if enough people do this over a long enough time, the message might get through, IMO. Why not boycott a country whose jingoism is distasteful to you? America’s might will not last forever, no empire does.
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People often feel helpless to foment change–not buying goods or refusing to visit are excellent ways to demonstrate displeasure with the “product”. I won’t be vacationing in South Dakota because of their insane recent legislation, for example. It may seem silly to some, but it is all I can do to protest the state of affairs. That and make sure that IL stays blue, that is.
don’t know what point you were trying to make. the sequence I was commenting on was;
POSTER A: USA hasn’t used nukes since WWII
Poster B: listed cites of USA testing nukes by exploding same.
I was pointing out that there is an appreciable difference between testing the damn things and intentionally dropping them on habited areas.
John Mace: same query. You went 10,000:1 against Rove being convicted of treason. Do you have the same confidence level here?
Proposed parameters:
ANY United States or NATO-allied nuke of any configuration (bunker buster, tactical, whatever) exploding on Iranian soil before Jan 20, 2009. Delivery, intent, and current political climate not important. Big bada-boom, you lose.
I hadn’t seen your previous posts on the topic, but I’d expect at least 1000:1 odds given your apparent confidence.
Bet?
Disclaimer: I’m not sure I’d take the bet. “winning” would be horrific. But I do want to know how dismissive John really is. And if he’s in the 1k:1 range or better , I’ll take the bet @ $10 and donate the proceeds to nuke relief with great regret.
I must respectfully disagree – for the modern-day GOP, it’s all about the Benjamins.
If Iran was rolling in money and open to throwing shovelfuls of it into the coffers of the Administration and its cronies, GWB would gladly give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad major lip-lock action (but no tongue!) on prime-time teevee without a second thought.
Ah, we’re talking at cross-purposes. The power at the point of detonation is one thing, the area affected is quite another. It’s clear that an inverse-square or inverse-cube law applies. But dead is dead.
HAHAHA…I never saw that! Thanks for fighting my ignorance.
Go SimonX! 
Ah, the spirit of the White House Iraq Group and the Office of Special Plans lives on!
I’m a military officer. I’m currently outprocessing and will be off active duty very, very shortly. However, if I were recalled to active duty after a first attack nuclear strike, I have to say I would seriously consider refusing to report (I can’t legally resign for another 3 years). I would file as a CO, depending on the context of our attack. Who knows what circumstances we would use these, but unprovoked, would seriously piss me off.
Dead is dead if I let off a big firecracker while holding it in my mouth.
Yet re-reading your posts, this isn’t what you initially claimed. You claimed, via an unsupported cite, that a single, conventional 22,000 lb bomb exploding at Scampton would flatten Lincoln Cathedral - which means a significant blast radius of 8km, which in turn means an area of near-total devastation of 210 km[sup]2[/sup]. Could you at least admit that you were talking bollocks in that respect?
A deconstruction of the Hersch story here:
Thing people should ask themselves, why was this story leaked? Heroic “high level administration officials” horrified by Bush’s nuclear brinksmanship? Highly doubtful.
Or something else? Who was the leak targeted at? Iran? Europe? The US public? Somebody on the other side of bureacratic turf battle?
You can’t take the pronouncements of anonymous leakers at face value, because these guys have an agenda, and it isn’t always the same agenda as the other senior administration officials. You’ve got to take seriously the idea that Cheney and Rove or somebody else wanted this story on the front page for some reason. Doesn’t mean it was a smart reason, just that I doubt Cheney is sitting in his office licking his wounds and snarling, “Curses! Our secret plan to nuke Iran is revealed! Now we’ll never be able to bamboozle the American citizenry into supporting it!”
I’ve got a hunch that Hersh has been around the block enough times to consider these possibilities. And unlike Woodward, he hasn’t become The Scribe of the Powerful; his sources don’t usually tend to be people that a Rove or Cheney would even know, let alone use as a vehicle for a leak.
A decent reporter knows that sources always have their own agendas. I agree that there are a lot of not-so-decent (read: damned clueless) reporters out there, hence headlines like the WaPo’s DeLay Parting on Own Terms: Congressman Wanted to Win GOP Primary Before Announcing Resignation. But Hersh, as reporters go, is a hell of a lot better than average.
Yes, but Hersh has his own agenda, since it’s no secret he despises Bush (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).
I’m sure he’d be a little more likely to believe someone who had a story that seemed to make the Bush administration look like idiots.
Because I don’t believe for a second that Bush et al are really really planning a nuclear first strike on Iranian nuclear development facilities. Maybe somebody asked for some contingency plans or worst-case scenarios. But even if somebody in the Bush administration was pushing the nuke bunker-buster plan, I believe you’d have to fire half the generals in the Pentagon before you’d find one who’d carry out the order for a nuclear first strike against Iran.
No. I see no reason to admit error when there is no error.
More to the point, they wouldn’t let it leak beforehand: they’d just go do it. By talking about it beforehand, they paint themselves into a corner. And lose.
Why ? Surely not all high officials are homicidal maniacs.
Closely followed by “Oh, well, let’s do it anyway !”
Why not ? These people are utter fools, not to mention evil; I don’t think there’s anything they wouldn’t do.
Why ? How often does a military ( any military ) run out of people willing to follow stupid orders ? We’ve already conquered one country for no sane reason, why not nuke another ?
Well, that’s the heart and soul of your error. You just don’t seem to realize how rediculously laughable your allegation is that a mere ten tons of explosive would destroy a church 5 miles away.
And I’m sure you can produce an example of a story Hersh wrote where his willingness to believe the worst about Bush & Co. caused him to get the story wrong.
Quartz, forgive me for pursuing this, but you have erred. You said precisely this:
My emphasis: no we can’t. You claimed that a 22,000 lb bomb could have a blast radius of 8 km. Which by simple application of πr[sup]2[/sup], means that bomb would wipe out 210km[sup]2[/sup]. Your cite is bollocks, and your claim is bollocks. Admit your error.