but pineapples are from South America and Hawaii hasn’t produced pineapples in years since it became a state! 😮

http://www.dolefruithawaii.net/store/?gclid=CIiB3ZqBhZkCFQpuGgodP2cJlg

Next.

If you know the history of middle east, you will see that they just need one leader to united the nations under one flag against Israel. Just like Saladin did during the crusades against the crusader kingdoms. There are limits to which the current playing Arab against Persian diplomacy it will fail one day and Israel must be ready by then.

What, like the United Arab Republic? That certainly worked well.

A Ticonderoga or Burke BMD cruiser in the Baltic would be an option, but I think equally abhorred by the Russians.

But we haven’t heard them say one word about the AEGIS BMD as far as I know. Given that it could be a far more threatening system to Russian ICBMs, that pretty much demonstrates that thrashing about over 10 ABMs in Poland is purely political.

They already have a chemical and biological weapons program.

Syria already has WMD, just not nuclear weapons. Same goes for Iran.

When you look at the land mass of the middle east(Israel vs. the Arab nations), the population/conventional force sizes of the states around Israel, you can see why a deterrent needs to exist to counter this.

Yeah, because the Arab nations had such stellar records against Israel in the past :rolleyes: Jordan won’t do anything. Egypt most likely won’t do anything. You’re left with Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Whicn really means it’d be Iran, or Saudi and Syria. Saudi and Iran don’t get along and even over this issue it is highly unlikely that they’d cooperate. Israel v. Iran or Israel v. Syria/Saudi is in Israel’s favor either way.

I think we should definitely clarify the term WMDs here. If you count every wacko filling nitric acid into an artillery shell as a indefinite proof of Iraqis possessing WMDs then guess what, even my parent’s home is a potential source of WMDs (my mother has worked as chemical analyst for years and I am sure there is something left from those times).

Looks like more and more Americans on this forum are slowly falling into complete denial of their own recent history in reckless effort to find the most laughable excuses for the WMD story in Iraq, the reason being complete inability to admit own failures and incompetence and stand proudly and humbly to the resulting responsibility. Case closed for me.

Look, what I am objecting to is the basic argument that there were no traces of any WMDs in Iraq, an argument continually used to deride America. People parroting the “there were no WMDs in Iraq” statement without any reinforcement is clearly wrong. There were WMDs in Iraq, the incident I mentioned involved a chemical-filled artillery shell (I think it was sarin), not something cooked up in a terrorist’s kitchen. Should we have gone into Iraq? Yes, under pre-existing resolutions, as Saddam did not meet the cease-fire goals from even 1991, and we shouldn’t have waited until 2003 to do it. Should we have pursued occupation and regime change? Certainly not. The Iraqis elected the man, they should’ve been stuck with him. Did we find any evidence of an active WMD program? No, or at least not as far as I am currently aware. But merely stating that there were no WMDs in Iraq is flat out wrong. THAT is my point.

the cost will go trough the roof.

It can’t, they’ve got a fixed-price contract. EADS has to deliver the jets at the specified cost to the customer, and any cost overruns are to be eaten by EADS. And they are having some, they’re trying to renegotiate a payment plan.