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It's not the ships that are intimidating so much as it's all those bombs coming in from everywhere.

Uh. . . is it logical to anyone to protest a war that hasn't actually started yet? Or even been proposed? It seems that they are getting ahead of themselves. I can't even tell what countries are to be involved in the war--I might WANT it--Iran vs. North Korea would please me. Maybe there should be people there supporting the next war, especially if it has nothing to do with us.

I have never heard of these people before, but apparently they have a history of doing things you dislike.

Russia's Foreign Minister: "I told you, don't ever call me here. What did I tell you before?"

Iraqi Foreign Minister: "We don't know each other."

"That's right, we don't know each other."

"Can we get some more tanks?"

"Mention Russia again on television, you little creep, and I'll see to it that every T-72 we have will be in Iraq by the weekend."

Pres. Chirac, on the other hand, stated that the US should cede all rights over governing Iraq to an uninvolved country, such as France. That country, if it were, say, France, could then help the Iraqis rebuild their economy by hiring some of the Iraqis to run the oil rigs while the, for the sake of argument, French, sell the oil to the US. There is definitely a place for the UN in the Chirac plan, since "lots of UN countries buy oil". Chirac cited the numerous times France has helped struggling nations gain their independence and develop bustling economies--Algeria, Vietnam, Haiti. . .

Chirac also wants the US to evacuate an area which has traditionally been in the French sphere of influence--the Louisiana Purchase; Chirac granted the US 48 hours to evacuate this formerly French territory and said he would be returning the $15 million Jefferson paid for it. Chirac added that he also had some bad news for Canada.

This post confused me as well (post 1). When I first read it, I thought he was questioning if Gulf War I Vets were veterans. He isn't. He is referring to a specific group of people on TV.
We Gulf War I veterans certainly ARE veterans, regardless of our assignments during the war. I tell people I am a veteran, but not a GW I Vet; since I was not in theater during the war, I was stationed elsewhere.
I apologise if I am addressing an issue you were not bringing up; it sounded like you were reading the same question into the post I was.

Saddam Hussein on the other hand HAS had to alter his daily schedule slightly:
1. Wake up
2. Crawl out from orphanage basement
3. Hide under baby milk factory while having breakfast ("baby milk" again)
4. Hide under Red Cross building disguised as Kofi Annan
5. Have lunch with Osama at the restaurant in the hotel with all the CNN guys in it
6. Spend the afternoon in the morgue of the Baghdad city hospital ("sure is cool down here, I hope I can get back here tomorrow")
7. Eat dinner with John Walker Lindh at palace bunker #1553 "The Camel's Armpit" ("Why does this guy keep standing me up? I hope nothing happened to him.")
8. Crawl under rock for the night

You know, France had just as good a chance to have a say in how Iraq gets partitioned/run/set on fire as anyone else. If you want to play the "Where's My Share?" game, you have to get dealt in at the beginning; not wait until it's over and claim you REALLY wished all along you had been on the side of the winners.
Actually, now that I think about it, that IS what they did in WWII and we did give them a part of Germany. I suppose they expect us to cut them in at the end just like last time--you know, to make Kofi Annan happy.
At least by their staying out of the fighting, we don't have to figure out to do when two armies meet each other and surrender simultaneously.
--"I am your prisoner."
--"No, I am YOUR prisoner."
--"Au contraire, I am YOUR. . . "

---

"The US and UK captured 1200 prisoners today, 500 Iraqis and 700 allied soldiers, whose nationality is being withheld."

---

"Pres. Chirac: please report to Camp X-Ray to claim your 'lost luggage'."

That's funny, on the airlines I've ever flown on, the stewardesses just used a tranquilizer gun. This new technique is probably due to the new laws against guns on aircraft.

They will probably learn a whole lot of NEW big words pretty soon; "intentional, malicious, felonious, conviction, penitentiary, and 'frequently sodomized'" spring to mind.

After the war, why not deport the (ideally small) remaining population of Iraq to an island somewhere and sell the land to Russia (or the EU) for whatever the war costs you (take payment in oil)? Throw in Iran, too--remember to deport them to a different island. The US would have little to worry about--war crimes trials are for the LOSERS in the war.

Maybe you should overthrow Saudi Arabia, too; sell it to the highest bidder--the Saudi nationals could probably be left in place since there are only about four of them.

I think it's best to avoid holding on to any of the area permanently; the area is notoriously difficult to keep without worrying about terrorism.

Better yet, if the US can, it should try living without the oil. Use corn whiskey instead, and every Middle Eastern Country goes back to the stone age without being bombed. Saddam Hussein can go back to butchering his own people in peace until they get tired of it and put his head on a stick.

I have a solution that will please everybody. All American citizens that can prove that they were legally enslaved under the laws of the US (other than after being convicted of a felony) shall receive ten million dollars. Upon the death of said person, all the money they did not spend goes back to the government. It cannot be inherited by heirs, because the heirs were not victims of slavery directly. Any property bought by said former slave may remain in the estate, but money goes back.

No one else gets anything.

I predict that the total number of people eligible to collect the 10,000,000 dollar reparation to be fewer than one; there are just not very many people who live to be 137 these days.

"What about people who are sick, in wheelchairs, one-legged, etc? What about pregnant women?"

Actually, those people do not need deferments--they are ineligible for the draft under current law anyway. A deferment is a legal postponement of obligatory service for someone who is subject to the draft (usually college students who wish to finish their degrees first).

The current US draft law is admirable in its ability to retain the government's right to compel military service without actually subjecting the military to the type of inductees one often sees in conscripted armies around the world. Conscripted armies today are generally lousy compared with professional ones. I have never talked to any army (or other services either) member who thought that what the army really needed was a whole lot of undisciplined people who don't want to be there.

