War on Iraq

[Jahya]

Originally posted by SnookBooger
The "Cold War" is over and we got bored. Now we have the "War on Terrorism." We were trapped in a "Cold War Psychosis" and did not know what to do with ourselves. By the way, have you seen the MOAB (Mother of all Bombs)? Looks pretty spiffy to me...

Yeah the MoaB is essentially a nuke without nuclear payload from the way this article I read described it. The "Brass" is saying this weapon is primarily for "psychological warfare." In essence, the explosion so closely resembles a nuclear explosion (giant mushroom-like cloud rising high into the sky) that it is supposed to spread fear of nuclear attack or something like that and cause the enemy to throw down their weapons and run away.

My question is this: If in appearance this bomb closely resembles a nuclear explosion, wouldn't it stand to reason that the enemy would just be more pissed that they've been nuked and retaliate accordingly??? Even in Iraq who, in theory has no nukes, they still have biological/chemical weapons of mass destruction (based on reports to the UN by the U.S. and Britain) which would probably be the course of retaliation. And since they cannot actually launch on the U.S., who will suffer that wrath? Israel.... ?

 

[Iceman]

Jahya, I don't know where your gettingyour "facts', but they simply do not bare up well according to history.

The Japanese at the time of the dropping of the TWO bombs were completely in full retreat and poised no threat whatsoever to the west coast of the US. Unless of course they had developed some kind of super teleportation device unknown to us.

Mar. 10, 1945 - Tokyo firebombed

334 B-29s with 2 kilotons of incindiaries at 6000 ft.
182 oil-gel M47 100lb; 1520 gelled gas M69 6lb
15 sq. mi. burned, 267,171 buildings, 100,000 killed,
1 million homeless, in 6 hours.

I don't know where they were pushing forward at as you stated because, everywhere on the planet earth at this time they were in full retreat and pretty much only on the homeland Japanese Islands.

Apr. 1, 1945 - Okinawa

458 ships land 193,852 U.S. troops
7374 killed, 31,807 wounded
107,539 Japanese and Okinawans killed

as you can see even their own home island of Okinawa had been captured months in advance of the bombings.

Don't mean to be picking on you or nothing, but strongly suggest you do some serious studying up on the subject, and simply watching the history channel ain't going to cut it.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by SnookBooger
The "Cold War" is over and we got bored. Now we have the "War on Terrorism." We were trapped in a "Cold War Psychosis" and did not know what to do with ourselves. By the way, have you seen the MOAB (Mother of all Bombs)? Looks pretty spiffy to me...

I experienced the tremor from the blast and the BOOM when it was detonated on tuesday... was in panama city... a short distance away from the AFB that was the test bed...

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Jahya


... and in the end, the great Roman Empire still fell....

not to the carthaginians though... in fact it is BECAUSE of the punic wars that rome became the empire that it did...

I understand your sentiment but the arguments you are raising and the points you are basing your arguments on are not very strong... they are open to interpretation either which way...

concerning the MOAB>.. its like the daisy cutter... but bigger... and effectively is more a PR weapon than a practical weapon...

the fact that it was TESTED means that it is unlikely to be out in the event of a war in iraq...

also the device's detonation and the way it works... it sends out a SHOCK WAVE which is one of the primary intentions... it is not designed to incinerate things in a 5-10 mile radius or whatever...

nuclear explosions are MASSIVE because of fission.. a regular device will not have the same effect...

 

[Tabula Rasa]

Originally posted by Jahya
My question is this: If in appearance this bomb closely resembles a nuclear explosion, wouldn't it stand to reason that the enemy would just be more pissed that they've been nuked and retaliate accordingly??? Even in Iraq who, in theory has no nukes, they still have biological/chemical weapons of mass destruction (based on reports to the UN by the U.S. and Britain) which would probably be the course of retaliation. And since they cannot actually launch on the U.S., who will suffer that wrath? Israel.... ?

The only missiles Iraq ever had are Scuds, they are to short sighted to hit any EU country (not to mention the US), the only potential target is Israel (in this case, there where some more back in 89).
the only real risk is chemical and conventional sense biological weapons probably wont survive the trip (as short is it may be, Scuds are old missiles that aren't designed for this kind of usage).
and all that assuming they have those weapons, which is not a fact at all.

if this war will ever happen (and it probably will sense the US is set to do it with or without support from anyone, and someone will always support them) the Iraqis will be the only one to suffer, they have no military power atm, and no one will be there to stop the US troops from just bombing them to hell.

 

[Sazar]

benny... I think your bovine avatar has mad cow... its jerking around incesently...

 

[Tabula Rasa]

leave my barking trance cow alone!
Its "Special"...

 

[Iceman]

Here is a interesting article on the ending of the war in the pacific and the downfall of Japan.

http://www.microworks.net/pacific/battles/end_of_japan.htm

as you can see, US and British forces had Japan surrounded with aircraft carriers and all of Japan's naval forces had been essentially destroyed, the allied forces had surrounded Japan for about a month with no losses taken, so basically the Japanese were done, accept for the surrender part. Then the a-bombs were dropped.

end of story

 

[Kr0m]

Personally, I'd like to see this dealt with peacefully. But with someone like Saddam Hussein, that option is unlikely. I do think something has to be done about his government. Who will run the country afterwards and how long we have to occupy Iraq if Saddem is taken care of, is another long thread/post, and a whole new can of worms.

