Valerie Plame

You know what I wish given the recent events made known by Fox News?

It's so unfair that the Democrats have a better propaganda apparatus than the Republicans. Not because the Republicans are being beaten, but because the Democrats have proven just how destructive they are. There is no room in the Democrat party for creation and construction, it's all about offense and not defense.

It's unfair that the terroists are better at propaganda and terror operations, than the US. It is unfair that those in the right, are unable to win because of restrictions they put upon themselves.

THe Bush Administration wouldn't have been as vulnerable to the Democrat plame operation if the Administration used blackmail, intimidation, and Presidential powers to arm twist and hardball the opposition party, in addition to Will and Valerie. Intimidation works, Bush didn't use it because Bush believes himself to be capable of winning without dirty tricks.

I'm not quite as law abiding as that.

The Agony of Defeat

The way I see it, Sala, is in terms of logistics and strategy. Guerrila war doesn't work if you have no hiding spots and no secure base to get logistics from. Israel and Iraq can combine to pincer off Syria, away from Iranian support. However, if Israel falls, then Syria can regroup their logistics and form a team with Iran to pincer off Iraq. Iraq will now be surrounded, and with two secure bases it doesn't matter how tactically brilliant the US Marines are, they cannot win when there are endless supplies and bodies for the enemy.

We'd have to do what MacArthur wanted, invade the source of logistics, to end the war permanently. You would have no choice once Israel falls and the entire West of Iraq is uncontested enemy territory. Trying to fight wars when you have no choice, is not a good idea.

I think a lot of people forget that Pakistan ain't an Arab country. They don't have 25 million or even 50 million, Pakistan has 120 million people. A third of the US population, and a tenth of India's yet with like 90% of the radical Muslims.

It's like a string of pearls. You can pincer Pakistan with Afghanistan and India. You can pincer Iran with Iraq and Afghanistan, but it all depends upon who moves to the offensive first.

Like a game of Go, if you can capture the enemy pieces, they can do the same to you.

Don and J at Bookworm wants partition, 3 states in a state. I argued that splitting the country up would create an unsolvable situation in which endless clan warfare would result. On a historical social level, unity erases chaos. Splitting people into factions is not going to erase chaos. The US fought a civil war to maintain Union, and that erased a lot of chaos. There would have been a lot more than ONE civil war had the US split into two pieces.

Rick offered two options - the only ones from the start. His instinct is the same as mine - win. Do what you have to do to win. There is no other option. No one should read what they want into this post, as many did at Rick's place with his - don't even think about it.

It's a good instinct, Sala. It almost doesn't matter what the current situation is, if you can forge ahead and create additional options. The point to winning is to get out of traps, not to sit around waiting for fate to bring you out of there. You got to make your own luck. If you're not doing anything or getting ready, then when opportunities arise, you won't take it.

Somalia is going the wrong way. From neutral/bad to bad for an example.

I know two guys from Somalia or thereabouts that work in the engineering sector in the US. For some reason, they make a lot of jokes about the para-militaries on the BBC website. How they would shoot at anything in the sky, rip off entire magazines, go on trucks with machine guns on the back. It was a weird, but educational experience for me.

To see how other people from Africa viewed things. One of them also said that Somalians on the street disliked how America would nose around their business. Contrasted with China, who they favor because the Chinesecome in, do business, get the money,and then leave. A sign of the future Chinese mercantilist Empire perhaps. (the idiots think Haliburton is an example of a mercantile empire, just wait I say)

If you have forgotten that, and hold our government at fault for not having perfect foresight – then shame on you.

My problem with Bush wasn't about his foresight, it's about what he can do now that he isn't doing. There are several sabotage and or military operations Bush can conduct on Syria and Iran, but for some reason Bush trusts in the UN. That seems... less than optimal.

Part Two

One of th ebiggest problems I had with the war was the thought that you can make someone become democratic.

I'll say the same thing I said to Don at Bookworm. Moderate Muslims exist, but so long as they face execution for being moderate and rewards for being part of the jihad, they will side with the enemy. The only way to get them on our side is to protect them from terroists and thugs, but to do that we have to be PHYSICALLY there to do so. They're not going to trust in UN bureacracies, state dep officials, or UN peacekeeper helmets. The onlypeople we can trust to protect the downtrodden are the US military, they are the only people capable and willing to do the job, without exploiting the locals for slave labor and sexual favors.

It doesn't matter what Bush's thoughts were or weren't. What matters is that Bush gave the job to the Marine Corps and the Spec Ops (to liberate the oppressed). That's all that matters. The military will do the job Bush gave them, and since Bush is a delegator not a micromanager, it doesn't matter at all what Bush thinks because Bush is not going to interfere. That's bad at a strategic level, but on a tactical level it is great for the soldiers. On balance anyways.

A lot of people don't know this, but President Grant had to send federal troops to the South because the Southerners were lynching blacks and intimidating them to vote Democrat, vote the slavers back into power after the Civil War. The federal troops crushed the growing KKK movement, and Republican leaders were elected. Then the next President recalled the soldiers, the KKK regrew, and Democrats took back the offices in the South. Do not think just because democracy is based upon the people, that the people are not vulnerable to intimidation and terror tactics. It is a false theory of human nature and human behavior to believe that the threat of death "does not work" on the constituents of a democracy.

I did not like the Iraq War, I just thought that it was historically the wrong place as there were too many ethnicities and religious groups to make it work.

It's one of the best places to start. Not only was there a history between Saddam and the US that allowed for a pretext to invasion. But the Kurds had a burgeoning secure state, a place of logistical resupply, should we need them. Bush didn't make use of the Kurds to conduct a guerrila war against Saddam, but that's his mistake, not the Kurds.

Not only the logistical and political situation favored Iraq, but also the cultural position as well. The sunnis were well educated and far apart from Islamic Jihad on a personal level. This wasn't Palestine or Iran where there were grassroots Hizbollah operations and what not providing healthcare to the peeps. It was a power vacuum, one that Saddam filled. Remove Saddam and we could move in. Bush trusted in the French and the UN too much, he trusted in the State Dep and CIA too much, and he got burned, and now we face the consequences.

A lot of the Sunni vs Shia vs Kurd phenomenon could have been prevented with some wise preventive management. Meaning, if we had operated in Iraq the same way the Spec Ops did in Afghanistan, we would have ended up with a revolutionary leader that agreed with us and also had the support to unite the country, if only because he blazed a trail of dead bodies into Baghdad with US support. It is no coincidence that Karzai lead indigenous Afghani forces aided by Spec Ops teams, and took Taliban occupied cities. It is no coincidence that at the end, Karzai became President. He did not become leader because we appointed him thus, he became leader because his people trusted him. When Karzai said he would take this city, he proved his word golden. There was this interview with the Spec Ops team with Karzai, that I have on my blog, was pretty interesting.

