Brits Set To Justify Iraq War

[davidmc]

In some ways, anti Americanism does seem to be getting a lot worse over here. To be frank with you, the reason behind this is America's image problem. Somehow we have this image of America that's tied in with George W Bush as opposed to, say, Madonna.
This is why you folks need to get rid of Junior as he's a dead duck. Let's face it, any company from whatever part of the globe has to have the right image and the representation of the USA people are picking up comes from the Bush factor. They see hypocrisy, ignorance, intolerance and narrow mindedness.
The Americans I met or worked with during my travels simply don't fit that description and I found they got on very well with the English or Irish, as a whole. The Russians had similar problems with Boris Yeltsin who came across as a drunken old man who ruled a nation of tipplers.

It does trouble me but, he apparently won. I didn't vote for him but I should respect the outcome. The only issue I have is no "paper-trail" inre:votes & many of the voting machines, w/ closed-source code [not open for examination by gov't officials] are manufactured by the self-avowed, Republican, Bush buddies at Diebold. http://www.diebold.com/

 

[davidmc]

How much speed do you need ? IIRC Lomu weighed ~250lbs and ran sub-12 100m and while that was exceptional when he was in his prime, there are plenty of big wingers out there who run at that pace. Hell there have even been Scrumhalves (17 year old Welsh kid) that ran sub-12s !

AFAIK Naas Botha was well past his prime by the time American Football latched onto him. When SA returned to international Rugby he was primarily on the pitch for his prodigious boot and his experience, not his fitness or speed.

On the other hand O'Gara is playing very well, and he will almost certainly run *any* American Football player into the ground over 80 minutes of hard graft.
Place kicking for an NFL team would be a horrible waste of his talent.

Gavin Hastings was another who place kicked in the NFL, he was well past his prime too. Just a nice earner to ease retirement (Rugby Union was strictly amateur back in those days).

American Footballer-Darrel Green 40 yrds, 40 yrs. old, 4.4 seconds . Darrel Green of Washington Redskins Fame.

 

[Colorado Ryder]

I very much doubt a 300lb lineman can run a sub-12 100m. AFAIK the world record 100m is 9.78s and that was with a 2m/s tailwind, and the guys who run in the 10s are more like 160lbs.

Found some contemporary rugby player 100m times:
Caucau-10.9
Roko-10.66
Lomu-10.8
Howlett-10.8
Ben Tune-10.8
Chavhanga-10.74

Apparently Lomu's sub-12 was on a grass pitch...



Found some dubious figures via Google that give 40m times (40 yards ~= 36.5m).

Sosene Anesi- 4.53 sec <--- This guy is reckoned to run mid 10s 100m
Joe Rokocoko-4.66 sec

The figures I found for some quick NFL guys :
Raghib Ismael 4.29 40yard (wide reciever),
Barry Sanders 5ft10 215lbs (97kg) 4.4second 40yard time (running back)

I doubt the 300lb dudes out-pace Sanders over 40 yards.

On the strength of that I reckon that the Rugby Union speed-demons are capable of keeping pace, dunno about the forwards though. Apparently tight-5s run mid-4s to low-5s for a 40m dash.

I now see how little you know about American football. Can you give me some times for guys that haven't been out of the league for 7 years? Didn't think so. You know nothing about our football but doubt lineman can run. First off I never said all lineman can run with that speed but several can. Now if the rugby guys are so quick, why do they only get to be kickers and punters in the NFL? Unless they just want the kicker to run on and off the field quickly.
Speed is the essence of our football. Speed allows a defensive lineman to get that edge on the blocker. Speed allows the offensive lineman to get better position on the block. Speed allows the running back to get through the hole before it closes. Speed allows the blitzing safety to get to the quarterback a split second quicker. Speed allows the defensive back to close on the receiver. Speed allows the receiver to gain the step or two. Speed allows the quarterback to get the ball out of the pocket in 5 steps instead of seven. It is all about exploiting the weaknesses of certain positions.
The NFL is interested in 40 yd times because most plays are from 0-15yds. Within the 40 yd time frame most rugby players are uncompetitive and lack the size. No one expects a 300lb lineman to catch a running back or receiver once they are past the line of scrimmage. There are linebackers and safeties for that.
You gave us times for rugby players. Is that with full NFL gear?
I don't doubt that rugby players are tough, but you say they are tougher than our football players. Then why are they only kickers and punters in the NFL?

