Balta1701

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 10, 2005 -> 11:58 AM) By sneaking terrorists across the border they already are. If they were going to do serious damage to our Army in Iraq like you talked about then they're gonna need a lot more than they have in their bag of tricks right now. Do you actually have evidence of this, or is that just a claim? Iran has no reason to try to put insurgents into Iraq...by helping create a shia theocracy in Iraq, we've helped them more than they would have ever dreamed possible. They have no reason to try to undermine it.

And what is to stop the Iranian army from adopting Iraqi insurgent tactics?

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 10, 2005 -> 11:22 AM) If Iran tried anything against Isreal they would be made to wish they hadn't. As for attacking our Army in Iraq they have the same POS equipment the Iraqi Army had. That would be like feeding a tree branch into a wood chipper. Just like our army when it went into Iraq.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2005 -> 05:50 AM) Science fallible? Don't tell that to anyone involved in evolution. They might start a smear campaign... As soon as there's genuine evidence against evolution, or even a testable theory standing opposite to it, let me know.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 10, 2005 -> 11:01 AM) Never mind that if Bush wanted to he could flatten all the suspected WMD sites uhh..like this evening and Iran couldn't do anything but sit there and cry to the UN about it. As for Syria, they're still wetting their pants and begging us not to hit them over the Hariri incident in Lebanon and the terrorists that keep coming across the border. Actually, Iran could do a lot about it if they wanted to...first they could flatten Israel, second they could literally attack our army in Iraq, and third and most importantly, we couldn't actually flatten the WMD sites in Iran, they're widely dispersed, often underground or in secure locations, and we don't even know where most of them are.

a.) We have dramatically increased the WMD threat through our actions in Iraq. By invading that country and failing to immediately secure sites that were formerly under U.N. control, we let the equipment that the U.N. had sealed off completely disappear. Equipment which was still operable, but just had 5-10 years of dust covering it and a few U.N. seals. We have no idea who is using this equipment now or where it is. Furthermore, there has been some evidence of insurgents in Iraq trying to develop rudimentary chemical weapons for use since the war ended, possibly using the equipment and expertise that was dispersed when we invaded. b.) By showing a willingness to spend blood and treasure to defend itself, the United States has rendered itself totally unable to defend itself further. Due to the degredation of our army's equipment and the fact that virtually all of our available soldiers are tied down in Iraq, we have no credible force with which, for example, we could use to threaten Iran in the event they really did choose to build a nuclear bomb. Iran has been far less willing to allow inspections than Iraq was under Hussein in his last days...do you claim that Iran would be equally stubborn if the U.S. had an army of 250,000 available to strike Iran if they chose not to comply with the U.N.? Furthermore, by putting so many troops into Iraq, we have still left ourselves unable to truly search and secure the remote areas of Afghanistan, where it is still thought that the cneter of Al Qaeda is hiding. Furthermore, by our actions in Iraq, we have dramatically weakend the coalition that came together to support us in Afghanistan, and therefore we have basically guaranteed that if we ever felt the need for another strike to try to preempt something (again, such as Iran building the bomb), we would be doing so virtually alone (Britain needs years to rebuild its army after Iraq as well). c.) The statement that IRaq is a terror spunge makes 1 terrible assumption. It assumes that there is a finite amount of terrorists in the world. If that were the case, then locking them all up in 1 area would be a wise strategy. However, that is obviously not the case, for the simple reason that it is possible to create more terrorists. In Iraq, that is exactly what we have done. By creating a large, unemployed population which is very unhappy, and giving Muslim countries all the ammunition they could possibly imagine on how to portray us as brutal, uncaring savages (Abu Ghraib, Fallujah), we have spawned an entire generation of terror recruits. The huge majority of the strikes against the U.S. carried out in Iraq are done by Iraqis. The huge majority of those arrested are Iraqis. Virtually no Iraqis were among the terrorists that made up Al Qaeda on 9/11, compared with places like Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Chechnya. We may very well be facing terrorists from Iraq for the next half century. The invasion has provided fertile recruitment and training grounds and radicalized thousands of muslims who never wished to hurt the U.S. before. But when the U.S. locks your brother up, or hits him with a weapon that burns off his skin, or kills him by freezing him to death in an Abu Ghraib torture chamber, that gives plenty of motivation to fight. d. Syria and Iran know without a shadow of a doubt that right now, the U.S. is in a completely inept position and cannot even hope to thereaten them. The U.S. has no army available for a major occupation right now, and even if it did, the U.S. would be doing so against the will of virtually the entire world. This is why Iran is probably racing right now to obtain a nuclear weapon - we gave them the perfect window to do so. We cannot hope to hurt them right now.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 10, 2005 -> 10:24 AM) Jim. Do you know what 25 MM rounds do to human bodies? Or .50 caliber rounds? or 40 MM grenade rounds? HE rounds? Bombs dropped from planes? They tend to do stuff a lot like what happened to those POS insurgents you have pictured there. This is a non-story if I ever heard of one. If I took a terrorist that was killed by an exploding bomb or caught in a fire and laid him next to someone killed by WP you couldn't tell me the difference. All I want to say in response is this...you'll remember that one of the main reasons we went to war with Saddam was that he had used chemical weapons against targets in his own country, and those chemical weapons wound up killing a lot of civilians along with the actual targets he was going after.

