A million would not buy the facilities to make a bomb. I don't think a million would buy a bomb that was already built (e.g., one of the Russian ones) and I'm almost certain a million wouldn't buy a bomb that worked. Nuclear weapons require maintenance.

Actually, a million probably WOULD get you a working bomb. But moving it and such would be the problem. And you wouldn't know if it WAS a working bomb until you tried it.

So, step #1. Acquire the knowledge required to build and maintain nukes. Even old style (1945) nukes.

And a million would get you that knowledge.

Then you have the experts who could tell if the bomb you're buying will work or not.

Yep, and the people you know are all that count, right?

Awareness of these issues will NOT start by congratulating yourself on bombing a 3rd rate dictatorship out of office. Or pretending that it's all right now that those bad men are dead.

Until and unless issues start getting talked about in rural coffee shops and cowboy bars, and their equivalents in Iowa and Upper Michigan, nothing will get anywhere.

Not true. All it takes is for the leaders to change their strategy. Like I said, manipulation is easy.

Unless, of course, you insist that you and the rest of the nobility can make the decisions without input from the hoi polloi.

Prior to the attack, how many of the "hoi polloi" could have located Afghanistan on a globe (unmarked)? How many of them could have identified ObL? Or his organization? Or ANYTHING about the current situtation? Even to the point of identifying the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan?

And that's just ONE example.

How many of them know what the goverment of Uzbekistan is?
Or that Pakistan has fundamentalist Islamics in its government?

You've seen how fucked up Marlowe's "facts" are regarding US history, even!

No, emotions aren't logical. Neither is refusal, on your part, to attempt to deal with such rhetorical devices as digression and return, argument by example, and metaphor and simile.

Also known as "going off on a tanget" and "rhetorical questions".

You have an example, metaphor or similie, present it. If you ask whether we'd be discussing this under a Stalinistic government, that's bullshit.

In this case your emotions betrayed you -- you saw a chance for a zingy one-liner against the jingoistic boob, leaped on it, and failed to notice that what attracted you was actually a setup for something quite different.

Really? Then feel free to correct me and proceed with your position.

To take an example: we flatly bullied Cuba into pushing the missiles out.

That was a DIRECT threat to our soil. None of the others were.

The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes all the choices are unpalatable.

That depends upon your definition of "unpalatable". Letting some country work out its own system of government (as we did in our's) doesn't seem "unpalatable" to me.

When that happens, we (or anyone) make the choice that seems least unpalatable -- the lesser of the evils.

Actually, what we seem to choose is whatever will advance our economic interests. Regarless of the cost in human lives or suffering (as long as they're not US citizens).

Second-guessing judgement calls, from the safety and comfort of fifty years and a warm house, is not only stupid, it's stupidly useless.

As long as you're warm and "safe", it doesn't matter how many people die how horribly in other countries. Just don't stop the oil.

George Bush (and I) propose a method for handling the situation on the ground now.

Simple, cutting off our funding of their regimes. Cutting off our oil imports. Cutting off our weapon sales to them. etc.

How would you address Mr. Atcheson on the subject [contemporary references only, please]

The simple answer, not contemporary for you, would be to not support the French on that. Don't get involved.

What would have been the effect of having Iran as the southernmost Republic of the Soviet Union? Can you suggest another method of preventing that?

Why do you insist on preventing that? What would it have mattered if they did?

What would a more sensible setup have looked like?

Again, why get involved? Why do >WE< have to determine what the border of a country is?

--Again to the British: When India was partitioned into "India" and "Pakistan", were those the correct boundaries?

Again, why do you presume it is up to us to determine the borders? Why ;can you not let the citizens over there decide upon their borders?

Suggest a set of arguments that would have made sense to my father for not exploiting that resource [my father was a Sergeant in WWII, in the Pacific theater]. You may not use the word "nuclear" unless you have a complete and definitive solution to the waste problem.

Simple, we trade with the country that has the resources we want UNTIL we have evidence that they are a totalitarian regime or that their view of human rights does not match our's. Then we stop.

Nobody needs to "acquire" the knowledge -- it's general science; that genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

No. The knowledge that it happens is general science. The specifics on how to make a bomb out of it is not. That is the knowledge that is needed.

The technology is and will remain harder.

Really? And can you tell me WHY this is so for that specific technology and not so for all other technologies?

In other words, what else did we build in 1945 that cannot be built today by just about any country or organization willing to do so?

Illegal immigrants tend strongly to cross the border with what they can carry and little more, and die of it; you should meet some.

I have. I spent some time in California. I could ask you what the mortality rate you believe is. But that would be going off on a tanget. Suffice to say that there are thousands of illegals in California.

Smuggling, especially of good-sized objects, is harder than it looks.

It would fit in a van. Smuggling isn't that hard. Like I said, thousands of illegals are in California.

I'm actually less worried about smuggled nukes than I am about North Korean missiles. Do you ever do any international shipping?

Yes I do. Missles deliver themselves. Do they have ICBM's?

Where you and I differ, I think, is that I come from a culture where religious motivations were and are important. I don't think you do; I think you interpret the whole thing in economic and "liberation" terms, and I think you make a very, very serious fundamental mistake in doing so.

What are you talking about?

I recognize ObL's religious beliefs and I understand what he can do based upon those.

What are >YOU< talking about?

The clerics leading the charges are not making economic arguments, and are not interested in liberating their people -- quite the contrary, and they make that explicit; do you know what the word "Islam" means?

