Oswald

[Steve Furlong]

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 20:31, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> At 11:34 PM 11/21/04 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
> >Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/
> >that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded"
> http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/
> 
> I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the
> Secretary variant.  Wonder what Teddie will say about that one.
> 
> Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he
> offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did.
> 
> And a hell of a shot as well.   Gotta respect that, with a bolt-action,
> no less.

A piece-of-shit boltie. I don't believe the official story, myself.

Huh. Just realized, now that I'm spouting conspiracy theories I must
finally be a real cpunks list member.

Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[James A. Donald]

--
James A. Donald:
> > Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides
> > Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq,
> > though considerably more reliably.

Steve Thompson
> You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil]
> war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian
> contractors with a variety of benefits.

Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of
mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American
military.

Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in order to
fund it.

Finding Al Quaeda is hard.  Nation building is even harder.
Military training covers nation smashing, not nation building.

But arranging matters so that Al Quaeda is busily killing those 
muslims it deems insufficiently Muslim, and muslims are killing
Al Quaeda right back, seems astonishingly easy.   It is like
throwing a match into a big petrol spill.  Why are American
soldiers getting shot putting out the fire?   Why are Americans
dying to stop arabs from killing arabs? We *want* arabs to kill
arabs.  When arabs kill arabs, we fear that the wrong side
might win - but whichever side wins, it usually turns out to be 
the wrong side.   If no one wins, no problem.

> > Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach 
> > people the virtues of religious tolerance.  That is, after
> > all, how Europeans learnt that lesson.

> You're dreaming.  People simply do not learn from history.

But we learnt from history.  Europe, and Europeans, did learn
from the European holy wars.

> Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing
> [enemy B] instead of [group C].  Sadly, this is not a perfect
> world and the people who need the most killing do not,
> generally speaking, get it.
>
> Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person
> who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a
> Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski,

First:  Three cheers for Timothy McViegh.

Secondly, the people who organize large scale terror can be 
identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is
why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan.


--digsig
 James A. Donald
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Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[Tyler Durden]

James A Donald wrote...
What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war,
but diminuition of civil war.  The problem was that the Taliban
was damn near victorious.  If the US government had maintained
the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and
kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11
Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even during the 
Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that ran some regions of 
Afghanistan.

More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes 
the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, as 
long as they offer some kind of peace. The period between Soviet withdrawal 
and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything imaginable...one batch 
of warlords would take over, killing the men loyal to the previous batch and 
raping the women, and then another batch would take over and do the same 
thing.

When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, 
albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis 
would have been willing to pay that price.

Such is the long-term consequence of an ill-thought out invasion by the US 
in Iraq OOPS I mean the Soviets in Afghanistan. They bet that all their 
power and their ultimate "inevitable" desitny as freers of the workers of 
the world should easily overcome the local will to control their own destiny 
(plus a few stingers of course).

-TD

Re: Patriot Insurance

[Steve Furlong]

On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 08:38, Will Morton wrote:
> How long have soldiers deployed in war-zones been able to get life 
> insurance?  Would love to see their actuarial process...

It's been a while since I was in the US Army, but I'm sure that the life
insurance we had didn't cover parachute-related deaths and I vaguely
recall it didn't cover combat deaths. Kinda serious omissions, from the
soldier's point of view.

Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[James A. Donald]

--
James A. Donald:
> > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is?

On 24 Nov 2004 at 2:42, Bill Stewart wrote:
> Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of 
> Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs,
> Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty
> much left with "Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy" and
> "Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to
> protect the Iraqi people".

Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans
with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though
considerably more reliably.

Chances are that after fair and free election, the majority
will vote to screw the minority - literally screw them, as in
rape being unofficially OK when members of the majority do it
to members of the minority.

Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach
people the virtues of religious tolerance.  That is, after all,
how Europeans learnt that lesson.

And the worst comes to the worst - well today the Taliban are
busy kiling Afghans instead of Americans.  Wouldn't it be nice
if Al Quaeda was killing Iraqis instead of Americans - well
actually they are killing Iraqis instead of americans, but
wouldn't it be nice if they were killing *more* Iraqis?

--digsig
 James A. Donald
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Re: Oswald

[R.A. Hettinga]

At 8:39 PM -0500 11/24/04, Steve Furlong wrote:
>A piece-of-shit boltie.

That and a corset...

Cheers,
RAH
---



The Los Angeles Times


COMMENTARY

That 'Damned Girdle': the Hidden Factor That Might Have Killed Kennedy

If not for an elaborate corset, he likely would have survived the Dallas
shooting.
 By James Reston Jr.
 James Reston Jr.'s forthcoming book is on the Spain of Christopher
Columbus and will be published by Doubleday next year.

