Bye-bye INF treaty?

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:40:08 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

The Iranians are awaiting the Mahdi, The Israelis are awaiting the
Messiah, The Christians, in a somewhat downbeat mood, are awaiting the
Antichrist.

....And the Kwizatz Haderach will kick all their butts :-)

OM
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On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:55:13 -0800, Bill Bonde
wrote:

You can zap warheads, of course, if you have that technology. What I'm
saying is that you cannot retaliate with thermonuclear weapons just
because someone sends a missile your way. You need to wait to see if
it's a WMD attack or not.

....Horse-hockey. If you don't fire, it hits, and it's not a WMD, then
you'll get impeached just as soon as if it hit and the city it landed
in melted along with the voters.

OM
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] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
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In article ,
Charles Buckley wrote:
Maybe, and maybe not. US policy for a long time (and possibly still
today) was that detection of incoming objects -- even lots of them --
wasn't sufficient grounds for a retaliatory strike...

Can you honestly expect this administration to react any other way
then how Pat described it?

Actually, yes. Now, some members of the Administration might or might not
start screaming for the immediate nuking of Tehran or wherever... but one
of the reasons that there's a considerable body of *rules* about how these
things are done is precisely to require angry or frightened politicians to
slow down and think and get concurrence from others. Those rules can't be
bypassed by Administration fiat, not even Presidential fiat.

Mythology notwithstanding, there is no "red button" on the President's
desk. The guys with their fingers on the buttons are professional
military men, not politicians, and there are well-defined rules about what
sorts of orders they are to follow immediately, and what sorts have to be
confirmed properly before action. (In particular, the possibility that a
President might become irresponsible or mentally ill was considered.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

On Feb 19, 6:40 am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Eric Chomko" wrote:

::Fred J. McCall wrote:

: "Eric Chomko" wrote:
:
: :
: :Fred J. McCall wrote:
: : "Eric Chomko" wrote:
: :
: : :
: : :Fred J. McCall wrote:
: : : "Eric Chomko" wrote:
: : :
: : : :On Feb 16, 1:50 pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
: : : : Pat Flannery wrote:
: : : :
: : : : :Remember how I said pulling out of the ABM treaty was a dumb move,
: : : : :because the Russians would think that any treaty we had with them wasn't
: : : : :worth the paper it was written on?
: : : : :Well, guess what?:
: : : : :http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russ..._Quit_INF_Trea...
: : : :
: : : : So, if the Russians have no plans to shoot at Europe, what is the
: : : : problem?
: : : :
: : : :So that is why we allowed nukes in Cuba? Oops, we didn't allow them
: : : :and we don't have plans to shoot at Cuba either. Counterintel just
: : : :isn't your bag is it Freddy?
: : :
: : : Sense just isn't your bag is it El Chimpko?
: : :
: : : What, pray tell, does your preceding spew have to do with ANYTHING?
: : :
: : : : So, if the Russians have no plans to shoot at Europe, what do they
: : : : want to get back into the IRBM business for?
: : : :
: : : : So, who do you think the Europeans will blame for the Russians
: : : : building a nuclear arsenal aimed straight at them?
: : : :
: : : :I guess it all depends where we plan on putting ours.
: : :
: : : We're talking about US deployment of AN ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM IN POLAND
: : : AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA, you stupid *******. *WE* are not talking about
: : : "putting ours" anywhere at all.
: : :
: : :Yes, yes the Department of Defense doesn't attack, they merely defend.
: :
: : So you ignore THE FACTS and just bleat. Typical El Chimpko.
: :
: :What facts? Making the words in a caps doesn't explain them. You are
: :vague yet again because you again have nothing real to say.
:
: Eric, what is vague about "We're talking about US deployment of AN
: ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM IN POLAND AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA, you stupid *******.
: *WE* are not talking about "putting ours" anywhere at all."?
:
:So US deployment isn't ours? What the hell does that mean? Poland and
:Czechoslovakia are customers as opposed to US being its own customer?

What the hell are you gibbering about now? The preceding bears no
relationship to anything said previously BY ANYONE.

:
: You really cannot read and understand simple declarative sentences.
:
:No, you are totally unclear. Why, is what I don't know.

