crwtom

and for those groups and forces in the admin an invasion of Iraq has always been at the top of the agenda. They had these ambitions long before 9/11 and long before the whole WMD controversy unfolded. These incidents were to them basically convenient circumstances out of which they believed to be able to concoct a case for a war. (In fact even choosing Iraq as target over other arab countries was a matter of calculation and convenience). None of these perceived threats exceeded similar threats by many other rouge nations, or singled Iraq out as a particularly urgent case among them. (Almost any other arab nation in the vicinity had a larger representation of terrorism, for nuclear capacities loose material in former Soviet countries ranks at the top followed by N Korea, Pakistan, and Iran, for biological capacities Cuba tops the list, chemical ones are all over the world, and if you talk about humanitarian disasters there're way worse ones in the world.) So I find the question whether or not Bush lied about details about the strength of the "evidence" for WMDs or connections to 9/11 at best secondary. What the details were about what information was exactly passed is quite irrelevant. In fact, these issues were never the trues reasons we went to war, but rather conveniently pasted into some piece of propaganda, without any real effort to double check them in any conscientious manner. Several people close to the political establishment in DC have given a picture of how the decision of Bush came about that I find very plausible given many other indicators surrounding this presidency: The Iraq-invasion-mongers managed to convince GWB that he could write himself into history by democratizing one arab nation and thereby spreading the joy of western enlightening into the neighborhood. Iraq was for many reasons the ideal target. Bush also had an excellent button to push - namely, his often observed compulsion to emulate Reganistic grandeur (see also Tax breaks) They only had to wetten his taste with a promise that this "democratization of arabs exercise" would be seen in the same light as Reagans (not really correctly attributed) "achievement" to bring down the communism. The shrub didn't have to think twice (not that this would have been particularly fruitful anyway) So YES. I'm convinced that Bush lied to the American people. Perhaps not about some legalistic hairsplitting detail to what degree a piece of intelligence about the issues that served as pretenses was given to him as fact or suggestion. But there's no doubt for me that he lied about what the true motivations for the administrations were to go to war. The world-reordering ideologies, and megalomaniac ambitions of self-glorification could have never been sold to the US public or the world. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

That makes sense only you can guranatee me that the only deadly use or abuse with guns are accidentaly deaths, and these are the deaths of only the gun operators . But you can't ! ... not even remotely! Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

The purpose of a parachute is to save your life. without harming anyone else. No, the main purpose and design is to incpacitate and/or kill another person or animal. In some particualr circumstances someone may use this feature to defend their own life (mostly though as a reult of someone else will ill intentions also having a gun) Even in such particular instances there will be at least one person badly hurt or killed. This is not heppening with a parachute. Fundametally different from a parachute also that there are a gazillion other ways to use a gun besides those phantasies of honest people having to defend themselves against some army of evildoers. OTOH there's only one way to use a parachute, and you'd need a lot of imagination to see how you can use a parachute to inflict devastating harm onto other people. Since the beginning of time guns have been designed for one singular purpose - to kill. And there are endlessly many motivations and situaions to do so, and anything that is possible will happen. In reality the taunted scenario of the honest citizen defending his life against a malicious intruder out to inflict personal harm is likely to be a very small percentage of how guns are actuallty use. My guess are a huge portion of gun related death and injury comes from domestic disputes, as well as similar sitaution (such as teaed high school students) where people feel their feelings have been hurt and they have to get even. No need for them to have a criminal profile or history before they start shooting. But also the use of guns in other crimes like robbery in the US likley exceeds that of other developed by orders of magintude. Add to that innumerous accidental deaths, suicides, and the like. How do you know who are the sinner and who are the guilty in a couple of months from now. Are you GOD or the Tom Cruise character from Minority Report? Prior crimial records do crap to predict domestic and similar disputes, and even for the strict crimial there's always a first time. To understand the broader impact and threat of loose gun laws it is useful to step out of a narrow individual perspective. Such regulations control the general level of availability of guns and level of acceptance of guns as part of normal life. If these levels in the general population are high it will seem also to many individuals much more tempting and easy to solve just about any problem at the trigger of a gun. As usual also main question is cirumvented - if not for gun laws, why does the US have astronomically higher homicide rates than other countries with comparable socioeconoic structure but stricter gun laws. (even conservative number talk about 15-times higher rates). In terms of public policy the main questions should be are more innocent people saved as a result of being able to defend themselves with guns, or are more innocent people killed as a result of the sheer volume, availability and acceptance of guns. IMO the former scenario may apply as common place in the Frontier days, in war times, in Hollywood movies, and perhaps the most remote and isolated premises out there. In a modern, piecetime, largely urbanized society with a solid infrastructure I would find the latter much much more likely. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

