Re: Things are looking better all the time [TERROR ALERT: Cerenkov Blue]
At 09:36 AM 3/27/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: On Thursday, March 27, 2003, at 08:41 AM, John Kelsey wrote: ... However, it seems to me it would be very hard for this news not to leak out. If, say, a nuke or serious bioterror weapon had been found in a major city, a lot of agencies would have had knowledge of it. It seems to me that at least one person would have said something, leaked it to the press, etc., for any of the usual reasons. True. I think it would depend on how it was dealt with. My wife used to work for a state environmental regulatory agency, and when their lab truck showed up someplace to collect samples, it always drew a lot of attention. Obviously, if the NEST people show up at some apartment building in Manhattan wearing moon suits, or if dozens of firemen and policemen are involved, it's going to be hard to keep it from slipping out that something interesting has happened. But if it were handled quietly, a single incident like this might not make the news. And if the incident was a terrorist nuke that turned out not to go off, the only evidence might be a soon-discounted warning call to a couple of major newspapers. --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Things are looking better all the time [TERROR ALERT: Cerenkov Blue]
On Tuesday 01 April 2003 08:50 pm, Neil Johnson wrote: When I went to work for the University I graduated from. I discovered all sorts of interesting things and even more when my sister enrolled.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 02:06 AM 3/28/03 -0800, Sarad AV wrote: hi, That cannot possibly even happen-by mistake.Al-jazeera is qatar based.They might hit a chinese embassy but not AL-Jazeera. I believe we hit the Al Jazeera office in Afghanistan pretty early in our bombing campaign there. (I read an archived BBC story about it when I was looking for the al-jazeera in english website.) This is a bit of a pattern; we hit television stations in Kosovo and Serbia during our campaign there, as well. So we're unlikely to bomb their main office, but hostile media offices (and the embassies of countries that p*ss us off) do seem to come to a bad end when they're in bombing zones. 1500 turkish troops moved into north iraq-US cannot immediately do any thing about it since flying over Turkish air space is important for them. The tragedy for the Kurds is that they're just not important enough to get the kind of backing they'd need to establish their own state, given the large set of countries that this would offend. So, once again, I expect that we'll leave them hanging when they're done being useful. This is lousy, though not any different than most countries' management of foreign affairs. What was that famous quote from Austria-Hungary? Something like We will astonish the world with our ingratitude. ... Sarath. --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Things are looking better all the time [TERROR ALERT: Cerenkov Blue]
John Kelsey wrote: I wasn't thinking of Al Qaida. There are a *lot* of people who might like to have a last-ditch deterrent against a US invasion or other action. I can think of a few workable deterrents against US invasion: - ICBMS - an army with a reputation of fighting nastily when attacked - a serious US-based political lobby friendly to the country Russian, China, and Britain have all three. France has one and two halves these days. The logic is that Israel should join the permanent membership of the Security Council - and India is a candidate as well. That's all the permanent members are really, a gang of countries who agreed not to fight each other because they had the nukes, so had to be sure to tell the others when they were going to pick on third-party country in case two of them picked on the same victim and ended up fighting each other by accident. The Security Council was nothing to do with the rule of international law (bye-bye Richard-Might-is-Right-Perle, I hope the rest of the warmongers take the pension-reducing plunge soon) and everything to do with the logic of MAD and carving up the world into spheres on influence. (And North Korea is in the Chinese sphere of influence, which is why the US leaves policing their nukes up to China.)
Re: Things are looking better all the time
hi, That cannot possibly even happen-by mistake.Al-jazeera is qatar based.They might hit a chinese embassy but not AL-Jazeera. 1500 turkish troops moved into north iraq-US cannot immediately do any thing about it since flying over Turkish air space is important for them. Sarath. (Before Al Jazeera is accidentally bombed off the air.) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 09:09 PM 3/26/03 -0600, Neil Johnson wrote: In a news conference on Tuesday, some general claimed they had located and taken out six sites where GPS jammers were being used. He claimed one site had been taken out with a GPS guided weapon. Kind of Ironic I beleive he said. Well, the satellites were *above* and the jammers *below* so its not that tricky. There's descriptions of the Mk-3 Tomahawk's antijamming ability out there. The proper use of a GPS jammer is *not* CW when you're fighting the US. The proper use is to switch them on when a spotter lets you know about incoming. Preferably you are in a nonbombable area (mosque, hospital, etc) when you switch on, and you promptly move after the incoming goes off. The goal being to increase bad PR, ie collateral damage aka civvy corpses. (Before Al Jazeera is accidentally bombed off the air.)
