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Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 58 (view)

Give Up? Posted: 10/1/2005 1:59:46 PM
If I lived near Ontario I'd go out with Bobbi in a split second. And I'd make her wear the pigtails, I think they're cute. Plus, when a woman has her hair up you get the fun of taking it down and brushing it out with your fingers... hair is a great thing for men to play with. It's like a cat toy ;) I think that's why my ex cut hers down to nothing after she left. Her way of destroying one of my favorite toys so I have nothing to come back to. Anyway, Bobbi, have you considered being more aggressive? Personally I love for a woman to make the first move, or any move. It eliminates so much of the tension and uncertainty. And almost any man will say yes to anything a woman asks him. Sometimes you have to take the direct route. The shortest distance between two points does not involve a lot of games and teasing.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 14 (view)

Globalization. The Elephant in the Livingroom Posted: 9/29/2005 7:55:13 AM
Someone mentioned Lexus and the Olive Tree. You would probably also like "The World Is Flat" also by Friedman. It discusses the ways that the world has gotten more connected. I'm almost done with it, and he seems to be making the case that with the availability of information and education, the defining factor in an economy will be brainpower. And China and India each have four times as many brains available as we do.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 38 (view)

Non White President? Posted: 9/20/2005 7:37:27 AM
No! Not the evil monkey who lives in my closet! The way America is nowadays, no one is pure anything. A hundred years ago people could still argue about being pure Irish or Italian or whatever. Nowadays we have to argue about white, black, ect... We've elected a Catholic, which for a long time was unthinkable. TImes change.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 168 (view)

Should Flooded New Orleans ever be rebuilt,...where it is? Posted: 9/19/2005 5:49:51 AM
Location, location, location. New Orleans sits on some major trade arteries and despite the damage, there's still a substantial amount of infrastructure there. Rebuilding will still be cheaper than building a city that size from scratch, and unlike certain Middle Eastern nations (I won't say Jordan and Egypt, I'll just think it really loud) we aren't going to leave our people in refugee camps for the next nineteen years. Besides, there are cities in much stupider places. Someone mentioned Washington being in a swamp. LA is on a major fault line. I think it's Olympia in Washington that's near a volcano. Honululu, hell, the entire state of Hawaii IS a volcano. Tucson sits down in a valley so the smog can't get out, that's one nasty city. Richmond is half on a flood plain, and after all these years I think their levee is STILL incomplete. With modern technology, we should surely be able to design a city that will survive the next hurricane. We just have to plan better and harden the city more. Surely it can be done. How many hurricanes has Miami survived? Didn't they have four in a row last year? Different situation, I know, but it can be done.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 15 (view)

Squirl BBQ Posted: 9/19/2005 4:55:30 AM
Eggs n brains. That's a classic farm dish. I never really liked it but hog farmers swear by it. Yankees are funny to watch when they come into a Southern diner and try to order bagles and lattes and croissants for breakfast. Just like that movie My Cousin Vinnie, where he sees the grits and has to have it explained. I can't believe people up north don't have grits, that's a vegan dish. As for wild game, wild turkey is excellent.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 11 (view)

Non White President? Posted: 9/17/2005 1:44:49 PM
We might not have a choice on electing a non-male WASP president. Suppose the 2008 nominees are Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 58 (view)

New Rules.... Posted: 9/17/2005 1:34:44 PM
Since we have the two-week cutoff for current events, could we have another section for 'older events' or 'history'?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 9 (view)

Why Are The Media Leaks Truthful & The Headlines Lies? Posted: 9/16/2005 1:50:17 PM
I'll give you Watergate in favor of leaks, especially now that we know who Deep Throat was, but the Watergate was an exception. How often do we get two people as paranoid as Nixon and Hoover working together? And even after Hoover died there was that paranoid atmosphere lingering in the FBI.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 8 (view)

Why Are The Media Leaks Truthful & The Headlines Lies? Posted: 9/16/2005 1:47:56 PM
Waco, other than the origional raid, happened on national TV in front of a hundred reporters. Not a very good job of covering up, unless you still believe that theory about the tear-gas grenades sparking fires. I've been around tear gas grenades a few times in the Army and I would be amazed if they started a major fire, unless you landed one directly on a bed or a load of laundry or some freak thing like that. And even then it would be chancy. They get hot, but not all that hot.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 180 (view)

world population is too high Posted: 9/16/2005 1:44:05 PM
Read up on a geographer named Malthus. He wrote a famous book, I believe in 1780, predicting that as the world population spiked it would inevitably be cut back down by war, disease, famine and one other factor I forget. His point was that the population, like everything in nature, would adjust itself. He forgot to factor in scientific progress, which is understandable in that day and age, so the world population has been increasing despite all of those things happening. Still, the Malthusian theory is still popular and might make for interesting background reading. And my point is that this has been debated for over two hundred years and every time we've found a way around it. The question is, can we keep doing so?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 21 (view)

Question For The Ladies Posted: 9/15/2005 1:35:55 PM
So do women ever stress about getting laid or not? Do women generally realize that sex is theirs for the asking?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 3 (view)

