BBC has an article about Beagle 3. Interesting that the PI has long lambasted NASA's approach for space probes, yet is asking NASA for a lift to Mars.

NASA seems to be interested in sending the probe though along with its Mars Lab unmanned long term rover (supposed to last longer than a Martian year). Much to the Greens chagrin, the Mars Lab is nuclear powered.

I can be quite critical of NASA too, to be sure. Anybody that's followed my comments since I have been on /. can see this. I am especially harsh about their manned projects. This is not because I don't want a manned space program within NASA, but because NASA keeps screwing up their manned programs. The X-30 and X-33 are two prime examples. They even screw the pooch on their launcher development programs too (*cough* X-34 *cough* ALS *cough* NLS *cough*).

However, their unmanned program is something they seem to do relatively well. So long as they don't go the battleship with wings route (like Mars Observer).

Back in the summer of 1998, I was working for a small grubby defense contractor. I was really just starting my career after having helped to start a recently imploded internet company. I was speaking with one of the analysts there. He's a good friend to this day. He's a former captian of armor. He'd been one of the very few treadheads to go on to get a Ranger patch.

The discussion we had was an interesting one. We was deeply worried about the direction the military was taking with its 'transformative' technologies. He wasn't so worried about the ability to fight stand-up fights with tanks and armor with the new tech coming down. He was far more worried about urban fighting. He strongly felt that the US Army wasn't taking it as seriously as it should or was getting the wrong answers when it did. He noted that with more and more of humanity living in these huge cities, we were going to have to figure out how to fight there.

Flash forward to the present.

Some of the more interesting things to come out of iraq have been how the US Army soldiers have been fighting the insurgents and how they fought the Iraqi army.

Something that seems to be said time and again is that heavy armor is important: M-1s often came forward to provide cover, and fire support, for troops that were pinned down. If you look at the 'transformation' plan, heavy armor is going bye-bye to be replaced with Strykers now and the vaporware Future Combat Systems. 20 tons yet has the protection of an M-1. *nervous look*

Also something that's come out on the TOE side of things is that we need MORE riflemen. They have been pressing artillerymen, air defense guys, etc. into the infantry role. They don't train for this! That's why if you've been following the casaulty reports the noninfantry make up a disproporationate amount of the dead and wounded. Additionally, the numbers of infantry slotted to be committed to combat is too low in the 'transformation'. A brigade is expected to take on the responsibilities of a division. Even with the XM-8 coming online and the very nice armor (that's saved my bro's life more than once) the infantryman hasn't had a massive upgrade in almost 50 years in capability. Asking them to do more with less is insane. Perhaps the Landwarrior stuff will work and help. Based on the cock-up that the XM-29 turned into (great basic idea (every infantryman a grenadier, every squad with the firepower of a heavy weapons squad), really poorly implemented) I'm not holding my breath...

Finally, one of the things I've noted is that perhaps we're fighting wars the wrong way. Right now, we try to fight as quick and bloodless a battle as possible. Fight very short and quick. Take out the leadership. Destroy the warfighting capability. Minimize casualties on both sides. Sounds great, right? Ummm...except that it leaves a lot people left over that haven't felt like they've been beaten. There might be some shock, but the awe definitely isn't there. This provides for a great pool of insurgents...oh my! Sound familiar? Perhaps we ought to take the time to attrite their forces, consolidate the positions, and blow the hell out of a lot of schiesse. You have to attack the will to fight as much as the capability.

Or so I think. Then again, I'm not a soldier. I may not have a clue about what I am talking about.

He's alive and well. Back in Fort Polk. *WHEW*

We'll see how he is.

For every prayer, every hope, and every wellwisher. danke.

Now we'll see how he is...

PS. Mom visited. Met my SO. Ouch. It hurts too much. I'll discuss another time. I'm still too sore.

Well! Despite the curves ball, I still knocked it out of the park. Waaaay out of the park.

