Balta1701

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 11:40 AM) Good move by the Dbacks. I'm not a big fan of either of those pitchers and when Estrada is healthy he's a pretty good hitting catcher. How many times in the last 10 years have the Braves traded for a pitcher who you thought was finished up, washed up, or just not worth a dime, and turned them into key guys on their staff? The most recent example I can think of is Jorge Sosa, who they picked up from Tampa Bay for almost nothing and who turned into a key starter for them down the stretch last year. Last year they had Mazzone to do it. Watch these 2 guys to see if that same magic still works without him.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 11:49 AM) How does the President allow himself to be taken out of the loop on untainted intelligence from an aggressive nation with whom war was imminent? I'm just going to sit and smile at that one.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 11:46 AM) Actually, Copies of "Magic" were always promptly delivered in locked pouches to President Roosevelt, and the secretaries of State, War, and Navy. They also went to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall and to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark. Hell, we even gave Britain 3 of the machines we engineered to gather intercepts but still none of this intel made it to Hawaii. For a significant period of time, FDR had his name removed from the list of those who were allowed to see the Magic intercepts, as one of the intercepts was found in one of his trash cans. He got back on the list only shortly before teh 7th.

ESPN:

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 11:27 AM) I expected a less than intelligent response from you. Now while you're laughing at your silly picture of tinfoil hats explain to me why, having cracked the Japanese diplomatic codes and having intercepted dispatches instructing operatives in Honolulu to do a reconnisance of Pearl Harbor and report on the locations of American ships, that we did nothing about it. We knew they were scoping the place out for a possible attack and we did nothing about it. Hell, we didn't even tell the commanders in Hawaii about it. There could be lots of reasons why we didn't do anything about it. We were scoping out the locations of Japanese ships for months before the attack...we lost track of 1 fleet in late November. Hell, Amelia Earhart's flight may very well have involved taking photos of Japanese positions in the south Pacific, since she was flying over there anyway. Recon of a potential enemy's ships is certainly nothing out of the ordinary, especially since our fleet was based there...that way you have an estimate of their strength if they sail out to meet the fleet. Simply pointing out stupid things which were done before the attack doesn't prove by any stretch of the imagination that FDR let it happen. What you would actually need is to not only show that these stupid things happened, but that FDR knew of every single detail of them and deliberately chose the things which happened. Do we know for a fact that FDR knew every detail that was coming from those intercepts? Hell, for a time he wasn't even permitted to see them. The military was sending out warnings to its pacific bases, but none of them were specific at all. There were even rumors of potential attacks on the weekends before the 7th, attacks which turned out to not happen...which could have very well made the leadership feel less inclined to send out war messages before the final Japanese declaration was given.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 11:02 AM) So it was coincidence then that the far more valuable aircraft carriers left port only a couple of days prior? Yes, it was. They were on a run to deliver aircraft to Wake Island, which had been preparing for a possible invasion for months and was ready to receive the newer aircraft. Those aircraft performed quite well in the defense of Wake, btw. Edit: oh yeah, and 1 more thought...at the time, the U.S. military and most of the folks in the government still imagined sea warfare involving what it had in the years before - large concentrations of battleships slugging it out. It wasn't really until Pearl, when all we had was aircraft carriers left, when the military really started using the potential of the Carrier. The Japanese realized the Carrier's potential before the war started - leading to Pearl and the sinking of Force Z near Singapore. If you asked people on Dec. 6th, 1941, which ships they'd rather lose in an attack, I bet you the large majority of the Navy would have said the carriers. They were really not thought of as more valuable than the battleships until we had no battleships left.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 11:05 AM) The Soviets and Chinese spent the whole war shipping arms to their "fraternal Socialist Allies". If a few of their advisors had been killed we could contend that their weapons were killing far more of our people and basically tell them to piss off. That leaves out the answer to the question: what would we do if they didn't just "Piss off"? If they chose to either up their aid or establish an actual military presence inside North Vietnam along the lines of what we had established in the south?

Oh, and furthermore...I'm not sure "Unmolested" is an accurate description of how we treated Cambodia and Laos...first of all, those areas were bombed heavily. In fact, some interesting tactics were used to try to place the bombings - sensors were developed to detect people in quite a few ways so that we could try to find where they were. Furthermore, Laos itself was actually even used as a site from which the U.S. ran operations- the CIA ran an "airline" which set up facilities for radar and covert operations out of Laos.

