RE: Osama's makeover
Yeah...wasn't there an X-Files that was similar? I remember someone picking up a photo of Sadam Hussein and the TLA-dude saying, Him? He was a truck driver in Detroit we found. Perhaps the reason Bush hasn't 'caught' bin Laden yet is because he thinks he (ie, Bush) will win the election. He does have Florida locked up... -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Osama's makeover Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 21:23:19 -0700 At 05:23 PM 10/30/04 -0700, John Young wrote: Which returns to the Osama make-over. His nose looks much bigger, longer and wider, eyes closer together. The sage-of-the-desert color combination of his face and hands, beard, robe, hat and backdrop look as if it was shot in New Mexico, or maybe Israel pretending Lawrence of Arabia remake. And did you see the wire up his back and the earpiece? Or maybe its hard to get good tailors in Pakistan. _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Winning still matters, etc...
-- At 05:09 PM 10/30/04 -0400, R.A. Hettinga wrote: The terrorists cannot win either a conventional or an asymmetrical war against the United States, should it bring its full array of assets to the struggle. Major Variola The large pit of smoldering radioactive glass is probably not an option.. Why not? You keep assuming that Muslims unite, escalate, etc, but if they do, US will escalate also. In fact, there is not much the Islamicists can do to escalate beyond their current extremes. There is a great deal the US could do to escalate beyone its current measures. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG odq504QOMD1tmYFgnLderv0nS117FbcIG83t4MIX 4GzccezZIfj7BfeEbPLrXimv+SU42yCuvTxkLS+Rn
Re: Winning still matters, etc...
To state the obvious to Major Variola, CDC will have first indication of a devastating US attack, reported fragmentarily under its links to hospitals, clinics and physicians, against which the might military and law enforcement have no defenses. By time the attack is understood it will be too late to mount a national defense. Food and water are the means and methods, not the hardware and electronic infrastructure, seaports and airports, so loudly warned about. The last terrorist attack is not the next one. Elderly and children first to show the signs. Those not watched all that carefully by the big warfighters, indeed overlooked by design, so disdainful are they of caregivers.
Re: Osama's makeover
At 08:23 PM 10/30/2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote: And did you see the wire up his back and the earpiece? Or maybe its hard to get good tailors in Pakistan. Nah - he's allowed to use a Teleprompter, unlike Bush and Kerry at the debate-o-mercials. And unlike Bush, he can actually read. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Osama's makeover
At 1:18 PM -0800 10/31/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: And unlike Bush, he can actually read. C'mon Bill, that's not fair. You keep thinking that, Mr. Pox. That's just the way he likes it... Cheers, RAH --- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/politics/campaign/24points.html?pagewanted=printposition= The New York Times October 24, 2004 POLITICAL POINTS Secret Weapon for Bush? By JOHN TIERNEY To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry. That, at least, is the conclusion of Steve Sailer, a conservative columnist at the Web magazine Vdare.com and a veteran student of presidential I.Q.'s. During the last presidential campaign Mr. Sailer estimated from Mr. Bush's SAT score (1206) that his I.Q. was in the mid-120's, about 10 points lower than Al Gore's. Mr. Kerry's SAT score is not known, but now Mr. Sailer has done a comparison of the intelligence tests in the candidates' military records. They are not formal I.Q. tests, but Mr. Sailer says they are similar enough to make reasonable extrapolations. Mr. Bush's score on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test at age 22 again suggests that his I.Q was the mid-120's, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry's I.Q. was about 120, in the 91st percentile, according to Mr. Sailer's extrapolation of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test. Linda Gottfredson, an I.Q. expert at the University of Delaware, called it a creditable analysis said she was not surprised at the results or that so many people had assumed that Mr. Kerry was smarter. People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can't understand, Professor Gottfredson said. Many Americans still believe a report that began circulating on the Internet three years ago, and was quoted in Doonesbury, that Mr. Bush's I.Q. was 91, the lowest of any modern American president. But that report from the non-existent Lovenstein Institute turned out to be a hoax. You might expect Kerry campaign officials, who have worried that their candidate's intellectual image turns off voters, to quickly rush out a commercial trumpeting these new results, but for some reason they seem to be resisting the temptation. Upon hearing of their candidate's score, Michael Meehan, a spokesman for the senator, said merely: The true test is not where you start out in life, but what you do with those God-given talents. John Kerry's 40 years of public service puts him in the top percentile on that measure. -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Osama's makeover
At 12:03 PM 10/31/04 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 08:23 PM 10/30/2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote: And did you see the wire up his back and the earpiece? Or maybe its hard to get good tailors in Pakistan. Nah - he's allowed to use a Teleprompter, unlike Bush and Kerry at the debate-o-mercials. And unlike Bush, he can actually read. C'mon Bill, that's not fair. Even Osama commented on how Bush was making good progress on that book about the goats in the school on 9/11. How W didn't even want to put it down, he enjoyed it so much. His fine reading skills even got shown in Fahrenheight 911, along with some amusing footage of his handlers, and that's a documentary, so it must be true.
Re: Winning still matters, etc...
12:22 AM 10/31/04 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: Major Variola The large pit of smoldering radioactive glass is probably not an option.. Why not? They're called downwinders. Which way do the winds blow in the middle east? You keep assuming that Muslims unite, escalate, etc, but if they do, US will escalate also. No, I assume you can nuke whereever you want, just because we can. This is my take on your thesis that we are discussing. Kicking hegemony up a notch, finishing the job, let's roll... It will get easier when a US city gets nuked. The folks on the West coast might not like a few trillion curies in their soup even if we did get rid of the Indonesian Problem in the process. Maybe they just need to suck it up, ask not what their country can do for them, but how they can bend over for it. Childhood leukemia is getting easier to cure anyway.
Re: Winning still matters, etc...
There is a decreasing chance the US can apply its military might to defeat an unconventional enemy. That kind of enemy is not what long-standing military strategy and most tactics are aimed at. Rumsfeld was hoping to revise that when yet one more mighty military war appeared to head off changing military policy. The US has demonstrated in Afghanistan and post-Hussein Iraq that it does not know how to fight unconventionally. That inability appeared in Korea, then Viet Nam and has been shown in every combat the US has engaged in since WW 2. Military professionals know this and are hamstrung by the narcotic dependency the defense industry and its beneficiaries has for big iron and every bigger and more expensive platforms. This has been coupled with gigantism in intelligence, big science and big technological research advocated and overseen by giant corporations and institutions. And to gloss this a huge spin and propoganda machine has been funded to pump up the threats and the hefty defense tax boondogling. Special forces and operations were devised to piss-ant an alternative to this spread across the US pork-barrell behemothicism. But they have seldom been applied beyond pinprick displays, with much hoorahing about their stealthy effectiveness: we can tell you about our successes, only failures make it to the media. Commentators have noted the corrupting influence of empire Britain thinking its global navy would assure continuance of hegemony. The more that conceit was believed the weaker the military became by its failure to recognize new forms of warfare and new ways of thinking. That empire was undermined by non-hegemonic forms of combat and thinking. The US might get a bye with its arrogant belief in military might for another generation if its lucky, if unlucky it will not survive this one. Well, parts of it may survive, away from the cities. Imagine one of the few cypherpunks holed-up in northwest Utah and one bunkered in Corralito escape the food-and-water-borne disease. President Attila or May?
Re: Winning still matters, etc...
At 1:12 PM -0800 10/31/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Which way do the winds blow in the middle east? East of Jerusalem. :-). Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
