Digital terrorism? Military and congressional intelligence?

A friend posted a link to this ABC News story offering a rare peek into a Congressional intelligence committee hearing. Pentagon officials offered some interesting testimony about how terrorists are taking good, strong, patriotic American games and twisting them to their nefarious uses:

"Any video game that comes out, as soon as the code is release, they will modify it and change it for their needs."

Yikes! Scary stuff. Another Pentagon official testifies that

"Nowhere is this more evident than the computer games they're using as they target the youth. This is made by an American company, but they've created a new trailer and plug-in where if you register and send $25 you can play it. ... You can see how they use humor first to evoke emotion and then to evoke a response and then to direct that response in a direction that they want."

Yeah. The problem is that it's complete bullshit. The game is off-the-shelf, not modified in any way by anyone but the manufacturer. The trailer was reportedly made by a Dutch-born Muslim, a guy with a master's degree working in as a hospital quality manager in Europe. He just compiled his own clips from his gameplay. The humor he's evoking? Well, the soundtrack came from a PUPPET MOVIE made by the SOUTH PARK GUYS. All this, of course, comes under a $7 million contract to Science Applications International, which is monitoring the insurgents' Web sites.

I found an Australian ABC page discussing this in greater depth. GamePolitics features another interview with the trailer's author:

[[Trailer Author]]: It's not everyday that they label you part of al-Qaeda... and a Jihad recruiter. They demonised me by directly labeling me to someone from al-Qaeda who's trying to recruit innocent children that are playing this game, by using a mod [modification of an existing game].

[[GamePolitics Guy]]: What did you think when you heard the claim that you had "modded" the game? Isn't the character in the footage just the "Insurgent" faction from the "BF2: Special Forces" expansion pack?

[[Trailer Author]]: It is just in game footage from SF, no self made mod at all. I can't get even my own computer to work. So you can see programming isn't on of my strong points As a matter of fact my computer crashed just a few days ago, and for a month now I cant get BF2 to work...

Clearly, a major threat to our nation.

Amusingly, the House Intelligence Committee isn't intelligent enough to properly link its own files. If you mess with the URLs to change the slashes and remove some extras, you can find valuable things, such as this RAND official's testimony on the use of the Internet or comments on how the media is releasing classified information.

MeTheSheeple failed to find a working transcript of all the Pentagon testimony in re: video games "created" by extremists. The ABC video, that first link I posted, includes some voice-overs to the effect of the game desensitizes the bad guys to killing Americans. The reporter may have put that in there himself. Yet it likely was a condensed version of the testimony.

Now, the idea of the Pentagon criticizing the desensitizing of youths toward violence through video game mods is funny, because the Pentagon created a custom video game from scratch as a recruiting tool. Yes, presumably the Pentagon supports the idea of more "good guy" soldiers and fewer "bad guy" soldiers. But to cast it in tones of moral superiority only when the other team does it, and then to advocate, sponsor and push for it when our team gets interested, is a bit on the hypocritical. Where does the moral superiority come from? Why is it generated? Why does no one realize that hypocrisy like this wrecks American credibility?

For the record, MeTheSheeple plays his own two video games. The latest is Red Orchestra: Ostfront, a historically based simulation of two armies that in their own ways ... well, could both be considered the bad guys. Just to pick one country, Poland: The Russians created Katyn and waited patiently while the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising, while the Germans committed a slew of atrocities that included the creation of Auschwitz. Just for the record.



And for the record, there, MeTheSheeple's the Russian with the DP-28. You know, the dead guy. Don't you love how the screen shot includes the German grenade in the air, though?

Sound and fury

MeTheSheeple is ever-intrigued at just how polarizing a force the Iraq war is becoming.

There's the ongoing debate about whether to "cut and run" in Iraq. There's this Boston Globe analysis piece about how the Republicans are trying to make the label stick to those wimpy Democrats. There's this Boston Globe opinion piece about how how, historically, it's the Republicans who are advocating the cut-and-run stance. Now it looks like the White House might just be studying something that looks a lot like the cut-and-run approach. However this shakes out, MeTheSheeple offers one of his favorite sets of campaign promises involving the cut-and-run approach:

1968: Richard M. Nixon: Elect me and I'll get you out of Vietnam.
1972: Richard M. Nixon: Elect me and I'll get you out of Vietnam.

