chicot

To return to the original subject, apparently the UK sailors are being released: British sailors to be released

But weren't the two dropped on Japan far less destructive than today's nukes? Still, I agree with you. It would probably take far more than 20 to have a devastating global impact.

? Are you confusing Iran with Pakistan?

It will probably blow over in a few days. Sounds dramatic but these things aren't all that uncommon and incidents like this were always going to be likely with the British and Iranian forces in close proximity in the Gulf. There'll be a lot of huffing and puffing in public from both sides and the return of the sailors will be resolved by quiet diplomacy.

"I read somewhere that it would only take the launching of 20 nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth for good." That sounds pretty dubious to me. I could see how that might possibly cause conditions so harsh that it might lead to the extinction of the human race but I think that some form of life would certainly survive and over time the planet would recover.

Even if he has peaked, there's no guarantee that Quinn or Russell would be any better than he was last year. There have been plenty of qb's taken in the first round that have been complete busts. I don't think there's any way they take a qb in the 1st round when there are far more pressing needs at lb, dt and rb.

I'm not sure that the weakening of the army was so much the root cause as a symptom of the general socio-economic decline of Rome. A declining population meant that they simply could not field the numbers that they once could and came to rely on barbarian mercenaries. As for the cause of the general decline of Rome, you can take your pick from any number of reasons. Historians have been arguing over this for centuries. The rise of Christianity, declining moral standards, the plague, climate change, etc... have all been mentioned as possible causes.

Moulds said it was Carr who hindered the team's chances, saying that at some point "the quarterback has to show that he can carry (the team)." The irony is that he left Buffalo just before Losman started doing just that.

Why stop there? Why not bring back popular medieval torture methods such as the rack or iron maiden?

If he'd said no major wars occurred during that period then I'd have had no problem with the statement, but saying that it was without one single war is pretty inaccurate. Also, I'm pretty certain the conquest of Britain occurred during Claudius's reign (Caesar led an expedition to Britain but didn't actually conquer the territory), which was during the Pax Romana.

The Pax Romana period was generally considered to be from 27 BC to 180 AD, which makes it a little over 2 centuries long, not 4 centuries. As for it being "without one single war in the known world", I suggest you go away and read up on Trajan's campaigns against the Parthians and Dacians, the Boudicea rebellion in Britain, or the campaigns of Marcus Aurelius. To suggest that this period was "without one single war" is absurd.

As Mancunian points out, if his toe was that serious he could have been seen sooner.

So everyone who can buys supplemental insurance (actually, not everyone) and those who can't afford it at least get a basic level of treatment? Where is the problem?

Money talks. Double their salaries and that will buy you a lot of loyalty. Expensive? Not nearly as expensive as keeping a lid on an insurgency that, certainly in the early days at least, was heavily dependent upon disgruntled former members of the Iraqi military.

In it? No, but there certainly is off-shore. Cuban oil

It's nonsense to pretend that this meant that it could not be reconstituted. If the army can be found to make payments to, then it could have been employed rather than put out to pasture (join the insurgency in many cases). Bremer made a political decision to dissolve it - he was not forced to do so by circumstances.

The oft-repeated claim that the Iraqi army "disappeared" and couldn't be found is nonsense. The US knew exactly where they were - they were the guys demonstrating in the streets when they were laid off. They were the people queueing up for payments that the CPA reluctantly agreed to make to them as compensation. They could just have easily been re-employed. The fact of the matter is that, for whatever reason, the powers that be did not want to re-employ them.

Who was in favour in keeping the Baathists in power? The point is that debaathification went much too far, removing people such as doctors and teachers from their jobs simply because they happened to be a member of the Baath party (in many cases, being a member of the party was simply a quick route to getting a decent job). There is no reason why it should not have been possible to remove the upper echelons of the Baath party from power without going to such ridiculous lengths and punishing people who were guilty of no crime. As stated in the article I linked to, this had the effect of removing much of the "human infrastructure" of Iraq. Yes, certain things about pre-invasion Iraq needed changing and I have no doubt that most Iraqis would admit that. The problem was that the US seemed to think it was their responsibility to completely remold the country, almost in a Khmer Rouge year zero sort of manner. Things such as the selling off of previously state-owned Iraqi industries were a matter for Iraqis to decide on, not something to be passed down by imperial diktat. The priority from the start should have been to get the country up and running again as fast as possible, rather than dismantling it completely and then attempting to rebuild it as some sort of new America in the middle east.

I don't think that a respect for the value of education and healthcare is an exclusively western trait. The availability of alcohol admittedly is a more western concern, but, considering I was using it in a reply to someone called "JoeSixPack", I think it was a suitable frame of reference.

Much of that is down to the effects of numerous wars and sanctions. Prior to the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was one of the most advanced countries in the region with good standards of education and healthcare. It was pretty liberal as well - alcohol was freely available and Baghdad had it's fair share of bars and nightclubs.

Interesting article about the root cause of US mistakes in Iraq. I think the author makes a very good case that a lot of the problems were caused by the idea that "everyone wants to be an American". What Iraq tells us about ourselves

Seems that it wasn't just the media that had a somewhat shorter timescale than 6-8 years in mind: Iraq war plan "delusional"

So the new justification for the Iraq war is that Iraqis were behind the Oklahoma City bombing?! Right. I'm sure Iraqis were behind the assassination of the Kennedys as well. Hell, it wouldn't suprise me if Iraqis were involved in the shooting of Abraham Lincoln

It's not a misconception at all. It's a fact that most (not all) people with weight problems simply consume more calories than they burn off.

While it is true that Arab armies have shown a high degree of incompetence in the past, it does not follow that that always has to be the case. In the recent Israel-Hizbollah war, a major factor was Hizbollah's use of anti-tank weapons. Not only did they possess them, but they proved that they knew how to use them very effectively as well. It is more than likely that they received some sort of training from Iran. While it is certainly possible that Iran may not know how to use the latest Russian anti-ship missiles effectively, it would be a very stupid commander indeed that would rely on that assumption. Surely, it would be far more prudent to assume the worst case scenario, that Iran not only possesses these missiles but also knows how to use them, and plan for that.