[shamelessly offtopic] on another note about why people refer to certain things in certain ways...Ive noticed a tendency for our conservative posters to refer to Iraq as 'iRaq'...at first I assumed it was typos....but I see it spelled that way constantly these days....whats the deal with that? and welcome back Mr Fish... [/shamelessly offtopic]
2K: basso, in a moment of extraordinary weirdness, explained that Iraq reminded him of "iMac." It makes no sense at all and it distracts me from his point every time he does it, but that's the 'clearest' explanation I've heard.
Deckard: RM95's banned from the Hangout. His buddy Major's banned from the whole site, from what I've heard. rimrocker thinks he might be banned too -- can't get in and doesn't get answers to his emails. It wouldn't surprise me too much if that happened to MacBeth too, but I really don't know. It would be good to see him around here if he's not banned. It's good to see Sam and Bob around. And I would love to hear from treeman ("centrifuge...").
That's really strange. I guess this now belongs in the feedback forum or something, but I hadn't seen rimrocker get personal with anyone, or violate and of the rules, and I usually read most everything he wrote. That would be a real shame to have him banned from the forum or the sight.
more from WaPo http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16282-2004Oct7.html -- The immense scope of an Iraqi effort in the late 1990s to curry political support for ending an international trade embargo is reflected in a list of more than 1,300 oil "vouchers" that then-President Saddam Hussein gave to more than a hundred corporations, foreign officials and political parties stretching from North America to Asia, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. . . . The report said the recipients made the payments by carrying bags of cash to Iraqi embassies in Amman, Beirut, Moscow, Ankara, Geneva and Hanoi, among other places. The cash was then sent to Baghdad via diplomatic pouches. "In the late '90s, we understood that lots of shenanigans were going on . . . under-the-table payments and so on, to curry favor and win support for eroding sanctions," said Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state. "We made various efforts to limit the scope of this," he added. But the report said that U.S. officials were blocked by Russia, China and France in 2000 and 2001 when they tried to clamp down on oil sales outside the oil-for-food program.
