Absolutely. That's the way it goes. You build the stuff in case, God forbid, all gloves are off one day. And you also develop the agent in order to invent the vaccine in case it's ever used against us. The question being, Are we hyprcrites? My Mid-westerner's answer: You bet!
Policemen carry hand guns, but children and felons aren't allowed to have them. Are the Police hypocrites?
No, we're not hypocrites. Saying rogue nations should not have WMD's while democratic nations which respect human rights are allowed to is not hypocrisy.
LOL! That just about summarizes the Anti-American's perception of the US's view of it's place in the world...unofficial, unelected self-appointed and self-serving global cops...except we're probably more of a Chicago kind of cop. Good job, jh. Oh, and to pre-empt your standard response, no, the fact that some governments in the world ask us to help occassionally doesn't give us a mandate to appoint ourselves Global Arbiter of Justice. In answer to the question, of course we have them, and of course it's hypocritical to decide that we can have 'em but others can't. I actually don't see why Nukes are exempt, and as such don't understand the question's purpose, but yes to both the stated and implied questions.
What is the argument here, exactly? If you are saying that the US was wrong to use the bomb in Nagasaki- that's one thing. If, however, you are saying that it was ethnic cleansing or imperialistic to use the bomb, you are very wrong.
I don't think the US is taking away WMD's from other democratic nations. So the metaphor would not be accurate. All democratic nations agree WMD's should be out of the hands of rogue nations like Iraq and North Korea. To argue this makes no sense.
Actually I was just thinking of a phonetically convenient 'rogue' nation...and my point was about who decides who'se responsible? Us? That would seem to be a little convenient, no?
Big Z, in your world, known as "Crazyland", all countries are equally responsible. In Crazyland, we should just get rid of all nukes, because we know that other countries would never develop nukes in secret to gain the upper hand. LOL, you are really a riot sometimes.
Exactly. My cop metaphor referred to children and felons, because emerging nations and rogue states are either not stabile enough or not responsible enough to possess WMD. You seem to have a good relationship with the denizens of Crazyland. Can you interpret my message for them please? Thanks in advance.
I don't want to call it stupid because I respect Rocket River very much. Many people don't know what this country has in it's quiver. The United States, from this Administration "spectacularly"... (and why am I thinking of a Seinfeld episode??) and also previous ones, has spent so much time talking about the threat of WMD's from other countries that I'm not surprised that people might think that we don't have them. The truth is that we have them in vast quantities... of every type and description. You name it and we have it or could make it in an extremely short period of time. The vast majority of them wouldn't have to be made. We have them already. We may very well have more than anyone else by a long shot. The former Soviet Union, now predominately Russia, was and is right up there with us. The scary thing about THEM is that they don't know where everything is and if it's even guarded properly. Big, big problem. Much bigger problem than the countries we are currently worrying about, at least in regards to potential for proliferation and deadly mischief, imo. We're trying to help Russia and some of the other former Soviet states dispose of them, but that program needs a huge boost. And we're not even talking about nukes. At least I'm not.
Deckard: You don't need to tell me what we have. I know, I'm stationed at a chemical depot. One thing that I doubt most of you know about is that we are finally, really getting rid of our WMD (aside from nukes - but we are even scaling down significantly on those). Our offensive biological warfare program was dismantled in the '70s (it really was, despite what some conspiracy theorists will tell you); we maintain a small amount of bioweapons for use in a defensive biological warfare program - to defend against biological attacks. We do not keep enough on hand to use offensively. We've been putting off destroying our chemical arsenal for 31 years, but we are finally doing it now. I know. How do I know this? Because I work a few hundred feet away from a $1.3 billion chemical demilitarization facility that is currently being built (almost finished) every day. The administration everyone derides so much for being hypocritical on WMD is the first administration that has actually forced funding through Congress to pay for chemical demilitarization - the first president to have the balls to destroy our chemical weapons and shut down our chemical depots. By 2009 the depot I work at will be an environmental preserve, and this country will have no more mustard gas stocks. (they have to destroy each shell one at a time, that's why it takes so long... we have alot of shells) Similar demil facilities are either being built at our other depots or will be built over the next two years (are already funded). By 2012 we will have no WMD aside from our nuclear arsenal. But who needs WMD when you have JDAMs, M1A2 Abrams tanks, and 30,000 Special Forces? I repeat, this thread is stupid.
