Stuff & Such

Great Falls MD to Georgetown on the Towpath

2008-10-03T20:52:00.001-04:00

WOW

2008-10-03T20:51:00.002-04:00

Morning Ablutions - Hagerstown City Park

2008-07-13T12:28:00.000-04:00

Local Color - C&O Canal Towpath Dam 5

2008-07-13T12:27:00.000-04:00

C&O Canal Towpath Dam 5

In Memoriam

2008-05-26T11:41:00.000-04:00

Rode through Greenlawn Cemetery in Columbus on Sunday and took these pictures, amongst others. Click on the pic to see full size:

Eddie Rickenbacker

2008-05-26T11:15:00.004-04:00

While riding through Greenlawn Cemetery on Sunday I discovered that Eddie Rickenbacker is interred there.

TOO FUNNY!!!

2008-04-09T00:04:00.006-04:00

From the Flying Squid:
Flying Spaghetti Monster Statue Outside of Tennessee Courthouse

Members of the Crossville, TN Chapter of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have installed a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster statue outside The Cumberland County Courthouse in Crossville, Tennessee.

"Fitna" the Movie

2008-04-01T00:21:00.000-04:00

Thank you, Geert Wilders

Pat Condell on the movie "Fitna"

2008-04-01T00:19:00.001-04:00

In Honor of December.....

2007-11-30T23:03:00.001-05:00

Kate Bush

World should give thanks for America

2007-11-18T12:09:00.000-05:00

From the OC Register:

World should give thanks for America

by MARK STEYN- Saturday, November 17, 2007

Speaking as a misfit unassimilated foreigner, I think of Thanksgiving as the most American of holidays.

Christmas is celebrated elsewhere, even if there are significant local variations: In Continental Europe, naughty children get left rods to be flayed with and lumps of coal; in Britain, Christmas lasts from Dec. 22 to mid-January and celebrates the ancient cultural traditions of massive alcohol intake and watching the telly till you pass out in a pool of your own vomit. All part of the rich diversity of our world.

But Thanksgiving (excepting the premature and somewhat undernourished Canadian version) is unique to America. "What's it about?" an Irish visitor asked me a couple of years back. "Everyone sits around giving thanks all day? Thanks for what? George bloody Bush?"

Well, Americans have a lot to be thankful for.

Europeans think of this country as "the New World" in part because it has an eternal newness, which is noisy and distracting. Who would ever have thought you could have ready-to-eat pizza faxed directly to your iPod?

And just when you think you're on top of the general trend of novelty, it veers off in an entirely different direction: Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress "Gimme a cuppa joe" and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato.

Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a Kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!

But Americans aren't novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany's constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy's only to the 1940s, and Belgium's goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it's not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France's, Germany's, Italy's or Spain's constitution, it's older than all of them put together.

Americans think of Europe as Goethe and Mozart and 12th century castles and 6th century churches, but the Continent's governing mechanisms are no more ancient than the Partridge Family. Aside from the Anglophone democracies, most of the nation-states in the West have been conspicuous failures at sustaining peaceful political evolution from one generation to the next, which is why they're so susceptible to the siren song of Big Ideas – communism, fascism, European Union.

If you're going to be novelty-crazed, better the zebra-mussel cappuccino than the Third Reich.

Even in a supposedly 50/50 nation, you're struck by the assumed stability underpinning even fundamental disputes. If you go into a bookstore, the display shelves offer a smorgasbord of leftist anti-Bush tracts claiming that he and Cheney have trashed, mangled, gutted, raped and tortured, sliced 'n' diced the Constitution, put it in a cement overcoat and lowered it into the East River. Yet even this argument presupposes a shared veneration for tradition unknown to most Western political cultures: When Tony Blair wanted to abolish, in effect, the upper house of the national legislature, he just got on and did it.

