How about: It's bad enough that this is *possible*?
Yeah, your Mom hasn't been shipped off to Gitmo. But she *could*. So could you, so could I.
I don't need proof that this is unacceptable.
Just about anything is possible, but that doesn't mean everything is probable and the inability to distinguish the two is one of the irritating aspects of dealing with people like yourself.
For instance, the probability that your mom will be picked up at the mall while shopping for her favorite bath soap at Bed, Bath, and Beyond at the mall is close enough to 0 to not worry about it.
However, if your mom is caught in Iraq with a Kalishnakov assault rifle, and a cell phone remote detonator, a couple of kilos of C4, and a laptop with IED making recipes, then the probability of her being shipped off to Gitmo will correspondingly rise.
Obsessive worrying about very low probability events is a mental illness by which people with very marginal importance in the grand scheme of things magnify their importance (in their own minds) by playing up their chances of being a victim of the evil machine. The machine doesn't care about you and you aren't important enough to spy on or throw into Gitmo. Neither is your mother. Get over it.
Which War has been declared under which these Muslims were captured as POWs?
Red herring. The SCOTUS has ruled that when Congress authorized the use of force, this was equivilent to a DOW and that a state of war exists between the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and various groups in Iraq.
Furthermore, segmentation of legal and illegal combatants has occurred, with legal combantants captured being detained in Afghanistan and mostly released. Most of the Taliban fighters fall into this category. Al Qaeda, who are not adhering to the rules of war, are NOT legal combatants and are not afforded the same legal protections that POWs are. The same goes with a lot of the groups fighting in Iraq as well. Many of them are not legal combatants (don't wear uniforms, intentionally take shelter in civilian areas) either.
Yeah, and the fact that the present administration is holding anyone indefinitely without trial--U.S. citizens or no--is totally against the principles for which we're supposedly fighting.
Right. So, I guess when the US held Japanese, Italian, and German POWs without trial, that was against the principles for which we were supposedly fighting then as well. When we captured the German leadership, and held them without trial for a couple of years after hostilities had ended, that too, was totally against the principles for which we were supposedly fighting for. Considering that a lot of Americans are "released" from "detention" by having the bodies dumped on a roadside after having their head sawed off for Al Jazeera, I'm all out of give a shit for the Islamists sitting in Gitmo.
*snort* Yeah, 'cause when someone's been picked up for another crime and terrorist ties are "strongly suspected" (based on sufficient legally-obtained evidence to rise to the level of probably cause?), that damn FISA court, which as we all know is just crawling with liberal activist judges, would never grant a warrant. They've gotten 19,000 requests, and they've had the nerve to deny six. SIX!!! What if one of those six had been Zacharias Moussaoui?!?
Plenty of documents, articles, and testimony on how FISA affected the Moussaoui case. And not for the positive.
As for the Fourth Ammendment, the Supreme Court through that away a while back when they ruled that a police officer can arrest someone for not wearing a seatbelt even though not wearing a seatbelt isn't an arrestable offense. The ability to arrest someone for innocuous offenses is a lot more relevant and intrusive than a limited wiretapping campaign. After all, who is more likely to intrude in your life? The local JBT, or the Federal government 1000 miles away?
There was more than one string of bombings designed to kill and terrorize, and you think that it shouldn't be investigated?
Absolutely the abortion bombings should'v been investigated. In fact, in many cases the government had a very strong probable cause for pursuing wiretapping warrants against individuals and religious groups. They simply did not do it...and violated Federal law and the Constitution to boot. The Bush administration has also violated Federal law, the difference is, he violated it in pursuit of his Constitutionally defined duties, and as such, the law in all probability will probably be struck down in national security cases, and some sort of post facto review will probably be put in place to review national security claims so that it doesn't become the de facto excuse for wiretapping the opposition party for political gain.
Awww, poor babies! When something like American torture gets any press coverage at all you're crying foul. 15-20 years ago there would have been an impeachment. Now it's a two-day story and even that is too much for your delicate sensibilities.
