Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 As I heard it, he said about the informants that they "knew the risks". Link to the "deserved" sentence, plz? It is relevant to my interests. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Child, manchild, aluminum, aluminium... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 Looking for it now..and yes, this guy to me is a liar..some time back he released a video of a US helicopter gunship firing on "civilians" yet edited out the portions of the video showing the "civilians" armed with RPGs, a threat to the gunship in question...his whole modus operandi has been like this, which is why I would not call him an idealist at all,lying and distorting things to get the proper story you are aiming for is not idealism. Edit: I stand corrected..he said they "knew the risks" still...not a valid argument for an "idealist"..it is akin to the bank robber who kills the clerk, saying that he knew the risk of working in a bank... And to be fair and unbiased, he did defend it by saying the informants were doing wrong...hardly an argument anyone KNOWING would say, as they risk their lives to help their country, but as Mr. Assange is not a "knowing" person, then I would actually give him the benefit of the doubt that he somehow felt it was ..well.."deserved" http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/publication-of-afghan-informant-details-worth-the-risk-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/story-e6frg6so-1225898273552 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 The famous 2007 baghdad video? RPGs or not, what creeped me out in that video was the pilot's demeanor. The eagerness to get permission, the "business as usual" feel... creeped the **** outta me 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 The famous 2007 baghdad video? RPGs or not, what creeped me out in that video was the pilot's demeanor. The eagerness to get permission, the "business as usual" feel... creeped the **** outta me Eager to get permission because as the famous movie "Blackhawk Down" shows well, Heli's are sitting ducks to RPGs..can fire and destroy the RPG easily, but it is a race to see who fires first. Combat is meant to be that way, the slower side dies. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 I know, but the demand came quite before visual ID... and that voice didn't give me the impression of "we're scared ****less of being sitting ducks sir, please confirm and let us defend ourselves from a possible attack". They were calm all the time. Sorry, that's just how it struck me. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 The part cut out of the video shows the targets in the video(horrible way to describe them, but it is accurate) being followed on the ground as part of a running battle. They were already IDed as hostile. And I would not want a pilot supporting ME, to ever give the impression he was scared ****less haha,whether he was or not, I am on the ground, he is in the air, he better be supporting my men. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 If the informants were killed (I like the way you can't avoid using the emotional "beheaded") within hours of their being named then the people doing the beheading were not capable of extracting the information they were party to (in which case they are hardly to be regarded as high value targets), or were deliberately sacrificing the named in an effort to maintain and enhance their own cover. Again, if the US SD had entered into a dialogue with Wikileaks then they would not have borne any moral responsibility for those lives. If the US had been even half way serious about having a useful and secure information service then this episode would not have come to pass. Blaming Assange for your own ineptitude and lack of responsibility is moral cowardice. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 please, cooooostie... you know damn well this reply will lead to an equal and opposite reaction. And will lead nowhere... Truce, to pick up the bodies, as in olden greek time? Pretty please with whip cream and naked women on top? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 Pešadija, it will not lead to a response really..I actually agree with what cos just said..still, though, you cannot blame the bank's security system entirely and void the robber of any wrong. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Thing is, the robber in question is considered robbing criminals by many, and thus providing a service. Not a simple thing. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 True, a "modern day Robin Hood" That I would probably even admire if he did it differently. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 But, as I see it, the thing you'd be satisfied with would be Assange personally muckracking, and getting heroically blown up by IEDs as he gets his undercover story underway... is that in any way correct? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 But' date=' as I see it, the thing you'd be satisfied with would be Assange personally muckracking, and getting heroically blown up by IEDs as he gets his undercover story underway... is that in any way correct? [/quote'] No.. I think he is dishonest, and a pretty strange fellow, but I really would not wish him blown up... I would like to see him actually go to the field and get his facts instead of only what he can safely get far away. I think he would see how very very wrong he is, if he spent even 1 tour in the field. I think the same of most people with their crazy ideas of these wars...spend a tour and then tell me..really, spend a day and then tell me what you think...I guarantee most would change their minds. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 But tell me just one thing, abneo, assange or not... the civilian deaths. What do you think of them? Unavoidable? Grave? Acceptable if they lead to a military payoff against al-qaeda? It was not the government or anything that hooked me up to the assange story, but the confirmed suspicion I had that more civvies died (at the hands of ISAF soldiers) than the mainstream media ll across the board knew. The thing I hate about war, and always will is the death of unarmed people caught in the crossfire. Yes, I know terrorists blow up civvies remorselessly in a routinely fashion, and that's not the point. The point is when the morally superior west does it also. Cumprende where's my pickle? I don't give a crap about homeland concerns if it means killing poor people elsewhere. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 Well, more effort is made to avoid that than in any war in history, but war always will kill,and the earth has civilians in most places where people fight, so it is unavoidable...but the west does not TARGET civilians,and usually ROE is such that we have to break off of a real target if there is a perceived chance of civilians being caught. The other side DOES target civilians, almost exclusively. And while I would prefer not any being killed, we are making THEIR country better, also, and I would prefer if there will be deaths, to be not from my own side. 9-11, the Madrid bombing, Khobar Towers, etc... show me that it is worth it to fight them somewhere besides here. My hope is that they will pick up their own fight, and their own security, and kill their own terrorists, and we can go home. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Assange is indubitably strange however if we look at many of the heroes of previous generations such as Churchill and Gandhi then they too may have been pilloried for some of their personal behaviour. And curiously the idea of sending Assange into the field and getting facts right surely should be better aimed at GWB. : ) I am sure if he had actually fought he may not have been as gung-ho for Iraq. And as for Cheney - five deferments!! http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/politics/campaign/01CHEN.html?ex=1398830400&en=1c0259e620183dd6&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND But in the battle between the little guys, who have strong suspicions to believe we are being screwed over, and the big guys; he is the only man we have. And I suspect it takes a flawed man to have got Wikileaks up and running whilst most of us play safe with jobs and wife and family. Incidentally are there official figures on how many informers were named and executed? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Again, adducing well known examples of terrorist induced death does not reduce horror. And I know that efforts are made, at least officially: but there are many cases in which certain soldiers acted very, very quickly to terrorist presence with overkill power. The first things that comes off the top of my head is those polish soldiers mortaring a village where some terrorists hid, and they hit the maternity ward of an hospital. These things, and the fact that complicit silence of some officers about such episodes is there because they think that the end justifies the means horrify me, not the blunders of a stressed soldier in an emergency situation that maybe hits a running civilian in a firefight. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dietrich Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Wait... haven't we had this discussion before? Oh, right, we have: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=91655 Truce, to pick up the bodies, as in olden greek time? Pretty please with whip cream and naked women on top? Put the whip cream on top of the naked women, and then you just might have yourself a deal. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Whatever a gentleman desires, Dietrich... Didn't see the thread, sorry. Just giving my two cents to abneo as to why people like Assange have an importance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 Well, I would be torn in that situation..if the people of the village knew terrorists are using their village as a base, then I think they lose the "innocent" word in front of "civilian" and become in effect a supply unit to the terrorists...while if on the other hand, they are just scared of the terrorists and that is why they cover them, then it is a true tragedy. But again, much of the blame should also go on the terrorists who go to a village to hide in the first place. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Of course, again, I'm not denying that terrorists are villainous, calculating scumbags deserving death. But pregnant women, unborn babies, a farmer that minds his own business, a kid coming back from school... please, put yourself in the trousers of a family head coming back from work. You don't care much about anything, just trying to live. You come home, see it blasted from a foreign bomb... you won't give a damn that bomb killed Bin Laden's whole lineage in the process. Please, do this mental exercise seriously. One should check the fault of unarmed people after eliminating the armed threat, is what I'm saying. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dietrich Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 I personally can't claim to know enough about Assange, WikiLeaks, or the "collateral murder" incident to be able to definitely proclaim judgment thereupon. Regarding the "collateral murder" incident, there are a number of questions which occurred to me but which I've never seen asked (let alone answered) by either side. Could that be because those questions related to points which are either invalid or irrelevant? Yeah, that must be it. I <good-natured sarcasm> love </good-natured sarcasm> how the consensus throughout the internet (the non-right-wing realms thereof, anyway) is that Assange and WikiLeaks are great and that anyone who says differently is highly unlikely to be anything but a tool. Didn't see the thread' date=' sorry. Just giving my two cents to abneo as to why people like Assange have an importance.[/quote'] No sorry needed, Peša. I too am just throwing in my ¢2 ad lib. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pešadija Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Don't personally care. The humanist level is where my interest lays. For me, one trigger happy soldier in the military is one trigger happy soldier in excess. Throw, throw. We need more spare change. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abneo3sierra Posted March 2, 2011 Author Share Posted March 2, 2011 Of course, again, I'm not denying that terrorists are villainous, calculating scumbags deserving death. But pregnant women, unborn babies, a farmer that minds his own business, a kid coming back from school... please, put yourself in the trousers of a family head coming back from work. You don't care much about anything, just trying to live. You come home, see it blasted from a foreign bomb... you won't give a damn that bomb killed Bin Laden's whole lineage in the process. Please, do this mental exercise seriously. One should check the fault of unarmed people after eliminating the armed threat, is what I'm saying. Sadly, in the field, we do this exercise mentally every day. It is probably related to the high % of PTSD, etc...that is not all just from personal danger, it is also a human's response to seeing visually destroyed lives of people who did not deserve it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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