Despite everything even known then about Nixon, and the obvious lack of follow-up on Nixon's campaign promise, and even the use of CREEP as an official campaign committee name, Nixon still made it.

That sort of leaves open some questions about what could happen, politically, in the fall. Expect political casualties, of course. Here's a good starting idea of Iraq's great divides:


Here's one example MeTheSheeple found intriguing. One of the concluding comments:

And anon, I'm pretty sure I have a pretty good idea about what service to my country is, and Murtha has given such service in the past. That doesn't give him a free pass to say and do whatever he fancies now.

That sounds remarkably as if a military veteran and U.S. Congressman has no freedom of speech.

The Iraq war's divides aren't just to be found in blogs, either. A retired brigadier forwarded an e-mail to me that questions Murtha's credentials and honesty. Whatever the facts are, however objective analysis would influence anyone's views, it's obvious that the subjective divides in Iraq are only growing deeper.

The real shame, of course, is that all these political conundrums, attacks, slanders, misdirections, misinformation and the like will create political casualties that will influence real casualties. While the debate continues, real people on all sides or on no sides of the conflict are dying, while countless others are suffering. These are very real, not theoretical, problems. Here's to hoping some concensus will form, soon, over some good answers.

An aside: A year ago, MeTheSheeple was riding in a car to a gun range with a military veteran. Said veteran had a then-wacky idea: If all these Iraqis are so sure life was much better under Saddam Hussein, why not drop him back in power and then see how the fighting really goes? ... Now, Hussein himself seems to think maybe the Americans have that idea. Yeah, OK, he's more than a few fries short of a Happy Meal ... but as the months go by, I wonder if that family friend wasn't maybe on to something.

What was that old line? "There's a time to think and a time to act. Gentlemen, this is no time to think!"

Second Amendment insanity

In honor of this weekend's Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot, I feel obliged to post my favorite sound track from last year's shoot. Your sight will likely focus on the guy with the big Browning up in the foreground. You're really just trying to listen in. That little vibration kinda deal is 100 bullets flying downrange.




This was posted using Google video. First time. Hope it works.

For the record, here's my favorite photograph from the shoot. Before you ask, the kid was under heavy supervision; yes, the field was on fire from tracer rounds and explosives in some junk cars; that particular gun was semi-auto only; and, aside from a few cases of heat exhaustion, the only casualties with untold thousands of rounds of ammunition fired were ... some cars and some washing machines. The washing machines were great shooting with an MP-40.

Computers are evil

MeTheSheeple's laptop just got a bonafide Blue Screen Of Death, something rare on Windows XP. The crash came as he finished reading a book in a record 2:20 and decided to take a break. The break came with a buggy game with massive memory problems (Red Orchestra: Ostfront) combined with a buggy Web browser with massive memory problems (Firefox, with extensions including Forecast Fox).

This'd normally be the time some jackass steps in to levy the usual bullshit about "This is better" or "That company is evil." You know the one -- like when the Mac guys supporting an abusive monopoly rail against the abusive monopoly of Microsoft. Then the Linux/open-source guys do the same -- forgetting, of course, that Firefox is largely responsible for this.

Almost no one argues the absolute truth: Computers are evil.

Yeah, they let us get work done. But they're also evil.

Fortunately, they're slowly becoming less evil. Years ago, MeTheSheeple bought a computer with NT 4.0 on it. The computer crashed every _12 minutes_ with all sorts of weird colors on the screen, making him think it was a video problem. Turned out to be a mouse driver -- and for a Microsoft mouse, if memory serves. Once the mouse driver was updated, the computer only crashed, on average, every 75-90 minutes. The answer was in Windows Millenium Edition, which everyone else thought was too buggy to use. Are we better in 2006? Yeah. Are computers still evil? Hell yeah.

Which laws to enforce?