Re: Things are looking better all the time [TERROR ALERT: Cerenkov Blue]
On Thursday, March 27, 2003, at 08:41 AM, John Kelsey wrote: At 08:28 AM 3/26/03 -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 06:12 PM 3/25/03 -0500, John Kelsey wrote: ... Maybe the FBI caught them and disarmed the bombs before they went off. And they didn't claim any credit? This doesn't jibe with the puffery one observes. Well, there's puffery, and then there's trying to avoid panic. Though I'll agree this looks less plausible after the all Americans should have duct tape and plastic to wrap their houses announcements. But I'm trying to imagine the fallout (sorry) from announcing on CNN that they'd just found and disarmed a nuke that had been hidden in an apartment building in Manhattan. (Officials said the bomb, which had approximately the same destructive power as the one used at Hiroshima, would have killed more than a million people if set off. In related news, the 200-mile-long traffic jam caused by refugees flooding out of the city continued today, and the NYSE announced that they would be moving operations to an undisclosed location in New Jersey for the forseeable future.) This is a very good analysis. I had not considered that some WMDs might have been discovered and dealt with, but then not publicized for the reasons you describe. However, it seems to me it would be very hard for this news not to leak out. If, say, a nuke or serious bioterror weapon had been found in a major city, a lot of agencies would have had knowledge of it. It seems to me that at least one person would have said something, leaked it to the press, etc., for any of the usual reasons. Such a thing could probably be kept secret for a few days, but not for months, it seems to me. Still, in this Orwellian era where the invasion of Iraq is called Operation Iraqi Freedom, where the fact that the U.N. and most countries oppose this invasion results in the Coalition of the Willing, and where other doublespeak is rampant, I suppose the authorities will do what they can to not scare the sheeple. Rumsfield is promising that the reasons for the invasion--Iraq's banned weapons--will still be found. So far, they haven't been, not in any of the regions yet invaded, and with no signs of them being used...the rockets launched at COW and COWait have been Al-Fatah missile, which were not banned. I don't doubt that there are probably some undestroyed missiles or even some chemical agents somewhere in a country as large as Iraq...bookkeeping errors alone would probably guarantee this. But it is so far looking like the U.S. will have some serious explaining to do if stockpiles of banned weapons are not found. The DOD and CIA are probably creating them right now. --Tim May, Occupied America They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 04:14 PM 03/26/2003 +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote: The RAF used an EFP in 1989 to assassinate the chairman of Deutsche Bank I assume that's some Italian or German group's acronym and not Britain's Royal Air Force? :-) (Besides, I thought assassinations were usually an SAS (Special Air Service, not Scandinavian Airlines) thing...)
Re: Things are looking better all the time
Steve Schear [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I seem to recall that with sufficient knowledge and commonly available detonators shaped explosive charges can be configured to hurl heavy explosive payloads, much like a mortar, with fair accuracy, great distance or very high velocity. I can't seem to find the reference on-line but I vaguely recall that a 50kg payload could be accelerated to multi-mach speeds with a device that could be placed in a car trunk. A poor man's howitzer. It sounds like you're talking about explosively formed projectiles (EFPs), which are a means of creating high-velocity (several km/s) light projectiles, chiefly useful for armour penetration. Because of the way it works, it can't hurl heavy explosive payloads (neither heavy, not explosive). It's been around for awhile, but the first technology demonstrators didn't surface until the 1980s (Germany and France), and it's only starting to be adopted now (very tricky technology to get right). The RAF used an EFP in 1989 to assassinate the chairman of Deutsche Bank (it's typically reported as being a car bomb, but was actually done by parking a pushbike with a small bag on the back next to the road where the car was to pass. The projectile punched through the side of his armoured limo and killed him, but left everyone else alive. This is one of those feats which, if you had asked experts in 1989, would have told you was impossible to do). Peter.
RE: Things are looking better all the time
At 04:37 AM 3/25/03 +0100, Lucky Green wrote: ... If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? Suppose you only have one, it was really hard to get, and you're not sure how much of your US network has been turned, or at least placed under heavy surveilance? Maybe you wait until you are really sure you can succeed before you use it. Alternatively, we have no way of knowing how often terrorists have tried to use nukes, but been stopped one way or another. Maybe the Russians sold them very convincing duds. Maybe the FBI caught them and disarmed the bombs before they went off. And for a third alternative, it's quite possible (I don't know how likely) that one or more groups have smuggled nukes into the US, planted them in US cities, and offered proof to the US government, as a way of establishing a nuclear deterrent. (C.f. Ross Anderson's Guy Fawkes Protocol.) There are pretty obvious reasons why the US government might not announce either of the last two cases, and why the terrorist group of your choice wouldn't announce we have a bomb until they had the thing planted where they wanted it. --Lucky --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 03:30 AM, Ken Brown wrote: Declan McCullagh wrote: Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. Another novel that came out with the idea - and the first one to explicitly mention GPS AFAIR - was The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury from 1987 (incorporating parts from stories in Analog back in the 1970s) which has an Afghan refugee studying aero engineering in the US and setting up light planes to autopilot an attack on the Kremlin. (To be honest when I first heard the news about 9/11 that's what I thought might have happened - until I saw a TV screen I didn't realise they were passenger planes) And of course it was in 1987 that the German teenager Matthias Rust flew a Cessna over the border into the USSR and buzzed Red Square, so it's not clear who had the idea first. (I remember the name but not the year, so I used Google to find it.) The general idea of using asymmetric warfare, via RC planes, bombs, etc., is really not very new. Torching an enemy's village in the middle of the night is a time-honored form of asymmetric warfare, though the War Lawyers have been trying to force armies to wear Official Uniforms and march in Official Patterns. --Tim May That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. --Samuel Adams