Going to get the ring and proposing was a wash. I have a friend that has a reseller's business for jewelry. As a gift, he was taking us to a wholesaler for the diamond and rings: that was going to knock 20-40% off the reseller's price. He had a family emergency though and could not go.

I improvised and took her for breakfast....er...lunch: she woke up late and took quite a while to get ready. It was almost 10:30 when we left the place. We went to my favourite breakfast & lunch place. It's run by a bunch of Middle Eastern & African immigrants in Oakland. we ended up getting some gyros because by the time we got there, it was about 11. We went over to Lake Merritt and ate.

We then had florist "issues": partially my fault, partially not. We went buy and picked up some roses anyways. She loved them.

That afternoon, we zipped up to Concord. My friend and his gf picked us up there. We drove over to the airfield and flew up to Clear Lake. We had a blast. My gf went nuts (good nuts) for the flight up and developed perma-grin on the way back when my friend let her fly for a while.

She was as giddy and delighted as a school girl when we went home. We didn't get home until rather late though. Her comment before bed was that I had made one of her dreams that she'd had since she was a small child come true.

I call that a home run.

Oh Shit!

We all know how well SGI and Cray got along! Please no round two!!!

This term is starting to get annoying. It was bad enough with the poor definitions of 'superpower' and 'Great Power'! Now we have to add another one?

Mein Gott! Die Amerikaner sind die einzigen noch stehend! Wir müssen ihnen einen neuen Aufkleber geben!

This is absolute silliness. While our growth as a power has increased American capabilities, it is far from the terrifying threat and menace that some people in the world are making us out to be.

We toppled two uber weak nations in two years. OoOoo! So scary! And in doing so, over overstretched the army to the point where short of a major attack on the US, we're not terribly scary to anyone (re NK's and Iran's behaviour post IRaq. They're NOT scared of us).

Perhaps then, this whole hyperpowerhood naming is because the nations that have labeled us so have just realized how far they have fallen and want to say we've grown out of control instead of them shrinking so far from what they were?

Personally, I don't believe it. I just cannot, looking at what we have done and knowing what we are capable of doing, accept that we have suddenly become the powered armor equipped 900 lbs gorilla that we're being portrayed.

What does it take to be a 'hyperpower'? I have a few ideas, but they take some fleshing out before I'd say outloud...what do all of you think?

DoD has stated that my brother's unit, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, is coming home by July 15th. They're not the only ones. The 1st Armored is coming home at the same time. The 2nd ACR was attached to the 1st AD for the recent unpleasantness in with al-Sadr.

*BALLOONS*

*CONFETTI*

He has survived some of the worst things that can happen to a man. Now, he has to deal with the rest.

*cue Psycho Music*

Our Mother.

You see, our mom is one of the craziest, yet uncertifiable, people left in the world. Worse than Shrub. Worse than Kerry. Worse than Dan Quayle. Worse than my ex wife - she at least had touch with reality!

Y'see, reality and our mother are at best passing ships in the night.

On the one hand, she's the caring Mom. On the other, even though I am a 30 yo, she still tries to run my life. Frex, when my gf and I started talking the M word, my mother tried to bull her way in to 'help' (in effect try to take over what was going to happen and when).

Afrex, y'see she and my father divorced my senior year of HS (more properly, my mother left my father). My mom's done really poorly since: my mother and money are like oil and water...no matter how ya try, they never properly mix. That was the source of my father and her getting a divorce. My father wanted to keep a very tight reign on my mother and money. It lead to some ubernasty fights. When their marriage counselor recommended that my father let my mother handle the family expenses - since she was a mature adult, verstehst? - she promptly waaaay overspent, screwed their credit, and was completely and utterly unable to balance the check book. My father took back over the expenses and everything went downhill from there. So, my mother left my father. She then wanted him to come chasing after her. My father finally said uncle and let her go (he'd gone chasing after her twice before). My father didn't date seriously for 5 years after that until he met my stepmother. Once he did, my mother stalked him because she felt they were meant to get back together. From there on, my father refused to even speak to her except through legal channels. My mother then took my father to court - note! *ALWAYS* keep copies of your child support checks. Don't depend on being able to get copies from the bank! *NEVER* give money in leiu of a CS payment. - and screwed him pretty good, but only about a 1/4 as thoroughly as she had tried to. She even said she did it out of spite and then blew the big windfall. *sighs* Now she keeps pining after him and wanting to at least be friends. I avoid most of this cuz I ran from home right after HS graduation and only met in person my family rather intermittantly.

