brab_alan

Reply to It's the right that's been naive about Iraq in Politics JoeUser Forums

One could try to decide on the failure or not of the Iraqi invasion by trying to answer a few questions: - The main question: would a more peaceful approach have worked. I believe so, as it seemed that the UN was making progress, thanks a lot to the pressure of a potential attack. - How many people died (civilian or military, Iraqi or foreigners) ? How many people would have died without the intervention ? - Is the region more stabilized, or not ? As Bush pointed out in his <a href="

How much can one trust electronic voting ? in Politics JoeUser Forums

I just read this update on the Diebold affair, and I find this very scary. It seems that this company wants to make sure that noone knows how, and whether, their votes are counted. I have participated in many manual vote counts in France (all vote counts are manual), and I was really impressed by the mechanism put in place to avoid cheating. The great thing is that any registered voter can go and count votes, thus building

Reply to A fantasy foreign policy in Politics JoeUser Forums

I also agree that getting Saddam out of power was a good thing. I'm just not sure that the way used was the best (in term of immediate human and material cost and in term of stabilizing the region). It's hard to know how many Iraqi civilian died, but most numbers I found are around 10000, that is 3 times the casualties of 9/11. Some might think it's not that much, but I do. The way I see it, the rush to war was justified by some immediate danger, which seems to have been fabricated. Fro

Reply to A fantasy foreign policy in Politics JoeUser Forums

Yes, unfortunately Iraq is one of the few countries that have used WMD. It seems to be the only one that got rid of them since, though. But I guess all of this is hard to look at objectively as it is happening.

A fantasy foreign policy in Politics JoeUser Forums

If you have five minutes to spare, this article is enlightening: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_3088.shtml .

Reply to CD Copy protection is not the way to stop piracy in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Great article. As another person said, I was also in group 2, because at the time I heard of Galciv there was no demo available, and I have been burned too many times buying games that sucked and that I could not return. By I have since repented, bought Galciv, and really enjoyed the frequent updates. Since then I have looked at the other things you do more closely, and even started arguing on this site. We definitely do not agree as concerns politics, but count me in as a loyal customer ;-)

Iraq and 9/11 in Politics JoeUser Forums

As I have read that saying that Bush had hinted at a connection between Iraq and 9/11 was revisionism, I need some help to read this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-1.html I am pretty sure that my misunderstanding of this letter (that is, concluding from it that Iraq or its leaders are terrorist or have aided the 9/11 attacks) comes from the fact that I am not a native English