I used to be conservative republican (i was trying to convince my friend back in college to vote for Bush the first time around) and thanks to this administration i'm leftist liberal - and really proud of it!

Interesting theory i heard -- administration wants us to feel so unsafe and powerless so that we won't question those fuckers as "we can't do anything anyway."

Course, we're about 5 miles from a national defense depot, so flight rules are somewhat different here. There is a narrow pathway that must be flown or you literally risk being shot down. Seriously, they had jets force down a training helicopter that strayed about half a mile into the no-fly zone, I have photos of the mess cuz it was forced down about a quarter mile from my home.
The guy being harassed has to cross a small section of the no-fly (maybe 250 yards) to get to his runway, which is a dirt, barely level runway. He's got a Cub and an old WWII biplane he's restored. So, yes...the local Buford T Puckett hassles him. We filed a NOTAMS for an upside down launch from the biplane, and it was refused, simply because the local yokel wouldn't approve. Our town marshal has no issues w/it, but the local sheriff is more concerned about bombs being flown in over the depot. Where he has zero jurisdiction anyway.

I'm still conservative, and for that reason I can't possibly support the republicans during their current hopefully shortlived compass failure.

A lot of republicans feel the same way, but they can't bring themselves to vote for the "dumocrats" so they'll just stay home this fall.

I hope the dems get rid of that regional sales manager caricature, wassisname?..., oh yeah, Howie Dean.

That guy is a massive millstone around the neck of the Dem Party.

I guess they felt they needed a cartoon donkey to represent the party.

Bjorn, you're absolutely right. And that is why people should seriously start looking at third parties, the libertarian, constitutional, green, parties, etc.

The truth is it's not a party issue alone. That is just the tip of the tip of the ice berg.

Got nothing to add to this discussion that hasnt already been said.
Cept...Cool shot Spot!...on eagles wings ehh?

Patryk, in the forum's "Service Rules" we agreee not to transmit (post) anything that is "vulgar [or] obscene," i.e., language. I for one would like to see it stay that way.

Thanks!

Ok... I'm clean now.

My wife went to Ireland last week---she forgot that she was carrying nail scissors in here makeup bag and of course, TSA didn't pick it up. On the way back from Ireland, the officers saw it in the scan at the airport and POLITELY took it from her. Heck, if they were doing their job then I could forgive them their nastiness.

I think the TSA recently changed their rules to allow toenail clippers and certain other small items on board, but I'm sure there is a maximum blade width on those too.

Since local small aircraft are ban from all large commericial or international airports, small airports are experiencing a big comeback.

Is this really true?

I haven't kept up here, since I'm still waiting to be able to renew my medical (probably with help from AOPA's medical department, they are very good at this too).

I know it's not true in Europe, although if you want to land at Frankfurt airport you have to make a reservation one year in advance (and if you arrive one minute late you'll have to wait another year, no kidding). That is an extreme example though.

Still, in most other countries pilots have to pay hefty landing fees and air navigation fees on top of that.

For some types of military airspace, controllers routinely offer permission to fly through, others are flat out impossible. Apparently DSE's neighbor hit the second category.

"Since local small aircraft are ban from all large commericial or international airports, small airports are experiencing a big comeback.

Is this really true? "

Which part?

It doesn't matter since both are untrue.

I have landed my single-engine Cessna at SFO many times and LAX once. Including a few times at SFO since 9/11. It's not a matter of being "banned" (which wouldn't be legal), it's a matter of no facilities for light aircraft or very expensive faciities for General Aviation (usually bizjets). Access to the passenger terminal is limited or impossible, and some airports acommodate GA picking up or dropping off passengers well and others don't. (SJC is great - you can taxi right up to Gate one an wait in the A/C for an airport employee to escort your passenger to or from your plane. No extra charge).

Unfortunately, for the past two decades we are losing small airports on an average of one a week. Public support for small airports is getting rather this, just as the cost of owning and operating a small airplane is coming down again.