*sighs*

Afrexa, because of my mother's ... inability ... yeah that's it...to deal with money, I offered to help her purchase a place to retire about 5 years ago. I told her so long as it was not too expensive, I'd be happy to. It was the an odd and old sense of obligation: kids get raised by parents and then take care of parents in their old age when they need it. At the time, I was earning about $40k. About a month after that, she called me after a big test at my last job. I'd been at work until about 4 am after being there for 16 hours. I had an hour drive home. The call was at 9am. She told me she'd found some land! It was 640 acres in Colorado. I tried, despite my exhaustion, from immediately lashing out and telling her she was off her rocker: maybe she was able to find an awesome bargain we couldn't turn away from...uh, um, no. After a verbal cornering, despite insisting that it was affordable, she confessed that it was 1.2 MILLION dollars. I immediately vetoed the whole thing and told her that if I devoted all my salary over the next 30 years to that leaving none for food, taxes, etc, I could only cover the payments towards the principle, forget the interest. I told her emphateticly no. We had a fight. She didn't talk to me for 2 months. Then I got another call stating that she'd found some land again. this time it was 960 acres. I cringed, but she stated that it was more affordable than the last. It was 'only' $780k. I vetoed again (I do want to get my own house) and we got into a fight. Of course. Over the next three months we had an argument about the size of the land and the budget. I told her whatever she could get for $100k and I told her most likely its going to be around 30 acres. Finally, she caved. Since she wasn'y going to be paying for it, she didn't have much of a choice. I thought we were on the right path. Then she sprung the house on me. Keep in mind she'll be living alone. She wants a 9k - 10k square foot home. The estimated cost based on what she has in mind will be close to $2 million dollars. My salary is a lot higher now. But there's no way to convince Mom that such a thing is just too unrealistic. She has a hard time cleaning a 600 sq ft apartment! 9k sq ft house?! Riiiiiight.

Yafrex, back when I was in HS, the first girl I was interested in enough to ask out, I got shot down. Because I listened to my mom, I kept after her. I thought that by consulting with a woman, I'd have a better chance at understanding and doing all the right things. Uh, no. As a matter of fact, she guided me into doing all the wrong things. Gifts too soon, persistance above and beyond, etc, etc. All the stuff that geeks tend to do anwyays, but worse. The girl finally told me knock it off, period. I did. My mom didn't. She kept sending flowers and such to this poor girl. Me with my already imploded self sense of self worth and horribly shy, couldn't bare to admit my mom was sending all that in my name. That went on for *6* MONTHS. Finally, my father intervened when I confronted my mom about it. My mother and I had a huge fight at VDay over some chocolate my mother had bought for the girl. I told her I didn't want to give it to this very annoyed girl and my mom had to stop. My father came in after the argument had moved off into another room, opened the chocolate, and started eating. My mother became irrate. My father was a rock that the storm simply could not touch and he was eating VDay chocolate quite happily. I came in after my mother had stalked off and told him a very heart felt thanx. He smiled and said 'I know'. Damn, one of my favourite memories of my dad...he's a hard man, but damn if he doesn't have his soft moments. :) Anyways to continue said story, I stopped telling squat to my mom about my interests in girls. I expressed absolutely no interest at all in them when she was around. Zip. Nada. No hint. Didn't even look when she was anywhere near. Within the next year, she confrontd me and demanded to know if I was gay... *sighs*

Why does my brother have to deal with all this above whatever is normal for him? He's engaged. He brought his fiance down to meet my mother and my sister when he came back for R&R last Feb. My mother despised this woman. When I've talked to her and we've exchanged email, my bro's choice of a fiance seems like a very nice woman, intelligent and articulate as well as very caring. She's finished her degree in teaching and is about 3 years older than my bro. I like her. My father and my other sister like her. Its just my one sister that lives near my mother and my mother that do not. My mother has done such a good job of alienating my bro and co that it looks like she might be noninvited to their wedding. erk.

