nacmacfeegle

"I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." I'd like to think of this as supplemental to the original Pink Panthers et al. Drawing parallels with Bond is reasonable, there's only one Bond, all others are supplemental to Connery's performances. I like Steve Martin, but I think he has gone off the boil of late. Dead Men Don't wear Plaid is an excellent, clever, and very funny movie. As is the Jerk, All of Me, and The Man with Two Brains, but he started to go a little downhill with LA Story and most of what followed. I think Sellers might approve of Steve carrying the torch on a revisit to the PP series, I reckon Kevin Kline will make a great replacement for Herbert Lom, Jean Reno might fill Burt Kwouk's boots as Cato, and Beyonce is (presumably) only there for eye candy ("Beyonce said her familiarity was mostly with the cartoon version pink panther"....nuff said?) Did you say minky?

"I am convinced that 95% of SUV owners don't use their vehicle to it's potential and could do just as well with a smaller vehicle." I agree with you, I reckon most SUVs are sold to a fashion driven market. Some may argue that SUVs are by definition tougher vehicles and afford their occupants a higher probability of survival over more compact cars, I'm unconvinced on this. I think I recall a statistic that most (something like 70% but I'm firing from the hip on the actual statistics) UK market Land Rover Discoveries are sold to people within the circle of the M25 (a highway circling London). IE an urban marketplace, why do people need a big beastie in town? Some may be offroad enthusiasts, but not all of them? Besides SUVs are bad for hitting kids. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Now, on a counter offensive, I could see China getting involved" Its an interesting scenario, how do you think the world might react if China were to invade NK to remove their despotic leader, improve the lot of the little people, and neutralise their WMDs? After all, where do you think all that fuel is going? I'd be nervous. Scratch, interesting parallels with the Peninsular wars, there's a major difference there though, Britain jumped in to assist the Spanish against a common foe. I can't really see any formal 3rd party intervention in Iraq happening, it would be tactical suicide. I might be tempted to draw comparisons with Gulf War 1. Likening Kuwait to Spain, and France to Iraq, with the usual suspects (the British Empire) as a common element of both conflicts. Good discussion though, its always good to look back on historic strategies and try to find out who, what, and why. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Over here the 1.9 and the 2.5 have been superceded by the much more powerful and more efficient modern units. EG the 1.9 comes in 110, 115, and 130 BHP, the new V6 2.5 comes in 150 and 180 BHP variants. Torque is good, and figures of 50+ mpg are common (albeit our gallons are slightly larger, so marginally higher mpg figures are to be expected). The 1.2 TDI is fitted to their A2, and has an excellent pedigree. Smaller diesel powered cars, with good mpg and reasonable performance, are already with us. I don't recall seeing too many smaller diesel cars in the US, maybe its one of those cultural differences? I reckon you may be seeing more of them soon. They gained popularity over here due to taxation differences on the fuel, and they sort of stayed after the differences were more or less nullified. "VW and Audi are one-in-the-same." Aye but not everyone else reading knows that.

"only diesel auto that's legal to buy new is a VW TDI." Thats the same TDI engine that Audi developed, so over here we can get the engine in a number of chassis variants, VW, Seat, and Audi, to name a few. The TDi will also run unmodified on biodiesel and bio blends. I get pretty good mileage from my Audi A4 with a 2.5TDi plant, running on a bio blend I get about a 5-10% improvement in both performance and eficiency. I reckon we might see more diesel powered smaller vehicles, they are already pretty common over here in the likes of VW Golf, Borra, Audi's A2, and A3 cars, what you guys might class as compacts. Conversions to gaseous fuel or dual fuel is something else I'm looking into as I can save about 50% on my fuel bill if I get the govt grant to run the conversion. And the technology is available off the shelf, locally. Its not all about hybrids.edit to include a response to my old mate AggieD.

