On 15 Jul 2005 11:13:21 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...

So, where did these WMD go between 1998 and 2002, exactly?

Into Osama's back pocket. They're as safe from us as they
could ever be. Our government would never look in saudi
arabia.

Got any evidence for that? Because I'm sure the UN would be happy to,
well, protest in the strongest possible terms or something.

In article , Dave Hinz says...

Into Osama's back pocket. They're as safe from us as they
could ever be. Our government would never look in saudi
arabia.

Got any evidence for that? Because I'm sure the UN would be happy to,
well, protest in the strongest possible terms or something.

Well one thing's for sure, the US won't touch the saudis over
any issue ever.

Jim


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On 15 Jul 2005 12:28:56 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...

Into Osama's back pocket. They're as safe from us as they
could ever be. Our government would never look in saudi
arabia.

Got any evidence for that? Because I'm sure the UN would be happy to,
well, protest in the strongest possible terms or something.

Well one thing's for sure, the US won't touch the saudis over
any issue ever.

That wasn't the question. Got anything other than vague handwaving to
back up your assertions?

In article , Dave Hinz says...

That wasn't the question. Got anything other than vague handwaving to
back up your assertions?

There's a great photo out there of the Dweeb sniffing around
after the top saudi official. Does that count?

Jim


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On 15 Jul 2005 14:07:28 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...

That wasn't the question. Got anything other than vague handwaving to
back up your assertions?

There's a great photo out there of the Dweeb sniffing around
after the top saudi official. Does that count?

Does that show how the WMD are in SA? You're slipping again, Jim.
You claimed that the WMD have been moved to SA. What other than vague
handwaving do you have to back that up? Because the UN would love to
know about any, you know, evidence.

In article , Dave Hinz says...

Does that show how the WMD are in SA?

Dave. Nobody. Cares. About. WMDs. Any. More.

It was an excuse cooked up to justify invading iraq.
The adminstration made up the term, and fed it to
the press, who took it hook, line and sinker.

Jim


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On 15 Jul 2005 15:10:10 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...

Does that show how the WMD are in SA?

Dave. Nobody. Cares. About. WMDs. Any. More.

Then why did you say they went to SA?

It was an excuse cooked up to justify invading iraq.

You keep not commenting on these quotes, showing the left "cooking up"
right along with W. Here's that link again, Jim. Gonna keep evading
it?
http://www.thiefsden.net/archives/000073.html
Remind me again what party Clinton, Clinton, Pelosi, Gore, Levin,
Graham, Kennedy, Byrd, Kerry, and Waxman are in?

The adminstration made up the term, and fed it to
the press, who took it hook, line and sinker.

Which administration exactly do you feel the above named folks are part
of? Jim, you're talking bull**** and you know it. That's why you keep
not addressing these quotes. To pretend they don't exist in the face of
them being blisteringly present doesn't do your argument any good.

Dave Hinz

On 15 Jul 2005 08:04:16 -0700, the opaque jim rozen
clearly wrote:

In article , Gunner says...

But honestly I will revisit that very reasonable question when
the cost for the local peekskill cops reaches 5 billion dollars
per month. Pack a lunch my friend.

Please do.

And in the meantime please meditate on what you and yours
could could do with a few spare billion dollars.

With my meager -share-, I could have bought a new steel building, put
it up, added a 200A panel to it, gone to Gunner's, bought a whole
-****load- of tools and accessories, and been producing barrels full
of small metal chips by now.


--
ALL YOUR FEARS ARE LIES
-----------------------
http://diversify.com UNfearful Websites

In article , Larry Jaques says...

And in the meantime please meditate on what you and yours
could could do with a few spare billion dollars.

With my meager -share-, I could have bought a new steel building, put
it up, added a 200A panel to it, gone to Gunner's, bought a whole
-****load- of tools and accessories, and been producing barrels full
of small metal chips by now.

I could have hired a full-time staff or RNs to help my mom
re-hab at *home*.

Jim


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In article , Ace
says...

You speak as if you are if your taxes alone are supporting the government.

Who else's taxes? Yours, gunners, every single poster on this
ng is paying for the war. Along with everyone else who doesn't
make enough money to hire a great tax accountant and 'opt-out.'

So, is it even credible to ask what you and yours could do with a few spare
billion dollars?

I was asking *Gunner*. I KNOW he could use some of that money.

Another thought is how many of these billions would be spent whether our
troops are in Iraq, or at their respective home bases?

That's a great question. They seem to have no compunctions about
spending it on a war, why not just *not* spend it, or pick some
other flavor-of-the month project. The spending is really
borrowing - we're putting our country into deep debt. Interestingly
this is how we won teh cold war - we out-spend the russians.

The terrorists seem to be taking a page from our own book here.


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On 15 Jul 2005 15:42:12 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:26:46 GMT, Gunner wrote:
On 14 Jul 2005 16:23:45 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

We know he had WMD,
because, well, we sold it to him,

Ah...no..we didnt.

OK, I thought we did. So, who did?


The French and Germans actually. And some by Russia.

Oddly enough..the same 3 nations that didnt assist the coallition in
prosecuting the war.

Odd huh?

Gunner

"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown

On 15 Jul 2005 08:04:16 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Gunner says...

But honestly I will revisit that very reasonable question when
the cost for the local peekskill cops reaches 5 billion dollars
per month. Pack a lunch my friend.

Please do.

And in the meantime please meditate on what you and yours
could could do with a few spare billion dollars.

Jim

I have and determined that using the money to wack a few hundred
thousand Islamic Fundimentalist Extremists and liberating 50,000,000
is a good thing.

Gunner

"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown

J. R. Carroll wrote:



Larry,
This is a message to terrorists that is a little more effective than
anything I have seen from politicians on either side of the aisle:

ftp.machiningsolution.com/avrilkorman.jpg

A picture is worth a thousand words....


Bull****, most suicide bombers don't read English. And even if they do,
do you really think they care about someone giving them the finger while
they blow up a dozen children?
--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

J. R. Carroll wrote:




There is something that you guys are overlooking.
The US is still in an uproar as the result of the initial attack.
We are still in the process of stripping US citizens of the thing we hold
dear - our constitutionally protected freedoms. UBL isn't doing that and
couldn't.
We are ****ing away hundreds of billions off dollars without much real
positive effect in our attempt to defeat "terrorism".
Political turmoil is increasing, not abating. The country was as united as I
have ever seen it on 12 September 2001. Look where we are now.
We have served up the members of our armed forces as targets, hardened
targets I'll grant you but the Russians were willing to take 10 to 1 losses
against the Germans. We are squandering the most professional, well
equipped, best trained, highly motivated fighting force the world has ever
known and haven't bothered to ask let alone answer the most important
question of all. What does "Victory" look like? Our armed forces are made up
of some of our finest men and women. We owe it to them to ask and answer
this question. They deserve it.
We have overlaid our commercial and financial with regulations that impose
enormous burdens and make us less competitive in the worlds manufacturing
and financial markets at precisely the time we need to be focused on
learning to deal with reality in these areas.
The President of the United States and his entire administration ( our
government ) are in the process of loosing whatever credibility they had not
with the outside world, but here at home where it really counts because they
have used any means to pursue ends that may or may not be realistically
attainable rather than being truthful and operating transparently.
The list goes on but one possible reason we have not seen further attacks
here is that we are accomplishing the goals of our enemies quite well
without further prodding. Why waste the energy with so little possible
return.

It sucks. Hard.


It sure does.

It does seem the Karl Marx was right with his theory of Historical
Materialism. (At least as I understand it with my very limited ability
to grasp the difficult concepts).

It sure seems that it is time for the US to be relegated to the
sidelines. And our elected leaders are doing a fine job to speed up the
process.

Our administrations, Congress (Democrats and Republicans alike are an
embarrassment), our news media, you name it.

The 20th century was America's century, the 21st century will most
certainly NOT be America's century.

We don't produce anything anymore, other than the best weapons ever
designed by mankind. The whole world shops here for products to kill.
Everything else is produced in China.
--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

In article , Gunner says...

Destroy Plames husband? How? Please be specific.

By ruining his wife's CIA cell.

Jim


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In article , Dave Hinz says...

To pretend they don't exist in the face of
them being blisteringly present doesn't do your argument any good.

Arguments notwithstanding, time will certainly tell about
the iraq war, and roves malfeasence. I'm not engaging
in any url wars because it's been proven in the past that
gunner can cook up whatever right wing fundie whack-o site
that supports *any* position. There is no credibility so
I just don't want to chase after another mary roush there.

This is one reason why Ed is conspicuously absent at this
point I think.

Jim


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On 16 Jul 2005 12:39:39 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Gunner says...

Destroy Plames husband? How? Please be specific.

By ruining his wife's CIA cell.

Jim

Ok...now she has a CIA cell. Interesting. Please provide cites for
such, and how the alleged exposure (which the Left is rapidly backing
away from as they realize no crime was committed nor was there any
intent) would destroy a time server who changed his story several
times on Niger yellow cake?

Gunner


"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown

On 16 Jul 2005 12:48:26 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Dave Hinz says...

To pretend they don't exist in the face of
them being blisteringly present doesn't do your argument any good.

Arguments notwithstanding, time will certainly tell about
the iraq war, and roves malfeasence. I'm not engaging
in any url wars because it's been proven in the past that
gunner can cook up whatever right wing fundie whack-o site
that supports *any* position. There is no credibility so
I just don't want to chase after another mary roush there.

This is one reason why Ed is conspicuously absent at this
point I think.

Jim

Humm..right wing fundi wack-o site....

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110006955

Wall Street Journal is a fundi wack-o site...interesting

Karl Rove, Whistleblower
He told the truth about Joe Wilson.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl
Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving
Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the
White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next
iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine
bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee
exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this
whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew
Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility.
He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been
recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice
President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In
short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could
understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan
trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you,
Mr. Rove.

Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws
in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her
husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that
Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982
Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have
deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an
undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official
capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name
and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.

On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New
York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news
organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr.
Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.

"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from
clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the
Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to
this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic
of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.

The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a
CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At
the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger
yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his
now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union
address.
Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first
reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the
Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign
and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat
appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with
Valerie) in Vanity Fair.

But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan
Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms.
Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission.
"Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his
wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his
name for the trip," said the report.

The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents
Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered
intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said
the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as
mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium
in Niger.

About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler
delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the
statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January
2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was
well-founded."

In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered
in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or
even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign
promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much
prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations.
But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and
thoroughly discredited, let us know.

If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has
been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not
to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration
is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment
of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt
the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided
missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their
sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying
crime was at issue.
As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired,
they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

One should also note..that before Novack published his story..he
Called CIA headquarters and asked if publishing the story would be ok.
He was given the ok.


"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown

Dave Hinz wrote:

Even those who don't want to fight against you also won't want to help.
Terrorism breeds pretty quickly in that sort of environment. In the
end, people get killed anyway, the only difference is that their lives
sucked before they died in a police state.

And who do you feel lives in a police state, exactly?

Singapore, for one.

Relavance being....?

It's a police state. You asked for a police state, so I named one.
Was that not what you wanted? I can only read what you've typed in; I
can't read your mind.


Relavance of Singapore to a US vs. mideast terrorist group being what,
exactly?


Hey you dimwit, ... YOU ASKED HIM for a police state, he gave you an
example, and now you try to attack him by asking what the relevance is!
You asked him, and he answered you. Don't try to twist it around as
if he tried to make a point.

