Operation Iraqi Freedom & the Planned Withdrawal

The Washington Post has an article describing the plans for the creation of a task force (read: advisory panel) that will decide what the conditions are that have to be met in order to bring "substantial numbers" of our soldiers home from Iraq. Thank God. Bring our boys home safe.

These "conditions" should have been laid down long before the first covert operative ever set foot in Iraq. To backtrack a little so everyone is clear of my views on this, I fully supported the removal of Sadaam from power, and continue to support such action. The day after the statues were pulled down, we should have been packing our bags.

The mission of the US military forces is not to occupy and rebuild. We destroy. We set free. We do NOT rebuild. As it is written upon the SF crest, "De Oppresso Liber" - To Free the Oppressed. We do not "nation build". As an instrument, we are to be sorcerer of death and destruction upon the enemy. As individuals, there are times when we will comfort the formerly oppressed people.

The cult of Islam has an amazing affect on people. How do you deter a people who are not afraid to lose their lives? I pondered this question for quite some time the other day. The only answer was to not take their lives, directly. When a physical loss becomes meaningless, you must then attack something which is held in higher regard, by these people, than life itself. You must attack their beliefs, their values, their culture, their world. You need to bring everything that they believe is right & true to its knees and to utter destruction. You need to break their belief and take away their sense of resistance. How do you stop water from boiling? You don't add ice. The ice will melt faster than you can put it in. You take away the source of heat. Remove that which causes the water to boil. Let's say you somehow cut one of your major arteries. Do you expect the doctors to simply pump more blood into your system and send you happily on your way? Surely not. First, they must stop the bleeding. Then, they can replenish your lost blood. The same goes for warfare. You must take away the motivation to fight. You must destroy the enemy's foundation. This is the only sure road to victory.

More to come on OIF at a later time.


Crispy

MRB Blogging Expected to Increase

Within the next few days I'll be heading back up to the college. I've decide that the reason I blog more when I'm up there is because blogging is a positive alternative to homework & the like. High school students: Erase that previous sentence from your minds. Do your school work.

They say the point of college is to teach you how to think. I disagree. It is what you do while your at college that can cause you to think (like blogging).

Oh, and one random tangent that has been bothering me for some time: Blogs & online journals are NOT the same. Online journals are when people drone on & on about the meaningless drivel that happens in their lives that they think the rest of us care about. For example: "July 29, 2005 @ 2:42AM: I went too the dentist 2day and he said that I have 4 cavitees". Things like that do not qualify for the word "blog". Those are online journals. Now, if you are telling about something that happened to you and you can make a point out of it or relate it to something else, then you are on the right track.

I'm not going to get too long winded into that. I just wanted to wet your taste buds & let you know I'm still pounding away at this keyboard.


Crispy

US-CERT TA05-210A -- Cisco IOS IPv6 Vulnerability

Technical: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA05-210A.html

Crispy

Ben Stein's Final Column

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started.

Lew Harris, who founded this great site, asked me to do it maybe seven or eight years ago, and I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

But again, all things must pass, and my column for E! Online must pass. In a way, it is actually the perfect time for it to pass. Lew, whom I have known forever, was impressed that I knew so many stars at Morton's on Monday nights.

He could not get over it, in fact. So, he said I should write a column about the stars I saw at Morton's and what they had to say.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars.

I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.

But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery. The teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children. The kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero.

Last column, I told you a few of the rules I had learned to keep my sanity. Well, here is a final one to help you keep your sanity and keep you in the running for stardom: We are puny, insignificant creatures.

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin--or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life.

I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

As so many of you know, I am an avid Bush fan and a Republican. But I think the best guidance I ever got was from the inauguration speech of Democrat John F. Kennedy in January of 1961.

On a very cold and bright day in D.C., he said, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth...asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on Earth, God's work must surely be our own."

And then to paraphrase my favorite president, my boss and friend Richard Nixon, when he left the White House in August 1974, with me standing a few feet away, "This is not goodbye. The French have a word for it--au revoir. We'll see you again."

Au revoir, and thank you for reading me for so long. God bless every one of you. We'll see you again.

I debated whether or not I should repost his entire article or simply use what I wanted to comment about. After some thought, I decided it was best to show everything that he wrote in this article. The reason being so many people see Ben Stein as a dry (even worse than me) game show host & spokesman for Clear Eyes ("Clear Eyes is awesome... And has an ingredient to moisturize. Wow."), yet so few realize there is a very active mind behind that deadpan face. I never gave him much thought as being a thinking person. I also don't spend time reading celebrity gossip, though. With that said, I was quite surprised by his above comments, actually. How many celebrities have you heard of that have refuted the ways of Hollywood? I suppose what truly caught my attention was the fact that his comments were uncommon, especially from someone in his position.

Though I doubt these words will ever reach him, Mr. Stein, thank you, sir, for remembering the warriors. Thank you for also remembering the everyday pillars such as the firemen, policemen, and teachers. Thank you, sir.

And now to "acquire" & slightly edit a closing I once heard,


God Bless You,
God Bless America,
AIRBORNE all the way.


