Big Ol' Smitty

Hmm...this sounds similar to some other comments I've heard. Pravda/Radio Moscow c. 1981 Idi Amin 9/23/1979 Ayatollah Khomeini 1981 Chen Jian, People’s Republic of China 1995 Idi Amin 1975 Admiral Sudomo, Indonesia 1977 Chen Jian, People’s Republic of China 1995

The three G's. Gutter. Gully. Grimy. Fuck the three R's.

A lot of you guys are in denial about the extensive use of torture that is happening now. Even conservative commentaors are condemning Gitmo. And read up on extraordinary renditon.

Man, Ghost Recon dropped so much from the first to the second. I *hated* how you could only control one guy in the second and that you just had one squad. The first was really fun, though.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050518/D8A5QH881.html

This is from 2005. source: Sojourners (admittedly, a liberal publication)

Understatement? I don't know if there's a more recent poll than this one. http://www.oxfordresearch.com/Iraq%20June%...cy%20Tables.PDF Q44 - Do you feel the US-led coalition force is … A liberating force 16.8 An occupying force 53.0 A peacekeeping force 10.9 A force which exploits Iraq 19.3 Q41 - Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the presence of Coalition Forces in Iraq? Strongly support 12.8 Somewhat support 29.3 Somewhat oppose 22.6 Strongly oppose 35.3 Q20 - I am going to name a number of organisations. For each one, could you tell me how much confidence you have in them: is it a great deal of confidence, quite a lot of confidence, not very much confidence or none at all? US and UK occupation forces A Great Deal 5.7 Quite A Lot 14.0 Not Very Much 29.5 None At All 50.8

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/internat...14uzbek.html?hp Nobody deserves to be overthrown more than this asshat Karimov--our buddy in the War on TERRA~! This guy has boiled political opponents alive and had them beaten to death. However, we have Karimov & even WH Press Secretary McClellan labeling the rebels as "terrorists." I'll tell you what, McClellan, those people aren't terrorists any more than the WH's BUTT buddy Karimov is. We also have a military base in Uzbek and over 1,000 troops there.

That's not the gist of the article. You: So effectively the article says nothing but "We can't be sure." Fair enough, that's about it. It doesn't really go into disproving the number, it just says it might not be fact. Also note the article I cite is almost a month fresher. At any rate, you have failed to disprove the fact that Iraqi Armed Forces are taking over more and more operations from the Coalition. You sort of ignored that in your fervor there. What fervor? A.) You are citing numbers and such while the GAO says, "there's no way to know." And the State Dept. numbers are even higher than the DoD numbers! But let's not get caught up in a numbers game... B.) "Iraqi Armed Forces are taking over more and more operations from the Coalition" Yep, and they're dying like crazy. And the insurgency is increasing in intensity. Just because they're taking over doesn't mean things are improving. The US casualty rate *is* down, as you said. That's because Iraqi security forces are dropping like flies.

You: That's not the gist of the article. You:

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=242 This is a lot to digest, but it is a pretty fascinating study that seems to suggest that there are more divisions within the red and blue voting blocs themselves than between the two.

You must be privy to some information that the rest of us aren't. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=580235

