uh oh.. what else did we find

[kleinma]

CNN - BREAKING NEWS
U.S. officer says American troops find thousands of boxes of unknown white powder, nerve gas antidote, and chemical warfare documents at complex south of Baghdad, according to The Associated Press.

[Xanith]

It’s only a matter of time before the world sees what US intelligence has known all along. Saddam has been hiding his chemical and nuclear programs under the noses of the UN and the rest of the world.

X

[plenderj]

Originally posted by Xanith
It’s only a matter of time before the world sees what US intelligence has known all along. Saddam has been hiding his chemical and nuclear programs under the noses of the UN and the rest of the world.

Well it was mighty nice of the US intelligence to keep that intelligence to themselves and allow a war to be started, instead of giving the info to the inspectors and averting this war.

[kleinma]

Originally posted by plenderj
Well it was mighty nice of the US intelligence to keep that intelligence to themselves and allow a war to be started, instead of giving the info to the inspectors and averting this war.

lol it is always out fault...

he didn't say they were keeping intelligence to themselves.. he said they knew all along that saddam had these things... which our govt has been saying since this whole thing started

[Xanith]

Originally posted by plenderj
Well it was mighty nice of the US intelligence to keep that intelligence to themselves and allow a war to be started, instead of giving the info to the inspectors and averting this war.

The problem was Saddam was in control of the country and could move things at will before inspectors could find them. Therefore such intelligence was worthless to inspectors. We knew he had the WMD's and that he was moving them around. Iraq is a big country with a lot of hiding places. Simply to vast for a handful of inspectors to play hide and seek.

X

[Memnoch1207]

The building where these boxes (about 3,000 of them) were found had been inspected by the UN inspectors on more then one occasion (the last time it was inspected was Feb. 18th), they never found anything, but low and behold, now that the UN inspectors aren't there, they find this...Just more proof that saddams regime is/was moving it's weapons from place to place to prevent the UN inspectors from finding them.

[plenderj]

Originally posted by Memnoch1207
The building where these boxes (about 3,000 of them) were found had been inspected by the UN inspectors on more then one occasion (the last time it was inspected was Feb. 18th), they never found anything, but low and behold, now that the UN inspectors aren't there, they find this...Just more proof that saddams regime is/was moving it's weapons from place to place to prevent the UN inspectors from finding them.

Assuming of course they are actually weapons.

[plenderj]

To quote : http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...086309,00.html

A senior US official familiar with early testing proceedures said the white powder was believed to be explosives.

[kleinma]

Originally posted by plenderj
To quote : http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...086309,00.html

A senior US official familiar with early testing proceedures said the white powder was believed to be explosives.

if we found a stock pile of nukes with saddams fingerprints on them i bet you would say they were planted by us

[plenderj]

Originally posted by kleinma
if we found a stock pile of nukes with saddams fingerprints on them i bet you would say they were planted by us

Yeah I probably would.
Especially seeing as he has no nuclear capabilities

[Xanith]

Originally posted by plenderj
Yeah I probably would.
Especially seeing as he has no nuclear capabilities

Actually that’s not true. Some "experts" say that he had enough material to actually produce a few bombs. Thanks largely in part to the French and their sale of nuclear technology and reactor to Saddam.

X

[Pc_Madness]

Originally posted by plenderj
Yeah I probably would.
Especially seeing as he has no nuclear capabilities

Your in idiot.... there is a thing called "money", and some countries might, just maybe, be willing to swap a nuke, or parts of it in exchance for this "money"

[Shaggy Hiker]

At this point, it still isn't clear if the powder was weapons of mass destruction material. Experts say "Explosives"? So what, even I might have some explosive powder around if I looked. If this powder turns out to be conventional weaponry, we shouldn't re-classify it just to be right.

[chenko]

"Weapons of mass destruction" - propaganda word. TNT can be a "WMD" if you really want it to be


Anyways, I would really like to see what Chemicals and Nuclear weapons the US are hiding, and I wouldnt belive you if you said they didnt.

We need much more countries to be in this really, as much as im against the war, I dont like the fact that one country is driving this, and that it can easily be corrupted. The British troops are doing paf all tbh, they are not being put to there best uses, seeing as they are a better force.

[Memnoch1207]

The British troops are doing paf all tbh, they are not being put to there best uses, seeing as they are a better force.

That depends on the warfare...The British do an excellent job at urban warfare, no doubt about it....But in an all out war...The US would win hands down...Better technology.

[Pc_Madness]

What was up with those 200 boxes of dead bodies they found? Definately something wrong there....