The Republican Leadership in the House of Representatives, worried that several Republicans would turn around and vote no on the upcoming omnibus appropriations bill that Congress is working on, has gone and dropped the provision from the bill which would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The same goes for offshore coastal shelf areas, which the Republicans and the oil industry would like to open up even more. This is not the end of this story, as it is still in the Senate version, and the Republicans may very well put it back into the final version which comes out of the conference committee (They've stuck far more random things in there before). Link

NYT Link. Lots more details in the actual article, including suggested paths through which the money could have been laundered.

WaPo

Venezuela is no where near Communist.

QUOTE(SoxFan562004 @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 07:37 PM) I guess Jermaine Dye wasn't the highest of high profile players, but there were a few teams after him and he took less to sign with the Sox because he liked the make-up of the team. Also Freddy probably took less than his market value to stay with the Sox, i know the Ozzie factor is the reason for that, but he seems to fit. Freddy signed his deal in the middle of 2004, before the Free agency period hit. I think the contract that set the tone for that period was Kris Benson's deal, which was signed in November. After that, there was a pretty decent jump in what pitchers were asking for based on his deal.

QUOTE(bschmaranz @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 08:22 PM) This makes me wonder how long it'll take for the White Sox World Champions home pregnancy test will be made available. They'll advertise it using those pictures of AJ that we've seen around here so many times. Half our team will be able to testify to its effectiveness after this year. Warning, may cause birth defects.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 06:14 PM) Grossman, IIRC, didn't miss a game during his whole college or high school career. Yet, the scouting report said he would get injured very quickly? Please, come up with a new schtick, because you're not bringing a whole lot right now... Saying that a guy didn't miss a game in either high school or college says nothing about what will happen to them in the pros. The people in the pros are far bigger, stronger, and faster than guys in college. Being able to elude people in college doesn't necessarily translate to eluding anything in the pros. Staying healthy in college doesn't mean you'll survive taking the hits you do as a pro. You could be healthy your entire career, then have 1 340 pound defensive tackle nail you when your leg is locked, and suddenly you're in a lot worse shape. You have to do better than just that if you want to disprove the other person's claim. I have no idea if that's what the scouting report said or not, but don't for a second think that the pro game is the exact analog of the college game.

Tapped

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/...5_11/007530.php

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 05:40 PM) Interesting to see that as big as Congress was talking, they can't even close the deal. They retreated big time on all of the penalties. If they are going to bow under to baseball like this, they might as well just let baseball and the other sports deal with it themselves and STFU. I don't know that they're "Bowing under to baseball" as much as bowing under to some of their own ranks who probably don't even want to vote on that sort of bill.