 November 22, 2004

 Two years ago, the historian Robert Dallek revealed new details about the
extraordinary range of shots, stimulants and pills President Kennedy took
to control his physical pain and present his youthful image to the world.
Important and interesting as these details are, they should not distract us
from the one medical remedy that probably killed the president: his corset.

 Members of Kennedy's inner circle had often witnessed the painful ritual
that Kennedy endured in his private quarters before he ventured in public,
when his valet would literally winch a steel-rodded canvas back brace
around the president's torso, pulling heavy straps and tightening the
thongs loop by loop as if it was a bizarre scene out of "Gone With the
Wind."

 Once in it, the president was planted upright, trapped and almost bolted
into a ramrod posture. Many would wonder how JFK could ever move in such a
contraption. And yet move he did, and, besides his painkillers, his corset
contributed to the youthful, high-shouldered military bearing that he
presented glamorously to the world.

 But this simple device imparted a fate almost Mephistophelean in its
horror to the sequence of events in Dallas 41 years ago.

 In researching my biography of Gov. John Connally of Texas 15 years ago, I
was put on to the critical importance of Kennedy's corset in the ghastly
six seconds in November 1963 by a former Texas senator, the late Ralph
Yarborough, who was in the motorcade that day.

 Yarborough growled softly about that "damned girdle," and this led me to
the remarks of two doctors, Charles James Carrico and Malcolm Oliver Perry,
buried in Volume 3 of the 26-volume set of testimony that attended the
Warren Commission report.

 In November 1963, Carrico was the youthful, 28-year-old resident in the
emergency room of Parkland Hospital who first received the injured
president in the trauma room; Perry came quickly to the emergency room to
supervise the case - and then to pronounce the president dead half an hour
later.

 Before the Warren Commission, Carrico told of removing Kennedy's back
brace in the first seconds after his body arrived in the hospital. He
described the device as made of coarse white fiber, with stays and buckles.

 Apart from the never-ending controversy over how many bullets Lee Harvey
Oswald actually fired from the Texas School Book Depository, most experts
agree with the Warren Commission that Oswald's first bullet passed cleanly
through Kennedy's lower neck, missing any bone, then entered Connally's
back, streaking through the governor's body and lodging in his thigh. This
was the first so-called magic bullet.

 When Connally was hit, he pivoted in pain to his left, his lithe body in
motion as it swiveled downward, ending up in the lap of his wife, Nellie.

 But because of the corset, Kennedy's body did not act as a normal body
would when the bullet passed through his throat. Held by his back brace,
Kennedy remained upright, according to the Warren Commission, for five more
seconds. This provided Oswald the opportunity to reload and shoot again at
an almost stationary target.

 The frames of the Zapruder film confirm this ramrod posture: Kennedy's
head turns only slightly in those eternal seconds, and his upper body
almost not at all, from frame 225 (when the first shot entered his neck) to
the fatal frame of 313.

 Without the corset, the force of the first bullet, traveling at a speed of
2,000 feet a second, would surely have driven the president's body forward,
making him writhe in pain like Connally, and probably down in the seat of
his limousine, beyond the view of Oswald's cross hairs for a second or
third shot.

 With no bones struck and the spinal cord intact, the president almost
certainly would have survived the wound from the first bullet. Both Carrico
and Perry testified to this likelihood (and apropos of the decades-long
controversy, both testified that the small, round, clean wound in the front
of Kennedy's neck was an exit wound rather than an entry wound).

 To Perry, under the questioning of then-assistant counsel - now senator
from Pennsylvania - Arlen Specter, the injury was "tolerable"; the
president would have recovered. Because the bullet had passed below the
larynx, the wound would not even have impaired his speech later.

 In the new focus on cortisone shots, codeine painkillers, barbiturates,
stimulants like Ritalin, and gamma globulin injecti

Re: Latest Tasteful Video Game: Chappaquiduck

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 11:34 PM 11/21/04 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/
>that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded"
http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/

I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the
Secretary variant.  Wonder what Teddie will say about that one.

Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he
offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did.

And a hell of a shot as well.   Gotta respect that, with a bolt-action,
no less.

