Well, it's not too surprising the US is reluctant to leave. It seems like once the US has a base somewhere, it's often almost impossible to get them to leave. Look at Cuba, they've been asking the US to remove their base for 60 years, and yet they are still there. They don't even have diplomatic relations with the country but that doesn't seem to make a difference. I wish Japan luck, but they're going to have to take a hard line if they really want the US to leave.

http://www.watchinghistory.com/2010/01/guantanamo...

It's too bad this has been delayed, but how about the *other* Guantanamo Bay question. When is the US going to leave Cuban soil?

Ah, I didn't say the Vietnamese won Tet. They lost, but they showed they could organize and mobilize vast forces and that the US could not quickly and easily win the war. That had a major impact on US government thinking (and on the public.)

Are you truly suggesting the US should have kept fighting and bombed a few million more people into their graves? If so, you are a very bad and evil person.

I didn't meant to suggest the protesters weren't doing the right thing and that I don't appreciate their efforts. But I believe history shows that it wasn't the protestors that ended the war. More people protested against Iraq before the war than ever protested during Vietnam, but that war still happened. The US military became warn out and on the verge of collapse during Vietnam. This is according to the generals themselves. The US could not have continued the war, and this is one of the reasons they moved towards withdrawal. Without the strong resistance of the Vietnamese, it never would have got to that point. I do agree the draft was a significant factor. Many people in the military themselves were rebelling and often refusing to follow orders (you even had "fragging" where soldiers would decide they didn't like the orders their CO was giving, so they'd just shoot them, avoid combat, and make up a story.)

I'm not, and never had been, an American. :)

Wow, I don't think the Taliban could even stage anything better than the last couple days. Keep in mind almost none of the troop increase has arrived yet, that's still going to take months. Even if random "incidents" like this are rare, the more troops you have, the more they will happen. Eventually there will be something like an Afghan My Lai. Then maybe there will be an Afghan Tet Offensive (I realize in Vietnam, this happened in the opposite order.)

People forget that the Tet Offensive wasn't actually a military victory. The Vietnamese lost the battle. But they mobilized so extensively, and caused so many US casualties, that US public opinion changed forever. That was one of the biggest events that led to the end of the war. No offense to the protestors, but it wasn't you who ended the war.

I think there's probably a simple rule of thumb we can follow to make sure we stay relatively healthy. If a given type of food has been eaten by humans for hundreds of thousands of years, eat it. If it was created in the past 50 years, stay away.

For decades we've been hearing about sugar substitutes that turn out to cause cancer or some other problem a decade or so down the line. We were told margarine was better than butter, now we're told the natural dairy product is really healthier. If you stick to the stuff we've evolved to eat, rather than something made in a lab, I don't think you can go wrong. :)

Yes, we're definitely getting a bad name from this. Now in many parts of the world, when people hear the word "Canada" the tar sands is the first thing they think of. Compare that to what people thought of us a decade ago, everyone loved Canada!

http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/12/ba...

The worst part is we already produce enough oil to meet our domestic needs, the tar sands are being developed primarily for export. They are just too environmentally damaging to justify. Shutting them down would not only allow us to achieve much better targets for emissions reduction, they would allow us to take our place as a world leader once again.

I'm not sure I would put Obama in this category. He is a great speaker, and seems like a nice person, but his actions don't match his words or promises. We now have more troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan than under Bush, and casaulties are rising on both sides. The US role at Copenhagen was a betrayal of many of the Americans who campaigned and raised money for Obama to get him elected based on a promise of taking a strong position on climate change. And despite a nice speech in the middle east at the beginning of his term, he has completely backed off any attempt to limit Israel's illegal settlement expansion, and he has said nothing to condemn the Gaza massacre or Israel's continuing war crimes.

Like many others, I had hope Obama would represent real change, but he is, unfortunately, just more of the same.

Thanks for your reply. I didn't mean to make a controversial statement. Please ask those who practise homeopathy themselves what they base their practice on. We might disagree with the effectiveness, but I don't believe they will disagree with the basis for it.

As for the recommendation to seek a medical professional, this is always good advice. I am fortunate enough to live in Canada, so I would advise people to see a health worker, instead. We are fortunate enough to have access to doctors whose income is not dependant on the service provided. That doesn't mean there are not wonderful doctors in the US, but when you remove the potential for vested interests, on average, you get better advice. Thanks.

I have to comment on this. Homeopathy is pseudo-science, and was created before we had any knowledge of modern medicine. It has failed numerous clinical trials, and there is zero evidence it works, and no rational scientific explanation for how it even could work. Homeopathy is based on diluting something to the point where not a single molecule of the original substance remains. In other words, homeopathic medicine is all the same, it's just water, or sugar (when given in a pill form.) See here for more info, or search the medical literature yourself.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4034

Please, please, please, if you have a medical condition or other health problem, see a real doctor. Failure to get prompt, good, medical treatment can lead to a lot of suffering, permanent problems, and in extreme cases where people turn to it for cancer and other serious diseases, even death. Don't play games with your health.