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Title: Idiocy in D.C., Progress in Baghdad
Source:
www.weeklystandard.com
URL Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conte ... icles/000/000/013/416urcoa.asp
Published: Mar 17, 2007
Author: William Kristol
Post Date: 2007-03-17 20:20:21 by BeAChooser
Keywords: None
Views: 3560
Comments: 224
Idiocy in D.C., Progress in Baghdad The surge is working--that's what matters. by William Kristol 03/26/2007, Volume 012, Issue 27 In order to preserve the cosmic harmony, it seems the gods insist that good news in one place be offset by misfortune elsewhere. It may well be that Gen. David Petraeus is going to lead us to victory in Iraq. He is certainly off to a good start. If the karmic price of success in Iraq is utter embarrassment for senior Bush officials in Washington, D.C.--well, in our judgment, the trade-off is worth it. The world will surely note our success or failure in Iraq. It will not long remember the gang that couldn't shoot straight at the Justice Department--or, for that matter, the antics of congressional Democrats--unless either so weakens the administration as to undercut our mission in Iraq. Obviously, it's too early to say anything more definitive than that there are real signs of progress in Baghdad. The cocksure defeatism of war critics of two months ago, when the surge was announced, does seem to have been misplaced. The latest Iraq Update (pdf) by Kimberly Kagan summarizes the early effects of the new strategy backed up by, as yet, just one additional U.S. brigade deployed in theater (with more to be added in the coming weeks): This "rolling surge" focuses forces on a handful of neighborhoods in Baghdad, and attempts to expand security out from those neighborhoods. . . . A big advantage of a "rolling surge" is that the population and the enemy sense the continuous pressure of ever-increasing forces. Iraqis have not seen such a prolonged and continuous planned increase of U.S. forces before. . . . The continued, increasing presence of U.S. forces appears to be having an important psychological, as well as practical, effect on the enemy and the people of Iraq. . . . [Meanwhile] in Ramadi, in the belt south of Baghdad stretching from Yusifiyah to Salman Pak, and northeast in Diyala Province, . . . U.S. and Iraqi forces have deprived al Qaeda of the initiative. This sense of momentum is confirmed by many other reports in the media, and from Americans and Iraqis on the ground. But back in Washington, congressional Democrats are still mired in the fall of 2006 and seem determined to be as irresponsible as ever. They're being beaten back--in part thanks to the fighting spirit of stalwart congressional Republicans. Last week, the Senate defeated a resolution that would have restricted the use of U.S. troops in Iraq and set March 31, 2008, as a target date for removing U.S. forces from combat. On the same day, on a mostly party-line vote, the House Appropriations Committee reported out the Democratic version of a supplemental appropriations bill for the war. It was an odd piece of legislation--an appropriation to fight a war replete with provisions intended to ensure we lose it. Here's what the Democratic legislation does, according to the Washington Post: "Under the House bill, the Iraqi government would have to meet strict benchmarks. . . . If by July 1 the president could not certify any progress, U.S. troops would begin leaving Iraq, to be out before the end of this year. If Bush did certify progress, the Iraqi government would have until Oct. 1 to meet the benchmarks, or troops would begin withdrawing then. In any case, withdrawals would have to begin by March 1, 2008, and conclude by the end of that summer." Got that? Oh yes, in addition to the arbitrary timelines for the removal of troops, there's pork. As the Post explains, "Included in the legislation is a lot of money to help win support. The price tag exceeds the president's war request by $24 billion." Some of the extra money goes to bail out spinach farmers hurt by E. coli, to pay for peanut storage, and to provide additional office space for the lawmakers themselves. So much for an emergency war appropriations bill. The legislation may collapse on the floor of the House this week. It certainly deserves to. Republicans can insist on a clean supplemental--no timelines to reassure the enemy that if they just hang on, we'll be gone before long, and no pork. They can win this fight--and if they do, combined with progress in Iraq, the lasting news from March 2007 will not be Bush administration haplessness; it will be that we are on the way to success in Iraq.
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#1. To: BeAChooser (#0)
fuck you and your lying douchebag hero, asshole. The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau. Baghdad -- 8:00 am: 2 killed in Baia. The Security Officer (Lieutenant Colonel) of The Directorate of Education of Al-Karkh Al-Thania, and his deputy (First Lieutenant), were both shot by gunmen as they were on their way to work and killed. -- 01:45 pm: A suicide bomber driving a dark car targeted the checkpoint in Kindi Street, Al-Harthiya, west Baghdad. The checkpoint is manned by Iraqi National Police and the explosion killed 2 civilians and 1 policeman, wounding 2 civilians and 3 policemen. -- 3:00 p.m. Two civilians were injured when a road side bomb exploded in Al Sileikh area. -- 4:45 p.m. A mortar shell landed on a house in Al Madaen, south east of Baghdad. The shelling claimed the life of 2 residents and injured 15. -- 4:45 p.m. a road side bomb targeting civilians in Al Khadraa neighborhood, west Baghdad. One civilian was killed. At sunset gunmen raided a Sunni mosque in Dora and bombed the mosque. -- Police found 19 unidentified bodies throughout Baghdad in the following neighborhood: 6 bodies in Amil, 4 bodies in Yarmouk, 3 bodies in Shoala, 2 bodies in Ghazaliya, 2 bodies in Jihad and 2 bodies in Ur. Tikrit -- 09:00 am: Police Force Lieutenant Colonel killed on his way to work in the Directorate of Inter-urban Motorways, 7 km to the east of Tikrit by gunmen driving a recent vintage Toyota. Hilla -- 08:30 am: IED explodes targeting a patrol of the Scorpion Force, killing one and wounding four in Nadir district in Hilla. Diyala -- Insugents Killed 5 civilians. In the town of Khalis, (20 km to the north of Baqouba) a group of insurgents attacked a fish farm in the district of Beni Saad. The owner of the farm, his father, their two partners (brothers) and a farm hand were killed and thrown to the fish in the fish pond. -- In the area of Imam Mohammed Al-Sakran, not far from Beni Saad, another group assassinated 3 civilians. It is noteworthy to mention that this is the second operation carried out by insurgents, after they assassinated the workers and guards of a petrol station on Wednesday last, who were five. Samarra -- IED explodes in a market place, Meryem, in the centre of the city and kills 2 civilians, early this morning.
Thank you for demonstrating the type of *debate* 4um members often employ.
Proudly bearing the neozio war mongering standard. BAC - come on - weekly standard? I would have hoped even you might have matured to reading a news source less TelAviv inspired...
LOL, doofus, it get's your attentention, Now let's go attack some Serbs, nigger! Come On! Do it!
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
PNAC ring leader William Kristol confronted on 9/11
"You can not save the Constitution by destroying it."
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
the only debate here is your chromosomal deficiency.
care to trade places with my son, Mr, Fuckin' Badass?
LOL, BaChooser is pretty godamned stupid now that I think about it...Who else would worship George "Dickhead" Bush?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070314/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_baghdad_security "Bomb deaths have gone down 30 percent in Baghdad since the U.S.-led security crackdown began a month ago. Execution-style slayings are down by nearly half. The once frequent sound of weapons has been reduced to episodic, and downtown shoppers have returned to outdoor markets — favored targets of car bombers."
They're sending the requested 3,000 on top of the 21,000 Bush requested - some sign of "progress." What't the deal, do they want to test the gas masks for chlorine?
From reuters, "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Civilian deaths and car bombs have fallen sharply in Baghdad since a U.S.-backed crackdown began a month ago, but attacks outside the capital were rising as militants change tactics, Iraqi officials said on Wednesday. In an upbeat assessment of the first 30 days of the security plan, Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad since February 14 was 265, down from 1,440 killed in the previous month. The number of car bombings, a favourite weapon used by suspected Sunni Arab militants fighting the Shi'ite-led government, was down to 36 from 56, Moussawi told reporters."
If your son is in Iraq, HE has my respect.
Why don't you sign up, go to Bagdad?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Those ever-optimistic neocons! When/if they bring the troops home, no matter the circumstances, we will be told we won the war, we were victorious. The many paralells between our neocon's and the old Soviet leader's behaviors and mindset never cease to amaze me. A truth and a lie make little difference, only agenda matters.
Help me steal the Litani River, hater.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Inspired? Nah. Transcribed.
From the same yahoo news article you quoted: But while many Iraqis are encouraged, they remain skeptical how long the relative calm will last. Each bombing renews fears that the horror is returning. Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents are still around, perhaps just laying low or hiding outside the city until the operation is over. U.S. military officials, burned before by overly optimistic forecasts, have been cautious about declaring the operation a success. Another reason it seems premature: only two of the five U.S. brigades earmarked for the mission are in the streets, and the full compliment of American reinforcements is not due until late May. In the months before the security operation began Feb. 14, police were finding dozens of bodies each day in the capital — victims of Sunni and Shiite death squads. Last December, more than 200 bodies were found each week — with the figure spiking above 300 in some weeks, according to police reports compiled by The Associated Press. Since the crackdown began, weekly totals have dropped to about 80 — hardly an acceptable figure but clearly a sign that death squads are no longer as active as they were in the final months of last year. In the 27 days leading up to the operation, 528 people were killed in bombings around the capital, according to AP figures. In the first 27 days of the operation, the bombing death toll stood at 370 — a drop of about 30 percent. Figures alone won't tell the story. In Vietnam, generals kept pointing to enemy body counts to promote a picture of success even when many U.S. soldiers and civilian officials realized the effort was doomed. True success will be when Iraqis themselves begin to feel safe and gain confidence in their government and security forces. Only then can the economy, long on its heels and with unemployment estimated between 25 and 40 percent, rebound and start providing jobs and a future for Baghdad's people. A long-term solution also must deal with the militias that sprang up after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Much of the relative calm may be due to a decision by Shiite cleric Muqtada al- Sadr to remove his armed militiamen, known as the Mahdi Army, from the streets. Al-Maliki warned the young cleric that he could not protect them from the Americans during the offensive. U.S. troops rolled into the Mahdi stronghold of Sadr City on March 4 without firing a shot — a radical change from street battles there in 2004. Some Mahdi Army fighters may have left the city. But Iraqis who live in Shiite neighborhoods say many others are still around, collecting protection money from shopkeepers and keeping tabs on people — albeit without their guns. When American patrols pass by, Mahdi members step into shops or disappear into crowds until the U.S. troops are gone. Sunni militants remain in some areas of the city too, although last year's sectarian bloodletting drove many Sunnis from their traditional neighborhoods, depriving extremists of a support network. If militants from both sects are indeed lying low, that suggests they may have adopted a strategy of waiting until the security operation is over, then re- emerging to fight each other for control of the capital. But positive trends in Iraq have proven hard to sustain. Hopes for reconciliation are quickly shattered. There have been a series of failed security initiatives. With so many uncertainties, public opinion appears mixed. "We gain nothing from this government. No change," said Abu Zeinab, a Shiite father of two in Baghdad's Hurriyah district. "Today is like yesterday. What is the difference?"
Says someone who accepts the lies when it comes to bombs in the WTC, no Flight 77, John Hopkins' claiming 655,000 Iraqi dead and DU is the scourge of the millennium.
If the media had reported WW2 the way they've reported this war, we'd have lost WW2.
How long have you been addicted to opiates?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Again, can you find the posts where I wrote of the bombs placed in the WTC? I'd like to see them since you've mentioned them before, I must've misremembered writing those posts so I'd like to get a reminder so that would be great if you can dig them up, thanks!
I simply said to ingest it causes health problems which is already known and well-documented.
Can you show us the posts where you've challenged the bombs in the WTC assertions? You've certainly been on enough threads where this was being discussed to have done so by now. So can you?
You've done more than that, Diana. One need only read this thread http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=47761&SC=1&EC=40#C1 to see that.
Psst....if the internet were around in 1941 the American public would have known quickly that FDR was aware - or should have been aware - of the Japanese attack on PH. He, like all good internationalists, despised our isolationism and used PH to join with England in world war.
Jews and their pets - click me
LOL, you get a +2 for prentending BAC is human.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Thank you for proving my point.
Hey BAC, what's this sound like to you?
Pearl Harbor Decption http://www.apfn.org/apfn/pearl_harbor.htm Sacrafice at Pearl Harbor
"You can not save the Constitution by destroying it."
BAC - there is no doubt that the ingestion od DU is a health hazard; no one disuptes that. It's all a matter of the form of ingestion & the assimilation of the particles, versus possible expulsion of those particles. You're beating a dead horse on this one; add tha stats of the disable vets. (You're just plain old "fucked-up,' BAC!)
The inside-job of 9-11 is the scourge of the millennium. (Whether you approve, or not, BAC!)
So Ooser, are you again trying to pass off Depleted Uranium (you know, the stuff that's contaminated with highly radioactive Plutonium and Transuranics) as being safe as cotton candy?
Stupid lying fucker would never eat DU unless we forced him, and I'm sure we'd be in the wrong in doing so regardless of all hims sins.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
No one is disputing that. What's disputed is how big a health hazard. REAL experts don't think it's anywhere near as big a health hazard as you folks. And you are just proving what I've said about 4um members. They seem to think foul language is a substitute for facts.
So, FormerLurker, are you again trying strawmen instead of facts?
How much DU have you been exposed to, twink?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
We did lose WWII. We allowed Communism to prevail, which contributed to far greater numbers of deaths than Fascism. In fact the event which triggered the start of WW II - the Germans invading Poland - speaks to our defeat - without a blink of an eye the communists claimed Poland and other Eastern European nations. The particularly sad thing about Poland was that its Christian citizens were killed by the Naziis in the same numbers as the Jews but to this day the World Jewish Congress is loathe to acknowledge that fact. "As historian Martin Gilbert pointed out, of the first 611 people who died at Auschwitz, 591 were Poles and 20 were Jews." The Poles were largely responsible for deciphering Enigma. Yet we let Stalin take Poland and its Eastern European brethren as part of his "spoils." http://www.holocaustforgott en.com/Lucaire.htm "We" hardly talk about that tragic result of WW II. Israel was born and Poland and other Eastern European nations were thrown to the communist wolves. Oh well. Substitute the words "gulag" for "concentration camp" and "Christian" for Jews" and you get the picture. Stalin and the communists walked away the big winners at the end of WW II.
spare me your lies, you worthless shit. YOU can shove your respect 'where the sun don't shine'. it's because of football head, bootlicking, wannabe Schutzstaffel like you that couldn't pull your own head out of your ass long enough to see you've been scammed over the last five years, that he has to be there in the first place. Fuck You, Pal!
And what strawman would that be BAC? You wish a link that describes the transuranics and how they got there? DU Contaminated With Plutonium and Neptunium "The contents of recycled uranium are exponentially more radioactive than pure, Virgin Uranium and pure Depleted Uranium. This mix of materials contains “transuranic elements, fission products, spent fuel products and nuclear activation products” of plutonium 239, 241, 242, uranium-236, and neptunium (and a host of other elements...) ...Both independent and government radiological analyses of DU penetrators collected from DU[21] battlefields have detected trace amounts of transuranics, including plutonium-239 in the metal. Independent studies have detected traces of uranium-236 in veterans’ urine; adding a new dimension to the inhalational exposure risks to veterans from recycled uranium elements." From US Dirty Bombs: Radioactive Shells Spiked with Plutonium "If it has been through a reactor, it does change our idea on depleted uranium," says Dr. Michael Repacholi of the World Health Organization, which has demanded to know how much plutonium is in DU ammunition. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is still working on an answer to that question. As early as January 2000, the DOE admitted that its DU munitions are spiked with plutonium, neptunium and americium – "transuranic" (heavier than uranium) fission wastes from inside nuclear reactors.(19) The health consequences here are fearsome: americium -- with a half-life of 7,300 years -- decays to plutonium-239, which is more radioactive than the original americium. DU "contains a trace amount of plutonium," said the DOE’s Assistant Secretary David Michaels, who wrote to the Military Toxics Project's Tara Thornton January 20, 2000. "Recycled uranium, which came straight from one of our production sites, e.g. Hanford [Reservation, in Richland, Washington], would routinely contain transuranics at a very low level...." Michaels wrote. "We have initiated a project to characterize the level of transuranics in the various depleted uranium inventories," he said. Dr. Von Hippel says in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that plutonium-239 is 200,000 times more radioactive than U-238. Plutonium "is probably the most carcinogenic substance known," according to Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of IEER, writing in his 1992 book Plutonium. International Physicians Against DU However there is another transuranic element like plutonium and as deadly called neptunium which is present in much higher concentrations [...] This material was mixed with contaminants that came from the reprocessed uranium from military reactors. The concentrations were as follows: uranium 236 – 188,000 parts per billion, technetium 99 – 270,000 parts per billion, neptunium 237 – 19,600 ppb, plutonium 238 – 0.0055 ppb and plutonium 239 – 124 ppb, americium – 0.43 ppb. 1 ppb is one part per billion, i.e. per one thousand million parts. Summing up, DU contains transuranics in the amount of almost 500,000 parts per billion, or 500 parts per million (ppm). The British nuclear physicist Sir Brian Flowers had grave concerns about plutonium in a 1976 UK Royal Commission report. Dr. Gordon Edwards from Project Ploughshares wrote in Plutonium, anyone? in the spring 1995 issue of The Ploughshares Monitor: A person inhaling a few micrograms of plutonium [...] is likely to develop a fatal lung cancer 10 or 20 years after exposure, as some of the cells damaged by alpha radiation begin to multiply uncontrollably. One microgram is one-millionth of a gram, that is, one milligram has one thousand micrograms. Dr. Edwards also wrote: A person who inhales just a few milligrams of plutonium -- a barely visible speck -- will die in a matter of months due to massive fibrosis of the lungs as delicate lung tissues, bombarded by alpha radiation, develop scar tissue, choking off oxygen to the blood. Death follows from a kind of internal asphyxiation. So if all “impure” specks of DU dust were ingested or inhaled, they alone could kill millions of people. The longer the deadly particles will linger unchecked for generations, the more chance that they would be taken in. Once inside the body, they work diligently at destroying cells and DNA. I doubt Ooser would want to visit a battlefield in the Balkans or Iraq.
Not as long as he enjoys an advantage by not doing so.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Oh, we are "....just proving", huh? You don't like us; get the fuck off this forum, asshole! Only you have attracted such consistently foul language; take a clue. {Christine, I don't think BAC "respects" you!}
So you agree about WWII, good. What I proved, and what you agreed to, is that presidents have lied our country into war. Can you say 9-11?
Jews and their pets - click me
some people just don't get it.
They seem to think foul language is a substitute for facts. too bad you don't recognize when you've been soundly and roundly facted. ;)
Thanks for the excellent resource. The greatest generation got suckered by a socialist. And it seems history is repeating itself in Iraq, only this time with an illiterate rapture monkey and legions of brain dead religious and political apostates.
Jews and their pets - click me
LOL, can I send you $3.75 to get BAC to do his Ned Beatty act?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Thank you. Thank you for demonstrating once again how irrational 4umers can be.
"Uncle Joe" Stalin was the big winner, hands down.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12 KJV
HE has my respect.
YOU can choke on it.
HE has nothing of value, there. All that is associated with you, BAC, is vile!
What's the problem, Formerlurker? Give up on Rokke? That link quote or link the views of any health physicists? No??? http://hps.org/documents/dufactsheet.pdf IPPNW: http://www.ippnw.org/DUStatement.html "peer-reviewed studies of health effects from natural uranium exposure are weighted against the probability that DU exposure, in and of itself, is likely to have caused an increase in leukemias or other cancers in the relatively short time since it has been dispersed in the Balkans environment"
Eat some DU, twink, just shovel it right in. Let's see you put your mouth where your money is.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
BAC: Thank you. Thank you for demonstrating once again how irrational 4umers can be. a. What -ism caused the greatest loss of lives in total in the 20th century? b. What -ism did we continue to fight long after WW II ended? c. Assuming that you recognize that the German invasion of Poland triggered the start of WW II, did we successfully liberate Poland by the close of WW II? Reflect on those answers and you will understand why "we" lost WW II - we defeated Hitler, but we enabled Stalin who was a greater evil to humanity and worse butcher than Hitler.
Of course they have always "downplayed" the dangers, as they wish to dispense it across their target areas. Do you dispute the fact that the DU projectiles do not JUST contain depleted uranium, but also plutonium, neptunium, U-239, U-236, and other highly radioactive transuranics? PURE DU would be hazardous by itself if aerosolized and inhaled (which is what happens to ground troops when walking through areas where DU projectiles have impacted armor), but with the added transuranics, it becomes EXTREMELY hazardous.
for what?
He's just one of many voices that speak the truth BAC. Something you wouldn't know much about.
Says someone who accepts the lies when it comes to bombs in the WTC, no Flight 77, John Hopkins' claiming 655,000 Iraqi dead and DU is the scourge of the millennium. If the media had reported WW2 the way they've reported this war, we'd have lost WW2. who's your messiah now, strawman.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Really BAC!! the Weekly Standard! that is a communist rag. and when American jew Rachel Corrie was killed in Palestine by the Israeli military running her over with a bull-dozer they actually said that she wanted to die in that manner because she liked pancakes and wanted to be flat like a pancake. You are an anti-American person to post anything from the Weekly Standard.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Four years ago, Iraqi poet Abbas Chaychan, a Shiite Muslim who'd been forced into exile during the predominantly Sunni Muslim regime of Saddam Hussein, hailed the American presence here in a poem that praised the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. "We have breakfasts of kabab and qaymar," he wrote, describing the new Iraq with a reference to a rich cream that's considered a sign of wealth. "We put, in your stead, Mr. Bremer / Better than a tyrant of our own flesh and blood, and his torture." Last January, shortly after Saddam was hanged, Chaychan again put words to paper. But his outlook had changed. "History is proud to write about him," he said of Saddam. "It wasn't a rope that wrapped around the neck / It was the neck that wrapped around the rope. ... "From his childhood he was a leader, stubborn and against the occupation." As the anniversary of the March 20, 2003, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq nears, many Iraqis, like Chaychan, are expressing nostalgia for the time more than 1,000 days ago when Saddam's statue stood proudly in Baghdad's Fardos Square. Chaychan's reading of his most recent work, in which he calls Saddam the Arab world's "knight" and compares his death to the eclipsing of the sun, has become a popular Iraqi destination on video-sharing services such as YouTube, where his pained voice rings out over a montage of shots of the Iraqi dictator: clenching his fist in the air, sporting his signature beret, at trial holding a Quran, with a noose around his neck. In a January interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes," President Bush told correspondent Scott Paley that the American invasion had taken "care of a source of instability in Iraq." "Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran," Bush said. "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision, in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had. But he was a significant source of instability." In interviews across Baghdad, few Iraqis agreed, however. Instead, they displayed a collective fatigue, even as another plan to bring about security got under way. They're tired of waiting for better days when each morning brings new terrorism. Trapped in their homes, afraid that death will knock, they're worn down, they said. Law and order - even under a bloody dictator who killed thousands and tortured many others - was better than this, many said. Even those who are glad to see Saddam dead expressed a longing for more orderly times. --- Layla Mohammed, a Sunni Muslim mother of three, remembered that heady day four years ago when a noose tightened around the neck of Saddam's statue. "I felt that I was at the highest point of a roller coaster, just about to plunge into what I hoped would be an exhilarating experience," Mohammed said. "I thought, `Oh, my God, it's happening. I live to see my sons set free.'" A pharmacist, she said she'd voted in all three elections that Iraq has had since Saddam was toppled: first for an interim government, then for a new constitution, then for a permanent government. She remembers dipping her finger in purple ink - to indicate that she'd voted - with her two sons and her daughter. Together they held up their fingers and took a family photo to commemorate their future democracy. "At that moment I felt that I was, at last, a sated human being. I had an opinion and it carried weight! I shall treasure that moment all my life," she said. "If only I could have that moment back; its joy was untainted. Now I know better." The life of freedom and liberty she was promised never came. Her sons are trying to flee the country. She can't afford to keep her house warm, and no longer goes to her pharmacy in the neighborhood of Hurriyah, a once mixed-sect neighborhood that was emptied of most Sunnis in December. "I have been conned," Mohammed said. When Saddam was executed she told herself, "There goes the one man who could stop this bloodbath. I thought we would have to pay oil for freedom and democracy, but not our life's blood. It's too much." She put her hand to her head. "It's too much." --- Ahmed al Yasseri, a Shiite, also remembers his excitement at the fall of Saddam. He excitedly set up a once-forbidden satellite dish. For the first time he watched Arabic news channels and foreign stations. He bought a cell phone and subscribed to an Internet service. Then his brother, a former officer in Saddam's army, was shot as he returned from his electronics shop in 2004. Yasseri's two nephews ran outside to see their father's body riddled with bullets. Yasseri fled his neighborhood looking for somewhere safer. Three months later his uncle was killed, caught in a crossfire as he waited in a long line to buy gasoline. Yasseri moved again. "In a short time you lose your dear ones, and for what?" he asked with despair. "Believe me, for nothing." Now his current neighborhood, Mansour, once an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad, has grown dangerous as well. The crowded Shorja market, where he works, is a tempting target for bombs: A triple car bomb there killed at least 67 people a few weeks ago. He travels nowhere but the path between home and work. Every moment he worries that he'll die in the kind of bombing that fills the morgue with body parts. "We envy the people who die in one piece now," he said. --- Saddam was caught nearly nine months after the invasion, hidden in an underground hole with a pistol. Bilal Ali, 40, a Shiite, remembers that night. He pulled out an AK-47 rifle that he'd received as a gift and fired into the air in celebration - a burst of pop-pop-pops - then handed the weapon to his mother, then to his 7-year-old son. "I shot five full magazines," he said. Each held 30 bullets. "Thank God, who blessed even the hearts of the martyrs in their grave, for this gift." But it didn't bring the peace that Bilal Ali, a shopkeeper in the Shiite area of Karada, had imagined. Car bombs became prevalent in Shiite areas. Shiites were afraid to pray in their mosques, and Iraqis were afraid to shop in outdoor markets, targets of the Sunni insurgency. Shiite militias struck back. Men, mostly Sunnis, turned up in the morgue, shot in the head, hands tied behind their back, drill holes in their bodies. The perpetrators eventually were linked to the Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police. Electricity grew scarcer, at first available for eight hours, then six, then as few as three hours a day. Salaries went up, but so did the cost of living. A tank of cooking gas soared to $60 on the black market. A lower price cost a day's wait in line. The use of a generator cost $100 a month. At $300 a month, wages hardly kept pace. Still, Bilal Ali is happy that Saddam was hanged. "I had hope at that time that life would be much better after his regime's collapse," he said. "But I'm very happy with his end even if the security situation is bad." --- Every morning as Mona Ali, a single Shiite mother, prepares sandwiches and breakfast for her three children she wonders whether they won't return to her. She leaves her 4-year-old son at home and tightly grips the hands of her two young daughters. On the daily walk to school, bullets sometimes have whizzed above their heads in the Shiite Amil neighborhood in west Baghdad. "There is fear in my heart every day that my kids will go and not come back to me," she said. Daily she walks to the neighborhood marketplace. On one trip, a car bomb ripped through the vegetable stands as she approached. The blood, the dead, the injured lay in front of her and she thought, it could have been me. She had a nightmare about her children as orphans. "I remembered the fear I had for my children and I realized I might not return safely to them," she said. "Baghdad is dirty. When it gets dark everybody hides in their houses just like rats," she said. Over and over again she repeated, "Baghdad is dirty." She remembers the bombing of the gold-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra more than a year ago. She knew the attack was different from all the others. "I felt bitterness in my heart that day," she said. "I knew that things would not rest; I knew that we shall have torment for a long time, and it was true." Shiite revenge killings soared. Neighbors soon couldn't live with one another. Sunnis feared Shiite militias and their dreaded checkpoints; Shiites feared the Sunni insurgency and its bloody bombings. People fled, and families were torn apart. Many, like Ali, feel numb to the pain, cheated out of the lives they expected. On the morning Saddam was hanged, Ali said, she wept. Not for the dictator, but for the death of her hope and the loss of confidence in a government that she thinks is worse than the one that came before it. "I want safety," she said. "Saddam's time was a safe time for us." --- Abbas Chaychan never returned to Iraq after the war. He remains an exile, part of an Iraqi diaspora that grows daily. As many as 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the war began, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Up to 1.7 million Iraqis have been displaced internally. It's the largest refugee movement in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948, the U.N. reports. About 8 percent of Iraq's population before the war has left; up to 50,000 more Iraqis are displaced each month. Bodies are stacked at the morgue, mothers weep and children are maimed. For four years Iraqis have waited for better days, and they weep for the time lost: no liberty, no freedom, just death. Chaychan's most recent poem doesn't lament Saddam's death as much as it pines for the era when he lived. "I cried & I didn't cry for you," he wrote. "I cried for the time that put you in a tomb." McClatchy Newspapers special correspondents Laith Hammoudi, Zaineb Obeid and Sahar Issa contributed to this report. for what, this?
