selkirk

uh oh TLG..... someone doesn't like you!

The world just hates you today sorry. You should go back to bed, and fear 's when you see them.

Why stop there? How about goats that like to carry packs? They could have all the urine they want!

Could you knockout the whole humping your leg thing? ???? Such serious questions to ponder..

Hypoalergenic nodders? What have you been doing with them Dru?

(1)dead horse, get over it.... what do we do now? and (2)Good points CJ, save not going into Iraq, see (1)

lol, someone took the bait.... And your right CJ, doint the right thing is always best. But doing nothing at all while you debate what's right for too long can be even worse. Have to find the right compromise, the best action at the best time. I still don't think we should have gone into Iraq, but were there. Now that were there we need to deal with the issues at hand, not twiddle our thumbs and ponder what's right forever. I personally think a lot of mistakes have been made in how we've pursued exiting Iraq since we arrived. But mistakes and all if we had just sat on our hands I think things would be getting worse even faster. sooo... now that were there what do you suggest we do? Scott's saying persue military action against any and all suspected terrorists. Cut off the head with overhwhelming firepower... I may not think it's right, but it's a better plan than doing nothing. so what's your plan?

Agreed..... freakin liberal wanks It's good to see all the conservatives haven't been chased off or banned.

Exactly, that's one thing were doing right.... Lots of room for improvement still though

More CIA sponsored radicals is definitely not the way to go. And I would agree with taking out the radical clerics, but it would be 100 times better if they were taken out by Iraqi and Palestinian forces than US or Israeli. Don't just knock them off, but have their own people put them on trial. If we take them out, it solves the problem only temporarily, we need to find a long term solution.

Certainly finding Zarqaway and Bin-Laden would go a long ways towards settling things in Iraq and the Middle East. And I think there should definitely be a huge military emphasis on them. But do you honestly thing that getting rid of those two, or even all of their lieutenants is going to be the end of their cause? So long as young men are willing to die because their homeland has been invaded there will be attacks against Israel, and against the US and Coalition in Iraq. I think getting rid of the bigwigs will definitely be a huge step towards national security against large scale threats (9/11, the Space Needle plot, etc) as their resources will then be much thinner, harder to come by, and much harder to organize larger scale attacks. There will still be low tech attacks on our troops though, and there will still be suicide bombings and other attacks of that sort. Do you really think those will go away if we capture 2 men? or even the top 2 dozen men?

you forgot your And I don't quite think that Japan is a particularly good example. Raw force and lots of it works when there is a fixed entity to destroy (Japan, Nazi Germany, etc.) but we don't have 1 fixed entity to deal with. This isn't even properly a guerilla war in the same terms of Vietnam, the American Revolution, numerous examples in South America), although this is closer. The closes parallel is probably the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, though on a larger scale. In my opinion it's not even a conflict we can "win" on our terms, in a military sense. There are a few fixed enemys at the top of the food chain, but killing them all won't end the conflict. It's not a war of guns, that's a system of the real conflict of mentalitys and beliefs. We definitely need to address the symptom, but treating it continually isn't enough. We kill them, they use it as recruiting fodder, and the cycle goes on ad infinitum. So how do you propose we break the cycle?

I kind of agree with Scott on this point... were beating a dead horse about weather or not the war was justified and everyone has a different opinion (that's not going to change any time soon). Were there, now what do we do? Even as dem. I honestly believe that Bush thought Sadam was a threat. Was the info wrong? yep, but from all the posturing, even with the weapons inspection, there was enough to question it. If the posturing had come from someone reasonably stable, and without Saddam's history, the outcome might have been different. The real question is, what the hell do we do now? And I think your wrong to some degree on this point Scott, we definitely need the sword, but it's rarely been a deterant, and it's almost never been enough to win. We may not be in the business of making people like us, but at the moment it seems we are in the business of making people hate us and fear us, and that's not a path that ends pleasantly either.

