A human Mars mission?

(Derek Lyons) wrote in message ...

It was bound up in the issue of WMD. Had the Iraqi's complied with
the treaty, no invasion. But they didn't comply with the treaty, or
with multiple UN resolutions.

So non compliance with treaties or UN resolutions means automatic
unilateral invasion and occupation by the US without the consent of
the UN? Somebody better warn Israel.

There is a wide spectrum of actions that could have been taken and in
fact were being taken in response to Iraq's less than 100% compliance
with 1441. An invasion and occupation was not the only course of
action and was certainly the wrong course of action that continues to
cost American lives and resources. Iraq was no threat to the United
States militarily and it has become very, very clear that Iraq posed
no WMD threat to the United States. Iraq had no deployable Weapons
of Mass Destruction.

Misguided supporters of this war have been reduced to howling things
like "Uday and Qusay qualified as WMD" and "Look at all the poor
people Chemical Ali killed!" (in 1988 under our uncaring eye using
resources provided by US.)

Iraq was being scrutinized, isolated, sanctioned, and contained and
those actions certainly would have been continued and intensified
without a unilateral US invasion. The spectrum of military actions
was very wide and did not require an invasion and occupation. Bush,
Rummy and co screwed this situation up badly and I hope they pay for
it at the polls in 2004.

I'm still allowed to vote for someone besides Bush, right?

On 1 Sep 2003 20:19:07 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(Art Class) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(Derek Lyons) wrote in message ...

It was bound up in the issue of WMD. Had the Iraqi's complied with
the treaty, no invasion. But they didn't comply with the treaty, or
with multiple UN resolutions.

So non compliance with treaties or UN resolutions means automatic
unilateral invasion and occupation by the US without the consent of
the UN?

No, just the kind that Saddam was in violation of.

Somebody better warn Israel.

Which UNSCR resolutions is Israel in violation of?

rest of idiocy snipped

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

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Michael Walsh wrote:

Yes, it might have been nice. But that option faded on 9-11, when the US
was jolted awake and our attention yanked to the middle east.

So that somehow forced the U.S. to invade Iraq?

Sigh. No, 9-11 turned our attention to the Middle East, and we saw
Saddam ****ing around. Since our recent problems were with middle
eastern terrorists, we really didn't need to have Saddam making even
worse weapons available... and since we had a legal reason to drop the
hammer on him, it was only right that we did so.

Not to mention the advantage of not having antagonized some
of our major allies.

You mean the ones making buku bucks selling weapons systems to the
Iraqis?

Wow! We just let the North Koreans take out Japan?

The Japanese don't like us. The Iraqis don't like us. If we shouldn't
be in Iraq for six months, why should we be in Japan for sixty years?


As I understand it your assumption is that a Saddam Hussein with some
maybe hidden chemical weapons was a huge threat in the middle east
but somehow we don't have to worry about the North Koreans.

Not quite. Saddam was under UN resolution - and surrender treaty
stipulation - to not have WMD AND to prove that he'd gotten rid of them.
NK is under no such stipulation. Just as a private citizen may own a
pistol with no reason for the cops to go after him for it... unless he's
a convicted felon, in which case the cops should go after him for it.


--
Scott Lowther, Engineer

"Any statement by Edward Wright that starts with 'You seem to think
that...' is wrong. Always. It's a law of Usenet, like Godwin's."
- Jorge R. Frank, 11 Nov 2002

Sander Vesik wrote:


I womder, if one could use a good heat conductor as a skin
followed by an insulator to reduce the effect? That is, you would
trade the relatively more frequent repairs to skin for less effect
to the structure overall...



My design the torus is illuminated from within by an axial mirror.
The outer torus lies in the shadow of a large parabolic mirror

http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/ChengHo.html

Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 19:05:17 GMT, in a place far, far away, Michael
Walsh made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

We are technically still at war with North Korea. An armistice
was signed in 1953, but no peace treaty exists. I assume that this
is probably covered under the UN resolution that was made by
the Security Council in 1950. Russia, and its allies had walked out
because of displeasure at something that had occurred earlier and
were not there to cast a veto against the UN action.

The discussion has degenerated to a point where you are reduced
to an apparent position of denial that North Korea is a real problem.

Yes, NK is a real problem. One of the reasons that we removed Saddam,
but not Kim, is for the same reason a dog licks his balls--because we
could. Even if they don't have nukes, there's no effective way to
neutralize all the artillery dug in within fifty miles of Seoul, and
the devastation in the first days of a war would be horrendous to both
the South Korean population and its economy (which would in turn have
repercussions for the Asian, and world economy).