Give me a break. I'm not crying about Bush's treatment. I think what he's experienced is the crucible that every President should have to go through, Republican or Democrat. What I do object to is the hyperbole used to describe the Bush administration, since it cheapens and diminishes the real events he's compared to, and makes it all the more likely that we won't be able to recognize real tyranny when it faces us. The constant use of emotionally charged adjectives degrades the facility of language of describing the differences between say Hitler and Bush, and erodes the very real differences between the two in the minds of the people who are using that language. In other words, by equating Bush to Hitler, you lose perspective on how very bad Hitler was, how mediocre Bush is, and how much worse things can get, and ultimately, you make the very tyranny you rail against all the more likely since you have lost any real capacity to make a contrasting assessment between leaders of history and the one you have now or will get in the future. In the end, you'll get what you asked for, just not what you wanted.
If they thought the existing laws were not adequate then they should have gone through Congress to change them.
This may seem like a strange idea to you, but the Executive branch does not have to ask the Legislative branch for permission to exercise it's Constitutionally delgated powers. If the Executive Branch asks Congress to change the law, it is defacto acquiesing to Legislative Branch oversight of that power, and functionally giving up some of it's delegated responsibilities. The proper route for the Executive Branch, as strange as it might seem, is to violate the law and take it to judicial review. The Constitution takes precendence over mere legislative law.
I wonder when the leftists will give up comparing the Bush administration to Hitler. If what the Bush administration has experienced over the last six years is "rubber stamping" by the media OR the courts, active opposition must look like civil war.
If you do not accept that argument, then Bush's actions are technically illegal - which he has already admitted is the case without his torturous arguments about the powers of the Commander in Chief.
That brings up the question of whether or not it is illegal to violate a law that is Unconstitutional to begin with. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will be the arbiter of that, and as such, it's a good test case for the limits of Executive and Legislative Branch powers.
From this perspective, the leaker is a hero - and a whistleblower, protected by whistleblower laws.
No, the leaker is not a hero, the leaker is a craven political apparatchik who's primary motivation was damaging the Bush administration politically, at the expense of national security. If he was whistleblowing over the Bush administration wiretapping the DNC, then yeah, he'd be a hero and true whistleblower, and Bush would be impeachable. At this point, however, whoever leaked the wiretapping is just a guy releasing unauthorized classified information in violation of the law...a much more serious law than the FISA one, I might add.
Of course, Clinton spied on US citizens when there was no national security risk or even criminal intent (Catholic Church, abortion protest groups, etc). It was so objectionable that the FBI agents assigned objected to it since they believed it to be illegal.
Bush, in contrast, was spying on residents in the US who's numbers just happened to be in cell phones captured from terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
The FISA process is broken, and all it takes is a libtard judge to block a FISA warrant to get something like Zacharias Moussaoui, who's picked up for immigration violations, is strongly suspected of having terrorist ties, but our agents are blocked from looking at his computer because of civil liberties concerns.
Whether or not Bush broke the FISA law is debatable...but I can pretty much guarantee you, if he broke the law, it'll go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court will find he acted within the powers delegated to him by the Constitution and that the FISA law is an Unconstitutional usurpation of Executive authority by the Legislative branch. And this would happen even if there were a couple more liberal judges. This is a perfect test case.
Was the calls by the NYT for investigation into the Valerie Plame leak for the purpose of prosecuting the leakers (even though the NYT aided and abetted the leak).
Then the NYT turns around and publishes information that is much more damaging to national security than the Plame case ever was. Hopefully there will be a grand jury investigation to put some of these NYT guys in jail. Last time I checked, releasing highly classified information is illegal, and the programs in question were classified for that rarity of reasons...actual national security. Not that it matters to the NYT when a juicy story is involved.
I know - I planned that sort of thing (but not targeting those sorts of civilian targets) ten years ago. Fortunately for the US, I got caught early because I didn't do adequate planning for the bank robberies. Had I a money man to finance the operation and a foreign government intelligence agency to supply the equipment, that wouldn't have been necessary; I could have gone straight into operations.
And what makes you think you would've been better at operations than you were at robbing banks? Robbing banks should've just been another operation. If you are sloppy there, there's every reason to believe you'd be sloppy elsewhere. This is the problem with terrorist ops...the group has to be lucky all the time to carry it out, the state only has to be lucky once. And the more people involved, the luckier the terrorists have to be since there are that many more additional ways opsec can break down. I can think of any number of diabolical schemes to bring the US or any other country to it's knees, but they all need a cadre of people who are cool under fire, willing to die for the cause, and able to keep their mouth shut for an extended period of time. Oh yeah, and they have to be able to work with others.
