turboplanner

The Cubcrafters Committee, representatives of all makes of aircraft tended to agree with HiHo although they didn’t know what this “gauge” business was, so they allowed him to enter.

Even though His 310 had wing tanks and two engines, due to the internal Bernoulli effect of its internal twists it lifted off like a feather, and he was sitting in first place for the take off, but....

If you are stupid enough to just rank them in the order that they are presented in you should not be doing surveys.

 

Stupid is a strong word but politicians kill for the donkey vote.

CAUTION!!! summer has only just started - long way to go yet.

 

Yes, certainly. These fires can still escape, and up the 4,000 km drought corridor fires can spread faster. In particular properties in Qld which would normally be green are a fire hazard. This is also about the start of the normal bushfire season in Victoria and the NSW/Qld guys who normally come down for the big ones in Vic/SA are exhausted.

pretty sneaky putting the magazine as the #1 priority on question 8

 

[ATTACH]42734[/ATTACH]

 

But you still have the option of making your own comments on that.

Meanwhile NSW RFS put out 30 of the 50 fires burning yesterday, and this morning TV News was showing backburning of firebreaks outside the containments lines in case fires jumped the containment lines, so a fantastic job starting to look like the end of the tunnel.

I read the Chilcot Report  (We're now on the Iraqi War (Or Gulf War II), covering 2001 - 2009

Extracts from the report:

• Intelligence regarding WMD was presented with unwarranted certainty
   
  
• That a war was unnecessary
   
  
• the report blamed MI6 Intel from an Iraqi with "phenominal access" to high levels in the Iraqi government"
   
  

If my Iraqi friend is correct and the Mustard and Sarin Gas was buried some years before the Iraqi war the Iraqi informant was correct, MI6 were correct, but there is no way the inspectors would have been able to find cylinders buried under sand for several years "somewhere".

If you think back to that time ISIS hadn't crystallised into the identifyable organisation it is today, religious icons were being torn down in Afghanistan, and the country was falling under guerilla control, guerilla attacks had started to occur on the west, and Saddam Hussein had started to act up again, mostly sabre rattling but clearly on the same side as the ISIS origins, then the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Fighting guerillas is the hardest form of war because you don't know where or how they are going to attack next, and with one of them having access to WMD, you could have a World Trade Center on steroids, so it wouldn't surprise me if the forst thoughts were to knock him out.

The problem was that just as general populations think leaders such as George Bush, Tony Blair and Scott Morrison run countries and Saddam ran Iraq, they don't; it was his party and the party's allies that backed him up in his decisions.  So even if a war was thought unnecessary, there would have to have been a pretty wide strike to be successful, and the proof of that was how the coalition forces and the new Iraqi government where bombed and harassed for years.

Estimated soldiers deaths on Iraq side in gulf one is 100-200 thousand dead.

 

Many thousand died from war crimes, soldiers left their tanks to surrender and walk away from battle. US used air burst fuel bombs and incinerated them in thousands.

 

For others that is a war crime, but the USA refuses to accept the war crimes convention  applies to them, only its enemy can be a war criminal.

 

In the Gulf War, the Iraqi army was estimated to be 1 million men + 850,000 reservists, 5,500 tanks.

The Coalition army sent in 750,000, so there was potential for a BIG conflict.

So we come to the "Highway of Death" 

The Coalition involvement on this highway consisted of A-6 Intruders blocking the ends of a column of vehicles leaving Kuwait. with cluster bombs

The attack lasted 10 hours, 28 tanks were destroyed along with military and civilian vehicles.

In these photos you can see the vehicles in a chaotic layout, some trying to get into the desert, some running into each other, general panic. These aren't the photos I referred to earlier; that was a column of military vehicles in lines stretching as far as they eye could see, in order, but every one burnt out completely.

PDA (Project on Defense Alternatives) estimate deaths at 200 - 300, but could have been up to 600. Other engagements along Highways 80 and 8  bring this to at least 800 - 1000. 

So let's say the coalition inflicted 1000 casualties and knocked out 28 of the 5,500 tanks.

Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said  the "shooting gallery scene's carnage was the reason to end the Persian Gulf hostilities"

This is from Wikipedia, so subject to correction, but I can't see a General Patton or Montgomery stopping after just 1000 people killed.

I don't doubt your claim of 100 - 200 thousand killed, but they weren't killed in this column which was so well covered by photographers and TV.

.......was one development he hadn’t caught up with. He realised he could turn his wheezing little fence hopper into a spectacular STOL by screwing this material on, and it wasn’t long before he.....

“...city flyer; they don’t know nothing!”