Steve Mann
www.n19093.com

"There is a formula among military planners on how many forces you need based on the size of country, its ethnic makeup, etc. That number for Iraq is 3 times the size of the biggest force we have had there. We never had enough troops there." What formula, what it is called? All military formulas have nick names that are used by the Pentagon and military planners. A few low level State department people and "un-name CIA sources" have stated the above claim in the press but have never actually produced this so called formula or its analyze from the military.

The CIA and the State Department have virtually nothing to with determining the number of military troops that go into a country. This is the job of the Armed Forces and in particular the Army.

As long ago as Germany and as recently as Kosovo we used a formula of 1 G.I.s to 40 inhabitants of a country. 1 to 50 or 20 per thousand is considered the bare minimum to provide security. Iraq has 25 million people. That's 500,000 troops.

Here is a paper published by the Army War College on this subject. That's from 1995. Note that he says cities pose specific problems and Iraq is a highly urbanized country. The doctrine was further revised after similar not so successful missions in Somalia and Haiti in the early 90's (where we didn't send sufficient troops) successful missions in the Kosovo and Bosnia in the late 90's. Here's the same author a 2003 study where he quite explicitly endorse the 20 per thousand ratio.

This was not a controversial theory, it is tested and proven Army doctrine. Before Rumsfeld and the knucklehead neocons got in, the guy in charge of planning for Iraq, the Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command, Gen Zinni had an up to date battle plan for Iraq and it called for 400,000 troops. It was discarded. It was this figure that Gen Shinseki had in mind when pressed for an answer on Capitol Hill said it would take "several hundred thousand troops." For this bit a truth-telling, this patriot was publically browbeaten and humiliated by lesser men, namely Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. They attacked and smeared him as well of telling the rest of the generals, that if they didn't get in line, they would be attacked and their careers disrupted.

Here is an article that talks about what is needed for stability operations in the "vacuum of authority" that occurs once you take over a country. The article was published late 2002 and its a bitterly ironic read when you if you remember the anarchy and looting the erupting in Iraq and Rumsfeld's cavalier dismissals of it.

This Washington Post Article and this James Fallows interview explain the backstory better than I do.

The end result is the same the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc, failed the men and women of the Armed Forces and more generally the citizens of the US. Remember Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith DID NOT WANT to attack Afghanistan after 9/ll. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were both arguing on 9/12 that we should attack Iraq instead. Feith argued we should respond to an attack by Al Qaeda by, I'm not kidding, launching a surprise attack on Hizbullah in South America.

As one of the generals said recently if a captain has committed the mistakes Donald Rumsfeld has he would be immediately relieved of his command.

Again, the Army War College functions as a publishing house for miltiary studies and theories that are studies done by mil officers or teaching staff. Its similar to the Academic press used by many colleges. It does not determine policy or what studies are the best, just an outlet for studies, many are non-funded and many are for "post grad" type work, hoping to catch someone's attention,( this is similar to college professors publish or die issues at colleges). Being published at the Army War College does not mean statement policy for the US Army.

Articles or studies published by AWC do not set Pentagon or US Army policy.

A couple of airports, will not named them, simply had their city government siezed the hangers(leased or owned) used by small private plane owners and redeveloped the land for the airport.

As a fairly experienced IFR pilot I'm certainly familiar with flying in the different classes of controlled airspace.

When I flew into large airports with my small plane (a Piper Archer II), I checked with other pilots for best ways to approach, even best landing times for the busiest.

Generally, if the weather is VFR ("clear"), they'll let you fly a crosswind close to the approach end of the runway. While you are putt-putting on the crosswind at 120-130 knots, the airliners are plopping down at 180+ knots on final, with a gap for you to drop in from up close and quickly get off the runway at the first taxiway.

If the weather is low IFR, they may have to make room for you, but in my experience they will do so without complaining.

But I find it hard to believe that there is even one single public airport in the entire U.S. where small planes are not permitted to land, or enter their approach airspace. There are pilot requirements for some types of approach airspace, but that has nothing to do with the size of the plane per se.

