It's just impossible. Why even try?
 

We can build a lot more patriot missles than they can build intercontinental ballistic missiles. It takes a serious effort on their part to put together one missile (I don't even think they really have one that can hit California yet). They are also limited on the amount of nuclear warheads they can put together. In addition, I believe our GDP is about 1000 times theirs. An arms race with North Korea would be like a clothes production contest between my grandmother and Mervyns.

It's just impossible. Why even try?
 

The Israelis are dead serious about missile defense. They know it is just a matter of time before someone with a real itchy trigger finger can hit Tel Aviv with a Nuclear Weapon or WMD. They are banking their whole existence on Star Wars.

Victimhood
 

I don't think many tried before 9-11. And I firmly believe that if the screeners were not in place after 9-11 Al Queda would have hit again, and if not Al Queda, a lot of copy catters would have hit us once they knew we were vulverable.

Right now its not easy to get enough explosive material past the screeners to take down a plane, and if it was, I believe people would be doing it.

It's just impossible. Why even try?
 

I think that the "successful 7 out of 8" depends on a particular way of defining "successful." I do think that they are genuinely making headway, but consensus from most all people involved in the projects (other than politicians -- so, like, the military people and the people who make the thingies and the people who measure the effect of the shots) is that they aren't really very close to having something that would be effective in a real-world situation.



ETA Gatti's article was not about Patriot missiles, it was about M-3 somethings. Are they still working on projects that involve trying to get Patriots to hit ballistic missiles?

Victimhood
 

And we accomplished all this with no profiling?

Victimhood
 

I was thinking about this yesterday (sorry to interupt whatever the argument is). In Mi a few weeks ago the FBI arrested some middle Eastern guys because they had bought like 80 cellphones and they had pix of the Mackinac Bridge.

Then we let them go, and CAIR and them were saying it was prejudice and profiling or whatever- and supposedly selling cellphones is a cottage industry in ME neighborhoods (why not just go to the store?). So the FBI over reacted.

but it occurs to me that if Atta et al were busted that morning at security- they would have been a dozen of so guys who happened to have some innocent box cutters and some pix of the WTC- BFD.

It's just impossible. Why even try?
 

Mervyn's doesn't make clothes, they buy them from various suppliers. I used to know a manager of one who had been a buyer in the past.

Maybe this is related to your patriot thoughts and how they relate to the article gatti posted showing fairly positive news about missile-defense programs?

Victimhood
 

Bad/no credit? Wanting to make a bunch of overseas calls and just dumping the phone without paying?

Victimhood
 

Apparently it is if you mix it on board.

Patriots vs other stuff
 

I think it may be generally accepted now that Patriots are most useful for low

Defense News
November 21, 2005

By Uzi Rubin, president of Rubincon, a consultancy, and founder of the Israel Missile Defense Organization.

excerpt re: Israeli missile defense: "Israel missile defense will be best served by a multilayered system combining, for example, sea-launched interceptors in the eastern Mediterranean with Arrow and Patriot batteries for upper-, mid- and lower-tier interceptions, respectively."

I can find some other stuff, but this guy does not sound like a flaming liberal out to undermine missile defense and have us all surrender to a Talibanic theocracy.

Victimhood
 

Yes we have been lucky so far. But they are always improving their game, so we need to constantly improve ours. Anything to make the system more effective, especially if it doesn't cost much - don't you agree?

It's just impossible. Why even try?
 

Thus, the disconnect between the apparent results and the lack of trumpeting by Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al. Success probably being defined as meeting the goal of the test, rather than meeting the ultimate objective of the program.

I don't think that there is any continuing project to use Patriots against ballistics. I think that Spanky is on the Patriot point to establish a baseline of some success with (short-? medium-? range) missile defense.

Victimhood
 

aren't we profiling with the warentless phone taps? those have probably helped stop stuff.

It's just impossible. Why even try?
 

That sounds right to me.

Bush Lied!
 

Just trying to get the k-race moving along.

An A for effort.....
 

In my experience, a substantive conversation never includes:"read this and get back to me." That is just a cop out.

An A for effort.....
 

On the other hand, a substantive conversation usually includes at least 2 people who read.

An A for effort.....
 

You didn't finish the sentence: On the other hand, a substantive conversation usually includes at least 2 people who read writings from a variety of sources (not just ideological biased sources that reaffirm their position) and can actually find validity in some writings that don't reaffirm their preconceived beliefs and find invalidity in some writings that do.

An A for effort.....
 

Ghost Wars is idealogically neutral enough that it didn't burst into flames when it entered slave's place. What do you recommend?

An A for effort.....
 

Why do you think Tom Ricks is ideologically biased?

An A for effort.....
 

I just read Bill Maher's latest book. I found that really funny.

Before that I read "Alls Fair" by Mary Matalin and James Carville. Wasn't all that great.

Before that I reread Empire of the Word by Ostler - that is awesome.

Before that I read Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan by Mary Anne Weaver - that was really good.

Before that I read "Sons of the Conqueres" by Hugh Pope. Boring.

Before that I read the entire Collen McCullough "First Man in Rome Series". That was also awsome.

Any one see the Daily Show last night? The bit on CNN and figuing out how terrorists can hijack planes was great.

An A for effort.....
 

He is the Pentagon Reporter for the Washington Post. Need I say more?

