WMDs aren't so easy to destroy without a trace...
*v*
his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable? Isn't it so, for
example that incinerating chemical weapons is dangerous, it leaves
characteristic traces, and is almost certainly incomplete without advanced
equipment (would they bother to ramp up for that, when they need to fund the
weapons themselves?) etc. I wonder if such things could even be buried
without looking just like that had been done, and by now, some of those who
worked on it would have shown where it happened? Similar considerations
apply for bio materials, no? It just isn't like one crazy guy flushing dope
down the toilet.
For political cross-reference, see
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030609/usnews/9intell.htm.
Daniel J. Stern
On Sat, 31 May 2003, *v* wrote:
> One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's "destroyed"
> his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
> nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable?
Yep. That's why it's far more likely he simply parked them elsewhere.
DS
*v*
"Daniel J. Stern" <das...@engin.umich> wrote in message
news:Pine.SOL.4.44.030531...@alumni.engin.umich.edu...
just move around the country, we have looked a lot, and had the chance to
talk to many who have no reason to defend Saddam now. If you mean to another
country: Who else liked him enough to just say: "Sure, old buddy, we'll just
take this crap off your hands. The USA et al will find this violently
offensive, and expose us to military and aid reprisals [none of the nations
around can really afford to be hated by us], but we'll do it for the sheer
purpose of being nice to a leader that is doing down, and can't really even
reward or threaten us about this anyway." ???
But still, give a try to guessing where they went. Iran?
OOO...@usmc.ret
I've spoken with several military friends with more current information than I
have, and the consensus is that we will see those weapons one of these days.
They're either well-hidden in Iraq, or have been stored in Syria or Iran. You'll
recall that during the first Gulf War, Iraq was successful in storing most of
its remaining military aircraft across the border...
Matt Giwer
> One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's "destroyed"
> his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
> nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable? Isn't it so, for
> example that incinerating chemical weapons is dangerous, it leaves
> characteristic traces, and is almost certainly incomplete without advanced
> equipment (would they bother to ramp up for that, when they need to fund the
> weapons themselves?) etc. I wonder if such things could even be buried
> without looking just like that had been done, and by now, some of those who
> worked on it would have shown where it happened? Similar considerations
> apply for bio materials, no? It just isn't like one crazy guy flushing dope
> down the toilet.
Iraq didn't have any such weapons. Everyone knew that.
--
2003 May 30: US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz, admits Iraq had
no weapons of mass destruction and the bush league lied to
the world about them.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2696
Matt Giwer
There were none. Bush lied. Blair lied. They all lied. Deal with it.
--
Bush says the US needs more time to find Iraq's weapons.
Sounds like the same excuse Hans Blix used for not
finding them.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2656
David Lloyd-Jones
Since trucks are big enough to be seen by satellites, he must have used
some other means of transport.
Segways weren't on the market yet. Convoys of bicycles would have left
sharply defined tracks.
Herds of specially trained mice maybe, each scurrying down its hole with
a weapon of mass destruction tied to its back?
Remember, Saddam has had 12 years since the Kuwait war to work on
miniaturization, and Moore's Law applies to modern weapons just like any
other high technology.
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
> OOORAH!@USMC.ret wrote:
>
>> Destroyed?
>>
>> I've spoken with several military friends with more current
>> information than I
>> have, and the consensus is that we will see those weapons one of these
>> days.
>> They're either well-hidden in Iraq, or have been stored in Syria or
>> Iran. You'll
>> recall that during the first Gulf War, Iraq was successful in storing
>> most of
>> its remaining military aircraft across the border...
>
>
> There were none. Bush lied. Blair lied. They all lied. Deal with it.
Matt,
I don't think that's possible. Both Blair and Bush are Christians, so it
is necessary to find some other explanation.
It is important to remember that for hundreds of years the Arab world
was the leading scientific civilization on earth. They had advanced
technologies like books, numbers, and mind-expanding drugs, back when
Europe had nothing but Darke Ages (tm.)
Thus it is likely that they not only have Weapons of Mass Destruction,
but worse, far far worse, WMD's based on technologies unknown to us.
Mouse Carried Explosives (MCE's) are almost certain to exist. This is
obvious, because we have found no WMD's above ground, and mice are known
to live underground when necessary. There are also reports of prototype
Ant Carried Explosives (ACE's), but it is not known whether these were
mass produced.
If MCE's are not found this will be evidence that the ACE program went
into production.
-dlj.
grandwazoo
It was merely a metaphore for 72 virgins lifting their veils showing
their WMD. Or, like a virgin for the seventy_second time.
(WMD)Weapons of Mass Delusion
--
Graham Shepherd
"David Lloyd-Jones" <da...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:3ED98E4E...@rogers.com...
The ACE program was superseded by the Ultra High Exposive Microbe (UHEM)
project - genetically engineered bacteria that colonise the human
respiratory and GI tract, synthesise high explosive inclusion bodies out of
sucrose and caffeine and are triggered by contact with butterfat. Avoid Coca
Cola and popcorn!
GS
Lawson English
"Graham Shepherd" <muhero...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:bbcid6$gc1$1...@titan.btinternet.com...
Actually they're triggered by alcohol consumption, that way they can kill
the infidels AND the backsliding Moslems at the same time.
Daniel J. Stern
>> There were none. Bush lied. Blair lied.
> I don't think that's possible. Both Blair and Bush are Christians, so it
> is necessary to find some other explanation.
Here's your "other explanation": Bush and Blair, being good little
brainwashed Christ-cultists, are doing their best to hasten the arrival of
the End Times.
DS
David Lloyd-Jones
> "Graham Shepherd" <muhero...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote
>>The ACE program was superseded by the Ultra High Exposive Microbe (UHEM)
>>project - genetically engineered bacteria that colonise the human
>>respiratory and GI tract, synthesise high explosive inclusion bodies out
>> Coca Cola and popcorn!
>
> Actually they're triggered by alcohol consumption, that way they can kill
> the infidels AND the backsliding Moslems at the same time.
Lawson,
This is incorrect. The solvent and calorigenic properties of ethanol are
exectly the most effective safeguards against these vile weapons -- and
many other dangerous aspects of the totalitarian side of Islam.
Consider the fact that the Palestine-Israel dust-up could have been
settled amicably in 1948 if only Arab leaders had been limited to one
cup of coffee per morning, but had had wine available from 11:00 a.m.
onward. Perhaps a light sherry around ten in times of great political
stress, and good cool ale on tap at every roadside for the Hadji.
Freedom's greatest danger at this moment is the fact that Bush Minor is
a teetotaller. This leaves him prey to the ultimate of Moore's Law at
work: engineered memes which enter his brain without the veritas test of
vino.
-dlj.
dave e
> "Graham Shepherd" <muhero...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:bbcid6$gc1$1...@titan.btinternet.com...
> >
> > "David Lloyd-Jones" <da...@rogers.com> wrote in message
> > news:3ED98E4E...@rogers.com...
> > > Ant Carried Explosives (ACE's), but it is not known whether these were
> > > mass produced.
> > >
> > > If MCE's are not found this will be evidence that the ACE program went
> > > into production.
> > >
> > > -dlj.
> >
> > The ACE program was superseded by the Ultra High Exposive Microbe (UHEM)
> > project - genetically engineered bacteria that colonise the human
> > respiratory and GI tract, synthesise high explosive inclusion bodies out
> of
> > sucrose and caffeine and are triggered by contact with butterfat. Avoid
> Coca
> > Cola and popcorn!
>
> Actually they're triggered by alcohol consumption, that way they can kill
> the infidels AND the backsliding Moslems at the same time.
I wrote the following essay for my own amusement several months ago,
before the war and just after the US government began advising the
public to stockpile duct tape and plastic curtains. I wrote this as a
joke, but now I'm beginning to think I may have been on to something:
Homeland security advisor Tom Ridge warned today of possible terrorist
attacks using a "mind control device". Commander in Chief George Bush
confirmed, "We have conclusive evidence that Sadam Hussein is
developing a mind control device; Evidence we will reveal to the
world community in due time."
An unnamed source inside the White House leaked this report: that the
CIA has intercepted radio signals between Bagdad and a Martian space
colony, proving the suspected link between Sadam Hussein and space
aliens. Top advisors at the White House claim that the space aliens
are providing mind control technology to Iraq, so that it can be
passed along to Al Queda. Sadam Hessein responded, "this is
preposterous; my country has no links to the Martians, but if we did,
I would be proud to admit it." And in a recently released video tape,
Osama Bin Laden is quoted saying, "Muslims should prepare to fight
against the US infidels, whether or not the Martians are involved."
Tom Ridge warned Americans to be prepared for the mind control
attacks. "The only way Americans can protect themselves from mind
control is by wearing tall pointy aluminum foil hats. Go out today
and stockpile as much aluminum foil and tall pointy objects as you
can. But at the same time, go right on living your life. Because if
you don't, the terrorists have already won."
Donald Rumsfeld refused to comment on the possible Martian mind
control connection, but continues to denounce the French as "a bunch
of pansies."
Dave
David Lloyd-Jones
Daniel,
If you're trying to write serious analysis, as opposed to satire, then
you need to get your facts straight.
There is no evidence whatsoever for Bush believing End Times (or any
other) theology, though it is clear that some large minority of that
minority of his supporters who are Christians do so believe.
Blair is an observant and fairly high church Christian Socialist, which
means he would be very seriously opposed to End Times theology -- except
that the possibility of his ever running across it, except by accident
on a trip to Washington, would be virtually nil. (I'm not sure, but I
may have read that his wife is Roman Catholic, which would make him
very, rather than fairly, high church. In any event it is clear that
they are both on the religious Left, and do not remotely fit your
bile-filled characterisation.)
I am sure that he has widespread contact with Pentacostalists in the
English Labour movement, and with extreme and hardy Knoxites and such
among the Scots and Welsh on the left. All of these would be appalled by
most American-style Fundamentalism and End Times hermeneutics.
-dlj.
Lawson English
> I am sure that he has widespread contact with Pentacostalists in the
> English Labour movement, and with extreme and hardy Knoxites and such
> among the Scots and Welsh on the left. All of these would be appalled by
> most American-style Fundamentalism and End Times hermeneutics.
Perhaps, but in America, a strong portion of Bush's support IS amongst the
End Times crew. Bush's own religious beliefs aren't known for certain, but
the religion of his advisors on the matter (rather than his stated religious
preference) does seem to be more Fundamentalist than I'm comfortable with.
Cliff Stabbert
John Ashcroft is among the slippier of those supporters, having
repeatedly had himself anointed when taking office (in the manner of
King David); at one point even substituting Crisco when a more
suitable oil could not be located.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/61/story_6188.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/HallsOfJustice/hallsofjustice63.html
That's right, John Ashcroft, self-anointed with Crisco. To say that
wanting to bring about Armageddon is "too far out there" for these
folks might be mistaken.
We'll see how they handle the Israel situation. The "Christian
Zionists" among Bush's supporters and staff so far seem to have gotten
their way (i.e., letting Sharon run roughshod over the Palestinians --
google around for christian zionists/zionism, rapture, similar stuff
if you're curious why Israel is so important to the extreme Christian
evengelical right, the rapture crowd, in the USA. Basically the idea
is that the jews have to get *all* the holy land before armageddon can
get triggered). The current push for this peace plan or roadmap,
whatever, does not yet have me convinced -- it could, for example, end
up serving simply as a nicely planned excuse for Sharon to just go the
whole hog as soon as a single bombing takes place or what have you.
As for Bush's beliefs, anybody who's in charge of a country this size,
with plenty of nukes, and *seriously* goes on about us vs. the
evildoers scares the bejeezus out of me (not to mention using words
such as "crusade" until panicked staff could "correct" him). If they
let us have elections in 04, a clause that sounds less paranoid with
each passing day, I'm voting him the fuck out. Unfortunately that may
not work, since the new electronic voting machines lack any voter
verifiable physical audit trail (for reasons we need one, see
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Papers/VoterVerify.html) and examining
them to verify their workings is illegal under the DMCA. Welcome to
the future.
--
Cliff
--
Cliff
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> Perhaps, but in America, a strong portion of Bush's support IS amongst the
> End Times crew. Bush's own religious beliefs aren't known for certain, but
> the religion of his advisors on the matter (rather than his stated religious
> preference) does seem to be more Fundamentalist than I'm comfortable with.
Lawson,
Maybe. Maybe not
It is my impression that the US is much more Christian, but much less
Nut Fundamentalist than it was a generation ago.
I attribute this in large part to Jimmy Carter, and to a generaation of
the churches who came out of the Civil Rights Movement to have wide
effects upon the whole culture.
A couple of vignettes:
* In about 1974, when I was in Japan, a Japanese sociologist did a
survey of a number of countries around two questions: "Are you a
Christian?" and "What are the names of the four Evangelists?" The
results came out almost inverse-linear: the US was highest in claimed
Christianity at about 89%, but lowest in the ability to say "Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John" at around 12%. Sweden (which has an established
Lutheran church) was lowest on Christianity, at something like 3%, but
highest on ability to name the Evangelists, at somewhere in the 90's
percent. Today, by contrast, claimed Chistianity in the US is down
several percent, but church attendance and ability to name the
Evangelists are both up sharply.
I suspect that part of this is the result of one specific campaign, by
an organiztion called Evangel 2000, or something close to that, of which
Jimmy Carter was the head. They had a very simple and specific aim over
a period of about twenty years: "To evangelise the name of Jesus to
everyone in the human race by the year 2,000." On their statistics they
came damn close, and I don't think they're hoodwinking themselves
too-ooo much.
This was an utterly balls-up no-limits bit of craziness. I'm not a
Christian, but I admire the hell out of these guys. They got hundreds of
people arrested for floating barge-loads of Bibles up the Volga River
and handing them out in the streets in Moscow. they had helicopters
dropping stuff over jungles, kids hitch-hiking out to fishing fleets,
every wild thing you can imagine and a whole lot you can't.
(Our newspapers at the time were full of the trouble of Russia's Jewish
refuseniks, of whom about 150 were imprisoned and a few thousand were
being mistreated. The mainstream press paid almost no attention to the
fact that there were more than 30 times as many, over 5,000, Russian
Baptists in jail for religious activities. Our press always wrote as
though the doddering Brezhnev was intimidated by American weaponry, but
I don't think that is what was on his mind. I think that when Brezhnev
looked at Carter across the desk in the Oval Office he thought to
himself "This is the evil Baptist Pope who is causing me all my troubles.")
* American Fundamentalism is not quite the savage bestiary it was in
Reagan times. Pat Robertson is still a major league greedhead and an
evil warlord savage still greedily meddling in the Congo, but he no
longer controls all of that TV empire. Tammy and Jimmy have dried up and
blown away.
