The Gaming Den

Murtak wrote:Anyone who signed on with the intent of protecting a country as large and powerful as the US from enemies who can only threaten them with scare tactics is dumb. Anyone who believes Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator, was in league with fundamentalist terrorists is dumb. Anyone who believes he is making the US secure by shooting Arabs is dumb. The whole US strategy is dumb. Or possibly evil. But I am going to give them the benefit of doubt and think of them as dumb enough to be brainwashed.

This is what is called a generalization. And it's a dumb one.

Except the US strategy part. Lots of it is dumb, yes.

This is exactly why soldiers (who should think in terms of 'collateral damage') should not be acting as a police force (which should think in terms of 'innocent until proven guilty' and at the edge maybe 'tase first and ask questions later'). The LAPD doesn't use machine guns in helicopters to snipe possible gang members.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:This is exactly why soldiers (who should think in terms of 'collateral damage') should not be acting as a police force (which should think in terms of 'innocent until proven guilty' and at the edge maybe 'tase first and ask questions later'). The LAPD doesn't use machine guns in helicopters to snipe possible gang members.

The problem really is that a police force doesn't really have enough firepower to hunt down insurgents unless they have extremely good intel to catch the insurgents while their pants are down.

Historically, the most effective ways of ending an insurgency revolve around two methods:

1) Recruiting the local populace (or a militant, competent segment of the populace) to provide you with a police force that can bitch-slap the insurgents for you - which was used to great success by the British Empire in India to quell revolts by recruiting "warlike" tribes like the Gurkhas to put down Indian revolts for them without necessarily pissing off the local populace.

2) Outright genocide.

Obviously, #2 is out due to humanitarian purposes. But sending out an army that was designed, equipped, and trained to face 20,000 Soviet tanks in the Fulda Gap to quell Iraqi insurgents isn't exactly very smart.

Zinegata wrote:

Murtak wrote:Anyone who signed on with the intent of protecting a country as large and powerful as the US from enemies who can only threaten them with scare tactics is dumb. Anyone who believes Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator, was in league with fundamentalist terrorists is dumb. Anyone who believes he is making the US secure by shooting Arabs is dumb. The whole US strategy is dumb. Or possibly evil. But I am going to give them the benefit of doubt and think of them as dumb enough to be brainwashed.

This is what is called a generalization. And it's a dumb one.

Except the US strategy part. Lots of it is dumb, yes.

The only part where I generalized is the entirety of the US strategy - which is of course the only part you agree to. Would you mind pointing out how my other points are wrong? Seriously, I can't fathom how anyone could believe the "reasons" for attacking Iraq. So tell me how Al Qaeda could threaten the US and how fighting them combats that threat. Tell me why Hussein would aid his natural enemies. Tell me how killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq is making the US more secure.

Murtak wrote:

Zinegata wrote:

Murtak wrote:Anyone who signed on with the intent of protecting a country as large and powerful as the US from enemies who can only threaten them with scare tactics is dumb. Anyone who believes Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator, was in league with fundamentalist terrorists is dumb. Anyone who believes he is making the US secure by shooting Arabs is dumb. The whole US strategy is dumb. Or possibly evil. But I am going to give them the benefit of doubt and think of them as dumb enough to be brainwashed.

This is what is called a generalization. And it's a dumb one.

Except the US strategy part. Lots of it is dumb, yes.

The only part where I generalized is the entirety of the US strategy - which is of course the only part you agree to. Would you mind pointing out how my other points are wrong? Seriously, I can't fathom how anyone could believe the "reasons" for attacking Iraq. So tell me how Al Qaeda could threaten the US and how fighting them combats that threat. Tell me why Hussein would aid his natural enemies. Tell me how killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq is making the US more secure.

Most people who signed up for the army didn't do it "with the intent of protecting a country as large and powerful as the US from enemies who can only threaten them with scare tactics" and the other reasons you mentioned.

They did it with the intent to protect their country, period.

Plus, there's "see the world" and "decent job in a recession" and other mundane reasons.

Zinegata wrote:Most people who signed up for the army didn't do it "with the intent of protecting a country as large and powerful as the US from enemies who can only threaten them with scare tactics".

They did it with the intent to protect their country, period.

Or to have a job, or to play with big guns, or to follow family tradition, or to piss off their parents, or...

