razorjak | (no subject)

Hey, back off! Next you are going to say that he won't resolve that little Isreal-Palistine issue before the end of his term.

I'm confused. Please translate the word solve from Shrub to English.

It's like Schroedinger's "solved."

It's very similar to those Weapons of Mass Destruction that Neo-Con advocates will still say were found in Iraq along with Saddam's connections to Bin Laden. It's also similar to the End of Major Combat Operations.

When the Decider(tm) decides that the problem is solved, it will be solved. At that time we will all be able to marvel at what he really meant by "solved."

Edited 2008-02-28 19:31 (UTC)

I'll take his shit over the "change" snake oil that Obama's trying to sell.

Lessee:
1. Increase in taxes for funding of UN programs
2. Federal Ban on assault weapons
3. Federal Ban on concealed carry
4. State level bans on handguns is fine because the 2nd amendment doesn't apply to those bodies (DC is apparently a state to him)
5. Wants to eschew the multilateral actions in Iraq and with regards to Syria
6. Wants to implement nationalized health care
7. wants to curtail free trade. Cause we know a tariff war with Canada will help the economy.
8. Wants to invade Pakistan.
9. Wants to cut back and close down the ABM programs. You know the 'un -ested' ones like SM3 which just shot down a satellite.

What did I miss?

Oh yeah, wants to cut and run from Iraq.

The Arab Israel issue won't be resolved this century unless we end up having to go roman on those what won't realize they have a good deal when presented with one.

Solved. Solved, do you hear!

The Decider said so.

Ye of little faith.

"It's very similar to those Weapons of Mass Destruction that Neo-Con advocates will still say were found in Iraq along with Saddam's connections to Bin Laden.."

I would call Sarin, Mustard Gas and binary 155mm artillery shells as fulfilling that qualification to a T. Moreover, the documentation recovered underscored that the Iraqi plan was to secretly maintain the programs in a suspended state as much as possible and then reconstitute them as SOON as the sanctions were lifted.

"It's also similar to the End of Major Combat Operations."

At least it's not the 'Victory' that the Democrats want to hand us ala 1975. Because actually finishing the job is too rational.

"I would call Sarin, Mustard Gas and binary 155mm artillery shells as fulfilling that qualification to a T."

I knew you would.

This is why the so vague as to be Schrödinger term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was coined instead of the already sufficient and common terms of art "nuclear" "biological" and "chemical" used to describe weapons with special international restrictions. So that you could justify failed foriegn adventures by saying "hey! they had a warehouse with some worn-out cold-war artillery shells with Sarin gas in it! That is exactly the same thing as having nuclear bombs 45 minutes from leveling London with mushroom clouds! And having a "suspended program" is exactly the same thing as having secret labs building atomic bomb components and enriching uranium preparing for a huge terrorist after-market for atomic bombs.

Sarin and Mustard gas hardly qualify.
1. They are primitive.
2. It took 5 men and one liter of Sarin (an artillery shell would hold 5 times as much) to kill 12 people packed into a fucking subway in 1995.

This weapon is not that badass, and it is far from a ZOMG Weapon of Mass Destruction. By way of comparison, 2 high school kids with little planning totally crushed this terror group's high score with hand-guns. The "mass" is missing in the WMD here. 155mm shells filled with, oh I don't know, High Explosive would be much more "mass" than that!

"At least it's not the 'Victory'..."

You're right. It's much more effective to dump our increasingly debt-burdened economy into maintaining an expensive and ineffective presence in a hostile and destitute foreign country.

Yeah, that'll show 'em.

It's not like the region has a history of stubborn violence or anything, so I'm sure we heard the last gasps in 2003, deployed 300,000 Iraqi soldiers 2004 (right after the election it was supposed to be), turned the corner in 2005, stayed the course in 2006, deployed all the reserves in 2007 to victoriously get violence back down to the levels when we were winning back in 2005. Yeah, with failur-er successes like that, we would hate to just hand those shadowy bad-guys their victory.

I believe we had a discussion two years ago where I mentioned the words failure and lies to you. Not much has changed except that our economy is tanking and the national debt is increasing impressively.

I'm sure the terrorists are very impressed with us and our fantastic strategery.

Suspension of Habeas Corpus
Extraordinary rendition to secret foreign prisons
Torture
Secret wholesale warrant less surveillance on U.S. Citizens
"Free Speech Zones"
No declaration of war, and no foreign body that could ever surrender to end that "war."

It's a good thing the party out to defend the principles of The Constitution is in power, and not those filthy liberals! < /sarcasm >

Finishing what job?

Bah, we don't need no stinkin' facts!

Failure.

We aren't done.

Well shit, I thought we had gotten that one right.

Don't forget the bit about changing the Constitution to fit the word of God that Huckabee was slinging. That is protecting the Constitution right?

