Afghanistan

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Afghanistan

I think the Nuremberg principle is meant

Ok - that explanation makes sense, thanks.

I suppose I could counter with claiming that Iraq was a defensive war, to protect the U.S. from Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction (our other dozen-odd wars notwithstanding.)

Somehow however I don't think such claims would carry much weight in this discussion.

Guess I'd better just wish everyone a nice day .

[ASH]

Re: Afghanistan

I played with mercury as a child...

That makes sense. ;)

[D-Mack]

Re: Afghanistan

Ok - that explanation makes sense, thanks.

I suppose I could counter with claiming that Iraq was a defensive war, to protect the U.S. from Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction (our other dozen-odd wars notwithstanding.)

Somehow however I don't think such claims would carry much weight in this discussion.

Guess I'd better just wish everyone a nice day .

You'll never know


They just found their Air Force

BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials have discovered that they may have a real air force, after all.

The Defense Ministry revealed Sunday that it had recently learned that Iraq owns 19 MIG-21 and MIG-23 jet fighters, which are in storage in Serbia

...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/wo...31iraq.html?em

[Starving Steve]

Re: Afghanistan

Mercury is good stuff. But the vapour from mercury is a nerve poison, so be careful not to spill mercury into a shag carpet. Kids who read this should keep this in mind: play with Hg outside the house and don't do a lot of breathing around Hg. So keep Hg in a bottle with a sealed top, and leave the bottle outside, so it won't break indoors.

Dental fillings to this day are sometimes made with mercury, so Hg can't be all that bad for you. Some silver is alloyed with the Hg, and a filling is made. Dentists know all about this.

Kids should be encouraged to collect elements from the periodic table. That is one way to learn chemistry, geology, and general science. And collecting coins/stamps from all around the world will help teach kids about the world and its geography. These are GOOD THINGS FOR KIDS TO DO.

[ASH]

Re: Afghanistan

Mercury is good stuff. But the vapour from mercury is a nerve poison, so be careful not to spill mercury into a shag carpet. Kids who read this should keep this in mind: play with Hg outside the house and don't do a lot of breathing around Hg. So keep Hg in a bottle with a sealed top, and leave the bottle outside, so it won't break indoors.

Dental fillings to this day are sometimes made with mercury, so Hg can't be all that bad for you. Some silver is alloyed with the Hg, and a filling is made. Dentists know all about this.

Kids should be encouraged to collect elements from the periodic table. That is one way to learn chemistry, geology, and general science. And collecting coins/stamps from all around the world will help teach kids about the world and its geography. These are GOOD THINGS FOR KIDS TO DO.

Yeah... in all seriousness, the issue with mercury is whether it is in a chemical form that the body is likely to absorb.

Last time I played with mercury was as a college student. I was dissolving mercury in nitric acid as a synthetic step to produce something. I wasn't that concerned about the mercury itself, but once I had treated it with the acid, I was pretty damn cautious. Mercury salts and vapors are more of a problem than elemental mercury; I think we are cautioned about handling elemental mercury mainly because it can change into a more toxic form.

Later, I learned how to make something similar by a safer synthetic route, so I quite futzing around with Hg.

[D-Mack]

Re: Afghanistan

NATO Plans Inquiry After Afghan Strike Kills Scores
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — A NATO airstrike before dawn on Friday killed 80 people or more, at least some of them civilians, in a once-calm region of northern Afghanistan that has recently slipped under control of insurgents, Afghan officials said.

NATO officials acknowledged that coalition aircraft had destroyed two hijacked fuel tankers in the tiny village of Omar Kheil, about 10 miles south of Kunduz. They said they were investigating reports of civilian deaths, but stressed that the attack was aimed at Taliban militants.

German forces in northern Afghanistan under NATO command called in the attack, the German defense ministry said. Afghan officials said the strike had killed insurgents as well as civilians who had surrounded the trucks and were siphoning fuel when the bombs struck. There were differing accounts of how many civilians were killed.

The airstrike comes three months after the lead NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, tightened the rules governing the use of airstrikes here, in an effort to reduce the civilian deaths that he said were undermining the American-led mission by creating anger and opposition among Afghans.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/wo...gewanted=print

The Germans are back in business, we should have never gone there.

[don]

Re: Afghanistan

The United States has rarely lost a conventional battle since at least 1950. But nor has it, at the same time, ever won a war.

...to repeat the critical point, the US has failed to attain victory in any of the wars it has fought since Korea. Its adversaries learned as long ago as the Korean War that a decentralized conflict would stymie America's overwhelming firepower, which was designed for concentrated armies, and provide a successful antidote to the use of massive and expensive technology.

All this is very well known. The real issue is why the US makes the identical mistakes over and over again and never learns from its errors. At the present time it is losing two wars and creating a vast arc of profound strategic and political instability from the Mediterranean Sea to South Asia.... We now have an unprecedented disaster in the conduct of American power, both overseas and at home...because the imperatives and inexorable logic of past policies and conventional wisdom have brought us to this critical junction. All the old mistakes have been repeated; nothing has been learned from the past, and official myopia is persistent.

A large part of the US problem, whether Republicans or Democrats are in power, is that it believes it has the right and obligation to intervene everywhere, in whatever form it chooses, and that its interests are global.

