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

To: michael97123 who wrote (183465)	3/13/2006 3:35:12 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Michael, plenty of Americans think that "Inside the Beltway" is a foreign country and I bet hordes have joked along such lines. If downtown Washington is your home, it would be worth assigning some weighting to Osama's threats. I consider it [seriously] quite possible that nukes are planted. I don't think they would be targeted at Peoria. Washington would be the primary target as it's a political battle. Maybe the Pentagon would be the target. Put the bomb in a van and deliver it via suicide bomber. Or, maybe go for the head of the snake up the road at the White House and Congress. I don't think Auckland would be the target either, but could well be as NZ was complicit with the USA in attacking the Taleban and Osama's gang. Auckland would be a nice, soft target. We don't have radiation counters running around checking each container which I guess the USA now has. I don't think so anyway. Hmm, maybe a bomb was sent here, then transferred to a shipment of sheep meat to the USA, which would be quite a joke on our famous "Nuclear-free New Zealand" claims. You'll have to forgive my black humour. It's just cultural reaction to grave threats. If we are going to die, we might as well laugh on the way. The Blitz didn't crush English spirits - perversely, it seems to have buoyed them. I suppose it's like people going to climb Mt Everest or Scott and co trying to get to the South Pole. People choose dangerous things to do for no good reason because the challenge and survival are pleasurable. Mt Everest is littered with bodies, but more keep going. On the overall impact of 4 nukes in major cities, there are nearly 300 million Americans and if even 10 million disappeared, along with the core of a few cities, it would be 1:30. The suicide rate, murder rate, car death rate and AIDS rate combined is no worse than that. Nobody thinks that the USA is coming to an end because of murder, suicide, car crashes and AIDS. Which isn't to say they aren't horrific problems for those concerned and we have also suffered deaths in the family, so we all know what suffering and death are about. I'm just pointing out the big picture. Osama is a storm in a teacup, even if he pulls off an extremely successful attack of world record proportions. Also, by recognizing the risks, people will respond to them and hopefully avoid them. Unfortunately, they often make things worse. The ridiculous level of aircraft security for example; grannies with nail files while glass bottles full of brandy are okay to be carried frustrates people and does nothing for safety. There isn't going to be another hijacking as passengers would go berserk and pilots have figured out, belatedly, that they should leave cockpit doors shut and locked and that they should not comply with hijackers, but resist them. Air marshals are just a waste of money. So far, all they've achieved is killing a mentally disturbed innocent person who was no threat to anyone. Meanwhile, Osama, having got them looking for pocket knives on aircraft, is ignoring aircraft and readying his Big Bang. The USA should be offering rewards for information tracking all nuclear material and paying Putin heaps to help track all renegade nukes. Offer big payments for information and finding nukes. But, more important than all that is a reconstituted United Nations so that the political problems between countries are reduced. PNAC and dog eat dog is the wrong approach. It is superficially attractive while one is top dog, but dogs get old and then civilization is more attractive. Wolf pack rules is no way to run humanity. Mqurice