h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

well the cynical part of me would presume that it has been argued in the "side rooms " of the senate ,if america signs ,they will also have a dutie to clear up those that they have "laid" or perhaps they cant account for "the thousands" that are not in stock so to speak.

Once they sign they will have to dispose of what they have got ,and dig up "those" known to be "currently deployed" well need i say more

Iraq is closer to the top of the second list. It's alphabetical. There are a lot of other big names: Russia, China, the Koreas, Israel, Estonia, Armenia. You know.

Sorry ltp, simulpost.

From what I've read of the American position on the land mine treaty, the Clinton administration reluctently declined because they felt they needed to still use mines in the DMZ between the Koreas. It would be just to expensive in troops to fully patrol the area without the use of marked mine fields to break the area into smaller more easily patrolled areas. While this is in some ways a reasonable position if one resigns onself to an unending division of the Korean Peninsula into hostile camps, the decision still leaves a massive capacity for the manufacture and distribution of the nasty little critters. And, of course, the treaty does nothing about remotely planted land mines (cluster bombs).

Nope i'm stupid i know but the same trigger that sets off these explosives can send radio signal or something of that ilk,explosives can be made to degrade after a time ,technology has done away with the need for these, at best they are to slow advances.
As a WMD not selective enough any person that think they win battles
and are needed in the 21 centuary is sadly misguided.

I agree, ltp. And so do most of the world's leaders.

Thanks for that link, Montana. Way cool.

This one's for you, Empty:

George Bush Jr. is sleeping, when the specter of George Washington appears to him. Bush says to Washington 'How can I become a better president?' Washington says to him, 'Tell the truth.'

Bush rolls over and goes back to sleep, only to have Thomas Jefferson appear in his dream. Bush says to Washington 'How can I become a better president?' Jefferson says to him, 'Uphold the constitution.'

Finally, Abraham Lincoln shows up in Bush's dream. Bush says to Lincoln 'How can I become a better president?' Lincoln says, 'Go see a play.'

Thanks Lentilla. That's brilliant.

this is brilliant, too: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040212/w021288.html

Also, Id been getting the impression from news stories lately that the resistence/insurgence/terrorists/saddam loyalists/sunni extremists/baath party loyalists/etc. where not targeting the coalition as much lately. Seems that's not really the way it is:

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040212/w021234.html

What I find amazing is that Shrub is still sticking to the "major fighting is over" story. He did an interview on Meet the Press here last Sunday, and I was just flabbergasted. He kept refering to himself as the "war president." Sorry, bub, but when I think on those terms, I'm not thinking aobut you.

The following is an excerpt from Micheal Moore's letter to George W Bush. It can be found on his website:

http://www.michaelmoore.com

"Mr. Bush, this issue is not going to go away -- and I think yesterday's actions just dug you into a deeper hole. You're probably wondering why the heck this story won't just die. You probably thought that after I brought it up last month and then got slammed by Peter Jennings for uttering the "d" word, the whole matter would just disappear as fast as bag of blow being thrown out the window of a speeding car on a deserted Maine highway.

But your "desertion" didn't go away -- and here's the reason why. You have sent countless numbers of our sons and daughters in the National Guard to their deaths in the last 11 months. You did this while misleading their parents and the nation with bogus lies about weapons of mass destruction and scary phony Saddam ties to al Qaeda. You sent them off to a never-ending war so that your benefactors at Halliburton and the oil companies could line their pockets. And then you had the audacity to prance around in a soldier's uniform on an aircraft carrier proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" -- while the cameras from your re-election campaign ad agency rolled.

THAT is what makes this whole business of you being AWOL so despicable, and makes the grief-stricken relatives want to turn away from you in disgust. The reason your skipping-out on your enlistment didn't matter in the 2000 election was because we were not at war. Being stuck in a deadly, daily quagmire now in 2004 makes your military history-fiction and your fly-boy costume VERY relevant.

You still have not answered the questions surrounding your National Guard "service." Let me repeat them as simply as I can for you (all of them based on the investigative work of the Associated Press and the Boston Globe):

1. How were you able to jump ahead of 500 other applicants to get into the Texas Air National Guard, thus guaranteeing you would not have to go to Vietnam? What calls did your father (who was then a United States Congressman representing Texas) make on your behalf for you to get this assignment?

2. Why were you grounded (not allowed to fly) after you either failed your physical or failed to take it in July 1972? Was there a reason you were afraid to take the physical? Or, did you take it and not pass it? If so, why didn't you pass it? Was it the urine test? The records show that, after the Guard spent years and lots of money training you to be a pilot, you never flew for the rest of your time in the Guard. Why?