The invasion of Iraq reminded me of something called the "Short and Victorious War".

Communication is important, I agree. But communication is only that important if you screw up in the first place. If you do everything right, then you don't need to justify anything, people will automatically go to your banner.

Bush has two choices. Either he can focus on rhetoric, oration, and communication. Or he can focus on discombobulating Iran and Syria. I favor the latter.

New Wiretap Ruling

I Just wanted to save an interesting comment here, so i can refer to it easily.

Comment below written by: MICHAEL in MI

Excellent point made by Andy McCarthy:

Just a Second, I Thought Those Leaks Didn't Matter ... [Andy McCarthy]

Remember back when the New York Times first disclosed the existence of the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program. A number of us contended that this should be grounds for a prosecution because it alerted the enemy to our signals intelligence efforts in wartime.

"NONSENSE!" replied the Times and its allies. You see, they explained, al Qaeda well knew that we were using every means in our arsenal to penetrate its communications. Telling terrorists about the NSA program didn't alert them to anything they weren't already well aware of.

Well, apparently the ACLU, CAIR, Greenpeace and the other "public interest" ogranizations who sued the government did not get the memo.

In order to convince Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to invalidate the NSA program, these plaintiffs had to establish that they had "standing" to sue -- meaning that they had suffered some kind of individualized harm, something that was unique because it is not enough for standing purposes to simply claim a general objection to government policies.

So how did these plaintiffs claim to have been harmed? They are journalists, lawyers and scholars who do research and other work in the Middle East. But now, according to Judge Taylor's opinion, they have sworn in affidavits that "Persons abroad who before the program [became pubic knowledge] spoke with them by telephone or internet no longer do so." They are, she says, "stifled in their ability to vigorously conduct research, interact with sources, talk to clients," because people suddenly think the U.S. government is listening.

So which is it? Is the TSP leak a big nothing that changed no one's behavior, or a bombshell that changed everyone's behavior? Evidently, it depends on which scenario the Left believes will damage the Bush administration more on any given day.

Posted by: MICHAEL in MI | Aug 18, 2006 12:53:39 PM

Granted, it isn't clear to me what kind of "tap" Bush is doing. It's obviouslly international to us local, so it can fit under foreign surveillaince instead of domestic police powers. One reason why it is under National Security instead of FBI local.

The other question is whether they actually listen in on these "taps" or whether it is just seeing tracing the phone list of captured terror cellphone addresses. Meaning do they listen in on every phone call from these addresses, or do they listen and then cross out, or locate then listen. Since Bush doesn't want to talk about it, it really causes confusion going on when one side, the Left doesn't care about the facts or what they reveal, while the other side who tries to defend the NSA, are doing so from self-chosen restrictions and security.

Honor and Blood

Having read the speech, I would just like to say that the author would have really liked the Marine Corps and their value systems. The US military exemplifies how someone can live in the 21st century with advances of technology, yet be a person endlessly improving himself.

The technology does not weaken a soldier character wise, it does not make things easy for him in training. It was not designed to.

Ask yourselves this, Neo, how does people like blackfive conduct a career in the profession of soldiering and yet also be the grand support for democracy and institutions?

But it's my contention that the difference between what he is advocating and what the jihadists are advocating is profound, although there is a superficial resemblance in that they both rely on religion to save us. This difference goes back to a fundamental (pardon the pun) difference between Islam and Christianity, as I understand it.

It's much like the difference between Islamic Jihad and US Marines. Both are willing to die and to kill for what they believe in, but US Marines are not equivalent to Islamic Jihad in most terms of behavior.

They are not alike, even though some things imply that they should be alike.

But religion can be another trap, and the jihadis are perhaps the best example of where that can lead.

Solz isn't talking about religion, Neo. He takes great pains to mention mostly about spirituality. Religion is only the means by which spiritualism can be achieved. The US Marine Corps and the SEALs, Delta,and Marine Recon have achieved the ultimate in spiritualism, and their goal isn't religion at all.

This is where Solzhenitzyn appears to circle round to a position that resembles that of our current enemies. Because isn't that exactly what they're saying? Counter the flaws of the Western Enlightenment with a return to the hegemony of religion in human life?

There are many methods to solve a problem, most of them are sub-optimal.

Islam does offer a path to heavenly rewards by imposing discipline in mortal life. With the prayers, submission to Allah, and Islamic Jihad jazz.

However, there are other package deals that can offer the same thing via different means and different price ranges.

Get rid of religion, it's a tool. If you want to talk about solutions, then dilineate the clear difference between what we want and how we get there. What we want is a better state in human affairs than just worship of money and materialism. We do not want to throw off the shackles of God only to be chained by the prison of our emotions, instincts, and whims.

So in a way, a person has to choose which duty he will follow. Duty to pursue money, vices, and material goods. Duty to pursue virgins and the smitting of the infidel perhaps. Or duty to something greater and purer than themselves, something longer lasting like God or the United States Constitution.

Solz doesn't mention the military option, because the military in Russia is not the US Marines. It will never be. He didn't see that option because the last war he saw was Vietnam that the Marines fought in.

About the denial of individual freedom. It is a human paradox that sometimes you must give up what you seek in order to obtain it. In this case, the military gives up certain freedoms in order to secure freedoms for other people. Since human affairs isn't a zero sum game, both civilian and military gain through this exchange. That's how it should work.

When duty requires that a certain thing be, no amount of individual freedom will do anything to change that duty or requirement. As the Japanese said, death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than mountains. In some respects, duty is more important than life because without duty, life is meaningless.

Honor is acquired through accomplishing one's duty, and one's duty is accomplished through blood. Honor and blood so to speak are the requirements of maintaining a certain level of spiritual health. Eternal vigilance and the blood of patriots and all that for freedom.

Like any internal combustion engine, you cannot drive it on nothing. In the physical world of science, you must input energy to get out energy. You cannot get something for nothing. In life, without sacrifice and duty, all you get are the dregs of other people's work and experiences. Nothing for yourself, because you have not given anything to earn anything back.

Body Count OIF

This is a good description of the other side, how much damage America has inflicted upon terrorism instead of the endless nabobe maroon chanting about American casualties.

To Paul

Since the argument has been going on for awhile, I think it's time to put down some basic truths through analysis.

For one thing, we have this here argument over facts and logic and so forth. The way I see it, arguments are composed of a few things. An argument being a statement saying something is true or something is false.

Arguments require evidence, facts, and correlational supports. These are justifications, things that justify whether an argument is true or false. But an argument is just statements of fact. Arguments use facts, evidence, and justifications in order to support a hypothesis that claims to know the truth of something else entirely new.

