#41
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Hey Chung
Bill C wrote:
On Mar 7, 12:11 am, Raptor wrote: wrote: On Mar 6, 4:31 am, "Bill C" wrote: ... I'm in total agreement on hanging Bush and Co. after the election, as long as you don't hold responsible those who voted based on the cooked intelligence. If your honest you've got to give Hillary and friends a free pass on this one. They thought they took a responsible stand based on solid information. No freakin way. Sure everyone assumed Saddam had WMD. But anyone with half a brain cell could also see that the 'intelligence' had been and was being cooked, even then, and it was clear to anyone with half a brain cell that WMD was just the latest in a string of justifications anyway. Many people were talking about this openly and in public at the time. Hillary and Co. cast their votes pro-war because it was the popular thing to do. No free passes. If you look at what they said during the debate over the AUMF, most Democrats were careful to express support for nothing more than a strong, unyielding stance against Saddam's Iraq. But you're otherwise right. Anyone paying close enough attention could see that the intel didn't back up the rhetoric, that the justifications changed from day to day, and that there was a huge black hole under "What happens next." -- Lynn Wallace Jesus loves Osama bin Laden- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Glad you know more about what's being provided in classified briefings to Congress, and other people in Washington from here than they did. I'd say that Hillary and folks made the safe choice based on what they were seeing, Either they were supposed to have forseen the biggest criminal abuse/misuse of intel since the Spanish American war and bet that there was no threat, or vote the way they did. Are you one of the clowns saying that the intel that Al-Q was dangerous was wrong under Clinton when he did nothing, but suddenly was right under Bush and he should've done something. You are a clown, Just like Kunich, it's about ideology. We ignored intel pointing to something happening leading to 9/11, the USS Cole, the Khobar towers, the Beirut Marine barracks, and I could keep going but none off that matters to you, even though there was serious discussion of WMD. It just as easily have gone the other way. They did nothing, and Hussein handed one of those missing Soviet suitcase nukes (not myth) to Al-Q and a US city disappeared. Then you'd just have kept your mouth shut, or more likely,be screaming that they SHOULD have taken action. It really amazes me that I end up defending the politicians I like least, other than Bush and Co., from the total nutjobs on the wacko fringe of their own party. I'd bet your a Kucinich supporter. Bill C I don't claim to know more than the classified briefings, but for someone paying attention, the countervailing intelligence WAS noted by the press: Iraq was 5+ years from a bomb, had no WMD delivery that could pose a serious threat to anyone but Kurds, their new missiles were if anything only technically in violation of the UN sanctions. Saddam was being built up as an imminent threat to the US and ANYONE paying attention knew it wasn't so. All you had to do was pay attention, but these stories were buried on page A14, not blared on A1. OTOH, we knew that he was very much opposed to our aims, and there was ample reason to continue the policy of aggressive containment that had worked for a decade. All it cost us was a bunch of jet fuel and the occasional bomb. It didn't help the Iraqi people a bit, but they were better off than most of them are now, and it kept us safe from Saddam. Suitcase nukes from Saddam is just re-badged "smoking gun in the form a mushroom cloud." Go tell it to someone gullible. The FBI didn't pin the Cole bombing on AQ until after Shrub took office. For every other attack they made against us, Clinton reacted proportionately. Under Shrub, it was 8 months of nothing. Then 9/11, and all of a sudden it's his highest priority. -- Lynn Wallace Jesus loves Osama bin Laden |
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#42
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Hey Chung
Tom Kunich wrote:
"Raptor" wrote in message ... wrote: But you're otherwise right. Anyone paying close enough attention could see that the intel didn't back up the rhetoric, that the justifications changed from day to day, and that there was a huge black hole under "What happens next." And of course we could really rely on newspaper accounts of what the intelligence community knew and was handing out to those with top level security clearances who of course would be so very open about it. Actually, yes. -- Lynn Wallace Jesus loves Osama bin Laden |
#43
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Hey Chung