Marcinko was able to do what he did because he and his team were a lot better trained than the 18 year old MPs guarding an installation...and a hell of a lot better than any jihadi or Michigan militia member.
One-off terrorism will always be possible, but extended campaigns like the one you see in Iraq would be very difficult to pull of domestically.
My point was very simple and easy to comprehend - except for you, apparently. It's quite possible to obtain explosives suitable for IEDs and military quality hardware in the US.
Sure, it's possible, but not nearly as easy, and not nearly as likely, and people who steal explosives are much more likely to get caught. Case in point, all of the cases you listed above which featured captures and convictions. Building intelligence on criminals or terrorists is a little bit easier in the US where LEOs know the language, culture, and customs, than it is in Iraq where soldiers don't. You come across as a hysterical nutjob worried about a militia threat that was overblown 10 years ago, and nonexistent today.
Seriously. Prior to 9/11 the biggest act of domestic terror was pulled off without using any fancy military explosives. The concept you need C4, daisy cutters, or even black powder to blow stuff up shows a serious lack of imagination. Hell, the Word Trade Center was brought down by guys weilding box cutters.
Ok, point taken, to a degree. I agree that, if one were so inclined, the raw materials available for committing acts of terrorism are readily available. It's going to be a lot harder to maintain opsec for your would be IED insurgent group in the US than it is in Iraq, however since it's very likely you won't have a friendly, or at least intimidated population sheltering you from police investigations, and police will know the culture, customs, players, and who fits in and who's out of place for any given event. The sub-contracting model being followed in Iraq also won't work in the US. As they say, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Sulfur levels in gas have been plummeting, so acid rain, while it hasn't vainished, is much less of a problem now.
Funny you mention it. The sulfur oxides also have a cooling effect that counteracts GHG pollution, so the cleaning of the air isn't all positive.
Huge swathes of land have been set aside as environmental preserves.
Even better is when the land is private land and the owners aren't compensated. Got some standing water in your field? Congrats, you're now the proud owner of a Federally protected wetland. Filling in the puddle is illegal. Modifying the land in any way is illegal. Have fun on your Federally protected wilderness zone, mr private "landowner".
Appliances are getting significantly more efficient -- a new refrigerator or washing machine uses far less power than one from a few decades back, with no noticeable decreace in useability, and new toilets and dishwashers use less water
Appliances are getting significantly more efficient because of market dynamics, not because of environmentalists. Refrigerants are being changed because of environmental lobbies, but efficiency gains are exclusive of that (and sometimes, environmental concerns trump efficiency concerns).
The worst pesticides have been banned
Along with the most effective pesticide. But I guess 2 million additional African deaths per year from malaria is apparently just a few eggs we have to break on the way to the omelette that is environmental progress.
You're forgetting how many National Guard armories (that have been broken into and stuff stolen) are in the United States.
National Guard armories don't typically have large quantities of ordnance lying around. They especially don't typically have the types of ordnance that are useful for construction of VBIEDs.
You're also forgetting the literally TONS of construction explosives that have been stolen in the US from poorly guarded construction sites.
And what has happened to these tons of explosives being stolen? Clue: in most states, you can buy a case of dynamite and blasting caps with a driver's license and a credit card.
Not to mention how many US military depot troops with drug, alcohol and sex problems have undoubtedly been bribed to fudge the paperwork as stuff "went missing" or was "consumed during training exercises."
Yeah, but why bring your gay uncle into the picture? The US military isn't the Russian military. Please post proof regarding those allegations, otherwise you're talking out of your ass.
Finally, the US has maybe 600 tactical nuclear weapons - and as Richard Marcinko demonstrated (and videotaped) with his Red Cell SEAL team, US military security is a joke.
Yeah, and that's why so many US nukes have gone missing from depots. And even if they get their hands on one of our nukes, it isn't going to do them much good without a PAL code to go along with it, and there is only one place to get those.
