Dirty Bomb, how bad?

Oh, come on, Win. Other than the Iraq fiasco and $3.00/gal gasoline, what can you really blame on Dubya?

And this is a pretty wussy way to play when he calls your bluff. I'm trying not to take sides here, which from J's POV makes me a liberal weenie, and from the liberal weenie POV, makes me a - I don't know - Hey, any liberal weenies out there watching this thread that have an opinion of me? ;-)

Thanks! Rich

John, get real, we didn't know that was the reason until they failed to find WMD, and they had to come up with a new reason.

I don't think the administration cared a whit for the citizens of Iraq, certainly not enough to undertake what we've witnessed. While I've contemplated the concept that finishing his Dad's job was an important factor for Bush, that couldn't have meant much to the neocons behind the plan, such as Wolfowitz and the others. Sure, they wanted regime change, but that was accomplished when Saddam was driven out of Bagdad.

What the neo-conservatives really wanted, and the *real* reason for the war, was a chance to execute their well-hashed theories and to remake a major Middle Eastern country in their image, a chance to create a bastion of Western-style government that would spread throughout the Mid East in a new form of domino theory.

Sheesh! They knew the American people would have never agreed to such an agenda as the excuse for our first pre-emptive war, if it was boldly stated and spelled out, and hence all their clever lying and orchestrated indirection to us before the war.

The administration is so much about indirection... The Google headlines read loudly, "US military experiences worst month in Iraq since Jan," and "Vice President lied as White House sought to defuse leak inquiry," and we see calls that Rove and Cheney should step down. But ah, there's some new indirection to pull our attention away from reality: "Supreme Court choice triggers political battle," which is predictable, and "Syria's future in doubt as international pressure mounts," which is rather scary.

"We Have Been Warned," writes Republican rep Ron Paul of Texas, "Prepare for a broader war in the Middle East, plans are being laid for the next U.S.-led regime change ? in Syria."

It's so predictable by now - if the war in Iraq is going badly, and critics gain political power at home, take our attention away in an effective serious long-term manner, with another war.

Republican Paul writes, "The statement that should scare all Americans (and the world) is the assurance by Secretary Rice that the President needs no additional authority from Congress to attack Syria." I really hope Dr. Paul is wrong this time, but sadly he was dead right last time, before the Iraq war. Read this Texas Observer interview with him then. His bold predictions have already come true, save one, which still may.

"Texas Observer: Is it inevitable we will go to war with Iraq? Ron Paul: I would say the odds are 98 percent. Only a miracle will save us from committing this overt act of aggression. I think this will be a gift for Osama bin Laden. He will be the beneficiary of it. He hates Saddam Hussein. He has a better chance of getting one of his men [in power] after we cause a lot of disruption over there. And besides, his recruiting operation is going to get a real boost. We are going to prove to many Muslims around the world exactly what he has been telling them all along, that we are over there to dominate, to control, and to get the oil. I think we have fallen into that trap."

How utterly ugly you right-wing apologists are becoming. I have several friends and relatives caught in the midst of this down in FL, and phone calls with them (where possible) reveal the problem. In a nutshell it's the breakdown of a few critical things, such as service-station operation - without which one cannot safely drive far (and in FL is thereby soon rendered truly powerless). That problem appears to be electricity for the gas-pumps and maintaining properly operating credit-card service. A related problem is having access to cash machines, so minimum levels of survival can continue. Surely there are relatively simple ways to solve these problems in advance, e.g., with government jawboning and some laws if necessary. Pure private enterprise (i.e. gas-station owners installing modest backup power on their own, etc.) doesn't seem to be working.

The stories of hunkering down with 110mph winds tearing at your roof, the fury and intensity of the noise, in dead blackness, fear of your life continuing for hours on end (my wife's mom has had three direct eye hits in the last 12 months, each with winds over 100mph above her house, and her stories are mind-boggling), leaves one in a mentally beaten-down state. Then to have to struggle for weeks without basic self-help capabilities functioning - simple things that could have easily been dealt with in advance, and should have, - well, hey, that's something fair to "cry" about, as you so meanly put it.

The real purpose of government, IMHO, is to do things collectively that we can't easily do individually. That's what we pay our money for, to make preparations for and to provide services for our needs. We all decide together how much we'll pay in, and what we want back. To see our money diverted instead to a massive military industrial complex and senseless wars, instead of where we need it, that sucks.

Well I, for one, respect you as a scientist and published author. But it

Bob

See what I mean?

"Minimal levels of survival" require credit cards and cash machines? And the ability to drive far in gas-guzzling air-conditioned SUVs? Tell that to the people in Africa!

I've been through a few hurricanes and one tornado, and people seemed cheerful and energetic afterwards, happy to be alive and eager to clean up and such. I recently spent some time in Louisiana, about 2 weeks after Katrina, and people seemed remarkably resilient and cheerful. It was like that after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, too.

If 5 million people are in the path of a hurricane, with days of warning, you might think they would stock up on enough water and cereal and cup-o-noodles to last a week or two. Or they could sit on their collective butts and complain when the Feds don't send in 80,000 helicopters the day after the storm hits.

Or does "self-help" not mean what I thought it did... helping yourself?

Um, "easily"?

Should the Federal government keep a hundred thousand helicopters on the Gulf coast, at the ready, fueled and full of supplies, with crews present and ready to go, from June through November? That's what it would take. And we in California would demand equal readiness in case of earthquake, forest fires, and soft-cheese import crisies.