Are you even capable of following your own pathetic reasoning? Clearly,
you are not capable of following the string of a high school level
debate. Not even one that is in written form.

Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Perhaps. Nobody can really show that the lack of an attack on the US
is the result of this war.

It's certainly debatable, yes. But the stated goal and the result are
the same.

No, it's not debatable, it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack. That's why nobody has been able to show it
aside from repeating it again and again in the hopes it'll be accepted
as fact by enough people.

What military? Seriously, everyone who's looked at gulf war 1 and
gulf war 2 says the same thing: the Iraq military had decayed. We faced
more opposition from the weather during the invasion. Even their piece
of **** SCUD missiles were a no-show during the invasion.

What military? Um, news flash: the guys who ran away during the major
combat operations, just might be the same ones bombing trucks giving out
candy to Iraqi children today.

His military didn't run from us in Gulf War 1 until it was hammered
into the sand. His military ran away from us in GW 2 before a shot was
fired in many places. Does that not sound like a decay to you? Not to
mention a glaring absence of heavy equipment during the "battles."
BTW, Saddam isn't building the IEDs that are being used now. Saddam
had control up until we invaded, so whatever has gone on since isn't
relevant to what Saddam was doing.

Do we know each other from a.g.d. by the way?

Yup. (:

Thought so. How's that madhouse these days?

Dunno--I left a while back when I got bored to tears with the game.

Same here; I abandoned a 70-something barb and a 60's druid with nice
gear. Ah well. PNF long, long ago I'm sure. Been playing civ3 lately,
oddly enough, waiting for the Harry Potter release tomorrow morning.

Yeah, I got to where I was only logging on to keep my dudes from
expiring, then I didn't even keep up with that. Once my favorite
sorceress (Amee: level 93 or 94) went poof I had pretty much no urge to
bother any more.

No longer even had the attention span to get on line and wait around for
people to chat with. That reminds me, I need to get on Yahoo and annoy
Orchid some more. She left AGD as well.

Well, she came and went from time to time, didn't she? Seemed like a
pretty level-headed person, good moderating influence for the kiddies in
the group.

Agreed. I used to talk with her pretty regularly on AIM. Good
therapy.

Yeah, I know it's our money. Whoopie. the action is worldwide, so
the results need to take into account the entire world. Looking at the
entire world, it's a failure.

Well, OK, show me a followup on the scale of 9/11/01 anywhere in the
world, then. I think it's getting better.

9/11 is a blip pretty far off the main line. If you want to set your
threshold as high as that, OK, there's been no terrorism in the world,
ever, except 9/11.
But if you're willing to settle for a more reasonable threshold,
Spain and England both come to mind. Plus the daily attacks in Iraq.

Of course not. I've never said it did. It's impossible to prove the
negative - prove to me there are no WMD in Iraq, for instance.

Good point. Part of the justification for the war was that Saddam
could not prove he had no WMD, so we invaded. You understand that we
made an impossible request, right?

Well, it's not like he didn't agree to the terms originally, at the end
of the first little party over there, that he'd get rid of 'em and
record those activities, and let the inspectors and observers in. He
failed on all those points. Maybe if nothing else, the lesson is "If
you've got the nasties, and don't prove that you really destroyed 'em,
be prepared to face a hell of an audit committee". I don't believe for
a second that he didn't hide or export them, though.

OK, so he lied. BFD--dictators lie all the time, it's par for the
course. If we went and invaded every dictatorship that lied at a cost
of $1.25billion per week, we'd be hopelessly swamped with warfare and
debt before making a dent.
Also, North Korea fits that description, but we've done nothing. If
we're trying to send a message, we've hosed it royally.

Second, what defense will you use if we do get
attacked over here? If your only justification for this war is that we
haven't been attacked yet, then as soon as we do get attacked again your
entire justification is gone.

Um, no, I think the obvious would be "Wow, that sucked, just imagine
what would have happened if we hadn't knocked SH out of power and he'd
given AQ some nasties at that time".

What nasties? There ain't any.

Then where did they go, exactly? You don't know; I don't know; but they
didn't just evaporate. And the Sarin shell(s) that injured some of our
guys weren't supposed to exist, but I'm thinking there are a few troops
who have direct personal experience indicating that they do.

The shells that we were hit with were old, according to the reports
about them. The most plausible explanation I've heard so far is that
they were duds dug up at a test range and incorporated into IEDs--the
assemblers thinking they were conventional weaponry.
It amazes me that a guy who supposedly was such a terrible leader he
couldn't provide electricity was also skilled enough to completely hide
all evidence of WMD development and go so far as to create a body of
evidence that would fool the inspectors into believing he had just let
his WMD programs rot. There seems to be a strong dichotomy there.

But what there is a lot of is
evidence that Saddam and OBL were enemies and even if Saddam did have
the nasties they were unlikely to get to OBL in a condition that could
be redeployed.

Well, there's enemies, and then there's enemies. Iran and Iraq have
been enemies, but if we threatened them, they'd probably be (uneasy?)
allies. Germany and the US are nominally, allegedly allies but I
wouldn't bet that during my lifetime, or that of my kids, that won't
change. If they saw a common enemy and a way to join resources to
attack more effectively, I don't think their differences would stop
them. AQ's presence in Iraq seems to back this theory up.

AQ was in the US on 9/11. Does that make AQ and the US allies?
Apparenly they're also allies with Spain and Britain.
AQ's presence in Iraq does not seem to back your theory up any more
than it backs the notion that AQ, the US, Spain, and Britain are in
cahoots.

At that point I suppose you could
redefine it as "It isn't as bad this time" or "it took X years for it to
happen again,"

There ya go.

Whoopie. Hey, Clinton got us through a few years without any attacks
on US soil, but you don't call that a success. Why is it not success
for Clinton, but it would be success for Bush?

Well, during Clinton things kept getting worse, and he went from
objecting, to objecting strongly, to objecting very strongly, to blowing
up a tent and two camels. This weak response is, I feel, what made the
escalation happen.

IIRC, there was one terrorist attack on US soil in Clinton's time,
(WTC, 2/26/1993) and there has been one during Bush's time. Unless you
want to count McVeigh's attack. Would you prefer to include him or omit
him? IN that case Clinton had two over an eight year span, while Bush
has had one in a four year span. It seems to me that the two are
comparable, but Clinton's response didn't require so many dead and
wounded. Much cheaper to boot.

I would juts love to
decipher this double standard.

Well, it's based on my feeling that things are getting better now, while
they continued to get worse during Clinton's years. Perception-driven,
perhaps, on both of our parts. Hey, this is actually a pretty good
argument we're having.

Yeah, we're being civil. (mostly, heh) That's why I kill filed
Gunner. He was only interested in being rude.

Complaining about the press is your other justification for this war?

No, I'm saying that the press doesn't show us the good stuff that's
going on there, because it's not attention-getting enough to warrant
their time. Nothing impressive about a new power station, and it
doesn't fit their adgenda to show real progress.

Well, I'll grant you that they're about making headlines, and blood
is way better than electricity for that, but at the same time how many
power plants do you think it will take to compensate for daily civilian
casualties over a two year occupation? their families will be ****ed,
and "Hey! You're lights are on 20 hours a day instead of 12!" is
unlikely to comfort them much.
Apparently a large number of Iraqis expected this to go more smoothly
than it has. THAT disappointment can be appeased with power plants and
such. I just don't know how much of the population is ****ed about
electricity vs. how much is ****ed about dead friends and relatives.

Saddam was contained, along with whatever weapons he had. Now those
weapons are out and being used against the US military pretty
successfully.

And the WMD that we could have contained have probably been mothballed
or exported, because we didn't go in soon enough.

Or because we went in. Or they were actually destroyed years ago.
WMD are high maintenance and extremely expensive to keep up. OTOH,
trashing them all in secret while maintaining the bluff that you still
have them is cheap and pretty effective. And that explanation is
completely consistent with all of the evidence found so far.

Now the rebuilding of infrastructure thing is exactly what I was
trying to get at in the first place--be nice to the Middle East. No
hugging bull****--just straightforward diplomacy. The whole notion that
we'll charge in, kick ass, and tell 'em how it is is enormously
counterproductive and I honestly think this war is just that.

I think it's valid to say "now behave or we'll be back to do it again."
We're dealing with a relatively immature civilization, organizationally.
The tribal mentality still exists, I think.

I think threats are completely counterproductive no matter who you're
dealing with. Instead of pounding Iraq, leaving it like that, and
threatening to do it all over again is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pretty much any country that has been pounded, threatened, and left
flared up into a problem all over again. Like Germany after WWI and
into WWII. After WWII we decided to be more charitable and reward the
chunk of the population that would listen to us. They, on their own,
squeezed out the chunk of the population that wouldn't listen.

This "last ditch" has been going on for two years now. I think at
some point it's safe to assume it's a

I'm sure it's the military which "ran away". And I'm not sure either of
us know if it's getting better, or worse, really.

I know there are more casualties per week this week than a few weeks
ago. I know we are having lots of difficulty holding ground once we've
caught it. Falluja's (sp?) churning up again after all of our effort to
get it back under control last time. The financial costs are enormous
and still rising. All of that I'll take as pretty good indicators that
the war is getting worse at the moment.

But now they have all-new intel that tells them that the old intel
was utter horse ****, but they don't change their plans one bit. How is
that acceptable?

Even Kerry admitted that now that we're in it, we're in it until we're
done and it's going to take many years.

Kerry is an idiot and I have never supported him. How is it
acceptable to "stay the course" when you know your map's backwards?

Like I said, I'd rather say "There ya go, don't **** up again." But,
given the choices we had last election, both of 'em acknowledged that
now that we're in the soup, we've got to get to a certain point before
bailing.

But is that acceptable? I know they both said it, but I think both
of them are goddamned fools. I believe Kerry was just saying it because
he thought he could win by doing so, and Bush said it because that's
what he plans to do. But I don't think it's acceptable.

Ah, so here's a link:
http://www.thiefsden.net/archives/000073.html

Oh yeah, I've seen pretty much the same thing many times. The
version I've seen is just a little shorter.

Well, this one is very well sourced and referenced, so think they're
all legit. It certainly shoots holes in some of the frequent whines
(not saying you use them all) about "This was all W's idea" or wahtever.

As long as Bush is in charge I'll hold him responsible for the
actions he takes--regardless of who his inspiration was. Bush ordered
this war, bush started this war, and Bush is keeping it going.

Oh, I don't think this is strictly a republican claim. I think only
that the republicans have the authority to fix things or keep them
broken. I'll quite happily bash away at the democrats in congress for
paying lip service to this bull****, but regardless of how much I
influence them they are powerless to change policy. So it's a whole lot
more productive to bash the republicans.

Is it?

Yeah. If I successfully bash the democrats, nothing
changes--everyone bashes the democrats and they're out of power anyway.
OTOH, successfully bashing the republicans will get them tossed out of
office and there's a possibility that things will change as a result.
It's not certain, but it's possible. And with a guy like Dean in charge
of the party it's even more likely that any new democrats who get
elected will be anti-war.
When you played king of the hill, who did you push? The guy on top,
or the guy who just fell off?

The quotes put them in charge of the military? Explain to me how
this amazing process works.

Both sides said he had WMD, and both sides voted to authorize the
military. That's my point. The quotes show this.

OK, both sides voted for this. Do both sides give the military their
orders?

It's quite thorough and quite accurate (as far as I can tell) and
quite unrelated to me or what I'm saying.

Not if you're just blaming the republicans. It was a shared decision.

