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Comment Should have been done long ago... (Score 2, Interesting) 449

I supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but I do not support the way they were handled. I do think the military-industrial complex should have been abolished long ago. Why? Because what has it done to protect us, really? Vietnam? It didn't help us win. Grenada? Yeah right. A banana republic with a few Cuban troops that our Salvation Army could have whipped. Panama? See above. Gulf War I? We didn't win that war, remember? We stopped just short of victory, a violation of one of the most fundamental principles of war that history has ever taught us: never leave an aggressor intact. We had to go back and do the job right in 2003. Somalia? We were trying to help those people, they started shooting at us, so we left. Confrontation with Saddam's forces while enforcing the no-fly zones and inspectors? Come on. We had about 20,000 troops in theater at the time. We don't need to spend $400b a year to maintain THAT, or any of our other troop commitments around the world. Iraq War and Afghan War? We took an army with a military doctrine of slowing down a Soviet tank advance across Europe just long enough for our ICBMs to reach Moscow, and tried to use it to fight two major land wars in Asia. Big mistake. We SHOULD have immediately instituted a draft after 9/11, converted factories to war production, raised a massive army (like, 5 million men), and when the time was right, rolled into Iraq with at least a million strong. The PROPER way to occupy a country you defeat is to make sure your occupying troops are in every city, town and village so they can establish ORDER. That wasn't done. You can only spread 100,000 troops so far in a country if 28 million. And we have all seen the results. They always make the same mistakes, thinking you can do war "on the cheap". You can't. But I am encouraged by Secretary Gates' plan. It may be a step in a direction we should have gone in decades ago.

Comment Monday morning quarterbacks... (Score 2, Insightful) 265

And still people criticize us for sending in troops to impose order and stability, in a place that never had it to begin with. I got news for you bleeding hearts. If you want to help those people, re-establish law and order first. Once that is done, the business of distributing food and water, rebuilding infrastructure, re-establishing basic public services like sanitation etc, becomes infinitely easier.

Comment Welcome to the future... (Score 1) 2

...where merit counts for nothing, and need is all that matters. Kinda like what's happening in this country now. Who cares what you accomplish; people with more power than you have decided you earn too much money and that it must be taken from you to be given to those more "deserving".

Comment No more... (Score 1) 888

I am with you guys. The US has become a paranoid culture bogged down with ultimately useless regulation and curbs on individual freedoms, thanks to 9/11. I said it then and I say it now: I would rather we turned Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Syria into radioactive parking lots, than lose what we were. But it's too late now. Osama has already won, especially when he has so many anti-government radicals in this country who are willing to provide aid and comfort to his cause. Welcome to the new reality.

Comment Can we go backward...? (Score 1) 383

It's way too late now obviously, but can we get rid of the "24 hour" news cycle and return to the "network news at 6 and 10pm" tradition? You know, before outlets like CNN, Fox etc had to go out and MAKE news because there wasn't enough to report, or have to bring on a bunch of clueless talking heads to fill time with speculation and innuendo that doesn't advance the story one iota? Back in the days when news outlets had enough time to RESEARCH stories, INTERVIEW relevant participants, CHECK their facts, and assemble it all in a format that a news anchor with actual INTEGRITY (i.e. Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Edward R. Murrow, etc) could then present to the public?? Sigh... I guess not...

Comment Seriously... (Score 1) 321

Come on people, use your heads. Just like, I dunno, flying a commercial jet at low altitude over NYC, making a game about a battle in an ongoing war where many of the people involved are still fighting is just a bad idea, and shows not only insensitivity but also questionable taste.

It is a game. No matter how realistic the fighting is, it won't be like the real thing. It therefore trivializes the very real aspects of war that the soldiers who were there must have gone through. I'm glad the game was canceled, but I question the intelligence of those who greenlit it to begin with. At some point during the creative process, somebody must have had the courage to say "hey guys, maybe we shouldn't be doing a game like this so soon after the real event". But maybe not.

Comment Oh yeah, he'll be back (Score 1) 100

I agree with the first guy. He won't be slowed down by this, he will gain encouragement from it like any megalomaniac would. Luckily Planet Earth is rapidly running out of people who take him seriously, and oddly enough most of it is his fault. Once there is nobody left and his pathetic attempts at self-promotion fall on deaf ears, I am betting he will turn to violence to call attention to himself again.

Comment Sony couldn't have got it more wrong (Score 1) 616

An asinine observation like this shows just how out of touch Sony really are. The initial arguments over which console hardware was "better" came down to the same thing it always has: seeing is believing. And Sony's claims of having superior hardware to the XBox360 rang hollow when the actual games look and play only "as good" as their 360 counterparts (or actually WORSE in many cases). Honestly, which game do you think showcases its console's strengths? Resistance, or Gears Of War?

Sony has some serious damage control to do here, and they had better wake up and smell the ashes. They have given up nearly all the game exclusivity deals that normally would have driven a nail into the coffin of any competitor (even Microsoft). Final Fantasy XIII is coming to both platforms. They lost Tekken. Even the bread and butter of the PS2 days, Grand Theft Auto, is superior on the 360 for many reasons. Overall the evolution of game development for PS3 has not come along like they expected and still lags behind its older, cheaper rival.

Sony had better lose the corporate arrogance and start helping their developers, cut their prices and start landing some console exclusives, or they're going to lose the whole show. The only thing that has kept them in the game has been the phenomenal success of the Wii (not considered by me to be a "next generation" platform), along with the XBox "red-ring-of-death" disaster that has created the perception among buyers that the console is unreliable. Otherwise this war would be over.

Comment Hmmm (Score 1) 408

The Congressional investigation mentioned in the original story (which would potentially cost millions of course) wouldn't be necessary if people would just effing learn something about how computers work. Investigation complete. Can they just give me the money instead? =D

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