The US military could easily do without the law today. I think it is not likely that conscription will be relied upon again in our lifetime by the US. All the same, almost every nation ever has reserved the right to call up troops involuntarily for the army. I doubt very highly that the Selective Service will be disbanded anytime soon.

"the Dred Scott Museum will be opening in Stuttgart."

Maybe they will trade with Idaho. Every country should be able to have the monument which corresponds to the problem they had. Germany gets all the Nazi Museums (neo-Nazi ones too). The US and Brazil get statues and plaques related to slavery. Argentina gets anything concerning economic ruin. We (Paraguay) get all the stuff related to government corruption. The World Racism Museum gets split between South Africa and Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe gets the parking lot). Imperialist Abuses Honorary Statues go to the UK and Japan. Overpopulation and Bad Governmment Memorials go to China.

The Whining And Moaning About The United States Museum will simultaneously open branches in every country which has ever been a member of the UN (including Nauru).

I have a guess as to why Pluto is harder to get an orbit for. It is a LOT further away than Jupiter and Saturn. It also has a much smaller mass (which naturally means its gravitational pull is very small also). It may be that since it is so very far away, the spacecraft must travel much faster to get there in a "reasonable amount of time". It will therefore need tremendous effort to get it to slow down enough to attain orbit, rather than fly by. Pluto's gravitational weakness will hamper the use of its gravity alone for this purpose. If I am not mistaken (and I may well be, I am out of the loop on scientific advances here in South America) we have never even orbited a craft around Uranus or Neptune, but did get some nifty shots of them with a Voyager fly by.

I think that it might still be worth doing even if we can only manage a fly-by type expedition--look at what the Voyagers let us see. Alternately, I doubt that it will really have to be 20 years before an orbiter is possible. If the US puts its money on a project and is allowed by its space budget to dedicate enough research to it, it could be much earlier. It took less than ten years to go from having every other rocket blow up on the launch pad to landing actual people on the moon.

al-Masri also cautioned listeners about the dangers of holding he hand of your newly-recruited, terrified suicide bomber. "TNT is not as safe as that schmuck Alfred Nobel wants you to believe."

I do not know exactly what to tell you about what to call yourself. Kentucky did not leave the Union (though a star was placed on the confederate flag to represent it). Many thousands of volunteers went to either side of the war from Kentucky.

I would have to consider Kentucky a "Yankee" state because its pre-war gov't never attempted to secede officially. Maryland, another border state was occupied by Union troops and had no chance to secede, but Kentucky simply decided not to--long before a Union army crossed into the state.

The other "border states" (slave states in the Union) are Delaware (Unionist--nerver tried to secede), Missouri (also counted on Conf. Flag but had a disputed state gov't at the beginning of the war; it was occupied by the Union like Maryland), and West Virginia (seceded from an already-seceded Virginia, to rejoin the Union).

Small historical note.

Actually, there weren't technically any Jews in Germany for Hitler to exterminate. Jews were less than cordially invited to leave Germany before the extermination order was issued. Few, if any, Jews were actually in Germany during the holocaust.

Unfortunately for many Jews, they did not get far enough from Hitler and were overrun in their "host" countries as refugees. Holland (where Anne Frank and her family had fled from Hesse, Germany), Czechoslovakia and Poland were overrun very quickly in the war--the extermination orders were given at that point. You likely already knew this, but your post implied that the Jews were still in Germany.

I found these things out while touring Dachau Prison camp in Bavaria. None of the "extermination" camps were in Germany, most were in Eastern Europe (Auschwitz-Birkenau was in Poland). Dachau was not used to exterminate Jews, but was a death camp in every sense, since Russian POWs died there by the hundred.

"This is our attempt to prove to our children that NOTHING is too stupid to happen."

"We are also not really thrilled with the flagrant use of the word 'lepers' in the Bible, as this word has a negative connotation."

"We were going to protest the use of the word 'wheelchair' being used in hospitals, but someone pointed out that it is actually a chair with wheels on it."

I think you are referring to the Emancipated minor laws that are designed for special circumstances for some teens, they become answerable directly to the state (rather than through their parents) as if they were adults of 18. Many states, if not all, have these laws.

I want to agree with you; that is, I think I agree with you. If there was a widesread lack of faith in public (and private) schools, surely more people would home school their children. Further, comparing the performance of homeschooled children with that of otherwise schooled children is somewhat unfair.

The children of those parents who homeschool would likely be the children of parents who are "concerned parents" if those parents did not homeschool. Many children's parents are reluctant to talk to their children's teachers, some are downright fearful that they may hear something unpleasant and these parents seem "unconcerned" or "uninvolved". These parents, generally speaking, do not homeschool--many would not dream of taking the responsibility and asserting (even in their own minds) that they could do as good a job of raising their own children as prefect strangers can.

It is frustrating to good teachers when parents do not participate in the education of their children. The teacher, even if he despises parent-teacher conferences and becomes nervous around his "customers", cannot afford uninvolved parents, for their children are so much more likely to fail his subjects because he has failed to teach them. "Involved" parents children, in my experience as a teacher, almost never fail, even if their interests and talents lie outside the classes they are taking. In fact, virtually all of my top performers in class have been those children whose parents I saw at every parent-teacher conference.

If we were to compare those children's collective performance with that of homeschooled children, I am confident that the gap in the performances between them would be significantly narrower than the overall gap between all "schooled" children and homeschooled children. The comparison seems otherwise a bit of an "apples and oranges" comparison.