Casey D

So in your scenario, Jax would be #5 seed, Buffalo #6, and Jets out. If Buffalo finished 9-7, and everything else in your scenario remained constant, Jets would be #5 seed, and Jax #6.

Ties are broken w/i the division first, and then between divisions. If Buffalo and Jets both finish 10-6, then we finish 2nd in Division and Jets 3rd. The Jets don't get to use their inter-division tiebreaker unless and until we get into the dance first. That's how it works...CD

Correct, if Jets, Baltimore, Jax and Denver all win this week--week 16. Realistically, if Baltimore wins on the road and sweeps Pittsburgh this week, I doubt they will lose at home to Miami in Week 17. As to Jax and Denver, it seems to me week 16 and 17 losses are about equally likely. Jets could drop 2, losing to NE would not be a shock, and the Rams are much better at home, and should have Bulger back for week 17.

The Bills won handily, and we got the two biggest losses we needed from the teams with better records(Balt and Denver). Jax winning made the day not perfect, but it is much easier to take because they were already 7-6. Baltimore or KC winning and we were on life support, particularly Baltimore. Baltimore must lose to Pitt, and that takes care of them(assuming we go 10-6). Jets lose to NE-- go to 10-5. That means we need some luck to get 2 of 3 things we still need, another Jets loss at Rams, and a single loss from Jax and Denver. Denver is fading, I think they find a way to lose somehow. So that leaves hoping Jax to lose to either Houston or Oakland, or the Jets losing to Rams. Jax already has lost to Houston and Tennessee, while beating Indy and at GB, so they are the wild card here(no pun intended). But they are inconsistent enough to make a letdown from yesterday possible, so we have reason to be hopeful...CD

IF we run the table, and the Jets lose to NE, and either St. Louis or Seattle, we would finish 2nd in the East, ahead of the Jets...CD

About Johnson, what you now say you said back in 1998-99 is just not true. You were jihad-like in your crusade for Johnson, and vicious against Flutie. Some of your posts were so vitriolic they were literally incomprehensible. Your suggesting that all you said was give RJ a chance, is equivalent to saying that Hitler had nothing against Jews, he just was not fond of religions other than his own. You were truly a Johnson fanatic in the days of the Johnson-Flutie wars. How correct were you about Rob Johnson? Careful now, we could look it up... CD

ICE is the guy back in 1998-99 who maintained that Rob Johnson was the second coming of Johnny Unitas, and that it was an outrage we were retarding his development by playing Flutie. Now he is saying the same thing with Losman and Bledsoe, in the Johnson and Flutie roles respectively. And just like he was sure about Johnson, he is sure about Losman. So when the Bills win with Bledsoe, it upsets him because it indicates his expert analysis might be wrong. So although he'll say the PC thing--he's happy the Bills won--in fact he wants them to fall apart so he can blame Bledsoe and prove that he is an expert at evaluating QBs. Thus his negativity. Oh, and if the team goes to the playoffs at some point with Bledsoe, he will, in Orwellian fashion, claim that Bledsoe was the man all along. Because he turned on Johnson like a rabid dog in 2000-01, once he understood he was wrong about Johnson's skills. So don't worry too much about his views, it's really much more about him than the team.

Fair enough, perhaps there are not even exceptions, which further strengthens the point...CD

The big rush to start Losman. If the Bills finish, say 9-7, meaning 9-3 over the last 12 games with Bledsoe at the helm, why would you want Losman to start in 2005? With a 9-3 finish, something like 11-5 would seem quite possible for 2005. Unless you were certain there would be no drop-off in play from Bledsoe to Losman--which seems highly unlikely when you look at the play of many 1st round QBs early in their careers(I know there are exceptions, but they are exceptions, e.g. Roethlisberger)-- why would you want to jeopardize that, when the team has not been to the playoffs for 5 years. I understand getting Losman experience would be great, but not if it cost the Bills a couple of games and the playoffs next year. It seems evident that this team is coming together with Bledsoe at the helm. I doubt that will change unless Bledsoe shows regression again, but not until. Losman can wait.

You would think we would get more from a hand picked interim leader.

Another invasion?

The apparent reason is that when they went through Al Qaqaa in late March or early April(2-3)--the facility is about 35 miles south of Bagdad--they were in a hurry, and finding no WMD, kept on moving to Bagdad. With a relatively small force, there was not enough manpower to secure the facility. When they returned 10 days later, most everything had been looted.

