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Saturday, August 09, 2003 |
Here Comes the Evidence. [little green footballs]
The British government will soon be presenting hard evidence that Iraq produced biological weapons. (Hat tip: ploome.)
Intelligence officials were producing another dossier on Iraqi arms, and "there is said to be hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal weapons of mass destruction", the British magazine "The Economist" said in its latest issue.
"We would hope to be able to demonstrate in the fullness of time that almost all the information in the dossier (published by the government last September) was accurate", a government insider told the magazine.
Government sources "say that several new bits of information will emerge including evidence based on interviews with Iraqi scientists that biological weapons had been produced in quantity", the Economist said.
5:40:42 PM 
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Can North Korea blackmail us? (God I hope so! I can't wait to see how many Dove's are left when NK or al Qaeda use a nuke)(LP)
[ Tyler Cowen , 7:37 AM ] Can North Korea blackmail us? Assume that the North Koreans want nuclear weapons to blackmail the United States, and not just for deterrence. They offer to sell us a nuclear weapon for $100 billion, or to sell it to al Qaeda for $1 million. Would we buy?
Now attacking them might appear to cost more than paying up. But I think the US would have to attack. They may play the game repeatedly, others might follow in their footsteps, and we would figure we just have to take our chances, at least we would have advance warning of a possible nuking and could step up security, if they hand off the nuke before we take them down. I think we would have to attack, even if they told us that if we start an attack, they stand ready to hand the nuke over to al Qaeda. And I think an American President could credibly signal that such an attack would be forthcoming (of course this is tougher if we elect a wimp), think of this as one of the better arguments for having invaded Iraq (note: perhaps we should be happy that WMDs in Iraq are scarce, it shows we are really tough and will attack on all sorts of pretexts, so you hawks don't necessarily root for them to be found!).
The same attack response follows if North Korea announces the same deal with probability of 0.99. Or 0.98. We simply have to attack.
So this will deter the North Koreans, at least if they are not crazy.
Now, is there any probability of handover where we would pay up rather than attack? What if the probability of handover is 000.1? The probability might already be this high, and of course we haven't attacked to date.
Assume that there is some critical "crossover probability" for an attack to follow. Any chance of a nuke transfer below that, and we pay them (we already pay Egypt not to attack Israel, don't we?) rather than attacking.
Of course the smaller the chance of a handoff, the smaller a sum they can extract. So it might be a sum we could live with, of course it would be disguised so as not to outrage the American public.
Given that we pay them under this scenario, why should they hand over a nuke to al Qaeda? They would be endangering their gravy train.
Of course all this falls apart if they are just crazy, I hope to return to that scenario soon, but if the North Korean problem is only that, we can be reassured just a bit, although of course your taxes will go up.
That's the optimistic scenario for the North Korean case. Your thoughts are again welcome.
[The Volokh Conspiracy]
5:09:40 PM
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Microsoft doesn't have a clue? Oh really?
Dan Gillmor cracks the code at Microsoft: the company doesn't have a clue about weblogging. This is a good thing. [John Robb's Weblog]
I've been using the Internet since long before Al Gore invented it. In all those years hardly a day goes by that I don't read or hear from somewhere that "Microsoft doesn't have a clue about this or that".
Every time I hear that they don't have a clue, within one or two years they end up owning the this or that they didn't have a clue about.
My question is ... When will all the experts get a clue about Microsoft?(LP)
4:23:19 PM
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Big numbers. [from:a klog apart]
4:02:04 PM
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Farmer Joins the Military
Dear Ma and Pa:
Am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Army beats working for Old Man Minch by a mile.
Tell them to join up quick before maybe all the places are filled.
I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late.
Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things -- no hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave, but it is not bad, they git warm water.
Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, beef, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and regular food. But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit between two city boys that live on coffee. Their food, plus yours, holds you till noon, when you get fed again.
It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on "route marches," which, the Sgt. says, are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different. A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys all get sore feet and we ride back in trucks.
The country is nice, but awful flat. The Sgt. is like a school teacher. He nags some. The Capt. is like the school board. Colonels and Generals just
ride round and frown. They don't bother you none. This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep gettin medals for shootin. I don't know why.
The bull's-eye is pert near as big as a chipmunk and don't move none. And it ain't shooting at you, like them Higgins' boys at home. All you got to do is
lay there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.
Speaking of shootin, enclosed is $200 for the barn roof and ma's teeth. Them city boys shoot craps, but not very good.
Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellows get onto this setup and come stampeding in.
Your loving daughter,
Gail
12:30:39 PM
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Lopsided Webcam
You knew it had to happen ... full nudity on the Lopsided Poopdeck! Danielle's first birthday is the 30th of this month and she requests that you send lots of money to her Grandfather and he will buy the presents!!!!!
12:37:49 AM
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Full Posts Vs. Headlines.
Can I get a really BIG AMEN? This bugs the heck out of me!(LP)
Clipped from Sean Bonner: "When you have your RSS feed set to display only the first 2 - 3 lines of your post, if... anyone is reading it away from an Internet connection, we can't read any more than those 2 - 3 lines. I might remember the next day to go back and look it up... when faced with a million new things to read, I don't." Food for thought. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
12:15:08 AM
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© Copyright 2003 John Gist.
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