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Building a Better Bomb
dr who and the darlix writes "There is a nice article here about carbon composite warheads being tested. They destroy their targets while minimizing collateral damage."
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I'm still waiting for a bomb that doesn't destroy its target while maximizing collateral damage.
...when human lives are abstracted almost entirely out of the discussion of weaponry. What makes it so difficult for them to say, "a bomb that kills the enemy more efficiently and minimizes the loss of innocent civilian's lives?" Guilt, perhaps?
I minimize "Collateral Damage" by not renting the dam movie in the first place. Yet, it IS a bomb; this is not off-topic.
Great title michael. You forgot to use the words Terrorist, Airplane and President in the title too.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Somebody set up us the bomb.
All your base are belong to us.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Why don't we try to build better peaceful people. I'm rather tired of all this military spending. If we'd just spend all the money we waste on bombs on feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless throughout the world I'm sure we'd have alot fewer people to throw those bombs at.
"The clay can become a bear, but not while it lays cold and wet on the riverbank." -Orson Scott Card, Children of the m
http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/story.shtm l
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
but
a) It doesn't do any good if you hit the wrong building.
b) It doesn't do you any good if you mean to hit the 'wrong' building.
Furthermore, if a civilian happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, this still won't help... such is the nature of war I guess, though.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
So does this mean there will be bombs that only kill one person and cost 20 billion to make. ALRIGHT!!
--Matt Fisher
At last... we can kill all the fucking arab and saudi terrorists without damaging the oil wells.
Allah be praised!
Does "collateral damage" still mean maiming and killing people these days? If so, why is US media so afraid of saying so? Or is that just something the evil doers do?
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
"I'm still waiting for a bomb that doesn't destroy its target while maximizing collateral damage."
Farts.
Would it not be less expensive to just use what we kno works; the old fashioned Tomahawk, which proved itselv extensivly in the Gulf Wars?
And how bad is really some collateral damage?
If you look behinfd the media hype and all the people that thinks that we should all be friend you will find a *war*. That means that there will and its supposed to be some collateral damage. Casualties makes the enemy frightned and less willing to fight.
And the enemy should expect some collateral damage when they start a war, collaterall damage will in fact make them less willing to start a war next time.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
"In the present effort, a Livermore team led by engineer Michael Murphy"
They've got Murphy involved already...
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
The best bombs in the world are pointless if they're "accidently" aimed at a foreign embassy or the pilot misidentifies his target. Personally I'd rather see the money spent improving America from within.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
I mean, if you're going to devise a device to kill people and blow up stuff, you should make it as efficient as possible, right?
Well that's part of it. But it also includes the destruction of buildings, property, cables, pipes, etc. So the killing of people just is too specific; it's but a subset of "collateral damage".
...for browsing at -1. The troll toll is $3.58. Thanks.
I wonder how much these new shells would theoretically cost. I wonder how much of this cost would be for various intellectual property issues. Anyone know how the approximate cost of a current steel-and-explosive shell?
I'd definetly prefer soldiers using the best equipment that is feasible, and I support the basic research here, of course, but I'm just curious.
Ryan Fenton
Nope. Collateral damage means just what it says: damage that's collateral, in other words damage that wasn't intentionally caused, but rather came as a side-effect of whatever caused the damage that was intentional.
Sometimes people, such as yourself, like to paint military jargon as being full of euphemisms for killing and whatnot. Ain't so. Military jargon is exactingly precise. We say "collateral damage" because that is precisely what we mean. We say "civilian casualties" because that is precisely what we mean. ("Casualty" means a person killed or injured. Which is why we don't say "people killed.")
It's just precision of language. I'll give you a non-military example. My wife's a surgeon. Sometimes she works in the emergency room. When somebody wrecks their car, the incident is referred to as an MVC: motor vehicle crash. It used to be called an MVA, for motor vehicle accident, but the fact is that when somebody comes in from that kind of thing, you have no idea whether what happened was accidental or deliberate, act of God, whatever. So "motor vehicle crash" is more correct.
Why not simply "car crash?" Because a boat wreck is an MVC, too. So are motorcycle accidents. MVC's aren't limited to cars.
It's about precision of language, not euphemism.
Thanks for trying to slip a shallow and thoughtless political remark into the discussion, though. Appreciate you trolls keeping the rest of us on our toes.
we could use the bomb for the mysterious SCO code
Just an observation, not a value judgement. -Me
I'd put a neutron bomb inside a carbon-composite warhead, just to fuck with them.
...on spammers?
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
"This has nothing to do with what you do or do not do. You can make more people dislike you through your choices, but you can never make no people dislike you. You can never be loved by everyone. Sooner or later, somebody's going to come along who hates you, hates your way of life, and wants to kill you."
Damn! That Mr Rogers must have been one hated bastard.
Does this Bomb reduce Human error? because unless it can do that it won't reduce any collateral damage since that's where most of it comes from.
Never Underestimate A Human Being
The defense establishment tried to sell the virutes of the neutron bomb with this pithy point: "It destroys humans but leaves buildings intact," minimizing collateral damage. Aping this thought, in college, some of my acquaintances developed a powerful alcoholic mixture that they dubbed "neutron punch." Their rationale? "It destroys your mind but leaves your body intact," they said.
A lawyer & digital forensics examiner. Also an expert on open source software (OSS).
When are they going to design a better mousetrap??
to this all is to use this new bomb to overtake, threaten, or otherwise overpower all other governments so that there is one, count it, one government on earth. once this is accomplished with these fancy new bombs, there will be little civilian life lost, the bombers will be applauded for it, and life will slowly get better. well, okay, so thats the utopia theory. but seriously, this is what needs to be done, and these new bombs make it easier to get civilian support because they are "safer". and if there was only one government, the money spent on overtaking the world and on various military stuff wouldn't be needed. more money for poor people as mentioned above that was a problem. but it'll never happen, right?
A few months back, I saw a tech article about another type of bomb they are working on, that is very related - Small bombs!