I agree completely about removing the extremist leaders. When they start calling for violence or start instigating. I also agree with ending the propoganda, it's pointless and worthless. But I think there is much more to diplomacy than spewing empty propoganda, and only part of that is humanitarian aid. I feel we've pretty much wrecked what infrastructure they had and until the time comes that they can function independantly again we need to do what we can to rectify it. (cans of corn, building roads etc). But the biggest part is immediate self determination, and getting all the partys involved and interested to the same table. My current impression is that the US led effort lacks legitimacy there. The way we've treated prisoners, the way we chose to invaid and the assets we chose to secure (oil over weapons), in addition to the way we've handled things since we've been there. It all comes across as unilateral decisions made in our own best interests, and every one else who has a stake in the matter can piss off. So long as it appears that we are there protecting and establishing our own interests with the wellfare of the populace as a secondary or tertiary consideration, then were invaders and nothing else. And this can't be just fluff propoganda. It seems a nearly immediate election, even if only for temporary posts, with something akin to the german system where the number of overall votes for a given party determines the number of voting seats that party recieves would be appropriate due to the fractured political system there. Or possibly even just inviting every interested party and give them all voting rights... (that's right, even the ones who don't want us there) And most importantly, we need to abide by their decisions and edict, not set our own... and make that absolutely clear. Our interests need to be secondary... They (the Iraqis', or even the Iraqi's with advisors from neighbouring muslim countries) set the priorities, troop training, where our construction efforts go etc. Our primary goal has been accomplished (no more Saddam, no WMD's), now we get out as fast as possible. We would certainly need to set some ground rules and enforce them ruthlessly, though even those would need to be agreed on by the members of the council or parliament, with the understanding that if there is a majority vote that goes against one of our own edicts, were gone in a heartbeat. (i.e. no violence against us, other ethnic or political parties etc.) At all costs we need the orginazation running the show there to have legitimacy in the eyes of populace. Whether that takes muslims from other countries to make decisions right now, or a council of iraqi's or whatever) and currently we don't even have legitimacy in the eyes of half of americans... how do you think the Iraqi's feel? Saddam may have been asshole, but at least he was their asshole. Were being assholes and were not even theirs. (Think of how we would treat an invading power who overthrew our government and started setting up a new one, even if we hated and feared the old on. I'm a liberal democrat, and even i'd be taking up arms to get the invaders the hell out.)

Your right scott, diplomacy isn't going to work with the real extremists. "people that declare jihads on authors, murder women and children (intentionally) and blow up civilian instalations" However it's not this people that we need to convince with diplomacy. I'd be willing to be that they're numbers are really rather small compared to our military, and your right, we need to track them down and get rid of them where-ever they are and when-ever we find them. But i'm fairly confidant that we can deal with those people, it may take a while but military action can take care of them. The threat isn't the ones that are already extremists, the real threat lies in their recruiting power. I firmly believe that people aren't born as violent extremesists. They're recruited, they're trained and they're brought into the fold. It's those recruits that we need to target with diplomacy. So long as their are people that can be recruited to their cause from the main stream then we can't win. (Gaza, Palestine, West Bank, inner city gangs you name it.) This isn't a simple power structure we can crush and move one. It's more persistant because it's at it's base it's a revolt by the populace. We need to cut of the recruiting lines, and turning them all into martrys isn't the way to do it. One of my favorite sayings is that you shouldn't piss of the peasants, they outnumber you. The only way's to win that kind of war is to kill them all, or to convince them that there isn't a reason to fight you. Somehow I don't think anybody wants to carpet bomb Iraq, Iran, Palestine, and all the countries that would be pissed off at us if we did do that, so we had better start convincing people that were benign and not worth fighting to oust from the area.

Time to come to the dark side and start leading bolts! Mandatory Suicide at the Feathers makes for a great 1st lead! Juggy 5.4 stemming

The problem is the only way to "do it right and be done with it" on the course Bush has set us on will be to carpet bomb the entire middle east. This isn't a war we can we win using only guns and tanks. Were going to need to think and be diplomatic as well, thinks the Shrub doesn't appear to be very good at. Your right, there were factions over there itching to go to war with us. But by going after government, and affecting the civilians strongly were lending legitimacy to their cause and there statements, as well as pushing some moderates towards extremism. War's against governments can be won purely militarily, once the government falls the military backing falls. But wars against the populace itself (in this case were calling them terrorists, in the case of the Revolutionary War we called them Patriots) are much more difficult and require more than force. We need to cut off the supply of recruits to the extremists. And if they're willing to run suicide bombing missions, obviously the threat of death isn't sufficient.

The new C4's have those nifty thumb loops, they would probably work as well. Could just thread your thumb through it glad you made it up safe though.... that's a bad place to cramp up.

So why are these so bad? (CMI Micro(Belay device)? .4 Camalot, Kong Frog? My biggest POS experience was with a set of REI gators very similar to These (but with a worse strap system for under the instep) Damn things are stretchy and won't seal to your boots when plunge stepping. Just pack full of snow as fast as you could clean theme.

Where was the great DFA on sunday?

lol, not in our life time.... Global Warming is good for rock climbing

spooky... So is it best to lead on one rope, and drag a second for setting up topropes? Does anyone do that?

Only for 30min of light showers, was a little chilly though . Only enough to slow us down a little! Were you helping out with the Caldwell filming on Saturday(I think) Skyclimb. We saw the rig over on Picnic Wall and heard he and Beth Rodder were signing books at Redpoint. Lions Jaw is a suite route! mmmm, thin stemming is fun!

No, just more curious than anything else. Til now all it's seen are TR falls/takes which don't really count...

Finally have one to add... though it's only a measly 15 footer on about 2/3 of the way up Barbecue the Pope over the weekend pumped out and pitched off. First real lead fall and it was a bit of an enlightening experience. Nice soft catch (thanks Dan!) and nothing hurt beyond my ego!