And it was partially correct; very few city pilots know that if 10 gauge barb to the leading edge of a prop. The weave on this gauge of wire creates a tiny dam, packing about 5% more air behind the prop and improving the aircraft performance substantially. The barbs don’t seem to affect this process, in fact..

Plenty of photos like this of the tank battle

Forum ??? Drift ??? Say What ???

 

The full story is too long for a forum and it's not about fire tankers.

Before the Americans attacked on the ground, Saddam Hussain is alleged to have done a deal with the US to neutralise his troops provided the US didn't invade Baghdad or take over his government, and there may have been other promises. The US waited until the road was clear then more or less drove to the outskirts of Baghdad with TV coverage all the way. There they stopped, then went home.  Bizarre actions for an army.

Twist & turn, twist & turn. Plausible deniability is the US' stock in trade.

 

Except that anyone can go to Halabja and count the graves.

....Turbo who apologises to NES readers for such an atrocious post which was made with the best of intentions to boost the Captain's morale; Loxy's beercan was an immaculate example of a prestige possession designed to be shown off.  There is no evidence that it ever left the ground at Wagga Wagga, just stood out there polished to withing an inch of its life, tyres blacked and a fox tail hanging from the antenna, while Cappy's Jab, which he built himself, looked it and had much in common with Riverina  farm outhouses including green mould around the windows. Clearly his post failed to calm the XXXXXX down, and.......

There is basically one arrogant and very powerful man responsible for the Iraq War fiasco - and that bloke is Donald Rumsfeld. Few people understand how much power a Secretary of Defence of the U.S., has.

 

And he was backed by a Christian fundamentalist dill of a President, who kept up the mantra - "That man tried to kill ma Daddy". What more reason could you need, to carry out a disastrous, ill-conceived, and totally unnecessary war?

 

"Cobra II - the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq" is a worthy read. The review of the book by David Swan is particularly valuable.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Cobra-II-Inside-Invasion-Occupation-ebook/dp/B000GCFCK0

 

There were six U.S. Generals who spoke out about the utter incompetence of Rumsfeld, and the associated kow-towing amongst the bulk of the U.S. Military leaders, who acquiesced to Rumsfelds demands and plans.

 

I have little doubt the careers of these six Generals - if they had spoken out against Rumsfelds incompetence and lack of understanding of Iraq culture and tribal alignments, whilst still serving - would have suffered as a result, and they would have been "promoted" to jobs of no consequence.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/04/donald-rumsfeld-iraq-war

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1408573/That-man-tried-to-kill-my-dad-says-Bush.html

 

Given that this is a forum, and thread drift at that, I was trying to keep it to the 17,000 Kurds who died, who ordered their deaths, that WMD did exist in Iraq (which was why I posted the photo of the graves) and who supplied the 14,546 tons of materials (not the USA).

On that basis the US and its allies were justified in going after Saddam Hussain and trying to remove/neutralise the WMD, and were not the criminals they were alleged to be.

Having said that, I don't have any problem with what you are saying because, having worked with US companies most of my life, I know that the head of an organisation rarely makes all the decisions and that if you don't quickly identify the internal politics, you're dead in the water, so it doesn't surprise me at all that Generals in a war are left out of the loop and ignored, and stupid decisions are made. 

What happened to the WMD?  Well according to an Iraqi professional I deal with, who lived under Saddam, and couldn't get out of there fast enough, those materials were buried, long before the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Whether they were hidden or not, while Saddam was operating like a loose cannon he was a much bigger threat with them than without them.

You'll remember that the forces didn't encounter a lot of opposition when they invaded Iraq; it was mostly guerilla attacks which were quickly put down.

So Saddam didn't have much left in the way of troops, Republican Guard included.

Going back to the Gulf War which started with air attacks on January 17, 1991, General Norman Schwarzkopf had amassed 750,000 troops on the ground, but people might remember that despite a lot of press conferences and predictions, nothing much was happening in terms of launching the attack, and that went on for days; in fact the ground campaign didn't start until  February 24, and people were asking why?

When the ground assault did start, within 90 hours Schwarzkopf destroyed 42 of 50 Iraqi divisions at a cost of 607 killed and 658 wounded; unbelievably good results for any army, and most people will remember when the army finally got on to the road to Baghdad, and the press were telling us that things would be different when they faced the Republican Guard, and most will remember that the army simply drove into Baghdad.................and stopped, and Schwarzkopf announced that they'd achieved their objective, had liberated Kuwait, didn't need to go into Baghdad, and were all going home, and they did; also something very unusual for a victorious army.

