Mastermind of 9/11 Attacks Designs a Secret Vacuum Cleaner 284
HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "AP reports that while confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked his jailers whether he could design a vacuum cleaner. After all KSM earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering, the agency had no long-term plan for him, but might thought he might someday prove useful and might even stand trial one day and for that, he'd need to be sane. They were concerned that his long imprisonment might do so much psychological damage that he would no longer be useful as source for information. "We didn't want them to go nuts," said a former senior CIA official. So, using schematics from the Internet as his guide, Mohammed began re-engineering one of the most mundane of household appliances. It remains a mystery how far Mohammed got with his designs or whether the plans still exist and even Mohammed's military lawyer, Jason Wright, says he is prohibited from discussing his client's interest in vacuums. 'It sounds ridiculous, but answering this question, or confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design, a Swiffer design, or even a design for a better hand towel would apparently expose the U.S. government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger,' says Wright. So now, says Doug Mataconis, if you happen to start seeing ads for the CIA's revolutionary new home cleaning device, you'll know where it came from." Sounds perfect for In-Q-Tel.
admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
He was tortured in order to obtain the confession, I don't know what good it is.
Re:admitted? (Score:4, Funny)
He was tortured to get a confession and when they read it, it was the plan for a vacuum cleaner...
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I vaguley recall that this was the plot of an episode of Hogan's Heros.
The Norton project was not a bombsight.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Informative)
He admitted to his role in 9/11 several months before being captured, in an interview with Al Jazeera.
That in no way excuses torture, nor does it mean he's guilty of the dozens of other crimes that they tortured him into confessing to, but he was responsible for 9/11.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you don't torture people who you think are criminals -- it does nothing but contribute doubt to your case. Society learned long ago that a torture-free imprisonment, followed by a fair and impartial trial, was the most effective way to ensure that an admission of guilt (or conviction) was credible and final.
Re:admitted? (Score:4, Insightful)
To play devil's advocate, if you're looking for information, torture with cross-checking will probably gain you some. It will cost you in other ways, though.
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Unless you torture the cross checker I guess.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Interesting)
As for costing in other ways, guess who tried to kill off the President of France some years ago? It was a group of returned soldiers from Algeria that had tortured doctors, priests and plenty of others that they had seen as authority figures so they didn't see why they shouldn't kill off their President. This sort of stuff has a way of following people home, which may be when some torture was outsourced to Egypt and Syria (two we know about) as part of the "extraordinary rendition" that had large numbers of suspects being flown to places where US law does not apply with people that won't be setting foot in the USA committing the atrocities.
In my view it's another thing to add to the list, not just having atrocities committed but being cowardly weasels about it.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Interesting)
US Soldiers are more likely to engage in spousal abuse, whether that's rape or pugilism. This distinction doesn't even involve combatants; there's enough brainwashing and rape to achieve this goal even for a non-com. I presume it's the same elsewhere. You teach people to solve problems with violence and that they are better than other people (as enlisted typically feel) and guess what happens?
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it just gets you something else to use in a show trial once you've already decided the person is guilty.
You need actionable information or some way of verifying it. Example: Leon v. Wainwright [openjurist.org]:
"Leon [one of the kidnappers] and Frank Gachelin [a relative of the kidnapee] met in the shopping center parking lot at 2:00 a.m. During the confrontation Leon drew a gun on Frank. The police officers, who had accompanied Frank to the meeting, immediately arrested Leon and demanded that he tell them where he was holding Gachelin. When he refused to tell them the location, "he was set upon by several of the officers." Leon v. State, 410 So.2d 201, 202 (Fla.3d DCA 1982). "They threatened and physically abused him by twisting his arm behind his back and choking him until he revealed where Louis [Gachelin] was being held." Id. The officers went to the apartment, rescued Gachelin and arrested Armand [the second kidnapper]."
Sure, you can practice crude torture, get signed "confessions" and boatloads of real and made up information. But to say you can't get any information from torture is just trying to shortcut the argument.
Not the same (Score:2)
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Care to give examples? Because I thought that torture will only get people to tell you what they think you want to hear. Truth doesn't figure into it.
Unless the aim of torture of one guy is actually to frighten and discourage a bunch of other guys not yet residing in your secret lair dungeons. Maybe that would work. But that would be, you know, terrorism.
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Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the aim of torture of one guy is actually to frighten and discourage a bunch of other guys not yet residing in your secret lair dungeons.