"submission". specifically, submission to the Will of God.

Which is why I believe that, one day, one of them will realize that Allah's Holy Fire will cleanse the world of the inifidels.

That is why we have to deal with that situation NOW.

You and Ashton are so focused on the [oil], and your leftist interpretation of the oil issue in terms of oppressed peoples of the world, that you seem sometimes not even to have the concepts for what I'm talking about.

The oil is what they sell to raise the money.

oil == money

Money is what they use to buy weapons and training and transportation and airplane tickets.

Money is what they will use to pay for the training and the equipment to outfit themselves with nukes.

Using the transitive property....

(the sale of) oil == nuclear martyrs.

The oil is secondary.

Without the oil, would ObL have the money he does? Without the money, would they have been able to pay for pilot training and airline tickets?

We -- the United States -- could do without the oil without missing it much.

Then, for our own national security, we should.

Leftist concepts of "oppression", "liberation", "capitalist hegemony", etc. are irrelevant.

Leftist concepts such as "a 40 kiloton nuke just went off in NYC" is relevant.

The Taliban took a country that was about as oppressed by world capitalism as a country could be -- and smashed what little was available to the people, doing their best to return them to the brutality and ignorance of twelfth-century life.

Do a google search on "taliban oil pipeline deal". Whatever the Taliban did, they did with the seeming approval of the US. Fuck! They were even meeting us in TEXAS to discuss the deals. IN 19-FUCKING-97!

We knew what their religion was, we knew how they treated women, we knew EVEEERYTHING.

But we didn't >CARE<.

And don't go all Rousseauvian on me. I'm not impressed by safe, warm, well-fed intellectuals rhapsodizing on the Nobility of infanticide, lice, and starvation.

Cool. And I'm sure you'll point it out IF I EVER FUCKING DO THAT! Right?

Oh, I understood well enough from the beginning. I simply think you're looking at it from too simplistic a perspective, as well has having Leftist concepts so firmly embedded that you can't think clearly on the subject.

Really? What part haven't I been clear on?

#1. The fact that nuclear weapons technology is 57 years old?

#2. The fact that we're in the habit of paying fundamentalist fanatics (as long as their in the government and will sell us the fuels).

#3. That, given #1 & #2, there will EVENTUALLY be a fanatic with a nuke?

George Bush, Texas Cowboy, shooting from the hip because he can't think of a way to handle the subject sensibly, just fits really nicely with your preconceptions, doesn't it?

It's called "insight".

#1. The "war" was to "get" ObL.

#2. We didn't give our evidence to the Taliban. We went right in to get him.

#3. We fucked up so badly that he got away.

#4. Not being able to admit that we fucked up, we re-phrased the "war" to "liberate" Afghanistan from the "evil" Taliban.

Even though members of the "evil" Taliban were meeting our people in Texax in 1997 to discussion pipeline deals.

#5. And no mention is made of ObL now. It's all photo ops of happy Afghans.

Which supports my position that the US will trade with ANYONE doing ANYTHING to ANYONE (as long as it's not a US citizen) so long as we get the fuels we want.

Now, how "moral" does that sound to you?

I don't know where you get your viewpoint from, but to me, that EXACTLY matches my description of gun-slinger politics.

Like it or not, the characterization is accurate.

Wrong, n. == The United States of America did it.
Wrong, v.t. == What the United States does to people.
Wrong, v.i. == What the United States does.

Nice to deal in such simplicity, isn't it?

Well, it does seem to save YOU the trouble of reasoning.

Or is there any facts that I've presented that you can refute?

I didn't think so.

We were wining and dining members of the "evil" Taliban in Texax in 1997.

We knew how they treated their people.

We just didn't care.

As long as we're getting what we want.

Of course, >YOU< can refute me.

Just present ANY bit of evidence that >YOU< were opposed to the Taliban in 1997.

Yet you're celebrating TODAY that they've been defeated.

And you're claiming that the people in the red neck bars are important.

Dude, in 1997, you didn't even KNOW who/what/where the Taliban was.

Hell, you didn't even know right up until September, 2001.

Then you're all too eager to believe that they are some terrible threat to the US.

You're a prime example of why those idiots in the red neck bars do NOT matter. You'll believe whatever propaganda is fed to you.

You won't even THINK about the history or ANY of our previous dealings with them.

You exist only in the moment.

That does tend to yield a specific type of moral certainty.

Nothing we've done to them or supported them in in the PAST has any meaning.

The US exists in a closed bubble of non-effect.

Things just sort of happen to us.

Because the people who do the bad things are bad people.

So, explain to me why, when a bunch of SAUDI fanatics hijack planes and crash them into the WTC at the command of a SAUDI millionaire are we bombing a bunch of AFGHAN civilians?

At which point your filters start to kick in and NONE of that makes any sense to you. It's simply to alien for your mode of "thought".

So you retreat into a non-fact space.

Anyone who disagrees with you >MUST< think that anything the US does is "wrong".

There, that's all sorted out. Now you can shut your brain down and start voting Republican again.

Don't think about the scary stuff. Don't think that in another 43 years (I'll still be alive), nuclear weapon technology will be 100 years old. It will still, somehow, someway, be too difficult for any terrorist to make one. Somehow. Despite the trend in EVERY other technology.

It just won't happen so we don't have to think about it.

Make the scary lunatic shut up, mommy.