Damn facts always getting in the way.

Oh yeah, I forgot about redefining the separation of church and state. Good call.

So, by my count the following have been undermined in the last 8 years:

- The basis of Common Law dating from the Magna Carta
- The U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, The Powers of Congress
- The U.S. Constitution, The first Amendment - freedom of speech, assembly, and separation of church and state (the third being inextricably implied by freedom of religion. It keeps religion free)
- The U.S. Constitution, Article 4, Secret warrant-less surveillance.
- The U.S. Constitution, Article 8, Cruel and Unusual punishment.
- The Geneva Conventions

This is why the so vague as to be Schrödinger term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was coined instead of the already sufficient and common terms of art "nuclear" "biological" and "chemical" used to describe weapons with special international restrictions. So that you could justify failed foriegn adventures by saying "hey! they had a warehouse with some worn-out cold-war artillery shells with Sarin gas in it! That is exactly the same thing as having nuclear bombs 45 minutes from leveling London with mushroom clouds! And having a "suspended program" is exactly the same thing as having secret labs building atomic bomb components and enriching uranium preparing for a huge terrorist after-market for atomic bombs.

Sarin and Mustard gas hardly qualify.
1. They are primitive.
2. It took 5 men and one liter of Sarin (an artillery shell would hold 5 times as much) to kill 12 people packed into a fucking subway in 1995.

This is absolute ignorant, disingenuous and utterly wrong.

Mustard gas, a Blister Agent, is a NBC weapon. Specifically a Chemical weapon. Your adherence to WMD as the requirement is in fact you sticking to the poorly articulated requirements that you ascribe to me. (Cognitive dissonance at it's best I suppose.) It is a 1st World war technology. That is still a proscribed weapon according to the terms of the treaty, regardless of purity or age.

Sarin is a Nerve Agent. Specifically in the G-agent class, similar to Cyclosarin, Soman and Tabun. Your equivocation to make it seem less harmful is disingenuous. The delivery system which the Aum Shinrikyo cult used was primitive and poor. I guarantee you that with the same purity of agent, an explosive Chemical Shell, whether binary or unitary would be FAR more deadly over a much larger area. G and V agents are Cold War weapons and are QUITE deadly despite your characterizations to the contrary.

A functional chemical industry able to make pesticides and a foundry/machining complex to make shells is all that is required to manufacture G type chemical agents. Stocks of ANY of those components is a violation of the treaty that iraq was signatory to.

Filled and degraded or unfilled shells themselves, whether unitary (one chamber for a final product) or a binary (two chambers with a function on firing to mix the two components for a final chemical product) are a violation of the treaty.

The NBC weapons presence issue is a Binary function. There ARE or ARE NOT weapons there. The Fact is that weapons WERE found during ODS and the following years. That's a Positive, not a negative. You cannot hand wave that away by saying they were old or poorly kept or a bad design. They were in fact, extant NBC weapons in violation of the treaty. Inspection efforts showed a very clear and consistent to conceal extant programs over the 12 years following the 1st Gulf war war.

It's not like the region has a history of stubborn violence or anything, so I'm sure we heard the last gasps in 2003, deployed 300,000 Iraqi soldiers 2004 (right after the election it was supposed to be), turned the corner in 2005, stayed the course in 2006, deployed all the reserves in 2007 to victoriously get violence back down to the levels when we were winning back in 2005. Yeah, with failur-er successes like that, we would hate to just hand those shadowy bad-guys their victory.

Running away won't help us or any of the allies. We cannot loose, to do so is only going to be because we decided to fail. The most critical strategic goal is destroying Al Quaida's forces in Iraq and showing the Arab World that Iraq saw them up close and turned their backs on them. Witness how the Democrats have in fact stopped talking about iraq because the Success in areas like Al Anbar. Specifically due to the surge which you say is not or will not work. The Surge is in fact working.

Of course if you listen to Obama, the success is because Democrats were elected and that scared the terrorists off.

I believe we had a discussion two years ago where I mentioned the words failure and lies to you. Not much has changed except that our economy is tanking and the national debt is increasing impressively.

Weak but still positive growth numbers are not 'Tanking'. And surely, increasing taxes and expanding the number of people on the dole and social programs would do wonders for making the Federal budget smaller right?

Thanks for playing.

Heres a question for you.

Since you're so certain on that Habeus corpus and search issue.

Japanese troops land in the US on the west coast.

Can the US army Listen in on their:
1. Radio Communications?
2. Local captured telephone communications?
3. Dispatch Rider messages in envelopes (Their mail as it were).

Second question.

Foreign Soldiers, captured on US or not US soil Get a trial when? What habeus Corpus right do they have?

No, no, that's not the way the "both sides" game works.

The way it works is, if you say something bad and discrediting about Conservatives, you must immediately say something shitty (even if it is irrelevant) about a Democrat, or you are biased.

