Polish jokes

Chuckle. I guess the US was expecting to use the new tunnels to move missiles around Poland:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

It appear the Poles don't get the newsfeed out of Georgia about how cozying up to a NATO member can get you in deep kimchi.

IIRC, Seattle did something similar when they built their transit tunnel system.

It was to be a dual use (bus and light rail) system. But the tracks they installed were unsuitable (wrong dimensions?) for light rail.

And then there's the stories about aircraft wiring harnesses made to wrong lengths, or carbon fiber fuselage sections of the wring diameter.

We all learn from our mistakes .... so we will recognize them when we make them again and again.

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Paul Hovnanian	paul@hovnanian.com
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Well of course. Near as I can guess(tm), the Patriot missile system salesmen are very active on the Russian border. For example, Turkey:

Same with Austria, Czech Republic, etc. $1 billion per country. Good for USA business.

It also has the advantage of giving Russia a simple choice. Spend huge amount of money building up their missile defenses (again), or sign a disarmament treaty with the US and its neighbors. Nothing precipitates a negotiated settlement better than a potential military crisis and associated military spending binge. We can afford it. Russia cannot.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com

The stats for the Middle East was IIRC:

44 delivery vehicle interceptions with ZERO warheads destroyed. All warheads impacted Allied territory, still at full leathality and pretty close to where they would have hit anyway. It was all theatre.

PATRIOT = Protection Against Threats, Real, Imagined, Or Theorized Is a re-purposed anti-aircraft missile. It may provide some limited protection against slower missiles. But even then, it didn't do as well as advertised against Iraqi Scuds in Israel. It might be effective against conventional missiles, but Russia has tactical nukes which can be detonated beyond Patriot's range.

But then I suppose this doesn't stop the salesmen from selling them. If it turns out they don't work, who is going to ask for their money back?

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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I like that. The real acronym is: "Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept Of Target" No missile system or product can be considered successful without a catchy acronym, or clever name. I've heard it called "Pat's Riot" or "Parts Riot".

The Wikipedia article covers the accuracy issues. Not great accuracy (or success rate), but good enough for Poland if used in quantity.

I can add a few comical anecdotes and details as to what happened in Israel, but I would rather not get into that discussion. Let's just say that there were some major screwups.

Caveat Emptor. I'm sure the Polish know about the Patriot missile systems batting average. My guess(tm) is that Poland and others are not so much interested in an anti-missile defense as in a manned assault by Russian troop carrying helicopters and transport. Russia would be nuts to devastate Poland, Austria, Turkey and others with a missle attack. More likely, they'll do a repeate performance of what they're doing to their own dissident provinces.

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# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558            jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us

That is if they get to launch them before the first strike to knock them out reaches them.

Yes. If it's a serious threat to the Russians, then the logical response would be to Osirak the installation before its comissioned.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com

dex.php?id=3D8072

must have had l.g. defelice from north haven, CT as their contractor

"Hundreds of storm drains on 3 =BD miles of the highway are defective, according to state and federal investigators. The portion of the highway affected by the faulty drains is part of the I-84 project, between 691 and exit 25A . Officials said some of the catch basins lead to nowhere, others are clogged with debris, and many were connected to faulty and substandard pipes"

"Construction began in 2002 to widen a three and a half mile stretch of highway. In the spring of 2006, it was discovered that more than 200 drains had not been installed properly or were defective. =2E.. This particular basin is 16 in. offset from where it's supposed to be. You can see from the shadow but the opening is here somewhere. Essentially cascading toward the road."

and the punch line: "L.G. DeFelice reformed as Hallberg and was hired by U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Company to finish work on Route 7. "

p

A bit more detail on the train tunnel problem:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com

Spehro Pefhany wrote:

...after allowing them to pour large amounts of money into it (as the Israelis did). 8-)

The existing (badly rusted) 16" steel plate can't be removed without everything falling apart. The layer of concrete they had to lay to reinforce the bed will not allow them to run the non-standard rolling stock (which already has special dispensation throughout the system).

If they dig upward, they bump into a highway roadbed; if they dig down, they hit sewer. What a pickle.

And at my workplace hardly a week goes by that i do not pound my pulpit that the best de fence against engineering errors is reviews by many others.

That will not mean all that much, Russia is culturally paranoid. Remember Reagan's star wars thing? It worked because it crashed the Soviet economy. Do we really want that kind of military build up again?

Israel.

Why spout when you can look it up?

Star wars helped, but had little to with the collapse in 1991. Russia was having problems dealing with Perestroika. There was a big dive in gross domestic product, with an attendent price inflation, just prior to 1989. That's bad in any economy, but one where almost everyone is on a fixed income, it sucks. It also made paying back foreign debt rather difficult. Meanwhile, much of the Russian economy had gone underground, resulting in a thriving black market economy, but which left the government out of the benefits. The 1986 Chernobyl reactor screwup, an expensive losing war in Afghanistan, and heavy defense spending, certainly didn't help with government confidence. What finally killed it was the rapid inflation of a deficit spending based economy, which was something that Russia had not seen before, and didn't know how to handle.

Whether Russia does or does not want to start another arms race is irrelevent. The former Soviet client states of eastern Europe are very fearful of a conventionally armed Russian takeover, as is going on now in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Georgia. Poland and others are worried that the Russians might do the same to them. So, they want to beef up their conventional defenses. The US is just there to help. So what if it starts a new war. The present administration will be out of office by then.

Incidentally, Poland did win a war with Russia:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com

Or we will see a repeat of Old soviet Georgia separatists.