Why Are The Media Leaks Truthful & The Headlines Lies? Posted: 9/15/2005 1:14:16 PM
How do we know that all the leaks are truthful? Since leaks usually occur anonymously, wouldn't it be a good way to get even with someone?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 6 (view)

Unitarian Jihad Threatens Immediate Action Posted: 9/15/2005 1:10:44 PM
That's pretty funny.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 41 (view)

No photos. No Stories. Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech under the Bush administration... Posted: 9/15/2005 9:36:10 AM
Excellent point, dmotz. Disaster preparedness and response are a state and local responsibility. The governor and mayor should have made sure everyone was out, and they damn well should have known that the city had 100,000 people who didn't own cars! Aren't such statistics kept for determining the distribution of federal and state welfare funds? And as for the media, I wouldn't want any of my loved ones seeing my dead body on TV. The soldier that confronted the reporter may not have gotten the word about the open-media policy, or he might have been acting off some policy he learned in Iraq. Personally I'm glad the US media avoids the most graphic images. Do we really want to inure our nation to those horrors by showing every detail like Al-Jazeera?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 18 (view)

ufo`s Posted: 9/1/2005 6:41:05 AM
Sort of like individual atoms? Or Australia? Or blue whales? I've never seen any of those things.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 9 (view)

any good single men near or around either christiansburg or charlottesville Posted: 8/31/2005 2:25:07 PM
Well, I'll take you to dinner if you're in Christiansburg sometime.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 10 (view)

ufo`s Posted: 8/30/2005 12:46:18 PM
I've seen weird lights in the sky, but nothing that couldn't be explained by Harrier jumpjets. And there's something I've always wondered... Aliens don't want it commonly known that they visit us, right? If they did, they would get on the radio and say so (I'm guessing that most UFOs have CBs.) So if aliens want to remain a myth, then why don't they turn off their headlights when they get to Earth? Surely an advanced intelligence would know better than to drive around with its brights on.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 54 (view)

Do you believe they put a man on the moon...??? Posted: 8/30/2005 12:22:50 PM
What I don't understand is why Bush is so hot to go back. What does he hope to find that we missed? I suspect he's just borrowing history's great ideas. The moon race, Reaganomics... As for whoever was going on about strange lights in space, there's strange lights everywhere. I think I'll start a UFO thread, that should be fun.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 80 (view)

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? Posted: 8/29/2005 11:27:00 AM
Yeah, Nittanylion, we're digressing, but there is a program now that fast-tracks applications for citizenship by soldiers and veterans. They still have to qualify but it cuts the processing time from something like two years to a few months.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 69 (view)

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? Posted: 8/28/2005 7:56:44 PM
I don't see the fact that the military is an attractive alternative for lower-income people as a problem. It's a great way for them to escape the poverty cycle, and they can make their way in a job where they're judged on performance. If it wasn't for the Army I'd have a hell of a time finishing my degree. If you can't save money in the Army you can't save it anywhere. After all, they house you, feed you, clothe you. And kudos to whoever mentioned the immigrants in the Army. Lots of immigrants, some of them not even citizens, serve. My unit took two Muslim soldiers with us to Iraq. As for the issue of the morality of Bush ordering soldiers into battle where he has a personal stake, when was the last time any president had relatives in battle under his command? The last one I can think of was Brigadier General Roosevelt, the son of FDR. He was the only general to land on D-Day, he rallied the 4th infantry on Utah beach and led them inland to their objectives after they landed off-target, and I think he won the Medal of Honor for it. But most presidents don't order their relatives into battle, it isn't just a Bush issue.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 7 (view)

any good single men near or around either christiansburg or charlottesville Posted: 8/28/2005 6:53:02 AM
Hey Dixie, any luck yet?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 40 (view)

