Iraq: Americans Thinking of Using New Type of Weapon

[DuctapeFatwa]

Fr. Jean-Jacques Perennes, O.P. while visiting Iraq at the end of August, gather information that the United States Army was thinking of using a new experimental weapon.



“One the foreign journalists who had followed the war”, wrote Fr. Perennes in his journey diary, “warned us on an aspect which is not very clear. In taking the airport at Baghdad a new type of weapon may have been used such as neutron bomb which would have destroyed every type of life – men and animals in a radius of several kilometers, without provoking apparent wounds and without destroying the infrastructure. Journalists were kept at a distance of kilometers for days. Was that the time necessary for to eliminate all traces?”



On this question, the rest of the report witnesses the “shocking” situation. Baghdad is “a total chaos” and the rest of the country, in Mossul and elsewhere, “there is a situation that is really catastrophic”. The religious, after returning to his headquarter in Cairo, felt it necessary to write the diary of the days in Iraq and publish by using the various Dominican web sties in Europe”.

http://www.vidimusdominum.org/giornale/EN/newsinfo/2003/N030917-03[d11.asp?archvio=no&nomearticolo=N030917-03&idarticolo=6364&sezione=N&nomefile=2003/N030917-03 %20 %20[d11.asp&lingua=EN

[billbuckhead]

1. Hitler thought "wonder weapons" would win the day for the Nazi cause

Is it any wonder this misadministration does as well?

[Cappurr]

2. Link is not working

Or the page has been removed

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. you have to copy and paste the link, it is so long

it will work if you copy and paste the whole thing with word wrap off

[Torgo]

6. Just link up to the Vidimus Dominum page...

and go to the English version of their newspaper.

[TahitiNut]

8. Link...

Try this.

It'd REALLY help make DU a more "user-friendly" refuge if folks would do the simple things like composing hyperlinks as above instead of clumsy, faulty URLs that make posts nearly unreadable. (I won't hold my breath, though.)

[Eloriel]

10. And see I'd rather see where the URL takes me

I think THAT is more user friendly, except in those cases where the link goes on forever, of course.

Eloriel

[BeFree]

11. It is really easy to shrink a link

And if you really want to see it pasted on the page it can be done with line breaks.

It really would be nice if folks would shrink the links. Would make DU much more user friendly.

[TahitiNut]

12. I always see the URL ...

... on the status bar of my browser (Mozilla, of course). And I almost always check it, too. When I'm (for some reason) wary, I'll actually copy and paste it for closer scrutiny. (And that's with extensive security precautions in place on my 'puter, too.)

[Atlant]

15. The reason the link did't work is a bug in DU.

When you just cut-n-paste a link into a DU posting, certain links
with funny characters in them are ended prematurely. It's a known
bug, reported in a posting in "Bugs/Features".

But generally, I'm on Eloriel's side and for two reasons:

1. I'd rather see people put the damned link than to be
   commanded to struggle and fail with the "link" mark-up tag.
   
   
2. It's a lot easier for the same less-computer-savvy people
   to evaluate a link IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MESSAGE a
   link they're about to click on than it is to remember to
   look at the status bar, ASSUMING THEY'RE EVEN SET TO
   DISPLAY THE STATUS BAR.

K.I.S.S.

Let the ultra-sophisticated users with lots of time on
their hands do it the fancy way.

Atlant

[arcane1]

3. was this a MOAB? OR, are they ALREADY experimenting...

with fucking 'tactical field nukes'??

:grr::mad::grr:

[Torgo]

5. The neutron bomb tactic sounds unlikely

I think Father Perennes could have seen the results of the blast at the Baghdad airport. All plant life, etc., would have been vaporized for a radius of several kilometers.

That blast would have been detected by every spy satellite overhead.

I think the Russians would have raised a real nasty stink had an N-bomb been used.

[bahrbearian]

7. Makes sense . Those people just get in the way of the OIL..

[burrowowl]

9. Unfortunately

to this maladministration, it would make sense.
WAR CRIMES anyone.

[Resistance Is Futile]

13. Factual error

neutron bomb which would have destroyed every type of life – men and animals in a radius of several kilometers, without provoking apparent wounds and without destroying the infrastructure.

This is a myth. Neutron bombs do have substantial flash and blast damage effects. They do not kill people while leaving infrastructure intact. In no way does this speak to the question of a new anti-personell weapon but the credibility of the journalist must be called into question after making such a gross error on a matter which can be trivially verified.

[tlb]

14. Additionally I recall viewing the live broadcasts by the embed reporters

at the airfield before the fighting ended. If the Iraqi soldiers were all nuked, they seemed to have held up well under it.

I'd file this with the story of the thousand US troops who put on Iraqi clothing anf fled the country, and the freezers in Afghanistan filled with hundreds of secret American dead.

[Robb]

16. Probably a confusion

...With the E-Bomb, or HPM bomb, which we did use.

I remember reading that journalists were keeping their cell phones and laptops in microwave ovens, in the hopes that the shielding would protect them. :)