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

Zinegata wrote:Most people who signed up for the army didn't do it "with the intent of protecting a country as large and powerful as the US from enemies who can only threaten them with scare tactics".

They did it with the intent to protect their country, period.

Or to have a job, or to play with big guns, or to follow family tradition, or to piss off their parents, or...

Yep. But I was addressing the protect the country point specifically.

All of this bitching is simply so laughable. Here's an idea - go carry some signs or have a sit in or shave your head in protest like Eddie Vedder or whatever the fuck you feel the need to do. But here is one thing that isn't going to stop: the US carrying out its mission to provide an epic beatdown on the terrorists and the countries that harbor, fund or support terrorists. Anyone that thinks that foreign policy is dictated by the wants and needs of the (primarily and completely clueless) population is sadly mistaken.

Do you think the military answers to you? Do you think the president does? How many fucking guns do you own? You have exactly as many rights as you have rounds of ammunition when the shit gets serious. This is simply the way that it is, and the way it always has been. This is the way life is in a vast majority of the countries in the world. Only in a few "enlightened ones" with years of internal peace is this question even raised and it means exactly fuck all once you get outside of Encino or wherever the fuck you live.

Lich-loved, you're starting to foam at the mouth a little there. Are you seriously espousing a "might-makes-right" philosophy? Are you making these statements as assessments of the way the world is, or as it should be? Are you meaning to imply that periods of peace are abhorrent, aberrant states that we should collectively be wary of? Do you really believe that the U.S. is heading to a point where the "shit gets serious" and your freedoms are are only secured by the quantity and quality of your personal armory? If so, would you defend those who couldn't or wouldn't fight? Or are non-combatants "the enemy" in this scenario? Maybe they exist to be exploited by those with the guns? I'm not really sure, as I can't quite grasp this militiaman mindset.

Clarification please?

LL is just espousing obviously insane views in an attempt to get a rise out of you. Nobody is dumb enough to actually think what he is saying.

violence in the media wrote:Lich-loved, you're starting to foam at the mouth a little there. Are you seriously espousing a "might-makes-right" philosophy? Are you making these statements as assessments of the way the world is, or as it should be? Are you meaning to imply that periods of peace are abhorrent, aberrant states that we should collectively be wary of? Do you really believe that the U.S. is heading to a point where the "shit gets serious" and your freedoms are are only secured by the quantity and quality of your personal armory? If so, would you defend those who couldn't or wouldn't fight? Or are non-combatants "the enemy" in this scenario? Maybe they exist to be exploited by those with the guns? I'm not really sure, as I can't quite grasp this militiaman mindset.

Clarification please?

Thanks for the question; I owe an explanation. I am saying that very sadly this is the way the world is in many places. We (in the US and the West in general) are so accustomed to internal peace here, so used to the rights of the individual that we are blinded by a kind of halo effect that our living conditions clandestinely support. We begin to think that everyone, everywhere has all kinds of basic rights and freedoms when in the vast majority of the world these freedoms do not exist and have never existed. The "law" is that the guy with the most guns wins, the rest is just philosophy. This is very true in some of the more dangerous areas I have been actually, talking with the much-maligned "brown people" and it is very true among nations where there is no other law. Sure we like to think there is International Law, but this is only set up, agreed to and generally followed in one approximation or another by these same enlightened countries and these nations only do so because they want to try to do so and no other reason. There is no "higher authority" that compels any nation to follow this law. If you doubt this, ask a Kuwati, a woman in the Congo or a Titsu or even an American Indian.

