miked10270

The good news:

Weapons of Mass Destruction have at last been found by the Bush Administration. Even as we sit here, specialist US Army troops are dismantling and destroying long range rockets with warheads containing the deadly nerve gas, Sarin. 2 such rockets have already been destroyed and the rest of the bunker is being cleared.

These WMDs are believed to total some 500,000 rounds and were stored in an old undeground bunker near a city. They're so dangerous & unstable that the US Army has issued protective clothing & masks to the local population to keep them safe.

The world is now a little safer from these insidious weapons.


The bad news:

The WMDs were part of a US Army Stockpile in Aniston, Alabama and the reason they're NOW being destroyed is that they're now unusable for purely technical reasons.


"Why did we go to war in Iraq Daddy?"

"Well son, it was all about the weapons of Mass Destruction. The rockets that had nerve gas in them. We had to invade Iraq before our rockets all rusted away!"

Once again I'd like to thank Dubya in particular and America in general for making me fall off my chair laughing.

Mike.

The_Dude

this is a really ironic part about US policy. it's OK for the US to possess weapons, but not OK for other nations to possess them.

remember the nuclear tests that india and pakistan did? US put an embargo on both countries then.

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Silvy

Yeah, if you're the biggest guy around (and I'm NOT talking about the Prez himself) you can push others around... simple as that.

Whether or not you wield that power... that's true leadership!

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Ralvek

Hipocracy, it's not just for Russia anymore.

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zfleebin

Your in the wrong forum

wario

Actually, I think what we were trying to go for here is that psychopathic mass murdering dictators probably shouldn't be in control of any nukes. Makes sense to me.

sixate

Exactly! Makes perfect sense to me too.

BigGov

Lets compare shall we.

USA - Drops nuclear weapons on Japan to end WWII.

Saddam - Uses biological weapons on a defense- less city that might possibly have a rebellion starting, killing almost everyone.

Ironic? Sure. Smart? Hell yes.

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One day an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together. They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints. The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out of his beer and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman, too, picked the fly out of his drink but then held it out over the beer and yelled "SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT, YOU BASTARD!"

HarmlessRabbit

Now see, that's exactly what those nuns who were demonstrating were trying to say too, and all the conservatives jumped down their throats.

Pop quiz: what country is the only one to actually use a nuclear weapon during wartime.

The_Dude

and who are we to decide that?

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Kadath

USA! USA!

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BigGov

Pop Quiz: You don't know anything about war, either that, or you'd be the worst general of all time.

In order to attack Japan, there would have needed to be an amphibious assault that would have dwarfed D-Day.

I don't think you understand the casualty count of D-Day. So let me explain it all to you. And if you think "No, he's exagerating" you're wrong. I'm probably underestimating it.

Imagine going to a beach. Got a nice beach in mind? Good. Now, imagine 5 more just like it. Got it? Good. Now imagine bodies up and down each and every beach and in the water. Got that? Now change the color of the ocean from blue to red. Got that? Now imagine more dead bodies the further you go up the beach. Got that? Now imagine that at least 10 times larger.

Now imagine this. We finally have the fleet assembled in Spring 1946, we can finally do this. We're going to lose probably 1/3 - 1/2 of our troops because of the way the Japanese fight. But we're ready to go. Now imagine almost all of our fighters from our air craft carriers getting shot down. Now imagine a large majority of our ships being sunk. Now imagine looking in the sky and seeing a huge air force of jet fighters flying under the red sun. See, the Japanese might have had bad guns and horrible fighting techniques, but they're masters at building. They created a jet engine from one, ONE photograph of a german jet engine that Hitler sent in the middle of the war. The Japanese used it to build a giant fleet of jet fighters hiding in the mountains of Japan with places to take-off and land drilled right into the cave.

But of course, with the way you put it, we shouldn't have gone through D-Day at all. No, that's way too drastic. We should have sat down with Hitler, kiss his ass, and politely ask him not to kill 6 million Jews. And that whole Pearl Harbor thing, we were way out of line. We should have never occupied that island. We should have listened the first time and let Japan take over all of the Pacific they wanted. The Japanese were just following their manifesdestiny.