Patriot Insurance

[Will Morton]

   "US Patriot Financial (USPF) exists to help Americans, who risk 
their lives making this world a better place, obtain life insurance.   
This includes resident aliens.
   Whether you are a soldier deploying overseas, a DOD contractor 
helping to rebuild war torn countries,  a missionary volunteering to 
help the most needy, or a business man or woman traveling the globe to 
support our economy we can help.
   Using  our extensive network of life insurance carriers, we are able 
to provide protection to those whose service leads them into some of the 
world's most dangerous places.   This includes US citizens living abroad."

   http://www.uspfinancial.com/
   How long have soldiers deployed in war-zones been able to get life 
insurance?  Would love to see their actuarial process...

   W

Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[James A. Donald]

--
James A Donald wrote...
> > What made [Afghanistan] a breeding ground for terrorism was
> > not civil war, but diminuition of civil war.  The problem
> > was that the Taliban was damn near victorious.  If the US
> > government had maintained the relationship with our former
> > anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we
> > never would have had 9/11

Tyler Durden
> Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even
> during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that
> ran some regions of Afghanistan.

I seem to recall you lot claiming that the Taliban had
successfully restored order - (you see the Taliban being able
to massacre civilians unoppose as order)

There was some truth in that claim.  They controlled 95%.  Had
their been less truth, the Taliban would have had less ability
to make trouble.

> More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and
> turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door
> to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind
> of peace.

So we should therefore make sure they cannot offer some kind of
peace.

In Iraq, the Pentagon cannot supply peace.  Why then should we
allow those who wish to destroy us provide peace?   If we
cannot have peace, no one should.

>  The period between Soviet withdrawal
> and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything
> imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing
> the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women,

Nonsense.  The ugly thing about the period before Taliban rule
was that the Taliban, or people of much the same ideology,
would persistently destroy murder and rape in order to get
people to submit to their rule.  When opposition largely
collapsed, their massacres did not cease, though their rapes
became more discrete.  Instead, they decided to expand their
terror onto a wider stage.

The war was not warlord vs warlord, it was radical Islamists vs
the rest, the rest being warlords and conservative Islamists. 
The radical Islamists won, but victory did not appease their
appetite for terror.

> and then another batch would take over and do the same thing.

All the big crimes were committed by the Taliban or their ally
Hekmatyar.


--digsig
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Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[Damian Gerow]

Thus spake Steve Thompson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [25/11/04 10:17]:
: You're dreaming.  People simply do not learn from history.

People /do/ learn from history.

But most people never bother learning history, period, and many of those
that do believe that their situation is different.  And...

: Never mind the fact that the historical record is largely incomplete and
: of course written by the victors; what does survive in the history of the
: species entirely fails to teach individuals and cultures the errors of
: primitive and barbaric ways.

Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[Steve Thompson]

 --- "James A. Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> --
> James A. Donald:
> > > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is?
> 
> On 24 Nov 2004 at 2:42, Bill Stewart wrote:
> > Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of 
> > Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs,
> > Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty
> > much left with "Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy" and
> > "Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to
> > protect the Iraqi people".
> 
> Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans
> with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though
> considerably more reliably.

You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] war in Iraq
benefits miltiary leaders and civilian contractors with a variety of
benefits.  Of course, I am quite stupid about a great many subjects and
consequently I may not be able to fully appreciate the benefits that
trickle down to the American public from being `part' of a
theocratic-military pseudo-oligarchy.  Perhaps such an arrangement makes
the best of the human condition and I am merely too inferior to appreciate
the fact.
 
> Chances are that after fair and free election, the majority
> will vote to screw the minority - literally screw them, as in
> rape being unofficially OK when members of the majority do it
> to members of the minority.

Well this is to be expected if one studies the field of game theory.  And
given that reality, there is really no point in using psychology and
legislation to mitigate against the dictatorship of the proletariat. 
Vulnerable minorities might as well lie back and enjoy the inevitable
loving attentions of the majority, eh?
 
> Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach
> people the virtues of religious tolerance.  That is, after all,
> how Europeans learnt that lesson.

You're dreaming.  People simply do not learn from history.  Never mind the
fact that the historical record is largely incomplete and of course
written by the victors; what does survive in the history of the species
entirely fails to teach individuals and cultures the errors of primitive
and barbaric ways.

Of course this may change in the future.  The Christian crusaders, to use
but one trivial example, did not have television and the History Channel
at the time when they were working themselves into a frenzy in preparation
for war.
 
> And the worst comes to the worst - well today the Taliban are
> busy kiling Afghans instead of Americans.  Wouldn't it be nice
> if Al Quaeda was killing Iraqis instead of Americans - well
> actually they are killing Iraqis instead of americans, but
> wouldn't it be nice if they were killing *more* Iraqis?

Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing [enemy B] instead
of [group C].  Sadly, this is not a perfect world and the people who need
the most killing do not, generally speaking, get it.
 
Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person who ends up
becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a Timothy McVeigh, or even a
Jim Sikorski, cannot be identified early on by some sort of DNA screening
technology and then channeled into an appropriate military program in
which they might be trained to use their special talents against truly
worthy enemies of the state.


Regards,

Steve


__ 
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca

Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[James A. Donald]

--
James A. Donald
> > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is?

John Kelsey
> At least three:
>
> a.  The pottery barn theory of foreign affairs--we'd be 
> blamed for making things worse.

And if we do nothing, we are also blamed for making things 
worse:  Observe, for example

1.  the French assist the Hutus to commit genocide against the 
Tutsis.  Capitalism and America get blamed.

2. The Indonesians massacre infidels.  Capitalism, Americans 
and America get blamed.

3.  Saddam massacres his people.  The CIA, Americans and 
America get blamed.

4.  Syria invades Lebanon.  America and Israel get blamed.

5.  Africans massacre each other in the Congo.  America gets 
blamed.  (Oddly, for once, the CIA, capitalism, and Jews, are 
not involved.)

>  (I don't know how much this matters long term, but it would 
>  certainly have made life pretty hard on Tony Blair and the 
>  rest of the world leaders who actually supported us.)

The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.

> b.  We would one day like their oil back on the market.

They would like that also.  Fortunately all the oil is Kurds, 
or Shiites - the first areas to be secured once the civil war 
burns down a bit.

> c.  We would like to make sure that the next regime to come 
> to power there isn't someone we also feel obligated to get 
> rid of, as even invasions done on the cheap cost a lot of 
> money.

But it is easy and cheap to remove people.  It is installing 
people that is hard, bloody, and expensive.

If the dice turn out badly, just roll them again.

Nobody teaches soldiers nation building in basic training. They
do however, teach them nation smashing. 

--digsig
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Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[James A. Donald]

--
James A Donald wrote...
> > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is?

 Tyler Durden
> And the answer is: 9/11 sucked.
>
> Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets 
> were pushed out of Afghanistan the place became a veritable 
> breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, 
> warlords, and so on.

Nothing wrong with warlords - right now they are doing a fine 
job of keeping the Taliban down.

What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, 
but diminuition of civil war.  The problem was that the Taliban 
was damn near victorious.  If the US government had maintained
the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and
kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11

The trouble was that the government abandoned our allies.   We
should have sent them enough aid to sustain permanent major
civil war against the Taliban. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
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Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[John Young]

Associated Press has pre-issued a Thanksgiving Day photo
of a former US soldier who lost a leg, participating in a photo
op at a military base. Secdef and CJCS issued pre-holiday
thanks yesterday to the families of the military dead and to
the wounded and maimed in hospitals and on photo op tours.

Today Secdef was on Laura Ingraham gushing (slobber not
blood) about the AmericaSupportsYou.mil website where 
red-blooded Americans can participate in thanksgiving the Iraq
bloodletting, praising the headless and limbless and scared 
shitless and McVeigh-mad-dogs yearning-to-frag-backhome-warfighters.

AP has nearly stopped showing valorous warriors in combat 
in Iraq, now its mostly photos of funerals and the dead in 
cheerful high school pictures and dress-uniformed headshots, 
oops, head shots are no, no's, except for the hardbitten 
would-be warriors here sitting fat and happy before the keyboard 
tapping for more killing, right James, civil war over there is 
hunky dory, but please not an RPG invading your computer 
bubble, an IED making your kids into rag dolls.

Overseas wars are delightful movie-land fun from over here,
Secdef croons -- gobble, gobble, Sergeant York called for the
Secdef's curious-head pop-up.

Seen the Norwegian site that calls for Bush's head shot?
Two URLs, the last vivid:

  http://www.killhim.nu/

  http://killhimwith.bazooka.at/once/

Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[Tyler Durden]

John Kelsey wrote...
Well, I'm sure glad we avoided having Iraq become a breeding ground for all
sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, etc.  Also that we avoided it 
becoming
a place that trains people in how to carry out effective guerrilla warfare 
against
US troops.  We sure dodged a bullet there

>-TD
--John
Oops!
I stand corrected.
-TD

Gilmore's regional arrest & interstate travel

[Major Variola (ret)]

> John (under regional arrest) Gilmore

The feds can't prohibit interstate travel, no?  To visit 2 of the
states, you must use a boat.  Do boats require ID?
I understand that trains now do.

[Note that driving through a foreign country should not be
required.  To boat you pass out of US waters, into
international, and back into US waters.]

-
Will DCite be greenish like trinitite, or is the swamp iron-poor?