The US, The UN and Iraq

The most profound source of concern may be what Eisenhower called spiritual: the corrupting effect on the uniformed military by their alliance with contractors. Most career soldiers leave the service by their mid-40s. A tiny handful last until their mid-50s, and nearly all the retirees look for a second career. Far and away the most lucrative opportunities are with defense industries. Knowing that their careers will end this way, soldiers face difficult decisions while still in uniform. Two valuable recent books, Path to Victory by Maj. Donald Vandergriff and Boyd by Robert Coram, consider the distortions of today's military career path.

Fishin'

Thanks for exploding another popular myth held by some people.

Tantor...you said:

Quote:

If he had a nuke, he'd use that. Saddam wants to be the leader of the Arab world, the new Saladdin. Destroying Israel would be a step toward accomplishing that.

I'm unclear...how would he lead the Arab world if dead? Are you considering he would survive after that?

tantor, Let me see: If Saddam uses a nuke against Israel, I wonder how many Palestinians will be blasted to smithereens at the same time? Yeah, a good way to win Arab support. c.i.

If Israel were a smoking hole, what would be the point of attacking Iraq?

Again, a nuke tends to suppress other nations from attacking you. That's why Saddam wants them so bad.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Meanwhile the Mirror's front page features the caption: "There is a lunatic with weapons of mass destruction 'ramping up' for a war that will imperil the whole world. STOP HIM." The picture accompanying it shows George Bush.

Very much to the point. The maddeningly frustrating part for me as an American, is that our alleged democracy provides those of us opposed to this jingoistic and self-willed war movement have no recourse to reign in the idiot.

The fact is that the majority is for solving the problem of Iraq with war.

Tantor wrote:

Saddam tried to do exactly that. Our troops found WMDs on the tarmac of Iraqi air bases, waiting to be loaded onto the jets. We don't know why they weren't. It appears that the order was given, the weapons in many cases deployed, but the order not carried out.

You know that the order was given? But don't knoiw why it wasn't carried out? My call: in the absence oif fact you make a judgement call that supports your theories (in this case that the order to use WMDs was given) but when a fact doesn't support your ratiocinantion you disregard it (as in the fact that they weren't used)..

My point was very simple, you used the lanching of the scuds to say Sadaam would use nukes just because he had them. Yet in the past he has had weapons that were not used and in the very situation he described he did not use warheads with WMD. .

Tantor wrote:

We have in fact relinquished many of our nukes. We have invited the Soviets to inspect as we destroyed various missiles and bombers, leaving the pieces out in broad view so that they could be viewed by satellites. Surely you have seen photos in the media of this happenning. For example, we have chopped up much of our B-52 fleet at Davis Monthan AFB, the boneyard for AF aircraft.

We gave up nukes because it's overkill. We don't need as many as we had and it was a smart move to relinquish them. If you have thousands but only need 100s it's a good idea to disarm a bit. If you have single digits and need hundreds it will be a more painful concession.

Our arms reductions were reciprocated by our competitors in the geopolitical scene, what Sadaam must do will not be reciprocated by anyone.

Tantor wrote:

We do in fact host a large contingent of Germans at Holloman AFB, NM. It is where all their pilots train to fly F-4s. Nobody twisted our arm to make it happen. They are foreign troops. They are on our soil. Questions?

What's the ratio of American troops on German soil and German troops on our soil? Also note whether German troops are allowed to operate or conduct missions of any sort from our soil and then look at how our troops on theirs are there to do precisely that.

Tantor wrote:

Look up the difference between race and culture, Craven. There is one, you know. Arabs who grow up in our culture adopt our reliance on reason while those who grow up in the Mideast do not. It is not race at issue, but culture. That is why I said our culture is superior to theirs, which is true, rather than our race is superior to theirs, which is not true.

Resorting to cheap race baiting should be beneath you, Craven. Raise your game.

I know the difference. There is still a race by the same name and it's a common euphemism or bigots to decry cultures instead of races. Cultural superiority is curcumstantial in large part and this is a fact that is often missed by bigots. If you are willing to differentiate between these situations then it will be closer to an unbiased claim.