"I wonder how prison life in the US compares to prison life in other countries, especially Middle Eastern countries." Go here.. http://www.amnesty.org/ There's a wee map on the right hand side of the page and you can see who is doing what to who. If you are going to base things on pure numbers, the undefined status of the detainees at Gitmo and within Iraq will skew the figures. The actual reports make pretty grim reading. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I would suggest that Hitler made the same error as Napoleon." Both also underestimated both the resilience of the Russian people, and the ferocity of the Russian winters. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Hasn't been verified when or where the vid was taken, but the claim is that it was from that day." A wee bit more on this here Kev. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/3741973.stm and also http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm There is video embedded, but I can't wiggle round our firewall to check it out. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"This thread most likely generates a "does not compute" brain malfunction in the hordes of America Bashers who hang out here, especially the non-American half. " I feel this may be directed at the likes of me, a self confessed critic of US foreign policy. If you care to look back, most people have not been bashing Bush/US over this. Most of us on both sides of the political and geographical divides have limited comments to an expression of disgust at the whole debacle. I have maintained that this is really bad propoganda at best, at worst, some lives will be lost over the release of the pictures and the reports coming out. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"The war is about oil............." I hear this a lot, and nobody has been able to expand on the statement. Can someone fill me in please. Is it about stealing the Iraqi oil? Is it about scaring the other OPEC nations? Is it about maintaining entente cordiale with OPEC? In what way is it about oil? I don't believe the war is about oil, I actually reckon its even more sinister, but a whole lot simpler than this glib often heard statement. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Sony should use us for one of their ads, don't you think?" "The sport has a very cool image, gives awsome visuals, ......... We put our camera's through hell every day they keep on surviving even though they are abused in ways they were never intended for and whufo's would never dream of. ...... We're the perfect advert." When Sony released their first upright model, the PC7, they used an ad which featured Wendy Smith and Deug getting married on a DC3. It had loads of freefall footage, and I even liked the tune, 'White Wedding' by Billy Idol. For what its worth, I use a PC7, (and a mini dv deck GR DV300 for bullet cams) but its playing up and will be retired shortly. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Och, be fair Dave, Kennedy said hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of thousands. If it had been detonated in a crowded mosque, or market place, or even at the local KFC, things would undoubtedly be different. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"And many do here on the forums." Ooh, thats like a toad calling a turtle green. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Stop watching me." Okay, but its going to take some time to dismantle the legion of devices I have secreted around California. By the way, is that a new haircut? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Getting rid of that WMD was justification enough for the war." Ah yes, undoubtedly Saddam is/was a bad guy, a black hat as it were. But that was not the reason we went to war. Not liking your fellow heads of state is not a valid reason to kill tens of thousands of people, and is generally frowned upon as a justification for aggression. We went to war because we thought he posed an imminent threat to the world in general, we had nothing to substantiate that claim, and we still don't. Show me the money. Show me some sort of realistic evidence, and we'll call it quits and go jump together.

