Damn...burned on my own smart @ss tendency.

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An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This seems like WWIII country by counrtry. I believe we could wup sum butt easily. However, we had better be prepared so some serious effort, because of the Iraq situation and so forth. We are truly putting our young generation through some very tough times. We CANT let them get nukes PERIOD. If they get em, we are ALL screwed. Not because they would necessarily use them, but because they would give them to everybody else who is crazy (Sudan, Algeria, Palestine, Syria, etc.....) Then the whole Middle East would have them.

Albert Einstein said "I do not know what weapons WWIII will be fought with, but WWIV will be with sticks and stones"

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Just wait for the first Nuclear reactor accident and the entire middle-east will be in a nuclear cloud.

If you were a leader in the middle-east that objected to the west, why would you want your own nuclear reactor? All that does is give your 'enemy' a direct and very effective target. IMO the covert is much better then the overt. Thankfully, most 'crazies' are very dumb.

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is how WWII started as well. First Germany went into Austria. Then Sudetenland, and then Czechoslovakia. Finally when they went into Poland, France and Britain decided they had enough and declared war on Germany, thus starting WWII. This actually leads to the question "who started WWII?". If you want to get technical, France and Britain did. If you want to be more logical, then the obvious answer is Germany.

I am very curious to know at what point our "Poland" will happen. Perhaps it could be Iran. Maybe it is the one after Iran. If we invade Iran, and China declares war on the United States, who will be seen as having "started" the war?

I don't disagree with you that this type of occupation is foolish and the means to a fuzzy end, but we did (and still do) occupy Germany and Japan to this day and it's been 61 yeas since WWII ended. The difference is we occuupy those countries via our military bases there.

And, let me state something that seems culturally biased but is indeed fact: the Germans and Japanese had more infrastructure, more "Westernized" society, no tribal conflicts, and probably more to live for than your average Iraqi- thus more motivation to get things back to normal after the end of WWII.

JV

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JV

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know...it's what we know for sure that just ain't so

If you recall, after our invasion or Iraq, a good percentage of the people actually cheered our arival. But when we failed to repair the damage to the infrastructure that we had caused and restore their electricity and drinking water, they lost patience. Now it is 3 years later and a good percentage of the Iraqi people are still without electricity and drinking water. All other things aside, if someone caused you to lose your electricity and clean water for 3 years, I'm pretty sure you would hate them regardless of what else they had done.

As far as occupation in general goes, if you study WWII, you find that the Germans had the same problems in France and other countries that we are having in Iraq. And Japan had similar problems in China and Korea. While both Germany and Japan had much superior militaries and were able to easily take over these countries, small bands of rebels continued to fight gorilla wars against them. Given time, even without help from the US and Britain, these occupations would have ultimately failed.

Eric- I have studied WWII, studied it quite extensively. I'm also a former Army officer, so I know a couple things about military history

The ONLY city to rise up against the Nazis was Warsaw, and they did it in 1944, after the Nazis had been there 5 years. Hitler got so pissed off about Warsaw defying him, that he ordered the city completely annihilated and over 90% of all the buildings in Warsaw were leveled. The surviving citizens lived in the sewers. The Russians sat across the river and let the Poles get slaughtered by 40,000 Germans with tanks and artillery. Over 200,000 Poles died during the months of the uprising, and Hitler accomplished his goal.

The Germans were taking heavy casualties from Polish snipers, but they won out in the end against the only city-wide defiance they faced in all of WWII.

The Japanese over many years had invaded, pillaged and tried to control parts of China and Korea (the 1910 Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty). The resentment of the Japanese in those countries ran deep. The Chinese and the Koreans weren't about to let history repeat itself without a fight, but the Japanese military was never ordered to annihilate anyone or anything as Hitler ordered his troops to do unto Warsaw.

Point being that armies are trained and fully capable of annihilation of a military target. Armies are not however, trained for and should never be expected to be civil occupiers under anything other than martial law.

JV

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JV

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know...it's what we know for sure that just ain't so

As Emril would say "BAMMM"

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Good summary of our discussion.