I don't believe the U.S. Constitution includes a right to abortion or gay marriage or a zillion other things the Left claims to detect emanating from the penumbra, but I find it sweetly touching that in America even political radicalism has to be framed as an appeal to constitutional tradition from the powdered-wig era.

In Europe, by contrast, one reason why there's no politically significant pro-life movement is because, in a world where constitutions have the life expectancy of an Oldsmobile, great questions are just seen as part of the general tide, the way things are going, no sense trying to fight it. And, by the time you realize you have to, the tide's usually up to your neck.

So Americans should be thankful they have one of the last functioning nation-states. Europeans, because they've been so inept at exercising it, no longer believe in national sovereignty, whereas it would never occur to Americans not to. This profoundly different attitude to the nation-state underpins, in turn, Euro-American attitudes to transnational institutions such as the United Nations.

But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too. When something terrible and destructive happens – a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan – the United States can project itself anywhere on the planet within hours and start saving lives, setting up hospitals and restoring the water supply.

Aside from Britain and France, the Europeans cannot project power in any meaningful way anywhere. When they sign on to an enterprise they claim to believe in – shoring up Afghanistan's fledgling post-Taliban democracy – most of them send token forces under constrained rules of engagement that prevent them doing anything more than manning the photocopier back at the base.

If America were to follow the Europeans and maintain only shriveled attenuated residual military capacity, the world would very quickly be nastier and bloodier, and far more unstable. It's not just Americans and Iraqis and Afghans who owe a debt of thanks to the U.S. soldier but all the Europeans grown plump and prosperous in a globalized economy guaranteed by the most benign hegemon in history.

That said, Thanksgiving isn't about the big geopolitical picture, but about the blessings closer to home. Last week, the state of Oklahoma celebrated its centennial, accompanied by rousing performances of Rodgers and Hammerstein's eponymous anthem:

"We know we belong to the land

And the land we belong to is grand!"

Which isn't a bad theme song for the first Thanksgiving, either.

Three hundred and 14 years ago, the Pilgrims thanked God because there was a place for them in this land, and it was indeed grand. The land is grander today, and that, too, is remarkable: France has lurched from Second Empires to Fifth Republics struggling to devise a lasting constitutional settlement for the same smallish chunk of real estate, but the principles that united a baker's dozen of East Coast colonies were resilient enough to expand across a continent and halfway around the globe to Hawaii.

Americans should, as always, be thankful this Thanksgiving, but they should also understand just how rare in human history their blessings are.

©MARK STEYN

Saturday Moring Diversion

2007-11-17T10:48:00.001-05:00

Noodling - go figure.......

Malachi Ritscher - One Year Anniversary

2007-11-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

Catching up, Part 2:

On the evening of November 3, 2007, a local contingent of progressive activists held a vigil to commemorate the first anniversary of the self-immolation suicide of Malachi Ritscher, who killed himself in in protest against the Iraq war and "the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."

The vigil assembled at Goodale Park in Columbus,OH and processed up High Street with their banner. The vigil stopped and gave a moving rendition of Malachi's final Mission Statement.

The videos below are my attempt to capture the event as best I could given the conditions.

Part 1 - Processing

Part 2 - Mission Statement

Part 3 - Mission Statement (Conclusion)

A few pictures from the start of the vigil can be seen

HERE or by clicking on the picture below:

International Festival - Columbus,OH 11/3/07

2007-11-17T10:03:00.000-05:00

Catching up, Part 1:

International Festival (November 3-4, 2007) is a wonderful collection of cultures represented in the Columbus Ohio area, and includes costume, dance and of course FOOD! Also included: a mock student UN, various NGO's and other political, religious and philosophical organizations from the area. The local Star Trek chapter had a booth, as did Scientologists, yoga experts, Hare Krishna and many more. Local health officials were also represented, presumably to council you against OD'ing on the copious food offerings!!

You can see my still pictures HERE, or by clicking on the picture below:

Lee Hamilton Takes Questions......

