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IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

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Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#91

Post by mikeash »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #10
melloclello wrote: post #7

Archived SomethingAwful thread from 9/11/2001: http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/ http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/wtc01.html > WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

From the thread: > Now this is weird, since last week was the first showing of that X-files spin-off "The Lone Gunmen" in Austalia. The plot of the first one was that some government group was going to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre. Life imitates art? Eee... WHAT? I always read that WTC was the kind of event that no one ever imagined it could possibly happen until after the incident.

The Japanese used suicide pilots in the 40s. The leap to airliners is not so big.

For something in the terrorism realm, check out Air France 8969. It was hijacked with the intent of using it to destroy the Eiffel tower (either by crashing into it or by blowing up the plane over it). It never happened because the French discovered the plan while the plane was on the ground and attacked it.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#92

Post by gonzo »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #35

I remember very clearly sitting in my first math class in my first term of college, talking about the Gulf War when it started. I was 18 at the time. The big concern we had was another Vietnam, dragging on for years with a new draft. There was a lot of talk on campus about that, until it became clear the war was not going to last long.

Russia invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve, 1979. Carter re-instated draft registration the following June. I'd just turned 18, and thought Afghanistan or Iran (hostage crisis) would be my Vietnam.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#93

Post by maxlybbert »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #84
dingaling wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically much of the damage to Tel Aviv and Haifa was not the direct result of Scud impacts but debris and explosives from Patriot SAMs launched against them. 39 Scuds were fired, 17 were engaged by Patriots and three were confirmed intercepted. I can't find the figure of how many Patriots were actually launched. The number of Patriots that struck the ground intact after failed launches / failed interceptions remai…

The Patriot was so overhyped and yet so bad in practice that Israel went and developed its own missile interceptor system (Iron Dome), because they realized that from the claimed 80+ % success rate, Patriots really intercepted less than 10%. And yet they still successfully sell this system to many countries.

I'm sure you realize that the Patriot system has been upgraded some in the last 24 years.

However, I think one of the brilliant things about Iron Dome is the fact that it doesn't try to shoot everything down. If a missile is determined to not threaten anything, it is allowed to crash on its own.

That may not be as big an optimization against opponents with good aim, but the people who fire rockets at Israel are often using old equipment that they can't aim well.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#94

Post by denom »

Houshalter wrote: post #9

This is surprisingly interesting. I just picked a random log and found this: test to see if infoserver is echoing messages to group +war. well all this info is probably old. The iraqis caused an oil spill 8-10 miles long and a couple miles wide. It's 12 times the size of that caused by the exxon valdeez. It's not known if wells are actively pumping into the gulf right now, or if they just dumped stored reserves. If t…

The success of the patriot missiles was a huge propaganda coup for the US. It turns out that the success rate of the missiles may have been as low as 10% or even zero: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot#Success_rate_vs...

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#95

Post by thaumaturgy »

StavrosK wrote: post #58
thaumaturgy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill An air strike was conducted against the pipeline that was the most significant contributor of the spill, however there were some other sources as well. It ended up being several times larger than the Valdez spill, a lot of it ended up on the beaches of Saudi Arabia, and it was never cleaned up, so it's still causing a lot of ecological damage. I don't think I'd heard ab…

Really? You never saw photos of all the oil-covered birds? I thought it was pretty well-known. Also, it wasn't an air strike against the pipeline, it was the Iraqis dumping oil to prevent US marine landings (from what I heard, they were planning on setting it on fire if there were any ships there? Game-of-Thrones-style). The air strike was to prevent further spillage: > On January 26, three US F-117 fighter-bombers d…

> The air strike was to prevent further spillage

Yeah, that's what I meant -- I just didn't word it right.

ca 1991, I hadn't gotten interested in world news yet. I would've been 12ish years old.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#96

Post by Nilzor »

count wrote: post #81
malvim wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant mIRC (the shareware software) is the official IRC client of the military.

Heh, they use the full paid version. I always wondered who KMB got cash from...

Didn't he have like 9 paying users after 15 years or so? Poor guy :) Could have needed some monetization strategy advice

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#99

Post by nikanj »

tottenhm wrote: post #50

Went to watch the July 4 fireworks in SF tonight, but it was cloudy, causing the fireworks to soften into a vague burst of color. I thought, "This looks just like CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. Except without all the fear and death. Damn, I'm lucky -- no war here!"

The rest of the world would prefer the US to have its wars on its own soil though.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#100

Post by saryant »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
ilaksh wrote: post #8

I'd like to see IRC logs from other countries at the same time. As well as a map of all of the invasions and "liberations" with a timeline, and a list of official "reasons" for those military actions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil... Hmm. I wonder what the IRC logs of the Venezuelan "liberation" will look like? Actually for Venezuelan's sake hopefully the economic warfare already going…

Large areas of WW2 were oil-related: North Africa, Indonesia, southern USSR (leading to Stalingrad), etc. I've not yet seen someone write the oil-orientated history of that war.

The Prize by Daniel Yergin devotes several chapters to the impact of oil in WW2, notably the destruction of the Shell complex at Balikpapan in the Pacific and Ike's decision to allocate fuel to Montgomery instead of Patton when stocks ran low, boosting Montgomery's march towards Antwerp but stopping Patton two days short of the Saar.

He covers everything from Japan's desire for the oil production of Indonesia to Germany's doomed synthetic fuel effort. The author also covers Nimitz's focus on denying oil resources to Japan, a strategy that eventually let him land several fatal blows to the Imperial Navy and end the war in the Pacific.

Nimitz was so successful in that strategy that near the end of the war, the Japanese began using kamikaze attacks against American naval vessels as a fuel-saving tactic, since pilots only required half as much fuel to complete their mission.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Prize-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110...

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