So would you contend that the death of any of the Soviet advisors, or the widening of the conflict to directly include Cambodia or Laos, would have had no consequences with regards to the actions of the Soviets or the Chinese?

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 10:59 AM) There is a school of thought that says that Roosevelt allowed Pearl Harbor to happen as justification for getting into WW2. Anyone believe that.........I do. Not a chance in Hell. He very likely did want an excuse to enter the European war, but he never imagined the loss of almost the entire Pacific Fleet.

"Air raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill."

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 10:49 AM) I wont debate you that we dropped a lot of bombs and wasted a lot of gas bombing. We did. Problem was that we dropped bombs on all the wrong targets. I would counter by saying that there weren't enough right targets. Even if we had gone after their defense network before it was up, it wouldn't have broken them. That nation endured terror campaigns just as bad as any bombing campaign we could have launched when the French first attempted to recolonize the country after WWII - people starving, torture, indiscriminate killings, occupation of cities, the whole works. When the "Christmas bombing" happened in 72 (I think it was that year, correct me if I'm off by 1), it basically had almost no effect on North Vietnamese morale, because the people had both been through worse, and they'd been expecting terror bombings of their cities since the U.S. first intervened.

Oh goodie, now we've got a Vietnam tactics debate. This should be fun. The problem with bombing as a tactic is that in North Vietnam, there really wasn't all that much available to bomb. Yes, we lost a ton of airmen because of the rules of engagement there, but think about this...in N.V., there were virtually no Industries during the war. Nothing in the way of factories, munitions plants, or even psychological targets that could be hit with bombing. If we flew planes over Vietnam, we were spending tens of thousands of dollars on fuel, munitions, and lost planes, in order to bomb a few hundred dollars worth of a target. (anecdote from History of Vietnam War class @ Indiana:) At one point during that war, the military claimed it had destroyed something like a billion dollars worth of North Vietnamese equipment through bombing; at the time, the estimated net worth of every piece of industry, equipment, buildings, etc., in all of North Vietnam was something like an order of magnitude less than that. The only solution to that war through bombing was going to be to bomb that entire nation into the ground, killing literally tens of millions. You simply cannot bomb away an opponent when the opponent is fabricating half his munitions from your unexploded bombs.

QUOTE(103 mph screwball @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 10:29 AM) If JG was traded, I still feel the Sox are in good shape to defend the title. I'd rather give big bucks to MB than JG. I don't think it's out of the question that we could afford to keep both of them, if we continue to be smart in the way we make moves, we keep competing (so that our attendence continues to grow), and inflation keeps happening of other revenue sources (Merch, TV, etc.) Also, we are probably going to continue to get younger at several positions (notably the Outfield), which will give us potential trade pieces in Podsednik and possibly Dye that could be used to find other young/cheap fill-ins.

64 years ago today, the newly installed radar station on Oahu picked up a large formation of planes headed for the Island from the North. The military wasn't alarmed, because a flight of B-17's was expected to arrive that morning.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 09:32 AM) If torturing terrorists saves one innocent life, prevents 1 suicide bomber from getting where hes going, stops one shooting before it starts, prevents one governmental official from being assassinated then its justified. I wont shed a single tear for people who hate America and want to kill as many of us as they possibly can. But what happens when torturing 1 person prevents 1 suicide bomber from getting where he's going, but it motivates 1000, or 10000 more people to begin to work/fight against America?

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 08:56 AM) Where'd you see this? That's badass if true. CBSSportsline

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 09:43 AM) LOL! Do you really believe the Mossad doesn't torture people? I HIGHLY doubt that. Link

QUOTE(ptatc @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 09:07 AM) There are many who will diagree with this statement. He follows the Tom House theory of mechanincs (as does Larry Rothschild). Many believe that these mechanics, especially the manner in which you throw breaking pitches, increases stress on the elbow. I happen to agree that it increases stress on the elbow. Not saying it's right or wrong but many people wil disagree that he puts litlle stress on his arm. I would say that of course pitching of any sort puts stress on his arm, but because of the way he uses his legs, his pitching tends to put less stress on the arm than the pitching style of say a Kerry Wood or an Eric Gagne...guys who drive the ball much more with their arms. Their fastballs probably put more stress on the arm than Prior's breaking ball puts on his...to say nothing about their breaking balls.

