I can feel that Pres Bush saw his legacy as . . . the one that let one get through The 1st attack on American soil in years . . . etc That does explain some of his Edge . . . . Rocket River
Hey, we're nuking the Iraqis and our own soldiers every day now. Funny that our soldiers won't go near this used stuff and the Pentagon says it's safe for children. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html Remains of toxic bullets litter Iraq The Monitor finds high levels of radiation left by US armor-piercing shells. By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD – At a roadside produce stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, business is brisk for Latifa Khalaf Hamid. Iraqi drivers pull up and snap up fresh bunches of parsley, mint leaves, dill, and onion stalks. But Ms. Hamid's stand is just four paces away from a burnt-out Iraqi tank, destroyed by - and contaminated with - controversial American depleted-uranium (DU) bullets. Local children play "throughout the day" on the tank, Hamid says, and on another one across the road. No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout. . . . US troops avoid wreckage During the latest Iraq conflict Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and A-10 Warthog aircraft, among other military platforms, all fired the DU bullets from desert war zones to the heart of Baghdad. No other armor-piercing round is as effective against enemy tanks. While the Pentagon says there's no risk to Baghdad residents, US soldiers are taking their own precautions in Iraq, and in some cases have handed out warning leaflets and put up signs. . . . DU munitions are neither the benign wonder weapons promoted by Pentagon propagandists nor the instruments of genocide decried by hyperbolic anti-DU activists," Mr. Fahey writes in a March report, called "Science or Science Fiction: Facts, Myth and Propaganda in the Debate Over DU Weapons." Nonetheless, Rep. Jim McDermott (D) of Washington, a doctor who visited Baghdad before the war, introduced legislation in Congress last month requiring studies on health and environment studies, and clean up of DU contamination in the US. He says DU may well be associated with increased birth defects. "While the political effects of using DU munitions are perhaps more apparent than their health and environmental effects," Fahey writes, "science and common sense dictate it is unwise to use a weapon that distributes large quantities of a toxic waste in areas where people live, work, grow food, or draw water." Because of the publicity the Iraqi government has given to the issue, Iraqis worry about DU. "It is an important concern.... We know nothing about it. How can I protect my family?" asks Faiz Askar, an Iraqi doctor. "We say the war is finished, but what will the future bring?" They're free ( to have childhood cancer at least ) New fear in Iraq over US use of depleted uranium in war http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...51&e=9&u=/afp/20030508/hl_afp/iraq_war_health BAGHDAD (AFP) - Several years after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites), Dr Salma Haddad started noticing more and more children at Baghdad's Al-Mansur hospital with an aggressive form of cancer. Haddad, a leading Iraqi specialist, was especially alarmed since the disease, acute myeloblastic leukemia, is closely associated with exposure to radiation -- and suspicion fell on the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions. With the fighting now all but over in the war to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), worries are growing that another surge in long-term health problems, for Iraqi civilians and soldiers on both sides alike, is on the way. Physicist Doug Rokke, a member of the US military team charged with cleaning up depleted uranium following the 1991 war and now one of the most outspoken opponents of the weapons, said the task is much easier said than done. "For each and every vehicle that is struck by a single uranium munition you have to take that entire vehicle, and physically remove it," Rokke recently said in an interview with the Arabic satellite news channel Al-Jazeera. . . . "Then you have to clean up all the uranium penetration that is left around that vehicle. Then you have to take a bulldozer, and go out to at least 100 metres (yards) and scrape down at least 10 centimetres (four inches) and remove all of that dirt in order to make that area safe again," he said. If that is not done, he said, the contamination will last 4.5 billion years. I think 4.5 billion years is a bit of an exaggeration.