QUOTE(greg775 @ Nov 8, 2005 -> 08:51 PM) I grew to love watching Paulie play a decent first base. I hope Dye isn't shifted there. BTW, did Joe B. go 3-for-3 this season? I thought at one point he was a perfect 3-for-3. Is that the way he ended up? After winning the World Series, I kind of trust Kenny to do whatever he sees fit with our team, but it would be nice to keep Konerko and add Frank at DH. No, he made a couple of outs when he started against Cleveland. He ended up 5/12.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 05:35 PM) Bin Laden and Iraq, contrary to the media bias, are related, at least by correlation. Maybe not DIRECTLY related, but they are related. So is Syria and Iran, and that scares me. What in the world does "related by correlation" mean? They didn't work together, the defector who said they worked together was a known liar, Bin Laden hated Hussein for running a secular regime, and Al Qaeda was virtually absent in Iraq before the war. Does correlated mean they disliked the U.S.? Yes, but they disliked each other more. Does correlated mean they were both Muslim? Well, yeah. But beyond that, I don't know what you're saying.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 04:00 PM) Im assuming that they're going to try and deport them back to places like Morocco and Algeria and the like. Whether or not they'll go for it is another matter. How about they just drop these people off on a deserted island somewhere and forget about all the red tape? Here's an idea, why not just send them to Madagascar?

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 04:06 PM) Really, I don't think we should worry so much about this. The recent spike in pirate stories suggests there are more pirates, while global temperatures continue to rise, a paradox that clearly signals the end of the world. Can't we all just get along in the short time we have left?

Rafael Palmeiro released a statement today today about his steroid conviction. He admitted that it was Stanolozol/Winstrol that was found in his system. HE tried to blame a vitamin shot he took in the spring. Previously, he has blamed his test on a vitamin B-12 shot he got from Tejada. Tejada has denied that accusation. I still don't believe a word he says.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 03:55 PM) Soxy. Invoking religon into this isin't the greatest idea. If there were liberals as we know em today around during the days of the Old Testament you'd want to put God on trial for war crimes. Im not the biggest bible scholar out there but I know that in the Old Testament God did a whole lot of really nasty stuff to people who didn't worship him properly. Stuff that makes stress positions, sleep deprivation and loud music pale in comparison. Sodomizing people with light bulbs, on the other hand...

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 9, 2005 -> 03:26 PM) 1) He would have acted on the same intelligence I disagree strongly with the idea that Bill Clinton would have acted on the same intelligence, if by the same intelligence you mean any and all data gathered by our intelligence services on Iraq. I agree with the idea that Bill Clinton would have acted had he been presented with the intelligence that the U.S. presented the world with. Remember what we have learned since the war. Virtually all of our intel on Iraq's WMD programs were based on defectors, many from Chalabi's organization. The CIA knows very well that you can't trust defectors. At least 2 of thsoe defectors were known liars - Curveball and the guy the NYT wrote about over the weekend. Nonetheless, their claims became key elements in Bush's run to war. Furthermore, there is the Niger/Uranium story. We had, through Wilson's trip, good reason to believe Iraq was not trying to acquire uranium from Niger. Beyond that, before we launched the war, we learned unequivocally that our only evidence that Iraq had tried to purchase that uranium, the forged documents, was in fact entirely B.S., when El Baradei said so before the U.N. Beyond that, we know that on a huge number of things that hte Bush administration presented as proven fact, there was in fact huge doubt in the CIA. For example, we know that the CIA had huge doubts about claim that the UAV's could be used to disperse bioweapons (They were held together with duct tape) or that they could reach the U.S. The CIA had huge doubts that those aluminum tubes could have been used in a nuclear program (They were simply the wrong parts). However, none of this data was presented publically. The people who paid attention figured it out. I swore openly every single time in 2002-2003 that Bush referenced the aluminum tubes, because I knew he was lying. People looked at the specs and said that they could not be used in a WMD program. The CIA did the same thing in many cases. But those doubts ended up at backs of booklets, and the administration chose to ignore them..