For example, someone could say that it is a fact that Bush is a liar. That would not be a fact, that entire statement would be an argument, justified by itself basically. Basically a circular argument presents its own justifications, instead of finding it somewhere else or linking you to it via logic, reasoning, or html sources on the net.

What would be a fact is whether Bush knew Alpha, Gamma, and Delta were true. Then the other fact would have to be that Bush said something about Alpha, Gamma, and Delta that was inconsistent with what he believed. Thus then the argument that Bush is a liar, would be supported by those previous two facts. Facts are specific data collected on specific instances and locations in space-time. Facts are limited, in that they only describe one event or one person or one action. Arguments are not limited because they can string a lot of facts together to form a reason chain or a logic chain.

So now we come to the other thing that makes up arguments, reason and logic. Reason and logic are most of the time interchangeable, in my view reason is superior to logic because reason has some real life wisdom inherent in the processing ability. Logic is pure and undiluted, but that just means it can be systematically wrong. Reason is superior because it also uses human intuition and what makes "sense", not just on a logical level, but on an instinctual and experience based level as well. But for argument's sake, we'll settle for the interchangeability between logic and reasoning. Logic, then in the end, simply connects facts together in a way that is systematic, objective, reproducible, and otherwise compacting facts and evidence into a configuration that makes sense and is not contradictory. Therefore two facts that state a mutually exclusive conclusion, would not be something that could pass logical consistency if logic was used to try to use both facts to prove one or the other. There are some basic rules that logic cannot violate, but within those rules, logic is pretty predictable.

Now let's talk about the types of logic. There are inductive logic and deductive logic. THe problem occurs when someone is using deductive logic and thinks they are using inductive logic. So, if someone claims that they have the truth and facts on their side, that this allowed them to draw a scientifically proven conclusion, but in actuality that someone was using deductive logic based around a priori faith convictions, then we have a problem. Our problem is that person thinks his facts lead to the formation of his ideology and beliefs, except in reality his beliefs and ideology lead to his awareness of the facts that agreed with him.

Since deductive logic starts from the argument and goes to the end, it can be easily confused with inductive logic which takes the end result of reasoning and facts and ends up at the beginning, the hypothesis argued by the original argument. One goes forward from the beginning, the other starts at the end and goes towards the beginning.

So I think Paul's problem is really that he confuses his facts with his arguments and his arguments with his facts. A lot of what he has said about me or Bush supporters are not wrong in terms of general arguments, but are also wrong in the specifics. It is not that Bush supporters like me don't criticize the President, it is simply that we criticize the President for things that Paul doesn't think is in need of criticism. For example, while we accuse Bush of being too honest, Paul accuses Bush of being too dishonest. Why are there two arguments arguing for mutually exclusive things, it cannot both be true that Bush is too honest and that he is too dishonest. One or the other has to be wrong.

So how does a person go about judging which is wrong and which is right? You have a few choices. You can either focus on the facts, and attempt to divine instances in which Bush lied specifically, then draw your conclusions from a consistent analysis of Bush's behavior and psychological behavioral model. Or you can use deductive logic to determine what the facts should be, if Bush was too honest or too dishonest.

The crafting of the required list of logic gates, of the 1s and 0s, require knowledge and ability in deductive logic. An example of deductive logic is when Bookworm learned that guns were not the tools of menace that she has always believed up to a certain point. Bookworm escaped from the belly of the liberal because she was a liberal. As thus, she came to face facts or evidence or reasoning that conflicted with her a priori assumptions of what is true and false. When those conflictions grew too great to sustain the a priori arguments for liberal truth, Bookworm discarded those assumptions and took up new beliefs that better fit the facts. This is what humans call changing their minds.

Inductive logic is not so useful in this case, because inductive logic requires that someone be objective and unbiased, that they not have a belief in one or the other conclusion. We have heard about scientists with "pet theories" that change the data and the experiments to have favorable outcomes that support their pet theories. We do not want that perversion of inductive logic. To use inductive logic, you must be a tabula rosa, you must be a true neutral. Few humans are true neutrals, we all have our prejudices, our beliefs, and our fundamental assumptions that support our world view.

So when Paul talks about how he has all the facts that Bush's policies are a failure and Bush is a liar, that cannot be true via logical consistency. Facts are not arguments, facts do not say whether something is always true or always false. Facts only say that something was true in this moment in this time. How can Paul believe Bush has lied, via inductive logic, when he has no factual evidence backing up his claim to the knowledge of what Bush believed and what he said or did that was inconsistent with Bush's beliefs? Of course you could lack a direct input/output of a person's thoughts, but even then you can come up with reasons using the facts discovered by psychology and human nature, in order to construct a reasonable explanation of Bush's actions using factual evidence and consistent real events. Paul has not done this for some reason.

And what I think is truely invalid in terms of the structure of arguments, is when Paul says that because he has all the facts, anyone else with an argument contradicting his premises, are ignoring facts. Facts are not finite however, just because someone has 100/100 facts that prove his position, does not mean that the next 101st fact will not dismantle that position.

That is the vulnerability of inductive logic, it is prone to inadequate factual representation of reality. For Paul to claim that he has mastered the factual representation of reality through some kind of omniscience, is rather too much of a stretch to believe in.

So now you know that you can tell the truth of Bush by using inductive or deductive logic. Deductive log starts from the premise that Bush is too dishonest, for example, and attempts to trace the logical consequence of that premise in real terms. By comparing and contrasting with various real event consequences supported by facts, a person can use deductive logic to determine whether the a priori premise was correct or not. You can also use inductive logic, but this requires that you not take a side. Paul neither used inductive logic, because he took a side, nor did Paul use deductive logic (he claimed that evidence backed his arguments without explaining the evidence that backed the other a priori argument position). Because Paul mixed and matched, the result is not very coherent.

Some stuff about Oil and Logistics

Inspired by a Bookworm post in the link title.

The last part of the article, reflects upon a basic truism I figured out for myself awhile ago. It was that war is the ultimate competition, and in competitions between life and death, certain inalienable qualities crop up. Those qualities being, the freer and more democratic the system of governance, the more productive the economic power of that nation. The more wealthy the people are, the less inclined to loot, vandalize, and otherwise disrupt the status quo with revolutionary furor. The more orderly the system of the rule of law, the more productive the people are, the more wealth generatedion, and a greater chance for unity of purpose and design.

All these qualities and consequences, produce a better war fighting nation. A nation that can buy guns, train soldiers by valuing individual lives over the price of training and guns, a nation that can sustain warfare for a long time via the economic position of the people and the economic endurance of the nation.

Steven Den Beste used to think wars were just who had the bigger club, using brute strength to knock down all the competitors. That's thug warfare all right, but it isn't the epitome of the ultimate competition between peoples and nations.

