A human Mars mission?

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 21:35:20 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Not to mention the fact that ending his regime had the additional
virtue (except to certain French presidents) of, well, ending his
regime, arguably one of the very worst that the planet had to offer...


So has the US handed Kissinger over to Chile yet?

That's an uninteresting non sequitur.

--
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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Rand Simberg wrote:
On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 21:35:20 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Not to mention the fact that ending his regime had the additional
virtue (except to certain French presidents) of, well, ending his
regime, arguably one of the very worst that the planet had to offer...


So has the US handed Kissinger over to Chile yet?

That's an uninteresting non sequitur.


See, the problem with claims of "and it helped demolish one of the worst
regimes ever, so US was justified on that regard to do it too" a

* it is not even close to the worst regimes ever, and not even in
the same same geographic region
* the US gets credit for having set up about half the worst regimes
this planet has or has had to offer
* there has been no chance to the policies that caused this to
happen, if anything, several of the mostly retired or banned
ones have been resurrected lately
* there has been no review, nor are there any indications of any
reviews on the legality of US harbouring past and present
handlers and member of terrorist groups and opressive regimes

The Ba'ath party that the propaganda drones are ranting about was for the
most part a US invention, came to power with US support and enjoyed US
support while supposedly (as you claim) also being one of the worst regimes.
It was essentially a US client state. The claim that its brutality had
anything whatsoever to do with the war has just about as much real world
credibility as "Bush needed to invade Iraq to enrich some of his big-oil
buddies". Regime-wise the only US interest is "is sufficently friendly
and will allow overflights whenever such are needed".

The US foreign policy does not and has never prioritised against - or
minded - human rights or the populace being prosecuted and oppressed
or being killed off en masse by a regime. This isn't finger pointing -
nobody else does either.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

George William Herbert wrote:

Michael Walsh wrote:
[ Iraq invasion justification]
As for President Bush lying or having extremely bad intelligence,
he isn't the first President to lie for policy reasons. Usually it gets
excused if there is a successful result or the end is seen as justifying
the means.

Again, I am somewhat annoyed by this line of reasoning.

George, on this particular issue, I can almost guarantee that you
will continue to be annoyed by my line of reasoning. However,
from your longer reply (I snipped that) your argument doesn't
refer to my paragraph on the ethics of presidential lies for policy
reasons, but rather on the credibility of the evidence justifying
the Iraq invasion.

You make a good case that the apparent evidence (at least the
public version thereof) supported the argument that Iraq had a
WMD capability.

My claim has been that since nothing has been found post-war
then the intelligence lacked the necessary verification to justify
an invasion on the basis of Iraq having the WMD capability.
There were ground for continued pressure on Iraq to prove
they actually did not have the weapons.

I have reached the point where I believe I have stated my
position and you have laid your points out in great detail.

I will add that it is a good thing that Saddam Hussein is no
longer in control in Iraq and I hope he will be located and
captured or killed soon.

Mike Walsh

George William Herbert wrote:
Michael Walsh wrote:

[ Iraq invasion justification]
As for President Bush lying or having extremely bad intelligence,
he isn't the first President to lie for policy reasons. Usually it gets
excused if there is a successful result or the end is seen as justifying
the means.


Again, I am somewhat annoyed by this line of reasoning.

Bush was far from the only person who stated that he believed
that Iraq had and was hiding WMD and missiles or at least
major missile components. I had believed that since the
mid-90s; so did Richard Butler, the former head of UNSCOM;
so did Khidhir Hamza, who used to be in *charge* of the
Iraqi nuclear program...

snip

The detailed examination of what Iraq's senior
leadership were thinking and planning in the six
or so months prior to the war will eventually be
of extremely high value... I am sincerely hoping
that someone adds a case study a la "Psychology and
Deterrence" to the world body of knowledge soon.



George,

The very simple case study for other countries is:

The US will not do anything to countries that have viable
WMD programs and weapons.

Powell's evidence presented to the UN was investigated
prior to the war and that also showed that there was
serious doubts about the accuracy of the intel. UN inspectors
did go to a number of sites listed by Powell and found nothing.
After the war, those results were verified by the US. Batting
zero is generally a warning sign in most endeavors.

Michael Walsh writes:

George William Herbert wrote:

[some pretty thoughtful stuff]

Perhaps it would be appropriate to snip something, but I will leave
it all up because I don't see anything I particularly disagree with.

One thing that makes North Korea a special case is that the
U.S. government is on record as saying that North Korea having
nuclear weapons is unacceptable. North Korea has, of course,
taken note of that and it hasn't reduced their paranoia one bit.

Note, however, that the US government said that at a time when
everybody who was paying attention pretty much assumed that Kim
Jong-Il had a couple of nukes, or at least a couple of E-Z-Bild
ten-minute nuke kits, gathering dust in one of his bunkers.

The message was, North Korea having an active or public nuclear
weapons program was unacceptable but something small and unspoken
was tolerable if it maked Kim feel better about his place in the
world.