Like telling audiences that he is a health physicist when, in fact, he is not?
********* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1530526.ece From The Sunday Times March 18, 2007 Resilient Iraqis ask what civil war? Marie Colvin DESPITE sectarian slaughter, ethnic cleansing and suicide bombs, an opinion poll conducted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq has found a striking resilience and optimism among the inhabitants. The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services. The survey, published today, also reveals that contrary to the views of many western analysts, most Iraqis do not believe they are embroiled in a civil war. Officials in Washington and London are likely to be buoyed by the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18. The 400 interviewers who fanned out across Iraq last month found that the sense of security felt by Baghdad residents had significantly improved since polling carried out before the US announced in January that it was sending in a “surge” of more than 20,000 extra troops. The poll highlights the impact the sectarian violence has had. Some 26% of Iraqis - 15% of Sunnis and 34% of Shi’ites - have suffered the murder of a family member. Kidnapping has also played a terrifying role: 14% have had a relative, friend or colleague abducted, rising to 33% in Baghdad. Yet 49% of those questioned preferred life under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to living under Saddam. Only 26% said things had been better in Saddam’s era, while 16% said the two leaders were as bad as each other and the rest did not know or refused to answer. Not surprisingly, the divisions in Iraqi society were reflected in statistics — Sunnis were more likely to back the previous Ba’athist regime (51%) while the Shi’ites (66%) preferred the Maliki government. Maliki, who derives a significant element of his support from Moqtada al-Sadr, the hardline Shi’ite militant, and his Mahdi army, has begun trying to overcome criticism that his government favours the Shi’ites, going out of his way to be seen with Sunni tribal leaders. He is also under pressure from the US to include more Sunnis in an expected government reshuffle. The poll suggests a significant increase in support for Maliki. A survey conducted by ORB in September last year found that only 29% of Iraqis had a favourable opinion of the prime minister. Another surprise was that only 27% believed they were caught up in a civil war. Again, that number divided along religious lines, with 41% of Sunnis believing Iraq was in a civil war, compared with only 15% of Shi’ites. The survey is a rare snapshot of Iraqi opinion because of the difficulty of working in the country, with the exception of Kurdish areas which are run as an essentially autonomous province. Most international organisations have pulled out of Iraq and diplomats are mostly holed-up in the Green Zone. The unexpected degree of optimism may signal a groundswell of hope at signs the American “surge” is starting to take effect. This weekend comments from Baghdad residents reflected the poll’s findings. Many said they were starting to feel more secure on the streets, although horrific bombings have continued. “The Americans have checkpoints and the most important thing is they don’t ask for ID, whether you are Sunni or Shi’ite,” said one resident. “There are no more fake checkpoints so you don’t need to be scared.” The inhabitants of a northern Baghdad district were heartened to see on the concrete blocks protecting an Iraqi army checkpoint the lettering: “Down, down with the militias, we are fighting for the sake of Iraq.” It would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. Residents said they noted that armed militias were off the streets. One question showed the sharp divide in attitudes towards the continued presence of foreign troops in Iraq. Some 53% of Iraqis nationwide agree that the security situation will improve in the weeks after a withdrawal by international forces, while only 26% think it will get worse. “We’ve been polling in Iraq since 2005 and the finding that most surprised us was how many Iraqis expressed support for the present government,” said Johnny Heald, managing director of ORB. “Given the level of violence in Iraq, it shows an unexpected level of optimism.” Despite the sectarian divide, 64% of Iraqis still want to see a united Iraq under a central national government. One statistic that bodes ill for Iraq’s future is the number who have fled the country, many of them middle-class professionals. Baghdad has been hard hit by the brain drain — 35% said a family member had left the country. Additional reporting: Ali Rifat ORB interviewed a nationally representative sample of 5,019 Iraqi adults between February 10-22. The margin of error was +/- 1.4%.
And you took this poll yourself, creep?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1530762.ece From The Sunday Times March 18, 2007 Iraqis: life is getting better Marie Colvin MOST Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today. The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week. One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today. Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month. By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias. More than half say security will improve after a withdrawal of multinational forces. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said the findings pointed to progress. “There is no widespread violence in the four southern provinces and the fact that the picture is more complex than the stereotype usually portrayed is reflected in today’s poll,” she said.
I've avoided this thread all day because I sniffed my screen and it smelled of Billy Kristol. Sure enough...neocon revisionism and disinformation. It's kinda fun to read, sorta like old Nazi propaganda. I took a course in college on Goebbels, and the most fun part of it was the newspaper reports from the Eastern Front, with glorious victories at every turn, grateful Russians flocking to join the German army, 17 year-old heros taking out whole divisions of craven Russians...it was a real trip. The next week, we had films of what was really going on. The German people must have noticed that hundreds of thousands went to Russia, and none came back. But they chose to believe Goebbels.
Can you show us the posts where you've challenged the bombs in the WTC assertions? You've certainly been on enough threads where this was being discussed to have done so by now. So can you? In other words, from the above post you answered me with, you looked back for such posts and to your consternation you found that I have written nothing on the topic of bombs in the buildings. That should teach you not to make assumptions or accusations without really checking first.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! That one's a real knee-slapper. Thanks, BAC.
for what? allowing you to be deluded in nationalism? ever heard of Philip Giraldi? Philip Giraldi from Cannistraro Associates has a column in the April 24 (print) edition of The American Conservative magazine about the story surrounding Sibel Edmonds. of course not. like Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson and Karen Kwiatkowski and many other former agency/military whistleblowers, you ignore them. learn something, tool.
This Marie Colvin? How Saddam's Agents Targeted Al-Jazeera - FrontPageMagazine, May 12, 2003 Are you insane? Nevermind, you've already answered that question.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
so now you grasp at "polls" for your validation. marvelous.
Bait and switch, bob and weave... It just so happens the topic of bombs is one that went by me.
A "projectible" poll of 5,019 Iraqis...hahahahahaha. Like they can even think of getting a cross-section in a country where power barely runs, phones rarely work, and most people would rather DIE than tell an anonymous voice, who may be a terrorist, what they really think. This was probably conducted with green zone employees, with a few Marines hanging around looking threatening. Job with shortest lifespan: Door to door canvasser in Iraq. Well, whattaya know, Marie, that one nearly made it to the end of the block.
siwwy wabbit, polls are for statists. huhhuhhuhhuh. ; )
One need only read this thread http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=47761&SC=1&EC=40#C1 to see that. Uh DUH....
I want BAC to tell us more about Iraqi National Congress.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
I like to think he is human, I really do, but sometimes I get to thinking he has a cold heart, maybe he is one of those lizard people David Ickes talks about. I don't know what to make of such a person.
How Saddam's Agents Targeted Al-Jazeera - FrontPageMagazine, May 12, 2003 Are you insane? Nevermind, you've already answered that question. Good find, Dakmar! HAHAHAHAHA. BeAChooser, since Marie speaks so favorably of conditions in Iraq, are you thinking of spending summer vacation this year at the Baghdad Hotel? Oh please say yes...
I think I just proved he works for Chalabi. :)
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
I'll toss in a free "Bring 'em on" Tshirt.
"BAC, Are you Human?" That sounds like the title of a song from a John Water's movie.
Stalin and the communists walked away the big winners at the end of WW II. Brilliant post scrapper. All too true.
You're incapable of having "respect" for anybody.
Well here's what Dr. Rokke has to say about DU. Dr. Doug Rokke Address on Depleted Uranium He says that he SERVED for the US Army as a health physicist. Do you have any evidence that he didn't? Regardless, it doesn't remove the transuranics from the DU the military is using as ammunition, does it.
Not that again.
Just in case you don't know, BAC is on this kick that only "health physicists" are capable of knowing the effects of DU on humans.
He's trying to say that Dr. Rokke is not a health physicist, so that makes anything that Dr. Rokke says less than credible. He always finds a way to discredit those that he likes to silence, well, almost always.. :) Regardless of Dr. Rokke's background, it doesn't change the fact that DU is in itself a radioactive material that can inflict DNA and celluar damage if inhaled, along with various other insidious effects due to its chemical toxicity. Add the highly radioactive transuranic contaminants, and you have a potent poison that can damage not only the people that have absorbed it, but their offspring in the way of horrendous birth defects. As far as Dr. Rokke, BAC has never demonstrated that he did NOT serve as a health physicist for the US Army. Judging from what Dr. Rokke has said concerning DU, I can see why BAC would like to shut him up..
He was good enough for the U.S.Army to originate their decontamination procedure, but not good enough for WhatALoser to be credible. ok, I get it.
and he prefers analysis from the U.N. and other international bankster grant-paid "scientists" instead? uh huh.
Right, that is how he works. He makes his own rules as he goes along, such as saying only health physicists are capable of knowing about DU, so that makes anyone else wrong, even those who are experts in the field. No one can ever win an argument with BAC because he operates on different principles than everyone else.
He's like a 3 year old in that he thinks he can get away with his lies and distortions which are very obvious to all. He gets angry when I point that out which I do from time to time.
Take a look at this: In Iraq there is a second structural imperative for the violence, equally compelling, though much less candid. Despite public utterances, there is good reason to think that one of the goals of the US occupation has been the political dismemberment of the country. The notion of a federal structure had been agreed at the London conference before the invasion took place under the guiding hand of current US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzid. The idea has been repeatedly endorsed in the pages of the New York Times (25 November 2003, 1 May 2006) by president emeritus of the Council for Foreign Affairs, Leslie H Gelb, a guru of US imperial strategy. A sectarian framework was superimposed on the new Iraqi state from the outset of the occupation, with political representatives made to take their place within government according to their language, religion, sect and ethnicity rather than by political programmes. Most importantly, the US installed as National Security Advisor (probably the most senior Iraqi military post in the land) Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a dedicated champion of partition, who has contemplated as many as six statelets within a loose federal structure. Now, with the growing backing of powerful political figures in the US such as leading Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Joseph R Biden Jr and the de facto endorsement of the outgoing British ambassador, the break-up of Iraq seems close at hand. With Iraq holding the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world, it’s not hard to see why three fractionalized polities might appear a more desirable outcome than a strong, centralized Iraqi state. Very interesting read: http://www.brusselstr ibunal.org/FullerJadiriyah.htm
Indeed. March 2007 is already the bloodiest March ever since the invasion as afar as US casualties is concerned. But the f___ing zionazi traitor couldn't care less about such small details.
Antiparty - find out why, think about 'how'
Oh. Maybe I just misinterpreted what you wrote here: ******** http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=45537&Disp=All[ BeAChooser - Currently, only one demolition expert in the world agrees with Griffin that Building 7 was a controlled demolition. Diana - Actually there are probably many others, but they dare not speak out as they value their lives and those of their families. ******* Then there was our conversation on the following thread ************* http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=46290&Disp=All&#C231 starting at post #37. BeAChooser to Jethro Tull - Give us the name of ONE structural engineer at BYU who supports Jone's theory. JUST ONE. Surely you can. Diana to BeAChooser in response to that statement - You've just proven your blatant dishonesty or ignorance or nacisissism or all combined by attacking the credentials of these scientists. BeAChooser to Jethro Tull - The structural engineering faculty in the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones. Diana to BeAChooser in response to that statement - Of course they don't, they don't want to lose their funding! ********* Try to convince us, Diana, that in the above you weren't defending the notion of bombs in the WTC towers. Because that's Jones' theory. That's the theory of the experts whose credentials I was criticizing. That's the theory of those on that thread you joined in to defend. I tell you what, Diana. I've give you a chance here and now to tell us you do NOT believe in the WTC bomb theories. Go ahead, prove me wrong. Or do you want to rest your defense on parsing your statements like Clinton?
Why not. Polls are all you folks have been grasping at all along.
Your not being honest, Diana. As the post above proves. I'm disappointed in you.
And we're ALL disappointed in you Ooser. We thought we'd get a better shill to bounce around, but you're rather inept and pathetic.
Isn't it amazing how many of you 4umers swear by a poll conducted by researchers who ADMITTED they dislike Bush and the war and who admitted that the people who conducted their survey HATE Americans? ROTFLOL!
You know Diana ... I really am trying to be civil with you. But you are making that hard.
You think so? Is the Soviet Union still around? And I'm curious. If we'd not gotten involved in WW2, who do you two think would have walked away the big winners?
Your floor must be all shiny and polished with all the time you spend rolling on it LOL. Maybe if you permeate your clothes with floorwax....
I'm trying to have respect for you. But you are making that difficult.
We've been over this numerous times before. Why do you pretend ignorance? To begin with, Doug Rokke was NOT a health physicist. He has a degree in EDUCATION. His calling himself a "health physicist" is like a garbage man calling himself a sanitation engineer. Nor did he get a degree in physics per se. And certainly not nuclear physics. He LIED about his credentials. ***************** http://www.ntanet.net/traprock.html Comments by Dr. Otto Raabe, Health Physicist, in regard to Doug Rokke The following text was published on the Radsafe list. It is from Dr. Otto Raabe, former President of the Health Physics Society. Dr. Raabe has far more education and experience in Health Physics than Doug Rokke. November 26, 2002 Davis, CA Last night I went to hear Doug Rokke's performance at the Davis Community Church concerning the "poisoning of whole nations by the use of DU munitions by the U.S. military". In his talk Rokke made numerous technical errors concerning uranium toxicology and health physics including saying that a beta dose to the skin of 300 mrem exceeded the standard for whole body exposure. I strongly objected to his misrepresentation of the DU toxicology facts during the comment period. I think my objections fell on closed minds, however, since this was a cultist group of "peace activists" who think disarmament of our nation will lead to peace. Rokke's stated purpose is to get the U.S. to stop using some of our best field weapons that employ DU projectiles. Rokke's performance was clever and polished. I think he has had professional drama coaching. Not since Helen Caldicott have I heard such masterful manipulation of the audience. He credited himself at every turn with being highly principled while always casting the U.S. military as nefarious and cold-blooded. He claimed he was fired by the government because of his dedication to health and safety. Much of his talk involved references to toxic chemicals released by our military action in the Gulf War, contaminated food provided by the Saudis, and claimed poisoning of people by DU dust. He said he was a "health physicist" (BAC - which proves Rokke is the ultimate source of the lies identified in this post) and implied that he had a Ph.D. in physics by reference to being in his "physics lab" while working on his doctorate. Actually, his doctorate is in "Education Methodology", which I got him to admit during the questioning. He is certainly not a qualified health physicist. According to reliable sources, he is currently a substitute teacher in a middle school in Urbana, Illinois, and a director of a children's camp in the summers (BAC - this pro-Rokke source, http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Rokke-Depleted-Uranium-DU21apr03.htm, confirms that). Rokke said that in the Gulf War he was the "Director of the Army Depleted Uranium Project," and that virtually everyone who worked on the project was sick from exposure to DU. The diseases and ailments that he claimed for DU conflict with 50 years of research on DU toxicology and with the findings of the Department Defence who are carefully evaluating military personnel who were exposed to high levels of airborne DU aerosols. See http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii Unfortunately, the audience of about 100 people were enthralled with Rokke and angry with me for objecting to his erroneous statements and misrepresentation, but I think it was important to cast some doubt on this charlatans's proclamations. Otto Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D. CHP ***************** And he LIED about his role in Iraq. ************* http://www.ntanet.net/traprock.html 30 Dead or Zero Dead? Military Spokesman Contradicts Fatalities Claim by Doug Rokke I recently received an email (indirectly) from a military source having the following email address: (special.assistant@deploymenthealth.osd.mil) The gist of the email is that Doug Rokke's claims about the health effects in members of his gulf war clean up team are not accurate. I decided to see what I could find on the Internet about those claims before posting this government response. The most common claim, attributed to Doug Rokke, is that 30 members of his "100 member team" have died, with the implication being that the death was from depleted uranium. Here is a typical quote where the information seems to come from Doug Rokke. This article is by Larry Johnson in the Seattle Post - Intelligencer but it is certainly not the only one as there appear to be dozens of similar texts on the Internet: "Rokke and his primary team of about 100 performed their cleanup task without any specialized training or protective gear. Today, Rokke said, at least 30 members of the team are dead, and most of the others -- including Rokke -- have serious health problems". ... snip ... ......................................................... The following information from the military "Special Assistant on Deployment Health" paints a quite different picture. Unless Rokke can come up with the names of most of the 30 who he alleges have died, I will have to believe the government information, rather than Rokke's claim. Rokke seems to have exaggerated both his role and the number of people who have died since the cleanup. Here is the email from the official government source: End of quote. My comments: It seems that as of 1998, not a single member of the team had died of exposure to uranium, contrary to Rokke's claim. Before posting the above text, I contacted Doug Rokke and asked him to comment on this material. He refused to say anything in support of his earlier claim that 30 people had died from his organization and instead showed an intense desire to change the subject. ******************* From this Australian government document: House:Legislative Council Statement Date Wednesday, 13 August 2003 ... snip Lancelin Defence Training Area HON FRANK HOUGH (Agricultural) [5.39 pm]: In early July I was made aware of a brochure that was being circulated in Lancelin by the Greens (WA), which was titled “Depleted Uranium: The Silent Killer”. I listened to the Liam Bartlett show on the radio and heard people say that their property values had halved because the Americans were using bombs with uranium tips in Lancelin, which would contaminate the water. I obtained a copy of the brochure issued by Hon Dee Margetts. It states that Dr Doug Rokke, a United States expert on depleted uranium, visited Lancelin on 6 July 2003. It also states, in part - "Dr Rokke was a major in the US Army and former head of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project, responsible for training US personnel in preparation for Gulf War I in terms of their exposure to environmental hazards including radiation. Dr Rokke holds a PhD in Philosophy and a Master of Science." I was rather annoyed when I read that. It was obviously based on information the member received and not from either Senator Robert Hill or the United States Consul General in Perth, Oscar De Soto. I took the time to write to Oscar De Soto and Senator Robert Hill. My letter to the Consul General states, in part - "I am writing to seek the Consulates assurance that the United States of America has not used and will not use Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions at the Lancelin Defence Training Area (LTDA) in Western Australia." I received a reply from the Consul General this morning. It states - QUOTE: "Thank you for your letter dated July 17 regarding Depleted Uranium . . . Firstly, let me make clear that the United States, as a matter of policy and practicality, does not use DU munitions at the Australian Lancelin Defence Forces range. DU munitions are seldom used in training anywhere because they are too costly to expend for training. Furthermore, the U.S. military uses the Lancelin Range only infrequently, and only by invitation of the Australian Government. When U.S. forces use the range, it is always jointly with Australia and in compliance with all Australian laws and environmental rules. The U.S. military utilizes Australian environmentalist planners on each and every use. Secondly, Dr. Doug Rokke has made exaggerated and untrue claims during his visit to Australia. Dr. Rokke has exaggerated his background. He is not, and has never been “the foremost U.S. military expert on DU,” as he was described in the June 18th Canberra Times. He is not a medical doctor. His Ph.D is in education. He earned a Ph.D in Science/Technology Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana in 1992." If he was finishing his PhD in 1992 he was certainly not, as Hon Dee Margetts claims, running the Gulf War as a major in 1991. He was still at university. The letter continues - QUOTE: "Dr. Rokke did not join the U.S. as a medical officer in 1967, as reported in the Canberra Times. He joined as an airman, an avionics technician. According to the Department of Defense, Dr. Rokke was not “in charge of cleaning up radioactive waste” after the 1991 Gulf War, as was described in a June 18th ABC broadcast. As a First Lieutenant, Dr. Rokke was assigned to the 12th Preventative Medical Detachment of the 330th Medical Brigade prior to and during the war. There were 66 people assigned to the unit; he was the most junior of 14 officers." He was one level from being a gopher! He was a junior lieutenant. That is a long way from being a major. They have different pips. He may not have been able to distinguish them! The letter continues - QUOTE: "Initially, he was responsible for conducting nuclear, biological and chemical training." Hon Peter Foss: He sounds like a fraud. Hon FRANK HOUGH: He does. Others sell snake oil. They get carried away. What is worse is that they get mixed up with the Greens (WA) and try to pull the wool over our eyes. I know I could go to America and become Surgeon General and an honorary brigadier and take people for a ride. The people in Lancelin should not be subject to charlatans who tell them their water is full of depleted uranium. The letter from the Consul General concludes - QUOTE: "In closing, let me reiterate that the U.S. military does not use DU munitions in Lancelin. I urge you to share this information with your constituents and other Members of Parliament. . . . Yours sincerely, Oscar De Soto, Consul General of the United States of America" I spoke to the consulate office this morning and I was guaranteed the information is very accurate. The consulate probably has a system linked with the Central Intelligence Agency to pull the records. The details of the letter were not made up overnight. The Consul General took three and a half weeks to research the situation. He was quite clear in determining the facts. Another part of the letter states - QUOTE: "While Dr. Rokke presents himself as an expert, this does not make it so. His role in the 1991 Gulf War, at the US Army Chemical School, and his educational background do not qualify him as an expert on the purported health effects of depleted uranium. . . . It is important to make a clear-cut distinction between Dr. Rokke’s technical qualifications and those of certified medical health physicists who are qualified to assess the medical implications of radiation exposures." The member should apologise to the people of Lancelin. She has been badly misinformed and badly misinformed them. She should write to the Consul General and apologise sincerely for having a go at the US Navy. We have enough problems with trying to establish relationships with other countries without having to deal with this type of rubbish. If she is not prepared to do that, she should enjoy life as something other than a parliamentarian. She is abdicating her responsibilities by putting out this type of rubbish and putting fear in the hearts of people who live in the broader community. This is one of the ploys that people work through. Another part of the letter states - QUOTE: "Regarding allegations in the pamphlet that the U.S. Navy plans to establish a permanent base at Cockburn Sound in Western Australia as part of the Sea Swap program, I can confirm the United States has no plans to establish a base in Western Australia or anywhere else in Australia. The Australian Marine Complex at Cockburn Sound is a Western Australian public-private commercial project. If the U.S. Navy uses the Complex for maintenance, it will be on the same terms as any other customer. That Dr. Rokke’s baseless claims regarding DU are associated with the U.S. Navy’s activities in Western Australia appear aimed at provoking anxiety and perpetuating disinformation in the community." I am extremely annoyed. I think I have contained myself very well. I have been rather humble and subtle in this because this type of rubbish has got to cease. People must not go to the broader community rumour mongering and making up stories for the betterment of their own. I often see the fairy-floss dancers on the sand hills at Lancelin at night dropping petals. I have people ringing me saying their house at Lancelin has halved in value. These are the people they appeal to. I hope my house at Lancelin has not halved in value, because I know who I will be chasing for the other half of the value. I believe the member might be getting a pay rise! **************** http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0311/msg00401.html Dear Editor: I thought that you might want to correct some errors and false implications in your article, "Nuclear physicist to give presentation on weapons at Franklin College." Doug Rokke is a retired U.S. Army Reserve major. He did not retire from the Regular Army. He is not old enough to collect his Army Reserve retirement pay. He is not a nuclear physicist and he is not a health physicist. He is occasionally employed as a substitute teacher. It appears his primary function is to travel around the world getting paid for speaking against depleted uranium. He was not a director of the U.S. Army depleted-uranium project. No such project with that name ever existed. In addition, he was not a director of anything else as far as I know. He is a Gulf War veteran, not a Gulf War combat veteran. He was never involved in combat. As background information, I am a nuclear physicist and a health physicist, have been a director, am retired from the Regular Army, and was in combat in Vietnam. I do not consider Rokke my peer in any of those areas. I realize that you were passing on information given to you to publicize the event. Hopefully, my corrections will indicate that the speaker has an agenda that tends to ignore the facts. Robert Cherry, Ph.D Certified Health Physicist Colonel, U.S. Army (retired) ************* He LIED, FormerLurker. About virtually everything. But you insist on believing him. On citing him as an expert. What does that say about you?