If your post had a point, I'm not sure what it was.
if you can improvise such explosives with readily-at-hand materials in Iraq, think of what a malcontent can do in the USofA; Little Johnny next door is going to start accumulating bleach and fertilizer;
The materials readily at hand in Iraq are a little bit different than the materials readily at hand at the local Home Depot. Iraq, having about 1/15th the population of the US, had around 60% of the munitions that the US has stockpiled around the globe, compressed into an area the size of Texas. In depots, bunkers, schools, mosques, hospitals, palaces Saddam had squirreled away mortar rounds, TNT, C4, howitzer shells, RPGs, ammunition, and guns. The whole country is a freaking arms dump. So, getting a few 152mm howitzer rounds, daisy chaining them with some det cord and a cell phone would be a little more difficult here in the US. Somehow I think making a pipe bomb out of gunpowder and PVC isn't going to have the same effect or be quite as deadly as a VBIED.
Fail how? The belief that Democrats are automatically going to fail in some way seems to be an article of faith with no basis in reality. If Bush's policies are leading to disaster, then vote for those who would avert the disaster. Simple.
Last time I checked, every single viable Democrat, when pressed, stated they would essentially continue Bush's policies vis-a-vis Iraq. If you consider Iraq a disaster, the Democratic "vision" for fixing it is strikingly similar to the Republican vision. The only functional difference is the Democrats aren't Bush. Not a big improvement, in my oppinion.
You don't care what they're spending the money on?
Sure I do. Only, I consider HOW MUCH they are spending as substantively more important than what. Democrats aren't any better in this regard. In fact, they are substantively worse in both regards. They spend more, and they spend more money on frivolous pork. My problem with Republicans in Congress is they are acting like Democrats now. Having no alternative is
You don't care how they've been treating the constitution and your rights?
Sure I do, only I must've missed the memo where the Democratic party suddenly became the "Constitutional party". Last time I checked, Democrats don't believe in the 1st Ammendment (McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform - which passed with overwhelming Democrat support) or the 2nd Ammendment (they are behind almost every anti-private gun ownership law initiative at the local, state, and Federal level), the 5th Ammendment (Kelo vs New London SCOTUS case), or the grand daddy of them all, the 10th Ammendment (which, by ignoring, they and the Republicans have inexorably expanded the bounds of the Federal governmment).
Again, Democrats are no better, and frequently worse. Save me your false, sanctimonious attitude when it comes to the Constitution. If you had any measure of concern for it, you'd be voting Libertarian as I am. All you are doing is voting who will eat you for dinner, the wolf or the lion.
You have no moral or ethical requirements of your government?
It's the nature of bureaucracies to be unethical. That's why the government that governs least governs best. A concept lost on Republicans and Democrats.
You're not bothered by corruption at the highest levels?
And you think Democrats are better, why exactly? Did you know that Enron built several extremely overpriced, inefficient power plants in India because BILL CLINTON lobbied the Indians to build them? Ever hear of Toricelli or the White House Travel Office scandal (recap: the existing White House Travel Office was fired so Hillary could bring in her cronies, and several people in the old office were brought up on FELONY charges just to shut them up...if that ain't corruption, I don't know what is). Oh yeah, the Democrats are currently the ones balking at corruption reform for their little private vacations. Seems they want to keep the free vacations they get from non-profit orgs. Again, save me your false outrage you freaking hypocrite and vote for a party that doesn't do the same exact thing they claim the other side is doing.
* NOTE: This assumes you are an American. If not, then your concern is rhetorical and not actual, and your voting preferences immaterial, and so I appologize for any mischaracterizations based on that. Otherwise, it all holds.
Companies don't pay for your health care, you pay for your health care. But it's easier to hide the overall cost if the employee pays for health care insurance instead of paying you the money. The explosion in the cost of health care has closely tracked to the growth of the insurance industry, and about 1/3 of all health care costs go to simply managing the insurance aspects.
I believe in holding people accountable for their own failures, not for the failures of others or potential failures at some point in the future
And if you elect people who's only notable vision is opposition to George Bush, you're going to have lots of failures. That's the problem with the Democrats. Their party platform has become "we're not George Bush".
The problem with Republicans is their party platform has become "we can spend just as much as Democrats."
You are missing the bigger picture, it's not simply the greens (or the fossil fuel industry) hijacking the debate, a large section of the public (particularly those over 40 such as myself) will not consider nuclear because they have an understandable and rational fear of it.
Then there really is no alternative. It's oil or poverty.
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How about: It's bad enough that this is *possible*?
Yeah, your Mom hasn't been shipped off to Gitmo. But she *could*. So could you, so could I.
I don't need proof that this is unacceptable.