 

[darkboong]

I now see how little you know about American football. Can you give me some times for guys that haven't been out of the league for 7 years? Didn't think so.

Those were just the ones I came across.

You know nothing about our football but doubt lineman can run. First off I never said all lineman can run with that speed but several can. Now if the

I've watched a lot of NFL, odd game, but I can't recall seeing a 300lb guy catch a wide-receiver off the mark.

rugby guys are so quick, why do they only get to be kickers and punters in the NFL? Unless they just want the kicker to run on and off the field quickly.

I've told you already : Because they have retired from Rugby.

Speed is the essence of our football. Speed allows a defensive lineman to get that edge on the blocker. Speed allows the offensive lineman to get better

Speed is of the essence in Rugby too, but it can be offset by strength and dexterity. You make American Football sound like a very dull one-dimensional game to be honest, I know that ain't true.

You gave us times for rugby players. Is that with full NFL gear?

AFAIK those times were recorded in 100m sprints at various Athletics events, so they were unlikely to be wearing full NFL gear. On the other hand it's reckoned that the first 20m of a 100m sprint are where the time is made, so those guys with Olympic pace 100m times are certainly quick over 40 yards too.

I don't doubt that rugby players are tough, but you say they are tougher than our football players. Then why are they only kickers and punters in the NFL?

I've told you already but you are hard of understanding.

 

[Colorado Ryder]

Those were just the ones I came across.



I've watched a lot of NFL, odd game, but I can't recall seeing a 300lb guy catch a wide-receiver off the mark.

Really. Watched a lot of NFL games. When does a lineman cover a wide receiver?


I've told you already : Because they have retired from Rugby.

Surely one of them would play in the NFL in their prime. But they don't because they are only good enough to be kickers. Wonder why?



Speed is of the essence in Rugby too, but it can be offset by strength and dexterity. You make American Football sound like a very dull one-dimensional game to be honest, I know that ain't true.

How does speed make the game one dimensional? Strength and size without speed equates to a losing team. Thats what sets the NFL apart. Everyone has size and strength. Speed is the defining edge.

AFAIK those times were recorded in 100m sprints at various Athletics events, so they were unlikely to be wearing full NFL gear. On the other hand it's reckoned that the first 20m of a 100m sprint are where the time is made, so those guys with Olympic pace 100m times are certainly quick over 40 yards too.

Hey finally a little knowledge. Thats exactly why the NFL uses the 40. Ever heard of a scouting combine. NFL scouts watch and time players in full gear.

I've told you already but you are hard of understanding.

I'm not saying rugby players aren't great athletes. They just can't compete in the NFL. Most likely many NFL players couldn't compete in rugby.

 

[davidmc]

"Michael Howard
If only he were George Bush.":

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher led the British Conservative party back into power with the exquisite piece of agitprop "Labour isn't Working," a phrase accompanied by a picture of a snaking queue of the unemployed. Those were the days when the Tories, as the party is known at home, could boast of being the most successful election-winning machine in the West. Ah, yes, those were the days. The current Conservative leader Michael Howard set out to defeat Tony Blair in the British general election on May 5 with this slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" The Sunday Mirror claimed the Tories lifted the line from an Australian children's show, Bananas in Pyjamas. Whatever the origin, you can almost hear the whirring of bewildered British minds: "Are you thinking what we're thinking? Well, I don't know, what are you thinking? If I was thinking what you're thinking, why would you have to ask? More to the point, why would you be so consistently behind in the polls?"

http://slate.msn.com/id/2117749/

 

[FredC]

"Michael Howard
If only he were George Bush.":

