tsunami question
 

Alas, no. They survived, you see.

tsunami question
 

Come now, don't leave out the important details. Are they American?

Too much choice
 

OK. We agree. I never said it was a huge deal, if you look at my posts, I just said it showed a real "tin ear." I take it you agree.

I'd agree with much of your first sentence. However, the down-side is that when a guy like that is wrong, he can be _really_, _really_ wrong, and unable to see the other side. I think he'd have made a better President than SecDef. Perhaps better at "the vision thing" than at the implementation (or prone, perhaps, to trust the wrong people).

I'm actually finally reading through "Bush at War" now (its been a busy year), and Rumsfeld comes across very well so far. Very smart and thoughtful guy.

His excellent discussion of his effort to revisit all U.S. war plans and reevaluate and update them all, beginning with the underlying assumptions, makes me wonder how his shop could have so badly fucked up the post-war planning and implementation in Iraq. Its hard to keep your place on the Honor Roll when you get a D on the exam.

S_A_M

This is Unbelievable
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4130599.stm

[Sri Lanka rejects Israel's help]

Too much choice
 

Did you consider the part where Rummy claimed that the shortage of armored vehicles was due to "the laws of physics," because factories were building them as fast as they could, to be honest?

Even though it was proven false the very next day?

Too much choice
 

God, what a puff piece. Woodward should be embarrassed (if he's still capable).

Too much choice
 

What? They're being sucked into black holes?

This is Unbelievable
 

I was thinking more along the lines of sad and pathetic as opposed to unbelievable.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

This of course all hinges on your assumption that the people who are disenfranchised, be it out of fear of violent reprisal or stupidity in listening to the mullahs crying boycott, will channel their feeling of second class citizenship into a renewed effort at the ballot box. The fact that they will be stuck with fewer seats to vote for because of the initial governmental structure being created makes this ballot box effort even less likely in my book, which is why I wish a different decision had been made.

How is anyone who lives/lived in Fallujah being registered at this point? Or Samarra? It may be the fault of the few wackos, but it's a whole group of people who may be getting left out of the future of Iraq. I don't see why this is any less unfortunate than the way the Sunnis kept the Shiites down (and yes I am speaking metaphorically and don't expect the rape rooms to reopen). To me it's a big deal, and unsurprisingly, I think Ty is right to question it. If he questioned it after the fact you'd just say he's a second guesser.

This nation building stuff is hard. I think we've proven this many times over just in the reversals we've made during our Iraq exploits. But as you say, I can give it some time. It will be an interesting year for the Iraq project.

Too much choice
 

Given that, at the time the question was asked, I think about 800 of the group's 833 HV's had already been uparmored, he was probably referring to the anthropic principle.*

(If the laws of the Universe were not conducive to the development of intelligent creatures to ask about the initial conditions of the Universe, intelligent life would never have evolved to ask the question in the first place. If the vehicles lacked armor to the extent people made it sound, the soldier would have already been dead, along with lots of other soldiers in that group, and could never have asked the question.)

((Yes, I'm reaching in the analogy, but I've wanted to refer to the anthropic principle for weeks, and I can just barely shoehorn this in here.))

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

Does this mean Dean will try again?

This is Unbelievable
 

Before you get all hot and bothered, wait for an article that makes clear what's going on. From this, it's hard to tell:

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

That was kind of my point. Just because you hold an election and people get a chance to cast a ballot, that doesn't mean you have a democracy. Voting is not an end in itself.

The bulk may be trying right now, but it doesn't seem to be going very well. When the police are targets, that's bad.

You're not paying attention to who's actually running and what they're saying, are you? Or does this religion-neutral group have a name?

Meanwhile, the question I've been talking about is not really about who's going to win. The question is about whether Sunnis are going to be represented much at all.

I think I understand your optimism, but in a clinical way I'm not sure you'd appreciate. It would indeed be wonderful if what you describe were to happen. I've never argued with the wondrousness of the vision. This is kind of like arguing about Jaguars or Land Rovers. They're good-looking cars. Me, I wouldn't buy one unless I had the money for the repairs, and for a nice second car to drive while the first one's in the shop. You're not going to change my mind by telling me how nice the Jaguar or Land Rover is when it runs.

Which is not even to get to your crap about Kerry, since conservatives here were so busy saying that his plan was the same as Bush's. I think there is no particular virtue with sticking with a failing policy instead of trying something new, but whatever.

No, this I really don't understand. Because the people who really believe in this vision of democratizing the Middle East should be ripped at Rumsfeld and Bush right now for screwing it up by trying to do it on the cheap. I can respect the neo-cons who had this vision. I disagreed, but I can respect the views. But this last comment tells me that for you, it's about shilling for Bush et al., not about a vision of democracy in the Middle East.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

2. As an aside, an NPR radio story this morning talked about the major Shia party in the election. When asked about reporters about the party's stance on the "issues," they had no articulable position on any issue at all, save getting the Americans out of country as soon as fucking possible.

Agree with the thrust of your point that this election seems to be almost entirely about ethnic and religious blocks. Bilmore's vision of these folks putting those divisions aside to make it all work is indeed nifty, and I wish it to be so, but from the reports that we've seen coming out of there, and the fact that this election seems to revolve almost entirely around the ethnic and religious divisions that Bilmore thinks we'll get past on Feb 1, I can't see it.


2. See, e.g., Bill Kristol.

Too much choice
 

You should have kept waiting.