2007-11-15T05:34:00.000-05:00

Lee Hamilton (of 9/11 Commission fame) spoke at Miami University Hamilton last night on the topic of "A Balanced View of American Power: How to Combat the Threats of the 21st Century". He took questions after the lecture and was quickly flooded with 9/11 Truthers.

A word to Islamofascists

2007-11-15T00:33:00.000-05:00

Pat Condell has a word or two for Brit Islamofascists. Excellent rant!!

An Excellent Post..

2007-11-10T10:13:00.000-05:00

...from the Mudville Gazette:

How did we win this war?

There are complex answers to that question, but there is also a simple one that is true and is the basis for all the complexities that spring from it: We won the war because United States Soldiers and Sailors and Airmen and Marines do not quit.

The decrease in violence is more than anecdotal. At this point I don't even think I need to provide links to supporting documents and news coverage - if you haven't heard by now then you aren't the sort of person who would have read this far anyway.

But I'm not a fan of death metrics. Up, down, and chaotic - an exceptionally low month means it will be quite easy for the next month to be higher - a helicopter crash could do it. And there are many possible reasons for this decrease, ranging from "neighborhood ethnic cleansing goals achieved" or "militias biding their time" to "Victory is ours!" And you'll hear them all from people pointing to the wrong numbers to support their claim: the numbers from the morgue.

But interspersed throughout the above are the right numbers,the real indicators of victory in Iraq. Civilian tips leading to terrorists and their weapons caches - and the ones you've seen above are just a few from one four-day stretch. These matter more than raw numbers on violence.

I said so almost exactly two years ago.

We've discussed it at MilBlogs.

But few people are paying attention to what those of us who are here fighting this war might have to say. Everyone is focused on the death metrics, and everyone is wrong. Call it "hearts and minds" or people fighting for their lives and futures who do not fear turning to us for help and helping us in return without fear of retribution from an enemy falling fast - these are the numbers that tell the tale. These are the numbers that indicate something worthwhile. These are the numbers that will drive the death metrics further down and keep them there.

How did we win this war? Simply put, we won because we are the best. The finest soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines in the world, and the best hope for people seeking hope for a future. And we are tired and hot is turning cold and we are far from home and soldiering on but you can't take that from us, and we won't let anyone take it from them.

Who's Nuttier!!

2007-11-07T20:10:00.000-05:00

From Wired:

Backlash Comparison: Who's Nuttier, Apple Fanatics or Ron Paul Enthusiasts?
By Kevin Poulsen November 06, 2007

In the past two weeks, THREAT LEVEL reporters have managed to draw the wrath of two different cultural tribes renown for their resolve and certitude: Apple fanatics, and Ron Paul enthusiasts.

Apple fans pummeled Kim for her story on the iPhone's controversial security model, while Ron Paul boosters went after Sarah for her piece on a recent spurt of deceptive spam promoting the Republican presidential candidate. Some representatives from each group got vicious, resorting to personal smears, sometimes laced with misogyny.

In other words, just another day at the office; smears and ad hominem attacks are an occupational hazard of journalism. But having two backlashes at about the same time provides us a rare opportunity to compare the religious fervor of two net-savvy cults of true believers.

(It's important to note that there are Apple fans and Ron Paul supporters who are reasoned and sane. They are ineligible for this competition. THREAT LEVEL will be rating only the behavior seen on the irresponsible edges of the groups.)

Let the judging begin.

**LINK**

Achmed the Dead Terrorist.....

2007-11-07T20:08:00.000-05:00

Hilarious!!

Media Dishonesty Matters

2007-10-08T21:35:00.000-04:00

Media Dishonesty Matters

From the American Thinker: We are being fed false and misleading information, in matters big and small. It has come from trusted sources such as established newspapers, experienced journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners and Nobel Peace Prize winners. It has been going on for a long time, sometimes by carelessness and sometimes by deliberate lying. I have compiled a list of 101 such incidents.

