"I would call Sarin, Mustard Gas and binary 155mm artillery shells as fulfilling that qualification to a T."
I knew you would.
This is why the so vague as to be Schrödinger term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was coined instead of the already sufficient and common terms of art "nuclear" "biological" and "chemical" used to describe weapons with special international restrictions. So that you could justify failed foriegn adventures by saying "hey! they had a warehouse with some worn-out cold-war artillery shells with Sarin gas in it! That is exactly the same thing as having nuclear bombs 45 minutes from leveling London with mushroom clouds! And having a "suspended program" is exactly the same thing as having secret labs building atomic bomb components and enriching uranium preparing for a huge terrorist after-market for atomic bombs.
Sarin and Mustard gas hardly qualify. 1. They are primitive. 2. It took 5 men and one liter of Sarin (an artillery shell would hold 5 times as much) to kill 12 people packed into a fucking subway in 1995.
This weapon is not that badass, and it is far from a ZOMG Weapon of Mass Destruction. By way of comparison, 2 high school kids with little planning totally crushed this terror group's high score with hand-guns. The "mass" is missing in the WMD here. 155mm shells filled with, oh I don't know, High Explosive would be much more "mass" than that!
"At least it's not the 'Victory'..."
You're right. It's much more effective to dump our increasingly debt-burdened economy into maintaining an expensive and ineffective presence in a hostile and destitute foreign country.
Yeah, that'll show 'em.
It's not like the region has a history of stubborn violence or anything, so I'm sure we heard the last gasps in 2003, deployed 300,000 Iraqi soldiers 2004 (right after the election it was supposed to be), turned the corner in 2005, stayed the course in 2006, deployed all the reserves in 2007 to victoriously get violence back down to the levels when we were winning back in 2005. Yeah, with failur-er successes like that, we would hate to just hand those shadowy bad-guys their victory.
I believe we had a discussion two years ago where I mentioned the words failure and lies to you. Not much has changed except that our economy is tanking and the national debt is increasing impressively.
I'm sure the terrorists are very impressed with us and our fantastic strategery.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 08:46 pm (UTC)I knew you would.
This is why the so vague as to be Schrödinger term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was coined instead of the already sufficient and common terms of art "nuclear" "biological" and "chemical" used to describe weapons with special international restrictions. So that you could justify failed foriegn adventures by saying "hey! they had a warehouse with some worn-out cold-war artillery shells with Sarin gas in it! That is exactly the same thing as having nuclear bombs 45 minutes from leveling London with mushroom clouds! And having a "suspended program" is exactly the same thing as having secret labs building atomic bomb components and enriching uranium preparing for a huge terrorist after-market for atomic bombs.
Sarin and Mustard gas hardly qualify.
1. They are primitive.
2. It took 5 men and one liter of Sarin (an artillery shell would hold 5 times as much) to kill 12 people packed into a fucking subway in 1995.
This weapon is not that badass, and it is far from a ZOMG Weapon of Mass Destruction. By way of comparison, 2 high school kids with little planning totally crushed this terror group's high score with hand-guns. The "mass" is missing in the WMD here. 155mm shells filled with, oh I don't know, High Explosive would be much more "mass" than that!
"At least it's not the 'Victory'..."
You're right. It's much more effective to dump our increasingly debt-burdened economy into maintaining an expensive and ineffective presence in a hostile and destitute foreign country.
Yeah, that'll show 'em.
It's not like the region has a history of stubborn violence or anything, so I'm sure we heard the last gasps in 2003, deployed 300,000 Iraqi soldiers 2004 (right after the election it was supposed to be), turned the corner in 2005, stayed the course in 2006, deployed all the reserves in 2007 to victoriously get violence back down to the levels when we were winning back in 2005. Yeah, with failur-er successes like that, we would hate to just hand those shadowy bad-guys their victory.
I believe we had a discussion two years ago where I mentioned the words failure and lies to you. Not much has changed except that our economy is tanking and the national debt is increasing impressively.
I'm sure the terrorists are very impressed with us and our fantastic strategery.