What very few people seem to have commented on were the initial chaotic photos on the orad to Baghdad where civilian cars had been driven off the road, parked off the road or bulldozed off the road - what we would expect, then further along neat lines of military vehicles all burnt out; tyres all burnt, interiors all burnt, body structure appearing to be intact, no bodies strewn about which you normally see in a war zone, no military vehicles spearing off at 90 degrees trying to return enemy fire, no vehicles out in the desert trying to escape, just a neat line of vehicles................................

 The linked story below seems to point to the US as the source of chemical weapons used by Saddam (Yes he's a bastard, but he's OUR bastard) Hussain in the attack on the Kurds.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-153210/Rumsfeld-helped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html

 

This story, by William Lowther of the Daily Mail appears to be undated, but is supported by a similar story by Julian Borger of The Guardian dated January 1, 2003,

it is about a visit by Donald Rumsfield, at the time an envoy of President Ronald Reagan to Saddam Hussein on December 19, 20, 1983, 20 years before the 2003 - 2011 Iraq War. At that time Rumsfield was not a member of the US Government.

It alleges Rumsfield (and by inference Reagan) made it possible for Iraq to buy viruses including  Anthrax and  Bubonic Plague, in his words "according to the Washington Post."

Antrax and Bubonic Plague would qualify as WMD, and were freely talked about for years, but even a Year 10 student would be wondering about how safe these would be in the hands of the average Iraqi soldier, and how, once released, if there was a safe way to disperse them, they could be stopped at the edge of the battlefield. Bubonic Plague, you'll remember raged through the whole of Europe killing around 50 million people in the 14th century.

It's interesting that people on Recflying will go nuts  when they read a press story where a Jabiru is called a Cessna, but a press story with no evidence of anyone dying from Anthrax or Bubonic plague is taken as gospel.

However, there is no doubt about the number of Kurds killed by the more benign WMD which Iraq obtained in the specific tonnages from the specific Countries (excluding the USA), when the US nd allies attacked Iraq from 2003-2011.

I was responding to Facthunter's statement: "They were poisoned with US supplied gas by Saddam", which was not true.

 The linked story below seems to point to the US as the source of chemical weapons used by Saddam (Yes he's a bastard, but he's OUR bastard) Hussain in the attack on the Kurds.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-153210/Rumsfeld-helped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html

 

These proven WMD are not linked directly to Saddam nor the US. I think that’s where a lot of wires get crossed.

I presume you are referring to Saddam Hussein - there is no doubt he was a monster. There have been and are still monsters, ruling countries around the World - do we completely trash their countries?  For the most part we only take an interest if there is mineral wealth or strategic consideration.  Don't kid yourself the West entered and trashed Iraq for reason s that had absolutely nothing to do with SH's treatment of his people. Like all dictators SH had another side - his regime was responsible for establishing the best health service in the Arab World, Universities, female education to all levels, civil infrastructure that was the envy of the Middle East, non tribal advancement , a thriving Agricultural industry and relative piece within his country - all gone now.

 

No, Ali Hassan al-Majid was the commander. 

In a just World - Little Johnny H, Baby Bush and the rest of the Coalition of the Willing would be tried as war criminals.

 

Why? The person responsible for these deaths was tried, convicted and executed.

NOBODY seems to care about what happens to them, even now with Turkeys actions against them.. They were poisoned with US supplied gas by Saddam .Blix never found any evidence of WMD. If you consider the gas thing enough on it's own, the scene was never presented THAT way at the time.. Nev

 

The Commander of Iraqi forces in Northern Iraq led the air and artillery attack on the town of Halabja; 5000 were killed on the day, 12,000 more have lost their lives since.

Gases used were Mustard and Sarin gas.

These gases are included in the Encyclopedia's definition of WMD

Iraq obtained Chemical weapons material from Singapore (4515 tons), Netherlands (4261 tons, Egypt 2400 tons, India 2343 tons, Germany 1027 tons.

None of this was ever found.

"Baby" Bush or the US doesn't get a mention.

....but before they did they replaced an equal number rivets in the Capatin's plane, and hung a pink barbie doll from the ceiling which made his batter than Loxy's, and....

“.........time rebuilding the engines and replacing 2/3 of the rivets in the beer can. Then we flew......”

 The entrance to that war was based on complete lies. George (Baby Bush)was ready to go and that was it. In all history nothing has been more obvious. NO EVIDENCE Whatever of WMDs.  The supposed reason for it all and what has happened since. Shock and awe and no follow up except profiteering. Nev

 

What about the Kurds - these people?

........foxy.......

.....monter, et..........

..........."Real men fly Boeings!" Just who the reporter was who went off-message and departed the socialist line no one knows, but suddenly Loxy was a Rock Star, people were again saying "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going",  and Loxy stayed loyal to his Pepsi-CFS roots, and

LOXY ON THE WAY TO HIS AD AWARD