chucK

This election is gonna get ugly. And it's not gonna be over by Thanksgiving. That's my bet

" Unfortunately, much of the shaky claims about how Iraqis would welcome us with flowers in the street went completely unchallenged. The Iraqi émigré, Chalabi, who helped the administration sell this fantasy, now turns out to be an Iranian intelligence agent. It appears that the Iranians were feeding the Bush administration whatever they needed to get the Americans to take out their mortal enemy, the Iraqis, and help Iran gain a Shiite client state next door. To allow America and its military to become the tools of another country, especially Iran is incredibly embarrassing, not to mention impeachable stupidity. "

Dru's system will work really well as long as all your gear placing happens at no-hands stances . I place draws on the back loops of the harness. You can reach them with either hand there too. Gear goes on a sling, in some organized fashion (one biner to each cam BTW) that can be remembered. Except when climbing slabs. In that case an around the shoulder sling is a PiTA because it hangs down and interferes with your view of your foot placements.

Those are some good recommendations D, but a lot of 'em might not be the best for late November probably? I have heard the N Side of Pine Creek (Brass Wall?) is very nice in cold weather.

I don't think the owners can edit their reports any more (expired window of editing time). Also, even if we could, for some reports like the Berge one, changing the URL's would insert gigantic pictures that would make the TR pretty unreadable. Hopefully this glitch can be fixed and we'll have all our old TR's restored. With respect to future TR's with pictures, until something changes, I don't think the photo-gallery currently auto-resizes the pix anymore (I just tried it). If you want your pix to be of a reasonably viewable size for either a TR or in the gallery you should submit the pictures already resized to a nice size. If you don't you will end up with something like this .

More pointless conjecture. But FUN!!! From article about NASA scientist analyzing the photos.

Scott, Are you saying that Kerry was just too slow to call the President a liar? If so, I would agree with you!

So Scott are you saying that going into Iraq without a reasonable plan for contingencies saved thousands of lives?

You can't do this without declaring war on a nation. Think about it. You are bombing on their soil. Soon enough the republican army would be shooting at our planes (even more than they already did) and all out war would have happened anyways. You can and we did. Clinton bombed or cruise-missled or whatevered Iraq a couple of times. Bush inserted airborne troops in Northern Iraq a month before the invasion. "All out war"? What was Saddam gonna do about it? Attack our forces in Kuwait?

I said I hope you're right (that we win). What is pessimistic about that!? I'm not against challenges. I am against gambling with the lives of our countrymen and lots of our money. If you're going to spend thousands of US casualties and billions of our dollars, then there oughta be an almost guaranteed return. At the very least, you'd better have thoroughly researched the area. You better have a plan for most conceivable alternatives. Betting thousands of US lives on Chalabi's word that we'd be welcomed with open arms was bullshit. Maybe that's a little too easy to say in hindsight; but Jesus, think about the motives of that guy! Don't you think it might be have been wise to have an alternate plan in case he's just blowing wind up your skirt. Seems pretty obvious to me.

Yeah Ralph! How come you always bring up Yugoslavia?

Well, we got no choice now. I hope you're right!

I don't think we rolled the dice in Kuwait or Yugoslavia. These operations had clear goals with little downside. Afghanistan was not so much of an elective war. We had to respond somehow to 9/11. Rolling the dice would be more acceptable in this case. And even if the whole country goes back to the warlords we will have accomplished a minor goal which was to disrupt Al Quaeda, and respond to 9/11. In Iraq, we can't just leave because it would probably create a bigger problem than we had when Saddam was in power.

If you use it, and fail, then you're really screwed. You have less than nothing. That's why you don't roll the dice unless you have to.

On the contrary, at present our antagonists (outside of Fallujah) are laughing at us, from France all the way to N. Korea. Maybe if we are able to accomplish whatever the currently proffered goal of our incursion and get at least half of our army out of there, THEN at that point, our threats may again become credible. Whether this happens remains to be seen.

Before Iraq we had a credible threat of the use of military force. We do not at the moment. We were able to spend our political capital for uses other than begging other countries to contribute to the Iraq War effort. Do you believe we (the US) are stronger (or at least no weaker) now than we were in 2002? Do you seriously believe that we are more or as able to affect change in the world for the good of the USA?