My larger point is that just as the guy with the guns makes the laws everywhere but in a few enlightened places, governments are essentially inflated projections of people living in a global neighborhood where there is no police force and all neighbors agree to get along in one way or another while they jockey for position. Throughout history nations have always acted in their own selfish best interest. To fail to do so means that your country is shattered and consumed by others. At times this self-interest means going to war. This isn't what should happen, it isn't what Americans, with their long peace and individualistic views are conditioned to believe by the very environment in which they live, but it is true nonetheless. When America was finally directly attacked and attacked well and when its way of life was threatened by radical instability in the Mid East (read as oil), it decided it had had enough of all of this "playing nice with the neighbors" strategy and things got a lot more basic in the world neighborhood; the guy with the guns starting making rules. The rule that was made was clear: if you are a terrorist if you harbor or financially or materially support terrorists then you are a target for attack and invasion at any time. And because guns still are the final arbiter of law, despite what people think, that statement became fact. Furthermore, and this is the hard part for Americans in particular to accept since they have never experienced the horror of oppression as Europe or other countries have (and few have even been in a place that is even really dangerous), is that our government has a larger, fiduciary responsibility to the American people of which they are blindly unaware. The government must act in our long-term national self interest even if that means violating some of the basic things the people that elected them to office blindly believe about the world and how it operates. This is why America did not sign the Kayoto Treaty, this is why it does not sign some of the other "major" treaties and this is why it occasionally goes to war. Because of this attitude, we have never had our boundaries redrawn as many of the countries in Europe have despite, for example, Khrushchev's famous threat to the US. Admittedly of course, we went to proxy war many times with Russia in the intervening years and finished up with an economic one that ruined them and very nearly ruined us but also managed to free Eastern Europe from the grip of communism without having to drive tanks throughout that beautiful German countryside. But I digress...

My post above was to state that in the end, when basic and important things are being decided on the world stage, the guys with the guns make the rules. Sign-waving, "demanding justice" and all that other stuff is philosophically great, and it is where the world should be but the real world is no where near that place and is not foreseeability headed there. Every country in the world would first have to cede authority (read as dismantle its military) to a World Government before that happens and if even one did not, then they would make the rules. Since that has not happened, there is going to be war and carrying signs and demanding answers is going to be completely meaningless.

And furthermore, since I have personally been to some unpleasent places in the world as well as some really nice ones, I can absolutely tell you a great number of those people here and elsewhere complaining about the "grand injustice of it all" have no fucking idea what they are protesting. In the words of Aragorn, 'Strider' am I to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so." Now I do not believe it is exactly as dire as all that, but the point is a good one. When I see women protesting, then it is truely paradoxical. For example, I was in a place where women often wear burqas and a man has many wives, yet their are western influences and younger women that are still "family girls" (read as allowed to be free but carefully watched) can work. In a hotel, once, such young girl was working the desk. She was excited to meet an American and try her English and we talked for a bit after she handled my check-in. She was 18 and I learned she was kept under lock and key. She was allowed to work and go to school, but a brother drove her to and from these places. She was not permitted outside the site of a family man except for her hotel manager, which the family met and approved of (and I believe it was pretty clear that if anything happened to her on his watch he and his family were dead - hey guns make the law again!). Our conversation was short and innocuous. The next day she was beaten by her brothers for the conversation. She could easily have been killed (a so-called honor killing). The world is not a nice place, it is not a peaceful place, it is not a place where people are generally accorded even basic rights and many of those people would be just as happy making the people here go right along with their view of the world and I know this because I have personally talked to these people who find our ways as unfathomable as they find them utterly unacceptable. So yeah, the US government is not going to allow that and if that means stepping on the toes of the sign wavers and head shavers, then that is what is going to happen because in the end it is in the average citizen's self interest that we do not end up living in the 13th century like they are currently doing.

What chaff. What tripe.

3000+ dead by a non-state actor is a tragedy. It is not casus belli for anyone or anything for whatever manufactured reasons are convenient.

Your entire argument about the necessity of killing people without one word regarding how exactly that helps them is just a signpost for your profound lack of intellect. Your platitudes about might makes right is noted, but it's total bullshit so... basically you're just justifying violence with ignorance.

Here's your million-dollar-question: if might makes right and these poor fools need America to save them, then why has might not made right?

Go fuck yourself, for ever and ever.

mean_liar wrote:Here's your million-dollar-question: if might makes right and these poor fools need America to save them, then why has might not made right?

Here is a better idea - why don't you ask the poor bastards in that video about 'might' and 'right' and then tell me it is all just platitudes.

Scoreboard motherfucker. Learn to deal.

Actually, I've learned to believe that war is almost always unjustifiable and unstoppably stupid.

Your response appears to be a similar, "war is hell", but you never ask if war is necessary or what ends it serves.

So, again, you stupid, pathetic fucker: if might makes right and these poor fools need America to save them, then why has might not made right? What is the long-term strategic benefit to America? What is the long-term benefit at all to humanity? Why has might failed to bring it's promised benefit?

mean_liar wrote:Actually, I've learned to believe that war is almost always unjustifiable and unstoppably stupid.

