Safer now that "W" is gone
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3rdyrp2:
It does not matter it the person believe what they say. What matter is what is said. My opinion about GWB has no bearing on the quote you provided. It is true or false on its on merits. It Hitler said that unicorns do not exist would they suddenly start to exist?
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Volt:[quote=voltmoie] [quote=JackBlack][quote=voltmoie]Who said you plagiarized? I said you can’t make the point yourself so you utilize a convenient quote. It’s a crutch and weak tactic to deploy in a debate. Point to historical events and actions … not quotes which you have no appropriate context to understand their true meaning.
Minus google what are you?
Why is it a weak tactic?
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If I must explain it to you then I won't quote boy.
[/quote] Volt: Can't or won't?[/quote] You have reading comprehension problems.
Volt:[quote=JackBlack][quote=voltmoie] [quote=JackBlack][quote=voltmoie]Who said you plagiarized? I said you can’t make the point yourself so you utilize a convenient quote. It’s a crutch and weak tactic to deploy in a debate. Point to historical events and actions … not quotes which you have no appropriate context to understand their true meaning.
Minus google what are you?
Why is it a weak tactic?
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If I must explain it to you then I won't quote boy.
[/quote] Volt: Can't or won't?[/quote] You have reading comprehension problems.[/quote] You say won't. I say you can't.
Jack … you can’t debate becuase your mind is weak. Instead you post quotes and ask questions in a pathetic attempt to out fox the fox. Keep posting your drivel and I’ll keep owning you. Frame a point and defend it using historical evidence … this is how you debate an issue. Lots of smart people on this thread doing just that - on both sides. Just not you.
You notice none of you clowns could come back via the Abe arguement. In times of wars we expect leaders to make hard decisions. Bush did this. Abe did this Clinton did not. Thank your lucky stars you had a man like George Bush as president after 9/11 and not a man like Obama. He was the right man at the right time. Now go find some horsesh!t quote to drop on us.Volt:
I believe in the <?: prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Geneva conventions. From you statement on this tread my guess is you do not. You want to nuke millions of innocent people in Afghanistan, to get the Taliban I do not think that is a good policy. You claim there are no rule in war, I point to the Geneva Conventions. I believe that we are better then the Taliban. You want to use any means necessary, which in my opinion would make us no better then the Taliban. I believe that you have to be careful that the ends justify the means. If you are willing to win at any cost, you might lose what is most precious to you.
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[quote=JackBlack]
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)[/quote] Jack, this is exactly right. That said, you are wasting your time in this debate. The people you are debating are contradicting themselves. Sometimes in the same post. They say for protection they want the government to suspend the Bill of Rights, tap their phones, pull them out of line, and then rant that they don't need the government to protect them, they want the government out of their lives. Ah??????? And, incredibly, because i don't agee. That I'm not ready for a "Papers Pleze!" society, I'm a wimp who "doesn't get It." This thread started out on an idiotic premise that the Ft Hood tragedy was Barak Obama's falt. It then degraded to some truely imbecilic statements. Ben Franklin inventing electricity got a laugh from me. But it shows the level of the cast of characters here. Along with a bundle of misinformed and unformed info posted here, this group proves that few can think for themselves. I was hoping for a better debate. These guys just aren't mikebutler222! Mike if you're out there, fuming somewhere, i miss ya bud! I truly do!There are children who's parents were killed and husbands/wives who's spouses were killed in Ft. Hood. It could have been prevented. Ask them what essential liberties they would have given up to "purchase a little temporary safety", and what they would give to wake up and have the deceased still in the house cooking breakfast in the morning or give them a hug after a long day of work. No essential liberties need to be sacrificed to eliminate one documented nutjob from the Army. Except political correctness and fear of retribution from religious sects.
[quote=JackBlack]Volt:
I believe in the <?: prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Geneva conventions. From you statement on this tread my guess is you do not. You want to nuke millions of innocent people in Afghanistan, to get the Taliban I do not think that is a good policy. You claim there are no rule in war, I point to the Geneva Conventions. I believe that we are better then the Taliban. You want to use any means necessary, which in my opinion would make us no better then the Taliban. I believe that you have to be careful that the ends justify the means. If you are willing to win at any cost, you might lose what is most precious to you.
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[/quote] I suggested a low yield tactical nuke in the mountains of Afghanistan - of which the blast would be shielded by the mountains. Hardly a metro area. You should "quote" me correctly quote boy. Go read the Geneva Concentions. It applies to nations, not terror groups that behead our captured heros. They only work when the other side has something to lose and in the case they don't. So keep prancing around bambi ....The Geneva Conventions also state that you can’t kill livestock, to include dogs.
So here is a situation. You and your squad are sneaking up on KNOWN arms dealer who is supplying weapons to terrorists.
The compound has several dogs surrounding it. There are sniper teams in place to provide cover and prevent you from being noticed.
However, because you can’t kill the dogs, they will sound the alarm as soon as they smell you. You COULD take them out with the snipers and thus your team would be able to enter the compound and remove any advantage the weapons dealer had.
What do you do Jack? We don’t want to become like the Taliban do we?
The reason I bring this up, is because this actually happened to me. Tell me what I should have done.
