civdiv
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Posts posted by civdiv
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We pretty much agree, except I doubt there is anything in the forseeable future that can bring about the change you note.Quote from Tarquelne,The ME/SE Asia can be made more secular - or less rabid - just like the rest of the world.
And in regards to making the world more secular, man, that is a wholely different topic. History tells us secularism leads to low birth rates, which leads to an increase in influence for immigrants, which tend to be non-secular as religion is a characteristic of the down-troddin, who tend to emmigrate. The self-licking ice cream cone if there ever was one. Check this out, pretty scary;
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Someone posted something on one of my favorite blogs about the supplemental earmarks that is much more articulate than I could ever conjure up;
from:Comment below written by: Theresa, MSgt (ret), USAFNo Mr. DeFazio, your vote was one of betrayal regardless of how you want to justify it. ONCE CONGRESS OVERWHELMING VOTED TO SEND OUR WARRIORS INTO HARMS WAY, THE DEBATE SHOULD HAVE ENDED. YOU WERE MORALLY OBLIGATED TO GIVE THEM YOUR FULL SUPPORT UNTIL VICTORY WAS ACHIEVED. Instead, as soon as your leadership saw the possible POLITICAL ramifications of a victory, they worked their collective asses off to ensure it didn’t happen. As you are a democrat and your party has a long history of betraying the military and putting politics ahead of national security, it comes as no surprise. If you feel so damn strongly about getting our troops out, make a damn stand and cut the funding today. As much as that would be beyond despicable, at least you would be making a definitive stand. This formal declaration of surrender loaded with perks for those who needed that extra incentive to screw our troops and the Iraqi people is nothing more than POLITICS. There is nothing honorable or admirable about anyone of you cowards who signed it. Your party and its leadership are craven self-serving pieces of garbage and your day of reckoning is coming. Unlike Vietnam, there will be consequences for your cowardice.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/03/the_power_of_th.html#more
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Max, and everyone else serving, you are in our prayers. Drive on, draw fire, and DUCK!!
civdiv
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Tarquelne,
Gotta disagree with you on some of your points. Agreed, the US has made things worse. Agreed, US has made a lot of people hate us. But Islam was a problem before we started pissing people off. And I will take off the gloves and dispense with the PC BS, Islam is the problem. We don't like to say that in our outside voice, do we? Islam is a compeletely backward religion that has failed to adapt to the modern world. Islam stopped growing and mutating over 300 years ago when they got thrown back from Vienna. They went back and hid in their holes and ignored what the rest of the world was doing. And now they are stuck with the culture and mores of 300 years ago.
In the Middle Ages Islam was the bright shining light in the world. Rich in art, science, literature, everything. While the average European noblemen was an illiterate pig rolling around in the mud somewhere in Western Europe, Islam was advancing on all creative fronts by leaps and bounds. And what happened? They decided they had nothing to learn from the west. They became an inclusive civilization. And while the west was constantly adopting the advances of Islam, Islam turned inward upon itself and simple stopped developing.
Now Islam is still cut off from the west as they refuse to adapt to the changes in the modern world. If it weren't for oil the entire culture would still be Bedouins or live in mud huts. Every year the number of books translated from other languages into Arabic numbers in the thousands. The number of books written in Arabic translated into western languages is similarly small. While, say, the number of books translated into or out of French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, English number in the hundreds of thousands if not millions for each language. Islam refuses to participate in the modern world and that is the nexus of their problem. Yes, they are cursed by dictators everywhere. A product of colonialism? Sure, and a product of their tribal culture. You need a dictator when you have no nationalism. The last progressive leader in the Middle East was probably Mosadegh, and yes, our CIA took care of him. But before him who do you have? Maybe Cyrus, but that was pre-Islam.
Your average Muslim is desperately poor, uneducated, and very, very angry. He is angry that his rich culture and history has left him unable to even provide for his family. He is angry at the west because we are rich, and powerful, and routinely smack his brethren around. And what does he do? He retreats into his culture because it is the only thing he has. He can't compete in the modern world so what else is left? And his angry kids go get educated by half literate, self-proclaimed mullahs because they have no other option and then are brainwashed into going off to earn 72 virgins. Thier best and brightest feel restrained in critical thinking and flee for the west in droves. When they arrive in the west, especially in America, they are amazed at the freedoms and the huge amount of progressive thought, and they associate their Muslim culture with a lack of education, discrimination, and a lack of freedom and they quickly embrace western culture. Iran is a good example. Their best and brightest emmigrate to the US or France, their semi-bright emmigrate to other areas in the Gulf, and whomever is left stays in the country to work, usually for the government.