Years ago, I worked alongside some deputies in a smallish Georgia city. One morning, two of 'em were bitching about a coworker, "that moronic MP," or something to that effect. I overheard, and interrupted: Didn't you guys used to be in the military? Yeah, the sheriff's sergeant had been an engineer in Vietnam and the sheriff's corporal hadn't changed his haircut since he left the infantry.

At issue was the actions of a third deputy, who was the former military policeman. He'd seen a guy stumbling along the street -- Georgia calls it "pedestrian under the influence" -- and arrested him, bringing him to jail to sober up and presumably have his family bail him out.

The other two guys were irked. The guy was stumbling home because he'd had too much to drink in a bar, decided not to hop in his car and risk killing someone else, and tried walking home. The one deputy investigated and arrested the guy, giving him a ride to jail. The other two guys would have investigated and offered him a ride home, because he'd been trying to do the right thing. The two guys predicted the next time the guy would just risk the drive, breaking more serious laws and threatening more lives and property.

Something in the Washington Post this morning made me recall this. At issue is of which laws to enforce, for which ends. The story is on immigration law enforcement:

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.

This is, of course, the same subject addressed by the president, who was trying to walk a fine line between two widely separated groups: "We're a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We're also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals."

Enforcement of some laws brings unintended consequences. Fark.com linked to a story on Georgia's near-ban on registered sex offenders, who will be prohibited, across the state, from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. To many people this will immediately sound like a good idea. Think, though, just how many bus stops there are, and what a 1,000-foot distance would mean. Very few places would thus allow sex offenders, and they have to go somewhere, right? In an ideal world, there wouldn't be child rapists, but, well, there are. And they have to live somewhere.

One Iowa city tried strict sex-offender laws, and they backfired, according to the New York Times.

Authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September. ... "The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

The statute has set off a law-making race in the cities and towns of Iowa, with each trying to be more restrictive than the next by adding parks, swimming pools, libraries and bus stops to the list of off-limits places. Fearful that Iowa's sex offenders might seek refuge across state lines, six neighboring states have joined the frenzy.

Sometimes, laws are passed, praised for their effectiveness, and only half-assedly enforced. MeTheSheeple can't seem to find authoritative, comprehensive statistics through the end, but notes that tens of thousands of convicted felons may have been prevented from buying guns under the Brady Bill. A felon's attempt to buy a gun is illegal. However, such laws were almost never prosecuted. Isn't that great?

Seems to me that in an ideal world we'd train officers in appropriate discretion (e.g., driving the drunk home instead of pushing him to become a drunk driver). We'd be careful not to enforce laws with any bias. And we'd pass laws with the intent of enforcing them a large part of the time. Then, if there are political pressures, legislators would be encouraged to revise, revoke or amend those laws.

Instead, we've got biased interpretation, broad lack of enforcement, and political pressures coming in the wrong ways. Yech.

Another view of Iraq

Ralph Peters wrote this interesting column in the New York Post, in which he wrote that Iraqi insurgents themselves are saying they're having a hard time recruiting, a hard time operating, a hard time getting weapons, and a hard time getting money. Peters goes on to write:

Desperate, Zarqawi's butchers laid out a program to try to regain the initiative they'd lost. Here's what the terrorists hoped to do:

In their own words, "use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance." That is, exploit the prejudices of the Western media, the terrorists' last allies.

Infiltrate Iraq's army, which was pinning them to the mat (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em).

Unify the resistance - which was falling to pieces amid squabbles over tactics, over turf and even over who was the real enemy.

Most ambitious, the terrorists hoped to spark a war between the United States and Iran, to "create a second front" that would take pressure off them. To that end, they planned to implicate Iran in staged terrorist events and to provide disinformation about Tehran's having ties to terrorist groups targeted by the United States.

Just in case that didn't work, the terrorists also hoped to ignite civil wars between Sunni and Shia, Americans and Shia, Shia and Shia, Kurds and Shia - and even between different Sunni factions. A Vietnam-era U.S. officer was ridiculed for saying, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it," but al Qaeda is willing to destroy all of Iraq in order to save it for a fanatical vision.

The whole column's interesting reading.

