Originally posted by Hand87_5
No problem go ahead !!! Are ex-wifes eligible as well ? 😀

Gets my vote Hand and I’d happily send mine to get the flames going good and strong. Hows that song go? “Burn, baby, burn”!!.

On a positive note it seems my daughter has an overactive scrounging gene as we’ve just done the obligatory sweep of the neighbourhood and she has literally netted 5lbs of sweets!!!.

Come to think of it I’m now a little concerned that she’s been “demanding with menaces” while I’ve been stood in the street waving happily and thanking my neighbours for their generosity!!! :confused: 🙂

Not heard of this anywhere else myself but the details sound authentic to a point.

The big questions would be what sort of “routine training” mission the Zubr was deployed on that saw it out alone with live ordnance for its 30mm cannon embarked? Presumably it “just” being on a training mission would mean empty tubes or just training rounds carried for the RL’s as, if the vessel was close enough to engage with the 30mm’s, it was certainly close enough to use the rockets if the situation warranted opening fire!.

As to the NK Navy, for a service with quite limited resources and very limited operational capabilities they do seem to be able to cause a LOT or irritation in their neighbourhood. They’ve had live-fire “incidents” with the SK Navy, Japanese patrol units and now the Russians over the last couple of years. I would have thought they’d be well advised to tighten their act up a bit before someone over there loses patience with them!

No offence taken or intended Alistair, thought it was just routine forum combat anyway!. 😀

To be honest with you I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek anyway….no…. more like an asolute bloody hypocrite…. as me and the wife love Ft William (just up the track from Fas!) and usually get two or three “weekends away from sprog” up there a year when we need to decompress.

The lager I was referring to was McKewans and, last time I bought it (circa 1992 I think) it came in an orange can and was quite suprisingly foul!. I have had some decent stuff north of the border “Special 70” or something but was just using it to pace the Jura so didnt pay much attention!.:)

Had a tyre go bang on me few years back in an Astra that I was pushing a tad too hard on the M6. Luckily was slowing down to enter a chicane….oops…I mean contraflow of course and had wound it back to 65ish before the blowout. Still took about an hour and a half for sphincter to return to normal diameter though! 😀

If its any consolation I gave up smoking 14 days ago so I’m probably in a poorer mental condition than you right now!

Save money on soap and shampoo by simply pretending to be a Scouser.

Save money on a Scottish holiday by simply removing the toilet paper from your bathroom, stocking your fridge with cr@p lager and sitting under a cold shower all week. Authentic scottish music can be easily simulated by taking a 9 iron to your pet cat for that total immersion experience.

:rolleyes:

“Excuse me sir, you appear to have just fallen down a 37ft well shaft. Are you okay?”

Garry,

Isnt this sort of contradictory:

Of course there was a reason to do so. The point is there was also a reason to make the safety of the oil secondary to the safety of the Iraqi people. America chose the oil and the Iraqi people know it.

and

Yeah crippled like Kuwaite… it is now living on handouts… or not.

In effect aren’t you saying that it was a poor show on behalf of the Coalition to preserve Iraq’s oil supplies, but, at the same time underline how absolutely essential that oil wealth is to eventual Iraqi prosperity?

Looks a lot like casual yank and brit-bashing from over here buddy!.

Thats not to mention that your “crippled like Kuwait” comment is just a bit misleading, after all, on the one hand you have a small country like Kuwait that was conquered without too much infrastructure damage initially. Was then subject to a few months occupation, pillage and looting and then liberated. On the other hand we look at Iraq and see a nation who’s infrastructure took significant damage in 91 and has taken the hits from 12 years of economic sanctions and a despotic nutter who liked to build palaces instead of utilities infrastructure etc. You think there is anywhere near an honest comparison possible there?

Or they could have been listening to Bush and Blair saying they have conclusive evidence of the existance of large quanities of WMDs in Iraq… you’d think if they were so sure they could have given such firm information to the UNSCOM and they could show the world.

They do have conclusive evidence of the existence of large quantities of WMD and WMD component materials in Iraq just before the war started. Hans Blix and UNMOVIC provided that evidence and the Hussein regime was not able to, or chose not to, refute the evidence.

You’d think high up Iraqi figures would hand over information on WMDs for their freedom… but it hasn’t happened.Either Saddam was a wonderful guy and he has their full loyalty or Bush and Blair were full of Sh!t.

Or the fact that the higher echelons in that regime know the dangers that crossing Hussein brings with it and be he dead or alive, if they wish to live in Iraq and have families at any time in the future, they keep their bloody mouths shut. That is dependent, of course, on which people actually know anything of substance. You could have a dozen different former-chieftains giving a dozen different stories out there right now. There are lots of reasons why HUMINT hasnt come through. The first one that came to mind, ironically seeings as I’m talking to you, though was simple anti-americanism. These people might not LIKE the yanks very much and might not WANT to collaborate!.

