Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WW III

Hey, I challenged you before to name companies that do what Haliburton does.

Once you answer that, we can get back to the "no-bid-contract-award" whining.

I agree with some of what you are saying about WMD but your blah blah blah spiehl sounds like something I would have shouted out when I was 20 and in the Army. It is not that black and white Because we are now useing that sort of rubbish to say we are justified in invading countrys BEFORE they have nukes just because we think they MIGHT be up to something. A bit like Pre-crime. So lets use your cops and robbers analagy. The robber has to us a rubber pistol because we had to take all of the guns away because you MIGHT commit a crime.

Look at it a bit differently: Cop sees robber, with reasonable suspicion that he is armed with a firearm (He just used a couple of hours ago in a robbery).
The cop decides he wants to search the guy. He keeps swearing up and down he doesn't have a gun, he threw it out, but cannot provide the cop with a location.
What's the cop to do?

The notion of pre-crime is getting very touchy indeed, I gotta hand it to you.

But, in the case of Iraq, there was very reasonable suspicion and circumstancial evidence supporting the WMD evidence.

That said, I don't buy it. (The Iraq-WMD connection)

Agreed. It is a bigger concern where it will go from here. Thus the title of this strand. We are pushing a very fine line.

We should go home soon, i.e. before the year is up.
And did I mention that we shouldn't be in Haiti?

We should but what we are hearing is two more years in Iraq. In either event I doubt we would come home before the election. The war on terror is only sector that Bush's numbers exceeed kerry's in the current confidence polls.

No, the red army was in those countries because under the terms of surrender, the USSR was granted occupation of those countries by the US and Britian, similiar to how we occupied Japan. The only place you will get this is in your history books. Better read up before you go espousing garbage.

The facts are the facts, and to sit here and say there was not an arms race or a space race between the US and the USSR is imbecile. The history between the US and the USSR during the cold war is full of examples of both sides developing weapon systems to counter each others advances. Why did Reagan propose star wars? Because he knew that the USSR would have to counter it. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? I don't get it. This is not an opinion, it is history, plain and simple. Read about the arms race and the space race, and then tell me how this is just my opinion.

You are changing your original point. I don't disagree with what you just posted, but your original (wrong) point was that the US forced the USSR into an arms race by building the bomb, superpowers, etc...

If the USSR was to remain a superpower equal to the US, it had to develop the bomb. The same scenario was played out when the USSR successfully launched a cosmonaut into orbit. Was the US forced to enter the space race? Yes, in order to maintain its position as a super power. The US didn't build the bomb to force the USSR into an arms race, but the emergence of the US and the USSR as the two super powers after WWII fueled the arms race and led each country to try and top the other.

No arguments here.
I don't think the US can be faulted, however, for developing the A-Bomb in the first place, nor can the US be faulted for "forcing" the Soviets into a race.

However, I think that the reason the Soviets went into space was to "out-do" the US.

Rick--and the reason they were still there 40 years later was? I know--we made them do it.

I believe the earlier statement was that the US had to amass the largest stockpile of WMD's in the world to ward off an evil empire. My point was that the US invented nuclear weapons, and the USSR was forced to develop them in order to remain a super power along with the US. You see, the context that we had to respond to an imminent threat is ass backwards. We developed the nukes, and the USSR responded by developing them to counter the US. Now if you don't want to accept that as the truth, that is your option. If you want to believe that my view point puts me in a parallel universe, and that I am a commie for saying it, or whatever immature statements you want to make, go for it.

Peace through superior firepower.

But what were we to do?

I still don't believe the USSR was FORCED to develop nukes.

They emerged as superpower, because of sheer size, and being victorious in WW2.

It was their choice to develop the nukes.

No, Rick, I didn't say you were a Commie, and I don't think you are one. But a lot of your posts sound like they were written by Pravda or Izvestia. I think it's the moral equivalence you seem to see between the U.S and the Soviet Union that I find galling.
Can you imagine what Stalin would have done in 1945 if he had the world's only nuclear weapons AND the Red Army at full wartime strength. Compare that to what we did.

Rick



You should be thankful that we did develop nuclear weapons. They have been a weapon of peace by preventing war with Russia. It also allowed us to disarm after WWII and focus on rebuilding and economic development. If we had not had nuclear weapons we would have had to maintain a huge army in Europe to defend against Russia.



After WWII Russia occuppied a large portion of Europe which they were suppose to allow free elections and self government. Stalin was an evil dictator who looked as these countries as properties that he owned and should keep so he refused to give up control. Not only that, but he had an agressive religion known as communism that he and the leaders who followed him tried to spread through out the world.



I have no doubt that there would have been a war between us and Russia without nuclear weapons. It would have been almost impossible for us to maintain a large force in Europe to oppose the Russians. In addition, we would not have been able to rebuild Europe and Japan while mantaining a large army. It would have been a disaster.



Conrad