10/22 NY Times editorial: Iran's nuclear threat
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/opinion/22fri1.html (user/pw: bobbob)
This is my prediction of what will happen:
- Iran suspends enrichment, but says it will never renounce right
- Iran accepts reactor-grade uranium from Russia
- Iran operates reactor
- Iran retains knowledge of weapons-grade enrichment
- Israel, U.S. do nothing
- IAEA maintains inspections
"Nightmare" scenario:
- As previous scenario, but ...
- GW Bush re-elected
- Joint U.S./Israel attack destroys reactor, 1/2 enrichment facilities
- 2-3 years pass
- Iran successfully detonates nuke, announces nuclear stockpile
- Israel responds with first public nuclear test
- U.S. stalled in UN by Security Council vetoes
- U.S. rapidly deploys primarily air-based systems near Iran's borders
- Iran blows up some nearby U.S. airbases with nukes before attack
- New Republican administration elected
- U.S. nukes Iran, destroying entire population
- Draft receives Congressional approval, including special skills draft
\_ Okay, and the bad part?
\_ So in your worst case scenario the ultimate bad thing that is going
to come from a nuclear war is the special skills draft? Okey dokey!
That was quite the stretch to get the geek draft in there. Anyway,
we've been over this before. The military is different now. The
draft would be worse than useless. It takes roughly 2 years to
take an off the street slacker and turn them into a soldier. WTF
good is a draft when the conflict will be long over before the first
draftee has a uniform on? FUD.
\_ Two years? Pshaw. It just takes 10 weeks of basic and 12 weeks
of infantry school. -Vet
\_ no you idiot. it's Us nukes iran, destroying entire population.
get your head out of your ass. i hope you're not allowed to vote.
\_ I don't think it's quite true that a _Special Skills_ draft
would be useless. It might take 2 years to train a guy
you want on the ground in Iraq, but support roles probably
aren't that hard. A special skills draft would allow the
military to stuff the support roles with draftees and put
the volunteers in the field.
\_ What about all the discipline, standards, and shit that
militaries want from their goons, support roles or
frontline grunts? You'll never get someone unmotivated
to be a usable combat grunt; rear-area support type will
simply be a tremendous waste of a lot of time. Your best
bet is shooting them on arrival, pre-body-bagging them and
using them as human sandbags. -John
\_ I think you're over-estimating the difficulty of
something. I'm not sure if it's "hearding
sysadmins" or what. Support roles aren't that
hard, and they don't require much discipline. It's
just like coders and sysadmins at IBM, you don't
show 'em to the public, you hide 'em in some back
room, while the marketers (soldiers) do the front
line stuff.
\_ Yes, you know that and I know that, but we don't
run an army. Now find me one of those which
follows this sort of sensible philosophy.
\_ Nah, you just need to transfer out the company
commander once the reservists don't show up
for their contaminated helicopter fuel run.
\_ Drafted sysadmins, coders are cheap. Anyways, I'm just showing
how Dubya keeps his "no-draft" promise - it's for the President
*after* Dubya. Also, anyone can come up with a worst-case
scenario. I'm painting a *realistic* "nightmare" scenario. -op
\_ You're showing nothing but your lack of understanding of the
modern American military. The realistic nightmare scenario
is that Iran is allowed to continue developing nukes, gets
nukes and has a nuclear exchange with Israel. The so-called
skills draft wouldn't make the list even if such a silly did
thing happen. What skills do you think you have they'd want
anyway? Surfing and restarting apache servers aren't
critical military needs.
\_ My scenario (the U.S. and Iran lobbing nukes at each other)
is not far off from Iran and Israel lobbing nukes at each
other. This second scenario is far more obvious, which
is why I didn't mention it. You missed my point on that
part - which is to argue how the U.S. realistically decides
to do some nuking itself.
Now, if the skills draft isn't that important, then why did
the military decide to plan for one, just like adding
a plan for a draft of Middle Eastern language experts?
My basic argument is that engineers are cheap when you
draft them. I'm also participating in FCS design, so I
know what I'm talking about. -op
\_ The Pentagon has a plan for everything. If they didn't
have a plan for everything collecting dust on a shelf
somewhere and getting updated every 10-15 years someone
would scream, "WHY DIDN'T YOU HAVE A PLAN FOR A SKILLS
DRAFT! YOU MORONS!". The US won't be nuking Iran
because Iran won't be nuking anything American. They
would hit Israel first. Once Israel is in ashes, they
"win", no matter what else happens afterwards. By
"they" I mean Muslims across the ME who want every
Israeli dead and Israel destroyed utterly. As far as
language experts go, were you upset they didn't have
enough Pashtun speakers when we went into southern
Afghanistan? They're making sure that sort of thing
never happens again. As an aside, my English instructor
at Cal was also a Baltic languages expert. The CIA was
paying his entire way and then some so long as he
continued to keep up his language skills and promised
to be available as needed. Was that a bad thing? Are
you opposed to that?
\_ Baltic?!! You mean Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian?!
Are you sure you don't mean Balkin? Why does the
CIA want Baltic language experts? I've been to
Estonia, and it seems odd that the CIA would go
to so much effort to spy one a very small country
of extremely peaceful people who mostly speak
english anyway.
\_ It might seem odd to you, but they do. |
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