Re: Things are looking better all the time
hi, They are not working very well or US since the iraqi's are using gps jammers and US are already in a row with russians claiming that they sold it to iraq. Regards Sarath. --- Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 03:30 AM, Ken Brown wrote: Declan McCullagh wrote: Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. Another novel that came out with the idea - and the first one to explicitly mention GPS AFAIR - was The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury from 1987 (incorporating parts from stories in Analog back in the 1970s) which has an Afghan refugee studying aero engineering in the US and setting up light planes to autopilot an attack on the Kremlin. (To be honest when I first heard the news about 9/11 that's what I thought might have happened - until I saw a TV screen I didn't realise they were passenger planes) And of course it was in 1987 that the German teenager Matthias Rust flew a Cessna over the border into the USSR and buzzed Red Square, so it's not clear who had the idea first. (I remember the name but not the year, so I used Google to find it.) The general idea of using asymmetric warfare, via RC planes, bombs, etc., is really not very new. Torching an enemy's village in the middle of the night is a time-honored form of asymmetric warfare, though the War Lawyers have been trying to force armies to wear Official Uniforms and march in Official Patterns. --Tim May That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. --Samuel Adams __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
Re: Things are looking better all the time
Bill Stewart wrote: At 04:14 PM 03/26/2003 +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote: The RAF used an EFP in 1989 to assassinate the chairman of Deutsche Bank I assume that's some Italian or German group's acronym and not Britain's Royal Air Force? :-) (Besides, I thought assassinations were usually an SAS (Special Air Service, not Scandinavian Airlines) thing...) Red Army Fraction (As Germans I suppose it would be something like Rote Armee Fraktion?) Most people called them faction in English but they preferred fraction as it was meant to imply that they were only a small part of a vast army of workers et.c They weren't, of course. Bloody heck, they even have a web site: http://www.rafinfo.de/ More often called Baader Meinhof Gang presumably because Ulrike Meinbhof looked sexier than most terrorists. And yes, http://www.baader-meinhof.com/ exists - though it seems to be a fan site. So now we have assasination groupies.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 09:22 PM, Bill Stewart wrote: At 04:14 PM 03/26/2003 +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote: The RAF used an EFP in 1989 to assassinate the chairman of Deutsche Bank I assume that's some Italian or German group's acronym and not Britain's Royal Air Force? :-) (Besides, I thought assassinations were usually an SAS (Special Air Service, not Scandinavian Airlines) thing...) Red Army Faction. --Tim May
Re: Things are looking better all the time
Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 04:14 PM 03/26/2003 +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote: The RAF used an EFP in 1989 to assassinate the chairman of Deutsche Bank I assume that's some Italian or German group's acronym and not Britain's Royal Air Force? :-) Red Army Faction, a German terrorist group active mostly in the 1970s, now disbanded. Peter.
RE: Things are looking better all the time [TERROR ALERT: Cerenkov Blue]
At 06:12 PM 3/25/03 -0500, John Kelsey wrote: At 04:37 AM 3/25/03 +0100, Lucky Green wrote: ... If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? Suppose you only have one, it was really hard to get, and you're not sure how much of your US network has been turned, or at least placed under heavy surveilance? Maybe you wait until you are really sure you can succeed before you use it. You're not even sure whether it works well, either. (Note that even a completely subcritical dud will still be a dispersal device unless they seriously overbuild a U gun-type device.) Alternatively, we have no way of knowing how often terrorists have tried to use nukes, but been stopped one way or another. Maybe the Russians sold them very convincing duds. Um, several times, in fact. Look Abdul, it clicks! Must be fissile.. There's a technically incompetent but well financed jihadist born every minute. (Its the competent ones you want to worry about.) Maybe the FBI caught them and disarmed the bombs before they went off. And they didn't claim any credit? This doesn't jibe with the puffery one observes. And for a third alternative, it's quite possible (I don't know how likely) that one or more groups have smuggled nukes into the US, planted them in US cities, and offered proof to the US government, as a way of establishing a nuclear deterrent. (C.f. Ross Anderson's Guy Fawkes Protocol.) But they've *already* declared their goals in numerous fatwas by now, what do you want, a UN resolution? And deterrent type solutions haven't worked. The US probably increased its presence in the land of Mecca since the first WTC attack. Al Q's m.o. is simply to make the expected future cost of empire too high. This future expectation is produced by current actions. So, its preferable that Americans think they had one, they can get another (while viewing the Detroit Crater from the observation platform), instead of supposedly (according to some idiot official who says we're on code Cerenkov Blue) there's a nuculear geezmo in some city. Besides, if you announce, you are toast. There are pretty obvious reasons why the US government might not announce either of the last two cases, and why the terrorist group of your choice wouldn't announce we have a bomb until they had the thing planted where they wanted it. Again, the operational risks with extortion, traced communications, the faith-based motivations and psyop saavy of Al Q indicate Use It or Lose It. If you've got 'em, smoke 'em as they say. --- He listened patiently to my explanation of how I now believed a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, but he seemed unenthusiastic about what I had to say and preoccupied with other thoughts. After I left his office, I found to my considerable dismay that the fly to my trousers had been unzipped. E. Teller p 317 Memoirs
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Wednesday 26 March 2003 05:26 am, Sarad AV wrote: hi, They are not working very well or US since the iraqi's are using gps jammers and US are already in a row with russians claiming that they sold it to iraq. In a news conference on Tuesday, some general claimed they had located and taken out six sites where GPS jammers were being used. He claimed one site had been taken out with a GPS guided weapon. Kind of Ironic I beleive he said. -- Neil Johnson http://www.njohnsn.com PGP key available on request.