* "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com a écrit "Davey Crockett" wrote in message ... But Saddam was one hell of a Man and he kept the lid on that bunch of Vipers pretty good. Much better than Bush ever could dream of, and for sure without killing 655,000 of them and making another 1,000,000 home less And provided you didn't start any revolutions, you could do whatever the heck you liked Sure, you could drain the marshes and murder all the marsh arabs. You could drop poison gas on the Kurds. And of course you could enter into an eight year war with Iran and end up with a minimum of some 750,000 casualties. Davey can read the Duelfer report himself and see what was happening after that. You poor BrainWashed ******* http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0703-01.htm -- Le vent à Dos Davey Crockett [No 4Q to reply] The News CNN and SKY won't show you http://azurservers.com:9080 |
#44
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Hey Chung
On Mar 7, 10:05 am, Raptor wrote:
Suitcase nukes from Saddam is just re-badged "smoking gun in the form a mushroom cloud." Go tell it to someone gullible. Like PBS Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl.../comments.html The Center for Arms Control: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/pro...tnw/chap5.html The Center for Defense Information: http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/cooperation.cfm The FBI didn't pin the Cole bombing on AQ until after Shrub took office. For every other attack they made against us, Clinton reacted proportionately. Under Shrub, it was 8 months of nothing. Then 9/11, and all of a sudden it's his highest priority. -- Lynn Wallace Jesus loves Osama bin Laden- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Lynn it's not whether Clinton reacted properly or not, my feeling is that he didn't even come close, but whether they had credible intel buzz beforehand that some of these things were likely going to happen. Just about everything I've seen says that we had at least some people warning that actions in these areas were likely, and dismissed them as not being solid enough to take precautions for. Bad choices. I personally would rather take some action, and plan for the worst case, which is what Congress authorized for Iraq. Rather than discount, again, the intel and apologize later, again. Let's face it, until Iraq most of America really didn't give a **** when US service members were killed by terrorists. "Hey they volunteered, and it's part of the job. No big deal. With people here in the Valley cheering dead "fascist scumbags". Lot's of people here agree with Ward Churchill that we got exactly what we deserved and it's just too bad it wasn't military getting killed though. Bush ****ed up every way possible, but it would be just as bad, and you'd be screaming, if they wrote the intel off and we got hit again. Our history is to NOT take this stuff seriously, right after 9/11 Bush exploited that history to create fear and get what he wanted. We were wrong in the past, and Bush was wrong. There were Russian advisors on the ground, in Baghdad, when we entered the city who were still working with Hussein, operating equipment that was banned under the UN sanctions, that they had recently brought in, during the sanctions. That put's a dent in the credibility of the denials. Blix repeatedly reported that the Iraqis were NOT cooperating and he couldn't say what level of cooperation was going on between the Russians and Iraq. The "Oil for Food" mess proves that the UN had NO credibility, or accountability as to what was happening. There was every reason to doubt the ability, or the will of the UN to control Iraq, or even get any sort of compliance. The French were lobbying to lift everything to allow ELF, their intelligence service oil company back into Iraq and the cash to start rolling again. Bush took advantage of all of this, and twisted the reality to sell a bill of goods. Congress voted on it based on all of this. If the UN had been even vaguely credible at any point up until then. If Hussein hadn't been playing a bluffing shell game. If Russia, France, and Germany hadn't been pretty openly violating the sanctions for cash, and lobbying to turn Hussein totally loose with little to no real oversight. Etc... Then Bush would've had a much harder sell. It's scary to see Russia still playing exactly the same game in Iran, and protecting them while Iran is playing games with the UN and stalling as much as possible while they scramble to build/get a nuke. China is protecting Sudan in the UN. China, Russia, and Iran are happily working with Chavez who is making no secret of wanting to take Venezuela nuclear. At least it's a little farther away than Cuba was when Russia gave Castro ICBMs. In short there was plenty of background that allowed Bush to cook what he needed to believably. The best lies always contain a kernel of truth. Bill C Bill C |
#45
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Hey Chung
Bill C wrote:
