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

To: Sam who wrote (124073)	1/31/2004 6:30:14 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

For the president of the United States to say that the reason that he gave for the nation going to war, a war which has cost us 500 dead already, thousands of Americans maimed, and has so tarnished America's credibility and reputation in the world, that he would say, essentially, that it does not matter if the reasons that we convinced the American people to go to war for are no longer applicable or were not true or were exaggerated or misstated, that is an astounding statement. But it would appear, from the fact that the calls for Bush to be removed from office IMMEDIATELY are being largely ignored by both press and politicians alike--it would appear that most Americans are not especially astounded. Apparently it is far more shocking--and an impeachable offense--for a President to get a blow job or two in the White House and then lie about it than it is for a President to lie about the reasons for taking us to a war which will cost, in the end, at least thousands of lives (American and non-American) and hundreds of billions of dollars. We sure know what is important.

To: Sam who wrote (124073)	1/31/2004 9:05:13 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Sam; Re: "THIELMANN: There was no clue given by the White House that there was any dissent on this issue, when the president essentially declassified top-secret information and announced to the United Nations in September of 2002 that Iraq was obtaining aluminum tubes for the nuclear weapons program." It later did turn out that the tubes were not compatible with uranium enrichment. Here's what I had to say, at the time, about that piece of "evidence": frankw1900, February 6, 2003 You don't have to know a lot of squat about those tubes. Rockets are throw away weapons - get a lot of firepower for cheap - fine tolerances aren't necessary or desirable. Whatever those tubes were meant for, they weren't for rockets. ... A major argument the US is making is that Hussein is continuing with his atomic weapons program. Iraq kept ordering the tubes machined to ever greater tolerances. The argument, in terms of fact, will be utterly accepted by governments and intelligence agencies, and just about any ordinary citizen, like, say, a car mechanic or industrial worker. #reply-18545385 Bilow, in response: Hi frankw1900; Re: "Rockets are throw away weapons - get a lot of firepower for cheap - fine tolerances aren't necessary or desirable." I'm glad that someone understands this better than I do. It's so good that the thread has an expert that can explain these things to us. Exactly what surface flatness and tolerance is required for a missile capable of going 150km, as opposed to a uranium centrifuge? I suppose you'll want to know how accurate the missile has to be when it hits its target, for that you should use the standard value for that range missile. For that matter, what are the surface specifications for US missile parts in comparable missiles? I myself know very little about what kind of tolerances missiles require. But whenever I've seen them, they seem to be pretty smooth. On the other hand, I've seen more than my share of centrifuges, and they don't seem that much more smooth. The centrifuges I've always dealt with don't have to be particularly well balanced, so I don't know where the US government is coming from here. For example, even an ultracentrifuge that produces an acceleration 600,000 times stronger than the earth's gravity field only requires 10% sample weight matching accuracy: Beckman XL 90, LE 80 Ultracentrifuges ... Sample imbalance tolerance: Up to 10% of volume in opposite tubes ... Maximum Force of 602,000 x g (rotor dependent) ... gmi-inc.com The above fact about centrifuges is due to some pretty simple physics about rotating bodies. -- Carl P.S. It might be useful if you could further expound on exactly what tolerance the aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq are manufactured to, and it would also help illuminate the problem if you could tell us what tolerance is more usual for the many manufacturing techniques used in tube manufacture. Here, I'll get you started with extrusions: aavidthermalloy.com #reply-18548838 None of the war heads responded to my comment. The reason? Simple. None of them knows the slightest thing about (a) centrifuges, (b) aluminum tubes, (c) rockets, or (d) manufacturing. But they were very willing to believe the evidence that the Bush administration had created out of thin air and in contradiction to their own intelligence agency findings. And now, it is widely admitted that Iraq had no nuclear program. Despite being not just lied to, but repeatedly lied to, few of them have changed any of their opinions. They've distanced themselves from reality. -- Carl