This board makes me laugh (a reality check)

[The once and future king]

Party Rocks.

It is your officers job to make you think what you do, if you dont then the war on the ground well it just isnt feasible anymore.

Men have to be motivated to face the prospect of stoping a bullet or making friends with an IED.

80% of Officers ranked Captain or above do not think this is a war of survival.

Grunts think one thing oficers think another. That is why grunts are grunts and officers are officers. Facts of life.

[MMMMMM]

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80% of Officers ranked Captain or above do not think this is a war of survival.

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The war in Iraq , in isolation, is not be a war of survival for the US. However, the war against Islamic jihadism/terrorism most certainly is a war of survival for the US--as it is for the UK, Australia, and Israel as well--and even for Europe, whether they know it yet or not.

[Cyrus]

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More delusions boy?

[/ QUOTE ] Ah I see you are not in the same generous mood as I am. Fair enough. We can replay our little tiff any time you want.

If I recall correctly you were blabbering about proving a negative [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img], after you went off on a rage that I claimed that your abhorrence of the crimes committed by the Nazis was related to your supposed support of Israel". No such thing, boy, so relax that sphincter. (My diagnosis so far has been that you are an otherwise intelligent and informed person who's suffering from bouts of paranoia. And I would not rule out dementia. You can spell that dyslexia, if you'd feel better.)

But in the spirit of Christmas and our Lord the Savior's approaching birth, I choose to quote your best offerings thus far this month. Merry f*cking holidays.

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I personally have no problem with legitimate historical scholarship. Secondly, criminalizing 'revisionism' is a dangerous and misguided policy, it may lead to criminalizing legitimate historical inquiry. I prefer to let people make their own arguments freely and let them be judged in the court of public opinion.

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The war on islamic terror is real. It is also a fact that the executive is taking advantage of this reality to greatly expand their powers in areas unrelated to the war on terror.

We need to keep paying attention.

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If for some reason the current system is too unwieldy, slow, or 'bureaucratic', why not change or adjust the law to streamline the process? No attempt was made to do this. The president simply, unilaterally, decided that law did not apply to him. Plenty of people - patriots, liberals, conservatives - are deeply troubled by this development.

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[Cyrus]

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[sarcasticallyInsurgents and terrorists with guns, bombs, mortars and anti-aircraft weapons are really just ghosts so there is no point in our arming our troops as best as possible and teaching them counter-insurgency warfare tactics.

[/ QUOTE ] It would be wrong for the political or military planners to equate in their minds insurgents with terrorists. What you describe above are insurgents, i.e. guerillas. Counter-insurgency warfare is altogether different than "regular" warfare, i.e. a clash between organised armies in the field of battle. (And need I repeat that the U.S. seems to have learned very little from its first-hand counter-insurgency warfare it conducted in places such as Central America and Vietnam? Even in counter-insurgency, the U.S. is behaving like a all -pwoerful giant with a peanut-sized mind.)

And BTW, when the insurgents are using seemingly "terrorist tactics", i.e. blowing up a Kabul discotheque full of civilians (oftentimes intentionally blowing themselves up in the process), this does NOT make the fight against them a fight against terrorism!

No, personally, I would be more concerned with modern terrorism itself. And by that I refer to large scale attacks against civilian targets, possibly targets at home (the home of those perceived as aggressors by the terrorists, e.g. Washington, Manchester, Rome, etc), attacks executed by relatively cheap and small means, using low-technology techniques for communication, command and control, e.g. mail drops, music signals, etc.

Against that enemy, the fight is extremely tougher than fighting the most ferocious insurgent in Afghanistan or Iraq! The importance of intelligence cannot be over-estimated. And that comes in the same package as co-operation across nations and continents among the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of all those committed to combat terror. Which, in turn, precludes unilateralism, arrogance and over-simplification -- but, instead, needs/depends on co-ordination, diplomacy, a dose of humility and a lot of thorough & complex analysis.

However, a lot of people in the United States confuse patience for inaction; controlled aggressiveness for reluctance to fight; and thorough analysis for nerdiness. Good poker players are supposed to know better.

[BluffTHIS!]

