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[Burrito Al Pastor]

Actually, the "suspicious photography" thing isn't without merit if you have a little sense. The other day I had the good fortune to be given a tour of Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building by somebody who's worked there for many years, and he had an interesting anecdote - several years back, he'd been giving the same tour to another architecture fan who'd been taking photos of the building (which was at the time partially in use by some federal agency). Said fan was of Middle Eastern origin, and acted very suspiciously, but for reals suspicious - he became pale and started staring at the ground when they entered the building and he saw the notice that all exits were videotaped, did some other thing that I forget, and most suspiciously of all, said he'd been in Chicago before he had come to Buffalo, but couldn't remember what other buildings he'd seen. Now, if you know anything about Louis Sullivan, you'd know that's about the most suspicious thing somebody could possibly say - that's like if somebody said they had eaten at a restraunt run by one of the Iron Chefs, but couldn't remember what they ate. Or were at E3 but couldn't remember any games they saw.

There's suspicious behavior, and then there's suspicious behavior.

[Royal☭]

Ha ha you're right we should totally lock up all the middle-eastern people with cameras.  Bravo.

[JDigital]

Only if they can't remember which buildings they've seen.

[The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji]

Is there a CQB hand signal for "I want to claw my eyes out over the idiocy and vulgarity of Blackwater's behavior and continued involvement in any conflict zone that boggles the mind?"

[Brentai]

#
Sharkey says at 1:24 pm, September 2nd, 2009
- Reply

This is making me hungry. Is it lunchtime yet?

[SCD]

Seriously, this stuff will always happen in war zones, doubly so when you're dealing with SA, Scottish, Rhodesian or other old mercs.  People get that bored, when they're stuck on guard duties for that long. 

Actually come to think it I've seen worst from polish conscripts.. 

and of course there's "Man-Love-Thursdays" in Kandahar province. 

War is a different culture than what your sensitive eyes are used to.  Trying to get into that realm usually ends up in one form or another type of scat-related tmfi when people are idle. 

To Quote Wellington, "Ours is the scum of the earth".  Little has changed for the dedicated ones.

[Mongrel]

I've always wondered just how many swaths of bizarre human history have been lost forever simply because everyone involved agreed not to talk about it and then stuck by that decision.

[SCD]

A lot. 

This is why cameras are forbidden in most military drinking establishments, although this is not an official rule - more of a self-policing gig. 

Two things:

1)  Hooray for the Germans and their piecemeal commitment.  There are operations where rampant alcoholism comes in handy (the former yugoslavia) and other places where it is just plain dumb.  This was the later.

2)  on 9/11, 2009 CNN fucked up royally on the Coast Guard Exercise and they refuse to apologize. 

Two things:  The main, and traditional role of media in society is to inform the masses with a clear, precise and true picture of events to allow them to make rational choices based off of the information handed to them.  After reading a certain science fiction novel set in the near future, shit like this makes the author sound prophetic. 

Second:  Competent reserve commanders will always engage in exercises and maneuvers in areas located to where their assistance could very well possibly be required for possible emergency situations.  Usually up north of the 49th, the media will publish a note or advertisement informing the community that this will be happening so that people know. 

I do not know if that was the case, and I'm not going to guess.

However, in terms of training, having people at the right place and the right time while conducting exercises is superb.  The guys on the ground are on a heightened state of vigillance and are not fooling around, plus if shit falls, "hey look, we're already here just give us the word there, commander-in-chief and we'll do what we can to assist". 

Forget these organizations and tree-hugging stoners that think it isn't sensible to be doing maneuvres - they hid the ammo, it was just radio chatter and puttering around in boats!  There were no explosions or shots fired...  Just boats playing cowboys and indians in the water!

++President for not taking any of this shit. 

[Mongrel]

1) My God, how low have the Germans fallen. To see it all come to this... I have no doubt that there's a table full of crotchety old Bavarians wishing for the days of the Wehrmacht-Heer. Or at least the resurrection of Frederick II.

[SCD]

Biden proposes saving Afghanistan from becoming another Vietnam....

...By turning it into a Somalia

For fuck sakes Biden, we've been over this... Your goddamned best of the nation has been over this:  YOU CANNOT WIN COUNTERINSURGENCIES BY SIMPLE ASSATINATION.  For that matter, you cannot destroy allies of the insurgents by those means either....

Do you realize you just went through it in Iraq?  Do you realize how they found windows of peace and real democracy in 08, as opposed to what you see now?!? 

Do you even bother listening to your Brains?  You know... The people who might know something about this sort of thing?


As someone who's lost friends to Afghanistan in support of the US, I take this proposal by Biden, as a major insult. 

[Mongrel]

Wait... did you link the wrong article? Because nothing in that first article mentions anything specific in the way of strategy changes at all, let alone invoking the spectre of assassination squads or Somalia.

[SCD]

Ah fubar, I think I did the wrong link. 

This would be it right here

Biden intends to coax Obama, not for the first time, into scaling back US presence and targeting and killing AQA leaders and members such as Clinton had the forces intentionally go out and arrest criminal leaders as in Black Hawk Down. 

By turning it into a Somalia, I mean attempting to make some trained forces, fucking off when they realize that without proper mentoring, they really can't make a proper police force (such as they failed to make a decent police force in Iraq) - I mean the ANP is the most rotten of the lot, right down to man love thursdays. 

I really hope that Petraeus and the commander in Afg get their way. 

[Brentai]

I don't think anybody listens to Joe Biden though.  Even Obama seems to have only brought him on for his perceived expertise in foreign policy matters.

[Mongrel]

Ah fubar, I think I did the wrong link. 