On the other hand, if you call anyone who disagrees with you a filthy "Liberal" and say that Liberals are traitors, that's totally okay.

Facts don't enter in to the discussion, unless they are copious, irrelevant, and presented with a vague implication that you must be a complete idiot for not knowing it.

And how much is the illegal war costing?

As regards 2,3, and 4 after the shooting at Northern Illinois University he said the following:
I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation" like background checks, he said during a news conference.
He said he would support federal legislation based on a California law that would facilitate immediate tracing of bullets used in a crime. He said even though the California law was passed over the strong objection of the National Rifle Association, he thinks it's the type of law that gun owners and crime victims can get behind.

Make sure you finish that.... "At his news conference, he voiced support for the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court next month."

This is the the total ban which in effect said, you had a right to read books, but only if you NEVER opened it and you violated the law if you carried the book from one room to another, never mind that there were NO legally operating Book stores in the District due to their legal interventions AND you were NEVER granted a permit to obtain books in the first place. What amazing support of such rights.

Further, DC is not a state. DC is a creature of the federal government which is, if you except 14th amendment inclusion of the 2nd amendment, STILL bound by the Bill of rights and thus the 2nd Amendment DOES Apply to the Laws in DC directly.

"As a state senator in Illinois, Obama supported banning the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic firearms, increasing state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms and requiring manufacturers to provide child-safety locks with firearms. He has also supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He sponsored a bill in 2000 limiting handgun purchases to one per month. He also voted against a 2004 measure allowing a self-defense exception for people charged with violating local weapons bans by using a gun in their home. Although out of line with most of his anti-gun voting history, in 1999, Obama voted "present" on SB 759, a bill that required mandatory adult prosecution for firing a gun on or near school grounds.

"Obama was also a board member of the Joyce Foundation which funds and maintains several gun control organizations in the United States.

"He supported several gun control measures, including restricting the purchase of firearms at gun shows and the reauthorization of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban." (Source: wikipedia)

He comes from a state where the Gun laws are about as unfair as you can get and the largest city in that state is a virtual desert of the right that he supposedly supports.

He admittedly sought a ban on the sale of semi-automatic firearms back in
1998. However, people's opinions about things do change.

Only because he didn't get a chance to vote for it because it died in the Judiciary committee. I trust Obama's new leaf on gun rights as much as I trust Giuliani's. Which is NOT AT ALL. The launch window had 10s of seconds of duration and the maneuver time of the kinetic kill vehicle was in the order of

RE #6. If he wants to reform the tort laws that'd be a good start to lowering the cost of insurance for the medical institutions. If it means he dictates what the prices can be then he's going to destroy the system.

Re 5 and 8.
<a h reaf="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/2392>This isn't hearsay, it's good analysis of what Obama said. Obama's words: "I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." That is a call to invade. Unilaterally (I thought Bush lost points for being unilateral). Perhaps its ok because it's more "change!"

P.S. Today was the third day in a row that the dollar closed at record lows against the Euro. Sounds like positive growth to me!

As regards 9, shooting down a satellite is pretty fucking easy. It's path doesn't change and it keeps doing the same thing over and over. A missile doesn't.

A Ballistic missile warhead does not necessarily maneuver so it's not quite as difficult or easy as you portray both. Further, the interception was a hit to kill, not a proximity warhead function (closing speeds make reliable fuze function difficult). The hit required less than a meter's precision at over 17,000 miles per hour of the target and a closing speed of 24,000 mph.

Moreover, SM3 is an expansion of a proven system, Standard Missile which has had decades of development, testing and operational use. That program is a further growth of an even older set of systems which were also largely successful. SM-3 has had 12 operational tests and 11 successful intercepts in those test. We now have a 12th' successful intercept of an unusual target which it was not designed to hit and which involved modification of three production missiles/warhead combinations to adjust for the target parameters (hit the fuel tank and not the 'warhead').

"This is absolute ignorant, disingenuous and utterly wrong."

Don't presume to lecture me on what the weapons are.

"There ARE or ARE NOT weapons there."

This is true when discussing whether or not there was a treaty violation, but treaty violations were not the administration's stated purpose for invasion, and it is ignorant, disingenuous, and utterly wrong to imply that it was.

When discussing the case given for war, this statement is false dichotomy.

In fact, you make my point. The term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" is an all-inclusive rhetorical trick where Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld could stand at the podium and talk about impending mushroom clouds, and later say "yeah this toxic chemical that many many orders of magnitude less destructive than an atomic bomb, yeah that is exactly the same thing as the nucs we were scaring the shit out of everyone with before the war." Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, equine excrement.

"We cannot loose [sic],"

Too late.

Don't forget the lies to go with that continued failure.

Incidentally, all of your victory rhetoric gets old after a few years.