Anyways my gf is going to be exposed to all this on July 7th when my Mom comes out to meet her. We'll see. My SO really gives me a hard time about my relationship with meine mutti. Her relationship with her mother really couldn't be better. Her mom actually really rocks. Anya - my gf's mom - is one of my favourite people.

My bro and his fiance are going to be married in August or September. My gf and I are likely to get engaged and married in the next year.

One war nearly wound down for my family and another about to begin.

I finished _Slave Trade_. Thank all that's good. Actually, I did it a couple weeks ago. I've had a couple books I've read since then. Reading ST was oppressive: as I have said before, the book was dispassionate and engaging. It was merely the subject matter that was extremely depressing. Normally I can whip right through a book w/o problems. Even subjects that are horrifying. The book is at home, but I have quotes I want to yank. I'll put them up later. Some observations though.

There are no saints in the story of the slave trade. I cannot even say that about some of the victims. There were cases of Africans caught to be sold as slaves, freed, and turned around to be slavers themselves. Most of the captians of slaver ships were right bastards. The assorted African kings that sold the slaves were too. If I kept the numbers straight, it looks like something on the order of 10 million Africans were exported as slaves between around 1510 to 1870. Most slaves exported were men. It was not until nearly the end of the legal slave trade that women made up more than a 1/4 of the slaves exported. The vast majority of the slaves exported went to the Carribean. There they were far more often than not worked to death in 2 to 3 years: in that time frame the owner will have turned a profit on the slave's work vs his cost (sickening). The north america was admired for how kind the slaves were treated there (stomach lurch) compared to the other new world colonies, esp the Carribean: the slave population in the US, frex, grew more from natural population replacement rather than importing. From what it looks like, that wasn't the case until slavery was abolished in the majority of other places: might have to do with the ratio of men to women too...but then, the women died just as much as the men.

Enough with that for now. Its sickening.

Since finishing ST, I've read _King David's Spaceship_ (fiction) and _Gemistos Plethon_ (nonfiction). The former is the book by JE Pournelle, a good mental rinse and spit with nada as far as lasting impression.

The latter on the other hand is about one of the last 'great' philosophers for the Byzantine Empire (he died a VERY old man a year or so before Constantinople fell to the Turks). He took the name Plethon, but he was born George Gemistos. He was largely responsible for reintroducing the Italian Humanists to Plato. He was essentially the father of what would later be the Neoplatonist movement. He participated in the meetings about whether or not the Orthodox and Catholic churches would unite again in the 1430s+. However, in the end, he turned pagan, but hid it. Given that day and age, its rather understandable why he hid it. Juvenal was executed in Mystra (in Greece where Plethon lived) for such. His _Book of Laws_ covers his religious beliefs. Not much survives of it because it was sent after his death to the Patriarch in Constantinople (Gennadios/Scholarios) who was his long time adversary who then burned most of it.

What I took away from this is...
1) I am not a philosopher: most of this stuff seems like hairsplitting to me to a ridiculous degree.
2) Science really has rolled back the frontiers of religion. Big time. Intellectually I knew that had happened, but reading a samples of what Plethon wrote uber demonstrates this. We know rather than make up some pretty bizarre models based on faith, angels, and everything else.

Definitely worth reading for enlightening us to exactly how much we have learned in the last few centuries about the world really does work.

I am now reading _Snow Crash_. I am getting as many chuckles out of it as anything else. When I read it, I can definitely pick out when it was written.

Oy. What did I go and do this weekend?