Whether, after all the publicity of the past year or so, we and
they can return to that state of affairs is one of the legitimate
diplomatic uncertainties of the issue.


We don't have any options for going back in time. My thesis
was that we would have been better off not having invaded
Iraq and fostering closer cooperation with our allies in
containing Saddam Hussein.

Containing Saddam Hussein required the cooperation of Turkey,
Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran. This, alas,
is not a list of our allies. Our historic allies are nations
which could make only token contributions to containing Iraq.
Fortunately, we could at least cooperate with Iraq's neighbors
on the containment issue, so long as that *was* the issue.

Problem:

Containing Islamic terrorism requires the ability to treat
Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran as our enemies. Or as friends,
depending on how they chose to act, but they hadn't been
acting in a terribly friendly matter w/re the terrorist
issue.

So there's an inconsistency between the two. Containing Iraq
requires cooperation we aren't going to get from states we
might have to treat as enemies, and countering the terrorists
potentially opens the way for Iraqi opportunistic expansion.


Now, the situation is reversed. Iraq is the final piece of
the puzzle that leaves Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran each
contained by a ring of US military power and political,
well, not alliance but at least unconflicted affiliation.
We can treat each or all of them as enemies if we need to,
we *don't* need to treat them as friends if we don't want
to, and by strange coincidence they are acting a lot more
friendly than they used to.

Oh, and we deposed a truly nasty regime and liberated a
country that has the potential to turn into a pretty decent
place with a bit of work.


My other complaint was expressed in my expressed belief that
President Bush lied when he claimed we invaded Iraq because they
had WMD, and specifically ready-to-use chemical weapons. My
complaint is not based on international law or UN resolutions,
but that the invasion was sold to Congress and the American people
under false pretenses.

The belief that Iraq held a covert and illegal arsenal of WMD was
sincere and reasonable, based on the best available intelligence.
And it was itself sufficient cause for military action.

We didn't have a good reason to invade Iraq, we had a *whole lot*
of good reasons to invade Iraq. Whether it constituted a "false
pretense" to focus the public debate on the least controversial
of those even though it was not the most important, is debatabl.
But I can't think of a war the US has fought that involved *less*
dishonesty w/re the official vs actual motives.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 00:32:00 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 21:35:20 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Not to mention the fact that ending his regime had the additional
virtue (except to certain French presidents) of, well, ending his
regime, arguably one of the very worst that the planet had to offer...


So has the US handed Kissinger over to Chile yet?

That's an uninteresting non sequitur.


See, the problem with claims of "and it helped demolish one of the worst
regimes ever, so US was justified on that regard to do it too" a

* it is not even close to the worst regimes ever, and not even in
the same same geographic region

Name some worse ones. And if you mention Chile, I'll just laugh.

The Ba'ath party that the propaganda drones are ranting about was for the
most part a US invention, came to power with US support and enjoyed US
support while supposedly (as you claim) also being one of the worst regimes.

This is utter bull****.

--
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:

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...
On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 00:06:56 -0600, in a place far, far away, Charles
Buckley made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

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


Somebody better warn Israel.

Which UNSCR resolutions is Israel in violation of?

Israel has been in violation of scores of resolutions.


I repeat the question. Name a UNSCR resolution that Israel is in
violation of, as Saddam was.

snippage

Let's see. 446, 452, 694.

Let's see. "request," "request," "request..."

Not comparable to "serious consequences," sorry.

As long as you ignore the use of conditional language in there Rand.

We went through this months ago. There is plenty of precident of
"serious consequences" not being immeidate war.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...


The Ba'ath party that the propaganda drones are ranting about was for the
most part a US invention, came to power with US support and enjoyed US
support while supposedly (as you claim) also being one of the worst regimes.

This is utter bull****.

So the US imposed sanctions and stopped doing business with them after
the attacks on the Kurds?

As I recall a motion was put to the US congress by, among others, Al
Gore which passed with a huge majority but was vetoed by the then
President.

You are saying that never happened and even if it did does not
consitute support for the regime?

You accuse other people of ignoring the facts but this is just
amazing!

On 12 Sep 2003 07:48:45 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(Dave O'Neill) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...


The Ba'ath party that the propaganda drones are ranting about was for the
most part a US invention, came to power with US support and enjoyed US
support while supposedly (as you claim) also being one of the worst regimes.

This is utter bull****.

So the US imposed sanctions and stopped doing business with them after
the attacks on the Kurds?

No, which is not the same thing as "providing US support."

--
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:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On 12 Sep 2003 07:48:45 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(Dave O'Neill) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in message
...


The Ba'ath party that the propaganda drones are ranting about was for
the
most part a US invention, came to power with US support and enjoyed US
support while supposedly (as you claim) also being one of the worst
regimes.

This is utter bull****.

So the US imposed sanctions and stopped doing business with them after
the attacks on the Kurds?

No, which is not the same thing as "providing US support."

Its not helping and it doesn't exactly send a "message" does it.