Because you can't read, which is both why I seem "totally unclear" to
you and why you "don't know".

: :
: : :You have the nerve to call me a stupid ******* yet you believe that we
: : :are beyond attacking anyone and merely defend ourselves.
: :
: : Where did I say that, you stupid *******?
: :
: :The implication that an anti-missile system would never be used to
: :attack, in all caps at that.
:
: How do you 'attack' with an anti-missile system, Eric?
:
:Makes as much sense as saying an airport can only be used for landings
:and never takeoffs.

El Chimpko gibbers again.

In order to use an anti-missile system THE OTHER SIDE HAS TO BE FIRING
MISSILES AT YOU, El Chimpko.

One more time with the question you refuse to answer - HOW DO YOU
'ATTACK' WITH AN ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM?

: : :Iraq, you stupid *******!
: :
: : Irrelevant, you dumb ****.
: :
: :Nope, you old fart.
:
: The only stinking thing here is your intellectual void.
:
:No, your lies stink much worse. There is truth and there is US
:sanctioned truth (i.e. propaganda). You speak the latter.

El Chimpko gibbers again.

: : :Would YOU trust any country putting anti-missile sites around the US
: : :as being merely prudent as you seem to think we are in Eastern Europe
: : :doing the same damn thing!?
: :
: : El Chimpko, you dumb ****, look at the FACTS. Such weapons in the
: : places described are no good at stopping weapons aimed at the US from
: : Russia or China (or even North Korea).
: :
: :No **** you dumb ass, I was talking about protecting other countries
: :from attacks by US! You really think we are beyond attacking anyone
: :and that if someone acts as if we might that that action is somehow an
: :act of aggression. Your mentality is at the root of the problem.
:
: What are you gibbering on about now? What connection does the
: preceding spew have to ANYTHING?
:
:The fact that you implicitly believe we are beyond making attacks and
:attacks that are simply wrong. That somehow we are pure. You forget
:what Thomas Jefferson said and have somehow been swept into a
:Orwellian reality where the government is beyond being questioned.
:That in the face of you claiming to being sane simply because you have
:a paper to prove it! Sorry I go back to my American roots that
:question authority as being implicitly good. In that regard you are
:not free but I am.

What the **** are you gibbering about now? Where did I say anything
even remotely resembling "we are beyond making attacks"?

I merely recognize that AN ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM can't attack. You in
your ideological stupidity fail to recognize that.

: :Again, would you trust a country placing anti-missile sites around the
: :US to protect itself from the US as an act of being prudent as you
: :seem to think placing anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe is prudent
: n our part as protection for us?
:
: Already answered. Again, you don't read very well.
:
:You said Cuba and Mexico knowing full well that there is no threat to
:us from the southern hemishere. You are intellectually dishonest in
:the guise of being coy.

Horse manure. US defense systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia are,
from the perspective of Russia, the precise equivalent of Russian
systems in Cuba and Mexico. Such systems in Poland CANNOT PREVENT
RUSSIA FROM ATTACKING THE UNITED STATES AND ARE USELESS IN THE EVENT
THAT THEY DO.

Which part of that is beyond you?

: : If someone wants to put anti-missile sites in Cuba or Mexico, why,
: : more power to them!
: :
: :Oh really? How about Canada or the Arctic?
:
: Different case. Russia would have better grounds to complain about
: that. But that's not what they're complaining about, now is it?
:
:What are they complaining about, McClod?

Eric, do you not even know what we're talking about? They're
complaining about the deployment of US anti-missile equipment in
Poland and Czechoslovakia and threatening to withdraw from a treating
banning IRBMs in response.

: : :We are so easy because too many people think just like you and not
: : :like the enemy. Again, counterintel-challenged aren't you Freddy?
: :
: : Need to smarten up to work your way UP to 'dumb ****', don't you, El
: : Chimpko?
: :
: :Hey, just because you're a janitor at a nuclear facility doesn't give
: :you the right to act so cocky. Perhaps you're a farmer with a silo?
: :hahahahahaha
:
: ANY of those would know more than you apparently do.
:
:You have no idea what I do.

