I stumbled across this very entertaining flash story of what the war against Irak might be like. Obviously, it’s intended for humoristic purposes and I’m not taking it seriously. You can enjoy it HERE.
But after you’re done laughing, I’d like you to point out which are the things that most unlikely to occur and why. I think this could be great debate material. In any case, I hope you like it as much as I did.
That’s hiLARious! Thanks for the site!
The scary thing is, of course, that none of the things that happen in the flash story are that inconceivable. It does raise a lot of unanswered questions!
Well, the most obvious mistake is that you spelled Iraq wrong…
Just checked with an Arabic colleague and Hail is right - in the Arabic as well, it’s IraQ.
There is however an ancient city in Iraq called Uruk, from which perhaps confusion stems?
Try this site: - http://www.uruklink.net/eindex.htm - for lots of useful Iraq links.
Kids, ease down, huh? I know that the French at least spell it “Irak.”
Yup, so do the Germans.
This was discussed a couple of months ago. Searching…
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And here it is:
Gulf War II (now with animation!) - could this happen?
Though the link to the animation on that thread seems to be having trouble.
BTW, andros we’re speaking English not French or German. 
BTW, CarnalK, a native French or German speaker will still likely spell it “Irak.”
Point is, it’s not particularly a mistake, and it’s foolish to dismiss someone as illiterate or dumb for it. Not that anyone has–yet–but I hope it’s now forestalled.
Well, the most unlikely to happen is Iran invading the south of Iraq, that would be suicide for them because by the time they were able to mobilize their army the Iraq war would be open and all they would accomplish would be to pain a target on their backs. Saudi Arabia kicking out the American troops is far fectched because it would leave their kingdom almost defenseless and piss of the US. Pakistan being able to smuggle nuclear weapons into Saudi Arabia is unrealistic in such a short time. Hezbollah invading Israel in unrealistic because they are outmanned and they know it. If the Al Queda presence in Afghanistan is really strong enough to overthrow the regime, it is unrealistic to expect them to wait for the Iraw war to do so.
Well, I’m playing the game right now…I’ll do a running commentary at each little continue sign on things I think are wrong. First things first, I wasn’t really paying attention during that first sequence so I won’t comment on it. I’m now at the Anthrax launching. Total crap…if the Iraqis launch a SCUD with an anthrax warhead, there won’t be massive casualties as anthrax is easily treated with common antibiotics. The only real danger is if you don’t know you have it and don’t know the warning signs. Second, the US didn’t give Iraq anthrax. They wouldn’t need to, it’s pretty easy to make. But that’s sort of beside the point in terms of the show.
Next, there’s no real evidence that Iraq has enough uranium for a dirty bomb. So that’s probably out as well.
Israel will not nuke Baghdad. It won’t have the provocation to go to such an extreme response, and the US will be able to restrain them, just as they did the last time.
Tony Blair looks pretty funny. Although, I’m not sure I want to hear him talk about people tasting British spunk. Gross.
Saddam Hussein will probably not be killed in a bombing raid, as his bunkers are pretty darn good.
There are more than three options for post-invasion leadership.
I don’t think there will be sudden urge from the US to crush the Shias in the south. In fact, I doubt there will be massive uprising there at all, since a power-sharing interim government is the likely post scenario.
If it comes to open civil war in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi royals will not expel US troops. Once it comes to open rebellian, the royals are toast without US support and they know it, there will likely be no appeasing the rebels.
The Iranians are not going to attack US forces.
Neither are the Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians or Pakistanis.
What you have to remember, and what every national government in the region realizes, is that if if comes to actual fighting they have almost no hope of defeating the US military, and even if they eventually do it will be over a ruined country. So posturing and complaining about the US military is one thing, attacking US troops is a complete other thing.
If these countries really do believe that the US is a rogue nation, the last thing they are going to do is attack us, since that would give us the pretext we need to invade and destroy them. Eventually the US would leave, but the current crop of national leaders would be gone. And if there is one thing the current crop of national leaders in the middle east are concerned about, it is perpetuating their regimes. Kicking the US out after years of Vietnam or Algeria style destruction would be pretty cold comfort.
Terrorists attacks inside the US aren’t very likely to make US troops go home, they are of course likely to enrage the US population and encourage the pro-war faction.
Hmmm…so there will be suicide bombers in Israel, Arabs around the world will angrily protest against Israel, and Saudi Arabia will become an Islamic fundamentalist country? Well, that’s news.
The animation actually does provide a possible worst-case scenario. Although one important ommission is the possibility that in all the chaos created by the war Al-queda acquires weapons of mass destruction and uses them on the US. The war provokes the very thing it was supposed to prevent.
Lets not forget, addressing the Iraq vs Irak issue again, that it is originally written in Arabic, which has its own alphabet.
I teach ESL and have seen many of the same names spelled differently. One common example is Tariq and Tarik.
I also have seen this from Russian speakers (Alexander, Aleksander, Aleksandr, etc etc) and Korean speakers (Lee, Ree, Rhee, etc etc).
The bottom line is that there often isnt regularization when dealing with different alphabets.
I dont know what Gozu’s native language is. If it IS English, well, thats one thing, but if it isnt – and those of you chastising probably dont know – well, I welcome you to join a discussion on a message board that isnt in English. Spelling counts.
Wow, different languages spell things different. You learn something new everyday.
The sound represented by ‘q’ in “Iraq” (or “al-Qaeda” or “Qatar”) does not exist in most other languages, certainly not in English or French. However, it makes more sense to represent it as ‘q’ rather than ‘k’, since
a) in the International Phonetic Alphabet, the standard used by linguists everywhere, that sound (uvular plosive) is represented by ‘q’
b) it makes clear that this is a particular sound which does not exist in English - ‘k’ can end a word in English, but ‘q’ can’t, and moreover, ‘q’ is never used without a following ‘u’ except in this particular context - I’m fairly certain that most or all of this applies to French as well.
In spanish it is also written with K, Irak. To the op, great site!!
Instead of going into the “what ifs” of the OP, I will happily grab the linguistic hijack:
Fang is correct on the “qaf”, the ending phoneme in the word “Iraq”: it is indeed an uvular plosive in Modern Standard Arabic. In most European languages, the sound is represented as a K, as it does not exist natively; though “q” is uncommon as a final letter in English, this is not the case in French (ever had coq au vin?). The main reason a ‘K’ is used would probably be historical: the phoneme is pronounced differently in different dialects of Arabic (Qatar is actually pronounced as gutter, for example) in modern times, but in many older manuscripts the “qaf” and “kaf” phonemes were represented simply by “k”. Burton did this in his writings when transliterating from Arabic, and, if anyone knew Arabic dialects and pronunciation, he did; however, he probably did it out of tradition, as Latin texts of much earlier did the same thing when transliterating Arabic texts. I have pages from a Bible written in Arabic and Latin, that dates from about 1570 AD; in it, both phonemes are represented by “K.”
Hope this helps…
The animation is a hoot, but as far as how grounded it is in the realm of possibility: well, there are always worst-case scenarios, I guess. However, I do agree that a war will lead us right around in a big circle: we will only inflame the situation, not solve it. The animation does make that point well, I think.
Andros guessed right. I’m used to the french spelling of Iraq. I apologize for the duplicate post. I Searched for “Irak flash” and “Irak animation”.
One should never underestimate the power of the Q.
(trekkies will get that )