"Congress and Bush enacted an $87.5 billion package last November for this year's U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In April 2003, a $79.5 billion measure was approved for that year's activities."

This is what the war is costing us people. 764 solder's lives, and 192 Billons dollars.

And what is our return? What have we gained? No WMDs, but of course we stopped the horror that was Saddam. And thats a good thing right? I mean just forget the fact that Bush has single handedly mortally wounded the NATO Alliance, the fact we have troops "blow[ing] off some steam" as Rush says by pseudo-sodomizing some of the same people we are liberating. We "stopped" WMD proliferation in Iraq while we overlook our ally Pakistan selling outlawed Nuclear Weapons Technology. We removed a horrible dictator who didn't value civil rights, so overlook our other allies who are just as guilty of denying its citizens these rights. Forget all that and look at the Returns.

Powell was right when he told Bush if we start this war, we will have to own Iraq. And we do. The administration glosses over it everyday, but the line between fighting Saddam's Army and fighting in the Iraqi Civil War was crossed a *long* time ago. And take a look at the deaths per month: the Iraqi Civil War is killing us faster than Saddam ever could or did.

That is what we have in Iraq now. Civil War. Think about that. Civil War. Yet there are no UN peace keepers helping to secure and police the country. No UN assistance in drafting a constitution, or in organizing a vote. No Red Cross personal visiting prisons like Abu Ghraib until the Army so nicely invited them yesterday. Iraq is engaged in a Civil War, and because of Bush's arrogance, we are largely fighting it alone.

So, to get where we are today, its costing us 764 deaths and 192 Billion Dollars. But its not over. We aren't leaving. We can't. Iraq is in anarchy. Yet we insist on transfering sovereignty of a country by June 30 for some stupid ass reason or another. A country, by the way, that is so unstable that it requires 138,000 US, not Nato, not UN, but US troops to stay until 2006. Why? This is a country where the major faction leader who is even the closest to a moderate, Sistani, is calling the quasi-defined government we are supposedly handing sovereignty to illegitimate. Yet we stick by this meaningless date of June 30, instead of creating a government that will in some way be effective and will be viewed as legitimate to even a small segment of the Iraqi population.

And to those who say that having a democracy in the Middle East, an "island of stability, "a "foothold" is worth the cost, I ask you to remember. Remember the last "island of stability" the US tried to create in the Middle East. And by "tried" I mean preemptively overthrew a government and set up a government that was more alike to our thinking. It was Iran. It was the Shah. And People saw it was a puppet government, and the Ayatollah Khomeini was what we got. "The Great Satan" is what we got. Radical Islam as mainstream policy is what we got.

Yes we rebuilt Europe at the end of WWII. We also had the support of our biggest trading partners, a strong economy, and no brain drain or job flight. We have none of that now, and oh by the way, the war to liberate the country is still raging, and is bloodier than ever before.

Ultimately, its the Iraqis who will suffer from our vanity, our belief that the US, and not the UN, and through them the whole world should rebuild Iraq. Sure we can do it, but it will be half done, like some 50 year old Hollywood star that looks beautiful in a quick glance, but whose insides rot.

What will the return on our investment of blood and bucks be in Iraq, and will our current policies create the best return? I have no answers, but these are Things to Ponder

Things To Ponder : Return on Investment in Iraq

] Then Rush Limbaugh put it all in perspective, after a
] caller remarked that the "stack [of] naked men" was "like
] a college fraternity prank."
]
] RUSH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no
] different than what happens at the skull and bones
] initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it
] and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then
] we are going to really hammer them because they had a
] good time. You know, these people are being fired at
] every day. I'm talking about people having a good time,
] these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of
] heard of need to blow some steam off?

[ Jesus. There's so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. Fucking asshole Limbaugh. If you need to demean someone in this fashion in order to "have a good time" or get some "emotional release", then you're a monster, and deserve no less than the harshest punishment under military law. A dishonorable discharge shouldn't even be a question... the number of years spent in a dark, cold, uncomfortable cell should be the only topic of discussion as pertains to these individuals. It's like slamming puppies against a wall for fun, only worse, because it's not to cute and cuddly, but dumb, animals, but to real people, with intellect and, well, once they probably had some dignity.