A few things are worthy of note. Interpret as you will. Peters was an experienced United States intelligence officer. One military consultant I knew said Peters should have been tried on treason charges for one of his novels, "Red Army," because it gave away so much of the American strategy. And Peters has been criticized for his view of the media, which purportedly is that reporters are combatants who should take the side of their country.

Most importantly, the column is based off a single insurgent document. MeTheSheeple would be very interested to see more. In the meantime, he recommends reading the column.

Bill Gates is retiring

Bill Gates is trying to retire from Microsoft but simply can't afford to live; open-source advocates have set up donation Web sites here and here. Yeah, just kidding.

It's easy to focus on all the bad things that Microsoft has done under Bill Gates' control: Some sneaky deals at the beginning of DOS, abuses of its monopoly, a lack of innovation in recent years, ungodly delays in software releases (remember Windows NT 5.0? Yeah.), and certainly Microsoft's opposition to open standards that makes today's Excel file tomorrow's Lotus 1-2-3 or VisiCalc file that you won't be able to open.

All of that said, Microsoft under Gates has brought intuitive, powerful computers to desktops around the world. The world has changed a great deal in the last few decades, and much of it has been because of Microsoft.

Gates is retiring to spend more money with his charity work. With his huge fortune and focus on philanthropy, Gates is on a parallel to Andrew Carnegie. Gates has rightly brought a focus to problems long neglected by the rich nations, like malaria. This is, undoubtedly, a great kind of innovation.

No one likes us ... dunno why

With the accuracy and speed both readers have come to expect of WeTheSheeples, MeTheSheeple brings this fresh report. Yep. Ran in the Globe yesterday, ran in the IHT two days ago, based off this study. The short story of the summary: One of Randy Newman's songs remains current.

Remember Spain, our ally in the war on terror, sufferer of its own terrorist strikes? Yeah. They like the United States less now -- just one out of four is in our fan club. Iraq as a new front in the war on terror? Not exactly working:

Support for the U.S.-led war on terror, with few exceptions, is either flat or has declined; confidence in President Bush has fallen ever lower in Europe; and majorities in most countries believe that the U.S. will not achieve its objectives in Iraq. ...

Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, 60% say the war has made the world more dangerous, compared with 30% who say it has made the world safer.

None of this is terribly surprising, as this old entry shows. The downward spiral, though, is not a good sign.

Someone out there could say, "Yes, but some of these countries never liked us." Not always true, but sometimes is. But if the overall population of a country we consider an ally grows to dislike us, what do you think is happening with the radical populations in those countries, the ones that could become terrorists? What about the radical populations outside those countries? What, then, would this say for the War on Terror?

Destinations

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show had a hilarious riff about some pretty serious business, the suicide of three American-held not-quite-prisoners-of-war, but maybe-not-criminals at Guantanamo Bay.

Now, there's some debate about just how many Gitmo prisoners are actually "enemy combatants," a phrase that has no basis in law. Nevertheless, these guys are being held in the war on terror, which, from the bad guys' side, resembles a guerrilla war. Without a doubt, those guys recognize the value of publicity, such that they target reporters for kidnappings because they know it will get disproportionate coverage.

All that said, that same idea can be taken to an extreme -- and, unfortunately, was, by an American bureaucrat: "Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good P.R. move to draw attention." All this, of course, comes from Colleen Graffy. A deputy assistant secretary of state. For public diplomacy. Who works for the person appointed by the American president to improve America's image abroad. It ain't working:

In Britain, where Graffy made her remarks, the reaction has been particularly negative, and calls for the closure of Guantanamo have gotten louder. A Reuters-UK article on the subject noted, "Nine British citizens have been held in Guantanamo Bay. All returned to Britain and none has been charged.

Several appeared in media interviews over the weekend in which they said they were not surprised that inmates had killed themselves."

If only as a "good PR move", it's time for the Bush Administration to close Guantanamo down.

A Washington Post columnist cites the case of one of those British prisoners, Moazzam Begg:

"It is considered a sin in Islam to despair," he writes, but after he was transferred to a solitary cell at Guantanamo in 2003, Begg began to crack. The guards seemed obsessed with preventing suicide. Begg received an odd plastic blanket, for example, and later learned that it was a "suicide blanket" that couldn't be torn up to make a noose. When guards found paint chipped in his cell, they worried that he was trying to poison himself.

