[extropy-chat] POLITICS: terrorism and strategies

[Robert J. Bradbury]

It would appear that J. Andrew Rogers and Acy James Stapp may have
a bit of a debate going on...

> 1.)  Compare the average death rate caused by Saddam's regime over his
> career to the rate of civilian and US deaths caused by military
> operations since the start of the war.  People would call that an
> improvement anywhere else.

Ok, this can obviously be resolved by hard casualty/death figures.
Let us see them.  If we have to question the sources, then let us do
so.

> 2.)  As far as I can tell, infrastructure currently meets and often
> exceeds pre-war levels and capabilities in spite of jihadis working
> against this.  Iraq's infrastructure was not particularly good prior to
> the war and hasn't been for decades, so this wasn't that hard.

I would disagree that things are up to pre-war levels (based on readings
in the popular press) but things are closer than they were a year ago.
So things are better than they were but still need to bbe improved.

> 3.)  Depleted uranium is a red herring, junk science propaganda for the
> most part.  Explain how dumping 40 tons of depleted uranium in the
> Middle Eastern desert is worse than the *thousands* of metric tons of
> UNdepleted uranium and thorium dumped near US population centers
> *annually*.  Look at the long-term medical studies of the US population
> centers in question.  I'll sum up for you: 1-2% increase in cancer rates
> above normal, attributed almost entirely to the thorium component of the
> waste.  A tiny one-time expenditure of depleted uranium in the desert
> doesn't even rise above the noise floor, particularly in a country that
> has serious problems with nasty organic chemical contamination.

Serious point -- as extropic individuals we should be trying
to evaluate claims on a scientific (logical) basis rather than
an emotional basis.

Robert