Sorry man, I'm yielding nothing on Maj. Rokke. My instincts tell me there's something there. As for depleted Uranium being weaker than uranium dug from the earth, the stuff in the earth is not pure uranium nor is it out in the open to much degree.

I'm going to hold off on using DU tailings as aggregate in the concrete for the footing of my house and the walls of the basement, thank you so much.

Look up hormesis, maybe you'll find it interesting.

Oh dear, my credibiliy in ruins. Oh boo hoo.

OK, I'll grant you my lapse in following current events in Panama if you'll take a look at the international body of opinion that accused us of heavy handed tactics in a bid to alter the eventual giving over of the canal.

It wasn't just that one movie that made those claims. Take a look at yourself. How does the line in the bible go, something about blanching at gnats but winking at camels? Nothing we do that detracts from the rights and prosperity of tiny nations is of any matter yet any and every affront to us is just cause for a military pounding. Gonna bust hell wide open.

More fun stuff from Wikipedia on Panama:


The elections of May 1989 were surrounded by controversy. Most of the other political parties banded behind a unified ticket of Guillermo Endara Galimany, along with vice presidential candidates Ricardo Arias-Calderon and Guillermo "Billy" Ford. An American, Kurt Muse, was apprehended by the Panamanian authorities, after he had set up a sophisticated radio and computer installation, designed to jam Panamanian radio and broadcast phony election returns. The Panamanian government decided to proceed with the election; Noriega's candidate lost by a large margin, too great for Noriega's intended rigging mechanism to sway the vote. Even Noriega's own troops, often bussed around all day to vote repeatedly, often voted against him. Noriega cancelled the election rather than let its result out. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, there as an observer, denounced Noriega, saying the election had been "stolen". Bishop Marcos McGrath did as well. Amid the outcry, Noriega unleashed his Dignity Battalions to suppress demonstrations. In an image caught on video and played out in news sources around the world, Endara's car was attacked by them and his bodyguard shot and killed. Covered in blood (from the bodyguard), Billy Ford attempted to flee as one of the Dignity Battalions pummelled him repeatedly with a metal pipe. This image brought worldwide attention to Noriega's regime.

The U.S. had imposed harsh economic sanctions, and in the months that followed, a tense standoff went on between the U.S. military forces (stationed in the canal area) and Noriega's PDF: The US forces conducted regular maneuvers and operations, which Noriega claimed were provocative and a violation of the Panama Canal Treaty. On the other hand, Noriega's forces engaged in routine harassment of US troops and civillians, including at least one case of sexual abuse. On December 15, 1989, the U.S. press reported that Noriega had declared a state of war with the U.S. government. Noriega strongly disputes this characterization, claiming that his statement referred to U.S. actions against Panama, and did not represent a declaration of hostilities by Noriega. The matter came to a head in December of 1989: A U.S. Marine, returning from a restaurant in Panama City was stopped by the PDF and harassed to the point where he panicked and attempted to flee, and was shot and killed.

In response, US President George H. W. Bush launched Operation Just Cause. With a few noticeable exceptions the invasion was over relatively quickly. Losses on the U.S. side were 23 troops, plus three civilian casualties. The U.S. claimed Panamanian losses were "several hundred", though exact statistics remain disputed, and some Latin American and international sources have estimated the civilian death toll may have been as high as 3,000. The conflict also caused caused some considerable domestic problems, with 20,000 to 30,000 having been rendered homeless. Probably the majority of those resulted from a fire that devastated much of a poor area of Panama City that surrounded the Commandancia, a fortified headquarters that was shelled.

Noriega fled during the attack and a manhunt ensued. He finally turned up in the Nunciature of the Vatican embassy in Panama, where he had taken refuge. U.S. troops set up a perimeter outside this building, which as an embassy was considered sovereign soil of the Vatican and could not be taken directly. The troops guarding it used psychological warfare, attempting to force him out by playing hard rock music outside the residence. [1] (PDF file) The Vatican complained to President Bush because of this and U.S. troops stopped the noise. After a demonstration a few days later by thousands of Panamanians demanding he stand trial for human rights violations, Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990.

****

Fnny how Noriega ended up in the Vatican. I thought he was into Voodoo at the time. Now, since he's been in jail, he's born again christian.

Man o man, that is interesting....and a relief as well. This means that the little bits of cyanide and arsenic that my agents have been sprinkling on your food is going to make you stronger. Now that I've had a change of heart and have seen the error or my ways, I'm relieved that there will be no ill effects from my intemperate actions.

