[karajorma]

Centrifugal force simply does not exist. It's a shorthand for conservation of circular momentum. It's not a real force. Once again, read ****ing wikipedia before you tell people that they are wrong! And don't make the same mistake Aardwolf did. Learn from your mistake rather than claiming you are right when confronted by people who know the subject much better than you do.

You're missing the point. He's not disputing the "true" definition of WMD, he's saying that's not the one people are familiar with, and he's going to stick with the one people are familiar with. And criticising the true definition. The masses have been taught a different definition of what WMD means.

Except that we've pointed out why that definition makes no sense. Many people would consider a dirty bomb to be a WMD but it wouldn't actually kill many people. Furthermore if you read the wikipedia entry you'll soon realise that using WMDs to not describe the exact kind of chemical weapon it was originally created to describe is a rather stupid thing to do.

If the majority of people have learned incorrectly what the term means, then we should be arguing about why that happened. About how the Bush government deliberately used the WMD term so that people would conflate the chemical weapons Saddam did have with the nuclear weapons they were scared of.

[Scotty]

If the majority of people have learned incorrectly what the term means, then we should be arguing about why that happened. About how the Bush government deliberately used the WMD term so that people would conflate the chemical weapons Saddam did have with the nuclear weapons they were scared of.

Yeah, about that...

(pssst, take a look at the date on that article.  That news is over six years old, but conveniently coincides with the US election year)

[Lorric]

I'm just pointing out Aardwolf isn't saying Scotty's wrong. The very fact that he acknowledges the existence of two definitions testifies to that. As for me, I accept the true definition.

On Centrifugal Force, I'll hold my hands up if I'm wrong, especially when coming on so strongly, but there's a possibility neither of us were wrong, but both right in our own way. He said it's not a thing. I skimmed the wiki at the time, but my brain was really going on the documentary I mentioned. So I was more interested in searching the NASA website to see, and that's what you see I posted. I'll try and do some research. Like this for instance:

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109500/does-centrifugal-force-exist

[Aardwolf]

@karajorma:

Obligatory xkcd link http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/centrifugal_force.png ; it exists in that it's a real phenomenon; it's just not a "force" in the traditional sense.

Furthermore if you read the wikipedia entry you'll soon realise that using WMDs to not describe the exact kind of chemical weapon it was originally created to describe is a rather stupid thing to do.

You know, when you excerpted part of that article for me, I assumed that that was supposed to be the interesting bit, and thus I had no inclination to look at the rest of the article.

I now know that the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" was coined in 1937 in reference to the the aerial bombardment of Guernica.

Well, I was almost going to concede that maybe "weapons of mass destruction" can just be classes of weapon, rather than a plural which must necessarily have a singular form... and I was going to be like "TIL Guernica was chemical weapons"... but then I fact-checked myself, and found out it wasn't (or at least it's disputed). So either we add "conventional ordinance, x a lot" as a type of WMD, or we remove chemical from the list (unless, say, it were the same kind of artillery shells but with sarin instead of mustard gas).

Iraq did have weapons that are classified as WMDs

Did you not read the part about how the West actually gave him the shells he then filled?

I think you need to check that you aren't subconsciously reading a "not" that isn't actually in Mars' post.




@Scotty: You are being an authoritarian. Authoritarianism is bad. You have repeatedly endorsed the authority of one particular definition, the one used by the United States government. That is just one definition, and it is imperfect. I have attempted to formulate a more useful one; you have no business preventing me from doing so, nor especially do you have any business telling me my formulations are "wrong" because they aren't the one you endorse.

I get that it's hard to admit that you were wrong

I can interpret this one of two ways.

• You presumed to know what I was thinking... you reckoned I believed myself to be in error, but was too stubborn to admit it. In which case you were wrong. Do not attempt to argue with me about what I was thinking; to tell me my motives or my thoughts were not what I claim they were is to accuse me of lying, and I will not stand for that.
• You didn't actually think I believed myself to be in error, but you wanted to call me a "sore loser" anyway to demoralize me.

So which is it, were you wrong, or were you being a dick?




