[Akalabeth Angel]

and a country with no military has no bussiness telling us what we can and cannot do.

     Considering that Canada may have more oil than Saudi Arabia and that consequently you may dependent upon our exports in the near future, I'd say that we can.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel


     Considering that Canada may have more oil than Saudi Arabia and that consequently you may dependent upon our exports in the near future, I'd say that we can.

With no military?  INVASION TIME!!  LIBERATE CANADA!! FREE THEIR OI...PEOPLE!

*cough*

Er, i bet they're actually carving the Glorious Leaders face into a mountain with shoddy dynamiting.

[vyper]

[q]and a country with no military has no bussiness telling us what we can and cannot do.[/q]

Nice little American boy, well trained... *pats bob on the head patronizingly*

[aldo_14]

N Korea allows blast site visit

"A British diplomat is to be allowed to visit the site of a huge explosion in North Korea that raised fears of a nuclear test, a British minister says.

The UK's Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell requested acccess to the site during a visit to North Korea. "

[Bobboau]

I put forth as much defence and used as much thought as he did.

[Akalabeth Angel]

I put forth as much defence and used as much thought as he did.

      Really? I don't think so. This whole bit about the US saying "oh, you can't have a nuclear weapons program or a WMD program because you're a bad man" is a joke. What kind of moral authority does a country have in saying that when they're the one ones to have used such weapons on civilian populations (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) not to meantion other WMDs on other populations (Agent  Orange in Vietman (which wasn't designed to kill people, but is still poisoning people daily), or their own soldiers with DU bullets or whatever and yet they still hold the largest stockpile of any such weapons?

      America has thousands of nukes, probably tons of chemical and biological weapons (which btw they sold to Mr. Saddam) and yet they're saying "no, such weapons are bad. You shouldn't have them". It's a case of a american holding a gun, and saying the other people shouldn't have one.

      If America thinks WMDs are bad then they should get rid of their own damn stockpile first. The only purpose nukes serve is some armageddon-defence in saying "if we go down, we're taking them with us" mentality, which is quite pointless because if the whole of the US was destroyed the Earth's environment would probably be irreprably damaged anyway. Only god knows why the US has tons of biological/chemical agents, it sure as hell isn't to find anti-dotes because you don't need a warehouse full of anthrax or whatever to learn how to stop it.

      And some people may say "well the US having nukes is safe because we won't fire them" is a load of baloney too, because beside the fact you're the only country to have actually used them, there are no guarentees that some President that gets into power isn't a in-the-closet crackpot with some hidden agenda of world apocalypse. I mean the current administration invaded a sovereign country out of some religious / economy-boosting / oil-grabbing desire, whose to say what else is possible.

      The only way to have a safer world is to have no one with nuclear weapons. If people don't want 'rogue states' building nuclear weapons, then fine. After the US, and France, and UK and Israel and Russia, India, Pakistan get rid of their all of their nukes then they can start telling other people to not develop them.

[ChronoReverse]

You can't seriously be that naive to believe all that can you?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

ooh, the naivité of that post is so pretty

[Akalabeth Angel]

If you're asking if I'm naive enough to believe that the US or any other country will destroy their remaining nuclear weapons, then the answer is of course not. It will likely never happen.

Instead the US will spend billions of dollars building anti-missile defences to defend against ICBM strikes when any nuclear attack on the US will probably be smuggled in by terrorists on boats or some other means. Just like they spend billions of dollars on WMD which they will likely never use (except perhaps as military aid to brutal dictatorships).

I'm also not naive enough to believe that _imposing_ democracy on a country will actually lead to a democratic society, or that the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with anti-terrorism or the well-being of the Iraqi people.

[Blue Lion]

I don't think he's the naive one.

[Corhellion]

*reads posts and CNN*

...Meh...

*goes back to rendering and listening to tunes*

[vyper]

Just become isolationists... please? Except for TV shows of course, keep 'em coming....

[Ford Prefect]

The only reason I would advocate keeping a few nuclear warheads around would be in case we ever need to blow up a comet or asteroid, which must happen sooner or later.

[Rictor]

you've been watching too much TV Ford. And besides, if it came to that, they could be produced easily enough, and using newer, safer technologies.

Akalabeth::

[Ford Prefect]

All I'm saying is that the odds dictate that sooner or later, probably sooner, a large object is going to cross our path, and that a large nuclear warhead might provide the means for preventing a cataclysm. It's not fantasy, only a matter of time.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
All I'm saying is that the odds dictate that sooner or later, probably sooner, a large object is going to cross our path, and that a large nuclear warhead might provide the means for preventing a cataclysm. It's not fantasy, only a matter of time.

'cept nuclear weapons are almost completely useless against large asteroids / comets IIRC.  I think they calculated that to destroy a 'planetkiller' type asteroid, they'd need a gargantuan nuclear missile capable of killing the world itself.

[Kosh]

I trust the BBC, not Fox. Fox is loaded with right wing BS.

'cept nuclear weapons are almost completely useless against large asteroids / comets IIRC. I think they calculated that to destroy a 'planetkiller' type asteroid, they'd need a gargantuan nuclear missile capable of killing the world itself.

They don't need to destroy it, they just need to change its course.

[Ford Prefect]

Well it wouldn't necessarily have to destroy it, only give it a nudge. And I'm pretty sure that some of the largest ones we've built, (the ones so huge that we never dared to test them), would provide enough force to divert most objects.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Much of the destructive capabilities of a nuclear warhead come from their interaction with an atmosphere. Specifically the heat and the shockwave (I believe).

In space, there is no atmosphere. So any nuclear weapons are going to be far less effective. I recently saw a show on either CBC or PBS saying that nukes would be mostly a waste of time. And instead some scientists had come up with some other whacky ideas like lasers and just strapping engines onto the asteroid to move it somewhere else.

[Bobboau]

given the situation, I'd rather have a huge stockpile of nukes to throw at it (while some committy tried to come up with alternitives) than no nukes.

shoot a few at it, let them get imbedded into it, then set them off, I'm sure that'd provide enough conduction and thow chunks off hard enough to do _some_ good. and the sooner the better.