Just about anything is possible, but that doesn't mean everything is probable and the inability to distinguish the two is one of the irritating aspects of dealing with people like yourself.
For instance, the probability that your mom will be picked up at the mall while shopping for her favorite bath soap at Bed, Bath, and Beyond at the mall is close enough to 0 to not worry about it.
However, if your mom is caught in Iraq with a Kalishnakov assault rifle, and a cell phone remote detonator, a couple of kilos of C4, and a laptop with IED making recipes, then the probability of her being shipped off to Gitmo will correspondingly rise.
Obsessive worrying about very low probability events is a mental illness by which people with very marginal importance in the grand scheme of things magnify their importance (in their own minds) by playing up their chances of being a victim of the evil machine. The machine doesn't care about you and you aren't important enough to spy on or throw into Gitmo. Neither is your mother. Get over it.
Which War has been declared under which these Muslims were captured as POWs?
Red herring. The SCOTUS has ruled that when Congress authorized the use of force, this was equivilent to a DOW and that a state of war exists between the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and various groups in Iraq.
Furthermore, segmentation of legal and illegal combatants has occurred, with legal combantants captured being detained in Afghanistan and mostly released. Most of the Taliban fighters fall into this category. Al Qaeda, who are not adhering to the rules of war, are NOT legal combatants and are not afforded the same legal protections that POWs are. The same goes with a lot of the groups fighting in Iraq as well. Many of them are not legal combatants (don't wear uniforms, intentionally take shelter in civilian areas) either.
Yeah, and the fact that the present administration is holding anyone indefinitely without trial--U.S. citizens or no--is totally against the principles for which we're supposedly fighting.
Right. So, I guess when the US held Japanese, Italian, and German POWs without trial, that was against the principles for which we were supposedly fighting then as well. When we captured the German leadership, and held them without trial for a couple of years after hostilities had ended, that too, was totally against the principles for which we were supposedly fighting for. Considering that a lot of Americans are "released" from "detention" by having the bodies dumped on a roadside after having their head sawed off for Al Jazeera, I'm all out of give a shit for the Islamists sitting in Gitmo.
this is the problem, we cant name one, as the names are not released...
Aka, the good old "I have no evidence, but I know it's true and nothing you can say can convince me otherwise" argument.
Indexing.
*snort* Yeah, 'cause when someone's been picked up for another crime and terrorist ties are "strongly suspected" (based on sufficient legally-obtained evidence to rise to the level of probably cause?), that damn FISA court, which as we all know is just crawling with liberal activist judges, would never grant a warrant. They've gotten 19,000 requests, and they've had the nerve to deny six. SIX!!! What if one of those six had been Zacharias Moussaoui?!?
Google is your friend.
Plenty of documents, articles, and testimony on how FISA affected the Moussaoui case. And not for the positive.
As for the Fourth Ammendment, the Supreme Court through that away a while back when they ruled that a police officer can arrest someone for not wearing a seatbelt even though not wearing a seatbelt isn't an arrestable offense. The ability to arrest someone for innocuous offenses is a lot more relevant and intrusive than a limited wiretapping campaign. After all, who is more likely to intrude in your life? The local JBT, or the Federal government 1000 miles away?
There was more than one string of bombings designed to kill and terrorize, and you think that it shouldn't be investigated?
Absolutely the abortion bombings should'v been investigated. In fact, in many cases the government had a very strong probable cause for pursuing wiretapping warrants against individuals and religious groups. They simply did not do it...and violated Federal law and the Constitution to boot. The Bush administration has also violated Federal law, the difference is, he violated it in pursuit of his Constitutionally defined duties, and as such, the law in all probability will probably be struck down in national security cases, and some sort of post facto review will probably be put in place to review national security claims so that it doesn't become the de facto excuse for wiretapping the opposition party for political gain.
Awww, poor babies! When something like American torture gets any press coverage at all you're crying foul. 15-20 years ago there would have been an impeachment. Now it's a two-day story and even that is too much for your delicate sensibilities.