RE: Things are looking better all the time
On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Lucky Green wrote: If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? I don't think they have nukes. Not yet. But now they're seeing plenty of reasons to get them. We're lucky they're poor, low-tech people in general.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- James A. Donald: If the US trys to avoid civilian casualties, this is not out of fear and weakness. Indeed, when we observe the recent past, it seems that it is failure to commit sufficient murder that provokes these attacks. On 24 Mar 2003 at 17:41, Eugen Leitl wrote: This is dire lunacy. Currently US is perceived as an agressor by the majority of the world, Exactly so. If the US murdered as many people as those it is perceived as aggressing against, then, like the Soviet Union, it would no longer be perceived as the aggressor, no matter how many people it subjugated or countries it invaded. It would get a free pass for its crimes, as the Soviet Union did. Recall that the he Soviet Union was slaughtering Muslims in enormous numbers, and today's Russia continues to murder them in numbers vastly greater than comparatively modest murders that Israel commits, and no one thought to launch terror attacks on the Soviet Union. There are a few terror attacks on todays Russia, but far fewer than on Israel. What is the moral? The moral is, murder more innocents, suffer less terror, less protests. Does anyone recall a protest against the Soviet Union when it was murdering Muslims by the trainload? If today's Russia murdered as many innocents as the former Soviet Union, they would have no terror problem at all. If you do not murder women and children, people think you are weak. So they attack. The more Iraqi children the US napalms, the safer every US resident who works in a tall building will be, and less our cities will be troubled with protests. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ZrkGvOGLQpALrU1KE9QX1mfd34aksVSnAZZd+OeA 4jz+JQJq45RkQt+yyCz+4rOM/aJdGQKZrYYsZTmp8
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 10:31:14PM -0800, James A. Donald wrote: The more Iraqi children the US napalms, the safer every US resident who works in a tall building will be, and less our cities will be troubled with protests. I assume you're joking. If you're not, what you say may be true (but hardly moral) if (a) all the innocents from that nation or ethnic group can be killed and (b) it can be kept quiet or other nations don't care. Neither condition is true. -Declan
RE: Things are looking better all the time
At 04:37 AM 03/25/2003 +0100, Lucky Green wrote: If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? Because they've been able to achieve Shock and Awe without them and keep most of the rabble in line by threatening to blow up other nuclear-armed terrorists in mutually assured destruction. Oh, wait, those weren't the terrorists you were talking about One of the things that really frustrated me about 9/11 was that after 45 years of nuclear terrorism and cold war, we'd had close to a decade without anybody threatening to destroy the world, except for occasional small patches of it just to remind everybody to pay their military-industrial-complex dues, and we'd had this nice economic boom (though it was obviously winding down), and while the Bush League was trying to do everything they wanted, even so, things were starting to look like maybe our species could act somewhat civilized for a while. But no, it's back to the same old same old, and so much for civil liberties in America as well.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
Declan McCullagh wrote: Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. Another novel that came out with the idea - and the first one to explicitly mention GPS AFAIR - was The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury from 1987 (incorporating parts from stories in Analog back in the 1970s) which has an Afghan refugee studying aero engineering in the US and setting up light planes to autopilot an attack on the Kremlin. (To be honest when I first heard the news about 9/11 that's what I thought might have happened - until I saw a TV screen I didn't realise they were passenger planes) A good book which got less attention than it deserved. Contains a brilliant idea for what should have been done in LEO after Mir. I suppose it has been eclipsed in the memory of sf fans both by really happened to the Soviet Union and perhaps also by Mary Jane Engh's Arslan (AKA The Wind from Bukhara) which overlaps in subject matter a little. Rumsfeld, Blix Barada Nikto!
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 12:03 AM 3/25/2003 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: Someone else pointed out that this has been discussed in a novel (wasn't aware). I hardly mean to say my prediction is unique. It's just one response to the question that the counterterrorism folks must ask themselves all the time: How to delivery a deadly payload of sufficient size to a target that's primarily defended against car bombs? I seem to recall that with sufficient knowledge and commonly available detonators shaped explosive charges can be configured to hurl heavy explosive payloads, much like a mortar, with fair accuracy, great distance or very high velocity. I can't seem to find the reference on-line but I vaguely recall that a 50kg payload could be accelerated to multi-mach speeds with a device that could be placed in a car trunk. A poor man's howitzer. steve War is just a racket ... something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small group knows what its about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. --- Major General Smedley Butler, 1933
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- On 24 Mar 2003 at 22:05, Declan McCullagh wrote: I fear that's right. We have substantially increased our number of enemies capable of causing us serious damage (and have the requiste means, motive, and opportunity) Observe the marked decline in terrorist acts. Recollect that 9/11 was the second attempt to bring down the two towers and one of many large scale terrorist acts directed at Americans. Since Afghanistan, there have been no comparable attempts. The Australians got a bit of terror for their actions in East Timor, whereupon they threatened the Indonesians that if they did not clean up Indonesia, the Australians would do it for them. Since then, they have had no further significant problems either. All of the terrorists, and most of the protestors, think that if one do not kill innocents, it is a sign of weakness, and they strike at weakness. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG SKftD3iO5jEjgK/DD7/KHtmYPRg6AxRM6VoCCMVd 4EwomPyztP4ywyl/PXmpq8ssvNutxjj3lMHHPmEb2