This global pretension, which originated during the 19th century in the context of the Western Hemisphere and which Woodrow Wilson articulated, is simply not functional and has led the US into countless morasses, detrimental to its own interests... The fact is that no nation has ever been able to assume such an international role, and those that have attempted to came to no good end. They exhausted their resources and passions and follies.

It is a transcendent truism of global politics that wars are determined more by socio-economic and political factors than any other, and this was true long before the US attempted to regulate the world's affairs.

Gabriel Kolko, World in Crisis p.50-52 (2009)

[Starving Steve]

Re: Afghanistan

War is won by EXTERMINATING the enemy.

WWII was won particularly by Bomber Harris of the British Army who vapourized German cities by saturation-bombing, and also by Comrade Joseph Stalin who came at the Hitlerite filth in Eastern Europe and thoroughly annailated them. His Red Army took very few prisoners.

The war against the Taliban is a "good" war. It can be won conventionally by being smarter than the enemy, moving NATO forces offshore and out of harm's way, then hitting the Taliban with endless missile attacks from at ships offshore. The Taliban and those who choose to sympathize with their cause will simply be vapourized........ End of story.

In a real victory, we will write the history of the Afgan War, no-one else.

The leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaide, and all those allied with their cause such as the radical clerics now running Iran would be captured. This bunch would go before a post-war war crimes trial in Nuerenburg, just like in 1945. And those responsible for this outrage against humanity would be sentenced to death-by-hanging.

With any luck, we might even find Bin Laden and bring him to justice for 9/11.

[KGW]

Re: Afghanistan

War is won by EXTERMINATING the enemy.

The current "enemy" of the United States is conveniently defined by the U.S. as those locals who resist the foreign policy of the U.S. We, the U.S., take your resources for a pittance, and a bribe to the local warlords. If you don't get with the program, we invade your geography under the pretense that you are a threat to the American way of life. . .And we kill you and yours.

You appear to have drank deeply of the Kool Aid. . .

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Afghanistan

I suppose I could counter with claiming that Iraq was a defensive war, to protect the U.S. from Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction (our other dozen-odd wars notwithstanding.)

Just in case any one didn't catch this about the WMD program in Iraq:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/

Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq
Last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts arrives in Canada


updated 6:57 p.m. ET, Sat., July 5, 2008
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
e

"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.

Secret mission
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger — and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims — led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.



Iran signals no plans to stop its nuclear regime
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.

Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

CONTINUED : Moving yellowcake faces hurdles

[D-Mack]

Re: Afghanistan

Just in case any one didn't catch this about the WMD program in Iraq:
...

they knew about it

Sometime in October 2001, a foreign government told US intelligence it had information indicating that Niger was planning to ship several tons of yellowcake to Iraq. (This government goes unnamed in official US accounts, but it is widely reported in the media to have been Italy.)

Several things about this allegation made sense. Along with Canada and Australia, Niger is one of the globe's largest producers of uranium. And Hussein knew all about yellowcake. He already had 550 tons, subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1115/p01s04-uspo.html

[kartius919]

Re: Afghanistan

Reasons I fear for the worst in America. An angry, irrational populace will seek the soothing words of a despotic charlatan.

[don]

Re: Afghanistan

Engelhardt has his own agenda but just crunch some of these numbers, especially the inability of Afghanistan to ever carry the freight.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KI10Df01.html

[ASH]

Re: Afghanistan

The current "enemy" of the United States is conveniently defined by the U.S. as those locals who resist the foreign policy of the U.S. We, the U.S., take your resources for a pittance, and a bribe to the local warlords. If you don't get with the program, we invade your geography under the pretense that you are a threat to the American way of life. . .And we kill you and yours.

You appear to have drank deeply of the Kool Aid. . .

In my opinion, Afghanistan is not about resources. The whole reason we have a security problem there today is because once we "solved" our initial security problem (the Soviet invasion), we disengaged rather than helping them put a functioning society back together (or imposing our own influence, at any rate). Why did we disengage? Because there was no compelling short-term strategic reason to stay. Our initial involvement in Afghanistan was about containing the Soviets and denying them access and influence in neighboring states; it wasn't about us acquiring that access or influence because we already had it from other countries in the region. Once the Soviets were defeated, control of Afghanistan wasn't vital to our international standing or regional influence, and Afghanistan was not important from the standpoint of resources, either. I submit to you that if Afghanistan were important to the United States in terms of resources (either resources in Afghanistan, or access to resources in neighboring states), we would have taken the trouble to establish influence there after the Soviets left. Instead, we left the Afghans to their own devices, and didn't get involved again until another security problem arose (albeit one which resulted from us sub-contracting management of the Afghan war against the Soviets to the Pakistanis, and subsequently ignoring Afghanistan). I know; I know -- the pipeline. Well, the pipeline might be a minor factor, but it's not a deciding factor. In my view, things like the pipeline are an idee fixe of those who are inclined to interpret history in terms of economic motives, to the exclusion of all other factors. I'm not saying you are one of them, KGW, but in this specific case, I think you may be over-emphasizing the resource angle. The danger of viewing everything through the prism of economic motives is that one is then tempted to dismiss all arguments to the contrary as cynical window dressing.

[c1ue]

Re: Afghanistan

ASH,

Your views on America's presence in Afghanistan having to do with reasons other than resources might be more convincing if Brzezinski and company had not already devoted books, lectures, and all sorts of money in pursuit of control over Chaostan resources.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4881

http://www.itulip.com/forums/archive...hp/t-8766.html