4/3" 22.50 18.00 13.50 243.00 a.k.a. micro 4/3"
1.8" 28.40 23.70 15.70 372.09 a.k.a. APS-C
35mm 43.30 36.00 24.00 864.00 ratio of diagonals gives 35mm crop factor
(above information calculated from http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Camera_System/sensor_sizes_01.htm )
You read that wrong, apparently. The lens is more than good enough for the sensor. Your point about shutter speeds is wrong, too. The light falling in any given area is the same as it would be for any other f/2.4 lens, and the sensor has a mechanical shutter, too, so readout times are not determining shutter speed. The problem is not a lack of sensitivity, either, as the pixels are the same size as regular cameraphones and the effective pixel size can be increased (and noise can be reduced) by using a 5-8Mpix downsized version. There is a slight penalty to be paid in higher readout noise relative to signal (lower light per pixel, same readout noise as a big pixel), but is a relatively small price. In fact there is also a neutral density filter that can be switched in front of the sensor to reduce the light and allow longer shutter speeds in bright light (allows blurring moving objects a little.)
The unprovoked, cowardly act of war that wiped out Sudan's pharmaceutical plant with no investigation or warning? The one where there was no evidence that it was making weapons? The one that murdered an innocent janitor and probably thousands of Sudanese who couldn't get the medicines made by the plant? The one that the US has refused to apologize for or even to investigate?
Right. In moderate, predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey there is broad, liberal public support for banning the wearing of headscarves in parliament and in other places. This keeps the fundamentalists from enforcing a dress code for women via social and extra-legal means and results in more real freedom for women. Banning the hajab isn't about cultural discrimination but about keeping religious nuts from running everybody else's lives.
"Remember that the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars, as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N."
I have spent many hours analyzing the IRS statistics, and while in absolute dollars the rich do pay more, the richest ($10M+/yr AGI) actually pay a lower percentage of their income than those in the next lower income brackets ($500k-$10M). When payroll taxes, sales taxes and other taxes are taken into account and a nominal allowance is made for necessary expenses ($7k/yr), with the tax rate is calculated on the remaining income, the US tax structure is quite regressive, with tax rates actually falling as a percentage of income until one gets above $200k, then remaining constant +/-1.1% of income before dropping about 2% for those in the $10M+ category. On the basis of percentage of income after covering $7k of living expenses, the total tax rate remains well above 50% for all returns below $30k AGI (a majority of all returns), and above a 2/3 share for those earning less than $17k (well over 1/4 of all returns).
The apparent unfairness of the fact that the rich pay more in absolute dollars is vitiated by the fact that they also have a wildly disproportionate share of income. Looking at federal income tax alone, the bottom 46.8% of returns have 10.6% of the income (AGI,2007), while the top 0.1% have 12.7%. (After all taxes about 11.8% bottom vs. 11% top.)
See: In Depth Analysis of American Income and Taxation for more insight.
Where did you get that idea? It is a listed numerical specification on many parts - tires, mechanical switches, camera shutters, and supercapacitors, for example.
Absolutely - the price is the most important information about nearly any product. If the price depends on various factors, the company website should be able to calculate it - packages, specials, volume discounts, shipping, credit, options, whatever. And it should make it easy to find and compare similar and related products.
So many companies think they are enticing you to call their sales-weasels by acting coy, but in reality they do nothing but repel 90%+ of their potential customers.
"nobody's mind is going to be expanded by making PowerPoints"
True, but their minds will be expanded by learning how to fully use a spreadsheet program. It's by far the most widely practiced form of programming and beyond its applicability to exploring and learning all sorts of other programs, and its potential business use, it helps with learning about and applying: mathematics, statistics, database ideas, visual presentation of information, personal finance, and fundamental programming concepts such as variables, functions, data types, absolute and relative memory addressing, conditionals, and even events, properties, and the perils of spaghetti code (giving a motivation to move on to "real programming").
Well, Mistral has aircraft rotaries that get 0.42-0.51 lb/hp-hr specific fuel consumption, which is comparable to other aircraft engines that get about 0.4 -0.5 lb/hp-hr. Their planned diesel/Jet-A rotary should have even better efficiency. They do that at around 2000 RPM / 80% of rated power, too, which should reduce wear a great deal. The weight isn't as low as one would expect for a rotary - 1.17 - 1.46 lb/peak hp, depending on model, but this may be a sign of robust construction. Better seal materials and designs have also made rotaries much more reliable than they used to be.
I don't know why so many commenters have brought up this absolutely irrelevant point.
Honda likely gamed the EPA test by testing a different version of the car than was sold to the public, most likely by using different ECU settings than they used on the cars sold to the public. Many reported that they got ~40mpg right off the showroom floor when the EPA numbers were 48/51. That is substantially more variation than expected from the published numbers.
Even ignoring that, later Honda reprogrammed the engine control computers in customer's cars, causing them to drop another 10mpg. This was solely to reduce the warranty costs to Honda for the design defects in the battery system which could not stand up to the charge/discharge rates needed for higher efficiency. Many current users report mileage when driving normally of around 30mpg, which is 60% higher fuel consumption than the lower EPA figure of 48mpg. That is excellent grounds for a lawsuit.