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? Posted: 8/28/2005 6:49:07 AM
My laundry's got about an hour to go and my copy of GTA keeps crashing, so I'll address this point by point. Oh, if anyone could explain how to use the quote function, that'd be a big help. I can never get it to work so it's all cut and paste. Let's see... "Americans have been duped by a criminal, fascist regime intent on dividing further the gap between the haves & the have-nots, the ultra wealthy and the poor." Fascist doctrine does not allow for opposing political parties. Fascist doctrine calls for organizing the entire population and resources of the nation behind the government and the ruling party, who increasingly come to be identified as the same thing. Fascism is a sort of hyper-nationalism that pulls everyone together and allows no dissent. I think we can all agree that there is dissent! And fascist leaders historically rule until overthrown by force. An unlikely prospect in a nation with term limits. If Bush tried to stay on past his term he would be impeached by Congress and arrested. It would be kind of funny to watch the federal marshalls bring him out of the White House in handcuffs, holding his jacket over his face... As for criminal, there's enough credible allegations about Halliburton and other issues that I'm reserving judgement on that. "I think it's because the media here in the states is totally controlled ...including television, video games, Hollywood movies, newspapers, magazines, even the education system." Controlled by who? The government that is critisized and has its abuses exposed by that same media? I've said it before, the problem with media is that they're driven by ratings to show big flashy things. In Iraq, for example, you never see a news report that says "nine hundred and ninety-nine Army convoys got where they were going without any trouble." You only hear about the one that got attacked, and that throws your perspective off. As for TV, video games, ect... I think that a lot of the problem is that Americans are increasingly wanting constant stimulation and entertainment. It's hard for me to tear myself away and get my work done (like I should be doing now). But if all those elements are working against us to control and manipulate us, what's the goal? What end result do they desire? Once they control us, what do they want to make us do? "People have become hypnotized by years of allowing mind-control agents into their living rooms daily ...in other words, the people have been programmed by TV to be complacent." I don't know any psychology, but it seems to me that the very heat of the debates suggests that people are not complacent. Complacent people don't complain or protest. "In case you're interested, the reasons for invading Iraq are multifaceted and designed to: * assist Israel in its Holy war against Islamic nations in the middle east" This one cracks me up. If Israel is fighting a holy war against Islamic nations, they're not doing very well. But we won't go into detail here, I'm sure there's an Israel thread. "* secure another permanent U.S. military base in the region" Why? We had bases in Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. What could we do from bases in Iraq that we couldnt' do from those? Aside from the following. And note that after Iraq fell, the Saudis made us pull most of our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Troops went to Saudi Arabia in 1990 to defend them against Iraq, and now that Iraq was beaten the Saudis don't need us anymore. "* insure a conduit for George Herbert Walker Bush, Sr.'s illicit narcotics trafficking" This one should be its own thread. I'd like to read the evidence on that. I'll guess that it goes back to his time in the CIA, and that the narcotics are the heroin in Afghanistan. Which gives me a great mental picture of US soldiers with hoes working their way down rows of poppies... I suppose he needed a new conduit since we just got evicted by Uzbekistan. Sexy, post the evidence on this one. I want to see it. "* rob the natural and cultural wealth of Iraq" The damned Iraqis robbed it themselves. During the battle for Fallujah the insurgents launched an attack in Mosul. The local police melted away, leaving their police stations empty. My roommate there was an electrician in real life, and he was on the team that inspected them after the battle. He said that the locals had stripped them down, taking everything. Doorknobs, furniture, window panes, electrical outlets, even yanking the wires out of the wall for the copper. I don't doubt that there are individual Americans who steal stuff and take it home, but it's hardly an organized effort. The customs guys in Kuwait had great stories. They have a four-foot-wide bronze head from a Saddam statue that they confiscated as a cultural relic from some unit trying to ship it home. I think they just wanted it for themselves. I also heard that they caught a Marine unit trying to send a camel home in a shipping container. "* develop & refine population control tactics to eventually be used against Americans" We didnt' have to take over a country for that, we could have done it in Kosovo. And if that was one of the goals of the invasion, I would say that so far its been a failure. Most organizations that want to control a population start from childhood, barraging them with slogans and propoganda, making them join a compulsory organization, wear uniforms and take loyalty oaths, ect... "* test biological and chemical weapons on real people (including U.S. troops)" If they did that, they must not have done it at any of the bases my battalion was at. NBC defense is a serious subject in the Army, and any chemical attack would be noticed. Remember the screaming when the insurgents got an old binary nerve gas shell and used it as part of an IED? As for biologicals, what agent? The only outbreak of disease I remember is a small outbreak of leishamanaisis (someone fix my spelling), and the diarrhea you get after taking those damnable malaria pills. "* control a vast field of the world's accessible oil reserves" Possible, I suppose. But how will we control them after we pull out? For that matter, we don't have direct control now, they're owned and operated by the Iraqi government and guarded by the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service. And the invasion caused the Saudis to ask us to leave, costing us "control" of their oil fields. "* create and maintain a market for arms manufacture and sales" Unnecessary. The US is one of the tops arms exporters and has been since the Lend-Lease program started back before WW2. Also futile, most of the weapons the new Iraqi forces use aren't even US. It's created a great market for Toyota and Nissan to sell their little pickups, and it's something to see US soldiers put on armor covered in ammo and gear, and climb into their big heavy Strykers and roll out with a few truckloads of Iraqi National Guard in little pickups with a machine gun mounted in the bed. Anyone who doubts the courage of Iraqi soldiers should think about going into battle with an AK47, wearing a flak vest that was passed on by the US since they're not good enough for our troops anymore and riding in the open bed of a pickup. "* charge U.S. tax payers billions for "work" contracts that are never honored" No personal knowledge or experience, but from what I've read in the news that is a problem. All I do know is that I never paid up front for anything. My roomie paid up front for a set of his-and-hers rings for him and his wife, and had a hell of a time getting them. "* kill/cripple America's young men/women ...leaving the country defenseless against NATO troops once martial law is declared" WTF, O? That sounds suspiciously like the fears of the UN army back in the 90s. Black helecopters and soldiers from the New World Order coming to take our homes. Never mind that the UN has only 80,000 troops around the world, more or less. This one is flat-out ridiculous, but my laundry has a few more minutes. Let's see... the head of Nato is an American General. Do you think the Nato command structure could plan something that large-scale without him knowing? US weapons and tactics, especially in air power, are far advanced beyond those of the other Nato members. British Challenger 2 and German Leopard 2 tanks might be a match for the M1A2, but they're the only ones. Once the F/A-22s come online we'll rule the skies, and all of Nato can just about match our air power now. And they don't have stealth bombers. France and Britian between them have less than three hundred nuclear warheads. The biggest army in Nato, after the US, is the Turkish army, which is mainly an infantry army and has no way to project it this far. Nato's aircraft carriers are all little STOL carriers, with the possible exception of the Foch and Clemenceau, but I think one of those was decommissioned. Even if they could land troops here or march then down from Canada we could close the sea lanes and cut off their supplies. As for weakening American forces, the Army is already better off in ways than before Iraq. The new Hummvees and body armor, weapons such as Crows and Matrix and that crazy heat beam are coming online. Coordination between air and ground forces is the best it's ever been. And now the entire US army, pretty much, is experienced and battle hardened. And who is going to declare martial law, anyway? Nato, after they take us over? Or the US government in response to an invasion? The US doesn't have enough troops to enforce martial law throughout the country even if we did declare it. And (actually getting back to the thred topic) even if 9000 US troops died rather than 1,800, this is going to sound incredibly callous, but that's a drop in the bucket of American manpower. Sexy, have you ever read The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion? It was a book published around 1900 claiming that there was a secret council of Jewish leaders who were going to lead their people, still spread throughout the world, in a mass uprising to take over all of Europe. Read it, I think you'll like it.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 17 (view)

Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides Posted: 8/27/2005 3:59:41 PM
Satire and mockery are permament parts of American culture. They always have been. Go back and read some of the things that Ben Franklin wrote about political opponents. And a person that cannot take critisism has no business being in politics. And as for constructive ways to voice our critisism, is there one? Nothing we say here will affect the system. All we can do is try to win each other over to our point of view, and considering how stubborn we all are, that's not much of a consolation prize.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 16 (view)

Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides Posted: 8/27/2005 3:53:54 PM
Yes Bush Sr was VP under Reagan. There is no way a VP has enough clout to begin a program like that, and Reagan would never have agreed to it. Look at what it took to get Reagan to agree to give Pakistan Stinger missiles for the Afghans.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 9 (view)

Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides Posted: 8/26/2005 10:59:55 AM
I decided to indulge myself and respond to the... um... 'creatively slanted' post. Oh, where to start. Le's see... "Do all your Happy Bushco, Kudos get you any better gas milage??? Do your happy bushco Kudos give you any greater Job Security??? Do happy bushco Kudos, get you a discount on food, housing, or normal day to day opperations??? " My question is, why are all these questions based on money? Is money all you want from the government? [It was wrong of Bush to push for WAR in Iraq, Because Sadam was in full complyance with The UN Charter, to understand why Iraq invaded Kawait in the first place, you have to go back to GHW Bush and his blessings to Sadam to attact Kawait as a direct if Kawait slant drilling Oil Wells and Tapping Iraqi Oil Reservs, then GHW Bush Exclaimed that Iraq had attacked and was sacking poor little Kawait... ] The UN charter specifically states that problems such as this between nations can and should be submitted to the UN Security Council for arbitration. And if Iraq's biggest concern was the slant-drilling, they could easily have sent troops or planes to destroy the wells dug slantwise. They were all right there at the border! Moreover, slant-drilling into Iraqi oil fields was probably the only way the Kuwaitis would get back any of the 10 BILLION dollars they loaned Iraq to fund the war with Iran. [Then we had the GHW Bush pupet Bill Clinton as our presidential Clown for a few years,] WTF, O? [Was it not GHW Bush who gave Sadam those munissions to defent Iraq from Iran and were not 100% of those munissions used in that conflict, to which other subsequent shipments were also Delivered to Iraq, by America Air Forse C-130's and Strato Lifters???] Again, WTF? I hate to break it to you, but by the time Bush Sr. was inagurated the Iran-Iraq war was over. And the chemical weapons used by Iraq in that war were primitive WW2 and earlier agents, mustard gas and early nerve agents, maybe a little chlorine. [Now back to our incoment Crazy Drugy President, can we proove that he is a deseptive sack or bushco dung??? YES!!!] My advice is this: type your posts in Word and press F8 before you submit them. It might be F9. You'll find it eventually.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 7 (view)

Reality is Stranger than fiction...(-; Posted: 8/26/2005 5:20:58 AM
Piers Anthony once wrote (and I'm paraphrasing) that since all people are created equal, and small people weigh less, they must be worth more per pound ;) One time in Iraq I saw a tall guy, 6'1 or '2, giving a short guy some crap. The short guy just said "When we go out on a mission, who's got a better chance of getting shot at? Who are they gonna see first?"