Give me a break. I'm not crying about Bush's treatment. I think what he's experienced is the crucible that every President should have to go through, Republican or Democrat. What I do object to is the hyperbole used to describe the Bush administration, since it cheapens and diminishes the real events he's compared to, and makes it all the more likely that we won't be able to recognize real tyranny when it faces us. The constant use of emotionally charged adjectives degrades the facility of language of describing the differences between say Hitler and Bush, and erodes the very real differences between the two in the minds of the people who are using that language. In other words, by equating Bush to Hitler, you lose perspective on how very bad Hitler was, how mediocre Bush is, and how much worse things can get, and ultimately, you make the very tyranny you rail against all the more likely since you have lost any real capacity to make a contrasting assessment between leaders of history and the one you have now or will get in the future. In the end, you'll get what you asked for, just not what you wanted.
If they thought the existing laws were not adequate then they should have gone through Congress to change them.
This may seem like a strange idea to you, but the Executive branch does not have to ask the Legislative branch for permission to exercise it's Constitutionally delgated powers. If the Executive Branch asks Congress to change the law, it is defacto acquiesing to Legislative Branch oversight of that power, and functionally giving up some of it's delegated responsibilities. The proper route for the Executive Branch, as strange as it might seem, is to violate the law and take it to judicial review. The Constitution takes precendence over mere legislative law.
I wonder when the leftists will give up comparing the Bush administration to Hitler. If what the Bush administration has experienced over the last six years is "rubber stamping" by the media OR the courts, active opposition must look like civil war.
If you do not accept that argument, then Bush's actions are technically illegal - which he has already admitted is the case without his torturous arguments about the powers of the Commander in Chief.
That brings up the question of whether or not it is illegal to violate a law that is Unconstitutional to begin with. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will be the arbiter of that, and as such, it's a good test case for the limits of Executive and Legislative Branch powers.
From this perspective, the leaker is a hero - and a whistleblower, protected by whistleblower laws.
No, the leaker is not a hero, the leaker is a craven political apparatchik who's primary motivation was damaging the Bush administration politically, at the expense of national security. If he was whistleblowing over the Bush administration wiretapping the DNC, then yeah, he'd be a hero and true whistleblower, and Bush would be impeachable. At this point, however, whoever leaked the wiretapping is just a guy releasing unauthorized classified information in violation of the law...a much more serious law than the FISA one, I might add.
Of course, Clinton spied on US citizens when there was no national security risk or even criminal intent (Catholic Church, abortion protest groups, etc). It was so objectionable that the FBI agents assigned objected to it since they believed it to be illegal.
Bush, in contrast, was spying on residents in the US who's numbers just happened to be in cell phones captured from terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
The FISA process is broken, and all it takes is a libtard judge to block a FISA warrant to get something like Zacharias Moussaoui, who's picked up for immigration violations, is strongly suspected of having terrorist ties, but our agents are blocked from looking at his computer because of civil liberties concerns.
Whether or not Bush broke the FISA law is debatable...but I can pretty much guarantee you, if he broke the law, it'll go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court will find he acted within the powers delegated to him by the Constitution and that the FISA law is an Unconstitutional usurpation of Executive authority by the Legislative branch. And this would happen even if there were a couple more liberal judges. This is a perfect test case.
Was the calls by the NYT for investigation into the Valerie Plame leak for the purpose of prosecuting the leakers (even though the NYT aided and abetted the leak).
Then the NYT turns around and publishes information that is much more damaging to national security than the Plame case ever was. Hopefully there will be a grand jury investigation to put some of these NYT guys in jail. Last time I checked, releasing highly classified information is illegal, and the programs in question were classified for that rarity of reasons...actual national security. Not that it matters to the NYT when a juicy story is involved.
I know - I planned that sort of thing (but not targeting those sorts of civilian targets) ten years ago. Fortunately for the US, I got caught early because I didn't do adequate planning for the bank robberies. Had I a money man to finance the operation and a foreign government intelligence agency to supply the equipment, that wouldn't have been necessary; I could have gone straight into operations.
And what makes you think you would've been better at operations than you were at robbing banks? Robbing banks should've just been another operation. If you are sloppy there, there's every reason to believe you'd be sloppy elsewhere. This is the problem with terrorist ops...the group has to be lucky all the time to carry it out, the state only has to be lucky once. And the more people involved, the luckier the terrorists have to be since there are that many more additional ways opsec can break down. I can think of any number of diabolical schemes to bring the US or any other country to it's knees, but they all need a cadre of people who are cool under fire, willing to die for the cause, and able to keep their mouth shut for an extended period of time. Oh yeah, and they have to be able to work with others.
