>The air conditioner, TV, etc. are things that help to make life quite pleasant even if a person doesn't have a lot of money. It's what makes >our poor "rich" by historical standards. Why are you pissing on these things?
I'm not pissing on those things. I'm just saying, being "rich" by "historical standards" does NOT make you rich, well-off, or even average by today's standards.
It's absurd to say that today's poor should be thankful they have it so good for simply owning $1400 worth of chinese-made electronics.
> * Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home >owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with >one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
Define "own". You mean they have the title, or they, like everyone else, have 30 more years of mortgage before they "own" it? I find it hard to believe that 46% of poor people have the title to their property.
> * The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, > London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average > citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Hooray. Now let's talk about the average cost per square foot of the properties under comparison.
> * Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, >only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. > * Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars. > * Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or >more color televisions. > * Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception. > * Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Wow! Golly! Just look at all those consumer electronics the poor own! Their quality of life just must be freaking awesome, eh?
Let's take a look at this, shall we?
Air Conditioner: $300 TV: $300 DVD Player: $50 Microwave: $150 Stereo: $200 Dishwasher: $400 TOTAL: $1400
Wowee-Zowee - a whopping $1400 worth of nicities, along with maybe a $5000 car you're making payments on.
Are these nicities things that the average person didn't have 50 years ago? Sure. So what! Today they don't amount to squat - a mere $6400 worth of cheap trinkets.
And why is it that the poor have a weight problem? Could it be that the cheapest foods are the ones that are worst for you?
I wonder what happens to other things when exposed to the radiation from nuclear waste? Like, say, water? I wonder if you could use that radiation to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, or convert other things into useful fuels?
Try downloading any video content that ends in a.WMV extension from any P2P network.
You will find that 99% of.WMV files won't play. When you try to play them, a window pops up and tells you you need to go download some kind of permission file from some unknown website before it will play. Of course, I'm not going to do that.
So as a result, I now screen out all.WMV extensions from my video searches on P2P networks. They have DRMed themselves right out of my existance. I now assume that anything with a.WMV extension won't play.
I tried burning DVDs - I could never get the damn things to play in my DVD players around the house. After lots of forum searching, I found that burning a DVD is really a black art.
So now I don't bother anymore.
I just bought a Dlink MediaLounge for Christmas. I now fetch the media off of my 400GB hard drive and display it directly on my TV, skipping the step of making a DVD.
I think downloading DVDs is great - but I don't need to burn them to a DVD to play them, and I'm not interested in paying for any media that expires after any period of time.
I suppose so. But I tell ya what - I'd certainly think twice about jeapordizing my career by showing up at some public rally if typing in my name was likely to pop up pictures of places in public I'd been.
Basically your statement is a tacit recognition that this technology will, in fact, stiffle protest, relegating it to only those who "really believe". Or perhaps, those with nothing to lose.
>For example, you could go to a political or cultural event for an unpopular group
Parent makes an interesting point. Who would risk going to any public protest for anything (war, whatever) knowing that you will probably turn up in a Google image search for doing so?
>I wonder why so many people (in particular Americans for some reason) feel that such a complex issue as >energy supply need a single source as an answer.
Americans don't really care where the energy comes from. They, like everyone else, just want to turn on the light switch and watch the lights come on.
The drive for a single source energy comes from the energy companies who currently enjoy the benefits of a monopoly on a single source of energy - oil. They want a neat package they can control and profit from.
Once the technological genie is out of the bottle for how to cheaply harness alternative energy sources, anyone will be able to do it. And the people with the money to invest in alternative energy technologies are afraid of that.
I am coming to the conclusion that digital content/really//is/ going to be valued as "free" in the very near future.
We see with things like YouTube that there are millions and millions of people willing to create and produce video content for free. Most of it might not be as polished as "professional" journalism, but evidently the masses don't care.
I read today on NPR about a company that is doing something similar with T-shirts (threadless.com) (have not checked the URL). People submit t-shirt ideas, which get voted on by the community, and the top-voted ones are made and put up for sale. Now in this case the winning submitters get paid a couple of thousand dollars, but once again, you have a situation where thousands of people are creating and submitting content for the community for free.
With millions of monkeys on the internet, there are always going to be a handful willing to write up some Shakespear for free.
This means it's going to be harder and harder to find a handful of monkeys people are willing to pay to read.
>Just set up authentication on your server and smart host out through your ISP. >On the road you connect and authenticate to your mail server, it takes the message >and relays out through your ISP's SMTP server.