Crispy


A special thanks to "WH", who emailed a shortened version of the article to me.
Article copied from: E!Online

Mozilla Firefox & Thunderbird v. 1.0.6 Released

I forgot to post this the other day...

Firefox: Read. Download.

T'bird: Read. Download.


Crispy

Ketsujin Studios Announces the Launch of Fighter Ace 3.8

Ketsujin Studios Announces the Launch of Fighter Ace 3.8

Toronto, ON -- July 19, 2005 -- Ketsujin Studios is pleased to announce their first major release of Fighter Ace since acquiring the game earlier
this year.  Fighter Ace 3.8 will be available July 19, 2005 as the first in a series of updates planned to keep the Fighter Ace on the cutting edge of online action games.

The staff of Ketsujin Studios are no strangers to Fighter Ace. Founder, Mark Vange, and the programming team originally created and launched Fighter Ace in 1997 as the first Premium title for Microsoft's MSN Gaming Zone. The reunion between Fighter Ace and Ketsujin Studios marks a return of the love of flight, innovation and technology that first created the game.  "I am very happy to be able to bring a new version of Fighter Ace to the wonderful community of players, both present and past, who enjoy the thrill and romance of World War II era aerial combat," said Mark Vange, President of Ketsujin Studios.  "The Fighter Ace Volunteer Group is standing by to welcome and support new and returning players," adds Jay Gardner, the head of the Fighter Ace Volunteer Group.

Fighter Ace is a massively-multiplayer online flight combat game in which
hundreds of players fight each other in authentic World War II era combat
planes for control of the skies. Players capture enemy territory and installations using a variety of fighter, bomber and transport planes, while enemy shipping is fair game for torpedo and bomb laden attackers.  Players battle daily in the open arenas while weekly special events allow both individual players and squads to compete for glory and renown.

Fighter Ace features over a hundred meticulously modeled World War II
aircraft from each of the five major combatants of the war.  Over twenty
detailed maps allow players to do battle with each other over terrain
ranging from the pyramids and desert sands of Egypt to the windswept
snowdrifts and icy fjords of Murmansk to the steaming jungles and
shark-infested waters of the Solomon Islands.  Every aspect of air combat is included, from screaming attacks in a Stuka dive-bomber to fearless torpedo runs in an Avenger and high-altitude bombing missions in a Flying Fortress.

An active and vibrant community interacts on Ketsujin's dedicated newsgroup servers and the Fighter Ace website (http://fighterace.ketsujin.com)includes information about the many aircraft, battlegrounds and events featured in the game.  Fighter Ace includes full support for player organized squadrons and free-lancing single pilots alike. Whether in a squad or independently, everyone can join the fun.

Fighter Ace can be enjoyed for the low price of only $14.95 USD per month
and new players can take advantage of a two-week free trial with no
obligation.  For more information about Fighter Ace and the Two Week Free
Trial, visit http://fighterace.ketsujin.com


For information: https://fighterace.ketsujin.com or

Contact: mailto:fasupport@ketsujin.com



Crispy

Today's Thought

Hypocrisy never fails to amaze me. Hypocrites should be shot. In the head. Daily.

What good are these people doing the world? They claim one thing but their actions display another. Hypocrites are like child molesters in several ways. First of all, they both prey on people who don't know any better (yet). Second, they both senselessly hurt people through their own "dysfunction". Third, I hate both of them. Did I say I don't like hypocrites yet?

If you are the type of "person" that claims to not "believe" in guns, I have a solution that will please those of you with that disorder too. How about we put the hypocrites in incinerators, right next to the sex offenders? That way, we won't have to look for them because we'll always know right where they are. While I'm on the topic of sex offenders and my disdain for them, I hate child molesters more than I hate terrorists & suicide bombers.


Death to the Opposition!!

Crispy

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.5 Released

Read about it here. Download it here.

Crispy

US-CERT TA05-194A -- Oracle Products Contain Multiple Vulnerabilities

Technical: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA05-194A.html

Crispy

US-CERT TA05-193A -- Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Word Vulnerabilities

Technical: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA05-193A.html

Non-technical: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/alerts/SA05-193A.html


Note: Windoze Update revealed 2 critical updates for XP (and the "Malicious Software Removal Tool").

Crispy

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.5 Released

Read about it here. Download it here.

Crispy

US-CERT TA05-189A -- Targeted Trojan Email Attacks

Technical: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA05-189A.html

Crispy

Life Issues IV

Today the Life Issues story receives another installment. Have you ever had to write or say something to someone that would either motivate them into action or completely drive them away from you? I have. I just did.

I like to have clear definitions and roles for the people in my life. For example, I would rather someone look me in the eye and tell me they hate my guts and wish I was dead, than to have someone who pretends to be a friend to my face, but talks about me behind my back. I would probably give the first person a gift card to their favorite restaurant because their honesty. The second person is more dangerous to you than the enemy. You know not to trust the enemy, but with the fictitious friend, you never know when (let alone the fact that) he or she will strike. You also do not know that the "friend" cannot be trusted. The disloyal person can be more dangerous because you place more trust in that person that you would an enemy. Disloyalty should be removed from your life immediately. You obviously couldn't trust them before, how can you trust them now?