Marcinko was able to do what he did because he and his team were a lot better trained than the 18 year old MPs guarding an installation...and a hell of a lot better than any jihadi or Michigan militia member.
One-off terrorism will always be possible, but extended campaigns like the one you see in Iraq would be very difficult to pull of domestically.
My point was very simple and easy to comprehend - except for you, apparently. It's quite possible to obtain explosives suitable for IEDs and military quality hardware in the US.
Sure, it's possible, but not nearly as easy, and not nearly as likely, and people who steal explosives are much more likely to get caught. Case in point, all of the cases you listed above which featured captures and convictions. Building intelligence on criminals or terrorists is a little bit easier in the US where LEOs know the language, culture, and customs, than it is in Iraq where soldiers don't. You come across as a hysterical nutjob worried about a militia threat that was overblown 10 years ago, and nonexistent today.
Seriously. Prior to 9/11 the biggest act of domestic terror was pulled off without using any fancy military explosives. The concept you need C4, daisy cutters, or even black powder to blow stuff up shows a serious lack of imagination. Hell, the Word Trade Center was brought down by guys weilding box cutters.
Ok, point taken, to a degree. I agree that, if one were so inclined, the raw materials available for committing acts of terrorism are readily available. It's going to be a lot harder to maintain opsec for your would be IED insurgent group in the US than it is in Iraq, however since it's very likely you won't have a friendly, or at least intimidated population sheltering you from police investigations, and police will know the culture, customs, players, and who fits in and who's out of place for any given event. The sub-contracting model being followed in Iraq also won't work in the US. As they say, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Sulfur levels in gas have been plummeting, so acid rain, while it hasn't vainished, is much less of a problem now.
Funny you mention it. The sulfur oxides also have a cooling effect that counteracts GHG pollution, so the cleaning of the air isn't all positive.
Huge swathes of land have been set aside as environmental preserves.
Even better is when the land is private land and the owners aren't compensated. Got some standing water in your field? Congrats, you're now the proud owner of a Federally protected wetland. Filling in the puddle is illegal. Modifying the land in any way is illegal. Have fun on your Federally protected wilderness zone, mr private "landowner". Appliances are getting significantly more efficient -- a new refrigerator or washing machine uses far less power than one from a few decades back, with no noticeable decreace in useability, and new toilets and dishwashers use less water
Appliances are getting significantly more efficient because of market dynamics, not because of environmentalists. Refrigerants are being changed because of environmental lobbies, but efficiency gains are exclusive of that (and sometimes, environmental concerns trump efficiency concerns).
The worst pesticides have been banned
Along with the most effective pesticide. But I guess 2 million additional African deaths per year from malaria is apparently just a few eggs we have to break on the way to the omelette that is environmental progress.
You're forgetting how many National Guard armories (that have been broken into and stuff stolen) are in the United States.
National Guard armories don't typically have large quantities of ordnance lying around. They especially don't typically have the types of ordnance that are useful for construction of VBIEDs.
You're also forgetting the literally TONS of construction explosives that have been stolen in the US from poorly guarded construction sites.
And what has happened to these tons of explosives being stolen? Clue: in most states, you can buy a case of dynamite and blasting caps with a driver's license and a credit card. Not to mention how many US military depot troops with drug, alcohol and sex problems have undoubtedly been bribed to fudge the paperwork as stuff "went missing" or was "consumed during training exercises."
Yeah, but why bring your gay uncle into the picture? The US military isn't the Russian military. Please post proof regarding those allegations, otherwise you're talking out of your ass.
Finally, the US has maybe 600 tactical nuclear weapons - and as Richard Marcinko demonstrated (and videotaped) with his Red Cell SEAL team, US military security is a joke.
Yeah, and that's why so many US nukes have gone missing from depots. And even if they get their hands on one of our nukes, it isn't going to do them much good without a PAL code to go along with it, and there is only one place to get those.
If your post had a point, I'm not sure what it was.