Most Democrats think war is all about who has the bigger weapon, and since America has the biggest weapon the Democrats believe America is not vulnerable or at risk. If a few Americans die here or there, well the Democrats are not going to care unless those dieing are their children and their loved ones. Since the Democrats send out the military to the backwoods corner of the world, it is most likely that people will die that they don't care about. Only an attack on AMerica's homeland itself, will galvanize Democrat reactions.

However, war isn't aentirely about who has the biggest gun, or who has the most money, or who has the most people. The ultimate competition is just that, the ultimate competition. Everything is used. Soul, will, wealth, skill, knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, and numbers. Among others. War isn't a limited competition, at least not Total War. You can have competitions with rules or you can have competitions without rules. With rules, means you impose upon reality certain limitations taking into account your desired goal. Without limitations or rules, then reality decides who is the best an the winner. In terms of wars to the knife, total wars, wars of either salvation or extermination, then you basically have IMperial Japan vs America. One loses, and one wins. The best nation wins. That is the only rule of Total War. The best nation wins.

If it was just about who had the bigger gun, we'd go back to crime land and thug warfare. With technology, however, the people now matter, not just who has all the swords.

The reason why some people don't like Total War, is because they don't like losing. Either they think they are invulnerable, like HOward Dean, or they believe they will lose against a superior force (Islamic Jihad). So either way, they don't like Total War, either because they believe they won't need it to win or they believe they need to avoid it to win.

However, if you are confident in your nation's power, the power of the citizens in that nation, the wealth and wisdom of America, then righteousness of your cause, then you should have no doubts about your nation winning Total War, the ultimate competition between peoples and nations.

After all, if you are right and God is on your side, then you must have done everything right not only according to reality but morality as well, eh? Military expediency is about doing everything right, and thus accomplishing your objectives. If you have the right military leaders, the right politicians, the right amount of willpower, where everyone always made the right decision or recovered through hard work if they made the wrong decision, then does not your nation have a high chance of winning Total War?

The problem with Islamic Jihad is simple. Nobody has been engaged in Total War with them. Not Israel, not Russia, Not China, not the US in Iraq, and so on and so forth. Oil powers Islamic Jihad, Oil powers their infrastructure, their national will, and their desire to fight. Oil also powers their economy, so that they can do the wrong thing by oppressing their people, yet still have the advantage of a robust economic warchest to buy weapons with.

So why doesn't someone take away Iran's oil via Unrestricted Submarine Warfare? How is Iran going to sell oil when no oil tanker is allowed into their ports? What is the point of having a Navy if you are not going to use it to reinforce national security?

The terroists have the right idea, bomb Iraq's oil infrastructure and electrical grid, piss off everyone and sustain an environment of chaos. This delays the orderly transmission of ideas, prosperity, and law. When you leave a base to your enemy, that enemy will gather around and make use of that base for logistics, logistics that will fuel attacks against your forces. That is why cutting off the logistics, is better than destroying entire armies.

What you can or cannot do in Total War is limited only by your ability to affect reality. There is no PC, there is no self imposed limitations like Bush ordered done, there are no limitations except the limitations of reality, of engineering, of technology, and of human will.

These things are not artificial, they are always there, and because they are always there, that is why it is the ultimate competition. The scoring is objective, it has always been objective, it has always been based upon the same quantifiable things.

I ask you this, what prevents Bush from using the military power of the United States to hijack Iran's oil infrastructure and steal their oil and sell it to the world? We aren't talking about invasion or democracy or taking over cities, capitals, or villages. We are not talking about maintaining security over a piece of territory, we are talking about a pure business deal. We see an Iranian oil tanker, we either destroy it or hijack it and sell the oil ourselves. If we see an oil tanker from another nation trying to dock with an Iranian port, we either blockade that oil tanker or we sink it. What's the rest of the world going to do, declare war on America when we control the world's oil supply? Not even China or Russia has declared war against Iran, it is far more profitable to do business than to do war. Since America has the power, we can do business as well as war. Bush is a business major, I'm sure he'll be much better at business than war. The same protection Iran has against the world, we will steal for ourselves, and in addition with AMerica's sheer power, the war will be ended far sooner. The international community submits when you have a katana resting against their heart, they do not submit because you beg them for help on your knees as Bush has been doing and wha t the Democrats recommend doing more of. Demonstrating Power commands respect, and respect produces authority. Authority thus produces obedience, as Europe is obedient to Iran. The Democrats care too much for people liking them, too populist. Real power comes from respect, not "buddy love". Maybe the Democrats believe that if enough nations like them, then America can send those nations out to do the killing and dieing for the Democrats. Very funny, but that's not going to happen.

So what's stopping Bush from ending the war(s)? It's a self-imposed limitation. Bush doesn't want to steal anything, he feels it is wrong, he feels it violates international laws and will set a bad example. Bush can afford to do this, barely, because he holds such great power from such a high position of elevation. A person can impose handicaps upon himself and still win against his unrestricted opponent, if the handicapped person is 10X or 100X better at the fighting arts than the unrestricted opponent. However, it will take longer, and when you understand that the longer this fight goes on, the more people that will die, then the conclusion is simple. It is more immoral and unethical to prolong the fight by putting self-imposed limitations on America, than it is to release the limits of America in doing everything we can with every weapon in our arsenal against the enemy. Bush once promised to use every means at his disposal to fight the War on Terror. Bush has not fullfilled that promise, and the fact that Democrats don't call him on it, only exacerabates Bush's problem. Bush's problem is America's problem, and America's problem is the world's problem.

Oil is the one thing that Americans understand. Business, that's what the wealthy understand, and that's what the poor understands as well if only because wealth comes form jobs and businesses. Who would truly be against lowering gas prices and securing the Middle East oil supply? The Democrats have done so much damage to American foreign policy when they accused Bush of fighting for oil. Bush had to defend himself against this, and that meant everyone on his side tried to get away from fighting for oil. But oil is what we should be fighting for. Just as Lincoln freed the slaves, we must free the oil. Slaves were adding to the economic power of our enemies. When we freed the slaves, they joined the Union armies and helped defeat the South.

Who exactly would be willing to committ political suicide by going against America's need for oil? The Democrats don't care about oil, they care about being re-elected.

Most people don't care who's in charge of big business, just so they don't get cheated. People do not absolutely care who they do business with, as Europe has proven. Americans have higher standards, which means we are less corrupt. However, it does make fighting an economic price war, very hard when you are up against unscrupulous people not only in Iran but in Washington D.C. as well.

How long can you afford to fight with one hand tied behind your back against two ruthless enemies that attempt to destroy all that you protect and cherish? How many family members are worth the price of moral purity?