"Your entire post is an argument for reasonable doubt in "getting behind" any side of the question." If there's any reasonable doubt, it can't possibly be a conspiracy. What I'm saying is, there are perfectly acceptable reasons why there are strange accents, and unexpected linguistic skills in modern terrorists. What I'm saying is, I don't think the CIA are behind this. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Some were stolen from him. Some were hidden by him. Some were sold by him.." Add to that... Some were used up by him in his struggle against religious fundamentalists as we supported and encouraged him against Iran. Some were destroyed before and during Gulf War 1. Some were covertly destroyed in the run up to the liberation. Some were overtly destroyed during the liberation. We now have no idea how many remain, or where they are, or even what condition they are in. We can't really hold the new Iraq responsible for this lack of accounting can we? Long story short, we'll never know for sure now, and the spectre of this threat may be hanging over us for quite some time. I don't think Saddam's trial will give us any better info, it should be interesting though. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"So they have no idea of what the inventory is within a margin of error of several tons.. QED" Ah, not exactly John, this is normally known as MUF (material unaccounted for) and a general tolerance is 2% of throughput for a typical plant. I can only cite missing material for Dounereay on the North coast of Scotland as an example, they lost 10kgs in a single year back in 1990-91 ish. Its okay though, the stuff keeps showing up on local beaches. more here http://www.antenna.nl/wise/377/3703.html and some googling here http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=dounreay+missing+plutonium -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Al Zarqawi (sp?) is Jordanian, raised in Palestine, fought in Afghanistan, and is known to have spent time in Germany, and Spain. Hell, he's probably been to America and the UK at some stage or another. Not all terrorists in this region are indigenous to Iraq, and nowadays they can probably pass as a citizen of just about any country they choose. They are not limited to reading and writing in their own language. I'd love to be able to believe that some dark force was behind this, but not even I can get behind this particular conspiracy theory. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Iraq was not allowed to have them,or the chemicals need to make them. " No argument here, although there is no evidence that this particular piece of ordinance was in Iraq prior to the liberation. Iraq seems to have become some sort of magnet for malcontents, aka insurgents. Sarin has been used by terorists in Japan, but that doesn't mean that the Japanese govt. has and is prepared to use WMDs. Its a real shame this shell was destroyed, it could have told us so much. I still hold that this type of ordinance is not what our leaders meant when they talked about threats to global security. Ergo we are expecting something much worse to surface somewhere, or we, or our leaders, were grossly misled. I'm not sure whats more alarming, the thought of these devices falling into the hands of terrorists, or an intelligence gathering system we have no faith in. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I don't think the majority of Americans understand the suffering and lack of manpower you Brits endured during WWII." The article also mentioned the lack of heating, minus 40 (celsius or fahrenheit, its the same) was pretty common. Thats cold. To be fair, I don't think a lot of us Brits from the post war era fully understand it either. I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like in Coventry or London during the Blitz. Or seeing Europe for the first time over a landing craft ramp, or out the door of a Dakota. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

" Didn't want to give any lefties delusions of grandeur. " Most of us lefties are too busy coming to terms with the right wing's delusions of adequacy, to be concerned with our own grandeur. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Just cause its old, and they didn't use it correctly does not mean its not an WMD." And because it doesn't have sufficient range to pose a real threat to Iraq's neighbours, let alone the UK, or the USA, is it really worth the loss of all those people to remove them from circulation. Putting things in perspective, hydrogen sulphide will kill you at 500 parts per million, thats a teaspoon in 25 oil barrells, the oil in that part of the world is loaded with the stuff. Should we destroy the petrochemical plants that separate this gas out of the oil? Or to cut to the chase Ron, is this and similar previously discovered legacy munitions what we went to war for? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I believe there was one set of controls for one pilot on the Lancaster. " I believe you are correct, there was no co-pilot, but the beastie's bomb capacity of up to 22,000 lbs would put it in the 'heavy' classification, in my book. Just to clarify a point hat John raised, the crews would get a 'rest' of 6 months after 30 missions, and 6 days off every 6 weeks. An insight into one Lanc, and its crew is here. http://www.edenbridgetown.com/in_the_past/bill_walters_story/lancaster_bomber.shtml -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"So what qualifies as a WMD in your opinion. Do Chemical weapons including one of the nastiest nerve agents known not qualify as WMDs to you?" My interpretation of a WMD? One that is capable of delivering additional, normally delayed, casualties outside its immediate damage field. By this I mean air born, water born, or physical transfer of contaminants via clothing, vehicle wheels, etc, that persist after initial weapon activation. The weapon itself must also be capable of being effectively delivered to its target. So a single shell may not be a WMD unless it has an associated delivery system, if its a 155mm howitzer shell, or motarr round, the presence of the launch system is a given, they are pretty common. If its a warhead, its not much use without a delivery mechanism such as a suitable aircraft, vehicle, or a missile capable of carrying it, and controlling its detonation at a prespecified target. A briefcase containing contaminants, and a dispersal system (small amount of exposives for example)could by definition be classified as a WMD. In this instance I believe we have the ingredients of a WMD, but its deployment in this situation gives rise to the suspicion that the weapon was not correctly identified as such by its users. It obviously wasn't deployed by anyone who actually knew what they were doing, fortunately. I think its a piece of legacy munition, similar to the mortar shells that were found that had the capacity to disperse similar agents, and also stuff like phosphorous. I'm not sure we would have accepted the invasion of a country based on this type of threat, artillery shells with chemical weapon capacity hardly constitute a threat to world peace. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson