Incredible news, if true

mannyfreshstunna · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by fishbiproduct
That would have been incredibly naive, dfb.
The US knew prior to 9/11 that Al Qaeda could
and would strike on its territory. It just failed
massively at acting on it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/america_under_attack/clues/timeline.html
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Yea, i guess we learned nothing about AQ from 1993-1998.

fishbiproduct · Sep 24, 2003

I think you could go all the way up to 2001

"July 2001
Agent Kenneth Williams, in Phoenix, Az., sends an electronic memo to FBI headquarters, warning of an unusual number of Middle Eastern men enrolling in U.S. flight schools. He speculates they may be connected to a bin Laden plot. The memo recommends that the FBI canvass other schools nationwide. Officials never follow up"

And don't forget that you won't get me involved
in a Dem adminstration vs Rep one. I'm not a US
citizen and that debate is irrelevant to me.
I'm only thinking that intelligence is...intelligence,
regardless of who is at the helm. I understand
different priorities, but not on matter of such
importance.

mannyfreshstunna · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by phats_away
are they teaching you anything? is my lotto money going to good use? are you going to uga? because that might explain something...
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Nope sorry, no UGA here. I go to NIU;you know the team that beat maryland and alabama this year.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by Belgian guy
Saying that this war is unjust is not the same as being a Saddam apoligist.

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What is the other option?

The pooch is screwed, what is the reasoning behind looking for the reasons now?

The world had their chance to make their case.

Why would the Bush admin have to lie to the world when they knew well in advance that they would do whatever they wanted to do anyway?

Looking to debate the reasons is good to make sure this farce never happens again, but then again some "crazy" people have even said that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to occur, to justify and force the isolationists of that era to vote for war.

Like many said, there was a creation of the new normal after 9/11 and yes, Bush wasted all the global support, but what exactly was the world going to do besides say, "Damn, I feel sorry for you."?

Bush had plans for Iraq before 9/11 and we all know it. He was going to war regardless. He had the privious war council from Gulf War I and we still "elected" him. To think, just think, we needed Bush, not after 9/11 because I think he did little to make the people feel safer, but he brought a humanity to things.

He then went cowboy and Joe Six Pack loved it. The US and a few friends kicked some serious tail, but we have an unstable situation now.

Speaking of which, history was kind to Viet Nam, even to think the public was so vocal and even violent agsinst the war. Who would have thought that today, VietNam is consider an L in the loss column, but the has not only been justified, the troops, dead or alive, are considered heroes, not spit on like when they returned.

To think Jimmy Carter is now considered a great (or good) president. Economy aside, he is considered pretty cool and the world loves him. Heck, he builds homes and still gets a boner for his own wife!

History wil be pleased with this war, too. Unless we have some smoking gun of the other kind...the vast resignations and the like.

But think, Iran Contra.
Reagan said he didn't remember and now Bush can just say, hey, I'm stupid. In the end, we won the Cold War and we defeated Saddam.

I guess history is kind to the winners, but it could help create the next bin laden or dare I say...the next Simon Bolivar. To quote the women of various talents, Rosie Perez , "Sometimes, when you win, you lose and when you lose, you win. Oooooo eee." from White Men Can't Jump.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by obie

-- Saddam was killing his own people and we wanted to liberate Iraq. While that is noble, it's also politically stupid. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama are waiting for their American liberators as we speak.

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You forgot about SoccerAndy5!

You want more war with bigger dogs?

Dan Loney · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by Colin Powell
Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors. While we were here in this council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

....

Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.

How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.

This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four, and it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the different bunkers.

Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are gone, it's been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd of December, as the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.

The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found nothing.

This sequence of events raises the worrisome suspicion that Iraq had been tipped off to the forthcoming inspections at Taji (ph). As it did throughout the 1990s, we know that Iraq today is actively using its considerable intelligence capabilities to hide its illicit activities. From our sources, we know that inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives. Iraq is relentlessly attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics. I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.

....when Iraq finally admitted having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast....Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.

And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.

Dr. Blix told this council that Iraq has provided little evidence to verify anthrax production and no convincing evidence of its destruction. It should come as no shock then, that since Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998, we have amassed much intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons.

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents. Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eye witness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.

The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.

Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.

The source was an eye witness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.

He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.

This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.

A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers.

A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.

Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier. We have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. Here you see both truck and rail car-mounted mobile factories. The description our sources gave us of the technical features required by such facilities are highly detailed and extremely accurate. As these drawings based on their description show, we know what the fermenters look like, we know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like. We know how they fit together. We know how they work. And we know a great deal about the platforms on which they are mounted.

As shown in this diagram, these factories can be concealed easily, either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and rail cars along Iraq's thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking them in a garage or warehouse or somewhere in Iraq's extensive system of underground tunnels and bunkers.

We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of--there may be more--but perhaps 18 that we know of. Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day.

