I was hoping to avoid this argument, but it looks like it's going to happen whether I like it or not. On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 02:13:58PM -0500, Bato001 at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 02/10/2005 2:06:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, > philiph at slac.stanford.edu writes: > >> In particular more troops would have allowed us to secure the weapons > >> depots which have fueled the insurgency. Given the WMD justification > >> for the invasion, this failure to secure the depots strikes me as > >> unconscionable. > > who says the weapons came from inside? Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia--Iraqs > > borders are so insecure North Korea could be shipping nuclear bombs into the > > country. > That would be the main-stream media reporting on what the military says. > There was a little scandal before the election about hundreds of tons of > high explosives useful for, among other things, building atomic bombs. > Our soldiers saw the depot in question being emptied but they didn't have > time/personnel/orders to guard it. If you are referring to the incident I think you are referring to, it's been debunked quite thoroughly. The reports you are referring to were from the second group to guard the site; the first group had already secured the location and removed the really dangerous stuff. The media reported it as "tons of missing explosives", but in fact, they weren't missing. The media was asking the wrong people where they were. > The IEDs killing our guys and gals > recently are thought to be as deadly as they are because of the > use of those high explosives. Some of the detailed reports about the Fallujah action discuss the supply train of material for car bombs and suicide bombs. They were, in fact, coming from neighboring countries, and one of the objectives in Fallujah was to roll up those supply lines. > Why go shopping out-of-country when the corner depot is full of nasty > stuff you're trained to use? This is true enough. Saddam had a lot of time to prepare for a resistance, and it would be silly to assume we can find and secure it all. But your specific examples are somewhat lacking. > Aw come on. Your no fun!!! Look, we are having a wonderful discussion, with > no arguments. When was the last time that happened????? Choirs make for great music, but poor fact-finding... If you are relying on the mainstream media for facts about events in Iraq, you are NOT getting good information. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/weblog/index.jsp