Was it a victory? You decide!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Drusus:

URC,

What I meant was that there are propably going to be battles where your mission is to secure a village in which there are 3 snipers. You have a Styker company with CAS and Artillery support. In this situation using artillery at all is excessive. But the Syrians are propably always going to fight battles where their enemy is big. At least a platoon or something like that. I must admit that there certainly could be battles where the Syrians must take collateral damage in account. Different thing is that it is possible that in many battles they don't have anything to cause excessive amounts of collateral damage. Many times no Artillery and always no Air support.

ah, i see what you mean. i would find it odd if Syrians wouldn't have systems capable of damaging or destroying buildings.

[Drusus]

Naturally in many battles they have T72s or artillery or something. Actually mortars would usually be there. So there are going to be battles where the Syrian commander must think about collateral damage. But because they are usually lacking heavy artillery and air support it is going to be rare that they will do (accidentally) _excessive_ amounts of collateral damage. The US side on the other hand can do almoust always excessive amount of damage with a couple of JDAMs...

Ofcourse things are much different if you are playing a scenario which is balanced in all aspects, meaning that the Syrians have as much artillery as the US side.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

yes, i see what you mean and agree about it.

unlike e.g. Iraqis, Syrians have good number of self-propelled artillery. it should be survivable enough to offer Syrian side short 122mm indirect fire missions.

[Imperial Grunt]

Originally posted by Andrew H.:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Although I pretty much disagree with that article cited by LTC West about how most journos do their job in a war zone, I think the writer's on the money with the conclusion that a modern U.S. war won't "fly" (i.e., maintain support with the U.S. taxpayers) unless it's ultra-clean.

I'll go beyond disagreeing with the article and call it offensive, anti-democratic, politically motivated, and dishonest. The problem with the war in Iraq, of course, is that many people don't support it - and of those who do support it, their support is not deep. It's not because of casualties that they don't support it, but because the war was sold as: (1) a war to stop Saddam's production of WMDs; (2) secondarily, as a war to stop Saddam; and (3) a war that not only would be over quickly, but a war that was over 18 mos. ago.

Against this backdrop - yeah, the US population is sensitive to casualties...there is little to no support for having the troops stay for the long term, and while most people probably do not support precipitously pulling out, they do want the troops home as soon as possible. So in this particular situation involving a war that, had the true facts been known would have had little support, yeah, the US public is sensitive to casualties. If troops were finding crude nuclear labs and sarin factories, people would be much more supportive of the war and much less sensitive to casualties.

Blaming journalists for the lack of support of the war is basically intellectually dishonest scapegoating...although if the writer wanted to blame the journalists for insufficiently investigating the administrations claims that led us into this war. Well, he would have a point. </font>

[lucero1148]

IMHO the press has been pretty fair about the coverage in Iraq from the start. The story that WMD's might be a bogus reason for going into Iraq was brought up before the troops went in. the point that it was overshadowed by the administrations declaration that had confirmation of WMD's made it a mooot point as to whether there would be any discussion until after the war is begun and won.

The press does it's job well bringing up stories that may not be popular with the frontline troops fighting the war but stories that need to be told anyway.

Now with online blogs so popular don't forget we get a lot of information straight from the grunts on the ground with their own personal blogs. If I rember right the story about the lack of armor for trucks and humvee's was brought outfirst in a blog?

Stories of troop morale can also be guage by what's out there on the blogs and mostt of that is quite positive.

Would someone explain to me how the press hasn't been telling the right story?

[Battlefront.com]

For structural damage I was thinking about % of overall damage to structures plus the potential to rate damage for specific buildings that the designer has designated. For example, in An-Najaf the forces there were told (I am paraphrasing, but this is close) that "if so much as one pebble hits the Imam Ali shrine they're going to get busted down to private". It was a HUGE tactical consideration as well as operational and even strategic. There was fighting in and around the shrine and the 101st Airborne had to plan its fire missions very, very carefully. Not only to avoid hitting the shrine directly, but also indirectly from flying debris of a nearby target.

What we might be able to do in CMx2 is have some sort of marker on something like this that has a value that ranges from mild to massive penalty for each point of damage done to it. If it is a small mosque, perhaps it is mild. This means you can damage it a little bit without getting specifically penalized for the damage. Or it could be a major landmark that is like Imam Ali shrine, in which if you so much as dirty a window you're screwed. The US player would know this up front and would have to cater his plans accordingly.

Perhaps we can also "forgive" some damage if the enemy chooses to fight from that location. But perhaps NOT for the super important ones. In that case you might have to simply ignore the enemy fire, while with a lesser protected building you can hit it with small arms or even a TOW.