Yes, that again. Why are you folks so eager to believe liars?
Just in case you don't know, Diana is on a kick of misrepresenting what I say (and what she has said).
No, what I said is that Dr Rokke LIED about being a health physicist ... because he and the folks who asked him to speak at various BAN DU meetings thought that would make him more credible to the rubes that attended those meetings. Is that it? Just "never mind" that he lied to folks like you ... about his credentials, about his activities in Iraq, about the claimed death of those he worked with? Funny that not one health physicist ... the folks whose specialty is that topic ... agrees with *Dr* Rokke or you about he dangers posed by DU. Not true. What I posted to FormerLurker about Rokke's Army career has been posted numerous times ... even here at 4um. In contrast, all we have to support his claims about his career in the Army is HIS WORD. The word of a man who has openly LIED about being a "health physicist". One should laugh at anyone gullible enough to still believe Rokke after learning that.
He didn't. He LIED about that. Rokke was a First Lieutenant assigned to the 12th Preventative Medical Detachment of the 330th Medical Brigade prior to and during the war. There were 66 people assigned to the unit; he was the most junior of 14 officers. He didn't originate anything. He LIED about being a health physicist. His degree was in EDUCATION. He lied about 30 of his associates dying from DU.
You only embarrass yourself when you do, Diana. You do that instead of face the fact that you've been deceived by the likes of Rokke, Jones, Roberts ... and the folks at 4um who support their allegations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/340944.stm Sci/Tech As debate intensifies over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons in the Balkan conflict, a former Pentagon adviser has come out against them. He is Dr Doug Rokke, a US health physicist who led the DU clean-up in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq immediately after the Gulf War. In 1994, Dr Rokke, an Army Reserve captain, was appointed director of the Pentagon's DU project, a job he left in 1997. He helped develop an education and training programme, and conducted tests on DU explosives in the Nevada desert. The Pentagon has confirmed that A-10 aircraft are using DU rounds in the war with Serbia. They are extremely heavy, and are used for their armour-piercing capability. Veterans from the 1991 conflict believe DU, which is both radioactive and toxic, may help to explain the existence of Gulf War Syndrome. Levels of radioactivity They point to reports from southern Iraq of much higher levels of stillbirths, birth defects, leukaemia and other child cancers. And the Rand Corporation says its study of DU "found little documented evidence of adverse effects", from either radiation or toxicity. It points out that DU is much less radioactive than natural uranium. 'Burning dust' But Dr Rokke told BBC News Online it had been mislead by Major Baggio. Dr Rokke says the force of the impact of a DU round converts much of it into a spray of burning uranium dust. "Consequently, we have DU dust which is a radioactive, heavy, metal poison on or within the equipment", and it is scattered up to 25 or 50 metres away. He says anyone who has inhaled or ingested this dust, or who has let it enter a wound, will need immediate medical treatment. A senior officer of the US Defense Nuclear Agency said in 1991 that radiation from fragments and intact DU rounds was "a serious health threat". He said there was "a possible exposure rate of 200 millirems per hour on contact". "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's maximum limit ... is 100 millirems per year." "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12 KJV
You're the one that brought up Rokke, not I. My original post was well sourced material indicating that the DU used in munitions is contaminated with highly radioactive transuranic elements, including plutonium, neptunium, U-239, U-236, and others. My post had nothing to do with Rokke, it is you that used him as a straw man. Additionally, I'm not so sure if your "sources" are credible as much of what you posted is based on anonymous sources, or people that are not speaking officially for the US Army. And BTW, there is no such rank in the Army as a "junior lieutenant", as one of your sources claimed Rokke to be. It is either 2nd lieutenant or 1st lieutenant. So what's all that say about YOU, eh?
Oh, so it's FIRST lieutenant now and not JUNIOR lieutenant, eh? Get your story straight.
They're not the "best" weapons when they poison the people that use them.
The facts do not depend on Dr. Rokke for their validity; the facts are the facts, regardless. And again, I did not even mention Rokke in my original posts on the topic, it is you that pulled him out of your straw hat to divert attention from the facts I had posted.
So you're telling me that there isn't one "health physicist" that finds U-239 and Plutonium to be harmful to human life?
I often wonder if Dr. Rokke is a deliberate plant that is out there making these sorts of statements for the sole purpose of discrediting the facts concerning DU, where disinfo artists such as you can later say, "see, this guy is a liar, so everything he says must be a lie". It might work on those unaware of the level of deception used by people like you, but it doesn't fool those that ARE aware. It simply validates the idea that there is an active campaign in place to discredit any real info on the topic.
In 1994, Dr Rokke, an Army Reserve captain, was appointed director of the Pentagon's DU project, a job he left in 1997. So the BBC reported him to be a health physicist for the US Army having a rank of captain. Well, you'd think the BBC would comfirm that info before reporting it, and if untrue, there would be an official US Army statement rebutting the assertions. Seems like BAC's source that claimed Rokke was a "junior lieutenant" is a bit off.. :)
Here's something for you to ponder BAC.. From Pentagon stance on DU a moving target 4/30/99 Scott Peterson Amid official attempts to nail down 'protection guidelines' for those confronting depleted uranium, Gulf War veterans press for clarity. And the prospect of DU's use in Kosovo raises the stakes. A soldier's boots are often treated with sacred regard, once they carry a warrior safely through combat. But for one US soldier, who volunteered for his Gulf War tour, Mark Panzera, his boots were the first sign that something was very wrong. He was an Army mechanic in the 144th Service and Supply Company of New Jersey, which in 1991 prepared US tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles that had been hit by "friendly fire" for shipment home. This front-line equipment had been inadvertently hit by American gunners shooting radioactive depleted-uranium (DU) bullets at what they thought were Iraqi tanks. For weeks after the mistake, the 144th worked at a salvage site in Saudi Arabia, getting into every corner of every vehicle to recycle equipment, wearing T-shirts and shorts, eating on and sleeping beside the vehicles. Suddenly one morning, Mr. Panzera recalls, before his team began work, two experts arrived looking like astronauts, wearing hooded masks and suits - and carrying radiation detectors. Before the two unexpected visitors approached the vehicles, they first ran their instruments over the awestruck mechanics. Their clothes were contaminated, but Panzera's boots especially set the detectors crackling. The dust left over from the impact of DU bullets hitting the tanks had clung to the cleanup crew. "'You're hot,' they told us, and I asked: 'What do you mean?' " Panzera remembers. "I was angry. Nobody tells you nothing, and the next day you are contaminated." Later, Panzera received an official letter confirming his exposure to DU radiation. He has been seeking government compensation for what he says is DU- related illness. Mixed messages from the top By the Pentagon's own admission, its policy toward use of DU weapons has been inconsistent. Several military and independent reports describe the potential danger of DU particles trapped inside the body, though most deem the overall risk to be "acceptable." Strict federal and military rules govern every aspect of DU use and decontamination. But the Pentagon today calls its own regulations - based on US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) guidelines, which require masks and suits when dealing with DU contamination - "total overkill." In 1993, a report from the US General Accounting Office, the government's investigative arm, found that Army officials "believe that DU protective means can be ignored during battle." Then, in 1995, all four branches of the US military approved a multimedia DU training kit. In January 1998 it was endorsed as "impressive" by the deputy secretary of defense, John Hamre. The kit, obtained by the Monitor through the Freedom of Information Act, said "the greatest threat is during open-air, live-fire testing. We can call combat a great big open-air, live-fire test." An area hit by DU "remains contaminated, and will not decontaminate itself." The kit was never issued, and it is now under review. "They [the NRC] have their own standards. The military's [standards] are under review," says Bernard Rostker, the Pentagon's special assistant for Gulf War illnesses. He first raised doubts publicly only last August. He said the "extremely restrictive" NRC rules are "poorly suited" to war, and "need to be rewritten." Reasons for backing DU Critics say the Pentagon has reasons for its apparent downgrading of DU dangers: The bullet pierces enemy armor like no other, it's cheap, and any confirmed link with health problems could trigger a flood of compensation and reparations claims. And the cost of cleaning up DU residue in the Gulf would be prohibitive, as well. The price tag for removing 152,000 pounds of DU in the now-closed, 500- acre Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana has been estimated to be $4 billion to $5 billion. More than four times that amount of DU was spread during the Gulf War, over a significantly larger area. "The government is institutionally incapable of telling the truth on this matter," says Bill Arkin, a former military intelligence analyst and columnist for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His analysis: DU is too troublesome for the Pentagon to keep in its arsenal. In January 1998, Rostker reported that "failure" to alert troops to DU hazards "may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures," but said those exposures "had not produced any medically detectable effects." Angry veterans say that DU could be a reason that an estimated 1 in 7 of them report a set of symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome, and have pushed their case on Capitol Hill. They estimate that hundreds of thousands of troops were exposed to DU during the fighting or on post-battle tours of the front line. Climbing on destroyed Iraqi tanks was a favorite activity, along with collecting war souvenirs. Among other sources, the veterans point to a 1990 report commissioned by the US Army that links DU to cancer and also makes clear that "there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero." They also remember Pentagon reluctance to divulge health hazards in the Vietnam War. "This [DU] is the Agent Orange of the 1990s - absolutely," says Doug Rokke, a former Army health physicist who was part of the DU assessment team in the Gulf War, and DU project director for the training package. Underscoring the official inconsistencies, Sen. Russell Feingold (D) of Wisconsin said in September that the Pentagon's "assertion that no Gulf War veterans could be ill from exposure to DU ... contradicts numerous pre- and postwar reports, some from the US Army itself." As much politics as science In a sign of the Pentagon's own confusion, Rostker told a White House oversight panel last November that he was "misguided" to issue so strong a statement - that ruled out DU as a cause of Gulf War Syndrome - in an August report. "I stand corrected," he stated. The problem seems as political as it is scientific: "Misinformation disseminated by both the Iraqi government and the US Department of Defense has made analysis of DU impacts difficult," notes Dan Fahey, Gulf War veteran and author of an extensive DU report for veterans' groups published last year. Protection guidelines for handling DU are as difficult to establish as a single speed limit for every American road, says Ron Kathren, director of the US Transuranium and Uranium Registries in Richland, Wash. But NRC guidelines "are in fact adequate" for DU, he says, and "if they are 'overkill,' that's OK, too. I'd rather err on the side of safety." Col. Eric Daxon, a senior Pentagon radiation expert with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, said in an interview that the military needs to come up with its own "acceptable risks" of DU, compared to the other threats of combat. Protecting soldiers from DU can also put them at risk during battle, he said. Gas masks and suits can overheat a soldier and impair vision. The goal today is to keep exposures "as low as reasonably achievable," he adds. "Reducing the total risk ... of getting shot, of getting wounded, of getting long-term cancers" is the new aim, he says. "We are really trying to balance all of those things." As the Pentagon now weighs the use of DU munitions in NATO's war against Yugoslavia, the debate about the risks of DU is certain to escalate. "I think we have been inconsistent," says the Pentagon's Rostker in the interview. "We published a standard ... that is inconsistent with the hazards of DU." Disillusioned As those arguments continue, Panzera has had several operations and health problems that he attributes to his DU exposure. Worried about taking contamination home before he left the Gulf, Panzera cut holes in his uniform and exchanged it for a new one. He left his soldier's boots "in the middle of the desert." "I guess they are waiting until half of us are dead before they give in," he says, echoing the view of many US veterans whose patriotism has long since given way to cynicism. "My volunteering days are over."
He LIED about being a health physicist. His degree was in EDUCATION. Rokke was an officer, correct? How did he get to be an officer, BAC - did he pin badges on his chest all by his own lonesome? You know I looked up more info about the hallowed profession of health physicists that you refer to and by golly I discovered that the biggest and best paying employers of this particular profession are government ( Department of Defense)and national laboratories, as well as government contractors. Now if I'm not mistaken that presents a bit of a conflict for the profession - ie. biting the hands that feed them. http://hps.org/docume nts/2006_hps_salary_survey.pdf Also, "If you desire national recognition as a health physics professional, you may seek certification at either of two educational and experience levels. Certification may be obtained from the American Board of Health Physics (ABHP) and, for technicians, through the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists (NRRPT)." http://hps.org/publicinfo rmation/hpcareers.html Major Rokke may not have received official accreditation but experiencially he was a health physicist based on his employment with the US military and likely could have been accredited if he chose to pursue it. Btw, I checked into Rokke's official military records - he has them posted on various sites - and as of 86/06/05 under the "Principal Duty" column, the US Military refers to him as NUC Med Sc Off and then on 91/03/25 he is referred to as "Theatre Health Physicist" and as of 92/09/15 he was referred to as EXECUTIVE OFFICER and as of 94/08/01 he is referred to as Project Director ( USACMLS) and from 95/11/30 to 98/11/20 he is referred to again as NUC MED SCIENCE OFF. So go figure Dr. Rokke must have been held in high regard by the US Military - he got promotions. Also I read an official letter of introduction of 1LT Rokke to CPT's Armstrong, Brannon and Carter dated 12 Dec 90 and the letter seems to be quite flattering about specifically "the technical expertise" of 1 LT. Rokke, a 68B with the 12th PVNTMED. Once again - go figure - the US Military evidently didn't believe Dr. Rokke was a "liar" BAC as you are in the habit of referring to him, and of yes, in the same breath you pretend "to support our troops." HAHAHA - Mr. ooozer ( it is Mister, yes? not 1st lieutenant or any other military designation, yes?)- anyways MISTER BAC, you have a strange way of showing support for our military when you name call one of them "liar." Nice. P.S. Rokke's PhD thesis is entitled "Perceived Physics Concepts needed to teach Secondary Technology Education as General Education" - his thesis was over 350 pages long - I guess Rokke can't be too stupid about physics concepts. And your PhD, BAC, is in what field?
You're really stretching it. I was defending the credibility of scientists you were attempting to riducule, kind of like you do with DU and "health physicists". That's kind of different than talking about bombs, as my technical knowledge in that area is not very good, that's why that topic skips over my head. It's like accusing me of talking in Chinese about something when I don't speak Chinese. Defending scientists is different than talking about bombs, though I suspect you already know that.
Are you serious?
You know Diana ... I really am trying to be civil with you. But you are making that hard. I was only kidding about you being a David Ickes lizard person, but sometimes you make it hard to be civil when you are so rude.
Everyone. Nazi Germany would have been destroyed regardless, and the Soviet Union would not have become strengthened, and millions of Eastern Europeans, Baltics peoples and additional Russians would not have died. IMO. Japan would have imploded in time as well.
Where'd he gooooooooooooo
diana: Everyone. Nazi Germany would have been destroyed regardless, and the Soviet Union would not have become strengthened, and millions of Eastern Europeans, Baltics peoples and additional Russians would not have died. IMO. Japan would have imploded in time as well. Exactly, diana. Thanks for pitching in - I had lost track of BAC challenging me on this. Russia lost 17-20 Million soldiers ( prodded onwards by the NKVD) fighting the Germans. In the course of battles, Russia ended up destroying 3/4 of the German ground forces. We stepped in after Hitler made his strategic error - Hitler's defeat was determined as soon as he decided to attack Russia. The Brits survived the Battle of Britain. The Brits were winning on the African front. America came in for clean up duty and to fight the Japanese. We lost approx. 300,000 men in WW II. Britain lost 600,000. Russia lost 17-20 Million. Can you imagine such numbers of losses? There's no doubt that Stalin and his communist government would have fallen right after the Russian-Eastern European fighters changed their focus from defeating the Germans to bringing down Uncle Joe and hanging him in Red Square along with his NKVD officers. Churchill and FDR gave communism an extension on life. Nothing much is written about the Eastern European lives that were condemned to servitude under communism generally or immediate death in the Soviet gulag camps. Oh well...
ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Doug Rokke is NOT a health physicist. His claim that he was is a LIE. As is most everything he told your source, robin. But I guess since you bozo'd yourself, you shall remain clueless. And now you want Diana to join you in that state.
finally! a thread that allows you to show off your expertise. you are a genius BAC. Everything you say is right. I read everything you write. thank-you BAC.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
See information in my message #121. Btw, I checked into Rokke's official military records - he has them posted on various sites - and as of 86/06/05 under the "Principal Duty" column, the US Military refers to him as NUC Med Sc Off and then on 91/03/25 he is referred to as "Theatre Health Physicist" and as of 92/09/15 he was referred to as EXECUTIVE OFFICER and as of 94/08/01 he is referred to as Project Director ( USACMLS) and from 95/11/30 to 98/11/20 he is referred to again as NUC MED SCIENCE OFF. So go figure Dr. Rokke must have been held in high regard by the US Military - he got promotions. Also I read an official letter of introduction of 1LT Rokke to CPT's Armstrong, Brannon and Carter dated 12 Dec 90 and the letter seems to be quite flattering about specifically "the technical expertise" of 1 LT. Rokke, a 68B with the 12th PVNTMED.
Yet you've tried to defend him, even having been previously posted everything I've posted on this thread about him ... and more. That leads me to suspect the veracity of any source you might offer. If you'd have at least acknowledged that your first source, Rokke, was a liar about his credentials and other claims, we might be able to begin a rational discussion. But a rational discussion to find the truth about any subject cannot be built on a foundation of lies and misinformation. That's what I've been trying to tell you 4umers. False. The sources I've offered who have made statements about Rokke have been named. HON FRANK HOUGH called him a "junior lieutenant". But the official reply from the US government he read before insulting Rokke in that way said he was a FIRST Lieutenant and the JUNIOR OFFICER of the 14 officers in the unit. And ALL you have to support his claim he was anything else is HIS WORD ... the word of a man who LIED about his education ... his credentials.
Yet on DU site after site, we find Dr Rokke being prominently quoted as an expert. Yet, clearly Dr Rokke has lied about his credentials and anyone doing even a modest internet search will discover this. So why don't those sites correct the misinformation and stop using him as an expert? Because the truth doesn't matter to them. Only the agenda. And the facts aren't the facts they cite. Otherwise there'd be a few REAL health physicists to support their claims.
I haven't said or implied that at all. Strawman. Is that all your side of this debate has? That and running being a bozo filter ...
Logic of last resort ...
Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist. When the Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a passionate voice for peace, travelling the country to speak out. The following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors All right, asshole; show us that Rokke is anything else, than advertised - or is this another of your famous LIES?
Guess they didn't. Wouldn't be the first time the mainstream media got it wrong. ************ From another Australian Government Document HON FRANK HOUGH (Agricultural) [4.44 pm]: On Wednesday night I asked Hon Dee Margetts for an apology for the rubbish she released around Lancelin about Dr Rokke and depleted uranium. Hon Dee Margetts put out a brochure that states - It went on to say that - It also says that Dr Rokke was a former head of the Pentagon etc. On the other page it states - Hon Dee Margetts: I did not say he was a former head of the Pentagon. Hon FRANK HOUGH: The brochure states - Hon Dee Margetts: Right! Thank you! I did not say - Hon FRANK HOUGH: The member should not get so excited. In the brochure it states that Dee Margetts - It then refers to the recent visit and the sea swap trial. The Greens (WA) have an apparent hatred for the American Navy, farmers, miners and small business. I would like to get to the bottom of it and the matter of the member’s friend, Dr Rokke, the expert. As the honourable member says in the uncorrected proof of Hansard of 13 August - In Dr Rokke’s address on depleted uranium in the The San Francisco Times he states - He goes on about destroying uranium and states - Who is Dr Rokke? We find out that Dr Rokke is a schoolteacher. A letter to me from the Consul General of the United States, Oscar De Soto - sounds like the name of a motor car - states - The people of Lancelin are very upset about what is going on. The honourable member has raced into Lancelin and the bullpen, thrown in a red rag, and run like buggery. I am left to sort it out with the residents in my home town, who are worried about the depleted uranium etc. Let us go on about Dr Rokke and his boss. Who is his boss? It is Robert Cherry, PhD, certified health physicist, and a retired US Army colonel. What does he say about Dr Rokke? In a letter of his to The Age he states - It could have been Dr Joke - Dr Rokke had been saying how sad it was that he had lost friends in Desert Storm, but apparently they are all alive and well! The letter continues - There is a letter from another boss to the editor, which reads - ************* Too bad robin will remain clueless about the above...
By all means, link us to those records he's supposedly posted. By all means.
But I do that to support a position on the topic being discussed. You mean to say you don't have a position on the topic being discussed? You just join in to defend the credibility of the scientists? Why don't you do that with structural engineers when RickyJ calls them ALL morons?
Who would have destroyed Nazi Germany, Diana? Because of what?
So go figure Dr. Rokke must have been held in high regard by the US Military - he got promotions. Also I read an official letter of introduction of 1LT Rokke to CPT's Armstrong, Brannon and Carter dated 12 Dec 90 and the letter seems to be quite flattering about specifically "the technical expertise" of 1 LT. Rokke, a 68B with the 12th PVNTMED. very good Smear tactics are all that's left, the facts are plain.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12 KJV
BAC - you asshole - you consistently cherry-pick out-of-context statements to "allude" to the possibility that the facts might not be the facts; then leap as though you actually discovered something. The rest of the world knows Rokke's credentials - YOU prove otherwise - as in factual evidence, not in terms of, "Can you prove your wife isn't cheating on you?" You're a total fuck-head, BAC!
After the war, Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop listed three main reasons for Germany's defeat (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4508901.stm ): (1) unexpectedly stubborn resistance from the Soviet Union, (2) the large-scale supply of arms and equipment from the US to the Soviet Union, under the lend-lease agreement, and (3) the success of the Western Allies in the struggle for air supremacy. Consider this. During the war the US supplied the Soviets with 450,000 lorries. And that's just one category of support. "After the collapse of the Soviet system, Russian historians were able to look into the archival files and total up the real figures. One study, by M.N. Suprin, calculates the caloric content of Lend-Lease foodstuffs sent to the USSR, divides the total by the caloric needs of the Red Army and arrives at a stunning conclusion: "The foodstuffs provided by Lend-Lease to the USSR would have sufficed to feed an army of ten million men for 1,688 days, that is, for the course of the entire war." Another study, by Boris Sokolov, which translates as THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR, estimates that the US supplied 92.7% of the USSR's railroad equipment, including locomotives and rails, and from 15% to 90% of production in all other categories. Weeks, who reads Russian, surveys these recent studies and cites them to show that Lend-Lease was indeed "Russia's Life-Saver." (http://www.amazon.com/Russias-Life-Saver-Lend-Lease-U-S-S-R-World/dp/0739107364 ) "Bombing diverted a lot of manpower and military equipment from the front in Russia, while it restricted the expansion of the German war economy." To suggest they, on their own, could have beaten Nazi Germany is highly optimistic. Especially since in technology, Germany was far ahead of the Soviets. A time would have come when that advantage in technology was decisive. The reality is that Britain is a island, and it was completely dependent on the US help to provide the materials needed to battle the Axis and to get those materials to the island. Without the US taking sides to make sure that materials were available and arrived, Britain would have been starved out in no time. Prior to our entry in the war, the US provided huge quantities of arms and other materials. The US turned over destroyers to Britain to fight the submarine menance. US ships were involved in prewar shooting incidents to protect the British supply line. The ONLY thing keeping Britain afloat was US assistance. Had we sued for peace, the Axis would have starved them out and eventually unleashed weapons that were far ahead of everyone else on them. The Second Battle of Britain would have been a far different engagement. ROTFLOL! There you have it folks ... scrapper's view of our role in WW2. But we weren't going to fight the Japanese. Under your presidency, we were going to apologize to Japan after they attacked Pearl Harbor (after all, we forced them to do it) and sue for peace to avoid hundreds of thousands of dead and the economic costs of fighting such a war. The media would make sure of it. Right?
