You can’t blame Bush for failing to sign the Ottawa Treaty. First, it was started while Clinton was in office. Second, while the US could have joined up under Bush, as long as North Korea remains the way it is neither the US nor South Korea will be getting rid of landmines completely, no matter who happens to be president.
If it makes you feel any better the US is signatory to the UN’s CCW, part of which regulates the type and placement of landmines.
…I bet I wasn’t the only one who thought that December was back from the banned! What next: an old Collunsbury thread?
Also, it’s a bit macabre, but land mines are generally *good *for the environment. They keep people away, and let animals and plants survive.
Except for the heavier ones, that is.
I’d say “except for the lighter ones,” actually – if it’s a hair-trigger anti-personnel mine, a large deer (or a predator, like say a leopard) might trigger it. A magnetic- or half-ton-detonation anti-armor mine, not so much. And people will still generally stay away from those, too.
Mission Accomplished, just like the OP predicted!
4000 casualties last year.
The consequence of only generally keeping people away.
I’m certainly no fan of Bush, but both of those things were the right thing to do. Kyoto was stupidly designed and would’ve resulted in a net negative for the enviornment as even more manufacturing would’ve been pushed to the worst polluters in the world, and the US already does not lay the sort of mines that stay around for years and make the world a dangerous place - the treaty was not written in a way to acknowledge that and pointlessly compromised our ability to use smart munitions.
Fine, I concede Alessan’s point that the DMZ is a protected wild place in effect, and take SenorBeef’s points as well. Bush still was part of an anti-conservation movement that pretends to be “conservative” but is mostly just robber capitalist, and I think Gore would have been better at that point in history.
Wasn’t the question abut the Iraq wetlands, as asked by AK84?
Man, this is going to hurt Bush’s chances in '04.
snork
I know you used the term “lay” there, but thinking that the US is already responsible with their smart munitions…
As for the Kyoto thing, do you have a cite?
It’s entirely consistent for the Bush administration to claim something negative is beneficial and the converse. See here for more.
That’s right. The guy on West Wing thinks so, and you’re to the left of him then you must be some kind of crazy hippie who can safely be ignored, because all the people who argue with the guy on West Wing are.
I was already scrambling for my wooden stakes and mallet when I realized it was just a zombie.
Before you all rush into the fray, IIRC, december passed away a number of years ago, and a relative contacted the board to inform us of the news.
Could a kindly mod verify this…or at the very least tell me that I’m totally mistaken and thinking of somebody else?? 
Fanks!
First I heard about december passing, you might indeed be thinking of someone else (or I just missed it).
I gather that Bush did do a good job with restoring the wetlands of New-Orleans.
december isn’t listed in the In Memoriam sticky.
Collounsbury was an overly combative poster who was fully convinced of his own rightness, but at least he knew stuff. I followed his blog for awhile after he was banned from here, and it was usually worth reading.
Weird. I could have sworn **december **died, too, and was in the ‘memoriam’ sticky with a description saying he was (combative? argumentative? something), but he was ours.