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 2 (view)

science-the earths core Posted: 8/26/2005 5:12:02 AM
Why would the inner core be lumpy? It seems like it would smooth out over time.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 7 (view)

Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides Posted: 8/26/2005 5:08:23 AM
"Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear." Please. I don't see how you can diagnose alcohol abuse without being close enough to smell his breath. I certainly can't, which explains why some of my family skeletons came as such a surprise. There's plenty of other reasons for cursing and flipping the bird. You should hear the things I say when I'm under stress ;) and when I'm sober I can think up new and better ones ;) Besides, I thought America had progressed beyond the need to judge people on their public speaking skills. Let's judge him by his actions instead. If we're going to crucify the man in the forums (and so far we're doing it thoroughly ;) let's at judge by deeds and not words.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 3 (view)

Radioactive Wounds of War Posted: 8/26/2005 4:58:51 AM
I'm no physicist, but I thought the whole point of DU was that it wasn't radioactive. Now this is all stuff I first learned in high school, so tell me if I go astray. Uranium has two isotopes, U235 and U238. The U235 is radioactive and that's what you use in atomic bombs. There is little U235 in natural uranium, I think four parts out of ten thousand or even less, so you have to seperate it out from the U238 in a centrifuge. Spin it around and the heavier U238 settles to the bottom. The top layer of U238 with all the U235 in it is scraped off and used to power nuclear reactors, and the bottom layer of pure U238, which is stable and inert, is used to make armor-piercing shells because it's dense as hell. My understanding is that the main danger from DU ammunition isn't radioactivity, but rather the fact that the powder can be toxic if you breathe it, like most heavy metals. You wouldn't want to breathe an aerosol of cadmium or thallium either. But being a heavy metal, the vapor settles very quickly. Hence the warning US soldiers get to stay away from vehicles and buildings that might have been hit by DU ammo. Our NBC man, a fiend who I trusted and who knows his job, told us that if we were worried about it simply tie a damp cloth over our mouth and nose and it would catch the heavy particles. He ended up as a Section 8 but he knew NBC ;) Of course, none of this addresses the basic question of whether DU exposure can cause birth defects or cancer. I leave that up to the medical people.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 29 (view)

Media and the path it's taking. Posted: 8/25/2005 7:40:30 AM
And television especially is bad for picking stories based on the visuals. Things like explosions in Iraq, burning buildings, car wrecks, tornadoes, all get long stories because they can show the big dramatic clips. Content isn't as important.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 22 (view)

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? Posted: 8/25/2005 7:30:14 AM
Playful, Buz, thanks for that. The support at home for the troops is absolutely amazing. We got all kinds of cards from people we'd never met, care packages from people back home, it was astounding how much support the troops have. I can't imagine what the Vietnam vets went through coming back, but I think that America has made up for that. As for the topic at hand, the Soviets tried to conceal the death toll in Afghanistan from their people. That was a totalitarian nation with a tightly controlled press and informers everywhere, and still people knew that the casualties were much heavier than admitted. In the book Charlie Wilson's War it mentions that the cargo planes that carried the caskets, the Black Tulips, would be loaded and unloaded at night in secret to conceal the number of dead. The Soviet government first claimed 10,000 dead over ten years in Afghanistan, but the Russian government said the real number was more than 28,000. The Soviet people knew that the numbers were wrong, and I think the American people would know too. As for the press, the only reporter I had much contact with was the one embedded reporter who stayed with our unit for a while. She went out on missions with us and wrote a fairly decent article. The problem, she told us, is that newspapers only want exciting news. There's never an article that says Ninety-nine Army convoys made it safely to their destinations today. There's just the article about the one convoy that got hit, and they love those big dramatic photos of burning vehicles. I guess I do it too, I tell people about watching a JDAM hit or blowing up an ammo cache and not about the hours upon hours in the guard tower watching the sheep and grass. Odd how in all the media coverage about Iraq you never hear much about the sheep, yet you can't get away from the things. Anyway, it's sad but true, dead people and battles make headlines while smiling Iraqi kids and refurbished wells and schools don't. It's no wonder people think our casualties over there are so heavy, few articles about the war get published unless an American is wounded or killed in it somewhere. Ok, enough of this. I'm going to go look for the media rant thread.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 19 (view)

If he is online, when you are online and he doesn't say HI! Is that a sign? Posted: 8/24/2005 5:09:47 PM
Sometimes you don't notice the little blurb that says that someone logged on. Who monitors their IM list constantly to see when people get on?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 6 (view)

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? Posted: 8/24/2005 5:02:32 PM
I'm not going to say that the occupation is good or bad, I leave that up to history. The Iraqis I met were mostly glad to have us there, but I was up in Kurd country so that probably isn't a fair sample. I will say a few things: An old man in the Sinjar mountains showed us their shrine and thanked us for making it safe for them to worship there again. He said Saddam's soldiers had defiled the shrine and destroyed ten of the fourteen others in the area. I like seeing the smiling laughing Iraqi kids along the road, waving and giving us thumbs-up as we drive by. I hate to think of those cute kids growing up afraid of their own government. Most of the Iraqis I met were just regular people. They wanted a decent job to feed their families, and maybe watch a game of soccer in the evening. They're some soccer nuts over there. When the Iraqi national team won a victory there would be guys shooting in the air everywhere. I guess I would say that the liberation of Iraq was a good thing, and that we should have planned it a lot better. Having a liberation government and an exile security force following behind the troops would have helped a lot. It's really hard to police a foreign culture, you don't know what's innocent and what's malicious. We freaked out when we saw blood on the side of Iraqi army trucks, we thought they'd taken casualties till we found out that they always put a handprint of sheep or goat blood on the side of a new vehicle. But that's past. As for the situation now, I don't really have any bright ideas beyond more and better training for the Iraqi forces. I wish we could ship a division of them back to the States and put the lot of them through maneuvers at Ft. Polk. Or at least the officers. From what I've seen the Iraqi troops are willing enough to work and fight, but they need better leadership. As for "getting the job done" that's going to take a generation and the Iraqis will have to do most of it themselves. They're trying to do what we did during and after the Revolutionary War, and remember that the US completely scrapped their first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and wrote up a completely new one. Remember too that the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, but our first President wasn't inagurated until 1789 and he had to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion. When we watch what's happening in Iraq we're watching history in the making, and history requires an attention span of years, even decades. And for a grunt's-eye-view this is really wandering. As for the outcome, that's going to take some thought.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 56 (view)