You keep making stupid remarks like this. Would you like me to call
you at work?

: You really need to stop laughing at your own 'jokes', El Chimpko. It
: just makes you look even stupider (and while that is something of an
: achievement, I wouldn't think it would be one you'd be striving
: toward).
:
:Looking stupid because you say so is pure victory.

Then you 'win', because you have succeeded in looking abysmally
stupid.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

....All that can be said in this case is that your reputation as a
moron is well and truely deserved.

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Charles Buckley wrote:
Maybe, and maybe not. US policy for a long time (and possibly still
today) was that detection of incoming objects -- even lots of them --
wasn't sufficient grounds for a retaliatory strike...

Can you honestly expect this administration to react any other way
then how Pat described it?

Actually, yes. Now, some members of the Administration might or might not
start screaming for the immediate nuking of Tehran or wherever... but one
of the reasons that there's a considerable body of *rules* about how these
things are done is precisely to require angry or frightened politicians to
slow down and think and get concurrence from others. Those rules can't be
bypassed by Administration fiat, not even Presidential fiat.

No, but the CinC is the ultimate legal military authority.

Failure to obey a legal order from him could resort in a court-martial.

Given an incoming missile threat, I think a good argument could be made that
a retalitory strike ordered by the President with little to no consultation
might be considered a valid, legal order. (And there's the story that in
Nixon's final days, any orders regarding use of nuclear weapons originating
from the WH be verified).

That said, there may be additional safeguards in play that are not public
knowledge (or are and I'm simply not aware of.)

For example, laws may require that in circumstances lower than Defcon 1 or
2, the SecDef may also need to verify the order.

(There's also the opposite case of course, if the President is
incapacitated, there's mechanisms in place for other command authorities to
authorize use of nuclear weapons.)

And of course there's always the "Wargames" scenario, where someone refuses
to launch.

In any case, I can't see Bush in any condition authorizing release of
nuclear weapons in the original scenario of Iran launching something. Short
of a full-scale attack from Russia, whether folks like it or not, it's
almost certainly better to ride out the initial attack and then respond.
Worse case scenario actually would be the incoming warheads to be not be
WMDs and for us to have wiped out a country.



Mythology notwithstanding, there is no "red button" on the President's
desk. The guys with their fingers on the buttons are professional
military men, not politicians, and there are well-defined rules about what
sorts of orders they are to follow immediately, and what sorts have to be
confirmed properly before action. (In particular, the possibility that a
President might become irresponsible or mentally ill was considered.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting
sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com

Henry Spencer wrote:

Almost certainly the US would *not* respond with ICBMs, especially given
that an ICBM strike on Iran would go more or less over Moscow.

The first thing you'd do is get Moscow and Beijing on the blower and
tell them what you were going to do; then you'd let a Trident submarine
have at them, probably from the Mediterraneans.
The American public are not going to react rationally to any missile
attack that comes down on American soil, no matter what type warhead it
has. They are going to demand blood pronto, and lots of it.
If it could be showed that a foreign government was directly
responsible for 911, I would have been very surprised if they wouldn't
have gotten something atomic dropped on them also.
Considering that more people were killed on 911 than at Pearl Harbor, we
certainly had a precedent to go on.
And even the way it was, there was talk of possibly doing nuclear attack
on Afghani Al-Qaeda targets in the days after it happened, on the
grounds that the aircraft met the criteria for WMDs due to the fact of
the amount of fuel they held and that two of them were aimed at civilian
targets.
Instead of invading Afghanistan and Iraq in some quest to give them
democracy while making as much money as possible for military
contractors, it would have made a lot more sense both economically, and
in regard to the hardships inflicted on our military and National Guard
troops by going to war, if the city of Kandahar simply went away as soon
as we were sure Al Qaeda did it. That would send a unmistakable message
to all the Islamic countries- you have these nut cases in your nation,
get rid of them pronto, as if you don't, and they do something against
the U.S. then what happened in Kandahar is going to be happening in your
country next.
The Romans figured out how to do this over 2,000 years ago.
If the Roman army shows up and tells you to open your city gates and
surrender, then either you do it or they declare siege; and once they do
that they won't stop till they've taken the place and everyone in it is
either enslaved or dead.
By doing that a few times, they set a precedent. When they showed up,
cities knew what was coming if they resisted, and so many would
surrender immediately and hope for the best.
This is a pretty rough way of fighting a war, but it ends up with fewer
people killed in the long run.
Particularly our people, which I count as the important ones in a
situation like this.
If we had nuked Kandahar, we may have nipped any worldwide Islamic
uprising in the bud, and the end result would be that there were more
people alive at the end of the twenty-first century than there will be
if we continue to follow this idiotic neocon course of trying to spread
democracy.
We can't afford this in either a monetary or military sense.
Nuclear weapons are fairly cheap; American soldiers lives shouldn't be.
For starters, after "Operation Burnoose Barbecue" Osama bin Laden would
have tens of thousands of Afghanis out for his blood due to what
happened to their relatives in Kandahar.
A pleasant thought, that.
Particularly when one considers what they'd do to him once they caught
him, which could involve him getting to see what his entrails look like
before he dies.
I notice relations between ourselves and Japan have been quite friendly
since that little misunderstanding back during the 1940s, and what
ensued in regards to _their_ cities.