QUOTE(SoCalSouthSider59 @ Dec 7, 2005 -> 09:27 AM) 58,000, and i agree with YASNY.......I know of two of them whose names are on The Wall too, they belong to my brave Uncles who fought and died in 'Nam.........I take that asshole Dean's comments very personally, and i'll say to him again, :finger !!! Ok, so yeah, go read Dean's statement, he was clearly saying not that 25,000 people died in 'Nam, but that 25,000 additional ones died after the point at which we should have gotten out of there - shortly after Tet, 1968, when Johnson basically had a peace treaty brokered which would have let us get out of there (it was basically killed by Nixon's people, who wanted to stay the course and had a "secret plan" for victory there too.)

Here we have a very disturbing case. Based on the story of this man, he is a German citizen...he was traveling to Macedonia, at which point he was grabbed by the U.S. He claims he was held without trial for nearly half a year, during which time he was subjected to beatings, among other methods of torture. When asked about the particular case in Germany yesterday, Sec. State Rice refused to comment on it, however she did admit that "Mistakes" could happen in the war on terror. German Chancellor Merkel said that the U.S. had acknowledged making a mistake in al-Masri's case...a statement which has aroused angerin both the U.S. and Germany...in the U.S. because the government says Rice never said that, and in Germany because the people want answers as to why one of their citizens was abducted, held without trial, and tortured.

By the way, here's Another worthy piece from Cole on exactly where these Shi'ite militias came from, how close they are with Iran, and why the U.S. is backed into the corner of gradually giving them control of Iraq.

I think McCarthy is going to be better than Willis...for longer than Willis, and will be cheaper than Willis for years. I still worry that at some point, Willis's motion is going to cause some major injury problems too, even though there's not great evidence of that happening yet.

Actually, it doesn't, and furthermore, it totally ignores the actual facts on the ground. What it does do is lay out what I would call "Goals". In other words, it gives general ideas focused on staying the course, but gives absolutely no criteria whatsoever for determining when those goals are met. Here is a prime example: You see what he did there? I think it's fairly obvious...he talked about how we're "Building an effective Iraqi security force" without ever defining how we should judge the effectiveness of that Iraqi security force. This is almost exactly the "In the fight" dodge that was all over the "Victory strategery" document that they released last week, where they came up with a new term regarding the training of Iraqis - "In the fight", without ever telling us what In the fight actually meant in terms of training, equipment, capabilities, or even loyalty to the national government. He says that Iraqi forces will be allowed to "take the lead". Ok, fine, when will that be possible? How many Iraqi troops will need to reach this level of training before we can begin to fallback? And most importantly, how does he react to the DOD's statement before Congress that the # of Iraqi battalions capable of independent operation has declined from 3 to 1 in the last year? Based on that metric, the number of Iraqi troops able to "take the lead" would have declined, not increased. Furthermore, Bush at one point holds up the example of Najaf, a place where the U.S. troops actually have pulled back, giving control to "Iraqi Forces". The problem is...the only Iraqi forces on the ground who have managed to control anything have not really been forces loyal to the national government, they've been forces under the control of the Shi'ite Militia groups, such as the Badr corps, who have been casually folded into the national army since the Shi'ites have taken control over the national government. Here is Juan Cole on this particular topic a few days ago. Now, if we're willing to basically hand over Iraq to the Shi'ite militias, we probably would see a civil war, but the Shi'ites would win based on numbers and Iranian support. That is basically who is controlling Najaf right now - the Shi'ites. And his speech even goes so far as to basically ignore what actually happened in Najaf...where the U.S. challenged Al Sadr's militia, and Al Sadr backed off on orders from Sistani...only to emerge a few months later with his militia in tact as a very strong political force. This speech contains no more details than any other one. All it says is "things are working and we must stay the course". However, as usual, it only gives anecdotes to describe how things are working...it gives no general specifics through which we could evaluate the progress of the war. It gives no way by which we could determine how long we're going to be there. It gives no hint how long any of these processes will take. And it subtly glosses over the real risks we're taking to try to make the place look more appealing - risks like relying on Kurdish and Shi'ite militia groups to control territory.

Juan Cole on this topic.