[OT] Another heated discussion about the Iraq siutation, war and politics.

[Erax]

Good translation.

(I spot an age difference here... I was entering high school when 'Self Control' started playing in these parts.)

How good is your Portuguese ? Try to find anything by Os Mamonas Assassinas, I think you'll like them !

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Chief Engineer Erax:
Good translation.

(I spot an age difference here... I was entering high school when 'Self Control' started playing in these parts.)

How good is your Portuguese ? Try to find anything by Os Mamonas Assassinas, I think you'll like them !

My portuguese sux . I can read it, and I'm improving my pronounciation, but I'm in trouble with the irregular verbs, and some other gramatical issues.
Is it there any good writer that you would recommend? Reading original works have always helped me.
Oh, I didn't do that translation. I was looking for Portuguese verbs Online and I found it. I think the song should say "Você levou meu auto" instead of "Você levou meu ego", right?
Or maybe I didn't get the song's meaning in English to begin with....

[primitive]

Talk about OT.

Here are a little piece of music to bring the thread back on topic (prolly posted before, but who cares).

Real Saddam

[tesco samoa]

hehe

http://www.theonion.com/onion3922/infograph_3922.html

[tesco samoa]

Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds

Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.
The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer Last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'

The conclusion of the investigation ordered by the British Government - and revealed by The Observer Last week - is hugely embarrassing for Blair, who had used the discovery of the alleged mobile labs as part of his efforts to silence criticism over the failure of Britain and the US to find any weapons of mass destruction since the invasion of Iraq.

The row is expected to be re-ignited this week with Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two Cabinet Ministers who resigned over the war, both due to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry into whether intelligence was manipulated in the run-up to the war. It will be the first time that both have been grilled by their peers on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee over what the Cabinet was told in the run-up to the war.

MPs will be keen to explore Cook's explanation when he resigned that, while he believed Iraq did have some WMD capability, he did not believe it was weaponised.

The Prime Minister and his director of strategy and communications, ALastair Campbell, are expected to decline invitations to appear. While MPs could attempt to force them, this is now thought unlikely to happen.

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to give evidence the week after.

The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.

[tesco samoa]

THis is from the WP.

Interesting read

A Plot to Deceive?

By Robert Kagan

Sunday, June 8, 2003; Page B07

There is something surreal about the charges flying that President Bush lied when he claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Yesterday The Post continued the barrage, reporting that Defense Intelligence Agency analysts claimed Last September merely that Iraq "probably" possessed "chemical agent in chemical munitions" and "probably" possessed "bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent and VX," a deadly nerve agent.

This kind of "discrepancy" qualifies as front-page news these days. Why? Not because the Bush administration may have -- repeat, may have -- exaggerated the extent of knowledge about what Hussein had in his WMD arsenal. No, the critics' real aim is to prove that, as a New York Times reporter recently put it, "the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may mean that there never were any in the first place."

The absurdity of this charge is mind-boggling. Yes, neither the CIA nor the U.N. inspectors have ever known exactly how many weapons Hussein had or how many he was building. But that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and the ability to produce more? That has never been in doubt.

Start with this: The Iraqi government in the 1990s admitted to U.N. weapons inspectors that it had produced 8,500 liters of anthrax and a few tons of VX. Where are they? U.N. inspectors have been trying to answer that question for years. Because Hussein refused to come clean, the logical presumption was that he had hidden them. As my colleague, nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, put it bluntly in a report Last year: "Iraq has chemical and biological weapons." The only thing not known was where they were and how far the Iraqi weapons programs had advanced since the inspectors left in 1998.

Go back and take a look at the report Hans Blix delivered to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27. On the question of Iraq's stocks of anthrax, Blix reported "no convincing evidence" that they were ever destroyed. But there was "strong evidence" that Iraq produced more anthrax than it had admitted "and that at least some of this was retained." Blix also reported that Iraq possessed 650 kilograms of "bacterial growth media," enough "to produce . . . 5,000 litres of concentrated anthrax." Cirincione concluded that "it is likely that Iraq retains stockpiles of anthrax, botulinum toxin and aflatoxin."

On the question of VX, Blix reported that his inspections team had information that conflicted with Iraqi accounts. The Iraqis claimed that they had produced VX only as part of a pilot program but that the quality was poor and the agent was never "weaponized." But according to Blix, the inspections team discovered Iraqi documents that showed the quality of the VX to be better than declared. The team also uncovered "indications that the agent" had been "weaponized." According to Cirincione's August 2002 report, "it is widely believed that significant quantities of chemical agents and precursors remain stored in secret depots" and that there were also "thousands of possible chemical munitions still unaccounted for." Blix reported there were 6,500 "chemical bombs" that Iraq admitted producing but whose whereabouts were unknown. Blix's team calculated the amount of chemical agent in those bombs at 1,000 tons. As Blix reported to the Security Council, "in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for."