It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will take the inspectors to find even one of these 18 trucks without Iraq coming forward, as they are supposed to, with the information about these kinds of capabilities?

Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings.

By 1998, U.N. experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying techniques for their biological weapons programs. Now, Iraq has incorporated this drying expertise into these mobile production facilities.

We know from Iraq's past admissions that it has successfully weaponized not only anthrax, but also other biological agents, including botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.

But Iraq's research efforts did not stop there. Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus (ph), tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox.

The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disburse lethal biological agents, widely and discriminately into the water supply, into the air. For example, Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by UNSCOM some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying.

In 1995, an Iraqi military officer, Mujahid Sali Abdul Latif (ph), told inspectors that Iraq intended the spray tanks to be mounted onto a MiG-21 that had been converted into an unmanned aerial vehicle, or a UAV. UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons. Iraq admitted to producing four spray tanks. But to this day, it has provided no credible evidence that they were destroyed, evidence that was required by the international community.

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.

UNMOVIC already laid out much of this, and it is documented for all of us to read in UNSCOM's 1999 report on the subject.

Let me set the stage with three key points that all of us need to keep in mind: First, Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons on another country and on his own people. In fact, in the history of chemical warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Second, as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry--6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war--UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for.

Dr. Blix has quipped that, quote, ``Mustard gas is not (inaudible) You are supposed to know what you did with it.''

We believe Saddam Hussein knows what he did with it, and he has not come clean with the international community. We have evidence these weapons existed. What we don't have is evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are. That is what we are still waiting for.

Third point, Iraq's record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.

The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law. UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery. Yet, to this day, Iraq denies it had ever weaponized VX. And on January 27, UNMOVIC told this council that it has information that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.

We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry. To all outward appearances, even to experts, the infrastructure looks like an ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and legitimate production can go on simultaneously; or, on a dime, this dual-use infrastructure can turn from clandestine to commercial and then back again.

These inspections would be unlikely, any inspections of such facilities would be unlikely to turn up anything prohibited, especially if there is any warning that the inspections are coming. Call it ingenuous or evil genius, but the Iraqis deliberately designed their chemical weapons programs to be inspected. It is infrastructure with a built-in ally.

Under the guise of dual-use infrastructure, Iraq has undertaken an effort to reconstitute facilities that were closely associated with its past program to develop and produce chemical weapons.

For example, Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq (ph) state establishment. Tariq (ph) includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq's chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past programs.

That's the production end of Saddam's chemical weapons business. What about the delivery end?

I'm going to show you a small part of a chemical complex called al-Moussaid (ph), a site that Iraq has used for at least three years to transship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field.

In May 2002, our satellites photographed the unusual activity in this picture. Here we see cargo vehicles are again at this transshipment point, and we can see that they are accompanied by a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity. What makes this picture significant is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time. So it's not just the photo, and it's not an individual seeing the photo. It's the photo and then the knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case.

This photograph of the site taken two months later in July shows not only the previous site, which is the figure in the middle at the top with the bulldozer sign near it, it shows that this previous site, as well as all of the other sites around the site, have been fully bulldozed and graded. The topsoil has been removed. The Iraqis literally removed the crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to conceal chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical weapons activity.

To support its deadly biological and chemical weapons programs, Iraq procures needed items from around the world using an extensive clandestine network. What we know comes largely from intercepted communications and human sources who are in a position to know the facts. ....

Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.

Let me remind you that, of the 122 millimeter chemical warheads, that the U.N. inspectors found recently, this discovery could very well be, as has been noted, the tip of the submerged iceberg. The question before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?

Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again, against his neighbors and against his own people.

And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them.
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Just a little reminder for the short attention span crowd over there on the right - Colin Powell is a lying sack of *#*#*#*#.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by superdave
Dude, you gotta admit, the particular misspelling was hilarious.
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https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=73591

Originally posted by superdave
The either didn't do Dean, or didn't report the results. Which is weird.
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I guess this is the Daily Double?

Grammar Smack and Spelling Smack in one post!

Weeeeeeeee!

Besides, could you change your avatar?
Everytime I see it I think of Conan O'Brien and his YYYeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaa Clinton bit.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by phats_away
are they teaching you anything? is my lotto money going to good use? are you going to uga? because that might explain something...
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AOL Keyword: Superdave

Maybe you guys went to school together.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by Scoey
More gems from Powell on Iraq:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<snip> ...without receiving on our shoulders all the baggage that goes with it that frankly has been causing the whole thing to start to unravel.

From http://usembassy-australia.state.gov/hyper/2001/0227/epf202.htm
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I would guess that "baggage" he mentions was the same Iraqi people who actually suffered from the isolation of Saddam?

