Free Republic

Wow. How old are these guys? They must be even older than the KISS guys. Maybe they can get Emerson Lake and Palmer to open for them and sing "Jerusalem."

They keep trying to use the same playbook they used in the '80s and '90s, but they don't get that people here (for the most part) aren't buying it anymore, and even people in Europe seem to be quietly recognizing most of it as BS.

Seems to me that if Japan had any will to do so, they could become the world's second most powerful military by a pretty wide margin. China should think about that. Of course, so should we.

They have a better (i.e., more misleading) name than NAMBLA.

Maybe the Cowboy can ask the Indians to scalp Osama for him on their way through Pakistan. :)

If Stratfor is right, we may find out soon whether any of Saddam's chemical weapon stockpiles ended up in the Bekaa valley. Nasrallah has come right out and stated that the Israelis should not assume that Hezbolla is as ill equiped to resist them as they were in 1982. Maybe he's just doing the "mother of all battles" thing and talking big like Arabs do, or maybe he really has access to them. If he does, I can't see him allowing Hezbollah to be "liquidated" without attempting to use them first.

"El Goremano"

We learned all about that from "Roots." "Perhaps you have noticed, the phalumbwebwe of a man is much different than that of a boy."

Next week's headline: "Former Sunni Insurgent Groups Claim They Must Have Nuclear Weapsons From U.S. To Fight Foreign Jihadists."

Well, at least they didn't throw in fat and ugly this time, so we have that going for us. Hugs and kisses to them too.

If you're point is that I don't really "know" anything with respect to how people would have reacted, I suppose that's true. But in a way, it's moot. If we had known this was all we were going to find, I don't think we would have made that case in the first place. We would not have allowed the issues at the UN and in the press to be framed so heavily in terms of WMD. Standing up and saying "We know that Saddam has 500+ pre-1991 shells scattered around the country that he hasn't located and accounted for" wouldn't have sounded very forceful. I think we'd still be there, but I think we would have made a different case. Again, just my opinion. But, just to show you where I'm coming from, I think we PROBABLY would have attacked Iraq even if Clinton was still president on 9-11. That's how crazy I am.

"Who's trying to "appeal" to anyone? "

The politicians who have been most vocally publicizing this in an election year. I wasn't speaking to your actions, or anybody else on this forum. My point from the get-go (perhaps inartfully stated) is that I don't think it's likely to redound to their benefit in the way they hope.

But your point is taken about the "Bush lied" issue. To the extent that this helps dispel that particular myth, then I suppose it's useful, but I don't think it will convince anybody who actually believes he lied.

"Its relevance to the issue of whether Bush was correct to declare him in violation of relevant UN resolutions, is unclear however. "

I think I made clear, the relevance is political. I guess I'm telling you what I believe (in my OPINION) the reaction of the average swing voter will be (or the average citizen of our supposed allies), to the extent he or she is paying attention. Convincing you and me that invading Iraq was even more of a a necessity that we already thought it was is a useless endeavor. He had us at "hello." In other words, in my OPINION, trumping these munitions only appeals to the already converted. And, yes, I am a mindreader.

Anyway, sorry if I upset anybody here. I'm not trying to flick anybody's ear, I just think they should have sat on this until they had something more to show - all at once.

As an aside, given how little of that country we REALLY control, in the true sense of the word, I suspect there is a lot more still there.

"Hey "Newbie" did you sign up just to counteract info inconvenient to the dimRats?"

You're obviously not reading the full content of my posts or grasping my intent, so I'm not sure this is worth pursuing. But I'll try again. I was, and still am, in favor of this war. I think it is bad PR to try to make a big deal out of these shells at this point. If you want to call me names, or question my intent, there's not much I can do about it.

"Saddam was supposed to account for his WMD, as per the UN resolutions and he refused to do that. "

I doubt he really even knew or cared about these particular worthless munitions. All the good stuff that he knew or cared about, assuming it existing (and I suspect it did) has been moved or hidden.

"He claimed he destroyed the WMD and this proves that he didn't. "

As a technicality, I suppose that's right. But I don't think he was intentionally lying about these particular worthless pieces of crap. And I think most people understand this, so trying to hang one's hat on this is bad PR for Republicans. It just looks bad. There's a logical reason why the Administration has not tried to make that case.

::If you had been following any of it, there are also tons of documents showing that he has been working on WMD AND working with Al Qaeda - a lethal combination.

That's fine, but it has nothing to do with these old degraded munitions that people keep hyping.

"We will never know what catastrophy President Bush may have saved us from, by getting rid of Saddam."

That's precisely right. And I think my original post made clear that Bush had to do this and that Saddam's continued existance after 9-11 was simply untenable for a host of reasons, whether or not our incompetent intelligence agencies were able to find any convincing evidence of his covert involvement.

I still feel the war is justified, in part because i think there were WMD that were moved or hidden and in part because I think there were plenty of valid reasons to do this having nothing to do with WMD. In fact, I think it would have been dereliction of duty by Bush not to do it.

However, all this pointing at these old degraded munitions as justification for the war makes Republicans look a bit silly. Though they may technically qualify as WMD, this was not the type of WMD on which the case for the war was made, and we would not have invaded if our real reason was simply these lame shells. These munitions were not a bona fide material threat to US. All this excitement over a few old shells just looks like desparation and detracts from the genuine reasons for the war.

'cause they're just as cute as a bug's ear and give great hugs?

Well, if two learned professors from the Institute for Social Research and the Institute for Legal Research both concur that this man is not a crazy leftist, who am I to doubt them?

Like I said, it was tongue-in-cheek. Maybe they could breed monkeys that find the taste of grapes repulsive, but loooove the bananas they would get as a reward. :)

That was just a joke over the fact that they are currently considering (or perhaps have passed) legislation that will grant certain elevated rights to the Great Apes akin to rudimentary human rights. I assume my tongue-in-cheek proposal to breed and enslave thousands of grape picking chimps or monkeys would not sit well with the proponents of that legislation.

Maybe we should breed apes or monkeys that are trained to pick crops, just to piss off the Spaniards. :) People often talk about jobs "that a trained monkey do." This might be the one job where that's literally true.