New Mars Forums

And that group includes people who are no threat to Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein decides who he thinks is a threat to him and the process he uses to decide doesn't have to be fair or judicial, and as a dictator he is answerable to no one but himself.  Saddam Hussein killed children and people's relatives. How did they threaten him? If you belong to a group that Saddam Hussein doesn't like, you can't simply disassociate yourself from that group. If Saddam is coming after you and your family for whatever reason, there is very little you can do about it except leave the country before the capture you. People are born being Kurds, individual Kurds hunted down by Saddam's forces were simply guilty of being Kurds, it is not something that you actively do that draws his attention. Most of the people Saddam Killed, he probably didn't even know outside of the fact that they belonged to a ethinic group or tribe.

And that is the sort of "Justice" that you support? Can't be bothered to find the individual terrorists, just kill all the Kurds, and if your a Kurd, just stop being one and Saddam will leave you alone, yeah right. 

Plenty of Kurds did nothing and they were still killed by Saddam's troops just for being Kurds. Now if Saddam thinks your ethnic group is someone he doesn't like, he will send troops to kill you too. You think that just because your ethinic group is not on someone's hit list that your safe? Someone can always add that ethinic group to their hit list and go after you.

Now you are operating in fantasyland. The United States doesn't run and didn't run any Death camps.

They are never so secure that they can operate out in the open like Saddam Hussein could. Saddam Hussein didn't have an army that was out trying to arrest him when he was murdering the Kurds, he didn't have to move from place to place and look for safehouses while he was in power. When he was a fugitive that was a different story, but that is not what we're talking about. Saddam Hussein as a head of state was not a fugitive, his police weren't out hunting for him, they were working for him.

Your probably not going to listen, but I didn't say we were going to kick them out, this ungly business is probably best left to the Iraqi government and only if the Sunnis do not stop fighting and killing. The rest of the Iraqis have a right to live you know, and if the Sunnis do not quit fighting something is going to have to be done about them. If they don't like being a minority, they can move to another country where they are not. What they are fighting for is their "right" to rule the country as a minority, and they have no such "right", the best that can be done, if they do not lay down their arms is to forcibly remove them and deport them. They themselves present this choice if they refuse to agree to anything reasonable or democratic.

Primarily because you don't like hearing what I have to tell you as it does not agree with your predetermined conclusions, any bit of evidence that does not fit, you reject. As far as your concerned, the United States of America is this evil thing, and no tidal wave of evidence that suggests otherwise is going to change your mind.

Well if he can go back and make all the right decisions, then he can also go back and continue the Apollo Program, transition it into a Manned Mars program and our first Mars landings would be in the 1980s, but John McCain has demonstrated no ability to travel in time, nor has he demonstrated an ability to get it right more often than Bush. Jimmy Carter has also criticised George Bush, do you want to elect him as the next President? Remember what the Manned Space Program was during during the Carter Administration? What do you propose John McCain would have done differently about Abu Ghraib that was not done during the Bush administration? You could say it would not happen, but you could have just as easily said it might not have happened during the Bush Adminstration either and George Bush would not have had to deal with it. One could just have easily said there would have been no terrorist attacks either as the terrorists would have decided that the stars were not properly aligned.

Basically if Saddam thinks you are a threat, he'll kill you, and if Saddam is very paranoid all the worse for you, if someone whispers in his ear saying your a threat then your dead. If one of your relatives does something threatening to him, he may come after you, torture you, or execute you just to get back at your relative. If you belong to a troublesom minority, such as the Kurds, then he will come after you whether you did anything threatening or not. Saddam ran prison complexes that specialized in execution and torture, this isn't a random bomb placed here or there to kill some passer by, Saddam's execution squads were systematic and ruthless. I'd rather take a chance with a random bomb attack than have Saddam's police specifically trying to hunt me down or kill my relatives. If Saddam thinks your a threat whether its your fault or not, he will kill you, since he has control over the entire country and can muster the resources of his nation to track you down and kill you. Terrorists don't control the countryside, they skulk and must evade capture by the authorities while planting a bomb, and since they are on the run, they can't devote their full attention to killing you, no matter how much they may want to. Your chances against terrorists are significantly higher than against the state.