We should do what we can. But as I said the Swiss reality is not the US one. A law that says we´d lift gun restriction once the US reaches the levels of crime, wealth, or poverty of Switzerland I may not object to. Absolutely wrong - this is not an equivalence. Operators and owners of parachutes vastly and predominantly kill themselves - operators and owners of guns vastly and predominantly kill other people. In fact, guns have been specifically designed and developed to kill effortlessly. Parachutes have been designed to do the opposite. If there was a mechanism built into all guns that would allow operators only to commit suicide or, at the very least, equate each attempt of killing with a suicide (like every forward shot would automatically release a backwards shot) I again would agree with lax gun laws and that one could speak of any sort of equivalence. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Therefore, crime is not caused by the mere presence of guns. Crime is caused by certain social conditions. Where those bad social conditions exist, you'll get crime regardless of what gun control laws are in place. The way to reduce crime is not to take away guns from honest people, but to deal with the social conditions which breed it. So how do you get rid of poverty and crime in the US by ... let's say Monday? (because I don't want to be the one with a bullet in the head on Tuesday) Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Aside from your exclusion of civilian deaths during the war (before and during the fall od Saddam) this is a pretty silly comparison also otherwise. The greater issue are the responsibilities that the coalition has towards the Iraqi population. Anything from international law, Geneva conventions, human decency, and Powell's 'pottery barn rule' say that if you occupy a country it is you who is resposibility for upholding public order and securing the safety of inhabitants. The US and coalition have done an abismal job at this. People die not only because of terror attacks but by a common crime homicide rate that is going through the roof. Public order and saftey is a disaster, a wild west mentality has become prevalent, and it is not getting any better. Here a quick overview It is hard to say what part of the responsibility rests on the military. But there are several political decisions and omissions that are directly related to this fuck-up. For example - disbanoning Iraqi army and security forces (most of whom have been rehiredyears later anyway) - US troop numbers that fell dramatically short of being able of uplholding public order - the lack of any real plans and strategies to restore public order - a horridly prepared political process for restoring normalcy that got off the ground way too late and is still plaqued will delays, assassiniation, and may other sicknesses. - a pre-war rethoric and politics that (falsly) tied the Iraq war to a war on islamic terrorism combined with a language of "crusades" and unapologetic unilateralism. That makes the war an easy sell as a christian jihad of some sort and is, for all practical purposes, an invitation to dance for all extremisms groups too hard to resist. (whether they were previously enganged in terrorism or not). - etc etc The bottom line: The US and coaltion have made decisions in obvious disregard of public safety of the Iraqi people and are thus in violation of international law and human decency Though they are likely never to be held reposibility the carnage among Iraqi's resulting from the invasion and these decisions will continue for quite a while. Daily death rates among civilians are still notably higher than those under the Saddam regime even more than two years after the invasion. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Even in the open battlefield the really outstanding trademark of US warfare is not the ground battle - it is the massive relentless aerial bombardement. Only after the earth is scorched and about all is in ashes the boots hit the ground. It's been like that in WWII and in the Iraq Wars. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Yeah, it falls in nicely with the Bush plan for the region: "Spreading the Spirit of the New Iraq to its Neighbors" Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Switzerland is the example by the US gun lobby that is recycled as often as it is out of place. Switzerland is one of the world's richest countries with practically no lower class, extrodinarily low crime rates in general (gun related or not), and only 6 Mio inhabitants. Add to this a subdued and traditionalistic mind set. Having lived in both Switzerland and the US for several yeasr I can assure you that the differences between the two countries both in regard to social structure and mentality could not be more crass and stark between any other two western countries. As opposed to people in the US the Swiss do not carry guns out of some paranoia that there is a gangster around every other corner that they have to defend themselves against. Their motivation are more along the lines of traditionally rooted sportsmanship. (and, of course, the mandatory assault rifle of the people's militia) The only parts of US society that would compare to Swiss gun owners would be either professional military, wealthy gun collectors, or people with too much money and time that they decide to spend on a shooting range as hobby and social activity. If you want to compare to other developed nations pick some whose socioeconomic structures and mentality has any resemblance to the US. That is, a fair amount of heavy industry, lower class population, a regular batch of social problems, a modern much less traditional mind set, a much larger and more heterogenous population, an open as opposed to an isolationistic society, etc etc. You will find bigger countries such as France, Germany, UK or Japan with very serious gun restrictions. At the same time these countries have gun related homocide rates that are 15 to 30 times lower than those in the US (depending on whether you rather read pro-gun or antigun stats) Why the US has 15 to 30 times higher gun related homocide rates than many comparable countries, if it was not for the gun restrictions, I have never heard a remotely interesting answer to by a pro-gunner. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Of course, he's innocent - he swore to find the real murderer of Nicole and Ron and has been doing some admirable work since: Thus far he has looked all the way to the bottom of 5426 Martini glasses, 7154 jars of Haagen-Daz, and 4281 golf holes to find that f***ing SOB, and he is not giving up. Cheers, T BTW: how do you largely kill someone? (with a really big knife?) . ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