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher led the British Conservative party back into power with the exquisite piece of agitprop "Labour isn't Working," a phrase accompanied by a picture of a snaking queue of the unemployed. Those were the days when the Tories, as the party is known at home, could boast of being the most successful election-winning machine in the West. Ah, yes, those were the days. The current Conservative leader Michael Howard set out to defeat Tony Blair in the British general election on May 5 with this slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" The Sunday Mirror claimed the Tories lifted the line from an Australian children's show, Bananas in Pyjamas. Whatever the origin, you can almost hear the whirring of bewildered British minds: "Are you thinking what we're thinking? Well, I don't know, what are you thinking? If I was thinking what you're thinking, why would you have to ask? More to the point, why would you be so consistently behind in the polls?"

http://slate.msn.com/id/2117749/

I couldn't work this one out at first, so I rang the bell for Nurse Ratchett. She suggested that I should read it again and again tomorrow. This was because I kept saying David's not like that it's that Carrera again, he's bananas. He's the purple Tinky Winky with the handbag.

 

[davidmc]

From: June Thomas
Subject: What My Grandfather Taught Me About British Liberals
Thursday, April 28, 2005, at 9:34 AM PT

British politics get ugly

My grandfather, a roaring Red, could judge a man's politics from his wardrobe: "The Conservative has a fur coat; the Liberal a cloth coat; and the Labor man wears a donkey jacket," he'd declaim. The fur-clad Tory may have been granddad's unique flourish, but he certainly wasn't the only Brit to conflate social status and political affiliation. He instinctively hated the Tories, but the Liberals he pitied: They were condescending toffs too confused to figure out their role in the class war, and they had no core beliefs beyond vague notions about civil liberties and personal freedoms.

In the aspirational, post-ideological 21st century, something very peculiar has happened to the Liberal Democrats, as Liberals are now known after decades of mergers and acquisitions. It's a cloth coat world. On issues like education funding, asylum/immigration, and health care, the Lib Dems now find themselves positioned to the left of the Labor Party, and, as they remind voters again and again, they opposed the Iraq war.

Earlier this week, many of the newspapers that have grown disaffected with Tony Blair led with the news that Brian Sedgemore had "defected" to the Lib Dems after 27 years as a Labor MP. Aesthetically, Sedgemore wasn't much of a catch—with his non-ironic comb-over and his '70s fashion stylings, he's the incarnation of old Labor—but his Dear Tony letter, published in the Independent, was devastating. Sedgemore accused Blair of telling "stomach-churning lies on Iraq" and declared that he was "renouncing Tony Blair, the Devil, New Labor and all their works." He closed by urging "everyone from the centre and left in British politics to give Blair a bloody nose at the election and to vote Liberal Democrat to ensure the tawdry New Labor project is dead." (Blair's nose is taking a beating this election. The Respect Party's campaign literature shows the prime minister with an elongated missile-proboscis under the tag line, "Bliar, Bliar Credibility's on Fire.")

National campaigns often take potshots at other parties' leaders—a 2001 Labor billboard placed Margaret Thatcher's hair atop then-Tory-leader William Hague's head—but the targeting of Tony Blair is particularly harsh. On Wednesday, the Conservatives broke a long-standing taboo when they used the "L word" in a new ad: Next to an image of a shifty-looking Blair, the text said, "IF HE'S PREPARED TO LIE TO TAKE US TO WAR, HE'S PREPARED TO LIE TO WIN AN ELECTION." (Compared with the United States, everything about British politics is aggressively negative.)

Blair's "truthfulness," particularly about the march to war, is now the key issue in the national media's election coverage. Late Wednesday night, two TV networks received a leaked document that shows that in advice presented to Blair on March 7, 2003, Britain's attorney general expressed doubts about the legality of invading Iraq without a second U.N. resolution—misgivings that were not mentioned in a second, more widely circulated report 10 days later. On Thursday morning, the prime minister's office finally published the full text of the first memo, but while few commentators have found anything truly shocking there, the fact that it was kept secret for so long confers a whiff of conspiracy. The details of the revelations are amazingly hard to follow—but that doesn't stop the Tories from trying to turn the election into a referendum on the prime minister's integrity.

