Fortune 500? Nah… How bout

FC-1 FORTUNE COOKIE

Crack one open to see what the lucky numbers are.

Liz Hurley and Zeta-Jones are pretty PHAT.

The RAF can give a good thrashing to most airforces in the world if the RAF gets basing rights closeby and the RN can sink most navies and engage in a limited blockade. But putting boots on enemy lands is much more difficult.

The question is, can the UK wage total war independently against another country? Hmm… depends on the other country of course but I think that capability no longer exists for the UK. Flay me alive if you will for saying that but …

I think to gain that ability would require the UK to make investments in its military a couple of magnitudes higher than what it is doing presently. Frankly, I don’t see any UK gov’t doing that anytime in the future.

There is interdependence b/w the US and UK. No country can afford to fight a war on its own any more and if they do, they wreck themselves silly and set back their development by years if not decades. Iran-Iraq, Ethiopia-Eritrea, US-Vietnam OK, the US wasn’t set back by decades but it was a significant drain on even US resources), etc.

There is nothing wrong with having a nitch military for a country who is well entrenched in a cooperative defense environment. In fact, that is the cost effective way of having enough deterrent capability but being able to fight collectively. If UK is attacked, the US and all of NATO will fight along side. What’s the point of sustaining a massive military that only duplicates your allies’ capability?

Originally posted by Wolverine
if you do go back and read you will see it as indeed your pal SD10 who lstarted flaming. he brought this whole logic of indian mentality into this without any reason. no indian was responding to anything.
there was a discussion going on with SOC and he strats flaming about indians.
i think this guy needs a kick out f this forum. just another flamer.

I think GD’s general advise about flamers still stand. Regardless of the flamer’s nationality, ignore them.

The ADS is supposed to be 37,000 tonnes (metric), which is about 41,000 tons (short).

Originally posted by SOC
Saudi’s…valuable allies…that’s debatable 😀

Anyway my reasoning behind backing the Arabs in hindsight is to stem the anti-American terrorism that is rampant (OBL and others). Many of them dislike US support of Israel. OBL is ****ed for a whole mess of reasons. Had we been on the side of the Arabs, the whole thing may have turned out different.

You can’t please everyone all the time. People like OBL and other like him will always find reasons to be p!ssed. It’s just their nature.

The way to deal with terrorism is NOT to address their “root causes” but to root out the terrorist financial, political, ideological and physical infrastructure. That’s the only way to deal with OBL and his stye mates.

PS, Saudis were extremely valuable in 1991. Wouldn’t have been possible other wise. They chose to leave from US’s good graces. The US didn’t kick them out.