The purpose of torture is to terrorize others. That's why torture is 'secret' (because it's illegal), but that 'secret' always seems to very widely known.
When a prisoner is tortured, a decision has already been made that it's not about criminal justice or reliable information.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I thought that torture will only get people to tell you what they think you want to hear
Why? Why do you think that people will _ONLY_ lie? What makes you so sure? If someone had information to hide and were tortured, its certainly ONE OF THE POSSIBILITIES that they would reveal that information.
Truth doesn't figure into it.
So every single person who was tortured always lied in each and every instance? lol.. your brain seems particularly receptive to propaganda and seems to exhibit a tendency of non-critical thought. Ah... to think of the things I could sell you...
well.. you can't know if it was a lie, a hopeful thought or something else. people might confirm your "suspicions", which might be a lie or might not - the guy telling you it might not know it though.
but more to the point.. why you don't torture people is simply because that it's evil, wrong and against the principles of western morality, idiot.
that's why it's illegal and against international laws. sure, you might save a life sometime - that's the risks you run by abiding to rule of law for which you're supposed to be fighting for, there's NO FUCKING WAY to execute torture "properly" except with consent for sexual satisfaction.
if you go the other way around then you could justify killing everyone in middle east because someone of them might sometime kill someone american. thus you would be "saving american lives" by killing everyone, going all judge death - preventing all kinds of crime with a simple "cure". now that sounds fucking stupid doesn't it? yeah, it's not so black and white but actually what's black and white very simply is that you don't torture people on purpose.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, the sad fact is that torture actually works and it can save lives when executed properly.
I doubt the truthfulness of this statement, on the basis of numerous studies, history, and a basic understanding of human psychology. But even if it was true, it is irrelevant, since it switches the argument against torture into and ethical and humanitarian one, which is also pretty solid. There also is the matter of hypocracy, since we can never actually condemn torture (of the so-called "good-guys"), as long as we advocate it.
The fact that there is a debate about the merits of torture is absolutely astounding to to me. Astounding and abhorrent.
Re:admitted? (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt the truthfulness of this statement, on the basis of numerous studies, history, and a basic understanding of human psychology.
If I had information and if someone wanted to pull my fingernails or gouge my eyes, I think I would consider giving up that bit of information (discounting obvious external factors). Ofcource at the same time, I would be scared that my torturers would think I was lying and continue torturing me for information that I *DONT* have. Then ofcource as you say, people make up any kinds of shit to make it stop.
You can't make blanket statements like "it works" or "it never works", etc. Like everything else in t
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I didn't say it was 0% effective, it just isn't very effective, nor is it the most effective way of reliable obtaining information. There are far more effective ways of obtaining information from uncooperative enemies.
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Re:admitted? (Score:4)
I know I would break really fast.
I might, you might... but imagine it was something truly important, something you were willing to give your life for? There are plenty of stories of people withstanding torture. A lot of American POWs never gave in, because they believed in their cause, believed their cause was greater than them, or their families.
Love of God, or Country is a very powerful thing.
I know I would break really fast. Although I don't know what you would do in the position if you don't actually know something but they think you do.. that would suck
If we need to torture you, then we can't know what you know, so how do we ever verify that you don't know?
All this is fine and dandy, be we're still arguing about torture. I don't care if torture is 100% effective, I'd still oppose it. If torture would save my family, I'd still be against it. If torture saved us from 100 9/11s, I'd still oppose it.
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Yup, the sad fact is that torture actually works and it can save lives when executed properly.
That has never happened and never will.
The example that people bring up is "what if the is a bomb and you need to find it before it detonates."
What would happen in those cases is that the subject will tell you anything as long as it stops the torture. He will give you a false location that you need to verify, thereby stopping the torture temporarily. You could keep torturing him continuously until the bomb is found but that removes the connection between answering and removal of torture so that is also inef
It also presumes omniescence. (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, how do you know there IS a bomb? If you are already certain enough to torture someone who could be innocent, you must have enough information to find out without torture.
We, as the viewer of 24 hours know that there's a bomb. We saw it being planted. We know that the story is going to be one where there is a bomb.
In Real Life (tm), we don't know that unless we were there like the cameraman was for 24 hours.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
followed by a fair and impartial trial, was the most effective way to ensure that an admission of guilt (or conviction) was credible and final.
And then they went and screwed it up, by letting interrogators lie -- imply that they had enough evidence to put 'em away for life, and coax the prisoner into confessing under a false pretense that they'll get off with less prison time, than they'd be certain to have if they insisted upon exercising their right to a trial.