Remember that king who despaired against fighting the forces of darkness, he was the one under the influence of Sauron, he wouldn't lift a finger and refused to defend his kingdom, because he thought all was hopeless, that is pretty much your attitude towards fighting terrorism, all you see is gloom and doom, and so long as that is all you see, you don't try very hard to find a way to win, and that is my criticism of you and your attitude. Your "get Bush" all the way, and you don't care about the rest of the World, just so long as you get Bush. Since finding a way to fight terrorism wouldn't be helpful in getting Bush, all you do is despair and see gloom and doom. Well I don't share your attitude, my feeling is if the war isn't going well, we should find better Generals and a better strategy, we have enough resources for winning, and no excuse for losing. These are stateless criminals we are fighting, so if one strategy doesn't work you try another, you don't give up and surrender like a General Charles Lee. The problem I have with many Democrats is that they are too quick to declare a War unwinnable when they encounter the slightest obstacle. You also focus on our casualities, but have you ever considered their's. I'm sure we're killing way more of them than they are of us. FDR never shared your attitude.

And who has more and better weapons? The Arab countries or us? If the Arabs arm our enemies, they become our enemies, and then we can go to war against them. The Germans fought a nasty way against us, even when they were cut off from our oil supplies, we have enough oil supplies to run our military equipment, we have a strategic reserve, and we can invade a number of other arab countries with oil fields, if they supply our enemies, they themselves become beligerants, and we would be well justified in invading them, so maybe they'd better just back off if they don't want a confrontation with us. I say again, the Sunnis may have the backing of the Arab countries, but the Iraqi government has the backing of us, even if our troops pull out, there is no reason why we can't just keep on sending their government money and equipment, they already have an army, and they can recruit and train more if they have too. I'd say right now the Iraqi government has the upper hand, and we're in there for at least another year. It would take a miracle for the Sunni insurgents to win, and I don't believe in miracles.

No, what they might accomplish is changing the requirements for governing Iraq, namely getting rid of them so Iraq can be governed. If the Sunnis refuse to get along, they will be kicked out amd made into refugees. Smart people know when to stop fighting, stupid people go the way of Hannible and Carthage.

Casualities are primarily the result of the way we conduct the war, mainly that we've been trying to rebuild all parts of Iraq and get the 3 groups to get along with each other, and this has provided some groups the opportunity to take pot shots at us. If we simply sided with one group and allowed the larger to crush the smaller however they saw fit and supplied them with plenty of weapons to do it, our casualities would be much less, but by following this moral high ground we've incurred higher casualities. You liberals would complain if we fought in a way that explosed our troops less. You want to limit our ability to fight in such a way that we can't possibly win, and then you want to declare the war unwinnable. If our main defense strategy is to run away, then soon we will be without a country. Our best hope is to fight in such a way as to make our enemy not want to mess with us in the future, and with these wars avoided, we also avoid casualities. But your too much in the here and now. In the very short term, retreat always saves some soldiers lives, but in the long term of losing the war, but you can't see past the tip of your nose.

If we had robots that sophisticated in 1969, then I couldn't leave that off as a possibility, but we didn't.

What's worse, a random terrorist bomb that just may get you as you happen to walk by, or Saddam's secret police hunting you down? Notice how the Nazis killed more Jews than terrorists did, that is because terrorists don't have the government that you live under on their side, they can only place a carbomb next to your house and hope that you are inside when it does off, and then evade authorities, but if it is Saddam's government that is out to get you, they are the authorities, their is no police to call because they are out to get you. I think you would be significantly safer if it is only a terrorist group out to get you rather than the government.