Got myself into trouble is what I did.

Not in the usual prescribed ways though!

My gf and I talked. She's moving in in the latter 1/3 of the month. This is a prelude. On her Bday about a week into July, I'm taking her to go get a ring. (That's in the morning) In the afternoon we're supposed to out to an airfield to catch a plane that a friend of mine is flying (small plane) to fly up to a small coastal community up north for dinner. When we get back, there is planned to be a bunch of flowers that will be delivered: roses, 27, 26 for her age and one to odd it out. Ukrainians have this thing about even numbers of flowers: even numbers are for mourning only. Strange, but true. The whole plan is a surprise. She knows I'm popping The Question soon and I already know what the answer is gonna be.

So, if all goes well, in about 4 years, we'll start having black haired (unless there's a blonde lurking somewhere in her ancestry), green eyed (both of us...), Ukrainian-German-Italian-Irish-Scottish-English-French blend kids. Yes, my family is playing collect them all for European ancestry. Xenophilia (aka aggressive outbreeding) seems to run in the family. I have it in spades more than most though.

Actually, the funny part is that comparing such things to my friends, my tastes in women seem to be far, far broader than most of theirs. My first crush was on a Korean girl. My second was on a WASP blonde. My exwife was a Latina. I've been attracted to (often very strongly) to virtually every race. Each woman is an individual and their personality effects me as much as their looks. Not that looks haven't been at least mildly important...I'm still a card carrying, knuckle dragging male after all. ;P

Human virtu must contend with fortuna, the personification of all the contigent forces in the world.

After a long pause I have updated my Java Applet Pacman game. There are several improvements, the most notable of which is that the Ghost is much smarter. Also the graphics shouldn't flicker on slow systems. Now I ask you, dear reader, to give it a whirl and tell me what you think. Are there bugs? Odd behavior? Have a suggestion? Please let me know!

Newest version of the game is here.

Finally, I am thinking of moving all my pages off of Angelfire. Does anyone have any free homepage suggestions?

I've been having ooooooooooooh so much fun at work. Specifically, those of you that haven't read past journal entries, I am working on the GUPFS project. The purpose of that project is to create a single shared FS for all the supercomputers and clusters that come through the door at NERSC. The hope is to decouple the storage from the systems so that the scientists don't have to mess aroudn with moving their data from one system to the next. In some cases we're talking about terabytes worth of data. The wasteful replication across systems and time lost is nontrivial.

Hence our project...

One of the crucial requirements for one of these file systems we are testing is crossplatform compatibility. We do not want to be forced into limiting our supercomputers based on the cluster/network/whatever file system we have bought and extended[1].

Up to this point a lot of work has gone into benchmarking and technology eval with respect to Linux. The idea was that the participants in this project wanted to build up an understanding of how the software worked and what the hardware limitations were, etc, etc. They did so in a very controlled Linux cluster environment. That way they could plug in and remove anything from the fabric and storage underneath the cluster file system to the kernel and whatnot. This allowed a very laboratory bent on being able to compare the different FS'. However, something they had been paying lip service to, but were not doing, was the crossplatform testing.

Guess what I am now doing after having been aggitating for this?

You see, I am nominally from the production side of the house. All the benchmarking and hud I thoroughly agree needs to be done in a systematic way. However, I also am a strong believer in making sure that we get a FS that is production worthy: reliability, scalability, practicality, and ease of administration are paramount in my book. One of the practicality bents is that it actually is able to run on all the different systems stably.

After much b*tch*ng and complaining, I was stuck with the configuration and testing of the assorted crossplatform tests. yeah! Something interesting to do other than the care and feeding of the analysts' cluster!

The first FS to be tackled is GPFS by IBM. I was to set up a basic GPFS FS that was cross mounted on AIX and Linux. This has been a nightmare. An interesting nightmare, but a nightmare all the same. It seems in the process of digging through all this that I have uncovered literal undocumented features (one is an excellent one, but politically sticky within IBM since it allows GPFS to by pass a lot of IBM software to run; it upset the developers and the architect a lot that I stumbled acorss it. It's literally undocumented) and even bugs. Lotsa bugs. The one that's killing us now is looking more and more like a kernel bug in AIX. What's annoying as f*ck about the whole testing is that I provide the debug info as requested, but I cannot look at source code. Yep, I'm having to rely on IBM all the way. This. Sucks. Thousand. Year. Old. Eggs.

I am getting started on week three of working with IBM. The end is nowhere in sight.

Due to the fact that I was extremely frustrated with the progress, I went and installed ADIC's StorNext FS. It took about a 1/2 day to install and configure. It's up and running. No sweat, no hassle beyond the differences between configuring a Linux box and an AIX one. I am going to be adding a Solaris box this week too. The analysts are salivating to no end.

Now if you compare and contrast with the GPFS nightmare...

At any rate, besides GPFS & StorNext, Panasas, Lustre, and IBM's SAN FS.

I have configured lustre before, but I'm not much of a fan. It's not real fault tolerant (at all) and even more cantankerous than GPFS seems to be. I can at least run GPFS on everything they claim it will, if not across the platforms. Lustre on the other hand...

The biggest problem for most of these are that they don't run across platforms much. GPFS runs on AIX and Linux. Lustre and Panasas runs on linux. SAN FS runs on a lot of things, but we've not gotten in ann eval copy yet. It's been a lil difficult in getting that arranged. StorNext does run on virtually everything, but its rather spendy. Really spendy. To me, it seems as though it ought to be a run between the SAN FS and StorNext, but I Am Not the Decision Maker Here. grr.

After getting the crossplatform testing done, I'll be off to try reliability and production worthiness...heh heh heh.

All the analysts are stating that what I've done ought to be written up as papers and published at some conferences. They're 100% confident that it will be well received and worthy of publication. The funny part is that I've never published before, but that I seem to have them all lining up to want to be coauthors. *bemused look*

Anyways, had to dump and you are the lucky ones...;)

Urgent requests

In all, the House voted to give the DOD $20.5 billion more than the president's $401.7 billion request for FY '05, although the actual spending will have to be approved by House and Senate appropriating committees. The House completed its consideration of the bill in less than a week, while the Senate continues to deliberate its version.

The bill authorizes $100 million to initiate a new rapid procurement initiative that would help respond to urgent requests for combat equipment by commanders in the battlefield. It also authorizes $829.6 million for production of up-armored Humvees and $358.2 million for vehicle add-on armor kits for the Army's truck fleet, and $191.8 million to procure Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

The bill calls for $275 million for Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to provide increased surveillance capability and $292.2 million for upgrades to M1A2 Abrams tanks. It also authorizes more than $400 million for new body armor, including add-on covering for shoulder and side body areas.

It also includes a provision to increase the size of the Army and Marines by 39,000 troops over the next three years.

That's what? Two Divisions worth +/-? They really need three to do what we do now and then some sort of reserve, possibly even a 4th if one goes to the Marines. Not the Army Reserve, but you know what I mean. Additionally, we do need to flesh out the Army Reserve for the logistics units that are needed. It'd prolly not be a bad thing to flesh out the regular divisions so that they're not dependant on reserve or national guard combat troops. But that's a brigade per division, right? hrm.

The White House recently released a "roadmap" to improve federal support of high-end computing, shortly after the Bush administration announced a new effort to build the world's top computer. The report calls for a "coordinated, sustained" federal research program over 10 to 15 years, lays out an "interagency collaborative strategy," and proposes pilot projects -- all to get breakthroughs that transform high-end computing technology, which federal officials and industry groups agree must be the world's best for the sake of U.S. economic competitiveness.

Stolen from a newsletter at work.

Read it here.

