And incidentally, I have family that are serving in the airforce in the gulf presently.

I'm headed that way myself. Our air force unit has been on rotations since enduring freedom started. hope that they are out of harms way Frogboy.

Frogboy, the problem is that there is no "War that will end all wars".
If Iraq is defeated today, 15 years from now the greater nuclear thread and ennemy of mankind may be Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, or maybe even the US itself.

I hope this will stay between the US and Iraq. The cause of WW1 was more trivial than this is.

I serve because people that want to but can't for some reason or other, and because some people don't care enough to. The biggest reason I serve is because there is no greater love than one who would lay down his life for his friends.

/me had to see if his name title changed.

Paxx: Germany and Japan haven't been causing too many problems lately.

Touché Brad!!!

Paxx, do you remember Kadafy (SP?} Lebonon hasn't been causing to many problems recently.

Never forget, the real war and the real enemy is the one we cannot see, what we see are the results of it.

Wombat: just a factoid: Bush lost the popular vote. The Electoral College, which ultimately elects the president, does so on the number of states won and the votes assigned them in the electoral college. So the win in Florida gave Bush the win in the Electoral College although he lost the popular vote. A curiosity of the US electoral process.

The Rated PG: FWIW Bush was in the Air National Guard. There was some controversy about his record while in the Air National Guard, but that can be found elsewhere.

SLOWTYPER: Your info is incorrect and comes from two "urban legends" promulgated via the Internet. The Atta in Israel in 1986 (aged 33 then) is not the same 33 yr old Mohammed Atta involved in the 2001 WTC attack. And it was Abu Nidal Ollie North spoke about, not Osama Bin Ladin who, if known at all, was one of the "freedom fighters" the US supported in Afghanistan against the Soviets. See:

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/atta.htm

http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/atta.html

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/north.htm

sig101, told yo I wished I had seen the hearings, thanks for the correct update.

Brad, I mentionned WW1, not WW2. The cause of WW2 wasn't trivial. And who said that WW3 would involve the same countries as enemies? The World has much changed since then.

DPG: exactly my point. Lybia is now low profile, but has been replaced by other evils such as Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il. Attacking Iraq won't make the World a safer place for the future.

An update to message #84.

Saddam believes he sees like most blind tyrants wielding power they do not control and this is what makes them so dangerous. But I wonder about our President, he says he sees, but the proverbial sounding bell doesn't seem to ring true either and this is why the America public as a whole is having such a hard time deciding, why war with Iraq?

sig yes air national guard. But you want specifics. The name tag on ALL air national guard members say US AIR FORCE. about 50% of deployed members right now are Guard and Reserves. Its called "total force".

I agree with Frogboy on this one. No, I don't like some things about the president, but I think he is doing a good job. Just like Frogboy said for those of us that have children, we want to take care of this now so that our children can live in a better and more peaceful world.

This may sound mean and I'm very sorry if this offends anyone:(, but I think the Iraqies are getting what they deserve. They have been after our country for a very long time. We should have took care of this a long time ago and we wouldn't be having the problems we are today. That's just my opinion though.

It's pretty easy to see how WW1 started. I don't see a scenario for a WW3. Feel free to present one.

