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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (115998)	9/20/2007 12:03:07 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361660

McCain’s Midnight Ride By GAIL COLLINS Published: September 20, 2007 Our question for today is: What counts as a warning? When it comes to conveying a sense of urgency, Paul Revere’s ride was a 10. A zero would be Alan Greenspan, empowering George Bush to slash taxes and then confidentially warning him that it only works if you also get Congress to slash spending, as frequently happens when hell freezes over. Donald Rumsfeld making a handwritten list of “15, 20, 25 things that could go wrong” in Iraq just before the invasion would be a negative-6. And now we have John McCain, who says that he has been warning us since 2003 that President Bush was creating a huge mess in Iraq. “As I said at the time, it was very much like watching a train wreck,” he announced on the Senate floor yesterday. As Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper reported in The Times, McCain has begun separating himself from Bush’s war. (“For nearly four years we were on opposite sides, because I believed and knew the Rumsfeld strategy was failing.”) Now, there is a new Petraeus-war, permitting the senator from Arizona to embrace his inner hawk. (Things are great in Anbar!) McCain can run for president as a cheerleader for the surge, while differentiating himself from his major opponents, who don’t like to criticize the commander in chief. Or in other words: I actually was against this war before I was for it. Way back at the beginning, McCain was a charter member of the “Iraqi-people-will-greet-us-as-liberators” club. Then he made his first trip to the war zone in August of 2003, and came back very worried about the way things were going. “If we do not meaningfully improve services and security in Iraq over the next few months, it may be too late,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. And after that deadline passed with no plans for sending additional troops, he simply kept grumbling on Sunday morning talk shows and making speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations. Now McCain sees this conflict as a potential “fight for survival,” and at minimum, the only thing standing between the Middle East and “catastrophic consequences and genocide.” If he realized the war was being run so badly, you would really expect a level of dissent somewhat higher than you hear when the issue is, say, inadequate funding for the No Child Left Behind Act. You would figure that McCain would be delivering a passionate speech every single day. Offering amendments that threaten to withdraw funding unless more troops are added. Staging hunger strikes in front of the Washington Monument. Instead, he helped George Bush get re-elected. Introducing the president to a crowd of soldiers in Fort Lewis, Wash., in 2004, McCain reminded the audience that we were in a fight between good and evil. He warned them that if the terrorists got hold of weapons of mass destruction we would all be toast. As far as how things were going, he said: “Like all wars, this one has had its ups and downs.” Yes, in 1775, we had “The British are coming.” In 2004, John McCain tries to jar the nation into facing the harsh reality of what was happening in Iraq with “like all wars, this one has had its ups and downs.” It was not until the president was safely re-elected that McCain announced he had “no confidence” in the secretary of defense. Even then, he declined to call for his resignation. Bush, he said, “can have the team that he wants around him.” Follow the thinking here: A) Disaster if we mess up in Iraq B) Rumsfeld is messing up in Iraq C) Only Bush can decide to get rid of Rumsfeld D) Bush wants to keep Rumsfeld E) Support George Bush. As his own presidential campaign got under way, McCain became more and more outspoken about the disaster that is Donald Rumsfeld. (He must not have received that 25-point memo.) The war was being run by “one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.” But you would have thought that the Pentagon was a separate nation-state, since McCain never seemed to connect the secretary to the man who hired him and protected him. Until McCain IV: The No Surrender Tour, in which the candidate’s Web site lists all the TV interviews in which he dropped the phrase “more boots on the ground” over the last four years. Here’s the great thing about playing the role of Cassandra. We’re not supposed to hold the four years of lost lives, international chaos and missed chances against John McCain because he always knew it was going badly. He said it on “Meet the Press!” And we should trust him about the surge because he was right about the presurge. Or at least potentially right, since there is no way of proving whether the “more boots on the ground” critique was actually an answer, or simply just a way to avoid confronting the fact that everything was a hideous mistake from day one. This is the way you rationalize the Iraqs of the future. And when they don’t go well, remember: I warned you. nytimes.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (115998)	9/20/2007 12:29:35 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361660

future wind... from chicago... pals of mine know this guy check it out aerotecture.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (115998)	9/20/2007 2:15:06 PM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361660

After reading those two articles my reaction was identical to yours...........H.S. :>( If it isn't another Roswell then the sky really is falling! Where is Chicken Little when you need him?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (115998)	9/20/2007 3:19:48 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361660

Great weather in Laytonville. High 67 Low 43? Man I could love that down here.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (115998)	9/24/2007 11:52:43 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 361660

Meteor Crash in Peru Caused Mysterious Illness José Orozco in Caracas, Venezuela for National Geographic News September 21, 2007 An object that struck the high plains of Peru on Saturday, causing a mysterious illness among local residents, was a rare kind of meteorite, scientists announced today. A team of Peruvian researchers confirmed the origins of the object, which crashed near Lake Titicaca, after taking samples to a lab in the capital city of Lima (see Peru map). Nearby residents who visited the impact crater complained of headaches and nausea, spurring speculation that the explosion was a subterranean geyser eruption or a release of noxious gas from decayed matter underground. But the illness was the result of inhaling arsenic fumes, according to Luisa Macedo, a researcher for Peru's Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology Institute (INGEMMET), who visited the crash site. The meteorite created the gases when the object's hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said. Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru, explained Modesto Montoya, a nuclear physicist who collaborated with the team. The naturally formed deposits contaminate local drinking water. "If the meteorite arrives incandescent and at a high temperature because of friction in the atmosphere, hitting water can create a column of steam," added José Ishitsuka, an astronomer at the Peruvian Geophysics Institute, who analyzed the object. By Wednesday, according to Macedo, all 30 residents who felt ill reported feeling better. "People Were Extremely Scared" Locals described the meteorite as a bright, fiery ball with a smoke trail. The sound and smell rattled residents to the point that they feared for their lives, Ishitsuka said. The meteorite's impact sent debris flying up to 820 feet (250 meters) away, with some material landing on the roof of the nearest home 390 feet (120 meters) from the crater, Ishitsuka reported. "Imagine the magnitude of the impact," he said. "People were extremely scared. It was a psychological thing." Continued news.nationalgeographic.com