Interesting. What position as a statesman have you held and what was your record on guiding your country away from war and toward prosperity?

mean_liar wrote:Your response appears to be a similar, "war is hell", but you never ask if war is necessary or what ends it serves.

War is necessary until there is unilateral disarmament because people with the most firepower make the rules. Since there is no unilateral disarmament and any country that first disarms is at the mercy of its neighbors, there is likely to be no disarmament. Hence, war is inevitable. This does not make it morally right or anything, it makes it inevitable.

mean_liar wrote:if might makes right and these poor fools need America to save them, then why has might not made right? What is the long-term strategic benefit to America? What is the long-term benefit at all to humanity? Why has might failed to bring it's promised benefit?

I never said "might makes right", those are your words. I said might makes the law. The law can be morally wrong, but since there is fuck all anyone can do about it in the face of might, arguing about its "rightnous" is a philosophical point, not a practical one. That is as small a package as I can make the point, and if you are still lost then I cannot help you.

And since you asked a good question, I will give you a good answer. What in the hell do you mean that there has been no benefit? What do you suppose the benefits of these wars were? First, they re-stabilize the region or at least de-stabilize it to the US's benefit vis a via oil. The message is clear: attempt to take over the oil production and be hung Saddam-style, at the end of a gibbet.

Secondly the US has been attacked by terrorists operating in various havens around the world for decades and basically did nothing about it. So a second benefit is that terrorists are being actively hunted by our drones and blown into unidentifiable masses whereever they gather. We are also directly killing off their leaders and those that are not dead change caves every night. Eventually we will find them hiding in a hole just like we found Saddam and that will be that. That is also clear win. The fact that new leaders rise up is fine, it fractures the organization as new philosophies are introduced and eventually people will stop applying for the job if the life expectancy is two weeks.

Thirdly, all those poor folk that have been and continue to be hoodwinked by their clerics and their environment into "wanting to kill Americans" are now doing it in some other country filled with their infrastructure and doing it against a force designed to kick the crap out of people rather than doing it in uptown Manhattan. I have been to ground zero, it wasn't nice when I was there. America haters now need not make the trip over here and clueless Americans can continue to go shopping and take busses without being killed because it is so much easier to travel a short distance and hide among a native population and kill US troops than it is to orchestrate attacks here. This is especially true when the few leaders with vision and the wherewithal to carryout such plans are either a pulpy mass or are using soup cans for communication to their faithful followers.

Fourthly, we are not the only country with problems with these people. Every reasonable country in Europe is starting to deal with these issues. People are slowly beginning to wake up to the fact that if you do not believe exactly as they do, you and your family and your way of life must be destroyed. This is why they blow each other up. When fucking Pakistan has terrorist trouble, you know its a problem. We are just doing the dirty work, thankless as usual, so some Dutch author can draw cartoons about a certain prophet and still sleep in his house at night. So the benefit we provide is taking on the brunt of the problem because no one else can do it at all and the ire of that world is focused on us rather than on other western countries.

That is four benefits right there off the top of my head. All of them benefit US short and medium term interests. Since there is no court we can go to to stop these things, we decided how things were going to be. That's it, it isn't more complicated than that. Notice I am not talking morality at all just facts.

What you are missing is that I see may downsides as well; I do not think it is all just fine.

1. Innocent people get killed because they either tacitly harbor insurgents or are forced into it or are just in the wrong place at the right time.

2. People hate us even more. This is kind of moot, they were already killing us before the war, what are they gonna do, hate us maor? But it is a point.

3. The cost in terms of dollars is enormous and there is very likely no "rebuild and return" of the country as we did to Germany and Japan after we had to put a boot to their necks to fix that problem.

4. It pisses off more people in the countries where there is battle, leading to more insurgents. This is not at all good, because we have far more ammo than they have people, so the whole "go go enlist" thing is not going to work out for them in the long run and of course we can get a bunch of them with a single round. And even when we do leave in force, we will likely keep special forces and drones operating overhead in case someone decides to open an "exercise gym and target range" in the desert to "train masked athletes for competition". I predict we will be delivering hellfire to those places with regularity once we pull out the bulk of our troops while simultaneously working with the established governments in both countries to help them continue to grow.