My recollection is that airports got Federal funding on the simple conditions that they had to let anybody land (although there may be an upper weight limit on the planes for example, because the runways or taxiways couldn't handle heavy aircraft), and they're not allowed to convert the airport to a Walmart bunker or condos without returning all Federal funds.

Still, AOPA is fighting a continuous battle with cities that want to disregard the Federal rules for closing publicly funded airports...

No the Army War College does not determine policy, but in this case the ideas and doctrine stated in the articles I pointed to were shared by the top generals in the Army. What Shinseki and Zinni and others were saying had recently proven successful by recent stability operations and was reviewed in the army's after-action reports. These were men who had experience and recent experience with this. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's ideas for a light force were not proven. In fact, they were an experiment, an experiment that has failed badly. Zinni and others told them, look you can take Saddam down with that force, but you can't occupy the country with it. The reason people keep harping on what happened to Shinseki is he WAS THE THE CHIEF OF STAFF of the Army. This wasn't some academic theorist diddling away, he is the the chief Army advisor to the President.

From Wikipedia: The Chief of Staff of the United States Army (CSA) is the professional head of the United States Army who is responsible for insuring readiness of the Army. As with the other military Service Chiefs, he has no operational command authority. He is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is the chief military adviser to the President of the United States on Army matters.

Note the part about command authority. The guy who had command authority over Iraq and the Middle East until 2000 was Zinni.

When the Secretary of the Army kept telling Rumsfeld Shinseki was right, he was fired.

Every account of the planning for the invasion has Rumsfeld beating and bullying on Zinni's successor, Gen Tommy Franks, to use less and less troops. Rumsfeld wanted even less than the 150,000 or so that invaded, but Franks resisted enough. He might have seen what was coming though because right after the initial invasion, he retired in July 2003 and got out of Dodge.

The numbers I posted for determine the level of force needed to ensure stability are not obscure academic folderol, but common, agreed to practices among top Army Generals. The numbers Rumsfeld and neocons came up with involve a large dose of wishful thinking. Rumsfeld thought this war would be over three years ago.

Buskerkeaton, you are vastly over stating the value of this article. It was not endorse by top generals at the Pentagon or the US Army, if so, they would have been listed on the front page on introduction, not last, as standard policy,( this is how miltliary people can quicky id the must read studies of future military interest).

BuskerKeaton, believe what you want, everyone is dumb but that those who read and worship the "Times" position.

The end result is the same the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc, failed the men and women of the Armed Forces and more generally the citizens of the US. Remember Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith DID NOT WANT to attack Afghanistan after 9/ll. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were both arguing on 9/12 that we should attack Iraq instead. Feith argued we should respond to an attack by Al Qaeda by, I'm not kidding, launching a surprise attack on Hizbullah in South America..............................Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's ideas for a light force were not proven..............
=========
Buster,
I haven't really joined in this discussion this time because I don't see where any of these "valid" arguments are going to convince the Bush supporters and other supporters of our (R) party of anything. I argued with lots of people before we attacked Iraq including someone who admitted he was wrong about the intrusion into Iraq above. Why was I against invading Iraq? Because I could easily see what they were up to having read the garbage they were spewing to the Clinton administration which was falling upon deaf ears. In fact they removed very little from their own self-incriminating website. And what they removed I have copies of.

And why didn't they bother removing the documents that showed their pre-plan to invade Iraq followed by Syria followed by Iran?
Because they had enough faith in the media NOT revealing it to the public. And in fact, they did NOT and still DON'T.

