Chuck,
I don't have any problem with idle chit chat, you and I are doing that
right now and it is fun. I just thought you had strong felt beliefs and
seem to be intelligent enough to want to make a change for the better.
Rec.boats is a great place for idle chit chat, it is a terrible place to try
to improve the world.
When was the last time you saw anyone change their mind in rec.boats?

"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
Bill Cole wrote:

I for one believe that dissenting opinion is good for America.

As is your right to counter said opinion.

Since you
have such strong beliefs and you have the answers, I just wish you would
be
able to help solve the problems. I am not sure, but I don't know how
many
cabinet members, members of congress or those in power who could actually
help solve these problems read rec.boats.

Try none.


Possible a letter to the editors
might be help the Bush Admin. see the how futile their efforts have been.

That sounds like a great idea. The common people should all give up
expressing
any opinions, and just write letters to editors and politicians. I suppose
you
would still allow all opinions that support your conservative agenda,
however?

That's the wonderful thing about freedom of speech. I'm free to speak.
You're
free to say "shut up", and I don't have to listen.
Same thing works 180 degrees around.

As for the Bush administration seeing "how futile" their efforts have
been?
I believe that everything is going pretty well in accordance with the Bush
plan. Failure to capture OBL for almost 2 years now, failure to find WMD,
failure to find SH.......none of those things are really important- even
though
we were told they were our moral justifications for the last two wars.

It depends on who initiated the action, and who's on the receiving end. :-)
If we do it, it's righteous. If someone else does it, it's terrorism.

"Terrorism is the warfare of the poor. Warfare is the terrorism of the rich."

On 28 Aug 2003 03:08:00 GMT, (Gould 0738) wrote:

You're comin' down pretty hard there, Bill. Prolly oughta ease up on him some
or
he'll stop writing those great articles 'bout boating in the great northwest.

John
On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale,

Bill? Coming down hard? He's one of the more rational righties, IMO. Sticks to
issues rather than name calling, (most of the time), a record that some of his
fellow travelers should aspire to.

Happy to exchange jabs with Bill any day.
He generally says "I think you're wrong, and here's why......" rather than "I
think you're wrong because anybody left of GWB is always wrong and you,
personally, are a sh*thead." A tactic some of his fellow travelers should
consider emulating.


Are you talking about Harry and jps again?

John
On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD

On 28 Aug 2003 03:50:44 GMT, (Gould 0738) wrote:

I did not know Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, but since you
believe he was, shouldn't we go after his top 50 henchmen?

You introduced the "top 50 Iraqis" into the discussion about responding to
9-11.
Even though our government implied that SH conspired with his sworn, mortal
enemy, OBL, to pull of 9-11, the case seems weak at best.

I thought we were discussing 9-11, but to answer your question anyway, if I
was a betting man, I would guess they are over in Syria or buried out in the
middle of the desert. Do you honestly believe that SH was not stockpiling
weapons of MD?

If he had any, they were manufactured outside of Iraq and brought in. The last
time we were able to detect any trace of WMD manufacture in Iraq was 1998.
Inspectors last year not only did not find any weapons, they were unable to
detect even the slightest chemical or biological trace of any recent
manufacturing activity. The ordinance has a 3- 5year shelf life.

Item from Radio Netherlands (hopefully an acceptably objective source) follows:

*******
With the battle for Baghdad fizzling out without the use of chemical weapons by
Iraqi troops, Washington's critics are demanding to know what has happened to
Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction. Former chief UN weapons
inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter is one of those who has heaped scorn upon
President George Bush's administration for going to war. In this interview with
RN's Saskia van Reenan, Mr Ritter, a former US marine officer, explains why he
sees US justifications for waging war as dishonest excuses for empire-building.

"The threat that Iraq poses from weapons of mass destruction I think has been
clearly exposed as a lie. We were told to expect chemical weapons to rain down
on troops as soon as they crossed over the border from Kuwait into Iraq, but
that didn't happen. We were then told that as we closed in on the so-called
‘red line' around Baghdad – the 50-mile circle – that as soon as we
breached that, chemical weapons would be used. That didn't happen. Then we said
chemical weapons would be used as a last-gasp defence of Baghdad but that
didn't happen. What chemical weapons? We were told that the presidential
palaces were brimming over with weapons of mass destruction, but we now occupy
many of the presidential palaces and we've found nothing."

"If Iraq were to have weapons of mass destruction today, they would have had to
reconstitute a manufacturing base since 1998, since weapons inspectors left. No
one has provided any information of a substantive nature that sustains that
allegation. Clearly Iraq had the potential, they had time, they had four years
between the time I left and other inspectors left in 1998 and the time that the
new UNMOVIC inspectors returned in the fall of 2002."

"I have clearly stated that Iraq could reconstitute a limited capability within
six months, so the potential is there for Iraq to have done this, but that
potential doesn't automatically translate into reality, and we did have
inspectors on the ground for almost four months, and they found nothing.
Furthermore they investigated over a dozen sites highlighted by the Central
Intelligence Agency as being prime suspects for producing weapons of mass
destruction and they have found nothing."

(sidebar begins)
DISSENSION IN THE RANKS: Scott Ritter began his fall from grace in the eyes of
the US establishment in the first Gulf War, when as a junior military
intelligence analyst he began filing reports contradicting the official US
estimates of the number of Scud missiles destroyed. Later appointed chief UN
weapons inspector in Iraq, he resigned in 1998, claiming that President Bill
Clinton was too lenient on Saddam Hussein's regime. Since then, Mr Ritter has
performed what his critics see as an about-face; he now says it is highly
unlikely Baghdad possesses dangerous amounts of weapons of mass destruction.

( Side bar ends-Ritter's comments continue):

"Clearly Iraq could have hidden something, we know that Iraq tried to hide
things from us in the past, but this 5 to 10 percent of unaccounted-for
material doesn't mean that Iraq didn't account for it, it means that we can't
verify the Iraqi accounting. Iraq claims to have destroyed everything, they
just can't prove that they destroyed everything. We can prove that 90 to 95
percent were accounted for."

"But let's talk about that missing material. In the field of biological
materials, anthrax. Iraq produced anthrax in liquid bulk form, it has a shelf
life of three years under ideal storage conditions, the last known batch came
out in 1991. I might be a simple marine, not able to do adequate mathematics,
but I think 1991 plus three gives you 1994. What anthrax does Iraq have? None
of the anthrax they produced prior to 1991 can be viable today, it simply can't
be."

"The nerve agent sarin: there's talk of 1000 tonnes of Iraqi nerve agent
unaccounted for, because there's 6500 munitions that we can't account for
dating from 1983 to 88. The problem is, that even if Iraq tried to hide that
stuff, it can't be viable today because that nerve agent has a shelf-life of
five years. So even though we can't give a final disposition of that 5 to 10
per cent that's unaccounted for, I can tell you this; regardless of what
happened to it, it's not worth anything today, it can't hurt anyone. So I come
back to the basic question: what weapons of mass destruction?"

***********************

Now, Bill, this guy was only the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq for a
while. Surely, he can't know as much as Rush Limbaugh or the other rw radio
spinmeisters about WMD.


....as an interesting aside: Scott Ritter hails from the area I live
in. About two years ago, he was arrested on charges involving the
"procurement" of an under-age female, over the internet. A member of
the NY DA's office offered a dismissal, based upon lack of evidence.
Once the deal was accepted, the DA's assistant was fired.

Huh?

Politics offers such a wonderful and wide palette of reality. If you
don't like the color of the sky, just wait a bit.

noah

...as an interesting aside: Scott Ritter hails from the area I live
in. About two years ago, he was arrested on charges involving the
"procurement" of an under-age female, over the internet. A member of
the NY DA's office offered a dismissal, based upon lack of evidence.

A dismissal based on "lack of evidence" is pretty darn close to a complete
exoneration. "We're going to charge you with doing this, but we don't have any
evidence that you did" IOW, political grandstanding.

Once the deal was accepted, the DA's assistant was fired.

Must be a liberal plot. Or the assisstant DA tried too hard to make a case
where none existed. Opinions will vary based upon political perspective. :-)

Doug Kanter wrote:

"Dave Hall" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:

"Dave Hall" wrote in message
...


Which brings us back to the original statement, how would you "hunt"
down a criminal such as OBL or SH, when we have no legal right to
enter
the country which harbors him? If the host country refuses to help
us,
do we just turn around, or do we comitt an act of war by defying the
wishes of the host country? That was the whole premise for the
campaign
against Afghanistan and Iraq. Remember, that aiding the terrorists was
akin to being an accessory to the "crime", and are therefore equally
culpable.


I just figured it out, Dave. I can't believe it took so long. You are
actually a skel who lives on the streets, and stumbles into an internet
cafe
with panhandled coins to use their computer a couple of times a day. How
else could we explain what you just said, other than to blame
intravenous
narcotics use and a diet of Thunderbird?

"no legal right to enter the country which harbors him" ?????

So: If we sent spies to hunt down and kill OBL, that would be wrong
because
we might not have the legal right to enter countries without their
permission. But, if we send enough people in military uniforms, it's a
different story? A patriotic endeavor?


Sigh. It figures that you just don't get it. Try reading it again a
little slower this time.

The point, if you still don't get it, is that if we want to play the
good guy, and respect the sovereignty of all nations, then we have no
right to cross the borders of any country which hides terrorist camps,
without their cooperation. Last time I looked, most are not
cooperating. So what's the difference if we send in covert assasins or a
full blown military garrison?

Dave

The word "covert" answers your last question. By sending troops into a
sovereign nation, we did exactly what terrorists have been pointing at, as
an excuse for their actions. By using covert assassins, it's a bit harder to
pin the blame on us, at least in the eyes of the world.


Then we become, in essence, the same sort of terrorist that we're
fighting against.

Dave

"Dave Hall" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:



The point, if you still don't get it, is that if we want to play the
good guy, and respect the sovereignty of all nations, then we have no
right to cross the borders of any country which hides terrorist camps,
without their cooperation. Last time I looked, most are not
cooperating. So what's the difference if we send in covert assasins or
a
full blown military garrison?

Dave

The word "covert" answers your last question. By sending troops into a
sovereign nation, we did exactly what terrorists have been pointing at,
as
an excuse for their actions. By using covert assassins, it's a bit
harder to
pin the blame on us, at least in the eyes of the world.


Then we become, in essence, the same sort of terrorist that we're
fighting against.

Dave


Exactly. Take your pick. We can throw our weight around like we've been
doing since the beginning of our imperialist days (Cuba, Phillippines,
1898-ish), or we can be quiet about our adventures. If art is any indication
of popular opinion, I think people prefer the James Bond approach.

Gould 0738 wrote:

So it looks like the current administration is doing a good job tracking
down the top 50 Iraqi's. I think they have found over 80% of them. Let's
be honest Chuck, you are only interested in finding fault because you do not
like Bush's party. Be proud of the fact that you are a democrat, don't be
ashamed. Stand up and say, "I am Chuck and I am a democrat". You will
feel better for it.

We were discussing the response to 9-11.
How many of the "top 50 Iraqis
had a hand in 9-11?

We don't know yet. But I'll bet there are some.


Where's Osama Bin Ladin?

Dead? Does it really matter?

Where's Saddam Hussein?

Dead? Hiding?


Where are the weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent danger to the United States?

It's a BIG desert out there......

Dave

Gould 0738 wrote:

I did not know Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, but since you
believe he was, shouldn't we go after his top 50 henchmen?

You introduced the "top 50 Iraqis" into the discussion about responding to
9-11.
Even though our government implied that SH conspired with his sworn, mortal
enemy, OBL, to pull of 9-11, the case seems weak at best.

I thought we were discussing 9-11, but to answer your question anyway, if I
was a betting man, I would guess they are over in Syria or buried out in the
middle of the desert. Do you honestly believe that SH was not stockpiling
weapons of MD?

