General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

In message . net,
Steven P. McNicoll writes

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...

Porton Down.


I never heard of this person. Who is he?

It's a place, not a person - and if the name means nothing to you, then
you're too ignorant to talk to. Which would be a shame.

It's where the UK does its chemical, biological and radiological warfare
work. Purely defensive, of course, and a side-effect is some
marvellously preserved downland that hasn't seen a farmer for over a
century.

Colleagues who work there were students on the same "train for field
deployment" course as me: but they were hauled off in mid-course to be
sent to Iraq to look for WMEs. They didn't find any despite being told
exactly where to look and what to look for.

This inspires a certain cynicism about our marvellous intelligence
picture of Iraqi operations.



--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

William Wright wrote:
"Mike Dargan" wrote in message
news:E2Suc.26929$js4.6877@attbi_s51...
snip

Me too. If the shrub had been President in December of 1941, we'd have
conquered Mexico City by June of '42.



And yet we in reality attacked FRENCH

Vichy France.

Cheers

--mike
North Africa in November 1942. Since
we were not at war with the French at the time and they had nothing what
ever to do with the Pearl Harbor attack, with your simple reasoning that was
a bad. Perhaps you should leave strategy and grand strategy to the people
who actually formulate it.


Cheers

--mike

Bush was AWOL for eight months.


Prove it.

"Yeah, the mainstream media have really kept a lid on this one. We wouldn't
know anything about Bush going AWOL if it hadn't been for that obscure
underground newspaper the Boston Globe, which broke the story nationally in May
2000. But you're right that coverage has been pretty thin. A few months after
the 2000 election, former Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala said he'd done a
Nexis search and found 13,641 stories about Clinton's alleged draft dodging
versus 49 about George W. Bush's military record. Why the disparity? We'll get
to that.

First the basics: Yes, it's true, Bush didn't report to his guard unit for an
extended period--17 months, by one account. It wasn't considered that serious
an offense at the time, and if circumstances were different now I'd be inclined
to write it off as youthful irresponsibility. However, given the
none-too-subtle suggestion by the Bush administration that opponents of our
Iraqi excursion lack martial valor, I have to say: You guys should talk.

Here's the story as generally agreed upon: In January 1968, with the Vietnam
war in full swing, Bush was due to graduate from Yale. Knowing he'd soon be
eligible for the draft, he took an air force officers' test hoping to secure a
billet with the Texas Air National Guard, which would allow him to do his
military service at home. Bush didn't do particularly well on the test--on the
pilot aptitude section, he scored in the 25th percentile, the lowest possible
passing grade. But Bush's father, George H.W., was then a U.S. congressman from
Houston, and strings were pulled. The younger Bush vaulted to the head of a
long waiting list--a year and a half long, by some estimates--and in May of '68
he was inducted into the guard.

By all accounts Bush was an excellent pilot, but apparently his enthusiasm
cooled. In 1972, four years into his six-year guard commitment, he was asked to
work for the campaign of Bush family friend Winton Blount, who was running for
the U.S. Senate in Alabama. In May Bush requested a transfer to an Alabama Air
National Guard unit with no planes and minimal duties. Bush's immediate
superiors approved the transfer, but higher-ups said no. The matter was delayed
for months. In August Bush missed his annual flight physical and was grounded.
(Some have speculated that he was worried about failing a drug test--the
Pentagon had instituted random screening in April.) In September he was ordered
to report to a different unit of the Alabama guard, the 187th Tactical
Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery. Bush says he did so, but his nominal
superiors say they never saw the guy, there's no documentation he ever showed
up, and not one of the six or seven hundred soldiers then in the unit has
stepped forward to corroborate Bush's story.

After the November election Bush returned to Texas, but apparently didn't
notify his old Texas guard unit for quite a while, if ever. The Boston Globe
initially reported that he started putting in some serious duty time in May,
June, and July of 1973 to make up for what he'd missed. But according to a
piece in the New Republic, there's no evidence Bush did even that. Whatever the
case, even though his superiors knew he'd blown off his duties, they never
disciplined him. (No one's ever been shot at dawn for missing a weekend guard
drill, but policy at the time was to put shirkers on active duty.) Indeed, when
Bush decided to go to business school at Harvard in the fall of 1973, he
requested and got an honorable discharge--eight months before his service was
scheduled to end.

