http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

He did play a lot of golf, I'll give him that.

Was this trip necessary?

The trip before the fall.

'USAF struck Syrian nuclear site'
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle/ShowFull

The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a suspected nuclear site under construction.



The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.

At the beginning of October, Israel's military censor began to allow the local media to report on the raid without attributing their report to foreign sources. Nevertheless, details of the strike have remained clouded in mystery.

On October 28, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the cabinet that he had apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan if Israel violated Turkish airspace during a strike on an alleged nuclear facility in Syria last month.

In a carefully worded statement that was given to reporters after the cabinet meeting, Olmert said: "In my conversation with the Turkish prime minister, I told him that if Israeli planes indeed penetrated Turkish airspace, then there was no intention thereby, either in advance or in any case, to - in any way - violate or undermine Turkish sovereignty, which we respect."

The New York Times reported on October 13 that Israeli planes struck at what US and Israeli intelligence believed was a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, citing American and foreign officials who had seen the relevant intelligence reports.

According to the report, Israel carried out the report to send a message that it would not tolerate even a nuclear program in its initial stages of construction in any neighboring state.

On October 17, Syria denied that one of its representatives to the United Nations told a panel that an Israeli air strike hit a Syrian nuclear facility and added that "such facilities do not exist in Syria."

A UN document released by the press office had provided an account of a meeting of the First Committee, Disarmament and International Security, in New York, and paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying that a nuclear facility was hit by the raid.

However, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA said media reports, apparently based on a UN press release, misquoted the Syrian diplomat.

Huh. Any verification from Israel or is it just Al-Jazeera?

Nope, I think it's just Al-Jazeera stirring things up and playing into Arab conspiracy thinking, which is rampant.

Note that the story claimed that Israeli airplanes accompanied the US aircraft. Other than the F-117 and B-2, American aircraft are no more stealthy than Israeli aircraft so it would defeat the purpose of using American stealth aircraft for Israel to send their aircraft along with them. Israel's F-15's and F-16's have all the capabilities of similar American fighter bombers for the mission, but they may even have better radar jamming capabilities in some cases, because they use an indigenously developed electronic counter measures system.

The Al-Jazeera story just doesn't make sense.

It sounds fishy on its face, not that that necessarily means it's false.



That's an interesting point.

The radar is the part of the story that hasn't been talked about much. Syria reportedly has the latest Russian version, a beta type so to speak, and it was so disabled that they never even knew any planes were coming. Quite an embarrassment I think.

They would probably be correct in saying they were US made jets.

Indeed.

Gives the Iranians something to chew on too.

A tactical nuke!!!????!!!! O Bog!

We often hear the claim that this or that entity must think so-and-so are fools or stupid. Well A-J just proved what they think of the intelligence of the Arab street.

People, think for just one silly second - we are not the only nation on the face of the earth with a nuclear detection capability, and two of those. with less reason to be absolutely freindly to us and our interests, sit on the UN Security Council as Veto Powers. Think that either of them would pass up the chance to blow the lid off of just such an event? Or that Syria herself would not? If we had used a tac nuc on their nuclear facility, they would be screaming bloody murder about how we took out an aspirin factory or a baby formula factory. And why not? The residual radiation from the use of such a weapon alone would provide them adequate "cover" should anyone actually go there on the ground to substantiate the story.

PLease. A-J is simply as noted up thread playing to the Arab conspiracy theorists and aficionados.

Well, to be fair, the article didn't actually say that they USed the nuke... jUSt that "that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb".

All good points.

U.S. Army: Five million acres needed for training facilities by 2011
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/U.S._Army_Fi...eeded_1103.html

Colorado Ranchers Angry Over Army Site Expansion
Plan to Take Land Spurs Debate On Patriotism, Property Rights
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=topnews

WALSENBURG, Colo. -- Herman Moltrer returned from Vietnam to be a cattle rancher on the broad shortgrass prairie that stretches as far as the eye can see in southern Colorado. The rugged work earned him a living and a little something extra for his soul, but now he fears he may have to sell his land, at someone else's price.

The U.S. Army wants 418,000 acres of private ranch land to triple the size of its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, a training area considered suitable -- some would say essential -- for preparing American warriors to do battle in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The 1,000-square-mile facility would be 15 times the size of the District.

QUOTE

"It's rude. It ain't right. It's not American," said Stan White, who could lose more than two-thirds of the 9,000 acres he ranches in Walsenburg. "We take our military and our country very seriously, but we're up against something we can't get ahold of. If they get this done, it's a national disgrace."

Several dozen ranchers and members of 15 county commissions that voted to oppose the project find themselves pitted against the Pentagon and Colorado business interests in a struggle over property rights, personal heritage and the contested priorities of national security.

Amid countless conversations around Colorado dinner tables about the potential for an economic boom or a government betrayal, experts on the environment, archaeology and paleontology are registering their concerns that the land will suffer. Both chambers of Congress voted against funding further work next year, one skirmish in a fight not nearly over.

Colorado may not be alone. Military planners foresee a need for 5 million more acres for training facilities by 2011.

In Piñon Canyon, where prehistoric dinosaur tracks lie near a surviving section of the 1800s-era Santa Fe Trail, the Army sees an opportunity when other training grounds are overtaxed by the demands of war. The move is also part of a long-term reorganization of the armed forces.

To Colorado business leaders, the expansion would help consolidate and enhance the state's growing role as a military hub: It is home to Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Northern Command.

But the government's appeal to patriotism when ranchers could be forced to sell property that has been in their families for generations leaves many landowners cold. They remain skeptical of the claims of national security and frustrated by the lack of answers.



There is a nearly universal feeling among ranchers that the Pentagon would not pay top dollar and might force landowners to sell their property using the power of eminent domain, a dirty phrase in these parts.

Marine recruiters busted in exam fraud
Stand-ins took test required of 15 marginal enlistees
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5263362.html



sure it is....

Space Defense Program Gets Extra Funding
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7111101173.html

Sounds like a nice one.

Great.

nice of them to tell us

Russian Military Chief Calls America "Evil"
Baluyevsky says U.S. missile defense is aimed at Moscow as tensions rise
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/novem...itary_chief.htm

Russia's top military chief has dubbed America "evil" while cautioning that the "insidious" U.S. missile defense shield weapons system has nothing to do with countering Iran and is aimed squarely at Moscow, as tensions continue to heat between the two superpowers.

The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Yury Baluyevsky told Russia Today, an English-language state TV channel, that Washington's plans to place a radar in the Czech Republic and ten missile interceptors in Poland supposedly to counter Iran was just a pretext to deploy weaponry close to Russia's borders.

"If the Americans deploy the radar by 2011 and anti-ballistic missiles by 2012-2013, they will certainly be directed against Russia, and we can easily prove it," said Baluyevsky.

"There will be no Iranian threat to the United States in the near future. Iran will be unable to create intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States until at least 2020," he added.
In the same interview, Baluyevsky labeled America as "evil" and swore to defend Russian military interests while absolving Russia of the responsibility of defending the rest of the world against American imperialism.

"Today, there is no need to be afraid of the Russian Armed Forces. However, I do not believe that the Russian military is obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans," he said.

Baluyevsky's inflammatory comments are likely to sour increasingly hostile relations between Washington and Moscow and they come just a month after Russian President Vladimir Putin compared the Pentagon's plan to deploy weapons in central Europe to the Soviet Union's 1962 deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

They've stolen your talking point. You should have copyrighted it.

thats a no brainer

I think my best have been "ASSKISS OF EVIL"

and "SUPPORT OUR OOPS"

You are truly the asskiss of evil. Bin Laden is going to turn around now so you can do the other side. Enjoy!

yeah I'm the one

The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Yury Baluyevsky is blowing smoke for domestic consumption pure and simple.

The European Capability will have ten interceptors, repeat ten, total. Which is not even close to being a countervailing threat to Russian Strategic Rocket Forces. Again, the trajectories alone used by their missiles for them to be a threat to the US, would render any successful intercept highly problematic, given the placement of interceptor launch sites, the Russian launch sites, and the physics involved. They know it and we know it. The interceptor site placement is optimized for a threat coming from Southwest Asia.

[ON EDIT] Here's a graphic showing both the proposed US system in Europe and the current Russian systems:



They're just upset they lost the competition for the system back in 2000, and that it extends the loss of their former client states in their eyes.

A simple review of the numbers involved simply highlights the absurdity of the claim he makes. If indeed this system were to be a counter to Russian launch cpability, it would be tantamount to using a flyswatter against a large thrown rock. In other words - useless.

According to The Russian Nuclear Forces Project, here is the status of Russia's nuclear deterrent forces:

"Current status of the strategic forces

At the beginning of 2007 the Russian strategic forces included 741 strategic delivery platforms, which can carry up to 3281 nuclear warheads. The Strategic Rocket Forces have 489 operational missile systems of four types that can carry 1788 warheads. The strategic fleet includes 12 strategic missile submarines. Their 173 missiles can carry 609 nuclear warheads. Strategic aviation consists of 79 bombers that can carry up to 884 long-range cruise missiles..."



The Russian Nuclear Forces Project

The goal of the project is to provide Russian citizens and policy makers with information about nuclear weapons, arms control and disarmament based on open scientific analysis.

The first Russian-language source of information about Soviet nuclear forces

The Russian Nuclear Forces Project started in 1991 by a group of young Russian scientists at the Center for Arms Control Studies. At that time, there was virtually no information about the Soviet nuclear weapons available to the Russian public. The little information that was available to researches drew on foreign-language sources that were not easily accessible. The Russian Nuclear Forces Project included translating into Russian and publishing in the Soviet Union "Soviet Nuclear Weapons," the book originally published in the United States by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1988 as part of their Nuclear Weapons Databook series (Nuclear Weapons Databook: Volume IV. Soviet Nuclear Weapons, by Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris and Jeffrey I. Sands). It was the most authoritative open source of detailed information about the Soviet nuclear weapons available at that time.

The Russian translation of the NRDC Databook volume, which was published in Moscow in 1992, became the first ever Russian-language book in open circulation that described the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Source: http://russianforces.org/

Yes sir.

High court to rule on Washington DC gun ban
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWAT00847820071120

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday it would decide whether handguns can be banned in Washington, D.C., a case that could produce a decisive ruling on whether individual Americans have a right to keep firearms.

The nation's highest court agreed to hear an appeal by the District of Columbia government arguing that the city's 31-year-old law banning private possession of handguns in the U.S. capital should be upheld as constitutional.

The justices said they would review a precedent-setting U.S. appeals court ruling, which held that individual Americans had a right to bear arms under the Constitution's Second Amendment and struck down Washington's law.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments most likely in March, with a ruling expected by the end of June. The decision could become an issue in 2008 elections in the United States, which is estimated to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate.

"The Supreme Court's decision in this case will be extremely significant -- the most important decision on guns in nearly 70 years and maybe the most important ever regarding the Second Amendment," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The group said it hoped for a reversal of the "clearly erroneous" appeals ruling against the ban and warned that a failure to do so could put at risk laws such as bans on military-style assault weapons.

The politically powerful National Rifle Association, which opposes gun-control laws, denounced what it called Washington's "unconstitutional gun ban." Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, predicted the Supreme Court would overturn it and rule in favor of broad individual gun rights.

The Second Amendment says, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Continued...

it happened here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkS2BRoCd2I

For the life of me, I can't shake the notion that somebody didn't proof-read that part of the Bill of Rights.

As written, that thing makes absolutely no sense. Take out the "being necessary to the security of a free state", since it surely appears to be a parenthetical clause refering to what a well-regulated militia is 'good for'. Tell me what in the hell "A well regulated militia the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." means.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" would make sense. Why the comma after "bear arms"?

Since a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed by the Federal government?

So, can it be infringed by each free state? Can each state determine what it takes to have a well regulated militia and the Feds can't interfere?

Some writers just use too damn many commas as well as other punctuation. George Mason was one of those, and it was a different time as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Declaration_of_Rights

XIII That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and be governed by, the civil power.


Influence

The Declaration heavily influenced later documents. Thomas Jefferson is thought to have drawn on it when he drafted the United States Declaration of Independence one month later (July 1776). James Madison was also influenced by the Declaration while drafting the Bill of Rights (completed September 1787, approved 1789), as was the Marquis de Lafayette in composing the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789).

The importance of the Virginia Declaration of Rights is that it was the first constitutional protection of individual rights, rather than protecting just members of Parliament or simple laws that can be changed as easily as passed.

Just wait awhile and the Bushie SCOTUS will tell you exactly what it means.

DC isn't a state. A minor point of order.

Still falls under the federal government and the Constition.

Yes, and not a state government.

2nd amendment still applies.

It might fall under local or municiple laws. Many states and cities have laws more stringent than the federal laws. The question here is constitutionality of a law, not the law per se.

Agreed, but Nomarchy will argue what right the 2nd implies.

At this point, I am willing to have somebody make a case as to what that darn peculiar construction ACTUALLY means.

For all their wisdom and glory and everything else, I don't think the 2nd Amendment was their finest hour. At least syntax wise.

finest hour was "We the People"

so much for that

Consider that the bill of rights is mostly about the rights of the people.

rights granted by the government?

NO

its about a government ALLOWED by the people

Another piece of 'circumstancial' evidence in favor of one vs another interpretation. I take it under consideration. Still, I insist, that thing is effed-up syntax and punctuation-wise.

That comma and the one preceding it have been beat to death. You gotta remember that when it says the mlitia is necessary, that it was understood at the time that the militia was all able bodied men and they brought their own weapons. So in order to have a militia you had to have men with guns. Therefore it has to be the right of those men to keep and bear said guns. Makes sense to me.

It was supposed to be simple and self-evident. So much that there was debate over whether a bill of rights was even needed. Arguing over a comma is obscuring the simple idea of the people being armed to defend themselves.

so how were people without weapons supposed to get rid of the government when it gets out of line?

its over

I am sure they have. Probably, in part, for polemical reasons. I enjoy exegesis. I would like to have all the possible interpretations and supporting evidence. Hopefully, I can come up with my own satisfactory understanding after I have done all that.

The SENTENCE, itself, as written, does NOT make sense to ME.

What are you talking about? These people were LEARNED. They didn't throw random commas in there just for fun. Unless, it was an honest mistake that never got 'caught' in the proofreading.

There's nothing simple about the idea.

Learned is an understatement as we will not see the like of these folk ever again. The simple convergence of so much talent in so small a place in such a short time is such an historical rarity that even hardcore atheists should give Provedence a second look

But, as with anything else, one has to evaluate something in proper context. Given the time, place and circumstance the phrase "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." is a work of art.... item/explanation...in virtual poetry.


Happy Thanksgiving