Despite his gift for oratory, Blair has been shockingly ineffective at convincing his compatriots of the need for, much less the urgency of, the war on terror. In appearances this week, when confronted by voters who accused him of misleading the nation when he took it into the Iraq war, the prime minister responded more personally than politically. On Wednesday's ITV News, he told questioners, "I took that decision [to go to war] bona fide, in good faith, doing what I thought was right. I still think it was, although I totally understand why people disagree with me."

Lib Dem boss Charles Kennedy, displaying his party's traditional lack of ruthlessness, isn't exploiting Blair's weakness. Instead, he is giving Blair a pass and striking out at the Conservatives: "[The Tories] are falling back now on the most negative form of personalized campaigning," he told the BBC.

It seems unlikely that the Lib Dems will take advantage of Labor disaffection and Tory negativity. In his recent book So Now Who Do We Vote For?, John Harris performed a valuable service for the legions of alienated and anti-war Labor supporters who, like him, are now debating whether to hold their noses and vote for Blair's New Labor or shift their allegiance to another party. In the course of his research, hoping to be seduced into their ranks, Harris spoke with several prominent Lib Dems, only to be frustrated by the party's "hazy" doctrinal underpinnings.

But at least the Lib Dems welcome converts. Perhaps some of the defectors, high-profile and otherwise, can put some starch into those cloth coats.

 

[darkboong]

Next to an image of a shifty-looking Blair, the text said, "IF HE'S PREPARED TO LIE TO TAKE US TO WAR, HE'S PREPARED TO LIE TO WIN AN ELECTION." (Compared with the United States, everything about British politics is aggressively negative.)

That statement doesn't seem to square with reality much. The Swift Boat Veterans was a classic bit of mud-slinging, and Bush certainly made capital out of that even after it was discredited... On this side of the pond the big parties campaigns have paralleled the American model for sometime by substituting policies for Market Research. The two largest parties (Labour and Conservative) no longer discuss policies and their manifestos amount to vague assurances rather than actual *policies*.

The Liberals and the rest of the smaller parties *do* promote policies instead of hairstyles and there is a wide choice to pick from. Many folks of my generation won't vote for parties without policies, they are wanting to raise children etc, and they've grown up with the Conservatives ****ing them over at every turn... One of the seminal films of my generation (Withnail and I) has an appropriate line in it : "Shat on by the Tories, shovelled up by Labour".

Despite his gift for oratory, Blair has been shockingly ineffective at convincing his compatriots of the need for, much less the urgency of, the war on terror. In appearances

Interestingly Tony Blair and his cronies have been very effective at stiffling overt dissent over their "Terror" measures. For example a Guardian article debunking the evidence presented against the guy recently convicted of killing a policeman and plotting terrorism was pulled from the archives. The Guardian article quoted expert witnesses from the court proceedings, specifically the guy from Porton Down who stated that Ricin is strictly a "one to one" poison, that the scheme the guy had concoted had no chance in hell of ever poisoning anyone AND that the actual stuff that the guy made was practically impotent. All that information was already in the public domain, there can be no other reason to change it unless the government wants to rewrite history in the degraded tradition of one-party states. By contrast the Telegraph's article that hysterically claimed Britain was on the edge of our own "9/11" still stands unchanged... That was pretty much an opinion piece as far as I can tell, it didn't match the facts as presented by the expert witnesses.

The question you have to ask is : What is the motive behind redacting the accurate article that quoted public domain information and leaving the hysterical unsubstantiated trash alone ? Who the hell made the call on that ? Why do they want the British public to be scared of ghosts ? My feeling is that the Government is aping the Whitehouse campaign, keeping the public scared, talking down to the voters while claiming they will keep us safe... It looks like they are prepared to do that at any cost too, including sacrificing the legitimate Democractic processes.