Right now, the "standard" US bombs are 500 lbs, 1000lbs or 2000lbs. Bombs this big were needed so that the blast/schrapnel would take out the target even if you hit 10-20 yards from the intended target. (talking blast effect here)
As the latest generation of bombs got more accurate, they started to realize that this was SERIOUS overkill. If you can hit the exact building you want, there is NO need for a bomb that big. So, for the first time since Pre WWII, the USAF is working on designs for bombs in the 50-100 lb class.
It gives them a BUNCH of advantages
1)Less colateral damage - yep, I'll be blunt - we kill less of the people we don't want to kill
2)Less danger to our own troops working close
3)The odd one - if we develop new load racks, you should be able to carry approximately 10 times more 50 lb bombs than you could 500 lb bombs
You see, even back during "Gulf I", we had to send multiple aircraft against one target to destroy it - it didn't make sense to worry about it. Now, we actually task one aircraft to destroy multiple targets. If you can carry 10x more bombs, you could (in theory) attack 10x more targets per mission. In reality, the fact is that the bombs have NOT become so accuate that each 50 lb bomb will hit exactly on target, and the kill radius is small enough, that even a small miss wont work. So they will probably task 2 or 3 bombs to each target, so figure each aircraft can attack 2-3 times more targets per sorte
Like it or not, it's interesting technology. You may not like what it's used for, but it is "cutting edge"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
We can rebuild it.
We have the technology.
We have the capability to make...
bah nevermind.
- tristan
For a second, I thought this article was gonna talk about a sequel to 'Gigli'.
Bowie J. Poag
These bombs aren't being designed because people like to live next to military outposts. People don't wander into potential bomb sites to look at the big guns...
What does happen is that certain militaries will deploy their equipment where the most collateral damage will be caused. The civilians are being used. When they die the occupying power can come on TV and rant about the US "murdering innocent civilians". Never mind that they stuck an AAA battery in a residential neighborhood, that's not important.
I think these bombs are a good curiosity to have but would be too expensive for general use. I hope that these bombs will make a commander think twice about using civilians as a shield. Unfortunately I think the effect will be the opposite, and military installations will get even more integrated with the populace for defense. Sometimes cause and effect really sucks...
If you make yourself totally unable to defend yourself, it makes you a much less desirable target and makes people like you more.
Wait, never mind. It makes the peaceloving people that you don't have to defend yourself against in the first place love you more. It also makes you unable to defend yourself against the people who want you dead with no comprimises.
Nature abhors a vacuum... but there are people out there who would love a power vacuum.
However, if you design weapons that can kill your enemies with extremely little collateral damage, you can let your enemies know that hiding behind civilians won't work any more. They'll be that much more hesitant to attack you in the future if they know that the threat of bad PR isn't going to save them any more.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(Ok.. having a bad day .. just posting a bit of a rant)
:)
What is wrong with collateral damage when you're out there killing people and destroying large portions of their country?
I'd be happy if someone admitted that they were creating the perfect doomsday device which would take out all of civilisation if everyone didn't behave.
On a side note.. One of the most amusing comments about bombs was TheOnion bomb that created 1500 new terrorists when it exploded...
Dear Lord. Is that site still around? I figured it just sort of disappeared ever since it was roundly discredited.
Long story made short: they accept high figures for kill estimates, but reject low figures. If we have ABSOLUTELY NO evidence of ANY deaths for a given incident, but somebody, somewhere (cough-Fisk-cough) asserts, completely without any support whatsoever, that twelve people bought farms, that web site adds 12 to their total and gnashes their teeth.
Fiction. Utter fiction. And not even interesting fiction at that.
In Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger (the book, not the movie), they had bombs with a cellulose casing to eliminate shrapnel. They used them when they wanted to make a single-bomb surgical strike look more like a car bomb.
I don't know if we really had munitions like that at the time when that book was written, but considering Clancy's attention to detail I wouldn't discount the possibility. Either way, the idea of a shrapnel-less bomb has been kicking around for a pretty long time.
~Philly
While the war in Iraq has had a lot of talk about efforts to reduce civilian casualties, reducing collateral damage has always been a priority for the military from a purely strategic standpoint. While key infrastructure points are valuable to an enemy, they are also valuable to friendly forces. If you can take out specific targets without damaging the surrounding area, then you can more effectively wage war.
So while collateral damage can indeed mean maiming and killing people, it can also mean in the process of destroying a military silo poised to fire on our friendlies the bomb missed slightly and also blew up a gas tank, destroying a warehouse containing food supplies. In both cases, something was damaged were no damage was intended. In both cases, the military would not wish to cause the damage - in the first, for the obvious reason that injuring civilians is not the purpose of war fighting, while in the second food supplies that could have been useful for friendly troops (redistributed among civilians, whatever) was accidently destroyed.
While accidently killing civilians is always something the military wants to avoid, they also want to prevent any collateral damage. We want to destroy the missile launcher, but not the school it's parked next to - even if no one is currently attending it. That's why the term is used - because while reducing civilian deaths is always a goal, so is reducing collateral damage to other objects.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
That's nonsense.
Bombs have, do and will go off near a target, destroy it and not cause collateral damage.
And if you look at any other recent, "real" war, you'd see how amazing that low a figure is. Compare that ~7000 figure to pretty much any other ground campaign in recent history - you'll see that it's really quite low. That's assuming their figure is accurate, too, which there's no real proof of.
War isn't safe. It isn't fun. It's hell for everyone involved. But the fact is, sometimes, it really is the last option left (in this case, I'm not sure it was, though). Would you prefer to go on living the dream that war is just something that the evil US is responsible for, or would you like to try to save innocent lives through better weapons technology?
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
An improvement would be a reduction in bombs, not an improvement in technology."
improve
- To raise to a more desirable or more excellent quality or condition; make better.
- To increase the productivity or value of (land or property).
- To put to good use; use profitably.