What's the answer? Probably some incredibly dynamic, charismatic, and popular Muslim figure who has the influence to drag the entire culture and religion into the 21st century. The problem is such a figure would immediately be a threat to Al Qaida, Hezballah, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Libya, Qatar, Syria, Palistine, every Islamic Terrorist Group, etc, etc, etc. Literally everyone in the Muslim world would regard him as a threat and they would line up to assassinate him.
I don't have an answer. A democratic Iraq with a democratic Afghanistan would be a good start but that is but a pipe dream at this point.
Yeah, we have made things quite a bit worse since March 2003. But we didn't start it, Islam did. And before I get flamed, I understand radical Islam is a small percentage of Islam. But Islam begat radical Islam, and it did it all on its own.
civdiv
[ March 27, 2007, 06:04 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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I only made one proposal so your plural 'proposals' is off mark. And voting out all the incumbants is hardly dictatorial. In fact it was about as far from being dicatorial, unless you are saying I 'dictated' something.Given such sweeping, near dictatorial proposals,
Actually an overwhelming percentage support the troops.two thirds of the country will prefer to **** the troops,
Who are my incumbants, you don't know, do you? Unless you are talking about American incumbants in general, but that begs the question of who is pissing on them?piss on your incumbents
Two thirds of the country is resuscitating their incumbants? I would think 100% of the country would attempt to resuscitate their incumbants.and resuscitate theirs.Besides those points I agree 100% with you.
civdiv
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Bigduke6,
I thought from your name you had served, but your comments lead me to believe that you haven't. Not trying to flame you or anything, but your expectations of the rank and file military boils down to derelection of duty. Lets take Clinton's impeachment. What if the majority of the military thought Clinton had to go (And believe me, the majority despised Clinton.)? So they decide to overthrow the government? Hey, they are doing just what you said they should, right?
We have a civilian run military for a reason. The military carries out it orders, period. It has no stake in politics. Refusing to carry out a lawful order (and they are lawful) is sedition and derelection of duty, you simply can't have it. Once the rule of law disappears from the military you have a disorganized bunch of well trained individuals armed to the hilt. That isn't a pretty picture.
In the military we have a saying; 'We don't make foreign policy, we just carry it out.' It's up to the voters to guide foreign policy, and then the troops to carry it out.
And in return the military expects respect from the population, but they do not demand it. And they expect solid backing for their mission from the government. Don't give the military an order and then be horrified when they carry it out. Militaries don't start wars (at least in a democracy), governments do that. Who is responsible for the government? The voters, of course. Wars are ugly and dirty and horrifying and the military breaks things and kills people.
So the knucklehead neocons got us into this war, and now the dems are playing games with the funding. Hmmm, resolution to be out by September 2008? Hmmm, the election will be in full swing by then, cooincidence? I think not. Hmmm, shut off funding for the troops or give spinach growers $25 million in funding to make up for losses when spinach growers poisoned people? The dems admit they are bribing senators to vote for the war resolution by piling all sorts of dumb earmarks on the MILITARY supplemental funding bill.
I say vote against all incumbants for the next series of elections; lets get rid of them all.
civdiv
[ March 27, 2007, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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Sorry Tripp,
The real kudos goes to you. For being a genuinely creative teacher and for thinking 'out of the box'. I don't give a hoot if you created any CM converts, I'm more appreciative that you gave a genuine history lesson to your pupils. I envy Sly for getting out of a tight situation, but I envy (and respect) you more for instilling in your pupils a love of history, and more importantly, an appreciation of the sacrifice our forefathers made for all of us.
Well done!!
civdiv
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Cpl Steiner,
Agree with you whole heartedly, and I am an American. And when did you get busted to Cpl, I hated you in CC.
Max,
How do you reconcile Sharia law AND democracy? The latter is just a publicity ploy. Given, I agree with many of its complaints (The previously mentioned dictatorships), but they are just another collection of Islamic nutjobs.