Why did the US population largely support the invasion of Iraq when there were compelling reasons not to? THE MEDIA SOLD THE INVASION TO THE PUBLIC. The endless fake analysis, dubious experts, pundits disguised as reporters, and fraudulent "Fact Checks" left the public with the impression that attacking Iraq was "urgent". Exactly as the administration wanted it. Then they sit back and let the unwitting call them "liberal" followed by a sheepish yet dishonest nod. Now some of them are trying to sell an "urgency" of attacking Iran to the public.
When Gore came out with his Global Warming movie some like CNN contradicted their own investigative reports to chime in with the pundits who want to discredit the vast majority of world scientists who see man exascerbating the problem. Man's exascerbation of the Global Warming problem isn't a "controversy" in the rest of the world. It is only a big "controversy" here in the United States. Thank the media for making it into one.
The number one problem facing the US today is the media and it's disservice to the public by it's corroboration of the lies put forth by those in our (R) party and the current administration while they sit back and enjoy the ignorant labeling them as "liberal" and supporting Democrats. Any attempts to roll back the relaxed media merger laws or reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine have been soundly defeated by our (R) party. All in silence. The downhill trend in the media started with the man who saw media mergers as a way to control the flow of information to the public. The same man who started the disgraceful downhill trend toward across the board dishonesty in our once great Republican party. The same man who became the so-called "best president we ever had" in ONE SHORT WEEK when he died by the very media he helped become a nightmare and a detriment to society.
Ronald Reagan.
Others in the world don't understand why Americans support some of the things they see as clearly wrong. What they fail to realize is that our media is to blame. Politicians respond to public pressure. If the public doesn't see a problem because the problems are either kept from them or camouflaged by the media they won't apply pressure or will apply the pressure to the wrong people. I don't see how this can possibly change in my lifetime.

John

I for one, don't "read and worship 'Times' position." In fact, I think it's good that they have to pay Wen Ho Lee money for smearing him.

The senior military advisor in the Army, Chief of Staff General Shinseki endorsed similar figures as in the article. The commander-in-chief of the United States Central Command before Rumsfeld came in, Gen Zinni, was in line with Zinnie. His updated invasion plan for Iraq had the upper number at 385,000 troops. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf used more troops to accomplish an easier mission in the first Gulf War. The point was that article represented the mainstream of thought of top Army generals. Top generals work on this sort of planning all the time. Gen Zinni talks about every since the first Gulf War, there has been ten years of planning by military officers for an invasion of Iraq. His plan reflected that thinking. Rumsfeld's plan was far, far outside of what professional military planning thought necessary for success. In fact, he ignored all previous planning. The results have been disasterous.

Buskerkeaton, warfare is never simple, and rarely fair. Rule one, never fight on your own soil unless that is your only asset. Rule two, force ememy to expend their attacking resources on low cost vs high cost battle assets,(this always is tought to discuss). Rule three, id source of attack,( base, supply chain, etc). Rule four, terminate all ememy items in rule three....

There has been no attack on any major US asset in the World. If you sum all items, you will see soldiers have a chance to fight back( I do not like that this is the way it is), but civilians have no chance and the impact is high. An ememy who believes you are weak, is just like the street punk who robbs and beats up the old and the weak.

apit this is a non-sequitur.

1 Iraq was not involved in anti-US terrorism before we invaded. The last time they tried anything against us, we bombed their intelligence facilities to the ground in 1994 and they never tried anything again.

2 Al Qaeda was the group that recently attacked us. Before the Iraq invasion Zarqawi was not aligned with Al Qaeda. His group Monotheism and Holy War shared similar goals, but they were rivals. After the invasion, he has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and renamed his group, Al Qaeda in Iraq. His main goal was to establish a radical Islamist government in his home country Jordan. Now he probably thinks he has a better chance doing it in IRaq.

Again, are we not being very selective in what we treat as terrrorism?

Just to name a few;
Saddam did have a hit squad in SA for an ex-president. Saddam was paying 20k to the families who perform suicide missions....

This is America, so believe what you think is the truth but remember, real-life solutions are not simple but closer to a chess game than checkers.

SA is South America? ex-president is Bush I?

If so, I think the location was in Kuwait and that is what we blew up his intelligence headquarters for.

Those suicide missions were not directed against the US. They were directed against Israel.