The word improve is subjective - depending on your perspective something which one may feel is an improvement may not be seen as such to another. I know that people have gotten in the habit of expressing opinions as facts.However, there exist stupid people in the world. Gullible people. Therefore I humbly request that you, an intelligent Slashdot contributer (*) please use phrases such as "In my opinion..." or "I feel that..." so the mindless sheep won't assume you are stating fact, which applies to all perspectives. Many people feel that a bomb which only blows up the person(s) or object(s) it was intended for without also maiming the family next door would be an improvement to current weapons technology. You appear, however, to hold the higher ground that no weapon would be better than even the smaller weapon. However, this does not mean that this is not an improvement, at least to many people with a particular perpective in life.
Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.
-Adam
* This is not an oxymoron.
** Please append "according to prophecy" to each of my sentences as you read this.
Thanks to this story, all of ./ can be accused of deep linking to terroristic activities. I guess we need to disassociate from changing the government or society....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The Ulam-Teller H-bomb is this Rube Goldberg contraption of a series of effects: a good-sized A-bomb to give off x-rays, a casing to channel the x-rays into Styrofoam, a blanket of deuterium (or lithium deuteride) to be compressed by the Styrofoad given oomph by the x-rays, a central "sparkplug" of plutonium to be compressed and give of yet more neutrons, and finally a U-238 jacket to take all those neutrons and convert them into explosive power.
Is a neutron bomb something as simple as an H-bomb with the U-238 jacket removed? With the plutonium sparkplug (essentially the second A-bomb imploded by the first A-bomb?) removed? Does this thing still work with those modification? If you take off the U-238 jacket and keep the sparkplug, you still have a very dirty bomb with a lot of fission effect. If you take out the fission secondary, are you even able to ignite deuterium to any effect? You can boost an A-bomb handsomly with lots of tritium, but that is an expensive, messy thing with a short half-life to use a lot of.
But the original H-bomb took essentially two, staged fission devices to get anything going with the deuterium (which fuses to produce a lot of energetic neutrons), and the original Teller idea of sticking an A-bomb at one end of a can of deuterium got nowhere -- the thing would have just fizzled. Is it possible that the "neutron bomb" was a fiction? I am thinking that a flood of fusion neutrons from a very low fission yield has to be, otherwise efforts to control fusion for power generation wouldn't be so difficult.
euphemism n. The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive: "Euphemisms such as 'slumber room'... abound in the funeral business" (Jessica Mitford).
Look it up yourself
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
According to this page, Murphy's law is named after Air Force Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr. for some 1949 medicial research involving strapping a person into a rocket powered sled. According to this page, Murphy worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, but the incident for which his "law" is named occurred, at Edwards Air Force Base, in California, which I believe is about 200 miles from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The projects are vaguely similar: California, the military, testing, explosive materials. It's an off chance, but somehow this makes me wonder if the Michael Murphy managing this project might be related to the Murphy from Murphy's law.
...you'll never have to hear them outdoors. Eventually we'll have a space based laser.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
all those friendly fire deaths caused by the yanks will be more efficient...
collaterla damage, dead civilians and all that aside, US forces seem to target and attack way to many friendly forces
Though maybe these new bombs are a good thing, smaller kill radius takes out less of the troops
better breeds of politicians (not politicians that get rich thanks to a war).
Can someone tell me the AC/non-AC ratio here?
Amazing that so many AC's have been modded up. Must be a first.
Put your name where your mouth . It shows gumption and conviction. So important if you're discussing a sublect like collateral damage.
"Hey, I see that Iran and North Korea are teaming up to build weapons of mass destruction. You know, if they really want to make a huge bomb, they should involve Ben and J.Lo."
Shamelessly stolen from Letterman.
Building Better Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow! (tm)
enough is too much
A little philosophy for all the kneejerkers decrying the focus on guns instead of butter, on swords instead of plowshares: life is a struggle, and utopia's are always the abodes of the dead. It is the power of the procreative urge that ensures there will always be more hungry mouths to feed than there is food to go around. If the money spent on defense, which employs many people, were simply given away to 'the poor', you only get more poor families. Believe it or not, we actually want more self sufficient famlies, not more beggars who don't know how to raise responsible, self sufficient children.
It was once the religious rationalition of the industrialist that mass production was the solution of mankinds neverending poverty: simply make more things cheaper and faster and everyone can enjoy plenty. Now we live with that legacy as industrial waste and environmenal degradation, shipping factories off to developing countries and let them deal with the runoff. However, the lesson learned is that whenever you produce n amount of goods, humanity produces n+1 people wanting those goods and squabling (ocassionally going to war) over how to obtain those goods. Also, on the economic treadmill, poverty is always relative - people under the poverty line in one country would be considered well-to-do in another. A person with a low-status-symbol automobile might be pitiful in one land, but envied in a land where few people at all have autos.
Now, the eternal question is: Am I My Brothers Keeper? The well off say no, those in need say yes. The well to do can give away everything they have, and the needy will only consume it and come back for more - except there isn't any more, and now there are more of them hungrier than before (including the formerly wealthy one who just gave up everything he had).
Say two farmers own the same amount land and produce the same amount of the same crops. Each one produces enought to feed a family of 8. One has 12 children, and the other has 3 children. One is needy, and the other has a surplus. Is it the social obligation for the one with a surplus to just freely give his surplus to the other? Or should he just sell it and buy a new tractor, to heck with the other guy?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Yeah, but wouldn't "accidental casualties" be even clearer than "collateral damage"? After all, most people (including myself) don't know that collateral = accidental.
The USAF already has concrete bombs. They contain no explosives. They use kinetic energy to destroy the target and are useful for attacking air defense sites in populated areas.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
1. Collateral damage is usually NOT produced by bunker-busting bombs that actually hit the bunkers. First of all, there usually isn't much to damage around the bunker, that does not happen to be another target. Second, it's usually produced by things that _miss_ the target -- what in this case will cause the same effect.
2. Last time I have checked, most of bombs that produced huge amount of damage to civilians, were dropped on civilian targets, or poorly protected military ones, to begin with. Often with the primary goal to cause massive damage to civilians.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Less chance of being hit with optically guided missiles was probably a reason why we contacted a lot of activity at night, but there were other signifigant reasons.