Let us never forget the sanctions impossed by Bush I that did nothing but hurt the common folks. This was maybe peanuts next to what Saddam had done, but just like with North Korea, the common folks...eeeerrrrrrr...baggage are hurt most.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by fishbiproduct
That would have been incredibly naive, dfb.
The US knew prior to 9/11 that Al Qaeda could
and would strike on its territory. It just failed
massively at acting on it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/america_under_attack/clues/timeline.html
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By the looks of it, you run your posts through bablefish to translate or some word program to spellcheck. Kudos to you.

My wife continues with ESL classes. I help teach them, too (couldn't really notice, huh?)

PS. Superdave would be proud.

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by mannyfreshstunna
What's that? You won't engage the issue? Ok i just wanted to make sure i heard you right.
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Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by Dan Loney
Just a little reminder for the short attention span crowd over there on the right - Colin Powell is a lying sack of *#*#*#*#.
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You made the case for the other side.

Americans don't care because your "post" was too long.

Are you Cobi Jones in real life?

superdave · Sep 24, 2003

OK, Garcia, you got it.

mannyfreshstunna · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by superdave
OK, Garcia, you got it.
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Hey, it's Indiana! Wait, Indiana isn't a planet.....

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by superdave
OK, Garcia, you got it.
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Is that the 51st State of the Union?
The flag industry must be happy.

Thanks, bro.

superdave · Sep 24, 2003

Aw, c'mon Garcia!!! He talked about Bush's Crucifiction!!! Fiction!!! Get it???!!! You can't really expect me to pass that up???

That wasn't exactly your run of the mill typo, it was a Freudian slip worthy of an episode of Matlock!!!

Garcia · Sep 24, 2003

Originally posted by superdave
Aw, c'mon Garcia!!! He talked about Bush's Crucifiction!!! Fiction!!! Get it???!!! You can't really expect me to pass that up???

That wasn't exactly your run of the mill typo, it was a Freudian slip worthy of an episode of Matlock!!!
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No way!!

Matlock would never use it.

This guy might.

NSlander · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by BenReilly
We didn't take bin-Laden all that seriously either before 9-11. Your smoking gun is a water pistol.
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So our failure to detect hints of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have justified our attacking Thailand when we knew that country was not a threat to the U.S.

At least try.

Richth76 · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by mannyfreshstunna
What's that? You won't engage the issue? Ok i just wanted to make sure i heard you right.
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You want issues. Here's the issue: Colin Powell said in 2001 that Saddam was not a threat and had "no capability" to develop WMDs . He had no basis for making such a claim becuase UN Inspectors had been kicked out of Iraq in 1998. Essentially he was talking out of his ass. In 2003, he goes before the UN and says Saddam has always had WMDs and here's exactly where they are. Again the man was talking out of his ass and feeding us *#*#*#*#.

So tell me (I have asked you this many times) why did we go to war with Iraq? Give me that one answer. But you "won't engage the issue".

BenReilly · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by NSlander
So our failure to detect hints of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have justified our attacking Thailand when we knew that country was not a threat to the U.S.

At least try.
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I'm not tryint to justify anything except that our assessment of threats was very different prior to 9-11 and must be judged within that context.

SoFla Metro · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by BenReilly
We didn't take bin-Laden all that seriously either before 9-11.
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I guess your definition of seriously and mine are at odds. Unless you've completely bought into the Republican smear machine about what Clinton did to fight terrorism during his presidency.

SoFla Metro · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by BenReilly
I'm not tryint to justify anything except that our assessment of threats was very different prior to 9-11 and must be judged within that context.
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I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.
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How was that threat assessment different than it is today?

Dan Loney · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by BenReilly
I'm not tryint to justify anything except that our assessment of threats was very different prior to 9-11 and must be judged within that context.
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After 9/11, they started making shi'ite up about probably the one country in the Middle East besides effin' Israel that had nothing to do with it!

Or did we find those 2,000 liters of anthrax yet?

SoFla Metro · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by Dan Loney
After 9/11, they started making shi'ite up about probably the one country in the Middle East besides effin' Israel that had nothing to do with it!

Or did we find those 2,000 liters of anthrax yet?
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...ashpost/20030925/ts_washpost/a61136_2003sep24

They're offering "no firm conclusions" which is code for "couldn't find shit"

DJPoopypants · Sep 25, 2003

Originally posted by SoFla Metro
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...ashpost/20030925/ts_washpost/a61136_2003sep24

They're offering "no firm conclusions" which is code for "couldn't find shit"
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SKROOB: Tell him to comb the desert. Do you hear me? Comb the desert.

SANDURZ: Sir.

HELMET: What?

SANDURZ: Are we being too literal.

HELMET: No, you fool. We're following orders. We were told to comb the desert, so we're combing it. Found anything yet?

TROOPER WITH COMB: Nothing yet, sir.

HELMET: How about you?

TROOPER WITH 2ND COMB: Not a thing, sir.

HELMET: What about you guys?

TROOPER WITH MINI COMB:

http://www.timrusstribute.com/images/Other Roles/Spaceballs/Spaceballs4.jpg

WE AIN'T FOUND *#*#*#*#!!!