It will be interesting how many Iraqi officials defect if he has been taken out of power. Are they truely loyal to him or are they just so scared of being executed by him to voice anything against him. We know he's executed previous unloyal Iraqi's. He will never totally disarm. UN can inspect only what they can see. Don't you think he's learned from the previous gulf war? He's purposely installed miltary targets near or next to civilian areas etc...(Hopefully US precision bombs do their job). He's drug his feet with the inspectors for the past 12 years and now with the US shifting their focus from Bin Laden to Iraq he's throwing the UN inspectors crumbs to chew on. This alone is a simple slap to the face to the UN and the World community.

A note on France... France has much pending or has already invested a lot into Iraq's rebuilding from the previous war. Alcatel with the communications, Elf Oil has and/or currently in talks with Iraq to harvest major oil fields in Iraq. A Major French Aerospace company has provided Iraq with 1/3 of Iraq's Airforce(why this was allowed by the World community or the UN boggles my mind, Russian Mig's are the other 2/3).

As to why Germany or other countries's motives to refusing to accept resolutions, I don't know, but it's unlikely it's because of the potential for Iraqi's civilian casualties. Maybe they have other investments or potential investments involved as well. I thought I heard a while back that Germany was trying to or did make an Oil deal with Iraq.

As for N.Korea, yeah they should and will be watched very carefully. And I'm sure the UN will handle this one better. It seems like they see N.Korea as more of a threat with their nuclear potential and hostility.

Another country that will be/or should be watched is Iran. They're in testing or have completed tests with nuclear facilities & enriched uranium.

All in all, I believe countries have the right to protect themselves with arms etc... but once they've done the dirty deed of take over attempts of countries etc... then they shouldn't be allowed any arms at all and should be invaded by the world community and dealt with appropriately with new governments installed. Inspections won't work once it's already too late. Since we already know the capabilities of someone like Hussein, why protest for peace & wait until he strikes again? I can see if he's never attacked anyone before, but he's repeatedly caused chaos in his region.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Kr0m
Personally, I'd like to see this dealt with peacefully. But with someone like Saddam Hussein, that option is unlikely.

or.... with someone like bush ?



also do not negate the US contributions to iraqi leadership and its arsenal

we have not exactly stood idle on the by-line...

worlds LARGEST exporter of military arms = the US...

 

[ZipTriX]

my opinion.....deal with it.

It seems as each day and veto that goes by in the UN, the US and Britian are making excuses to attack Iraq. 12 yrs and Iraq has done nothing. Bush should have never made the statement of "the man who tried to kill my father". Looks like he has a "personal" issue, than a political one. He also needs to stop linking Sept 11 with Iraq. There is no proof, so there is no need to imply such a statement. As far as North Korea, my theory is they want money from the USA. They have none to provide for their people. The US hands out billions of dollars for the sake of bribery. I don't blame North Korea for what they are doing. I also hope that the US experiences repercussions of this war. Maybe then the US will stop acting like "big brother" and start concentrating on it's own problems.

 

[Kr0m]

Re: my opinion.....deal with it.

<SNIP>Originally posted by Ziptrx
... I also hope that the US experiences repercussions of this war.

What kind of repercussions are you talking about?

 

[Mubbers]

Not much been said in this thread about the probable existence of Chemical and Biological weapons in Iraq.

In my opinion we most definitely need to go into Iraq and find out whether these things exist or not.

Nuclear weapons are horrible but at least the effects (when used individually) are 'local' however a bio-weapon unless carefully developed could sweep out of control across the whole planet and cause human loss of life on a scale never before seen.

I believe it has been mentioned that the likely thrust of Iraqi research into bio-wepaons has been to combine the killing power of Ebola with the persistance and communicability of Smallpox. I hope not!

But regardless of this we already know that Anthrax & VX has been created in Iraq so I don't need anymore convincing as to the need to get rid of Saddam and his regime - immediately.

Put it another way, I'm not willing to gamble the lives of my wife, children, family and friends against the word of a psycopathic dictator.

Mubbers

 

[Mubbers]

Re: Re: my opinion.....deal with it.

Originally posted by Kr0m
What kind of repercussions are you talking about?

A funny one that...

What I think is being said is that if we have this war then Britain and the US will become targets for Islamic terrorist attack.

Firstly we are already and have been for some time, should we not therefore be doing somthing about it?

Secondly if the potential method of these attacks is the use of WOMD by state sponsored terrorists then isn't reasonable to disarm a rogue nation of WOMD and prevent it from further sponsoring of terrorist organisations?

and,

Thirdly if the implication is that retaliation will follow an invasion of Iraq by allied forces then the threat really confirms the need for the action to take place. Do we doubt they have weapons capable of great harm? No! Do we doubt they have the will to use them? No! So why are we letting them hold a gun to our heads?