Jerry Falwell is still around, and he can stick his foot in his mouth
is pretty ugly ways from time to time. Still, his following is evolving
(!), and my feeling is that a generation from now he will be seen as a
beneficial force on balance, and the Knox and the Corinthians in his
teaching will be remembered more than his bogus service-club American
patriot pietisms.
* When the Tammy Faye and Jimmy Bakker operation went belly up, they
called in the Canadians. This had one sad effect, which I'll come to,
but it had one very good effect: Canadian urban fundamentalism has two
mainstays, the Huntley Street operation, and the People's Church.
Huntley Street is Canadian Conservative in its political positions,
which I'd say puts it slightly to the left of Al Gore. The People's
Church is like something out of the Glasgow Gorbals at the time of the
Presbyterian upsurge in the late 19th century: Think Jesus on the Mount
in full strong voice, with the Labour Party selling memberships on the
paths up and down the mountain.
To have people like this called in is a sign, and a good one, that the
Fundies know they need help -- and they go to the right place to get it.
(The sad part of this whole story was that the Jimmy and Tammy real
estate operation had to be liquidated, and at this point in came two
Toronto businessmen, Alan Fay, an elderly, respected and decent Jewish
investor, and a young Jewish firebrand who was involved -- like a number
on the Jewish political Right -- with American right-wing Fundies. Fay
unwisely let the youngster use his checkbook to clean up the Tammy-Jimmy
financial disaster, and the youngster didn't have a clue what he was
doing. It ended up costing Fay something like $40 million, without any
clearly apparent good coming out of the whole thing. The Bakker's had
created a gigantic delusionary rat-hole, and a ton of Canadian Jews'
money got sucked into it, out of ill-used good-will. No doubt it joined
tens of millions of dollars contributed by others of the Bakkers' victims.)
* Finally, for now, consider Ralph Reed, the evil Pat Robertson's very
decent (and enchantingly pretty) side-kick. Reed is widely known for his
utterly larcenous -- and not terribly electorally successful -- career
as a right-wing Republican political operative. OK, no problem: he takes
a ton of money from Republican nuttoes, and he delivers roughly nothing
in return, and they all deserve each other.
On the other hand consider his two accomplishments back when he was a
full time worker for the Christian Coalition/Moral Majority congeries.
Now I think it's true enough that the CC/MM is four lies strung
together. One is reminded of Winston Churchill's remark that the USSR is
the only country with four lies in its name. Reed, however accomplished
two things by wielding its mailing lists and self-proclaimed power: one,
he rammed the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit through
Congress. The fact that he did this for the benefit of his peckerwood
constituency is not a criticism. That's who needs good legislation of
that type.
There is only one thing wrong with those laws: Why are they limited to
earned income? Why should people with no income, or whose only income is
unemployment insurance or welfare be excluded? (In the same vein, what
was going through the Republicans' tiny minds last week when they
increased the child tax credit for people with incomes between $26,000
and $44,000, but not for those with incomes below $26,000, who need the
money even more?? But I digress.)
Second, Reed frankly acknowledged that the conservative end of American
Protestantism had been racist in the past, that this was a major sin,
and that every Prostant church had a duty to combat racism and work for
inter-racial comity. Now one could cynically say that he did this to
increase his influence among black churches. I don't say this, and
believe it to be false. I think that he really believed, and believes
that that is true. (I also believe that he is correct in so believing.)
And I think he has done a tremendous good for America, and for
Americans, by the stand he took and by the work he did in encouraging
that stand among others.
* * *
To summarise: Yes, I think that there are some crazy, and a few
dangerous, people among Bush Minor's supporters, and I think this is a
damn shame all around.
On the other hand I don't really think this is a big deal. To put things
into perspective, how dangerous are a few thousand earnest Crystal
Cathedral TV-watchers compared to maybe a Lockheed, a Boeing, and a
Pfizer lobbyist with say five million dollars in campaign funds to
spread around?
If Richard Perle were to fall head first down a long flight of stairs,
and if somebody could get Paul Wolfowitz to take his medication,
wouldn't the world be a safer and saner place five minutes later? Where
are the CIA boys with the exploding cigars and the poisoned shoe insoles
when we really need them?
Happily I think there is some chance Perle will be going to jail and
that Wolfowitz will be purged -- though for the wrong reason, for being
too frank, open, and honest in his insanity.
Sometimes the darkest hour really is followed by the dawn.
-dlj.
Matt Giwer
> Matt Giwer wrote:
>
>> OOORAH!@USMC.ret wrote:
>>
>>> Destroyed?
>>>
>>> I've spoken with several military friends with more current
>>> information than I
>>> have, and the consensus is that we will see those weapons one of
>>> these days.
>>> They're either well-hidden in Iraq, or have been stored in Syria or
>>> Iran. You'll
>>> recall that during the first Gulf War, Iraq was successful in storing
>>> most of
>>> its remaining military aircraft across the border...
>>
>> There were none. Bush lied. Blair lied. They all lied. Deal with it.
> Matt,
> I don't think that's possible. Both Blair and Bush are Christians, so it
> is necessary to find some other explanation.
They are both politicians. When they speak their lips move. Next question.
> It is important to remember that for hundreds of years the Arab world
> was the leading scientific civilization on earth. They had advanced
> technologies like books, numbers, and mind-expanding drugs, back when
> Europe had nothing but Darke Ages (tm.)
> Thus it is likely that they not only have Weapons of Mass Destruction,
> but worse, far far worse, WMD's based on technologies unknown to us.
> Mouse Carried Explosives (MCE's) are almost certain to exist. This is
> obvious, because we have found no WMD's above ground, and mice are known
> to live underground when necessary. There are also reports of prototype
> Ant Carried Explosives (ACE's), but it is not known whether these were
> mass produced.
> If MCE's are not found this will be evidence that the ACE program went
> into production.
Then we certainly need to look out for flea carried micro-nukes.
--
2003 May 15: Israel murders five Palestinians.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2677
*v*
<OOORAH!@USMC.ret> wrote in message news:3ED977BF...@introtech.com...
I wonder is: before the war, during the inspections, a major concept was: if
only we could talk to cognizant scientists under good conditions (away from
minders, no reprisals, etc.) Now, we've had plenty of time to talk to just
about anyone we want to, except for SH, Uday, et al themselves. Some of them
should have told our investigators just where or at least how to find this
stuff. It is true that we found chemical shells at one point, but could that
have been for P, SiCl4, etc, and not the illegal kind of chemicals? (Note
that not all "chemical" ingredients are illegal, and I don't just mean the
smart-aleck point that TNT, RDX, etc, are of course chemicals. I mean the
sort of thing that dissapates "as itself" or burns, rather than exploding.)
*v*
"Matt Giwer" <jul...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:jgfCa.36817$Gg7.1...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/ap05-30-085334.asp?reg=EUROPE , what he
said was essentially:
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited bureaucratic reasons for
focusing on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and said a
''huge'' result of the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops
from Saudi Arabia.
''The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S.
government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could
agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason,''
Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of an interview with
Vanity Fair.
The magazine's reporter did not tape the telephone interview and
provided a slightly different version of the quote in the article: ''For
bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,
because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.''
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction may have been destroyed before the war.
''It is also possible that they (Saddam Hussein's government) decided
that they would destroy them prior to a conflict,'' he told the Council on
Foreign Relations in New York.
Neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz suggested Washington fabricated
weapons claims, and an aide to the defense secretary, speaking on condition
of anonymity, insisted their remarks had been misinterpreted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not as bad as bald admission of making it all up, but to spin things like
that is bad enough.
*v*
"*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote in message
news:vdilmir...@corp.supernews.com...
> One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's "destroyed"
> his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
> nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable? Isn't it so,
for
Any chance we could get some high-quality scientific and tech input? Most of
what I've seen so far is hope, fear, politics, and satire.
David Lloyd-Jones
V,
Perhaps you could suggest what you have in mind as "high-quality
scientific and tech input" on the subject of something that apparently
does not exist.
A good deal of the time the science involved is "forensic science," as
when the United Nations staff, I think it was, showed that the documents
"proving" Saddam was buying uranium from Niger were forgeries. In that
case the science involved consisted of things like phoning around to
find out that the signatures belonged to people who did not hold the
offices claimed. Not exactly high tech.
A good deal of what is involved is logic. An example this week: some
people, though only a few, in the US say they have found trucks which
are biochemical warfare labs. The Iraqis under arrest -- who have no
reason to lie, and who could probably make a lot of money by telling the
approved kind of lie -- say that the trucks were used for generating
hydrogen to inflate artillery spotting balloons.
American chemical warfare specialists say that if these trucks had been
used for making biological weapons they would have been accompanied by
clean-up trucks, facilities for turning the biological product into
weapons, and a bunch of othe stuff. So... What do you think?
The US now has a record of something like eight steady months of
retailing lies, mistakes, forgeries, exaggerations, distortions, and
strange speculative theories.
It's your call.
Good luck!
-dlj.
grandwazoo
The US ultimatium given to Iraq was destroy the WMD or war. Rumsfield's
spin is ironic. Given two possibilities, it appears the Iraqs were
telling the truth, rather than non-compliance justifing war. I suspect
we will see WMD 'discovered' in the future anyway.
--
Lawson English
> people, though only a few, in the US say they have found trucks which
> are biochemical warfare labs. The Iraqis under arrest -- who have no
> reason to lie, and who could probably make a lot of money by telling the
> approved kind of lie -- say that the trucks were used for generating
> hydrogen to inflate artillery spotting balloons.
Do you have documentation of this?
>
> American chemical warfare specialists say that if these trucks had been
> used for making biological weapons they would have been accompanied by
> clean-up trucks, facilities for turning the biological product into
> weapons, and a bunch of othe stuff. So... What do you think?
I think that a canvas covered truck is a lousy place to conduct production
of dangerous materials, especially in the desert heat.
>
> The US now has a record of something like eight steady months of
> retailing lies, mistakes, forgeries, exaggerations, distortions, and
> strange speculative theories.
>
Its all very bizarre. Do you suppose that what is REALLY going on is that
they have evidence that the Rapture is just around the corner and are having
fun playing mind-games with the non-Saved until they're called to Heaven?
--
That darned liberal Colin Powell. Its all his fault...
Did you hear that his family originally came from France? Froggy
pseudo-intellectual socialists, every one of them. Its true! I heard it on
Rush.
thunder
> "David Lloyd-Jones" <da...@rogers.com> wrote in message [...]
>> A good deal of what is involved is logic. An example this week:
>> some people, though only a few, in the US say they have found
>> trucks which are biochemical warfare labs. The Iraqis under
>> arrest -- who have no reason to lie, and who could probably make
>> a lot of money by telling the approved kind of lie -- say that
>> the trucks were used for generating hydrogen to inflate artillery
>> spotting balloons.
>
> Do you have documentation of this?
" The trailers were discovered April 19 and May 9. Captured Iraqi
scientists have said they were for producing hydrogen for weather
balloons in support of artillery. The report acknowledges the
trailers could be used to make hydrogen but says the effort would be
inefficient compared with widely available commercial hydrogen-
generation systems."
From:
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1054189282243870.xml
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> The US ultimatium given to Iraq was destroy the WMD or war. Rumsfield's
> spin is ironic. Given two possibilities, it appears the Iraqs were
> telling the truth, rather than non-compliance justifing war. I suspect
> we will see WMD 'discovered' in the future anyway.
Grand,
I'm sure there are people in the Administration who would like to cook
some up. They have the small problem the the operational military is
pretty much honest.
I suspect that the honesty increases proportionately as one moves away
from Virginia, but there's a good deal of it to be found, right up to
the level of the Joint Chiefs. If you find inaccuracy at the field
level, what you're finding is incompetence, not lies. Soldiers in the
field know Feynman truth, "Nature cannot be fooled." Bureaucrats forget
this, so at the top level it's more difficult to tell whether you're
seeing dishonesty or stupidity.
What seems to surprise a lot of people is that the intelligence
community is also very largely honest, as well. Nixon thought he could
tell the CIA to concoct lies on demand, for the very peculiar reason
that he had absorbed, by mirroring, the Communists' and Fascists'
paranoid fantasies about it.
Rumsfeld at times seems to be tempted by such a Nixonian view of things,
but has been stymied by reality, the CIA's point-blank refusal to come
up with the intelligence estimates he demanded, as opposed to what they
believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the truth. Rumsfeld therefore took
the entirely lunatic step of setting up his own fairy-tale shop to
cobble up the lies he wanted told. Then he started believing them
himself, and wandered off into a hall-of-mirrors which he had bought and
paid for himself.
This is what often happens when rulers think they deserve courtiers and
servants, rather than advisors and employees.
George Bush doesn't realise it, but Jean Chretien was a better friend of
America than silly-poodle Tony Blair was. Blair followed wherever Bush
pointed, which is what ass-kissing toadies do. Chretien called it the
way he saw it, at first in private, and eventually -- when he was forced
to -- in public. This is what trustworthy friends do.
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
> "David Lloyd-Jones" <da...@rogers.com> wrote in message
> [...]
>
>>A good deal of what is involved is logic. An example this week: some
>>people, though only a few, in the US say they have found trucks which
>>are biochemical warfare labs. The Iraqis under arrest -- who have no
>>reason to lie, and who could probably make a lot of money by telling the
>>approved kind of lie -- say that the trucks were used for generating
>>hydrogen to inflate artillery spotting balloons.
>
>
> Do you have documentation of this?
Only what's been in the newspapers all over the place for the past week
or ten days. I don't have a private line to the grunts in the Gulf, if
that's what you mean.
>>American chemical warfare specialists say that if these trucks had been
>>used for making biological weapons they would have been accompanied by
>>clean-up trucks, facilities for turning the biological product into
>>weapons, and a bunch of othe stuff. So... What do you think?
>
>
> I think that a canvas covered truck is a lousy place to conduct production
> of dangerous materials, especially in the desert heat.
You can either produce the hydrogen on the spot, from safe precursors --
which is what all other armies do when they need hydrogen balloons -- or
you can store the stuff, decant it, shlep it around, and take the risk
of it blowing up in j random hangar someplace, seems to be the theory. I
think that armies like the idea of having "capability" driving around in
trucks, rather than having to think about things and send out
requisition forms beforehand.
>>The US now has a record of something like eight steady months of
>>retailing lies, mistakes, forgeries, exaggerations, distortions, and
>>strange speculative theories.
> Its all very bizarre. Do you suppose that what is REALLY going on is that
> they have evidence that the Rapture is just around the corner and are having
> fun playing mind-games with the non-Saved until they're called to Heaven?
No.