On a more serious note, I feel like America is more of a target for terrorists than it was before. So, I agree with Batman...I dont want to be nuked.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/16/1052885398462.html Fatal attraction: Why everybody now wants the bomb May 17 2003 Nuclear disarmament is dead as the United States flaunts its weapons superiority and small nations rush to make their own bombs. The second cold war is here, writes Christopher Kremmer. For almost half a century nuclear weapons poisoned the global imagination, a force so devastating it could literally destroy life on our planet. It's a nightmare that could return if the Bush Administration gets its way. It almost did last week, when a US Senate committee voted to lift a decade-old ban on the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, providing $US15.5 million ($24 million) for research on a "bunker buster" hydrogen bomb called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Designed to take out enemy command and control facilities, the tactical bomb is billed as a "useable" nuke with a yield as low as 0.3 of a kiloton, much smaller than strategic nuclear weapons. Yet scientists believe human casualties from radiation would still be in the order of 10,000 to 15,000 dead if such a weapon were used in a built-up area. Thousands more would die in the fires and building collapses caused by the blast. This week, the Senate committee's vote was overturned by the House Armed Services Committee, but trench warfare over the proposal will continue. Already, a string of decisions and pronouncements from Washington have convinced many experts that the United States is on an ambitious program to revitalise its nuclear arsenal and widen the scope of its possible uses. The Doomsday Clock, which is maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as a measure of global insecurity, now stands at seven minutes to midnight, 10 minutes closer to Armageddon than it was at the end of the Cold War in 1991. On May 1, 2001, the US President, George Bush, declared: "Nuclear weapons still have a vital role to play in our security and that of our allies." The Administration's Nuclear Posture Review completed later that year called for new and improved nukes. New weapons require testing, and having refused to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the US faces no legal impediment to a resumption of nuclear tests. Soon test sites from Nevada to India and China could be rumbling once more to the sound of underground nuclear explosions. The Bush strategy is to maximise America's room to manoeuvre in its war on terrorists and rogue regimes. But in doing so it threatens to inflict mortal damage on the global agreement that for 30 years has contained the spread of nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1968 enshrines a bargain between states with the bomb and those without it. Under Article Six, the 182 signatory nations that don't have nukes promised not to acquire them, while the five officially recognised nuclear powers agreed to negotiate in good faith to reduce and ultimately eliminate their arsenals. But, says a former director of alliance policy at the Australian Defence Department, Ron Huisken, a methodical analysis of American statements and actions in recent years would reveal "no trace of a commitment to Article Six". "The obligation on them to negotiate in good faith towards total nuclear disarmament no longer receives even lip service, which is as it should be, because they are no longer interested in that goal. They do not intend to allow their interests to be contaminated in any way by any formal obligations to any other states," says Huisken, who is now with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra. . . . . But, equally it's clear that much of the world fears that threats to stability and security are coming not just from Kim Jong-il and the ayatollahs, but from the new American doctrine as well. Many doubt the US's ability to sustain a series of regime-change wars, with or without nuclear weapons. They seek a renewed commitment to global co-operation as the only way to address the evils of nuclear weapons and terrorism. "The probability of terrorists getting hold of nuclear weapons is increased the more countries acquire them, and then have to keep them absolutely secure every minute of every day until kingdom come," says Ron Huisken. "The new central security theme of the 21st century - that is, terrorism - actually leads you back to a very focused interest in nuclear disarmament." After 35 years, only four nuclear weapons states - Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea - stand outside the NPT, with 180 rejecting the nuclear option. Important countries such as China and France were acceding to the treaty as late as 1992, and in 1996 the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan joined. Cuba and Brazil are the most recent converts. It's not perfect, but it's absurd to suggest it's been a total failure. Finding balance between Bush's brave nuclear world and the existing infrastructure of nuclear restraint may be the main game in global politics in the coming years. Get it right, and a revitalised system of global security could result. Get it wrong, and the result could be disaster.
You know what...you're either horribly misinformed or frankly not very bright.. We are preparing to LEAVE IRAQ. So much for OCCUPATION. We are TURNING OVER CONTROL OF OIL FIELDS to Iraqi citizens. Ooops...there goes your controlling the oil theory. There will be no decades of occupation or anything resembling it. Get off the soapbox and go grab a fistful of these precious little things we here in reality call facts.