You're missing the point entirely - this discussion is about physical punishments (in which harm is done to another person's body). Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

If you're in favor of the death penalty your really must like this idea ... if you want to be consistent that is. If detroying all bodily functions of a human being is an OK punishment, cutting a thumb shouldn't even raise an eye brow. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

the more intersting quote is praying for his soul in the other worl instead if pulling the plug and keeping him in this world ... Christians are a riot! Cheers, T . ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Yeah, Libby was charged with committing perjury in an investigation that examined why and how a CIA agent was outed. With that, he is at least indirectly charged with obstructing the efforts of investigators to get to get to the ground of and the rectify a serious matter of national security and prevent this from happening again. The condensation of these circumstance into the suggested simplified headlines is of course legally incorrect. Aside from the natural tendency of any second tier media to oversimplify there are, however, a few more reasons why the media is not handling the Libby affair with delicacy and velvet gloves - and you don't have to resort to the a conspiracy theory of a media in the control of evil liberals. For one, Libby wasn't very nice to media recently himself. He let a (even relatively conservative) NYT reporter rost in jail for nearly three months. Also one of his (alledged) lies was an attempt to stick the leakage-dirty onto Tim Russert, one of the most respected media people, in order to save his own skin (in a pretty stupid way may I add). All this is not a way to make friends with media no matter what your political conviction Another reason is just the gut-common-sense-hardball-whatever thing that sells well in the media world. If it is proved that Libby committed perjury the next question to ask is why and what did he have to hide? It is not entirely absurd to hope/expect/fear that more dirt will be unearthed and for those, and for those earning their money with this kind of news it smells like a small or not so small gold mine. Quite generally, media is a business like anything else. There's some institution, ciumstance, group etc A that generates news and then there is an audioence B that is interested in learning about the news. The media makes money reporting A to B. It is not quite plausible why only liberal should have the business sense to do so. If there is anything to your perception it means that either conservative journalists are not up to the jpb, or that most of the A that is produced is not what they want to report about (such as the Bush Admin producing bad news) and/or a lot more B, that is people paying money to read the news and get informed, is on the liberal side than on the conservative side. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