Hey, Mike's back! YOU DON'T LIKE WAR YOU LIKE SADDAM!!! [/retardvoice] http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wo...y-top-headlines Experts: Iraq verges on civil war BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF May 12, 2005 WASHINGTON -- An unchastened insurgency sowed devastation across Iraq Wednesday as experts here said the country is either on the verge of civil war or already in the middle of it. In the course of the day: Four car bombs detonated in Baghdad; a man wearing explosives at an army recruitment center in Hawija, north of Baghdad, blew himself and many others up; a car bomb exploded in a marketplace in Tikrit, north of Baghdad; and the country's largest fertilizer plant was heavily damaged by a bomb in the usually quiet southern city of Basra. Meanwhile, U.S. Marines were winding up a remarkable pitched battle against surprisingly well-equipped and determined insurgents on Iraq's western border. Some 76 Iraqis were reported killed and more than 120 wounded in the one day of violence. With security experts reporting that no major road in the country was safe to travel, some Iraq specialists speculated that the Sunni insurgency was effectively encircling the capital and trying to cut it off from the north, south and west, where there are entrenched Sunni communities. East of Baghdad is a mostly unpopulated desert bordering on Iran. "It's just political rhetoric to say we are not in a civil war. We've been in a civil war for a long time," said Pat Lang, the former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon. Other experts said Iraq is on the verge of a full-scale civil war with civilians on both sides being slaughtered. Incidents in the past two weeks south of Baghdad, with apparently retaliatory killings of Sunni and Shia civilians, point in that direction, they say. Also of concern were media accounts that hard-line Shia militia members are being deployed to police hard-line Sunni communities such as Ramadi, east of Baghdad, which specialists on Iraq said was a recipe for disaster. "I think we are really on the edge" of all-out civil war, said Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor who worked for the U.S. coalition in Iraq. He said the insurgency has been "getting stronger every passing day. When the violence recedes, it is a sign that they are regrouping." While there is a chance the current flare of violence is the insurgency's last gasp, he said, "I have not seen any coherent evidence that we are winning against the insurgency." "Everything we thought we knew about the insurgency obviously is flawed," said Judith Kipper of the Council on Foreign Relations. "It was quiet for a little while, and here it is back full force all over the country, and that is very dark news." The increased violence coincides with the approval of a new, democratic government two weeks ago. But instead of bringing the country together, the new government seems to have further alienated even moderate Sunnis who believe they have only token representation. "That is a joke," said Sunni politician Saad Jabouri, until recently governor of Diyala Province, in an interview here. "The only people they allowed in the government are ones who think like them," he said of the majority Shia faction, who mostly come from Islamic parties. Military and civilian experts said the insurgency seemed designed to outlast the patience of the American and Iraqi peoples. "I just think this Sunni thing is going to be pretty hard," said Phebe Marr, a leading U.S. Iraq expert reached in the protected Green Zone in Baghdad. "The American public has to get its expectations down to something reasonable." Lang said there is new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime carefully prepared in advance for the insurgency, with former Iraqi officers at the core of each group. They are well coordinated and have consistently adjusted their strategy, he said. Now the 140,000-plus U.S. troops in the country are mainly "a nuisance" factor in the insurgents' overall goal of preventing the new government from consolidating. "They understand what the deal is here," Lang said, "to start applying maximum pressure to the economy and the government and make sure it will not work." Their roadside bombs are intended to keep U.S. forces inside their bases, he said. All the while the insurgents are gaining strength, he said. "The longer they keep going on the better they will get," said Lang, a student of military history. "The best school of war is war." The Sunni insurgents could win the battle if they persevere long enough to sour U.S. voters, Feldman said. He said, "There is no evidence whatsoever that they cannot win."

Larry Flynt has become involved in the Bolton confirmation hulabaloo. For the sake of all things holy, I hope Bolton did not actually engage in the alleged forced group sex. http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/larry_flynt_bolton_511

That's the second time my dumbass governor has been involved in security breaches in D.C.

I'm reading a book called The Tipping Point and it talks about how little things like a news anchor's facial expressions when discussing a candidate might have a bigger impact on an election that outright political bias. There was a study done of this back in the 80s where Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw were all analyzed whenever they discussed one of the Presidential candidates.

Fuck Kerry. In the book Spanking the Donkey, the author Matt Taibbi talks about how whenever he went to a Kerry campaign event during the primaries he always followed him around in a gorilla suit. A Kerry staffer asked him what it was all about. "When your candidate stops being full of shit," he replied, "I'll stop wearing the gorilla suit."

Unfortunately, you're probably right. He's what the Democrats need to *win*. Not what they necessarily need to be right. This and Kerry's cynical stance on gay rights really makes me wonder: is it better to win or to be right?