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 10:53 PM 3/24/03 -0800, Steve Schear wrote: I seem to recall that with sufficient knowledge and commonly available detonators shaped explosive charges can be configured to hurl heavy explosive payloads, much like a mortar, with fair accuracy, great distance or very high velocity. I can't seem to find the reference on-line but I vaguely recall that a 50kg payload could be accelerated to multi-mach speeds with a device that could be placed in a car trunk. A poor man's howitzer. A shaped charge would probably destroy any projectile other than the collapsed liner. Which does move very fast -faster even than the detonation velocity of the brisant, which can be a few thousand m/sec. Nothing like a hypersonic slug of molten tungsten to start the day. However, see _The Irish War_ for a few practical, tested homebrew mortars you can fire out of a van. Moonroofs are terrorist equiptment.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Declan McCullagh: what you say may be true (but hardly moral) if (a) all the innocents from that nation or ethnic group can be killed and (b) it can be kept quiet or other nations don't care. No need to keep it quiet. The French would kiss our feet as they kissed the feet of the Nazis. The New York Times glories in a pulitzer prize received for laudatory reporting of similar activities by the communists, and would doubtless drop its present anti war stance for similarly laudatory reporting. Indeed, to keep it quiet would be useless. Were the US to burn every Iraqi child alive, the intent and purpose would be to have everyone strongly suspect, so that the world would learn to let sleeping giants lie. Similar tactics were repeatedly employed throughout the the twentieth century, and were invariably highly effective, and welcomed everywhere in the finest universities, amongst the very best people, and the most prestigious publications, with glowing praise. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3ugzZZGkxDJMCzgCZSym0TNHDvLJtovGA0GdGNLC 4eZu4NvyASZJK56sH1lBkFMLUv6ARCl1r7M/m6epB
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- James A. Donald: The more Iraqi children the US napalms, the safer every US resident who works in a tall building will be, and less our cities will be troubled with protests. Declan McCullagh I assume you're joking. I am stating a fact. It should be obvious I do not conclude that the government should round up every Iraqi child, and every male in America with an arab sounding name, and burn them alive, but were the government to do so, that would be very effective in making us safe from arabs and Muslims though far from effective in making us safe from our government. Similar measures were successful for communists, and met wide acceptance from Western intellectuals and newsmen. Still do to this day. One of the many Pulitzer prizes the New York times still boasts of to this day was given for laudatory reporting of similar measures. Similarly the French kissed the feet of the nazis, and spat on the graves of the heroes who brought them freedom. There is a regrettable but widespread human inclination to feel that only those whose hand are red with the blood of innocents are deserving of wealth and power, and to therefore strike out anyone with wealth and power whose hands are not red, and that attitude is very visible in the speeches of Bin Laden, among the protesters, and among some of those who posted to this list objecting to the US adventure in Iraq. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4dP6/9Fhfmcs0iNekbG0Bt8hi7nnExY+o8L9PChE 4kZFmvALzX6VS72SUAlVBMzbNJRjFm2x/ClOJIcg+
RE: Things are looking better all the time
At 10:42 AM 3/25/03 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Lucky Green wrote: If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? I don't think they have nukes. Not yet. But now they're seeing plenty of reasons to get them. We're lucky they're poor, low-tech people in general. Are you sure you know where all your irradiators, isotope batteries, soviet agricultural sprouting-inhibitors are? Just asking. (And yes, dispersal weapons are not nuculear explosives, but since the major effects of either are due to panic, they're good enough for (anti) government work.)
Re: Things are looking better all the time
What decline? The tower attacks were separated by about 8 years, There is no adequate sampling to justify that statement. On 24 Mar 2003 at 23:31, James A. Donald wrote: Observe the marked decline in terrorist acts. Recollect that 9/11 was the second attempt to bring down the two towers and one of many large scale terrorist acts directed at Americans.
RE: Things are looking better all the time
If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? --Lucky Well, one idea worth considering is that these terrorists are not merely mindless killing machines. Their goal (at least as bin Laden has stated it) is to get the US out of the middle east, and stop us from pretty much propping up the likes of the Saudi royal family, Saddam Huessein, and so on. Thus, killing 3,000 in the WTC is pretty dramatic enough...more can be tried if this doesn't get our attention. And then again, there's the possibility that they don't have a lot of nukes and are waiting for the appropriate moment (such as when 100,000 troops are tightly clustered around somewhere they can set one off). -TD _ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 07:36 PM 03/23/2003 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: No one (except the US military which hopes to rule an intact Iraq) least of all the protestors, care how many Iraqis get killed. Who recollects how many Iraqis were killed the last time around? James, I agree with you more often than I disagree with you, (and in fact I'll agree with you on a different point below), but in this case your doctrinaire jingoism is not only unfair, it's 180 degrees inaccurate. During Phase I of this war (I won't call it the last time, because we've maintained an embargo and a no-fly zone and hostile agents (mainly UN inspectors) in their territory, so essentially that war hasn't stopped), US propaganda very seldom discussed Iraqi casualties, while focusing very heavily on the few Invader casualties, mostly US but occasionally deigning to admit to the existence of British and Canadian and sometimes other invader casualties. There were a few body count speeches, with Schwartzkopf announcing (IIRC) about 20,000 and then about 50,000 deaths, mainly military, and later on someone, I think Rumsfeld, announcing about 200K including civilians. But there were very few speeches like that, and they were usually doing a We're kicking their asses deal. Mostly you'll hear that from anti-war sources (and by the way, I got thrown off of Federal property for holding a sign about it near the entrance when there was a pro-war rally going on.) Government sources mainly talked about what a great job they were doing with precision-targeted smart weapons (glossing over the fact that 95-75% of the ordnance used was dumb iron bombs.) Meanwhile, if you want to find the UN estimates of 