Did you know that Time magazine and other news organizations had a Vietnamese communist on full-time staff in Vietnam during that war? Do you remember that ABC, CBS and NBC have all rigged cars or trucks with explosives or other devices to make them look dangerous on TV, or that Consumer Reports lied about the Suzuki Samurai enough to put it out of business? Do you know that multiple "veterans" of the Viet Nam and Iraq wars who told of atrocities there were never even in the military? Did you realize reputable news organizations such as the Boston Globe and Reuters cannot tell the difference between a real soldier and a toy doll, commercial pornography and soldiers committing rape, a burning tire dump and a bombed building, a fired and an unfired rifle round, or footage of the North Pole and a clip from the movie Titanic?

The Dishonest 101

1. ABC, Food Lion story (1992). Fraudulent techniques and probable fabrication. Two ABC producers lied on their resumes to get jobs at Food Lion. They each wore a wig hiding a tiny lipstick-sized camera, and each carried a concealed microphone. It's possible they shot footage of mishandled food by doing the mishandling themselves. Food Lion sued ABC and a jury awarded it $5.5 million.

2. ABC 20/20 "Exploding Fords" story (1978). Staged footage. Similar to the later NBC "exploding" GM trucks episode, ABC aired "grossly misleading crash videos and simulations, withheld the same sorts of material facts about the tests, and relied on the same dubious experts with the same ties to the plaintiffs bar... viewers were shown a crash fire and explosion without being told it had been started by an incendiary device."

3. ABC 20/20, "Buckwheat" (of the Little Rascals) story. (1990). Fell for hoax. "In 1990 the ABC program 20/20 was hoaxed into believing that Billy "Buckwheat" Thomas was alive and working as a grocery bagger in Tempe, Arizona. (Thomas actually died in 1980.) A segment broadcast October 5 with narrator Hugh Downs featured an impostor."

4. AFP/Yahoo News (2007). Fell for hoax/lie. Ran a picture with the caption "An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City." But the picture was of unfired cartridges, which could only have "hit her house" if they were thrown at it.

5. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press (2005). Lying/fabricating. In his sports column, he described alumni players at a basketball game who were not even there.

6. Stephen Ambrose, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. He was almost a book "factory", writing eight books in five years. But that apparently came easier when parts were copied from other books, without attribution.

7. Pham Xuan An, Time (1960's). Communist spy reporter. Pham Xuan An was a "Viet Cong colonel who worked as a reporter for U.S. news organizations during the Vietnam War while also spying for the communists... He was the first Vietnamese to be a full-time staff correspondent for a major U.S. publication, working primarily for Time magazine... his job as a spy was to uncover and report the plans of the South Vietnamese and U.S. military... he was considered the best Vietnamese reporter in the press corps." He died in Viet Nam in 2006, where he had been "promoted to major general and was named a Hero of the People's Armed Forces, with four military-exploit medals."

8. Peter Arnett, CNN, NBC, National Geographic (1999-2003). Lying, bias, treasonous behavior. CNN fired him in 1999 for his reporting the Operation Tailwind story (see below). NBC and National Geographic fired him in March 2003 for being interviewed on Iraqi TV during war, in which he stated that the U.S. war plan had failed. "It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war," said NBC.

9. Associated Press (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.

10. Doug Bandow, columnist (2005). Failure to disclose potential conflict of interest. "The Copley News Service revealed it had suspended syndicated columnist Doug Bandow for allegedly accepting payments from Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write positive stories about Abramoff's clients." Bandow said, "It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it."

11. Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe (1998). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. Totally made up stories, including one about a black kid and a white kid with cancer. Also used quotes from George Carlin as his own. Fired from the Boston Globe.

12. BBC and many others in the looted National Museum of Iraq story (2003). False reporting. The BBC stated on April 12, 2003, that "The museum's deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years. ‘They were worth billions of dollars... The Americans were supposed to protect the museum.'" By May, the Telegraph (UK) was reporting "They now believe that the number of items taken was in the low thousands, and possibly hundreds."