Well of course their are more casualities for US soldiers after they got into the war than before. How many American casualities were their in World War II before we got involved in World War II?

Spoken like a true Defeatocrat. Seems like the only tone we hear coming from the Defeatocrats are ones of despair and hopelessness. Defeatocrats are always the ones saying we can't do it, its no use, give up! Looks like you've fallen under the influence of Sauron, such hopelessness and despair, your so down, you won't even lift a finger in your own self-defense. Might as well put your head down on the chopping block right now so that your enemy can cleave it off cleanly and quickly. Tsk tsk tsk.

 
What they want doesn't count since they are in the minority. In a democracy a minority doesn't gewt to rule over the majority, nor does it get to impose its religion over them, and now thanks to Saddam's death they no longer have a leader to rally behind, there is no chance of freeing him from prison and putting him back in power. All their violence does now is make the majority more angry at them, their is no telling what the majority might do to the minority once it gets angry enough, and with the US supply this government with weapons, the Sunni minority can hope for no succor. If the Shiites can live with the Sunnis because they as a group are too violent well, something may be done about it. Violence should avail the Sunnis nought, if they become refugees, that outcome would largely be of their own doing because of the hatred the raised through their violence. Who in the world cares about a bunch of homeless stateless Saddamites?

The Iraqis know what we will do to them if they host Al Qaedam, we aren't just going tro sit there and let them take pot shots at us.

The launch window to Mars occurs once every two years. Seems to me that when such a window occurs, you would want to launch a whole bunch of passengers all at once, a "Shuttle" that could ferry passengers into low Earth Orbit once per week, would only ferry Mars bound passengers for a small percentage of its time and would need to find other payloads to keep itself in business between Mars launch windows. A Launch Vehicle capable of delivering 500 tons to low Earth orbit could probably launch the entire Mars bound craft all at once, complete with Hab, nuclear transfer vehicle and Earth return vehicle all at once. You would have 2 years to build each one before each launch window occurs.

For a Space Elevator, you might want a huge heavy lift vehicle to lift the cable into orbit, they say they can do it with the shuttle, but a larger vehicle could launch a more robust cable. First we got to make the cable and the quality of the cable will determine how much of it we have to lift into orbit. Less tensile strength means more taper and more mass to lift.

I think we can build a robot that can fit inside a space suit, we could launch that robot to Mars with current space vehicles, and that robot could walk around on Mars as a human could more or less. Since you can't see what's behind the face mask of a space suit, it that way, you could fake a manned mission to Mars. If the public only see's a space suited figure hopping around on Mars, it really can't tell whether there is a human in that space suit.

It appears that if you want to walk on Mars, you will have to walk slow. I think most astronauts would prefer to jog if they want to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time, but in a comic book, you don't always have to portray them in mid-stride. In a comic book, you will realistically find your characters running here and running there, if they are engaged in a slow methodical search, they will probably walk. So is this going to be set in the 23rd century? I think at this time bipedal robots may be common enough. I would suggest not to go too overboard with the nanotech, probably nuclear fusion would be harnessed by this time. Communication could be by holographic 3-dimensional displays by this time, screens would be as flat as a piece of paper, and they might even have a sticky back end so they would adhere to walls and things, perhaps even selectively sticky, you'd press a button on the front of the screen and suddenly the display would become unglued from the wall, a minor function of nanotech I think.

Also under the communist system, people aren't allowed to run their lives independently, citizens are beholden to the government as their sole legal employment, there is only one entity you can work for and that is the Government. Everything is tied into the command economy, the government employs all the farmers, owns all the farm land, runs all the factories, operates all the stores and decideds what is stocked in each store and what you can buy, that is the Communist system, if someone wants to be independent, I don't see why he should support Communist guerillas, knowing that the Command economy that they have in mind doesn't allow for much independence.