I don't have any control over the email server - either my web host email server or my ISP email server, so I don't know how to set up authentication on them.
What does it mean to "smart host out through your ISP"?
The problem I have on the road is that many networks block port 25 so I can't hit my web host or ISP email server.
Are you talking about setting up my own email server at home? I've never done that before.
I tried Thunderbird, but I didn't like the look and feel of it. Every time you open an email it "feels" like you are launching a separate program as it took a comparatively long time to open the window to read the email.
>What I see is that the Internet is an exceptionally fertile ground for seeds to sprout in. >The existence of large companies such as Yahoo and Google doesn't change that. His comparison to >the energy sector is flawed. The ease with which somebody can start up a new web site (sorry, >"service provider") is in no way comparable to what it takes to start a new energy provider. Not even close.
Excellent post. And, pardon my topic derailment, but I'd like to take this time to point out to everyone that this is an excellent reason to preserve network neutrality. It is the neutrality that is the fertilizer that makes the Internet such a fertile ground for those seeds.
Look, I'm as pro-stem cell research as you can be. I think it's great, and I think someone is going to do it no matter what so we might as be the ones who do it.
But I'm tired of the arguement that says, "We must do X, because it could possibly do Y".
It might NOT do Y, also. We do scientific research to gain knowlege. Sometimes there's even a goal in mind behind the search for that knowlege. But this constant shrieking that "We must do stem cell research because it could cure disease (fill in the blank) smacks to much of the the old saw "We must do it FOR THE CHILLLLLLDREEEENNNNN!".
How can I make Outlook 2000 delete any email with an imbedded image? 99% of the emails I get with pictures in them are crap. They are either spam or some stupid joke I've already seen.
>Everybody delivers e-mail messages through the SMTP server of their ISP. What is wrong with that?
Here is the problem. My ISP will only allow me to send email through their SMTP server as long as I am ON THEIR NETWORK. So if I'm at home, no problem, I can send email.
But if I'm on the road, and I plug into someone else's network, I can't send email using my ISP's SMTP server.
>Allegedly many people do, including the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and the American >voters who let him keep that position in 2004.
I guess maybe you missed the last election results?
>Since that method of ending the attacks is only about 10 zillion times more effective than your >"anger all of Iraq through excessive violence" strategy, and you agree that it is the method we should take, >why did you even suggest the vastly less effective and much much more costly and stupid method?
Because obviously it was considered militarily important to go into Iraq. If you are going to draw the sword of war, you should use the sword of war. My point was that if we were going to have a military response to Iraq, we should have had a fucking/military/ response. But we didn't, we won't, we're just going to pussy-foot around playing policeman. So we should leave.
>Not people, person. Not only did the military leaders think the war should go on, but it didn't matter because >it was only the Emperor's word that mattered. And yes, he told them to surrender because he knew he wouldn't >have a country to rule. Had he for whatever reason failed to issue that edict, then we would still be fighting the war.
Yeah right - the emperor of japan could see the handwriting on the wall but no one else could.
>Whereas in Iraq there is no "person in charge" to tell the insurgents to stop to begin with. Mohammed is not >going to appear in the sky and say "Oh damn, seriously guys, I didn't mean for you to get all that martyr-y, >just stop already". Therefore, we will continue to fight this war for as long as we are there, and excessive >violence will not end it but only make it worse.
Well, you can believe what you want, but I believe that it wouldn't take many mushroom clouds to convince the staunchest fanatic that the cause was lost.
>You have something you think is worth fighting for, so you blow it up with a nuke. Brilliant.
You misunderstand me./Iraq/ is not worth fighting for - breaking the will of muslim fanatics is. The actual property and populace of Iraq means nothing to me.
>What in your mind makes a target worthy of military action?
When destroying it serves to work towards the goal of breaking the will of the enemy.
>Since boots on the ground are the only things that can hold territory, occupy and control land, exploit its >resources, replace its government, etc. etc. you seem to be implying that no offensive action is ever worth it, >and neither is any defensive action which requires anything of the above. Certainly no mission which could be >described as "peacekeeping". What, exactly, is worth it in your mind?
No, you misunderstand me again. Offensive actions don't require boots on the ground. Iraq could be leveled without ever having a soldier there. If a military action was warranted against Iraq, then it should have been done from the air, blowing up the bad guys.
>"Draw the sword of military might to bear"? What does that even mean? You talk about it as an "intent", >as if it were a goal unto itself.
