Category Archives: Uncategorized

How Long Will It Take

…before a lot of the people who were castigating Bush as a “miserable failure” because he couldn’t find Saddam start saying that catching Saddam isn’t that big a deal?

I suspect it’s already happening.

By the way, I wonder how effective a commercial showing Dick Gephardt repeating the words “this president is a miserable failure” over and over would be for the Republicans ten months from now?

Road To Orbit?

…or a dead end?

Clark Lindsey has a good survey of opinions on the utility of suborbital vehicles, in terms of their applicability to orbital space transports. Regular readers will know that I concur with Dan DeLong and Henry Spencer, and that I have little respect for the opinion of John Pike.

We’re slowly recapitulating manned spaceflight the way it should have been done in the first place, had we not been derailed by Apollo.

Jack Up The Winnebago

OK, a space post. I’m a little jealous, because Clark Lindsey got a scoop (well, not really, it’s just a release by the Space Access Society, but whenever Henry Vanderbilt does a Space Access Update, it’s usually worth reading, and it’s not yet available on the Space Access Society site).

Fortunately, Clark published it on his site. It has, as usual, some common-sense advice as to what to do about NASA which, as equally usual, will probably not be followed. Henry is more optimistic than I, but I hope he’s right.

Why Should We Die?

Caroline Glick explains why what happened to today is so momentous, and such a crucial psychological blow to the enemies of freedom (registration required).

Saddam’s ability to remain at large bolstered his henchmen and empowered jihadists throughout the Arab and Muslim world to the cause of defeating the US and its allies.

The psychological impact on Saddam’s loyalists and on terrorists around the world of the picture of the tyrant’s dirty, mired face and meek complicity during his medical examination by a US army doctor is immeasurable. Today they are forced to ask the question, “Why should we die when Saddam surrendered so abjectly?”

It has been argued that it was wrong for the Americans to show such pictures of Saddam. Doing so, it was said, will enrage jihadists who will fight all the more desperately to regain the honor lost by Saddam’s humiliation.

The problem with this argument is that it fails to take common sense into account. Saddam’s surrender is a signal to his allies as much as to his victims.