Sort of related, one of the thesis' I did for a past college class was the importance of women's rights in battling radical Islam. You can't have both. So I theorized that women's rights was the best weapon to use against radical Islam. But keep in mind that empowering the Muslim women is not the same as a westerners version of the ERA. Voting rights, rights to own and run a business, rights to political office are still not a western 'liberated women's' idea of equal rights for women.
civdiv
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The jeep/tiger thing happened in TOAW 1. They had one chance to grab me and they failed;
http://www.sgo.cc/reviews/the_operational_art_of_war_vol_2/index.shtmlUnfortunately, novelty has its price and TOAW paid it. This essentially was the source of much condemnation and criticism for TOAW1 (the "100 jeeps taking out 100 Tigers" example has probably gotten the most press). -
barbarossa2,
You have made the most convincing argument for trying out COTA (or any other game) that I think I have ever read. I may just give it a shot, at least after I hear the feedback from the upcoming patch. Thanks for signing up to this board just to put your $.02 in!
civdiv
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Max,
We have forced (indirectly) Khaddafi into given up his WMD program (Where most of Iraq's WMD program went), we forced some measure of democratic change in Kuwait. I agree that the root problem is the corrupt dictatorships in Kuwait, SA, UAE, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc. We have moved towards forcing more transparancy and democracy, but we are over-the-barrel due to being on the oil teet. I agree more needs to be done in regards to our foreign policy, but only so much can be done. Iran is a non-starter as they did blow up our barracks in SA a few years ago. Clinton and the rest of his minions did their best to deflect the media's attention from that fact while trying to 'massage' his legacy by improving relations with Iran. The fact is we should have pummelled Iran from afar at the time, instead of blowing up baby food factories in Sudan. But we were to fixated on Iraq at the time, and Clinton was too busy turning down various groups and nations offering us bin Laden's head on a platter. If we had 1) taken Sudan's offer of bin Laden, 2), not hit them with cruise missiles, we might have engaged them to a degree that this Darfur crap wouldn't be going on now. But lost opportunities and ancient history.
But making nice with the Muslim Brotherhood, are you insane? They hate all things western and what would that do to our relationship with Mubarak? Look, there are resistance groups that we might want to break bread with but the Muslim Brotherhood is not one of them. I'd treat with Hekmatyar or Fatah or Hamas long before I did anything but kill members of the Muslim Brotherhood on sight.
Pete, the failure in your argument is that both sides had not agreed to tone things down. AQ was just awaiting the opportunity to hit us again, and again, and again. I agree Iraq was a mistake, and I said so at the time, but the fact remained that radical Islam was going to continue to spread and continue to attack us. They would have brought down some country (Pakistan, SA, etc.) eventually. Given the thousands of radical nut jobs that have entered Iraq to fight us, where would they have gone if Iraq was not an option? Given, our actions in Iraq have only made things worse, but whether it's 10 thousand more radicals in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, things were going to break at some point. The Greeks and the Turks have realized the point of diminishing reutrns, especially due to dreams of entering the EU, so they put aside their swords. AQ has made no such decision, and they will continue to be a threat for decades, regardless of whether we enter Iraq or not.
civdiv
[ March 25, 2007, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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Thanks John,
I would assume they carry nothing but HEI these days. But just an assumption on my part, I can't see them spraying DU all over the place these days, especially given the heaviest armor they have to penetrate is the hood of a toyota pick-up.
civdiv
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Sergei,
Total guess on my part but I think it would be pretty rare for a conscript. Maybe insurgents and such, but not a conscript. Probably more likely further into the invasion, like during occupation as the resistance gets more radicalized, a la Iraq. I think Hezballah is pretty disciplined and I can't see them doing the allahu ahkbar thing.
civdiv
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Since there is no insurgent armor, what kind of ammo is the A-10 using for strafing? I'm about 99% sure it's not DU that IIRC, was the only ammo the A-10 used to carry.
civdiv
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The rate of Allahu ahkbar shouting is directly related to the number of video cameras filming the event. The islamic nutjobs do shout it hoping allah is going to make their rpg or mortar round a bit more accurate. The suicide bomber shouts it hoping to bump his chances for the 72 virgins by 1/10th of 1 percent. For filmed events it is shouted mostly for propaganda reasons, and also because AQ demands video tapes of attacks as a requirement for funding. AQ does this to not only give them propaganda opportunities, but also to make sure the attack they paid for actually got done. Shouting allahu ahkbar just shows the guy paying the bill that you are devout. If there is no video camera rolling, and you aren't a suicide bomber, you probably aren't going to shout it. But there are plenty of islamic nut jobs who would tend to shout it. Not saying it isn't done, just saying it isn't done as much as you would think given the propaganda videos.
