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Author Topic: Don't you know there's a war on?  (Read 77193 times)

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TA

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #380 on: June 23, 2010, 09:38:31 PM »

Turgidson?  I would have said Ripper.
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SCD

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #381 on: June 24, 2010, 05:15:31 AM »

At this point, I'll concede.
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Büge

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #382 on: June 24, 2010, 06:36:27 AM »

What a coincidence. I was just reading about Dead Hand.
Quote
President Merkin Muffley: But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you *build* such a thing?

Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

President Merkin Muffley: This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.

Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.
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Mongrel

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Royal☭

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #384 on: July 13, 2010, 06:56:39 PM »

More than a little disturbed that the army is willing to spend $3.7 million on things I thought were badass when I was eight.

Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #385 on: July 14, 2010, 05:32:37 AM »

Cheap, safe, effective.  You only get to choose two when it comes to defusing a minefield.
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Mongrel

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #386 on: July 25, 2010, 03:54:02 PM »

So, it's pretty much on every news outlet everywhere. Apparently someone's leaked pretty much the entire not-for-public-consumption internal US documentation of the Afghan war up to 2009 (conveniently or inconveniently excluding the Obama-administration era).

It's supposed to be up on Wikileaks soon, but the NYT, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel all got early access.

...


...


:popcorn:
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SCD

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #387 on: July 25, 2010, 05:39:13 PM »

It should be interesting, as I expect a lot of the major issues to mirror problems with other old powers and how they handled insurgency "back in the day".  To paraphrase a pretty keen US General of the past, "Counterinsurgency is a racket".  However despite the political " :whoops:"'s, Afghanistan's best days are still ahead of her.

To start on the Wired article itself, you'll notice the "next-generation" anti-IED road clearing vehicle designed to knock out under-road IED's are huge, but despite the massive size of this behemoth and the millions that will go into it there is one error of shortsight not thought out by the fobbits in puzzle palace when they try to foist this sort of thing on the taxpayer.  This flaw should be obvious to some, and I will explain without going into the murky electronic warfare which is just as incremental and circular in nature with a bit of recent history.  For the Canadians, the insurgents started out knocking our unarmoured jeeps with old landmines as well as our soft-skin logistics tpt, so we switched to the Mercedes-jeeps.  The insurgents responded with "double" and "triple stacks", which are pretty much what they sound like.  The Conservative government decided then to allow the forces to buy these honking huge stuffy Nyalas (RG-31) which are SA in design, and are meant to drive on minefields.  They withstand triple-stacks. 

Unfortunately Einstein was wrong:  The two most common elements were not Stupidity and Hydrogen, but Soviet-era weapons from Soviet stockpiles and Chinese factories and stupidity(don't worry China, we forgive you!  If you can't protect your citizens from lead or other forms of simple poisoning, how can we expect your citizens to have the same care for your stockpiles of weapons not for your army?  I still haven't forgiven you for not fixing the lack of White Rabbit candies being exported after the melanoma scare..  Bad China!).    The crater that took out our first RG-31 took out everything in a three-lane radius and left no survivors.   So now as the U-wals decide to implement even larger and more-expensive road clearing attachments for the M1 Abrams, I will predict that the next IEDs will go where there is less armor - dig deeper, or just placing them where they cannot be scooped up.  Sadly this shows that the fobbits in Puzzle Palace failed to read the opening phrases in the bible FM 3-24, which explain that the more you pursue in making your troops more safe in insurgencies, the less safe they become. 

And on the official US field manual's author, I am pretty gleeful that he has scrapped the old guy's plans to go in guns blazing but instead look at tribal-based solutions.  It won't be anything near perfect, but that corrupt neighbour bob with the AK sure beats the ANP (which is not saying much; a stop sign beats those guys hands down).  However, NPR has a good explanation of the situation as well as an interview of an Ozzie who is one of the foremost experts on counterinsurgency.  I still revere Petraeus as the best general in irregular warfare, but despite my bias it's important to note that he did win a sparsely-populated region using the same basic strategy with the same non-support from the HN government in a similar "almost all hope lost" scenario not half a decade ago.  Hope Endures.

As far as the kill-all strategy of the last guy, the Canadians tried that hard and slaughtered the Taliban by the hundreds during Op Medusa.  It calmed things down during that following winter more than the others, but it didn't work in the long run.  Something about the lack of good government and many other things you will no doubt read about if Mongrel's link reads true.
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SCD

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #388 on: July 29, 2010, 04:41:07 AM »

Well, in the Canadian media, there has been a bit of hoo-haw about how there was a possible coverup of a few Canadians killed by friendly fire in the aforementioned op in my pre-emptive essay up there.  Luckily, a Globe and Mail reporter by the name of Christie Blatchford was around in the time of the operation (and wrote a memoir called "Combat Charlie).  This is what she has to say about the most damning reports of coverup up north.
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Mongrel

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #389 on: July 29, 2010, 05:08:21 AM »

Christie Blatchford's columns can frequently be asinine and forgettable (especially anything about 'everyday life'), but I've generally found her SRS BIZNESS REPORTUR columns to be top-notch (most of her military ones and also her stories on the native occupation in Stoney Creek).
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SCD

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #390 on: August 09, 2010, 07:58:02 PM »

Really loving Robert Gates right about now.  Fresh from his last round of cuts of ridiculous spending projects(Laserjet, anyone?), he's at it again looking to snip out another 20 Bn USD from the budget by looking for stuff that doesn't work and going "HEY YOU, GET A REAL JOB". 

