gunnergoz

What incident are you discussing? Because we are talking about Apache pilots a kilometer away, not grunts on the ground ducking fire. Two entirely different things. And if the pilots had observed these "suspects" firing towards US troops, it would be another thing entirely. But they did not see that happening, and opened fire indiscriminately. And my criticism relates to the quality of leadership, supervision and training that US forces receive prior to engaging the enemy - and the leadership and control they are under while they are in engagement range. Too many military leaders do not lead, they "manage" and scoot away crab-wise when there is something nasty that they might be blamed for. And no, none of this is easy. War should not be easy. Killing civilians least of all. Whatever happened to accountability? Incidents like this lose the war for the population, not win it. And the people are who we are fighting for, right...or is it the oil? If the latter, then never mind, the end justifies the means I guess.

Exactly my point: When will we ever learn? This is the kind of warfare where the enemy racks up points with each civilian we kill, in greater percentage than we do for each bad guy we kill. It is in the enemy's interest to put civilians at risk. So, I ask, why are we so dumb as to be playing the enemy's game? If you are going to fight a war, do so to win. Winning is not always calculated by enemy body counts, but more by won minds and hearts. Look, in Iraq, we went in, rightly or not, deposed a dictator and left a power vacuum of enormous scale through stupidity and arrogance of the "war planners" in DC. The people craved security and economic improvements. Instead they get sectarian warfare and a trigger happy occupier that does not care much who goes down as long as the shooting stops. We did get smarter and did many things better over time, granted, but we seem to be having to learn the lessons all over again in Afghanistan, where a different culture and a different enemy seem to have got us all flummoxed because we are trying to use the tactics of the last war and not all of them translate over. I don't for a minute envy the situation of our combat troops over there, but I envy the plight of the locals even less. And if we want to say we won, we have to win in the locals' eyes most of all. Or else it will all be for naught. But finding smart, savvy, thinking people in DC, Foggy Bottom or the Pentagon and putting them to work on these issues, is where a solution starts. Then, someone has to lead the war fighters, not just manage them into a so-called verbal victory.

If we have that much trouble sitting at home figuring out from the video what happened, imagine how confusing it must have been to the guys in the Apaches. All the more reason to hold fire until you are positive of what you are looking at. Sounds like more training and better supervision would help. And 1/8 Cav is a First Cav battalion, am I correct? They seem to have a real gung-ho thing going on in that division. Too many reruns of Apocalypse Now? Not to mention that Crazyhorse is hardly a call sign that brings up the image of a sober, thinking war fighter. New times, new roles. People - and leaders - need to learn that.

The bottom line for me is, did the US gain anything from the engagement? Short term, perhaps it suppressed some local bad guys in a tactical situation. Long term, it is ending up giving aid and comfort to its own enemies, who love seeing the US depicted as a killer of Muslim civilians.

Yes, and my initial unease about the whole thing somewhat abated. It is a strange mix of images, as if a 10 year old boy suddenly was infused with the fantasies of a 16 year old and the memories of a wartime vet as imagined by a WW2 grog who's seen a lot of wartime images. I could envision brain trauma perhaps having something to do with this sort of scrambling of reality and fantasy. Had I not read the bio material, I might have concluded that the creator of this "world" was a bit deranged...

Episode 3 was bound to raise eyebrows among some folks. But the Australian interlude was an important part of the wartime experience of many Marines. Was it's inclusion in the series essential to telling the story of Marines Leckie/Sledge/Basilone? That's a matter of personal opinion of course, but I'm glad that the producers at least tried. I suspect that there will be war scenes aplenty to come in the next 7 episodes... BTW I've just re-read Sledge's book and will next buy Leckie's. Basilone's authorized biography has been re-published and I need to locate a copy (passed one up on the shelf but had no cash with me and the next day it was gone.) So far, the series is fairly true to Sledge's account, at least for feel and flavor, if not minute details.

Sorry - that did not happen to me when I opened the site. Maybe my anti-malware suite blocked it; I would not use such a site if I knew it was posting crap. You might want to check your PC out though, that is not normal behavior at all. If you are running with sub-par protection on the internet, all sorts of nasty things can happen. But again, no, I had no idea...