Hell yeah there were heavy-handed tactics. It started with Teddy Roosevelt engineering a "revolution" to establish a nation called, Panama, which immediately ceded a significant portion fo it's sovereign territory to (guess who) the USA on a 99 year lease. If that ain't shady, ain't nuthin' shady. Then there's the various coups we've engineered in several latin American countires every decade since. Both major parties were equal-opportunity belligerents, so don't try to hide behind the "it was them!" BS. It was the USA--your mammy and pappy and mine.

So what? Should I thrash myself with a cat-'o'-nine? Beg forgiveness from camposinos? I know, I'll acknowledge our mis-deeds and swear (but NOT on a Bible) to never do it again.


Bot

Does this mean you're not going to join my chapter of the Manuel Noriega fan club? BTW, there's a "Noriega" street in SF. Figures, huh?

The guy was a thug. Ain't it odd that we supported a thug for 20 years, then when he got too big for his britches, we had to go in and destroy huge chunks of his country to protect his citizens and the world at large from him. Sorry to go off on Iraq again...Jeez, always changing the subject....

Ain't it past your bedtime? It's late here, a few time zones to the west.

Maybe a recognition that we aren't the benevolently wise Uncle Sam people get all teary eyed about would be a good start.

I'd like to see the thang that Franklin, Jefferson, et. al. started endure for 1,000 or more years. To do that, some fine tuning will be required. As it is now, we're looking like a high tech repeat of Rome, maybe Brittania. If we were as all wise and just as you'd like to believe, we'd be more popular with the rest of the world. Oh they hate freedom all right, the freedom we take with their resources.

Said it before -- we got the powerful Caesar thing down....need to work on the wise Caesar bit....

My mammy and pappy never made $gazillions off'n of bananas or cocoa picked by people who's lives make American migrant farm workers look like kings.

If you bothered to examine some of those coups that you casually list, it might give you cause to rethink notions of our benevolent goodness.

Dirty little secret about our throwing off the Brits in the 1770s....not too long after, a goodly number of God-fearin' 'Mericans realized that bastards though the Brits may have been, they sure did know a thing or two about getting rich. And thus was born the American empire -- devoted unwaveringly to following Rome and Britain into glory.

And how far will your moral authority get you? Did someone slap the Taliban for what they did? Doubtful. What did your moral authority do for the people that got blown up? Did it even supply a band-aid to the effort? Nope. Let me put a gun to your head and demand money and you tell me about moral authority and see if I put it down. We clean house becuase we have the power. Moral authority doesn't do much. Tell me about moral authority in place we got out tails kicked like Somalia and Vietnam. Yep, we had moral high ground but what did it get us again?

Moral authority is like going into a football game when the other team is playing with a different set of rules and there is no referee to give them a penalty. Does it help? Your team shows up to play with NFL rules and my team shows up with armour and guns. First thing we do is shoot the ref. Now, what do you do? Still play NFL rules while we don't? Did moral authority help the people who died in the Bataam Death March or the Hanoi Hilton? Tell them about moral authority and see if it changes much of what happened. I suspect we punished some of the officers in the march while I can't remember what happened to the officers in charge of the Hanoi Hilton. Can you refresh my memory on that?

Zactly.

B

Was that the same international authority that involved themselves in the largest scam in world history...the oil for food bribery scheme? What a credible bunch that group is....

I'd be happy to. What do you expect someone to do when you're bombing their cities? They shot some of the planes down and imprisoned the pilots. Unfortunately, our purpose behind bombing the cities, countryside, and wherever was ill conceived. No return on investment. Didn't anyone ever read about Brer Fox and the Tar Baby?

The good Americans that got stuck at the Hanoi Hilton were acting from commendable loyalty. Doesn't mean that losing another 70,000 Americans and killing 2 maybe 3 million more Vietnamese than what we did so that we could bring the HH guards to trial would have been prudent.

Down side of our heroic and crucial victory in WW2 is that it launched a wave of belief that whenever we choose an enemy, God will not be in his heaven till the foe's been utterly crushed and we stand victorious. Lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice. We won in WW2 ultimately because our moral authority was greater, which led to greater support. We lost in VN because the other side had more to lose than we did. We were never going to match them in sheer numbers. And it was launched on a lie: the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Heard of it? I want a book report on that by tomorrow.

The war was beyond lost. We were fools. Get over it.

Which of our esteemed presidents first engaged us in the Vietnam war?

Do you think I actually give a F*** that it was a Democrat? That is supposed to moderate my thinking on this somehow?

Democrats are just as capable of being fools as Republicans.