Ignorance is one of the worst things in people, so please save us from showing yours with comments like "Pop quiz: what country is the only one to actually use a nuclear weapon during wartime."

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One day an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together. They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints. The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out of his beer and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman, too, picked the fly out of his drink but then held it out over the beer and yelled "SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT, YOU BASTARD!"

The_Dude

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=20915

we already have a thread on the a-bomb.

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Zeld2.0

My god people are STILL using the same arguments.

Honestly though, people, can't you see:

You say one thing, the con's will say the same argument back.

The con's say one thing, the lib's will say the same argument back.

I think every thread so far has ended w/ the same stuff lol, its so predictable now. You can almost imagine what they will say next.

BigGov

You're just figuring this out?

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One day an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together. They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints. The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out of his beer and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman, too, picked the fly out of his drink but then held it out over the beer and yelled "SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT, YOU BASTARD!"

ctembreull

Uh, there are international organizations and treaties to deal with this. You deal with this sort of thing diplomatically, because the odds are if you invade a country that's developed The Bomb, and that country realizes that it's on the verge of losing said Bomb, the odds are pretty good that that Bomb is going to be used.

My larger point here is that no one country - not even the United States - should be the final arbiter of who can have what. We have chemical weapons, and have sold them to other nations. We have nuclear weapons, and have sold the material for them to other states. We're contributors to the problem of proliferation, so now who are we to say that nobody else can possess the weapons that we ourselves possess?

Regardless of who we're talking about, that sort of attitude is hypocritical at best.

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"If it's nae Scottish, it's crap!

Slims

Well, at least the Bush administration is getting rid of them.

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BigGov

Except then it's going to have the whole world coming after it.

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One day an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together. They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints. The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out of his beer and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman, too, picked the fly out of his drink but then held it out over the beer and yelled "SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT, YOU BASTARD!"

rainheart

Ok guys, a basic lesson in remaining a superpower:

Not letting other nations become powerful.

Durr.

bermuDa

I was channel surfing and caught the end of this story on some news channel... I heard 'weapons of mass destruction being destroyed' and 'sarin gas' and 'alabama'.... shook my head and turned the tv off...

I don't know what the hell is going on anymore.

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Mojo_PeiPei

This could be the biggest crock pile of shit I have ever seen, now you Liberals are trying to question whether or not Saddam was a murderous dictator?

Also I am getting pretty sick of people jumping on the U.S. for using the bomb too end the war, get over it, its done.

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wario

UN Inspectors: "Saddam, let us in. We're here to inspect."
Saddam: "No."
UN Inspectors: "Saddam, let us in. We're here to inspect."
Saddam: "No."
UN Inspectors: "Saddam, let us in. We're here to inspect."
Saddam: "No."
UN Inspectors: "Saddam, let us in. We're here to inspect."
Saddam: "Ok."

He obviously had something to hide. Why do you think he stalled so long? He was using the time to hide or move whatever it was.

If you're being mugged, and a good samaratan comes along and stops the mugging, do you say, "Who are you to interfere in my mugging?" Saddam is friggin' nuts. He kills without reason. He killed his daughters' husbands. He's not the kind of person anybody wants in control of a spud gun, much less chemical or nucelar weapons.

miked10270

You know, I originally posted this in "General Discussion", confidently expecting that if it were to be moved, it'd go into "Humour".... Simply because I think it's funny. I would neverSERIOUSLY compare Dubya with Saddam, but the irony of the US hiding their chemical weapons in a bunker at a city and then citing the very thing they do as a valid reason to invade another country was... well...

Incidentally, Wario,

Saddam was many things, but he certainly wasn't "Friggin Nuts". There was never a time "He kills without reason". The main reason he'd been able to build up the infrastructure to make WMDs was that WE, THE WEST, WILLINGLY SOLD aND EVEN GAVE HIM THE TECHNOLOGY. WE DID THIS DELIBERATELY AND IN THE FULL KNOWLEDGE OF HOW IT'D BE USED!