This would be it right here

Biden intends to coax Obama, not for the first time, into scaling back US presence and targeting and killing AQA leaders and members such as Clinton had the forces intentionally go out and arrest criminal leaders as in Black Hawk Down. 

By turning it into a Somalia, I mean attempting to make some trained forces, fucking off when they realize that without proper mentoring, they really can't make a proper police force (such as they failed to make a decent police force in Iraq) - I mean the ANP is the most rotten of the lot, right down to man love thursdays. 

I really hope that Petraeus and the commander in Afg get their way. 

Heh. Everybody always wants to believe that targeted assassinations work because the Israelis work so hard to pretend it does the trick for them that even their allies swallow that line. 

[SCD]

Ugh, if Karzai gets through this election scott-free despite what might be stuffing of up to 10% of the ballots, you're looking at an illegitimate gov.  Not much change from what they have there now, but the religious fundamentalists are really starting to look like a good choice on the ground compared to the boy-raping police forces (ANP)

even if there's a run-off, it will be hard to get things running before the winter snow comes and elections become much much harder to get the vote across. 

Wait and see, but legitimate governments win counter-insurgencies.  Not foreign militaries.  If Dr Abdullah Abdullah wins this one, we might yet have a snowballs chance in hell. 

Otherwise, expect to see a snowball's chance in lava.

[Büge]

According to Dante, the centre of hell is actually ice.

[Mongrel]

You know, about eight years ago, a cynical old Discordian gamer friend of mine* flatly assessed that the NATO invasion of Afghanistan would end in precisely the way the Soviet invasion had. Along with every other invasion of Afghanistan for the previous 2000 years. I thought perhaps this time might be different, but I also wouldn't dismiss his view out of hand as it was certainly plausible.

Here we are eight years later. I have the exact same opinion and he probably does too.

*_{You have no idea how much fun this guy was.}

[SCD]

I don't really agree with simplistic assessments.  There should be no question that Soviet Afghanistan and today's Afghanistan are two very different bags of feces.  The chips that were laid down in Soviet Afghanistan included active hi-tech assistance to the enemy from the CIA, mass executions at local Communist Party headquarters, not to mention the massive numbers of soldats from the Soviet Union. 

Buge got my joke.  To quote the current general in reporting to his political masters, "Numbers alone cannot win Afghanistan, but lack of numbers will most certainly lose it". 

He has it right, and understands that NATO lacks the backbone for a long counterinsurgency.  And even the key NATO players have long worn out their joints.  Peacetime Canada never really could assemble the numbers, and the UK will never be the military power it once was up until the end of Argentina.

If this is an eulogy, NATO and the States both messed it up in the get-go, both politically in choosing the wrong people at the wrong time (not that after Masoud's death by a suicide car bombing a week before 9-11, there were many clear-cut leaders to choose from).  They won the initial invasion not with shock and awe, but with CIA, special operations, and donkeys with truckloads of weapons, ammunition, and US dollars, but didn't expect to fight a counter-insurgency that would linger on with fighters bred in Pakistan, and experts and funding from Saudi Arabia..  We liberated the country from tyranny.. they have freedom!  If we make their lives better, what more could they want? 

Turns out some food, good government and security from Tribal warlords fit that bill...

The ruskies also had to worry about Paki and local fighters, but US interests and expertise doing the pushing, both through knowledge and money.  The Ruskies also didn't have the fiscal assistance from China through investing in mining sites as they are now..  At least there's a couple of towns in Central Afghanistan that can benefit from salaried workers.  Also having Iran next door was beneficial to the western province.  The lucky bastards got trade, doctors and electricity from the mix.  The government of that day in Iran I imagine would have other things on their minds...

However, back to the shortcomings, I digress:

I've been hearing increased debate in some circles also blaming not only Bush Jr for failing to "Select and Maintain the aim" (this folks, by the way, is the first principle of war) in getting distracted through the invasion of Iraq, but also, rather controversy, Bush Snr for liberating Kuwait, another middle-eastern non-democratic state. 

After Iraq took out Kuwait, they had the means to take out Saudi Arabia.  Oil prices may have gone up, but one of the most evil (imho) states currently running in humanity would have been taken out by a moderately less-evil dictator.  Oil would have spiked in the initial onset, but Hussein did have a hold on the oil better than we have it now in Iraq. 

Think of Gadaffi in Libya invading Mugabe's Zimbabwe. 

Al-Q would most likely have blown up the twin towers, but they probably would not be as advanced right now, where they have Internally-implanted suicide bombs that can go through metal detectors. 

I bet you all feel safer going through those airport metal detectors already!

Back on track, the game isn't over just yet.  Iraq was going through Genocide when Petraeus took it from the brink with many US soldier's lives.  Lets see what McChrystal has to offer.  You won't find a better man for that job anywhere. 

[Mongrel]

Er, I think you actually overcomplicated my oversimplification.

When I said that an old friend of mine

flatly assessed that the NATO invasion of Afghanistan would end in precisely the way the Soviet invasion had. Along with every other invasion of Afghanistan for the previous 2000 years.

he just meant "failure", not that it would necessarily duplicate the exact patterns. I mean, I didn't think that Alexander the Great, The Mongol Khans, Timur the Lame, or the Soviets used any of the same tactics either, so I thought that went without saying, but I guess not?

I was merely musing that a lot of time and money have been spent without anyone being any surer of what will ultimately happen. No more, no less.

 

[SCD]

Fair enough.  Turns out I love the sound of my own print anyways. 

Plus I wanted to see if I could make you react with the "blame GB Snr" theory.