To USA members: July 7, 2005. I'm honoured to be your neighbour Posted: 8/24/2005 4:25:46 PM
We Americans joke about Canada a lot. That's just our way, we crack jokes on everybody. What I remember is the Canadian division that landed on Juno beach in Normandy on D-Day. We fought side by side once, and we haven't forgotten it.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 7 (view)

What America Needs ... Posted: 8/24/2005 4:20:43 PM
Take back the country and live on the foundations? This country needs to look to the future, not the past. What I remember about our foundations is an agrarian slave-holding society. Keep the parts of the past that are still useful and important, but don't talk about restoring the past wholesale.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 4 (view)

Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? Posted: 8/24/2005 4:16:30 PM
I did a tour in Iraq, and from what I saw the official death toll is certainly plausible. Granted I only had a grunt's-eye view, but I think I would have noticed if people were dying at five times the official rate. My entire battalion had only two KIA. The embedded reporter who came with our unit traveled with us, ate and slept with us, and wrote it like it was. The only censorship imposed on her was that she could not publish details of our tactics, routes or defences. All sensible precautions to keep the enemy from learning about us in the papers. The only problem we ever had was that we never could teach her the difference between an APC and a tank. And as for cellphones and cameras, the cameras are only banned to Iraqis because we don't need every Iraqi who works on the base taking pictures of the guard towers. Cellphones are banned because of both Opsec and notification issues; cellphone signals are easier to intercept than satellite signals, and in the event of casualties the base phones and internet are shut down so the family finds out from a notification team and not the rumor mill. And for whoever was talking about people dying at Landstuhl and Walter Reed, that just defies common sense. If a patient has survived the twelve to twenty-four hours it takes to get them back to Germany, they're probably going to make it. Anyway, they don't send people out on medevac flights to Germany until they're stabile. Think about it. If a patient is getting worse, would you take them out of a hospital and make them spend twelve hours in a flying ambulance? Hidden/Mass graves. I assume that means of Americans. If this were the case I probably would have heard about it. I was in an engineer unit, and we would have had to dig the damned thing.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 18 (view)

GOP Senator Says Iraq Looking Like Vietnam Posted: 8/23/2005 8:23:47 AM
"This is nothing more than an illegal invasion for purely economic reasons. " I'll assume that by illegal you mean a violation of the UN charter, since I don't know of any part of the Constitution that prohibits this. If so, then why the failure of the Security Council to react to it as an act of aggression? There is plenty of historical precedent, the first Gulf War, the Korean War, ect... and under Article 27-3 the US and Britian, as direct participants, cannot veto the resolution.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 17 (view)

I have a question for the supporters of President George Bush’s “War on terror”. Posted: 8/15/2005 7:10:22 PM
As an Iraq and Bosnia veteran I've met all kinds of Muslims. The people in both those nations (the only two with a large Muslim population I've visited so far) are a lot like the people here. Different groups stand for different things, different groups oppose different things, different groups are willing to fight for what they believe in, and fight in different ways. Let's see. There are the ones you see on the news all the time, bombing and mortaring and shooting up passing convoys. One of them walked into our chow hall and blew up two dozen people. Here in America two teenagers walked into a high school after scattering improvised bombs around and shot fourteen or fifteen people. What's the difference? There are religious fanatics who stir up hatred against us because we are foreign invaders from a different religion. An American religious fanatic named Jim Jones killed a Congressman and almost a thousand other people in their compound in South America in 1978. Another religious fanatic named David Koresh led his people to their deaths in Texas. Is there a difference between American and Iraqi religious fanatics? Or for that matter the Rajneshees, the cult that carried out the samonella attack in Oregon in 1985? Or the Aum Sun Shu Kyro (sp?) group that conducted the gas attack in Tokyo in 1995? Religious fanatics come from every religion. IMHO the majority of attacks, nonsuicidal anyway, that we take in Iraq are from ordinary Iraqi patriots who just want the foreign soldiers to go home. Think about how we'd respond to an invasion. I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in the Appalachien mountains it'd be a bloodbath. We don't keep those gun racks in our trucks for decoration, you know. Then there are the rest of the Iraqis, the ones you usually don't see on the news. The Iraqi troops we had on our base would go out after working all day, in the summer heat no less, and play soccer in the evening. Or the guy who left the base to go to his other job. We asked him why once, and he told us "I have two wife and nine child, so I need two jobs". The merchants who risked their lives to come on base and run little shops selling Pop-Keks (Iraqi Twinkees) and bootleg DVDs. The crazy barbers who scared the hell out of us the first time we went to them. It's nerve-wracking enough when you've had all the lectures about base security and infiltrators and you're sitting in the chair with your rifle leaning against the wall and he pulls out the straight razor and goes to work on your neck. Then he takes out a chunk of dental floss that looks like garrotte wire and spins it between your eyebrows to get the hair there. Then he pulls out a pointy nail file, dabs a gob of goo on the end and LIGHTS IT ON FIRE! That's how they trim nose and ear hair. At that point I drew the line. I can put up with a lot, but no one, Iraqi or American, is jamming a wad of flaming goo up my nose. And then there were the Bosnians. There was a club and a bus stop on the road past our base, so on Friday night we would laugh as they staggered down to the bus stop. One guy in a nice suit walked down the yellow line like the cop told him to and he never stopped. Ok, I'm going to cut off the stories. The point is, people are people all over the world, and no matter where you go some of them are going to want to kill you. That's just life. Ok, maybe not, but I'm not very good at ending these things. Look at it this way, when physical strength fails people turn to spiritual strength. The Native Americans turned to the Ghost Dance in the 1890s as their resistance collapsed. A group of Saudis turned to the preachings of a cleric named Wahabbi in 1922 after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Patton turned to prayer when the weather favored the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. The Afghans were sustained by their faith during the Soviet occupation, before the foreign aid started flowing. It's not really surprising that Iraqis looking for something to keep them going in the face of superior firepower would turn to religion. It's not an Islam issue, it's a human nature issue.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 25 (view)