That's really just a matter of statistics: If you have a population with a disapproval rate of around 57% your distribution of opinions in the population will naturally be centered significantly further in the negative than in a population that exhibits a disapproval rate of around 34%. And if you shift a bell curve by such an amount to the negative you shift with it the negative tails of the distribution much farther into the negative as well. You probability of encountering extremely negative opinions thus, of course, a lot higher for the 57% distribution than for the 34% distribution. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Those people choose to read the reports that suggested Saddam really had meant his promises this time, and ignored all the past times where he didn't, or where he used the weapons. How do people believe that WMDs were really the issue of this war? Really aske yourself this. Suppose the Bush Admin had decided to observe due process and let the weapons inspector finish their jobs. Suppose, just hypothetically, they had come back with irrefutable evidence that there cannot be any significangt stock piles of WMDs in Iraq. (as there weren't) Do you, even for a second, seriously believe the admin would have said "oh well, our bad! Good we have nothing to worry about and can leave Saddan alone." Iraq was in the cross hairs of world order ideologues, Strauss and Wohlstaetter disciples, the PNAC activists, the disgruntled Bush sr ex offcicials, who found their way into the Bush jr Admin long before 9/11 and long befor e any talk about WMDs. The latter incidents were vehicles not reasons for the war. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

... or a deputy defense secretary, ... or a 'Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee', etc nevetheless, the names Libby, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc have been well known long before to the Plame affair. At least to anyone mildly interested in and familiar with the driving ideological forces behind the Iraq War. People are measured by their impact not their formal positions, and these guys and their academic phantasies about new wold orders etc had a massive impact on where this country is now. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Interesting definition ... So if you're getting hand-cuffed by a police officer does that mean you're having sex with him(her)? Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

woha! USS Cole attack was 10/12 2000. In the beginning people could only speculate who was resposible. Connections to a so far little publized terror group Al Quaeda and a guy called Osama surfaced around beginning December. This was perhaps a month after elections and a month before presidency passed from Clinton to Bush. As outgoing pres Clinton decided to leave any decisions for retaliation (and their ramifications) to his successor. In the beginning of 2001 he told GWB 1-on-1 and eye-2-eye that the greatest threat facing the US is Al Quaeda/bin Laden. (Followed by N Korea, Iran, and much further down the list Saddam) With that retaliation was strongly recommended to GWB. And what did the dim-wit do? .... exactly nothing! Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

And a higher unemployment rate. So freaking what? let's throw in the key indicator poverty. Umemployment in France does not necessarily imply being doomed to poverty (at least not nearly to the extend it does in the US) ... so indeed, "so freaking what?" OTOH, poverty and income inequality are heavily correlated to infant mortality - there are gazillions of articles about that. I have no time to research the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if poverty was an at least as potent if not far more effective fetus and baby killer than abortion. Something, I'm sure many on the religious right wingers would love to listen to and consider. Every country has its own style. France affords itself a highly subsidized umemployment system that may run out of money soon. The US affords itself a layer of society living in 3rd world style poverty only rarely seen in any other highly developed countries, as well as all the ramifications in the form of high infant mortality, increased criminality, poor education and skill, etc that come with that. I guess it's a matter of taste which like better ... Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