13. Scott Beauchamp, The New Republic (2007). Lying. TNR hired this U.S. Army private and husband of one of its own staff to write first-hand accounts from Iraq. One of his accounts, supposedly demonstrating the dehumanizing effects of the Iraq war on him and fellow soldiers, occurred in Kuwait before Beauchamp even entered Iraq. Other parts of his writing are likely false, and if not, constitute military crimes on his part. In fact, his anonymous writing from a war zone is likely against military rules. This story is currently unfolding.

Indexing "The"

2007-10-06T09:01:00.000-04:00

The power of 'the' wins Ig Nobel

By Stephen Pincock for ABC Science Online
Posted Fri Oct 5, 2007 4:16pm AEST

It is a small and often neglected word. But the word 'the' has just won Australia's Glenda Browne international recognition in the form of an Ig Nobel prize.

The Ig Nobels, parodies of the real Nobel Prizes, are awarded annually to applaud achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think.

Ms Browne, a professional indexer who once worked in the field of biotechnology, is this year's winner in the literature category.

Her award honours a scholarly article addressing a tricky question. Where should names starting with 'the' appear in indexes?

While contemplating this issue, she looked through indexes filled with names like The American Journal of Psychiatry, and The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics on one hand, but British Journal of Pharmacology and Journal of Microscopy on the other.

Ms Browne's work involves creating alphabetical lists of key terms that appear in books, so readers can find the material they want. So the 'the' question is crucial to indexers like her.

But throughout her 18-year career she grew increasingly aware that the humble 'the' was a problem.

"I don't know why I started thinking about it," she says from her home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

"In indexing, we follow rules but sometimes the rules don't make sense and that bothered me."

The conundrum with 'the' is deciding how to index names or titles that include it, she explains. Should 'The Who' be indexed as 'Who, The', or 'The Who'?

The key question is finding a method that would make the index easiest to use, Ms Browne says.

Her deceptively simple solution was published in 2001 in the journal The Indexer.

Index entries for names with 'the' in them should be indexed both with and without the 'the', so to speak, she says.

"I decided, look, people think in different ways, so let's put it in the index in two places."

It was a win-win solution, and a logical conclusion.

"Similar arguments apply to 'a' and 'an', but these are beyond the scope of this article," she notes in her paper.

Ms Browne says the indexing skills she needs to resolve issues such as the 'the' dilemma are similar to those needed for scientific endeavour.

"I think they both have a mix of the analytical and the creative," she says.

"You need to focus very carefully, but you also need to be able to take a broad point of view."

My only question now is, do you index the name of the band "The The" twice, side by side?

Bush ignored Saddam's Terror Links

2007-10-04T16:59:00.001-04:00

Al Gore criticizes Bush for ignoring Saddam's ties to terrorism.

Socialist-Backed Anti-war Protests Shrink

2007-10-04T05:24:00.001-04:00

From Reuters:
U.S. protests shrink while antiwar sentiment grows
By Andy Sullivan Wed Oct 3, 8:33 AM ET

Crowds at antiwar rallies in Washington have dwindled even as U.S. opinion has turned against the war in Iraq, as organizers feud and participants question the effectiveness of the street protests.

Rival antiwar groups, which in years past jointly sponsored massive rallies on the National Mall, have promoted separate protests recently or decided to steer clear of the capital altogether.

The thinning crowds stand in contrast to the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era, which grew as the war progressed.

Activists and experts say divisions among peace groups, along with other factors like the lack of a draft, fatigue about the war and the rise of the Internet, have all contributed to the declining turnout.

Sparse turnout -- fewer than 1,000 at a rally on Saturday, according to local media reports -- could undermine the goal of forcing an end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, participants say.

"When you have demonstrations in which the turnout is not terribly impressive, that gives politicians the sense that people may oppose the war but nobody's really going to pay a price," said Peter Kuznik, an American University history professor and antiwar protester.