[honeybee]

Originally posted by kleinma
if we found a stock pile of nukes with saddams fingerprints on them i bet you would say they were planted by us

That is a very strong possibility, actually

So far, whatever "interesting sites" your marines have found, have turned out to be quite different than chemical weapons manufacturing facilities. Therefore I don't think your claim of Iraq possessing WMDs can stand at all once the war is over.

Also the Iraqi resistance has been so pathetic, it actually goes to prove that the Iraqi regime was no imminent threat at all. Why, no Iraqi warplanes have even been sighted, forget about being used.

All this picture leads to only one conclusion: Under the guise of finding the WMDs, the US has managed to take over another soverign country, and will establish its representative government there: Colonization in modern times.

.

[honeybee]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2919631.stm
Ms Rice said Iraq was unique, and it was natural that those who had sacrificed blood and life would play a leading role in the aftermath.

Clearly Mr. Bush doesn't want anyone else to share the loot

.

[Pc_Madness]

Originally posted by honeybee
Why, no Iraqi warplanes have even been sighted, forget about being used.

Haha. You do realise, that because of the no fly zones over the country for a long time, the Iraqi's have been unable to train pilots for their fighters, and I doubt anyone would want to go against an American fighter anyway.

And thats assuming of course that they actually have any working aircraft

[honeybee]

Originally posted by Pc_Madness
Haha. You do realise, that because of the no fly zones over the country for a long time, the Iraqi's have been unable to train pilots for their fighters, and I doubt anyone would want to go against an American fighter anyway.

And thats assuming of course that they actually have any working aircraft

Are you actually backing up the claim that there's not much of a chance Iraq could have used WMDs over a range??

.

[Pc_Madness]

*coughsplurt*SCUD*coughsplurt*

[chenko]

Originally posted by Memnoch1207
That depends on the warfare...The British do an excellent job at urban warfare, no doubt about it....But in an all out war...The US would win hands down...Better technology.

Yea right. And they still fire and kill friendly troops.

Better technology, maybe, doesnt make them a better force, specially when they cant even use that "tecnology" to hit the correct target or the correct side.

[hellswraith]

Better technology, maybe, doesnt make them a better force, specially when they cant even use that "tecnology" to hit the correct target or the correct side.

That is just ignorant. 95-99% of our stuff hits on target. You only hear about the 5% in the news though, and you think that is what it is about.

And yes, your right, having better technology doesn't make a better force, it is being able to effectively use that technology that makes it a better force. They train day in and day out with the better technology so they are at ease with it in the battle field. It does give them the advantage whether you admit it or not.

[hellswraith]

Yea right. And they still fire and kill friendly troops.

Friendly fire will ALWAYS happen. To much is happening in war for it to not. Plus, sometimes technology fails, and even worse, humans always are the weakest link because of emotions. EVERY side has friendly fire incedents. I don't care who they are.

[Xanith]

Originally posted by chenko2
Yea right. And they still fire and kill friendly troops.

Better technology, maybe, doesnt make them a better force, specially when they cant even use that "tecnology" to hit the correct target or the correct side.

Dont be ignorant. Friendly fire incidents have been happening since the first caveman learned to throw a rock and they will continue to happen. Why is this you ask? Because we are all human. Human's design the weapons and humans use them. Humans are imperfect beings and prone to mistakes therefore friendly fire incidents will ALWAYS happen. Had coverage of WWII been like it is today you would probably be shocked by just how many friendly fire incidents there were on all sides.

X

[chenko]

Originally posted by hellswraith
That is just ignorant. 95-99% of our stuff hits on target. You only hear about the 5% in the news though, and you think that is what it is about.

And yes, your right, having better technology doesn't make a better force, it is being able to effectively use that technology that makes it a better force. They train day in and day out with the better technology so they are at ease with it in the battle field. It does give them the advantage whether you admit it or not.

Well considering the amount of ordinace which is being fired, that 1 to 5% is _alot_ of accidents. Also, attacking a tank without IDing it? twice, specailly as it is a different tank from that of which the Iraqi army uses. Attacking a frienly group when the air strike had the coordinates of the ground positions that that same group called to be bombed. Also, going back to the first gulf war, more British troops were killed by US troops than by the enemy.

Use it effectivly? how did a patriot missile fire automatically instead of using IFF? It sure doesnt change on its own.

Yes, I might be pretty ignorant, but its small in comparision.