500K - 1.5M deaths from the war and early aftermath and the years of bad water because the Invaders destroyed their water systems and the Embargo prevented importation of water purification equipment, you've either got to look it up yourself or listen to anti-war protestors - you won't hear it from the pro-war side. Now, if you want to argue that the anti-war side are also a bunch of chauvinists who are more interested in a million dead Iraqi children as a debating point than as human beings that they care about individually, well go ahead, but at least the lefties go to the work of counting them, while the pro-war side pretend they don't exist at all. Mike Rosing: The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. Harmon Seaver: Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. . James: Furthermore, the plan appears to be to take cities as they were taken in Afghanistan, by laying seige to them and fostering revolt from within, a process that in Afghanistan took cities with very few civilian casualties. That's probably correct - especially after taking out the anti-aircraft capabilities, they can just about take out every truck that tries to drive down the street, doing a much more thorough version of a siege than medieval warfare ever had. Not sure it's easy to do that without civilian casualties, especially if you're expecting the civilians to overthrow their military government, and if the military can seize most of the food, but it certainly can be done with a minimum of Invader casualties, unlike the problems that Allies liberating Germany or Nazis invading Russia went through. Rome was not burnt in a day. Now _that's_ a nice line :-)
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Harmon Seaver: Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. James A. Donald: No one (except the US military which hopes to rule an intact Iraq) least of all the protestors, care how many Iraqis get killed. Who recollects how many Iraqis were killed the last time around? On 23 Mar 2003 at 23:36, Bill Stewart wrote: I got thrown off of Federal property for holding a sign about it near the entrance when there was a pro-war rally going on. OK, you recollect how many Iraqis were killed the last time around. However tons of collateral damage is not going to crucify Bush and Blair, and to suggest that it would is to treat virtue as weakness. I am enraged whenever I see people speaking as if the US desire to avoid civilian casualties was a form of weakness, a manifestation of weakness and fear This view, this interpretation of US behavior, is so widespread that perhaps the most effectual thing the US could do to prevent future random terror attacks is to round up one hundred million. innocents and slaughter the lot. Everyone loved the commies for doing that, so if the US wants to be loved, perhaps it needs to do the same. If the US trys to avoid civilian casualties, this is not out of fear and weakness. Indeed, when we observe the recent past, it seems that it is failure to commit sufficient murder that provokes these attacks. The US does not suffer bad consequences from killing innocents, but from its failure to kill sufficient innocents. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hu6ELr3jUIu3oEIpUP+J4+eT2MmE73JlaP2gGpR3 4KKD7h+egCTl5Lbm/b7SZ67vmhXn3fpWObKHp2b2Y
RE: Things are looking better all the time
Eugen wrote: This is dire lunacy. Currently US is perceived as an agressor by the majority of the world, including the so-called ally U.K. which has lent more than just its name. You will see an unprecedented surge in terrorism in the heart of homeland soon after this campaign is over. These attacks could well be nuclear, or at the very least result in heavy casualities, far eclipsing 9/11. Resulting nuclear strike on a random city somewhere will result in a world wide nuclear arms race. Soon after we're at the threshold of WWIII, a Gdeath event. If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? --Lucky
Re: Things are looking better all the time
Declan McCullagh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. Or for that matter, it would be extremely easy to outfit a model RC control unit with bigger servos to fly a real plane. And small planes are quite easy to steal as well.
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Monday, March 24, 2003, at 07:28 PM, Bill Frantz wrote: At 7:05 PM -0800 3/24/03, Declan McCullagh wrote: Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. The simplest autopilots just keep the wings level. Almost equally common are ones that can follow a radio location signal (VHF Onmi-Range (VOR) usually). Altitude hold is less common, as are autopilots that can follow an Instrument Landing System (ILS) in both azimuth and elevation. In theory, one could set up an attack where the plane follows a VOR to the target. If the payload is chemical or biological, dispersing it at altitude might be what is wanted. Otherwise additional equipment will be needed to crash the plane into the ground. I remember hearing that airliners will eventually be equipped with autopilots able to land the planes, with perhaps some assistance from ground controllers. If memory serves, a 767 pilot claimed during a television interview just after 911 that the autopilot on the 767 (and being retrofitted to 747 and 757 planes) is precise enough to actually land the plane at an airport like JFK. To check what's available for small planes, I just risked having GoogleNarc report me to the Thought Police and did a search on autopilot cessna. It appears that the autopilots available today are capable of doing altitude changes, though not dives into the ground (not suprisingly). This would make it possible for a Cessna owner to bail out at a safe altitude and then have the plane drop in altitude and fly into buildings or a sports stadium. (With obvious variations: detonating a large nail bomb at 300 feet, using a GPS system to trigger the release of a 400-pound jet fuel bomb with impact detonator, and so on.) I'm glad I don't travel much, and not by air for nearly 3 years (with no plans short of a major family emergency to get me in the air). I don't think most of the world cares for our Pax Americana brand of invading and occupying and seizing oilfields, all based on crudely forged CIA documents and splutterings from the inept Colin Powell about how we have to invade Iraq in order to save Iraqis. And I don't think the world is a very safe place. Sure, the chance of being caught in a nail bomb attack or a sarin release is less than the chance of having the Reich Security Forces do a stop and frisk and find some banned literature in luggagewhich is exactly why I don't travel. A lot of other people are also choosing to stay closer to home, too. And this is why Mrs. Tom Daschle wants a massive bailout of her airline clients. As Benito Mussolini said, fascism _is_ corporatism. But as Cathy Young, former libertarian, would put it, in foxholes there are no believers in free enterprise. --Tim May