I actually saw this place, Balaclava, from the outside when I visited Sevastopol a couple of years ago. It is not far away from Sevastopol along the Crimean coast. The sub base is pretty imposing-looking and I can imagine the security around it when it was an active Soviet installation. Now it is just another tourist site and kids dive off the locks and in the channels just outside the gates. Sevastopol is interesting to visit of course, tons of things to see there. As for the sub base, it is surrounded by amazing cliffs that are a sight worth seeing, even if one ignores the history of the place. When I was shown the cliffs from a small motorboat by the young naval officer who was the sole remaining custodian of the base where the sub pens are located, he pointed out on the cliffs where the few surviving Red Army defenders were thrown to their deaths many meters down to the sea, after surrendering to the Germans. http://planetoddity.com/abandoned-top-secret-soviet-underground-submarine-base/

Don't forget that, with the exception of John Basilone, many of the players in the film are only 17-20 years old, with personalities as yet largely unformed. They grew up on those battlefields and became the men they were later. It is entirely credible to me that they chose to begin the film with these personalities a bit blank and generic, to be shaped and molded by subsequent wartime experiences. My two bits. And yes, I really enjoyed the first installment. Every time I drive to L.A., I have to drive past Basilone Road on I-5 at Camp Pendleton. A supervisor I had some years ago was a Marine Raider and knew John personally. So all this means a great deal to me and I really want to see these stories told well. There have already been complaints that officers are depicted in a monochromatic way in the series, mostly full of bluff and bluster and not too bright or gutsy. What I have seen so far is the depiction of one company commander who failed to live up to the test of combat. Unlike the young marines under him, this man probably had years to build up a persona and peacetime presence that got him through the officer ranks...but it was not sufficient to hold him together in actual combat. Then too, he was older and perhaps had a family, had had lots of time to consider his own mortality and desire to be somewhere, anywhere, else. So he ended up being relieved in disgrace. From what I heard and read, many of those disgraced officers ended up tragically later on, either suicides or drunks and vagrants. The kids they led had less to look back upon and no idea of what to expect, so perhaps the trauma of combat was a bit easier for them to take. It is said that the anticipation of combat and imminent death is harder than the actual experience on some individuals. I don't know, but it rings true. It must be a very personal and individualistic thing. I've read many war memoirs (admittedly few by combat failures) and they all have their own take on what happened to them and how they reacted. So I'll wait to see the other episodes to find out if officers are fall guys and patsies in the series. It is well known that Tom Hanks' father was a naval officer who despised the navy and many of his peers, so it could be that that disdain has been carried over to the series. But surely we will see some depiction of the good officers, a number of whom are named by Sledge and other writers as being heroic and inspiring leaders. Many of them did not come home alive. They made the same sacrificed as did their enlisted. I hope to see that balance in the series too.

An excellent idea that: broadcasting/webcasting dissertation defenses. But too much science spoils the public's eager ignorance of the real world and its processes. And whatever would we do with an educated public? Heaven forbid they ever try to vote...

Granted that, I was simply discussing modern equivalents. By now, cavalry troopers are part of the mythological landscape in the public mind. There is no question that "para-troopers" rode metal steeds into battle in a way reminiscent of their antecedents on horseback. We are always building upon what we know - or, we imagine that we know. Hollywood loves to build upon these stereotypes since it makes storytelling that much easier. The problem lies in that the myths tend to build upon other myths and soon we are lost in a miasma of made up stories that have little bearing with reality. But such is the world of politics, PR and movie making...

Have to bump this thread, having finally purchased the DVD and seen The Hurt Locker myself. I found it to be a very good movie. As always, Hollywood stretches credulity a bit, but given what I have heard of the Iraq war, not too incredibly in this case. What I found most intriguing (and ultimately satisfyingly credible) about the film is that it did not try to answer all the questions about characters, motives, personal histories and outcomes. It just sort of dumps some people/scenes on your lap and lets you try to sort out what happened before, what is happening now, and what happens afterward. That is more like real life to me than a film that neatly wraps up everything in the silly little endings that the average film goer expects. Interestingly, my Ukrainian wife gave up on it early, complaining it was just a "documentary" and "not a movie." A little too realistic for her (and she left before the real gory parts, too) and probably in the sense I described above. Russian/Ukrainian films also tend to provide neatly tied together plots/characters/scenes/motives/endings. I know because we watch a lot of them in our home... Anyway, I do not hesitate to call The Hurt Locker an excellent film; whether it is an accurate depiction of anything or anyone is open to debate, but do recall that one EOD grunt is suing the producers of the film for allegedly basing the film upon him personally, then not including him in the credits or reimbursing him in any way. If he, a war vet, feels there is enough in the film to tie it to him, certainly there are likely some scenes in the film that ring true for him too.