You are making an artificial distinction here regarding terrorists and insurgents. There are not two different types of enemy here, but only one which uses different tactics in different situations against their enemies. Al-Queada makes this clear since its operatives both carried out the 9/11 attacks, and also carry out guerilla actions in Afghanistan. Same thing with various palestinian groups that have both carried out homocide bombings in Israel, and also fought small pitched battles/ambushes with small Israeli military units.

[Jdanz]

i think there is a distinction between insurgents and terrorists, but that's neither here nor there for me atm.

A questin to all those pro war, could any iraqi (with who knows what ideology) legitametely oppose US power in Iraq?

What extent of opposition would be acceptable, protest? civil disobedience? violence?

[Peter666]

I mean the president's professional critics and Michael Mooreheads.

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What I do know about Osama Bin Laden (head of 'AQ') is that Ronald Regan provided material support to terrorists including OBL in Afganistan during the 1980's

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That is correct. We also provided the same type of support to Iraq at the same time. Gas was 75 cents a gallon, the Bears won the superbowl, lots of things happened in the 80s which don't mean a hell of a lot today.

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You were kinda starting to win me over until this fell out of your mouth. There are so many ways to debunk this tripe I don't even know where to begin. I definitely want our government and military to be held accountable for prior actions, and I have a hard time believing that some in our armed forces (roughly 80% of them, supposedly) don't think this.

"So Saddam, you gassed your own people in the 80's"

"Yeah, so? The Bears won the superbowl in the 80's. What's your point?"

[Cyrus]

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You are making an artificial distinction here regarding terrorists and insurgents. There are not two different types of enemy here, but only one which uses different tactics in different situations against their enemies. Al-Queada makes this clear since its operatives both carried out the 9/11 attacks, and also carry out guerilla actions in Afghanistan. Same thing with various palestinian groups that have both carried out homocide bombings in Israel, and also fought small pitched battles/ambushes with small Israeli military units.

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I think the label of artificiality fits your argument rather than mine. Let me elaborate a bit:

Qaeda will NOT stage a "pitched battle" between itself and American or other organised military forces. I would stake a lot of money on that claim. Whatever "pitched battles" we are seeing in places such as Iraq are mostly the work of nationalist Iraqis, whose passion could be fuelled also by religious fervour. Or it could be the other way around, nationalism fuelling religion. It's also the case that Qaeda aids and promotes the Iraqi insurgency directly. Finally, Qaeda's fighters could be getting "first hand" experience in drawing blood, just like they did in their anti-Soviet struggle in 1980s Afghanistan!

But the threat right now, and ever since 9/11, to the safety and security of the United States of America is NOT -- let me be very emphatic here-- N O T from "pitched battles" by small groups of armed angry men against American military units, N O T from bombs detonating in places frequented or traveled by Americans, N O T by assassinations of American officials and N O T by suicide bombers carrying out "small-time" missions, such as killing 20 Iraqi policemen or 5 U.S. Marines.

All those confrontations, in one variety or other, and though they are indeed causing harm, sometimes big harm, the United States, like the modern imperialist superpower that it is, has been facing (or facing down) regularly since the end of World War II ! Americans, whether full-scale military or just "military advisers", have been dealing with insurgents all over the world every year, eg Latin America, (and those people were being labeled terrorists only for political reasons). They have also been dealing with terrorists, eg November 17, for decades and while that was a hassle, it was not a threat to the safety and security, etc etc.

The threat concerns major attacks carried out by islamic terrorists on American home ground.

And that threat needs a focused and specific policy to be confronted and eliminated (or, at least, minimized as much as possible). The war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq is insignificant, to the point of being almost irrelevant, in the war against terror. Some argue that it is even counter-productive! (E.g. draining of resources; getting tied down in one place; alienating allies and friends in the process; losing the PR battle worldwide; etc.)

[MMMMMM]

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Whatever "pitched battles" we are seeing in places such as Iraq are mostly the work of nationalist Iraqis, whose passion could be fuelled also by religious fervour.

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Wrong, Cyrus. Nearly all of the attacks now in Iraq are the work of foreign jihadists and foreign terrorists. And in the recent elections, those Sunni elements who had previously warned against voting and threatened voters, now themselves voted, and also even even offered to help protect voting Iraqis from being attacked.