mr2mk1g

What is he blaming the US for?

On the other hand while the UN did not achieve what we asked for (proof) they did achieved what we really wanted (a Sadam that did not have WMD). ie while we wanted proof and rightly ought to have got it, over and above our desire for proof what we really wanted was him to have no WMD. He had no WMD. Of the things we asked of him, we got the better of the two.

You wouldn't really complain though would you. I figure it beats sitting on a cloud with a harp, in my estimation at least.

There is a low incidence of drug taking in society. Skydiving is a sport with an exceptionally good representational cross sectional of society. As such you will find examples of almost anything in skydiving that you would expect to find in the general population. Thus some skydivers do take drugs... but not because they are skydivers... simply because they are drug takers who happen to skydive.

I've got pie. I ate the last of my mothers birthday American cheese cake... but still have some of my mothers birthday coffee cake left. Can't eat it. Feel sick. Was gonna bin it but you can have it - I'll e-mail it to you if you like.

Depending on the analogy you want to use - sadam would let us do CT scans but wouldn't let us poke around in his pooper as that would cause so much embarrassment he would have lost control of his country. Although when we're dealing with WMD though poking around in someone’s pooper is probably a reasonable step to take. (pssst. John... claim he has WMD )

Yes those are all discontinued models. Sony tends to bring out several new models per year - thus something that JUST came out and is the newest thing on the market with only a couple of people at the DZ having one since it's so new... will actually be only 2 weeks away from "obsolescence" according to the Sony website. Almost those listed in your post are fine. If you buy something other than one of those the likelihood is it's the same shape and size anyway and only has one slightly different feature which justifies a new model and thus more $$ for Sony. It's all marketing. Even if it's not the same size, 2K helmets are built to measure, for both your head and the camera. If you tell them what camera you're buying they'll build it to fit.

The Hitchhikers Guide to Modern Warfare: Don't want your troops to have to murder people - employ mercs. Don't want to be caught torturing people - give your detainees to "allies" for a while. Don't want to be forced by your constitution to give human beings basic human rights - hold your detainees overseas in a country outside the reach of your constitution. Don't want to be forced by international laws you set up to give human beings basic human rights - reclassify your detainees as "enemy combatants", a term you just made up, and low and behold discover that there are no rules for how you treat "enemy combatants" on the books.

Not while packing. No one sweats more than a skydiver trying to pack a new canopy on a hot day. No one.

check to see if you've got any bent pins in the CF card port.

pssst. He already thinks you're pedaling conspiracy theories... that aint gonna help.

We pretty much agree on everything. Remember all the points I put in my a-c list were not mine but simply my reiteration of the points put by those who strongly oppose the war. I have to admit there are a number of them I simply cannot overcome - such as the death toll or $$$'s spent for example. If some consider those to be too high a price to pay for the benefits we have had from taking out Sadam when taken into account with the less favorable outcomes, who am I to argue with them. At the end of the day this is why we both live in democracies - their delegates were out voted by ours in our respective political institutions and thus our countries went to war. If there were more people who held the lives of our troops and those of the innocent's we've killed in the regard they do we wouldn't have gone to war, and that's democracy. Remember in your rebuttals of things like the economic damage and the capture of OBL that whilst no one can prove the economy would have recovered without the war or that OBL would have been captured without the war – we can't prove the contrary either. At the end of the day I think the anti war camp have a strong argument when they say there would have been more resources allocated to OBL if we didn't go into Iraq and the deficit is as big as it is because of all the billions the war has eaten up. Sure they can't prove those things wouldn't have happened without Iraq... but the odds certainly start to scew in different directions without the war.

true. but he didn't have WMD... the WMD problem was solved by the UN prior to our two countries invading. (although it could well be argued that for the problem to be "solved" you need to be sure it was solved and since no one was sure due to non compliance it couldn't be "solved"... but that all depends on what definition of "solved" people want to use). Yup, although I think some may have good reason to. I agree overall taking him out was the "right" thing to do. Hell I think the "right" thing to do was take him out way back in 91 instead of stopping as we did but hey, it wasn't my call. I think the problem a lot of people have is not that Sadam was a real bad person that needed to be taken down... but that either a) they were told it was all about WMD and now politicians are trying to convince them it was always all about Sadam being bad... or b) they think that when you weigh up all the good and bad things that have come of this situation they feel that it would have been better to not invade - then we would have had 100,000 live innocent Iraqi's, 1000+ live US troops, less of a budget deficit, less of a fucked up economy, more money to spend on hospitals, more allies, more of a moral high ground, more stability in the region, fewer terrorists, fewer reasons for terrorists to want to kill us, found OBL, more resources to tie down Iran/NK/whoever if nes... or c) they wouldn't have supported war based solely on Sadam being bad but feel duped into supporting a war because they were told he definitely had WMD. Now a) I'm pretty pissed about myself. b) I disagree with overall but accept that is how some people weigh up the situation, and c) I accept that sometimes intel is just bad and that is the nature of the game but can see why those people might be pissed, (although I'd have still sent troops personally just to take out sadam... but that comes under b)). I'd also be pissed at c) if some time in the future when documents are de-classified it all turns out that no one actually thought he had WMD but just wanted to use it as an excuse... at present I can't see anyone proving this though.

