Joshik

One of the silliest, jaw-droppingest war films I ever saw was "The Losers" (also called "Nam's Angels"). Hell's Angels bikers mount guns on their choppers (bikes, not helicoptors!), and go on a mission to NAM to kick some VC butt... yow! You can see a snippet of this film in the movie Pulp Fiction. Look for the scene where Bruce Willis is in his hotel room. Shortly before discovering that his watch is missing, he's watching The Losers on TV. Other comments: Did you know some of these stupid movies almost got us into WWIII? Around 1982-1984, the Soviets were getting very, very nervous, and were convinced that the US was preparing to instigate a nuclear war. The Soviets launched an intelligence operation named RYAN ("Ree-ahn") that examined several aspects of life in the US. They wanted to search for anything that would be a sign of nuclear war preparedness. Remember, this was during the time that Reagan made his assinine radio comments about "beginning the bombing in five minutes". So they assumed that Hollywood was just a tool of the Government, and Hollywood was producing films that seemed to be acclimating the US population to the idea of going to war. Look at the films of this period: Rambo, Top Gun, and the unbelievable Red Dawn, complete with the evil Soviets parachuting into the middle of the United States! While most of us took these movies with a huge grain of salt, or wrote them off as puerile, jingoistic propaganda, the Soviets took them damn seriously. We were as close to nuclear war in 1983-1984 as we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis. No joke. Unrelated comment: concerning Saving Private Ryan ("Ryan")--- will all you bean-counting, left-brained, anal-retentive nitpickers lay off this beautiful movie? "Hey... that solider is wearing the A-107f belt buckle, when in reality, they only had the A-107c model during D-Day!" SPR accurately conveys the sheer terror of warfare, showing it as ugly and brutal, not glamorous. There are not too many films that do this, except for maybe "Cross of Iron". --Joshik

Damn... Major H beat me to the punch. I was going to mention that Weinberger will probably be best remembered for his list of criteria, his "going to war" checklist that the US should consider before committing troops anywhere. My question to Major H is: is the list you menitoned hierarchal, i.e., is #1 more important than #6? As I do more research, it seems that US public support is becoming one of the most vital considerations in any US endeavour. Which is troublesome, since after the smashing success of the Gulf War (low # of US casualties), I think we have a really really low tolerance for pain. Any extended warfighting operation is going to be difficult. KwazyDog also hit it right on the head. I saw Weinberger at a lecture in 1994(ish), where he proved to still be head-over-heels in love with the notion of a Reagan Star Wars Peace Shield. As a consummate Reagan-naut, I doubt if his views on this have changed. KwazyD's question is very well put: how do you define a "sucessful intercept" of a SCUD during the Gulf War. Because we now know that the Patriot system, contrary to propaganda, was incredibly ineffective. The Israelis told us that right away, but we shushed them up quickly, lest our people get all upset and lose confidence in our technological prowess. This is speculation, but I would bet that Weinberger is still heavy into GOP and defense politiking. I ran into Ed Meese (frmr. Attny Gen'l & fellow reaganut) at a bed&breakfast in Maine, where he was doing GOP fundraising & lobbying. What's scary is that I bet Weinberger is probably involoved with lobbying Congress to further a StarWars - type missle defense system, something that will be of very questionable effectiveness, but certainly cost us a looooooooooooot of $$$. But that's for a different OT Post. Tell Cap I said "hi", & be sure to ask him some Iran/Contra questions! --Joshik

Did someone say "mattress"? <sigh> I TOLD you to please use the term "dog kennel", didn't I?

Gentlemen: I'm back at work this morning after suffering from a weekend bout of the flu. I felt horrible on Saturday & Sunday, and spent most of the day in bed. This got me thinking: is illness an issue that should be raised in CM? Many of the scenarios take place in winter or poor weather conditions. If the members of a rifle squad were all sick with the flu, wouldn't it reduce their morale and stealth levels? Would the following calculations make sense? In a scenario with snow or rain during the winter months, there is a random chance that a certain percentage of soliders will be sick. If more than a certain number of soldiers in the same unit are sick, then the entire unit is affected by the flu. The unit would have its stealth capabilities reduced (all that coughing and sniffling isn't good for sneaking around!), and morale would be lowered. Orders would take more time to be excecuted, they would be less able to spot the enemy, and they would be more likely to enter a state of "Shaken" or "Broken". The effects of flu would be smaller, the more experienced the unit is. Crack units and Veteran units would not be too hampered by this. They've dealt with it before. But for green units or conscripts, flu could add to their miseries enough to make them run. Is this realistic? I was "knocked out of action" for two days with just a damn cold. I felt miserable, and wouldn't have been too effective in storming a building, or taking out a tank. If I had the flu, complete with vomiting and the runs, I would be completely ineffective in any scenario, much less a battlefield. What do you guys think? ps- hats off to the troops who had to put up with this crap (literally!).

