Crap Throwing Monkey

Was I really the first one to clue in to this? Are we still the only two to figure this out? I mean, it seemed pretty obvious the moment one idiot was saying "Iraq is a UN problem, we can't do it alone" the same time another idiot was saying "Iraq is a national security problem, we don't need the UN" way back in late 2002. That was a pretty good clue that, right or wrong, they couldn't explain themselves for sh--...

Actually, I find it disgustingly racist. Which is why I'm using it. It fits - perfectly - the topic. For people (not you - I don't recall seeing your opinion either way on this subject) to B word at the use of the vocabulary "sand !@#$" in describing Arabs while simultaneously treating Arabs like "!@#$s" is hypocritical in the extreme. I'm sorry you find it offensive...so do I, honestly. But as long as people maintain the racist attitude, we may as well use the proper vocabulary to go along with it.

It's because they're a sand !@#$ company! It amazes me that the least racist elected official in this whole stupid "controversy" is actually George W. Bush.

This one of those "quoting things people never said" that you accused me of doing but never do yourself, right?

Of course, the same people who argue this also argue that Bush isn't fit to be president because he did poorly in school...

Even if he's never been attacked by a telephone pole, because you've lived in three different places in New Jersey...

On behalf of T-Bone, I'll cast a vote for Adam Berg.

But...but...but...sand !@#$s! Don't you get it! Friggin' sand !@#$s! The stupidest reason against it I heard was some yahoo on the radio this morning explaining that this deal would fund terrorism with American dollars. Like we haven't been buying their !@#$ing oil for forty !@#$ing years.

Actually, the end started in 2000, when Donahoe was signed. Well, that's what I read on the football side, at least...

Difference being that the Cold War involved actual nations. Last I checked, the UAE hadn't attacked us. A foreign company sells maintenance contracts to another foreign company, and somehow it's the American president's fault? I thought it would be the vice president's fault even more, seeing as how the UAE company has ties to Carlisle Group... Or maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that. What sort of shitstorm did I just ignite? Well THAT'S just !@#$ing stupid. But that's a kind of stupid I've come to expect from these idiots.

Sorry...it's the Gauntlet, not the Grumble. My bad. Still a bad-ass missile. Still better integrated into an air defense system, particularly with 20k foot altitude, 700km/hr target speed, and 25 mile surveillence range limits (yes, I know the publicly admitted range of the search radar is 25 kilometers...I don't know what the range is, but it's pretty damned obviously longer that 25km, so I'm giving the Russian weapons designers the benefit of the doubt). I can think of a few ways of defeating that system on its own...and I'm hardly an expert at modern air defense suppression, so I can only imagine what the experts have come up with.

NATO designation SA-10 Grumble, I think. The SAM from Hell. And if it's not the Grumble, then it's newer. And there's little to worry about in that, I think. These days, most weapons systems like that don't do as well on their own as they do as part of an entire system. A single SA-10 launcher, or even a group, is theoretically pretty easy to defeat. Combine it with other systems (light and heavy guns, differently capable SAMs, search radars operating in different bands), it becomes much nastier. I don't know if the Iranians have such an integrated system. If the don't, they're probably working towards building one, given they're buying Russian equipment and the Soviets have designed that sort of air defense system many times over for many different client states.

CAS is CAS. The A-10's still capable in that role, I see no reason why the Su-25 shouldn't be, if the airframe design's basically sound and survivable. Hell, modified C-130's are used for close air support... And, again, gets back to my point that slapping a nuke on the damned thing is a different matter entirely. Entirely different set of requirements between a nuclear delivery platform and a survivable battlefield assault aircraft.

Like anyone here reads Cyrillic. Technically, the IL-2 was the "Bronirovannyi Shturmovik" - Russian for "Armored Assault Aircraft" (thus, its initial designation "BSh-2", before designations changed to design bureau abbreviations). Generally, the Russians didn't name their aircraft models like the Western Allies or (less so) the Germans did...but when the BSh-2 became the Il-2, apparently the phrase "Shturmovik" stuck as a sort of popular or "folk" name. The name was resurrected for the Su-25, in part because as an assault aircraft it evoked memories of the Il-2, and in part because it is a "shturmovik" in the literal meaning of the word.

There's a reason I give more credence to the statements of the worker bees than I do our elected officials. Several, actually. That's just one of them.

Hey, look! You did it again!

"Frogfoot" is the NATO designation. The official Russian name is "Grach" ("Rook" in English, as in the chesspiece). It's unofficially called the "Shturmovik" because a) it is a CAS aircraft sharing its mission with the Il-2/Il-10 WW2 line, and b) I believe, off the top of my head, that "Shturmovik" is actually a generic Russian term for a ground attack plane that became a sort of "brand name" for the Il-2 (much like "Stuka" was a German abbreviation of the generic term "Sturmkampfflugzeug", literally "diving battle aircraft", that came to be the appellation of the Ju-87.) I'm not positive, as my Russian is a little rusty, but I can check when I get home tonight. But, at any rate, the SU-25 is referred to by the unofficial name "Shturmovik", even though that's not its official Russian name nor NATO designation. And before anyone asks...yeah, I could use a real hobby, and my wife often wonders why she married me.

Holy sh--. He found the !@#$in' caps lock key.

That was a perfect setup, wasn't it?

I thought it was obvious. And I think the Jack Bauer list is funnier than the Chuck Norris list anyway.

Oh...well, I guess that MORE than makes up for all your other stupidity in this thread.

But in VA's defense, his memory's about as short as his stature...

I'll ogle her when she's an adult. Right now, she looks like she's more in meazza's age range...

At least he took my advice and kept it to 25 words or less.

Theoretically. But given the continuing rhetoric to the effect that US port security is so porous that anything shipped in a container will get through, wouldn't it stand to reason that only the source is relevant anyway? But "control" in this context is still undefined. Again, it's not like Customs is turning over its port security duties to a foreign nation.