While the taxpayer won't see the money go back into the pot, if this is successful it will ensure that the logistics of Afghanistan is less likely to require a 20 billion dollars a year of emergency funding

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Royal☭

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #391 on: August 09, 2010, 08:36:14 PM »

Oh, Robert Gates.  I'm still tickled pink by this quote of his about the recent WikiLeak posting:

Gates: Posting classified war documents was morally wrong (emphasis mine)
Quote
"If I'm angry it is because I believe this information puts those in Afghanistan who have helped us at risk," Gates said, citing a Taliban statement that it would seek out informants and other collaborators exposed by the documents.

He said the issue involved two areas of culpability - legal and moral.

While the Department of Justice will decide on the legal questions, "there's also a moral culpability, and that's where I think WikiLeaks is guilty," Gates said.

SCD

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #392 on: August 09, 2010, 08:49:31 PM »

And would you say why posting raw data containing names of individuals is wrong, given knowing the context?
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Thad

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #393 on: August 09, 2010, 10:01:50 PM »

The individuals' names are not required to understand the content of the dumps.  There is no benefit to providing them, only a risk.
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Royal☭

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #394 on: August 10, 2010, 05:04:25 AM »

It's the hypocrisy of the Defense Secretary accusing someone else of having blood on their hands that I hate.

Classic

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #395 on: August 10, 2010, 10:50:48 AM »

He is probably qualified to make that assessment though? I don't know the guy, but it seems he doesn't harbor any illusions of being "clean" himself.
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SCD

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #396 on: August 12, 2010, 07:13:44 PM »

It's not hypocritical.  The people who offered translators and others work promised secrecy of the names, and due to some idiot intelligence operator who should never see the light of day again and some idiot with an ego the size of jupiter (who could have had the decency to have his minions at least black out the names) these Afghans and their families have to fear for their lives. 

I fail to see how gates is any more responsible for this any more than the other two I bring up.  In addition to that, it was not Gates who signed on to this war, or cowered away when it got ugly, but chose the option of loyalty regardless of the political flavor in office.  Your anti-war bias is clouding your judgement in this case. 

And for what it's worth, Gates keeps a counter of all the people who has died on his watch.  I'm pretty sure this is a guy whose been looking forward to a nice full-pensioned retirement, but has had to push it off for a good 6 years because no other adult would step in and clean the mess the kids made.
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Royal☭

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #397 on: August 12, 2010, 07:34:39 PM »

It's not hypocritical.  The people who offered translators and others work promised secrecy of the names, and due to some idiot intelligence operator who should never see the light of day again and some idiot with an ego the size of jupiter (who could have had the decency to have his minions at least black out the names) these Afghans and their families have to fear for their lives. 

You know what is also making them fear for their lives?  The war.

I fail to see how gates is any more responsible for this any more than the other two I bring up.  In addition to that, it was not Gates who signed on to this war, or cowered away when it got ugly, but chose the option of loyalty regardless of the political flavor in office.  Your anti-war bias is clouding your judgement in this case. 

So I should go easy on those whose job it is to ensure the healthy funding and budgeting of the war?  Boo-fucking hoo.  Gates has influence, an opinion, and his own self-respecting.  Every moment he continues to do that job is a moment he's responsible for the deaths of Afghan civilians as well as American and allied soldiers.  He may not have started the war, but he sure as hell has become a pivotal cog in it.


And for what it's worth, Gates keeps a counter of all the people who has died on his watch.  I'm pretty sure this is a guy whose been looking forward to a nice full-pensioned retirement, but has had to push it off for a good 6 years because no other adult would step in and clean the mess the kids made.

I'm glad he can look forward to a full-pensioned retirement one day.  Hundreds of thousands of others have lost their loved ones.

patito

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #398 on: August 12, 2010, 07:57:37 PM »

Gates is a dick, sure whatever. The point being that the wikileaks guys were absolutely and totally irresponsible for posting that stuff without first blocking off names or contacting the governments about what sort of stuff was on those papers and what kind of harm it could cause, not to the government itself but to their afgan or iraqui collaborators who are trying their best to help their country out.

If there wasn't any war in the first place then sure, maybe they wouldn't have to fear for their lives, but guess what, they are in a war now and leaving them now it's not gonna do them any good, especially not now that the enemy knows their identities and the fact that they were collaborating with the US.
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Brentai

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Re: Don't you know there's a war on?
« Reply #399 on: August 12, 2010, 08:19:12 PM »

You seem to be under the assumption that the war would stop without this man.
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