Provide links to what you CLAIM.
robin ... listening to only one side of a debate yet thinking she has the whole story. ROTFLOL! Say robin ... be sure to ask scrapper to a link for what he CLAIMS.
BAC, do your own research. I did my research to satisfy my own curiosity. It doesn't take much finger power, BAC. For instance, I found these directions/options right off wikipedia. Go from here, BAC. Tah tah. "Rokke's actual military records and doctoral thesis have been posted to theveteran2@yahoogroups.com and teachnonviolence@yahoogroups.com. Anyone can also request the military records using the Standard Form 180 and the process detailed at the Department of Veterans Affairs website http://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/. This site gives instructions to submit a SF 180 - Request Pertaining to Military Records. Rokke's doctoral thesis is available in the University of Illinois Library at Champaign-Urbana." I don't have Dr. Rokke's permission to post links to the pdfs in their entirety. But you can read the identical formal documents I read by following the instructions given in wikipedia...that is, if you want to learn the truth. I suspect you'd rather keep to the smear-untruths posted on the web per weekly standard/newsmax military desk jockey warriors. Weren't you blubbering all over yourself a day ago telling Hammerdown how much you respected his son for serving in the military? But somehow you find it soooo easy to diminish the service of Dr. Rokke, who also served in the military - and why is that BAC? You respect only some military but not all military or you respect military all except whose last name begins with "R" or maybe you respect military only if they don't speak out against the instances when the DOD knowingly puts soldiers' health at risk re: DU exposure? What are your exceptions to the rule for "respect" you show the US military? Btw, I'm not sure if you read this article - some cut and paste: http://ww w.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/17/1050172706047.html "Scientists reject line on depleted uranium April 19 2003 By Paul Brown London Hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium used by Britain and the US in Iraq should be removed to protect the civilian population, the Royal Society - Britain's premier scientific institution - says, contradicting Pentagon claims it is not necessary. The society's statement fuels the controversy over the use of depleted uranium, which is an effective tank destroyer and bunker-buster but is believed by many scientists to cause cancers and other severe illnesses. The society was incensed because the Pentagon had claimed it had the backing of the society in saying depleted uranium was not dangerous. In fact, the society said, both soldiers and civilians were in short and long- term danger. Depleted uranium is left over after uranium is enriched for use in nuclear reactors and after reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Thousands of tonnes of it are stored in the US and Britain. Because it is effectively free and 20 per cent heavier than steel, the military experimented with it and discovered it could penetrate steel and concrete much more easily than convential weapons. It was adopted as a standard weapon in the first Gulf War despite its radioactive content and toxic effects. It was used again in the Balkans and Afghanistan by the US. Depleted uranium has been suspected by many campaigners of causing the unexplained cancers among Iraqis, particularly children, since the previous Gulf War. Chemicals released in the atmosphere during bombing could equally be to blame. The UN Environment Program has been tracking the use of depleted uranium in the Balkans and found it leaching into the water table. It has recommended the decontamination of buildings where depleted uranium dust is present. Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group on depleted uranium, said a recent study by the society had found that the soil around the impact sites of depleted uranium penetrators might be heavily contaminated. "We recommend that fragments of depleted uranium penetrators should be removed, and areas of contamination should be identified and, where necessary, made safe," he said.
'you folks' who? what polls? only polls on this thread are sited by you, cheerleading enabler.
"Why not. Lies are all you folks have been grasping at all along."
since when was the topic of this thread DU and Doug Rokke? Says someone who accepts the lies when it comes to bombs in the WTC, no Flight 77, John Hopkins' claiming 655,000 Iraqi dead and DU is the scourge of the millennium. yeah, just couldn't help yourself, right?
again with fairy tales from the paid government propagandist... nice try, Silver Shirt. Inter Press Service Read story on website BAGHDAD, Mar 15 (IPS) - Many Iraqis are now looking to local political leadership to fill wide gaps in a fractured government that is failing to provide security and basic needs. Continue reading "Give Us Some Real Political Leaders" Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 03:47 PM Inter Press Service Read story from website BAGHDAD, Mar 12 (IPS) - The security conference held last Saturday in Baghdad produced statements, drew mortar fire, and brought little hope of security. Continue reading "Security Meet Ends, Insecurity Does Not" Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 06:09 AM Inter Press Service Read story from website BAGHDAD, Feb 13 (IPS) - Violence and bombings have only increased after the proposed "surge" of 21,500 U.S. troops in Iraq. Continue reading "More Troops, And More Violence" Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 06:55 PM Inter Press Service Read story from website NAJAF, Feb 12 (IPS) - New evidence is emerging on the ground of an Iranian hand in growing violence within Iraq. Continue reading "Iran 'Fooling' U.S. Military" Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 12:50 AM The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau. Baghdad -- Around 9:30 a.m. a roadside bomb exploded in Al-Mustansiriyah square (not far away from Al-Mustansiriya university) targeting an Iraqi police vehicle. The blast killed one Iraqi policeman and injured two other policemen and two civilians. -- Around 1:00 p.m. random gunfire by gunmen near Al Rusafi square targeting civilians claimed the life of one civilian and injured two. -- Around 4:45 p.m. a parked car bomb exploded in Al Shaab neighborhood near Shalal market. The blast targeted civilians and claimed the lives of three civilians and injured seven. -- Around 5:50 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy in Al Kamalia neighborhood. the blast damaged one Humvee, Iraqi police said. -- Police found five unidentified bodies throughout the capital. All the corpses were found in the western side of Baghdad (Karkh). The number of corpses found in each neighborhood as follows: Two dead bodies in Dora, two dead bodies in Amil and one in Saidiyah. Diyala -- Around 2:30 p.m. gunmen attacked a mini bus carrying passengers was heading to Baghdad in Hibhib town of Al Khalis (20 Km north of Baqouba). The attack claimed the lives of 7 (including one child less than two years old and 2 women) and caused severe injuries to 4. -- Iraqi police patrols found one dead body in Shafta area in Baqouba. Basra -- Two gunmen were killed in a clash with the British forces in Al-Hussein area (8 Km west of Basra) early morning today, Iraqi police source said. Q&A: BERKELEY, United States, Mar 16 (IPS) - Author of the upcoming book "The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis", due for release in September from Polipoint Press, Reese Erlich recently spent three weeks investigating Kurdish resistance organisations in Iran and Iraq's Kurdish region. He tells IPS that "the United States is officially funding armed groups to overthrow the Islamic government" in Tehran. In an interview with IPS's Omid Memarian, Erlich, who has covered the Middle East as a freelance journalist for the past 20 years and co-wrote 2003's "Target Iraq", says that Washington's strategy is primarily focused on media propaganda -- such as websites and satellite television and radio stations -- but also includes covert military training. Iraq's Mercenary King Bush's Book List Gets More Islamophobic Iraq: Former Premier Pushing New Plan For Reconciliation Surge Numbers Approach 30,000 if you were even a quarter less cluless than the Chamberlains you source, you might have a chance, but I doubt it.
Doug Rokke is a fellow who spent 30 years in the US Army. The army tasked him to look at depletetd uranium issue and to do some cleanup. He did his job. And now he is sick from it. and I am one who does know that you are aware of all this - you do have sympathy for Rokke's health plight just as we all do as well. But to me that is enough credentials combined with the fact that he is very intelligent and has information and experience to back up what seems to me an 'expert' view on this subject. when the army sent him into that DU field to do clean-up and he learned the hard way it kills people, that is all the credentials he needs.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
b. ROTFLOL! There you have it folks ... scrapper's view of our role in WW2. a. While the lend-lease program helped Russia, it wasn't all rosey for us ( ie. America, in case you get confused about the nation I'm speaking about, BAC). If you had looked at the next reader comment to the one you cut and pasted from re: the amazon title, you might have discovered that the lend-lease program was not exactly in America's best interests or in the interests of the world - Stalin, the bloodiest Dictator of the 20th century - and that Professor Weeks paints Roosevelt's role in helping Stalin as somewhat questionable: "...But Prof. Weeks doesn't stop there, he also paints a lively picture of the political developments leading to the decision of President Roosevelt to come to the rescue of the bloodiest Dictator of the 20th century, Joseph Stalin, in his fight against his opponent and recent collaborator, Hitler. Prof. Weeks also demonstrates that Stalin was actively working through the channels of his espionage agencies to influence the US administration to deliver material aid to the USSR (he cites the Venona decrypts and material from Russia, most notably the NKVD's "Operation Snow"). It becomes clear that the large-scale infiltration of various US government branches by the Soviet espionage agencies played an important role in the speedy decision to send vast amounts of military and civilian goods to Stalin's Soviet Union. Stalin also ordered his agents to obtain military secrets from the US, both before and during the war, even when the Soviet Union was a nominal ally of the US. At times, aid to the USSR was given priority over aid to Britain by President Roosevelt. Roosevelt's dubious and naive role in his dealings with Stalin is presented in some detail as well. Weeks also shows that Stalin always rightly understood the might and potential of the American economic potential. US technical assistance had already played a major role in the mechanisation of both the Soviet agriculture and the Red Army. Stalin has been able to use the huge "tractor factories", built with the help of Ford, among others, to establish the necessary industrial base for the mechanisation of his huge tank forces before the outbreak of the Second World War..." b. It's not just my view. There are a multitude of books that allude to the same thing. In fact, the Brits and Canadians in particular and Europeans generally take offense over the bravado and swagger of chest beating tinhorn macho men like yourself, BAC, who claim it was America that won the war. Au contraire. America's entry helped but the war was already on the way to being lost by Hitler due to his choice to attack Russia. That meant Hitler was committed to fighting on 3 fronts. The Germans were doomed. The British maintained naval superiority and had survived the Battle of Britain - no way would Hitler take Britain. Rommel was getting his butt kicked on the North African front. And if the US had not jumped in - Russia would have finished off Hitler and soon after Uncle Joe would have fallen - the communists could not have survived the uprising of their own people and the Eastern Europeans if FDR and Churchill had not backed the Stalinists' villanous asses and called them "allies." As for Pearl Harbor -HA! -faux reason that caused 300,000 US servicemen deaths including the 2500 at Pearl Harbor - American boys' blood on FDR's hands - read the book "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert Stinnett. From Amazon " Robert Stinnett served the U.S. Navy with distinction during World War II examines recently declassified American documents and concludes that, far more than merely knowing of the Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt deliberately steered Japan into war with America." c. And you still have not answered my question, did we liberate Poland at the end of the war - the matchstick that triggered the start of WWII - if there's any single measure of who won the war, it's who liberated Poland, yes? Also, you don't seem too concerned about the millions upon millions of Eastern European Christians who were doomed to Uncle Joe's brutal rule and gulag camps. Oh well. They're only Catholics and Orthodox Christians - they don't count much in your books, BAC. They are not "special." d. As for Japan - the Russians beat them up pretty good as well - they crushed their supply lines. http://www.ncesa.org/html/hirosh ima.html "Hiroshima: Historians Reassess" by Gar Alperovitz Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34. Copyright 1995 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
It is amazing the number of people who died from wars and communism during the 20th century!
And other totalitarian govts such as nazis I should add.
Hitler was a small time evil as compared to Uncle Joe and his communist compadres, who were the bigtime genociders. The communists took blood letting very seriously. There's good reason for why they were associated with the color red. What the Naziis did in the concentration camps was unforgiveable but the communists murdered many many many times what Hitler did - and oddly enough there never were any Nuremberg style Trials held to bring them to justice. Nazii-fixated folks like BAC probably view Catholics and Orthodox Christians as being disposable, forgettable, not special so why bother faulting Uncle Joe and the communists? Uncle Joe was "our" ally after all as well as his swell NKVD who kept the Russians and Eastern Europeans marching forward, never to turn back. That's jolly good Russian nationalism, BAC would claim.
Japan would have imploded in time as well. Because of what? Regimes ruled by insanity can't last. Most everyone has been taught that all the Germans loved Hitler, and he killed 6 million Jews, which all the gentiles in Europe were so happy about. Nothing is further than the truth; he killed millions of people, he imposed impossibly high standards on all the civilians, made them snitch on neighbors, threw people in camps for the slightest infractions, raided other countries, it was a demonic regime and demonic regimes including Japan and Cambodia in the 1970s can only last so long. They are not the natural state of things. Germany and Russia would have continued to fight and could have worn each other down to the point where both countries could have ended up with humane regimes. At least nazi Germany ceased to exist, but as we know Soviet Union was only empowered and millions across Europe died who otherwise would probably not have, that is what I think. I realize among some only those 6 million matter, some have strong religious/tribal beliefs which tell them only their people matter, but the fact is many millions of all kinds of people died causing much grief, misery and destruction.
The German people and their neighbors would have tolerated only so much. There would have eventually been uprisings and the nazi regime overthrown, even without the help of the Soviets. The German and Austrian people were increasingly miserable in spite of what the History Channel tells us, it would only have been a matter of time, and a very short time at that. And they became furious when they found out how much they had been lied to by their govt, and how some very bad information such as pertaining to the camps had been kept from them. Another thing, will triumphs over technology every time.
This happened near the Amsterdam airport: On 4th October 1992, at about 6.30 in the evening, El Al flight LY 1862, a Boeing 747-200 crashed into a block of 12-story flats in Bijlmer, on the outskirts of Amsterdam, killing its crew of three, a "non-revenue passenger", and at least 43 people on the ground. Because some of the people in Bijlmer were migrants, who were without documents, the full number of victims remains unknown. According to Seán MacCárthaigh, of the Irish Times, who arrived shortly after the crash,"The El Al plane had scythed through the top five stories of two buildings; about 40 flats took a direct hit. Then a huge fireball rolled through the complex and apartment after apartment popped into flames.... A giant cloud of choking white smoke engulfed the area." What this choking smoke consisted of was a mystery. From day one, right up until 1998, the Israeli government insisted that there was "no dangerous material on that plane. Israel has nothing to hide." This did not however explain why, after the crash, over 850 Bijlmer survivors - residents, police and rescue workers - sought treatment for a host of maladies including fatigue, breathing problems, hair loss, neurological ailments, mental confusion, depression, encephalomyelitis and disabling joint pains. Over several years Dutch newspapers and citizens groups searched for further details in the face of what seemed evidently to be a series of cover ups. Then, on October 4, 1998, the Dutch newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, published a leaked copy of a page from the plane's cargo documentation. According to the leaked paperwork, Flight 1862 was carrying 10 tons of chemicals, including hydrofluoric acid, isopro-panol and dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) - three of the four chemicals used in the production of sarin nerve gas. The DMMP, supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc. of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, was destined for the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Nes Ziona, outside of Tel Aviv. IIBR is the Israeli military and intelligence community's front organization for the development, testing and production of chemical and biological weapons. Once again there were lies and a cover up. Israel maintained that the chemicals were to be used to test gas masks - but only a few grams would be needed for such tests. In fact, there were enough chemicals on Flight 1862 to produce 270 kilos of sarin - sufficient to kill the entire population of a major world city. There was more - once again with lies from the powers that be. In the months following the crash, the Dutch citizens' group Onderzoeksgrep Vliegramp Bijlmermeer (OVB) reported how, "in addition to the cocktail of toxic chemicals that came free during the disaster," traces of uranium, zirconium and lanthanum had turned up in soil samples taken from the crash. Worse, there were traces of uranium in faeces samples taken from survivors. One year after the crash, the Laka Foundation, an independent Dutch nuclear research group, revealed that the El Al jet - like all Boeing 747s - carried 1,500 kg of depleted uranium (DU) onboard in the form of counterweights in the tail fins, horizontal stabilizers and wings. DU is an extremely dense metallic by-product of the production of U235, the fissionable uranium isotope used to manufacture nuclear weapons and fuel. It contains residual amounts of radioactive U235, the less radioactive U238 and trace amounts of U236. A Boeing document has acknowledged that swallowing or breathing DU dust can cause "a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue." DU has been implicated as a cause of Gulf War Symptom - a series of physical and mental debilities remarkably similar to the symptoms reported by the Bijlmer survivors - as a result of the use of depleted uranium shells in that conflict. Large areas of Iraq have also been contaminated and large numbers of children have died with cancers. DU oxidizes at temperatures as low as 350 C. The fire at Bijlmer, fuelled from the airplane itself, reached 1100-1400 C. In response to concerns the Dutch government issued a report which assured the public that the counterweights had remained intact and never posed a threat to health. However, LAKA published its own findings that only 163 kg of the 430 kg of depleted uranium on the plane had been recovered. The shock from this rebuttal triggered the demand for a full Dutch Parliamentary inquiry. The Bijlmer hearings were chaired by Christian Democratic opposition deputy Theo Meijer and was televised weekly. A phone line for psychological counselling was necessary for many viewers. At the committee hearings it came out that an El Al cargo flight between New York and Tel Aviv touched down every Sunday evening. The flights were never displayed on arrival monitors and the documentation for the flight was processed in a special unmarked room. According to the testimony of the Dutch Attorney General, Vrakking, the El Al security detachment at Schiphol was a branch of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. A Dutch Air Guidance Organization employee told the hearing that the "policy" since 1973 was to keep quiet about all El Al activities. Schiphol workers testified that El Al planes were never inspected by customs or the Dutch Flight Safety Board. Maintenance workers were uncomfortable about clearing Flight 1862 for take off as there were many "carry over items" on the maintenance sheet that were uncorrected - but their supervisors had ordered them to clear it for take off. The Dutch press reported that security officials had been waving Israeli air cargo through Schiphol since the 1950s. Shipping the kinds of chemicals aboard LY1862 ordinarily would be a violation of the Chemical Weapons Treaty (which the US has signed). By refueling the jets at commercial, rather than NATO airfields, a way was found around the military treaties. "Schiphol has become a hub for secret weapons transfers," according to Henk van der Belt, an investigator working on behalf of the Bijlmer survivors. "Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over Israeli activities at the airport." A Televisieproduktie Amsterdam (TVA) report identified Schiphol as one of several European airports that allows El Al to transfer cargo without supervision. TVA claimed that Belgian politicians now fear that "a disaster like the crash in Holland in 1992 is possible at [Belgium's] Zaaventem. This airport is, like Schiphol, under control by the secret police of Israel."
So you're telling me that there isn't one "health physicist" that finds U- 239 and Plutonium to be harmful to human life? I haven't said or implied that at all. Strawman. That is EXACTLY what you have implied, as my post was concerning the contamination of DU used by the military for munintions based upon a DOE report. The contamination consisted of plutonium, neptuniuam, U-239, U-236, and other transuranic elements. Your first post to me on the subject was a rant about Rokke, who is your favorite strawman whenever facts concering the dangers of DU are mentioned. You are a LIAR, just as you always were.
Trolling 101: When confronted by superior facts and logic, demand more proof.
Yes, let's see what Wikipedia has to say about Doug Rokke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Rokke Major Douglas Lind Rokke PhD Education, University of Illinois, 1992, served in the Vietnam War in the USAF as an avionics technician. He then served in the Illinois National Guard where he was decorated for saving the lives of accident victims he found alongside the road on his way home from a monthly drill. First Lieutenant Douglas Rokke was activated for the Gulf War and served predominantly in Riyadh. After the Gulf War, he was attached to a team headed by a senior Army civilian employee that was involved in assessing armored vehicles hit by depleted uranium armored penetrators. After he completed his doctoral degree, he was activated to serve a voluntary active duty tour at the US Army Chemical School, Fort McClellan, Alabama, where he was the liaison officer with a contractor who was preparing training materials about Depleted Uranium. As a GS-13 civilian employee, Rokke directed instruction at this school. He was terminated from that employment while on probation. Rokke commonly refers to this period of work as his being the Director of the Army's depleted uranium program. Rokke has exaggerated that as well as most other aspects of his involvement with the Army and Depleted Uranium. Guess you missed that ... huh? Do you need permission given that they've been posted on a public forum? And did the person who posted them have his permission? Or are you just saying Rokke posted them? You know, the guy who dishonestly claimed he was a "health physicist" to uncounted anti-DU groups? Go ahead, scrapper. Post the pdf's that Rokke claims are his official records. By the way, did you see the material I posted from the Australian government website that quote official communications with the US government and Rokke's military commanders ... stating that most of Rokke claims about his background in the military are outright false? Let me post some of it again: ******** Yet another Australian Government document you folks will ignore: HON FRANK HOUGH (Agricultural) [5.39 pm]: In early July I was made aware of a brochure that was being circulated in Lancelin by the Greens (WA), which was titled “Depleted Uranium: The Silent Killer”. I listened to the Liam Bartlett show on the radio and heard people say that their property values had halved because the Americans were using bombs with uranium tips in Lancelin, which would contaminate the water. I obtained a copy of the brochure issued by Hon Dee Margetts. It states that Dr Doug Rokke, a United States expert on depleted uranium, visited Lancelin on 6 July 2003. It also states, in part - I was rather annoyed when I read that. It was obviously based on information the member received and not from either Senator Robert Hill or the United States Consul General in Perth, Oscar De Soto. I took the time to write to Oscar De Soto and Senator Robert Hill. My letter to the Consul General states, in part - I received a reply from the Consul General this morning. It states - He was one level from being a gopher! He was a junior lieutenant. That is a long way from being a major. They have different pips. He may not have been able to distinguish them! The letter continues - Hon Peter Foss: He sounds like a fraud. Hon FRANK HOUGH: He does. Others sell snake oil. They get carried away. What is worse is that they get mixed up with the Greens (WA) and try to pull the wool over our eyes. I know I could go to America and become Surgeon General and an honorary brigadier and take people for a ride. The people in Lancelin should not be subject to charlatans who tell them their water is full of depleted uranium. The letter from the Consul General concludes - I spoke to the consulate office this morning and I was guaranteed the information is very accurate. The consulate probably has a system linked with the Central Intelligence Agency to pull the records. The details of the letter were not made up overnight. The Consul General took three and a half weeks to research the situation. He was quite clear in determining the facts. Another part of the letter states - The member should apologise to the people of Lancelin. She has been badly misinformed and badly misinformed them. She should write to the Consul General and apologise sincerely for having a go at the US Navy. We have enough problems with trying to establish relationships with other countries without having to deal with this type of rubbish. If she is not prepared to do that, she should enjoy life as something other than a parliamentarian. She is abdicating her responsibilities by putting out this type of rubbish and putting fear in the hearts of people who live in the broader community. This is one of the ploys that people work through. *********
Now there's an *unbiased* source. (wink) Perfect for the 4um. ROTFLOL!
BeAChooser, lets play pretend. Regarding this weekends US military casualities, if you were President, how would you explain their deaths to their families?
Jews and their pets - click me
Where do you get that nonsense, RJ?
. . . Yours sincerely Oscar De Soto Consul General of the United States of America Uh huh, this says it all...LOL..."let me reiterate that the U.S. military does not use DU munitions in Lancelin." Thanks but I'll stick to Dr. Rokke's military records. You did not bother to access them, did you?
I didn't suggest that Stalin was a nice guy. Or not a problem himself. I'm only saying that had we not helped the Soviets and the British, Hitler would likely have won WW2. And then where would we be today? I didn't say or suggest that either. You folks seem to rely mostly on strawmen. What I said is that without US help, Hitler would have won the war against Britain and the Soviets. There is a difference although perhaps its too subtle for you? No, the only thing that kept the Soviets afloat was support from the US. US built equipment moved their army and supplies. US foodstuffs fed their army. And US support of the UK and the threat of US invasion keep large portions of the German military from moving against the Soviets. The Soviets hung on by a thin thread and US support was vital to keeping that thread from breaking. Like I said. Without US support Britain would have starved. The British won the Battle of Britain primarily because of radar superiority and the failure of Germans to recognize its use. But by the end of that period, German technology in radar, aircraft and many other fields had far surpassed that of Britain (and the US). The Second Battle of Britain would have been much different had the US not been a partner to the British. British morale was high ONLY because the convoys were still getting through. Without US help to ensure that happened, Britain would have ended up isolated, starving and vulnerable once again. Oh ... is that why in May 1942 Rommel won a stunning victory at Gazala and captured Tobruk? Because the British were kicking his butt? Is that why he drove them back to Egypt? Because they were kicking his butt? The Battle of Alam el Halfa, which finally turned things around, took place between August 30 and September 6, 1942 ... 9 months after the US joined the war. The US invaded North Africa in November 42. It was Operation Torch which broke the back of the Germans in Africa. And guess who did it? An American general named ... Patton. But had there been no US help and Britain was still hanging on by its own thin thread ... Two can play this game. Had Hitler been deposed, German generals would have been free to fight the war as they saw fit. A very good case can be made that it was Hitler's mistakes against Britain, in North Africa and against the Soviets that kept Germany from winning in each case. And Hitler was lot closer to being deposed than Stalin ever was. With the US out of the picture perhaps the Generals would have seen the light? You only prove my point. Folks like you would have ensured the US didn't enter the war had the media of today reported the situation back then like it has reported the WOT. Or at least guaranteed that the mantra "FDR LIED, GIS DIED" would have ensured we lost that war or sued for peace before US might was really felt. ROTFLOL! I hate to tell you this, but your allies against the Iraq war, liberal democRATS and other leftists, are the ones who in the 80's and 90's wanted to appease and learn to live with the Soviet machine. It took a Republican President, a Catholic Pope and good ol' Margaret to bring it down. And when did this happen? Oh yes ... long, long, long after the US entered the war when US forces were knocking on Japan's door. I guess you missed that little detail.
yeah, he's one of 'those people', right? laugh it up, dickbag. while you're down there, you might want to pick some more trash from the Horowitz peanut gallery.