First off the state of the union address sounded like he was trying to sell his ideals to himself. It was real close to the same speech he gave not to long ago to the people of Chicago. And any one that has to have some one write up a speech for you and then for you to have to practice it for 2 weeks sounds just like an actor telling people what they want to hear and giving a good show. Maybe we should reward them with an Oscar for best actor. And any one that can site up there on capital hill and stuff there faces at social functions and dinners that consist of a menu of veal, duck, caviar (by the way its nasty tastes like salt with a freshly pulled out of the water raw fish) etc. knowing damm well that there are people out there men, women, and CHILDREN that are starving has the morals of a greedy tyrant. And lets not forget how its clamed “We take care of our own!” I’m not going to list all proven facts of the way our government has so called taken care of our own, but just to name one my wife was in the army worked hard to go thru basic training and did well to rise up in rank she was even taken charge of the ASP (ammunitions supply) the person in charge of supplying our troops with ammo and because she had the miss fortune of being raped they showed her how they take care of here by not giving her the therapy she needed for this transgression but then decided she should be shipped to Korea and under some one that was doing her job here. Not too long after she arrived at her post in Korea she was ordered to drive a forklift she told them she had not been thru training yet and they still told her to dive it she then asked to speak with the next level of the food chain then she was told if she didn’t get on there and drive it she would take an article 15 (dishonorable discharge for those that don’t know) now as fate would have it, one thing led to another and it tipped over and landed on her leg. After a long 45 minuets of waiting for some one to find her and the hydraulic fluid leaking into her leg and after them dropping it on her a few times after they did manage to check on her instead of sending a chopper to pick her up they sent and ambulance and because of the terrain from the ammo depot to the hospital they flipped the ambulance. One of the medics said that they had better media vac her to sole but the hospital said no they could take care of it. Needless to say after she got there they realized there was no possible way for then to care for here so she had to wait for 6 days till they shipped her to sole. In the mean time the gang green set in and day by day it crawled up her leg eating at the flesh and muscle tissue. A week later waiting for them to get a flight to ship her to Hawaii they ended up amputating her leg above the knee. At the ripe old age of 21 a women with her whole life in front of her has now been destroyed in her mind. Now the fellow that ordered her to drive it got a rise in rank so they could post him some were else and because our government takes care of there own they were going to have her take the yearly pt test to qualify to stay in the military knowing damm well that she could not do it. Lucky for her she had a friend that knew some one that could help her. She was discharged the next day. Yep there right we do take care of our own we use them till they’re no good to us any more and push them under the rug.

So after much thought and few prayers to God I decided to take that offer you gave babypooh “but how would you like the whole country resting on your shoulders? You can't please everyone, I would like to see you try to do what he does on a daily basis” So I’m going to run in 2008 not because I’m a greedy political tyrant but because I have a love for this country and I give a shit about the people that live here and what happens to them. I mean look take for instance Huntington WV. They have spent 25 million dollars not 2.5 but 25 million $’s on snow removal and the winter is not over. I picked 106 cities the same size or bigger not all the cities in America but just 106 that were the same size or bigger that is an average of $2,650,000,000 per year of the tax payers money. What if I told you I can take that from billions of $’s to thousands. I know in the first 2 years of office I can save the taxpayers billions of $’s just in snow removal alone not in 2020 but now. I have the blue prints to prove it I drew them up now I’m making them in 3D. Not to mention all the other things I would do in office. I spent 5 years of my life doing to research and putting together a plan to restructure foster care (being a foster child myself and being forgotten and left on the street) and to help the homeless get a home and a job. I flew to Minneapolis, Minnesota and paid the $500.oo to get into the door to see President Clinton and give it to him. I told him what I had done and how much time I spent doing all the work and what it was he gave it to the person to his left and said some thing in his ear and shook my hand and told me thanks for your hard work and your interest. I watch the fellow dump 5 years of my life in the garbage can in the hall. But in taken your offer babypooh I also urge people from all over America to take the people out of the senate and put people in that are not rich greedy political people who really do care for this great nation and want to help take our system apart and put it back together the way the constitution was written the first time around. This by no means is all I would do there is so much to be done if your interested in a list of things I would do then let me know either e-mail me or post it here. I would of put it here but this is getting way too long to post on the message board.

There are many possible scenarios, but nobody knows the future.

Just for fun, lets imagine...

- Saddam gets thrown out. Kurds uprise and ask for independance, so do the Shia. Kurds in Turkey join them, and Iran also offer their military support. Kurdistan joins them. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and a few other arab countries in the region oppose them. Other countries could then start being involved: Chechenia, Russia, ... Maybe North Korea could take advantage of the situation to attck South Korea, and even maybe Japan.

Anyway, of course, it's purely theoritical and not likely to happen like that. But nobody knows what a can of worms contain once you open it.

The Rated PG: no offense intended, but the AF guys I've known in the past, pilots, academy, that sort of thing, didn't quite regard those who went into the ANG on the same level. They made the distinction.

And now those many of those in the reserves and NG are on active duty. Whenever there's something going on in the world a guy in the reserves I know at work disappears. He's involved in communications which I suspect involves intelligence matters. I don't ask, he doesn't tell.

WW3 scenario....

Indignant, emphatic response to a '9/11' equivalent terrorist attack which is a little overzealous and pre-empts unilateral accord.
Collateral 'civilian' damage fuels festering Anti-US inclinations, resulting in more attacks on US soil/property.


Etc, etc, etc.

For 'target', insert 'any' country, if not most.

Once upon a time, there were 2 'super' powers, and the world figured that it'd be the Ruskie's fault.