Antiwar rallies drew hundreds of thousands of people at the war's start in 2003, although only 23 percent of Americans then said the invasion was a mistake, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll. That figure is now 58 percent.

Frustration about the war has driven down President George W. Bush's approval ratings and helped Democrats win control of Congress last year. But since 2005, antiwar groups have opted to promote separate events rather than work together.

Saturday's protest, sponsored by the Troops Out Now Coalition, came two weeks after an antiwar event sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, which drew roughly 10,000 people. ANSWER also sponsored a rally in March.

The groups' agendas are similar, opposing what they call "imperialist" U.S. policy not only in Iraq but toward countries like Cuba and Iran -- which has alienated some supporters.

"There's all of these peripheral issues that you're going to be associated with, whether you want to or not," said Hamilton College history professor Maurice Isserman.

SPLINTER GROUP
Both groups' leaders were associated with the Workers World Party, which advocates a shift toward a Soviet-style planned economy. But a 2004 dispute prompted some members to form the splinter Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Members of the splinter group stayed active in the ANSWER Coalition, and the remaining members of the Workers World Party formed the Troops Out Now Coalition, Troops Out Now spokesman Dustin Langley said.

Another antiwar group, United for Peace and Justice, has refused to work with ANSWER since a joint rally in 2005. The event drew well over 100,000 people, media reports said, but the two groups clashed over speaking time and other issues.

United for Peace and Justice, which has tried to focus on ending the Iraq war, drew 100,000 people to a January protest. The group plans 11 regional demonstrations later this month, but none in Washington.

"The base that we work with was saying to us, 'We've been to Washington a lot in the last four years, we don't want to go to Washington again,"' national coordinator Leslie Kagan said.

ANSWER has called for antiwar groups to join forces for a large rally in the spring, but Kagan and Langley said their groups have not decided whether to participate.

Antiwar leaders say recent smaller protests reflect new tactics, not disorganization. Smaller activist groups like Code Pink have been a colorful, disruptive presence at congressional hearings and appearances by Bush administration officials.

"There's times when we've had half a million people out in the streets, and there's times when it's important just to be there," Langley said.

But others said it is less likely they'll head to Washington at all. "People are tired, they are frustrated because they didn't expect this to go on so long," said Laura Bonham, a spokeswoman for Progressive Democrats of America, which lobbies lawmakers to support a withdrawal. "It's like, well, we can stay home."

Largely absent from the actions are young people, who were the majority of Vietnam-era protesters -- perhaps because they do not risk being drafted into the military or from a sense that they can express their opposition to the war on the Internet, rather than on the streets, Isserman said.

Columbus "Stop The War Now" Rally 2007

2007-10-01T00:56:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, September 29 about 50 people came together in downtown Columbus, OH to call for an immediate end to the war. Directly below are links to the photo album from the day, as well as the videos I posted to YouTube.

Click on photo below or HERE to see the still photos taken...

Videos -

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Bolton: Attack Iran

2007-09-30T22:41:00.000-04:00

From the Jerusalem Post:
Bolton: Attack Iran, 'remove' its leader
By JPOST.COM STAFF

Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Tory delegates in Britain Sunday that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.

Bolton said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "pushing out" and "is not receiving adequate push-back" from the West.
"I don't think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don't know what the alternative is.

"Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities."

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the "source of the problem", Ahmadinejad.

"If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back," he said.

Bolton said that the fact that only partial intelligence about Iran's nuclear activity existed should not be used as an excuse not to act.

"Intelligence can be wrong in more than one direction... Responding after they (nuclear devices) are used is unacceptable."
Bolton also said the UN was "fundamentally irrelevant".

The former envoy criticized Britain's "softly softly" approach to Iran's imprisonment of 15 British sailors in April.

They were released after Ahmadinejad announced he was making a "gift" to the British people. "They [Iran] got no response from the UK or the US. If you were the Iranian leader, what conclusion do you draw?"