I recently came across a post of Grim's at blackfive, and he was talking about some of the same themes I was talking about, about oil and cutting the enemy's logistics and how what Bush was doing was immoral. This below is the comment I wrote in reply to Grim's post. Read his post first, then read the comment.

I've considered that moral dilemma as well, Grim. My conclusion was that if you truely loved someone, then would you not want them to be happy and safe? However, if your love of that someone is the thing that puts them in danger, that keeps them with you and puts them in danger, is your love strong enough to place the consideration of the loved one over your own feelings?

How would you protect someone that loved you from being killed, if your love was keeping him tied to the place of danger? You cannot convince the person to leave, because he loves you and is willing to risk his life. THe only way to convince him to leave the place of danger, independent of reason, is to demonstrate that you do not love him and that he has no reason to stay here with you.

If you truly loved the children, you would place their considerations first. If this means detaching your heart from your mind, if it means demonstrating a lack of love through action and rhetoric, then that will be it, if you have the willpower to sustain such an action of necessity.

That is the right thing to do, the honest thing to do for real love. Parents face this pretty early. Do they love their children and remove them from all bacterial and sicknesses, only to have them become allergic and sickly for their entire adult lifespan? Or do they harden their hearts, and expose their children to viruses and bacteria, hoping against hope that it will not kill them, in return for their future safety? Do you teach a child how to use a gun so that he can protect himself with one, or do you try to protect that child from reality by not telling him anything that is going on?

These moral dilemmas are challenges that people face individually. No one else can determine for you how you will react to these moral dilemmas, only you and your soul will decide. THe strength of your love, the condition of your mind, and the hardenss of your will.

Wars are a test. Total Wars are the ultimate test, the ultimate competition to see who is morally right, physically strong, and emotionally durable. Many people, Bush included since he's the chief, have attempted to limit this war. The power of the US buffers against the threat of terrorism, but this won't be so forever. No limited opponent can face an unrestricted opponent and win 10 out of 10. Not even if you are 10X more powerful. Tiger Woods with a gold handicap against that other dude with no handicap. Murphy wants in on that.

I appreciate your writing most of the time more for the depth of analysis than sublime reasoning. We have all been tap-dancing around this issue and I appreciate your biting the bullet and addressing it. You choked me up once or twice because I have to think about how to explain to my kids that I agree with you.

The question is could any of us act with conviction given that belief?

Well Jimbo, I tend to think you can act with conviction simply because there are two types of love, in general. Selfish love and selfless love. Meaning, selfish love is where the feeling of love is so strong that you are not going to do anything to threaten it, the feeling of it, even if it meant seeing the one you loved destroyed in front of you. Saving the village by destroying, remmeber that? (Save Japan by destroying it with nukes is actually an example of wisdom) Actually Saving the village by seeing it destroyed, instead of saving it. Killing a woman because she has been rendered impure, in order to save her in your eyes. Selfless love is where you put the safety of the ones you love above your own personal desires, feelings, and status.

What is love? Love is pain, to feel pain so that those you love, do not feel pain. I'm writing this in chronological order. So I read Grim's post first, some of the comments, Jimbo's comment, and then Grim's comments.

That is an order of wisdom that is not human. We should not blame anyone for failing to come to it naturally -- it is not natural. Yet it is still true. That means it must be supernatural: a kind of love that is not a normal part of the human heart. Yet reason shows that it is true love, however strange it feels to a mortal heart. - Grim

I came across that, and it is true it is wisdom, because I've always been intelligent so that is why I desired wisdom above intelligence. Wisdom had to be earned, intelligence was just inborn. I think I first encountered a good example of true love by watching Babylon 5. Where Linear and Denin and the Captain had this love triangle going on. Linear loved Denin but was loyal to her as an aid and armsman, so he did not feel that it was his place to interfere. So when Denin saw the Captain trapped in a poisonous chamber, and couldn't get out because the keypad was on the other side, Denin ran away. Giving into a moment of weakness, but he came back after he thought about the consequences of his actions. Denin openly loved the Captain and was married to him. Would Linear hurt his beloved solely in order to get rid of the competition? Is that not selfish? Since the door was clear, they both saw each other. The Captain had no idea of Linear's true feelings, and when Linear came back to save the Captain, he found Denin with the Captain, helping him gain back oxygen.

Then there were other things, like parents and child and immune systems. It is true love Grim, and while some people are Intelligent, they are not wise. Certainly the Left is not wise.

In the end, I think it's a harsh choice, that only the strong of heart, mind, and soul can make. You may be willing to sacrifice your life for others, but are you willing to allow others to sacrifice their life for you? If you could do something that could save them in the process? What if saving them meant that you could never see them again, what if saving them meant that you had to deceive them into believing that you did not love them at all? Are you strong enough to make that decision? Is your love strong enough or is it just a transient feel good emotion for yourself?

Is it not true that if we disregard all things peaceful during times of war (such as children, mosques, etc.), we could go in, get the job done, and be victorious in a shorter amount of time? This way, less time-less death.

Killing people's children on purpose is one way to get them to fight to the death against you. This way, you get more death in more time, not less time less death. Let's not confuse, Rosemary, between the means and the ends. The end is the saving of more lives, the means is the ending of those lives. To save the nation of Japan, you must nuclearize the nation of Japan, to save the village, you must destroy the village. It is not regular logic, because we are talking about humans here, and humans as we all know are very illogical people.

Somalia - Man on Street

I was talking to this guy, who lived in Somalia and came to the US. He said that the Chinese got a lot of contracts in Somalia because they were all business, they didn't nose around in places where they didn't belong. They would go there, do what they were contracted to do, get the money, and then leave. That is the word on the street in Somalia. SO you can guess how the average Somali looks upon the US, where the natural desires of liberals is to nose around in the boondocks, while leaving the job undone.

The Somalians don't mind having their lives bettered, what they probably do mind is that if you want to mess up their lives, then stay for the long haul, instead of popping here and there.

Another conclusion I drew, was that China is attempting to be a mercantile empire. There are a couple of different versions of Empires. Enlightened Empires, Despotic Empires, Expansionist Empires, Mercantilist Empires (Britain east india company), and probably Non-Expansionist Empires. A lot of people accuse Bush of being of the mercantile stripe, but as you know, it's far more likely Bush is the non-expansionist version while China is the one interested in making money.

Islamist or Islamic fascists

The reason it’s inappropriate to describe Islamists as fascists is simple: They’re not statists. To Muslims, including that subset of Muslims I call Islamists (see below), a state is at best a temporary thing, performing certain administrative, organizational, or ideological tasks. It has no independent significance, as it does in, say, the Christian tradition. (“Render unto Caesar” and all that.) Islamists aren’t trying to create a state in which all the parts work as one; their ultimate goal is a stateless world in which everyone worships Allah. Read up on Islam if this seems strange to you. Start with this.