I blame them both--we've covered that already. But I hold the
republicans responsible.

That your people said he had 'em, my people said he had 'em, both sides
voted to go to war, and you're only blaming my people.

You have the executive who made the decision to start shooting. He's
one of yours. My people caved, sure enough, and I'm extremely
displeased with that, but attacking democrats gets nothing done.
Attacking the republicans might.

I doubt it.

I doubt it, too. This whole country showed how ****ing stupid it was
in 2004.

However, I do believe that some of the democrats in congress are
being honest when they say that they only voted for the war after being
shown the cooked arguments from the WH.

Check the dates. When did this cooked data arrive from the WH, please?

Prior to the war.

But with the rest I know they
just voted for it so they wouldn't have to fight over that issue next
election cycle.
Both sides are full of sellouts, but one side has sellouts in charge,
which are far more dangerous.

Meh. If they all agreed, then they're all equally responsible.

That's not true. How can you be responsible for something you have
no power over? I mean, if you're driving down the road like a nut, kids
in the back seat cheering you on, when you get pulled over, do you
expect the cop to give the kids tickets too? No, that wouldn't make any
sense.
Yeah, the democrats in congress agreed with the war for whatever
moronic reason, but they're not in charge of it. They can't add a few
more troops here and there, they can't set any deadlines, they can't
even force the Pentagon to armor plate their vehicles.

I just moved to Kenny Marchant's district and honestly don't know
much about him yet. But what I do know is that he had a hand in that
redistricting bull****,

That was a lovely little party, yes.

The good news is that the courts here in Texas are looking into
overturning that new map since it was strong-armed into law by a bunch
of guys who got elected with illegal corporate money.
Maybe we'll even string up DeLay.

might have had a little involvement with the
TRMPAC investigation that's following DeLay around, and he waves George
Bush's name around like gospel. I find none of that appealing. OTOH,
he does seem to be quite good about cutting government expenses and
streamlining government paperwork. At this point he's a wash.

Sometimes that's all you can hope for. About how I feel about Feingold.
He votes the way I would fairly often, but always for reasons that I
feel are wrong.

Yeah, that always has an icky feel to it.

I went to one Clinton Speech in Ft Worth (or near there anyway--it
was a long time ago and I didn't drive) where he was heckled and
protested. He poked fun at the hecklers and want and talked to the
protesters after he finished with his speech and obligatory handshaking.
But maybe that was a one-time thing.

Hard to say, but I do know that non-party-members don't get invited to,
for instance, campaign stops.

This thing wasn't by invitation. It was just announced in the
newspaper where and when he'd stop in and whoever wanted to would show
up. No security screening either--just a lot of cops wandering around.
I'll bet you a lathe or two that Bush will absolutely never do that.

You're being intentionally dense. If someone threatens you, the best
way to deal with that threat is to provide an effective defense, not as
you'd suggest, to try to reason with them.

So who would you say is being the bully in Iraq?

SH. He's out now, so once we get things stabilized there, we'll get
out. Personally, I'd prefer we get out sooner, give 'em notice to keep
the new guy in line or we'll come back again.

If he's out then he is no longer being the bully. So who would you
say is being the bully in Iraq now?

Nobody at the moment. If another one comes up, then we should take that
one out too. Eventually they'll catch on that they have to control
their own leadership.

I'd have to disagree. After all, we were discussing above us
threatening Iraq "We'll come back if you screw up again."

By showing weakness. Do pay attention.

So what would be the next level of "bold" after throwing grenades at
an oncoming tank?

Attacking our country.

Bull****.

Well, attacking us there, is one thing. Attacking us here, is the next
higher thing, I think.

Attacking us here is easy. Attacking us there is hard. They just
don't need to attack us over here. Think about it--their goal with the
9/11 attack was split several ways: show us that they could manipulate
us with an attack, hurt us financially, and start a fight. Now that
we're in Iraq and stuck there, they've succeeded in starting a fight,
hurting us financially, and proving they could manipulate us.
Attacking us again would be pretty redundant. And keep in mind that
if they want to make a statement, their target audience is in the Middle
East, not the US. Any attack on us in Iraq gets all over the news in
the Middle East, where their support base is, whereas an attack on the
US would get on US news along with Middle East news. More news
coverage, but not really worth the effort.

Yeah, they're being less bold by attacking hardened military targets
in the middle of a ****ing war zone. 'Cause if I had the option: fight
with trained, armed, and ****ed-off marines vs. evade mall security,
it's the marines every time!

They're busy over there. Better that than them being busy over here.

Not too busy for a quick little jaunt to Britain. Weren't too busy
for Spain either.

Have we actually found out that London was AQ?

That seems to be the consensus. And I didn't know we were even
restricting this to just AQ, I thought it was all global terrorism?
Whoever they were, they obviously weren't stopped by what's going on
in Iraq.

We also knew that they didn't like each other. Like going to war to
keep two north pole magnets apart.

Then why is AQ such a presence in Iraq? I contend that a common enemy
(us) united them against us, and that any activity against either would
have had the same result.

All three of us were mutual enemies. Who's to say Saddam wouldn't
have sided with the US against AQ as quickly as he would have sided with
AQ against the US? Besides that, it's a lot easier to take on AQ within
your won country than it is to take on another country half way around
the world.
AQ is a presence in Iraq because it's a war zone. Those assholes
wanted a war with the US for years, and now they've got one.

OTOH, the guys who have been successfully killing our soldiers are
extremely dangerous, and they weren't around before this war. As far as
I'm concerned none of this should have happened at all.

They weren't around?

They were alive, but they weren't figuring out how to kill our
military.

I'm not so sure of that.

Who in Iraq attacked the US prior to the invasion?

I'm saying it shouldn't have happened, the guys to caused it are
****ups, and I have no faith that they'll turn this from a ****up into
anything measurably better than a complete failure.

Well, the US hasn't been attacked again, and no further attacks on the
scale of 9/11 have happened, so I think we're making progress.

OK, if your sufficiently selective, yes, the "WAR ON TERROR!" has
been a success. But if you broaden your horizons a bit, it's a failure.
An expensive, deadly failure.

--
B.B. --I am not a goat! thegoat4 at airmail dot net
http://web2.airmail.net/thegoat4/

In article , B.B.
says...

... it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack. That's why nobody has been able to show it
aside from repeating it again and again in the hopes it'll be accepted
as fact by enough people.

Hey, we must be spending $5B per month on *something* right?
It's so expensive it must be working, eh?

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

"Gunner" wrote

I have and determined that using the money to wack a few hundred
thousand Islamic Fundimentalist Extremists and liberating 50,000,000
is a good thing.


Yeah, but why do you want to _overpay_?

There are, say, 25 million Iraquis. Every month, we spend $5 billion to
keep them "liberated". That's $200 for every single Iraqui, every month.

Surely we could buy every single Iraqui a cheap pistol and a box of ammo for
a _one_time_ expenditure of $200 apiece. That would "liberate" them as much
as it's possible to "liberate" anybody, and we'd be done with it :-)

-- TP

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 23:22:20 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

On 16 Jul 2005 12:39:39 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:
On the claims that the White House was actively seeking to discredit
Wilson and out Plame...


It now turns out, according to multiple published reports, that
columnist Robert Novak did not learn about Plame's CIA connection from
Rove.

If anything, it was the other way around: Novak called the White House
and asked Rove if he'd heard anything about Plame working for the CIA.
Rove then responded that he'd "heard the same thing" - from another
journalist.

And newly disclosed e-mails show that Time magazine's Matt Cooper
approached Rove about Plame, not the other way around.

As to Plame being covered by the 1982 law that Rove. or whomever the
headhunters seek to vilify next, is being accused of violating...


a.. Wilson Thursday night told CNN his wife "was not a clandestine
officer on the day that Bob Novak blew her identity." He quickly
reversed himself, but the damage had been done.
b.. It is now clear that the 1982 law that makes it a crime to
knowingly expose covert U.S. intelligence agents doesn't apply to
Plame, because of specific statutory time limits.

In any event, a re-reading of the original Novak column and subsequent
writings confirms that Novak didn't identify her as a covert
operative, either. (He says had he thought she was covert, he'd never
have used the information.)

The first writer to refer to her as working covertly (notes Clifford
May on National Review Online) was David Corn, Washington
correspondent of the far-left magazine The Nation, in an article three
days after Novak's column appeared.

Which raises the question of how Corn, who went into a great amount of
detail about her specific job, got the information - because you can
rest assured it didn't come from Karl Rove.

In fact, as May - a former New York Times foreign correspondent -
points out, all the evidence suggests strongly that Corn's secret
source was . . . Joe Wilson.


Curiouser and curiouser...


Gunner

"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown

On 16 Jul 2005 12:48:26 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...

To pretend they don't exist in the face of
them being blisteringly present doesn't do your argument any good.

Arguments notwithstanding, time will certainly tell about
the iraq war, and roves malfeasence. I'm not engaging
in any url wars because it's been proven in the past that
gunner can cook up whatever right wing fundie whack-o site
that supports *any* position.

News flash: I am not gunner. And the quotes are linked to sources like
the senators' own web sites and press releases.

There is no credibility so
I just don't want to chase after another mary roush there.

Riiight. So Kennedy is a liar because he claims to have said it, then?

This is one reason why Ed is conspicuously absent at this
point I think.

WTF is "Ed", and what does he have to do with you saying that WMD were a
republican talking point, and then ignoring multiple examples to the
contrary?

Gunner wrote:


Go look at the blogs from Iraqis who actually LIVE in Iraq..then get
back to me as to the comparison of what they report..and what your
media reports ok?



I would like to read some of those blogs. You seem to claim, that you
have. Would you please provide a few links to them, so that I and
others can read them also.

Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 13:13:15 -0500, B.B. u wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Perhaps. Nobody can really show that the lack of an attack on the US
is the result of this war.

It's certainly debatable, yes. But the stated goal and the result are
the same.

No, it's not debatable, it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack.

I keep agreeing with that, but that was one of the stated goals, and it
has so far been true.

That's why nobody has been able to show it
aside from repeating it again and again in the hopes it'll be accepted
as fact by enough people.

And nobody has been able to show there are no WMD in Iraq. "We can't
find them because we gave him time to hide them" doesn't equal "They
aren't there".

What military? Um, news flash: the guys who ran away during the major
combat operations, just might be the same ones bombing trucks giving out
candy to Iraqi children today.

His military didn't run from us in Gulf War 1 until it was hammered
into the sand. His military ran away from us in GW 2 before a shot was
fired in many places. Does that not sound like a decay to you? Not to
mention a glaring absence of heavy equipment during the "battles."

They decided on a different tactic - dissolve and reform - rather than
the known ineffective one of stand & fight & die that they used last
time. Seems more effective this time.

BTW, Saddam isn't building the IEDs that are being used now. Saddam
had control up until we invaded, so whatever has gone on since isn't
relevant to what Saddam was doing.

Saddam isn't all of his organization, just as OBL isn't all of _his_.

Dunno--I left a while back when I got bored to tears with the game.

Same here; I abandoned a 70-something barb and a 60's druid with nice
gear. Ah well. PNF long, long ago I'm sure. Been playing civ3 lately,
oddly enough, waiting for the Harry Potter release tomorrow morning.

Yeah, I got to where I was only logging on to keep my dudes from
expiring, then I didn't even keep up with that. Once my favorite
sorceress (Amee: level 93 or 94) went poof I had pretty much no urge to
bother any more.

