Wednesday, August 8, 2007

What's Wrong with the War in Iraq?

Here's the answer, from General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, who retired as one of the nation's most highly decorated military officers.
During his 34-year career in the U.S. Army, he served in Vietnam, Latin America and ultimately was named NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, where he led a unified force to victory in NATO's first major combat action. Clark commanded all NATO forces to success in the important Kosovo conflict, saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing without a single Allied casualty.

Bottom line: Clark is the voice of experience and he makes it clear that Bush's incompetence is why the war in Iraq is a disaster.

Click here to watch highlights from General Clark's keynote speech.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think General Clark is my new hero.

Jason

Shoes4Industry said...

Ours too.

Anonymous said...

We met him last Sunday! He's a very cool guy.

H Nicole Young said...

Ditto, Ditto, and Ditto. Great post again, Shoes!

PS -- Judy Wood, forever my scientific hero, is home today and fine.

Anonymous said...

Great news, nicole. I was getting worried...

Anonymous said...

The second engineer is Judy Wood, who has been mentioned in the comments here for her bizarre billiard ball from the top of the World Trade Center theory. OK, Ms. Wood is an actual Mechanical Engineer at Clemson, but thus far her work has been primarily focused on the stresses of dentistry. A fascinating field no doubt, but hardly relevant to planes crashing into buildings.

Yes, it's true she specializes in dentistry but that doesn't mean she's wrong about her Billiard Ball from the towers. She produced a graphic showing how long it would take a billiard ball to fall from every ten floors of the towers. She starts from the 110th floor, drops a billiard ball, goes to the 100th floor, drops another billiard ball and so forth on down to the tenth floor. Apparently, her only experience with pool is hitting the cue ball off the table. She forgets a little ditty called "Transfer of Momentum."

H Nicole Young said...

Transfer of what momentum? In order to transfer momentum you need a little ditty called mass. There was no mass. It all turned to dust.

You can't have it both ways, Anon. You either "transfer" in-tact mass with its velocity (i.e., momentum) to the floors below and drive the building into the ground -- hard (and even given this far-fetched scenario of the mass remaining in tact the whole way down, it's even further far-fetched to think the lower floors offer absolutely zero reistance such that the top floors reach the bottom at near free fall speeds), or you "transfer" in-tact mass into dust on impact. Anything in-between (i.e. -- some mass transfers its momentum to floors below while some mass becomes dust) results in significantly slower than free-fall speeds.

Dr. Wood, who did a heck of a lot more than her excellent work on "stresses of dentistry" (see her bio at http://drjudywood.com), eloquently demonstrates with her billiard ball example that it was not physically possible for the buildings to fall as they did without some input of energy from an external source (i.e., directed energy weapons, mini-nukes, thermite -- all of the above?)

Please read Dr. Wood's appendices carefully and rethink the billard ball example before you pooh-pooh eloquent simplicity and throw around the term "Transfer of Momentum" as if her model does not very clearly take it into account.

Shoes4Industry said...

We also urge you to try the "plastic cup" experiment below. See for yourself!

Anonymous said...

And a plastic cup and a brick have what? to do with a million ton building with almost infinite variables?

Like a billiard ball being hit by another on a pool table, each floor transferred its momentum to the next floor below. The more weight, the less resistance each floor gave.

Shoes4Industry said...

And a plastic cup and a brick have what? to do with a million ton building with almost infinite variables? Just think about it.
It's all matter of structure and scale. Look at the weight of the cup vs the brick. The brick weights far more than the cup, yet the cup SUPPORTS the brick. Even if it's dropped, it still SLOWS the speed or the descending brick. Now scale this up to the size of the WTC, why would this structure behave any differently (fire is not an issue here BTW)?

Like a billiard ball being hit by another on a pool table, each floor transferred its momentum to the next floor below. The more weight, the less resistance each floor gave. Ok, given that "theory", how do you explain all the DUST created? (look at photo posted here.) You can not have mass pancaking down AND pulverizing the structure.
Your ENERGY has the choice of ONE not both.

Anonymous said...

Your methodology refers to and depends on what is called pseudo science. A plastic cup and a brick may demonstrate a principle, but in fact, have nothing to do with the reality of an event that also may have that principle as an apparent basis.

Much like Dr Judy and her beam weapon "theory". Her very claims of evidence may appear to have a basis in principle, but when reality is applied, such as directivity, Geo Synchronous orbit, Low Earth Orbit, and numerous other factors, her theory proves it's own falsehood.

Shoes4Industry said...

Your methodology refers to and depends on what is called pseudo science. We here at the Shoes 4 Industry Institute of Common Sense, do not claim any scientific basis for our analysis, rather empirical evidence and (rather than, the majority of opinions)common sense. No more, no less.

If your "theory" is correct, why then did NIST not use the WTC events in as "case studies" in their report on "pancaking" building collapses?

H Nicole Young said...

What the heck is directivity, Geo Synchronous orbit, and Low Earth Orbit, and more important, who cares?

Dr. Judy Wood repeatedly states something that many scientists (especially physicists and mechanical engineers in particular, as I am recently discovering) probably need a major lesson in learning about stating themselves every so often, when appropriate... repeat after me, guys (yes "guys" -- sorry, but it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that a lot of this may be somewhat gender-specific in nature, with occasional special exceptions like Shoes):

"We don't know. This requires further investigation."

This is what Dr. Judy Wood repeatedly states, and appropriately so given how true the statement is, whenever she is questioned about minor details and specifics of directed energy weapons, details that nobody outside certain government and defense contractor circles could possibly know about in the first place.

A new weapon (or a newer version of some older weapons?) obviously brought the towers down. We don't know exactly how, but it requires further investigation.

Anonymous said...

Directivity, directionality, diffraction, beam cohesion, focus, LOE, GSO, are just a few terms that have to do with science of DEW's and the facts thereof. Things that Dr Judy and most of you wouldn't understand because it deals with hard cold facts as opposed to "we don't understand".

Shoes4Industry said...

These a big difference between "we don't know" and "we don't understand."

We would like to KNOW what happened so that we can UNDERSTAND what happend.

Anonymous said...

I'm not a scientist, and I have no inclination to pose as one on this site (though I could probably cut-and-paste a pretty believable scientist persona).

But the fact that even a handful (or more) of people qualified in a variety of fields of scientific study have questioned WTC 7 suggests that further study is not inappropriate. We, as a society, create pathways to give people certain levels of intellectual/academic credibility. Then, when some don't like their conclusions/questions (like those of Judy Wood) they decide that somehow her thought processes aren't valid.

In the end, I wonder why people get so angry. If there is no validity to the questions brought forward, why are they considered so offensive?

(And, before someone jumps in with a juvenile call of "hate speech" or "Bush bashing" as the reason for the questioning being so offensive, please remember that not every thought is politically motivated. If a Democratic administration had made the same choices/decisions over the past several years, I most definitely would have the same questions I do now.)

Jason

shoes4industry said...

Good points and well spoken!

This is not matter of Right vs. Left, as much as it is Right vs. Wrong.

If any reasonable person looks at the reports, looks at the footage, the photos, looks at the controversies,the facts, looks the physics, the eye witnesses, the inconsistencies, the unbelievable coincidences, the evidence and the lack of evidence, there is no way they can come to any other conclusion than: we have not been told the whole story, and the 'theory' we have been told, does not make sense.

Anonymous said...

Your "theory" is that 9/11 was a planned attack from within. Yet, six years later not ONE person (including any of the news media people that gave first hand accounts of what they saw) has yet to come forward with information indicating your "theory". Thousands of people would have had to be involved in an inside job yet not ONE leaked it out BEFORE hand and not ONE has come forward SINCE then.

WOW! Talk about a "theory."

Shoes4Industry said...

No, no, no.

Read very carefully what we say here:

If any reasonable person looks at the reports, looks at the footage, the photos, looks at the controversies,the facts, looks the physics, the eye witnesses, the inconsistencies, the unbelievable coincidences, the evidence and the lack of evidence, there is no way they can come to any other conclusion than: we have not been told the whole story, and the 'theory' we have been told, does not make sense.

We did not say it was an "inside job" you did. Maybe YOU know something we don't.

Anonymous said...

"You might come to the conclusion that 9-11 had to be an "inside" job..."

YOUR words as posted on THIS website S4I!!

Your continual double talk and twisting of statements is typical of Progressives.

Of course comparing a brick and a plastic cup to 2 1300+ ft buildings is very scientific.

Shoes4Industry said...

Your continual double talk and twisting of statements is typical of right wing trolls...

Of course comparing a brick and a plastic cup to 2 1300+ ft buildings is very scientific. We never claimed that it was "scientific" but rather and exercise in "logic" (foreign territory for some here) that demonstrates the problems with the government's WTC collapse "theory."

Try it yourself, you will come to the same conclusion that it was an
"inside job", inside the building.

Anonymous said...

yeah, no left wing trolls here.

Shoes4Industry said...

h nicole, you're a scientist, what do you think of the logic behind the "cup and brick" experiment?

H Nicole Young said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
H Nicole Young said...

I love the cup and brick experiment, Shoes, because it is what I call a kitchen experiment -- anybody including kids can do it to learn more about the physical world around them (though I would suggest this one be done outside instead of in the kitchen!)

You have to do it yourself, make your own observations, and come to your own conclusions (and yes, it is perfectly okay to predict what you think might happen or goof around in changing the experimental conditions, whatever -- it's just a harmless experiment! It doesn't bite and there is no wrong way to do it unless you somehow put yourself in harms way and accidentally drop the brick on your toe or something!)

My own observations were that the cup suprised even more than I thought in slowing a relatively large, falling mass (the brick). In fact, because of the cup and brick experiment, I am beginning the think that the large upper masses of the WTC towers would not have even caused so much as the first major collapse of the first floors below them -- that is, had these large upper masses not been dustified in mid air along with the floors below them.

I don't buy the argument that you can't apply results from simple experiments to more complex systems or that you need an exact replica of the crime scene before you can draw any strong conclusions about how the crime was committed. It certainly helps, but it is not 100% necessary

Shoes4Industry said...

RE: CUP AND BRICK EXPERIMENTERS - If anyone would like to send us photos or videos of their results, we will posting them here,if, of course, you follow the prescribed procedure. Why not even try if with at beer can?