It means if you are gonig to go to war, that is, resort to mechanisms of violence to resolve a conflict, then you don't fuck around with half-measures. You don't "sort of" go to war.
>What would be the positive outcome of that be?
No more terrorist attacks against the United States, for starters.
>You cannot claim "the end of fighting" as a positive outcome of the fight that you started.
We did not start the fight. Muslim extremists did on 9/11.
>Might makes right, might is right, fight fight fight!
Might isn't always right, but it usually wins. In this battle of ideologies, all I really care about is being the winner in the end.
>Grow up kid - or if you are an adult get out and talk to people and listen. This sort of juvinile behaviour has real >consequeces even on an international level - as seen with the antics of North Korea when they saw how thin the USA had >stretched itself and the triumph of China as a far more credible trade partner than the USA in a growing number of >circumstances.
I agree it would have real consequences. Good ones, too.
>Even if the above is true why react to ignorant savages by becoming more ignorant and more savage? >Bringing the worst attitudes of the middle east home is not the way to keep a law abiding society intact.
Ah that old saw - "If we act like the terrorists what makes us different from them????"
Look, I don't care if I'm different from them. I just want to be the last man standing.
>Um, no, the goal is to establish a stable, peaceful Democracy.
Who really gives half a shit if the Iraqies have a peaceful democracy? Who wants to spend a trillion American tax dollars so that the Iraqies can have a peaceful democracy? Not me.
>If all we wanted was to not be attacked by Iraqis any more, we could just fucking leave.
I agree. We should do it tomorrow.
>The Japanese stopped fighting because their Emperor told them to lay down arms and stop fighting, and for no other reason. >Death by itself didn't sway them, because dying for the their Emperor was considered a great honor.
But, of course, they didn't. Why? Because the people in charge said, "Holy fuck, guys, we can't win against this shit!" and that was that.
>We could nuke the cities, sure, but we'd be doing it from airbases in Kuwait.
Which we should have done from day one if Iraq was a target worthy of military action. There is no reason to have boots on the ground in Iraq. If the thought was to draw the sword of military might to bear against Iraq, than this could have much more effectively been done with standoff weaponry. But obviously it was never the intent. Rather, the administration wanted a handy police force to occupy the place. Dumb, expensive, and useless.
>Your analysis is correct, except I still wonder what "positive outcomes" you think sufficient military force could bring.
Either eliminating the enemy, or causing them to give up hope in their cause.
>You must live in some alternate world where there was a threat to the US from Iraq.
Threat or no, they, along with Afghanistan, were excellent low-hanging fruit for striking back at the Muslim world for 9/11.
>So what happens after we bomb a bunch of cities and Saddam still doesn't cough up the non-existent WMDs?
First, I'm not convinced that there were no WMDs. Just as Syria, Iran, and who knows who else managed to slip thousands of rockets to the Palestinians to launch into Israel, I have no problem imagining Saddam's WMDs slipping over to Syria or Iran. Second, I find it difficult that the administration would lie about something that would be found to be so untrue so quickly. You'd think if they were going to lie about it, they would have planted some evidence or something.
However, even without WMDs, Saddam's Iraq was a convenient target for at least two reasons: 1) to hit back at the Muslim world for 9/11, and 2) to eliminate a dictator.
Spare me all the "there are lots of dictators in the world" speach.
As to what happens when you bomb a bunch of cities, what happens is peace, either through death or through fear.
That's a good thing, then. The last thing we need is for the government to take over and destroy health care. Health care is just to important to "socialize". Spend the money to reduce the debt, fix broken roads, or other good things. But don't spent it on an ill-conceived program for government to run (and ruin) something it has no business controlling.
Regardless of how good or bad socialized medicine might be, my point is I'd rather spend $340,000,000 on welfare for crack-whores instead of tossing it into a third-world shit hole.
>Word that way, I'd not find the choice as easy. Americans are not inherently better than Iraqis!
That's not the point. The point is, American tax dollars are inherently better spent on/Americans/ than Iraqies.
If you're going to waste $340,000,000, waste it on Americans.
Slashdot Mirror
>The air conditioner, TV, etc. are things that help to make life quite pleasant even if a person doesn't have a lot of money. It's what makes
>our poor "rich" by historical standards. Why are you pissing on these things?
I'm not pissing on those things. I'm just saying, being "rich" by "historical standards" does NOT make you rich, well-off, or even average by today's standards.
It's absurd to say that today's poor should be thankful they have it so good for simply owning $1400 worth of chinese-made electronics.
> * Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home
>owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with
>one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
Define "own". You mean they have the title, or they, like everyone else, have 30 more years of mortgage before they "own" it? I find it hard to believe that 46% of poor people have the title to their property.
> * The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris,
> London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average
> citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Hooray. Now let's talk about the average cost per square foot of the properties under comparison.
> * Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago,
>only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
> * Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
> * Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or
>more color televisions.
> * Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
> * Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Wow! Golly! Just look at all those consumer electronics the poor own! Their quality of life just must be freaking awesome, eh?
Let's take a look at this, shall we?
Air Conditioner: $300
TV: $300
DVD Player: $50
Microwave: $150
Stereo: $200
Dishwasher: $400
TOTAL: $1400
Wowee-Zowee - a whopping $1400 worth of nicities, along with maybe a $5000 car you're making payments on.
Are these nicities things that the average person didn't have 50 years ago? Sure. So what! Today they don't amount to squat - a mere $6400 worth of cheap trinkets.
And why is it that the poor have a weight problem? Could it be that the cheapest foods are the ones that are worst for you?
I wonder what happens to other things when exposed to the radiation from nuclear waste? Like, say, water? I wonder if you could use that radiation to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, or convert other things into useful fuels?
Try downloading any video content that ends in a .WMV extension from any P2P network.
.WMV files won't play. When you try to play them, a window pops up and tells you you need to go download some kind of permission file from some unknown website before it will play. Of course, I'm not going to do that.
.WMV extensions from my video searches on P2P networks. They have DRMed themselves right out of my existance. I now assume that anything with a .WMV extension won't play.
You will find that 99% of
So as a result, I now screen out all
I tried burning DVDs - I could never get the damn things to play in my DVD players around the house. After lots of forum searching, I found that burning a DVD is really a black art.
So now I don't bother anymore.
I just bought a Dlink MediaLounge for Christmas. I now fetch the media off of my 400GB hard drive and display it directly on my TV, skipping the step of making a DVD.
I think downloading DVDs is great - but I don't need to burn them to a DVD to play them, and I'm not interested in paying for any media that expires after any period of time.
I suppose so. But I tell ya what - I'd certainly think twice about jeapordizing my career by showing up at some public rally if typing in my name was likely to pop up pictures of places in public I'd been.
Basically your statement is a tacit recognition that this technology will, in fact, stiffle protest, relegating it to only those who "really believe". Or perhaps, those with nothing to lose.
Steve
>For example, you could go to a political or cultural event for an unpopular group
Parent makes an interesting point. Who would risk going to any public protest for anything (war, whatever) knowing that you will probably turn up in a Google image search for doing so?
Steve
>I wonder why so many people (in particular Americans for some reason) feel that such a complex issue as
>energy supply need a single source as an answer.
Americans don't really care where the energy comes from. They, like everyone else, just want to turn on the light switch and watch the lights come on.
The drive for a single source energy comes from the energy companies who currently enjoy the benefits of a monopoly on a single source of energy - oil. They want a neat package they can control and profit from.
Once the technological genie is out of the bottle for how to cheaply harness alternative energy sources, anyone will be able to do it. And the people with the money to invest in alternative energy technologies are afraid of that.
Steve
Kilotons, Megatons, now Moretons!
I am coming to the conclusion that digital content /really/ /is/ going to be valued as "free" in the very near future.
We see with things like YouTube that there are millions and millions of people willing to create and produce video content for free. Most of it might not be as polished as "professional" journalism, but evidently the masses don't care.
I read today on NPR about a company that is doing something similar with T-shirts (threadless.com) (have not checked the URL). People submit t-shirt ideas, which get voted on by the community, and the top-voted ones are made and put up for sale. Now in this case the winning submitters get paid a couple of thousand dollars, but once again, you have a situation where thousands of people are creating and submitting content for the community for free.
With millions of monkeys on the internet, there are always going to be a handful willing to write up some Shakespear for free.
This means it's going to be harder and harder to find a handful of monkeys people are willing to pay to read.
>Just set up authentication on your server and smart host out through your ISP.
>On the road you connect and authenticate to your mail server, it takes the message
>and relays out through your ISP's SMTP server.
I don't have any control over the email server - either my web host email server or my ISP email server, so I don't know how to set up authentication on them.
What does it mean to "smart host out through your ISP"?
The problem I have on the road is that many networks block port 25 so I can't hit my web host or ISP email server.
Are you talking about setting up my own email server at home? I've never done that before.
