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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (68216)	1/24/2003 3:58:17 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "Unless you buy the argument that they actually destroyed the WMDs but, dang, the dog ate their homework so they can't prove it." The problem is in the nature of the proof. I bought about 5000 rounds of .22 ammunition around 10 years ago. Most of it fired through my rifle. I eventually sold the rifle, and included the ammunition in the sale. Since then I've lost the sales receipt, and even if I did find it, it didn't include the exact number of rounds that were included. I just gave the store I sold it to the ammunition for them to dispose of. Nor did I keep records at the time for how many rounds I fired at the target ranges. If I did keep those records, the US authorities would reject them as my fakes and fantasies anyway, so they don't matter. The only thing I could do is to take them to the gun range and point at the brass littering the area. But gun ranges regularly collect up brass and recycle it. For that matter, it's not unlikely that somewhere around my house there's still a couple of bricks of ammunition lying around. I know that there is a theory that WMDs are not jelly doughnuts, and that it is therefore highly unlikely that no records would exist, but the fact of the matter is that the US has already proven that the US in peacetime does not keep accurate records on its own WMDs, so how can they expect a primitive 3rd world nation in the middle of several large (to it) wars do it? Most of the world recognizes these facts, which is why we're unable to get them to support us. The total volume of WMDs that the administration is talking about is tiny. (Note that it took about a ton of mustard gas to kill a single soldier in WW1. In modern warfare, since the soldiers are more spread apart, it takes about 10 tons. See #reply-18459813 for the links.) That's why they say that these weapons are so easy to hide. But at the same time, this also implies that these weapons are very easy to lose track of. That's what happened in the US. -- Carl