Danke, Herr Schrullenhaft! I'll give it a try... I was also unaware of a special Tech section. Thanks for your input. -Joshik

Tech question for MacHeads: I just got a new G4 w/dual 450Mhz processor at work (whee!). But upon launching the demo, the text is either showing up onscreen in black, or not at all. Even the QUIT dialog buttons are blank, and you cannot see any unit info at the bottom of the screen. Does CM require a particular Mac system font that I may have inadvertantly removed? Or is this a problem with just the demo (don't have the full game yet)? Or... is there an incompatibility with the new G4/Dual450??? Hope not! Any advice, fellow Mac users? --Joshik

Gentlemen: There is one war movie that surpasses even "The Green Berets" in terms of pure, gut-wrenching badness... The Losers! (aka "Nam's Angels") Hell's Angels bikers get send on a secret mission to Nam, to battle and defeat the vicious Viet Cong with their souped up & well-armed choppers! Yow!! This is no joke. In fact, you can see a brief clip of it in "Pulp Fiction". Check out what Bruce Willis is watching on TV (just before he discovers his watch is missing.). Now seriously, don't I deserve a copy of CM for winning this contest? Huh? Huh? --Joshik

Thought this might provide some interesting reading, given the current discussion at hand... (I think it's from Slate.com) -Joshik --------------- The Missile-Defense Test By William Saletan (Slate) Wednesday, July 12, 2000, at 4:00 p.m. PT This weekend, the Pentagon staged the third test of the National Missile Defense system it plans to build over the next five years. In the first and simplest test, the anti-missile struck the target missile after initially drifting off course toward a decoy. In a second test, the anti-missile missed. In this week's test, the anti-missile veered out of control, failed to separate from its booster, and never got near the target. Did the system fail the test? No, the test failed the system. Defense Undersecretary Jack Gansler and Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish explained to reporters how what looked like a failure really wasn't. The anti-missile might have missed its target, but Gansler, Kadish, and other advocates of missile defense struck theirs, by planting a dozen post-test rationalizations in the press. Here's a scorecard of the shots they fired and the targets they hit. 1. The part that failed wasn't the part we meant to test. Shots: The failure "happened in an area that has little to do with the functionality of the key component of the system that we're testing" (Kadish). "The thing we were hoping to get out of this was much more information on the interceptor portion of it, which is really the part that is unique and different about this particular flight vs., say, a normal booster development or a missile development" (Gansler). Target struck: "The flaw that doomed the test had nothing to do with the most sophisticated elements of the system, which are supposed to track an incoming missile, differentiate it from a limited number of decoys and intercept it" (New York Times). 2. The part that failed always works, except this time. Shot: "This test really didn't establish that the program can't work. The thing that failed in this test is something that we've done hundreds of times before. * It's not something that technologically we don't know how to do" (Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.). Targets struck: "Instead, it was a failure in a well-developed technology that has been used successfully in rockets that have launched satellites and missiles for decades" (New York Times). It was a "catastrophe involving the tried-and-true process of separating a payload from a booster" (Los Angeles Times). 3. The part that failed was an irrelevant surrogate for a part that we plan to rely on but haven't tested. Shots: "The booster we are using is not the booster we intend to use in the operational system" (Kadish). "That particular booster * is planned to be used only another three times, and then after that we use the real booster" (Gansler). Target struck: "The Pentagon has 16 more flight tests planned, and later tests will use a different type of rocket than the one used Friday" (Chicago Tribune). 4. Let's build the part that worked while we try to fix the part that failed. Shot: "The decision now [is] relative to trying to build a site at Shemya [Alaska] for the X-band radar˜which, by the way, the X-band radar part of it was working. * That's the decision that they're going to be making, not on whether we're ready to release the missiles. * The booster is going to be the gating item for the second decision, which is the one in '01" (Gansler). Target struck: "Much of the pressure on Clinton to decide this fall revolves around the need to award contracts for a high-power radar station. * A prototype radar [in the test] was able to differentiate between the mock warhead and a decoy balloon" (USA Today). 5. All the parts have worked, though never simultaneously. Shots: "The rest of the system now has successfully worked twice, the last two flights, although the interceptor didn't. * So in a sense we've tested the major elements of this system sufficiently to say that the design is probably the one that's pretty solid" (Gansler). "I don't think we should draw conclusions from any one test that are irrevocable. What we have is a number of tests and legacy tests for all the elements of the system. When added together, it provides us a great body of evidence of the capability of the system" (Kadish). Target struck: "[The] booster rocket * failed to release the 122-pound 'kill vehicle' interceptor. Otherwise, the test went more or less as planned" (Denver Post). 