civdiv
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Actually, how cool would it be to zoom in on a vehicle and hear the radio going? I mean, if you zoom in on a CM tank you hear the rumble of its engine, right?Originally posted by panzermartin:I'm hoping for these features too. How about noisy radio chat from friendly vehicle crews, FOs or units out of view? Would be useful when spotting enemies.
civdiv
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Steve,
Agree completely. Mistakes have been made by the brass, but sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between a general officer beaten to parade rest by Cheny or Rummy or Bush or Bremer, etc, and when they are keeping their mouth shut to avoid getting sacked. Lots of egos involved to; Sanchez saying the surge wouldn't work, WTF was he thinking? So general, you had all the troops you needed, and things were progressing forward (based on numerous statements he made), but now we can't succeed with 25 thousand more troops? Can someone explain that to me please?
It was a pretty sunny Sunday afternoon and I got to spent a couple of hours out in it. I'll email you some 70 degree weather, how big an attachment can your email box take? I think it's about a meg per degree.
civdiv
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It's not using the catapult as it starts too far down the deck to be hooked up. No JATO though, probably tire smoke;
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Sergei,
Guilty. I edited it.
civdiv
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As requested;
It looked like it was running JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) bottles, any opinions?
civdiv
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I have a two year old XPS Gen 2 w/ a 2.13 Centrino;
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1769524,00.asp
It has 2 gigs of RAM. I am confident it will run CMSF, but I assume it will get choppy with all the doodads turned on.
civdiv
[ March 25, 2007, 02:31 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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Sly,
That is an amazing story/AAR. Given the small force you had and the percentage of combat power that was lost with the immobilized Sherman, I probably would have quit and restarted at that point, or perhaps just rushed everyone forward willy-nilly to get the thing over with.
civdiv
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Bremer and his bunch of clowns plus State and the Administration are the primary architects of our failure. I get so sick of the military getting blamed for the situation in Iraq. But then you have stuff like this, no wonder they hate us over there. This is perhaps the most distrubing video I have seen from Iraq. And this is early on, before the insurgency got rolling. That's 4th ID when they finally got in country. Several Army buddies have told me that that iteration of 4th ID (The iteration of 4th ID that first got into Iraq.) was a horribly undisciplined unit. Not trying to flame the Army or 4th ID soldiers, I'm sure most were professionals, but apparantly 4th ID was known for crap like this;
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Here's a video of the episode;
Insurgents target Strykers in Iraq
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
Hmmmm, I am for gays in the military despite my career there. I am pro-gay union. But I don't have a problem with any of the Patriot Acts nor non-FISA wire-taps. I don't think the Second Ammendment covers automatic weapons or armor piercing ammo, yet I own a half dozen weapons myself and am seeking a concealed carry permit. Has the needle on your meter crashed out of the glass and flown across the room yet? I've lived in the south for a total of around 3.5 years (mostly while I was in the military), so Abou, you got a nice cookie-cutter hole in your wooden toy for me?
Tillman's death, known by Army brass within hours to be fratricide, was managed horriby, and they deserve all of the mud that will be hurled at them to stick to them.
Come on Abou,
You have someone here that knows your culture and speaks your language and is semi-on your side. Set off the car bomb you intend for everyone, allies and enemies alike, and I will continue to show you a close-up of the floor.
You look at my criticism of US policy but then you are blinded by my criticism of Islam. You immediately lump me in the category of semite and ignore my arguments. I am one of the ones smiting you, but I am also one of the few who realize there is a better way. So take a big breath and re-read my comments (that freely criticise the policies of my own country) and understand my intent and my beliefs. You won't get a 100% agreement with me but you will get a partial agreement with me. We can argue colonialism versus culture but we agree on the way out.
I'm sorry my rendition of Islam hurts you, but it is the god's honest truth as far as I am concerned. You can argue the point, or you can use personal insults. And before you begin to refute the points, which is what I hope you do, provide the path out of the quagmire we are in. Ancient history means nothing, we are where we are, and we need a road back.
Bottom line; we have a problem, east versus west. Many people will die unless SOMEONE comes up with a solution. Our solution here probably won't affect things afar but let's at least think about things. Give up the hyperbole and come up with cognicent points and we will discuss. Keep with your current attacks and I will 'peel the onion' as I have spent literally years living within your culture.
civdiv