Keith Devens .com

Where did you hear this?

On Fox News. They said something about our government having asked them to stop for the past year, but they haven't, and there was evidence of some of their technology making it into Iraq at least as recently as Friday, and the administration is furious.

Here's a link from LGF: Our Russian Buddies

Thankya, interesting but almost not surprising. I'm fairly worried about the nuclear materials that seem to go unaccounted for over there as well. I think part of the wars budget is actually being alloted to work on that problem. (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Ok, I'm currently logged on using a friend's account, I'm after having a bad exam, the keyboard on this computer doesn't type the letter 'e' (hence I'm locked out of my account, I'm having to paste in 'e's by hand, and so typing on this thing's making me angrier by the second) and I'm not in the best of moods, but....

...sorry, but how the hell is Madman Insane any more or less evil than when the US was supporting his regime? Sorry, but the idiot moral-highground stance the US is taking (oooh! let's introduce democracy after supporting the despot for as long as we have!) really irritates me. Not only that but oooh, let's take on the easiest target we can find! Let's not take anybody who could really put up a fight and is more of a threat to world peace unless we really have to.

Every day, the US seems more and more like a new Rome.

Remember, pinch of salt.

Although I'd put it in a more restrained way then Keith G. He's essentially right. I have to laugh when we make statements about our concern about the Iraqi people. I mean I think the Gov doesn't want too high a body count, but I don't think having one would make them stop bombing. We're fighting for selfish reasons. American Lives, American Security, American Stability. Important things no doubt but self interested. Let's just not pretend we are trying "to do the righ thing".

We've never claimed we aren't doing this for "selfish" reasons. We've always said this is part of our war on terror, to protect Americans. However, liberation of the Iraqi people is one of our goals.

Keith, based on your comments, you aren't even arguing that this war is wrong. The most you seem to be claiming is that we're inconsistent, and should have behaved differently in the past. I'm not really in disagreement there; we probably should have taken Saddam out during the first gulf war.

However, to call us a "new Rome" is completely unjustified. We're not building an empire. We're behaving consistently with how we've behaved in the past. We rebuilt Germany and Japan. We're rebuilding Afghanistan, and we're going to rebuild Iraq. They didn't in the past, and they won't now, become "American territories".

What irritates me is that the American administration is taking an unjustified moral high-ground on the affair, conveniently forgetting their history with Madman. The image it looks like they're trying to portray, to people outside of the US anyway, is a rather selfless one.

The "new Rome" comment isn't as unjustified as you think. The US is trying to impose a Pax Americana through this whole affair, and to non-Americans, that's a worrying sign. It means that the US has made itself the final arbiter of right and wrong. It's not the matter of invading other countries, it's the notion that somehow the US knows best and damn anybody who doesn't agree. There's many ways of controlling the world, and an empire is only one.

I agree with you on the matter of the First Gulf War. Not getting rid of Saddam back then was a massive mistake. It was a savage kick to a people who'd been promised a chance at freedom only to be denied it because the Allies didn't have the stomach to finish the job. After that, and the way the region has been messed about with in the past, is is any wonder that they're not exactly happy to see US and British troops?

As far as my position on the war goes, it's a little more complex than being for or against it. It'd take too long to explain it and I don't have the time right now. I'm finished my exams and it's time to scalp everybody in poker and partaaaay!

Oh and I knocked up a basic Wiki in ColdFusion yesterday that I'm thinking of throwing up online. I think you mentioned you were writing one - how's it going?

I is off!

Re: the wiki... For a while I tried to find one already written that would suit me, but I couldn't. So, now that my nifty cms is in place and slowly improving, I'm going to want to write a wiki once I get everything else exactly how I want it.

What's nice is that it's chugging away running my site, but there's still lots I can improve in it. I've been meaning to make a post about all my plans for it. Anyway, I just want to mention this as an aside... I really appreciated one of Bruce Eckel's programming guidelines:

Watch out for "analysis paralysis." Remember that you must usually move forward in a project before you know everything and that often the best and fastest way to learn about some of your unknown factors is to go to the next step rather than trying to figure it out in your head. You can't know the solution until you have the solution.

Anyway... partaaaay!