Attack on Iraq Betting Pool

Friday, August 30, 2002 | Momaw Nadon

[Momaw Nadon]

It seems like an attack on Iraq is coming soon.

Place your bet as to when the attack will begin.

Whoever gets closest to the date and time wins.

Attack time must be specified in Month, Day, Year, Hour, and Minute

For the hour, don't forget to specify what time zone you are referring to.

There is no decision on a prize to be awarded yet except for bragging rights.

[fatrat]

feb 28th 2003 4:15pm central standard time.

[I'm ALL Right!]

I'll take a stab at it...I say February 14, 6:07AM, Saddam's time. Good riddance.

[merry10]

February 19, 2003.

[saxxa]

FEBRUARY , 26TH , 2003 ..12;01 , A.M. , BAGDAD TIME........BOMBS AWAY!!!!!!

[VietVet]

A couple of days ago, I would have said the night of the first new moon after the end of the Haj, to avoid the considerable civilian air traffic in the region as the Haj season ends.

After the President's speech today, I suspect it will be sooner than that, maybe even this weekend. (and to think some commentators regarded the speech as expressing a willingness to compromise and wait for the UN to authorize action!)

But in a very real sense, the attack has already begun. It has been reported (in Time, among other places) that American Special Ops are already inside Iraq, and that Turkish troops have crossed the border to set up refugee camps for the expected Kurdish refugees, whom they would rather keep in Iraq than let into Turkey. The British and American airstrikes in the "no-fly" zones have apparently been hitting more than just anti-aircraft sites which made the fatal error of firing on Allied planes for some time now. to paraphrase Patrick Henry, "the gentlemen may cry 'Peace! Peace!', but our brethren are already in the field. The next wind that blows from the East will bring to our ears the resounding clash of arms.!"

VietVet

[Tamzee]

February 16th, 1:00 a.m. Zulu time

And may our courageous armed services be safely and quickly home again...

[US_MilitaryRules]

feb 08 03 8:00 pm bagofdead time

[AF68]

March 3, 2003 at 6:00 P.M. CST

[NordP]

Good post - I didn't know when the the Full and New Moons were. If everything I've heard about Moon cycles is true, then for the sake of having all happen quickly and effectively, I would say March 2 would be best.

MY GUESS IS MARCH 3 10 AM PST.

Reality: When we have all our "ducks" in a row, and Rummy gets told we're ready, and he passes it on to George - kah boom, baby! And the people of Iraq live happily ever after, liberated. That would be a wonderful gift to them, from us. We should bring a few of them over here and take them to a Costco, and watch them freak out over all the quantities of EVERYthing we have here - then take them to Disneyland...and then send them home to tell two friends, who tell two friends...and so on, and so on.

Win the war.

Start the liberation.

Impliment some good 'ol fashion American PR on our behalf.

World loves us - economies are prosperous - all are happy! ...and so ends another tough American day at the office.

NordP

[The Great Satan]

Nine pages of wet dreams and know-nothing chest beating. Read it and weep.

[Mr. Mojo]

Did you place your bet for Oct. of 2004 yet?

[The Great Satan]

I already have placed my bet for May 7, 2004: www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/828377/posts?page=75#75

[Mr. Mojo]

It's blazing hot over there in May, and fighting in our anti-bio/chem rubber suits would be next to impossible during that time.

[Fred Mertz]

Mine is on that thread too. I kept it off the official thread so I could do my axis of weasel excuse making if I'm wrong. Maybe I should stick with Super Bowl predictions.

[The Great Satan]

The timing of any campaign on Iraq will be dictated entirely by our ability to counter Saddam's biological WMD retaliation against US and allied civilian populations. Everything else is trivial by comparison. If you actually believe all the BS about the "blinding heat of the Iraqi summer," you are very naive.

[Mr. Mojo]

So you chose May of '04 arbitrarily, convinced that we'll have neutralized Iraq's anthrax threat by then? LOL! The alternate universe you've constructed for yourself is both elaborate and illogical. ....But hey, at least it's yours.

[The Great Satan]

The US government placed an RFP for a civilian anthrax vaccine last April, with a proposed intial buy of 25 million doses, sufficient to treat eight million victims, equivalent to two simultaneous NYC subway-scale attacks:

RFP ANNOUNCEMENT: PRODUCTION AND ACQUISITION OF ANTHRAX VACCINE - NIH-NIAID- DMID-03-29

Parallel contracts were awarded in September to a US company, VaxGen, and a British company, Avecia:

VaxGen one of two firms picked to develop new anthrax vaccine

Delivery of the 25 million dose stockpile is scheduled for the end of this year. The development plans calls for a much larger stockpile to be built up subsequent to that, but no precise numbers are available on how fast they'll be able to ramp up production. It took about a year to manufacture the 300 million dose stockpile of smallpox vaccine after 9-11, so that may give us a ballpark.

My pick of a May date for a US assault on Iraq is, of course, arbitrary: I have no inside information on Bush's schedule. I assume that it will be at least several months after the initial 25-million dose stockpile is produced, because Saddam could easily attack any city in the whole world, even if we felt we could protect obvious targets such as (say) NYC and DC with that initial stockpile. This is what Project Bioshield, announced in the SOTU, is all about. I do suspect that Bush will attack before the next presidential election, although, if the assessment is that we cannot protect ourselves or our allies at that time, some pretext will be found to delay things into his second term. From a public opinion management standpoint, Bush has all the cards. This is easy sh*t.

[Thud]

The invasion started some time ago.

[The Great Satan]

The invasion started some time ago.

Really? By that standard, Iraq's already invaded us. Mutual invasions. Fancy that!

[Shermy]

Lot of good ideas here. I'll try something else.

My bet - On day three of the "war" (really just finishing the war started in 1998) an American missle or bomb will "accidently" explode close to the French Embassy, causing some damage to it.