There is another aspect that tends to make people think of "marines" in these SF contexts: it is natural to associate the term "marines" with a vision of troops riding vessels to an alien shore, then invading it using special techniques and vehicles...a skill that American Marines are amply famous for world wide. Similarly, the commonly used term "paratroops" well known to the public, has also been expended upon by SF authors to convey a sense of those fighting men, e.g. Robert Heinlein's "starship troopers." By now, SF and fiction have done a real PR job (as if historic achievement were insufficient) for the Marines and also to some extent the paratroopers. Perhaps only Special Forces (the Green Berets) has a similar cachet with the public, though perhaps a bit well less known. It is natural for people to associate these terms with certain scenarios. Authors and screenplay writers can now count upon the public's familiarity with these units and readily use it, exploit it and abuse it.

Chicago seems to go its own way in several respects. I recall, some years ago, calling a probation officer in Chicago (I was then one in San Diego) and he asked me casually how much it cost to make supervisor in San Diego. The going rate was $10K in Chicago he said. He did not believe me when I said that there was no way to bribe a promotion where I worked (although there was a lot of fraternization that led to directors being married to supervisors, etc. and then oddly enough most of those married supervisors also made director.) In retrospect, I like the Chicago system more...

I also seem to recall tank unit memoirs where the tank crew was given some leeway when they replenished as to what types of ammo they could receive. Obviously, if some is in scarce supply, they're not going to get a lot of it, but they could to some degree manage their own load outs, depending upon unit (probably company commander) preferences, but possibly up to battalion level dictates, depending upon how closely supervised they were and the general supply situation. Recall that at some periods, right after the breakout, ammo was scarce in general. Since reloading was a one-on-one experience with the supply folks, I expect that a lot of custom loads went out, or quite a few at least. The wartime GI was pretty crafty and had a healthy dose of self-preservation in him.

In the absence of specific numbers of rounds available, you may as well just take a random number daily, pivoting around a "reasonable" minimum number. It amounts to the same thing. Daily ammo deliveries could vary with season and whether you were on the offensive or defensive...not to mention what was already in the pipeline being "pushed" to the front. Nothing I've read over the years made it sound like the "super" rounds were ever in any great supply, however...

Taking on a Tiger at 100 yards with a 75mm Pack Howitzer would take nerves of steel in my book. That's what made those guys so damn special. Not all of them, I'm sure, but enough to make the difference.

Not going to shed a tear for what is clearly a spam post.

If the parents don't value education, the kids will see little to be serious or focused about to begin with. No amount of excellent teaching can make up for a kid who is just not there because his parents say education is not important or relevant to him/her.

The real question is, why did this take so long to happen? The technology has been out there for a long time. I suspect other situations have arisen where illicit commandeering of a laptop webcam has taken place, we just don't know about them yet. Maybe this will cause some people to wonder why that little blue light is on all the time on their laptop, especially when they go to the shower... To be honest, I've been a bit paranoid about these webcams, wondering if even the "on" light can be bypassed. But one can hardly get by without skype or some other FTF software anymore, so I guess we'll have to live with it. But it would be nice to know that software and hardware people are on top of this and looking for ways to fix the problem and keep these cams from being hacked and/or surreptitiously remote commanded.

A few years ago my son in law (a Ukrainian) wanted a used H2 so he wired me the funds and I bought one for him and shipped it over there. He ended up paying double, for the import duty was about the same as the purchase price. Anyway, I got to drive it for a week and hated every moment of it. It was a real pig. Never again.

I'm Italian and Berlusconi absolutely baffles me...his support among Italians is something I cannot comprehend. I know Italians are basically an ungovernable people, but the way he has managed to keep getting votes is just amazing. Perhaps because I live in the US and am beyond the reach of his bribes and propaganda, I can see what they cannot...?

Loved both jokes, they made my day...even the wife laughed at the Lady Blair joke.

A very sad fate for such a young man. RIP.

And little Subaru's get through the worst of snow and ice, just fine...I had one years ago and enjoyed watching the poorly-balanced big SUV's spinning in circles while my Subie just cruised on by, nimble as a cat. So you don't need a locomotive sized SUV to beat snow, that's for sure.