> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Gautam Mukunda
[snip]
> It is, of course, impossible to provide. One of the basic rules
> of logic is
> that it is impossible to prove a negative. It is literally impossible to
> prove that no US weapons hit _any_ civilian targets.
Let me preface the following by saying that I would hope that I would
respond thus no matter *who* wrote that... It is *logically* possible,
though difficult, to account for every bomb and the damage it did. I
suspect you are thinking of the principle that it is impossible to prove the
non-existence of a thing. The bombs exist and their effects are measurable.
I pick a nit mostly because of the story it reminded me of.
My friend Dan Ryder (call sign "Mad Dog" or "Pazzo Cane," when he was based
in Italy), who, when I said we were working on a library for Sarajevo that
"couldn't be bombed," corrected me by saying, no, it would just be very
difficult. This was during the Bosnian conflict, when I was involved
creating a digital library that would reside on servers in various parts of
the world, after Sarajevo's library was destroyed. Dan, who was vp of my
company, was a former Navy attack pilot with more than 1,000 carrier
arrests, which fewer than 100 guys had ever done at the time. That
achievement has been greatly dimmed by the more recent conflicts (he served
in Vietnam). This raised the idea of someone bombing the University of
Pittsburgh, which had offered to be the main host, which seemed humorous at
the time. Not so much now.
The library idea disintegrated when the war heated up again and I couldn't
get into Sarajevo. But I'll never forget the folks from the Soros
Foundation, who were going to put up the seed money, noting that in my
budget, I needed to include a flak jacket and helmet. "Don't forget to sit
on your flak jacket on the way in," they said. Lots of small-arms fire at
those U.N. relief planes. Ah.
Nick