Well lich loved is apparently stark raving insane.

In his world might not only makes right, it manufactures an alternate reality out of it's very ass.

But then what do you expect from someone named after necrophilia?

Ganbare Gincun wrote:

cthulhu wrote: It's just people making a crap decision based on blurry visuals in a really high pressure situation. If the guy is 'pointing' or even 'vaguely looking in the direction of' a friendly you have like one second to make the decision, and if you make a bum steer you either kill a civilian, or a bunch of grunts take a beating and very likely die.

There's a huge world of difference between misidentifying military vehicles on the battlefield or in the sky and gunning down groups of people casually walking in the street or trying to help the wounded. Once again, watch the video - none of the people that were gunned down were taking any kind of action that would indicate that they were about to start a firefight or that they considered the copters to be a threat (what with them allowing the copter to flank them and all).

Maximum engagement range for an Apache is well beyond the range of unassisted human accuity. It is very probably they did not even know it was there. For example, see that video of an Apache shooting up what appears to be an arms deal while the pilots give each other cowboy high 5s which was frankly unprofessional. The apache shoots one of the guys in the back because he's looking the wrong direction because he has no idea what is going on.

Then it just boils down to 'did the pilot think the guy had an RPG' and 'was there a US military vehicle in the area' I think the answers are clearly yes and yes, and as has been pointed out, using these optics it is entirely possible to mistake your grandma for Michael Jordan.

Mind you, I am not blaming (most of) the soldiers, except possibly for being dumb enough to join up to "protect their country". They are not trained for these situations. In fact their training is the exact opposite of what is needed. Soldiers blow shit up. Soldiers kill people. Sending people trained to identify and kill threats out to patrol marketplaces is asking for trouble. Expecting them to be able to correctly identify threats on an iPhone-size screen is insane. Even if they make the correct decision 99% of the time you still end up killing civilians instead of insurgents.

People don't join up to protect their country. People join up because it's a good job and unemployment is at 10% - thats why the professional military was so shit when the pay was bad and has improved out of sight now pay is actually pretty good, and why the Australian military finds it impossible to hold onto staff in Western Australia where the unemployment rate is functionally 0% for anyone who's done time in the military.

The patriotism thing may be a reason, but it's not THE reason. If you took the money away everyone would respond by leaving. Thus a quick value drive analysis of 'why did you join up' reveals that 'money' is the reason.

Finally the stuffabout soldiers being pure killing machines is fairly retarded, the military noticed a while ago that the job changed.

Now if you want to critique the US strategy that's fine, but Shinceki got up and said the GWII strategy was shit. Everyone KNOWS the strategy was shit before it happened including the joint chiefs of staff AND the state department. Blaming the shit strategy on the military is just missing the point.

Zinegata wrote:I would think that "haven for terrorism" (a national interest issue) is a much bigger reason as to why the Americans whacked the Afghans as opposed to a proposed pipeline that doesn't yet exist.

This contrary attitude is frankly laughably absurd.

Wait did you just actually brush a 7.6 Billion dollar project intended to open the entirety of the Caspian sea oil reserves to US interests without Russian interference as LESS important than some guys with rifles living in caves in the mountains?

Especially when all things considered most of the men involved in the supposed triggering attack came from Saudi Arabia. So you know, if THAT were really so important wouldn't you be in an entirely different country?

What is laughably absurd here again? A ten year long supposed mission to route out one guy and his dialysis machines from Afghanistan (who may not even be there) with an entire army that has failed to do that?

Or a plan to secure support for an oil pipeline project that is still effectively in motion?

You seem to have made your choice.

Lich-Loved wrote:War is necessary until there is unilateral disarmament because people with the most firepower make the rules. Since there is no unilateral disarmament and any country that first disarms is at the mercy of its neighbors, there is likely to be no disarmament. Hence, war is inevitable. This does not make it morally right or anything, it makes it inevitable.

Oh dear, that is why Europe is a war-ridden hellhole, right? Wait ....

Lich-Loved wrote:might makes the law. The law can be morally wrong, but since there is fuck all anyone can do about it in the face of might, arguing about its "rightnous" is a philosophical point, not a practical one.

It is not about being morally right. I for one have long lost the hope of seeing a country act morally. I will settle for not being evil and dumb. Currently the US is spending trillions of dollars on creating terrorists and destroying their own freedom more effectively than terrorists ever could.