Well, it was a good game for a while but the 1.10 delays were
frustrating, and once it finally came out it was underwhelming. I think
that's the point where I kind of said "screw it".

Well, she came and went from time to time, didn't she? Seemed like a
pretty level-headed person, good moderating influence for the kiddies in
the group.

Agreed. I used to talk with her pretty regularly on AIM. Good
therapy.

I also like how she could come in and do the "mom" thing if the group
got a bit too rambunctious.

Yeah, I know it's our money. Whoopie. the action is worldwide, so
the results need to take into account the entire world. Looking at the
entire world, it's a failure.

Well, OK, show me a followup on the scale of 9/11/01 anywhere in the
world, then. I think it's getting better.

9/11 is a blip pretty far off the main line. If you want to set your
threshold as high as that, OK, there's been no terrorism in the world,
ever, except 9/11.

I also didn't say that. We were promised events which would dwarf 9/11.
Rhetoric, certainly, but the fact that they clearly have the desire, and
have been denied the means, is a good thing. I can think of a dozen
things off the top of my head which would be worse, so the absence of
followup can't be from lack of ideas or from lack of desires. That
leaves "opportunity".

But if you're willing to settle for a more reasonable threshold,
Spain and England both come to mind. Plus the daily attacks in Iraq.

Well, to be honest, I'd rather that the terrorists are fighting and
dying in Iraq, than that they were doing the same in the US. Spain was
done specifically to change the outcome of their elections, and sadly,
it worked. London, I'm not sure has been linked to AQ yet; the chemist
they arrested allegedly has no ties, unless something has changed in the
last 24-48 hours since I looked at it.

Good point. Part of the justification for the war was that Saddam
could not prove he had no WMD, so we invaded. You understand that we
made an impossible request, right?

Well, it's not like he didn't agree to the terms originally, at the end
of the first little party over there, that he'd get rid of 'em and
record those activities, and let the inspectors and observers in. He
failed on all those points. Maybe if nothing else, the lesson is "If
you've got the nasties, and don't prove that you really destroyed 'em,
be prepared to face a hell of an audit committee". I don't believe for
a second that he didn't hide or export them, though.

OK, so he lied. BFD--dictators lie all the time, it's par for the
course. If we went and invaded every dictatorship that lied at a cost
of $1.25billion per week, we'd be hopelessly swamped with warfare and
debt before making a dent.

Well, maybe we should just pick the ones who, you know, have been at war
with us previously, and who are likely to have weapons that we don't
want used against us. Oh, and let's just do the winnable ones.

Also, North Korea fits that description, but we've done nothing. If
we're trying to send a message, we've hosed it royally.

Well, better that he screw up in Iraq than with N. Korea, I think. I
wonder; if war does get re-started there, given that there was never a
peace treaty, does the US need a declaration of war, or does the
original, never revoked one still stand? It's still just a truce, after
all.

For that matter, was there ever a peace treaty after GW1?

What nasties? There ain't any.

Then where did they go, exactly? You don't know; I don't know; but they
didn't just evaporate. And the Sarin shell(s) that injured some of our
guys weren't supposed to exist, but I'm thinking there are a few troops
who have direct personal experience indicating that they do.

The shells that we were hit with were old, according to the reports
about them.

Yes, but they are a non-zero example of WMD in Iraq, and are dismissed
out of hand.

The most plausible explanation I've heard so far is that
they were duds dug up at a test range and incorporated into IEDs--the
assemblers thinking they were conventional weaponry.

But they're examples of WMD that were there, and were not destroyed, and
were not accounted for. That's just the alleged "innocent mistakes";
what about the ones that we gave him years to hide, either inside or
outside the country?

It amazes me that a guy who supposedly was such a terrible leader he
couldn't provide electricity

Well, that was by his choice, not by his inability.

was also skilled enough to completely hide
all evidence of WMD development and go so far as to create a body of
evidence that would fool the inspectors into believing he had just let
his WMD programs rot. There seems to be a strong dichotomy there.

His priorities were on weapons, not his people. Seems pretty clear
to me?

But what there is a lot of is
evidence that Saddam and OBL were enemies and even if Saddam did have
the nasties they were unlikely to get to OBL in a condition that could
be redeployed.

Well, there's enemies, and then there's enemies. Iran and Iraq have
been enemies, but if we threatened them, they'd probably be (uneasy?)
allies. Germany and the US are nominally, allegedly allies but I
wouldn't bet that during my lifetime, or that of my kids, that won't
change. If they saw a common enemy and a way to join resources to
attack more effectively, I don't think their differences would stop
them. AQ's presence in Iraq seems to back this theory up.

AQ was in the US on 9/11. Does that make AQ and the US allies?

Of course not. What's your point?

Apparenly they're also allies with Spain and Britain.

I recognize and reject your failed rhetorical tactic.

AQ's presence in Iraq does not seem to back your theory up any more
than it backs the notion that AQ, the US, Spain, and Britain are in
cahoots.

(shrug) OK, whatever. They're there, fighting against us, with some
Iraqis. My point was that they could work together against us, and the
rest of that point is "Good thing we kept them from getting the WMD".

Whoopie. Hey, Clinton got us through a few years without any attacks
on US soil, but you don't call that a success. Why is it not success
for Clinton, but it would be success for Bush?

Well, during Clinton things kept getting worse, and he went from
objecting, to objecting strongly, to objecting very strongly, to blowing
up a tent and two camels. This weak response is, I feel, what made the
escalation happen.

IIRC, there was one terrorist attack on US soil in Clinton's time,
(WTC, 2/26/1993) and there has been one during Bush's time.

AQ was attacking US interests around the world on an increasing level
during Clinton's administration. USS Cole, and all those. Since
Clinton didn't respond to those other than in "objecting most strongly",
he showed the weakess that was then the cause of AQ deciding to get more
aggressive and attack us here. Weak response=event here. Strong
response=event elsewhere. I prefer them elsewhere.

Pretty much any country that has been pounded, threatened, and left
flared up into a problem all over again. Like Germany after WWI and
into WWII. After WWII we decided to be more charitable and reward the
chunk of the population that would listen to us. They, on their own,
squeezed out the chunk of the population that wouldn't listen.

That's what I'm _saying_. Here's some help, the rest is up to you.

This "last ditch" has been going on for two years now. I think at
some point it's safe to assume it's a

I'm sure it's the military which "ran away". And I'm not sure either of
us know if it's getting better, or worse, really.

I know there are more casualties per week this week than a few weeks
ago.

True. Maybe we should draw a line in the sand.

Even Kerry admitted that now that we're in it, we're in it until we're
done and it's going to take many years.

Kerry is an idiot and I have never supported him. How is it
acceptable to "stay the course" when you know your map's backwards?

Like I said, I'd rather say "There ya go, don't **** up again." But,
given the choices we had last election, both of 'em acknowledged that
now that we're in the soup, we've got to get to a certain point before
bailing.

But is that acceptable? I know they both said it, but I think both
of them are goddamned fools. I believe Kerry was just saying it because
he thought he could win by doing so, and Bush said it because that's
what he plans to do. But I don't think it's acceptable.

Well, what alternative is there at this point?

Ah, so here's a link:
http://www.thiefsden.net/archives/000073.html

As long as Bush is in charge I'll hold him responsible for the
actions he takes--regardless of who his inspiration was. Bush ordered
this war, bush started this war, and Bush is keeping it going.

And so many democrats made the same justifications, and voted to
authorize the military action.

influence them they are powerless to change policy. So it's a whole lot
more productive to bash the republicans.

Is it?

Yeah. If I successfully bash the democrats, nothing
changes--everyone bashes the democrats and they're out of power anyway.
OTOH, successfully bashing the republicans will get them tossed out of
office and there's a possibility that things will change as a result.

"Do something, anything"? I submit that sometimes "nothing" is a better
course of action than the wrong "something".

It's not certain, but it's possible. And with a guy like Dean in charge
of the party it's even more likely that any new democrats who get
elected will be anti-war.
When you played king of the hill, who did you push? The guy on top,
or the guy who just fell off?

Maybe figuring out how to work with whoever is on top might be a plan?
I sure as hell didn't like, respect, or trust Clinton, but that didn't
mean I was trying to push him down.

The quotes put them in charge of the military? Explain to me how
this amazing process works.

Both sides said he had WMD, and both sides voted to authorize the
military. That's my point. The quotes show this.

OK, both sides voted for this. Do both sides give the military their
orders?

Um, by authorizing military action, yes they do.

It's quite thorough and quite accurate (as far as I can tell) and
quite unrelated to me or what I'm saying.

Not if you're just blaming the republicans. It was a shared decision.

I blame them both--we've covered that already. But I hold the
republicans responsible.

I'm missing the distinction?

You have the executive who made the decision to start shooting. He's
one of yours. My people caved, sure enough, and I'm extremely
displeased with that, but attacking democrats gets nothing done.
Attacking the republicans might.

I doubt it.

I doubt it, too. This whole country showed how ****ing stupid it was
in 2004.

The choice was between two less than ideal options.

But with the rest I know they
just voted for it so they wouldn't have to fight over that issue next
election cycle.
Both sides are full of sellouts, but one side has sellouts in charge,
which are far more dangerous.

Meh. If they all agreed, then they're all equally responsible.

That's not true. How can you be responsible for something you have
no power over?

They exercised their power in voting for it.

I mean, if you're driving down the road like a nut, kids
in the back seat cheering you on, when you get pulled over, do you
expect the cop to give the kids tickets too? No, that wouldn't make any
sense.

And yet, pretending that they were telling the driver not to do it would
be lying. It'd also be lying to pretend that, if they were driving,
they wouldn't have done the same thing.

Yeah, the democrats in congress agreed with the war for whatever
moronic reason, but they're not in charge of it. They can't add a few
more troops here and there, they can't set any deadlines, they can't
even force the Pentagon to armor plate their vehicles.

Do you really, really want to go there?

I just moved to Kenny Marchant's district and honestly don't know
much about him yet. But what I do know is that he had a hand in that
redistricting bull****,

That was a lovely little party, yes.

The good news is that the courts here in Texas are looking into
overturning that new map since it was strong-armed into law by a bunch
of guys who got elected with illegal corporate money.
Maybe we'll even string up DeLay.

I'm not sure that I'd see that as a problem.

might have had a little involvement with the
TRMPAC investigation that's following DeLay around, and he waves George
Bush's name around like gospel. I find none of that appealing. OTOH,
he does seem to be quite good about cutting government expenses and
streamlining government paperwork. At this point he's a wash.

Sometimes that's all you can hope for. About how I feel about Feingold.
He votes the way I would fairly often, but always for reasons that I
feel are wrong.

Yeah, that always has an icky feel to it.

It's a shame that the republicans ran someone against him last time who
wasn't up to the task.

Hard to say, but I do know that non-party-members don't get invited to,
for instance, campaign stops.

This thing wasn't by invitation. It was just announced in the
newspaper where and when he'd stop in and whoever wanted to would show
up. No security screening either--just a lot of cops wandering around.
I'll bet you a lathe or two that Bush will absolutely never do that.

No clue. And I only have the one lathe, so that's not an option.

So who would you say is being the bully in Iraq?

SH. He's out now, so once we get things stabilized there, we'll get
out. Personally, I'd prefer we get out sooner, give 'em notice to keep
the new guy in line or we'll come back again.

If he's out then he is no longer being the bully. So who would you
say is being the bully in Iraq now?

Nobody at the moment. If another one comes up, then we should take that
one out too. Eventually they'll catch on that they have to control
their own leadership.

