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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran has gas for weapons
2004-11-20
This continuing runaround has lost its novelty for me. The Euros pretend to trust Iran while Iran pretends to occasionally cooperate and we pretend we're not going to level their country next year.
Posted by:Fred

#8  You got it Mike.
It's about winning.
If it takes 3 years of SPAM and walking... it might be worth it. At least I'll be able to explain what's going on to the kids.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-11-20 3:08:28 PM  

#7  You're mistaken Fred, The Euro's aren't pretending to trust Iran. They really do.
Posted by: JerseyMike   2004-11-20 2:01:30 PM  

#6  Mike, how about not letting them detonating anything (and let them smuggle in just one to have casus belli) and glass Tehran?

Win-Win is better than Lose-Win
Posted by: Cornîliës   2004-11-20 1:32:32 PM  

#5  nice point Mike; you forgot: "All your oil/ng fields are belong to us"
Posted by: Frank G   2004-11-20 1:29:29 PM  

#4  ...Just my two cents here on the Mullahs' Mindset.
Socially these guys are in the 12th century - but in terms of tactical and strategic politics, they're locked up somewhere around 1978, and in terms of understanding of their weapons, they're around 1914.
They think they can still play off the powers the way they did towards the end of the Cold War - but they will not acknowledge that we have already demonstrated a willingness to go it alone, without regard to others.
They also feel that we will think twice in regard to their WMDs- but forget that we still have a Cold War-era C4 infrastructure that was designed to take the worst the old USSR could throw at us and keep functioning. At the risk of sounding callous, let them somehow smuggle in and detonate a dozen weapons, which would probably be all they could make. (BTW - the Shah started the Iranian program, not the Mullahs). Our setup is designed to absorb thousands of incoming warheads in a first strike. One warhead - just ONE - on Teheran means the end of Iran as a functioning, coherent nation. Like 75% of the nations on this planet, every telephone line, every thread of the bureaucracy runs thru the capital. Glass it and the mullahs who are outside the capital, no matter how high they are in the regime, command only what is within the sounds of their voices and the range of their bodyguard's guns. And when the populace realizes that the Emperor not only has no clothes, but is incinerated beyond recognition, that's it.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2004-11-20 12:58:06 PM  

#3  Chemical weapons create the same problem for the attacker than for the attacked in conflicts between forces, so they lose their advantage.

The US looked into chemical weapons for the Iwo Jima attack in WW2, based upon what I read, but feared reprecussions on our prisoners of war, so it was nixed.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-11-20 12:24:40 PM  

#2  nope, it's Uranium Hexafluoride-6 for nuke- fissionable mat'l production
Posted by: Frank G   2004-11-20 9:47:07 AM  

#1  No particular surprise. Chemical weapons are WWI-era technology with few barriers to implementation, unlike nukes. But as an American general said earlier, pound for pound, anything you can hit with chemical rounds, you can hit harder with high explosive rounds.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2004-11-20 9:32:36 AM  

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