War News Rather than Seinfeld

Instead of watching Seinfeld reruns, I've been watching the war coverage. PBS's Frontline put together several of it's past shows covering Iraq over the years. It started with Frontlines that were shown before the first Gulf War. In the days before that first war, there seemed to be a lot more concern about war with Iraq. Frontline showed Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense during the start of the Vietnam War) at a Congressional meeting where NcNamara warned that they should expect thousands and thousands of casualties, and he recommended letting sanctions be given at least 12 to 18 months to work.

Also interesting was the first George Bush at a press conference several weeks after the war ended. Bush said:

You mentioned World War II. There was a definitive end to that conflict. Now we have Saddam Husein still there. I haven't yet felt this wonderfully euphoric feeling that many of the American people feel.

Couple other Frontline shows covered the UN inspections after the war. It seems like the inspectors had most of their success right after the war and in 1995 after an Iraqi defector filled them in on the Iraqi hiding strategy. But they mentioned that the inspectors received less and less support from the UN as time past. Finally, in 1998, Iraq was successful in ending the inspections. Clinton then had to figure out how to respond. There were indications that Clinton was planning something significant. The show had a piece of a town hall session where Clinton's top people like Madelin Albright, Sandy Berger, and William Cohen were trying to discuss the issues at Ohio State University. They were being booed and heckled by the crowd who expressed hatred for US sanctions and bombs against Iraq. Albright gave her opinion about Saddam:

He is qualitatively and quantitatively different from every other brutal dictator that has appeared recently, and we are very concerned about him specifically, and what his plans might be.

Well, Clinton did finally act in operation Desert Fox in December 1998. It was a bombing operation that lasted only four days. I guess they thought it would punish Iraq without causing too much anger at the UN or in the US. But in the minds of many people, Saddam had won...

The remaining Frontline continued with the second Bush replacing Clinton and the changes that occurred, especially after 9/11.

Quote from the First Bush

There was one quote that I remember from the first Bush before the first Iraq war. It never received any publicity. To me it had a feel of a Clint Eastwood line, but it wasn't so blatant that people would criticize it. I still remember it although I probably don't remember the exact words. I thought it expressed the situation quite nicely. It went something like this:

The Iraqi aggression against Kuwait will not stand. It's not a threat. It's not a boast. It's just the way it's going to be.

Spam Selling Anti-Spam Software....

Why do people send spam or junk email? I can't believe it really works these days. Only thing I can think is that the spammers must be desparate. I received a quite ironic spam a few days ago. The email was trying to sell me software that gets rid of spam....

Lately, there has been moves to help cut telemarketers by allowing people to sign up for do-not-call lists. Seems like something similar could be done with spam. I wish I could select the unsubscribe option in the spam without worrying that it will just notify the spammers that they had a hit. Seems like some sort of global unsubscribe method that's required by all commercial email could help a lot. This global unsubscribe option could be operated by some trustworthy organization that could ensure its integrity.

posted by Ken on 12:03 PM permalink and comments  

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