Now there is only one 'Super' power, and with concepts of 'pre-emption' being considered, the world is understandably 'nervous'.

It may be horrible to consider that US/UK/AUS actions 'could' be actually 'bad', and have dire consequences, but as unimaginable as we'd like it to be, it could still happen.

Let's all wait ten years or so.

If I'm alive and breathing...and don't glow in the dark....and our [Aussie] F18s get back from Iraq, and our SAS and our ships as well, then it won't be ALL bad...

AF, ANG, NG? GH GB JH YU VD SW QO?

Hehehe, that was an answer to sig's post with his mystery abreviations.

Sorry, paxx. The decryptions aren't particularly exciting...Air Force, Air National Guard, National Guard.

The WW3 scenario posted above is about as likely as aliens invading.

WW1, by contrast, was inevitable because of a huge series of interlocking alliances that required country A to declare war on country B if country B declared war on country C due to contry D delcaring war on country C and so on.

I know it's easy to just throw ones hands up in the air and say "Well bad things can just happen..." but history doesn't work that way. Nation states act in their own self interests and can do so only as far as their logistics will take them.

On the other hand, the odds of something very bad happening by doing nothing are far greater.

Imagine this LIKELY scenario:

So the US bows into pressure from France and Germany and moves the military out of the region. Inspections continue but slowly but surely Iraq interferes and obstructs the inspections. France and Russia begin to make noises that the inspections should just come to an end and the sanctions should be lifted.

With me so far? Because that's precisely what happened in the 90s.

But this time, the US having pulled out its military forces has fatally weakened US domestic support for doing anything. So sanctions get lifted and Iraq continues on its merry way procuring what it needs to develop more chemical and biological weapons. It also continues on its program to develop nuclear weapons.

About 3 to 5 years from now, Iraq announces that it now has a sufficient number of nuclear weapons to bring ruin to any country that tries to do anything. It then quietly begins to obtain concessions from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The US, again, after having tried to get international support for military action against Iraq but having been rebuffed doesn't have the domestic support to actively do anything, a quasi-"Vietnam syndrome".

A couple of years later, Iraq essentially controls Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. Other countries, feeling threatened begin procuring nuclear weapons themselves. And still other countries, seeing the success North Korea and Iraq have achieved thanks to having such weapons begin obtaining these weapons enmeasse too.

Within another decade, the world is full of nuclear armed states run by dictators. The world economy is hampered by the fact that half the world's oil supplies are under the control of Saddam Hussein's son.

Eventually one of these nuclear armed maniacs is going to start trying to find more "living space" for their people / expand their realms. Or maybe Iraq will see to it that a terrorist gets a nuclear device and uses it on Israel. After all, Iran's Mullahs have publicly stated that they need to get a nuclear bomb so that they can "eradicate the Zionist entity".

The "international community" at this point would have to decide whether to continue to watch things going down the tubes. If military action is required, well guess who's going to have to do it? Yea, the United States. You think France and Germany, having successfully blocked military action a decade and a half earlier are going to do anything? No. They'll just blame the US for not having taken care of the problem when it could have. So the US, UK and Australia will be stuck, again, having to put things to right. Except this time it will be played out on a nuclear battle field.

And that's the BEST case scenario. The worst case scenario is that northern Africa and the middle east become "united" in a bloody nuclear armed dictatorship run by the Hussein clan. In charge of most of the world's oil supplies and sufficiently protected thanks to their nuclear weapons, they can dictate to the economies of the world. Oil, which the ignorant see as only fueling SUVs, is used to transport the majority of the food and supplies in North America. Those trains in France and Germany don't run on fusion power either btw.

Of course during this time, millions of Iraqi's and citizens of nearyb countries have died due to the brutal police state imposed by Saddam. People on the left, who were always rather soft on dictatorships like Mao and Stalin, even as they starved and murdered TENS OF MILLIONS of people, will no doubt ignore the millions of deaths in the middle east as long as it thwarts "cowboy bush".

Now, I ask, which scenario is more plausible? The one I outline which is based on the previous actions of Iraq and the international community. Or the one that implies that somehow Russia and China and Turkey and Saudi Arabia will somehow get involved in some war against the US or each other in some vague unspecified way (despite the fact that most of these countries are not capable of logistically supporting their military outside their borders for any length of time).

I think the answer is clear. At least to those who are willing to look at the issues honestly.

OMG JAFO

/me crawls back into bed and pulls the covers *way* up