Although I am technologically challenged to provide a link to MSNBC, here is a quote from its website for those who are interested: "At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S. led coalition troops had searched Al Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed the explosives were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity."

Although the veracity of the WH is not in question, there are problems with the WH timeline on the missing weapons. The WH relies on an NBC report of April 10 2004 that the weapons were already gone by that time. That is what CNN is reporting. Other sources show, however, that US troops reached Al Qaqaa in March, and the weapons were there. That is why NBC itself is not reporting the story that CNN is reporting. At that point(March 2004), the site was not secured. When troops returned in April, the weapons were gone. But as the WH has also said, this is no big deal anyway, there are lots of weapons in Iraq, so I guess this is OK.

Reading more about this, the administration was not even informed until 10/15/04 that the explosives were missing, based on news accounts. So if this old news, it only indicates you are more in the loop on this than the WH, which I hope is not the case.

Oh OK---it was the branching out part that confused me. But I must say, bloated bureaucracies or not, securing 380 tons of some of the world's most powerful conventional explosives seems like a pretty obvious thing to do. That is especially true since the whole war was predicated on securing WMD. I mean, if we had found Sarin gas or nuclear devices, would we have left them unsecured. I guess this seems to me--and I'm no expert-- a major error. And one that has left the world in much greater danger, given that just one pound of this stuff brought down Pan Am 103. Multiply that amount by 760,000 times, and knowing it is strong enough to detonate a nuclear device---gosh, you would thing we were more competent than that to just leave it lying around.

Just fyi, I think you mean "roles" not "rolls" Are you suggesting that the Army--which would seem to be a core govenrmental function, if I follow you-- has taken "a hit in quality" because there is a Department of Education, Homeland Security, and EPA, to name a few newer governmental agencies?

I'm not sure I follow--they warned us about it before the invasion, but we did nothing to secure it? I mean, it isn't new news that terrorists now have their hands on 380 tons of virulent explosives? Are you saying we have known about this for a while, because I guess I missed it. Looks like alot of other folks missed it too, given that it is the news story of the day. If it's old stuff, I apologize.

I'm not sure I understand how some people's desire to have "the government play to roll[sic] of parent" has anything to do with securing a major munitions dump in Iraq that was monitored by the UN pre-invasion, but if you think this is no big deal, then I'll accept that I guess.

No, this is new. It's all over the news, not just the liberal Times. I'm sure, however, we'll get a good explanation from the Administration later today.

Do you think no one at the White House thought about(or knew about) this major munitions dump for 2 years? Gee, that concerns me too, since the point of invasion was to secure weapons of mass destruction--I guess I would have thought smething like this might have been on their radar screen. But I suppose you are right, this is no big deal, and the worst thing we could do is blame the Administration or anyone else for providing terrorists with 380 tons of high grade explosives.

Perhaps you are right. How would feel, however, if the story proves accurate?

How can that be? We failed to secure these explosives when we went into Iraq, and the terrorists have been looting the site for over a year. Indeed, reports indicate that we still do not have control over the munitions site, and looting was still going on yesterday. Is this how we are fighting the war in Iraq, the war on terror? This is scary stuff, I hope there is some explanation that this is no big deal.

That seems right.. and passion is probably better than apathy, even if misguided. But it is still not profitable use of time to try and persuade the unpersuadable. Besides, if you can't do it, I know I can't in light of your moniker at the bottom of your page...lol...CD

Fair enough about zealotry--it does go both ways. It is just generally in America today,however, that the media zealotry comes mostly from the right. O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox News, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Wall Street Journal editorial page, Washington Times, Regnery etc etc, --the market place over the last 10 years has shown that right wing demagogery is profitable. There is little equivalence on the left, with some newer exceptions such as Franken and Moore, who lefties feel are just evening up the score a bit. They are not the big business that the right wing media is. So conservative, nasty demagogery has been in vogue since the mid-1990s, and is very closely reflected here on the board..with the accompanying rudeness and lack of real debate--that is why people like Limbaugh screen their calls, they don't want real debate with real facts, they deliver propaganda and people eat it up and advertisers pay millions... it seems to me the board largely reflects these larger trends...CD