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I think the reason you don't torture people is because it is wrong, and because it is prohibited by the document which outlines the terms under which the government maintains it's legitimacy.
How did we even get here to the point where we have discussions of the utility of our policy of torturing POWs-by-any-other-name? Torture has always been prohibited my entire life, and I was raised hearing stories about the example we set with out treatment of Japanese POWs during WWII.
Guantanamo Bay vaporizes any high-
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, right there is your problem. You're arguing it wrong. Don't argue that it leads to better trials, better convictions, yada yada, then they can argue back against you about it. They can disagree. This isn't something that should be a debatable issue.
Argue: "Torture is evil. If we administer it, WE are evil people. It is all about hate, revenge and there is no excuse, no justification for it, ever. If a man were guarding the knowledge that would cure all mortal illness and the only way to get the cure from him were torture, it would STILL be wrong to commit it. We cannot give up our very souls for security because all we'll truely be secure in is our own shame."
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This is why I wish at times it were possible to rewrite human nature--essentially strip out the greed, petty cruelty, and shortsighted stupidity and distribute the fix like a software patch. Society would work a lot better if we didn't have these flaws.
That'll take some serious genetic engineering followed by some serious behavior modification therapy starting from birth. And keep in mind that some people will fight to the death to hold onto their greed, petty cruelty, and shortsighted stupidity, basically, anybody in power at the moment anywhere on the planet. The rest of us? We're trying to make a living, raise the kids to be somewhat sane in an insane world, and maybe find a few fleeting moments of happiness before the hammer falls.
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Until some mutant is born losing the patch and, in a world completly unprepared to handle such a person, swiftly amasses a vast fortune by reinventing the 419 scam and a bit of old-fashioned burglery.
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Or just about any scene in The Invention of Lying.
Or a certain speech given in Team America :>
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--->Society would work a lot better if we didn't have these flaws.---
There is nothing more dangerous than a man hell bent on redesigning society.
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It also might not work at all. Take away greed and do you still have ambition to build? Our worst failings are also our greatest virtues, it's really a matter of situation and the wisdom to know which instincts to depend on when.
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Equating greed with ambition is a bit sad.
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This is why I wish at times it were possible to rewrite human nature--essentially strip out the greed, petty cruelty, and shortsighted stupidity and distribute the fix like a software patch. Society would work a lot better if we didn't have these flaws.
The human mind is very malleable, it is in fact possible for each individual to modify his own nature to a significant degree. There are techniques to train you mind and modify your behaviour in pretty much any way you like. I have yet to find any reliable ways to change other people though.
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Re:admitted? (Score:4, Funny)
He admitted to his role in 9/11 several months before being captured, in an interview with Al Jazeera.
9/11 and that interview were clearly an amazing publicity stunt to generate hype for his vacuum cleaner design. Slashvertisement was just the next step in his plan. Next week, he'll open up the kickstarter project and the money will start rolling in like an avalanche.
Call me pessimistic, but I expect delays in any delivery date he sets.
All in all, it seems like the ???????????? before PROFIT was "get waterboarded". Who knew?
captcha: gigawatt
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9/11 and that interview were clearly an amazing publicity stunt to generate hype for his vacuum cleaner design. Slashvertisement was just the next step in his plan.
Prisoners in general are held to be in the service to the government, while in prison --- so, as if they were an employee, the government gets the rights to their creation, invention, or business.
So if there was a publicity stunt involved, the guy should have designed it first.
Re:admitted? (Score:5, Interesting)
nor does it mean he's guilty of the dozens of other crimes that they tortured him into confessing to
To the best of my knowledge he didn't give them jack shit despite being waterboarded around 180 times. For a while there was this pro-torture narrative going around that he "broke" after ~30 seconds of waterboarding when later it turned out that the real story was closer to the CIA gave up waterboarding him after ~30 days of doing it to him 5 times a day and getting nothing.
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Reference please. Sounds like more of your Islamicist apologist rubbish - hence, reputable reference please.
Torture doesn't work is an apologia for some religion? What a simplistic world you live in.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Laughed Off Waterboarding [miamiherald.com]
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The founders of Israel would be disgusted with you considering what they lived through.
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Ooo a pro torture animal exposes itself! Thank you for that
The only way to prove your case to us is by stating those claims under weeks of torture. As long as you are NOT in agony, nothing you say is true.