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 07:28:41PM -0800, Bill Frantz wrote: The simplest autopilots just keep the wings level. Almost equally common are ones that can follow a radio location signal (VHF Onmi-Range (VOR) usually). Altitude hold is less common, as are autopilots that can follow an Instrument Landing System (ILS) in both azimuth and elevation. Just got a private off-list note -- or at least that's what it seems to be, since the list wasn't copied and it hasn't shown up here. It made two points: * High end aircraft avionics can be programmed to fly an entire flight from GPS waypoint to GPS waypoint at arbitrary altitudes for each leg. * Fancy interfaces could allow someone to enter data into the autopilot via a radio link (possibly cell phone or wide area pager) for updates on the fly. The defenses against this would seem to be primarily radar and air traffic control. I can't see them being very effective if the target is a civilian government complex or non-governmental building in America's heartland, where general aviation is commonplace and airports would probably be in the close vicinity. As for something like Washington, DC? Well, security measures at College Park airport (inside the Beltway to the northeast) are strict. I couldn't quickly find a map on faa.gov, but I'd guess there are other general aviation airports within 20 miles of attractive targets in the heart of DC, much less if you count suburban ones like Langley or Fort George. If you assume that a plane can fly 200 mph, and the distance to travel is 20 miles, that's not much time for a military response. This is a different question from whether a 1,000 lb payload would be sufficiently dangerous as to cause a catastrophe, of course. Someone else pointed out that this has been discussed in a novel (wasn't aware). I hardly mean to say my prediction is unique. It's just one response to the question that the counterterrorism folks must ask themselves all the time: How to delivery a deadly payload of sufficient size to a target that's primarily defended against car bombs? Yet another reason to move out of DC. -Declan
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Monday, March 24, 2003, at 08:11 PM, Bill O'Hanlon wrote: Both of these ideas get used in Martin Caidin's book Deathmate... (If you're old enough, you might remember the Six Million Dollar Man TV series. Caidin was the author of the book that was used for that series.) It's a bit old, but Deathmate is quite violent and somewhat topical. It's sure to please some folks on this list. Yep, I'm old enough to have read the novel, circa 1969-71, except that it was called Cyborg. I know I read it a few years before the TV series, which I only saw a few episodes of (I was in college, and TV was not common for student back then). Joe Poyer was another military/thriller writer of the era. I've been seeing novels by another Poyer lately...I've been assuming it's his son. Walter Wager was another good novelist of the era. Amazon will have details on all of them. --Tim May A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. --Alexander Fraser Tyler
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 10:05:24PM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: I'm still predicting radio-controlled helicopters (or RC planes, which could carry a far greater load). Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. Both of these ideas get used in Martin Caidin's book Deathmate... (If you're old enough, you might remember the Six Million Dollar Man TV series. Caidin was the author of the book that was used for that series.) It's a bit old, but Deathmate is quite violent and somewhat topical. It's sure to please some folks on this list. -Bill
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 7:05 PM -0800 3/24/03, Declan McCullagh wrote: Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. The simplest autopilots just keep the wings level. Almost equally common are ones that can follow a radio location signal (VHF Onmi-Range (VOR) usually). Altitude hold is less common, as are autopilots that can follow an Instrument Landing System (ILS) in both azimuth and elevation. In theory, one could set up an attack where the plane follows a VOR to the target. If the payload is chemical or biological, dispersing it at altitude might be what is wanted. Otherwise additional equipment will be needed to crash the plane into the ground. Cheers - Bill - Bill Frantz | Due process for all| Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | American way. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 05:41:09PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: This is dire lunacy. Currently US is perceived as an agressor by the majority of the world, including the so-called ally U.K. which has lent more than just its name. You will see an unprecedented surge in terrorism in the heart of homeland soon after this campaign is over. I fear that's right. We have substantially increased our number of enemies capable of causing us serious damage (and have the requiste means, motive, and opportunity), while arguably decreasing the number of our allies. Moreover, some of the intrusive laws we have adopted since 9-11 and expansions in government power have increased the danger of attacks on, say, Washington, DC by domestic malcontents. Given that the U.S. has experienced relatively little homeland terrorism so far, compared to other countries like the U.K., it wouldn't take much to mark an unprecedented surge. That said, I fear you're right -- and it'll take a far more distributed form. I'm still predicting radio-controlled helicopters (or RC planes, which could carry a far greater load). Or perhaps we'll see someone take a GPS-controlled small plane, which can carry 1,000 lbs, and turn it into a flying bomb or delivery system for something quite noxious. These planes can be rented by the hour at hundreds of small to medium sized airports around the U.S. Though I don't know if the autopilot is configurable enough to let an attacker program it to head to a certain altitude at a certain location and then bail out via parachute. -Declan
Things are looking better all the time
Hey, this war is looking better all the time. We got our first fragging already, and the US troops are finding themselves no real match for the Iraqis. I just heard that there's at least 1 million well armed Ba'ath party irregulars, plus unknown numbers of armed Iraqi tribes, besides the 400,000 strong Iraqi army which clearly isn't rolling over like projected. Could it be that the US will actually get it's ass kicked? Unless dimwit dubya decides to start carpet bombing the civilian population, there's no way they can beat those numbers. The US airpower does them zilch good in the cities otherwise. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com We are now in America's Darkest Hour. http://www.oshkoshbygosh.org hoka hey!
