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28 March 2006

Agent Orange victims gather to seek... justice?

Agent Orange victims gather to seek justice - Yahoo! News
Deformed children born to parents Vietnam believes were affected by the estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, poured on the country were brought to the conference as dramatic evidence of its effects.
'The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam produced unacceptable threats to life, violated international law and created a toxic wasteland that continued to kill and injure civilian populations long after the war was over,' said Joan Duffy from Pennsylvania.

Uh... didn't John Stossel debunk this crap in 1996? He did a show about junk science and showed the USAF unit that loaded Agent Orange onto the aircraft. No one in Vietnam had more exposure to AO than these guys - their hazing ritual for new guys was to force them to drink a cup of it! Guess what? They're just as healthy as the rest of the population their age.
Could it be the deformed children are the result of thrid-world prenatal health care and relatively substandard preventive care? Wouldn't want to impugn our society, so let's just blame Agent Orange...

And what 'international law' was violated? Was Vietnam a signatory to any of these international 'laws'? And who's the enforcement regime for those 'laws'?

10 March 2006

StrategyPage

StrategyPage.com
StrategyPage gives you rapid access to military news. We report these events as history, not headlines, and provide concise, comprehensive and easy-to-understand descriptions of the troops, their equipment and why wars the world over are being fought.

I'll let y'all decide if "history" includes "partisan bias."



Military Photos at StrategyPage
Here's a story you have never heard the military's 'friend' John Kerry talking about.
Children jump on two new spring toys before their installation August 19 at the orphanage in Kirkuk. Sgt. Doyle constructed these from old HMMWV parts during his spare time and other unit soldiers painted them. All the playground equipment in the photos where constructed by members of the Task Force 2-116 Armor. (Photo submitted by Task Force 2-116 Armor)

09 March 2006

FEMA & Homeland Security & The Department of Perpetual Stupidity

So now we want to redraw the organizational boxes for FEMA and pull it out of DHS. Weren't these problems predicted back in 2002?
And do the boxes really matter if you fill them with idiots who are never held accountable for their actions?
We rearranged the boxes in the intel system because of 9-11, under the assumption that if the boxes were arranged differently, 9-11 wouldn't have happened. We didn't fire the people who were in the current boxes, we drew an org chart around them, thus insulating any idiot in those boxes from ever having to make a decision for which (s)he could be fired.
Instead of holding people accountable, we have institutionalized a new Department of Perpetual Stupidity.

01 March 2006

Europe in 2015


EUROPE IN 2015
Sent by a fellow Wargamer staffer. Having lived in Europe, and knowing what's going on with the Turkish talks with the EU, I can say that this isn't as funny as the first glance would have you think. I also think that Denmark might be sunk by then, especially if the Ira(tional)nians get their nukes working.