Art. 54. Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
Ok, since JB and BG didn’t want to respond to my question. I’ll give some options.
A) We scrap the mission, and continue letting insurgents place bombs to kill our men. Also, continuing the sale of weapons from the sheikh. We then go to the sheikh during the day and ask him nicely to stop selling arms. We tell him that we love all arms dealers and we embrace him with open arms.
B) We go in, even with the dogs barking, and while being attacked by the dogs, some of us get shot and killed. We appear not only incompetent, but also easy to attack. Our scruples for following GC will keep us getting killed
C) The snipers shoot the dogs. We capture the sheikh, find out where he is getting his weapons (with a little encouragement) and disrupt the entire operation, the resulting information leading to the capture of hundreds of weapons and the death or capture of over 70 insurgents.
C seems like it would have done the most good. But we obviously could not do it since it violated the Geneva Conventions.
[quote=JackBlack]
Art. 54. Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
So now you are an attorney. And you decide whether it is indispensable? You mean, I can say that those dogs are not used for the protection of the sheikh (a civilian figure and leader) so that people don't sneak up on him? Is it possible that those dogs protect their crops (what little they have) from being eaten by rodents, or stolen by vagabonds?
Point in fact it is not only possible, but that was the case.
Now, should I still fire?
EDIT: I almost forgot. They eat dogs. One interesting case was where the family was starving but didn't want to kill the dog outright, so they chopped off one of it's legs.
We are America! I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are America; we do not f***ing torture!
…oops!"
S.Smith.
Morean:
The the sheikh is this case is an KNOWN arms dealer, who is arming the insurgents. He is clearly a military target. Fire away.[quote=JackBlack] Morean:
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You have to catch him in the act. Remember? You can’t just go in guns blaZing when all you have is the word of another Iraqi and some dead bodies. We just would have gone in during the day and arrested him.
Let me just tell you how this ends: I took option C. Some bleeding heart lieutenant complained after taking pictures. I was given two choices: court martial or an article 15 with forfeiture of one pay grade and half pay for three months. The JAGS in country told me I didn’t have a shot, since it was a clear violation of the GC and thus punishable under UCMJ.
Court martial would have resulted in dishonorable discharge if I lost and I would likely not be discussing this with you.
So. I broke the Geneva Conventions. In the process likely prevented several bombings and ambushes. I am evil. Everything that is wrong with this country.
I’m glad you believe in the GC. It cost me a little but if money and prevented me from continuing with the mission. What a great thing to talk about on VETERANS day.
Here’s the last thing I will say on “enhanced terrogations” and not stooping to the level of the Taliban and AQ. Halfway through our deployment in Baghdad, we got moved to another section of Baghdad b/c this one unit had to redeploy stateside early. During the handover process, I was actually the Commander as my Commander was on leave (go figure, he went before me too! Soldiers first, lol). As we conducted the handover process and they talked to us about the territory, we saw how the unit we were replacing behaved with the local population. We were in a busy section of Baghdad and there would be cars jam packed in traffic. These guys would walk through the cars and break glasses, headlights, point weapons directly at people for no reason, etc. The whole time they were doing it they were laughing and going about their business. The reason they were leaving a little early? In the short time they were there, they had too many KIA’s and were on the verge of being combat ineffective. About five days prior to that, they lost 5 guys in an IED explosion.
As we took over the area, the people knew the units changed out. They saw the different unit patches and they watched the way we conducted business. We were stern when we needed to be but we weren’t d*cks for no reason. Trust me, when it came time to shake some guys down, we did it no problem. We just didn’t smash windows for no reason and laugh while we did it. Guess what? One early morning while we were getting ready to conduct our IED sweeps, we had some of the local people flag us down right infront of our FOB (Forward Operating Base)from far and tell us “bomb bomb bomb”. Our interpreter asked them exactly what happened and they said they saw someone right before dawn plant an IED and they knew we would be out soon so they wanted to make sure we knew about it. The rest of the time we were there, we had the local town give us that kind of information all the time. Gee, the unit before us didn’t get that kind of help from the people because they were a bunch of jerks. We had a Civil Affairs Officer that was attached to us and he worked with the unit before us and he even said the way we conducted ourselves was completely more professional and not “douche baggish” like the units before us and because of that, we’re getting their help.
So what’s my point? When the unit before us just broke crap and acted like a bunch of tough guys, they got no help from the local people and had almost 5 times the amount of KIA’s in a shorter time span than my whole unit’s entire time in Iraq. We didn’t have any KIA’s when we occupied that zone. There were Iraqi’s who didn’t really care we were there either way: they weren’t happy and they weren’t mad, they were indifferent. Once we kill someone they know (without cause I will add, not someone who needed to be killed) or destroyed their property without cause, we just made another enemy.
I haven’t checked the numbers in a while but while I was there, AQ represented maybe 5% of the people who were fighting us. The rest were the Baath party guys who were pissed off that they didn’t have jobs anymore and had nothing else to do. During the initial invasion, we gave notices to the entire Iraqi Army to not fight us and if they put their arms down, it would benefit them and they would have a place in the new government. When the genius Paul Bremer signed that piece of paper to purge the entire Iraqi Army and go back on our promise, that’s when they got pissed and was a huge portion of the resistance we faced in Iraq.