This is the least informative sentence I have ever seen.
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
One reason the Iraqi Army was considered so formidable was not only it’s size but the presumption that it had a huge pool of “battle-hardened veterans” from the Iran-Iraq war. It turned out to be more “battle-weary”, but that was only in hindsight.
[/QUOTE]
That and they were fighting from prepared, fixed defenses which (before combat started and these were shown to be death traps) were presumed to balance the odds somewhat. I don’t believe that anyone (including Saddam or his generals) ever thought seriously that Iraq could win the confrontation, but my own memories were that a lot of supposedly knowledgeable folks were predicting it could turn into a blood bath all around, and that the US and our allies could take substantial casualties.
-XT
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
This is the least informative sentence I have ever seen.
[/QUOTE]
Platypus hopscotch.
-XT
That’s not a sentence.
Are you sure? If someone said ‘What is that marsupial over there up too’, and I responded with ‘Platypus hopscotch’, would this not be considered a valid sentence? Or would I need to including ‘Playing’ in there to complete it?
-XT
In that case, you are deriving the implied subject, verb and object from the context. What you’re really saying is, “that is a platypus playing hopscotch”.
pretty much anything can be a sentence if it’s exclamative.
Only on the SDMB could a debate regarding the world’s strongest military powers devolve into a nitpicky discussion about monotrematic playground games…
You’ve never had a Pentagon meeting, I can tell.
Erm… how about, “that is the aircraft carrier RNS Platypus taking part in Operation Hopscotch”?
That cite does support what I stated, which was that people were claiming it was the 4th largest, not the 3rd most powerful. It was being provided to get clairobscur to either provide a cite or back down from his claim that they were ever presented as 3rd most powerful. Sorry if that was unclear.
Iraq having the 3rd/4th largest army/military was based on numbers; probably the number of divisions as well as manpower. Iraq had 55 divisions while the US Army had 18 active and 10 National Guard divisions for a total of 28. Counting divisions can be very deceptive as an indicator of actual military power though, as this clearly demonstrates.
As to why the point would be made if not for propaganda and the overblown estimations of Iraq prior to the war, it should be remembered that before the war the last time the US military had seen serious combat was in Vietnam. The failure of US arms in Vietnam left a scar on the American psyche of self-doubt and uncertainty. It’s still impossible for some to admit that the US lost in Vietnam, to quote Red Foreman from That 70’s Show “We didn’t lose the war, it was a tie.” The long lead time necessitated to build up the force for Desert Storm from August until January the next year left the media with plenty of time to stew it over and little else to report on.
Well, to be frank, we didn’t lose the war; we just chose not to win it. The Vietnam war was a pulled-punches war the entire time it was fought - accounting for the fact that even I came to oppose it.
There is a Muslim country in the top 5, if we ignore nukes.
Can anyone guess which one it is?
Turkey?
-XT
Indonesia?
Sweden?
See what I mean?
That’s hilarious.
Man, the US lost the war. You can spin it for ever, but you lost. Unless the British didn’t lose the American revolution.
That’s a bad analogy. The British had a direct stake in the Revolutionary War, where as the US had an indirect or even perhiperal stake in the Vietnamese civil war/conflict. The South Vietnamese lost the war. The US pulled out and left them to face the music. The North Vietnamese won, though they paid a heavy price for that victory.
-XT