Maybe you heard about it, now you can see it!
MIG Buried in the Sand
This was send to us from a friend that is over fighting for us.
It makes you wonder what else is buried out there.
Photo courtesy of MSGT T. Collins, USAF
(photos I can't move to FR. Darn!)
The Iraqi jet, an advanced Russian MiG-25 Foxbat, was found buried in the sand after an informant tipped off U.S. troops.
The MiG was dug out of a massive sand dune near the Al Taqqadum airfield by U.S. Air Force recovery teams. The MiG was reportedly one of over two dozen Iraqi jets buried in the sand, like hidden treasure, waiting to be recovered at a later date.
Contrary to what some in the major media have reported, not all the jets found were from the Gulf War era.
The Russian-made MiG-25 Foxbat being recovered by U.S. Air Force troops in the photos is an advanced reconnaissance version never before seen in the West and is equipped with sophisticated electronic warfare devices.
U.S. Air Force recovery teams had to use large earth-moving equipment to uncover the MiG, which is over 70 feet long and weighs nearly 25 tons.
The Foxbat is known to be one of Iraq's top jet fighters. The advanced electronic reconnaissance version found by the U.S. Air Force is currently in service with the Russian air force. The MiG is capable of flying at speeds of over 2,000 miles an hour, or three times the speed of sound, and at altitudes of over 75,000 feet.
The recovery of the advanced MiG fighter is considered to be an intelligence coup by the U.S. Air Force.. The Foxbat may also be equipped with advanced Russian- and French-made electronics that were sold to Iraq during the 1990s in violation of a U..N. ban on arms sales to Baghdad.
The buried aircraft at Al Taqqadum were covered in camouflage netting, sealed and, in many cases, had their wings removed before being buried more than 10 feet beneath the Iraqi desert.
X Marks the Spot
The discovery of the buried Iraqi jet fighters illustrates the problem faced by U.S. inspection teams searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is larger in size than California, and the massive deserts south and west of Baghdad were used by Saddam Hussein to hide weapons during the first Gulf war.
U.S. intelligence sources have already uncovered several mass grave burial sites in the open deserts with an estimated 10,000 dead hidden there. In addition, Iraq previously hid SCUD missiles, chemical weapons and biological warheads by burying them under the desert sand.
U.N. inspection teams found the weapons in the early 1990s after detailed information of the exact locations was obtained.
Top U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay is known to favor human intelligence as the primary means to find Iraq's hidden treasure trove of weapons and secrets.
While there are rumors of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons being shipped to nearby Syria, the weapons may very well still remain inside Iraq buried under the vast desert wastelands.
A "heavily armored" jet? Heavily armored and jet are mutually exclusive because of weight restrictions. It takes a relatively small explosion to bring down a jet. Something doesn't jive here.
The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War.
Ummm, since when did the acquisition date become a criteria for the Iraq invasion? I don't care if Hussein acquired these missiles on the day of the Resurrection! If he possessed them at any time that the 1991 cease fire agreements were in effect, he was in violation of them and countless U.N. agreements. Result: Bush is still correct in his decision to invade, but now with even more evidence to back him up. I'll be sure to tune into Rather's broadcast tonight for a fair & balanced report on this development!!!
Part of the cache they claimed to have destroyed right Blix?
1. Did intelligence at the time of the war indicate that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and related resolutions?
2. Was Iraq in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and related resolutions?
3. Did intelligence at the time of the war indicate that Iraq had "WMD" according to some consistent definition of that term?
4. Did Iraq have "WMD" at the time of the war according to that definition?
5. Was it legally justified to invade Iraq?
6. Was it right (all things considered) to invade Iraq?
As near as I can figure, here are the answers as of now.
1. YES. Bush's critics spent a lot of time arguing that he "doesn't have WMD" or that it "wasn't enough" but nobody argued that he wasn't in violation of 1441, just that it wasn't "enough" to warrant war.
2. YES. In point of fact, Hussein's regime was in absolute violation of 1441. This is not even arguable. Even Hans Blix himself proved this by finding a banned drone which had not been declared. BOOM. That placed Iraq in violation, end of story.
3. Probably, but arguable. Yes, it seems like all major intelligence agencies at the time "thought" that Hussein had some kind of "WMD", but lefties are now saying that this or that aspect of the intelligence was trumped-up. Okay, fine. That is possible to some extent or another, of course. Nevertheless all pre-war discussions did tend to take it for granted that Saddam had something, the question was "how much" and "how bad" and what to do about it, so the lefties' complaint along these lines only goes so far. Rightly or wrongly, most tended to believe that Saddam had something.
4. Unknown. We just do not know at this point. Of course by a "weak" definition of "WMD" (like, if a bag of cyanide or the botulism toxin precursor - or whatever it was - if those things count), then the answer is yes. But by "moderate" or "strong" definitions the answer is unknown, and it's also only fair to say there is no positive evidence indicating that he had "WMD". (At the same time it's necessary to remember that this doesn't mean he didn't.)
5. Yes, of course. Congressional resolution gave wide scope to Bush, it's not clear he even had to go to the UN at all.
6. Well, this is where the disagreement really is, isn't it? All these other little arguments about "WMD" and "lies" and "smoking guns" and such are really just little proxy attempts to chip away at one side's position on #6.
In this context I'm not even sure what "smoking gun" is supposed to mean. Who needs it? Help me out, a "smoking gun" is something which would change the answer to #4 from "Unknown" to "Yes", right? And that's it. Big deal! After all,
-It can't change the answers to #1, #2, and #5, because those answers are ALREADY "Yes".
-It can't change the answer to #3 because it is a historical statement, unaffected by later events.
-It can't change the answer to #6 unless there are people out there who believe that the ENTIRE "case for war" (tm) stands or falls with whether we find "WMD" later. Which would be a weird thing to believe, and I'm not sure how much attention ought to be paid to such people, if there are any.
So we're left with #4, a "smoking gun" is something which changes the answer to the question "Did Iraq have "WMD" at the time of the war?" from "Unknown" to "Yes".
I have one last response to this. It is that it's quite possible that Iraq did have "WMD" at the time of the war (according to whatever definition you like), but that there are no "smoking guns" remaining in Iraq to be found. This is related to the equally-true fact that failure to find a "smoking gun" is NOT a reason to believe that #4 is False.
The simple reason for this is as follows: Objects may be moved from one place to another. Whatever these "WMD" are, they are not features of the landscape, but physical objects. Their presence at a place at time T1 does NOT mean they will be present at the same place, at some later time T2. Conversely, their absence at time T2 does NOT prove that they were absent at time T1.
Objects can be moved from one place to another. Remember that.
Of course, the entire above discussion changes significantly if you believe, as many leftists apparently do or pretend to, that objects CANNOT be moved from one place to another. According to that belief, if we haven't found a "smoking gun" (after looking in all places thought to contain them), this is proof that #4 is False. In other words, from the lefty point of view a "smoking gun" is something which would change #4 not from "Unknown" to "True" but from "False" to "True".
What that means is that this whole "smoking gun" thing is far more crucial to the anti-war side than to the pro-war side. There is little reason for pro-war types to fuss too much over whether there's been a "smoking gun" in the first place, because the only effect will be to change #4 from "Unknown" to "True". #1, #2, #3, and #5 will all remain just as True as ever, regardless of whether or not a "smoking gun" is ever found.
I've no idea why I chose this particular thread to type this all up but I had to get it out sometime. Perhaps I'll cut 'n paste it to all future such threads.....
Charles R. Smith (newsmax)
-direct descendant of Karl Marx!