designed or not - pregnancy is, per-se, a high risk activity. According to WHO maternal mortality in the North America is 1:3700, which roughly says one pregnancy is about as dangerous as 35 skydives. So the mother of an average size family in the US will have earned her B or C license. For the mother of 16 kids you're talking somewhere around 560 skydives - she may be getting ready for her AFF rating. This, however, only because medical attention in the US during delivery is very highly developed. If you're arguing (evolutionary or phantasy) design you also need to look into countries where medical attention is far less developed (anything from basic hygiene, over ultrasound monitoring to the surgical technology helping in C-sections are not part of evolution) For Africa WHO reports maternal mortality of 1:16. Bearing and delivering one child is thus as perilous as more than 8000 skydives. An african mother of just one child would therefore be entitled to her Septa Diamond Wings. An african woman that becomes pregnant with 16 children will have a chance of survival of about 1:3, and you're talking 6-digit jump numbers. For the principle of natural selection the survival of the mother is actually secondary - the survival of the child is the primary point for selection. If the child is OK the gene survives. There's, of course, an advantage if the mother also survives in order to produce a second and third child and thus a second and third copy of a gene carrier. But that'd be a secondary factor. Aside from mortality there are also many health risks related to pregnancy that do not necessarily result in death. Among them diabetes, accelerated osteoporosis, hernias, increased risks of some cancers, damage from infection, and all sorts-of possible complications following delivery or C-section. Having said all these terrible things let me add that having a child is still about the coolest thing there is in life. If that mother can manage the health, financial, and educational issues she'd be the about the luckiest on the planet. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

The only implication I can logically derive from this is that the "masses" played to are "way left of the center". As a "center" is a sort-of average or median this, in turn, implies that there's got to be some type of unobservable, dark matter on the right balancing the observable "masses way left of center". Interesting concept .... Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

one of the first (if not the first) humans to ever be accepted into an ape community. Lived for almost three decades in the jungles of Tanzania observing chimp tribes. The stories of Dave Greybeard, Fiffi, Flo, and all the others beat any human fiction or soap. Goodall is an icon of primatology, athropology, philosophy, and beyond. Not direcly related to her studies but probably the first thing she would like to talk to a press reporter about is endangerment and preservation. What measures should african and western societies or governments take to avoid the extinction of chimps and other great apes throughpoaching, land development, etc. Another thing that seems to stir anyone reading her books is the fact that aggression and cruelty are apparent inherent to primate/humanoid behavior. There are of course those remarkable accounts of tribal warfare between different chimp tribes, or de facto assassinations for gain of power. There are also accounts in Goodall's books of discriminationa and rejection of members of the tribe who were somehow "different" - one because he had human-style white eye balls, another because he was paralized as a result of polio. A bunch of questions can be derived from that - either philosophical about human nature in general or also contemporary political (terrorism, racism, ...) Finally, one thing she gets asked a lot about are animal experiments and their jsutification. Chimps are genetically closest to us so that any experiments on them are be more significant than tests on any other species. Her point of view is , very roughly and as I understand it, that she's not militantly opposed to testing on chimps for the right reasons. Her biggest point, however, is that chimps are highly social animals but are often kept in isolation in their captive environment before or during the experiments. It's something she considers particularly cruel. Hope that helps, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

No, one clueless man gets to do that. That so-called "clueless man" was elected by the majority of the people. That's a long way from a decision by just one man. Recent polls say that the American public thinks by a 2:1 ration that the Iraq war is a lousy idea -or at least the way this admin is going about it. Even if you give generous margins of error or wait "for better days" this isn't goint to turn around the present "majority". There is huge difference between deciding on a policy and voting for some person. One is more related to actual thinking about a problem, the other more to general "sympathies". Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

What a riot! Now the people running around with those ribbon and stickers with "Support our Troops" (really meaning "Support Bush") turn around and say "well they volunteered and had it coming - tough luck for them". Does it mean I am a real patriot if I say that 100'000 or so troops in Iraq and Afghansitan are none of my care and bother since they knew what they were getting into and signed up voluntarily. That I am a true American if I think nearly 2000 killed and 10000 wounded US troops are a routine matter that is hardly noteworthy since that comes with the territory. Death as a matter of semantic convenience I suppose? Wow, I can't wait to read the contorted logic that is to wind itself out of this one. (but probably won't have time ...) Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true