Skateboarder Branded by Manhole Cover Sues Posted: 7/28/2005 5:00:36 PM
And just for the record, manhole covers have to be metal. Look at the size of the trucks that drive over them.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 24 (view)

Skateboarder Branded by Manhole Cover Sues Posted: 7/28/2005 4:59:41 PM
It certainly is reasonable to realize that on a hot day, a slab of metal in the sun will get very hot. People have gotten burns off all kinds of things in the sun... metal, black leather, even plastic. Believe it or not, not every bad thing that happens is someone's fault. The utilities company wasn't trying to hurt anyone, she wasn't trying to fall on it, it was just an accident. Americans have this weird notion that anytime something bad happens someone should get blamed. Why? Sometimes it's just bad luck.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 1 (view)

Why are we there? Posted: 7/25/2005 4:53:27 PM
Every day there are news reports about more deaths. Every night on TV there are photos of death and destruction. Why are we still there? We occupied this land, which we had to take by force, but it causes us nothing but trouble. Why are we still there? Many of our children go there and never come back. Why are we still there? Their government is unstable, and they have sloppy leadership. Why are we still there? Many of their people are uncivilized. Why are we still there? The place is subject to natural disasters, from which we are supposed to bail them out. Why are we still there? There are many hostile religious sects, which we do not understand. Why are we still there? Their folkways, foods, and fads are unfathomable to ordinary Americans. Why are we still there? We can't even secure the borders. Why are we still there? They are billions of dollars in debt and it will cost billions more to rebuild, which we can't afford. Why are we still there? It is becoming VERY clear . . . WE MUST PULL OUT OF CALIFORNIA ! ! !

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 78 (view)

Man shot dead by UK police not connected to bombs Posted: 7/24/2005 7:42:15 PM
Judge jury and executioner isn't actually a bad metaphor. Think about it. Those three are due process for normal criminals. In this situation, due process is to decide if the suspect is or is not an immediate threat to the lives of others and end the threat that he poses. In the case of a suicide bomber, who only has to squeeze his hand on a claymore clacker hidden in his sleeve, the only way to quickly prevent him from setting off the bomb is to sever the control he has over the detonator without causing or allowing him to squeeze that one hand. In other words, shoot him in the head. I was rather surprised that they tackled him first, I guess they didn't want to shoot at him and risk hitting a bystander.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 104 (view)

Why should the USA fight the Islamo-Fascists in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other country? Posted: 7/24/2005 12:46:34 PM
Please. Name we one religion that hasn't launched a war against another religion. Religion is just one more tool used by power-hungry leaders to get people to follow them and bind their conquered populations more closely to their culture. The Sufavids did it with 12er Shiism, the Moghuls did it in India, the Europeans did it all over the world, even the origional spread of Christianity came about when the Romans decided that the new religion would improve their control over the people of the Empire. Osama can talk about religion all he wants, but I'm sure he intends to be in charge if he ever wins and drives the West out of the Muslim nations.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 3 (view)

