What Would Start WW3?

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At some time in the past Constantinopel (Turkey) was once the
seat of the Roman Empire.

330AD to 1453AD with a brief break between 1185–1259 when it was part of the so-called Latin Empire.

Interesting speculation R, but oddly enough more realistic the other way round, as the object of a Christian crusade; not as far fetched as one might think, during WW1 many poets and writers romantically joined the British Expeditionary Force in the Balkans, visualising an heroic cavalry campaign to drive back the Turk and restore Constantinople to Christian rule (which had also been the undeclared object of the Russo-Turkish Wars of the 19th C and of the Treaty of San Stefano)

One such participant was Rupert Brooke, who coined the famous lines

"If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England..."

well he got his wish as far as that was concerned, but as for his glorious military crusade, he never got further than Skyros. Yet he died more peacefully than thousands of his comrades-in-arms who were slaughtered in the Dardanelles Campaign by idiotic upper-class amateur officers who also saw war as either a glorious crusade or a jolly game.

Anyway I digress, as per usual; Turkey's strictly secular constitution which is stoutly guaranteed by the Army, and the pervasive memory of Kemal Ataturk and how he saved the nation from dismemberment after the fall of the Ottoman Sultans, makes it very unlikely that Turkey will ever join the ranks of radicalised Islamic nations, despite a strong grass-roots fundamentalism amongst the people, and they're way too important to the US as a stable regional strongman.

Re: Saddam's Babylonian obsession. Like many secular strongmen in the Muslim world, Saddam tried to legitimise and strengthen his regime by associating it with past glories, and also to flatter his own ego. He even had the blue bricks that made up the restored Ishtar Gate stamped with his own name and not that of Nebuchadnezzar who actually built the original. His intention seems to have been to have turned the Babylon site, which is really more of a sprawling suburban region rather than a city as such, into his private pleasure park with several new palaces. It's also beleived that in his drunken fantasies, Saddam would drivekl on about being a reborn Nebuchadnezzar and that he would restore the glory of ancient Irak (that's how they used to spell it and you can't call it Mesopotamia anymore!)

The Shah of Iran tried something similar with Persepolis and Pasagardae in the 70s, staging elaborately recreated Persian rituals, which didn't endear him to the to majority Shia population in Iran (he was already hated anyway) and was one of the factors that brought about the Iranian revolution in 1979.

As for the Scud crisis during Desert Shield/Storm in '91; yep your then Govt (Bush Sr) had to literally go down on bended knee to stop the Israelis hitting back at Iraq, because if Israel had joined the then Coalition, all the Arab nations would have left, and this was supposed to be a united effort of all nations, new world order, blah blah blah. Remember Bush Sr going on telly at the Raytheon factory where they made Patriot missiles? "20 for 20" he hubristically claimed, but in reality they didn't shoot down squat except some expended fuel tanks over Tel Aviv. Despite the batteries of Patriots that the US hurriedly gave to the Israelis most publicly in order to help win the Israeli public over and make them (and us) think that this wonder-weapon would beat the Scud menace, actually it was all just propaganda; in reality it was British S.A.S. teams in Iraq itself who were taking the launchers out, or trying to. That's what Bravo Two-Zero was all about.

There's also the little-known fact that at a private meeting in Switzerland, the Iraqis were told directly by the US that if they used chemical weapons against Coalition forces or Israeli civilians, the US would nuke Baghdad in response. True story although no-one will admit to it. There is a bit of myth though that Saddam had a primitive nuke that was designed to be launched from one of the Superguns, also called Project Babil (Babylon) which is an utterly fascinating story in its own right and one that we did discuss some years ago (Project H.A.R.P.)

