perfessor multigeek's Journal: I'm baaaack!

Boy, it was good to get away, but with what's happening I guess that I should be posting *something*. I'm not up for a major response to the election at the moment having just flamed away in gmhowell's journal earlier. Maybe I'll rewrite that rant for here soon but not tonight.
Here's my totally insane comment for the day. If we're so all-fired determined to take over a Middle Eastern country then why don't we start by truly occupying Yemen? The government is a joke, the people in genuine need of the sort of thing that we could choose to do very well, from creation of real rule of law to telecom for the hill country to passive solar desalinization devices.
If we really must piss away three hundred billion dollars on Dubya's twisted schemes then the least we can do run a little beta test near by. After all, the Yemeni ruling junta is so measly that we could probably just buy them all villas in Dubai and be rid of them for the cost of one stealth airplane.
Wishing I lived in a nice small town in Vermont,
Rustin

Idiot

[gmhowell]

What kind of moron proposes attacking Yemen? Clearly, the target we should have in our national crosshairs is Saudi Arabia.

Re:Idiot

[perfessor multigeek]

well, gmh, ya might just want to look again at my first sentence. Something "insane suggestions" if I remember correctly.
Anyway, to the extent that I was serious, my point was that Yemen is a piss-ant little place with little means of defending themselves and thereby an easy win before the real task.
Saudi? I wish. They're rich, powerful, friends of the Bush family, and know way too many of our secrets to push around easily, and if you think that U.S. troops occupying Mecca and Medina would be anything less then the irreversable start of World War II then you might want to look again.
My choice for that bunch of doubletalking, two-faced, totalitarian religious whackos would be a variation on what I wanted done to Iraq. To paraphrase myself, you'ld want a massive subversion campaign run by a cross between Wild Bill Donovan and Aaron Spelling. Add in lots of condoms, "appropriate technology" as it is called (solar ovens, and radios, self-charging laptops, earth-berm housing tutorials, etc), and covert assistance to local human rights and rule of law groups. Maybe even tens of thousands of study-abroad scholarships for their local underclass with disproportionate numbers going to Beduin and women and the BinSauds will be in serious hurt in pretty short order.
BTW, "idiot"? "moron"? well, gmh, at least I always know where I stand with you. ;->
-Rustin

Re:Idiot

[gmhowell]

Idiot and moron are terms of endearment. Calling you 'willfully ignorant' is an insult. (Think through that one, and I think you'll agree ;)

Who is Wild Bill Donovan?

Re:Idiot&Bill Donovan

[perfessor multigeek]

Idiot and moron are terms of endearment. Calling you 'willfully ignorant' is an insult. (Think through that one, and I think you'll agree ;)
Hmm. Well, O.K. Language is such a funny thing.
I certainly agree that "willfully ignorant" would be serious fighting words. Though, of course, in my case I've invested such eyeball-grinding effort in a hundred-plus (literally) areas of research that I'ld mostly just laugh.
Who is Wild Bill Donovan?
William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan was, among many other things, the founder of the O.S.S. , the World War II parent of the CIA. He was utterly shameless and merciless, as was his assistant William Casey, who later got known as the coverup man (maybe) of the Reagan administration Contra scandal.
My point was that Donovan didn't fiddle, he acted. Instead of our current intelligence approach of sitting around hoping to recruit some disaffected loser to do our work for us, he dropped agents all over Axis territory, subverted supply lines, sent in negotiating teams, trained teams of Free French commandos, and generally took a can-do approach that was utterly unlike the cowardly deskjockey/digital wanking bullshit we pay hundreds of billions for now.
If America was *serious* about nation-building, then we'ld do a lot more of that and a lot less brute force invading and sat-photo navel-gazing.
Rustin

which country?

[memfree]

Now, see, I'd much rather we take over the Sudan -- if for no other reason than so we can show the Brits how they *shoulda* done it in the 1880s. Ahhh... Gordon versus the Mahdi.