On Mar 7, 10:05 am, Raptor wrote: Suitcase nukes from Saddam is just re-badged "smoking gun in the form a mushroom cloud." Go tell it to someone gullible. Like PBS Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl.../comments.html The Center for Arms Control: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/pro...tnw/chap5.html The Center for Defense Information: http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/cooperation.cfm I don't need to follow the links to know that it is an actual threat. So was Anthrax, botullism, etc., from Iraq finding its way to the US. But invasion was not necessary to prevent it from happening, especially if said invasion creates more terrorists from other sources and inhibits our ability to meet all these new threats. We know what we need to do to prevent a suitcase nuke attack, and we are (presumably) doing it pretty damn well. Further, in the range of threats we face, the suitcase nuke is just one, a lower probability one, and one that's variously easier to thwart than many others. That's why I call it re-badged scare-mongering rhetoric. The FBI didn't pin the Cole bombing on AQ until after Shrub took office. For every other attack they made against us, Clinton reacted proportionately. Under Shrub, it was 8 months of nothing. Then 9/11, and all of a sudden it's his highest priority. -- Lynn Wallace Jesus loves Osama bin Laden- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Lynn it's not whether Clinton reacted properly or not, my feeling is that he didn't even come close, but whether they had credible intel buzz beforehand that some of these things were likely going to happen. Just about everything I've seen says that we had at least some people warning that actions in these areas were likely, and dismissed them as not being solid enough to take precautions for. Bad choices. But the Cole DID take precautions. Same with Khobar Towers and the embassies. They were reasonable, but they were inadequate. More effective would've been to not have our forces in that theater at the time, but that's a whole set of choices we don't seem ready to make (and I don't seriously argue for them here). And Clinton's branch successfully thwarted the Millenium bombing. I personally feel that we gave AQ the attention it deserved. Even if Shrub wasn't asleep at the switch, 9/11 might have happened just as those other attacks did. Plinking a ship or blowing up remote installations are one thing, calling for an aggressive security and combat posture but low-scale and somewhat covert. That's what Clinton did. But 9/11 was over the top and it was time to deploy massively against the enemy. The French said, "We are all Americans," the whole world essentially asked us to please shoot straight, and we "invaded" Afghanistan. I was 100% in favor, and am still in favor of completing that mission. I personally would rather take some action, and plan for the worst case, which is what Congress authorized for Iraq. Rather than discount, again, the intel and apologize later, again. We did "take some action," and were "taking some action." Against AQ, we got caught with our pants down, and it can be argued as you're doing that we should have been more aggressive all along. I don't know. There's always a case for not over-reacting to threats. Against Iraq, we were doing quite well, bombing the place roughly weekly, quarantining the country, taking no **** from Saddam. Facts as developed indicate that we were effective. That's regardless of the intel. Always, we should take action based on the level of threat combined with the confidence of the info. Re Iraq, the old aggressive containment strategy was indicated and, as we've seen, effective. Against AQ, we've learned that we should've been more aggressive. Let's face it, until Iraq most of America really didn't give a **** when US service members were killed by terrorists. "Hey they volunteered, and it's part of the job. No big deal. With people here in the Valley cheering dead "fascist scumbags". Lot's of people here agree with Ward Churchill that we got exactly what we deserved and it's just too bad it wasn't military getting killed though. A terrorist attack against a military target IS less objectionable than one against civilians IMO. The military is prepared, accepts risks, and is the tip of the spear. Acknowledging that, or that the terrorists may have justification for wanting to hurt us, doesn't give them permission to hurt us. It merely provides cause for re-assessing policy and its implications. If they hit us, we hit back. If we know they want to hit us, we prepare & try to preempt them. Bush ****ed up every way possible, but it would be just as bad, and you'd be screaming, if they wrote the intel off and we got hit again. I'm honest. If we had not invaded Iraq, and somehow Saddam decided the gamble was worth it, and gave terrorists something traceable to him, then I'd have said, "Oops." Our history is to NOT take this stuff seriously, right after 9/11 Bush exploited that history to create fear and get what he wanted. I happen to be okay with running some risk. Deploy prudent precautions, make it quite hard but not impossible to hit you, try to be just nice enough that no one's determined enough to take advantage. Freedom involves some risk, and ultimately everyone dies anyway. We were wrong in the past, and Bush was wrong. There were Russian advisors on the ground, in Baghdad, when we entered the city who were still working with Hussein, operating equipment that was banned under the UN sanctions, that they had recently brought in, during the sanctions. That put's a dent in the credibility of the denials. Blix repeatedly reported that the Iraqis were NOT cooperating and he couldn't say what level of cooperation was going on between the Russians and