I have known Don Rumsfeld since he was a minor league, but tall,
Congressman back in the 1960's. The man is a half-wit. Almost as bad,
his factual knowledge consists of stuff far too stupid to make it into
comic books. Men's club jokes, mostly. Republicans are suckers for tall,
so he moved up in the ranks.
Dick Cheney is not a half-wit, but he has never had an honest job in his
life. He's a salesman, and like all successful salesmen, he believes his
own spiel. Like many salesmen, he is also an administrative incompetent,
which helps to account for some of the many many mistakes he has made.
Finally, he's lazy. Only laziness can account for the fact that he came
within an ace of bankrupting Halliburton by failing to do due diligence
on Dresser Industries. (One of the reasons Cheney has to keep his head
down to some extent is that a remarkable number of people still at
Hallibuton seem to hate his guts -- with manifestly sound reason:
they've seen his handiwork up close, and have spent all the time since
he left fighting forest fires and cleaning up messes. When Cheney tells
lies about his Halliburton years, the truth has the embarrassing
tendency to turn up in the papers a few hours later.)
George Bush is George Bush. His backers got exactly what they expected
and what they paid for.
Richard Perle is a highly intelligent man, with a right-wing paranoid
view of history, and an apparent infatuation with men who resemble him
physiologically: Conrad Black, Ariel Sharon, for two. I think it's an
animal thing, having nothing to do with the prefrontal cortex. Imho, his
ideas about what is in America's best interest are as muddled and foggy
as his ideas of what is in Israel's best interest, but whenever these
ideas become clear they are wrong, in great depth and with an
astonishing consistency.
Paul Wolfowitz is a highly intelligent idealist -- one of the most
dangerous critters the Good Lord ever fashioned. A hungry jaguar is a
tabby cat by comparison.
Cheers,
-dlj.
jmfb...@aol.com
David Lloyd-Jones <da...@rogers.com> wrote:
>Lawson English wrote:
>> "David Lloyd-Jones" <da...@rogers.com> wrote in message
>> [...]
>>
>>>A good deal of what is involved is logic. An example this week: some
>>>people, though only a few, in the US say they have found trucks which
>>>are biochemical warfare labs. The Iraqis under arrest -- who have no
>>>reason to lie, and who could probably make a lot of money by telling the
>>>approved kind of lie -- say that the trucks were used for generating
>>>hydrogen to inflate artillery spotting balloons.
>>
>>
>> Do you have documentation of this?
>
>Only what's been in the newspapers all over the place for the past week
>or ten days. I don't have a private line to the grunts in the Gulf, if
>that's what you mean.
<snip>
You apparently aren't reading all the news. The former rulers
are now arranging revolutionary tactics. Do you honestly think
that those who have been captured are going to take a change
at telling the truth? They see no evidence of the war stopping
and are taking no chances that the Bath party won't be back
in power in a few months or years. Those people have long memories
and are viscious with retaliation of any slight imagined.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Tom Potter
The root cause of the problem is that
the stock in trade of the Bolsheviks is
instigating conflict and war for power and profit,
just as the stock in trade of Gypsies used to be
fortune telling and horse trading.
They instigated the class wars of the 1900's
and they are now instigating the religious wars of the 2000's.
Bush is a willing player in the Bolshevik game, just as FDR was.
If FDR had gone after the Bolshevik terrorists
rather than getting in bed with them,
WWII would has lasted two months, and there would have been
no millions of deaths, no holocaust, no Cold War, no Korea, no Vietnam ,
no nuclear weapons, no instigation of global religious war, etc.
If Bush had gone after the Bolsheviks,
rather than getting in bed with them and Sharon,
there would have been no 9/11, no movement of America
toward a police and military state,
no loss of freedoms to Americans,
no danger to American's at home and abroad,
no collapse of the economy,
no shattering of the national budget,
no impending war with the Iraqi people,
with its' attendant cost, depletion of
non-renewable resources, environmental damage, etc,
no loss of trust by most nations of the world,
no hatred of America by hundreds of millions of Muslims,
no raid on Social Security,
no freeze of Civil Service employees salaries,
no bankruptcy of major airlines, etc.
The major weakness of a democracy,
is that immoral, profiteering, manipulators
can effectively buy the government at a low price,
by finding politicians like Bush, Clinton, etc.
and giving them the financial and media support
they need to rise above the pack.
As Philip, Alexander the Great's father said,
"There are no city walls so strong,
that they cannot be breached,
if you can get a donkey load of gold up to the wall."
The same is true with a democracy such as America has,
and immoral manipulators steal gold from the masses,
and use the gold to buy more politicians.
--
Tom Potter http://www.tompotter.ws
David Lloyd-Jones
Tom,
Your analysis is superb as far as it goes.
Take it from me, one of the six billion members of the Secret Elite on
this planet: if it goes another 2.54 centimeters, you've gone an inch.
-dlj.
anonymous
> Matt,
>
> I don't think that's possible. Both Blair and Bush are Christians, so it
> is necessary to find some other explanation.
"Christians????" What makes one a "Christian," and what does that have to
do with Bush and Blair lying? Christian, give me a break. What a joke!
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> You apparently aren't reading all the news.
JM,
Why start your post with an ignorant insult? I'm probably reading more
of the news than you, and I've certainly read the stuff you bring up below.
> The former rulers
> are now arranging revolutionary tactics.
Uh, not quite. A few people are taking pot shots at the Americans and
Brits here and there. Some of them are perhaps residual Ba'athites doing
what they were trained to do. I don't know, (and you don't either) but
it's my guess that more of them are youngsters in thrall to the
resurgent mullahs, encouraging the Americans, they hope, to leave.
Others are probably just angry citizens, exercising their right to bear
arms when the garbage doesn't get collected. 'Course you can't dig coal
with bayonets, and you can't pick up litter with an AK-47.
Certainly if I were a Ba'athite, I would be a hell of a lot more worried
by the mullahs than I would by the Americans: as Afghanistan has
demonstrated, George Bush has the attention span of a four month old
puppy. The mullahs are going to be around a lot longer, and they will
have the support of Iran until the counter-revolution evolves, another
few more years, and of Saudi as long as the present regime or anything
remotely like it survives. Saudi and Iranian support are right there on
the ground, and are reliable. American support, even while US troops are
there, reacts slowly and inaccurately, if it reacts at all.
> Do you honestly think
> that those who have been captured are going to take a change
> at telling the truth?
For anyone who has any serious stories to tell, the main chance is a
house in the suburbs of Denver. If telling the truth will get them
there, they'll tell the truth. The danger is that if making up stories
seems likely to get them there, they'll make up stories.
> They see no evidence of the war stopping
> and are taking no chances that the Bath party won't be back
> in power in a few months or years.
You have a pretty funny notion of what "no evidence" looks like.
"Ba'ath" was hijacked by Saddam's personalism back in the mid-1980's,
and is now finished totally.
Ba'ath in its true sense, Arab renaissance, is the whole aim of American
policy when it is not blundering around at random. Remember the two most
powerful people who have endorsed the program of the Revolutionary Khalk
in Afghanistan: Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush. Unfortunately not enough
others.
> Those people have long memories
> and are viscious with retaliation of any slight imagined.
I'm not sure whether you are more worried about the viscocity or the
viciousness of these people's memories, nor which particular "these
people" it is that you claim to speak for. Perhaps you aren't, either.
-dlj.
Russell Blackadar
[snip]
> It is my impression that the US is much more Christian, but much less
> Nut Fundamentalist than it was a generation ago.
Hmm. About the latter, I think it is hard to say.
[snip]
> * In about 1974, when I was in Japan, a Japanese sociologist did a
> survey of a number of countries around two questions: "Are you a
> Christian?" and "What are the names of the four Evangelists?" The
> results came out almost inverse-linear: the US was highest in claimed
> Christianity at about 89%, but lowest in the ability to say "Matthew,
> Mark, Luke, John" at around 12%.
I suspect that this mainly indicates how few Americans
knew the Biblical meaning of "Evangelist" at (especially)
that particular time. I recall hearing the word spoken
frequently -- but almost exclusively, by one person:
Billy Graham, as a characterization of himself. If anyone
had asked me in 1974 to name an evangelist, I would probably
not have thought of anyone in the Bible. Nevertheless, I'd
have had no difficulty at all naming the "four Gospels".
[snip]
Lloyd Parker
>Destroyed?
>
>I've spoken with several military friends with more current information than
I
>have, and the consensus is that we will see those weapons one of these days.
>They're either well-hidden in Iraq, or have been stored in Syria or Iran.
You'll
>recall that during the first Gulf War, Iraq was successful in storing most of
>its remaining military aircraft across the border...
>
liters, remember?). Of course, the "consensus" was that the army would desert
in droves, people would welcome us from day 1, there'd be an uprising as soon
as we landed, etc.
David Lloyd-Jones
Russell,
Good theory, but no. The wording varied in each country, but it was done
with enough prolixity to make it clear that Gospels, or Evangelists, or
main teachers, or... was the required answer, and there were four of
'em, which was what you should guess for.
Cheers,
-dlj.
*v*
> *v* wrote:
> > "*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote in message
> > news:vdilmir...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> >>One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's
"destroyed"
> >>his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished
into
> >>nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> >>eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable? Isn't it so,
> >
> > for
> > ...
> > Any chance we could get some high-quality scientific and tech input?
Most of
> > what I've seen so far is hope, fear, politics, and satire.
>
>
> V,
>
> Perhaps you could suggest what you have in mind as "high-quality
> scientific and tech input" on the subject of something that apparently
> does not exist.
I mean in the conditional sense that would support a case to be made on the
very issue of whether there were or were not such weapons. Science can be
very helpful for talking about what cannot or did not exist. Just as I
originally brought up, the credibility of claims such as the WMDs having
been destroyed, or just dumped out or released into the air as one fellow
said to me, since Saddam of course doesn't care about the consequences. It
may seem obvious to many what to make of what has happened so far, but it is
in the public interest for prominent scientists to speak out on the
believability of government claims on this issue (and others.) I mean, the
way Sagan used to write articles in Parade magazine, etc. You've ironically
answered your own rhetorical question to some degree below.
But perhaps the intelligence issues are more revealing. As I said elsewhere:
We've had plenty of time to interview just about anybody there we want to,
and still no good leads?
Since you know Rummy, I say; tongue-tickling-cheek; why not call him up and
ask him if he lied about all this?
Thanks for the wishes. I think the whole country needs some good luck in the
coming months and years.
Matt Giwer
A rather large load of BS there. Why were US troops there other than to
enforce the no-fly zones. Those were an American invention without UN
authorization. That is a self-serving excuse.
> ''The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S.
> government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could
> agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason,''
> Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of an interview with
> Vanity Fair.
> The magazine's reporter did not tape the telephone interview and
> provided a slightly different version of the quote in the article: ''For
> bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,
> because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.''
They settled on the most obvious lie because it would sell to the
poorly educated public. That is quite an admission, that it was only a
political sales job.
> Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Iraq's
> weapons of mass destruction may have been destroyed before the war.
> ''It is also possible that they (Saddam Hussein's government) decided
> that they would destroy them prior to a conflict,'' he told the Council on
> Foreign Relations in New York.
If it was that easy and that fast then the US gov is lying about how
difficult it is to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles. Which is the
lie? Iraq did not do it safely? Where are the dead people downwind of
the destruction?
> Neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz suggested Washington fabricated
> weapons claims, and an aide to the defense secretary, speaking on condition
> of anonymity, insisted their remarks had been misinterpreted.
It was clear to anyone who examined their claims and who who had a
basic working knowledge of what they were claiming they were lying. They
are presumed to have that basic working knowledge and therefore knew
their claims were lies.
If you can't face the idea they lied perhaps you would like to assume
senior people in the defense department don't have a minimum working
knowledge of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons. That may satisfy
a certain cynical view but it cannot be true.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Not as bad as bald admission of making it all up, but to spin things like
> that is bad enough.
Long ago I got some good advice from an Army Colonel, when in a hole,
don't dig. These people are using very large shovels.
Matt Giwer
> The US ultimatium given to Iraq was destroy the WMD or war. Rumsfield's
> spin is ironic. Given two possibilities, it appears the Iraqs were
> telling the truth, rather than non-compliance justifing war. I suspect
> we will see WMD 'discovered' in the future anyway.
Even if they have to file off the US serial numbers.
--
2003 May 11: Israel murders three Palestinians.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2674
Matt Giwer
1) Efficiency is not an argument.
2) Thousands of commercial items were prohibited for sale to Iraq
including water purification materials.
3) Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of biological containment
methods looks at the canvas sides and laughs at anyone dumb enough to
think it could have been used to produce anthrax.
--
2003 May 24: In a new low, Israel murders only one Palestinian.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2687
*v*
> grandwazoo wrote:
> >
> > The US ultimatium given to Iraq was destroy the WMD or war. Rumsfield's
> > spin is ironic. Given two possibilities, it appears the Iraqs were
> > telling the truth, rather than non-compliance justifing war. I suspect
> > we will see WMD 'discovered' in the future anyway.
Do you remember the curious shift, unremarked on anywhere I've seen, just
before the ultimatum? It was indeed originally reported about a day before
the ultimatum, that it would indeed be: Destroy the WMD or war - "disarm."
But only some hours later, the message had changed to the garish cowboy
taunt: You've got 48 hours to get outta Iraq/Dodge. The kids on talk radio
loved it. What was going on there? Could it be, that Saddam might have caved
in for the first message and just let anyone in to look around, thus blowing
any frame-up?
>
>
> Grand,
>
> I'm sure there are people in the Administration who would like to cook
> some up. They have the small problem the the operational military is
> pretty much honest.
>
> I suspect that the honesty increases proportionately as one moves away
> from Virginia, but there's a good deal of it to be found, right up to
> the level of the Joint Chiefs. If you find inaccuracy at the field
> level, what you're finding is incompetence, not lies. Soldiers in the
> field know Feynman truth, "Nature cannot be fooled." Bureaucrats forget
> this, so at the top level it's more difficult to tell whether you're
> seeing dishonesty or stupidity.
>
> What seems to surprise a lot of people is that the intelligence
> community is also very largely honest, as well. Nixon thought he could
> tell the CIA to concoct lies on demand, for the very peculiar reason
> that he had absorbed, by mirroring, the Communists' and Fascists'
> paranoid fantasies about it.
And now we hear of how the intelligence community is chafing and speaking
out against their political manipulation. This could get interesting in the
weeks ahead.
>
> Rumsfeld at times seems to be tempted by such a Nixonian view of things,
> but has been stymied by reality, the CIA's point-blank refusal to come
> up with the intelligence estimates he demanded, as opposed to what they
> believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the truth. Rumsfeld therefore took
> the entirely lunatic step of setting up his own fairy-tale shop to
> cobble up the lies he wanted told. Then he started believing them
> himself, and wandered off into a hall-of-mirrors which he had bought and
> paid for himself.
