Big Red wrote:
Jordan wrote:
....
Ah, but you're assuming that Arab Powers aren't prone to suicidal acts
of aggression. Witness the fate of Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a
counter-example.

How many wars have the Arab powers fought with Israel after the Jewish
state developed tacitical nuclear weapons? Even Saddam's invasion was
tacitical. Kuwait is just a sheikdom that has some oil. He gambled that
the Russians and the Chinese could stop the U.N., and America wouldn't
rush into a war without allies. He fatally underestimated how powerful
America was, especially what the U.S. could do with a smaller superior
force, and command of the sky. However, Saddam's invasion didn't amount
to sucide, as he retained power after the war.

In fact Bush senior OK'd his invasion of Kuwait. Did you miss that? He tried to
hold back world reaction for two months until he lost the PR battle and then
rushed to the front so he could lead.

You missed all that? In fact to this day the ambassador at the time is still
prohibited from speaking about her instructions in the discussion with Hussein
in the matter of the invasion.

In any event there is no question that Kuwait was in fact slant drilling into
Iraqi oil fields and is doing so to this day.

Frankly I think it was simply a major miscommunication. The intent was to OK
military action to stop the slant drilling and Hussein went to far. But until
she is allowed to speak it is not possible to know and one can reasonably assume
it was an OK for a full scale invasion for not permitting her to speak of it.

No viable system has ever been deployed to stop an inbound
nuclear missle with 100% accuracy and no stratedgy could made could
hope to take out all of an exisisting nuclear power's missles, silos,
and submarine based weapons. Finally- nuclear war, involving the
destruction of an entire nation, is only a possibility in the minds of
the most sociopathic members of the human species.

Without being too much of a pessimist there is none possible short of
successful laser weapons unless the antimissile carries a nuclear warhead. In
that case it was doable back in the 50s with Nike Zeus.

Most simply the problem is the faster the incoming missile the less effective
the defensive missile. The greater the missile range the greater its velocity.
Israel does have some US charity capability against short range Scuds. The
effectiveness was greatly overplayed during the Gulf war. The current upgrade of
Patriot has never had a real life test.

--
Can anyone tell me the difference between Iraq with nuclear weapons and Iran
with nuclear weapons? The lies all sound the same to me.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3654
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Zionism http://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/disinfo.phtml a4