But claiming that Arabs only respond to force is silly. Humans in general are like wheelbarrows, they only go as far as they are pushed. It can be said that almost any nation on earth only responds to force. There have ben very few nations that conceded where concession was not going to be enforced through vuiolence.

There are many problems with Arab culture (their zealous religiousness, their undereducation, the inequality for their citizens and much more) and any of those could be used to claim that their culture is currently inferior (a claim I have no qualm with if based on fact)..

Not to be picky, but surely German pilots are not paying hard earned Deutch Marks to learn to fly the F-4? Maybe the F-111?

The total dominance of the skies over Iraq, btw, may account for why the Iraqis were not able to deploy many of their weapons systems--it may have been caution on Saddam's part, and it may well have been a complete inability to deploy WMD's.

dyslexia wrote:

The most lucrative positions for the overwhelming number of retirees is NOT with defense industries. Those industries tend to pay poorly unless you are in very senior positions. Most positions with any defense contractor would be at a pay level that is less than when the person was making while on Active Duty.

That's my experience leaving the Air Force, getting an MBA, and taking a job working for General Dynamics. GD paid its people lousy. As soon as I got enough computer skills to interest outside employers in the civilian market, I was gone.

For the Air Force, the most lucrative jobs when you separate from the service are in the airlines as pilots. My personal observation is that only a small percentage of military officers go to DoD contractors. I seemed to run into a lot of them in the e-commerce world. I've also seen them sacking groceries just for something to do instead of sit around the house. I met a couple retired lt cols who were ski instructors.

Tantor

Tantor wrote:

I am having a hard time following your l0ogic, you say he'd use it and you also say he'd like to keep it as a deterrent.

For a deterrent you just need to test one. He is hard pressed to build them so you expect him to use one of his few nukes and still think the remaining few nukes would serve as a deterrent?

I don't think Saddam will stop at building one nuke. He'll make as many as he can. Some will be used, others kept in reserve.

Tantor

Who do you think gave the order to deploy the WMDs, Craven? Iraq's WMDs are closely controlled by Saddam to the point that the secret police run the WMD research programs. Saddam has a nasty habit of executing people who disobey his orders. That tends to suppress the initiative of his subordinates. It is hardly a wild leap of judgement that the presence of deployed WMDs infers an order from Saddam.

Craven, please name any weapons Saddam has possessed and not used. Hint: There aren't any.

Craven, then you concede the point that the US has willingly destroyed its nukes? If you remember, you firmly stated the US would never do so. Now you seem to firmly state that of course they do and give excellent reasons why.

You might want to check with the Red Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, and of course Iraq. They don't seem to be reducing their nuclear inventories, but increasing them.

Saddam can not have nukes. Tying his reduction in nukes to an American reduction in nukes is preposterous. We don't intend to use our nukes if we can avoid it while Saddam is an evil aggressive dictator who will indeed use a nuke.

So then you concede this point too, that America would host foreign troops on its soil? You quite firmly said that America would never let this happen. Craven, of course, the Germans fly missions from Holloman. That's the whole point of training. They are there to learn to fly the jets, to drop bombs from them, and to strafe. Their training missions in America in F-4s are not substantially different from the training missions I flew in F-4s in Germany. The only difference is that we allow them to drop live bombs in America where we can not even drop practice bombs in Germany.

It sounds like you can't make your argument that the Muslim Arab culture is equal to ours so you make a phony argument about race. You are much too desperate to call people who disagree with you racists, a low tactic.

When an earthquake strikes Turkey or famine strikes Africa and the US responds with humanitarian assistance, how is that prompted by force? When the US went to the former Yugoslavia to shut down the death camps, how was that prompted by force? When we captured Germany and Japan at the end of the war, what forced us to make them into economic superpowers instead of slave nations?

So then you concede that the Arab Muslim culture is inferior, too, huh? Wasn't that your main objection to my post? I'm confused, Craven. Does this mean that you are a racist like me?