I am a risk taker ("No way!" you say). If I don't know where a person stands, it will drive me crazy until I am sure about where that person stands. If by that email or phone call I drive someone away from me, it wouldn't bother me because was that person ever really on my side? If it brings that person closer to me, all the better. Now I have gained a close friend, or close whatever the situation may be, that I didn't have before.

Back to the clear-cut intentions of people for a moment - There are basically four types of people in your life. Those who add to you, multiply you, subtract from you or divide you. Those who subtract or divide are enemies. Or, as I like to say, those who do not add to you or multiply you are the enemy. I'm not going to go through a long explanation thereof, I hope that you'd be able to figure out who is who.

Adversity, or challenge, causes the hypocrite to reveal themselves. Likewise, that is the time that your friends will come stand beside you. For that reason, I like crises. It forces people to make a decision and pick a side. Another benefit to a crisis is that it is the time when heroes rise up and shine. Using David and Goliath as an example, Goliath gave David something all of his friends and all of his family could never have given him. Goliath provided a challenge that, if victorious, had the promise of reward from the king. Because David killed Goliath, he and his family never had to pay taxes again. If that wasn't enough, David also received the king's daughter in marriage. Tell me that isn't a good deal! Oh, I almost missed one of the best parts. David's friends and family could never have given him the giant's head to carry around as a trophy either. That trophy could only be earned from an adversary. Adversity births the situations that give rise to heroes. It is what allows the mediocre to turn into the extraordinary.

When was the last time you did something for the first time? People spend too much time in their comfort zones. How do you expect to change if you never do anything different in your life? Change causes pain. Do you expect circumstances to improve without you doing anything? Newton's First Law of Motion: Nothing changes unless acted upon by an outside force. You will only change when the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than the pain of change. Do you expect your boss to decide to give you a $5/hr raise "just because"? Put forth the effort now, then, in time, you will see promotion come your way.

There comes a time when you need to make a who's who list of the people in your life. Be honest. Write it down on paper. When your done and see that certain people are taking things out of your life and not putting back in, cut them off. You don't need any extra burdens. Am I saying that you shouldn't help people? By no means. Am I saying that should burn off the leeches that are sucking the blood and energy out of you? Heck yes. Beware of the person that is always making a demand on you and withdrawing from you but never depositing back into you. They will rob you of your time, money and energy. Go where you are celebrated, not where you are tolerated.


Crispy

I am Displeased

A simple search on Google revealed that there are a lot of people beginning to use the screen name "Crispy23". I find it flattering, in some ways; extremely annoying in other ways. If you want to pretend your me, include somewhere in your meaningless drivel that you are NOT the Crispy23 at MRB. Otherwise, thank you for taking a long walk off a short pier.

/endRant

The One, The Only,
Crispy

US-CERT ST05-014 -- Real-World Warnings Keep You Safe Online

Non-technical: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-021.html

Crispy

"24" Season 5 Predictions

If you haven't already read, I am an avid fan of the FOX series "24". More happens in one episode of that show that an entire season of something like, say, "Friends". I'm not going to bother explaining the premise of the show. If you aren't already a close follower of the show, go to Blockbuster and rent (or buy) Season 1 through 4 so you can get up to speed. If you're unwilling to do that, stop reading here.

At the close of last season (4), we were left with Vice President Logan acting as President, because President Keeler had been injured (when AirForce 1 crashed) causing VP Logan to invoke the 25th Amendment (11PM-12AM).

My prediction for next season is that President Keeler will return to his office. After hearing about the embassy raid and VP Logan's interference with a Federal investigation, President Keeler will turn VP Logan over to the Chinese because he was in charge during that time. VP Logan also allowed Marwon to escape (1AM-2AM at the night club), due to the arresting of Bauer. Having turned over VP Logan, this will satisfy China's demand for a scapegoat. This will allow Jack to return to CTU.

I also anticipated Kim and Chase returning to the show in Season 5, but I couldn't place the circumstance for their return. After talking with WaMi about the above, this is what he came up with:

In episode 2 (8AM-9AM) Tony will be killed. Shortly thereafter, we will find out that Michelle is pregnant. As a final act of loyalty to his long time friend, Jack marries Michelle. With Tony's death, Jack will need a new partner. This opens the door to bring Chase and Kim back with Chase acting as Jack's partner (so Jack can pull the trigger next to Chase's head again). Michelle and Chase, some time later, have an affair. Jack gets "aggravated" and we have a bloodbath in CTU.

I've yet to decide if the whole affair thing will happen. That seems a little too mushy for 24. I don't know, though. Those writers have a gift for making you say, "No way, man!" and gasping for breath. Only time will tell. So, get your pens & paper ready to keep track of how many people Jack whacks this season because January is coming. Check your local listings for channel and time information for your area.

Crispy

Happy Independence Day

I just wanted to write a quick wish for everyone to have a safe, happy Independence Day filled with memories, friends & family. Enjoy the fireworks!

Crispy

P.S. - I might finish up my post, later today, about the next season of '24'. It includes one (or more) of my predictions about what we will see next season.