Oh please. Have you nothing but strawmen to offer? The ISSUE is whether the Germans would have defeated the Soviets had the US not helped them in WW2. The ISSUE is what would the world look like today had that happened. Keep in mind that the Germans were only a little behind America in the race for the bomb and that race was given urgency here in the US primarly because we were at war with Germany. Had that not been the case, Germany might well have beaten the US to its development. And you may not know this but at the end of 1945, the Germans had a bomber that could fly to the US and return. That bomber could easily have carried nuclear weapons. Like I said to you folks. What then?
Really? The Soviet regime lasted the better part of a century. That's enough time to do a lot of damage, Diana. Do you honestly think that had Germany and Japan won WW2 due to the US staying out of it, they'd have just ignored the US for all those years until they collapsed? Really??? (high squeaky south park voice with head tilted) Another strawman. No one is now being taught ALL Germans loved Hitler. The Soviets, which as scrapper has pointed out was just as bad or worse, lasted most of a century. And they didn't just ignore us, Diana. Neither would the victorious Germans or Japanese. You have got to be kidding. ROTFLOL!
Like happened in the Soviet Union? Like has happened in Communist China? Forget the Soviets. They are gone in your alternate world. The Germans defeated them using technology that even the US didn't have at the end of WW2. One would think the Soviet and Chinese people, being as miserable as they were for decades, would have revolted like you claim the Germans would have. Is that so? Then surely Saddam should have beaten us during the First and Second Gulf wars.
No that is not what I implied (or said). In fact, let me post something you were posted previously (back in LP days) that proves you aren't being truthful. ************* **************** http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1101.html Q: What is your opinion, as a professional health physicist, about the use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition in war operations? A: Human health risks from exposure to DU can be broadly categorized in terms of radiological or chemical toxicity. Because of DU's low radioactivity or specific activity, a very high exposure is required to increase the radiological risk. For example, an acute inhalation of gram quantities of respirable DU aerosol would be needed. This would only be possible for soldiers present in armored vehicles struck by DU penetrators. Exposure of the general public to environmentally dispersed DU may pose a risk of chemical toxicity depending on the level of exposure, primarily from ingestion. At a recent experts' workshop on DU in the Balkans (Bad Honnef Germany; see the Health Physics Society's Newsletter, September 2001 for details), United Nations scientists studying the environmental behavior of DU showed that DU dissolving from penetrators embedded in soil did not migrate more than 20 cm from the source and that a very small fraction of the DU had dissolved. They did not find any DU contamination in milk, well water, houses, or vehicles in areas where DU munitions were used, nor was any DU measured in urine samples taken from soldiers who were deployed in regions where DU was used. Because evidence indicates that human exposures to DU will be very small, and that these levels will be small fractions of the public's routine exposure to natural uranium, predicted health effects appear to be inconceivable. Raymond A. Guilmette, PhD **************** And here, once again, is the collective wisdom of the Health Physics Society: http://hps.org/documents/dufactsheet.pdf Are there any health effects associated with exposure to DU? DU behavior in the body is identical to that of natural uranium. Uranium and DU are considered internal hazards. Therefore, inhalation and/or ingestion of these materials should be minimized. In general, natural U and DU are considered chemical health hazards, rather than radiation hazards. The exception is the case where DU is inhaled in the form of tiny insoluble particles, which lodge in the lungs and remain there for very long times. DU is less of a radiation hazard than natural U because it is less radioactive than natural U. Direct (external) radiation from DU is very low and only of concern to workers who melt and cast U metal. DU used in commercial civilian applications does not present a significant health hazard because it is usually in solid form and not available for inhalation or ingestion. Military operations with DU, however, may contaminate soil, groundwater, and breathing air. When used as a weapon, small particles of DU may be produced. These particles have high density and most fall to the ground very close to where they are produced. Studies have been made of workers and other persons who have ingested or inhaled uranium. There is no known association between low-level DU exposure and adverse health effects, including birth defects. In large quantities, DU exposure can cause skin or lung irritation, but only soldiers in the immediate vicinity of an attack that involves DU are potentially exposed to these levels of contamination. People who live or work in areas affected by DU activities may inhale or consume contaminated air, food, or water. Soldiers with wounds containing fragments of DU shrapnel may develop effects at the wound sites. However, the risks to these sites decrease quickly once the DU is removed. Persons exposed to very large inhalation doses of uranium have shown minor, transitory kidney effects, which typically disappear within days to a few weeks after exposure. Persons inhaling insoluble particulates that lodge in the lung may be at elevated risk of developing lung cancer many years later, particularly if they are smokers. But lung cancer has yet to be demonstrated in uranium workers or others exposed acutely or chronically to uranium. A group of Gulf War veterans who have small DU fragments still in their bodies continue to be followed by government scientists to determine whether there will be long-term health effects. As of early 2005, only subtle but clinically insignificant changes in measures of kidney function have been observed. One common observation is a persistent elevation in the amount of uranium measured in the urine more than 10 years after exposure. This reflects the continued presence of DU in wound sites and its ongoing low-level mobilization and absorption to blood. In summary, some minor health problems have been observed following exposure to DU, but ONLY with high levels of exposure. Exposures to airborne DU or to contaminated soil following military use are not known to cause any observable health or reproductive effects. ************* http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q746.html Q: How are bullets made by depleted uranium, and what reactions do they cause when they enter into contact with the ground and with humans? A: Because of its very high density—nearly twice that of lead—and certain other properties, depleted uranium is used in certain kinds of munitions because of its ability to penetrate heavily armored vehicles such as tanks and armored personnel carriers. Depleted uranium (DU) is not used in small cartridges or bullets for rifles or machines guns but alloyed DU is used in the 25, 105, and 120 millimeter (mm) kinetic energy cartridges used primarily as antitank munitions. DU is also a component in some tank armor and sometimes used as a catalyst for land mine systems. Since depleted uranium is weakly radioactive, the public has been concerned about the possiblility of adverse health effects from DU. DU is a heavy metal, and like all heavy metals such as mercury and lead, is toxic. However, except in certain very unusual situations, it is the chemical toxicity and not the radioactivity that is of concern. And, from a chemical toxicity standpoint, uranium is on the same order of toxicity as lead. Largely from work with animals along with a few instances in which humans inhaled very large amounts of uranium, the chemical toxicity of uranium is known to produce minor effects on the kidney, which in humans who have suffered large acute exposures have been transitory and wholly reversible. Because depleted and natural uranium are only weakly radioactive, radiological effects from ingested or inhaled uranium have not been detected in humans. Human experience with uranium has spanned more than 200 years. In the early part of the twentieth century, uranium was used therapeutically as a treatment for diabetes, and persons so treated were administered relatively large amounts of uranium by mouth. Tens of thousands of persons have worked in the uranium industry over the past several decades, and have been followed up and studied extensively as have populations in Canada and elsewhere who have high levels of uranium in their drinking water. Results of these studies have not revealed any ill health in these populations that is attributable to the intake of uranium. This is not surprising, as the risk from the radiation dose from uranium is far overshadowed by its potential chemical toxicity, and intakes of uranium of sufficient magnitude to produce chemotoxic effects are unlikely in and of themselves. Any such effects from ingestion or inhalation of uranium would likely manifest themselves first in the form of minor effects associated with the kidneys. That military personnel and others who may have had contact with depleted uranium from munitions are suffering from various illnesses is not in dispute. That their illnesses are attributable to their exposure to uranium is very, very unlikely. Health physicists are deeply concerned with the public health and welfare, and as experts in radiation and its effects on people and the environment, are quite aware that something other than exposure to uranium is the cause of the illnesses suffered by those who have had contact with depleted uranium from munitions. A truly enormous body of scientific data shows that it is virtually impossible for uranium to be the cause of their illnesses. Despite this body of scientific data to the contrary, misguided or unknowing people continue to allege that the depleted uranium, and specifically the radioactivity associated with the depleted uranium is the cause of these illness. This is indeed unfortunate, for health physicists and other scientists and physicians already know that depleted uranium is not the cause of these illnesses and thus any investigations into the cause of these illnesses should focus on other possible causes. If we are to offer any measure of relief or solace to these suffering people, and to gain some important additional knowledge of the cause of their illness, we should not waste our valuable and limited energies, resources, and time attempting to point the finger at depleted uranium as the culprit, when it is already known that uranium is almost certainly not the cause of the problem. With respect to reactions with the soil, in time depleted uranium will likely leach into the soil and become mixed with it. It will for all practical purposes be chemically indistinguishable from the natural uranium that is already present in the soil all over the earth. One could create all kinds of scenarios, but probably the best way to think about DU in the soil is to compare it with lead. Because lead and uranium are so similar from a toxicological standpoint, the concerns are about the same. Ronald L. Kathren, CHP **************** Now you go ahead and offer the name of a REAL health physicist who says DU is anything remotely approaching the threat you claim. Go ahead, FL.
And here's some more material you've been posted before: http://www.iem-inc.com/askset.html "Integrated Environmental Management, Inc. (IEM) is pleased to offer visitors to this web site an opportunity to ask a Certified Health Physicist (CHP) a question on any radiological issue that your firm or organization is facing." Well guess what ... someone already did. http://www.iem-inc.com/askq14.html "From my research, it looks like the military does monitor and test soldiers exposed to DU to determine the levels of uranium they may have been exposed to. I have found no scientific evidence of an increased rate of birth defects in children born to Iraq War veterans. Furthermore, exposures to the levels of DU experienced by military personnel would result in no toxic or debilitating health effects other than those that might be associated with conventional ordnance shrapnel wounds." *************** http://www.forces.gc.ca/health/information/med_vaccs/engraph/DU_Backgrounder_e.asp "... snip ... A souvenir hunter who picked up a piece of depleted uranium penetrator rod (the core of large DU munitions) and carried it in his pocket for a few days would receive a relatively high dose of short-range beta radiation to the skin adjacent to the souvenir. But it would not be enough to cause a burn - much less a significantly elevated risk of skin cancer" "In the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists the authors tried to estimate the possible external gamma-radiation levels on the battlefield by assuming that 100 tons of depleted uranium had been distributed uniformly over a one-kilometer-wide strip along 100 kilometers of the "Highway of Death" between Kuwait City and Basra, a city in southern Iraq. The average dose for someone who lived in the area for a year would be about one mrem - or about 10 percent of the dose from uranium and its decay products already naturally occurring in the soil. The dose rate immediately around a destroyed vehicle could be about 30 times higher. But even that figure would only add about 10 percent to the natural background radiation." "The authors of the article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists also note "For perspective, the driver of a tank equipped with DU munitions would get dose rates of up to 5 times natural background, corresponding to a doubling of the background dose if the driver spent 40 hours per week in the tank all year." Depending upon the nature of the impact, a significant fraction of a DU penetrator can burn, oxidizing into an inhalable aerosol. If we assume that 20 percent of the depleted uranium burns, a reasonable estimate based on army tests, the impact of a heavy DU penetrator might generate a kilogram of uranium oxide aerosol For soldiers outside struck vehicles, the aerosol inhaled in the minutes immediately after a vehicle struck by DU munitions would be greatly reduced by the fact that the kinetic energy was turned into heat by the impact. For a heavy penetrator, the released energy would be equivalent to the explosion of up to a kilogram of TNT, lifting the DU aerosol upward on a column of hot air. Because of this vertical dilution, the amount of depleted uranium inhaled by a person nearby would probably not exceed 0.1 milligrams. The dose to a person a mile away directly downwind would be about ten times less. The main cancer risk from inhaled depleted uranium would be from tiny insoluble particles lodged deep in the lungs. According to the inhalation-retention model constructed by the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP), 15 percent of an insoluble inhaled uranium oxide aerosol could be retained in the lungs for more than a year. However, because of the low radioactivity of depleted uranium, the radiation dose would be quite low. For someone close to the battle who inhaled one milligram of depleted uranium - an unlikely scenario - the equivalent whole-body dose would be up to 0.1 rem. That is roughly half the annual dose from inhaled radon and its decay products in a typical single family home in the United States. The estimated added risk of cancer death for such a dose would be about one in 20,000. (To put things in perspective, we in the United States have a one-in five risk of dying of cancer)." Depleted uranium ammunition is shielded, which further reduces its radiological hazard. The Defence Radiological Protection Service in the UK has stated "The external radiation hazard would arise from personnel being in close proximity to DU and is concerned mainly with beta, gamma and x-ray radiation. The alpha radiation poses no external hazard to intact skin. AWE and DRPS have conducted measurements of external radiation levels inside tanks to establish the external radiation exposure. These demonstrate that personnel would need to be in a fully DU loaded tank for 1500 hours before they would reach the annual whole body dose limit (50 mSv). There is no significant external hazard to personnel working with and exposed to DU ammunition in armament depots or stores. Over 5000 hours of exposure to DU would be required before the current dose limit for exposure of the whole body (50 mSv) would be exceeded. The main external radiation hazard from DU is from contact with bare skin. The current dose limit to the skin will only be exceeded if the skin remains in contact continuously with DU for more than 250 hours per year. Naomi H. Harley is an authority on radiation physics. She earned her Ph.D. in radiological physics at the New York University where she is currently a research professor at the University's School of Medicine, Department of Environmental Medicine. She has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on radiation exposure, with emphasis on natural background radiation. She has written six chapters in books dealing with radiation or toxicology and holds three patents for radiation measurement devices. She is a council member on the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, an advisor to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and an editor of the journal Environment International. In commenting on reports of some doctors finding traces of depleted uranium in the urines of service members years after any possible exposure, Dr. Harley notes this would only be possible if the military members had depleted uranium fragments embedded in their bodies. She comments on the issue of some veterans being convinced that fragments could be inhaled particles lodged in their lungs by stating "It's hard to imagine that anybody could have inhaled enough material so that it could still be there eight or nine years later, enough so that you could see the amount being dissolved and then getting into the urine." Harley says she's heard people project that the use of depleted uranium will cause tens of thousands of new cancers in Gulf War veterans and Iraqi citizens, but says such projections frighten veterans unnecessarily because there is no scientific support for such claims. "There is no way you can get enough uranium into the body to cause even one cancer. You can't inhale it, you can't ingest it. You would choke to death before you could inhale that much material." ******************* http://www.bovik.org/du/snl-dusand.pdf Here is an excerpt from it's conclusions: "The study described in this report used mathematical modeling to estimate health risks from exposure to depleted uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War for both U.S. troops and nearby Iraqi civilians. The analysis found that the risks of DU-induced leukemia or birth defects are far too small to result in an observable increase in these health effects among exposed veterans or Iraqi civilians. Only a few veterans in vehicles accidentally struck by U.S. DU munitions are predicted to have inhaled sufficient quantities of DU particulate to incur any significant health risk (i.e., the possibility of temporary kidney damage from the chemical toxicity of uranium and about a 1% chance of fatal lung cancer). The health risk to all downwind civilians is predicted to be extremely small." Let's see if you just dismiss or ignore them like you did then.
You mean by resuming the subsidized grain shipments to the USSR that Carter stopped? If nothing else, you're good for a mid-day belly laugh.
diana: Another thing, will triumphs over technology every time. BAC: Is that so? Then surely Saddam should have beaten us during the First and Second Gulf wars. a. LOL - look who is living in an alternate world - knock, knock anyone home,BAC? If you believe that the Germans defeated the Russians in WW II, then it's no wonder that you believe the propaganda from Weekly Standard and News Max about our eminently successful military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. You're a riot, oozer. From the BBC: "...In the spring of 1944, a Soviet invasion of Germany became a real possibility, as Soviet troops pursued the retreating German army. Hitler ordered the citizens of Germany to destroy anything that the enemy could put to good use. Embittered by defeats, he later turned against the Germans themselves. 'If the German people lose the war, then they will have proved themselves unworthy of me.' Hitler suffered his greatest military setback of the war in the summer of 1944. More destructive by far than the D-Day landings, Stalin's Operation Bagration in Belorussia eliminated three times more German army divisions than the Allies did in Normandy. Hitler retaliated by demanding specific divisions of the German army stand fast to the last man - the very tactic that Stalin had deployed so disastrously in the early days of the war. Defeat for Germany was only months away. Final victory came for Russia when Soviet soldiers hoisted the red flag over the Berlin Reichstag in April 1945. Soviet soldiers hoisted the red flag over the Berlin Reichstag in April 1945." End of story, BAC. b. You know why Stalin's government did not fall after WW II? One of the reasons and major it was - Stalin's brutal grip was strengthened by the FDR's lend-lease program. It did not just fuel Stalin's war machinery to fight Hitler, it strengthened him to fight any insurrections from within. Didn't you read the Professor Weeks' book from which you quoted? As for our "beating Saddam" - I don't recall Saddam's army fighting ours in 2003 - I just remember video clips of lots of army uniforms strewn on the streets but no army to face off against. Did you see something different than me? As for our successfully pacifying Iraq after the Iraqi military faded into the shadows, the verdict is still out in that regard. Diana is right - that the "will" of the Iraqi insurgents will ultimately overcome the technology of the foreign occupier. But what do you care? Israel has been made safer by the chaos and instability in Iraq. In fact at last week's AIPAC conference, Nancy Pelosi was booed when she called the Iraq War a failure - that particular crowd thinks the Iraq War was a success - it accomplished everything they wanted to happen - for Israel's national security. In fact, Olmert himself on several occassions has said the Iraq War is great, wonderbar. Well, some people are happy - too bad it's not the US public or the Iraqi civilians or the UK public. But AIPAC and Olmert are on the moon with joy. BAC, do you even care about the US soldiers' deaths [ apart from your empty platitudes about "respecting" US soldiers] who were sent to fight in a war for lies, a war for the benefit of Israel/Haliburton/Exxon? And why didn't you join this fabulous Iraq war effort if you believed in its merits? Last but not least the toll the war for lies has taken on our fair nation's reputation on the world stage is a loss we will not be able to recover from for generations to come. And for that we should thank the war mongering chickens**t IsraelFirst neocons like Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams and their anti-American ilk - better known as BAC's heroes.
What is his masters in? As you've probably seen I posted about the plane crash at Bijlmer, I was around there a couple years after it happened and it was a big issue. Americans aren't the only ones who are experts in such matters, and this Dr. Rokke certainly isn't the only person in the world who would or wouldn't know about DU. That would sound strange for a PhD in education to be an expert on DU but if he has a master's in a related science and did a lot of coursework in that area it would explain it, though he appears to have some detractors so who knows, it would be interesting to find out about the rest of his education.
"A straw man argument is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position." I had to look that up as that term is flying around a lot here lately.
They had help and were in a more secure location and larger geographically than Germany. Your bomb argument may have some merit, I'm not so sure they were that close to us at the time in development though as a lot of their best scientists defected.
I don't have time today to do more research into Dr. Rokke's undergraduate degrees, but he was indeed at one time viewed as an expert in DU matters, toxic chemicals in the environment. In fact, he is named as a participant in a CDC conference publication from 1999 - at that time Dr. Rokke was an Ass't Professor at the Dept. of Physical and Earth Sciences, Jacksonville State U and last I heard, Jacksonville State U was not a middle school. http://www.cdc.go v/nceh/publications/gulfwar/report.pdf "The Health Impact of Chemical Exposures During the Gulf War: A Research Planning Conference" February 28 - March 2, 1999 Crowne Plaza Hotel - Atlanta Airport Atlanta, Georgia Sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Collaboration with the Office of Public Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services the National Institutes of Health, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry a. See Appendix A Registered Participants, page 65 Douglas Rokke, PhD Assistant Professor Jacksonville State University Dept. of Physical and Earth Science Jacksonville, AL b. And page 89: Prevention Workgroup: Members Douglas Rokke, PhD - Assistant Professor, Department of Physical and Earth Science, Jacksonville State University c. And page 100, Prevention Workshop Members' Presentations: "Dr. Douglas Rokke discussed procedures for identifying and handling toxic materials in the Gulf War theater and the role of mitigation efforts and criteria in limiting extent of exposures. He highlighted the need to recognize and select appropriate courses of action against various threats in the military arena."
Like the BBC and the Christian Science Monitor are not going to check what they print. http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=48191&Disp=112#C112 He is Dr Doug Rokke, a US health physicist who led the DU clean-up in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq immediately after the Gulf War. In 1994, Dr Rokke, an Army Reserve captain, was appointed director of the Pentagon's DU project, a job he left in 1997. Kosovo: Special Report He helped develop an education and training programme, and conducted tests on DU explosives in the Nevada desert. The Pentagon has confirmed that A-10 aircraft are using DU rounds in the war with Serbia. They are extremely heavy, and are used for their armour-piercing capability. Veterans from the 1991 conflict believe DU, which is both radioactive and toxic, may help to explain the existence of Gulf War Syndrome. http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=48191&Disp=120#C120 "This [DU] is the Agent Orange of the 1990s - absolutely," says Doug Rokke, a former Army health physicist who was part of the DU assessment team in the Gulf War, and DU project director for the training package.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12 KJV
I don't believe that. Didn't say it. Didn't suggest it. Just another scrapper strawman. The Soviets defeated the Germans. BUT, in large part thanks to the help of the US. Had the US not provided that help ... Almost three years after the US entered the war. I'm glad you recognize that the Lend/Lease fueled Stalin's war machine. Without it Hitler's Germany would have won. Then what? Well I see you are rooting for their side. Too bad we have folks like you and those in the mainstream media doing everything possible (since almost day one) to weaken OUR will. Given that, whose side are you on?
I've previously linked his own resume. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Rokke-Depleted-Uranium-DU21apr03.htm#1 It states: * Doctor of Philosophy; University of Illinois; 1992. It doesn't specify the field.
No more so than Germany would have been had it beaten the British and Germans. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4598955.stm "Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb."
He is NOT named as an expert on DU in that report. DU is not even mentioned in the same sentence as Dr. Rokke in that report. Dr. Rokke was an Assistant Professor in environmental science. He did not gain tenure.
No he is NOT. robin still hasn't figured that out? Well, that's what happens when you listen to only one side of a debate. ROTFLOL!
So do you find U-239 and plutonium to be safe to inhale and ingest BAC?
A physicist or chemist with a doctorate degree holds a Phd, not any other type of doctorate degree. So Doctor of Philosophy could be a Phd in Physics (Doctor of Philosophy in Phyics).
Your propaganda outlets are either deliberately misleading people, or are unaware of the fact that DU is contaminated with transuranic elements. They apparently have never tested any real DU munitions, and are simply using theoretical values and assumptions based on invalid data.
So did you enter that Wikipedia article all by yourself BAC?
People don't get a PhD in Education, they get a Ed.D or D.Ed A PhD is a research degree and applies to a wide range of sciences and humanities. Not in this case. Various sources (that you've previously been linked) clearly indicate Rokke's degree was in Technology Education. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/supplements/FosterBibliography.html "A Partial Bibliography of Recent Graduate Research in Technology Education and Related Fields ... snip ... This bibliography is a compilation of recent masters theses and doctoral dissertations completed in Technology Education, and related fields such as Industrial Arts, Industrial Technology, Industrial Vocational Education, and Trade & Industrial Education at institutions listed in the NAITTE/CTTE Directory ... snip ... Rokke, D. L. (1992). "Perceived physics concepts needed to teach secondary technology education as general education." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign."
Really? ********************* http://teched.vt.edu/CTTE/ImagesPDFs/Mono17GradResearchDatabase.pdf The Technology Education Graduate Research Database 1892-2000 Council on Technology Teacher Education ... snip ... Rokke, Douglas Lind. (1992). Perceived physics concepts needed to teach secondary technology education as general education. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign. Dissertation Abstracts Online Accession No: AAG9236582 *********************** Why do you suppose that Rokke is not a member of any physics organizations? He's a member of the National Association of Industrial Technical Teacher Educators. *********************** http://www.coe.uga.edu/naitte/minutes/naitte_min_12-12-02.pdf "National Association of Industrial Technical Teacher Educators Executive Committee Meeting Las Vegas Hilton – Room 9 – 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Las Vegas, NV December 12, 2002" ... snip ... The major work of the past year was planning the NAITTE Program for the 2002 ACTE Convention. We again worked with the Technology Education Division to schedule the program. ... snip ... Checks that have come for the 2002-03 membership year imembers report in October. ... snip ... Marcelle Hardy, University du Quebec Montreal, $60.00 *************
So do you find U-239 and plutonium to be safe to inhale and ingest BAC?