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Reference please. Sounds like more of your Islamicist apologist rubbish - hence, reputable reference please.
if he broke in 30 secs.. why the fuck is the trial taking so fucking long to be finished with? I don't think anyone breaks from waterboarding in 30 secs though - and it's probably the sort of thing you would get used to, like severe spankings.
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Saying you did it is something different than actually having done that something.
No matter how great it is to have a confession.
Our man in havana (Score:5, Funny)
Graham Greene rolls over in his grave.
Wrong date (Score:2)
Mk 1 (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard... (Score:5, Funny)
...his design sucked.
Thank you! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
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The deserts menu is rather dry and crunchy ... would not recommend
Many terrorists are engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting how many terrorists are trained as engineers.
And evil geniuses (Score:5, Funny)
Doctor Octopus
Doctor Doom
Doctor Evil
Doctor No
Doctor Horrible
It's interesting how many evil geniuses have an advanced degree.
Re: (Score:2)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate [tvtropes.org]
Re:Many terrorists are engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting how many successful terrorists are trained as engineers.
Fixed that for you. It is interesting, but it is also unsurprising if you think about it.
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It's interesting, because while you obviously need good technical skills, you also need some level of blind obedience.
Now excuse me while I go and bash some followers of the cult of Vi with my Model M.
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I would call that more of a sampling bias.
You basically have one core prerequisite for driving someone to acts of terrorism - Extreme belief in a position that most others don't hold, about which you feel the "wrong" opinion will cause massive damage on a large, even global, scale.
You can then divide that into two groups - The wrong and the right. The former, for some reason, almost always seem to act based on belief in imaginary creature
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people that gets shit done
From Pakistan? Not a country known for its technical accomplishments. I'd say when you have an educated class within a hopelessly backward culture, you suppress their ability to accomplish goals. Which leads to frustration and a certain subset of that class lashing out destructively.
If Boeing can't get their act together with the 787, I fear the fury that will be unleashed in the Seattle area.
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the same Pakistan that has a nuclear bombs and a missile to deliver them 2500 km?
Pakistani engineers are upper class if you consider the whole nation..
ha! (Score:2)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Making things that suck since 1987.
I'd buy one (Score:2)
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I read horrible reviews about that new Dyson's cyclone blabla, it sucks everything but dust.
Apparently Microsoft secretly bought out Dyson.
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I read horrible reviews about that new Dyson's cyclone blabla, it sucks everything but dust.
Apparently Microsoft secretly bought out Dyson.
Obviously, they hardcoded DRM into the vacuum cleaner's BIOS then, cause it's borderline useless as a vacuum cleaner. If it indeed did suck, it would be a good design.
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That sounds like a line from the Goon Show.
Wormold!!!! (Score:2)
Graham Greene LIVES!
YAY!!
Life Imitates Art ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember the Grahame Greene novel "Our Man in Havana"? The protagonist is a CIA agent who gets tired of his job trying to uncover missile silos and communist plots in Cuba and starts microfilming close-ups of vacuum cleaner schematics and sending those back to Washington.
So now we have a Guantanamo detainee drawing vacuum cleaner schematics? Which are no doubt being photographed and pored over by CIA agents for evidence of terrorist plots.....
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I guess it helped that old Russian vacuum cleaners looked like a rocket.
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4128/193134567.2/0_9d4ed_46b8054b_L.jpg [yandex.ru]
And here is a washing machine:
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4133/193134567.2/0_9d4d1_cf3056df_L.jpg [yandex.ru]
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Kryten: "Whoever they are, they clearly have a technology far in advance of our own."
Lister: "So does the Albanian State Washing Machine Company!"
grave danger (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of hyperbole is what makes people ignore warnings.
Vacuum man. (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously, (Score:2)
his handlers never watched the first Iron Man movie.
His contribution to society (Score:2)
Well, there are worse things he can do in his spare time (something he has a lot of in a prison cell) than design a vacuum cleaner. While the world does not need another terrorist since the so-called Third World and American fringe element nut jobs are very good at making those, the world can always use another good vacuum cleaner. My Dyson vacuum cleaner is good but I need one that is powered by a tame black hole for better sucking qualities. Also, with a tame black hole, I won't need to empty the dust
You don't really want a black hole (Score:2)
Actually, you probably don't want an appliance powered by a black hole, because those convert matter into energy via Hawking radiation [wikipedia.org] and the energy output actually ramps UP as the size decreases. A very small black hole, say, 1 kg in weight (a little over 2 pounds) would convert itself into energy in about 84 attoseconds and release the same energy as a 21 megaton nuke or so.