Xanith, True, but the shear amount is what you have to look at. As some troops said "We dont know what to be more worried about, Iraqi troops infront of us, or US troops behind" "We've been trained in all types of combat, except avoiding being shot by friendly troops"

Originally posted by Pc_Madness
*coughsplurt*SCUD*coughsplurt*

SCUDs are not really "weapons of mass destruction". They are allowed SCUDs (though they did have a problem with some having a too long of range)

[hellswraith]

Well considering the amount of ordinace which is being fired, that 1 to 5% is _alot_ of accidents.

It is actually a lot lower than that. I just gave you some pretty lax numbers because I didn't want to figure it out. Here is a break down to actually get the real numbers for you:

Based on this site: http://vialardi.org/IRAQ/iraq_by_numbers.html

Iraqi deaths (not a hard number) around 500 civilians.
Collition forces 107 dead (not all are from friendly fire, but we will use them all in our figures to help your side).

Total of about 607 dead that shouldn't have been killed from bombing.

14,750+ bombs dropped (actually a hell of a lot more because that figure only counts precision guided ones, but again, we will use figures to help your argument out).

We are going to need another figure that I couldn't find, and that is how many deaths per stray bomb. Lets give a conservitive estimate of 3 deaths per stray bomb. That means 200 bombs were strays.

That is a 1.4% error rate by those numbers. Like I said though, there have been a lot of conventional bombs dropped to add to the 14,750 number. Probably around 5,000+ more. Also, not all those deaths are from our bombs, so the amount of deaths from those can also be safely reduced. That means we are getting less than 1% innocent deaths from our bombs.

You won't find ANY war with that accuracy in the history of time. You at least have to appreciate that.

Also, attacking a tank without IDing it? twice, specailly as it is a different tank from that of which the Iraqi army uses.

This statement comes to what I said ealier in one of my posts. Human error. It happens. Deaths happen in a lot of jobs because a co-worker was being careless. My father was almost killed where he worked because a crane operator wasn't watching what he was doing, although there are strict proceedures when running the crane to prevent such accidents. (He was lucky, but could have easily been killed if he hadn't turned around in time.)

Also, going back to the first gulf war, more British troops were killed by US troops than by the enemy.

Of course, because of the accuracy of the weapons the US uses, they will hit the targets aimed at. Human error again for shooting them at them, but that was explained above. The Iraqis, if they had as accurate of weapons as the US, would have killed more because they were intentionally shooting at the british troops.

Use it effectivly? how did a patriot missile fire automatically instead of using IFF? It sure doesnt change on its own.

Do you know that the British plane didn't have his IFF off or if it was malfunctioning? Patriot missiles don't fire automatically. They have to be initiated by a ground person. Human error? Maybe. Also, was it a US manned Patriot missle battery or Kuati? I don't know all the facts of this one, but it probably comes down to human error again.

The reason I called your statement ignorant is because it was obviously slanted to state one side of the story. If it was a logical one that included facts that presented your argument, I wouldn't have called it so.

[BodwadUK]

They are allowed SCUDs (though they did have a problem with some having a too long of range)

No their not!!!! Scud are extremely dangerous and can also carry a nuclear or bio weapon hence the sudden checking of the first missiles fired into Kuwait.


Scuds are banned from Iraq!!!!

[Maven]

Originally posted by plenderj
Well it was mighty nice of the US intelligence to keep that intelligence to themselves and allow a war to be started, instead of giving the info to the inspectors and averting this war.

We provded lots of intel....

[Maven]

Originally posted by chenko2
"Weapons of mass destruction" - propaganda word. TNT can be a "WMD" if you really want it to be


Anyways, I would really like to see what Chemicals and Nuclear weapons the US are hiding, and I wouldnt belive you if you said they didnt.

We need much more countries to be in this really, as much as im against the war, I dont like the fact that one country is driving this, and that it can easily be corrupted. The British troops are doing paf all tbh, they are not being put to there best uses, seeing as they are a better force.

First off scientist consider them to be weapons of mass desturction. Most people with sense would consider a weapon that can kill in the millions to be a WMD.

We have had checmial, biological, and nuclear weapons. Ereyone knows we have them, its no secret.

[Maven]

Originally posted by chenko2
Yea right. And they still fire and kill friendly troops.

Better technology, maybe, doesnt make them a better force, specially when they cant even use that "tecnology" to hit the correct target or the correct side.

Our stuff is more acurate then anyone elses and is constantly being improved.

[MasterBlaster]

Originally posted by chenko2
"We've been trained in all types of combat, except avoiding being shot by friendly troops"

He just summed up the entire problem in one sentance. Obviously more training is needed to learn how to avoid getting shot by your own troops.