I was one of those that was mildly supportive of the idea for thumping Saddam prior to the war. Why only mildly? Because I had my doubts about the WMD intel. I did not think that the Intel folks were trying to mislead the President et al nor did I think that the President was going in to be a bigger man than 'Daddy' (as a bunch of antiBush Texans[1] have stated). I had my doubts because intel work is an interpretive one. That means its open to human error. Big time. Judgement calls can be meant to do the right thing can and do turn out to be absolutely, positively wrong. Even with the best of intentions.

Because of that, when I spoke to my friends back in New Mexico I expressed some doubts. What if, I said, we don't find the weapons. What would it hurt, I continued, to wait for three more months, give Saddam his chance to prove that he'd really, truly destroyed the weapons, and if he failed to do so, just as he'd done up to that point. I thought, then we might have the French et al on our side. Maybe. At least then we'd been patient and shown that we'd let the inspectors do their job. I really didn't think that they'd be able to prove one way or the other, but a lil bit of patience might not have alienated so many nations. My friends disagreed and I was brushed off. I shrugged and when the time came, I rah-rah'ed with the absolute best of them. Not the least of reasons was that my lil brother is with the 2nd ACR that was slotted to go through Turkey with the 4th ID into northern Iraq. Also because, frankly, I had felt we'd fallen down the first GW: we promised the Shiites we'd support them against Saddam and then backed down: we left them to be slaughtered. Either we shouldn't have made that promise, or we should have been true to our word. This has bugged me ever since. We're supposed to be the white hats, damnit.

Then, after the fast squashing of an enemy that was obviously in terrible shape despite his bravado otherwise, the thing that had worried me before seemed to come true. There were no WMDs. We blew vast amounts of credibility and sympathy gained after 9/11 to the whole world for this war. If we were right, we could more than recover. It appeared we were not. Even as the lone superpower (queue appropriate music, either the empire march or the good, the bad, and the ugly, depending on your tastes), we still need allies and coalitions. Even if you assume a linear extrapolation of the power growth differentials between the US military and the rest of the world, it will be a generation before we could stand and literally do anything to anywhere in the world without anyone standing beside us. However, its monstrously foolish to take linear extrapolations seriously: they're almost always wrong because a hell of a lot can happen in 20 years. Besides, I'd rather work with friends even if I am the f*ck*ng 9kton gorilla among the 500 lbs ones rather than alone.

The complete lack of finding the WMD really made me scared as hell. This was doubly so when I started reading about other nations talking about America as hyperpower that needed to be contained. I smelled the smell of the beginnings of the retorhic that produced the Cold War. To be sure, even with the stomach turning abuses at the iraqi prisons, we are not even close to the danger to the world that the Soviets were. We have no radical ideology that we are out to convert the world with. However, rumblings from a lot of the world were that we were a supreme danger. This was because we toppled two countries in extremely short periods without straining overly much. Our army is strained, but only because we haven't expanded it: we have less than half the combat troops under arms that we did during the Cold War, so it is not the society is strained at all. We could and possibly would recruit enough troops to fill all the tasks we have and do a lot more. That's part of the fear that the rest of the world has. Where will the Hegemon stomp next if they expand their/our army? Syria? Iran? Oder wo?

My digression over.

Today, sarin gas was released from a 155mm shell used in an IED. It turns out that this seems to be a shell that the old Iraqi regime said was destroyed. It seems that it was in good enough condition that the insurgents assumed it was usable in that IED even if they didn't seem to realize it was a chemical warhead. it also turns out that there was a mustard gas shell from a few weeks ago used the same way.

This is something of a personal shock. I had pretty much resigned about our credibility loss and the fact there were no WMDs. At least one cache of WMD seems to really exist. We just have to find it. We have to before the insurgents figure out how to use it effectively.

Assuming we do, and its a big cache, not just one or two chemical warheads mixed in with a huge normal stockpile accidently, then what does that mean? The diplomatic damage has been done, even neglecting the fiasco from the f*ckn*t MPs. However, it would prove that Shrub was right. I'd guess he gets reelected, but beyond that? What are the implications?

1. Yes, they do exist, Virginia.