There simply aren't any pretty choices there, but the best one seems
to be to hope that the Chinese can exert enough pressure to get it
under control. I do fear, though, that war is eventually inevitable,
and hope that they've come up with a plan to defang the regime as much
as possible in that event, and keep the Korean peninsula from going up
in flames.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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Here's my email address for autospammers:

Mike Combs wrote:
Sander Vesik wrote:

I womder, if one could use a good heat conductor as a skin
followed by an insulator to reduce the effect? That is, you would
trade the relatively more frequent repairs to skin for less effect
to the structure overall...

Could be. Probably best bet would be to design to minimize wide temperature
fluctuations.


The two basic choices a
* one side towards sun - one side is heated the other not and you have
to transfer heat away. the dark side does not.

* edge towards sun - each point on the outside gets to regularily see
sun depending on rate of rotation. the inside does not.

If you rotate along more than one axis you will get additionaly "extra high flux"
and "extra low flux" periods.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

On 2 Sep 2003 16:22:05 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(John Schilling) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Actually, on reconsideration, I disagree with this part:

The North Koreans have stated that their desired outcome for this
situation is that the North Koreans don't starve to death, that
the North Koreans don't freeze to death, that North Korea is not
bombed or invaded, and that North Korea not have a working nuclear
weapons program.

Just because the North Koreans have stated something doesn't mean that
it's, well, true. In fact, it often means exactly the opposite.

On the evidence, the only thing that the North Korean government
really wants is to not be bombed or invaded. It's clearly indifferent
to North Koreans starving and freezing, and I think that hell itself
will freeze before the fuzzy-haired nutball gives up his nuclear
ambitions, particularly because he thinks that it's his only ultimate
means of holding on to power.

So, no, their desires are not convergent with ours.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

John Schilling wrote:

Michael Walsh writes:

George William Herbert wrote:

Questions such as, "Should the member states
surrender to the UN absolute authority over
the decision to initiate armed conflict"
and "Did the Iraqi noncomplyance justify
the US initiation of armed conflict at that
particular time and circumstance" are
perfectly reasonable.

-george william herbert


Another question that could be, in my opinion, reasonably
debated is whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq without specific
authorization from the U.N. and absent the support of some
key allies was a wise move. I voted no (and posted it) before
the invasion of Iraq began.

Right now we have what I consider an extremely serious
confrontation with North Korea. North Korea claims that
they really do have atomic weapons and may very well conduct
a demonstration test. The U.S. reaction? We are going to
stop them using diplomacy.

Well, yes.

The North Koreans have stated that their desired outcome for this
situation is that the North Koreans don't starve to death, that
the North Koreans don't freeze to death, that North Korea is not
bombed or invaded, and that North Korea not have a working nuclear
weapons program.

The desired outcome for the United States is, well, pretty much
exactly the same thing. Likewise the South Koreans, the Japanese,
the Russians, and the Chinese. There may be some quibbling about
how much of the North Korean nuclear program goes into mothballs
and how much is outright destroyed, but aside from that absolutely
everybody involved, on *both* sides, wants the same thing.

This is precisely the sort of situation that calls for diplomacy.
The only reason it hasn't been diplomatically resolved long ago
is that North Korea's initial ham-handed moves looked on the surface
like nuclear blackmail, such that the simple and direct solution on
our part would look on the surface like appeasement and submission.
So now we have to put some diplomatic camoflage on it, arrange for
everybody to save face, and probably launder the real solution thru
China.

Takes time, but the outcome is not seriously in doubt.

Sure. We can all count on Kim being reasonable.

We can certainly hope that the situation will be resolved diplomatically,
but the U.S. had better be prepared to take military action if
North Korea makes a military move and perhaps even uses nuclear
weapons.

Of course, that we hope it won't all get set off by a diplomatic
miscue originating in Washington.

The situation is seriously in doubt.


Precisely the opposite of Iraq, where there were mutually incompatible
goals on all sides. Iraq wanted WMD, or at least the plausible appearance
of WMD, everybody else demanded the unambiguous elimination of WMD. We
wanted Hussein gone for many reasons, of which the WMD shell game was
only the one with the greatest international legitimacy. Hussein of
course did not want to be gone. The Europeans mostly wanted Hussein
to stay but the WMD to go. And the neighboring states all had their
own agendas for what was going to happen.

That one, no diplomatic solution was possible, though we had to at
least pretend we were trying.