On topic (moreso, at least):

As I remember things, these are the two big selling points Bush II and co. used to push the invasion of Iraq:

• The aluminum tubes, supposedly for centrifuges to enrich uranium. This was either an outright lie on their part, or gross incompetence, because within the next few weeks (iirc? maybe sooner) The Washington Post discovered that "hey these aluminum tubes which you said were too fancy for any kind of missile? Yeah, we found out they exactly match the parts uses in this kind of missile".
  
  
• Some satellite photos of trucks that they claimed were "mobile weapon facilities". I don't remember what precisely the claim was, whether it was supposed to be chemical or bio or nuclear or what, but the evidence was ****. Somehow one photo shows the vehicles, and another of the same place without the vehicles (or did they show up somewhere else?), and it's like "trucks move therefore <plural noun>"
  
  And maybe
  
  
• "They have missiles capable of hitting Israel". I don't know if that was true, but there wasn't any indication that Saddam had any interest in doing so.

[Scotty]

@Scotty: You are being an authoritarian. Authoritarianism is bad. You have repeatedly endorsed the authority of one particular definition, the one used by the United States government. That is just one definition, and it is imperfect. I have attempted to formulate a more useful one; you have no business preventing me from doing so, nor especially do you have any business telling me my formulations are "wrong" because they aren't the one you endorse.

I get that it's hard to admit that you were wrong

I can interpret this one of two ways.

• You presumed to know what I was thinking... you reckoned I believed myself to be in error, but was too stubborn to admit it. In which case you were wrong. Do not attempt to argue with me about what I was thinking; to tell me my motives or my thoughts were not what I claim they were is to accuse me of lying, and I will not stand for that.
• You didn't actually think I believed myself to be in error, but you wanted to call me a "sore loser" anyway to demoralize me.

So which is it, were you wrong, or were you being a dick?

Cut the bull****, Aardwolf.  This is at the very least the second time you've used that utterly contemptible attempt to reframe the discussion in terms of personal attacks instead of what's actually going on.  This time I'm going to call your bluff on it: you're lying.  Not because of either of those two options, both of which are wrong, but because this is by far the most egregious example of discussional dishonesty in GenDisc in the last week, and that's saying something.  If you are fundamentally incapable of understanding that the world does not revolve around you, or what you want it to be, then you have no business discussing real world issues on this forum.  You were wrong.  I didn't use the term "unequivocally" earlier in the discussion without giving it some thought.  There is not an eventuality in which your definition will be preferential while discussing this subject, because it is wrong.

You're acting like the worst kind of lay-person.  The kind that disagrees with people who have real experience in the field because it "sounds wrong", and then have the gall to be indignant when you're corrected.

I am fully aware that what follows is not appropriate moderator language, nor do I particularly care.  I'll handle the consequences graciously, which you seem incapable of doing.

Grow the **** up.

[Phantom Hoover]

Centrifugal force definitely does 'exist' in a meaningful sense; I thought this had been hammered into the internet's collective consciousness by that xkcd comic.

[karajorma]

You know, when you excerpted part of that article for me, I assumed that that was supposed to be the interesting bit, and thus I had no inclination to look at the rest of the article.

That you should have looked at the article before starting this nonsense was my entire point. If you wanted to keep arguing you definitely should have looked at it then.

Well, I was almost going to concede that maybe "weapons of mass destruction" can just be classes of weapon, rather than a plural which must necessarily have a singular form... and I was going to be like "TIL Guernica was chemical weapons"... but then I fact-checked myself, and found out it wasn't (or at least it's disputed). So either we add "conventional ordinance, x a lot" as a type of WMD, or we remove chemical from the list (unless, say, it were the same kind of artillery shells but with sarin instead of mustard gas).

Or you stop dragging this entire thread off topic with your attempts to redefine something so that you can win an argument on the internet. No one else cares about your definition. It's not germane to the discussion. I've repeatedly told you what is more important but you continue to attempt to win the discussion by proving you were correct to redefine what WMD meant. You really aren't.

Iraq did have weapons that are classified as WMDs

Did you not read the part about how the West actually gave him the shells he then filled?

I think you need to check that you aren't subconsciously reading a "not" that isn't actually in Mars' post.

I read it just fine.

Mars attempts to justify the invasion of Iraq with the claim that Saddam had chemical weapons. I point out that the same countries that supported the invasion were also heavily involved in giving him those weapons in the first place.