Steve
I tried Thunderbird, but I didn't like the look and feel of it. Every time you open an email it "feels" like you are launching a separate program as it took a comparatively long time to open the window to read the email.
Steve
>What I see is that the Internet is an exceptionally fertile ground for seeds to sprout in.
>The existence of large companies such as Yahoo and Google doesn't change that. His comparison to
>the energy sector is flawed. The ease with which somebody can start up a new web site (sorry,
>"service provider") is in no way comparable to what it takes to start a new energy provider. Not even close.
Excellent post. And, pardon my topic derailment, but I'd like to take this time to point out to everyone that this is an excellent reason to preserve network neutrality. It is the neutrality that is the fertilizer that makes the Internet such a fertile ground for those seeds.
Steve
>potential cure for a disease like Parkinson's
Look, I'm as pro-stem cell research as you can be. I think it's great, and I think someone is going to do it no matter what so we might as be the ones who do it.
But I'm tired of the arguement that says, "We must do X, because it could possibly do Y".
It might NOT do Y, also. We do scientific research to gain knowlege. Sometimes there's even a goal in mind behind the search for that knowlege. But this constant shrieking that "We must do stem cell research because it could cure disease (fill in the blank) smacks to much of the the old saw "We must do it FOR THE CHILLLLLLDREEEENNNNN!".
Steve
How can I make Outlook 2000 delete any email with an imbedded image? 99% of the emails I get with pictures in them are crap. They are either spam or some stupid joke I've already seen.
>Everybody delivers e-mail messages through the SMTP server of their ISP. What is wrong with that?
Here is the problem. My ISP will only allow me to send email through their SMTP server as long as I am ON THEIR NETWORK. So if I'm at home, no problem, I can send email.
But if I'm on the road, and I plug into someone else's network, I can't send email using my ISP's SMTP server.
Steve
That has to be one of the dumbest mistakes I've ever typed on teh internets. :)
>Apollo is simply fiscally unrepeatable
I have read that for the $340,000,000 currently spent in Iraq we could have nearly 2.5 Apollo missions in today's dollars.
No one has a problem with nice, clear plastic windows in packaging so you can see the item in the box.
What people have a problem with is when that clear plastic FRONT window is thermally, ultrasonically, or RF welded to a matching BACK clamshell.
This is what makes you have to break out the damn jackhammer to get to the item inside.
It's all to help prevent shoplifting.
>Allegedly many people do, including the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and the American
/military/ response. But we didn't, we won't, we're just going to pussy-foot around playing policeman. So we should leave.
/Iraq/ is not worth fighting for - breaking the will of muslim fanatics is. The actual property and populace of Iraq means nothing to me.
>voters who let him keep that position in 2004.
I guess maybe you missed the last election results?
>Since that method of ending the attacks is only about 10 zillion times more effective than your
>"anger all of Iraq through excessive violence" strategy, and you agree that it is the method we should take,
>why did you even suggest the vastly less effective and much much more costly and stupid method?
Because obviously it was considered militarily important to go into Iraq. If you are going to draw the sword of war, you should use the sword of war. My point was that if we were going to have a military response to Iraq, we should have had a fucking
>Not people, person. Not only did the military leaders think the war should go on, but it didn't matter because
>it was only the Emperor's word that mattered. And yes, he told them to surrender because he knew he wouldn't
>have a country to rule. Had he for whatever reason failed to issue that edict, then we would still be fighting the war.
Yeah right - the emperor of japan could see the handwriting on the wall but no one else could.
>Whereas in Iraq there is no "person in charge" to tell the insurgents to stop to begin with. Mohammed is not
>going to appear in the sky and say "Oh damn, seriously guys, I didn't mean for you to get all that martyr-y,
>just stop already". Therefore, we will continue to fight this war for as long as we are there, and excessive
>violence will not end it but only make it worse.
Well, you can believe what you want, but I believe that it wouldn't take many mushroom clouds to convince the staunchest fanatic that the cause was lost.
>You have something you think is worth fighting for, so you blow it up with a nuke. Brilliant.
You misunderstand me.
>What in your mind makes a target worthy of military action?
When destroying it serves to work towards the goal of breaking the will of the enemy.
>Since boots on the ground are the only things that can hold territory, occupy and control land, exploit its
>resources, replace its government, etc. etc. you seem to be implying that no offensive action is ever worth it,
>and neither is any defensive action which requires anything of the above. Certainly no mission which could be
>described as "peacekeeping". What, exactly, is worth it in your mind?
