Gorgon

"I'm an idealist. Gorgon is a conspiracy theorist. Please don't interchange the two." I think you need something a little more spectacular than accusing the CIA of misleading the American people to be called a conspiracy theorist. Besides, it's not paranoya if they're really after you.

" The disposal of the vanquished is the right of the conqueror. That is just how the world works. It sucks sometimes but the whining and hand wringing of old men in Belgium will not change that." Would it not be a step forward to pretend that justice was the right of everyone then. ?

All you have to do to avoid that is not to perpetrate any crimes agains humanity

"given that the UN is not elected, nor have i heard of any plans to make it so, it probably will never (nor should it) trump individual nations' own sovereignty." Thats not what the tribunal is about though, its asking countries to accept international juristicton of war crimes perpetrators. Its not the 'UN tribunal'

There is nothing to support that the tribunal should be either corrupt or incompetent, but for some people the mere fact that it was a european idea from its inception is enough. There is an obvious problem with international juristiction, Neurenburg was clearly victor's justice, appart from also providing justice to the victims of Nazism, which is why the notion can only really work if it is supported by everyone. Nevertheless, where else would you try the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing. Are we to just accept that whatever atrocities are perpetrated on a nation state level are free from justice. The US for obvious reasons didn't want to have another authority decide what it should do with its 'enemy combatants'. This has nothing to do with either Henry Kissinger or american GIs.

That would be the first den of government spies anywhere subject to international law.

Do you have any proff to back up the contention that intelligence analysis eats up the dissenting views in order to come up with a conclusion ?, I would imagine it would work more like academic writing where the opposing view is always adequately represented especially if the conclusion runs contrary to it. At a minimum Bush and Rice should have been presented with this view in some other form, not doing so ammounts to creating policy, directly influencing the decisionmaking process by controling information, not exactly what the CIA was intended for.

The hot asian american pilot, is she all cylon or is the one with the fleet real and the one in the warzone a replicant ? Is it possible to become 'un-posessed' by the cyborg upload magic ? I have watched around 4 episodes in non chronological order, and it seems like the premise of the show has yet to be explained. What is the motivation for the cylons, how exactly does their possesion work.

"You may not have heard, but I've got a lung infection at present, so I'd be grateful if you would refrain from making me laugh so much. Dissent in the intelligence community is like bitchiness in the movie industry. Intel is the art of drawing conclusions from imperfect data." The formulation of a report which categorically states that the probability is extremely high that Sadam has WMD AND an active neculear weapons programme all the while there are a significan portion within the organisation who vehemently disagree, who's position is never brough to the attemtion of the administration, that is misinterpretation of the facts, mr. interlligence analyst. The intelligence to back up these claims, defectors trained by aforementioned Achmed Chalaby to bolster his chances of becoming president of Iraq, mind you this was all before the corruption scandal and his complete isolation from Iraqi politics. And recently, a senate comitee on Iraq settle the issue by stating unequivocally that Sadam did not have WMD in the leadup to invasion, and therefore, that the premise of the war was false, at best a mistake, at worst ... A CIA report concludes the same http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report/ I have to say your callous dismissal would be much more believable if you actually knew facts surrounding it.

Running around at full tilt for 90 mins does.

"actually, no you idiot" You need to learn to make people look like fools without actually calling them idiots, you know, like I have been doing to you the last few days. 'a sattelite saw something' is hardly compelling evidence of anything at all. Firstly we are clearly in wishful thinking territory here, secondly, since the mobile weapons facility theory is highly suspect considering the sources, what is left that could have been moved to Syria, a few chemical grenades... honestly, who cares. Syria could cook up some anthrax on its own without too much trouble.

LOL is this round two ? - The phantom weapons are now in Syria, quick, invade, send the secretary of state to the UN with a bull**** story. Might I point out the source that Sadam had mobile weapons facilities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Chalabi

" actually you can't use the words "proven fact" as there is strong evidence he had something (they don't know what), and shipped it out during the dead period before the war, probably to syria. taks " What a sad little fig leaf, but sure, it's not completely proven.