There was a quite possible diplomatic solution available. Something
called keeping the pressure on Saddam and continuing inspections.


It might be nice to have a united allied front available

We do. The US, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia are all pretty
solidly united on this matter. "Allied" is, fortunately, not synonymous
with "European".

and to not have a large segment of U.S. strike forces engaged in
Iraq.

Who did you imagine we were striking at in Iraq? Our *strike* forces
are mostly back at home, where they are supposed to be. It is our
*occupation* forces that are in Iraq. Since there is about zero
possibility of our trying to occupy North Korea, this doesn't seem
like a big problem.

OK, changing the title doesn't reconstitute the military. Does this
mean you believe we did it with special forces and air power alone?
Provide some backing for your remarks. Who claims that our
miltary striking power has been disengaged and is back in the U.S.?

And diplomacy really might not work and whether we like it
or not we may end up in an armed conflict with an enemy
who has nuclear weapons.

There is a small possibility that we will have to conduct strikes
against North Korean nuclear facilities, which we can do even with
the infantry "bogged down" in Iraq.. While the North Koreans do
have nuclear weapons, their ability to deliver them against us is
extremely limited, and the possibility does not fill me with utter
dread. Because, really, the odds are very much in favor of diplomacy
working.

Iraq, there was no possibility of a diplomatic solution. And the
prospect of trying to deal with the many real threats of the region,
while hamstrung by Hussein's presence, menace, and predilection for
opportunistic power grabs, *that* filled me with utter dread.

Fortunately, we don't have to do that now.

No, apparently all we have to worry about is all of the major problems
that you don't seem to believe will ever happen.

Mike Walsh

Michael Walsh wrote:

Scott Lowther wrote:

Michael Walsh wrote:

Wow! We just let the North Koreans take out Japan?

The Japanese don't like us. The Iraqis don't like us. If we shouldn't
be in Iraq for six months, why should we be in Japan for sixty years?

As I understand it your assumption is that a Saddam Hussein with some
maybe hidden chemical weapons was a huge threat in the middle east
but somehow we don't have to worry about the North Koreans.

Not quite. Saddam was under UN resolution - and surrender treaty
stipulation - to not have WMD AND to prove that he'd gotten rid of them.
NK is under no such stipulation. Just as a private citizen may own a
pistol with no reason for the cops to go after him for it... unless he's
a convicted felon, in which case the cops should go after him for it.

We are technically still at war with North Korea.

Which means that they have not signed a surrender treay, and are
consequently not under the same "no WMD" stipulation as Iraq.

The discussion has degenerated to a point where you are reduced
to an apparent position of denial that North Korea is a real problem.

Wrong. They are a problem. They're just not *our* problem.

So, what do *you* want? A US strike against NK? How many millions of
dead Koreans are you after?
--
Scott Lowther, Engineer

"Any statement by Edward Wright that starts with 'You seem to think
that...' is wrong. Always. It's a law of Usenet, like Godwin's."
- Jorge R. Frank, 11 Nov 2002

Scott Lowther wrote:

Michael Walsh wrote:

Scott Lowther wrote:

Michael Walsh wrote:

Wow! We just let the North Koreans take out Japan?

The Japanese don't like us. The Iraqis don't like us. If we shouldn't
be in Iraq for six months, why should we be in Japan for sixty years?

As I understand it your assumption is that a Saddam Hussein with some
maybe hidden chemical weapons was a huge threat in the middle east
but somehow we don't have to worry about the North Koreans.

Not quite. Saddam was under UN resolution - and surrender treaty
stipulation - to not have WMD AND to prove that he'd gotten rid of them.
NK is under no such stipulation. Just as a private citizen may own a
pistol with no reason for the cops to go after him for it... unless he's
a convicted felon, in which case the cops should go after him for it.

We are technically still at war with North Korea.

Which means that they have not signed a surrender treay, and are
consequently not under the same "no WMD" stipulation as Iraq.

Oh, that makes me feel real good. I notice that whether or not
diplomatic niceties apply depends on exactly how you want to
phrase it.

The discussion has degenerated to a point where you are reduced
to an apparent position of denial that North Korea is a real problem.

Wrong. They are a problem. They're just not *our* problem.

That is certainly comforting to know.

So, what do *you* want? A US strike against NK? How many millions of
dead Koreans are you after?

I want the recognition that we have no control over the North Korean
nuclear weapons and the realization that the U.S. might have to react
militarily in order to prevent them from using the weapons.

Diplomacy is the appropriate starting point. Realistically we must
be ready to act if it fails.

Mike Walsh