[MasterBlaster]

ERm

http://www.msnbc.com/news/895392.asp

[chenko]

MasterBlaster, That is STUPID. sorry, but it is. Why should a country train not to be fired upon by friendly forces when they are trained *not* too shoot friendly forces. Me thinks they need to make it harder for troops in the U.S. Army, sitting at base stations with microwaves, dounout(sp) machines and TVs isnt my idea of what the army does.

Originally posted by BodwadUK
No their not!!!! Scud are extremely dangerous and can also carry a nuclear or bio weapon hence the sudden checking of the first missiles fired into Kuwait.


Scuds are banned from Iraq!!!!

Ok, they are allowed SCUDS with a range of less than 77miles (if im correct, its near that thou)

Do you really think that someone would fire a SCUD with a nuclear war head (thou, there hasnt been any nuclear war heads fired on a scud missole) so close to the firing point? pretty stupid really. They *are* allow SCUDs as long as they fire under the allotted range.


Maven, Yes I know, why not disarm first before you tell other countries to disarm?

"Our stuff is more acurate then anyone elses and is constantly being improved."

Really? a patriot missile hitting a friendly target? and airstike on the same people that called it? a tomahawk missing Iraq completely, more than once... very very accurate :/

"We provded lots of intel...."
I dont call models of a suspected lorry that can carry the stuff "intel"... I laughed when I saw there proof, this "smoking gun"


hellswraith, Well if you want to complain about it, then at least look up some info and get what you are saying a little more correct for the sake of the argument.

"You won't find ANY war with that accuracy in the history of time. You at least have to appreciate that."

I never said there would be no mistakes. Im saying that alot more come form the US than most other countries, and its not the first time, i have already mentioned the first gulf. I dont call killing more British than the enemy did a "fact of war" I call it insanity.

" Do you know that the British plane didn't have his IFF off or if it was malfunctioning? Patriot missiles don't fire automatically. They have to be initiated by a ground person. Human error? Maybe. Also, was it a US manned Patriot missle battery or Kuati? I don't know all the facts of this one, but it probably comes down to human error again."

No reports marked that IFF was off or malfunctioning on the Jet, Possible thou, but do you know the difference between a jet and a missile? Yes, they can fire automatically upon threats using IFF or without it. human error? yup, thats my main point.


"The reason I called your statement ignorant is because it was obviously slanted to state one side of the story. If it was a logical one that included facts that presented your argument, I wouldn't have called it so."

Well you didnt state any facts, you just called me ignorant first with nothing to back it up, in turn, I call you ignorant for that previous comment.

[MasterBlaster]

Originally posted by chenko2
MasterBlaster, That is STUPID. sorry, but it is. Why should a country train not to be fired upon by friendly forces when they are trained *not* too shoot friendly forces. Me thinks they need to make it harder for troops in the U.S. Army, sitting at base stations with microwaves, dounout(sp) machines and TVs isnt my idea of what the army does.

First off, show some manners *******. Second, When you get some combat experience you can give me your expert opinion and call me stupid. Ground forces most definatly should get more training to avoid getting hit by friendly fire. Do you know why the ground forces were hit? Didn't think so. Do you know if the ground forces misread the hot zones for the bombing runs? Do you know if they were miscommunicated coordinates called in by ground forces? It is eaiser for a ground unit to Identify itself and keep accurate recods of their location than it is for a guy at 10,000 feet going 600 mph to identify them by site.

[hellswraith]

I stated facts, and where I didn't know them, I clearly stated that I didn't. Here, look at my post again:

It is actually a lot lower than that. I just gave you some pretty lax numbers because I didn't want to figure it out. Here is a break down to actually get the real numbers for you:

Based on this site: http://vialardi.org/IRAQ/iraq_by_numbers.html

Iraqi deaths (not a hard number) around 500 civilians.
Collition forces 107 dead (not all are from friendly fire, but we will use them all in our figures to help your side).

Total of about 607 dead that shouldn't have been killed from bombing.

14,750+ bombs dropped (actually a hell of a lot more because that figure only counts precision guided ones, but again, we will use figures to help your argument out).

We are going to need another figure that I couldn't find, and that is how many deaths per stray bomb. Lets give a conservitive estimate of 3 deaths per stray bomb. That means 200 bombs were strays.

That is a 1.4% error rate by those numbers. Like I said though, there have been a lot of conventional bombs dropped to add to the 14,750 number. Probably around 5,000+ more. Also, not all those deaths are from our bombs, so the amount of deaths from those can also be safely reduced. That means we are getting less than 1% innocent deaths from our bombs.

You won't find ANY war with that accuracy in the history of time. You at least have to appreciate that.

