Osama

[Hell's Bells]

I think HB has Brad's dander up

easy big boy you may blow a blood vessel

Brad - you are intelligent, and passionate about your views, stop beating HB's dead horse - withdrawal early and agree to disagree. i worry only about your blood pressure

for the record i was not beating a dead horse...i just have a different opinion then everybody else and occasionally i want to express it.....which i assume is not a problem right??

[Grizlaw]

the 4 year gap is important because it allowed him to start up the program again, and hide the cash possibly in a different nation to hide it from wepons inspectors.

but i subscribe to the notion that he was faking the wmd's to scare off iran

Wow, now I'm pretty confused...

Let me try to re-state your argument; let me know if I'm missing anything crucial:

You think the period between 1998 and 2002 (when there were no inspectors) is important, because it allowed Saddam to re-start his weapons program and hide everything (and specifically, "the cash")...

And, as an aside, you also think he actually had no weapons program, and was actually just pretending that he had one in order to scare Iran.

Does that pretty much cover it?

--GL

[SonomaCat]

you didnt mention the four year gap...if my memory is correct you basically said that they were there the entire time

I noted the four year gap after you did, but I didn't explicitly mention it before. I never suggested that it wasn't there ... only pointed out that leading up to the war, we did have inspectors in there, and they were not able to find anything. My position is, granting 20/20 hindsight, that we should have listened to the UN and others and allowed that process to continue. We convinced ourselves that the reason we didn't find anything was because they were hiding it really well. We now know that the reason we didn't find anything was because there was nothing to find.

When this was all going down, I was thinking that our buildup of troops was a strong arm diplomatic tactic to encourage Saddam to play nice and to give better access to the inspectors. I was trying to tell my friend who held Bush in less esteem than I did that this was a smart move, and that it would get us where we needed to be without an actual war.

Then we invaded. I was surprised, and a little concerned. But I was still optimistic that they had a good idea of what they were doing. I remember specifically telling a friend of mine at work, "I just really, really hope they find those WMD now, or else we are going to look really stupid."

Of course, we found nothing, and the war hasn't been a liberation party as Cheney promised us. That explains in large part my current level of skepticism towards anything that comes out of the administration.

[Hell's Bells]

you didnt mention the four year gap...if my memory is correct you basically said that they were there the entire time

I noted the four year gap after you did, but I didn't explicitly mention it before. I never suggested that it wasn't there ... only pointed out that leading up to the war, we did have inspectors in there, and they were not able to find anything. My position is, granting 20/20 hindsight, that we should have listened to the UN and others and allowed that process to continue. We convinced ourselves that the reason we didn't find anything was because they were hiding it really well. We now know that the reason we didn't find anything was because there was nothing to find.

When this was all going down, I was thinking that our buildup of troops was a strong arm diplomatic tactic to encourage Saddam to play nice and to give better access to the inspectors. I was trying to tell my friend who held Bush in less esteem than I did that this was a smart move, and that it would get us where we needed to be without an actual war.

Then we invaded. I was surprised, and a little concerned. But I was still optimistic that they had a good idea of what they were doing. I remember specifically telling a friend of mine at work, "I just really, really hope they find those WMD now, or else we are going to look really stupid."

Of course, we found nothing, and the war hasn't been a liberation party as Cheney promised us. That explains in large part my current level of skepticism towards anything that comes out of the administration.

I remember that...

looking back on it i just wonder if Bush ran out of patience with sadam after being the third president to be jerked around by the guy. i know we almost invaded in 1998-1999

[briannell]

So Monica DID have a purpose for Bill Clinton, may be this is why he always seemed so calm when he discussed for policy in his speeches. Clinton always seemed calm and collected when discussing the middle east - really it was monica that kept things running smoothely.
Anyway, i still think that Bush is a little overzealious in the war on terror, we are so stretched with our military that by running to Iraq, now possibly iran, it leaves us wide open to attack by Osama.


Sex calms nerves before public speaking - study Wed Jan 25, 2:26 PM ET



Forget pretending you are talking to one person or concentrating on a single point in the audience -- having sex is good way to calm nerves before giving a speech or presentation.

But Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley in Scotland, said it has to be full sexual intercourse to get the best results.

He studied nearly 50 men and women who recorded their sexual activities for two weeks and analyzed its impact on their blood pressure levels when under acute stress, such as when giving a speech.

Brody discovered that the volunteers who had sexual intercourse were the least stressed and had blood pressure levels that returned to normal more quickly than people who engaged in other types of sex.

But people who had abstained from sex had the highest blood pressure response to stress.

Even after taking into account stress due to work or other factors, the range of responses to stress were best explained by sexual behavior.

"The effects are not attributable simply to the short-term relief afforded by orgasm but rather, endure for at least a week," Brody told New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

He believes that the release of the so-called "pair bonding" hormone oxytocin might explain the calming effect.