Not burned dude... nuked... looked like some kinda low density ceramic when I was done with it.

We didn't invade because he was killing his people. We invaded because we thought he had WMD and hadn't given them all Hans Blix. Turns out we were wrong - he didn't have any - the UN had already handled the situation.

by that logic there can't really be much criticism of the UN's handling of Rwanda etc as WE obviously didn't want to handle the situation either. If WE had, perhaps WE could have done something seeing as WE are the one’s that control the troops not the UN and if we had wanted the UN to do something WE could have voted for action seeing as WE ARE the UN. And apparently the UN had handled Iraq's WMD's quite well as when we went in it turned out there weren’t any. And it would appear they did it without killing people at a rate 10 times faster than Sadam ever managed to. At the end of the day though - I'm not quite sure what this thread is trying to prove. We're all quite clear that taking out Sadam was exceptionally meritorious... even if it was done on premise that turned out to be wrong... and also turned out to have significant down sides as well.

It's like sand dude - there is not an infinite number of sand particles on earth even though the number keeps changing as sand is created all the time. But if you could freeze time you could count all the particles. It would take you ages but you would one day have counted all the sand particles in existence at that one moment in time. Same with boobies... there would be a hell of a lot of them out there... but if you could freeze the internet you could count every single booby and you would have a finite number... of course the line of applicants to get the job of counting them all would be infinitely long.

Imagine crown green bowling (NOT 10 pin) but with circular things that look like irons (ie the hot thing you use to flatten out shits) instead of weighted balls... oh yeah, and it's on ice... and you can slow or speed up the iron thingy by scrubbing the ice with a sweeping brush. Yup... someone somewhere got very very bored one winter.

Just post neked pics now - we won't hold it against you if you're on the ground.

The one I've always had suggested to me is that the competition is who doesn't die.

hehe - come visit the home of curling - Britain. That's right... the only Gold medal we took during the last winter olympics - curling. Go figure.

I put an oven bake garlic bread stick in my microwave oven for 30 minutes one time a few years back. Sadly I hadn’t set the thing to "oven" but to "microwave" and thus 25 minutes later when I returned to my kitchen to retrieve my nice hot garlic bread stick I find the place filled with neon yellowy-green smoke down to my knees! Yes I really do mean neon yellowy-green smoke, seriously! So I go to the microwave and open the door allowing more thick smoke to literally poor out of it like an Irish waterfall. Take some tongs and retrieve the garlic breadstick which now looks like a cross between some kind of ceramic shuttle nose cone material and something that was retrieved from the depths of the Chernobyl reactor. I now run outside with it and throw it onto the grass where it makes a sound like breaking glass and continues to sizzle and crack, all the while emitting this scary neon smoke. (It reminded me of the moment in "Time Bandits" when the dwarfs were running round having to pick up chunks of pure evil... but anyway). The kitchen took a while to clear out of smoke and the smell was there for a day or two. Of more concern was the effect on the grass. A baguette sized hole was burned in the grass (hardly surprising given the heat of the thing). But more troubling was the fact that the grass within a full meter radius of the spot I'd thrown the bread stick turned yellow and slowly died. I hesitate to think what kind of chemicals and/or radiation that thing must have been chucking out in order to kill grass a full meter away. Shit I actually had to re-turf the area as the grass never re-grew. I think I’m probably going to come down with some kind of Chernobyl style syndrome in a few years and doctors are going to ask me curiously if I’ve ever handled chunks of used reactor rod or fissile material or if I'd ever been near any small nuclear explosions. This must have been about 8 years ago... I haven't grown an extra finger yet... not yet anyway.

I suppose the classic example would be a cutaway on your first jump of a new canopy or a new reserve pack job. That's kind of a sods law mal – plenty of those around. Only jumped without a hook knife once. (Looked down just before exit and noted the pouch was empty... "how did that happen? Ah well, on with the jump"). Low and behold I had a tension knot causing my main to turn (not that badly). Landed it from half breaks uneventfully and I guess the hook knife wouldn't really have been the appropriate remedy anyway but I certainly found if funny how I'd thought "ah when do you ever actually need a hook knife anyway" just before getting out of the plane.

The problem is, because the ruling is that it was never legal to issue licenses, no licenses that were ever issued were legal... therefore no one was licensed at the time they were married... therefore no one was ever legally married... thus no one is currently married. Under the constitutional circumstances it looks like the court really had no choice but to annul them if they were going to find in favor of the prejudiced bigots who brought the case before them.

Would you change your minimum cutaway altitude if you had a skyhook?