6. The part we meant to test has worked one out of two times. Not too shabby. Shot: "We didn't get to the interceptor on this [test], and the prior one we had a failure on it," but "certainly on that test that we had the intercept, it gave us all a lot of confidence that the design we have of the kill vehicle, which is the key to the system, worked. * So from that standpoint, a key piece of the puzzle was put into place" (Gansler). Target struck: "Senior defense officials in the U.S. said scientists have learned much about the system's feasibility from previous trials, including the one successful interception in October, and from computer simulations" (Knight Ridder). 7. Failure is no predictor of failure. Shots: "If you go back in history to the ICBM development, to the Safeguard development, there were many successes but also many failures early in the program" (Kadish). "To ultimately achieve success, one must experience some failure" (Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.). Target struck: "All military programs suffer setbacks from time to time, and the test failure today does not mean that a missile shield can never be constructed" (New York Times). 8. Since the part that failed prevented us from getting to the part we meant to test, the test never really happened. Shot: "Everything appeared to be on track with the launch in the battle manager type systems, the integrated part of the system, to work right. * The kill vehicle was waiting for a signal that we had second-stage separation. We did not receive that signal. Therefore, the timeline shut down and the kill vehicle did not separate, and therefore, we did not attempt or have any activity in the intercept phase" (Kadish). Targets struck: "Key Missile Parts Are Left Untested as Booster Fails" (New York Times). "[T]he important part of the $100 million test˜homing in for the collision in space˜was never even attempted * and few of the critical technologies of the missile exercise were actually tested" (Times). "[T]he 'kill vehicle'˜a 120-pound package of miniature rocket motors, computers and sensors˜never got a chance to show whether it can hunt down an incoming warhead" (Washington Post). 9. There are two possible test outcomes: favorable data or insufficient data. Shots: "The question is whether we have enough information on the terminal phase in order to be able to make an assessment that says we should go ahead. * I would say we didn't get the data we had hoped to have. The question of whether it's an absolute need or not is the one that the Secretary and the President will be deciding" (Gansler). "[Y]ou can make the case either that we have shown that the design is workable or that the testing has yet to demonstrate its feasibility" (senior military officer quoted in the Washington Post). Targets struck: "You now lack data from two tests on the intercept phase" (reporter's question at Gansler-Kadish press conference). "The unexpected malfunctioning of the booster meant that the experiment produced few meaningful lessons about the weapon's capabilities" (New York Times). "Critics of the administration's plans * are likely to be emboldened by the ambiguous results" (Washington Post). 10. There are two possible conclusions: The system works now, or it will work later. Shots: "What it tells me is we have more engineering work to do" (Kadish). "Obviously, this does go to the question of * how far along the system is" and "whether to proceed with the deployment of the system or whether to defer that" (National Security Adviser Sandy Berger). "The technological piece of this is not yet in place" (Kyl). "President Clinton, notwithstanding this disappointment * ought to decide to at least keep the process moving forward" (Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.). Target struck: "t's hard to imagine a commander in chief arguing against this kind of self-defense when it becomes technically feasible. But the $100 million miss yesterday raises new doubts about when that will be" (Washington Post). 11. If the system doesn't work, it's just not big enough. Shots: "I'm more concerned the president will cut a quick deal for an inadequate system than I am that we don't have the technological capability of perfecting the system" (Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.). "While last night's test is a disappointment, I remain confident that given the right leadership, America can develop an effective missile defense system" (George W. Bush). "The technology is ready; it's the Clinton policy that isn't ready" (Retired Navy Vice Adm. J.D. Williams). Target struck: "One lesson Pentagon planners and the White House may draw from the test is that any missile defense system may require a significantly larger fleet of antimissile rockets than currently planned" (New York Times). 12. The question is not whether it works, but whether we need it. Shots: "What we're talking about is how do you deal with an emerging threat. * The system that is under development * seeks to do that" (Berger). "It would be irresponsible if we did not do everything we could to deal with that threat" (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright). "In view of the potential threat * the United States must press forward to develop and deploy a missile defense system" (Bush). "We're simply going to have to continue until we perfect it" (Thompson). Target struck: "The latest failure * doesn't alter the underlying reasons to seek such a system" (Washington Post).

Hmmm... in 1941, the Germans experimented with murdering Jews by means of gas vans, most notably in Chelmno, that would funnel carbon monoxide exhaust into a locked rear chamber. Later, the Germans employed the use of Zyklon B, a pesticide derivative, to murder Jews in a more efficient manner. Does this not constitute the widespread use of chemical warfare?