Usually, if you're playing the sovereign nation game and your next-door neighbor violates your airspace and bombs the bejabbers out of you, killing your soldiers all out of the blue, you raise a stink about it.
Unless what they were bombing was destined to be your secret nuke facility.
EDIT: I really wish the Syrians had gone to the UN in a snit, however, because "Officer! Sumdood stole my dope!" stories are my favorite dumb crook yarns.
Did you notice how many times the author mentioned that the facility was years away from completion?
ReplyDeleteApparently pre-emptively bombing the site violated the Marquis of Queensbury's rules of etiquette when dealing with rogue nations' nuclear programs. Not at all sporting!
Everybody knows that you are supposed to piss and moan until the bomb has actually been built. Then blame GWB for not doing more to stop it through diplomatic efforts.
I guess the writer didn't quite get that if you're going to bomb a nuke facility next door, the time to do it is well before the "hot" stuff arrives!
ReplyDeletePre-emptive hits are the only way to do it. International etiquette bedarned, I'll take mine non-glowing, please!
And this article gives further reasons why the Syrians keept quiet.
ReplyDeleteThe Israelis with some help from the US, completely jammed the Syrians Russian made air defense system
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071013/COLUMNIST14/710130320
Basically meaning the Syrians and Iranians are defenseless to air attacks. :-)
'God help me, I do love it so.'
ReplyDeleteThe 'good' intelligence, however, was all Israeli; US insiders argued bitterly over its value. Early reports indicated there may have been a "cement tanker" from NoKo, and the site already had some glitter to it.
ReplyDeleteDa bitch kitty is, they chose to Join The Club in the middle of the sub-continent's only decent wine country, giving "collateral damage" a whole new aspect and validating the judgement of beer lovers everywhere (why IS it that beer is never mentioned in either testament of the Ancient Book of the Middle East--anyhow?)
All we have to do now is convince Taiwan to bomb North Korea.
ReplyDeleteAnon, not to forget that the Chrysanthemum Fleet has taken to the high seas once more...
ReplyDeleteand this time, gentlemen, they're on our side.
Oh, Comatus, a little "glitter" is good for you! (Honest to fermentation, at the low end of the Radiation Exposure vs. Death Rate curve, it reverses slope!)
ReplyDeleteComatus,
ReplyDeleteBecause beer was the drink of the enemy heathens in Egypt perhaps.
roberta, sure it's good for me! It's just not too good for vacant old military buildings in Syria that were going to be an agricultural research station and were years from completion anyway and you'd have never got to if our new Russian radar was turned on. I say we send Blix.
ReplyDeletegregg, workable idea, could be; but if so, it's the very hell of an editing job. There are scores of references to wine in scripture(none, as any modern Baptist can tell you, to whiskey, and don't you wonder why); there are historical references to beer from every other civilization all around the ME, and of course Dr. Katz proved that recipes from Sumeria pre-date Abraham leaving Ur. And yet, and yet, in the actual Testaments, zip, nada, er, bupkis. And it's not like beer ain't kosher. An historical conundrum if ever I ran across one. More research needed (sound of cap popping)...
Syria:"Officer! Sumdood stole my drugs!"
ReplyDeleteIran:"Shut up, fool. Sumdood don't like no snitches. And if there's anything Sumdood don't like, it ain't got long to live......"
Beer gets mentioned in Proverbs and Isaiah. Wine gets mentioned more of course, but I have to wonder if it isn't a translation issue. It's possible that alcoholic beverages translators don't recognize all get translated as "wine."
ReplyDeleteThe lack of whiskey is completely understandable though. Because of technical problems, distilled spirits didn't appear until the 8th century in the Mid East and it was well into the Middle Ages before they came to Europe.
Well, thanks for that, Jeff; I happily yield to a superior familiarity with Hebrew, the "other" classical language.
ReplyDeleteI've got to think, though, that any translation errors on that subject must have taken place before the King James project, at least a few of whose contributors had to be malt-worms...
That was a jibe about the Water-of-Life. I always heard that the Mid-East applications had to do only with essences and perfumes--or could it have been a work-around of a Certain Religion's prohibition?