It may be a wasteland but it was a strategic holding until the Panama Canal was finished. I think the war was a foregone conclusion though given the military power in place at the time. I think General Leopoldo Galtieri assumed that if he succeeded in grabbing the Falklands that things would turn out differently in the elections in October 1983.

http://freespace.virgin.net/gordon.smith4/F13history.htm
http://www.falklands.info/history/history6.html
http://www.naval-history.net/F11falklands.htm
http://www.falklands.gov.fk/1.htm

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>>>tcha!
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>>TCHA? Help me out here, bud.
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>How does one spell an exclamation of disdain, such as the sucking of air through the teeth?
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>We didn't have massively superior firepower. The war was won through luck and British pluck (luck & pluck), at a great cost in materiel.
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>I've gone over this recently: In the 70s the Brits tried to give the Falklands to the Argentines but the islanders didn't want to be Argentine. The A's invaded, imposed their will on the islanders (such as stipulating that schools will now be in Spanish, drive on the right). A was ruled by a miltary S. American junta. How would you like it if your way of life was suddenly displaced by an alien, despotic regime? How would the US react if the Hawaian islands were suddenly taken over by, say, an imperialist Japanese force? (oh we know that, don't we). Granted, the wind-swept Falklands aren't nearly as pleasant a piece of real estate as Honolulu, but they are OURS. Just cos it was 1000s of miles away doen't mean it shouldn't be protected. What if the French suddenly decided they wanted the Isle of Wight, or the Channel Islands? Because they are handy we'd take them back, but if theyt were remote - don't bother.
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>As I've said before, I think that a good compromise would have been to let the A's have the largely unpopulated West island. And it's not as if diplomacy wasn't given a chance. I believe the expression "shuttle diplomacy" was born in the US attempts to halt a war.
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>>Let's just agree to disagree about the Falklands war. Sure, soldiers on both sides died, but it was about the silliest "war" ever. The British sailed halfway around the world to reclaim a godforsaken pile of rocks, with massively superior firepower, and it was all over quickly. Contrast this with the current U.S. adventure in Iraq, the dumbest military adventure in OUR history. (No, wait, that honor goes to Grenada). We are approaching the third anniversary of this brain-dead, poorly planned exercise with ~2600 Americans dead and countless Iraqis. Our mission, whatever exactly it was, is no closer to being completed and Iraq is teetering on the brink of outright civil war, which is exactly what I predicted three years ago. This has been a gigantic waste of time, money, and lives.
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>>I'll shut up now. It makes me angry, that's all. Such utter stupidity.