We know he had WMD capability 'cos we gave him the WMD capability. We did this in the 1980's because Iran was "our" enemy, and Iraq under Saddam was Iran's enemy. Therefore he's our friend, right?

Maybe the US should hire the Iraqi bunker-builders to show the US how to hide chemical weapons properly.

Mike.

wario

I'm so glad to hear this. Too often when people are discussing this kind of thing they make comparisons like that and you can't tell if they really believe it. It's like these Bush being portrayed as Hitler things I've seen. Whether you agree or disagree with the president, it lends weight to your argument to know that you don't take that kind of stuff so seriously.

Yeah, I'm going to have to stand by my "Friggin Nuts" argument. Okay, sure, maybe there was a perfectly logical reason in his twisted mind to kill his sons-in-law, but to me it looks like "Friggin Nutiness."

That's something I still don't get. I don't know why we keep selling weapons to to these wackos? Do we really need their money that badly? What's a few more billion dollars of debt? Is there at least some kind of screening process like there is for guns? Apparently not.

miked10270

Of course we don't sell weapons to whackos. No-one does. "WE" only sell weapons to friendly countries, countries which because of their geographical position and beliefs are bulwarks against the rising tide of Communism / Islamic Fundamentalism / Anti-Americanism / Frenchism Etc...

WE fully understand that such countries (like Nazi Germany, Iraq, Colombia, Iran, Guatemala, Panama, Korea, Vietnam, China) have to curb certain personal freedoms because of the situation they're in, but the leaders aren't really ALL THAT BAD? Are they? And they ARE against the same things we're against, aren't they? So certain countries (at certain times) "should be supported, and their defence capabilities improved.

It's the right thing to do, isn't it?

The_Dude

not entirely. the weapons were leaking and werent fit to use anymore. they're also really old.

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and as for other nations possessing nuclear weapons, they need it as much or more than the US.

look at india (which has a no-first strike using nukes policy) and pakistan (which doesnt have a policy and has publically warned of using nukes) example. (yeah, i'm pretty biased here).

india needs because of pakistan and china. both are nuclear powers. now who is the US to say that india/pakistan cant have nukes?

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Phaenx

The super power of the planet. Wis great power comes great responsibility. We're like the spider man of the world.

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mr sticky

I know this may be an extremely unenlightened view, but I got to tell you... I am perfectly okay in dictating who can and who can't have ANY WMD. This world gets smaller by the day, and I trust our finger on the button more than I trust the goodwill of anyone else...period!

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splck

LOL...yeah right

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nice line eh?

Cozmo

Do any of you really believe that Iraq had no WMD? I cannot understand that thought process and I'm curious to know if anyone truely believes in that. Just curious....I guess I don't care if we find WMD since we did a great thing in removing Saddam from power.

bparker805

I so feel suckered right now. I read the first line of this thread and imediately started scouring the news sites for more info... Looks like i should look before I leap...

shalafi

Being the worlds superpower makes the us kind of like the parents of the world with all of the other countries as the children.

NO pakistan.....you put down that nuke right now young man!!!

Iran....youve been very very naughty.....give daddy the wmds!!!!

Isnt it the parents job to discipline their children? oh wait i forgot....not according to the liberals.

The_Dude

so, it's OK for parents to tell their children not to do something, then turn around and do the same thing while the kids are watching?

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"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

shalafi

yup....ive got no problem with a father who has a beer in his hand telling his underage kids they cant drink.

The_Dude

no no no, not as simple as that.

this is a father who has fridges full of beer's and other alchoholic beverages (lots of everclear ) and telling the kids that they shouldnt drink.

__________________
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

shalafi

Im confused......your saying the posession of everclear and buying his beer in bulk makes him an unfit father? I like everclear and i like beer and i still know that children shouldnt be given either of them.

smooth

No one has even stated that. Remember this:

Two years ago there wasn't even a phrase "WMD." It entered the lexicon after multiple speeches and FOX, CNN, and other major news outlets began pumping it into our living rooms. In the beginning we were told that Saddam was going to blast nuclear weapons into our major cities. After that was debunked we were told that whatever he had, even if they weren't nuclear weapons, Saddam certainly possessed "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that could be used against us within 45 minutes. We were never explicitly explained what those weapons were. They became a composite of nuclear weapons (for the people a few days behind the headlines), chemical weapons (for the people remembering back about a decade to the previous war--discounting the fact that whatever of those were left were pretty much useless due to degradation), and biological weapons (matching the fears resulting from the Anthrax and various other diseases that were about 10 minutes from striking our major hubs of civilation).