When American soldiers die in a conflict, that calculation changes, the conflict suddenly becomes more important not to lose simply for the sake of those soldiers who gave their lives, Liberals don't seem to appreciate the sacrifices they make as they are all too willing to conclude the conflict is unwinnable and throw all those hard fought gains away for nothing. Vietnam meant something to the people who fought there, that their leaders betrayed them as Benedict Arnold would have betrayed the Continentals to the British made it all the more hard on them. What Vietnam really needed was a military genius who knew how to win rather than a bunch of cowards in Congress who knew how to quit.

How are they to decide their own future without democracy? If you rob them of democracy they are without the tools for deciding that future, their future is more or less decided on the whim of a dictator. Dictators are in it for themselves, it doesn't matter if that dicator is a foreigner or a native. There are plenty of benevolent foreigners and quisling local rulers who would oppress their own people for another power. A native dictator is no guarantee of a benevolent rule.

Worked in Germany, Japan, and even in North America, if you consider the British Colonists an invading force.
In any case, if something is not tried, it doesn't succeed.

That is an article of faith on your part since the people you say they wanted to elect would not have given them the chance to voice their opinion in a popular vote anyway once in power.

Well the idea itself is too implausible to be true, most of it was just hot air produced by the enemy to undermine the public moral on the propaganda front. The main problem was that we had and still have a Fifth Columnist mainstream press that only presents one-sided reporting on the War. They said that the United States was trying to rebuild the French Empire and they kept beating on that same drum and with little else to hear, the public started believing it, but that doesn't mean it was true.

A communist France, just recovering from the War and occupation, would just be asking to have their cities bombed again, were they to stir up trouble, and it doesn't really matter what system they live under if their generals were just as bad and incompatent as they were during World War II. As it was France has not been much of an asset to the alliance, they are too willing to do double dealing and sell secrets to the enemy, if France was a member of the Warsaw Pact, they couldn't do that.

Without a democracy there is no way to prove what the Vietnamese people are interested in, since no one will give them a chance to voice their opinions in a democratic vote. You must therefore take it as an unprovable article of faith that they don't want democracy. Saying a person doesn't want democracy is like saying a person just loves being a slave and just loves his master. Democracy is an inherent right to all people. If someone doesn't want democracy it means one of two things, either he loves being a slave or that he wants to enslave others by depriving them of the vote.

Foreign rulers or Domestic, what difference does it make, none of them are answerable to the people and they all rule just for themselves. If the people do not choose their own government, then that government, no matter what its origin, has no reason to listen to the people. People may try to rise up, but the modern Communist system is designed to make that very difficult, no matter what its rheteric or promises made prior to assumption of power, what communism is designed for is to control society, and make it very difficult for people to make their voices heard. Those that complain risk being arrested or worse, large spy organizations are typically employed to weed out dissent and rebellion at its inception to prevent it from growing. In a communist system all independence means is that the local ruler is native and not foreign, but a native ruler is not necessarily a benign ruler and neither necessarily is a foreign ruler a tyrant. Great Britian was successfully ruled by foreign rulers starting with William the Conquerer. Generally the good rulers are good to the people they rule, because they realize that they are the source of their political power.

You know Communism is just as much a foreign Western Idea as is Democracy, the only difference between the two ideologies is that Democracy requires that the local undemocratic rulers give up power, while communism only requires that they "dance to a different tune" in order to keep it.

There is nothing native or indigenous about Marxist Leninism/communism. it is just as much an Import as is Western Representative democracy, the important thing is the later giver the local population some control of the government, while the former merely provides opportunity to have a revolution and to harness the popular passions of the moment to make a "Dictator Switch". What communism does is keep dictators on their toes lest other would be dictators use this ideology to mount a "revolution" to replace them. Communist Revolutions are only good at putting other dictators in power, all it does is waste people's blood by giving them false promises in exchange for supporting someone else's rise to power.