I'd have to disagree. After all, we were discussing above us
threatening Iraq "We'll come back if you screw up again."

That's not bullying, that's a "behave and don't be a problem for us any
more or we'll prevent you, again, from getting out of hand". Threat?
Yeah, I guess so. But not bullying.

So what would be the next level of "bold" after throwing grenades at
an oncoming tank?

Attacking our country.

Bull****.

Well, attacking us there, is one thing. Attacking us here, is the next
higher thing, I think.

Attacking us here is easy. Attacking us there is hard. They just
don't need to attack us over here. Think about it--their goal with the
9/11 attack was split several ways: show us that they could manipulate
us with an attack, hurt us financially, and start a fight. Now that
we're in Iraq and stuck there, they've succeeded in starting a fight,
hurting us financially, and proving they could manipulate us.

If getting the snot bombed out of their country and the country of an
uneasy ally is "manipulating us", I suppose. Odd goal to have, though,
getting invaded.

Attacking us again would be pretty redundant. And keep in mind that
if they want to make a statement, their target audience is in the Middle
East, not the US. Any attack on us in Iraq gets all over the news in
the Middle East, where their support base is, whereas an attack on the
US would get on US news along with Middle East news. More news
coverage, but not really worth the effort.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying, or if I am following it, that
I agree.

Not too busy for a quick little jaunt to Britain. Weren't too busy
for Spain either.

Have we actually found out that London was AQ?

That seems to be the consensus. And I didn't know we were even
restricting this to just AQ, I thought it was all global terrorism?
Whoever they were, they obviously weren't stopped by what's going on
in Iraq.

That much is true.

We also knew that they didn't like each other. Like going to war to
keep two north pole magnets apart.

Then why is AQ such a presence in Iraq? I contend that a common enemy
(us) united them against us, and that any activity against either would
have had the same result.

All three of us were mutual enemies. Who's to say Saddam wouldn't
have sided with the US against AQ as quickly as he would have sided with
AQ against the US?

Well, we have been at war with him, and he's more likely to save face
with the Muslim world by siding with a Muslim in a conflict, no?

Besides that, it's a lot easier to take on AQ within
your won country than it is to take on another country half way around
the world.

I'd rather they stay over there, thank you very much.

AQ is a presence in Iraq because it's a war zone. Those assholes
wanted a war with the US for years, and now they've got one.

Well, let's kill as many of them as we can, over there, so we don't have
to do it over here then.

They were alive, but they weren't figuring out how to kill our
military.

I'm not so sure of that.

Who in Iraq attacked the US prior to the invasion?

You said "figuring out", not "attacking".

I'm saying it shouldn't have happened, the guys to caused it are
****ups, and I have no faith that they'll turn this from a ****up into
anything measurably better than a complete failure.

Well, the US hasn't been attacked again, and no further attacks on the
scale of 9/11 have happened, so I think we're making progress.

OK, if your sufficiently selective, yes, the "WAR ON TERROR!" has
been a success. But if you broaden your horizons a bit, it's a failure.
An expensive, deadly failure.

If the US is doing the bulk of the work, and getting more benefit than
the others, well, the others could pitch in a bit more. Do I care if
we're not protecting, say, France? Not especially.

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 06:10:52 GMT, Gunner wrote:
On 15 Jul 2005 15:42:12 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

We know he had WMD,
because, well, we sold it to him,

Ah...no..we didnt.

OK, I thought we did. So, who did?

The French and Germans actually. And some by Russia.

Wait, but weren't the French, the Germans, and the Russians the folks
who didn't want us to...

Oddly enough..the same 3 nations that didnt assist the coallition in
prosecuting the war.

Yeah, that.

Odd huh?

No, it explains much, doesn't it.

On 18 Jul 2005 17:57:12 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 06:10:52 GMT, Gunner wrote:
On 15 Jul 2005 15:42:12 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

We know he had WMD,
because, well, we sold it to him,

Ah...no..we didnt.

OK, I thought we did. So, who did?

The French and Germans actually. And some by Russia.

Wait, but weren't the French, the Germans, and the Russians the folks
who didn't want us to...

Oddly enough..the same 3 nations that didnt assist the coallition in
prosecuting the war.

Yeah, that.

Odd huh?

No, it explains much, doesn't it.

Indeed.


Gunner

"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown

Rex B wrote:
jim rozen wrote:

... at least
it eliminated terrorism in London, right?


You miss the point - the present administration's
war in iraq does *nothing* to prevent that sort
of thing.


I think there is real value in pulling aspiring terrorists into Irag
where we have people trained to deal with them. I would rather soldiers
fought them there, than have civilians attacked here.

Give it a bit of time, they'll be here (again). They're not in a hurry.

Sure, we can't isolate them to Iraq, but it seems to be keeping
thousands of them pretty busy.

And keeping 140.000 American soldiers busy at the same time.

At least until a bullet finds them.

More of their bullets, bombs and shrapnel have found American soldiers,
than American bullets have found terrorists or insurgents in Iraq.


Considering how badly the AQ would like to follow up on 9/11, and
haven't, I'd say someone is doing something right.

The fact that Al Qaida has not attacked again in the US proves nothing
as so many people have already stated.

Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

Gunner wrote:

Now Jim..was it Bush or the Jews that are responsible for the London
bombing?


But, but, the Jews of course. They are the fault of everything bad in
this world. Did you not know this yet?

Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

F. George McDuffee wrote:


Such a split is not as far-fetched as it might seem to some
people. However, the basic division is not between/among
anomalous and arbitrary geographical divisions based in part on
historical accidents [i.e. red/blue states] but rather on the
very different general perceptions of reality by residents of
high population density urban areas and everyone else.

Separation or fragmentation may of course follow a socio-economic
implosion as was the case for the USSR, but it may also occur as
a result of differing "views of the future" or sense of what
"ought" as in Czechoslovakia which split into the more urban and
densely populated Czech republic that is now part of the EEC and
Slovakia, less urbanized and more based on the traditional values
of heavy industry and manufacturing.

In many ways, this separation, called the velvet divorce, appears
to have been good for both nations in that it allowed them to
tailor their domestic socio-economic policies to their specific
national needs and concerns. When both were united in
Czechoslovakia, what was good for the urban areas, i.e. Czech
Republic, tended to be not so good for the heavy industry and
manufacturing areas, i.e. Slovakia, and visa versa, so there was
continual national grid-lock and/or contradictory policies.
[Sound familiar?]

After the political separation, an economic union was attempted,
but this promptly imploded when both the economic stimulus [cheap
money] and fiscal responsibility levers were shoved to the
full-on positions at the same time (sort of like engaging the
half-nut and longitudinal feed on a lathe at the same time).
[Sound familiar?]

Although your suggestion was apparently intend as satire, the
time may well have arrived to think the unthinkable, and begin
the process of political divestiture and spin-off if catastrophic
socio-economic failure is to be avoided. Separate nation-states,
with a reasonably homogeneous composition, may be just what is
required, where some can be as "politically correct" as they
desire. It will be however, a rude awakening when the citizens
of these new nations discover that food does not come from the
store, gasoline does not come from the filling station, and money
does not come from the government, no matter how many immigrants
they accept or how many guns they ban.

This would also have the beneficial outcome of relocating the
political leadership far from Washington, D.C. where they are
currently subject to the cumulative toxic effects of Potomac
swamp gas, which induces delusions of omnipotence and a
compulsion to participate in all activities and decisions..


Brilliant!
--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

Abrasha wrote:
More of their bullets, bombs and shrapnel have found American soldiers,
than American bullets have found terrorists or insurgents in Iraq.

Where did THAT come from?
From what I've seen we have been killing the bad guys at a high ratio
to our own losses.

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:36:23 -0500, Rex B wrote:


Abrasha wrote:
More of their bullets, bombs and shrapnel have found American soldiers,
than American bullets have found terrorists or insurgents in Iraq.

Where did THAT come from?
From what I've seen we have been killing the bad guys at a high ratio
to our own losses.

It came out his ass, as usual.
Which is why I killfiled the buffoon long ago. Only mistake I made..I
put a 1 yr cap on the killfile. This time it became
permanant/global/delete

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

No, it's not debatable, it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack.

I keep agreeing with that, but that was one of the stated goals, and it
has so far been true.

But it could just as easily be explained by dumb luck. If you want
to justify a war that is killing human beings you need something more
concrete than sheer luck.
Your justification that we haven't been attacked again isn't
necessarily wrong, but it's nowhere near good enough either. And I
haven't seen any other compelling justifications either.

That's why nobody has been able to show it
aside from repeating it again and again in the hopes it'll be accepted
as fact by enough people.

And nobody has been able to show there are no WMD in Iraq. "We can't
find them because we gave him time to hide them" doesn't equal "They
aren't there".

That has nothing to do with what I was saying as far as I can tell.

They decided on a different tactic - dissolve and reform - rather than
the known ineffective one of stand & fight & die that they used last
time. Seems more effective this time.

We've hired most of his military. The guys running around causing
the most trouble are mostly too young to have been in Saddam's military,
and a great many have come from outside of Iraq. I don't think it's his
military that's kicking our asses.
And that still doesn't explain the lack of equipment.

BTW, Saddam isn't building the IEDs that are being used now. Saddam
had control up until we invaded, so whatever has gone on since isn't
relevant to what Saddam was doing.

Saddam isn't all of his organization, just as OBL isn't all of _his_.

Then I take it you might agree with me that the big push to capture
Saddam was nothing more than a PR show? That's another massive red flag
in this war: landmark events. They build up as if the next mission will
fix everything and when it doesn't, they pick a new one. THey've been
flailing lately, but they seem to have settled on the formation of a
solid police force (or simply X number of police trained) as the goal.

Yeah, I got to where I was only logging on to keep my dudes from
expiring, then I didn't even keep up with that. Once my favorite
sorceress (Amee: level 93 or 94) went poof I had pretty much no urge to
bother any more.

Well, it was a good game for a while but the 1.10 delays were
frustrating, and once it finally came out it was underwhelming. I think
that's the point where I kind of said "screw it".

Yeah, 1.10 also hosed my Exploda-Bob build. That an all of the
super-lame builds I enjoyed making for the sheer hell of it became
overpowered after that patch. It just wasn't the same game anymore.
Besides, by the time it came around I was past the stage where I was
content to level on my own until someone showed up, so new chars were
more of a hassle than a joy.

Well, she came and went from time to time, didn't she? Seemed like a
pretty level-headed person, good moderating influence for the kiddies in
the group.

Agreed. I used to talk with her pretty regularly on AIM. Good
therapy.

I also like how she could come in and do the "mom" thing if the group
got a bit too rambunctious.

Yeah, every NG needs a mom in it.

9/11 is a blip pretty far off the main line. If you want to set your
threshold as high as that, OK, there's been no terrorism in the world,
ever, except 9/11.

I also didn't say that. We were promised events which would dwarf 9/11.
Rhetoric, certainly, but the fact that they clearly have the desire, and
have been denied the means, is a good thing. I can think of a dozen
things off the top of my head which would be worse, so the absence of
followup can't be from lack of ideas or from lack of desires. That
leaves "opportunity".

Or lack of need. The stated goal of OBL was to start a war with the
west and now he's got it.

Well, to be honest, I'd rather that the terrorists are fighting and
dying in Iraq, than that they were doing the same in the US. Spain was
done specifically to change the outcome of their elections, and sadly,
it worked. London, I'm not sure has been linked to AQ yet; the chemist
they arrested allegedly has no ties, unless something has changed in the
last 24-48 hours since I looked at it.