Lich-Loved wrote:And since you asked a good question, I will give you a good answer. What in the hell do you mean that there has been no benefit? What do you suppose the benefits of these wars were? First, they re-stabilize the region or at least de-stabilize it to the US's benefit vis a via oil. The message is clear: attempt to take over the oil production and be hung Saddam-style, at the end of a gibbet.

Do you really think this is cost-effective?

Lich-Loved wrote:Secondly the US has been attacked by terrorists operating in various havens around the world for decades and basically did nothing about it.

That is laughable. Yes, you have been attacked by terrorists. On a scale so minuscule it is hard to imagine. Heck, most terrorist incidents int he US were homegrown.

Lich-Loved wrote:So a second benefit is that terrorists are being actively hunted by our drones and blown into unidentifiable masses whereever they gather. We are also directly killing off their leaders and those that are not dead change caves every night. Eventually we will find them hiding in a hole just like we found Saddam and that will be that.

Saddam was not a terrorist. He did not fund terrorism. You are killing hundreds, possibly thousands of civilians per actual terrorist. Each civilian "blown into unidentifiable masses" is another dozen people who grow to hate the US. If anything you are creating more terrorists daily.

Lich-Loved wrote:That is also clear win. The fact that new leaders rise up is fine, it fractures the organization as new philosophies are introduced and eventually people will stop applying for the job if the life expectancy is two weeks.

Yeah, because blowing up more people makes the terror stop. As can be seen in Ireland and Russia, right?

Lich-Loved wrote:Thirdly, all those poor folk that have been and continue to be hoodwinked by their clerics and their environment into "wanting to kill Americans" are now doing it in some other country filled with their infrastructure and doing it against a force designed to kick the crap out of people rather than doing it in uptown Manhattan.

Are you by chance a clueless idiot? Firstly, you can count the number the number of arab terrorists on US ground on your fingers, secondly they can still enter the US and thirdly they were not from Iraq and Afghanistan. Not one of them.

Lich-Loved wrote:Fourthly, we are not the only country with problems with these people. Every reasonable country in Europe is starting to deal with these issues.

Yeah, the Brits for example are busy trying to recreate 1984. Germany on the other hand tried to use the terrorist craze to get rid of some annoying citizens' rights. Since it was hard to make people afraid of bombings they had to switch to child porn though. That seems to be working better to scare people with. So yes, many european countries have their own version of the war on terror. That makes it neither right nor smart.

Lich-Loved wrote:People are slowly beginning to wake up to the fact that if you do not believe exactly as they do, you and your family and your way of life must be destroyed.

Bullshit. No one is getting bombed, much less suicide-bombed because you are different or because they hate your freedom. You are getting bombed because the US fucked over the middle east for decades now. Mind you, I am not saying blowing up the twin towers was right. But I am able to see why they did it. Here, try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo

Lich-Loved wrote:3. The cost in terms of dollars is enormous and there is very likely no "rebuild and return" of the country as we did to Germany and Japan after we had to put a boot to their necks to fix that problem.

Note that after WW1 Germany was not rebuilt. Without the enormous payments driving the populace into poverty the Nazi party could never have gained power and WW2 would not have happened. After WW2 Germany was rebuilt. Everyone could look to the future and see things were going to be ok a couple of years or maybe a decade later. No war, no calls for a war, no unrest, nothing.

Now look to Afghanistan and Iraq. What do they have to look forward to? Both countries are worse off than before US intervention, and it does not look like the situation will be getting any better. Desperation breeds danger. Hence terrorists. Do you seriously believe you can brainwash educated men with a wife and kids and a decent job into suicide bombing someone because they have HD TV?



Bottom line: For all purposes the US is currently, at an enormous cost to the country, creating more and more terrorists. The only ones to benefit are defense contractors and those who use the terrorist scare to erode your rights.

2) Outright genocide.

Obviously, #2 is out due to humanitarian purposes.

Huh?

When did those enter into our calculations for the Iraq occupation?

Kaelik wrote:Ganbare, you paused a video at one of many clips per second, and picked the one where there was a good distance between the camera and his body. And it's still not even painfully obvious in a still shot. Watching the video does not indicate that difference whatsoever, and you are fucking stupid for calling it that.