Why would President Bush use “fascist” to describe such an ideology? I honestly don’t know. The only thing I can think of is that “fascist,” like “communist,” has negative emotive meaning. It’s an all-purpose term of abuse. To call something fascist is primarily to condemn it—that’s President Bush’s goal—and only secondarily to describe it. (This is why Brian Leiter and other leftists call President Bush a fascist. It’s pure abuse, with little or no cognitive content.) The best term to describe the people President Bush has in mind is “Islamists.” A Muslim is an adherent of Islam, which is a religion. Islamism is not a religion; it is a political morality (note the “ism”) and a set of doctrines about permissible means of social change. (Terrorism is one such means.) Those who subscribe to it are Islamists. All Islamists are Muslims, but not all Muslims are Islamists. Islamism competes not with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Confucianism but with liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, anarchism, and socialism. See here for more on this important distinction.

Fascism is an occult ideology, one based upon the mythic belief in the Aryan super race and the perfidy of the Jews that bred with the Aryans and shrank the once noble giants down to human sized caricatures of the previous super race.

So no, it isn't that "The only thing I can think of is that “fascist,” like “communist,” has negative emotive meaning. "

(This is why Brian Leiter and other leftists call President Bush a fascist. It’s pure abuse, with little or no cognitive content.)

When someone, like anal here, says that he doesn't know why Bush used fascism to describe Islamic Jihad, it is then a pretty good example of a lack of cognitive content.

The same ideology, mythology, and what not powering the shame ridden masses in Arabia was the same ideology powering the masses in Germany. Basically, the belief that one select group of people were superior, and that the Jews were the reason why this super race failed.

Islamic Jihad is a death cult, Nazism and fascism were also centered around the occult. Fascism being a related description of the Nazis. They are tied together.

UPdate I'm going to change how I reasoned out the argument. I'm not saying fascism is Nazism and the occult, but rather that because fascism was centered around Nazism, what Nazism centered around also infuses fascism. Now there were fascists who were not part of Nazism, like Mussolini, but that seems to be a rather irrelevant sideshow. Mussolini was just on for the show, was he really the author of the Nazi ideology? No, that Rudulph Hiss.

Ned Lamont's Speech

I was watching his speech on Fox News, and comparing it to Lieberman's speech. Liberman sounded like a statesmen, Ned Lamont sounded like some gruff teenager that had been yelling too much, his voice was very annoying and broken.

OMG Cynthia McKinney lost!! I just heard, hahaha.

ANyways, Ned Lamont also has a pretty wife on his right. Presumably that is his wife since there was a woman on Lieberman's right as well. Anyways, that looked like a trophy wife, for the millionare and the budding politician of course.

I just can't forget the Daily Kos commercial. Markos looked like some teenager, and it was just weird. Ned Lamont's speech was like some amateur demagogue practicing his lines. Ridiculously transparent. Oh ya, he also had like two of the heaviest black Democrat propagandist cannons at his back. Sharpton and Rainbow dude.

You got your chocolate, your vanilla, and your Rainbow it seems, to use the Mayor of New Orlean's rhetoric.

Bloody Sunday

Synova put up a link to this interesting music video that spliced up Bush's speeches into a song.

As background info, this describes Bloody SUnday.

Catholics were unanimous in calling the shooting unprovoked murder and ridiculed the army version that troops themselves had come under heavy gunfire.

Widgery exonerated the soldiers, saying some of the dead might have been armed before they were hit. He said troops came under fire when they tried to arrest rioters after clashes on the fringe of the rally.

Catholics say the Widgery Report was "a whitewash" which slandered unarmed people who were caught in a hail of army fire.

[...]
NEW EVIDENCE

Britain's Channel 4 television news and Don Mullan, an Irish human rights activist, have both come up with new evidence that soldiers may have opened fire from the 17th century city walls above the Catholic Bogside area.

Mullan said Widgery dealt only with the rounds fired by paratroopers at ground level but said eyewitness statements and ballistics opinion suggested three of the victims may have been killed by army sniper fire from the walls. "This was not the paratroopers coming in on a scoop-up arrest operation. This was the working out of a much wider military operation on that day," said Mullan, who has studied original statements by civilians for a new book "Eye Witness Bloody Sunday."

Daly said one lesson of Bloody Sunday was that military punishment of civilians in peaceful protest does not work.

"I think it is imperative that the British government quite unequivocally admits what happened, in other words that paratroopers deliberately killed innocent civilians -- picking them out and targetting them individually -- and apologise for it."

This is the original main page with the links on it to bloody sunday.

On January 30, 1972, soldiers from the British Army's 1st Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed and peaceful civilian demonstrators in the Bogside, Derry, Ireland, near the Rossville flats, killing 13 and wounding a number of others. One wounded man later died from illness attributed to that shooting.

The march, which was called to protest internment, was "illegal" according to British government authorities. Internment without trial was introduced by the British government on August 9, 1971.

The British-government-appointed Widgery Tribunal found soldiers were not guilty of shooting dead the 13 civilians in cold blood.

This ties in nicely with what Ravana at bookworm room said, that the British were more disciplined than the US military and that was why the Shia areas were not like the US controled ones.

LCD Monitor Comparisons

Haven't seen one of these before, but I was trying to learn about LCDs and got this.

Bookworm's Room

[Some kind of fight at Bookworm, brought some of my comments here]

Bush is too honest, everyone in our world knows that. Bush is so honest, he won't even propagandize his viewpoint, meaning dessimilate information favorable to his viewpoint at the expense of others.

Another reason why Bush isn't trumpeting the evidence, is because people like MissionAccomplished would just say "Mission Accomplished" whenever Bush says something.

For example, in a quixotic attempt to substantiate the irrational belief that the WMD justification for Iraq invasion was actually true, Bookworm can only point to whacked-out right-wing sites such as the Moony Times and PowerLine.

The day that two lawyers from this site and the lawyers from Powerline are called whacked-out right-wing people, is the day of Armageddon in which lawyers will rule the earth as the annointed of God.

I was quite surprised at the number of lawyers back when the Constitution was written. Jefferson was a lawyer, that other guy was a lawyer, along with merchants and businessmen and inventors like Franklin. But anyways, in a state, there are soldiers, spies, and lawyers. Without the spies, the soldiers will be brought down by internal betrayal and lack of information. Without lawyers, the military will become undisciplined and unable to determine what level of punishment or even who is guilty or innocent. Without soldiers, lawyers and spies would get taken down by the enemy's soldiers.
Getting to the point. Lawyers aren't on the right. Lawyers are everywhere. Unless ofcourse you live in a universe to the left, in that case, ya those lawyers are to the right, the wacked right.

I'm telling you Bookworm, whenever you get close to unraveling the matrix of unreality and metaphysics, they can see you then. And they come, and come, and the deluge occurs.