3. Can you produce one person who can verify that he served with you in the Guard during the year that your Texas commanders said you did not show up? Why have you failed to bring forth anyone who served with you in the Guard while you were in Alabama? Why hasn't ONE SINGLE PERSON come forward?

4. Can you tell us what you did when you claim to have shown up in Alabama for Guard duty? What were you duties? You were grounded, so what did they have you do instead?

5. Where are the sign-up sheets that would have your name and service number on them for each weekend you showed up? Aaron Brown on CNN told us how, when he was in the reserves, he had to sign in each time he reported, and his guest from the Washington Post said, that's right, and there would be "four copies of that record" in the files of various agencies. Will you ask those agencies to release those records?

6. If you were in fact paid for that time when you apparently went AWOL, will you authorize the IRS to release your 1972-73 tax returns?

7. How did you get an honorable discharge? What strings were pulled? Who called who?"





But everything's alright because Dubya (probably) won't be president a year from now. Apparently Americans are genetically superior and not capable of doing anything really wrong. So Bush will (probably) be voted out in the next election, become just a footnote of history and all will be right with the world.

After you've been accusing Americans of being mostly fat, lazy & stupid and generally inferior, (ok, I think we have to give you fat ), does it not strike you as slightly odd to come up with that little "genetically superior" comment? I mean to repeatedly put a group down and then accuse them of arrogance...

I'm asking, nicely, if you could qualify those blanket statements about Americans with something like "most" or "the majority of". Please.

Thanks.

The problem with voting Shrub out is that most of the folks doing the voting out will vote for anyone that isn't Shrub. Which is frightening in itself. John Kerry, for example, gives me the willies. But I think the following, from Asteroid Lil, sums it up pretty well:

Consider what a Democratic president is going to find on the desk when he walks into the Oval Office. Do you think it will be High Ideals Day?? Of course not. He'll have to raise taxes -- what choice have the neo-Cons left him? He'll be years just starting to undo the damage that has been done to our international relationships. He'll be years undoing the legislative and actual damage that has been done to our environment. He'll be fighting (most likely) a partisan Congress. And that all presupposes he can give lots of time to those matters, that North Korea won't pop the cork or that Iran won't invade Iraq because the latter has collapsed into Somalia-hood.

And the world will still be rapidly changing as he tries to chart his course. It won't be the time for mapping the way to the moral high ground. It will be toppingly hard enough just to figure out what's going on.

<>

Sadly, this pessimism is no doubt justified...

"Terror groups flourish in Canada: U.S. report"

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/15/terror040215

"The report, prepared by Library of Congress research staff working with the Central Intelligence Crime and Narcotics Center, cites only two cases of terrorist activity in Canada"



The report is titled "Nations Hospitable to Organized Crime and Terrorism" http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/Nats_Hospitable.pdf . The only Western Hemisphere countries mentioned are Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is interesting that the country which provided the flying lessons for the 9/11 hijackers is not listed. It is interesting that the country that provides the training for the death squads in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is not mentioned. It is interesting that the country which provided most of the funding for the IRA is not mentioned. It is interesting that the Western Hemisphere country which provided training, equipment, and funds for Osama Bin Laden and his boys is not mentioned.

Gee. I didn't have to do any research and I could find more than two examples for that country. And I didn't even get to organized crime.

Is there any whitewash left in that bucket?

Bush will go and the human race will exist for much longer then.I think that the human race will survive once again..

I can't imagine voting anybody into office that would be worse than Bush. But nobody envisioned Bush being as much of a f****up as he's been. It's the devil you know versus the devil you don't. I figure Kerry couldn't muck up things any worse, and he'll probably make a good start on fixing these problems. Too bad Clinton can't run again. If only Bush had decided to get a little presidential nookie instead of making war on other countries, we'd be in a lot better shape.

> But everything's alright because Dubya (probably) won't be president a year from now. Apparently Americans are genetically superior and not capable of doing anything really wrong. So Bush will (probably) be voted out in the next election, become just a footnote of history and all will be right with the world.

Empty - not pessimistic at all, are ya?

Ah, at last you realize that we're genetically superior - because we've got a little bit of everybody! Mix it all up, put it in the pan, next thing you know you've got fusion. You know that the most important thing is to get Bush out of office. Then we can start figuring out a way to put him in court for his crimes. Too bad we can't send him to the ICC - by all rights, Saddam should be tried there.

Yeah, but Clinton ignored the intelligence suggesting that the various groups were planning something big. I'm just saying that between Shrub's take no prisoners approach and Clinton's don't worry about it approach, something's seriously out of whack.

anhaga, dear, it's a pretext. You're harboring terrorists, and now we can invade. It was always in the Shrub agenda, don't you know. Think of all those lovely virgin forests he can clear cut....