A prison psychiatrist explained to Begg that there had indeed been suicide attempts: "She told me there were people who'd lost all sense of time, reason, reality; people who had been kept in a solitary cell, completely blocked off with no window, eight foot by six, like mine, but with absolutely nobody to speak to, nobody. She said some of them just ended up talking to themselves." A despairing Begg writes at one point to his father back in England: "I still don't know what crime I am supposed to have committed. . . . I am in a state of desperation and I am beginning to lose the fight against depression and hopelessness."

This doesn't do much for the arguments that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. The Washington Post's David Ignatius sums up Gitmo:

When I hear U.S. officials describe the suicides of three Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday as "asymmetric warfare" and "a good PR move," I know it's time to close that camp -- not just because of what it's doing to the prisoners but because of how it is dehumanizing the American captors.

The American officials spoke of the dead prisoners as if they inhabited a different moral universe. That's what war does: People stop seeing their enemies as human beings and consign them to a different category. It was discomfiting to see this indifference stated so bluntly, and subsequent U.S. statements tactfully disavowed the initial ones.

Speaking about a different context, Sen. John McCain argued that the United States needs to keep a true moral superiority: "If they could, Islamic extremists who resort to terror would destroy us utterly. But to defeat them we must prevail in our defense of American political values as well. The mistreatment of prisoners greatly injures that effort. The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies."

America's future

America's colleges are respected worldwide. America's lower schools, on the other hand, compare most unfavorably.

This Rocky Mountain Times story captures some of the challenges and tribulations faced by high school students. It's got plenty of the human element to keep you moving through the story, but is also supported by a wealth of statistics and some bonafide statistical analysis.

Among the data cited is that the average dropout costs society about $200,000. MeTheSheeple remembers looking through some Georgia Department of Labor job offerings years ago and noticing that even forklift drivers had to be high school graduates. The fact that so very many Americans never make it out of high school is appalling, and is awful for their future and for the country's. Maybe the Rocky Mountain Times story can get more people thinking about these challenges -- and solving them. Either way, the package is worth a read.

The Rocky Mountain News story is one of the winners of the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism. MeTheSheeple guesses some of the other stories in the group are worth a read, too.

Police state

The AP reports:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --The Rhode Island General Assembly is considering legislation that could give police access to Internet and phone records and credit card and bank information without a warrant or other court review, civil libertarians said.

The state police said the legislation would help track down the increasing instances of Internet-based crime, including fraud and child exploitation. They say they are only seeking expanded access to Internet records, not phone or banking records.

MeTheSheeple's favorite part is the justification:

State police say going before a judge to get a warrant can be time-consuming and cumbersome.

Cpl. John Killian, the state police's computer crime specialist, said it can take three to four hours of work to obtain a warrant.

"There's a balance between privacy and police authority," Killian said. "The current situation is weighted too far on the side of privacy."

So obviously the key to balky warrant procedures is to get rid of the warrants. I don't know what's scarier -- that law enforcement agencies are redrawing the lines so far, or that it's highly controversial when someone expects a search warrant.

Brightening your weekend

Just when you thought some things couldn't get any worse:

EL FASHER, Sudan -- Tribal leaders on Friday rejected the possibility of U.N. peacekeepers replacing African Union forces in Darfur, with one chief threatening a "holy war" if non-African troops deployed to the Sudanese region.

... If a U.N. force comes to Darfur, Jalaladin said, "we are declaring jihad against it. . . . It means death. It means defending Sudan and Islam."

This apparently is a Muslim unfamiliar with God the merciful and compassionate, who encourages his followers to protect the weak.

'Course, other blogs have pointed out Ann Coulter's latest ravings. That makes this old article from The Nation particulary interesting in retrospect.

MeTheSheeple seems to recall that while the development of the religions took different paths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share common roots -- and thus a common God. At least 1.4 million Web page authors have the right idea. Where do these morons come from? Is there a remedial religion school we can kick 'em off to?

Some rights for some?