It doesn't matter who was behind the attacks. It only matters that
they happened. The "War on Terror" didn't work.

OK, so he lied. BFD--dictators lie all the time, it's par for the
course. If we went and invaded every dictatorship that lied at a cost
of $1.25billion per week, we'd be hopelessly swamped with warfare and
debt before making a dent.

Well, maybe we should just pick the ones who, you know, have been at war
with us previously, and who are likely to have weapons that we don't
want used against us. Oh, and let's just do the winnable ones.

We'd still be broke, as we are now.

Also, North Korea fits that description, but we've done nothing. If
we're trying to send a message, we've hosed it royally.

Well, better that he screw up in Iraq than with N. Korea, I think. I
wonder; if war does get re-started there, given that there was never a
peace treaty, does the US need a declaration of war, or does the
original, never revoked one still stand? It's still just a truce, after
all.

I also don't condone a war on a technicality.

For that matter, was there ever a peace treaty after GW1?

Yeah, Saddam was to destroy his weapons. The evidence we've found so
far indicates that he did that. The speculation and general assumption
so far has been the opposite for some odd reason.

The shells that we were hit with were old, according to the reports
about them.

Yes, but they are a non-zero example of WMD in Iraq, and are dismissed
out of hand.

Bush's latest excuse for the war is that Saddam had WMD development
programs. Old, decayed shells don't prove that there was active
development of weaponry recently. Of course, bush gave so many reasons
both before and after the war which one is real (if any) is anyone's
guess.

The most plausible explanation I've heard so far is that
they were duds dug up at a test range and incorporated into IEDs--the
assemblers thinking they were conventional weaponry.

But they're examples of WMD that were there, and were not destroyed, and
were not accounted for. That's just the alleged "innocent mistakes";
what about the ones that we gave him years to hide, either inside or
outside the country?

What about them? We sure as hell haven't secured them, so this war
is a failure by that measure also. We do know at least that when Saddam
was in power he had no motivation to use them, and after we started the
invasion he had all of the motivation in the world, yet still didn't
fire.
Could be that he didn't have anything to fire at us.

It amazes me that a guy who supposedly was such a terrible leader he
couldn't provide electricity

Well, that was by his choice, not by his inability.

How do you know this?

was also skilled enough to completely hide
all evidence of WMD development and go so far as to create a body of
evidence that would fool the inspectors into believing he had just let
his WMD programs rot. There seems to be a strong dichotomy there.

His priorities were on weapons, not his people. Seems pretty clear
to me?

He ran the country for 30 years. He must have done something right
along the way. A leader eventually has to tend to his people in order
to remain in power.

them. AQ's presence in Iraq seems to back this theory up.

AQ was in the US on 9/11. Does that make AQ and the US allies?

Of course not. What's your point?

That your assumption was illogical.

Apparenly they're also allies with Spain and Britain.

I recognize and reject your failed rhetorical tactic.

And what tactic would that be?

AQ's presence in Iraq does not seem to back your theory up any more
than it backs the notion that AQ, the US, Spain, and Britain are in
cahoots.

(shrug) OK, whatever. They're there, fighting against us, with some
Iraqis. My point was that they could work together against us, and the
rest of that point is "Good thing we kept them from getting the WMD".

How do you know we kept them from getting any WMD? You claim both
that they existed and that they were never destroyed, and acknowledge
that we haven't found them. That sounds extremely not like we kept them
away from anyone other than the US and her allies.

Whoopie. Hey, Clinton got us through a few years without any attacks
on US soil, but you don't call that a success. Why is it not success
for Clinton, but it would be success for Bush?

Well, during Clinton things kept getting worse, and he went from
objecting, to objecting strongly, to objecting very strongly, to blowing
up a tent and two camels. This weak response is, I feel, what made the
escalation happen.

IIRC, there was one terrorist attack on US soil in Clinton's time,
(WTC, 2/26/1993) and there has been one during Bush's time.

AQ was attacking US interests around the world on an increasing level
during Clinton's administration. USS Cole, and all those. Since
Clinton didn't respond to those other than in "objecting most strongly",
he showed the weakess that was then the cause of AQ deciding to get more
aggressive and attack us here. Weak response=event here. Strong
response=event elsewhere. I prefer them elsewhere.

Cole was not on US soil. Is your standard attacks on US soil, or
attacks anywhere? It seems to be that attacks on any scale anywhere
during Clinton's term make Clinton a failure, while any attacks of any
size during Bush's term either don't count or were successfully
addressed since we haven't had another on US soil since the last one.
THAT is a double standard and THAT is all I've ever seen to justify
the endless bashing of Clinton from the conservatives. Push your
standards as high as they need to be for Clinton to fall short, then
push them as low as possible to excuse anything and everything from Bush.
I remain deeply unimpressed.

Pretty much any country that has been pounded, threatened, and left
flared up into a problem all over again. Like Germany after WWI and
into WWII. After WWII we decided to be more charitable and reward the
chunk of the population that would listen to us. They, on their own,
squeezed out the chunk of the population that wouldn't listen.

That's what I'm _saying_. Here's some help, the rest is up to you.

I don't view this war as "help." How is it even our place to help
them by force?

This "last ditch" has been going on for two years now. I think at
some point it's safe to assume it's a

I'm sure it's the military which "ran away". And I'm not sure either of
us know if it's getting better, or worse, really.

I know there are more casualties per week this week than a few weeks
ago.

True. Maybe we should draw a line in the sand.

We should have a long time ago. Bush didn't then, didn't today, and
won't tomorrow.

But is that acceptable? I know they both said it, but I think both
of them are goddamned fools. I believe Kerry was just saying it because
he thought he could win by doing so, and Bush said it because that's
what he plans to do. But I don't think it's acceptable.

Well, what alternative is there at this point?

I don't know. I am only arguing that this war was a ****up. Does
the lack of alternatives make it acceptable?

As long as Bush is in charge I'll hold him responsible for the
actions he takes--regardless of who his inspiration was. Bush ordered
this war, bush started this war, and Bush is keeping it going.

And so many democrats made the same justifications, and voted to
authorize the military action.

Do they hand out the orders to the military? That's my threshold in
this case.

Yeah. If I successfully bash the democrats, nothing
changes--everyone bashes the democrats and they're out of power anyway.
OTOH, successfully bashing the republicans will get them tossed out of
office and there's a possibility that things will change as a result.

"Do something, anything"? I submit that sometimes "nothing" is a better
course of action than the wrong "something".

Does that also apply to starting this war?

It's not certain, but it's possible. And with a guy like Dean in charge
of the party it's even more likely that any new democrats who get
elected will be anti-war.
When you played king of the hill, who did you push? The guy on top,
or the guy who just fell off?

Maybe figuring out how to work with whoever is on top might be a plan?
I sure as hell didn't like, respect, or trust Clinton, but that didn't
mean I was trying to push him down.

You sure do like holding him responsible for terrorist attacks on the
US. And how am I to work with those in power if they won't listen to
me? I'm not a preacher or a billionaire. I wasn't even allowed to
attend any Bush speeches simply to listen back when I lived a stone's
throw from Crawford.
Bush is a chicken****.

The quotes put them in charge of the military? Explain to me how
this amazing process works.

Both sides said he had WMD, and both sides voted to authorize the
military. That's my point. The quotes show this.

OK, both sides voted for this. Do both sides give the military their
orders?

Um, by authorizing military action, yes they do.

Bull****. That authorization gave the President the authority to
start a war. It gave no orders or guidelines to the military WRT troop
strength, distribution, placement, equipment, anything.
I take it your real answer is "No"?

I doubt it, too. This whole country showed how ****ing stupid it was
in 2004.

The choice was between two less than ideal options.

That does not make us not look like idiots to the rest of the world.

I mean, if you're driving down the road like a nut, kids
in the back seat cheering you on, when you get pulled over, do you
expect the cop to give the kids tickets too? No, that wouldn't make any
sense.

And yet, pretending that they were telling the driver not to do it would
be lying. It'd also be lying to pretend that, if they were driving,
they wouldn't have done the same thing.

I'm not pretending the democrats didn't authorize it, I'm just saying
that I don't give a ****. Yes, the democrats in congress were a bunch
of ****ing morons for supporting this war. But they do not have any
control over it at this point, so why do you feel the need to stress the
point? Do you think spreading out the blame a bit will unkill some
civilians? Or unkill a few servicemen? I kind of doubt that.

Yeah, the democrats in congress agreed with the war for whatever
moronic reason, but they're not in charge of it. They can't add a few
more troops here and there, they can't set any deadlines, they can't
even force the Pentagon to armor plate their vehicles.

Do you really, really want to go there?

No. I didn't want to go in many of the places this thread has gone.
But here we are.

The good news is that the courts here in Texas are looking into
overturning that new map since it was strong-armed into law by a bunch
of guys who got elected with illegal corporate money.
Maybe we'll even string up DeLay.

I'm not sure that I'd see that as a problem.

What is "that" referring to in the above? What the republicans did,
or undoing what the republicans did?

I'd have to disagree. After all, we were discussing above us
threatening Iraq "We'll come back if you screw up again."

That's not bullying, that's a "behave and don't be a problem for us any
more or we'll prevent you, again, from getting out of hand". Threat?
Yeah, I guess so. But not bullying.

Iraq was out of hand how?

Attacking us here is easy. Attacking us there is hard. They just
don't need to attack us over here. Think about it--their goal with the
9/11 attack was split several ways: show us that they could manipulate
us with an attack, hurt us financially, and start a fight. Now that
we're in Iraq and stuck there, they've succeeded in starting a fight,
hurting us financially, and proving they could manipulate us.

If getting the snot bombed out of their country and the country of an
uneasy ally is "manipulating us", I suppose. Odd goal to have, though,
getting invaded.

They wanted a war. Yeah, odd goal, but mission accomplished all the
same. And as far as I've seen this whole "ally" thing between Saddam
and OBL is completely made up. Absolutely not a shred of justification
anywhere except guesstimations from the back-seat drivers.

Attacking us again would be pretty redundant. And keep in mind that
if they want to make a statement, their target audience is in the Middle
East, not the US. Any attack on us in Iraq gets all over the news in
the Middle East, where their support base is, whereas an attack on the
US would get on US news along with Middle East news. More news
coverage, but not really worth the effort.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying, or if I am following it, that
I agree.

My point was that attacking again in the US would be a waste of
effort. They already have the war they wanted, and they're winning the
PR battle in the Middle East, which is where they want to win it. They
don't really give much of a **** about the US's opinion beyond egging us
into a war.

All three of us were mutual enemies. Who's to say Saddam wouldn't
have sided with the US against AQ as quickly as he would have sided with
AQ against the US?

Well, we have been at war with him, and he's more likely to save face
with the Muslim world by siding with a Muslim in a conflict, no?

He was completely secular and only seemed to be interested in running
Iraq before we invaded. I don't see any motivation anywhere to risk
annihilation by attacking the US simply to "save face." OBL didn't have
palaces to get bombed, but Saddam did.
It isn't as if anyone really expected Saddam to win a fight against
the US.

Besides that, it's a lot easier to take on AQ within
your won country than it is to take on another country half way around
the world.

I'd rather they stay over there, thank you very much.

I was talking about Saddam taking on AQ within Iraq vs. Saddam
attacking the US for whatever stupid reason.

AQ is a presence in Iraq because it's a war zone. Those assholes
wanted a war with the US for years, and now they've got one.

Well, let's kill as many of them as we can, over there, so we don't have
to do it over here then.

Do you know that killing as many of them as possible over there won't
just manufacture even more? We've been slaying a whole lot of
insurgents (seem to be a kind of catch-all category these days) in Iraq,
yet their numbers keep increasing.

They were alive, but they weren't figuring out how to kill our
military.

I'm not so sure of that.

Who in Iraq attacked the US prior to the invasion?

You said "figuring out", not "attacking".

So is this another case of assuming the worst in the absence of any
proof either way in order to justify a war?
Who in Iraq was planning how to kill us prior to the invasion?

I'm saying it shouldn't have happened, the guys to caused it are
****ups, and I have no faith that they'll turn this from a ****up into
anything measurably better than a complete failure.

Well, the US hasn't been attacked again, and no further attacks on the
scale of 9/11 have happened, so I think we're making progress.

OK, if your sufficiently selective, yes, the "WAR ON TERROR!" has
been a success. But if you broaden your horizons a bit, it's a failure.
An expensive, deadly failure.

If the US is doing the bulk of the work, and getting more benefit than
the others, well, the others could pitch in a bit more. Do I care if
we're not protecting, say, France? Not especially.

We have the bulk of the military casualties. In fact our military
casualties outnumber both Spain and England's terrorist attack victim
casualties AND military casualties. I don't think we're coming out
ahead in this.

--
B.B. --I am not a goat! thegoat4 at airmail dot net
http://web2.airmail.net/thegoat4/

In article , B.B.
says...

No, it's not debatable, it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack.

I keep agreeing with that, but that was one of the stated goals, and it
has so far been true.

But it could just as easily be explained by dumb luck. If you want
to justify a war that is killing human beings you need something more
concrete than sheer luck.
Your justification that we haven't been attacked again isn't
necessarily wrong, but it's nowhere near good enough either. And I
haven't seen any other compelling justifications either.

What, you need compelling justification to put the entire country
in debt by spending five billion dollars per month that we don't
have?

We're at war with iraq. There have been no american soil terrorist
attacks, nor have there been any elephant rampages in peeksill.
Which of those two things follows from the first and how do you
prove the assertion?

I would say this has been the most costly elephant eradication
program in peeksill to date. But it's been real effective!!

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
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On Sat, 23 Jul 2005 01:46:14 -0500, B.B. u wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

No, it's not debatable, it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack.

I keep agreeing with that, but that was one of the stated goals, and it
has so far been true.

But it could just as easily be explained by dumb luck. If you want
to justify a war that is killing human beings you need something more
concrete than sheer luck.

I didn't _say_ that (a) caused (b). I said that (b) was a stated goal
for doing (a), and that (b) has continued to happen after (a).

Your justification that we haven't been attacked again isn't
necessarily wrong, but it's nowhere near good enough either. And I
haven't seen any other compelling justifications either.

I haven't seen any compelling proof that there aren't WMD in Iraq; to
the contrary, in fact, but for some reason those sarin shells don't
count or something.

And nobody has been able to show there are no WMD in Iraq. "We can't
find them because we gave him time to hide them" doesn't equal "They
aren't there".

That has nothing to do with what I was saying as far as I can tell.

It's exactly the same thing. It's impossible to prove that the action
in Iraq hasn't prevented another attack in the US, just as it's
impossible for you to prove that there aren't any WMD in Iraq. Can't
have it both ways, y'know.

They decided on a different tactic - dissolve and reform - rather than
the known ineffective one of stand & fight & die that they used last
time. Seems more effective this time.

We've hired most of his military. The guys running around causing
the most trouble are mostly too young to have been in Saddam's military,
and a great many have come from outside of Iraq. I don't think it's his
military that's kicking our asses.

His military was his until a year ago. Seems to me some of 'em are
still around.

And that still doesn't explain the lack of equipment.

?

Saddam isn't all of his organization, just as OBL isn't all of _his_.

Then I take it you might agree with me that the big push to capture
Saddam was nothing more than a PR show?

You know, it's funny. (sad-funny, not haha funny) that, before SH was
captured, the failure to capture him was held up as an example of Bush
doing something or other wrong. Now that he's been captured, he's just
a "Oh, him, well, he didn't really matter anyway".

That's another massive red flag
in this war: landmark events. They build up as if the next mission will
fix everything and when it doesn't, they pick a new one. THey've been
flailing lately, but they seem to have settled on the formation of a
solid police force (or simply X number of police trained) as the goal.

And yet, friends of mine who have come back tell me that what the press
reports, and what they've seen and done, look like two different
countries.

Yeah, I got to where I was only logging on to keep my dudes from
expiring, then I didn't even keep up with that. Once my favorite
sorceress (Amee: level 93 or 94) went poof I had pretty much no urge to
bother any more.

Well, it was a good game for a while but the 1.10 delays were
frustrating, and once it finally came out it was underwhelming. I think
that's the point where I kind of said "screw it".

Yeah, 1.10 also hosed my Exploda-Bob build. That an all of the
super-lame builds I enjoyed making for the sheer hell of it became
overpowered after that patch. It just wasn't the same game anymore.
Besides, by the time it came around I was past the stage where I was
content to level on my own until someone showed up, so new chars were
more of a hassle than a joy.

Bloody Foothills runs get old after, well, about the third one. You'd
have people wanting to level, but some idiot maphacker would barge
through, run to the exit, and the sheep would follow him. What's the
point of leveling if you aren't going to kill stuff and look for items?

I also like how she could come in and do the "mom" thing if the group
got a bit too rambunctious.

Yeah, every NG needs a mom in it.

So...here, we have Gunner then maybe?

9/11 is a blip pretty far off the main line. If you want to set your
threshold as high as that, OK, there's been no terrorism in the world,
ever, except 9/11.

I also didn't say that. We were promised events which would dwarf 9/11.
Rhetoric, certainly, but the fact that they clearly have the desire, and
have been denied the means, is a good thing. I can think of a dozen
things off the top of my head which would be worse, so the absence of
followup can't be from lack of ideas or from lack of desires. That
leaves "opportunity".

Or lack of need. The stated goal of OBL was to start a war with the
west and now he's got it.

It's impossible to know, isn't it.

Well, to be honest, I'd rather that the terrorists are fighting and
dying in Iraq, than that they were doing the same in the US. Spain was
done specifically to change the outcome of their elections, and sadly,
it worked. London, I'm not sure has been linked to AQ yet; the chemist
they arrested allegedly has no ties, unless something has changed in the
last 24-48 hours since I looked at it.

It doesn't matter who was behind the attacks. It only matters that
they happened. The "War on Terror" didn't work.

Well, sure, putting pressure on group (a) won't necessarily stop group
(b), but if it stops group (a) from doing things, then things have been
improved.

OK, so he lied. BFD--dictators lie all the time, it's par for the
course. If we went and invaded every dictatorship that lied at a cost
of $1.25billion per week, we'd be hopelessly swamped with warfare and
debt before making a dent.

Well, maybe we should just pick the ones who, you know, have been at war
with us previously, and who are likely to have weapons that we don't
want used against us. Oh, and let's just do the winnable ones.

We'd still be broke, as we are now.

Not sure how that enters into it?

Also, North Korea fits that description, but we've done nothing. If
we're trying to send a message, we've hosed it royally.

Well, better that he screw up in Iraq than with N. Korea, I think. I
wonder; if war does get re-started there, given that there was never a
peace treaty, does the US need a declaration of war, or does the
original, never revoked one still stand? It's still just a truce, after
all.

I also don't condone a war on a technicality.

Point remains, if the war(s) never ended, then there aren't new ones to
start, just resumption after the pause.

For that matter, was there ever a peace treaty after GW1?

Yeah, Saddam was to destroy his weapons. The evidence we've found so
far indicates that he did that.

Oh?

The speculation and general assumption
so far has been the opposite for some odd reason.

Got a cite for that? I'd love to read that.

The shells that we were hit with were old, according to the reports
about them.

Yes, but they are a non-zero example of WMD in Iraq, and are dismissed
out of hand.

Bush's latest excuse for the war is that Saddam had WMD development
programs. Old, decayed shells don't prove that there was active
development of weaponry recently.

Come on. You know that Gore, Kennedy, Pelosi, Clinton, Clinton, Kerry,
and all those folks _also_ said he had WMD. Do I have to post the
quotes _AGAIN_?

Of course, bush gave so many reasons
both before and after the war which one is real (if any) is anyone's
guess.

See above. Saying "The Democrats agreed, sure, but Bush is the
President so only he gets the blame" is bull****.

The most plausible explanation I've heard so far is that
they were duds dug up at a test range and incorporated into IEDs--the
assemblers thinking they were conventional weaponry.

But they're examples of WMD that were there, and were not destroyed, and
were not accounted for. That's just the alleged "innocent mistakes";
what about the ones that we gave him years to hide, either inside or
outside the country?

What about them? We sure as hell haven't secured them, so this war
is a failure by that measure also.

It proves that he had WMD that he neither destroyed or declared. Best
case, his record-keeping sucks. More likely, there are more we haven't
found yet.

We do know at least that when Saddam
was in power he had no motivation to use them, and after we started the
invasion he had all of the motivation in the world, yet still didn't
fire.
Could be that he didn't have anything to fire at us.

It could be. Perhaps a lesson here is "Don't threaten someone with
bigger sticks than you have, or you'll get whumped".

It amazes me that a guy who supposedly was such a terrible leader he
couldn't provide electricity

Well, that was by his choice, not by his inability.

How do you know this?

His priorities weren't his people. I'm frankly boggled that you even
have to ask.

was also skilled enough to completely hide
all evidence of WMD development and go so far as to create a body of
evidence that would fool the inspectors into believing he had just let
his WMD programs rot. There seems to be a strong dichotomy there.

His priorities were on weapons, not his people. Seems pretty clear
to me?

He ran the country for 30 years. He must have done something right
along the way. A leader eventually has to tend to his people in order
to remain in power.

Are the Iraqi people better off now, or 2 years ago?

AQ was in the US on 9/11. Does that make AQ and the US allies?

Of course not. What's your point?

That your assumption was illogical.

Some iraquis are fighting to get us out of Iraq. Some AQ are fighting
to get us out of Iraq. Some AQ are allied with some Iraqis.


Apparenly they're also allies with Spain and Britain.

I recognize and reject your failed rhetorical tactic.

And what tactic would that be?

Come on.

AQ's presence in Iraq does not seem to back your theory up any more
than it backs the notion that AQ, the US, Spain, and Britain are in
cahoots.

(shrug) OK, whatever. They're there, fighting against us, with some
Iraqis. My point was that they could work together against us, and the
rest of that point is "Good thing we kept them from getting the WMD".

How do you know we kept them from getting any WMD? You claim both
that they existed and that they were never destroyed, and acknowledge
that we haven't found them. That sounds extremely not like we kept them
away from anyone other than the US and her allies.

If they have 'em, they haven't used them yet.

Whoopie. Hey, Clinton got us through a few years without any attacks
on US soil, but you don't call that a success. Why is it not success
for Clinton, but it would be success for Bush?

Well, during Clinton things kept getting worse, and he went from
objecting, to objecting strongly, to objecting very strongly, to blowing
up a tent and two camels. This weak response is, I feel, what made the
escalation happen.

IIRC, there was one terrorist attack on US soil in Clinton's time,
(WTC, 2/26/1993) and there has been one during Bush's time.

AQ was attacking US interests around the world on an increasing level
during Clinton's administration. USS Cole, and all those. Since
Clinton didn't respond to those other than in "objecting most strongly",
he showed the weakess that was then the cause of AQ deciding to get more
aggressive and attack us here. Weak response=event here. Strong
response=event elsewhere. I prefer them elsewhere.

Cole was not on US soil. Is your standard attacks on US soil, or
attacks anywhere?

ARGH!

Clinton didn't respond to the attacks while they were still elsewhere.
This made AQ more bold to attack us here. It's not complicated.

It seems to be that attacks on any scale anywhere
during Clinton's term make Clinton a failure, while any attacks of any
size during Bush's term either don't count or were successfully
addressed since we haven't had another on US soil since the last one.
THAT is a double standard and THAT is all I've ever seen to justify
the endless bashing of Clinton from the conservatives. Push your
standards as high as they need to be for Clinton to fall short, then
push them as low as possible to excuse anything and everything from Bush.
I remain deeply unimpressed.

Once escalation happened, we got attacked here. Had he responded
usefully, that might not have happened. Clearer?

Pretty much any country that has been pounded, threatened, and left
flared up into a problem all over again. Like Germany after WWI and
into WWII. After WWII we decided to be more charitable and reward the
chunk of the population that would listen to us. They, on their own,
squeezed out the chunk of the population that wouldn't listen.

That's what I'm _saying_. Here's some help, the rest is up to you.

I don't view this war as "help." How is it even our place to help
them by force?

Because they didn't control their madman themselves.

I know there are more casualties per week this week than a few weeks
ago.

True. Maybe we should draw a line in the sand.

We should have a long time ago. Bush didn't then, didn't today, and
won't tomorrow.




But is that acceptable? I know they both said it, but I think both
of them are goddamned fools. I believe Kerry was just saying it because
he thought he could win by doing so, and Bush said it because that's
what he plans to do. But I don't think it's acceptable.

Well, what alternative is there at this point?

I don't know. I am only arguing that this war was a ****up. Does
the lack of alternatives make it acceptable?

As long as Bush is in charge I'll hold him responsible for the
actions he takes--regardless of who his inspiration was. Bush ordered
this war, bush started this war, and Bush is keeping it going.

And so many democrats made the same justifications, and voted to
authorize the military action.

Do they hand out the orders to the military? That's my threshold in
this case.

Yeah. If I successfully bash the democrats, nothing
changes--everyone bashes the democrats and they're out of power anyway.
OTOH, successfully bashing the republicans will get them tossed out of
office and there's a possibility that things will change as a result.

"Do something, anything"? I submit that sometimes "nothing" is a better
course of action than the wrong "something".

Does that also apply to starting this war?

It's not certain, but it's possible. And with a guy like Dean in charge
of the party it's even more likely that any new democrats who get
elected will be anti-war.
When you played king of the hill, who did you push? The guy on top,
or the guy who just fell off?

Maybe figuring out how to work with whoever is on top might be a plan?
I sure as hell didn't like, respect, or trust Clinton, but that didn't
mean I was trying to push him down.

You sure do like holding him responsible for terrorist attacks on the
US. And how am I to work with those in power if they won't listen to
me? I'm not a preacher or a billionaire. I wasn't even allowed to
attend any Bush speeches simply to listen back when I lived a stone's
throw from Crawford.
Bush is a chicken****.

The quotes put them in charge of the military? Explain to me how
this amazing process works.

Both sides said he had WMD, and both sides voted to authorize the
military. That's my point. The quotes show this.

OK, both sides voted for this. Do both sides give the military their
orders?

Um, by authorizing military action, yes they do.

Bull****. That authorization gave the President the authority to
start a war. It gave no orders or guidelines to the military WRT troop
strength, distribution, placement, equipment, anything.
I take it your real answer is "No"?

I doubt it, too. This whole country showed how ****ing stupid it was
in 2004.

The choice was between two less than ideal options.

That does not make us not look like idiots to the rest of the world.

I mean, if you're driving down the road like a nut, kids
in the back seat cheering you on, when you get pulled over, do you
expect the cop to give the kids tickets too? No, that wouldn't make any
sense.

And yet, pretending that they were telling the driver not to do it would
be lying. It'd also be lying to pretend that, if they were driving,
they wouldn't have done the same thing.

I'm not pretending the democrats didn't authorize it, I'm just saying
that I don't give a ****. Yes, the democrats in congress were a bunch
of ****ing morons for supporting this war. But they do not have any
control over it at this point, so why do you feel the need to stress the
point? Do you think spreading out the blame a bit will unkill some
civilians? Or unkill a few servicemen? I kind of doubt that.

Yeah, the democrats in congress agreed with the war for whatever
moronic reason, but they're not in charge of it. They can't add a few
more troops here and there, they can't set any deadlines, they can't
even force the Pentagon to armor plate their vehicles.

Do you really, really want to go there?

No. I didn't want to go in many of the places this thread has gone.
But here we are.

The good news is that the courts here in Texas are looking into
overturning that new map since it was strong-armed into law by a bunch
of guys who got elected with illegal corporate money.
Maybe we'll even string up DeLay.

I'm not sure that I'd see that as a problem.

What is "that" referring to in the above? What the republicans did,
or undoing what the republicans did?

I'd have to disagree. After all, we were discussing above us
threatening Iraq "We'll come back if you screw up again."

That's not bullying, that's a "behave and don't be a problem for us any
more or we'll prevent you, again, from getting out of hand". Threat?
Yeah, I guess so. But not bullying.

Iraq was out of hand how?

Attacking us here is easy. Attacking us there is hard. They just
don't need to attack us over here. Think about it--their goal with the
9/11 attack was split several ways: show us that they could manipulate
us with an attack, hurt us financially, and start a fight. Now that
we're in Iraq and stuck there, they've succeeded in starting a fight,
hurting us financially, and proving they could manipulate us.

If getting the snot bombed out of their country and the country of an
uneasy ally is "manipulating us", I suppose. Odd goal to have, though,
getting invaded.

They wanted a war. Yeah, odd goal, but mission accomplished all the
same. And as far as I've seen this whole "ally" thing between Saddam
and OBL is completely made up. Absolutely not a shred of justification
anywhere except guesstimations from the back-seat drivers.

Attacking us again would be pretty redundant. And keep in mind that
if they want to make a statement, their target audience is in the Middle
East, not the US. Any attack on us in Iraq gets all over the news in
the Middle East, where their support base is, whereas an attack on the
US would get on US news along with Middle East news. More news
coverage, but not really worth the effort.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying, or if I am following it, that
I agree.

My point was that attacking again in the US would be a waste of
effort. They already have the war they wanted, and they're winning the
PR battle in the Middle East, which is where they want to win it. They
don't really give much of a **** about the US's opinion beyond egging us
into a war.

All three of us were mutual enemies. Who's to say Saddam wouldn't
have sided with the US against AQ as quickly as he would have sided with
AQ against the US?

Well, we have been at war with him, and he's more likely to save face
with the Muslim world by siding with a Muslim in a conflict, no?

He was completely secular and only seemed to be interested in running
Iraq before we invaded. I don't see any motivation anywhere to risk
annihilation by attacking the US simply to "save face." OBL didn't have
palaces to get bombed, but Saddam did.
It isn't as if anyone really expected Saddam to win a fight against
the US.

Besides that, it's a lot easier to take on AQ within
your won country than it is to take on another country half way around
the world.

I'd rather they stay over there, thank you very much.

I was talking about Saddam taking on AQ within Iraq vs. Saddam
attacking the US for whatever stupid reason.

AQ is a presence in Iraq because it's a war zone. Those assholes
wanted a war with the US for years, and now they've got one.

Well, let's kill as many of them as we can, over there, so we don't have
to do it over here then.

Do you know that killing as many of them as possible over there won't
just manufacture even more? We've been slaying a whole lot of
insurgents (seem to be a kind of catch-all category these days) in Iraq,
yet their numbers keep increasing.

They were alive, but they weren't figuring out how to kill our
military.

I'm not so sure of that.

Who in Iraq attacked the US prior to the invasion?

You said "figuring out", not "attacking".

So is this another case of assuming the worst in the absence of any
proof either way in order to justify a war?
Who in Iraq was planning how to kill us prior to the invasion?

I'm saying it shouldn't have happened, the guys to caused it are
****ups, and I have no faith that they'll turn this from a ****up into
anything measurably better than a complete failure.

Well, the US hasn't been attacked again, and no further attacks on the
scale of 9/11 have happened, so I think we're making progress.

OK, if your sufficiently selective, yes, the "WAR ON TERROR!" has
been a success. But if you broaden your horizons a bit, it's a failure.
An expensive, deadly failure.

If the US is doing the bulk of the work, and getting more benefit than
the others, well, the others could pitch in a bit more. Do I care if
we're not protecting, say, France? Not especially.

We have the bulk of the military casualties. In fact our military
casualties outnumber both Spain and England's terrorist attack victim
casualties AND military casualties. I don't think we're coming out
ahead in this.

In article , Dave Hinz says...he showed the
weakess that was then the cause of AQ deciding to get more

Cole was not on US soil. Is your standard attacks on US soil, or
attacks anywhere?

ARGH!

Clinton didn't respond to the attacks while they were still elsewhere.
This made AQ more bold to attack us here. It's not complicated.

We *still* haven't responded to AQ for the cole, or for 9/11.

AQ isn't IN iraq. We're not doing *anything* to slow them down.
The Iraq war is a tremendous drain on our resources and AQ is
delighted we're there spending five billion dollars per month
that we don't have, so we can set up a terrorist training camp.

Yes, we sure should have spanked somebody for the cole, for the
first WTC attack. But we didn't, because they were saudis. And the
saudis are our friends, right?

Jim


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On 23 Jul 2005 06:31:34 -0700, jim rozen wrote:

We're at war with iraq. There have been no american soil terrorist
attacks, nor have there been any elephant rampages in peeksill.

Jim, elephants never have rampaged in Peekskill. Yet, terrorists _have_
attacked on US soil. Why do you keep using this fatally flawed tactic?

Which of those two things follows from the first and how do you
prove the assertion?

I would say this has been the most costly elephant eradication
program in peeksill to date. But it's been real effective!!

Why do you keep using this fatally flawed logic?

On 25 Jul 2005 10:26:37 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...he showed the
weakess that was then the cause of AQ deciding to get more

Cole was not on US soil. Is your standard attacks on US soil, or
attacks anywhere?

ARGH!

Clinton didn't respond to the attacks while they were still elsewhere.
This made AQ more bold to attack us here. It's not complicated.

We *still* haven't responded to AQ for the cole, or for 9/11.

AQ isn't IN iraq. We're not doing *anything* to slow them down.

/blink
/blink
Um. You do know that we did this little military thing over in
Afghanistan, right?

Yes, we sure should have spanked somebody for the cole, for the
first WTC attack. But we didn't, because they were saudis. And the
saudis are our friends, right?

I've never pretended that they also don't want to kill us.

jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...he showed the
weakess that was then the cause of AQ deciding to get more


Cole was not on US soil. Is your standard attacks on US soil, or
attacks anywhere?

ARGH!

Clinton didn't respond to the attacks while they were still elsewhere.
This made AQ more bold to attack us here. It's not complicated.


We *still* haven't responded to AQ for the cole, or for 9/11.

Seems like I recall some advanced police work in Afghanistan, where
there USED to be a dozen or so AQ training sites and an AQ-friendly host
government. I bet they saw that as a response, right before they stopped
...seeing.