Seriously I have seen him interviewed a few time including on Frontline and the guy seemed incredibly biased to me. The guy seems to think everything Rumsfield does is wrong. When people are that sweeping in their criticism my radar goes up. Its like listening to George Will talk about Clinton or McCain.

By the way - I agree with the criticism that we should have used more troops for the invasion (or at least for the occupation).

An A for effort.....
 

No, no. Something about Iraq that doesn't burst into flames. Or, as Stewart happened to put it to Ricks (Fiasco) a couple weeks ago, is there anyone writing a book these days on Iraq and the campaign there titled something like "Good Job!"

An A for effort.....
 

Have you ever read a book by someone with a conservative bias?

An A for effort.....
 

I read Dan Quayle's autobiography.

An A for effort.....
 

Other than support for missile defense, what do you think that Rumsfeld has done right?

An A for effort.....
 

Children's books don't count.

An A for effort.....
 

Right now to write a good book on what is going on in Iraq you would have to be privy to stuff that only the military and the administration knows. They most certainly aren't releasing all the relevant information, and most of the reporters are flying blind. It will be years before a descent book can be written. At least that is my opinion.

An A for effort.....
 

Considering that you just recommended a book by a reporter for The New Yorker, one might start to think that your concern about where people write is selective.

I have not seen him speak, and you may be right. OTOH, there are a lot of reasonable people who think that everything Rumsfeld has done is wrong. Sometimes sweeping criticism is deserved. What is a sportswriter covering the Temple football team to do?

Lefty bloggers whom I respect were trashing Ricks a few weeks back when his book came out because his reporting from a few years ago gave little sign that he thought the war was a clusterfuck. So he has been accused of following the conventional wisdom too closely. (Which itself would be a form of bias.) Others have defended him.

Whatever one may think of Ricks, it's too cute by half to respond to a fairly specific factual assertion by saying that he's biased and then failing to otherwise engage. If that's your best effort, why bother?

An A for effort.....
 

Actually, this sounds a lot like the materials Ricks drew from in writing his book. It's a shame you consider him an agenda-harboring America-hater.

An A for effort.....
 

We turned the tide of the war in Afghanistan and ended that conflict rather quickly and Rumsfield was right in that we didn't need a lot of troops to conquer Iraq. That invasion was text book. He has done some stuff wrong, but he has done a lot of things right.

An A for effort.....
 

I think we are already descending, but to each his own.

So basically there is no point on writing anything about Iraq because those who actually know about things can't write about them, and no one else knows anything? Or is this purely applicable to books.

An A for effort.....
 

If someone wrote a book saying that Pol Pot wasn't a bad guy, I wouldn't have to read it to know it was probably mostly bogus. Too many of Rick's claims just don't pass the smell test. I can't read everything, and I try and stick to people that I feel make the most sober assessments.

An A for effort.....
 

Yes. I don't tend to read a lot of books about current events, except that I like to keep up on the intelligence/counterterrorism stuff. I prefer history and fiction.

An A for effort.....
 

What's a claim that Ricks has made that doesn't pass the smell test?

And I'm still waiting for you to point to something suggesting that Iraq's WMD programs lasted much beyond Desert Fox. Anything?

An A for effort.....
 

Lose a bet?

Winter storm trap you in a cabin where that was the only book?

An A for effort.....
 

Close. It was my third year of law school. A roommate had worked in a bookstore before law school and had tons of books. I read almost everything he had.

This is batshit crazy:

• Unless Congress steps in to stop it, the IRS is set to begin implementing a wildly inefficient plan to outsource the collection of past-due taxes from those who owe $25,000 or less. IRS employees could collect these taxes for about three cents on the dollar, comparable to other federal programs' collection costs. But Congress has not allowed the IRS, which is eliminating some of its most efficient enforcement staff, to hire the personnel it would need to do the job. Instead, the agency has signed contracts with private debt collectors allowing them to keep about 23% of every taxpayer dollar they retrieve. Employing these firms is almost eight times more expensive than relying on the IRS, but, according to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, it fits in with the Bush administration's efforts to reduce the size of government.
  
  Over 10 years, the companies hired are projected to collect overdue taxes totaling $1.4 billion, $330 million of which the companies keep as fees. According to the IRS' own estimates, over those same 10 years, the agency could collect $87 billion in unpaid taxes at a cost of just under $300 million — if allowed to hire sufficient personnel. In total, utilizing the private sector instead of augmenting IRS personnel would leave in the hands of delinquent taxpayers more than $85 billion owed to the federal government.

Spanky, is there someone you can call about this?

An A for effort.....
 

This seems like an absurd question.

1) No one knows, except for people with security clearance, if there were WMDs after Desert Fox. You make it sound like you and I can access information that would shed light on the subject. We can not.

2) What I do know that it is painfully obvious that operation Desert Fox did not wipe out Saddam Husseins WMD program. Either it was moved or Saddam destroyed it, but to suggest Clinton took it out with Operation Desert Fox is just absurd.

An A for effort.....
 

His criticism of Franks. The whole Muddy Boots Sojer thing. That he is not that bright. Just a yes man that doesn't think about what he is doing. I have seen Franks interviewed and he is not stupid. You may not like his strategy but he definitely has thought it out.

I should also point out that he is another king of "anonymous sources". That also makes me sckeptical.