qm, lying to the country is illegal even if your strange assessment of the "success" of the invasion is correct.

The only mistake in taking out saddam was we didn't level iran first.

as for giving iran the "smackdown"... well, you can't fucking afford it.

A few dozen Raptors over Tehran and the shadow of one B-2 is all it would take, just like Israel kicked Syria's ass from the air(also underreported).

Oh and while you're at it could you please illustrate some of this "alternate history of the past eight years" you refer to?

1) Claims that Bush "stole" the election when in fact it was the taxocrats who tried to steal it
2) Bush "knew" about 9-11...or planned it (not worthy of any response deeper than "Koo-koo!")
3) After 12 years of sanctions and an entire world intelligence community agreeing saddam had wmds (which he did, since he used them) claiming that poor saddam was "illegally attacked".
4) Slick Willie "did everything in his power" to answer muslim terrorist attacks in the 90s.
5) Islam is a 'religion of peace' the government is picking on.
6) Non-stop doomsaying over how Iraqi thugs were going to defeat the world's finest armed forces.
7) Deliberate (what-liberal-media?) blackout of any positive news from Iraq
Sandbagging Gen. Petraeus.
9) Hillary supports the war unless the crowd she's bowing to opposes it.
10) Terrorists at Gitmo are being "held without trial" (even tho US law doesn't apply to them).
11) The Patriot act has led to rampant eavesdropping on regular joes and internment camps, etc.

Liberal alternate history: a negative, half-baked fairy tale focused only on greed, exploitation and cynicism, sold to neo-hippies by paleo-hippies, both who've never been hungry for more than a day and therefore have no understanding of what privation really is, resulting in no gratitude, no shame, no nothin' except hatred for Bush.

I've been sandbagging Videosift for years now and never felt a need to "join", but seeing JP on here sort of renewed my faith in humanity and I felt a need to say thank you. So thanks mlx.

"It was Christmas in prison and the food was real good
we had turkey and pistols carved out of wood....."

Is anyone surprised the hate-America left was going to sandbag the Petraeus Report? Silly Dems. Hard to imagine a party that opposes so much also stands for so little, except higher taxes, less freedom and squashing the little guy in the guise of protecting the little guy. How many police will Edwards send to make sure you go to your MANDATORY yearly physical?

I don't think the left has ever understood what's at stake and how long we're going to be fighting islamofascism.

What's at stake is a world free of 14th-century barbarians attempting to wreck advanced societies and spawn another dark age which more enlightened religions passed through centuries ago.

As for how long this will take: Iraq is but one small theater in the coming decades-long wars. We're fighting desert warriors who are used to waiting out the enemy. They deserve no admiration but do deserve respect for their capabilities and resilience. They must be stopped permanently, just like the nazis and the commies.

I'm taking the long view here because liberals won't: they hate history, which exposes their same failed agendas over and over again. Appeasement didn't work with Derr Hitler and it won't work with these fanatics.

You could stop hating the people trying to kill the people trying to kill you, or rather, let them do their jobs without noise from the olbyloon hooting to his dismally small ratings audience.

Fake this, trash that, ballistic calculations blah blah blah...you people are LAZY. This isn't Youtube, folks, do the math if you're gonna complain so much.

First of all, a quick Googling reveals this gem:
"6-27-07: BOOM HEADSHOT! This is amazing. Willie, the father of Tina, who made the sandbag rests fires a .50BMG, an Armalite AR-50 and it ricochets off of a steel plate that it should have easily penetrated. The bullet comes straight back and hits him in the head. You can see it hit the dirt about 15 feet in front on him before it clobbers him. Luckily he was uninjured. He's a bit sore today, but otherwise fine. Lucky lucky bastard. He has been advised to buy lottery tickets while he still has so much luck. I don't know about the timing, but you can hear the hit on the steel plate. Time that till the impact on Willie's head... how fast is that 750 grain slug traveling? The range is 100 yards. Amazing."

The time from the sound of the shot to the sound of the impact of the bullet on the target is used to calculate for the initial velocity (sound delay over distance accounted for). The speed of the projectile (I'm not ruling out the possibility of a piece of the target being the ricochet, not the bullet) on ricochet to the ground is taken from the time from the sound of the impact of the bullet on the target to the sound of the impact on the ground. The speed of the projectile on ricochet to the earmuff is taken from the time from the impact on the ground to the impact on the earmuff. (This last impact makes a rather significant change in energy loss.)