It's painfully obvious in the video that it's not an RPG, just like it's painfully obvious that these "insurgents" were just a group of people casually strolling down the street that had no intention of getting into a firefight with gunships sporting 30mm cannons and Hellfire missiles. Remember the pictures? Rewind the video before the soldiers opened fire on the crowd and review carefully. Which one of those shapes is not like the other? Are you blind, or merely willfully ignorant?

And if the Rules of Engagement state that anyone simply NEAR someone carrying an AK-47 is a legitimate target, then we might as well just start carpet-bombing the entire country until no one is left alive. But then again, some people might prefer that.

Alas, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that it is Pentagon policy to target journalists in Iraq, nor is it the first time that they have used the excuse of "imminent threat" to justify their murder. As per Infowars:

"U.S. troops deliberately slaughtered journalists at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in 2003. Two journalists, Taras Protsyuk of the British news agency Reuters and Jose Couso of the Spanish network Telecino, were killed because they were not “embedded” with the Pentagon. On the same day, the Pentagon targeted the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, two Arabic-language news networks that have been broadcasting graphic footage. In both instances, the Pentagon claimed soldiers had come under fire.

In 2005, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was targeted. Sgrena had been held hostage for a month by a little known Islamic group before the incident. “If a high-profile journalist whose capture and release made the international headlines can be gunned down along with Italian intelligence agents by US troops, how many Iraqi men, women and children have suffered the same fate for failing to obey US military orders? Only a few of the worst instances have been reported in the international media,” Peter Symonds wrote on March 7, 2005."

Nabel Noor-Eldeen - the brother of one of the victimes - posed this question in the wake of this scandal: "how could those highly skilled American pilots with all of their high-tech equipment fail to distinguish the difference between a camera and a missile"?

The unfortunate answer is: they knew damned well that these people had cameras, and they were marked for death thusly.

Kaelik wrote:You claim that they stopped firing "to draw out the moment" even though they explicitly asked for permission to resume firing when the van pulled up, instead of, you know, shooting the guy on the ground like you think they were planning to based on no evidence.

Keep in mind that they already stated that they were going to fire on him if he "picked up a weapon". I have the sneaking suspicion that if the van hadn't come along when it did, he would have "found that weapon" and been sent to his death immediately thereafter. With no witnesses, the only definitive evidence of what really happened would have been their radio chatter and the video that was recorded. And guess what? Centcom doesn't have a copy of the video:

"A military spokesman told the AP that it has been unable to locate its own copy of this footage. But in an interview with me, a spokesperson for Centcom went considerably farther, acknowledging it may no longer be accessible at all.

This is important, because Centcom had hoped to match up its own footage with the leaked video before commenting on it publicly.

Speaks said that at present, Centcom has only confirmed that this type of footage is kept by the units themselves, if it is kept at all.

Pressed on whether this meant the military’s own footage might never be recovered, Speaks said: 'I’m not in a position to rule that out.'"

So the only reason that we even HAVE this footage is because someone in the unit - an anonymous hero - leaked this footage before it was destroyed by someone in the unit. So much for trying to preserve evidence, eh?

Kaelik wrote:Repeated accusations of racism based on... No seriously, I have no fucking clue where you even get your accusations of racism from. Not a single thing that these people did was even remotely racist.

I mean, I hate to resort to Freudian bullshit, but the only possible source for your accusations of racism is that you yourself are so race conscious that you can't imagine an action not being motivated by racial concerns. Because literally nothing these people did is even remotely racist.

Maybe it's because the main reaction to this footage from the conservatives that have seen the footage that I have talked to IRL has been "who cares, we should kill all of the fucking ragheads"? Or, even better, that old chestnut "we should just glass the fucking desert". You know, the kind of shit that they say when they're "amongst friends" and not subject to any kind of public scrutiny. Gee, I wonder why I might be picking up on some "racial overtones" regarding this incident?

Anyways, the fact of the matter is that whenever you have one group of people that view another group of people as being alien and inferior they aren't going to put any value on their lives. And whenever you put racists and bigots into a situation where they can kill, rape, and murder the objects of their derision without facing any kind of accountability and then give them numerous opportunities and justifications to do so, bad shit is going to go down. Sometimes you end up with black people hanging in trees, and sometimes you end up with the bodies of dead Iraqi civilians lying in the streets. I think Noor Eldeen, the photographer's father, summed it up best:

“If such an incident took place in America, even if an animal were killed like this, what would they do?”