" In any event it's interesting that you bring up the comparison with WMD. Do you not think that a brutal dictator unsupervised by ANYONE who has previously built WMD, wants WMD, and retains the industrial capabilities to produce WMD wil probably have them? " What are you talking about ? Bush and Rice use the national securtiy estimate of 2002 to bolster the contention that they did the right thing with the information they had at the time, only there were plenty of dissenting views within the intelligence community that were never presented. It's called plausible deniablilty, tell us what we want to hear and don't tell us anything it might be better we be seen not to know. It's a proven fact that Sadam didn't have any WMD but was engaging in a game of high stakes bluff, so I take it you mean Iran ?

The CIA fabricated the WMD evidence Bush needed as a pretext for war. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/index.htm

"Er... Sando, you know you might accord the CIA the same presumption of innocence you grant the suspect gentleman. Or is it OK to work purely from teh basis that you reckon they do that sort of thing?" Why sould one extend presumption of innocence to an organisation accountable only to an oversigth comitee and not to normal standards of criminal law ?

Migth I point out that there is not a significant power anywhere which does not engage in skullduggery. Some people I guess think that we have move on from the cold war and that such practice should nolonger occur. While I agree on principle I don't see it happening any time soon. The only difference here is that the cat is out of the bag.

There are quite a few people who aren't interested in WoW. Me included.

They work fine, remeber you still get stat increases with levels so you might end up being too uber which will destroy your enjoyment of the game.

Its not the newspaper, it's the report, i'm sure there are dozens of other news site sources.

Again I have to point out that science is not about link contests. It is quite clear that there are disenting views on global warming, but it is also equally clear that a growing consensus now links human activity to global warming.

I played Guildwars a lot and the most enjoyable time I had was main quest instances. The quests, of which there are hundreds are all drab repetative things you accept without ever reading what are about. It does have a rather egalitarian theme to it as you will be able to get first class gear practically without farming. The stuff that costs 100 times more just looks different, so you can tell the l33t from the mere mortals. What I would most like to see in a MOG are quests that aren't stupid and an involving main story line, as well as competative gaming elements.

"this is the problem with society, people like gorgon are running off at the mouth based on reports by political organizations (IPCC) and news media." Thats a little convenient don't you think, whenever you don't like the message the organisation magically becomes 'political', a claim for which, incidentially, you make no explanation. From what I can glean of your political lean though, the UN affiliation alone is damning evidence.

"so your proof of a "consensus" is a couple news stories," The 90% of the scientific community was in a BBC report and another link I can't find now. The 'news story' is about the IPCC report which is considered the one stop authority about global climate change, science is not about link contests though, if you look hard enough you can find a web page 'scientifically' supporting any claim you care to make, regardless, since your claim is the more outrageous why don't you 'prove' that there is no consensus. I have a sneaky feeling though, that you are not interested in finding out anything that conflicts with your current position. "The latest IPCC report was written by hundreds of experts and reviewed by hundreds more, from 113 countries. It is being released in stages during 2007. The first chapter, released on Friday, deals with the scientific basis for climate change. The next two parts of the IPCC's 2007 assessment, plus a synthesis, will be released throughout the year. Part 2, dealing with the impacts of climate change and our vulnerability to those impacts, will be released in April. Part 3, to be released in May, deals with how we might mitigate these impacts."

" prove it. i love such unfounded statements. so easy to shoot down. even at that, maybe roughly 90% of those that publish, or are funded, but that does not mean 90% believe as such. many that disagree are afraid to for fear of being black-listed. more and more are coming forward every day to point out how ludicrous, sometimes outright fraudulent, the so-called "science" regarding this topic is." http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/b...s.php?id=116511 http://environment.newscientist.com/articl...-humankind.html Why don't you prove that there is widespread bullying of scientist who refuse to go along with the notion now ?