In addition to the problem of physically (or logistically, or politically
vis-a-vis other nations, etc.) getting rid of all that stuff, there is
another argument against the Admin's thesis: wasn't it only about two weeks
from the time Inspectors had to leave, to the start of the war? Iraqis
wouldn't have had much time to rush around destroying virtually all of the
stuff, given the difficulites previously noted. (I know, they couldn't be
everywhere, but still: the presence of the Inspectors would have left them
off-balance and in danger of suspicious activity being noted.)
So: why did they want to invade Iraq? There must be a better answer than,
"for oil."
>
> This is what often happens when rulers think they deserve courtiers and
> servants, rather than advisors and employees.
>
> George Bush doesn't realise it, but Jean Chretien was a better friend of
> America than silly-poodle Tony Blair was. Blair followed wherever Bush
> pointed, which is what ass-kissing toadies do. Chretien called it the
> way he saw it, at first in private, and eventually -- when he was forced
> to -- in public. This is what trustworthy friends do.
>
> -dlj.
>
Excellent! Get your thoughtful and well-written material out also into
blogs, or newspapers, or radio, or some other venue that (I hate to say
this) looks better on a resume, if you haven't already. (Are you David Lloyd
Jones, the "international law expert," mentioned for example in
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/1999/02/04/fhead.htm, and/or
con-nomenal posting to the excellent discussion site
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/ , movable_type/archives/001034.html
?)
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> But perhaps the intelligence issues are more revealing. As I said elsewhere:
> We've had plenty of time to interview just about anybody there we want to,
> and still no good leads?
Absolutely spot on: the reason the newspapers are full of all this stuff
right now is the whole CIA is leaking like a fire hose, telling the
press how they sent over memo after memo describing the future then as
the present now: nothing to be found.
>
> Since you know Rummy, I say; tongue-tickling-cheek; why not call him up and
> ask him if he lied about all this?
Hell, he lies as clumsily now as he did then.
> Thanks for the wishes. I think the whole country needs some good luck in the
> coming months and years.
Yer fuggin ay!
People are nuts to talk about this in terms of the Nazis burning the
Reichstag, but it sure looks like the middle days of the Delian League,
about when democratic Athens started thinking that it had a calling to
slice the heads off any little Greek city who weren't democratic enough
to shut up and obey.
When Condie Rice talks about how Canada is going to be punished for a
long time for speaking truth to power, that's the voice of of the City
Fathers of Athens a generation after WWII ^h^h^h^h the Peloponesian War.
Best,
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> Excellent! Get your thoughtful and well-written material out also into
> blogs, or newspapers, or radio, or some other venue that (I hate to say
> this) looks better on a resume, if you haven't already. (Are you David Lloyd
> Jones, the "international law expert," mentioned for example in
> http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/1999/02/04/fhead.htm, and/or
> con-nomenal posting to the excellent discussion site
> http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/ , movable_type/archives/001034.html
> ?)
>
Thank you for your kind remarks.
I am not the DLJ speaking about the Pinochet prosecution, though his
views seem quite reasonable, nor do I know who he is. He would certainly
fit in smoothly with the Methodist Lloyd-Jones family from slightly
south of mine, in Caenarfon, and at least two of them are Davids.
I don't find any Lloyd-Joneses on the other page you mention, but I post
to Brad DeLong's's site fairly often, usually in a light vein, sometimes
seriously. Accounting standards is a topic on which I am slightly to the
right of Atilla the Hun, and I have certainly written on the subject --
with more in the works. I'm an accountant by training, though not much
in real life. So that one is a maybe.
Best,
-dlj.
Tom Potter
Hopefully "David Lloyd-Jones" has a faulty perception of distance,
and that there are folks who are intelligent enough, and rational enough,
and open minded enough, and have enough love for ALL of mankind, to
"see farther" and to recognize that most conflict and war is caused
by instigators who profit from causing death, destruction and misery
to other people.
If you want to know who instigated the class wars of the 1900's,
and who is instigating the religious wars of the 2000's
***follow the money.****
Look at who profits,
and who suffers in misery and depravation
--
Tom Potter http://home.earthlink.net/~tdp
David Lloyd-Jones
> Hopefully "David Lloyd-Jones" has a faulty perception of distance,
> and that there are folks who are intelligent enough, and rational enough,
> and open minded enough, and have enough love for ALL of mankind, to
> "see farther" and to recognize that most conflict and war is caused
> by instigators who profit from causing death, destruction and misery
> to other people.
>
Tom,
I quite agree.
On the other hand I think an inch is being rather generous in giving you
credit for how far your analysis of who those instigators are goes.
> If you want to know who instigated the class wars of the 1900's,
> and who is instigating the religious wars of the 2000's
> ***follow the money.****
Calling WWII a class war seems to me plain delusional -- a word that I
think would have to be used a great deal in any line-by-line exegesis of
your work, Tom.
> Look at who profits,
> and who suffers in misery and depravation
Given that a large part of what you write, Tom, is simply throwing
things into a blender and pushing the Hi button, I'm not surprised to
see you coming up with the wonderful portmanteau "depravation."
The depravity of the war-monger and the deprivation of war's victims,
supposed cause and effect smeared together in the same blend, and the
identities of both homogenised right down to shredding their DNA,I assume?
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
> Hopefully "David Lloyd-Jones" has a faulty perception of distance,
> and that there are folks who are intelligent enough, and rational enough,
> and open minded enough, and have enough love for ALL of mankind, to
> "see farther" and to recognize that most conflict and war is caused
> by instigators who profit from causing death, destruction and misery
> to other people.
>
"Tom,"
I quite agree.
On the other hand I think an inch is being rather generous in giving you
credit for how far your analysis of who those instigators are goes.
> If you want to know who instigated the class wars of the 1900's,
> and who is instigating the religious wars of the 2000's
> ***follow the money.****
Calling WWII a class war seems to me plain delusional -- a word that I
think would have to be used a great deal in any line-by-line exegesis of
your work, Tom.
> Look at who profits,
> and who suffers in misery and depravation
Given that a large part of what you write, Tom, is simply throwing
*v*
Weapons of Mass Disappearance. (Weapons of Mass Delusion?) The article
brings up the usual questions we've gotten used to, but one point interests
me: A side piece details some troubles for [accused Bush-poodle] Tony Blair.
But he claims proof is in the works, and most interestingly, the piece
implies that British intelligence workers support the claim that there
is/was something there. That is interesting, since US spooks are chafing and
squealing about their own plight. What could the Brits know that is any
better cover for what's going on, and why would they cover for TB unless
they are on to something at least?
Daniel J. Stern
> interestingly, the piece implies that British intelligence workers
> support the claim that there is/was something there.
Yeah, and if the bigoted first world would only let Africa douse itself in
DDT, none of this would have happened. Just ask David Lloyd-Jones.
DS
David Lloyd-Jones
V,
I don't know.
I know a good deal about US intelligence, but my knowledge of the
British is about the same as that of any well-informed newspaper reader.
One thing worth bearing in mind: the Brits have exactly zero of the
American organizations commitment to and history of honest dealing.
The forged evidence of Saddam's supposedly buying uranium in Niger were
put into circulation by the Brits -- with the claim, which you can
believe or not -- that it was an Italian production. My only observation
is that the forgeries were so crude they didn't survive half a day of
objective examination, so machiavellian or not, the Brits responsible
were at least thoroughly stupid. The Americans got taken in by the same
bunch of docs, and that's gotta be a real hall of mirrors story.
Of the several false histories of Saddam and terrorism that have been
going around, you see the same sort of Transatlantic split. The Brit
ones are real forgeries, though not very good ones, while the best you
get out of Americans is self-delusion.
Britsh spooks have a solid four hundred years of double-dealing,
cynicism, and dishonesty behind them. One way of putting the nixon
delusion about, and the Rumsfeld with for the CIA might be put in those
terms: Nixon thought the CIA was, and Rumsfeld wishes the CIA were as
"dependable," i.e. as controllable by a conservative authority, as the
British "services" are.
-dlj.
V,
Incidentally I expected to find "gadowl" in Israel, naturally, but
didn't. There's a hallucinet in France, which some of your mail get sent
to automagically -- a bit of net tweaking that is completely new on me.I
can't find any halluci.net. Couldst send me your address privately?
Cheers,
-d.
David Lloyd-Jones
V,
I don't know.
I know a good deal about US intelligence, but my knowledge of the
British is about the same as that of any well-informed newspaper reader.
One thing worth bearing in mind: the Brits have exactly zero of the
American organizations commitment to and history of honest dealing.
The forged evidence of Saddam's supposedly buying uranium in Niger were
put into circulation by the Brits -- with the claim, which you can
believe or not -- that it was an Italian production. My only observation
is that the forgeries were so crude they didn't survive half a day of
objective examination, so machiavellian or not, the Brits responsible
were at least thoroughly stupid. The Americans got taken in by the same
bunch of docs, and that's gotta be a real hall of mirrors story.
Of the several false histories of Saddam and terrorism that have been
going around, you see the same sort of Transatlantic split. The Brit
ones are real forgeries, though not very good ones, while the best you
get out of Americans is self-delusion.
Britsh spooks have a solid four hundred years of double-dealing,
cynicism, and dishonesty behind them. One way of putting the Nixon
delusion *about*, and the Rumsfeld wish *for*, the CIA might be put in
those terms: Nixon thought the CIA was, and Rumsfeld wishes the CIA
were, as "dependable," i.e. as controllable by a conservative authority,
David Lloyd-Jones
Dan,
You should be *much* more careful to take your meds when your therapist
is out of town.
-dlj.
Tom Potter
> "Tom Potter" wrote:
>
> > Hopefully "David Lloyd-Jones" has a faulty perception of distance,
> > and that there are folks who are intelligent enough, and rational enough,
> > and open minded enough, and have enough love for ALL of mankind, to
> > "see farther" and to recognize that most conflict and war is caused
> > by instigators who profit from causing death, destruction and misery
> > to other people.
> >
>
> "Tom,"
>
> I quite agree.
>
> On the other hand I think an inch is being rather generous in giving you
> credit for how far your analysis of who those instigators are goes.
>
> > If you want to know who instigated the class wars of the 1900's,
> > and who is instigating the religious wars of the 2000's
> > ***follow the money.****
>
> Calling WWII a class war seems to me plain delusional -- a word that I
> think would have to be used a great deal in any line-by-line exegesis of
> your work, Tom.
>
> > Look at who profits,
> > and who suffers in misery and depravation
>
> Given that a large part of what you write, Tom, is simply throwing
> things into a blender and pushing the Hi button, I'm not surprised to
> see you coming up with the wonderful portmanteau "depravation."
I suggest that David Lloyd-Jones is incapable of
seeing beyond his nose, and I am
"being rather generous" at that.
It does not take a microscope or telescope to
see that the same group was responsible for
instigating the class wars of the 1900's
for power and riches, and that after they
raped Russia and wore out their welcome,
they migrated to Israel and New York, where
they are now instigating the religious wars of the 2000's.
The Bolsheviks have a long history
of instigating conflict and wars for power and profit.
It is their stock in trade, just as fortune telling
and horse trading was the stock in trade of Gyspies.
Bush is a willing participant in the Bolshevik game, just as FDR was.
If FDR had gone after the Bolshevik terrorists
rather than getting in bed with them,
WWII would has lasted two months, and there would have been
no millions of deaths, no holocaust, no Cold War, no Korea, no Vietnam ,
no nuclear weapons, no instigation of global religious war, etc.
If Bush had gone after the Bolsheviks,
rather than getting in bed with them and Sharon,
there would have been no 9/11, no movement of America
toward a police and military state,
no loss of freedoms to Americans,
no danger to American's at home and abroad,
no collapse of the economy,
no shattering of the national budget,
no impending war with the Iraqian people,
with its' attendant cost, depletion of
non-renewable resources, environmental damage, etc,
no loss of trust by most nations of the world,
no hatred of America by hundreds of millions of Muslims,
no raid on Social Security,
no freeze of Civil Service employees salaries,
no bankruptcy of major airlines,
no dollar flight,
no meltdown of the dollar,
no meltdown of America,
no weakening of the United Nations,
no weakening of NATO,
no weakening of the G8,
no weakening of international cooperation and trade,
etc.
The major weakness of a democracy,
is that immoral, profiteering, manipulators
can effectively buy the government at a low price,
by finding politicians like Bush, Clinton, Blair, etc.
and giving them the financial and media support
they need to rise above the pack.
As Philip, Alexander the Great's father said,
"There are no city walls so strong,
that they cannot be breached,
if you can get a donkey load of gold up to the wall."
The same is true with a democracy such as America has,
and immoral manipulators steal gold from the masses,
and use the gold to buy more politicians.
--
Tom Potter http://www.tompotter.ws
Edward Green
> One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's "destroyed"
> his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
> nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable?
The worst-case scenario came to me yesterday -- he managed to slip
some out of the country to terrorists or sympathetic rogue governments
before his fall. Some may also be buried in Iraq so deeply nobody can
find them -- and those who knew where they were are not talking, or
are dead. Remember, Saddam hoped or even expected to come out of this
alive somehow -- "survivor" is his best single descriptor -- and he
would want to have a stash for later. People have served years in
prison with their ill-gotten booty hidden on the outside.
Of course debate is pointless -- the real motivations are in
childhood, not the facts. I can't wait until the new 1776' tower is
finish on the WTC site -- the one women fear will be a magnet to
terrorists. Fine. Let them come -- the US is not Israel or GB --
second string powers to be bedeviled with limited consequence. The
real interior dialogue is "You fucked with us, or you consorted with
people who fucked with us: you die".
Richard Herring
Green <null...@aol.com> writes
>Of course debate is pointless -- the real motivations are in
>childhood, not the facts. I can't wait until the new 1776' tower is
>finish on the WTC site -- the one women fear will be a magnet to
>terrorists. Fine. Let them come -- the US is not Israel or GB --
>second string powers to be bedeviled with limited consequence. The
>real interior dialogue is "You fucked with us, or you consorted with
>people who fucked with us: you die".
You appear to have overlooked the fate of those who destroyed the
original towers. They don't seem to mind dying.
--
Richard Herring
Lloyd Parker
null...@aol.com (Edward Green) wrote:
>"*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote in message
news:<vdilmir...@corp.supernews.com>...
>
>> One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's "destroyed"
>> his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
>> nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
>> eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable?