It's like they got a radar system that can detect whenever people are talking about things that might reveal the mystery of the ages or something. And when they come, they come in packs, they come in mob rushes, and they all say certain things dilineated by geological and geographic differences only.

I can hear you now?!

Some of these people would get wasted if they tried to pick an argument with me. I give kudos to Mission for accomplishing his objectives in avoiding me and going after someone else. Smart action.

The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war……He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

I'll translate this in terms some people might be more amenable to. MSNBC wanted to make more bucks, and in order to get more bucks they needed more ratings, to get more ratings they needed to draw people in America to watching them, and when they are anti-war when the war is popular then they won't be watched therefore MSNBC will do certain things to increase their market share. Like firing Phil. Nobody said MSNBC had business geniuses from the Apprentice working for them.

#

Ban away there Delusion-girl! Like I’m ever coming back to read your “through-the-wormhole” delusions again!

Comment by MissionAccomplished | August 7, 2006

See what I'm talking about. Instead of picking a fight with someone like me, they want to pick on the gurrls. Right.

I recommend retreat when faced against the strong, and beat up on the weak when they are under you. That is, I would recommend it, but I'm on my side, not anyone else's.

Here's the difference between my style of argumentation and the style of other people's argumentation. Other people get flustered and seek to inflict discomfort and frustration because they feel backed into a corner. Other people lose their tempers easily and reduce their psychological balance into the negative and vindictive zones. I, on the other hand, don't use personal attacks. You can get people angry and make them lose arguments, if you curse them out, but where's the skill and art in that? Far better to take self imposed limitations and see if you can outsmart and out maneuver the opponent, into losing his cool before members of the public.

People call others names and attack them personally because they feel threatened by other people and their positions. SInce few people have a powerful enough presence and arsenal of attacks that would scare me or threaten my positon or composure, I do not feel threatened by anyone here calling Republicans wackos, or right wing wackos, or right wing wacko Powerline sites, or whatever. And since I don't feel threatened, I do not feel the need to lash out in a blaze of uncontrolled rage. Ya sure, some people behave at internet sites because they have manners, but when people like MissionAccomplished comes here, I only behave because it would take too much energy to do anything else.

It would take a pretty stringent and renewed campaign to get past my defenses. NeoNeoConned and ConfudeForeigner maintained their agent provocateur actions well until after they were banned by Neo Neocon using Haloscan. Yes, gasp!!! The infamoussss Neo Neo Con.... *cue the music*

Btw, I wish Mission would accomplish his mission and keep to his word, never to read Bookworm's words again. You can always come to my blog and read my words, if you feel up to the challenge.

First Episodes of Naruto

If you can't read the subtitles, click on the video and then use the enlarged version link at youtube.





This is one of my favorite anime series, and these first few should give you a taste of what potential is in the series and the kinds of themes in it. A lot of anime series have several episodes where nothing happens, or something happens but the characters are developed slowly.

This is the third episode, which starts the first story arc.


I heard the English version, and it was... about 80% inferior. The 20% that was good, was due to the well done storyline, characterization, and plot twists.

Here's the fourth episode.



Part 1 of Ep 5.

Part 2 of Ep 5.

Episode 6 A
Episode 6 B
Episde 7 A
Episode 7 B
Episode 8 A
Episode 8 B

Ep 9


Btw, this music video is pretty good. She does other songs as well, the ones she herself wrote down, check it out.

To Ravana

I was arguing with someone called Ravana. These are the last two comments. One from her, one from me. It's far back in Bookworm's blog, so navigating to it to read might be troublesome so I put the link on my blog.

1. Ravana Says:
   August 4th, 2006 at 1:46 pm

   Jg, are you for real? I cannot even begin to attack your argument because you make none. Your post comprising of terms like “barbarians”, “civilized world”, “there is no third way” etc is pure pulpit rubbish and smacks of outdated ill-informed colonialism. You make no attempt to back up anything you are saying. You appear to see the world in black and white. Fortunately, it is not.

   The US’s defeat in Vietnam did not hasten the fall of Communism. I am curious to know why you think it did.

   Ymarsakar - you said: “In summary, people blow themselves up in Gaza because they are teenagers that are sexually frustrated.”

   If you actually believe the things you have said in your last post, I think I am going to stop having this discussion with you. You are clearly out of your mind.

   If you think that the war in Iraq is a success, you are in an extreme minority of the world’s population. And in fact, you would be a minority even in the US. The majority of Americans think that the war in Iraq has made the US less safe, the position that I have been taking all along. The rest of the world knew all along that the going into Iraq was a gross mistake, and I for one had serious doubts whether there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq in the first place. There aren’t any WMD. And the American government said that there were, and this was their justification for the war. There are no WMD, so the American government lied, and so the war is unjust.

   However, I have to admit, the hardline position against terrorists and (finally!) the classification of groups like the LTTE as terrorists have made me better off, but this is an unintentional consequence. The war has made Iraqis and Americans worse off.

   Here’s an article from the American media. Enlighten yourself.

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/07/AR2005060700296.html

   As an aside, your deductive reasoning is flawed in the case of your argument against the BBC because all your three premises are flawed. You would have to start your reasoning from a premise accepted by me for your reasoning in turn to be accepted by me. I do not accept either of the alternative premises that you offer.

   The BBC are not a propaganda apparatus for Blair and the British. The are not propaganda machines for the Left, independent of the government.They are not shills for foreign governments like the PLO and Israel. Deception is not their goal.

2. Ymarsakar Says:
   August 6th, 2006 at 8:56 am

   If you actually believe the things you have said in your last post, I think I am going to stop having this discussion with you. You are clearly out of your mind.

   I’ve already laid down the situation, Ravana, you just didn’t pay attention. Your logic starts with a NOT gate. If you don’t know what a NOT logic gate is, then here it is. A NOT logic gate makes a 1 into a 0 and a 0 into one. It is used in computers, computers that rely upon machine code otherwise known as binary code.

   This means, that whatever is positive for me, is a negative for you. de facto. If you want to opinionate it as meaning I’m out of my mind, then you’re free to wrongly do that. Others will know what I’m talking about and take from it more than your accussations based upon amateur psychotherapy.

   If you can’t tolerate, even comprehend, people who disagree with you, then that’s your problem, Ravana. Not mine or JG’s.

   You appear to see the world in black and white. Fortunately, it is not.

   Do you understand that there are more than one kind of number system? There is binary, decimal, Hexadecimal, octagimal, and various others. You can translate decimal to binary and back again, it’s easy. The world doesn’t have to be black white, the world just has to be able to translate black and white into colors. If you got a problem with someone’s 1 and 0 view of the world, then maybe you should criticize yourself for seeing anyone that disagrees with you fundamentally as being crazy. It’s either your way as 1 or craziness, 0, eh?