No, you misunderstand me again. Offensive actions don't require boots on the ground. Iraq could be leveled without ever having a soldier there. If a military action was warranted against Iraq, then it should have been done from the air, blowing up the bad guys.
>"Draw the sword of military might to bear"? What does that even mean? You talk about it as an "intent",
>as if it were a goal unto itself.
It means if you are gonig to go to war, that is, resort to mechanisms of violence to resolve a conflict, then you don't fuck around with half-measures. You don't "sort of" go to war.
>What would be the positive outcome of that be?
No more terrorist attacks against the United States, for starters.
>You cannot claim "the end of fighting" as a positive outcome of the fight that you started.
We did not start the fight. Muslim extremists did on 9/11.
>Might makes right, might is right, fight fight fight!
Might isn't always right, but it usually wins. In this battle of ideologies, all I really care about is being the winner in the end.
>Grow up kid - or if you are an adult get out and talk to people and listen. This sort of juvinile behaviour has real
>consequeces even on an international level - as seen with the antics of North Korea when they saw how thin the USA had
>stretched itself and the triumph of China as a far more credible trade partner than the USA in a growing number of
>circumstances.
I agree it would have real consequences. Good ones, too.
>Even if the above is true why react to ignorant savages by becoming more ignorant and more savage?
>Bringing the worst attitudes of the middle east home is not the way to keep a law abiding society intact.
Ah that old saw - "If we act like the terrorists what makes us different from them????"
Look, I don't care if I'm different from them. I just want to be the last man standing.
>Um, no, the goal is to establish a stable, peaceful Democracy.
Who really gives half a shit if the Iraqies have a peaceful democracy? Who wants to spend a trillion American tax dollars so that the Iraqies can have a peaceful democracy? Not me.
>If all we wanted was to not be attacked by Iraqis any more, we could just fucking leave.
I agree. We should do it tomorrow.
>The Japanese stopped fighting because their Emperor told them to lay down arms and stop fighting, and for no other reason.
>Death by itself didn't sway them, because dying for the their Emperor was considered a great honor.
But, of course, they didn't. Why? Because the people in charge said, "Holy fuck, guys, we can't win against this shit!" and that was that.
>We could nuke the cities, sure, but we'd be doing it from airbases in Kuwait.
Which we should have done from day one if Iraq was a target worthy of military action. There is no reason to have boots on the ground in Iraq. If the thought was to draw the sword of military might to bear against Iraq, than this could have much more effectively been done with standoff weaponry. But obviously it was never the intent. Rather, the administration wanted a handy police force to occupy the place. Dumb, expensive, and useless.
>Your analysis is correct, except I still wonder what "positive outcomes" you think sufficient military force could bring.
Either eliminating the enemy, or causing them to give up hope in their cause.
>You must live in some alternate world where there was a threat to the US from Iraq.
Threat or no, they, along with Afghanistan, were excellent low-hanging fruit for striking back at the Muslim world for 9/11.
>So what happens after we bomb a bunch of cities and Saddam still doesn't cough up the non-existent WMDs?
First, I'm not convinced that there were no WMDs. Just as Syria, Iran, and who knows who else managed to slip thousands of rockets to the Palestinians to launch into Israel, I have no problem imagining Saddam's WMDs slipping over to Syria or Iran. Second, I find it difficult that the administration would lie about something that would be found to be so untrue so quickly. You'd think if they were going to lie about it, they would have planted some evidence or something.
However, even without WMDs, Saddam's Iraq was a convenient target for at least two reasons: 1) to hit back at the Muslim world for 9/11, and 2) to eliminate a dictator.
Spare me all the "there are lots of dictators in the world" speach.
As to what happens when you bomb a bunch of cities, what happens is peace, either through death or through fear.
n/t
>"We don't have money for socialized medicine"
/Americans/ than Iraqies.
That's a good thing, then. The last thing we need is for the government to take over and destroy health care. Health care is just to important to "socialize". Spend the money to reduce the debt, fix broken roads, or other good things. But don't spent it on an ill-conceived program for government to run (and ruin) something it has no business controlling.
Regardless of how good or bad socialized medicine might be, my point is I'd rather spend $340,000,000 on welfare for crack-whores instead of tossing it into a third-world shit hole.
>Word that way, I'd not find the choice as easy. Americans are not inherently better than Iraqis!
That's not the point. The point is, American tax dollars are inherently better spent on
If you're going to waste $340,000,000, waste it on Americans.