For the sake of better accuracy, I assumed that the range was NOT 100 yards and calculated distance instead assuming that the gun was an Armalite AR-50 (.50 BMG), 750 grain slug, and that certain ballistic statistics on the gun were reasonably accurate, and that the ricochet did not return straight back, then compared the expected and actual times between the round being fired, the impact on target, impact on dirt, and then impact on person.

Keep in mind that I am no expert on large-caliber rifles and these calculations are the result of about 5 minutes of thinking, but unless you're willing to properly time the sounds on a video editor, incorporate angling for the energy transfer calculations and cross-reference ballistics info on the AR-50, I'm the best you're gonna get, so piss off.

Bullet weight: 750 gr
Average muzzle velocity: 2620 ft/s
Average energy: 11420 ft*lbf

Distance to target: 362 ft
Muzzle velocity of shot: 2603 ft/s
Velocity of the projectile on impact to the ground: 271 ft/s
Velocity of the projectile on impact to the earmuff: 210 ft/s

Conclusion: Very possible, especially assuming the target was steel, as I quoted above, but contrary to what the guy in the video said.

For reference sake, this is less than the speed an average paintball will hit you at (I think 250-300 ft/s). In all likelihood, though, the projectile had enough speed and energy and pointy bits to seriously mess this guy up if he'd been hit straight on. Maybe there'd be enough pressure to penetrate, maybe not, but I'd bet he'd have a broken bone or two at the very least.

On a final note, ricochets do happen with metal targets, and not completely rarely either, thus the rules of gun safety. This guy should NOT have been shooting at a steel/iron target with a .50 caliber rifle at such a close distance (I've heard that .50 cals can hit targets a mile and a half out), although it seems like he was smart enough to be wearing eye protection. He made the assumption that the round would penetrate the target, and we've all heard what happens when you assume. Hell, I can't even think of a reason to OWN a .50 caliber, past a psychoanalysis to make Freud weep or dreams of zombie pandemics.

Anyways, lucky guy, one-in-a-million-chance, remember gun safety, and you're welcome.

Man he looks tired....it's hard, it must be, running around the globe advocating shut-down. Again, please, most agendas are multi-faceted, and surely, Gore's motivation is partially sincere, in his dire and grave scenario of Carbon dioxide: "The evil gas"
The plaentary emergengy he speaks of is real- and it is grave-a grave he will dig for us all if he wins over the hearts, and emotions of those who deny real issues...The real issue of the mechanism that is defective, exclusive, and still alive-We are headed for planetary change, but nothing as linear as us slowly polluting ourseves.....this is the pollution that may kill us-the masters of disinformation, like Gore, like Raytheon, like HAARP staff/Navy Dept.

The climate crisis, the possibility exists, is cyclical.....not to mention the core samples of the ice shelves, sea-floors, and datum that point to a massive eruption that fucked this planet up 75000yrs ago.

Make no fucking mistake! If Yellowstone, Etna and those assoc with her, or the magma chambers that Japan has under her , ever decide to pop......you may as well suck a tailpipe, or breath in a big healthy dose of free-silica from a sandbag, because humans are history....and not in some 1000 yr iteration, but BOOM!

When you hear Gore say some subjective bullshit like "These aren't normal times"
"What, Mr. Gore, does that mean?"

This poor guy-most poor folks-

However many millions of tons of C02 we dump, planet Earth dumps more!!!
One thing is certain.....We are all going to die.
Most likely, it will be from paying attention to diversion like this.

Stop Sunspots!!
Better than that, stop bullying yerself Al......

THE CAPS ARE NOT MELTING FROM CO2.......(..."AND THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW IT IS DOING IT SO QUICKLY")GORES OWN WORDS.....WE DON'T KNOW, BUT SOME WOULD LIKE TO BLAME HUMANS-I blame humans for shiting in their own nest, and in their own brains.

Age does not make violent action justifiable... People in Iraq do not see them as children, they seem them as combatants which they are.

That rock that hit the windshield could easily kill someone, and the thought that the convoys can't defend themselves even using non lethals (Sandbag guns) makes me want to vomit.

Kudos to Bush putting them in this position.