Bush's enemies say all this proves he was a cowardly deserter. Nonsense. He was
a pampered rich kid who took advantage. Why wasn't he called on it in a serious
way during the 2000 election? Probably because Democrats figured they'd get
Clinton's draft-dodging thing thrown back at them. Not that it matters. If
history judges Bush harshly--and it probably will--it won't be for screwing up
as a young smart aleck, but for getting us into this damn fool war.

--CECIL ADAMS

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030411.html

In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
"Pete" wrote in message
...
If they could bury an entire MiG-25 (found only by the shifting sands
revealing a tail), what else is buried out there?

Ah, but if we use the analysis method employed by those folks claiming that
Saddam was not violating the requirements regarding WMD's, then those Migs
are not evidence of "aircraft", 'cause you have to have at least one hundred
of them, or more, before you can even *consider* them being "aircraft",
right?

Iraq's large and capable air force is a major and pressing threat that
must be neutralised immediately...

Okay, we found a buried MiG-25, isn't that a "large and capable" air
force?

A chemical round of a type that Saddam never revealed having *any*
of,

Yet which we knew he was working on.

maybe developed as a product of an R&D effort that post-dated 687,

Or that predated 687.

an
alleged mustard round,

Because out of 200,000 rounds produced, one round turning up is absolute
proof?

Do I scent desperation here?


From "Hussein may be exporting kilotons of WME to his US-hating
neigbbours" we're down to "we've found one or two decade-old shells".

There were supposedly vast factories and stockpiles of chemical and/or
biological weapons. It seems our intelligence was incorrect, since those
vast stockpiles and the factories that produced them remain elusive.


The claim was that there was a clear and obvious threat. Where was it?
What made Iraq so special compared to more evident proliferators and
producers of WME?

I asked eighteen months ago and never got an answer.

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
Thousands-to-one odds, anyway.

Nope. Millions. Out of the couple of dozen artillery rounds

How many shells do you think have been used as IEDs? It's not 'dozens'.

that have
been set as roadside IEDs, versus the tens of millions of rounds of
artillery shells they had available.

Trouble is, you're into sample size. They might have umpty-squadrillion
shells still sitting in depots (and probably do - Iraq has some _huge_
arms depots that still defy proper securing) but only one shell so far
has been filled with sarin instead of HE.

(Out of interest, has anyone *reported* cases where IEDs were rigged
with smoke shells, leaflet shells, or blue practice shells? If you think
only a few dozen shells have been used for IEDs, you have a serious
learning curve to climb)

So which is more likely? That someone hid a pile of chemical weapons (a
medium-sized arsenal of the things would fit in a building the size of a
house) in a country the size of California, versus your contention that
they didn't have any and were complying with the UN sanctions?

Where was that my contention?

You want a debate, you need to stop telling me what I think.


If they *had* a decent chemical weapon stockpile, why have they waited
so long to use it, why have they used it in such an ineffective manner,
and why weren't we able to find it in the last year-plus since our
leaders claimed to know that these weapons existed and exactly where
they were?


If there's a lesson here, it's "don't overrrule the analysts".

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

In article , "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
"Pete" wrote in message
...
If they could bury an entire MiG-25 (found only by the shifting sands
revealing a tail), what else is buried out there?

Ah, but if we use the analysis method employed by those folks claiming
that
Saddam was not violating the requirements regarding WMD's, then those
Migs
are not evidence of "aircraft", 'cause you have to have at least one
hundred
of them, or more, before you can even *consider* them being "aircraft",
right?

Iraq's large and capable air force is a major and pressing threat that
must be neutralised immediately...

Okay, we found a buried MiG-25, isn't that a "large and capable" air
force?


Do not ignore the threat to anyone standing behind the fighter when the
engine starts blowing out the sand.

"WalterM140" wrote


They've told a number of lies.

They lied about the rationale for the war. There were never any WMD.

At what point between 1991 and today did that statement become true? What
day was it that?

Pete

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
"Pete" wrote in message
...
If they could bury an entire MiG-25 (found only by the shifting sands
revealing a tail), what else is buried out there?

Ah, but if we use the analysis method employed by those folks claiming
that
Saddam was not violating the requirements regarding WMD's, then those
Migs
are not evidence of "aircraft", 'cause you have to have at least one
hundred
of them, or more, before you can even *consider* them being "aircraft",
right?