Glib, but untrue. Texas has a significant fraction of the Army's TO&E, but most explosive ordnance and munitions are stored elsewhere.
if you can improvise such explosives with readily-at-hand materials in Iraq, think of what a malcontent can do in the USofA; Little Johnny next door is going to start accumulating bleach and fertilizer;
The materials readily at hand in Iraq are a little bit different than the materials readily at hand at the local Home Depot. Iraq, having about 1/15th the population of the US, had around 60% of the munitions that the US has stockpiled around the globe, compressed into an area the size of Texas. In depots, bunkers, schools, mosques, hospitals, palaces Saddam had squirreled away mortar rounds, TNT, C4, howitzer shells, RPGs, ammunition, and guns. The whole country is a freaking arms dump. So, getting a few 152mm howitzer rounds, daisy chaining them with some det cord and a cell phone would be a little more difficult here in the US. Somehow I think making a pipe bomb out of gunpowder and PVC isn't going to have the same effect or be quite as deadly as a VBIED.
Ecological environmentalism hasn't exactly been a success story.
Fail how? The belief that Democrats are automatically going to fail in some way seems to be an article of faith with no basis in reality. If Bush's policies are leading to disaster, then vote for those who would avert the disaster. Simple.
Last time I checked, every single viable Democrat, when pressed, stated they would essentially continue Bush's policies vis-a-vis Iraq. If you consider Iraq a disaster, the Democratic "vision" for fixing it is strikingly similar to the Republican vision. The only functional difference is the Democrats aren't Bush. Not a big improvement, in my oppinion.
You don't care what they're spending the money on?
Sure I do. Only, I consider HOW MUCH they are spending as substantively more important than what. Democrats aren't any better in this regard. In fact, they are substantively worse in both regards. They spend more, and they spend more money on frivolous pork. My problem with Republicans in Congress is they are acting like Democrats now. Having no alternative is
You don't care how they've been treating the constitution and your rights?
Sure I do, only I must've missed the memo where the Democratic party suddenly became the "Constitutional party". Last time I checked, Democrats don't believe in the 1st Ammendment (McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform - which passed with overwhelming Democrat support) or the 2nd Ammendment (they are behind almost every anti-private gun ownership law initiative at the local, state, and Federal level), the 5th Ammendment (Kelo vs New London SCOTUS case), or the grand daddy of them all, the 10th Ammendment (which, by ignoring, they and the Republicans have inexorably expanded the bounds of the Federal governmment).
Again, Democrats are no better, and frequently worse. Save me your false, sanctimonious attitude when it comes to the Constitution. If you had any measure of concern for it, you'd be voting Libertarian as I am. All you are doing is voting who will eat you for dinner, the wolf or the lion.
You have no moral or ethical requirements of your government?
It's the nature of bureaucracies to be unethical. That's why the government that governs least governs best. A concept lost on Republicans and Democrats.
You're not bothered by corruption at the highest levels?
And you think Democrats are better, why exactly? Did you know that Enron built several extremely overpriced, inefficient power plants in India because BILL CLINTON lobbied the Indians to build them? Ever hear of Toricelli or the White House Travel Office scandal (recap: the existing White House Travel Office was fired so Hillary could bring in her cronies, and several people in the old office were brought up on FELONY charges just to shut them up...if that ain't corruption, I don't know what is). Oh yeah, the Democrats are currently the ones balking at corruption reform for their little private vacations. Seems they want to keep the free vacations they get from non-profit orgs. Again, save me your false outrage you freaking hypocrite and vote for a party that doesn't do the same exact thing they claim the other side is doing.
* NOTE: This assumes you are an American. If not, then your concern is rhetorical and not actual, and your voting preferences immaterial, and so I appologize for any mischaracterizations based on that. Otherwise, it all holds.
Companies don't pay for your health care, you pay for your health care. But it's easier to hide the overall cost if the employee pays for health care insurance instead of paying you the money. The explosion in the cost of health care has closely tracked to the growth of the insurance industry, and about 1/3 of all health care costs go to simply managing the insurance aspects.
I believe in holding people accountable for their own failures, not for the failures of others or potential failures at some point in the future
And if you elect people who's only notable vision is opposition to George Bush, you're going to have lots of failures. That's the problem with the Democrats. Their party platform has become "we're not George Bush".
The problem with Republicans is their party platform has become "we can spend just as much as Democrats."
Both parties have serious issues.
You are missing the bigger picture, it's not simply the greens (or the fossil fuel industry) hijacking the debate, a large section of the public (particularly those over 40 such as myself) will not consider nuclear because they have an understandable and rational fear of it.
Then there really is no alternative. It's oil or poverty.