>
>The worst-case scenario came to me yesterday -- he managed to slip
>some out of the country to terrorists or sympathetic rogue governments
>before his fall. Some may also be buried in Iraq so deeply nobody can
>find them -- and those who knew where they were are not talking, or
>are dead. Remember, Saddam hoped or even expected to come out of this
>alive somehow -- "survivor" is his best single descriptor -- and he
>would want to have a stash for later. People have served years in
>prison with their ill-gotten booty hidden on the outside.
Bush claimed tens of thousands of liters and hundreds of tons. Kind of hard
to disguise that much.
John Kievlan
> >childhood, not the facts. I can't wait until the new 1776' tower is
> >finish on the WTC site -- the one women fear will be a magnet to
> >terrorists. Fine. Let them come -- the US is not Israel or GB --
> >second string powers to be bedeviled with limited consequence. The
> >real interior dialogue is "You fucked with us, or you consorted with
> >people who fucked with us: you die".
>
> You appear to have overlooked the fate of those who destroyed the
> original towers. They don't seem to mind dying.
No, you're right, they don't. Although I'm sure Osama would mind, somehow
he doesn't consider himself worthy of being a suicide bomber, I wonder why?
Anyway. No, they don't mind dying, but do you know what they *do* mind?
They mind failing. They mind being unable to affect the US by their
terrorist tactics. If we kill them, and then do what they want so they
won't do it again, and think that we've sent the message we wanted to send
by simply killing them, we've already failed. We've sent the opposite
message. There is only one way to defeat terrorism -- not by killing the
perpetrators, but by killing them and simultaneously demonstrating that
*they died in vain*. They don't mind dying, in fact they seem only too
happy to die, but they *do* mind dying pointlessly. If we give them a
pointless and wasted death, then they will think twice before throwing their
lives into a brick wall.
If we rebuild the tower, and refuse to accede to their demands, then where
do they stand? They've been slaughtered, scattered, and crushed, and where
are their results? We are, if anything, stronger than we were before,
because our eyes have been opened. How many times will they waste their
suicide bombers on us before they learn? We are not a weak, tiny nation
that will crumble when we see our countrymen die. We are a powerful nation
that is angered when we see our countrymen die, and it is very dangerous to
anger us. I am sorry if that sounds arrogant, but it's true. It's the
difference between the bully beating up a child, and that same pathetic
little bully trying his hand on Stephen Seagal. It becomes worse than
pointless, because whatever they can do to us, we can do ten thousand times
that to them.
I'm not saying this because I'm proud of the slaughter that must happen when
they do things like this -- but I would far rather see terrorists die by the
thousands than see a single American die. Not only so, but I fully realize
that this attitude is why so much of the world dislikes Americans. And do
you know what? I don't give a fuck. I, and other Americans with me, won't
stand and die just so that we'll be seen as compassionate. If we are
killed, the killers don't deserve compassion. Civilians will die, yes, and
that is regrettable. But OUR civilians have died as well, and our civilians
and other civilians wil continue to die as long as this behavior is allowed
to continue. At least we don't deliberately destroy civilans, and we try to
prevent as many crossfire deaths as we can. They kill civilians
deliberately and proudly. In the end, fewer will die, and the world will
not regret the loss of animals like Osama.
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> The worst-case scenario came to me yesterday -- he managed to slip
> some out of the country to terrorists or sympathetic rogue governments
> before his fall.
Edward,
I don't know why this is only occurrig to you now. This was one of the
most powerful arguments against the war, before it happened, made by the
people most opposed to the war. It was all over the UN, and it was all
over the press, for weeks before Bush flipped out.
Those critics said that *if* such weapons existed, Saddam could always
be deterred from using them, because, as you correctly point out, he is
or was a "survivor," in type, if not now in actual survival. If America
went to war against him, these people pointed out, there was the fact
that in defeat he would no longer be deterred from anything, and might
gain, in extremis, from giving the weapons to others. The recipients, Al
Quaeda or whoever, it was theorised, and you now point out, would not be
deterrable.
This was not my position; my position was that a war under the auspices
of the Security Council would have been perfectly OK -- and that the
threat of such a war was the ultimate deterrent, and should therefore
have been threatened. This was also the French and German position,
which is why they voted for and continued to support Resolution 1441.
However I do agree with you that if the weapons turn out to have
existed, then Bush and Rumsfeld will have proved the more extreme
critics of the war correct.
-dlj.
Lawson English
[...]
We've sent the opposite
> message. There is only one way to defeat terrorism -- not by killing the
> perpetrators, but by killing them and simultaneously demonstrating that
> *they died in vain*. They don't mind dying, in fact they seem only too
> happy to die, but they *do* mind dying pointlessly. If we give them a
> pointless and wasted death, then they will think twice before throwing
their
> lives into a brick wall.
But they didn't die in vain. One of the main reasons Al Queda attacked us
was because we had military bases in Saudi Arabia. We no longer have those
bases, and as Wolfowitz pointed out, thats an important outcome of the Iraq
war...
In other words, we did exactly what Al Queda wanted, BECAUSE they wanted us
to. Spin it as you want, and I'm sure you will.
Xcott Craver
> Edward Green <null...@aol.com> writes
>
>> Fine. Let them come -- the US is not Israel or GB -- second string
>> powers to be bedeviled with limited consequence. The real interior
>> dialogue is "You fucked with us, or you consorted with people who
>> fucked with us: you die".
>
> You appear to have overlooked the fate of those who destroyed the
> original towers. They don't seem to mind dying.
He also overlooked the fact that Osama Bin Laden didn't die.
Nor did he get thrown in prison, or even given a stiff fine.
We completely missed him, so badly that the administration
trotted out the excuse that he's not really a threat anymore.
Worst serial killer in American history, but oh, looks like
he's not gonna do it again for a while.
--X
*v*
"Edward Green" <null...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:2a0cceff.03060...@posting.google.com...
> "*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote in message
news:<vdilmir...@corp.supernews.com>...
>
> > One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's
"destroyed"
> > his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished
into
> > nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> > eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable?
>
> The worst-case scenario came to me yesterday -- he managed to slip
> some out of the country to terrorists or sympathetic rogue governments
> before his fall. Some may also be buried in Iraq so deeply nobody can
> find them -- and those who knew where they were are not talking, or
> are dead. Remember, Saddam hoped or even expected to come out of this
> alive somehow -- "survivor" is his best single descriptor -- and he
> would want to have a stash for later. People have served years in
> prison with their ill-gotten booty hidden on the outside.
I've gotten skeptical about the existence of the WMDs, but I'll be humbly
respectful for now of the idea there might have been something, at least,
to it. Indeed, the latest is that SH was working on long-range missiles -
technically not WMDs, but still banned under the UN resolutions, and there's
a few empty chem shells, the trailers - ? (Apt digression: it is the
business of the instituion issuing bans, resolutions, etc., to enforce them,
not someone else, right?) However, think of the problems, as I and others
have brought up:
1.) The physical and logistical problems of destroying them or even burying
them (I'm still waiting for some good input from the sci/techs) of
destruction, which includes the issue of traces, products, and of course
stuff that is in shells can't be just poured out, etc. Burial leaves signs
observable to the trained eye, does it not?(I'm just scratching the surface
of all this, I'm no expert - where are they, anyway, in general - I mean the
physical scoop, not political speculation.)
2.) The resistance of any ohter country against taking the stuff off SH's
hands. Do you think Syria or Iran would just do that as a favor, to a guy
they have no reason to love, or even was their enemy, who will fall and not
be able to do much for them anyway? And then, to have the US and Israeli
intelligence jumping all over them, and the satellites checking it all out?
Israel would never let Syria keep such stuff, it would already be at war or
threatening to. We wouldn't let it go either, and if it did happen, our
intelligence is awful for not catching such a mass of weapons, and the
Administration's political will negligent for not pouncing on them
immediately. It is simply not credible. Oh, a few persons and little things
and may have snuck across, known or unknown to those governments, but...
forget it for the big-time way it would have to happen, to get close to what
was claimed mostly moved out. Even through terrorists, the logistics are
considerable and not concealable big-scale (except for a few items, again,
like a few little nukes, etc., but not tons of Sarin shells, etc.)
3.) Our forces have had plenty of time to talk to whomever they can reach.
Remember, with inspectors there, the hope for getting to the stuff was based
on being able to interview scientists credibly. Now we can, and what have
they said that led anywhere? And, you can't kill them all: the people
"shooting the scientists," are around to be questioned, etc. (Kathleen
Parker's editorial yesterday was such a joke, especially the insult that
anyone who would even dare (!!!) to question Bush's honesty wouldn't take no
(to his having lied) for an answer - what a pathetic, sycophantic,
administration flack - a disgrace to journalism. Contrast with Buchanan's
bold editorial on this subject. See what an independent conservative type
can do, away from the Republican Establishment/Corporatist/Neo-Con
plantation. Go ahead, silly broad - tell Pat that he's a hysterical leftist
Bush-hater, or whatever dittohead filth is being passed around for the
playbook.) Here's what Pat said today, in part:
"Something is terribly wrong here. It is impossible to believe the president
would deliberately lie to the nation when he knew the full truth would be
discovered at war's end in a few weeks. Either he was misled, or he was
deceived - and so, too, was Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Who did it? Who was responsible for the intelligence failure, or the
dishonest use of selected intelligence, or the conscious and deliberate
deceit of a president and secretary of state?
Where are the weapons? We have searched 300 sites and arms dumps and found
not one shell. If Saddam had the weapons, why did he not use them? If he
destroyed them before the war, as Rumsfeld now argues, he fulfilled the
terms of Resolution 1441 and could have saved himself by showing U.N.
inspectors where and how he did it."
I don't want to think Bush lied either, and he could have been massaged by
Svengali types - but they too would know the truth would be discovered in a
few weeks. The insidious possibility, is that they don't care, because they
know so many Americans have become suckers and liberal-hating dittoheads who
just go with the flow of that whole mudslide of the Right, and will just not
give a crap, or believe it was true anyway - that such a public would just
let them get away with it. Look at WSJ editorials, the hack "think" tanks
like the Heritage Foundation, talk radio, all getting in tune together to
just say: Shut up, America-Bush hating leftist traitors, etc.
>
> Of course debate is pointless -- the real motivations are in
> childhood, not the facts. I can't wait until the new 1776' tower is
> finish on the WTC site -- the one women fear will be a magnet to
> terrorists. Fine. Let them come -- the US is not Israel or GB --
> second string powers to be bedeviled with limited consequence. The
> real interior dialogue is "You fucked with us, or you consorted with
> people who fucked with us: you die".
Your first sentence is thought-provoking, and poetic sounding. (You know,
what they say: "Either a madman or a genius.) But no, debate *is the point*
for rational minds. I suppose you must love Tom Friedman's work. I don't
blame the US for hitting something back after 9/11, but I don't want to be
lied to about side shows like Iraq either. Things may not be better after
the war (see recent Pew polls) but I'll credit Bush for getting something
stimulated in the Israel-Palestinian stalemate.
*v*
...
> I don't find any Lloyd-Joneses on the other page you mention, but I post
> to Brad DeLong's's site fairly often, usually in a light vein, sometimes
> seriously. Accounting standards is a topic on which I am slightly to the
> right of Atilla the Hun, and I have certainly written on the subject --
> with more in the works. I'm an accountant by training, though not much
> in real life. So that one is a maybe.
>
> Best,
>
> -dlj.
>
but raw monetary production in women on the ladder of success in
accountancy.
Posted by: David Lloyd-Jones on October 22, 2002 05:17 PM "
?
*v*
SPINSANITY (http://www.spinsanity.org)
Countering rhetoric with reason
=========================================
FEATURED POST
==================================
Bush falsely claims "we found the weapons of mass destruction" (6/1)
By Ben Fritz
President Bush's is now claiming that "we found the weapons of mass
destruction." This statement is flat out false according to the
evidence presented by his own administration, however. So far, the
U.S. has only found evidence of weapons labs that likely could have
been used to create biological weapons, but has found no actual
weapons banned by the United Nations.
http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_06_01_archive.html#200371537
FEATURED POST
===============================================
Barnes perpetuates the Scud myth (5/30)
By Brendan Nyhan
In his cover story on General Tommy Franks in this week's Weekly
Standard, executive editor Fred Barnes claims Scud missile sites were
taken out in Iraq before the war. However, news reports have
indicated that no Scuds have been discovered in Iraq.
http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_05_25_archive.html#200364165
David Lloyd-Jones
I think a word or a comma has gotten dropped there, but yup, that's mine.
The context was, the empirical fact that went with it was that in banks
and in the big Eight, uh, Big Five, going, going... Big four accounting
firms the first women to make partner (for accountancy) or genuine Vice
President, are always in tax, computation or some such area where there
are objective measures of excellence. (In manufcturing, similarly, women
generally reach the top only when there are hard numbers, e.g. sales or
divisional profitability, to get them there.)
Men in all these fields -- but spectacularly in accountancy -- reach the
top by being pretty, or soft-spoken, or seductive. Hell, even in pro
football the quarterbacks get there by looking nice, nuthing but.
-dlj.
Matt Giwer
Serial? But only one time is not serial. And then we do require
physical evidence of his involvement in 9/11 do we not? Just as we
require physical evidence of gas chambers do we not?
You thought jumping on the gas chamber bandwagon was fun when you had
company dismissing the requirement for physical evidence but now that
you have learned the importance of physical evidence in Iraq and just
how powerful belief over evidence can be you refuse to address the issue
of physical evidence.
--
When morals to down morale goes up.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2650
Xcott Craver
> Xcott Craver wrote:
>>
>> We completely missed him, so badly that the administration
>> trotted out the excuse that he's not really a threat anymore.
>> Worst serial killer in American history, but oh, looks like
>> he's not gonna do it again for a while.
>
> Serial? But only one time is not serial.
My silly mistake, I meant to say "mass murderer."
-X
Lloyd Parker
"*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote:
>
>"Edward Green" <null...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:2a0cceff.03060...@posting.google.com...
>> "*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote in message
>news:<vdilmir...@corp.supernews.com>...
>>
>> > One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's
>"destroyed"
>> > his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished
>into
>> > nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
>> > eliminations scientifically and logistically questionable?
>>
>> The worst-case scenario came to me yesterday -- he managed to slip
>> some out of the country to terrorists or sympathetic rogue governments
>> before his fall. Some may also be buried in Iraq so deeply nobody can
>> find them -- and those who knew where they were are not talking, or
>> are dead. Remember, Saddam hoped or even expected to come out of this
>> alive somehow -- "survivor" is his best single descriptor -- and he
>> would want to have a stash for later. People have served years in
>> prison with their ill-gotten booty hidden on the outside.
>
>I've gotten skeptical about the existence of the WMDs, but I'll be humbly
>respectful for now of the idea there might have been something, at least,
>to it. Indeed, the latest is that SH was working on long-range missiles -
>technically not WMDs, but still banned under the UN resolutions,
The only ones we've found were legal.