Then why didn't they threaten to do that with the Germans in 1939? "Hey Hitler, we need you to go into Vietnam and suppress a Communist revolution there otherwise we'll turn Communist here, and we know how much you hate Communists eh Adolf?"
"Oh anything but that! Oh dread! a communist France! Oh what shall we do? Ok, we'll send storm troopers to suppress the Communist Rebellion in Vietnam!"

If Germany can knock out France in 2 weeks, I doubt a few red flags would have stopped us if De Gaulle threatened to follow Ho Chi Min into Bolshevism. The More direct approach would be simply to go into France and replace the Communists with our own Vichy type government. We know how little trouble the French caused the Germans, they weren't about to drive out the Germans of their own accord. I seriously doubt the French wanted to be oppressed by the Communists any more than they wanted to be oppressed by us. Why didn't they threaten to go Nazi by the way?

The French. We just liberated their country, and they wanted us to hand over their empire to them on a silver platter at the price of American Blood, or they do what? I'd think I'd rather expend that American blood overthrowing a communist government in France, that is the more direct approach after all. I just don't buy the notion that the French can blackmail us into building an empire for them at our expense. The notion was to contain communism and promote democracy, that was what we were doing, your other theory just doesn't sound plausible to be true.

France never was a bulwark against communism, it never was an active participant in NATO, the only use it was, was to help the Allies liberate itself, then it wanted a piece of the German pie, then it sought to profit from the Cold War as we strove to protect Europe.

Yes, its a well know fact that the Indochinese were always Marxist/Leninists, they've been making 5-year plans and doing central planning for their whole country since the beginning or recorded history. 

You still have not explained to me why the Vietnamese would prefer one form of oppression over another. If they were a part of the French Empire, why would they effuse blood for another form of undemocratic government where they don't have a say? As far as I know, if what you are saying is true, why should the Vietnamese peasants care who their tax money goes to if it is not spent for them. Either Ho Chi Min takes it, or France takes it as you say, since neither one was offering them democracy, wouldn't it be much easier for them just to keep things as they were, rather than die by the millions just to change tyrants? You think they'd have a much worthier goal since they can only die once, that fighting to determine whether their undemocratic leader has "round eyes" or "slanted".

I do however think the US was promoting democracy, as Americans do not freely spill their blood to build other people's empires, I'd think we'd much rather fight France if it ever became a threat to us.

What else do you expect? They were beaten by the Germans with a numerically inferior German Army. Counting on the French to make good soldiers is a foolish endeavour, no matter how much money they are given.

If they would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, then how come he didn't allow free and openly contested elections, why did he insist on one party rule? If he thought he was so popular, then why was he afraid to have a fair election?

There's that magic word again: independence.
What exactly does that word mean for the average Vietnamese? That they get ruled by Ho Chi Minh instead of France or the Americans? So what? You still haven't established why Ho Chi Minh's rule was something worth fighting or dying for. I think, for example under the French or the Americans, the Vietnamese had more individual freedoms than they had under Ho Chi Minh, they had freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to own property, freedom to buy and sell to any one and to work for any employer, freedoms that were denied by Ho Chi Minh, all in exchange for some undefined something that you call independence. That their leader has slanty eyes instead of round ones is supposed to make up for all the rights and freedoms that they lost? 

Unlike Ho Chi Minh, George Washington didn't make himself "King"!

Yes, I was trying to be funny. You shouldn't be so testy about someone trying to insert a little humor here. In part I was poking fun at the point that you brought up this Sea Dragon without explaining it. I'm sure if I googled Sea Dragon, I would have gotten a number of hits including one about the legendary sea monster. You shouldn't assume that the reader has read everything you've read. You don't have to be a moron not to know what is meant when the term Sea Dragon is brought up with out further explaination! Instead of complaining, I decided to make a joke instead. Ah, but I see you are a dour and humorless person, too bad.

This thing was designed in 1962 for Christ sake, that is 5 years before I was born, it was never built, and how am I supposed to know what it is when someone brings it up out of the blue?