John

So do you actually appreciate the administration's lying to the pulic as long as that's the only way to get the public behind what only a minority considers a worthy cause (in this case: toppling Saddam)?

robert

Where life is oriented around dependence on being able to retrieve savings and use mechanized transport, then yes, these things are essential. Where life is not built around them, they are not. While an individual can do some things to temporarily offset this dependence (stockpiling) that has complications (spoilage, panic shortages, theft), and offsetting it for durations of months would require a drastic changes in land use and urban layout. We'd pretty much have to go back to all doing a bit of farming/fishing/hunting, which would mean we could not have city-scale population densities.

The irony is that being spread out enough to survive off the land in a time of emergency means anyone not working the land during non-disaster times is going to need personal transport to commute to work, with the population density->road maintenance factor possibly even justifying that transport being an SUV!

The people I'm thinking of were on the other side of FL, and were not warned of being in any particular path until the very last day, if then.

Stike easily. Insert "practically"

No, no, of course no! Sometimes I think you guys are on a different planet, did you even read what I wrote? OK, let me repeat. Picture you're low on fuel and are told power might take three weeks or more to restore (that's what happened to my wife's mom), that means you're hesitant to go driving around getting what you need to start with the self-help process. Now imagine the phones are out (that happened too, stil out in places) and although a store may be "open" they won't take a credit card. In that case you need cash, so some ATM machines have to be working. With a breakdown in just a few simple things, you're grounded and cannot do much to get what you need to start fixing stuff. Then you're justified in complaining. BTW, my inlaw did not complain.

I'm suggesting the good old free enterprise system doesn't care much about the reliability of these infrastructure items, and could use a little governmental guidance, pushing, whatever. That's my suggestion.

You are pretty much describing my dad's situation in Folsom, La, for two weeks after Katrina. He's 85, and didn't complain much. With over a thousand square miles and maybe a million homes trashed to various extent, nobody could expect the resources to be available to fix things up in a few days. OK, strike the "nobody", sub "nobody rational."

The most serious workers I saw were the powerline crews. They were everywhere, and had come from everywhere. I talked to the crew near my dad's house. They had come down from Virginia and were pretty much working and sleeping, putting up and wiring a new power pole about every 45 minutes. CLECO, like most power companies, has mutual-aid agreements with other states' utilities for situations like this. States have similar National Guard assistance agreements, but the moron governor of Louisiana was more concerned about her political power than people dying, so that didn't work as well.

We have an earthquake kit at home, enough to keep us healthy for two weeks at least; satellites don't show earthquakes approaching. And I'm spending over $300K on voluntary seismic upgrades to our "new" building. So far, government has assisted us by taking 6 months to give us permits (they had to untangle their own screwups) and almost trashed the entire upgrade by insisting on insane ADA expenses for facilities that nobody can or will ever use.

John

And when is life so dependant? In Antartica, maybe.

Oh dear, I just can't *live* without my iPod!

John

Cheer up, JT's name calling doesn't mean anything. Your problem is that you (too often) assume that JT could contribute to a normal conversation. Total waste of energy, but keep up the good work ;)

The "grease" heap-of-sh_t is just an old fag troll of subnormal intelligence among numerous other seriously defective characteristics. Sure it's easy to claim to be liberal when you're on subsidy like "it" is. Your problem is allowing yourself to be jerked around by the liberal press- they are just as bad as the right wing. A great deal of the present global situation can be blamed directly on Clinton for having his head in the sand. You can't show these animals *any* magnanimity, the Arab culture is to respond by cutting your head off.

--- Hello, starengr.

Here, in the US&A, it's: "Mom's apple pies", so the ess preceding 'pies' in: "Mom's apple pies" is begged and could cost you your poetic license...

"Min spies" are my favorites, and with a side of our (Brenham, Texas) Blue Bell Natural Vanilla Bean ice cream, can't be beat.

Mud spies? One meaning is that there are multiple mud spies spying on our young.

Another meaning, properly constructed with a plural possessive subject, in your context, would have "Mud spies" mutate into "Mud's pies."

Or, perhaps, Mud's pi's.

A circular argument? I'm confused...

-- John Fields Professional Circuit Designer

I read in sci.electronics.design that Winfield Hill wrote (in ) about 'Dirty Bomb, how bad?', on Mon, 31 Oct 2005:

Apple spies (Mom's), and min spies at Christmas. Mud spies if you are very young.

Were they all ? The evidence (Downing Street papers) acknowledges that the USA were manufacturing evidence. Personally, I don't believe that either Tony Blair or GW Bush were "believers", I give them more credit than that.

More simply stated, they are liars - and what's so unusual about that for politicians.

Yes, Clinton was a liar too, but lieing about sexual relations doesn't result in untold American deaths. What was the sixties mantra ?

The bad guys are coming to get you !

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Fields wrote (in ) about 'Dirty Bomb, how bad?', on Tue, 1 Nov 2005:

At least you are no longer cussing.

-- Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. If everything has been designed, a god designed evolution by natural selection.

manufacturing evidence.

"believers", I give them more credit than that.

politicians.

in untold American deaths.

One, Two, Three, Four! We Don't Want Your F****ng War!

But wasn't that Johnson and Nixon?

Thanks! Rich