This vague term came to represent any one of those things I listed so that any rational discussion about the merits of each one became useless--we each had a different definition of the threat and each was infused with its own level of emotional response.

So, the short answer is: we never argued that Saddam didn't have dangerous weapons nor that he didn't use them against an oppositional ethnic group living within the borders of Iraq (not "his own people"). Instead, the debate has been whether he possessed weapons that created a substantial threat to our security, whether he could have used them before we could stop him, or whether he could provide small nuclear or biological weapons to terrorist factions.

None of those scenarios have seemed to pan out. The best evidence and intelligence we have actually supports the opposite conclusion. No one in the region was interacting with Saddam--he was castigated by his neighbors. He did not share the same ideals as bin Laden and was unlikely to cooperate with Al-Qaeda. Any weapons he did have were probably defunct, of the ones he did possess he only became more likely to use them as our likelihood to invade increased.

Unfortunately, rational arguement regarding the claims that were primarily made is over. We are already there. Now we face the prospect of answering charges that we are callous if we appear to not "finish what we started", don't want Iraq "liberated", or that we don't care about innocent civilians being slaughtered. All of these are important points--but they weren't the points raised to convince a vastly diverse nation, arguably the most powerful in the world, to support a war. The adminstration played on our fears as a nation and then is playing on our cultural virutes (freedom, equality, and tenacity) to stay there--despite the reality of the original claims.

We aren't saying that Saddam didn't have weapons. What we are saying is that the degree of threat to our nation was exagerated and the people were unable to evaluate whether war was an appropriate response to the threat that was present. We could say that leaders should make such choices. And I would concede that point if we then started to debate whether we have a democracy (or republic if you want to get semantic on me--even still, we would then need to elect leaders based on the best information, not on an absence of information in order to make rational decisions). No matter what, our culture has always positioned itself in a rational-legal legitimacy. These types of actions ought to be addressed since they subvert that type of legitimacy. One can desire to "depose" the current adminstration without having a hatred for one's country--that's the reasons we vote, we don't have a monarchy where one specific leader is identified with the culture or nation as a whole.

Sorry, my dinner is ready...

Lebell

Minor correction:

The term "Weapon of Mass Distruction" may have entered into the popular lexicon 2 years ago but as any Tom Clancy fan can tell you, it's been around for awhile.

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smooth

So help me out a little here:

When Clancy used it wasn't he referring to a small, nuclear attack in an urban area?

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mml

Quite a tirade from both sides. To go back to the original thought, yes it is somewhat inconsistant that we posess the very weapons we were trying to prevent Iraq from obtaining. The key factor is that we are in the process of disposing of these weapons as opposed to stockpiling them.

As far as the war in Iraq, the United States and the United Nations(if it so chose) had every right to take action against Saddam and his regime. Iraq had signed a treaty to end the first Gulf War and had consitantly broken that agreement over a twelve year period. What pisses me off is that our current administration did not have the patience to take their case to the U.N. and use diplomacy to achieve its ends.

President Bush and his advisors chose to trump up issues like immediate threats, nuclear weapons and stong links to terrorism to propel us to war(sadly much of America actually believes that Saddam had somethng to do with 9/11). If they had shown patience and worked to create a coalition, I believe that the US and UK would not now be bearing the brunt of the costs, both human and financial, of this ill-advised war.

And to all liberals or Democrats (they are not one in the same) stop using the U.S. is the only country to use the bomb line. Any objective historian (even several respected Japanese historians) will defend Truman's choice to drop the bombs. The extreme loss of U.S. and Japanese lives if we proceeded with a land attack would have been devestating for both our countries and indeed the world. I am sure that if you asked, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and "W" Bush, all would agree with Truman's choice.

And yes, I am a Democrat.

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