>and there's
>a few empty chem shells, the trailers - ?
All tests so far have shown fertilizer making processes.
Edward Green
> Richard Herring wrote:
> > Edward Green <null...@aol.com> writes
> >
> >> Fine. Let them come -- the US is not Israel or GB -- second string
> >> powers to be bedeviled with limited consequence. The real interior
> >> dialogue is "You fucked with us, or you consorted with people who
> >> fucked with us: you die".
> >
> > You appear to have overlooked the fate of those who destroyed the
> > original towers. They don't seem to mind dying.
>
> He also overlooked the fact that Osama Bin Laden didn't die.
> Nor did he get thrown in prison, or even given a stiff fine.
Oh, boo, hoo, hoo. So maybe he continues to lead a nomadic existence,
tethered to his dialysis machine. I'm sure he's having a lovely time
of it.
Thoese who flew the planes may not have minded dying ... but others
who aided and abetted did/would have/will -- and that just takes the
fun out of supporting suicide bombers. Like that fat one -- devout
Muslim -- who was known for as a playboy while coordinating the death
of others. He's in prison, and not having much fun at all anymore,
though he may live.
And lets not forget the Uncle Al position -- want to die? Let us sate
their desire in full! Remember Carthage -- the Romans did, but they
never had to worry about it again.
Sorry about that second-string power crack, RH -- I realize that in
the case of both GB and IS it's not so much the will or even the way
to oppose, but a hamstringing in international politics. Purely as a
matter of size the US at least is in a position to say the hell with
international politics -- you're either with us or against us -- and
still enjoy a good chance of long term survival. Though I really like
what you guys did in the South Atlantic.
> We completely missed him, so badly that the administration
> trotted out the excuse that he's not really a threat anymore.
> Worst serial killer in American history, but oh, looks like
> he's not gonna do it again for a while.
Boo hoo hoo ... they just indicted a man in a 20 year old murder in
the US: we will never stop looking for him, though it's perfectly true
-- even if not killed or captured, destruction of his organization and
freezing of his assets lowers his threat level. No government on the
planet will dare now openly harbor him or Hussein ... in the event
they are alive.
But OK ... I get the drift -- you want to take the position that
everything the US does is ineffective. It's a common POV "Everything
X does is Y". Fine. The course we are taking now seems likely to be
more effective than the protracted appeasement posture which led to
the WTC -- the burden on the critic is or should be "OK ... and what
do you propose which is better"?
But somehow I doubt your real motivation is the success or security of
the US: you've certainly got plenty of company, but then, only
performers can hope for universal love, and then only after good
performances.
John Kievlan
> was because we had military bases in Saudi Arabia. We no longer have those
> bases, and as Wolfowitz pointed out, thats an important outcome of the
Iraq
> war...
>
> In other words, we did exactly what Al Queda wanted, BECAUSE they wanted
us
> to. Spin it as you want, and I'm sure you will.
I'm not spinning anything. I think we've done some things right and some
things wrong. I hate it that we did *anything* they wanted, I think it's a
mistake. That's why I argued that we should rebuild the towers -- anything
we can do to show them that we're not crushed is great... I just wish we'd
done more than we have. But I hadn't heard that we don't have bases in
Saudi Arabia anymore... when did that happen?
Xcott Craver
> Xcott Craver <c...@B-r-a-i-n-H-z.com> wrote:
>>
>> He also overlooked the fact that Osama Bin Laden didn't die.
>> Nor did he get thrown in prison, or even given a stiff fine.
>
> Oh, boo, hoo, hoo. So maybe he continues to lead a nomadic existence,
> tethered to his dialysis machine. I'm sure he's having a lovely time
> of it.
Obviously, that does not suffice as "justice." I understand
that it will be hard to catch him; what I'm dissatisfied with
is the attitude that Bin Laden is a low priority now that he's
not killing thousands of Americans for a while.
Before the Iraq war, we had opinion polls indicating that a lot
of Americans thought Hussein was involved in 9/11. Now that the
war is over, I wonder if polls would indicate some sort of
appeasement or closure over 9/11, because we liberated Iraq.
--X
Lawson English
Mis-spoke. They are leaving and should be out by the end of Summer.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/29/wbr.saudi.base/
[...]
Ironically, even though bin Laden's al Qaeda movement and its Taliban
backers have been crushed in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has now announced the huge U.S. Air Force operation at the Prince Sultan
Airbase in Saudi Arabia will move on -- to neighboring Qatar we're told.
At a joint news conference today with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan,
Secretary Rumsfeld told reporters, "By mutual agreement, the aircraft that
had been involved will now be able to leave."
[...]
The Saudi royal leadership will clearly be relieved to say goodbye to the
U.S. forces and warplanes -- now that the Iraqi threat is gone. Most of the
U.S. forces are expected to be out of the Kingdom by the end of the summer.
--
That darned liberal Colin Powell. Its all his fault...
Did you hear that his family originally came from France? Froggy
pseudo-intellectual socialists, every one of them. Its true! I heard it on
Rush.
ZZBunker
> One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's "destroyed"
> his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished into
> nothingness. But, aren't such glib pronouncements of sequelae-free
> example that incinerating chemical weapons is dangerous, it leaves
> characteristic traces, and is almost certainly incomplete without advanced
> equipment (would they bother to ramp up for that, when they need to fund the
> weapons themselves?) etc. I wonder if such things could even be buried
> without looking just like that had been done, and by now, some of those who
> worked on it would have shown where it happened? Similar considerations
> apply for bio materials, no? It just isn't like one crazy guy flushing dope
> down the toilet.
It is one crazy guy flushing dopes down the toilet, the toilet called
the Euphrates. Which has been renamed "clean it up, and shut up",
you colder-than-fusion, liberal lefty, Stalin-wannabee
bankrupt commie hosers.
Robert J. Kolker
Richard Herring wrote:
> You appear to have overlooked the fate of those who destroyed the
> original towers. They don't seem to mind dying.
>
That is o.k. We will kill their women and children and we will not have
the problem 60 years from now. Kill them all and let Allah sort out the
corpses.
Bob Kolker
Josh Halpern
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
That was certainly a high point of Christian culture. The
Abbot of Cliteaux would be proud of you.
josh halpern
Lloyd Parker
Dave
> OOORAH!@USMC.ret wrote:
> > Destroyed?
> >
> > I've spoken with several military friends with more current
> > information than I have, and the consensus is that we will see
> > those weapons one of these days. They're either well-hidden in
> > Iraq, or have been stored in Syria or Iran. You'll recall that
> > during the first Gulf War, Iraq was successful in storing most
> > of its remaining military aircraft across the border...
>
> There were none. Bush lied. Blair lied. They all lied. Deal with it.
Possibly, but outside the US and the former USSR, Iraq probably had
the greatest expertise with chemical weapons, and at one time had the
largest stockpile, measured in hundreds of tons. Where all that
material went has never been clearly established.
*v*
"Dave" <gal...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5591d176.0306...@posting.google.com...
That's the big question: not just where as accepted, but whether. Look at
the problems of various ways of dumping them: physical, logistical,
political. If you have good answers, LUK. All these replies, to a thread
started in sci.x's, and no good points yet about the science issues of
destroying such weapons. You can't just make a bonfire and burn loads of
chem shells. Israel would never let Syria take in such weapons, and we
couldn't either - that whole angle would be hopping. I don't know what's
left.
*v*
"ZZBunker" <zzbu...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:e4a0829b.03060...@posting.google.com...
Dogpile results for: "clean it up, and shut up"
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Search engine: Dogpile Picks found 0 results. The query sent was "clean it
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1. Wright Stuff - Humour 1
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*v*
> *v* wrote:
...
> >>
> >
> > "...Lloyd-Jones's Law of Accountancy: prettiness in men trumps
everything
> > but raw monetary production in women on the ladder of success in
> > accountancy.
> >
> >
> > Posted by: David Lloyd-Jones on October 22, 2002 05:17 PM "
> >
>
> I think a word or a comma has gotten dropped there, but yup, that's mine.
>
> The context was, the empirical fact that went with it was that in banks
> and in the big Eight, uh, Big Five, going, going... Big four accounting
> firms the first women to make partner (for accountancy) or genuine Vice
> President, are always in tax, computation or some such area where there
> are objective measures of excellence. (In manufcturing, similarly, women
> generally reach the top only when there are hard numbers, e.g. sales or
> divisional profitability, to get them there.)
>
> Men in all these fields -- but spectacularly in accountancy -- reach the
> top by being pretty, or soft-spoken, or seductive. Hell, even in pro
> football the quarterbacks get there by looking nice, nuthing but.
>
> -dlj.
>
Tom Potter
>
> "ZZBunker" <zzbu...@netscape.net> wrote in message
> news:e4a0829b.03060...@posting.google.com...
> > "*v*" <gad...@halluci.net> wrote in message
> news:<vdilmir...@corp.supernews.com>...
> > > One of the scenarios we hear from Rummy et al is that Saddam's
> "destroyed"
> > > his WMD before Coalition forces moved in, implying that they vanished
> into
> > > nothingness.
Here is an excerpt from an article on America's intelligence community,
and what some of the "spooks" have to say:
"As best I can reconstruct events, Rumsfeld genuinely felt the CIA and
Defense Intelligence Agency were
doing a horrendous job on Iraq - after all, he was hearing much more
alarming information from those
close to Ahmad Chalabi. So the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit,
and it sifted through everyone
else's information and goaded other agencies to come up with more alarmist
conclusions."
.
"He's an ideologist," one man in the spy world said of Rumsfeld. "He doesn't
start with the facts, even
though he's quite brainy. He has a bottom line, and then he gathers facts to
support the bottom line."
It seems to me, that the great presidents like
Washington, Jefferson, Reagan, Truman, etc.
were honest and truthful, and could be trusted.
I wonder what Bush would have told his father,
if he had cut down the cherry tree?
I wonder if he would have emulated the old man and said:
"Read my lips!!!!
I didn't cut down that cherry tree!!!"
--
Tom Potter http://tompotter.us
*v*
"Tom Potter" <t...@hotsheet.com> wrote in message
news:bbri24$cm93t$1...@ID-188019.news.dfncis.de...<snip>
> Here is an excerpt from an article on America's intelligence community,
> and what some of the "spooks" have to say:
> "He's an ideologist," one man in the spy world said of Rumsfeld. "He
doesn't
> start with the facts, even
> though he's quite brainy. He has a bottom line, and then he gathers facts
to
> support the bottom line."
> Tom Potter http://tompotter.us
>
I love the physics stuff, but I don't see a ref. to that article. Could you
give a link, or the source?
Matt Giwer
So what? They still lied. The war was illegal. The fact that there was
a war is a hanging offense for the political leadership of the countries
engaged in that war. Blair and his cronies in Britain and Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz and Feith all have a date with the gallows
although they will likely escape it because there is yet to be a rule of
law in international relations.
--
Hodie postridie Nonas Iunias MMIII est
-- The Ferric Webceasar
Matt Giwer
Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
several gases with annual $1.5B US agricultural grants. It is no secret
the US financed the production of chemical weapons.
Now if you put together a chemist and a bookkeeper you can estimate the
amount of chemical weapons which could have been produced and subtract
best estimates of how many were expended and declare the difference
unaccounted for. And that is all that was done.
And that is the only basis for falsely claiming there were "weapons"
because of the bookkeeping difference. Maybe Iraq cheated and actually
made fertilizer.
I invite anyone to go to their medicine cabinet or kitchen and find
anything with a 10 year shelf life. Scott Ritter kept repeating the
obvious, even if they had not been destroyed they would have been
useless in three years. Iraq never bothered manufacturing to the extreme
purity required for long term storage. They went from production to
usage in a couple weeks.
--
How does a threat to the Homeland differ from
a threat to the Fatherland?
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2666
ZZBunker
You'll never find it in a Dogpile search,
since Bin Laden's got it. So "scientists" just gotta shake it off,
and write some OP ED shit to the New York Times or something that,
rather than Usenet. Concerning how Hussein
was completely innocent in the 9/11 clean up,
and how Kennedy Airport isn't REALLY a WMD.
Dan Clore
> *v* wrote:
> > That's the big question: not just where as accepted, but whether. Look at
> > the problems of various ways of dumping them: physical, logistical,
> > political. If you have good answers, LUK. All these replies, to a thread
> > started in sci.x's, and no good points yet about the science issues of
> > destroying such weapons. You can't just make a bonfire and burn loads of
> > chem shells. Israel would never let Syria take in such weapons, and we
> > couldn't either - that whole angle would be hopping. I don't know what's
> > left.
>
> Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
> several gases with annual $1.5B US agricultural grants. It is no secret
> the US financed the production of chemical weapons.
>
> Now if you put together a chemist and a bookkeeper you can estimate the
> amount of chemical weapons which could have been produced and subtract
> best estimates of how many were expended and declare the difference
> unaccounted for. And that is all that was done.
>
> And that is the only basis for falsely claiming there were "weapons"
> because of the bookkeeping difference. Maybe Iraq cheated and actually
> made fertilizer.
Or perhaps acted with the competency typical of such
bureaucracies.
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"It's a political statement -- or, rather, an
*anti*-political statement. The symbol for *anarchy*!"
-- Batman, explaining the circle-A graffiti, in
_Detective Comics_ #608
David Lloyd-Jones
> "David Lloyd-Jones" <da...@rogers.com> wrote in message
>>The context was, the empirical fact that went with it was that in banks
>>and in the big Eight, uh, Big Five, going, going... Big four accounting
>>firms the first women to make partner (for accountancy) or genuine Vice
>>President, are always in tax, computation or some such area where there
>>are objective measures of excellence. (In manufcturing, similarly, women
>>generally reach the top only when there are hard numbers, e.g. sales or
>>divisional profitability, to get them there.)
>>
>>Men in all these fields -- but spectacularly in accountancy -- reach the
>>top by being pretty, or soft-spoken, or seductive. Hell, even in pro
>>football the quarterbacks get there by looking nice, nuthing but.
>
>
> What a curious inversion of the usual stereotypes.
>
Nothing curious about it. With massive bias of power against women,
bulling their way through of the basis of objectively verifiable success
is the only strategy that wins.
On the other hand the work of the highly paid symbolic leadership
positions is mostly fucking the dog -- and dogs prefer to be fucked by
the prettiest men.
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
> *v* wrote:
>
>> the problems of various ways of dumping them: physical, logistical,
>> political. If you have good answers, LUK. All these replies, to a thread
>> started in sci.x's, and no good points yet about the science issues of
>> destroying such weapons. You can't just make a bonfire and burn loads of
>> chem shells. Israel would never let Syria take in such weapons, and we
>> couldn't either - that whole angle would be hopping. I don't know what's
>> left.