AMERICAN MONEY Posted: 7/24/2005 12:39:59 PM
The vast majority of money is in electronic format now. It's far more decentralized than it used to be And as for the national debt, we could pay it off if we had the national will to do so. After the Franco-Prussian war the Prussians imposed an imdemnity on France that was supposed to hobble it for a generation. The French made a massive national effort and payed it off in five years. Same thing with the Czechs, Hungarians and Finns after WW2. The problem with the debt isn't that we can't pay it off, it's that we're not willing to give up the government luxories we're used to having or pay more in taxes. Think if we could pay off the debt. It would be like paying off a credit card. Currently the Federal budget includes more than 300 billion dollars each year in interest payments. 321 billion in 2004. http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm If we payed off the debt, we would have an extra 300 billion dollars in the budget every year! That's enough to provide government health insurance, keep up the war in Iraq, and maybe throw a little to Nasa.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 44 (view)

is Islam an Posted: 7/24/2005 10:09:20 AM
Spoken like someone who's never been in uniform. The Army is by far the most multi-ethnic environment I've ever been in. I grew up in a small town in the Appalachiens, and it wasn't till I went to an Army base that I ever had a conversation with a black person. In boot camp we had whites, blacks, Puerto Ricans, a good guy from Hawaii, a couple Native Americans, some Asians... and when my unit deployed to Iraq we took two Muslim soldiers with us. The medic Akmed worked with everybody at one time or another, and we were glad to have him. The Army doesn't teach you to hate, that's counterproductive. What they teach is this: if someone is trying to shoot you, that person isn't a person anymore. They're a target. You fire until the target goes down. "And how to lower their pride, dignity and self-respect" again no, the Army doesn't teach that, it's counterproductive. Every time you degrade or debase a person you're potentially creating another enemy. Every time you kill a civilian you create an entire family of enemies. That's why the Army has the Rules of Engagement, so you don't go around killing people willy-nilly. Now, individual soldiers may break the rules, killing, degrading, ect... but those are individual acts dealt with on an individual basis. Those are more a reflection of the predjudices of the American people post 9/11 than a result of anything the Army teaches.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 29 (view)

is Islam an Posted: 7/24/2005 12:31:16 AM
Self-idenifications are hardly a valid measure of a religion and its members. Jim Jones was a self-identified Christian, a minister, and he ordered the deaths of 980 of his followers. After they killed a Congressman. And as far as Islam spreading by the sword, how do you think the Romans converted their empire to Christianity? Religious conversion is often used by a conquering culture. The point isn't really to bring them to the one true religion; it's to have them identify more with the conquering culture and help them forget about their own, to reduce the urge to rebel. The Sufavids did it with 12er Shiism, I think the Moghuls did it late in their empire's life when they tried to conquer the southern end of India, the Spanish and Portugeuse did it all over the Americas. It is important, critical, to seperate out the genuine religious actions from the actions taken in the name of religion by people who only intend to use the religious convictions of the people for their own ends. Usually in a drive for power. Osama may see fanatical Islamic convictions as a way to oppose the economic power of the West. But when the Western powers are driven from the Muslim lands, who do you think he intends to take control and rule those newly "liberated" nations?

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 56 (view)

Redneck!!!!!!!!! Posted: 7/24/2005 12:16:45 AM
I'm from the Appalachiens, I'm pretty well certified as a redneck, and even if it meant something way back when, now it's just a joke. Nobody cares.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 4 (view)

is Islam an Posted: 7/23/2005 6:53:32 PM
Let's see... for over five hundred years the Muslim nations were the friends and protectors of local Jewish communities. The French king Louis XIV used the Ottoman Empire as the model for his own nation. And my personal first experience with Muslims came in Bosnia. After 9/11 my unit went out to meet with a Bosnian Muslim (Bosniac) team clearing minefields. The first thing the team leader told us was how sorry he was about 9/11, and he offered to bring his team to our base to donate blood for New York. Islam is not evil. Evil people occur in all religions. Hitler, Stalin, Torquemada (sp), Tamerlane, Pol Pot, Mao Ze-dong, Tojo, Carlos the Jackal, Timothy McVeigh... Evil is an individual condition. Besides, we have many Muslim allies. Remember during the Mogadishu battle, it was Pakistani tanks and Malaysian APCs that went in to help bring out the Rangers. The Turks stood with us all through the Cold War. Persia was a vital link between the Allies and the USSR in WW2.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 28 (view)

American Ideals vs. Americanism Posted: 7/21/2005 1:49:13 PM
Actually Carter created the Rapid Deployment Force and the Delta Force. And he launched the mission into Iran to get the hostages back.

Snowlight03

Joined: 7/10/2005

Msg: 8 (view)

Media and the path it's taking. Posted: 7/21/2005 1:46:02 PM
Media is ratings-driven. Does that mean that the incredible decline in media news quality (liberal and conservative) is a result of dumbing themselves down to what the ignorant masses want? Or that the masses have been numbed and dumbed by the constant barrage of news shows, racheting themselves lower into the much? Personally, I think it's chicken-and-egg. A little of one, then a little of the other. The fact remains that something needs to change. We need intelligent news. There are people out there that will consume it, and the American people are capable of understanding a lot more than the networks think. Sometimes people just need to be challenged. The coverage of trials is what turned me away from TV news altogether. Why are the OJ and MJ trials worth so much airtime? What about trials with real consequences to society, like the reporter who wouldn't name her sources? In the old days we had Ed Morrow, Walter Cronkite, Ernie Pyle and William Schrirer. Today they give us Geraldo Riviera. Making Geraldo a reporter makes as much sense and giving Pamela Anderson a sitcom....

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