The war was conducted in a way that was designed to try to make the enemy give up and run as quickly as possible. Constant neverending attack is an important part of this stratedgy. Never being able to sleep because of constant bombing destroys morale alot faster then actually trying to kill them. Bombs that target at night just as well as they do during the day make every strike seem guided by a unstoppable force.
The morale reason was probably the biggest reason for strikes all throughout the day and night.
Einstein once said something like this: I can't predict what they will be fighting with in World War 3. But in World War 4, they will be fighting with stick and stones.
If a bomb blows up a target radar site but also takes out an unoccupied building, causing no injury or loss of life, collateral damage was still caused. The term simply means that something other than the intended target, be that human or not, was also damaged.
Hear, hear! Only one caveat: it was not even NATO that imposed the no-fly zones, just some of the NATO countries.
do you know how many people surfing /. from work are now going to have their browsing activity flagged because they loaded the front page of yr freakin' site. Hel-LO??? Note to self -- don't visit /. for another 36 hours.
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
You have a legitimate target in one area but you know your bomb will also damage some of the surrounding area thats not part of the target. You decide to drop that bomb anyway. This is typical of most of the bombings in civilian areas of Afganistan and Iraq in which many innocent civilians have died.
Hmmm... Pie...
Who cares. I hate violence in all its forms.
I would normally just ignore this kind of provocating posts.
But..
I am right now facing the Finnish warmachine. I either have to got to army, move a pile of dirt for 11 months OR go to a pricon for 6 months.
hmm...
Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you v....
Ahhh...
Thanks for the oportunity to vent a bit...
(I also have a hangover)
Bot Assisted Blogging
I mean, if you're going to devise a device to kill people and blow up stuff, you should make it as efficient as possible, right?
Well, yeah. I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. Believe it or not, this is somewhat good news. Yes, it's designed to blow stuff up - welcome to reality - but it's designed only to blow up the stuff it was meant to. Or, at least, minimize the damage to things it wasn't intended to damage.
While people will whinge about how it's still open to human error (or bad intentions), the fact is war is here: it's a part of life. Perhaps not a direct part of your life or mine, but as part of life for the world as a whole.
So, taking that into account, I think your seemingly sarcastic statement is actually correct, kind of. 'Efficient' is perhaps a bad word for it, as it seems to imply (in the context of your post) that more people will be killed. 'Accurate' I think would be better, as it's made to hit a target - not inflict mass casualty.
And like it or not, the advance of weapons technology by the US are keeping you and I in the world we know. Keeping us in a country where we can do almost anything we want. Yeah, blah blah blah Bush - but it's not That Bad. Not yet.
RTFA -- "casualties" does not encompass damage to buildings and equipment, which is part of "collateral damage". Such damage was specifically mentioned in the article:
After all, most people (including myself) don't know that collateral = accidental.
RTFD. "collateral" != "accidental"
"accidental" would not be appropriate -- collateral damage may be unfortunate, but it is not always unanticipated. When you carpet-bomb a city and civilians get killed and schools get destroyed, I don't think you can say "oops -- that was accident," because such damage, though not your primary goal, was unavoidable, and you knew it and bombed the city anyway. Instead, you'd call it collateral, in the sense that it is "1 a : accompanying as secondary or subordinate : CONCOMITANT b : INDIRECT"
I agree with the AC, even though I hadn't thought about it this way before -- the phrase "collateral damage" is precisely correct for what the military types are trying to describe. If that doesn't fit with your preconceptions of what those words mean, maybe those are what need to be examined.
That's nice and alright then. Trouble is it's rather like computer geeks talking techno babble to non-geeks. Meaningless and misleading and in this case very conveniently misleading.
/., BTW, would have been the use of the internet by frontline troops.
If they mean "hey, we accidently hit all this shit, killed a few folks by mistake and maimed a couple of others" then that's what they should say.
A much more interesting story for
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
"More Terrorists" - It's doubtful there are more terrorists. The guerilla actions taking place in Iraq are Baath party "security" or Republican Guards forces with nothing to loose, they will probably be the first lined up and shot by the new government once it get's established. Or they desparate people who will do anything for some money, Baath party leadership is supposedly handing out money to folks willing to take a shot at an American. Or they may be a few "nationalists", but they'll calm down when they figure out we are not there to colonize or when we go home. Or they are foreigner, jihadists going to Iraq because that is where they can take a shot at an American. In this latter case, perfect. This is what we want. All those al qaida paramility camp graduates, we want them in Iraq, we want them engaging our military. The military's job is to fight these nuts on someone else's soil before they can find a way to attack civilian on US soil or elsewhere.
"More Weapons of Mass Distruction" - No, Iraq can not build any now. Terrorists have lost a big potential supplier, and they have definitely lost an actual proven financial supporter. Any new weapons in Iran or North Korea are independent events, North Korea started working on them when we were sitting at home and being all friendly during the Clinton administration.
"Carpet Bombing" - We did not carpet bomb Baghdad. Carpet bombing is the indiscriminate bombing of a broad area. You may have seen a string of bombs going off on CNN one night, they came from a single bomber, but each bomb was an independently targetted precision weapon. If you want an example of carpet bombing find a photo of Berlin in 1945.
"Send CIA in and assassinate him" - That is pure fiction, the stuff of movies, books, and video games. In the real work Saddam had excellent personal security and was in a closed highly controlled society.
"Unjustified" - The United Nations is on record saying he had the weapons but had not provided evidence of their destruction. The Clinton administration bombed him over this when he kicked out inspectors. While honest people may have honest debates about timing, about another chance, etc, your rabid emotional response merely demonstrates that political ideology blinds you.
Setting aside the fact that you are a fucking moron, let me try to clarify.
Old Term: Motor Vehicle Accident
New Term: Motor Vehicle Crash
Accident is a word that means it was unintentional. Crash, is a generic word referring to something that could be either intentional or unintentional. Therefore, being as it is less specific, they changed from MVA to MVC, to increase accuracy. Understood?
