Absolutely no need to thank me for that.

Now stop being such a grand person, you’re giving me the creeps 😉 !

Point taken Steve.
I was not aware of the phrase ‘Unweaponised WMD’ and responded to that. I do maintain my view that some better linguisticists could be hired to come up with a less scaremongering term, as in my eyes an unweaponised weapon is not a weapon.

I think there are more reasons which can make an aircraft historically significant:

-1- The airframe itself is of an historical significance. I can think of certain prototypes or test-aircraft (like the Fairey Delta mentioned above) or aircraft which were part in a historical event (the German Constellation ‘Konrad Adenauer’, or RAF Tornado GR1 ZA447/EA ‘MiG Eater).

-2- The aircraft is representative of some historical/technological benchmark. Like a B707 (for being the world’s third jet airliner after the Comet and Tu-104), a MiG-15 (first swept-wing fighter) or a Spitfire (well, duh!).

-3- The airframe is unique because it’s only a one-off (Brabazon 🙁 , Mirage 4000) or because there are only few of that particulair type remaining (any Swift, any Javelin, any Yak-28P, any B-36).

I don’t think any museum would hire me though, since i would consider far too many aircraft worth preserving…

Originally posted by Jonesy
So, in summary, we have an unweaponised WMD product in a small tanker, buried somewhere….

Steve, i thought you would be better informed than to use cheap rhetorics like “unweaponised WMD”. You’ll have to agree with me that a such contradictionary combination of words is utterly laughable, and can apply to everything you want. Niger’s uranium is of course an unweaponised WMD. So are the cute little duckies at your local pond (take a duck, scrape a bit around it’s butt and i’m sure you will find a few bacteria of the botulism strain which will give you a far better killer than anthrax). And while we’re at it, Surinam’s bauxite supplies are only a fleet of intercontinental bombers in disguise :rolleyes:

Like any other bacterial strain, Iraq’s anthrax as delivered by Donnie R. needs maintenance to be kept usefully alive. Specific temperature, food, light, the lot. Traces of anthrax will indeed survive when buried in the hypothetical propaganda bowser, but certainly not enough to maintain a useable weapon. Even more so, maintenance of Iraq’s germ collections was done with help from US companies – do you really think that a lot of those still were present after 1991?

Vortex, don’t leave your **** dangling out of your fly if you don’t want it kicked. Other people can play the cheap insult trick too, so please don’t provoke people. Better be very thankful that Kev is a grand enough person not to make an issue out of it. Plenty of others would.

The US did target civilians in Vietnam. In South Vietnam, as Kev stated, VC-controlled (or suspected) areas were free-fire zones. Anything that moved was a target, even if she was only four years old and helping her grandfather in the ricefields. Don’t worry though – both were tallied as VC.

In North Vietnam the US bombed dikes, canals and irrigation works in the hope that with the upcoming monsoons, large areas of the country would be flooded and that the irrigation works wouldn’t have enough water to grow enough rice. It didn’t work because the monsoons set in late that year (i believe ’68 or ’69)
Flooding an area and hoping for a famine? Sure, both are strategic targets. But the civilian population would be the prime victim.

And please stop that BS that we should only look at the US for what it has done over the last 20 years. It is exactly that attitude, of setting the standards yourself and then being proud of those ‘achievements’ which is what i consider the most disgusting thing Americans seem to enjoy so much. If the US hasn’t been nasty over the last 20 years (well, Nicaragua/Honduras still fits in this period as well as several ‘errors’ like the Chinese embassy or Iranian Airbus), then why worry? I believe no militant Islamists have done anything evil for the last 20 minutes… You don’t believe that either. I know the US could well be on it’s way to international decency, but i don’t think anyone but the most naieve star-spangled-banner-toting Texan can blame me for being sceptical.

With you, Steve, Kev and probably the rest of the sane (if we’re part of it, that is 😉 ) world i agree that terrorism should be dealt with as poweful, effective and ruthless as possible. But i also think that in order to really eradicate a problem, more is needed then only fighting the symptoms. And with Kev i agree that this symptom-fighting might in fact aggravate the disease itself.

Where to start…

The first time i got seriously arrested (rather then ‘removed’) by Russians for planespotting was in 1993, at Mahlwinkel in former East Germany.

Even though the phenomenon of planespotters was known to the Russians in Germany back then, there are always a few who think they know better… The lucky guy who got to walk at gunpoint to the base’s HQ was me.

I didn’t speak any Russian at the time yet, and well before i was given an interpreter the balls of bureaucracy and paranoia had started rolling. When i had finally made my statement it was already clear i had done nothing wrong, but alas: the HQ of the GSFG at Wünstorf had been warned, and an official investigator would come the following morning to hear me out.

But it was only early in the evening. So what to do? A drinking binge of course! Together with the local Spetsnaz commander (Sr. Ltn. Sergei Nikolayensko) and a few of his buddies, we were put in an appartment on the base, and vodka was bought. In large quantities of course.

And so the drinking began. In total there were about seven of us, and a few more bottles of vodka (one box of six bottles, those were sold at giveaway prices at the Russian ‘PX/NAAFI’-stores, and a few more separate bottles). All bottles were emptied, and two were smashed by one of the spetsnaz-guys against his own head. Yes, you’re tough, now stop it!

I only managed to get two hours of sleep, and was of course still dead drunk when i woke up. The excellent pasta & goulash & coffee breakfast at the officer’s restaurant didn’t sober me up all that much… i guess you can imagine the state i was in when i was in front of that intelligence Colonel. Somehow i don’t remember much from that interrogation, except that when i got out the Colonel was extremely angry with my physical state in which i attended the interrogation. Everyone i had met the previous day was already quite amused with me being totally drunk (i was only 18 then), but when the good Colonel finally went away a lot of them burst out laughing.

Oh, despite him being pissed off at me he agreed i did nothing wrong. Sensible people, those Russians!

A market economy requires free and easy movement of goods more than anything else. Anyone else who ever travelled in Russia?????

Originally posted by keltic
What do people see in the far right parties?.

Easy. Far-right parties blame the problems a country has on a group of outsiders. The easy appeal of the ignorant malcontent: “Your problem? Their fault!”

Sad.