You'd need a pretty big one for it to be stable, and I doubt you really want a vacuum cleaner weighing as much as the Everest :p
On t
Danger, my ass (Score:3)
Have any number of qualified and competent engineers (good ol' America-loving ones, of course) pick it apart and analyze it. Boom, problem solved.
There's no danger, it's a chickenshit excuse to avoid the negative PR of a "terrorist vacuum cleaner."
Why waste that time... (Score:2)
Just mark it classified and file it.
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Have any number of qualified and competent engineers (good ol' America-loving ones, of course) pick it apart and analyze it. Boom, problem solved.
Well, solved in a manner of speaking ~
Romania? (Score:2)
The CIA has secret prisons in Romania??? WTF?
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Please tell me that's sarcastic mock surprise.
No mastermind (Score:2)
He didn't come up with the idea, he just watched what Israel and the US were doing on a daily basis. Even the suicide element had already been tried.
Re:He Should Be Executed (Score:4, Insightful)
How is he still alive?
Simple. We threw him in Gitmo instead of treating him like the a criminal, and trying him by jury. He'd already have been executed if we would've done that. But since due process was not afforded, we are now paying the bills for keeping him alive. Funny how that worked out for us..
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"but it's another thing to execute a person without trial."
Osama was executed without trial.
I watched Zero Dark Thirty last night and it made me so sick.
Why America did you act like fucking children?
The state is supposed to be better than that. The state is supposed to represent what's best about a society. If the best that America has to offer is the endorsement of sneaking into a sovereign nation and murdering a bunch of people in the night, then I'll say it again, FUCK YOU AMERICA.
I do not, for the life
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You sound like he should be burned at the stake, even. Why not. But death penalty is useless, and insanely expensive in the US (which doesn't even prevent innocent niggers from being executed regularly)
I don't know why it still exists in a handful of first world countries. Just abolish it : if anything this tends to prevent backwards comment like yours that call to murder in a legal way.
I'd also rather have war criminals, dictators etc. not face execution when tried. E.g. the likes of Dick Cheney, Tony Blai
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But death penalty is useless, and insanely expensive in the US (which doesn't even prevent innocent niggers from being executed regularly
innocent niggers? really? was that necessary?
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I fucked up I guess.
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The term may usually be considered racist, but his use of it was sarcastic: He was refering to the well-known but somewhat embarassing fact that minorities conficted of crimes in the US tend to recieve much harsher sentences than would a white person convicted of the same crime under the same circumstances.
The country still hasn't entirely gotten over the old racist ways. They are much diminished now, but not eliminated.
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You know what a scumbag is, right? Its not just a derogatory term.
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Chimping normally refers to the ritual of reviewing a newly taken photo on a camera's LCD.
Re:I wont pretend to be impressed for this salesma (Score:5, Informative)
How is this for impressive then:
Britain admits to using 'brutal' vacuum bomb against Taliban
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/britain-admits-using-vacuum-bomb/story-e6frg6to-1111116704067 [theaustralian.com.au]
Is this where KSM got the idea?
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Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that thermobaric weapons don't produce a vacuum wave. Internal organs are pounded by a high air pressure shockwave which is literally the exact opposite. Othe
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Actually, they do create a vacuum when the fuel is consumed. However, the victims definitely die of having their lungs ruptured rather than simple asphyxiation.
Re:I wont pretend to be impressed for this salesma (Score:5, Insightful)
10 years in prison without due process.
Tortured.
Nice democracy you have there.
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Oh and in case you didn't notice, HE'S NOT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN! You think the constitution applies to everyone worldwide? Go ask everyone worldwide what they think of us passing laws that p
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The Constitution applies to the government wherever it may act. That is frequently ignored but is nevertheless true. So long as the U.S. controls Gitmo, the Constitution certainly applies.
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The US is not a democrapcy. It's a Republic!
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A direct democracy is not the only democracy.
When the average person says 'democracy', they are merely referring to the fact that the citizens vote to elect their leaders.
Now quit being a douche, pack up your semantics, and kindly fuck off.
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It is *nominally* a republic with a constitution. The actuality is somewhat different.
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CIA is launching the new GuantanaMoBrands Home Appliances
Well... the prisoners might as well be doing something useful, for all the money being spent to house them. Spending all 8 am to 6pm every day working at a Vacuum cleaner factory in GuantanaMo sounds great to me.
Why should these prisoners get to play all day, when the rest of the population has to work?
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