Works for me.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...01/248ipzbt.asp This is from the Weekly Standard, a conservative political journal. The Case for the Empire by Jonathan V. Last There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good. It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case. First, an aside: For the sake of this discussion, I've considered only the history gleaned from the actual Star Wars films, not the Expanded Universe. If you know what the Expanded Universe is and want to argue that no discussion of Star Wars can be complete without considering material outside the canon, that's fine. However, it's always been my view that the comic books and novels largely serve to clean up Lucas's narrative and philosophical messes. Therefore, discussions of intrinsic intent must necessarily revolve around the movies alone. You may disagree, but please don't e-mail me about it. If you don't know what the Expanded Universe is, well, uh, neither do I. I. The Problems with the Galactic Republic At the beginning of the Star Wars saga, the known universe is governed by the Galactic Republic. The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure, but has little real power. Scores of thousands of planets are represented in the Galactic Senate, and as we first encounter it, it is sclerotic and ineffectual. The Republic has grown over many millennia to the point where there are so many factions and disparate interests, that it is simply too big to be governable. Even the Republic's staunchest supporters recognize this failing: In "The Phantom Menace," Queen Amidala admits, "It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions." In "Attack of the Clones," young Anakin Skywalker observes that it simply "doesn't work." The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression between member states. In "The Phantom Menace" a supra-planetary alliance, the Trade Federation (think of it as OPEC to the Galactic Republic's United Nations), invades a planet and all the Senate can agree to do is call for an investigation. Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own, but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep the peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the Senate, trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi number only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone. What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power. They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force comes from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood, like mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic trait. If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard. And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two notable exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and seem honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe. When the chief Jedi record-keeper is asked in "Attack of the Clones" about a planet she has never heard of, she replies that if it's not in the Jedi archives, it doesn't exist. (The planet in question does exist, again, with terrible consequences.) In "Attack of the Clones," a mysterious figure, Count Dooku, leads a separatist movement of planets that want to secede from the Republic. Dooku promises these confederates smaller government, unlimited free trade, and an "absolute commitment to capitalism." Dooku's motives are suspect--it's not clear whether or not he believes in these causes. However, there's no reason to doubt the motives of the other separatists--they seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a government that isn't bloated and dysfunctional. The Republic, of course, is eager to quash these separatists, but they never make a compelling case--or any case, for that matter--as to why, if they are such a freedom-loving regime, these planets should not be allowed to check out of the Republic and take control of their own destinies. II. The Empire We do not yet know the exact how's and why's, but we do know this: At some point between the end of Episode II and the beginning of Episode IV, the Republic is replaced by an Empire. The first hint comes in "Attack of the Clones," when the Senate's Chancellor Palpatine is granted emergency powers to deal with the separatists. It spoils very little to tell you that Palpatine eventually becomes the Emperor. For a time, he keeps the Senate in place, functioning as a rubber-stamp, much like the Roman imperial senate, but a few minutes into Episode IV, we are informed that the he has dissolved the Senate, and that "the last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away." Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black. But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now." Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian. Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen. Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job." And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him "Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship, we don't know. I suspect it's the former.) But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in "The Empire Strikes Back" when Darth Vader is battling Luke Skywalker. After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order. None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors. The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true. But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again. Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia. Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction. III. After the Rebellion As we all know from the final Star Wars installment, "Return of the Jedi," the rebellion is eventually successful. The Emperor is assassinated, Darth Vader abdicates his post and dies, the central governing apparatus of the Empire is destroyed in a spectacular space battle, and the rebels rejoice with their small, annoying Ewok friends. But what happens next? (There is a raft of literature on this point, but, as I said at the beginning, I'm going to ignore it because it doesn't speak to Lucas's original intent.) In Episode IV, after Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the Imperial Senate has been abolished, he's asked how the Emperor can possibly hope to keep control of the galaxy. "The regional governors now have direct control over territories," he says. "Fear will keep the local systems in line." So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos. In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one. Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back. I'll take the Empire.

...?!? Harry Reid is a moderate. Sure, he's an idiot, but he's a moderate. Hey, why did you hate on Harry Reid in this thread? He's doing a good job.

If somebody used the term "axe" for "ask" around me I would decapitate them and defacate upon the wound. *sobbing* God, I miss Mike.

I can't remember, watched the video before lunch. But I think it was Gau. Gau was always a glutton for punishment. And yeah, it looks like they put a lot of work into it. Pretty amazing stuff. And it reminds me of just how epic that VI ending really was. Don't know how to do the spoiler thing so SPOILER ALERT Virtual Boy is Shadow.

I wonder if Mike acts like he does on the messageboard in real life.