At 12:15 PM 9/19/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >My running, personal theory is that Muslim fundamentalism (and in general, >most fundamentalisms) get going when the locals gain a persistent sense that >they're gettin' screwed over,
See "Crusades", which aint over til the tall buildings fall. and that their current government ain't >helping a whole lot. The Saudi royalty is the best the US can buy! It's kind of a devil's bargain to obtain a source of >strength. By necessity it needs to reject a lot of the local culture, >otherwise there isn't sufficient motivation to fight. In general, it's >probably on many levels predictable and even reasonable. Religion (of any form that posits an afterlife) is a terrorist weapon. Faith in the man with the silly hat is a WMD. >Of course, this can boil over into bizarre, "fanatical" behavior, but then >again as Mr Young so aptly put it, "fanatical" is what the screw-ers >normally call mass behavior they don't like. Winners write the history books. >In the case of Nukes, I'd point >out that the nuclear nations have a distinct advantage at the UN or any >other bargaining table, so if I were Iranian I'd be working pretty hard to >get something quasi-viable together that could be called a "nuke". Of >course, the few truly "fanatical" members of the local nuke-wannabees might >get a hold of the block box and, well, that sucks. 1. The UN doesn't let Rogues (tm) into the Security Council and thus a nuke is only *de facto*, not diplomatically useful in deterring colonial regime-changing. 2. Far more likely is that a decade's worth of work, a lot of money, and a few scientists will be vaporized by an Israeli Hellfire, made in the USofA by those proud flag-flying folks at Raytheon Death, Inc. The counter to 2 is to have two or more, one mounted on a missile on a mobil platform, how do you say MX in Farsi, and keep everything really really secret. The first nuke is for demonstration purposes, which might be a waste if its a U-gun type (except in making abundantly clear how far along your R&D is :-). (Remember the Hiroshima bomb was *not* tested, so sure were the scientists. Trinity was a Pu-implosion finesse job.) The interesting thing is that Iran isn't buying a few from Pakistan. Oh that's right, the U$ bought the Paki 'leadership'. Also means that Al Q isn't willing to share their stash with Iran. They probably think they have higher-priority uses for them.