Iraq. The "Oil for Food" mess proves that the UN had NO credibility, or accountability as to what was happening. There was every reason to doubt the ability, or the will of the UN to control Iraq, or even get any sort of compliance. The French were lobbying to lift everything to allow ELF, their intelligence service oil company back into Iraq and the cash to start rolling again. Bush took advantage of all of this, and twisted the reality to sell a bill of goods. Congress voted on it based on all of this. If the UN had been even vaguely credible at any point up until then. If Hussein hadn't been playing a bluffing shell game. If Russia, France, and Germany hadn't been pretty openly violating the sanctions for cash, and lobbying to turn Hussein totally loose with little to no real oversight. Etc... Then Bush would've had a much harder sell. It's scary to see Russia still playing exactly the same game in Iran, and protecting them while Iran is playing games with the UN and stalling as much as possible while they scramble to build/get a nuke. China is protecting Sudan in the UN. China, Russia, and Iran are happily working with Chavez who is making no secret of wanting to take Venezuela nuclear. At least it's a little farther away than Cuba was when Russia gave Castro ICBMs. In short there was plenty of background that allowed Bush to cook what he needed to believably. The best lies always contain a kernel of I can see why people made the decisions and votes they did, I just was never buying what Shrub was selling. As for Russia and China, we can and should expect other nations to protect their interests. Crying over it does no one any good, and our goal should be to simply navigate the smoothest course through all the competing interests. It's not hard, it's just beyond the crew we've got ourselves stuck with. This will change. -- Lynn Wallace Jesus loves Osama bin Laden |
#46
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Hey Chung
"Raptor" wrote in message
... Bill C wrote: On Mar 7, 10:05 am, Raptor wrote: Suitcase nukes from Saddam is just re-badged "smoking gun in the form a mushroom cloud." Go tell it to someone gullible. Like PBS Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl.../comments.html The Center for Arms Control: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/pro...tnw/chap5.html The Center for Defense Information: http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/cooperation.cfm I don't need to follow the links to know that it is an actual threat. So was Anthrax, botullism, etc., from Iraq finding its way to the US. But invasion was not necessary to prevent it from happening, Yes, we could have sent off a stern letter of warning. We know what we need to do to prevent a suitcase nuke attack, and we are (presumably) doing it pretty damn well. My but you're so forceful. By the way, what exactly is it that we're doing about suitcase nukes again? |
#47
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Hey Chung
On Mar 7, 9:07 pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:
"Raptor" wrote in message ... Bill C wrote: On Mar 7, 10:05 am, Raptor wrote: Suitcase nukes from Saddam is just re-badged "smoking gun in the form a mushroom cloud." Go tell it to someone gullible. Like PBS Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...itcase/comment... The Center for Arms Control: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/pro...tnw/chap5.html The Center for Defense Information: http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/cooperation.cfm I don't need to follow the links to know that it is an actual threat. So was Anthrax, botullism, etc., from Iraq finding its way to the US. But invasion was not necessary to prevent it from happening, Yes, we could have sent off a stern letter of warning. We know what we need to do to prevent a suitcase nuke attack, and we are (presumably) doing it pretty damn well. My but you're so forceful. By the way, what exactly is it that we're doing about suitcase nukes again? We've been over this befo http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/ 8f1cbaf9cef1118b http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020923.htm "Suitcase" nuclear weapons: - probably existed - are very low yield; nobody's going to cause a Hiroshima with one - reports of them going missing are unreliable and probably not true - any portable nuclear weapons that went missing in the 1990s are completely inoperable by now The Center for Arms Control page that Bill linked refers to the CNS study I linked above, whose conclusion is that old Russian "suitcase" nukes are not a threat but we could use more information about what the Russians made (good luck getting that from Putin, though, no matter what GWB says about seeing into Putin's heart). Ben RBR Dept. of Known Unknowns |
#48
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Hey Chung
On Mar 8, 1:23 am, "