>
>
> Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
> several gases with annual $1.5B US agricultural grants. It is no secret
> the US financed the production of chemical weapons.
It is also established that the US sold 48 Hughes helicopters with
spraying equipment to the Iraqis.
What is not known, I would guess, is two things: what tonnage of
chemicals was used up in killing the tens of tousands of Kurts sprayed
with poison gas?
And -- a good possibility -- what percentage of the chemicals actually
went into agricultural insecticides and/or fertilizers as was the
claimed intention?
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
> *v* wrote:
>
>> the problems of various ways of dumping them: physical, logistical,
>> political. If you have good answers, LUK. All these replies, to a thread
>> started in sci.x's, and no good points yet about the science issues of
>> destroying such weapons. You can't just make a bonfire and burn loads of
>> chem shells. Israel would never let Syria take in such weapons, and we
>> couldn't either - that whole angle would be hopping. I don't know what's
>> left.
>
>
> Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
> several gases with annual $1.5B US agricultural grants. It is no secret
> the US financed the production of chemical weapons.
It is also established that the US sold 48 Hughes helicopters with
spraying equipment to the Iraqis. At least some of these were used in
the mass murders of the Kurds. Hughes claims the Saddamites must have
"reconfigured" them How? By taking the packing tape off the nozzles?
What is not known, I would guess, is two things: what tonnage of
chemicals was used up in killing the tens of tousands of Kurts sprayed
with poison gas?
And -- a good possibility -- what percentage of the chemicals actually
went into agricultural insecticides and/or fertilizers as was the
claimed intention?
There's no reason those two numbers should not add up to the total ever
bought.
-dlj.
Tom Potter
New York Times. June 6, 2003 editorial.
Note that you will have to paste to get the URL right.
(Everythjing should be on the same line.)
Tom Potter http://tompotter.us
Dr. George O. Bizzigotti
wrote:
>*v* wrote:
>> That's the big question: not just where as accepted, but whether. Look at
>> the problems of various ways of dumping them: physical, logistical,
>> political. If you have good answers, LUK. All these replies, to a thread
>> started in sci.x's, and no good points yet about the science issues of
>> destroying such weapons. You can't just make a bonfire and burn loads of
>> chem shells. Israel would never let Syria take in such weapons, and we
>> couldn't either - that whole angle would be hopping. I don't know what's
>> left.
> Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
>several gases with annual $1.5B US agricultural grants. It is no secret
>the US financed the production of chemical weapons.
"Financed" implies intent. Is there evidence that the US officials who
approved grants to Iraq (were they really grants, or maybe loan
guarantees to commercial banks?) intended for the money to be used for
the production of chemical weapons? I'll stipulate that some
US-supplied funding may have been used to purchase dual-use chemicals
that were diverted to CW production, but that's a bit different from
financing CW production.
> Now if you put together a chemist and a bookkeeper you can estimate the
>amount of chemical weapons which could have been produced and subtract
>best estimates of how many were expended and declare the difference
>unaccounted for. And that is all that was done.
> And that is the only basis for falsely claiming there were "weapons"
>because of the bookkeeping difference. Maybe Iraq cheated and actually
>made fertilizer.
That's incorrect. The basis for claiming there were "weapons" is the
Iraqi declarations to UNSCOM in the late 1990s; Iraq stated that they
possessed WMDs. Iraq claimed the weapons were destroyed, but UNMOVIC
was unable to verify the claims. It is reasonable to question what
happened to the Iraqi weapons, but the basis for asserting that the
weapons existed is much more than a mere bookkeeping discrepancy.
> I invite anyone to go to their medicine cabinet or kitchen and find
>anything with a 10 year shelf life. Scott Ritter kept repeating the
>obvious, even if they had not been destroyed they would have been
>useless in three years. Iraq never bothered manufacturing to the extreme
>purity required for long term storage. They went from production to
>usage in a couple weeks.
I'm quite skeptical of this point. First, "extreme" purity of agent is
not required for long term storage. The US still has a few munition
filled with Levinstein mustard, which was only 60-70 percent active
agent when it was manufactured in the 1940s. Six decades later, these
munitions are still dangerous and considerable care will be taken in
their destruction. US stockpile GB is generally about 86-87 percent
pure, and US stockpile VX is about 91 percent pure. This is not
particularly high purity, even for technical grade chemicals; it was
pure enough for military weapons. Comparing this to the purity
required of food or drugs is disingenuous; shelf-lives in one's
kitchen are driven by factors such as the growth of microbial
contaminants, loss of moisture, or reaction with oxygen, none of which
are a factor with WMDs.
It is true that some Iraqi agents were quite impure, but shelf lives
vary depending on the specific nature of the impurities and the agent.
The G agents they produced during the Iran-Iraq War had very short
shelf lives, apparently due to contamination of one of the precursors
with hydrogen fluoride. I would not, however, assume that the VX they
declared to UNSCOM would have a similar shelf life; the process
chemistry for manufacturing VX as well as the susceptibility to
decomposition is significantly different from the analogous GB
parameters. Moreover, even an impure chemical munition that had lost
it's effectiveness as a military weapons might still be a formidable
terrorist weapon. Some biological agents, notable anthrax spores, are
quite long-lived.
Regards,
George
**********************************************************************
Dr. George O. Bizzigotti Telephone: (703) 610-2115
Mitretek Systems, Inc. Fax: (703) 610-1558
3150 Fairview Park Drive South E-Mail: gbiz...@mitretek.org
Falls Church, Virginia, 22042-4519
**********************************************************************
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*v*
"Dr. George O. Bizzigotti" <gbiz...@mitretek.org> wrote in message
news:hbh9evksskt66a456...@4ax.com...
<message content>
**********************************************************************
> Dr. George O. Bizzigotti Telephone: (703) 610-2115
> Mitretek Systems, Inc. Fax: (703) 610-1558
> 3150 Fairview Park Drive South E-Mail: gbiz...@mitretek.org
> Falls Church, Virginia, 22042-4519
> **********************************************************************
>
Good: I was hoping someone technically knowledgeable and up front would post
to this thread. I ask this in all sincerity, and not in a sarcastic
rhetorical mode: can you explain why we can't find any instances or
significant signs of WMDs? Thanks.
~ *v* ~
Bonzo Trontsky
to be told, that no one can find that either!
Matt Giwer
> On Sat, 07 Jun 2003 03:26:07 GMT, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.rr.com>
> wrote:
>
>>*v* wrote:
>
>>>That's the big question: not just where as accepted, but whether. Look at
>>>the problems of various ways of dumping them: physical, logistical,
>>>political. If you have good answers, LUK. All these replies, to a thread
>>>started in sci.x's, and no good points yet about the science issues of
>>>destroying such weapons. You can't just make a bonfire and burn loads of
>>>chem shells. Israel would never let Syria take in such weapons, and we
>>>couldn't either - that whole angle would be hopping. I don't know what's
>>>left.
>
>> Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
>>several gases with annual $1.5B US agricultural grants. It is no secret
>>the US financed the production of chemical weapons.
>
> "Financed" implies intent. Is there evidence that the US officials who
> approved grants to Iraq (were they really grants, or maybe loan
> guarantees to commercial banks?) intended for the money to be used for
> the production of chemical weapons? I'll stipulate that some
> US-supplied funding may have been used to purchase dual-use chemicals
> that were diverted to CW production, but that's a bit different from
> financing CW production.
As I recall they were grants but if loan guarantees so much the better
as the banks would sign out the loan money directly to the suppliers in
the same way the bank makes out a car loan check to dealer not the
lender. Therefore what was being purchased would be exactly known
without the slight extra effort it would take with a grant.
As Iraq was at war with Iran at the time and as CWs came into
widespread use by Iraq (noting Iran was using CWs also) after those
loans were made and knowing what was purchased and knowing the chemicals
were dual use does not require a rocket surgeon to come to the obvious
conclusion. It was so obvious even the talking heads were saying it. The
Wash Post was commenting on it. It was coffee mess talk in DOD.
As to intentional financing, if the money stopped flowing after it
became obvious meaning one year only or if greater controls were put
into place AND the use of CWs stopped then you could make a case it was
not intentional. The opposite occured. I am certain it is well
documented on those 700 pages of Iraq's disclosure that the US prevented
from being made public.
>> Now if you put together a chemist and a bookkeeper you can estimate the
>>amount of chemical weapons which could have been produced and subtract
>>best estimates of how many were expended and declare the difference
>>unaccounted for. And that is all that was done.
>> And that is the only basis for falsely claiming there were "weapons"
>>because of the bookkeeping difference. Maybe Iraq cheated and actually
>>made fertilizer.
> That's incorrect. The basis for claiming there were "weapons" is the
> Iraqi declarations to UNSCOM in the late 1990s; Iraq stated that they
> possessed WMDs. Iraq claimed the weapons were destroyed, but UNMOVIC
> was unable to verify the claims. It is reasonable to question what
> happened to the Iraqi weapons, but the basis for asserting that the
> weapons existed is much more than a mere bookkeeping discrepancy.
I can find nothing in any source regarding any such assertion by Iraq
as to having weapons in the late 1990s. Every reference I have read by
the gov, when they were kind enough to given any reference has been to
the late 1980s in reference to the Iran-Iraq war. I have read both
Ritter and Blix make explicite reference to that war. What is your
source for a declaration of actual possession in the late 1990s?
>> I invite anyone to go to their medicine cabinet or kitchen and find
>>anything with a 10 year shelf life. Scott Ritter kept repeating the
>>obvious, even if they had not been destroyed they would have been
>>useless in three years. Iraq never bothered manufacturing to the extreme
>>purity required for long term storage. They went from production to
>>usage in a couple weeks.
> I'm quite skeptical of this point. First, "extreme" purity of agent is
> not required for long term storage. The US still has a few munition
> filled with Levinstein mustard, which was only 60-70 percent active
> agent when it was manufactured in the 1940s. Six decades later, these
> munitions are still dangerous and considerable care will be taken in
> their destruction. US stockpile GB is generally about 86-87 percent
> pure, and US stockpile VX is about 91 percent pure. This is not
> particularly high purity, even for technical grade chemicals; it was
> pure enough for military weapons. Comparing this to the purity
> required of food or drugs is disingenuous; shelf-lives in one's
> kitchen are driven by factors such as the growth of microbial
> contaminants, loss of moisture, or reaction with oxygen, none of which
> are a factor with WMDs.
That is correct but the impurities in US stockpiles are preservatives
rather than manufacturing impurities. I have heard no claim of Iraq
having purchased the stabilizing agents. Without those the impurities
are manufacturing byproducts which will continue to react albeit slowly
with the desired material.
As to the medicine cabinet, according to the people who cried
Wolfowitz, Iraq had tons of every disease and plague known to man in
weaponized form. Therefore the reference is reasonable.
> It is true that some Iraqi agents were quite impure, but shelf lives
> vary depending on the specific nature of the impurities and the agent.
> The G agents they produced during the Iran-Iraq War had very short
> shelf lives, apparently due to contamination of one of the precursors
> with hydrogen fluoride. I would not, however, assume that the VX they
> declared to UNSCOM would have a similar shelf life; the process
> chemistry for manufacturing VX as well as the susceptibility to
> decomposition is significantly different from the analogous GB
> parameters. Moreover, even an impure chemical munition that had lost
> it's effectiveness as a military weapons might still be a formidable
> terrorist weapon. Some biological agents, notable anthrax spores, are
> quite long-lived.
As with the current round of diversionary BS being secret factories
ready to go into production the same method can be used to find weapons
under those conditions. Follow the power lines to the climate controlled
storage facilities. Anthrax spores for example, they probably could
survive thousands of years under the right conditions as some grain
found in Egypt have. But unless absolutely dry they have a natural
tendency to produce bacteria destroying all the weaponized characteristics.
The terrorist claim is among the dumbest of them all. Of the few people
who would be interested in actually trying to deploy such things, it
invokes the image of the mad scientist who would have the knowledge to
actually use such things if they could get them.
www.giwersworld.org/911/dirty-bomb.phtml and poison-water.phtml are a
couple straightforward examinations of the problem.
But certainly a few thousand artillery shells and a dozen or so
artillery pieces can be smuggled into the US and shell some unsuspecting
American city. Maybe they could us some of those 9000 mile range
unmanned drones Bush said Iraq had ready to use to attack the US.
I would prefer they repacked the deadly chemicals so we only have to
collect their bodies after they kill themselves in the attempt.
--
Rumsfeld says overthrowing Hussein was like liberating
Paris. I didn't know those guys in WWII had it so easy.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2665
Matt Giwer
> GW offered to show his wife, "His weapon of Mass Reproduction", only
> to be told, that no one can find that either!
But Bush is happy with finding two Trailers of Mass Destruction.
--
2003 May 30: US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz, admits Iraq had
no weapons of mass destruction and the bush league lied to
the world about them.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2696
Kenneth Almquist
> Here's what Pat [Buchanan] said today, in part:
> "Something is terribly wrong here. It is impossible to believe the
> president would deliberately lie to the nation when he knew the full
> truth would be discovered at war's end in a few weeks. Either he was
> misled, or he was deceived - and so, too, was Secretary of State
> Colin Powell. Who did it? Who was responsible for the intelligence
> failure, or the dishonest use of selected intelligence, or the
> conscious and deliberate deceit of a president and secretary of state?
> Where are the weapons? We have searched 300 sites and arms dumps and
> found not one shell. If Saddam had the weapons, why did he not use
> them? If he destroyed them before the war, as Rumsfeld now argues,
> he fulfilled the terms of Resolution 1441 and could have saved himself
> by showing U.N. inspectors where and how he did it."
> I don't want to think Bush lied either, and he could have been massaged
> by Svengali types - but they too would know the truth would be discovered
> in a few weeks. The insidious possibility, is that they don't care,
> because they know so many Americans have become suckers and liberal-hating
> dittoheads who just go with the flow of that whole mudslide of the Right,
> and will just not give a crap, or believe it was true anyway - that such
> a public would just let them get away with it.
There is nothing to suggest that the Bush administration knew before
the war that Iraq did not posess weapons of mass destruction. Rather,
it appears that there was no solid evidence either way. My guess is
that several processes were involved:
1) Confirmation bias. People tend to latch onto evidence that
supports their views and ignore evidence which contradicts it.
Thus, as evidence concerning the possibility that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction appeared, people in the administration
could come to believe that the bulk of the evidence supported
their views. When Blix didn't find any weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, the response from people in the administration was not
to reconsider their belief that Iraq had the weapons, but rather
to questions Blix's competence.
