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Tuesday, Jun 13, 2006
Map-o-rama
Most on-line mapping sites are lousy for determining directions for bicycles routes. Mapquest allows an option to avoid highways, which helps.
I was playing around with yahoo maps beta, and realized it supports multiple destinations. I can at least use it to determine the length of a route I select by giving enough way points to guide the software.
My commute from D's work to my work is about 14.3 miles. I don't feel so bad about the elapsed time for last night's ride. In addition to the slight uphill and an atypical head wind (rather than the prevailing tailwind at that time of the day) , I went almost two and a half miles further than I thought. So I was just north of 10 mph. Pretty damn slow, but at least in the double digits.
Selected excerpts from the NewsMax review of Godless by Ann Coulter
"The truth," Coulter writes, "is the truth whether we like it or not."
[Editor's Note: Get Ann's new book for just $4.99 – Save $23! Go Here Now]
Killing Him Softly
To keep the story alive for yet another news cycle, the US government has released additional details about a dead terrorist, Abu Musab Zarqawi. Seems that the overpressure from a bomb blast trashed his lungs. He lasted almost an hour, probably in intense pain. News it is, but a leading story for yet another day?
Bully for the troops for whacking this guy. But fuck Bush for letting him operate for four more years than he should have. Bush let Abu Z get away in 2002 in order to bolster the case for taking out Saddam.
If only the media could keep that story alive. Ultimately, these facts are more important to the future of this nation than are the death throes of a terrorist.
March 2004
NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.
The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
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