wrote: On Mar 7, 9:07 pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote: "Raptor" wrote in message ... Bill C wrote: On Mar 7, 10:05 am, Raptor wrote: Suitcase nukes from Saddam is just re-badged "smoking gun in the form a mushroom cloud." Go tell it to someone gullible. Like PBS Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...itcase/comment... The Center for Arms Control: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/pro...tnw/chap5.html The Center for Defense Information: http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/cooperation.cfm I don't need to follow the links to know that it is an actual threat. So was Anthrax, botullism, etc., from Iraq finding its way to the US. But invasion was not necessary to prevent it from happening, Yes, we could have sent off a stern letter of warning. We know what we need to do to prevent a suitcase nuke attack, and we are (presumably) doing it pretty damn well. My but you're so forceful. By the way, what exactly is it that we're doing about suitcase nukes again? We've been over this befo http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/ 8f1cbaf9cef1118b http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020923.htm "Suitcase" nuclear weapons: - probably existed - are very low yield; nobody's going to cause a Hiroshima with one - reports of them going missing are unreliable and probably not true - any portable nuclear weapons that went missing in the 1990s are completely inoperable by now The Center for Arms Control page that Bill linked refers to the CNS study I linked above, whose conclusion is that old Russian "suitcase" nukes are not a threat but we could use more information about what the Russians made (good luck getting that from Putin, though, no matter what GWB says about seeing into Putin's heart). Ben RBR Dept. of Known Unknowns- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I couldn't find a fairly new link that I had a while ago from one of the intel sites on this stuff. It was a report from 2003. As you've said it's always been pretty sketchy what the "suitcase" nukes actually are, and if they did exist. Lots of conflicting reports. What did, and still do exist are ADMs: http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/madm.htm (I didn't know we had our own in house expert: http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/davyc.htm The Davy Crockett (shown here at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in March 1961) was the smallest and lightest nuclear weapon ever deployed by the U.S. military. It was designed for use in Europe against Soviet troop formations. Now we know what Davey's been up to on his "walkabouts") Anyway the report was one on just what had gone missing and was triggered by confirmed reports and Russian actions on an air force unit that was selling off it's missiles and parts, and a couple off whole planes, which was what got them caught. They said they were doing it because they hadn't been paid in something like 18 months. The report solidly confirmed 8 ADMs missing and unaccounted for from a Speznaz base among other things. The IAEA is also VERY worried along these lines: http://www.worldmun.org/2006/committ...ittee.php?c=18 Topic A: Nuclear Terrorism Since 1993, there have been over 650 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive material. Last year alone, nearly 100 such incidents occurred, 11 of which involved nuclear material. Almost half of the confirmed incidents involved criminal activities (e.g.: theft, illegal possession, smuggling, or attempted illegal sale of the material). As the incidents of reported nuclear materials trafficking steadily rise, it becomes more and more important that the IAEA take action to ensure global security and prevent possible attacks. The main potential nuclear security risks include: the theft of a nuclear weapon; the acquisition of nuclear materials for the construction of nuclear explosive devices; the malicious use of radioactive sources, including in so-called "dirty bombs," and the radiological hazards caused by an attack on, or sabotage of, a facility or a transport vehicle. The IAEA's main points of focus are prevention, detection and response. The other major concern is that a lot of this stuff could have, and has been maintained by scientists who were either abandoned, like the Russsian military and are doing it for cash, or rogue scientists like Khan who did it for ideology: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3343621.stm A large percentage of "experts" absolutely believe that it's a case of When, Not if. Unfortunately I agree with them. The good thing is that it's not likely to be worse than Hiroshima at worst, if you can call that a good thing, and probably much less. Bill C |
#49
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Hey Chung
On 7 Mar 2007 22:23:06 -0800, "
wrote: "Suitcase" nuclear weapons: - probably existed - are very low yield; nobody's going to cause a Hiroshima with one - reports of them going missing are unreliable and probably not true - any portable nuclear weapons that went missing in the 1990s are completely inoperable by now And the only succesfully deployed suitcase bomb destroyed an American Airlines lost luggage center in Nebraska. Some of you may have noticed that you never got your luggage that week. Curtis L. Russell rbr department of new facts, made to order |
#50
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Hey Chung
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