Pat

Scott Hedrick wrote:
It would take a bit of time to determine where it's going to land, and
that in part will determine whether or not it's an accident. I may not
launch at all. But I *am not* going to base my decision on what comes out of
the warhead when it lands, and I would be highly irresponsible if I did.


For starters, if it just explodes in a non-nuclear manner you can't be
sure it just isn't a dud.
The other thing is by destroying where it came from ASAP, you may
prevent further launches from that launch site.

Pat

Charles Buckley wrote:

Henry,

Can you honestly expect this administration to react any other way
then how Pat described it?

Hell, if a Iranian missile comes down in the U.S. without us attacking
Iran first, I'll be on the phone to my congressmen _demanding_ we blow
the place to hell.
The best way to make sure you are fighting a just war is let the other
guy take the first swing, then beat the living **** out of him.
If he knows that's what's going to happen, the chances are very good
he'll never take that first swing.
If he's stupid enough to do it, then he deserves what he gets.
At the moment, the power of radical Islam is waning in Iran, as the
local elections showed.
By saber rattling, all we are doing is strengthening the
fundamentalist's hands, in much the same way that Castro keeps Cuba
paranoid about an American invasion.
As usual under this administration, we are showing a brilliant aptitude
at doing exactly the wrong thing consistently.


Pat

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 02:26:34 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Instead of invading Afghanistan and Iraq in some quest to give them
democracy while making as much money as possible for military
contractors, it would have made a lot more sense both economically, and
in regard to the hardships inflicted on our military and National Guard
troops by going to war, if the city of Kandahar simply went away as soon
as we were sure Al Qaeda did it. That would send a unmistakable message
to all the Islamic countries- you have these nut cases in your nation,
get rid of them pronto, as if you don't, and they do something against
the U.S. then what happened in Kandahar is going to be happening in your
country next.

The city of Kandahar didn't attack the World Trade Center. There are
over 300,000 people living in the city of Kandahar. Whatever you
were drinking tonight, maybe try something else

The Romans figured out how to do this over 2,000 years ago.

And it has served them well in maintaining their world position
in the 2,000 years since

Dale

OM wrote:
...Not if you're using the "accepted subtitute" for a nuke, the
Large-Scale Fuel Air Bomb. Seven of these - six in a hexagon with a
core - should have been detonated over Tora Bora the second we found
out Bin Laden was holed up there. The resulting firestorm and oxygen
disruption would have suffocated those who weren't immolated, US
troops wouldn't have died, and there would have been no resulting
Cherenkov Effects to worry about.


If he was in a cave, it might not have gotten him...then he would have a
miraculous escape to add to his legend.
Tora Bora isn't a specific place, it's a mountain range:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/grap...FF4AV CBQYIV0
Seven fuel-air bombs aren't to kill all life in the Catskills.
This is a riot BTW- somebody's been looking at one too many James Bond
films:
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/cave.htm
All that needs is the "Laser Beam" ready to fire and "Lil' bin Laden"
scampering about.
And lava of course...there's always lava. :-D

Pat