2) Group think. Once you get a sufficiently large group of people
who are convinced that Iraq most likely has weapons of mass
destruction, other people become reluctant to challenge that
belief. This creates a uniformity of (expressed) opinion, which
leads people to be much more certain than they would be if they
were considering the evidence without input from other people.
3) Deliberate lying. I'm sure this occurred, but I'm talking about
relatively minor lies here. The Bush Administration regularly
stretches the truth to sell its policies. Did the people in the
Bush Administration think that they could get away with lying
about Iraq? Sure--as long as weapons of mass destruction were
found in Iraq after the war. Then the big picture would be that
Bush claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and
weapons were found. The public would ignore the details.
My point is that, based on the way that the Bush Administration
handled the search for weapons of mass destruction after the war, it
appears that the administration was gambling that Iraq actually did
possess weapons of mass destruction. Obviously this was a risk, but
group decision making tends to overlook risks, and I think that was
what happenned here.
Note that the question of whether Iraq actually posessed weapons of
mass destruction is a problem for the Bush administration mainly because
it didn't have a strategy for burying the issue. The actual justification
for the was was that the alleged weapons of mass destruction might be
used against the United States. But in fact Saddam did not used weapons
of mass destruction against the U.S. even when we invaded Iraq and
overthrew his government. If Saddam didn't use weapons of mass
destruction against the United States under *those* circumstances, it
is hard to imagine he would do so under *any* circumstances.
Thus the Bush Adminstration's claim that Saddam's alleged weapons of
mass destruction were a threat to the United States--the claim used
to justify this war--is as far as I can see utterly discredited. This
is pretty much ignored in the public debates over the war.
Kenneth Almquist
Tom Potter
"Kenneth Almquist" <k...@sorry.no.email> wrote in message
news:bc8mor$sif$1...@shell.monmouth.com...
The question is:
"What did he <Bush> know,
and when did he know it?"
Clinton was impeached because he lied about a blow job.
Nixon was about to be impeached because he may have lied about
covering up an illegal break-in."
Did Bush lie in order to start a needless war???????
What did he know,
and when did he know it?????
If Bush and Rumfeld lied in order to start a war,
it is the worst crime against America in history
by ANY American citizen,
including Benedict Arnold.
thunder
> 1) Confirmation bias. People tend to latch onto evidence that
> supports their views and ignore evidence which contradicts it.
>
An interesting article on just that:
Randy Poe
> If Bush and Rumfeld lied in order to start a war,
> it is the worst crime against America in history
> by ANY American citizen,
> including Benedict Arnold.
"Remember the Maine!"
- Randy
Dr. George O. Bizzigotti
wrote:
>>> Correction. In the 1980s, Iraq bought precursor chemicals to make
I believe there's a bit of confusion here. v originally referred to
$1.5B US agricultural grants. Yet on 17 April 2003, Jane's Chem-Bio
Web reported that "The USA reportedly approved the export to Iraq
[before the Gulf War] of US$1.5bn worth of dual-use items, including
powerful computers, precision machine tools and advanced electronics."
Thus, it appears that v took the figure for all military dual use
items and somehow applied it as an annual figure to "precursor
chemicals" to manufacture several CW agents.
I've read the "Staff Report on U.S. Chemical and Biological
Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and The Possible Impact on
the Health Consequences of the War" by the U.S. Senate Committee on
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, chaired by Senator Riegle. There
is an extensive listing of biological cultures sold from the American
Type Culture Collection or shipped from the Centers for Disease
Control to Iraq,* but no reports of chemical weapon precursors. Note
that there are a number of sources on the web that assert that the US
sold VX to the Iraqis, citing this report, but there is no such
assertion contained in the report. There is reference in committee
hearings to the illegal export of thiodiglycol ( a mustard precursor)
to Iraq by a Baltimore company that was successfully prosecuted for
its actions. I'm able to find a number of references to sales of CW
precursor chemicals by European companies to Iraq, but no details as
to the financing.
Given that I'm reading this in sci.chem, I'm interested in the
specific chemicals the Iraqis purchased. Some precursors are farther
away from the final product than others, and some have more legitimate
uses than others. It would also be nice to know what program supplied
the funding and how the funds moved before making allegations that the
US "financed" Iraq's CW program.
*ATCC is a non-profit corporation set up to share cultures between
bona fide researchers. It's not a government agency. CDC is a
government agency, but it's work is in public health, not military
affairs. These organizations may have been naive in sending disease
organism cultures to Iraq in the '80s, but it is stretching the point
incredibly to allege that this constituted intentional US assistance
to the Iraqi BW program. It's also useful to note that the Iraqi BW
program, when revealed by a defector in 1995, came as a surprise to
UNSCOM, so it's not as if everyone knew in 1985 that the Iraqis had a
program.
>>> Now if you put together a chemist and a bookkeeper you can estimate the
>>>amount of chemical weapons which could have been produced and subtract
>>>best estimates of how many were expended and declare the difference
>>>unaccounted for. And that is all that was done.
>>> And that is the only basis for falsely claiming there were "weapons"
>>>because of the bookkeeping difference. Maybe Iraq cheated and actually
>>>made fertilizer.
>> That's incorrect. The basis for claiming there were "weapons" is the
>> Iraqi declarations to UNSCOM in the late 1990s; Iraq stated that they
>> possessed WMDs. Iraq claimed the weapons were destroyed, but UNMOVIC
>> was unable to verify the claims. It is reasonable to question what
>> happened to the Iraqi weapons, but the basis for asserting that the
>> weapons existed is much more than a mere bookkeeping discrepancy.
> I can find nothing in any source regarding any such assertion by Iraq
>as to having weapons in the late 1990s. Every reference I have read by
>the gov, when they were kind enough to given any reference has been to
>the late 1980s in reference to the Iran-Iraq war. I have read both
>Ritter and Blix make explicite reference to that war. What is your
>source for a declaration of actual possession in the late 1990s?
The UNSCOM Report to UN Security Council of October 1998 references
Iraq's Full, Final, and Complete Disclosure on Biological Weapons of
September 1997. Up to 1995, Iraq continued to deny having ever had any
offensive biological weapons program. In 1995, Iraq declared the
production by 1991 of at least 19,000 liters of concentrated botulinum
toxin (nearly 10,000 liters were filled into munitions), 8,500 liters
of concentrated anthrax (some 6,500 liters were filled into munitions)
and 2,200 liters of concentrated aflatoxin (1,580 liters were filled
into munitions). Through 1998, Iraq continued to claim that an order
for destruction of their biological weapons had been given orally, but
no Iraqi representative was able to recall an exact date for the order
or the dates or exact location of destruction operations.
Aside from "missing" chemical munitions, UNSCOM recovered a small
number of mustard-filled shells in the period 1997-1998. The
bookkeeping differences concerned actual chemical weapons, not merely
what could have been produced from known amounts of precursor
chemicals. I may have erred in referring to an Iraqi "declaration" in
1998. There was an incriminating document that was discovered during a
July 1998 inspection of the headquarters of the Iraqi Air Force that
was examined briefly by a Chief Inspector, then seized by an Iraqi
official; the document accounted for Iraq's total holdings of chemical
weapons.
>>> I invite anyone to go to their medicine cabinet or kitchen and find
>>>anything with a 10 year shelf life. Scott Ritter kept repeating the
>>>obvious, even if they had not been destroyed they would have been
>>>useless in three years. Iraq never bothered manufacturing to the extreme
>>>purity required for long term storage. They went from production to
>>>usage in a couple weeks.
>> I'm quite skeptical of this point. First, "extreme" purity of agent is
>> not required for long term storage. The US still has a few munition
>> filled with Levinstein mustard, which was only 60-70 percent active
>> agent when it was manufactured in the 1940s. Six decades later, these
>> munitions are still dangerous and considerable care will be taken in
>> their destruction. US stockpile GB is generally about 86-87 percent
>> pure, and US stockpile VX is about 91 percent pure. This is not
>> particularly high purity, even for technical grade chemicals; it was
>> pure enough for military weapons. Comparing this to the purity
>> required of food or drugs is disingenuous; shelf-lives in one's
>> kitchen are driven by factors such as the growth of microbial
>> contaminants, loss of moisture, or reaction with oxygen, none of which
>> are a factor with WMDs.
> That is correct but the impurities in US stockpiles are preservatives
>rather than manufacturing impurities.
Actually, both are present; in the case of Levinstein mustard, there
are no preservatives and the balance of the material (30-40 percent)
were manufacturing impurities, primarily polysulfide derivatives.
Mustard agents do not require stabilizers. Stabilizers are present in
nerve agents at 1-2 percent, so US stockpile nerve agents contain 7-12
percent manufacturing impurities.
> I have heard no claim of Iraq
>having purchased the stabilizing agents.
Stabilizers used for the agents that require them are not controlled
substances; off the top of my head, I recall that some are found in
latex paint.
>Without those the impurities
>are manufacturing byproducts which will continue to react albeit slowly
>with the desired material.
Stabilizers are used to retard the reaction of agents with moisture as
well as some potential contaminants. However, most manufacturing
byproducts are inert and do not react to any significant degree with
the agents, which is why they remain present in assays conducted 20-30
years after the US agent was produced..
> As to the medicine cabinet, according to the people who cried
>Wolfowitz, Iraq had tons of every disease and plague known to man in
>weaponized form. Therefore the reference is reasonable.
Only if one is seeking to score debating points. The expiration dates
on drugs in your medicine cabinet have absolutely nothing to do with
whether or not agents made 10 or more years ago are still lethal.
>> It is true that some Iraqi agents were quite impure, but shelf lives
>> vary depending on the specific nature of the impurities and the agent.
>> The G agents they produced during the Iran-Iraq War had very short
>> shelf lives, apparently due to contamination of one of the precursors
>> with hydrogen fluoride. I would not, however, assume that the VX they
>> declared to UNSCOM would have a similar shelf life; the process
>> chemistry for manufacturing VX as well as the susceptibility to
>> decomposition is significantly different from the analogous GB
>> parameters. Moreover, even an impure chemical munition that had lost
>> it's effectiveness as a military weapons might still be a formidable
>> terrorist weapon. Some biological agents, notable anthrax spores, are
>> quite long-lived.
> As with the current round of diversionary BS being secret factories
>ready to go into production the same method can be used to find weapons
>under those conditions. Follow the power lines to the climate controlled
>storage facilities. Anthrax spores for example, they probably could
>survive thousands of years under the right conditions as some grain
>found in Egypt have. But unless absolutely dry they have a natural
>tendency to produce bacteria destroying all the weaponized characteristics.
This would explain why Gruinard Island, the site of a 1943 anthrax
release, remained infectious for half a century. Gruinard is off the
coast of Scotland, which is famous for its absolutely dry climate. I'd
also note that most biological weapons are relatively well sealed
against moisture; anthrax weapons don't even require refrigerated
storage (it helps, but it's not required).
> The terrorist claim is among the dumbest of them all. Of the few people
>who would be interested in actually trying to deploy such things, it
>invokes the image of the mad scientist who would have the knowledge to
>actually use such things if they could get them.
> www.giwersworld.org/911/dirty-bomb.phtml and poison-water.phtml are a
>couple straightforward examinations of the problem.
Joseph Epstein published an analysis of the possible use of nerve
agents to poison public water supplies in the Journal of the American
Water Works Association. In 1968, as I recall. It wasn't an effective
tactic back then, either. However, that doesn't mean that we should
not be concerned about terrorists getting their hands on chemical
weapons.
> But certainly a few thousand artillery shells and a dozen or so
>artillery pieces can be smuggled into the US and shell some unsuspecting
>American city. Maybe they could us some of those 9000 mile range
>unmanned drones Bush said Iraq had ready to use to attack the US.
> I would prefer they repacked the deadly chemicals so we only have to
>collect their bodies after they kill themselves in the attempt.
There are ways that chemical munitions could be used as terrorist
weapons without resorting to artillery pieces but without significant
personal risk to the terrorist; I'm not going to describe how on the
Internet. If you really want to criticize Bush, et al., the potential
that a sleazy Baath official has already sold a dozen VX rounds to a
terrorist is a decent place to start.
Edward Green
> Edward Green wrote:
> > Xcott Craver <c...@B-r-a-i-n-H-z.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> He also overlooked the fact that Osama Bin Laden didn't die.
> >> Nor did he get thrown in prison, or even given a stiff fine.
> >
> > Oh, boo, hoo, hoo. So maybe he continues to lead a nomadic existence,
> > tethered to his dialysis machine. I'm sure he's having a lovely time
> > of it.
>
> Obviously, that does not suffice as "justice." I understand
> that it will be hard to catch him; what I'm dissatisfied with
> is the attitude that Bin Laden is a low priority now that he's
> not killing thousands of Americans for a while.
Oh. And here I was bracing myself for a violent disagreement.
Well, I'm not sure that's not a smart use of resources. When you are
still fighting a war, the priority is to nullify the enemy's
warfighting capability. First secure Berlin, then go after Goebels.
Yes, I know, it's not so clear this time when Berlin will have been
secured -- but if bin Laden has at least been nullified for now as an
active threat, then it might make sense to put him one the back burner
-- though neither forgiven nor forgotten, yadda, yadda, yadda.
We are running up against the behavioral block now that since active
threat nullification has apparently been effective going on two years,
it begins to look like "nothing is happening"
> Before the Iraq war, we had opinion polls indicating that a lot
> of Americans thought Hussein was involved in 9/11. Now that the
> war is over, I wonder if polls would indicate some sort of
> appeasement or closure over 9/11, because we liberated Iraq.
Possible. Looks like, if Saddam even knew about 9/11 ahead of time,
his biggest and fatal blunder in keeping power may have been not to
tip us off in time to prevent it -- whereupon he could be living
happily ever after even today, taking turns torturing Shiites with
Uday, with our thanks and blessing.
Like CEO's, maybe rulers of rogue states had better watch the company
they keep -- beyond a national cathartic ass-kicking, that may be the
realpolitic message.
Xcott Craver
>
> but if bin Laden has at least been nullified for now as an active
> threat, then it might make sense to put him one the back burner
> -- though neither forgiven nor forgotten, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Of course, this kind of threat nullification may not be
effective at all. If hundreds of thousands of people want to
kill Americans, and want this really badly, it doesn't matter
if Al Qaeda in particular is dismantled (nor does it matter
what security measures we put in place) --- we will see
another major terrorist attack, sure as shootin'.
From a security engineering standpoint, the biggest factor
in determining how safe we are is not what measures we put
in place or which of today's terrorists we have caught;
but the degree to which people in the rest of the world are
majorly pissed off at us, both in number and degree.
Or to put it a different way, if the threat is large enough
and the incentive to do wrong is large enough, yours is not
a security problem, but a policy problem.
-X