BAGHDAD (Reuters) - George W. Bush's national security adviser said on Thursday some prewar intelligence about Iraq was flawed, but Iraq's foreign minister said he was confident weapons of mass destruction would still be found.
Condoleezza Rice defended Bush's decision to go to war and said the United States may never learn the whole truth about Iraq's weapons capabilities because of looting after the conflict.
(SNIP)
Time to get the gum boots on guys, the s**t is about to hit the fan.
With Bush's well known (sic) grasp of world geography I've been wondering if he got Libya and Iraq mixed up - Libya had/has WMDs. I can just imagine all the "intelligence" officers being too scared to put him right and just doing a global word change in their word processors from Libya to Iraq.
So did Iraq..else a bunch of Kurds died from food poisoning. It was interesting to note how many NBC suits were found all over Iraq, along with all the atropine injectors the Iraqi troops had on them.
Gunner
"This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect to any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may he substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.'
Missed the mark on this one Gunner. You don't train with NBC gear because *YOU* have the WMD. You acquire NBC gear because the people who may attack you have WMD.
Sorry Joe..but I take it you never completed NBC school?
The US will never use Chemical Biological agents. We have signed too many treaties and agreements, and we could not live with the bad press, both from our own nation and the world court of opinion. Period.
Which is why we are destroying our remaining stocks of such. Not including riot agents of course. This is a known fact. We would use a nuke before dusting off any CB agents for battlefield use.
If one plans on using CB agents on the battlefield, one had damned well be sure that one's own troops are protected from the vagaries of the winds. This means either using aircraft disbursed agents with a long time before entering the area (depending on agents used) or if using short ranged weapons such as mortors and rockets, your troops had damned well be suited up and have their injectors on their persons. This was learned the hard way in Ypres, France; when German soldiers first used chlorine gas on April 22, 1915, to attack the French. All was going well until the wind reversed directions. Ooops.
The huge amounts of atropine injectors (with a finite shelf life btw) and turd world chem suits found as the US entered Iraq precluded this stuff being leftover from the Iran/Iraq conflict a couple decades before.
Care to try again? Perhaps we can discuss the pros and cons of blood agents vrs neurotoxins in the high energy/ low humidity battlefield?
Gunner
Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli
You are correct but not for the reasons that you state. We don't care about treaties and increasingly we don't care about bad press.
Correct. We would use a nuke first. This is for military reasons not moral reasons. Nukes are instant and precise. CB weapons are neither. When you are the world power and have complete freedom of action in a war nukes are much preferred.
This is the reason that we are embarking in new research programs on small nukes. This will make nukes more manageable and useable. This will, of course, mean that they will be used.
On the other hand, CB weapons are preferred if you are the weak party. Generally you are not attacking the enemies forces directly, you are attacking his supply chain. That most often means the home country. Since we have disavowed any international convention that we find inconvenient, no one will condemn a CB attack on us. This is the world that we have created.
More bombs, more CBs, do you like the way that the world is heading?
[Note, I chose Gunner's post to follow up to for no particular reason. My observations apply equally to those who bash Bush, as those who are bashing the current Dem front runner.]
The more I watch Repubs and Dems argue on the net the more I'm convinced that they aren't really interested in political solutions to the country's problems at all; they just enjoy fighting amongst each other. The bulk of what I see in these "discussions" is mud-slinging and ad-hominem attacks on the slingers by the other slingers. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of the participants didn't even understand what their chosen party's ideology was; they might as well be arguing over whether Fords are better than Chevys. How scintillating.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@lightspeed.net says... (SNIP)
History pretty thoroughly proves that the US govt, and any other, will honor its treaty commitments only as long as it is convinced that it has more to gain by keeping them than it has to gain by breaking them. I notice also that while you assert that the US would never use CB agents, our current president has publicly stated that he *would* use nukes if a conflict escalated to the use of WMD. Disavowing use of the inexpensive, low tech, end of the NBC trilogy doesn't earn us any sort of special dispensation in the eyes of the world when it comes to nukes.
During most of the cold war one of our favorite forms of foreign aid was to build pesticide plants in third world countries. It boosted crop yields and cut the incidence of insect borne diseases, as well as giving them a commodity they could export to us in return for more US dollars. (Building a new pesticide plant in the US is difficult at best.)
Of course it also created a market for NBC gear for every third world army. Because any plant that can produce insecticide can produce the cruder forms of nerve gas. That was also before we decided that the
*ability* to produce even crude forms of nerve gas was justification for a preemptive invasion. I doubt if we'd get many takers today if we started giving away pesticide plants again.
Well, they knew that Iran had used chemical weapons against them in the past. They knew that the nation with largest known stockpiles of NBC weapons was planning to attack them. And they knew that their most hated enemy (Israel) also possessed NBC capabilities, and had a leadership ruthless enough to use them. All of that made it prudent to have NBC protective gear for their troops.
Their reasoning in this matter need be considered no more sinister than that of US commanders, who also issued NBC gear to the US invasion troops.
They also knew the US wouldnt use NBC. Had not used it since 1918. And Israel was out of the equation. And actually the US didnt have the largest stock piles as we were destroying it very well. Russia was not attacking them.
We did because they indeed did use it. Regularly.
Gunner
Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli
Well actually, the US has roughly 10,000 nuclear weapons, down from
20,000+ before SALT II. That puts us comfortably in the lead with respect to the Russians, who, thanks to the breakup of the Soviet Union, have built down faster than we have (in part with our money).
The US also has *not* been destroying its stockpiles of chemical weapons. We have *plans* for destroying those stockpiles, but they are only now starting to be implemented. The enviroweenies have done an excellent job of blocking the transportation and incineration of our (vast) chemical weapons stockpiles. (Same with nuclear waste which could be used in dirty bombs.)
The amount and kinds of biological agents the US has is not well documented in the open literature, so what if anything we're doing with them can't be accurately determined. (Sound familiar?)
The WMDs in discussion are BC, not nukes. Atropine injectors are not particularly effective against gamma or x-rays or sun surface temperatures.
We have been destroying them for years. The environwienies put it on hold for some time, but we are back after it again.
The last time we used it on an enemy was when exactly? The kinds of BC we had/have is well documented. The quantities are classified for the most part.
Gunner
Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli
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