In a war, if you're the bad guy, I can blow you away on sight... and use whatever I have available to do it quickly..
In a "police action" I have to wait until you shoot at me... which is Nam all over again...
IMHO, we (US, UK and very few others) kicked ass quickly and effectively... and that's when the grunts should have gone home and a police force brought in...
Some are calling Iraq "Vietnam in the sand", but what I'm afraid of is that it's becoming another Ireland, and we'll be there forever..
Shouldn't there be a measured chance of succes in undertaking any mission? Will a man, blindly, go over a hill with a pocket knife to take out a machine-gun nest? (I amplify the hypothesis to illustrate a point) Is there NO point at which a CO says: "Can't be done, my men will not go commit suicide (or commit crimes)." ?
I finally saw one of those up close and personal. Wow. Not armored is an understatement. Nothing gives you a feeling of security in an under-fire situation like sitting on a cushion directly on top of a gas tank, right?
Best place for it. Two things that I want really well protected are my ass, and the fuel tank. At least it's not in the main exit doors, like a BMP ( d'oh! ).
Secondly, it's diesel not petrol. That's a small comfort.
I don't beleive that there's anything in my rather extensive collection of civilian firearms that would be stopped by 1/2 of wood, except maybe one of the pellet guns. And I KNOW it wouldn't stop anything in my (much smaller) collection of military firearms.
This week the Brits are talking of little else (really - you can no doubt guess why)
So attrocities on one side are equally culpable by all soldiers, and form a valid excuse for the withdrawal of PoW's rights from all members of that combatant force ? By that logic you've just made yourself culpable for My Lai.
No, not particularly. I favour treating them as criminal terrorists, because I accept the legal argument that armed fighters outside a declared combat between nation states are not PoWs.
What I can't accept is the Kafkaesque Guantanamo situation (a PR spokesman at Gitmo really is called "Lt. Mike Kafka" !). These terrorists are either criminals or PoWs - you have to have them one way or the other, not hold them indefinitely incommunicado and without trial. That is not the act of any nation with any claim to decent behaviour, lest of all one that has set itself up as the moral arbiter for the world.
Besides which, I thought you were the one claiming that this was a war?
Really ? Shocking ! Just which part of my way of life was Iraq planning on attacking ? Where _where_ those pesky WMDs ?
Yeah, it's such a great thing for the world that America was watching out for us. _America_ told Saddam that it was OK to invade Kuwait. _America_ taught the 9/11 pilots to fly. Yeah, great vigilance there.
Go Team America ! If there isn't already a fight, carry one right on in there.
On 27 Jan 2005 00:40:09 GMT, the inscrutable snipped-for-privacy@aol.comnotforme (Charlie Self) spake:
Don't worry. This one won't last forever. Once Shrub attacks Iran, the Muslims will unite globally against us and we won't be around any more. Duck and cover, guys. This one's gonna be nasty.
OR, if he doesn't go into Iran and Syria, he'll try to shove "democracy" down Korea's throat and get the Chinese to come to their aid. Once our imports are stopped dead in their tracks, we'll implode by ourselves.
I just wish we'd stop effin' with the rest of the world, bring it all back home, and start taking care of our own for once.
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"Mike Marlow" wrote in news:_e_Jd.3252$Mo5.890 @fe61.usenetserver.com:
Too late now. He's got a second term, and he thinks that constitutes a mandate for his policies in Iraq.
Some of the supporters of this policy are pretty scary. They seem to think that the end justifies the means, even when the end has no clear and constant definition, and the means include sanctioning torture and suspension of habeas corpus.
"If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."
I meant that folks in alt.politics should discuss things in alt.politics and folks in rec.woodworking should discuss things in rec.woodworking. If one wants to discuss things with another group they should go to that group to hold that discussion. It is not, nor has it ever been netiquette to cross post as you did. It only invites an invasion of conversations that are not relevant to the group in question. If what you were trying to accomplish was to take a political discussion away from a woodworking group (not necessarily a bad idea all by itself...), then it works better to get the participants to go there. Opening this group up to a deluge from alt.politics by cross posting there does nothing in the name of netiquette.
Lose the knee jerk rant against "America" .. it is unbecoming of you, and you know better. Your enemy is not America, but muslim fundamentalist ... learn to accept that and you may yet survive.
Don't worry, we've managed to rise to the occasion a couple of times in the past, much to your benefit, and we will do so again.
Tsk, tsk ... or just baiting? In any event, these shallow, irrelevant questions miss the mark completely.
There is no question that we have the tools to do the job. The question is do we have the will?
When the sheep ultimately look up and see, ONCE AGAIN, their loved ones dying in the streets of Hometown, USA, just hope like hell there is enough of that "will" left to get the job done.
Security is relative. Flying in a helicopter, with no armor, while watching the tracer rounds pass by, and knowing that you're only seeing about 1/7th of those little buggers, doesn't leave you with a helluva lot of regard for the dangers of sitting atop a tank of diesel, not gas, while tooling along on the ground.
Besides, you gotta put the tank somewhere. I'm certain that if some of the global master thinkers/planners ranting against reality hereabouts can come up with a better solution, they'll find someone to listen.
Thing about it is, its a complicated world. ... many here are using filters that work against crossposting. If you take out the crossposting, you defeat the filter.
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