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- On 23 Mar 2003 at 17:39, Mike Rosing wrote: What they *can't* do is destroy small armies. So the Persians, Talibs and other muslim groups that have a grudge against the US will bleed them to death one soldier at a time. The US is not bleeding in Afghanistan. Iraq, like the french and unlike Afghanistan, has a long history of rolling over for tyrants foreign and domestic and begging for the tummy to be tickled, so the comparatively light hand of the US should lead to little friction. Assuming the war is as short and victorious as seems likely from events so far, Iraqi resistance wil not be one of the problems that results. Of course the war is far from over yet, but once it is over, it will indeed be over -- as the war in Afghanistan, against people far tougher and more determined, is over. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KtUZvg8HqIFOjO7TntiUtvJukF5ylhS4ToL3G4SJ 4r/cJgkx4X+dQYBr41/4Z/r/mWGlutzeNbOJsgwUk
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 05:39:05PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: Hey, this war is looking better all the time. We got our first fragging already, and the US troops are finding themselves no real match for the Iraqis. I just heard that there's at least 1 million well armed Ba'ath party irregulars, plus unknown numbers of armed Iraqi tribes, besides the 400,000 strong Iraqi army which clearly isn't rolling over like projected. Could it be that the US will actually get it's ass kicked? Unless dimwit dubya decides to start carpet bombing the civilian population, there's no way they can beat those numbers. The US airpower does them zilch good in the cities otherwise. Don't get your hopes up. With air power and seige tanks the Iraqi's don't have much ammo or food. Just like the US controls Afghanistan, they will claim they control Iraq. There will be incidents and a few minor operations to clean out enemy cells, but I don't expect to see any well organized defense. The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. There are buses full of armed irregulars coming into Bhagdad. I'll bet we see US/UK deaths in the thousands, if they try to move into the city. And they'll have to, the international community won't go for starving the civilians anymore than they will bombing them. And it's pretty obvious the Iraqi civilians are pissed (other than the Shiites down South) *and* armed. The US never dreamed, I don't think, that they've be dealing with all those armed civilians. Shades of Red Dawn. 8-) What they *can't* do is destroy small armies. So the Persians, Talibs and other muslim groups that have a grudge against the US will bleed them to death one soldier at a time. With truck bombs and grenades and other suicide missions. Since this whole thing is about oil, they'll definitly want to attack oil pipelines. I don't think the majority of neanderthals in the US fully understand the mess they've created, nor how they will ever extract themselves from this tar baby. Nope, they sure didn't. I think the US gov't has really fucked itself good. The reason the US got its butt kicked in Vietnam was the refusal by congress to allow full military unleashing. That's not really true -- they gave it everything they had, except nukes. They didn't have the firepower they have now with cruise missles, etc. but the tonnage of bombs was pretty phenomenal, and the ground troops couldn't really have done any more than they did, unless they just Mai Lai'd the whole country. Now, they've unleashed the military, who will win the war, but never really fully control anything. The US now has troops in over 100 countries. That's a lot of targets to pick at. Imagine losing a soldier somewhere once a day, everyday for the next 10 years. Maybe somebody will notice? Yup, I wouldn't even be a bit surprised to see Europeans, non-muslim, I mean, starting to off the GI's over there. Drop a little cyanide or ricin in a guy's beer in the pub... -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com We are now in America's Darkest Hour. http://www.oshkoshbygosh.org hoka hey!
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Mike Rosing: The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. Harmon Seaver: Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. No one (except the US military which hopes to rule an intact Iraq) least of all the protestors, care how many Iraqis get killed. Who recollects how many Iraqis were killed the last time around? Furthermore, the plan appears to be to take cities as they were taken in Afghanistan, by laying seige to them and fostering revolt from within, a process that in Afghanistan took cities with very few civilian casualties. This is already working in the North, where the US has allies on the ground. It is not yet working the the South, indeed it failed conspicuously and embarrassingly, but it is early days yet -- we shall see. Rome was not burnt in a day. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG CEot0/Fv5upkisp2OkrlJ7HOSs54PKAvATPS9MMh 4yzGvQnbJbVyDJ/tpJS7TGIrVyZ/9wVT0lt6W2p9a
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: Hey, this war is looking better all the time. We got our first fragging already, and the US troops are finding themselves no real match for the Iraqis. I just heard that there's at least 1 million well armed Ba'ath party irregulars, plus unknown numbers of armed Iraqi tribes, besides the 400,000 strong Iraqi army which clearly isn't rolling over like projected. Could it be that the US will actually get it's ass kicked? Unless dimwit dubya decides to start carpet bombing the civilian population, there's no way they can beat those numbers. The US airpower does them zilch good in the cities otherwise. Don't get your hopes up. With air power and seige tanks the Iraqi's don't have much ammo or food. Just like the US controls Afghanistan, they will claim they control Iraq. There will be incidents and a few minor operations to clean out enemy cells, but I don't expect to see any well organized defense. The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. What they *can't* do is destroy small armies. So the Persians, Talibs and other muslim groups that have a grudge against the US will bleed them to death one soldier at a time. With truck bombs and grenades and other suicide missions. Since this whole thing is about oil, they'll definitly want to attack oil pipelines. I don't think the majority of neanderthals in the US fully understand the mess they've created, nor how they will ever extract themselves from this tar baby. The reason the US got its butt kicked in Vietnam was the refusal by congress to allow full military unleashing. Now, they've unleashed the military, who will win the war, but never really fully control anything. The US now has troops in over 100 countries. That's a lot of targets to pick at. Imagine losing a soldier somewhere once a day, everyday for the next 10 years. Maybe somebody will notice? Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: Things are looking better all the time
On Sunday, March 23, 2003, at 07:13 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 05:39:05PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: Don't get your hopes up. With air power and seige tanks the Iraqi's don't have much ammo or food. Just like the US controls Afghanistan, they will claim they control Iraq. There will be incidents and a few minor operations to clean out enemy cells, but I don't expect to see any well organized defense. The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. There are buses full of armed irregulars coming into Bhagdad. I'll bet we see US/UK deaths in the thousands, if they try to move into the city. And they'll have to, the international community won't go for starving the civilians anymore than they will bombing them. The COW (Coalition of the Willing) losses are mounting as urban areas are approached. Unsurprisingly, U.S. power is most obvious out in the desert, out with exposed enemy columns, out where air power and satellite imagery makes a big difference. Defenders have a massive advantage when they can just sit and snipe. (Sure, COW can call in air strikes, but even the Empire's budget will start to suffer when multimillion dollar airstrikes are called against lone gunmen). I expect the COW forces to get increasingly strung out (geographically, mentally) and for mistakes to increase. More scenes of exhausted and demoralized grunts, more reports of a batch being blown up, a another chopper crash. The Siege of Baghdad begins. The train wreck is developing nicely. --Tim May