You couldn’t say the Iraqi people are better off at the moment, but without Saddam they probably have a better future ahead. I wonder when America will invade Iran, Syria, North Korea, Zimbabwe, etc etc etc

Well some of them seem to think the absence of the Mukhabarat and “special police” institutions is a good thing right now. Sure, theyre not very pleased about an occupying presence in their country – their a proud people so of course their not happy about it, eventually, though they’ll be better off. As to the other places who knows, who cares right now?. IMO when those other places commit acts of aggression, have had UN resolutions placed on them, ignored them and squander a good few years of diplomatic effort to peacefully resolve whatever situations are faced THEN we can go off with the US and blow bits off them too. Until that time why give them less slack than we did with Hussein?

Why invade at all? It was only politicians that wanted that anyway. You’ve already waited 12 years, why not give Saddam until the right time next year to invade him?

Hmmm leave US/UK troops out in the desert for 12 months and then try for an invasion – good idea Garry!. We saw conclusively that the only time compliance was seen with the UN/UNMOVIC was near Blix’s deadlines and under the credible threat of force. Leave those troops dangling over the border and that credibility of threat evaporates and Hussein goes back to prevaricating and yanking UNMOVICs chain. Why waste yet another year and why give him another year to work on his weapons programmes?

It clearly wasn’t anything to do with saving the Iraqi people… that was an accident.

Who cares if it was an accident or not? I think the definition may be important to neo-intellectuals like us debating long into the night, but, to the Shi’a in Southern Iraq, for example, it may be that Saddam being gone is enough all by itself and they wouldnt care less if it was accident, design or the work of The Great Pumpkin!.

Now the US is going to set up a government from the people who ran away from Iraq… much like the British drew up the borders in the region how many years ago? What the British did was called imperialism though… and that is considered bad now… but the US is the Good guys, they can’t do bad things… just like the Bad guys can’t do good things like keep the Kurds or Iranians in check…

…and I’m looking for a clear point in there somewhere but all I’m seeing is a vague, soap-box, diatribe against US and British neo-colonialism???

Fair enough Ben Hans Blix asked Bush to wait. Hans Blix though himself had mentioned that the only times co-operation was forthcoming from the Regime was near a deadline though and the UNMOVIC inspectors themselves are on record as saying that some of the sites they attended werent just “clean” of any kinds of prohibited substance or material but they were actually clinically sanitised.

Is it full marks to the Iraqi management team for running clean establishments and paying full attention to health and hygiene in the workplace or a more sinister agenda in play? You may believe the optimistic side of that if you wish. I dont.

Two things that Hans Blix wilfully (IMO) failed to comprehend though was that the ONLY reason he wasnt getting UNSCOM’d out of the country was the steady buildup of US and UK troops in theatre. Simple equation no coalition troops = no compliance with UNMOVIC. The other thing was that desert fighting is best not undertaken in the middle of summer but when the temperatures are as cool as possible. Waiting a “few months” til about now-ish would mean US and UK troops fighting the environmental conditions at the same time as the Iraqi’s. Why do that? Why put additional burdens on the troops to satisfy politicians who were most likely NEVER going to be satisfied with an aggressive military posture and as EASILY manipulated by Hussein’s mucking about as they had been for the past few years!?

Hmm, explosives are no WMD’s. In fact, name me one country which does not have explosives.

What do the explosives themselves or the possesion of them have to do with anything though Ben? Its the fact that Hussein was prepared to utterly cripple the prospect of his “beloved” country being able to recover post-Saddam. It would appear that the hope was that he could dissappear and, with the country in a mess through no oil revenues to rebuild, he could step back in at some later time and be welcomed by a jubilant Iraqi people as a latter-day messiah bringing them order and security (Mukhabarat style) saving them from the nasty Yanks et al.

People making excuses for Hussein now stating things like “well its been 4 months now were are the bombs”, “he didnt have any in the first place” and all the other similar veined, happy clapper, delusional bull**** are completely ignoring the fact that UNSCOM were there for YEARS and were still turning up new finds until Hussein effectively booted them out in 1998. They also completely ignore the fact that UNMOVIC were, peacefully, unable to get Hussein to produce documentry or personal evidence of tens of thousands of litres of material that he wasnt allowed to have by UN decree.

If, as it now seems is being believed, that Hussein ordered all that material destroyed a couple of days prior to Iraqi Freedom commencing then Iraqi Freedom achieved everything that UNSCOM and UNMOVIC utterly FAILED to do in a decade of work. Its just a shame, for him and some of the civillian populace that he was responsible for, that Saddam wasnt able to get that information out, for whatever reason, before the balloon went up.

If there are no longer WMDs or WMD construction facilities in Iraq so much the better, like I said, that was what the UN demanded 12 years ago and its about time it happened. If a byproduct of this is that Saddam is gone and the Iraqi people are willing and able to have a crack at responsible self-governance (as they certainly seem capable of in Basra from the MoD reports I’ve read) then so much the better for them.