In reading about the fighting in and around Fallujah there was a mosque that was clearly being used as the hub of insurgent activitty during a rather large battle. A CIA operative showed up at the commander's HQ and confirmed this, saying that the iman who is in there is on the US' "bad guy" list. So with that, a 2000lb JDAM was called in and the mosque was reduced to rubble. And not surprisingly, the firefight's intensity went up, then trickled off because their ammo and leadership were eliminated.

Anyway, this is the sort of interesting scenario stuff I promised that we would be including that will make things interesting even if the enemy itself isn't necessarily so.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

To paraphrase an oldy but goody slogan:

"Media doesn't kill support for leadership, bad leaders do".

To quote General Tommy Franks, while in charge of the war in Iraq, "... the fxxxing stupidest guy in the world" in regards to Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Feith was partly in charge for establishing post-war planning in Iraq. When you have guys like this in positions of authority, it is not hard to imagine why the media has a lot of negative things to say about the results of the policies. Heck, even senior Repbulicans have called the handinng of Iraq "incompetent" and I spoke with senior frontline commanders who called the first year "a missed opportunity" and the reason why the insurgency managed to grow and not be marginalized.

All I am saying here is that the press can ultimately only report on what is actually happening. If they are reporting bad stuff, then bad stuff is happening. The question about balance... well, it is tough to say. If I had daily bombings, night time raids by armed men (from both sides), murders, general lawnessness, massive unemployment, and other such things in my town, the fact that I have a new soccer field or running water for the first time in 10 years would not be on the top of my head of things to mention to any press passing by.

Just my 2 cents!

Steve

P.S. I forgot to mention that I hate mainstream media with a huge passion. I feel almost dirty defending it

[akd]

Are there holy shrines/sites as politically sensitive as the Imam Ali shrine in any area of potential conflict in Syria? I know of major mosques in Damascus and Aleppo, but I don't know if these approach the importance of the sites in in Najaf or Karbala.

Also, how will Christian sites be handled? Same as Muslim?

p.s. Can you imagine fighting in this?

[ January 09, 2006, 09:32 PM: Message edited by: akd ]

[Imperial Grunt]

Originally posted by akd:

Are there holy shrines/sites as politically sensitive as the Imam Ali shrine in any area of potential conflict in Syria? I know of major mosques in Damascus and Aleppo, but I don't know if these approach the importance of the sites in in Najaf or Karbala.

Also, how will Christian sites be handled? Same as Muslim?

p.s. Can you imagine fighting in this?

That is just like Fallujah in alot of ways, no pattern of building or streets and alleys or building construction, and mosques everywhere. Fallujah has been called the "city of mosques".

I would imagine that Syria would have alot of the same. Western style construction need not apply.

[juan_gigante]

I remember the fighting in the Najaf cemetary and thinking how incredibly strange it must be fighting in an enormous cemetary.

[Peter Cairns]

Apparently one of the largest cemetaries in the world is in Ciaro, and it's now got a resident population that makes it a virtual suburb. Just put that in to illustrate just how different these places are to live than what most of us are used to.

Having said that I live in Scotland and I've heard tales that in some parts of the world, the sky is blue, not grey.

Peter

[Imperial Grunt]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

Having said that I live in Scotland and I've heard tales that in some parts of the world, the sky is blue, not grey.

Peter

Grey skies? What is that. I live in southern California and we have cloudy days...like maybe 10 days in a year...

[Peter Cairns]

Where I live we have single clouds that last longer than ten days.

Peter.

[Imperial Grunt]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

Where I live we have single clouds that last longer than ten days.

Peter.

That sucks...

[Peter Cairns]

Well we had a choice, go out and face it head on, or huddle inside and stay warm.

Being pragmatic and inventive we decided to do both.

We invented GOLF and WHISKY

Peter.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

Well we had a choice, go out and face it head on, or huddle inside and stay warm.

Being pragmatic and inventive we decided to do both.

We invented GOLF and WHISKY

Peter.

And haggis and bagpipes. No wonder why Hadrian built the wall to separate you from the civilized world!

[Peter Cairns]

That's true Sergi I guess Hadrian got it right, the rest of the world wasn't ready for civilisation.

Peter.

[CavScout101]

Not to bring up massively old thread, but I was there part of the Stryker escout for the Helicopter recovery team, basically the QRF for the mission. 

I was the driver for the lead vehicle that escorted the flatbed to recover the OH58-D, A Troop 1-14Cav.

 

Read thru most of this thread, most of it is accurate

Any questions I can try to answer. 

I don't want to post because of stolen valor, etc. but I have a photo of the Kiowa on a flatbed(I took it when we got on base) and I have a short clip of the Kiowa down from a UAV. 

Edited November 4, 2015 by CavScout101
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