[quote="Tawakalna"]

Remember Bush Sr going on telly at the Raytheon factory where they made Patriot missiles? "20 for 20" he hubristically claimed, but in reality they didn't shoot down squat except some expended fuel tanks over Tel Aviv. Despite the batteries of Patriots that the US hurriedly gave to the Israelis most publicly in order to help win the Israeli public over and make them (and us) think that this wonder-weapon would beat the Scud menace, actually it was all just propaganda; in reality it was British S.A.S. teams in Iraq itself who were taking the launchers out, or trying to. That's what Bravo Two-Zero was all about.
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Hey Taw,
You do know why the Patriot missiles were innefective, right? It's like 'they say' where the smallest of things can cause the biggest of problems; once the Patriot batteries were in place and booted up, the automatic error in place ensued, and by the time they launched it was (at the time) completely impossible for that missile to hit it's target. Simple math problem causing an error that threw the timing off and got (geometrically I think) worse until the actual launch. That was one dummass mistake, kinda like one of the Mars orbiters I believe... Later -
LW

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So, what's gonna trigger a 3rd world war? Take a look at the internet. It's been going on since the advent of advanced internet and MMORPG's.

@R: absolutely brilliant! very well observed, comrade.

@LW: I did hear about that (a lot later) Back during the Falklands War, a similar problem occurred with GEC/Marconi radars that lit up aerial targets for the Sea-Dart ship-to-air missiles. In fact, HMS Sheffield was lost precisely because of it; if aerial targets flew so close to each other that the appeared to be merging into one, the Ferranti computer couldn't re-differentiate between them and would only track one target, even though the thing was supposed to be able to track two targets independently, the software engineers hadn't allowed for that particular scenario. To workaround the problem, the decrepit Type 965 radars and their computers needed turning off and back on again which took a few minutes, by which time the Argies had closed enough to launch their Exocets dooming Sheffield. Not that it had much of a chance anyway, the Sea Darts were designed to intercept mid-to-long range targets at mid-to-high altitudes, not short range low altitude ones. That's what the Sea Wolf missile system was for but Sheffield hadn't been fitted with that, just the Sea Darts and guns. The Argies close to launch their Exocets and the crew had 5 seconds warning of a missile launch. Never stood a hope in hell.

Edit:- how coincidental that just as we started mentioning Byzantium/Eeastern Roman Empire, one of my favourite interests btw, a major exhibition of Byzantine arts should open at the Royal Academy and I didn't know about it till today! I may even venture a trip down to London, a place I usually avoid, for it is a dreadful place full of horrors and frightfulness.

Congrats to all peacefull ppl of the world, we have just dodged ww3 for pixel.
Live long and prosper.
Bring peace and safety to all ppl of this lonely planet.

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Try the discovery of oil in Israel.

brilliant! I didn't think of that, gosh that would guarantee Armageddon in the Middle East.

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Until we create respawners, the human race will continue to have wars.

Actually, that works on the assumption that once human life became worthless then nobody would bother with using war as a threat because the threatened opposition would not care about the potential loss of life. False! Human life is already worthless in many respects and we already have so high a population that we don't need respawn in order to provide cannon fodder.

@Taw: Sure that would not just be Genesis? What? You know I am bored off me *insert body parts here*, shoorely you had to expect this at some stage.:P

well yeh there's be a bit of the old fiat lux going on but with several hundred megatons of nukes going off in a fairly tight regional local, it's be a long time before any new wickle creatures came along to celebrate the Almighty's Creation.... not much of anything left really.

And said God let there be light, and the light is made by a hundred nukes going WHOOP

nukes don't go whoop, they go fsssst KA-BOOOOOOOOOM rumble rumble rumble whoooooooshhhhhhhh, to the power of 10.

10 what?

that thing what I wrote x10 x10 x10 x10 and so on, ten times.

I can't help but feel that you squandered a gold lined opportunity there.

I enjoy being literal. besides I'm not as witty as you, I never kissed the blarney-stone of St Kildare.

Ah don't be hard on yourself, that's my job.

shame you aren't as good at selling cars....

I see that you dropped the cloak?

Went the same route as the portakabin. Bloody banks would take the cloak off a yer back so they would. Left me wearin' nothing but a smile.

I'm amazed that they could even see it to repossess it.