Rome fell because Romans stopped defending it. The army was heavy with mercenaries, they tried to pay off enemies, etc. All signs of weakness that invite attack.
Come on, this is flamebait and not at all funny. /. IS too Americentric (though why America would want to kill people is beyond me).
It's interesting that you mention "small" bombs. Over the past decade Israel ran into the problem that Palestinian Arab terrorists operate out of densely populated urban areas, effectively using civilians as shields. It had been very effective for the terrorists because they knew the Israeli public is very sensitive to civilian casualties. So in order to deal with this the Israeli's developed an ultra small warhead to put on the hellfire missiles used with the apache helicopter. That's how they've managed to kill terrorists in these areas with such a relatively low number of collateral damage.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
I had studied in Moscow State Technical University, Special Engineering faculty. "Special Engineering" means weapons. Bombs, fuses, tanks, explosives, radars, smart and dumb mines, rockets, warheads, guidance systems, targeting systems, etc. Pretty much everything except for ships and planes. Gray haired professors who taught us all this stuff didn't mention that it kills a bunch of people even ONCE in 6 years that I've been there. They referred to weapons as to "devices", and to their targets as to "objects", "enemy's live force" (rarely), "targets". This helps them enjoy what they're doing because with rare exceptions they don't think about the shrapnel tearing apart human bodies. Exceptions are those people who come up with more efficient shrapnels and weapons targeted directly at causing death of a human. Directly meaning pierce, tear apart, blow up or burn the body itself.
I saw those professors behaving like excited kids when they blew up an old plane in a field test of their experimental warhead. They ran around it, and enjoyed the result of their work.
Then it depends greatly on if they can hit their target in the first place, doesn't it?
WTF is the matter with some of you? Why is this sort of program being looked at as some sort of crime against humanity?
Look, in a conventional iron bomb, roughly half the total bomb weight is the casing. For a 2000 lb bomb, only about 950 pounds of that is actual explosive, and the rest is the steel bombcase.
The fragments of that bombcase is what makes the bomb so lethal. The blast alone won't kill you beyond a relatively small distance, but the blast will throw chunks of steel resembling flying lawnmower blades for upwards of 1,000 yards. Replace the steel bombcase with some sort of frangible shell that doesn't sacrifice penetration, and you can still kill the hard targets you want to kill while at the same time minimizing needless civilian casualties.
Why, on earth, would anyone possible consider that a bad thing? Does anyone see any other military on the entire freaking planet spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on trying to *not* kill people?
In the real world, Saddam was capitulating to every single request.
The reasons for war in order..
1. To get Saddam to comply with Weapons Inspections, of course, he did that, soo....
2. To get Saddam to destroy his WMDS', of course, the inspectors couldn't find any, so...
3. To get UN approval to let us go in so we couldn't find them, but we had no suppport, so....
4. To go in and find WMD's, unless, of course, we don't, in which case, we bombed them because we love democracy so much..
Did I leave anything out?
number 3 was supposed to read...
3. To get UN approval to let us go in so we could find them, but we had no suppport, so....
Taken from here.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Actually it is willful neglect and widespread ignorance that prevent the poor masses from being fed. Politicians (and the corporations they represent) institute policies that thwart efficient distribution of food and sublimely encourage overpopulation. Poor countries have exploding populations because having more children increases the likelihood that some of their offspring will survive the harsh conditions. Adequate medical access is a severe problem for 95% of the global population.
There is enough life support on the planet to support the entire population. The problem is we mismanage resources and stultify the education system. I agree that overpopulation is a serious problem but I think can be dealt with effectively through thoughtful analysis and widespread education.
the lesson learned is that whenever you produce n amount of goods, humanity produces n+1 people wanting those goods and squabling (ocassionally going to war) over how to obtain those goods
This is absurd on its face. Wars are not fought by people clamoring for goods. They are fought by well-moneyed interests pursuing oil, or defense contracts, or interest from massive loans, or reconstructionists. Armies do not mobilize over a deficit of PalmPilots or a lack of pr0n (well . . .maybe around here :p )
Educated Earthlings need not hoard. It is our responsibility to use our fortunate positions to develop saner solutions. War, in light of our considerable technological prowess, is insane.
We should use our knowledge for livingry, not weaponry
harmonious design
They'd be trying to kill us no matter what we did. If we withdrew from the Middle East they'd hate us for our cultural influence. There are always more reasons to hate for people like that - trying to appease them is useless.
And this, my friends is why the BORG are really the enlightened ones. By accepting all peoples into their own society they are slowly, but surely ensuring a galaxy without war or hate.
It's not too late! Learn the ways of the BORG now!
Can it tell the difference between the Iraqi embassy and the Chinese Embassy?
Reminds me of an old Willy 'n Ethyl cartoon:
Willy is cleaning his double-barreled shotgun.
Ethyl: What would you do if all the people and all the nations of the world gave up all their guns and weapons?
Willy: Rule wisely.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Do you even know who Eisenhower was? Here's a hint: before he was a President, he was a General.
Yes. That's the point. Real generals don't love war -- notice that the only person in the Bush admin that wasn't too keen on the whole Iraq fiasco was Powell, who realized that it was going to be another Vietnam-style guerilla war. It's easy to support war when your only experience is watching CNN.
Before you try to play the history card, make sure it's in your hand
This is just too funny. Really, had you never heard of the Eisenhower's famous "cross of iron" speech? Here's a longer quote which brings in the stupidity of wasting scientists on designing weapons, thus tying it to the article we're discussing
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
I think i'll feel safe now if a bomb explodes 2 meters near me.
Not on topic but important! Google hacked by here: http://www.iraniancrawler.com/hackedgoogle.htm
Reducing collateral damage is becoming more and more important as military planners realize that the war is not over once you capture the territory.
You want to win over a people's hearts and minds by changing the regime but not levelling their cities a la carpet bombing Dresden in WWII. Killing citizens does not shorten a war and the London Blitz and Berlin showed that enemy soldiers will fight harder if they know their families are being killed too.
There are lots of different types of bombs that try to reduce collateral damage. The most infamous was the Neutron bomb that limited a nuclear bomb's blast and heat damage to a few hundred yards but killed people through the use of radiation.
The electric power distribution munition(ph), can knock out a whole power grid. This bomb scatters spools of carbon strands over a target. In Vietnam the US developed Hyper baric Fuel Air bombs that used a high pressure wave to kill people in tunnels or create helicopter landing pads in the jungle. The latest improved version is the thermo baric bomb that uses extremely high temperatures to create a blast wave and also suck the oxygen out of enclosed spaces.
War is not glorious but it is necessary from time to time and if you can defeat the enemy without killing non-combatants, I am all for it.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Not a hack but much funnier:
Go to google and enter weapons of mass destruction.
If you hit search you get the regular results but if you hit - I'm feeling lucky - you are directed to a very special page. Read it closely. Its hilarious.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
So, cool... Here we are, all worried about terrorists sneaking on airplanes with bombs disguised as banal objects, and yet, it's the US government is doing the research to make construction of such weapons possible.
We always seem to be in an arms race with ourselves. First, we were doing advanced research on nuclear weapons, much of which was stolen and sold to the USSR and China. Now, we're doing advanced research on terrorist weapons. Y'know, "the enemy" wouldn't get nearly as far with construction of his weapons if we weren't doing all the grunt work first.
... people (over 20,000 on a population of 16.5 million) were killed in the last war in Iraq. The article calls that "as the conflict in Iraq unfolded this spring, the world watched in amazement at the accuracy of the latest generation of precision-guided missiles".
I did some research, and even WW-II carpet bombing had less "collateral damage". Example: when Germany conquered Holland in May 1940 (roughly same population size as Iraq today), which included the bombing of Rotterdam, there were "only" 2200 military and 2559 civilian caualties.
Give me a break.....
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Often with the primary goal to cause massive damage to civilians.
You were +1 insightful up to there. Both are good points.
But I very much doubt that anyone in the military actually *intends* to kill civilians. They're out there to kill the enemy as efficiently as possible with the least risk to themselves, and that means battering the sh1t out of military (ie anything that has a role in shooting back) targets.
The fact that the US military seems to hit the wrong thing on a regular basis - the Brits lost more personnel to 'friendly' fire than the Iraqis in the first invasion of Iraq - doesn't mean they're out there shooting at anything that moves. I'm more inclined to attribute it to incompetence, an overly gung-ho attitude or amphetamines. I don't believe it's malicious.
Like they say, never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Warning: May contain nuts
They do not contain enough explosives to kill an average soldier, but will blow off feet and pepper the rest of the torso with plastic shrapnel.
Unlike standard steel casing armament shrapnel, the fragments are virtually impossible to detect with X-rays.
The goal here is not to kill the enemy soldier(sic), but to permanently disable them and create a further drain on resources.
These carbon composite shells are far to familiar sounding for my liking.
I hope I am proven wrong - but I doubt it.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
is that we spend enormous amounts of money trying to build bombs that kill FEWER people.
Our opponents, on the other hand, spend their money trying to build chem/bio weapons (to kill more people indiscriminately) and suicide vests (to murder as many civilians as possible at the local shopping mall).
It's this kind of thing that, despite that fact that it's designed to take human life, gives me hope for the future. The stark, simple fact is that some people need killing... not understanding, not diplomacy, not hand-holding, not yet-another-chance... killing. When faced with fanatics who don't even recognize your right to exist, and in fact would murder your children in front of you if they could, you simply have to put them down, just like a rabid dog. Historically, few countries have possessed the ability to kill people in industrial-sized lots like the US has... and here we are, spending vast resources, and honing our warfare to spare civilians. In response to evil people using their own women, children, schools, and mosques as human shields, we're doing the world's dirty work (and make no mistake, someone's got to do it), while at the same time sparing the innocent... What could be more noble?
BTW, this post is for the benefit of those who like to claim moral equivalency between the US and Bin Laden, or the Israelis and the Palestinians.
There is no equivalency, at least not until Hamas starts making suicide bomb vests with GPS-guided ball-bearings...
Don't know about you, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It's because the US media is so very protective of Conservatives like Bush and they wouldn't do anything to hurt his '04 chances.
And I am the Dali fucking Llama.
Many of you here today are forgetting that the media wants to make money... they do this by having eyeballs and earballs affixed to their news coverage... this is enhanced when there is death and carnage to wag about to and fro. Where are you people getting it in your head that they either want to protect the President (riiight...) or sugar-coat the war in Iraq?
My blog can kick your blog's ass
Because the US did not want Iraq becoming a theocracy like Iran.
e ss .htm
So we funded Saddam with "agricultural loans" that he use to develop his weapons programs.
Check out Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam and being all nicey nice.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/pr
Saddam couldn't even travel from city to city in his own country without body doubles and armored sedans.
Check out the US military installations. They are also surrounded by neighbors.
During the Iraq invasion, there was only one theocratic zealot who was threatening to use his nukes and gas. That was George Bush.
There are very few terrorists in the world. But by killing civilians, we create more.
And that just feeds your persecution complex.
There weren't any nukes in Iraq. Therefore, there weren't any nukes that Iraq could have given to terrorists. Therefore, New York, London and Paris were not in any danger of "theocratic zealots" using a nuke from Iraq.
But our troops in Iraq are in danger from "terrorists" now. Except that those "terrorists" are viewed as "freedom fighters" by the Iraqis. Because they are fighting to drive out the foreign invaders.
Look up "paranoid" sometime.
I hear a lot about how they do that. But I don't recall any times when that stopped us. We'll blow up the civilian structure and then point out that they were using it for a shield.
In case you haven't looked up from the DNC FUD lately, the tax cuts affected the "rich" making more than $40,000 a year. That is, by any measure, the MIDDLE CLASS.
Derek
Somehow, that doesn't add up. We avoid hitting targets in civilian areas, but we have so many civilian deaths.
a q. html
Of course, I would always trust everything that our military said about their targetting procedures.
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/un-powell-ir
Look for the part about the St. Petersburg Times use of commercial satelitte photos that don't show what our government claimed was there.
Sorry, I don't put much faith in someone's claims about their own virtues. Our government and military has lied to us enough in the past. And those lies are documented.
But I'm sure you believe that they wouldn't lie this time.
Just what I wanted to wake up too on a Sunday morning, 1000 messages from looser 'do gooders' that don't fully understand the need for defense in the *real* world.. not the typical fantasy world you all live in.
Perhaps you will think differently when its YOUR home that is broken into, or your country that is pulverized by some lunatic because you want to throw flowers at people.
Somewhat like a survey I once heard ( somewhat paraphrased ) that was send to pacifists: " if your wife was being beaten up and your friend was armed, would you want him to help, or just walk away and 'turn the other cheek'".. Of course they chose to let the friend defend his wife.. interesting how things suddenly change when reality comes in for a visit.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The High Energy Weapons Archive has a good rundown of neutron bombs. They're a bit more complicated than just taking the jacket off a hydrogen bomb (still needs the jacket to get the fusion going) - see the FAQ for a rundown. The Mk 70-0 nuclear artillery shell was apparently a tactical neutron device (~1kT yield); I dont know if it was ever tested. I wouldn't really call a staged implosion H-bomb a Rube Goldberg device, though..its a bit more complicated than you paint it to be; the tolerances are on the order of a few microns and nanoseconds. See the rest of the FAQ for a hugely in-depth discussion of the physical principles and engineering that goes into one of these things (you need a grasp of thermodynamics and physics, though).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
lol....I love it.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
"But obviously unlike you, I know many great men and women who serve in the US Armed Forces, some who are retired career soldiers."
Sure you do.
Meanwhile, there is photographic evidence that the military lied.
"Listen, I don't really give a rat's ass whether you believe "the Man" is lying to you or not."
It's not a belief. There is photographic evidence.
"You can believe whoever you want."
Again, it is photographic evidence.
"I'll take it from the horse's mouth, from people who've been there."
You don't understand this "lie" thing, do you? On the one hand, you have people telling you what you want to hear.
On the other hand, there is photographic evidence contradicting their claims.
So you'll believe the people rather than the photographs.
Notice how few Irish people speak Irish from day to day?
What part of the logic don't you follow? Read the comment. The comment wasn't that MVC is more presice but more general. That's why the term is used. The point was in response to some idiot's charge that collateral damage is a euphemism for killin', when in fact it's term used by military and weapons system professionals to describe damage beyond the target area. The military is quite willing to use the term 'kill' when appropriate.
I dont think a person that wants to DEFEND his country, and its freedoms is to be considered extreme.
Anyone that isnt willing to defend what they have doesnt deserve to have it in the first place.
Now if i advocated going out and attacking other people ( nations ) for fun and profit, then yes, id agree i was..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Even assuming that the blob of concrete comes out undamaged of its encounter with the target, it's not that clear that the same will happen to the guidance package. Though I don't think the concrete they use is of the garden variety, I'd think that it's cost is peanuts compared to the guidance 'tronics.
Besides, you don't always want to go fetch a 500kg blob of concrete after you dropped it on hostiles, do you?
He did all his great work around 1905. From then on he was spent. No more great ideas, just religiious critiques of better ideas than his.
Take his comment on WWIII. It's being fought right now. When it's over, the entire world will be better off.
- The world will be safe for American liberal democracy.
- European Corporatism (Fascism dressed in Prada) will be contained.
- Islamic lunatic fundamentalism will be tamed.
- Baathism (Arab Fascism) will be dead.
- Saddam will be dead.
- The Iranian mullocracy will have been torn to pieces by the people it's oppressed.
- Kim Jong Il will not be lobbing nukes at Attu and Kiska; with any luck he'll be pickled in the sauce he loves so much and put on display for dung-flinging competitions
- Ditto the house of Saud.
etc., etc.
WWIII was forced on the U.S., but the U.S. will be standing long after the perpretrators have discovered the joys of pacifism, just like the Japanese did after we paid back Pearl Harbor with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Has the sight of Saddam's various killing fields meant nothing to you?
If not, then you're so blinded by ideology as to be unworthy of further regard.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Tell me, if wealth is a zero sum game, then how did it come to pass that essientially every American lives in comfort unheard of 200 years ago?
How is it a zero sum game when the number one health problem of the poor in this country is obesity- TOO MUCH TO EAT!
If such large numbers of Americans live with comforts only vaugely aproximated by the wealthiest people 200 years ago, were did we steal all that money from? There aren't enough people on the planet to steal all that money from!
So I disagree; wealth is not a zero sum game. The large middle class in america, and even our 'poor', have been lifted out of a farming existence by the massive creation of wealth, and everyone in this country is better off for it.
Every equation must be balanced; mustn't it? So how can general motors, for example, take steel, plastic, and leather, and turn it into a $50,000 cadillac?
Effort. When you work, you add value; wealth- and it's more than the worth of what you ate that day, and the gas and wear and tear on your car so you could get to work. With millions of americans and their hard-core work habits, we add a tremendous amount of wealth every day to the economy.
Socialists whine about the accummulation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, yet despite the occasional ups and downs of the economy, life gets better for citizens of a capitilistic country every year. That's because more wealth is created than the wealthiest 0.01% suck up.
It's effort that adds wealth to the equation.
Remember that money is an abstract, a tool used to simplify trade. It's only valuable because we believe it has value. And we have more money in circulation now that 50 years ago because we had to print more to increase the supply, as the wealth we create every day continues to strain the money we have in circulation.
Chew on this: If wealth is a zero sum game, then how come pretty much every American, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide, are immuserable better off than the aristocracy 200 years ago?
Who the fuck did we take all that money from?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The 'terrorists' who happen to operate out of the densely populated urban areas in which they live?
The 'terrorists' who are in fact resisting an illegal and brutal occupation?
It's very nice that the Israelis can effectively take out a car with minimal damage outside the vehicle (when they hit it, that is), but it doesn't make extrajudicial assasinations right.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
yes... and all the children will be ignored and drown in the butter as both invading and defending forces duke it out with there ever deadly butterknives.
Just exactly that, since all the money are being spent on guns, warships, and rockets.
I certainly agree with the parent poster. The US *has* taken a high-handed approach, and *has* been able to convince its own citizens to ignore many of its own excesses and abuses.
What I get from this post is that you're upset at being presented with the fact that *you* may also be guilty of helping along the same killing of civilians that you find distasteful, and would be happier having it not brought up. You find it easier, more comfortable, to avoid it that way.
May we never see th
From some old 80's nuclear standup comedy (can't remember who):
The hydrogen joke brought the house down, but the neutron joke knocked em dead and left the house standing.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Meanwhile, there is photographic evidence that the military lied.
Between the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and the CIA and other intelligence assets, you have a huge, diverse organization that has to act in almost real time. Mistakes happen, and intelligence gets misinterpreted.
And even when they get it right, it often gets to a public that can't interpret correctly. I've pored over battlefield satellite photos and could discern almost nothing. However, the recon expert next to me was able to point out everything. It's a special skill.
Check out the US military installations. They are also surrounded by neighbors.
All or most of the installations near civilians were either built away from cities but the cities grew into them, or are simply takeovers of old German installations, or both. I know of one U.S. installation custom-built relatively recently, and the 1975-78 construction of LDCK Kaserne in Garlstedt was out in the middle of nowhere. But I can see in another 30 years, nearby Osterholz-Scharmbeck may grow out to be near it. Doesn't matter though since we closed it in 1992.
The same is often true in the U.S. where a post such as Fort Sill was established a hundred miles from nowhere, but a city grew around it.
This is as opposed to putting AAA in the backyard of a school or mosque.
"I'm not gonna fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt." - George W. Bush
So he's saying the tent's empty, yet there's a camel in it to waiting be hit by the missile, forgetting that an Arab would never keep a camel in a tent in the first place.
Yep, that sounds like good ole GW.
"Wernher Von Braun" by Tom Lehrer
(accompanied by Tom on piano)
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Ha, Nazi schmazi," says Wernher von Braun
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun
You too may be a big hero
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
"In German oder English I know how to count down
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun
Like when the Israelis bombed Iraq's French-built nuclear plant back in the 80s, causing only one death -- their spy who didn't get out in time after directing the attack.
That is what the Western world epitomizes.
9/11 is what the fundamentalist Muslims seem to epitomize -- 100% civilian casualties.
From the article: Tritonal, a silvery solid of TNT mixed with a dollop of aluminum for stability.
Wrong, except for the "silvery solid" part.
First, Tritonal doesn't have a "dollop" of aluminum, but 20%. Second, TNT is very stable so doesn't need a stabilizer. The aluminum improves the brisance, a.k.a., the speed at which the TNT develops maximum pressure after being ignited. Tritonal, because of the aluminum, is about 18% more powerful than TNT.
How many other facts did they screw up?
Iraq had quite a good income during the sanctions days, more than enough for Saddam to feed his people and keep hospitals supplied. This doesn't even include the billions he made with the illegal pipeline he had.
Of course, he decided to spend that money on rebuilding multiple palaces, supporting his security apparatus to stay in power, continuing WMD programs and building Chinese fiber-optic C3 networks.
Besides, a bunch of healthy five year olds on TV doesn't make for good anti-US propaganda, does it?
How did that ever cross the mind of anybody is abolutely beyond me.
There are really some stupid people out there.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This particular poster falls into the category of "waste of breath." If he/she is determined to believe that the "other side" is in a vast conspiracy to conceal the truth, and only "our side" acts in good faith, then there is no use in anyone trying to disabuse them of the notion. Doing so only reinforces their belief that they are one of the elite who "really understand what's going on, man." Sorry state of politics, reduced to paranoia.
Derek
dr who and the darlix writes
Shouldn't it technically be:
Doctor Who and the Daleks
Sounds phonetically similar, but this actually makes sense. (Except for the minor part that the Daleks are enemies of Doctor Who.)
Oh, GRE's (Gaseous Rectal Expulsions). Nothing new. Move on.
In a war such as this, there is no tactical or strategic reason to attack residential areas. In fact, it would be especially counter-productive in this case since Bush wanted the Iraqi people to like us and see us as liberators.
The only reason bombs were dropped in residential areas was because Saddam positioned weaponry and C3 bunkers there. Even if there were a tactical need to position AAA in those neighborhoods, it's not hard to put it out in the park by some trees rather than in the courtyard of a school.
As for Saddam's "strategy", it did not require any effort on his part to make everyone see that it was a completely unprovoked attack
But an unprovoked attack producing almost completely military casualties doesn't look as good on the 6 o'clock news as women and 5 year olds. Saddam knew this.
Why do you think that when those human shields ("useful idiots") went to Iraq to protect schools and hospitals, Saddam sent them to refineries and military installations. His people are expendable to him.
Photos were taken of an area. The government said that there were lots and lots of bad guys in that area. Commercial photos of the same area do not show any bad guys. This isn't a case of "mistake". This is a case of "lie". Read the article. Don't post based upon what you think might be true.
What quality were the commercial photos, what time and place? I kind of learned to read these photos during my time with that analyst. I'd like to see them.
If you're trying to argue against American hegemony by example of Rome, you need to pick another example. For all the problems within Roman society, they maintained a trans-Mediterranean empire for 500 years... 1500 if we follow the eastern half. Tributary states? Used them from start to finish.
Luke, help me take this mask off
There's some disturbing articles about how medical people won't try as hard to save you if you are signed up as an organ donor, and will start tearing you down for parts before you're actually dead.
It was enough to make me tear up my donor card that I've had in my wallet since I was a teenager.