Jul 20 2008
Only Journalists And Liberals Would Confuse “Schedule” And “Conditions”
OMG – how much brain damage did the elitist school system do to this nation? The reason I ask is because those of us who went to public schools seem to have come through the ordeal sane, but those with Ivy League educations seem to have lost all their marbles – especially the journalists!
How many elementary school graduates understand the difference between a ‘schedule’ and ‘conditions’? Pretty simple stuff one would think. A ‘schedule’ is a list of dates when things must or should happen. To have a schedule-driven plan is to take any actions, even risky ones, to keep the schedule dates. ‘Conditions’ are a list of characteristics, events and/or configurations which describe something. Condition-based plans drive to results (optimal or minimal). The next step is not taken until conditions are established to proceed.
The US Government has had seen the battle between schedule-driven and condition-driven plans before. Mindless or careless or impatient adherence to schedules over conditions has led to some of this nation’s most horrific disasters. Let me share two such examples from NASA. They are well known as the Challenger and Columbia Shuttle disasters.
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Image of The Challenger DisasterÂ
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Image of The Columbia DisasterÂ
Both disasters happened because conditions were thrown aside as the driver before taking the next step – in these cases a launch. Each time conditions were NOT optimal met, not even minimally, but schedule took precedence disaster happened. There is no clearer example of why only fools believe in schedules – dangerous fools at that.
When the government drives to schedules and ignores conditions people die. Obama and the liberal SurrenderMedia have conveniently forgotten this. In fact, they seem to have forgotten what the difference is between ‘schedules‘ and ‘conditions‘. Is this confusion deliberate in order to help Obama win votes? Is this focused amnesia regarding our historic run-in with the disasters that have resulted from similar confusion a dangerous act of malicious and premeditated disinformation on the part of the Surrendermedia? Are there no boundaries of decency those on the left will violate to surrender Iraq? Apparently not.
Great insight. One can compare it to Nixon’s decision to establish a schedule for withdrawl and Vietnamization instead of following the advice of General Abrams, the new commander of US who was establishing conditions, the defeat of the insurgency, proposed offensive action in Cambodia and Laos, and the building of a conventional capacity in the ARVN. Obamessiah wants a schedule just like Nixon.
Hi AJ,
I understand your post but libs won’t get it.
You need to explain how sticking to schedules doomed these two
space flights, from frozen O-rings through to refusal to examine
the ice damage.
Good choice of reasons why schedules must not dominate,
but you can’t assume that everyone understands logic as you do.
Come to think of it, at dkos and infoshop and rcj2, logic is the enemy,
but it’s worth a try.
Conditions are the tool of a leader. Schedules are the tool of an accountant.
In the world of Program Management every human endeavor has three components tied, inseparably in a triangle; Scope(conditions), Schedule and Cost. They are independent legs of what is reffered to as the Triple Constraint. You cannot mess with one with affecting the others. War is a human endeavor. The triple contraint applies here as well. Conditions and Schedule are independent. If you mash them together the Triple Constraint will force you to completely unmanageable costs.
What cost are you willing to pay BO? I bet you have no concept of this what so ever.
This is fundamental management 101.
i know y’all have a hard time thinking about more than one small item at a time…way too complex for you i guess…so this will probably come as a shock but a schedule can be varied according to conditions. the point is to have a goal and not a never-ending commitment…or a hundred years as mcsame says. in the bogus shuttle analogy you would never schedule a launch but just wait for some ideal conditions, that you can’t even describe, to happen. then i guess you would just wake up one morning and decide to have a launch. right. in the real world (not the world of far right fringe blogs) a shuttle launch can be scheduled and if conditions are wrong it can be, and should have been, delayed. postponed. this is how goals work. obama has always — ALWAYS — said that withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. this is how adults operate. they set goals. and they evaluate as they proceed.
for tomanon to talk about unmanageable costs is nothing short of laughable. how much more unmanageable can you get than the two or three trillion dollars we have already borrowed?