Drizzt
March 25, 2003, 05:17 PM
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
March 22, 2003 Saturday THREE STAR EDITION
SECTION: MAIN, Pg. A10
LENGTH: 567 words
HEADLINE: War through the ages
BYLINE: Andy Rooney
BODY:
It is far from certain that we won't end up destroying all life on Earth. Every war produces new weapons that come closer. The fact that it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't. Armageddon could be just around the corner now. I'm nervous.
The earliest warriors went at each other with clubs. They would have been alarmed if they'd heard about David using a new weapon -- the slingshot -- to kill Goliath at a distance.
For thousands of years, men killed each other with spears and swords. The disadvantage was that warriors had to get close to their enemies to use them.
When they started riding horses into battle, soldiers covered with armor and using spears had the advantage over soldiers on foot.
When the Carthaginians invaded Iberia on elephants, Iberians must have thought they had met the ultimate weapon.
The bow and arrow was the favorite of medieval times, although men were still killing each other with them in our Colonial times, long after they had guns.
After all the years and all the mechanical devices invented for the men of one army to kill the men of another, the foot soldier remains dominant in war. It always seems as though technology has taken over and wars will be fought by machines, but that hasn't happened.
A few weapons have changed the course of wars. War hasn't been the same since gunpowder was invented. There's an argument over whether it was the brainchild of the Chinese or an Englishman named Roger Bacon. I'm not terribly interested who came up with it, but gunpowder changed war for good -- by which I mean bad. A soldier packed the explosive powder in one end of a tube, stuffed a metal ball down the front of the tube, then lit the powder behind the ball to blow it out to strike a target. The first move to make cannons more lethal was to cut the metal ball in half, pack it with powder, then put the ball back together so it exploded when it hit a target.
Along the way, someone discovered that a projectile flew faster and more accurately if it was revolving, so they invented rifling -- cutting spiral grooves in gun and cannon barrels. Many of the men who died in our Civil War were killed by a rifle bullet. I suppose, as a way of dying, it was an improvement over being pierced by an arrow, stabbed with a sword or trampled by an elephant.
Hand-held muskets, pistols or handguns, have been more popular murder weapons at peace than at war. Killing an enemy one at a time is inefficient.
The first use of chemical weapons came in World War I, when phosgene, chlorine and mustard gas were used. They were effective but bad weapons because you could not control where the gas drifted.
Tanks and airplanes were threats in World War I that didn't materialize as serious weapons until the next war. Tanks never worked because foot soldiers learned they could stop one in its tracks and cremate its occupants by throwing a bottle filled with gasoline wrapped in a flaming rag at the vehicle.
The United States used what is so far the most effective death-dealing weapon when we dropped two atomic bombs and killed 100,000 Japanese people in 1945.
The future may belong to the country that can contrive a device that combines the destructive force of a nuclear bomb with the lethal capacity of anthrax and attach it to a long-range rocket.
If the United States is hit by such a weapon, will the Americans left alive re-elect Bush?
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How does that last sentence have anything at all to do with the rest of the article? What point was he trying to make?
March 22, 2003 Saturday THREE STAR EDITION
SECTION: MAIN, Pg. A10
LENGTH: 567 words
HEADLINE: War through the ages
BYLINE: Andy Rooney
BODY:
It is far from certain that we won't end up destroying all life on Earth. Every war produces new weapons that come closer. The fact that it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't. Armageddon could be just around the corner now. I'm nervous.
The earliest warriors went at each other with clubs. They would have been alarmed if they'd heard about David using a new weapon -- the slingshot -- to kill Goliath at a distance.
For thousands of years, men killed each other with spears and swords. The disadvantage was that warriors had to get close to their enemies to use them.
When they started riding horses into battle, soldiers covered with armor and using spears had the advantage over soldiers on foot.
When the Carthaginians invaded Iberia on elephants, Iberians must have thought they had met the ultimate weapon.
The bow and arrow was the favorite of medieval times, although men were still killing each other with them in our Colonial times, long after they had guns.
After all the years and all the mechanical devices invented for the men of one army to kill the men of another, the foot soldier remains dominant in war. It always seems as though technology has taken over and wars will be fought by machines, but that hasn't happened.
A few weapons have changed the course of wars. War hasn't been the same since gunpowder was invented. There's an argument over whether it was the brainchild of the Chinese or an Englishman named Roger Bacon. I'm not terribly interested who came up with it, but gunpowder changed war for good -- by which I mean bad. A soldier packed the explosive powder in one end of a tube, stuffed a metal ball down the front of the tube, then lit the powder behind the ball to blow it out to strike a target. The first move to make cannons more lethal was to cut the metal ball in half, pack it with powder, then put the ball back together so it exploded when it hit a target.
Along the way, someone discovered that a projectile flew faster and more accurately if it was revolving, so they invented rifling -- cutting spiral grooves in gun and cannon barrels. Many of the men who died in our Civil War were killed by a rifle bullet. I suppose, as a way of dying, it was an improvement over being pierced by an arrow, stabbed with a sword or trampled by an elephant.
Hand-held muskets, pistols or handguns, have been more popular murder weapons at peace than at war. Killing an enemy one at a time is inefficient.
The first use of chemical weapons came in World War I, when phosgene, chlorine and mustard gas were used. They were effective but bad weapons because you could not control where the gas drifted.
Tanks and airplanes were threats in World War I that didn't materialize as serious weapons until the next war. Tanks never worked because foot soldiers learned they could stop one in its tracks and cremate its occupants by throwing a bottle filled with gasoline wrapped in a flaming rag at the vehicle.
The United States used what is so far the most effective death-dealing weapon when we dropped two atomic bombs and killed 100,000 Japanese people in 1945.
The future may belong to the country that can contrive a device that combines the destructive force of a nuclear bomb with the lethal capacity of anthrax and attach it to a long-range rocket.
If the United States is hit by such a weapon, will the Americans left alive re-elect Bush?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does that last sentence have anything at all to do with the rest of the article? What point was he trying to make?