For aircraft pictures :

mainly : Nikon F-5 + 28mm + 35-70mm + 80-200 + 300mm (Nikon AF-Ds)

additional : a Sigma 400 + 1.4 converter

backup : Nikon F90 X

a Pentax Espio Zoom 135mm is used for holiday pictures

I´m currently looking at a Nikon D100 digital camera, but still not sure I want that one.

My last post was in no way meant racist,

what i was saying is that the 3rd world has few changes to catch up with the first and it can not be blamed only on the local governments and population.

Look at Africa up to the end of the “offical” imperialism those countries were exploited and the gains helped build the modern western societies. And today has not changed a lot, we take the resources from the countries and sell them the finished products and do make profit by that. How should these countries develop if a large part of the money is spent paying back debts given to them by the western states ?? And the western states profit two times from such credits, mostly the countries buy goods and services for the money they got and after that they have to repay the debt.

Surely it has to do with a lot of missmanagement in those countries, but that is not all. Especially when you consider that the western countries need cheap raw materials to keep the economy running.

I do agree that most european countries enjoy a form of social captalism, that is neither pure socialism nor pure capatilasim and it surely does offer a decent life to most people in those countries. And it surely is a better system for former communist states then the raw capitalism.

But in the end this social capitlasim depends as much on cheap raw materials as the pure capitalism.

Interesting discussion,

but everyone here is underestiminating communism. The world has not yet seen a real communist state. Most states that call/called themselves communist are/were in fact Stalinist. Stalinism is only another form of the old master and slave form of a society. So in a true sense Stalinism is closer to capitalism then it is to communism, as you have a small minority controlling the majority. Stalinism uses force to control the masses, capitalism use money, but in the end both forms are comparable.

The US and the other so called modern states are not even capatalist they are imperialist. They are controlling and exploiting other countries to improove their economy. Other people are killed and oppressed if it is helpfull to stabilize the society in their home countries. So in that view you have again a small minority (western states) oppressing a large majority (rest of the world).

So in that was even Stalinism was better, as the suffering caused by that political system was limited to the actual country. Modern western imperialim in contrast spreads the suffering to the rest of the world, but it reduces the suffering in the western countries. But this system is only succesfull as long as the oppressed masses in Africa, Asia and South America don´t overthrow their masters.

The weather could be another reason.

The idea that the US could plant WMDs in Iaq is a bit on the funny side, as this could be very easily found out as the inspectors should know very well which capability was available to the Iraqis and which not. Could be quite hard to stage this.

I believe they will find some WMDs (especially chemical weapons), if they are still useable will be a question most likely never answered.

There are many explanations :

First of all he only had very limited numbers available. Or let us say serviceable. The means ready to use without blowing up when fired.

Most of his means of delivery were not usefull.

– Planes would not work, because US air superiority
– medium range missiles – few left
– short range missiles – possible but how many stable warheads left ?
– arty – same as short range missiles

We must see that most of the weapons Iraq had, offered only a very limited shelf life. Those were unstable and crude weapons.

They had to be cooled and stored in air conditioned storage areas.

So he could not deploy them early. Given J-Starts probably covering all known depots 24/7 moving them would become difficult.

We don´t know how long he was still in contact with front line forces and if he would have been able to order the use in time.

Using them at day 1 was out of the question, as that would have meant certain defeat. I bet he was hoping enough casualities to the US to make them withdraw. But his conventional forces failed misserably. And at the point that became obvious to him, he might have lost control of his WMDs.

We don´t know how much of the celebrations were staged and for a city of 5 Million people there were only a few celebrating.

I think the regime of Saddam was not worth dying for, but they will want the US to leave their home asap.

If there are any I would expect them to be in the Tikrit area, as the support for Saddam is better there. And he can be more sure that no one would give his secrets away, then around Baghdad were people might be tempted to give his secrets away for money and a flight to the US…..

But that is if there are any …………..

Originally posted by Jonesy
Hey, I never said they were new!!! 😀

Besides some things improve with age least thats what I tell the wife 😀

That will backfire, when you want to buy an new car, PC, etc.