"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 12:55:05 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:


"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
.. .

First, let's note that I said or wrote none of which "George Z. Bush"
has posted here below the attibution header!

(Snip)

I took out all of an exchange you were having with someone else which was
irrelevant to what I wanted to say. No need for you to be so defensive about
it....it just wasn't pertinent, so I deleted it.

How about considering that we are quick to disavow the outrageous behavior of
a
handful of our sadistic jailers as being representative of us as a nation,
but
we deny the Iraqis the same right to disavow the existence of a single
artillery
shell of dubious age filled with Sarin as being representative of an arsenal
of
WMDs they would have used on us if they had existed.

One sadistic jailer doesn't mean that all of our jailers are sadistic any
more
than one Sarin-filled artillery shell means that all of the artillery shells
the
Iraqis had were filled with Sarin. It took us a whole year to find (or 'fess
up
to) one of each.

George Z.


By your rationale the only way a nation possesses WMD is if ALL of
their weapons fit the class? We've found one Sarin filled shell in a
country the size of California. Saddam had twelve years of experience
in hiding WMD from UN inspectors. He had a couple of years of warning
regarding build-up to invasion. He had almost a year after expelling
the UN inspectors to dismantle, export, hide or decommission WMDs.

WMD is an acronym for Weapons of Mass Destruction. That is "weapons"
(plural)....and One of anything does not make it plural. You want to make a
federal case out of finding one artillery shell after a year of intense looking
by thousands of troops, go right ahead. I'll just rest my case on the theory
that one weapon does not an arsenal make, and you can pooh-pooh me if it makes
you feel better.

Is Sarin a chemical weapon? Would the components of a binary weapon by
a chemical weapon if they were held in two separate locations? Is a
biological weapon only a biological weapon when it is employed,
otherwise it's just a case of the sniffles?

Of course it's a chemical weapon. But one artillery shell does not constitute a
threat that warrants embarking on an active war over. Not only that, but we
didn't even know for a fact that they had that one weapon when we started the
war....we apparently started it on some Mickey-Mouse intelligence information
that it took us a year to find out wasn't accurate.

By your logic, we probably ought to be at war with half the world if those
nations possessed one chemical or biological weapon that they might someday
consider using against someone for some reason somewhere down the road. Tell me
the Chinese don't have one or more, or the Pakistanis (who, you will recall,
sold nuclear know-how to the Libyans), or the Russians, or the Israelis or, for
that matter, even the Saudis. Numerous countrys, many of whom we have
disagreements with, have WMDs, but we don't go to war with them because of it.

I baby-sat a B-61 Y-1 at 345KT was that a WMD? If we only had Fat Man
and Little Boy (which is all we had) and then we dropped them on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, did we then no longer have WMD? Or, since
those two weapons were only 20-25KT were they not even WMD at all?

Sounds like you want to refight WWII because we had and used nukes. That's a
bit more nonsensical that I care to bother with. Or are you suggesting that we
were the bad guys because we developed them and used them?

The relationship between the jailers and WMD isn't a very rational
argument. How much Sarin will you allow to be deployed in New York
City before you take offense? Would it be more acceptable to use it in
Jerusalem? Would it be alright to spread three liters of Sarin in
Kuwait City?

How many WMD rounds does it take to equal possession of WMD in your
convoluted logic? Would two be better than one? Or will you hold out
for exclusive WMD rounds and no conventional? Then, one conventional
round would prove the non-existance of WMD, despite the other rounds?

When all is said and done, your arguments are sophomoric and thoroughly
unconvincing. They're not worthy of individual responses.

C'mon George, confess that you didn't think it through when you wrote
that/

Ed, it's all in the eye of the beholder, and I like to think that my arguments
were more logical and convincing than your efforts to belittle them.

Perhaps it's one of those times when we need to agree to disagree and simply
move on.

George Z.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8