Kaelik wrote:Let me explain this as I would to a child then.

1) Sometimes you are in a situation in which you have to choose between two things, and you aren't sure. You take your best guess. Do you like to find out afterwords if you were right?

2) You see some guy lying on the street. There is a 50% chance he is the President of the United States, and you love him. There is a 50% chance he is a serial killer, and he will personally murder your family.

Some guys pull up in a van. It is a 50% chance they are the President's Secret Service, and they want to protect the President, but will also heal the serial killer so he can kill again. There is a 50% chance they are the serial killers best friends, and will help him murder even more people. If they find the President, they will murder him too.

If you could create a magic force field to prevent them from picking up the guy on the street, would you?

Kaelik, how can you sit down with that much straw coming out of your ass?

Ganbare Gincun wrote:
Nabel Noor-Eldeen - the brother of one of the victimes - posed this question in the wake of this scandal: "how could those highly skilled American pilots with all of their high-tech equipment fail to distinguish the difference between a camera and a missile"?

The unfortunate answer is: they knew damned well that these people had cameras, and they were marked for death thusly.

What? You keep ignoring the proven history of US forces accidently shooting themselves in circumstances that are far less trying the ones we are dealing with here.

For reference

A) An american bradley and a iraqi T-90 do not have the same colour

B) an american bradley and an iraqi T-90 have very different profiles

C) An american bradley and an Iraqi T-90 have very different guns

D) One is more than 50% larger than the other

E) US tankers mistook the bigger one that was closer for the smaller one that was further away (how does that even happen?)

They literally look nothing like each other and are massive objects. With telescopic equipment and full spectrum vision, US tank crews demonstrated an inability to differentiate between a bradley 100 meters away from them, and a T-90 almost two kilometers away.

Why are you so surprised that they cannot differentiate in other more difficult conditions? Occam's razor tells me that the bad decision under confusion conditions is far more likely than an orchestra'ed campagin to wack journos or whatever - if this was a clinical cmapagin to wack descent rather than accidents, why do they always have bloody accidents with themselves?

Maybe the British unit that accidently called in an airstrike on themselves knew that they would deserve because they were hippies, so decided to have themselves killed?

PhoneLobster wrote:Wait did you just actually brush a 7.6 Billion dollar project intended to open the entirety of the Caspian sea oil reserves to US interests without Russian interference as LESS important than some guys with rifles living in caves in the mountains?

Especially when all things considered most of the men involved in the supposed triggering attack came from Saudi Arabia. So you know, if THAT were really so important wouldn't you be in an entirely different country?

What is laughably absurd here again? A ten year long supposed mission to route out one guy and his dialysis machines from Afghanistan (who may not even be there) with an entire army that has failed to do that?

Or a plan to secure support for an oil pipeline project that is still effectively in motion?

You seem to have made your choice.

Congratulations on joining the retarded list.

Yes, it's a 7.6 billion dollar plan. Which is in motion but still isn't providing America with a single drop of oil. I would think that bombing the crap out of the regime who is protecting the self-proclaimed mastermind of the terrorist attack would rank higher than a pipe dream as a reason for taking out the Taliban.

If you're referring to the current escalation of the Afghan conflict as being brought about by this pipe dream, you are doubly retarded because it is being conducted by an administration that has been actively exploring alternative sources of energy to lessen the demand for oil. And even if the alternative sources aren't enough, the administration was willing to drill off its own coastline and reap anger from its own constituents than say, bomb Venezuela?

Unless you're into conspiracy theories. But given your line of thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if you do.

Also, again, Afghanistan has no fucking oil and this is literally grasping straws to paint the Afghan war as an oil war as opposed to "Whack anarchists who blew Americans up"

Josh_Kablack wrote:

2) Outright genocide.

Obviously, #2 is out due to humanitarian purposes.

Huh?

When did those enter into our calculations for the Iraq occupation?

Stop being an idiot and read the whole post.

What conspiracy?

The American government said "We want a new regime in Afghanistan so we can build this pipe."

Then a bit later they conquered Afghanistan and low and behold the new Regime is letting them build the pipe.

Again. If they are after "the terrorists", why aren't they in Saudi Arabia?