A PhD is a research degree and applies to a wide range of sciences and humanities.
Answer the question, BAC.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
LOL, I think BAC might be Marie Colvin.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
Well I see you are rooting for their side. Too bad we have folks like you and those in the mainstream media doing everything possible (since almost day one) to weaken OUR will. Given that, whose side are you on? You are doing that strawman thing to scrapper here, and you are again inciting Aaron of LP to tie up the phone lines at Homeland Security. She simply said the will of the people will overcome technology, and then you call that rooting for their side which is an outrageous accusation and unfair comparison.
* Doctor of Philosophy; University of Illinois; 1992.< * Bachelor of Science; Western Illinois University; It doesn't specify the field. That's a bit odd, normally such information would be available. I'll look for it as it should be easy enough to find.
No strawman here, Diana. Since we ALL agree that "will" is very important to winning, then anything that hurts our will or bolsters our enemy's will is bad. And the media and many 4umers have been posting material from day one that can arguably be said to do that. That is, unless, you don't view our opponents as our enemies. Is that the case, Diana? Huh???
That or Judith Miller.
Have you ever given a dog helium?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
BAC: Oh please. Have you nothing but strawmen to offer? The ISSUE is whether the Germans would have defeated the Soviets had the US not helped them in WW2. The ISSUE is what would the world look like today had that happened. Keep in mind that the Germans were only a little behind America in the race for the bomb and that race was given urgency here in the US primarly because we were at war with Germany. Had that not been the case, Germany might well have beaten the US to its development. And you may not know this but at the end of 1945, the Germans had a bomber that could fly to the US and return. That bomber could easily have carried nuclear weapons. Like I said to you folks. What then? What's the strawman? You make perfectly clear that you could give 2 hoots about the Eastern Europeans that we doomed to communism. It's only Hitler who is your focus and why is that? In sheer numbers of deaths he caused Hitler was an amateur compared to Stalin. And yet you see no problem with our aiding the worst butcher in modern history. Why is that, BAC? Hitler was no threat to America. Say what you will about Hitler and the bomb - he was several years from that. We had the bomb and we used the bomb. Hitler didn't. So why are you yammering about the dannger of Hitler to the world. Why don't you ask the Japanese about the dangers of a nation having a bomb and using it irresponsibly. And don't bother spamming me with it was the only way to stop the Japanese from fighting any longer. I provided you with a link to US Government documents recently released the showed the opposite to be true. Here's where your worries about Hitler and the bomb belong - in the trash heap of history like where this historian's book went, evidently - your claim and his about Hitler being minutes away from developing the bomb are laughable. http:// www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,346293,00.html March 14, 2005 Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch claims that the Nazis conducted three nuclear weapons tests in 1944 and 1945. But he has no proof to back up his theories. The United States needed 125,000 people, including six future Nobel Prize winners, to develop the atomic bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The uranium enrichment facility alone, including its security zone, was the size of the western German city of Frankfurt. Dubbed the Manhattan project, the quest ultimately cost the equivalent of about $30 billion. In his new book, "Hitler's Bomb," Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch claims Nazi Germany almost achieved similar results with only a handful of physicists and a fraction of the budget. The author writes that German physicists and members of the military conducted three nuclear weapons tests shortly before the end of World War II, one on the German island of Ruegen in the fall of 1944 and two in the eastern German state of Thuringia in March 1945. The tests, writes Karlsch, claimed up to 700 lives. If these theories were accurate, history would have history would have to be rewritten. Ever since the Allies occupied the Third Reich's laboratories and interrogated Germany's top physicists working with wunderkind physicist Werner Heisenberg and his colleague Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, it's been considered certain that Hitler's scientists were a long way from completing a nuclear weapon...
"Nazii-fixated folks like BAC" So you would have doomed them to Hitler. And unlike now, you have doomed them permanently. Hitler was only getting started. Well there you have it folks. scrapper assures us that Hitler was no threat. Just like Saddam was no threat. No, many experts think the Germans were perhaps 6 months from the bomb at the end of the war. And that was with US bombing and specific US efforts to take apart and sidetrack Germany's nuclear program. Had we not been in the war ... You trying to tell us that you think he wouldn't have if he had one? Especially if he were the only one with one? That deserves a laugh. ROTFLOL! You think our use of the bomb against Japan was irresponsible? Really? Refresh my memory.
BAC: I don't believe that. Didn't say it. Didn't suggest it. Just another scrapper strawman. The Soviets defeated the Germans. BUT, in large part thanks to the help of the US. Had the US not provided that help ... b. scrapper; Hitler suffered his greatest military setback of the war in the summer of 1944. BAC: Almost three years after the US entered the war. c. I'm glad you recognize that the Lend/Lease fueled Stalin's war machine. Without it Hitler's Germany would have won. Then what? d. d. scrapper: Diana is right - that the "will" of the Iraqi insurgents will ultimately overcome the technology of the foreign occupier. BAC: Well I see you are rooting for their side. Too bad we have folks like you and those in the mainstream media doing everything possible (since almost day one) to weaken OUR will. Given that, whose side are you on? a. Liar. This is what you said in post #169: "Forget the Soviets. They are gone in your alternate world. The Germans defeated them using technology that even the US didn't have at the end of WW2." b. What does one have to do with the other? The Russian army was singlehandedly responsible for the German defeat in the summer of 1944. The US military was not in Russia. In case you were not aware of this, BAC, the Russians had the largest standing army in the world as of 1941. There are historians including Viktor Suvorov who served in the Soviet army and military intel as well as historian Albert Weeks ( whose book you quoted)who believe that Stalin all along had hoped Hitler would challenge the world powers so Stalin could be called in as an ally to "liberate" European nations he had his eye on taking and brutalizing. Stalin had been preparing all along for a WW where he'd be the victor ( and he was right)and Stalin had been using FDR and his lend-lease plan to rebuild his army to expand Soviet domination and you think this was all well and good? Stalin had spies in FDR's Admin. Stalin stole military tech from our nation. FDR enabled a monster to get to be a bigger monster who double-crossed America. So why are we supposed to be proud of that? c. I never denied that the lend lease program fueled Stalin's war machine. What I said and so did your Professor Weeks - whose stats you merrily quoted without reading more about the content - was that FDR's lend lease program also fueled Stalin's oppressive machinery as well. FDR condemned millions upon millions of Eastern Europeans to servitude under communism or to immediate death in the gulags. And to that you say nothing - you don't care, and it's transparently clear why. If we had stayed out of the war, the 2 monster isms would have finished each other off and the Stalinists might have imploded thereafter and we wouldn't have lost 300,000 soldiers. There was zero chance that Hitler would invade Britain after he lost the Battle of Britain. Hitler didn't get his weapons re-armament plans implemeneted by Speer until 1943, for God's sake. Britain was way ahead of Germany in that regard. I'm wondering why are you so eager to jump into wars when you have never served in any? Have you seen anyone die of wounds? Have you ever killed anyone? War is brutal even to the survivors. So grow up and get over your illusions about war being a computer game. d. I support the troops by wanting them to come home asap. There is no mission in Iraq that is relevant to America. By forcing our troops to stay the course or to surge or whatever only benefit's Israel/Haliburton/Exxon. Is that what you support?- all 3 or just 1? Btw, don't you dare bad mouth or raise any cheesy questions my patriotism without knowing what me and my family have contributed over many generations. I don't have dual citizenship - like some, perhaps you? - I have loyalty to only one nation and that's America so keep your cheap punk back stabbing to the classrooms where you take your lessons at the AEI offices. As for will, the Iraqis have it because it's their country. They - the insurgents - or as war mongers like yourself like to label Iraqi citizens "the enemy" are planning to fight the foreign occupier to the last man - get it - they have legitimacy on their side - it's their country, not ours, not Israel's, not Haliburton's, not Exxon's. We were not invited to invade and occupy Iraq by the Iraqis. We invaded for lies generated by the Office of Special Plans. What we need to rely on now is common sense - something that has been in short supply the past 4 years in the White House. Common sense is telling most Americans - who don't have hidden agendas - that we should cut our losses and leave in an orderly fashion by the New Year and leave Iraq to its rightful citizen-owners. Btw, I saw 2 people interviewed on PBS today - representing both left and right schools of thinking - Wade from the Council of Foreign Relations and Mathews from the Carnegie Foundation and BOTH concurred that the Iraq War was a terrible mistake in judgement - both said they believed that if GWB had the chance to do over again, he would not invade Iraq, and that because of the invasion and occupation we have caused great harm to America's future on the int'l stage and that we are definitely more unsafe now because the neocons' Iraq War was such a grevious act that it has radicalized Muslims around the world as a result. I hope the neocons - every last Trotskyite one of them - burn in hell for what their duplitious selves wrought on our fair republic.
It's not just my opinion. http://www.ncesa.org/html/hirosh ima.html "Hiroshima: Historians Reassess" by Gar Alperovitz Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34. Copyright 1995 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." (Emphasis added.) The author of that statement is not a revisionist; he is J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nor is he alone in that opinion. Walker is summarizing the findings of modern specialists in his literature review in the Winter 1990 issue of Diplomatic History. Another expert review, by University of Illinois historian Robert Messer, concludes that recently discovered documents have been "devastating" to the traditional idea that using the bomb was the only way to avoid an invasion of Japan that might have cost many more lives...
b. You trying to tell us that you think he wouldn't have if he had one? Especially if he were the only one with one? That deserves a laugh. ROTFLOL! a. Hitler was no threat to us. He was loathe to have us come into the war. Hitler wanted continental Europe. If it weren't that he believed Russia was going to attack him, he probably would not have taken on the Eastern front either. But he did and it was his undoing. Saddam was no threat to us. It's been said by the 9/11 Commission and by the Iraq Study Group. Are you deaf and blind? Get with the program. And no one but you believes the prop of Billy Kristol and Normie Podhoretz and Richard Perle. b. Here's what I'm trying to tell you - since you didn't get it the first time round - we had the bomb. Hitler did not have the bomb and he was several years from getting the bomb, regardless of what your sources might say. We were in the driver's seat. And even if Hitler had eventually got the bomb, so what - haven't you heard of the phrase "mutual deterrance"? Duh - Russia had the bomb and we went through a 40 year cold war with them and Russia did not use the bomb. Pakistan has the bomb. N. Korea has the bomb. India has the bomb. There is only one nation that used the bomb. It's us - so get out from under your bed and breathe easier - you don't have to worry about "other" nations.
No, dummy. It took hundreds of thousands of people fighting against the communists in Afghanistan. Now brighter people than you might see some lesson(s) to be learned here.
Just watch one of the many documentaries on tv concerning nazi Germany.
I know someone who had an uncle who designed and drew up a diagram of a helicopter powered by God that he submited to the US patent office. It was very well designed, he had been an engineer. He was crazy though.
Excellent post, explains the situation very well.
Gee, scrapper. Did you fail to understand the word "alternate"? The only reason the Soviets were even capable of resisting the Germans at that point was the massive amounts of US aid (remember? 450,000 trucks. Enough food to feed the entire Soviat army over the course of the war. Railroad equipment. Etc.) they'd received in the intervening years. Plus, they were aided by the diversion of large portions of the German military machine elsewhere to defend against attacks by, primarily, the US. Good. Just as I said. I'm glad you recognize that. And YOU, had you been President and not brought us into the war, would have condemned even greater millions to NAZI servitude or immediate death in NAZI run ovens. That's not what would have happened. The Germans would very likely have won. If for no other reason then that they had most of the rocket and jet fighter scientists. You know that old saying. If at first you don't succeed ... You can't build anything if you don't get the materials. You can't run engines if you don't have the oil. And without us in the war, the Island of Britain would have been starved out of both. It was a near thing as it was. Do you know that in 1940 (before we even entered the war), the British requested and received 50 destroyers? Even before entering the war officially, American warships were escorting Allied convoys as far as Iceland. In January of 1942 five (5) Type IX U boats sailed the shores of the US. In the next 3 weeks they sank 156,000 tons of shipping without losing a single U boat. In six months those few U boats sank 397 ships (2 MILLION tons). And it was US shipping yards that replaced the losses. And it was US ships that defended the convoys. Even with US help it was near thing. In October of 1942 alone, with everything America could do to stop the U boats, they sank 56 ship (258,000 tons). Without US participation, Germany would have starved out Britain in no time as more and more U boats were produced. But won't the WOT still be going on? Won't troops just have to die elsewhere to fight it? Perhaps in locales where they can't exercise as much freedom to use the weapons they have? Do you think bringing our troops home will stop the WOT? Won't instability in Iraq make terrorists groups like al-Qaeda, and terrorist supporting nations like Iran and Syria stronger? Won't instability in Iraq weaken our allies in the WOT in the region? Does a perceived defeat make us weaker in general? What, historically, have islamic countries done when they see weakness? How do the Chinese perceive weakness? But if as you say, WILL is everything, then doesn't anything that harms our will hurt us? Doesn't anything that strengthens our opponents will hurt us? I'm curious what you mean by AEI. So you think the insurgents that have brutally murdered tens of thousand of Iraqi civilians are "patriots". I see. Bet you if they'd had a secret referendum on the matter the "invade us option" would have won hands down.
I'd like to see the names of these scholars. And I'd like to see these alternatives. And by the way, consider this. If we hadn't used the atomic bomb to end WW2, the reality of the consequences of nuclear war would not have been apparent ... not to world leaders or the people of the world. It was a critical event. In that case, the likelihood that nuclear weapons might be used in some future conflict would have increased considerably. The likelihood of war between great powers like the US and Soviets would have increased. Perhaps the Berlin Crisis might have ended in open conflict. And had that happened, that conflict might very well have gone nuclear. And then where would the world be today, scrapper?
I'm a little rusty on all this, but I'll guess John Foster Dulles in the "Who Is BAC Chanelling Tonight" Contest.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost
when I saw that word 'Idiocy' in the title, then I knew that you would be a fountain of knowledge on this thread. Thanks for your expertise. Eating Depleted Uranium dust is fun. BAC is a genius. I read everything he says.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Was that really the limit of his ambitions, scrapper? Tapes captured in Iraq show that Saddam still considered himself at war with us. They show him and his aids talking about the use of surrogates to attack the US with WMD. And we know that Saddam was crazy. Crazy enough to use WMD against his own people. Crazy enough to order the use of WMD against Israel in Gulf War 1 (where Israel wasn't even a combatant). Crazy enough to attempt the assassination of an ex-President. Crazy enough to let his country get invaded rather than cooperate in proving his country had no WMD. Crazy enough to wind up in a small hole in the ground rather than prove that. Would we have had the bomb if we hadn't been at war? I think not. The war was the impetus for developing the weapon with such urgency. That's not entirely clear. As I posted early, recent discovers indicate the Nazi actually had a drawing of a nuclear weapon that might have worked. They even knew how much fissionables were required. And even if development had been a few years later, so what? By that time, Germany and Japan would have consolidated its hold on the rest of the world and finally be ready for new conquests. Maybe each other. Or maybe the US. With the bomb. With the means to deliver that bomb to the US mainland. And would America have responded before it was too late? Well that hasn't been our history. I thought this was a debate. Duh, the Soviets got the bomb FROM US. If we hadn't developed it, then the USSR might have faced Germany without the bomb. Only assuming that the USSR was still around at that point in time.
b. And by the way, consider this. If we hadn't used the atomic bomb to end WW2, the reality of the consequences of nuclear war would not have been apparent ... not to world leaders or the people of the world. It was a critical event. a. I gave you the same link 2 times already - it's 4 pages long. Newly released US gov't documents make it quite clear ( except to war mongers like yourself) that nuking 2 cities in Japan constituted war crimes committed by Truman. He had alternatives and he consciously ignored them. http://www.ncesa.org/html/hirosh ima.html "Hiroshima: Historians Reassess" by Gar Alperovitz Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34. Copyright 1995 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." (Emphasis added.) The author of that statement is not a revisionist; he is J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nor is he alone in that opinion. Walker is summarizing the findings of modern specialists in his literature review in the Winter 1990 issue of Diplomatic History. Another expert review, by University of Illinois historian Robert Messer, concludes that recently discovered documents have been "devastating" to the traditional idea that using the bomb was the only way to avoid an invasion of Japan that might have cost many more lives..." That's cut and past of the first couple of paragraphs. b. You really are certifiable nuts, boozer - before I thought you were merely a paid employee shill for one of the "think" tanks. But after reading your latest observations about the valuable learning experience that came as a result of frying Hiroshima and Nagasaki [ when atomic bombs were not required to get a surrender from the Japanese Emperor] I am now convinced you are an off-the- wall-wacky-bloodthirsty-nutjob. You think Nagaski and Hiroshima were some kind of petri dishes for experimentation on what works for peace and what doesn't? You think we should look at the "up" side of how we fried 2 Japanese cities for nothing? Good God, man, you are heartless. "On 9 August 1945, Nagasaki was the target of the world's second atomic bomb attack at 11:02 a.m., when the north of the city was destroyed and an estimated 39,000 people were killed. According to statistics given at the Nagasaki Peace Park, the dead totaled 73,884, injured 74,909 and diseased 120,820. Most of those who died were civilians." "On August 6, 1945 the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people and completely destroying approximately 68% of the city's buildings.[1] In the following months, an estimated 60,000 more people died from injuries or radiation poisoning. [2][3] Since 1945, several thousand more hibakusha have died of illnesses caused by the bomb."
Like the torture renditions. By ignoring the fact that you have already answered his request for links, he then spams the thread filling it with copy/paste nonsense, making those links more difficult to find. BAC is not here for honest debate, he is not here in good faith. He is here to distract and disrupt any meaningful discourse and exchange of ideas about certain topics.
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
yeah, then he wonders why so many here and on LP "bozo themselves!" no one wants to read his spamcrap. it isn't just 4um'ers.
What were those alternatives? And who were the scholars he claimed have reached a consensus. Surely both must be available to you, scrapper. If you want that to be the argument you depend on in this debate, fine with me. I've offered facts and sound logic to prove you are wrong about the outcome of WW2 had we not intervened. And there is by no means a consensus that the dropping of the bombs in Japan was a war crime (http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20050902-hiroshima-nagasaki-japan-atomic.shtml ). But you go ahead and keep repeating that. I suspect that most Americans will simply ignore you if you do. Is it really heartless to believe that by using two nuclear weapons on cities we avoided thousands being used on cities? Or just common sense...
I guess robin, because she's bozo'd herself, doesn't realize that I posted the article starting this thread. And since she can only read half the debate, she has no idea what discourse and exchange of ideas is really taking place. It's rather funny, if you ask me.
You can still see article posts even when you have someone on the bozo filter, so I'm sure she knows you started it.
God is always good! So you think the insurgents that have brutally murdered tens of thousand of Iraqi civilians are "patriots". I see. That is a ridiculous accusation on many levels.
Death by radiation poisoning is suppose to be one of the most painful ways to die. Had I been a civilian there, I would have preferred to have been at ground zero where it's said the people were completely vaporized in a fraction of a second.
Here are your so-called "patriots" in action, scrapper, from today's paper: ******** Children used as decoys die in car attack New York Times March 21, 2007 by Kirk Semple Baghdad, Iraq - Insurgents detonated a car bomb with two children in the car after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, a U.S. General said Tuesday. Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said U.S. soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat. "Children in the back seat lower suspicion," he said, according to a transcript. "We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonated it with the children in back." Lt Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. spokesperson, said Tuesday his office had no record of the attack but was researching it. Agence France-Presse said the incident occurred Sunday. The bombers parked the vehicle across the street from a school then ran away, leaving the children inside, an official told the news agency. The blast killed the children and three other civilians and wounded seven." *********
Which only makes her comment all the more curious...
Imagine a world filled with radiation, Diana. The destruction of the two Japanese cities was a seminal event. It deeply affected the leaders of the world in a way that no nuclear test in a desert could ever do. It deeply affected the public in the same way. And even the military was forced to deal with the real consequences of a nuclear war. I'll say it again. Had the bombs not been used and WW2 ended in some other fashion (probably several years later and at who knows what cost in lives and destruction), the likelihood of open conflict between the US and Soviets would have been dramatically increased. Underlying the fear of conflict between the great powers was the spector of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And had conflict erupted, somewhere during that conflict the military would have convinced their leaders that they needed to use a nuclear weapon to keep the other side from winning in some battle. And then things would have spiraled out of control with them eventually being used against cities, as fast as the two countries could make them. The use of nuclear weapons to close WW2 probably even kept us from using nuclear weapons in the Korean War. And again, who knows what would have happened, had we done that.
Obviously, it's too early to say anything more definitive than that there are real signs of progress in Baghdad. The cocksure defeatism of war critics of two months ago, when the surge was announced, does seem to have been misplaced.
Roundup of violence in Iraq -- March 17, 2007
By Sahar Issa
McClatchy Newspapers
#2. To: hammerdown (#1)
fuck you and your lying douchebag hero, asshole.
#3. To: BeAChooser (#0)
Weekly Standard...
#4. To: BeAChooser (#2)
#5. To: BeAChooser (#2)
#6. To: BeAChooser (#0)
#7. To: scrapper2 (#3)
Proudly bearing the neozio war mongering standard.
Eeeek!
#8. To: BeAChooser (#2)
*debate*
#9. To: BeAChooser (#2)
Thank you for demonstrating
#10. To: hammerdown, BeAChooser (#8)
#11. To: scrapper2, ALL (#3)
Proudly bearing the neozio war mongering standard.
#12. To: beachooser, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#0)
#13. To: hammerdown, ALL (#8)
the only debate here is your chromosomal deficiency.
#14. To: hammerdown, ALL (#9)
care to trade places with my son, Mr, Fuckin' Badass?
#15. To: BeAChooser (#13)
#16. To: BeAChooser, All (#0)
Obviously, it's too early to say anything more definitive than that there are real signs of progress in Baghdad.
#17. To: BeAChooser (#14)
#18. To: scrapper2 (#3)
a news source less TelAviv inspired...
#19. To: BeAChooser (#11)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070314/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_baghdad_security
#20. To: Diana, ALL (#16)
A truth and a lie make little difference, only agenda matters.
#21. To: scrapper2, ALL (#19)
But while many Iraqis are encouraged, they remain skeptical how long the relative calm will last. Each bombing renews fears that the horror is returning. Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents are still around, perhaps just laying low or hiding outside the city until the operation is over.
#22. To: BeAChooser (#21)
#23. To: BeAChooser (#20)
Says someone who accepts the lies when it comes to bombs in the WTC, no Flight 77, John Hopkins' claiming 655,000 Iraqi dead and DU is the scourge of the millennium.
#24. To: BeAChooser (#20)
DU is the scourge of the millennium.
#25. To: Diana, ALL (#23)
Again, can you find the posts where I wrote of the bombs placed in the WTC?
#26. To: Diana, ALL (#24)
I simply said to ingest it causes health problems
#27. To: BeAChooser (#21)
If the media had reported WW2 the way they've reported this war, we'd have lost WW2.
#28. To: Jethro Tull (#27)
#29. To: Jethro Tull, ALL (#27)
Psst....if the internet were around in 1941 the American public would have known quickly that FDR was aware - or should have been aware - of the Japanese attack on PH. He, like all good internationalists, despised our isolationism and used PH to join with England in world war.
#30. To: BeAChooser, Uncle Bill (#25)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#31. To: Jethro Tull (#27)
#32. To: beachooser, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#26)
#33. To: beachooser, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#20)
...... is the scourge of the millennium.
#34. To: BeAChooser, Diana (#26)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#35. To: FormerLurker (#34)
#36. To: SKYDRIFTER, Diana, ALL (#32)
BAC - there is no doubt that the ingestion od DU is a health hazard; no one disuptes that.
You're just plain old "fucked-up,' BAC!
#37. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#34)
So Ooser, are you again trying to pass off Depleted Uranium (you know, the stuff that's contaminated with highly radioactive Plutonium and Transuranics) as being safe as cotton candy?
#38. To: BeAChooser (#36)
No one is disputing that. What's disputed is how big a health hazard.
#39. To: BeAChooser (#21)
(Edited)
If the media had reported WW2 the way they've reported this war, we'd have lost WW2.
#40. To: BeAChooser (#14)
HE has my respect.
#41. To: BeAChooser (#37)
So, FormerLurker, are you again trying strawmen instead of facts?
Weyman's is one of a few texts drawing attention to the extreme hazard of nuclear waste recycled into uranium alloys for manufacture of "conventional" weapons. The most hazardous additive are so-called transuranics, which are tens of thousands of times more radioactive than pure Depleted Uranium (DU, mostly Uranium 238, some U234 and 235) or pure, Non-Depleted Uranium (Virgin Uranium):
The discovery of uranium-236 contamination in spent munitions used against Kosovo revealed that the DU was not obtained before the nuclear reaction process. The Pentagon, NATO and the British Ministry of Defense have always downplayed the danger of DU saying it was "less radioactive than uranium ore." But at least half of the DU (250,000 metric tons) is now known to have been left over from the reprocessing of irradiated reactor fuel (done to extract weapons-grade plutonium), leaving it salted with fission products.(18)
On the DU-Watch list on February 19th, 2001, renowned anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott wrote about the “impure” contents of DU in armour and bullets:
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#42. To: Dakmar (#35)
Stupid lying fucker would never eat DU unless we forced him, and I'm sure we'd be in the wrong in doing so regardless of all hims sins.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#43. To: FormerLurker, BeAChooser (#42)
I doubt Ooser would want to visit a battlefield in the Balkans or Iraq.
#44. To: beachooser, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#36)
And you are just proving what I've said about 4um members. They seem to think foul language is a substitute for facts.
#45. To: BeAChooser (#29)
Thank you for proving my point.
#46. To: Dakmar (#10)
#47. To: BeAChooser (#36)
And you are just proving what I've said about 4um members.
#48. To: Itisa1mosttoolate (#31)
#49. To: christine, BeAChooser (#47)
too bad you don't recognize when you've been soundly and roundly facted. ;)
#50. To: scrapper2, ALL (#39)
We did lose WWII.
#51. To: scrapper2 (#39)
#52. To: hammerdown, ALL (#40)
spare me your lies, you worthless shit. YOU can shove your respect 'where the sun don't shine'. it's because of football head, bootlicking, wannabe Schutzstaffel like you that couldn't pull your own head out of your ass long enough to see you've been scammed over the last five years, that he has to be there in the first place. Fuck You, Pal!
#53. To: BeAChooser (#52)
#54. To: BeAChooser (#52)
HE has my respect.
#55. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#41)
DU Contaminated With Plutonium and Neptunium
From The quantitative analysis of depleted uranium isotopes in British, Canadian, and U.S. Gulf War veterans.
The Pentagon, NATO and the British Ministry of Defense have always downplayed the danger of DU saying it was "less radioactive than uranium ore."
On the DU-Watch list on February 19th, 2001, renowned anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott wrote about the “impure” contents of DU in armour and bullets:
#56. To: BeAChooser (#55)
#57. To: BeAChooser, robin (#50)
(Edited)
scrapper2: We did lose WWII.
#58. To: BeAChooser (#55)
(Edited)
The Pentagon, NATO and the British Ministry of Defense have always downplayed the danger of DU saying it was "less radioactive than uranium ore."
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#59. To: BeAChooser (#52)
HE has my respect.
#60. To: BeAChooser (#55)
Give up on Rokke?
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#61. To: BeAChooser (#37)
are you again trying strawmen instead of facts?
A truth and a lie make little difference, only agenda matters.
But while many Iraqis are encouraged, they remain skeptical how long the relative calm will last. Each bombing renews fears that the horror is returning. Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents are still around, perhaps just laying low or hiding outside the city until the operation is over.
#62. To: FormerLurker, BeAChooser, hammerdown (#60)
Fighters for Fuller? Yeah, how do you like that name? I made it up. Everybody's nuts about it! The biggest men in the country are coming to my banquet... to get things rolling. I've got an admiral, two governors... some investment house boys and a cabinet minister. Which one? I don't know. I told the general to pick one. They're coming to your party? Honey, if I ask them, they've got to come. They'd be afraid not to come. I could murder them, like guests. I'm afraid it’s true. What’s true? Right here, tonight, you might have that much power. Seen the ratings?
#63. To: scrapper2, BeAChooser (#3)
#64. To: BeAChooser (#50)
demonstrating once again how irrational 4umers can be.
4 years after invasion, many Iraqis look back with longing
By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers
HE has my respect.
#65. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#60)
"Give up on Rokke?"
He's just one of many voices that speak the truth BAC.
#66. To: hammerdown, ALL (#64)
for what, this?
#67. To: BeAChooser (#66)
Despite the sectarian divide, 64% of Iraqis still want to see a united Iraq under a central national government.
#68. To: Dakmar, ALL (#67)
#69. To: BeAChooser (#0)
#70. To: BeAChooser (#25)
Again, can you find the posts where I wrote of the bombs placed in the WTC?
#71. To: BeAChooser (#68)
By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias.
#72. To: BeAChooser (#52)
According to Sibel, (no link, via email), this is "a fantastic short piece by Phil Giraldi; it sums up the case very well, considering the length... as far as published articles go, this one nails it 100%"
I've liberated the article from print (errors are mine):
---------------------------------
Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish FBI translator turned whistleblower who has been subjected to a gag order could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time. On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection. Israel has long cultivated a close relationship with Turkey since Ankara's neighbours and historic enemies - Iran, Syria and Iraq - are also hostile to Tel Aviv. Islamic Turkey has also had considerable symbolic value for Israel, demonstrating that hostility to Muslim neighbours is not a sine qua non for the Jewish state.
Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress - as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.
Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit. Investigators are also looking at Israel's particular expertise in the illegal sale of US military technology to countries like China and India. Fraudulent end-user certificates produced by Defense Ministries in Israel and Turkey are all that is needed to divert military technology to other, less benign, consumers. The military-industrial-complex/neocon network is also well attested. Doug Feith has been associated with Northrup Grumman for years, while defense contractors fund many neocon-linked think tanks and "information" services. Feith, Perle and a number of other neocons have long had beneficial relationships with various Israeli defense contractors.
#73. To: BeAChooser (#68)
Marie Colvin
#74. To: BeAChooser (#66)
The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003
spoken like a true clintonian.
pmlol!
#75. To: BeAChooser (#25)
Can you show us the posts where you've challenged the bombs in the WTC assertions? You've certainly been on enough threads where this was being discussed to have done so by now. So can you?
#76. To: hammerdown (#74)
#77. To: Mekons4 (#76)
#78. To: BeAChooser (#26)
I simply said to ingest it causes health problems You've done more than that, Diana.
#79. To: hammerdown, Mekons4, BeAChooser, robin, Marie Colvin (#77)
#80. To: Dakmar, Jethro Tull, BeAChooser (#28)
LOL, you get a +2 for prentending BAC is human.
#81. To: Dakmar, Mekons4, BeAChooser (#73)
This Marie Colvin?
#82. To: Diana (#80)
#83. To: scrapper2 (#81)
. are you thinking of spending summer vacation this year at the Baghdad Hotel?
#84. To: Dakmar (#82)
#85. To: scrapper2 (#39)
Substitute the words "gulag" for "concentration camp" and "Christian" for Jews" and you get the picture.
#86. To: BeAChooser, hammerdown, All (#52)
HE has my respect.
#87. To: BeAChooser (#65)
Like telling audiences that he is a health physicist when, in fact, he is not?
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#88. To: BeAChooser, FormerLurker (#65)
Like telling audiences that he is a health physicist when, in fact, he is not?
#89. To: FormerLurker (#65)
#90. To: Diana (#89)
Just in case you don't know, BAC is on this kick that only "health physicists" are capable of knowing the effects of DU on humans.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#91. To: Diana (#89)
#92. To: Diana (#89)
#93. To: FormerLurker, hammerdown (#90)
He's trying to say that Dr. Rokke is not a health physicist, so that makes anything that Dr. Rokke says less than credible.
#94. To: hammerdown (#92)
#95. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2, hammerdown, FormerLurker, robin, All (#68)
(Edited)
The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.
#96. To: BeAChooser (#0)
He is certainly off to a good start.
#97. To: Diana, ALL (#70)
Again, can you find the posts where I wrote of the bombs placed in the WTC?
"Can you show us the posts where you've challenged the bombs in the WTC assertions? You've certainly been on enough threads where this was being discussed to have done so by now. So can you?"
In other words, from the above post you answered me with, you looked back for such posts and to your consternation you found that I have written nothing on the topic of bombs in the buildings.
#98. To: hammerdown, ALL (#74)
"The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003"
so now you grasp at "polls" for your validation. marvelous.
#99. To: Diana, ALL (#75)
It just so happens the topic of bombs is one that went by me.
#100. To: BeAChooser (#99)
Your not being honest, Diana. As the post above proves. I'm disappointed in you.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#101. To: Mekons4, ALL (#76)
This was probably conducted with green zone employees, with a few Marines hanging around looking threatening.
#102. To: Diana, ALL (#80)
maybe he is one of those lizard people David Ickes talks about.
#103. To: Diana, scrapper2, ALL (#85)
Stalin and the communists walked away the big winners at the end of WW II.
Brilliant post scrapper.
#104. To: BeAChooser (#101)
#105. To: Diana, ALL (#86)
You're incapable of having "respect" for anybody.
#106. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#87)
Dr. Doug Rokke Address on Depleted Uranium
He says that he SERVED for the US Army as a health physicist. Do you have any evidence that he didn't?
Center for Health and the Environment
University of California, Davis, CA 95616 We can offer some accurate information to correct the record. Rokke is a private citizen and does not represent the Department of Defense. Following the ground war, Rokke was attached for duty to assist technical experts in the recovery and decontamination of radioactive material and equipment. The team of approximately 10 people was led, not by Rokke, but by a civilian from the Army Munitions and Chemical Command (AMCCOM). Rokke's primary role was to facilitate the recovery operations by ensuring the team had the proper support. Over the past years, Doug Rokke has reported varying numbers of ill or dead members of "his team." These claims have been researched and are unsubstantiated.
In 1998, our office compiled a list of 29 names of people Rokke reported to be on "his team." Staff members were able to interview 22 of them. Approximately 15 of the 29 people Doug Rokke had identified as being on "his team" actually worked on DU-contaminated vehicles. Two of the 29 had died, however, in interviews with the others, neither of these two veterans was named as having worked with depleted uranium. While we respect Rokke's right to express his opinions, the fact that he presents himself as an expert, does not make it so. His role in the Gulf War and at the Chemical School, as well as the specifics of his educational background, do not qualify him as a depleted uranium expert. These areas fall well outside of his area of expertise and responsibility.
#107. To: Diana, ALL (#88)
Like telling audiences that he is a health physicist when, in fact, he is not?
Not that again.
#108. To: Diana, ALL (#89)
Just in case you don't know, BAC is on this kick that only "health physicists" are capable of knowing the effects of DU on humans.
#109. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#90)
He's trying to say that Dr. Rokke is not a health physicist, so that makes anything that Dr. Rokke says less than credible.
Regardless of Dr. Rokke's background,
it doesn't change the fact that DU is in itself a radioactive material that can inflict DNA and celluar damage if inhaled, along with various other insidious effects due to its chemical toxicity.
As far as Dr. Rokke, BAC has never demonstrated that he did NOT serve as a health physicist for the US Army.
#110. To: hammerdown, Diana, ALL (#91)
He was good enough for the U.S.Army to originate their decontamination procedure
#111. To: Diana, ALL (#94)
He's like a 3 year old in that he thinks he can get away with his lies and distortions which are very obvious to all.
He gets angry when I point that out which I do from time to time.
#112. To: Diana (#95)
Pentagon's man in uranium warning
A-10 tankbuster: They are now firing DU weapons over Kosovo
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby 
But Nato says DU is no more dangerous than any other heavy metal. Its spokesman, Major Dan Baggio, says a DU round contained about as much uranium as would go into "a glow-in-the-dark type of watch". ![[ image: DU munitions are
highly effective armour penetrators]](/olmedia/340000/images/_340944_tank.jpg)
DU munitions are highly effective armour penetrators
He believes that Pentagon officials have made "a political decision and are totally unwilling to recognise that there are health consequences of the use of DU". ![[ image: What sort of
Kosovo will the refugees return to?]](/olmedia/340000/images/_340944_people.jpg)
What sort of Kosovo will the refugees return to?
#113. To: BeAChooser (#106)
What does that say about you?
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#114. To: BeAChooser (#110)
Rokke was a First Lieutenant assigned to the 12th Preventative Medical Detachment of the 330th Medical Brigade prior to and during the war.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#115. To: BeAChooser (#106)
Rokke's stated purpose is to get the U.S. to stop using some of our best field weapons that employ DU projectiles.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#116. To: BeAChooser (#109)
Is that it? Just "never mind" that he lied to folks like you ... about his credentials, about his activities in Iraq, about the claimed death of those he worked with?
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#117. To: BeAChooser (#109)
Funny that not one health physicist ... the folks whose specialty is that topic ... agrees with *Dr* Rokke or you about he dangers posed by DU.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#118. To: BeAChooser (#109)
No, what I said is that Dr Rokke LIED about being a health physicist ... because he and the folks who asked him to speak at various BAN DU meetings thought that would make him more credible to the rubes that attended those meetings.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#119. To: robin, BeAChooser (#112)
He is Dr Doug Rokke, a US health physicist who led the DU clean-up in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq immediately after the Gulf War.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#120. To: BeAChooser, robin, Diana (#111)
Christian Science Monitor Pentagon stance on DU a moving target
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#121. To: BeAChooser, robin, diana, SKYWALKER, HOUNDDAWG, former lurker (#110)
(Edited)
he was the most junior of 14 officers
#122. To: BeAChooser (#97)
Diana to BeAChooser in response to that statement - Of course they don't, they don't want to lose their funding!
#123. To: BeAChooser, hammerdown, All (#98)
Why not. Polls are all you folks have been grasping at all along.
#124. To: BeAChooser (#102)
maybe he is one of those lizard people David Ickes talks about.
#125. To: BeAChooser (#103)
And I'm curious. If we'd not gotten involved in WW2, who do you two think would have walked away the big winners?
#126. To: BeAChooser, All (#125)
#127. To: Diana, BeAChooser (#125)
BeAChooser: And I'm curious. If we'd not gotten involved in WW2, who do you two think would have walked away the big winners?
#128. To: robin, Diana, ALL (#112)
He is Dr Doug Rokke, a US health physicist
#129. To: BeAChooser (#128)
Idiocy
#130. To: BeAChooser, robin, diana (#128)
ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Doug Rokke is NOT a health physicist. His claim that he was is a LIE. As is most everything he told your source, robin.
#131. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#113)
You're the one that brought up Rokke, not I.
I'm not so sure if your "sources" are credible as much of what you posted is based on anonymous sources
And BTW, there is no such rank in the Army as a "junior lieutenant", as one of your sources claimed Rokke to be. It is either 2nd lieutenant or 1st lieutenant.
#132. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#116)
The facts do not depend on Dr. Rokke for their validity; the facts are the facts, regardless.
#133. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#117)
So you're telling me that there isn't one "health physicist" that finds U-239 and Plutonium to be harmful to human life?
#134. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#118)
I often wonder if Dr. Rokke is a deliberate plant
#135. To: beachooser, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#128)
#136. To: FormerLurker, robin, ALL (#119)
So the BBC reported him to be a health physicist for the US Army having a rank of captain. Well, you'd think the BBC would comfirm that info before reporting it,
and if untrue, there would be an official US Army statement rebutting the assertions.
Dr Rokke, a US expert on DEPLETED uranium . . . spoke to a meeting of concerned residents . . .
. . . the US was planning much more intensive use of the Lancelin Range.
Dr Rokke was a major in the US Army and former head of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project -
. . . has expressed her condemnation in the strongest terms . . .
. . . I will first point out that I have sighted Dr Rokke’s citations and can only assume that the member who has just spoken has not. . . . Unfortunately, the United States military has no record of cleaning up its mess . . .
. . . I was the U.S. Army health physicist assigned to the 12th Preventative Medicine AM theatre command staff . . .
I immediately contacted unit and the theatre medical command staff to recommend medical care for all exposed individuals.
. . . Dr Rokke has made exaggerated and untrue claims during his visit to Australia. Dr Rokke has exaggerated his background. He is not, and never has been “the foremost U.S. military expert on DU,” as he was described in the . . . Canberra Times. He is not a medical doctor. His Ph.D. is in education.
Dr Rokke apparently misled you on several points as you prepared your article.
He was never a US military researcher.
He was never a scientific expert on depleted uranium, much less the Pentagon’s senior expert.
While I cannot tell you why he was sacked (US Privacy Act), I can tell it was not for his “public views.” His first presented these views only after he lost his job.
Scientists are not divided and much pertinent research has been done to show that Rokke’s allegations about the DU’s health effects are false.
Damaged vehicles were left behind and buried because their recovery was uneconomical, not because they were “too dangerous to move.”
He was not recalled to head a “depleted uranium project in Nevada.” He inserted himself, but the US Department of Energy only allowed him there as an observer.
In the past he has named friends he has “lost” who are still very much alive and well.
While uranium can cause harm internally, it must exceed a threshold well above natural levels. Rokke and soldiers in the Gulf War never exceeded that threshold except for friendly fire survivors. Those survivors have never shown ill health attributable to uranium still in their bodies.
Robert Cherry, Ph.D.
Certified Health Physicist. You reporter. . . has just published . . . an article on Doug Rokke, with the highest count of errors per paragraph ever recorded to my knowledge. It is embarrassing to read such tripe knowing Doug Rokke so well and experiencing the ease with which even a cub reporter on a high school paper could trip him up. In a nutshell, not one of his “facts” could be verified if you even bothered a perfunctory check. I was his supervisor at Fort McClellan, AL where he was called to duty to work under me while I was the Director of the Bradley Radiation Laboratories at the U.S. Army Chemical School. It would take too much space to detail the lies he told your reporter, but here is a minuscule sample: he is not a Health Physicist, he was not “put in charge” of anything, he did NOT loose his job from speaking out: that came later, . . .
Disappointedly, Ed L. Battle, PhD (in Physics, not education like Dr. Rokke’s), COL, USAF (Ret)
#137. To: scrapper2, ALL (#121)
Btw, I checked into Rokke's official military records - he has them posted on various sites - and as of 86/06/05 under the "Principal Duty" column, the US Military refers to him as NUC Med Sc Off and then on 91/03/25 he is referred to as "Theatre Health Physicist" and as of 92/09/15 he was referred to as EXECUTIVE OFFICER and as of 94/08/01 he is referred to as Project Director ( USACMLS) and from 95/11/30 to 98/11/20 he is referred to again as NUC MED SCIENCE OFF.
#138. To: Diana, ALL (#122)
I was defending the credibility of scientists you were attempting to riducule, kind of like you do with DU and "health physicists".
#139. To: Diana, ALL (#125)
"And I'm curious. If we'd not gotten involved in WW2, who do you two think would have walked away the big winners?"
Everyone.
Nazi Germany would have been destroyed regardless, and the Soviet Union would not have become strengthened
Japan would have imploded in time as well.
#140. To: scrapper2 (#130)
Btw, I checked into Rokke's official military records - he has them posted on various sites - and as of 86/06/05 under the "Principal Duty" column, the US Military refers to him as NUC Med Sc Off and then on 91/03/25 he is referred to as "Theatre Health Physicist" and as of 92/09/15 he was referred to as EXECUTIVE OFFICER and as of 94/08/01 he is referred to as Project Director ( USACMLS) and from 95/11/30 to 98/11/20 he is referred to again as NUC MED SCIENCE OFF.
#141. To: beachooser, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#136)
#142. To: scrapper2, Diana, ALL (#127)
Russia lost 17-20 Million soldiers ( prodded onwards by the NKVD) fighting the Germans. In the course of battles, Russia ended up destroying 3/4 of the German ground forces. We stepped in after Hitler made his strategic error - Hitler's defeat was determined as soon as he decided to attack Russia.
The Brits survived the Battle of Britain. The Brits were winning on the African front.
America came in for clean up duty
and to fight the Japanese.
#143. To: scrapper2, ALL (#130)
See information in my message #121.
#144. To: robin, scrapper2, ALL (#140)
Smear tactics are all that's left, the facts are plain
#145. To: BeAChooser, diana, robin, HOUNDDAWG, Hammerdown, former lurker, AGAviator, Fred Mertz, SKYWALKER (#137)
(Edited)
By all means, link us to those records he's supposedly posted. By all means.
#146. To: BeAChooser (#98)
Why not. Polls are all you folks have been grasping at all along.
#147. To: BeAChooser (#110)
He didn't. He LIED about that.
try again, strawman.
#148. To: BeAChooser (#138)
But I do that to support a position on the topic being discussed.
#20. To: Diana, ALL (#16)
A truth and a lie make little difference, only agenda matters.
you're not even a capable amateur strawman, 'loser.
#149. To: BeAChooser (#66)
Marie Colvin
March 15, 2007
Give Us Some Real Political Leaders
Ali al-Fadhily* March 13, 2007
Security Meet Ends, Insecurity Does Not
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily February 13, 2007
More Troops, And More Violence
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily February 12, 2007
Iran 'Fooling' U.S. Military
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily March 15, 2007 - MidEastWire.com Daily Iraq Monitor
March 15, 2007
Iraqi security sources said that hundreds of Al-Mahdi Army members continue to receive training in the Kermanshah area in western Iran with the participation of a group of Al-Mahdi Army commanders who left Iraq for Iran six weeks ago. The sources said that the Iranian Revolution Guards Intelligence Unit and Al-Quds Operations Command asked Al-Mahdi Army to establish a command-in-waiting that would include new elements that are not publicly known, while maintaining the central command of Al-Mahdi Army militia. The command-in-waiting will include young elements and other elements that are not wanted by Iraqi and US forces.
The sources have mentioned the names of some commanders who have great influence within Al-Mahdi Army. Among these names, which could not be verified from independent or Al-Mahdi Army sources, are Walid al-Zamili, Mustafa al-Ya'qubi, Ali Kharsan, Awn Abd-al-Nabi, Hashim Abu-Raghif, Jabir Jabiri, Amar Muhaysan, Riyad al-Nuri, and Abbas al-Kufi, most of whom are outside Iraq at present, in addition to the known commanders of the sectors. The sources also mentioned the names of the publicly-known personalities in the Sadr Trend who are active in Iraq. Among these names are Abd-al-Zahra al-Suway'idi in Al-Sadr City; Salim Husayn and Hazim al-A'raji in Al-Karkh; Muhammad al-Zubaydi in Al-Rasafah; Ali Salim in Basra; and Abd-al-Razzaq al-Nadawi in Al-Diwaniyah. Government sources repeatedly declined to give official information on the movement of Al-Mahdi Army in Iraq and Iran, thus making it difficult to verify the information coming from government and non-govern! ment sources at the same time.
The Iraqi government had in the past received a report on a training operation held in two Lebanese areas; namely, in Hirmil and Al-Nabi Shit, but Hezbollah denied any link to such training operations. The secret report presented to the Iraqi government by an Iraqi security agency said that the rumours about the training of Al-Mahdi Army in Lebanon led to discharging Hezbollah official Nawwaf al-Musawi, who was replaced by Hasan al-Rahal to coordinate the training operations in Lebanon.
An explosion of a booby-trapped car driven by a suicide bomber rocked the Al-Karradah area in southeastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounded two others, according to an initial casualty toll. A security source said that the explosion targeted an Iraqi Police checkpoint at Kahramanah Square, adding that the casualty toll is expected to rise since the area where the explosion took place is usually crowded with people. Eyewitnesses said that they saw six wounded people following the explosion, which took place at 1500.
A bus exploded in front of the General Company for Mechanical Industries in Al-Iskandariyah in northern Babil Governorate, south of Baghdad. Security sources said that the bus exploded when the employees arrived at the company this morning, killing at least five people and wounding 21 others. Ambulances rushed to the site of the explosion and evacuated the wounded to hospitals.
An armed group in Iraq announced that it kidnapped an Iraqi officer with the rank of brigadier general. It posted on the Internet his identity cards, which showed that he holds the post of deputy director at the Iraqi Defence Ministry, but it did not describe him as an officer. Jamal Rashid Muhammad Ali was shown wearing civilian clothes in all his identity cards, which were posted by Ansar al-Sunnah Group on the Internet. The group said that the kidnapping operation took place in an area in Baghdad, without making any demand to release him.
Unidentified gunmen today assassinated an escort of Iraqi Construction and Housing Minister Bayan Dazhyi near his house in Al-Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad. A source at the Construction and Housing Ministry said that unidentified gunmen attacked Asu Abdallah Ghafur, an escort of the minister, while on his way to the ministry, which is located inside the Green Zone in central Baghdad.
US-Iraqi forces imposed curfew on the city of Al-Dulu'iyah in Balad District, north of Baghdad, following an airdrop over the city and an armed attack on a police station there. Iraqi Police sources said that US forces were dropped from five helicopters over the Al-Jubur neighbourhood in central al-Dulu'iyah, adding that the US forces killed two young men in an air bombardment near their houses and carried out raid-and-search campaigns in a number of areas, during which they arrested nine people, including a brigadier general in the former Iraqi Army and his brother.
Sources said that unidentified gunmen attacked Al-Hardaniyah Police Department in northern Al-Dulu'iyah and clashed with policemen. As a result, a gunman was killed and another was wounded, while officer with the rank of first lieutenant was seriously wounded and curfew was imposed. - MIDEASTWIRE.COM, Middle EastRoundup of Iraq violence -- March 18, 2007
By Mohammed al Dulaimy
McClatchy Newspapers
"U.S. Funding Armed Groups to Overthrow Iranian Govt"
Interview with Reese Erlich
The Iranian government has itself accused opposition groups of destabilising the border region, and recently warned Kurdish Iraqi officials to expel armed bandits and anti-Iranian groups from their province, or face military incursions.
IPS: What do the Kurdish opposition groups look like? What constitutes the daily life of these small groups who are fighting an established government?
Reese Erlich (RE): The Kurdish compounds are like small villages. They have barracks for the single men peshmurga. Political cadres live with their families in small homes, much like Iraqi Kurds in that area. They have meeting halls and offices. PJAK's [Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê, or Party of Free Life of Kurdistan] conditions are much more like guerrillas, living in the cold mountains with more rudimentary huts.
I described one PJAK leader as the "very model of a modern guerrilla general." He has a cell phone, internet access and satellite TV. The women guerrillas claim they only watch news programmes, but I got them to admit they also like movies with Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson.
IPS: Is the U.S. support limited to media or does it include other activities, such as military operations?
RE: Secretly, U.S. intelligence services are also sponsoring armed attacks within Iran. I discovered the U.S. and Israeli support for PJAK in Kurdistan and from so-called former MEK members. The U.S. asks a Mujahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MEK or MKO) member if they have left and if they support democracy. If they answer yes, they can be trained and armed for clandestine actions inside Iran.
I believe that Kurds and other minorities within Iran have legitimate grievances. They are not allowed to learn in their local languages and face other forms of discrimination. But the U.S. finds the most extremist of minority groups and encourages them to engage in violence. The PJAK is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and has become a nationalist cult built around the personality of Abdullah Ocalan. MEK is really a cult, run by very secretive and authoritarian leaders. Both these groups consider themselves social democrats, but ironically, they receive the most support from extreme right wingers in the U.S.
IPS: How do they get support from [sympathisers in] Iran when the Iranian government has extensively shut down their operations in the west of Iran?
RE: I met with three Iranian Kurdish opposition groups with camps in northern Iraq. KDPI [the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran] and Komala say they recruit new members from Iran and both have peshmurga militias. But neither currently engages in armed activity inside Iran. It's hard to know what actual support they have inside Iran, but they historically certainly had supporters in the Kurdish regions. PJAK is much smaller and more isolated. But they have picked up some support from young people angry at the oppression they face inside Iran.
>From my sources among Kurds, all three groups carry out clandestine meetings with supporters inside Iran. When big demonstrations broke out inside Kurdistan in 2006, all three groups participated in the demonstrations. PJAK took a more militant line, calling for armed struggle, and that appealed to some youth.
IPS: What can they achieve while there are many dynamics to reform the Iranian political system?
RE: All three groups agree on certain things. They say they support a revolution in Iran with the ultimate aim of establishing a democratic, federal system. They want the central government to control major issues such as foreign affairs, the military and economy. But local regions should control education, health, police and similar local issues. They do not call for separatism. The danger, of course, is that if Iraqi Kurdistan becomes independent and the Iranian government continues its current policies, the mood could shift in support of separatism.
It's very hard to judge how much support these groups have in Tehran. I met with some intellectuals, NGO leaders and others who -- I suspected -- supported one or another group. But since the groups are illegal, they can't be very specific. I think the support for much greater local control or federalism is strong among the Kurds I met.
IPS: Does the Iranian opposition, which is supported by U.S. money, support any kind attack against Iran?
RE: KDPI strongly opposes any U.S. military attacks against Iran, arguing it will just alienate Iranians, including those who oppose the government. PJAK welcomes such attacks in hopes they will topple the government. Komala says it neither supports nor opposes such attacks. U.S. attacks might help topple the regime, they argue, but they don't advocate it.
U.S. military officials I spoke with deny any U.S. support of PJAK. The official position of the Bush administration is to support Iranians to bring about a new government, but they don't officially call for "regime change." In reality, the U.S. is doing everything in its power to overthrow the Iranian government and install one friendly to the U.S.
IPS: Is there any direct connection between the Kurdish opposition groups and U.S. officials? Do they meet on regular basis?
RE: In 2006, top Komala and KDPI leaders visited the U.S. to meet with middle level State Department and intelligence officials. It was an official meeting covered in the press at the time. They wouldn't tell me the content of the meetings except that the meetings were very friendly.
Hejri visited Washington in 2006 to meet with State Department and other U.S. government officials. Hejri and other KDPI leaders deny accepting U.S. financing, although he said KDPI would accept such aid if offered.
Morteza Esfandiari, the KDPI representative in the U.S., told me that KDPI had applied to get some of the 85 million dollars allocated to "promote democracy" in Iran in order to improve its satellite TV station.
The KDPI opposes U.S. or Israeli military attacks on Iran's nuclear power facilities as counterproductive.
I think it will very hard for Iran to crush the Kurdish opposition. Kurds are a very independent people who have never liked repression from the central government. In addition, the Kurdish guerrillas can retreat into Iraq, and return to fight another day.
IPS: The Iranian government has a very friendly relationship with Iraq's president, who is a Kurd himself and has strong ties with Iranian officials. Why does the Iraqi government allow the Kurdish opposition groups to operate in Iraq?
RE: The KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) allows Komala and KDPI to maintain compounds in Iraq and train peshmurga, so long as they don't carry out armed actions inside Iran. I think KDPI and Komala agree to those terms. PJAK does carry out armed actions. KRG officials claim they can't stop PJAK because of the rugged mountain terrain. In reality, they just look the other way, since PJAK has U.S. and Israeli backing.
Kurdish nationalism is very strong. The KRG, which has good relations with Iran, can't ignore the plight of Kurds living in Iran. So they compromise by not allowing the two major groups to engage in guerrilla activity. But it's a situation that can't last forever. Last year, on two occasions, Iran shelled Iraqi Kurdish villages, killing five people as a warning to the KRG.
In the past, Iran has asked the KRG to shut down opposition groups operating in Kurdistan. They even made a deal with one of the Iraqi Krudish groups to attack KDPI's camp. But KDPI was warned in advance and no one was hurt. Right now the KRG relies on the U.S., and the U.S. wants Iran attacked. So I don't think Iran's entreaties will go anywhere. If the general political situation changes, however, who knows?
*Omid Memarian is an Iranian journalist and civil society activist. He has won several awards, including Human Rights Watch's highest honour in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award. His blog can be found at http://omidmemarian.blogspot.com/. (FIN/2007)
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#150. To: BeAChooser (#134)
#151. To: BeAChooser, robin, diana (#142)
(Edited)
a. the US supplied 92.7% of the USSR's railroad equipment, including locomotives and rails, and from 15% to 90% of production in all other categories. Weeks, who reads Russian, surveys these recent studies and cites them to show that Lend-Lease was indeed "Russia's Life-Saver."
#152. To: scrapper2 (#127)
America came in for clean up duty and to fight the Japanese. We lost approx. 300,000 men in WW II. Britain lost 600,000. Russia lost 17-20 Million. Can you imagine such numbers of losses?
#153. To: All (#152)
#154. To: Diana, BeAChooser (#153)
And other totalitarian govts such as nazis I should add.
#155. To: BeAChooser (#139)
Who would have destroyed Nazi Germany, Diana?
#156. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2, All (#142)
To suggest they, on their own, could have beaten Nazi Germany is highly optimistic. Especially since in technology, Germany was far ahead of the Soviets. A time would have come when that advantage in technology was decisive.
#157. To: scrapper2, BeAChooser, FormerLurker (#145)
#158. To: BeAChooser (#133)
(Edited)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#159. To: scrapper2 (#145)
BAC, do your own research. I did my research to satisfy my own curiosity. It doesn't take much finger power, BAC.
Just because [Christine] exercises this type of tolerance for the absurd (ie. you)...doesn't mean she has to smell your droppings up close. - Scrapper2 to BeALooser
#160. To: scrapper2, ALL (#145)
I found these directions/options right off wikipedia.
I don't have Dr. Rokke's permission to post links to the pdfs in their entirety.
Dr Rokke was a major in the US Army and former head of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project, responsible for training US personnel in preparation for Gulf War I in terms of their exposure to environmental hazards including radiation. Dr Rokke holds a PhD in Philosophy and a Master of Science.
I am writing to seek the Consulates assurance that the United States of America has not used and will not use Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions at the Lancelin Defence Training Area (LTDA) in Western Australia.
Thank you for your letter dated July 17 regarding Depleted Uranium . . .
Firstly, let me make clear that the United States, as a matter of policy and practicality, does not use DU munitions at the Australian Lancelin Defence Forces range. DU munitions are seldom used in training anywhere because they are too costly to expend for training. Furthermore, the U.S. military uses the Lancelin Range only infrequently, and only by invitation of the Australian Government. When U.S. forces use the range, it is always jointly with Australia and in compliance with all Australian laws and environmental rules. The U.S. military utilizes Australian environmentalist planners on each and every use.
Secondly, Dr. Doug Rokke has made exaggerated and untrue claims during his visit to Australia. Dr. Rokke has exaggerated his background. He is not, and has never been “the foremost U.S. military expert on DU,” as he was described in the June 18th Canberra Times. He is not a medical doctor. His Ph.D is in education. He earned a Ph.D in Science/Technology Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana in 1992.
If he was finishing his PhD in 1992 he was certainly not, as Hon Dee Margetts claims, running the Gulf War as a major in 1991. He was still at university. The letter continues -
Dr. Rokke did not join the U.S. as a medical officer in 1967, as reported in the Canberra Times. He joined as an airman, an avionics technician. According to the Department of Defense, Dr. Rokke was not “in charge of cleaning up radioactive waste” after the 1991 Gulf War, as was described in a June 18th ABC broadcast. As a First Lieutenant, Dr. Rokke was assigned to the 12th Preventative Medical Detachment of the 330th Medical Brigade prior to and during the war. There were 66 people assigned to the unit; he was the most junior of 14 officers.
Initially, he was responsible for conducting nuclear, biological and chemical training.
In closing, let me reiterate that the U.S. military does not use DU munitions in Lancelin. I urge you to share this information with your constituents and other Members of Parliament.
. . .
Yours sincerely
Oscar De Soto
Consul General of the
United States of America While Dr. Rokke presents himself as an expert, this does not make it so. His role in the 1991 Gulf War, at the US Army Chemical School, and his educational background do not qualify him as an expert on the purported health effects of depleted uranium. . . . It is important to make a clear-cut distinction between Dr. Rokke’s technical qualifications and those of certified medical health physicists who are qualified to assess the medical implications of radiation exposures.
#161. To: hammerdown, ALL (#149)
Dahr_Jamail
#162. To: BeAChooser (#161)
#163. To: Red Jones, ALL (#150)
Doug Rokke is a fellow who spent 30 years in the US Army.
#164. To: BeAChooser (#160)
In closing, let me reiterate that the U.S. military does not use DU munitions in Lancelin. I urge you to share this information with your constituents and other Members of Parliament.
#165. To: scrapper2, diana, robin, ALL (#151)
Stalin, the bloodiest Dictator of the 20th century
In fact, the Brits and Canadians in particular and Europeans generally take offense over the bravado and swagger of chest beating tinhorn macho men like yourself, BAC, who claim it was America that won the war.
America's entry helped but the war was already on the way to being lost by Hitler due to his choice to attack Russia.
The British maintained naval superiority
and had survived the Battle of Britain
- Rommel was getting his butt kicked on the North African front.
And if the US had not jumped in - Russia would have finished off Hitler and soon after Uncle Joe would have fallen
As for Pearl Harbor -HA! -faux reason that caused 300,000 US servicemen deaths including the 2500 at Pearl Harbor
Also, you don't seem too concerned about the millions upon millions of Eastern European Christians who were doomed to Uncle Joe's brutal rule and gulag camps. Oh well.
As for Japan - the Russians beat them up pretty good as well - they crushed their supply lines.
#166. To: BeAChooser (#161)
Now there's an *unbiased* source. (wink)
care to provide any source of his bias, smartass?ROTFLOL
#167. To: scrapper2, diana, ALL (#154)
Nazii-fixated folks like BAC probably view Catholics and Orthodox Christians as being disposable, forgettable, not special so why bother faulting Uncle Joe and the communists?
#168. To: Diana, scrapper2, ALL (#155)
Regimes ruled by insanity can't last.
Most everyone has been taught that all the Germans loved Hitler, and he killed 6 million Jews, which all the gentiles in Europe were so happy about.
he killed millions of people, he imposed impossibly high standards on all the civilians, made them snitch on neighbors, threw people in camps for the slightest infractions, raided other countries, it was a demonic regime and demonic regimes including Japan and Cambodia in the 1970s can only last so long.
Germany and Russia would have continued to fight and could have worn each other down to the point where both countries could have ended up with humane regimes.
#169. To: Diana, scrapper2, ALL (#156)
There would have eventually been uprisings and the nazi regime overthrown,
even without the help of the Soviets.
The German and Austrian people were increasingly miserable in spite of what the History Channel tells us, it would only have been a matter of time, and a very short time at that.
Another thing, will triumphs over technology every time.
#170. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#158)
So you're telling me that there isn't one "health physicist" that finds U- 239 and Plutonium to be harmful to human life?
"I haven't said or implied that at all. Strawman."
That is EXACTLY what you have implied,
Professor Emeritus Washington State University
#171. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#158)
#172. To: BeAChooser (#165)
I hate to tell you this, but your allies against the Iraq war, liberal democRATS and other leftists, are the ones who in the 80's and 90's wanted to appease and learn to live with the Soviet machine. It took a Republican President... to bring it down.
#173. To: BeAChooser, diana (#169)
(Edited)
BAC: Forget the Soviets. They are gone in your alternate world. The Germans defeated them using technology that even the US didn't have at the end of WW2.
#174. To: BeAChooser (#160)
Dr Rokke holds a PhD in Philosophy and a Master of Science.
#175. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2, robin, All (#167)
Oh please. Have you nothing but strawmen to offer?
#176. To: BeAChooser (#168)
Really? The Soviet regime lasted the better part of a century.
#177. To: Diana, robin, BeAChooser (#174)
What is his masters in?...That would sound strange for a PhD in education to be an expert on DU but if he has a master's in a related science and did a lot of coursework in that area it would explain it
#178. To: scrapper2 (#177)
#179. To: scrapper2, ALL (#173)
If you believe that the Germans defeated the Russians in WW II
Hitler suffered his greatest military setback of the war in the summer of 1944.
It did not just fuel Stalin's war machinery to fight Hitler
Diana is right - that the "will" of the Iraqi insurgents will ultimately overcome the technology of the foreign occupier.
#180. To: Diana, ALL (#174)
"Dr Rokke holds a PhD in Philosophy and a Master of Science."
What is his masters in?
* Master of Science; University of Illinois; 1986.
* Bachelor of Science; Western Illinois University;
#181. To: Diana, ALL (#176)
They had help and were in a more secure location and larger geographically than Germany.
Your bomb argument may have some merit, I'm not so sure they were that close to us at the time in development
#182. To: scrapper2, ALL (#177)
but he was indeed at one time viewed as an expert in DU matters, toxic chemicals in the environment. In fact, he is named as a participant in a CDC conference publication from 1999
Dr. Rokke was an Ass't Professor at the Dept. of Physical and Earth Sciences, Jacksonville State U
#183. To: robin, ALL (#178)
Dr Doug Rokke, a US health physicist
#184. To: BeAChooser (#170)
(Edited)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#185. To: BeAChooser (#180)
Doctor of Philosophy; University of Illinois; 1992.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#186. To: BeAChooser (#171)
Let's see if you just dismiss or ignore them like you did then.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#187. To: BeAChooser (#160)
Yes, let's see what Wikipedia has to say about Doug Rokke:
Please see the discussion on the talk page.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#188. To: Diana, BeAChooser (#174)
That would sound strange for a PhD in education to be an expert on DU
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#189. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#185)
So Doctor of Philosophy could be a Phd in Physics (Doctor of Philosophy in Phyics).
#190. To: FormerLurker, ALL (#188)
People don't get a PhD in Education, they get a Ed.D or D.Ed
Doctor of Education
A PhD is a research degree and applies to a wide range of sciences and humanities.
Doctor of Philosophy
Robert Hoewll, Fort Hays State University, $50.00
Aldo Jackson, Erie County Technical School, $50.00
Edward Mann, The University of Southern Mississippi, $50.00 + $10.00
Connie Munson, Student Membership $15.00
Mabel Okojie, Mississippi State University, 50.00 + $10.00
William Page, Clemson University, $150.00
Greg Petty, The University of Tennessee, $50.00
Ernest Savage, Bowling Green State Univ., $50.00
Jerry Streichler, Bowling Green State Univ., $50.00
Jack Wescott, Ball State University, $150.00
Jamie Harrington, Western Washington University, $50.00
Mark Johnson, Pittsburg State University, $50.00
Gary Lietz, U.S. Department of Energy, $50.00
Edward Mann, Univ. of Southern Mississippi, $150.00
Reynaldo Martinez, Jr., Oklahoma State University $50.00 + $10
Virginia Osgood, University of Central Oklahoma, $50.00
Douglas Rokke, $50.00 + $10.00
Thomas Walker, Temple University, $50.00 + $10.00
Tom Bell, Millersville University, $50.00
#191. To: BeAChooser (#190)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#192. To: BeAChooser (#190)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#193. To: FormerLurker, BeAChooser (#184)
So do you find U-239 and plutonium to be safe to inhale and ingest BAC?
#194. To: FormerLurker (#187)
#195. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2 (#179)
Diana is right - that the "will" of the Iraqi insurgents will ultimately overcome the technology of the foreign occupier.
#196. To: BeAChooser (#180)
It states:
#197. To: Diana, ALL (#195)
Well I see you are rooting for their side. Too bad we have folks like you and those in the mainstream media doing everything possible (since almost day one) to weaken OUR will. Given that, whose side are you on?
You are doing that strawman thing to scrapper here,
and you are again inciting Aaron of LP to tie up the phone lines at Homeland Security.
#198. To: Dakmar (#194)
LOL, I think BAC might be Marie Colvin.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#199. To: BeAChooser (#197)
#200. To: BeAChooser, diana (#167)
scrapper: Nazii-fixated folks like BAC probably view Catholics and Orthodox Christians as being disposable, forgettable, not special so why bother faulting Uncle Joe and the communists?
#201. To: scrapper2, ALL (#200)
What's the strawman?
You make perfectly clear that you could give 2 hoots about the Eastern Europeans that we doomed to communism.
In sheer numbers of deaths he caused Hitler was an amateur compared to Stalin.
Hitler was no threat to America.
Say what you will about Hitler and the bomb - he was several years from that.
We had the bomb and we used the bomb. Hitler didn't.
Why don't you ask the Japanese about the dangers of a nation having a bomb and using it irresponsibly.
I provided you with a link to US Government documents recently released the showed the opposite to be true.
#202. To: BeAChooser, diana (#179)
a. scrapper: If you believe that the Germans defeated the Russians in WW II
#203. To: BeAChooser (#201)
You think our use of the bomb against Japan was irresponsible? Really?
#204. To: BeAChooser (#201)
a. Well there you have it folks. scrapper assures us that Hitler was no threat. Just like Saddam was no threat.
#205. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2 (#165)
It took a Republican President, a Catholic Pope and good ol' Margaret to bring it down.
Just because [Christine] exercises this type of tolerance for the absurd (ie. you)...doesn't mean she has to smell your droppings up close. - Scrapper2 to BeALooser
#206. To: BeAChooser (#168)
No one is now being taught ALL Germans loved Hitler.
#207. To: BeAChooser (#181)
"Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb."
#208. To: scrapper2, BeAChooser (#202)
As for will, the Iraqis have it because it's their country. They - the insurgents - or as war mongers like yourself like to label Iraqi citizens "the enemy" are planning to fight the foreign occupier to the last man - get it - they have legitimacy on their side - it's their country, not ours, not Israel's, not Haliburton's, not Exxon's. We were not invited to invade and occupy Iraq by the Iraqis. We invaded for lies generated by the Office of Special Plans.
#209. To: scrapper2, ALL (#202)
a. scrapper: If you believe that the Germans defeated the Russians in WW II
BAC: I don't believe that. Didn't say it. Didn't suggest it. Just another scrapper strawman. The Soviets defeated the Germans. BUT, in large part thanks to the help of the US. Had the US not provided that help ...
scrapper: a. Liar. This is what you said in post #169:
BAC: "Forget the Soviets. They are gone in your alternate world. The Germans defeated them using technology that even the US didn't have at the end of WW2."
b. scrapper; Hitler suffered his greatest military setback of the war in the summer of 1944.
BAC: Almost three years after the US entered the war.
scrapper: b. What does one have to do with the other? The Russian army was singlehandedly responsible for the German defeat in the summer of 1944. The US military was not in Russia. In case you were not aware of this, BAC, the Russians had the largest standing army in the world as of 1941.
BAC: c. I'm glad you recognize that the Lend/Lease fueled Stalin's war machine. Without it Hitler's Germany would have won. Then what?
scrapper: c. I never denied that the lend lease program fueled Stalin's war machine.
FDR condemned millions upon millions of Eastern Europeans to servitude under communism or to immediate death in the gulags. And to that you say nothing - you don't care, and it's transparently clear why.
If we had stayed out of the war, the 2 monster isms would have finished each other off
There was zero chance that Hitler would invade Britain after he lost the Battle of Britain.
Hitler didn't get his weapons re-armament plans implemeneted by Speer until 1943, for God's sake. Britain was way ahead of Germany in that regard.
d. d. scrapper: Diana is right - that the "will" of the Iraqi insurgents will ultimately overcome the technology of the foreign occupier.
BAC: Well I see you are rooting for their side. Too bad we have folks like you and those in the mainstream media doing everything possible (since almost day one) to weaken OUR will. Given that, whose side are you on?
scrapper: d. I support the troops by wanting them to come home asap.
Btw, don't you dare bad mouth or raise any cheesy questions my patriotism
AEI
As for will, the Iraqis have it because it's their country. They - the insurgents - or as war mongers like yourself like to label Iraqi citizens "the enemy" are planning to fight the foreign occupier to the last man - get it - they have legitimacy on their side - it's their country, not ours, not Israel's, not Haliburton's, not Exxon's.
We were not invited to invade and occupy Iraq by the Iraqis.
#210. To: scrapper2, ALL (#203)
"You think our use of the bomb against Japan was irresponsible? Really?"
It's not just my opinion.
... snip ...
"The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it."
#211. To: BeAChooser (#210)
#212. To: BeAChooser (#210)
#213. To: scrapper2, ALL (#204)
a. Hitler wanted continental Europe.
Saddam was no threat to us. It's been said by the 9/11 Commission and by the Iraq Study Group. Are you deaf and blind?
b. Here's what I'm trying to tell you - since you didn't get it the first time round - we had the bomb.
Hitler did not have the bomb and he was several years from getting the bomb,
regardless of what your sources might say.
And even if Hitler had eventually got the bomb, so what - haven't you heard of the phrase "mutual deterrance"? Duh - Russia had the bomb
#214. To: BeAChooser, diana, robin, christine, Burkeman1, Brian S. leveller (#210)
(Edited)
a. I'd like to see the names of these scholars. And I'd like to see these alternatives.
#215. To: scrapper2 (#214)
You think Nagaski and Hiroshima were some kind of petri dishes for experimentation on what works for peace and what doesn't?
#216. To: robin (#215)
BAC is not here for honest debate, he is not here in good faith. He is here to distract and disrupt any meaningful discourse and exchange of ideas about certain topics.
#217. To: scrapper2, ALL (#214)
I gave you the same link 2 times already - it's 4 pages long. Newly released US gov't documents make it quite clear ( except to war mongers like yourself) that nuking 2 cities in Japan constituted war crimes committed by Truman. He had alternatives and he consciously ignored them.
b. You really are certifiable nuts, boozer
Good God, man, you are heartless.
#218. To: robin, ALL (#215)
He is here to distract and disrupt any meaningful discourse and exchange of ideas about certain topics.
#219. To: BeAChooser (#218)
I guess robin, because she's bozo'd herself, doesn't realize that I posted the article starting this thread. And since she can only read half the debate, she has no idea what discourse and exchange of ideas is really taking place. It's rather funny, if you ask me.
"It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House, 1/5/02]
#220. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2 (#209)
BeAChooser says to scrapper2:
#221. To: scrapper2, BeAChooser, Ricky J (#214)
"On August 6, 1945 the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people and completely destroying approximately 68% of the city's buildings.[1] In the following months, an estimated 60,000 more people died from injuries or radiation poisoning.
#222. To: scrapper2, ALL (#209)
As for will, the Iraqis have it because it's their country. They - the insurgents - or as war mongers like yourself like to label Iraqi citizens "the enemy" are planning to fight the foreign occupier to the last man - get it - they have legitimacy on their side - it's their country, not ours, not Israel's, not Haliburton's, not Exxon's.
#223. To: RickyJ, robin, ALL (#219)
You can still see article posts even when you have someone on the bozo filter, so I'm sure she knows you started it.
#224. To: Diana, scrapper2, ALL (#221)
Death by radiation poisoning is suppose to be one of the most painful ways to die.
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