Those are facts, and again, where I couldn't find a hard number, I gave the benifit of the doubt to your side.

Im saying that alot more come form the US than most other countries, and its not the first time, i have already mentioned the first gulf.

You are right, it is going to come from the US more than any other countries. This is basic statistics. The US has a lot more troops and equipment over there than any other country. Of course that would indicate that the US will have more friendly fire incidents than other countries.

You also failed to mentioned that the British shot one of their own tanks:

On March 25, a British tank misidentified another British tank, firing a shell that killed two soldiers and seriously injured two others inside.

The US isn't the only ones that do this, but because of the larger number of US forces, statistics will dictate that the US will have more friendly fire incidents.

[chenko]

Originally posted by MasterBlaster
First off, show some manners *******. Second, When you get some combat experience you can give me your expert opinion and call me stupid. Ground forces most definatly should get more training to avoid getting hit by friendly fire. Do you know why the ground forces were hit? Didn't think so. Do you know if the ground forces misread the hot zones for the bombing runs? Do you know if they were miscommunicated coordinates called in by ground forces? It is eaiser for a ground unit to Identify itself and keep accurate recods of their location than it is for a guy at 10,000 feet going 600 mph to identify them by site.

I said sorry when I said it, as it was not offence to you, just your oppionion, I think your comment deserves more than just a fire back.

No, that is what I dont understand... when a pilot is given coordinates, this is programmed in, and they only have to fire within a required range, and it will sort the target itself, large margin of error, so it shouldnt happen.... but it did? so that showed that the pilot was way off out of the margin. Also, the pilots should aquire a target and find out what it is first, specially as that A4 (i think thats it) did two runs on a tank, and he wasnt at 10k ft when he did it. Also, if you get a request for an airstrike on tank positions near the people who called it, aint you going to expect your own troops to be near by? so, do you just bomb the first thing you see? specially as its not on the coordinates that you were given?
That guy at 10k ft needs to fly by coordinates because they will get into positions where they HAVE to fly by there equipment readouts (this wasnt the case at the time, specially at that height) and they have far better equipment for getting there postitons.

Bombing runs on open desert? Ummm right mate. and the airsticke was airstrike was called, so it wasnt previously planned.

[hellswraith]

Originally posted by MasterBlaster
First off, show some manners *******. Second, When you get some combat experience you can give me your expert opinion and call me stupid. Ground forces most definatly should get more training to avoid getting hit by friendly fire. Do you know why the ground forces were hit? Didn't think so. Do you know if the ground forces misread the hot zones for the bombing runs? Do you know if they were miscommunicated coordinates called in by ground forces? It is eaiser for a ground unit to Identify itself and keep accurate recods of their location than it is for a guy at 10,000 feet going 600 mph to identify them by site.

Exactly. Also, based on my knowledge of the targeting systems, the pilot just punches in some numbers to mark grid cordinates that the ground crew gives them. Sure, there is a chance that the ground gives the wrong cordinates, or the pilot punches them in wrong, **** happens. I believe the pilot has to repeat back though after punching the numbers in, so it takes a lot to screw it up. Once the pilot has the numbers in, it dives down to a predetermined level and when the computer indicates, pushes a button. The bomb does everything else.

[chenko]

"You are right, it is going to come from the US more than any other countries. This is basic statistics. The US has a lot more troops and equipment over there than any other country. Of course that would indicate that the US will have more friendly fire incidents than other countries."

Im not talking amounts, im talking ratios. So it doesnt matter how many there are.




"You also failed to mentioned that the British shot one of their own tanks:"

To be honest with you, I thought that was US-US because of what I was told, and I never looked into it more. Hence why I never mentioned it in any statements. I will look into it later, and form my oppionions on it.


"The US isn't the only ones that do this, but because of the larger number of US forces, statistics will dictate that the US will have more friendly fire incidents."

As the first statment

[MasterBlaster]

I wasn't refering to bombing runs in poen desert. I was refering to bombing runs hitting allied convoys on the supply lines which are constantly being scanned for enemy convoys and should be considered "Hot". Obviously there are communication errors occuring between aircraft and ground forces. To solve the problem you have to determine where the breakdown is occuring and why the breakdown is occuring. This will require training for the air and ground forces. Allied convoys traveling through zones with Jets looking for targets of opportunity should make damn sure certain that the airforce knows exactly where they are and where they are going. Errant bombs killing friendlys will never be solves, **** happens. Also, You'd be suprised how Easy it is to call in a fooked up grid coordinate when someone is slinging lead at you. Equate that to me shooting at you with a machine gun and making you tell some one multiplication tabels over the phone at the same time.