Somber
11:36AM Oct 6th 2009

Banging the war drum? Why don't you hustle on down to the local recruiters office and show you committment to this course of action. If your knowledge of the employment of nuclear weapons is any indicator of your intelligence, you won't make it through boot training. If Iran wants nukes, I say let them have them...let them have 20 or 30. We have over 5000...so what. Which cities in the US would the Iranians target? Seattle? Boise? Who cares? Fear makes cowards of us all. The Republicans, and the Iranians, can only manipulate us, and cloud our judgement if they can keep us afraid. We make a short statement to Iran...your fault, my fault, anybody's fault...you launch, you die. We then move on.

jrot (The Angry Banana),


I'm sorry dip$hit, but she has the right to an opinion, unlike your pathetic ass that won't work and contribute. Get a job and support this nation rather than bleeding it dry with the handouts you obtain daily from hard working, patroitic citizens.

You can talk when you earn the right to. I so depise folks like you.

How ironic that we're on the same side on so many other issues. What I don't get is that you said basically the same thing that I did: let assured destruction turn Iran into the nervous wreck we were in the 70's. Let Iranians know that even if they somehow managed to sneek a nuke into Washington DC that we will retaliate with overwhelming and absolute power. This is something that I don't think Iran and North Korea realize is once you are playing the nuclear game then the cost if you lose is everything. Pakistan and India have come to this sober realization. Since both gained nuclear weapons, both have been forced to participate in strained and grueling negotiations rather than armed conflict because the alternative is war with the possibility of nuclear exchanges.

Incidentally, I did try to enlist in 1998 and 2004. Unfortunately I didn't clear medical. Theoretically I have a pending waiver somewhere in the Surgeon General but it's been five years and I doubt I'll ever hear back from them. There's also that whole DADT thing too. It'll always be a regret of mine that I was never able to directly serve my country. I think that's something everyone should do, at least for a few years.

Oooo, now that's a good idea, Somber. But really, does anyone really think Israel is gonna sit still for them having nukes??? I would lay money on that one.

http://splashinthepacific.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/damn-twice-in-one-week-its-like-being-married-crazytownfox-news-impresses-me-again/

No...we don't agree. We have no right to dictate to another country what types of weapons they think they need to defend themselves, or which side of the road they drive on. We allowed India, Pakistan, and Israel to have nuclear weapons, and guess what? NO WAR! In fact, India and Pakistan have been in a defacto state of war for 50 years. India and China had a war. Guess what? No nuclear weapons were used! Let me explain this to you one more time. Any country that has a doctoral level electrical engineering program and can purchase the raw materials on the black market and can build a low-yield nuclear weapon. Building and testing a safe and reliable nuclear device is very, very expensive, and very, very dangerous. Note, the key words are SAFE and RELIABLE. meaning, it won't blow up in your face while you're building it, and it will detonate when and where you want it to. Then you have to be able to mate it to a delivery device...an ICBM. If you want to reach the United States, you have to use liquid fuel. If you use liquid fuel, you can't store it in the missile. We know that it takes at least one hour to properly fuel of a liquid fuel missile, and you have to do it out in the open, to vent gases. These gases change the temperature of the surrounding air that can be detected with IR sensors, or mass spectrometers. You also need up-to-date weather information, and targeting data. Each of these actions, produces a "signature." For example, to get up-to-date weather information (a cross wind of 1 knot or temperature change of one degree can make you miss the target by 50 miles!)To get that weather data, you have to send up a special type of weather balloon, that transmits data to a local ground station. This balloon takes wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. The old Civil War saying "when the balloon goes up" nowadays means the eminent launch of a long range ballistic missile, and the balloon is a weather balloon gathering crucial data. What about GPS guided missiles? No problem. As soon as one is launched, the NSA can trigger "offset" software on GPS satellites. Now...let's say they have some of the smartest people in the world, who have overcome these extremely technical and extremely expensive obstacles. Where do you store this device? At a fixed site? One enhanced radiation warhead makes the launch site radioactive, rendering the launch site lethal to anyone stupid enough to remain there, and rendering all electronic components that were not shielded, useless. If their missile is underground, opening the hatch to launch will expose the the occupants to lethal doses of radiation...with death perhaps in less than one hour. Even without using an ERW, a thermobaric bomb(s) would ignite all combustibles above ground, including fuel tanks, and suck oxygen out of nearby underground command and control bunkers. Now..something else you didn't know about nuclear weapons...they have to be constantly tested, and components, subject to deterioration by the very nuclear material they detonate, have to be constantly replaced. The only way you can test a nuclear weapon, is by detonating it underground, or using a special type of supercomputer. The Iranians don't have, and can't get supercomputers, and detonating a bomb underground might use up all the u235 or plutonium. It's one thing to say you have a bomb, and it's another thing to confirm it. Once you confirm you have one, you are open to attack from anyone and everyone, including the Russians (Iran and Russia share a border). Next, you have to have some type of fail-safe PAL (permissive action link a type of lock) that keeps unauthorized people from stealing the weapon and using it. The next issue, is targeting. If you want to strike at the United States, which city do you strike? Washington D.C.? New York? Los Angeles? The President would have 30 minutes to order massive retaliation. It would take 63 weapons in the 5-60kt range to return Iran to the stone age. This includes destroying all of their military, all of their telecommunications ability, all of their oil infrastructure (and starting fires that would burn uncontrolled for over one-hundred years), all electrical power, all ports, all of their major population centers, and their entire economic capacity for the next 20 years. As an added measure, the warheads could be "enhanced" to yield very high levels of radioactivity, killing hundreds of thousands of people for years to come. Even the most insane Iranian leader would be removed for even thinking about bringing something like this on their country.

There is such a thing as a one in a million. Good for you.

Moderately left of Lenin, how do you like your boy staying the course in Iraq and ramping up in the "Real War" Afganistan? Looks like he'll go kicking and screaming into Iran next. Hope and the Same.

Hiney... That is President Obama, you are proof that carter is right.

moderate,

You still can't fathom what makes this great land tick? You don't know it's history and beginnings? What keeps us being the most enviable nation on the planet?

jhinds6056 - What exactly has Obama f*cked up in Iraq and Afghanistan? Please explain what he has done to make the situation worse than Bush left it? Bush left Afghanistan to persue his little vendetta against Saddam in Iraq. Bush also f*cked up Iraq by invading it and he also empowered Iran. According to history, not some republican version of history, but real history, Bush f*cked up real bad, but all you republicans can do is deflect blame away from Bush and project it onto Obama.

I do appreciate all of your and your friends efforts to incorrectly blame Obama for everything that went wrong under Bush's watch. Pretty soon you will be blaming Obama for 9/11.