Let me get this straight...if we aren't CONSTANTLY b****ing and whining about things then we are "playing our parts" like some drone? Secondly, a liberal complaining that conservatives are using weak, emotional argument? Hell...I don't think I have laughed that hard in a long time. This coming from somebody whose cohorts continuously shovel drivel like "it just isn't FAIR!!!" Please. Spare me. Ladies and gentlemen...it's official...Batman has gone just plain Bats.
Just an update to Batman's nightmare.... - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday low-yield nuclear weapons may be useful in destroying deadly chemical and biological weapons stocks as he pressed Congress to lift a 10-year ban on research and development of smaller nuclear arms. The Senate was debating whether to allow research on low-yield weapons with about one-third the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II, which Democrats said would signal the United States was pursuing new battlefield weapons and would spur an arms race http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030520/ts_nm/arms_congress_dc_2
BTW... ·On August 6th 1945, the Enola Gay, a USA bomber, dropped a bomb called "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. For extracts from the plane's flight log - click here ·80,000 people were killed instantly ·Out of the city’s 55 hospitals, only 3 were usable after the blast. ·90% of all doctors and nurses in Hiroshima were killed or injured ·Radiation claimed many more lives after the bomb was dropped. ·48,000 out of 76,000 buildings were destroyed. ·The initial heat blast was 900 times hotter than the sun. ·Bodies were vapourised underneath the bomb blast. ·By 1950, 200,000 people had died as a result of the bomb. ·Between 1950 and 1980, a further 97,000 people died from cancers associated with the radiation caused by "Little Boy". ·On August 9th 1945, the bomber "Bockspur" dropped "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. Once again, the final number of deaths was over 200,000. 80,000 200,000 97,000 377,000/3 126.666 Thousand people....
So instead of invading Iraq we could have dropped a few small yield nukes on what turned out to be false leads. That's hilarious logic. It does make sense if you believe there are none of significance to be found. One won't be embarrassed like we are today with our lack of finding any of the supposed large supplies of WMD aimed at our troops, we can just say the nukes destroyed em, yeah, that's the ticket.
Listen to yourself! That's one of the most abhorrent sentiments, well, *ever*, but particularly after an itemised list of the effects of Hiroshima.
It's funny that you see it that way, because, dating back to Herotodus, there has been a huge school of thought in historical analysis that sees much if not most of the ongoing wars etc. in human history as a series of retributions based on percieved earlier wrongs at the hand of another party... I could cite you hundreds of examples that completely defy your point, but allow me to merely make this one... Allied "victory" in WWI....result? "True peace?" Er, no....30-40 ( depending on source) odd million more dead in a little thing called World War Two, entirely because of the first 'victory', and it's ramifications for the vanquished.
<b>towel</b>: Why are you pissed off if Japan is not? <b>MacB</b>: I said tru<b>est</b> peace, you said true peace. Little suffix mean big difference. I'd like to see some more of your examples of negotiated peace.
Batman, You do realize that we knew that Iraq did not have nukes, and we knew that N. Korea did. The reason we went to war was so that we didn' t have to deal with TWO North Koreas. DD
That's not a logical point. It *is* abhorrent to say that the bombing of Hiroshima and all its attendant effects was a good thing which allowed for 'true peace'. Whether or not Japan's government is now the US's trade and political ally is basically irrelevant. (I'm sure there are plenty of angry hibakusha (hope I spelled that right!) out there.)
Yes, DoDo, I do "realize" that. That was my point. Somehow, on the fourth page of this thread it's turned into "Batman's nightmare" and something worthy of the legendary DD explaining the world climate to me. Read my initial post. I may have posted more in this thread but I don't remember if I did. What I remember is starting the thread to let you know that you and your ilk were PLAYED. My whole point here was that the US government LIED to all of us and YOU (especially you and your rightie pals round here, DD) believed them and cried wolf to the point of telling the rest of us you guessed we'd like to be victims of these fictional WMDs and you're not at all, not the least bit pissed, you were LIED to and that you, by extension, not only lied with them, but lied with PASSION. If the ways in which you were obviously PLAYED by the Bushies doesn't bother you and if, in fact, you are actually backing them in playing you, you will never ever have my respect and I am amazed you can even have your own. This towel person though, I like.