You want to talk about hampering our military effort... you have no concept of how much damage these acts have done to america. None. We've engendered more hatred and anger with a few photos than I ever thought possible. This war is lost. Period. The message is gone. The good intent, whatever there was, is gone. The enemy is stronger than ever, and we're to blame. More Americans will die as a result.

But then, I suppose someone like Rush would argue that it wouldn't be a problem if the military would have suppressed these photos. Torture and humiliation is bad PR, but it's a necessary OUTLET for our uniformed men and women... we just need to keep quiet about it, for the safety of the US fucking Fatherland. Fuck you Rush, for insulting the thousands of HUMAN BEINGS that make up our armed forces. No one can call themselves a patriot who believes that actions such as these are anything less than reprehensible. End of story. -k]

Wonkette

] After a year of tackling the Windows security nightmare,
] Microsoft has killed its Next-Generation Secure Computing
] Base (NGSCB) project and later this year plans to detail
] a revised security plan for Longhorn, the next major
] version of Windows, company executives said.
]
] On Tuesday, Microsoft executives confirmed that NGSCB
] will be canned. The project, dreamed up with Intel in
] 2002, was once code-named Palladium.

I hate this technology to my core. I see its uses (banking, online transactions, etc), but this closed spec will be used extensively by Microsoft to protect its code and cause incompatibilities.

Its like Nuclear technology.Yes, we have over 440 Nuclear power plants worldwide, but we have orders of magnitude more Nuclear weapons.

Microsoft Shelves Palladium in Longhorn (for now)

] Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average"
] Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz;
] a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage;
] a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g
] wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three
] times faster than those on the market today.

Follow the line:
Intel 486DX2-66, 24 megs (~1993) runs Win 95 (1995) ok.
Pentium 120, 64 Megs (~1994) runs Windows 98 SE (1998) very well
AMD K6-III, 256 Megs (~1999) runs Windows 2K, ME and XP (2000-2002) very nicely

Hell even my beastly Dual Pentium 200 MMXs, 128 megs runs Win 2K just fine. 2 year old hardware has and should be able to run modern OSes. However,even overlooking the 1 terabyte and GigE crap, it seems like a modern top of the line PC will not running an OS due out in 2 years. The amount of resources they are expecting are so far from current standards.

Contrast this with my Linux Experience

Dual Pentium III 600's, 640 Megs (2000) runs Mandrake 10.0 (2004) beautifully
Dual Pentium Pro 233's, 512 (1996) runs Mandrake 10.0 (2004) very well (yes, even X).

And you thought XP was bad

] $[ $RANDOM % 6 == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo "you live"
] #Russian roulette

Russian Roulette - Linux Style

] (CNN) -- Sinclair Broadcast Group has ordered its seven
] ABC stations not to broadcast Friday's "Nightline" that
] will air the names and photographs of the more than 500
] U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war.
]
] In a statement online, the Sinclair group said the
] "Nightline" program "appears to be motivated by a
] political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the
] United States in Iraq."

And of course the order to pull the program isn't political either.

We have talked about this on Memestreams a lot, and this is yet another example: Who do you trust for news, when the news is filtered by large companies. This is complete and utter bullshit

CNN.com - 7 ABC affiliates ordered not to air 'Nightline' - Apr 29, 2004

More photos of my Cola Machine I showed at Interz0ne III.

Since my finals just ended, I'm starting to work on a new design that holds 7-10 colas, and keeps them cold.

More Cola Machine photos

] Syria said Wednesday it would not tolerate terrorism

Since when? It seems there are layers of craziness when it comes to suicide bombing radical Muslems. Syria just learned they aren't as low as they thought they were

Syrian Suicide Bomber One: Did you hear about those those crazies in the news. They are so fucked up, they think we are the great Satan.

Syrian Suicide Bomber Two: Hahaha, those crazy basta..... hey, whats the truck coming at us? [BOOM!]

International News Article | Reuters.com

] A damning new report reveals that the Bush administration
] has quietly removed 25 reports from its Women's Bureau
] Web site, deleting or distorting crucial information on
] issues from pay equity to reproductive healthcare.

We started talking about this issue last week on TIA;
particularly because of the onerous robot.txt on the
whitehouse site (and others), there is almost no
automated accountability for inexplicable content
mutation or deletion. This is a particularly bad example.

Salon.com Life | Making women's issues go away

Check out the Interz0ne III presentations. Pretty good quality for a con video.

Wilpig rocks

Interz0ne Presentation Video