Iraq's large and capable air force is a major and pressing threat that
must be neutralised immediately...

Okay, we found a buried MiG-25, isn't that a "large and capable" air
force?

You need to calibrate your "humor" switch.


A chemical round of a type that Saddam never revealed having *any*
of,

Yet which we knew he was working on.

Which he claimed was R&D only, with no weapons listed as produced from the
effort. This was a weapon. It was not reported. Bad on him; you can defend
Saddam all you want in this regard, but it is clear he did not provide a
"full, final, and complete" accounting of all WMD's he had built, since he
did not report this one. Hence a violation of the terms he was supposed to
be operating under.


maybe developed as a product of an R&D effort that post-dated 687,

Or that predated 687.

Big question mark. Saddam did not declare any rounds produced of this nature
at any time--being as his disclosures did include some pretty "low density"
items (numbers in the single and double digits for other systems), then why
was this left out? Neither UNSCOM nor the later UNMOVIC were able to reach
any kind of definitive conclusion about exactly *what* the Iraqis had or had
not been able to do, or did, in terms of manufacturing 155mm binary rounds.
Interestingly, Saddam did not see fitt to even acknowledge the R&D effort
(which he was required to do) until after it was discovered via some
documentaion by UNSCOM inspectors. But hey, you still want to defend him
here, right?


an
alleged mustard round,

Because out of 200,000 rounds produced, one round turning up is absolute
proof?

Back to the old, "How many weapons does a violation make?" argument, eh?


Do I scent desperation here?

No, you scent disbelief that folks are still trying to defend Saddam and
claim that he was not guilty of continuing proscribed WMD activities, or of
hiding those that he had already conducted and wanted to keep out of sight.



From "Hussein may be exporting kilotons of WME to his US-hating
neigbbours" we're down to "we've found one or two decade-old shells".

That would be your quote, I presume? I mean, we all now know how willing you
are to doctor/create a quote and assign it to another poster, right?


There were supposedly vast factories and stockpiles of chemical and/or
biological weapons. It seems our intelligence was incorrect, since those
vast stockpiles and the factories that produced them remain elusive.

Our intel in those regards may indeed have been incorrect. But that does not
change the FACT that Saddam was violating the requirements set forth before
him. Gee, I wonder *why* he was so interested in ricin, which is admittedly
not likely to be the best of battlefield agents, but would likely perform
nicely if used by terrorist types, or his own intel folks (you remember, the
same guys who were implicated in that kill-the-former-President scheme?).



The claim was that there was a clear and obvious threat. Where was it?

Saddam continuing to work towards proscribed goals is good enough for me. I
personally don't think he was the kind of guy I'd want to be controlling
*any* WMD's, in whatever quantities; you may differ, but I could care less
to be honest. Then of course there were the other (non-WMD) related reasons
for conducting this operation--the ones that you can't seem to understand do
indeed exist?

What made Iraq so special compared to more evident proliferators and
producers of WME?

I asked eighteen months ago and never got an answer.

Because your question remains as stupid now as it was then--and yes, you got
an answer, you just can't seem to (or more accurately don't want to) grasp
it. No standard playbook for handling threats/potential threats in the
geopolitical realm--it is all situationally dependent. I suspect you can
understand that, but apparently as usual you just find it easier to ignore
the obvious in your quest to, for some unknown reason, defend Saddam as the
poor whipping boy. BTW, did you notice that the Saudis have again been in
AQ's target ring? You remember--the country that IIRC you were claiming was
more of a threat to the US and more deserving of US action than Iraq?

Brooks

In article . net,
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

"Chad Irby" wrote in message
om...

...and since you quoted it, you commented on it.

That's two low-quality lies in a row.


com·ment Pronunciation Key (kmnt)
n.
1..
1.. A written note intended as an explanation, illustration, or
criticism of a passage in a book or other writing; an annotation.

In other words, what you did.

And then denied you did.

That's three.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message . net,
Steven P. McNicoll writes

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...

Porton Down.

I never heard of this person. Who is he?

It's a place, not a person - and if the name means nothing to you, then
you're too ignorant to talk to. Which would be a shame.

Not in this case. McNicoll is one of those folks who thinks that
nothing he says really matters as long as he can keep denying it when
he's caught, after cutting out the relevant parts of his own posts.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.