Mubbers

 

[Mubbers]

Originally posted by Sazar
or.... with someone like bush ?

I think that's the whole point though. Behaving peacefully for the last 12 years hasn't exactly resulted in Iraq complying with the UN resolutions previoulsy passed to the intention of getting Iraq to disarm.

While the posturing by America and Britain is quite rightly seen as warlike it has produced significant results to this end and in a very short period of time.

Please note: These results, the re-admission of inspectors and the discoveries that been made since are entirely because of the stance of America and Britain. Countries like france who oppose the pressure being put on Iraq have achieved nothing. france did not table 1441 and it is not prepared to enforce it. This "peace-loving" nation has had no part whatsoever in acheiving the progress made so far.

If france and other nations derail this attempt to disarm Iraq then nothing further will be achieved. It is only because America and Britain are prepared to put troops on the ground (to our own considerable cost) that Iraq truely believes it is time to co-operate.

If Iraq does not fully co-operate then we have to back our words with action. And once again it is quite clear that some countries will not be helping to achieve the goal of disarming Iraq.

Mubbers

 

[Perris Calderon]

I for one, love the results of all of the posturing and saber rattling, and so far, these efforts are well done indeed.

if this was the intention...congratulation Mr Bush.

if however, his intention is to start a war, let's point out;

When our presidents Father started the war against iraq, iraq was actively agressing other countries...this was a new threat, and needed to be dealt with as it was dealt with....except that the original effort stopped short of the desired result.

however, This president is the person that's bringing a new threat, and this president is (it seems) trying to start a war in iraq when iraq is clearly less of a threat then ever before.

he thinks he can do this because we were attacked by another country on september eleventh...and he thinks that Americans are now looking for revenge, so might as well take revenge on his fathers folly.

in other words, just a war for the sake of a war, and not the war for the sake of any new threat.

so, if no war comes from this saber rattling, then Mr Bush did a fine job.

if war does come

then this president is the agressor, and not iraq...clearly in an attempt to distract his constituants from the results of his presidency

he will either create a great accomplishment and legasy

or he will be the instrument in starting an unprovoked war, for no new threat

 

[Kr0m]

dealer: some good points. Except, the simple fact that Hussein has been rebuilding his arms, not fully complying to the UN and etc... is an act of aggression. Especially since he's been being "watched" since the gulf war.

Mubbers: Why would France be for war against Iraq, read my previous post about France... They have a lot at stake. If a new Iraqi government came out of this because of a war, do you think France would get the same deals they are now for oil and other items? Unlikely.

 

[Mubbers]

Originally posted by Kr0m

Mubbers: Why would France be for war against Iraq, read my previous post about France... They have a lot at stake. If a new Iraqi government came out of this because of a war, do you think France would get the same deals they are now for oil and other items? Unlikely.

Yes - Exactly! But the the press popularises the french stance as a glorious fight against the terror of war, making chirac out to be some kind of nobel peace prize winner in the making.

However like you point out the real reason for frances position has nothing to do with a love of peace and all things good in the world but more to do with money.

An like I said they seem to be taking the credit for moving the world away from war and towards peace when infact the US and Britain are the countries that are actually moving Iraq towards disarmament and to date without an invasion!

Mubbers

 

[Mubbers]

of course, it's the obligation as a head of state of iraq to try to grow

just like india

just like china

just like israel

and just like most nations that now have nuclear arms, "illegaly"

so, no, there is no new threat

Well actually more like Nazi Germany Dealer - do you recall that invasion of Kuwait, all the looting pillaging etc...

I know it's only a minor detail and he hasn't done it since but I'm sure it indicates a certain modus operandi! What do you think?

As far as the old chestnut you bring up again "no new threat" Well that's as may be and still not yet proven either way. But hell the old threat's good enough for me and really that's what the UN resolutions are all about - confirming the disposal of weapons constructed in the 80's and early 90's.

Mubbers

 

[ZipTriX]

Re: Re: my opinion.....deal with it.

Originally posted by Kr0m
What kind of repercussions are you talking about?

Economic downfall. With that happening more damage to the US will follow. If Bush alienates his allies, like he is beginning to do, not only will he lose support but he will also diminish the economic relations with those countries.

It is very distrubing to see and hear people talk about America and the rights it gives to Americans. Once Americans use their right to free speech, they are being criticized for speaking out against the war and Bush. Others are claiming that they are against the troops. I support the US military personnal and understand that they are doing their job, but I feel Bush hasn't provided anything concrete to begin an attack. Like I said, when Bush made his stupid remark of "he tried to kill my father", he made it appear to be more personal than political. When he kept linking Iraq and Sept 11 in the same sentence, it made it appear as an excuse to attack Iraq. There are too many questions that are unanswered. Until they are answered and with UN backing there should be no war. Also, the one who demands that french fries and french toast should be called "freedom" fries and "freedom" toast, should rethink his moronic demand. Along with those who want to pass a bill to "bring home the fallen soliders that are buried in France". If a family wants to bring home a family member buried there, they should pay for it....not the taxpayers. America has now reached a point of showing to the world that the ego is to big to admit that others are right.