I have read many accounts of generals who told the administration that they would like to have a much greater force than they did, in order to deal with occupation I believe. For whatever reason, these people were deemed too conservative. When you electively get into a war (that is, you CHOOSE to do it, nothing is forcing you to do so, which was the case in Iraq), you should stack the odds heavily in your favor. Yes you will still be "rolling the dice", but unless you're an idiot, you make sure that the dice has only a 1% chance producing a bad outcome. You do this by being conservative in your decision making. Bushco was not being conservative when they ignored the generals (the experts) who counseled more preparation. If you're forced into a war, you do what you gotta do, roll the dice and hope. If you choose to invade a country because .....(wait we still don't know why!) you better not be rolling the dice. Like I said before, I'm sure those guys thought they had it all under control. My point is, is that they were idiots in the way they assessed their/our risk.

Unless you're really desperate (which we were not), going to war should not be a "chucK of the dice". If you're going to electively get into a fight, you should be pretty damn sure you know what's going to happen. I don't think the neocons are total idiots and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they did not choose to recklessly endanger our fighting forces and our nation, so I'll assume that they were pretty damn sure that Iraq would be easier than it has turned out to be. The blame lies with the fact that they didn't use very good evidence-based procedures to carefully estimate the possible consequences. They relied on listening only to "yes"-men. I think this led to some serious miscalculations.

So JayB, do you think we have NOT been hurt by this Iraq "situation"? Do you NOT agree that we are now weaker in our negotiating positions with respect to Iran, N Korea, Pakistan, OPEC, hell just about anyone (with the exception of the Iraq "government")? Due to having our foot caught in the trap, we have countries like Poland giving us subtle crap!! With benefit of 20-20 hindsight the answer seems obvious. Even without the hindsight, though I doubt many foresaw the extent of the current disaster, many, including myself were against going into Iraq partly because it seemed like a poor strategic manuever. Current events have shown this to be much more true than we ever expected. You know this is true, though you attempt to refute this with claims that I am stupid because I wouldn't support a land invasion of Iran? Weird. And sorry to be glib about the UN scandal. I didn't say it wasn't bad. It would be nice to fix that up. Don't think we have much chance of that though now. Unfortunately, we need the UN now. We need any help we can get to relieve us from the giant mess we got ourselves into. How does it feel to be beholden to a guy like Kofi Anan because your President sucked us into a stupid war for reasons THAT STILL ARE NOT CLEAR? I would think that that would burn a guy like you up. It's one thing to be supporting corruption like that. It's another to place yourself in a position (due to disregarding competent advice) where you are going to have to suck up to a slimeball like that.

I think it's clear that the neocons, or whoever is in charge, believed that Iraq would go down much more peacefully than it did. So, Scott, you're probably correct, they were probably thinking baby steps. Trash Saddam, give our military some "practice" and move on to a now encircled Iran. Too bad it didn't turn out that way. While I doubt many people had any idea that Iraq would turn out so terrible, I think a lot of people were advising more caution than was used. The big fault here seems to be what seems to me (through Bush-hating glasses admittedly) to be the disregard of the neocons for any outside, evidence-based, information. Though some of the unexpectedly fierce resistance is just "who'd a thunk it", I think some of it is due to Bush administration blunders due to over-confidence (Bush-haters like me though prefer to use the word "arrogance").

That's some long-winded article (Anan one) that you linked! It's really slowed down my posting, and I'm still not even to the good part. I assume there must be something damning about Anan in it eventually. Did Peter Puget forward that one to you? But anyway, yeah corruption in the UN sucks too. Though AFAICT that UN scandal has not hobbled the US of A to such an extent that N Korea and Iran can thumb their noses at us with impugnity, and OPEC can keep gouging us more every day for oil. Anyway, in summary: UN scandal . Complete degradation of the power of the United States of America to help ourselves in areas of great importance by bogging us down in a foolish war that will surely end up killing more Americans than 9/11 did, for little return (bad dictator put to death) .

That's three times. What terrorist links of Saddam?

Scott, Where are you getting this stuff about Saddam funding terrorists? I've seen you've state this at least twice today. Do you know something that I haven't even seen on Fox News? If so, I'd like to know.

Did you click on the video Fairweather? The video clearly states that the entire complex was not searched. There is an interview with that exact embedded reporter. If you'd have actually watched the story as you claim, you'd have figured that out pretty easily. Interesting that, I noticed that between the time I first looked at this story and the second, the reference to Pentagon statements that the weapons were indeed there has been removed.

What a f**King liar that Drudge guy is. Check out the NBC news story about the NBC newsstory that Drudge refers to. Then check out what Drudge linked (CNN!). The CNN story completely leaves out the part about Pentagon Officials stating that the site was searched and that the weapons were there. Check out what the embedded NBC news reporter actually said too, as reported by NBC, as opposed to Drudge. She tells a totally different story. Finally, since you've been soiled by the Drudge report you owe it to yourself to now read Salon's interview with a weapons expert about this thing. Sheesh. Talk about scare tactics!! Holy Cow!