Today, of course, they and many other known weapons are still unaccounted for. Does it follow, therefore, that they never existed? Or does it make more sense to conclude that the weapons were there and that either we'll find them or we'll find out what happened to them?

The answer depends on how broad and pervasive you like your conspiracies to be. Because if Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are lying, they're not alone. They're part of a vast conspiratorial network of liars that includes U.N. weapons inspectors and reputable arms control experts both inside and outside government, both Republicans and Democrats.

Maybe former CIA director John Deutch was lying when he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Sept. 19, 1996, that "we believe that [Hussein] retains an undetermined quantity of chemical and biological agents that he would certainly have the ability to deliver against adversaries by aircraft or artillery or by Scud missile systems."

Maybe former defense secretary William Cohen was lying in April when he said, "I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. . . . I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out."

Maybe the German intelligence service was lying when it reported in 2001 that Hussein might be three years away from being able to build three nuclear weapons and that by 2005 Iraq would have a missile with sufficient range to reach Europe.

Maybe French President Jacques Chirac was lying when he declared in February that there were probably weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that "we have to find and destroy them."

Maybe Al Gore was lying when he declared Last September, based on what he learned as vice president, that Hussein had "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Finally, there's former president Bill Clinton. In a February 1998 speech, Clinton described Iraq's "offensive biological warfare capability, notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs." Clinton accurately reported the view of U.N. weapons inspectors "that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons." That was as unequivocal and unqualified a statement as any made by George W. Bush.

Clinton went on to insist, in words now poignant, that the world had to address the "kind of threat Iraq poses . . . a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists . . . who travel the world among us unnoticed." I think Bush said that, too.

So if you like a good conspiracy, this one's a doozy. And the best thing about it is that if all these people are lying, there's only one person who ever told the truth: Saddam Hussein. And now we can't find him either.

The writer, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Alpha Kodiak]

This all leads to some really interesting speculation. It seems that if Bush/Blair et al had been deceiving us on the existence of WMD that they would have been prepared to plant evidence to justify their position after they had control of Iraq, as not finding WMD is entirely too embarassing. Add to that the fact that has been repeatedly brought up that even opponents of the war thought Saddam had WMD and it leaves us with an a real puzzle.

It seems to me that there are three possibilities. First, it could have all been destroyed prior to the war, but Saddam was unwilling or unable to accurately document the destruction. Possible but unlikely.

Second, they could still be hidden in Iraq. Only time will tell on this one.

Third, and I think scariest, is the possibility that they were moved out of Iraq, probably to Syria. Again, only time will tell.

There is the fourth possibility, that they didn't exist at all, but I think the WP article Tesco quoted was pretty thorough in refuting that.

I just hope that, assuming it is out there somewhere, we find it before it finds us.

[tesco samoa]

I always thought that the "WMD" that the 'bad guys' have are over rated.

Fuel based weapons , nuclear and cluster type weapons are very deadly.

Especially the Fuel based weapons.

The germans used to use one in ww2 that the allied soldiers called snow. A bomber would fly over the normandy coast and release these white phosphorous fragments ( the size of soap ) They looked like a blizzard. They would also fire them out of the bigger guns. Anything they touched would burn.

Anyways enough of the history lession on anti-personal weapons.

Here is one that is off topic. Quiz time

Who invented the first APC?( armored personal carrier )
What battle was it first used in?
What was it made out of ?

[Phoenix-D]

Tesco, that isn't that different from, say, napalm. And you're missing the "mass" in "mass destruction". Chemicals I would argue don't fit, but biologicals properly dispersed do..since the breed. Nukes of course..one bomb, minus one city or for the smaller ones a good chunk of it.

EDIT: compare that to, for example, the car bombing of the WTC in 1993. As it is it did fairly minor damage. With a nuke onboard instead? The entire WTC complex gone as a -minimum- for a very small weak nuke.

[ June 17, 2003, 02:58: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Narrew]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
Quiz time
Who invented the first APC?( armored personal carrier )
What battle was it first used in?
What was it made out of ?

1) Spartans
2) Trojan War
3) Wood in the shape of a horse

well, did I win a prize?