   You would have to start your reasoning from a premise accepted by me for your reasoning in turn to be accepted by me.

   So, I was right, it is either your way or the zero way? Regardless of that way, you’re also wrong because logic is about determining which premises and a priori propositions are correct. If I start my reasoning from a premise that you think is already true, then there is no way you could ever be wrong. You could change the fundamental laws of physics for god’s sake, just so your statement that “the sky is red” could be true.

   THat’s not how I play. But I know that’s how you play, though. Deductive logic is not about reasoning based upon “accepted premises”. Deductive logic, its usability, comes from exploring ALL possible PREMISES and fundamental foundations, in order to verify which ones are more accurately reflected by reality and facts.

   Determining whether the BBC is this way or that, requires that you assume the BBC is this way or that, then and only then asking yourself what should be true if the BBC was truely this way or that. That’s deductive logic used by someone who comprehends its usability.

   If you don’t think deception is their goal, you should say what their goal is. Then I’ll tell you why you’re wrong by assuming what you say is true, and verifying its consistency via the world line.

There's also this, which I might need for later.

The Mocking Bird at Neo

neo: care to address the total implosion of Iraq that's taken place while the world is focused on Israel/Lebanon? The fact that the vaunted administration of Al Maliki doesn't run outside the Green Zone? Pace and Abizaid agreeing that Iraq "may be slipping towards a civil war" -- LOL? The fact that the U.S. is deploying thousands more troops to Baghdad from other still-hostile parts of the country in an effort to avoid a last-chopper-out-of-Saigon scenario? The U.S. report in the last week that corruption in the Iraqi government is so bad that one single Iraqi official is believed to have stolen ONE BILLION DOLLARS?

The Iraq farce is over. Bush and his neocon puppetmasters lost. Iraq lost, big time. If there's a winner, it's Iran -- and the Kurds are going to come out pretty good. The only question remaining about the U.S. withdrawal is: How humiliating will it be? How politically disastrous for the neocons and the poor misguided lapdogs (e.g. Blair) who followed them?

This Israel/Hezbollah thing is a sideshow. Iraq remains. (Along with the real central problem in the Middle East, the Israel/Palestine question).

This is a comment left by tequilamockingbird, which i think is a very good example of the Left in its... unique perspective let us just say that.

This was a previous example, at the same place, where Tequila called me a liar for saying that Tequila had posted several long posts in sucession without breaks. He said that anyone that did that, was obviously trying to disrupt the thread, but of course denied that what I said was true, denied that he did any such thing. Well, after while, after I put down the challenge for others to take bets on who was right me or tequila, tequila somehow remembered.

This is the link and resource to that incident, where he made a fool of himself, and my reaction to it.

Make sure you put tequila in perspective before worrying about "Last Saigon pull out".

ATI Express 200 Chipsets

It's a tech review of the ATI dual core chipship, consisting of a north bridge and a south bridge, the south bridge used to feed peripheral inputs into the chipset architecture.

Because the ATI Express 200 has an integrated graphics core, a meld between ATI and AMD, it allows graphics output that has current technology but is at least two generations back in terms of performance. The review has benchmark tests using Doom 3, Farcry, and UT 2004 in order to test Intel's integrated graphics core with ATI"s integrated graphics core.

Another advantage is that the ATI Express 200 can use system ram in order to bolster video ram. It can also boost and work together with Geforce and ATI Radeon PCI express video cards, so the video capabilities can be upgraded as with all other desktop systems.

Blackfive - The Future Strategy

BF has some good stuff. One of them being a video of a graduation speech by a LT Colonel.


The other one is a strategic intel analysis by Grim, who was a Marine intel officer.

Some highlights here.

But we won't do another Fallujah-style campaign in al Anbar. When it is time to move again against al Anbar province, Iraq's central government will do it themselves. They now have the capability to close the western frontier with the forts, and hold those forts against even serious infantry attacks. This will be a hammer-and-anvil movement, of the sort we regularly employed in Vietnam, but for keeps. Sunni tribes will be evicted and allowed to withdraw -- forever -- to Jordan or Syria, or destroyed, as the Central government prefers.

There will be no partition of Iraq. The Sunnis will comply, or leave, or be destroyed. We have given them the tools, and I see no reason to believe the government of Iraq would refrain from using those tools. I wouldn't, humane though I hope to be. It would save lives in the long run.

[...]
Prognosis:

I suspect that we will one day speak of the war in Iraq the way we speak of the Spanish Civil War -- that is, rarely by comparison to the greater war that followed it. Peace is not in the cards. Things are going to get worse. Our enemies are glad to employ terrorists, who will try to bring the war to our homes. The wise man will prepare his sword, and the arm that may wield it.

Here's a Strategy article about Hizbollah

But going to war with Israel, as any historian of Arab-Israeli relations can tell you, is a losing proposition. The Israelis are famously not stupid, and take any attack on them as a threat to their very existence. These are not the kind of people you want to fight a war with. But Hizbollah thought they had no other choice (there weren't even many options), and now has to stick it out and hope for the best. Hope won't do them much good. While the Hizbollah rocket arsenal is a new touch, it's not like the Israelis have not dealt with new terrorist tricks before. While journalists are keen to figure out what the Israelis are up to, many of the Israeli counter-terror innovations only work if they are kept under wraps for as long as possible. Pundits love this, because they can spout whatever they want, secure in the knowledge that few people will remember that they were way off the mark.

But if you pay close attention, you can figure out who is going to win, and how they are going to do it. The Israelis are hitting Hizbollah where they are vulnerable, but are not broadcasting the target list ahead of time, for obvious reasons. Just like a few years ago, months of seemingly ineffective efforts will suddenly produce results. That has happened before, terrorist victories have not.

I'm wondering whether those leaflets dropped on Lebanese civilian areas to warn them to get out, is not a warning to the terroists as to what is on the Israeli hit list.

Israel pulled out without victory once, because of fatigue and casualty losses. Hizbollah probably thinks it can repeat this feat while gaining power and Iranian backing. Victory is a murky thing. In war, often times you think you've won, and the enemy sends in his reserves.

Jacksonian - Iran

Post about Iran by Glittering Eye

Jacksonian post by glittering eye.

Iran Iran Iran

This was an interesting dean world post about Iran. The catchy detail I liked was this.
UPDATE: Robert Tracinski nails it: It is a war in which everyone knows the enemy's strategy, in which it is child's play to see through all of his ruses and propaganda tricks--and yet our leaders, rather than devising their own counter-strategy, fall for every ruse and play along with the enemy's game.

Bookworm and others like her, will probably find the above quote... very relevant to the construction and criticism of America's war and diplomatic strategy.