Media types -- heck, Americans in general -- generally advocate equal rights for everybody. The Boston Globe's Brian McGrory bucked the trend in this little tatterous ribbon of stupidity.

At heart is the recent rejection of a standard police operating procedure. Let's look at the first paragraph of the original Boston Globe story:

Police officers cannot stop and frisk people on the street based solely on observing suspicious clothing, hairstyle, walk, or body posture, the state Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.

Hardly sounds revolutionary, eh?

McGrory disagrees. Because, in this instance, the guy getting frisked on the street really did have a gun:

Who's protecting the civil rights of the elderly residents who would never dare venture outside after dark? The teenagers who can't shoot baskets in area parks because they're too dangerous? The young adults who aren't ever really told that there might be a better way?

In the abstract, the state Appeals Court is absolutely right. Civil rights are critical in a society like ours, and a criminal's rights are no less important than those of the most God-fearing citizens.

Apparently, you have to be a good, honest person to have rights. The insanely stupid part of this is those very seem teenagers shooting baskets in the park ... are just as likely to be frisked on their way home.

Let's really look at this argument here. Haircuts? Dangerous streets? Most people don't move more than once a year. Most people keep a haircut for at least a month. McGrory's arguing, really arguing, that police should freely be able to frisk the same guy every night for a month, walking home on the same street with the same hair cut.

He's really incensed the case was thrown out because the guy was guilty of having a gun. OK, but what if he wasn't? What if he were the kid coming back from the basketball court getting stopped by the cops every night for a month?

This isn't to take anything away from the police officers' sense of judgment, but on the whole that same sense of judgment is imperfect at best. Heck, the same newspaper reported just that last week. Some Fark.com submitter summed it up perfectly:

Police search minorities more often than whites, even though crackers are more likely to be carrying contraband

How many more guys with guns were searched by cops tonight? How many innocent guys with a "bad guy" hairdo and a "bad guy" walk?

Bullet points

MeTheSheeple loves it when several of his interests converge. Thanks to CBS News and other outlets, we've got that.

"CBS News Investigates" just aired this relatively lengthy package about the effectiveness of the 5.56mm bullets being fired by Americans. This fresh investigative story, unfortunately, is cast almost verbatim as this two-year-old story on "The American Thinker" -- whatever that is. One of the chief arguments made by the main source involves a three-year-old incident. And the guy making the claims has been arguing the same thing for several decades.

That's not to say there's no worthwhile story here. Clearly, the effectiveness of the U.S. military is incredibly important. If our soldiers can't kill or disable the bad guys, more of the good guys will get hurt.

Yet MeTheSheeple is appalled at how CBS likely was approached by a source who has consistently said the same thing for two years, and then bills it as an investigative piece. Worse, CBS News offers an uncut interview with the one source (see sidebar there, "Are these bullets duds?") but no uncut interviews with sources with opposing viewpoints. There's also no apparent effort to contact troops in the field or troops who have returned from the field, some of whom might just have something to offer.

MeTheSheeple won't pretend to be an expert, but he will point out several things. First, the M-16 was designed to fire high-velocity rounds that tumbled and fragmented. Early on, the rifle was changed with tighter rifling that reduced the tumbling. Then the United States developed a different bullet with a solid steel core -- to penetrate protective armor -- that didn't really fragment. Then the United States adopted the M-4 carbine, which has a shorter barrel length, which reduces velocity. Suddenly, it's no longer such a high-velocity, tumbling, fragmenting bullet.

True experts can better say what all this means. The reading isn't very pleasant but you can get an idea of what's going on.

Whatever happens, the current United States 5.56mm round is the same basic bullet used by other NATO countries, plus countless others. It's also not drastically different from the round used by Russia since the 1970s. People can argue about "the better bullet" back and forth ad nauseum, and have, for years. One classic example is this Usenet thread, which reached 119 messages. Amidst all the technical stuff, MeTheSheeple was amused by this opinion favoring 7.62x51mm bullets over the 5.56x45mm bullets:

However, if you're involved in more serious social interacting with people who hold views which differ radically from yours, at 500m the 7.62(mm) makes for a more convincing argument.

Add: Via a Fark.com discussion, this link.