If he had any, they were manufactured outside of Iraq and brought in.

Not necessarily.


The last
time we were able to detect any trace of WMD manufacture in Iraq was 1998.

By what means?


Inspectors last year not only did not find any weapons, they were unable to
detect even the slightest chemical or biological trace of any recent
manufacturing activity. The ordinance has a 3- 5year shelf life.

Key phrase: "were unable to find". That does not mean that they were not
there, only that the inspectors failed to find them. You seem to imply
that the Iraqi's were "up front" and honest when it came time to show
the inspectors around. Like I said before, it's a BIG desert.



Item from Radio Netherlands (hopefully an acceptably objective source) follows:

*******
With the battle for Baghdad fizzling out without the use of chemical weapons by
Iraqi troops, Washington's critics are demanding to know what has happened to
Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction. Former chief UN weapons
inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter is one of those who has heaped scorn upon
President George Bush's administration for going to war. In this interview with
RN's Saskia van Reenan, Mr Ritter, a former US marine officer, explains why he
sees US justifications for waging war as dishonest excuses for empire-building.

Scott Ritter is suspect already. He seems to have his own agenda, which
he is actively promoting. He's done a 180 degree turnaround since his
days as an inspector. There are also enough skeletons in his closet, to
cast doubt upon his true motives.


"The threat that Iraq poses from weapons of mass destruction I think has been
clearly exposed as a lie. We were told to expect chemical weapons to rain down
on troops as soon as they crossed over the border from Kuwait into Iraq, but
that didn't happen. We were then told that as we closed in on the so-called
‘red line' around Baghdad – the 50-mile circle – that as soon as we
breached that, chemical weapons would be used. That didn't happen. Then we said
chemical weapons would be used as a last-gasp defence of Baghdad but that
didn't happen. What chemical weapons? We were told that the presidential
palaces were brimming over with weapons of mass destruction, but we now occupy
many of the presidential palaces and we've found nothing."

"If Iraq were to have weapons of mass destruction today, they would have had to
reconstitute a manufacturing base since 1998, since weapons inspectors left. No
one has provided any information of a substantive nature that sustains that
allegation. Clearly Iraq had the potential, they had time, they had four years
between the time I left and other inspectors left in 1998 and the time that the
new UNMOVIC inspectors returned in the fall of 2002."

They had those same 4 years to become creative with techniques to hide
those same weapons.

Does any sane person believe that Saddam Hussein, with his past history
and his personality type, would be willing to just "give up" his own
imperialistic aspirations? Or would it be more fitting of his
personality, for him to attempt subterfuge?



"I have clearly stated that Iraq could reconstitute a limited capability within
six months, so the potential is there for Iraq to have done this, but that
potential doesn't automatically translate into reality, and we did have
inspectors on the ground for almost four months, and they found nothing.

It's easy to not find something, if you are not looking in the right
places.

Furthermore they investigated over a dozen sites highlighted by the Central
Intelligence Agency as being prime suspects for producing weapons of mass
destruction and they have found nothing."

(sidebar begins)
DISSENSION IN THE RANKS: Scott Ritter began his fall from grace in the eyes of
the US establishment in the first Gulf War, when as a junior military
intelligence analyst he began filing reports contradicting the official US
estimates of the number of Scud missiles destroyed. Later appointed chief UN
weapons inspector in Iraq, he resigned in 1998, claiming that President Bill
Clinton was too lenient on Saddam Hussein's regime. Since then, Mr Ritter has
performed what his critics see as an about-face; he now says it is highly
unlikely Baghdad possesses dangerous amounts of weapons of mass destruction.

One wonders what event precipitated his "about face"......


( Side bar ends-Ritter's comments continue):

"Clearly Iraq could have hidden something, we know that Iraq tried to hide
things from us in the past, but this 5 to 10 percent of unaccounted-for
material doesn't mean that Iraq didn't account for it, it means that we can't
verify the Iraqi accounting. Iraq claims to have destroyed everything, they
just can't prove that they destroyed everything. We can prove that 90 to 95
percent were accounted for."

