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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (15767)	11/10/2003 6:53:57 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793682

If this happens here, buy some Railroad stock. Civil Aviation will be over if we lose a couple. __________________________________________ Flightmare The Iraqi insurgents' surface-to-air missiles won't win the war, but they could wreak havoc on civilian aviation. By Daniel Benjamin Posted Friday, Nov. 7, 2003, at 4:53 PM PT Given the growing intensity of the combat in Iraq, the downing of two helicopters and the resulting deaths of 22 soldiers in the last week comes as little surprise. The destruction of a Black Hawk today, reportedly by a rocket-propelled grenade, and a Chinook on Sunday by a shoulder-fired missile were all but statistical inevitabilities in a country with a deepening insurgence and 600,000 or more tons of largely unsecured armaments. But the attacks should also send a shudder through anyone who flies, even if they never board anything but commercial wide-body airliners and never venture within 5,000 miles of Iraq. By removing the locks from Iraq's enormous stores of armaments, including "vast, unknown" quantities of anti-aircraft weapons, as Air Force Gen. John Handy, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, put it several months ago, the fighting in Iraq has virtually ensured that some of these arms will wind up in the hands of terrorists who will want to use them outside the current war zone. Though rocket-propelled grenades pose a real threat, especially at unsecured airports, shoulder-fired missiles are far more dangerous because of their greater range—some can strike aircraft 5,000 meters away—and the accuracy of their heat-seeking sensors. In the parlance of security types, these missiles are "MANPADS," man-portable air defense systems. History has not recorded who devised this moniker and acronym, which sounds more like a male continence aid than a surface-to-air missile, but there is nothing remotely funny about these weapons. At least 500,000 MANPADS have been produced worldwide since their appearance in the mid-1960s. The Chinook that was shot down last Sunday is believed to have been felled by an SA-7, a Soviet-designed weapon that is stockpiled in some 70 countries. REST AT slate.msn.com

To: unclewest who wrote (15767)	11/10/2003 10:33:30 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793682

"It's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and Tommy that, and Tommy go outside. But it's 'Thank you Mr. Atkins' when the bombs begin to fly." Can't go wrong with Kipling on "Veteran's Day." Mike. This article is in the "Guardian." _______________________________________ At the eleventh hour We should offer thanks that there are men and women still prepared to fight for the greater good David Aaronovitch Sunday November 9, 2003 The Observer ......The military conflicts we have been 'marched into' by Mr Blair are Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. That isn't because the PM never understood the words of 'Imagine', but because it transpired that the Taliban, the hard men of the Baath, the amputating militias of West Africa, the Hutu Interahamwe and the Serb army of Radko Mladic had been brought up on something other than Joan Baez........ observer.guardian.co.uk

To: unclewest who wrote (15767)	11/10/2003 7:30:44 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793682

It was my fault, mine personally; I was part of the antiwar crowd and I'm sorry. But my apology is too late for the South Vietnamese dead. All I can do is join the chorus in shouting, "No more Vietnams!" No more shrugging off tyranny; no more deserting our friends; no more going back on our duties as the strongest nation on Earth. Don't Quit as We Did in Vietnam By David Gelernter David Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard. November 9, 2003 NEW HAVEN, Conn. — U.S. policy in Iraq is haunted by Vietnam, no question about that. That's why Americans support the war and will keep on supporting it until we win. ("Win" is a verb you rarely heard in the Vietnam era.) We are haunted by the image of Vietnamese who trusted and supported us trying frantically to grab a place on the last outbound helicopter; by Vietnamese putting to sea in rowboats rather than enjoy Uncle Ho's "Workers' and Peasants' Paradise" one more day. We are haunted by the consequences of allowing South Vietnam to collapse. Tens of thousands of executions (maybe 60,000), re-education camps where hundreds of thousands died, a million boat people. We put them in those rowboats — we antiwar demonstrators, we sophisticated, smart guys. The war was nearly over when I graduated from high school. But high school students were old enough to demonstrate. They were old enough to feel superior to the fools who were running the government. And they were old enough to have known better. They were old enough to have understood what communist regimes had cost the world in suffering, from the prisons of Havana to the death camps of Siberia. Today we are haunted, in thinking about Iraq, by the fact that a noisy, self-important, narcissistic minority talked the United States into betraying its allies. (Loyalty didn't mean a lot to antiwar demonstrators; honor didn't mean a lot.) We betrayed our allies and hurried home, to introspect. They stayed on, to suffer. We were eager to make love, not war, but the South Vietnamese weren't offered that option. Their alternatives were to knuckle under or die. It was my fault, mine personally; I was part of the antiwar crowd and I'm sorry. But my apology is too late for the South Vietnamese dead. All I can do is join the chorus in shouting, "No more Vietnams!" No more shrugging off tyranny; no more deserting our friends; no more going back on our duties as the strongest nation on Earth. Before the switch of commanders from William C. Westmoreland to Creighton Abrams, we conducted the Vietnam War stupidly; that thought haunts us too, and that's why people like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are running the Iraq war and his Vietnam-era counterpart Robert S. McNamara and his friends and disciples aren't. We are haunted by our having gotten into Vietnam without really meaning to, without having thrashed it out first in a nationwide conversation. That's why the Bush administration laid out exactly what it wanted to accomplish (regime change) beforehand — and why the nation chewed the thing over for months before we opened fire. Regime change is what America wanted and what we fought for and won. Regime change is what we will defend, whatever it takes. End of Part One