It's even more illegal for the manufacturer to change the engine software long after purchase to use 20-60% more fuel, as Honda did. That's why they are getting sued.
You misunderstand the situation.
Honda changed the programming of the engine long after the cars were sold which cut 10mpg+ off the existing mileage. This was to reduce the warranty costs to Honda of a design defect that caused the batteries to fail prematurely. If the EPA tests were repeated with the new programming the old numbers would be too high by ~10-20mpg. As fuel consumption per mile is the inverse of mpg, users driving normally are using 20-60% more fuel than expected (closer to 60%).
Honda is required to test car models substantially as they are sold; Honda is not in compliance with EPA / DOT regulations and consumer protection laws when it changes software in this way. As many customers reported that the cars were getting 10mpg less than advertised even when new, which is well outside the usual variation from the EPA estimates for other cars, it also seems possible that the original EPA testing was done on a car that was not substantially the same as what customers bought, even before the software change dropped an additional 10mpg off the efficiency.
The calculation is more complicated than that. Israel gets that money for free, whereas the spending in the US is a transfer from US citizens to other US citizens, with some leakage out to foreign bondholders (about 4% of overall spending, roughly $450 per capita).) Also, while the aid to Israel is mostly (not all) spent on US armaments, they often get them at deep discounts, much lower than the US DOD would pay. This is done by writing off nearly new equipment as surplus, as with a substantial fraction of Israel's fighter aircraft.
Your way of doing the calculation is like comparing rearranging the furniture in a house (US domestic spending) with giving away some of that same furniture.
The Raspberry Pi includes no data storage (thus no software), no enclosure, no screen, keyboard, mouse, cables, or power supply. It is not a usable computer system without at least $200 in extra gear.
No, you don't have to do two years with the NHS; working abroad, particularly as a licensed specialist in a Commonwealth country, is sufficient. OTOH it's much easier for a Pakistani anesthesiologist to get GMC credentials than for an American pathologist. Mostly the GMC leaves the decision up to the individual specialist Royal Medical Colleges, who in turn mostly set things up so that they won't have to admit qualified non-EU, non-Commonwealth doctors who might compete with the RMCs' UK members.
Very adept combination of the first cause ploy with the argument by semantical gymnastics, 125 Pope-Points(TM) for you. (Some restrictions may apply. Epic poetry not included. Not valid in Delaware or Guam.)
From the The Principia Discordia:
"there's no knowledge of calculus"
Archimedes was actually very close to inventing integral calculus. He calculated areas, volumes and centers of mass using limits.
The biggest thing missing from ancient math was the positional notation system using zero. The next biggest was the printing press.
Actually there is no evidence that he bombed his own people, which was the justification used for the so-called "no-fly zone", which somehow immediately morphed into a full-scale air/special forces invasion with the rebels tagging along for the ride. (The US can't say the same - look at Philadelphia's aerial firebombing of MOVE in the '80s) The NATO bombardment, OTOH did verifiably kill many hundreds of Lybian civilians, and worse, intentionally bombed Libya's water supply and the pipe factories that produced spares. Taking out the water supply leads to the risk of killing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly children under the age of five, as the US did in Gulf War I and the sanctions which followed. Dysentery is not a nice way to go. Bombing water supplies is a war crime of the first order.
Also, when Gadaffi was killed by a targeted airstrike, he was traveling under a flag of truce which had been negotiated. Anybody else in the world now has no reason to trust the US or European forces to obey the most ancient of the laws of war in any future conflict.
The popular account of Gadaffi, Libya and the Libyan conflict was almost entirely propaganda. He wasn't even exactly a dictator, not being formally a part of the actual government. Libya had a strong direct democracy, a relatively low level of corruption compared to other African nations, a high standard of living due to enlightened policies. Life for the people of Libya will certainly deteriorate as NATO loots the country (the British government is claiming it will make hundreds of billions, about a 1000x profit on the war). The social programs will end, debt, destitution, hunger and disease will spread among the Libyans, and all for "humanitarian purposes".
Iraq did not have chemical weapons at the time of the 2nd US Gulf War, or at least none were ever found, other than perhaps a single rusty shell which the Iraqi government had apparently lost track of back before it destroyed its chemical weapons.
There was a confluence of factors that went into the decision to go into Iraq, and oil was one, but it was not,as many think, to secure that oil for the US, rather it was to keep that oil off the market and to create fear in the market of even greater supply disruptions. Anyone with oil to sell benefited enormously from this, not least Dick Cheney and his many friends in the oil business.
Other factors:
*Huge profits for contractors, often cronies
*Israel wanted it, (so did Saudi Arabia and maybe Turkey, but they were less of a factor)
*Saddam was a former associate of the crew running the US, who had gone off the reservation and needed to be taken down as a warning to others,
*Iraq was to be a strategic position along with Afghanistan for controlling Central Asia and the Middle East, surrounding Iran,
*Keeping the US military not only trained but blooded