Of course, that's only the stuff that we KNEW about......


"But let's talk about that missing material. In the field of biological
materials, anthrax. Iraq produced anthrax in liquid bulk form, it has a shelf
life of three years under ideal storage conditions, the last known batch came
out in 1991.

Key word: "known".


I might be a simple marine, not able to do adequate mathematics,
but I think 1991 plus three gives you 1994. What anthrax does Iraq have? None
of the anthrax they produced prior to 1991 can be viable today, it simply can't
be."

Unless, of course, they made more since......


"The nerve agent sarin: there's talk of 1000 tonnes of Iraqi nerve agent
unaccounted for, because there's 6500 munitions that we can't account for
dating from 1983 to 88. The problem is, that even if Iraq tried to hide that
stuff, it can't be viable today because that nerve agent has a shelf-life of
five years. So even though we can't give a final disposition of that 5 to 10
per cent that's unaccounted for, I can tell you this; regardless of what
happened to it, it's not worth anything today, it can't hurt anyone. So I come
back to the basic question: what weapons of mass destruction?"

***********************

Now, Bill, this guy was only the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq for a
while. Surely, he can't know as much as Rush Limbaugh or the other rw radio
spinmeisters about WMD.

He appears certainly naive to the very real possibility that Iraq has
had opportunities to make and hide new WMD. Ritter's logic appears to be
cemented in the snapshot of what he knew in 1998 (Assuming that he had
the whole picture then), and he does not even consider the posibility
that they might have made more on the QT, not to mention underground
alliances with other like minded regimes.

You have been quick to point out that our mightly military has thusfar
failed to find both OBL and SH. Yet you seem perfectly satisfied that
the UN weapons inspectors were able to find all of Iraq's weapons. That
logic seems a bit contradictory.

Dave

Doug Kanter wrote:

"Dave Hall" wrote in message
...


Ah! So you admit that people ARE blaming the blackout on the Bush
Administration, which you challenged me to find the proof of. Now you
want to spin it as "well yea, Bush is responsible, and here's why".
Nevermind that trhe issue of pollution and other conditions have been in
place isince the late 1970's and through several presidents in the
meantime.

I didn't say he was responsible for the blackout, silly. However, if you
believe one bit of interconnected info, you can draw your own conclusions:
Some are saying that insufficient capacity caused the blackout. Some experts
dispute that claim. But, this is all beside the point.

But let me ask a question of pure logic; how is Bush, by "bending to the
wishes of the electric industry", making it harder to make electricity?
It would seem that if the electric companies are citing EPA regulations
as being too costly to comply with, as the excuse for the sorry state
that they are in, that Bush's sympathetic position would make it easier
for them to fix their problems. So tell me again how this is Bush's
fault?

Dave

Bush makes it harder to generate power because he creates situations where
litigation is absolutely inevitable, and he knows it full well.

Litigation? In what way? Besides, one of this country's biggest problems
is the over litigation that comes out of the courts, which end up
costing the taxpayers, in many different ways. Reduction of litigation
would be a good thing IMHO.


Or....to be
more correct, the results are known to whomever makes him do what he does,
since I'm 100% sure he doesn't understand the consequences of his actions.

I'm not 100% sure of many things. You would have to be GWB himself to
make that statement, and expect to be even close to being factual.



As far as "too costly", I dealt with that in a message I wrote to you a few
minutes ago: The utilities think ruining air & water is a consequence we
must accept. I say eating the cost of cleaner equipment is a consequence the
utilities must accept.

Either way, how does Bush, by clearing the path for these electric
companies, make it harder for them to make power?

Reality is this: Electricity costs money. If the costs to make
electricity rise due to mandated pollution controls, then the costs of
said electric will proportionately rise, and be ultimately passed on to
the consumer. Who will feel the pinch the most? The same people you guys
on the left always champion; the poor.
So do you want affordable electric, so the poor can maintain some
standard of living, or do you want electric that will be affordable to
only the "upper echelons" of income?

Dave