[Aardwolf]

You know what, fine, I don't know what you were thinking when you posted this:

I get that it's hard to admit that you were wrong

What effect could you possibly expect that to have other than pissing me off?

attempts to redefine something so that you can win an argument on the internet

You've got it backwards: saying the phrase should be defined a certain way is not a tool to win an argument, it's the argument I'm trying to win.

No one else cares about your definition. It's not germane to the discussion. I've repeatedly told you what is more important

You're right, perhaps my revised definition is not relevant here. But my original one is, because that's (partly) how the invasion was sold to the American public.

but you continue to attempt to win the discussion by proving you were correct to redefine what WMD meant. You really aren't.

Subjective, but I'm done with this.

I read it just fine.

Mars attempts to justify the invasion of Iraq with the claim that Saddam had chemical weapons. I point out that the same countries that supported the invasion were also heavily involved in giving him those weapons in the first place.

I see. But that wasn't Mars' point at all. Mars was saying "Some of Bush II and co.'s claims were lies, but this one wasn't, on a technicality".

[zookeeper]

I point out that the same countries that supported the invasion were also heavily involved in giving him those weapons in the first place.

...and then also proceeded to use things like white phosphorus and depleted uranium themselves, too.

[karajorma]

Arguing "We need to shoot him because he has a gun locked away in a gun safe that I sold him illegally" should get both of you in trouble. The big lie was that Saddam was making WMDs. Because Bush et al weren't willing to shout out quite as loud that the weapons they actually knew he had were ones they gave him in the first place.

[Luis Dias]

Oh I'm sure these were those, you know, "unknown unknowns" that everyone knew about anyway...

[Scotty]

Arguing "We need to shoot him because he has a gun locked away in a gun safe that I sold him illegally" should get both of you in trouble. The big lie was that Saddam was making WMDs. Because Bush et al weren't willing to shout out quite as loud that the weapons they actually knew he had were ones they gave him in the first place.

Did you read the article I posted in direct response to this earlier?  It very much sounds like you didn't.

[karajorma]

I'm not quite sure what point you are trying to make here. The fact that Iraq had uranium was an established fact well before the first gulf war. Given that you can't even make a dirty bomb from yellowcake I don't see where you're going with this.

[Scotty]

You can, however, enrich said yellow cake to produce fissile material and with over five hundred tons of it even at very low percent yield that's a lot of material.  Facilities for exactly that refinement did exist in Iraq.  If that doesn't fit the bill of "WMD development" then nothing does.

[karajorma]

And yet since 1991 there wasn't a single gram of it converted into fissile material (at least as far as I've ever heard of). What explanation do you have for that apart from "Saddam wasn't actually trying to make a bomb"?

[Scotty]

Did you forget why this thread exists?  The entire reason this is only news now instead of 10 years ago or more is because the Bush administration deliberately hushed it up to keep said weapons secure.  If you'll recall, 2003 was also right about when Iran stated getting serious about their nuclear program.  News of weapons quality or even the *potential* for weapons quality uranium stores would have been Very Bad.

[Dragon]

...and then also proceeded to use things like white phosphorus and depleted uranium themselves, too.

The latter actually isn't bad at all - it's a lot like tungsten, in that it's dense, hard to melt and really hard. DU shells are hardly WMDs, quite the opposite, in fact (they're used as high velocity anti-tank ammunition). As for WP, it was supposedly for illumination. I suppose you can do that, Captain Walker got an entire Army camp mighty well illuminated in SpecOps: The Line... Apparently, chemical weapons special-purpose shells are OK to use as long as they horribly kill people in addition to doing something else.

[Aardwolf]

@Scotty: This thread exists because some people weren't paying enough attention. I distinctly remember seeing a TV news story about our soldiers finding drums of the stuff.

@Dragon: It's also pyrophoric!

Now can someone please change the thread title? Because it's not good news, it's not news, he wasn't conservative, and he wasn't presidents.

[Scotty]

You have a lot of issues with the definition of words, don't you?

[Grizzly]

Because it's not good news, it's not news, he wasn't conservative, and he wasn't presidents.

Bush wasn't conservative? First time I have ever heard of it.
Otherwise: Sarcasm yo.