Vanir Ausf B

Don't worry. China will lend us the money to pay for it.

Sounds like we need a dictator (imperator?) OMFGBBQ you're as old as Emry's.

The Romans had a good run. We could do worse.

Given that both players will have access to the maps prior to setup, I would think most map selection will be via mutual consent.

Yeah, I was going on the assumption that the most common units would have zero rarity (as they did in CMx1 games), so you could burn all 12 rarity points (to use your example) on 2 Tiger Is and then still purchase a few IV Hs with whatever purchase points were left over. So I guess the question is: do even the most common units in CMBN cost a minimum number of rarity points?n MikeyD's post suggests they do.

Aren't rarity points separate from purchase points in CMBN?

I would say that Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are all different situations and it's perfectly logical to be in favor of invading some but not all. For example, I supported going into Afghanistan but not Iraq since one was self-defense while the other was not. If something is to be done it really should be the EU that does it. It's too bad they have cut back on defense spending so much that they are no longer capable doing much of anything on their own.

From a wargaming perspective I've always found the Russian front more interesting on the strategic and operation levels. But at the tactical level the Western front seems more dynamic in terms of different nationalities involved and variety of units and equipment. The Russian infantry's lack of good organic anti-armor capability means you have to be careful about what armor units you allow in games. IIRC, outside of 1945 and spring '42 one side or the other has a strong advantage in armor.

"We" are busy. Send Wikileaks.

Well, thank you. I think... :confused: BTW, if you can find a way to get there they probably could find a gun for you if you're not picky about quality. AKs are a dime a dozen in that part of the world.

True enough. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." I see world leaders doing the opposite.

That bugged me too. Hopefully we'll get some chest-bumping animations in the modules.

I'm with Pak 43 on this one. If you start basing your foreign policy on moral outrage you're going to end up in wars all over the place. If Libya, why not Darfur? Or Zimbabwe? If the Saudis crack down further on the protests there do we bomb them also? We definitely don't want to start handing out Stingers to people. :eek: Don't assume Kaddaffi will be defeated without his air force. The rebel forces are outnumbered, lack heavy weapons of all types, lack command and control capabilities and military training in general. They are also not a united group politically. If you put a no-fly zone in place but Ghaddaffi doesn't fall, then what? You gonna buzz around up there for the next decade a la Iraq in the 90s, or you going to invade to finish it a la Iraq in the 00s? We have our plate full in Afghanistan right now. If France wants to do it then more power to 'em.

Not a deal breaker, but still a major omission IMO. I used to adjust waypoints on virtually every PBEM turn.

It would be super cool if he were to resurrect CMHQ. Doesn't look likely tho....

Is it actually necessary to have a confirmation of someone killed because of the information in the reports in order for them to have an effect on relations between NATO forces in Afghanistan and the native population? I don't think so, and judging from your comments below you don't seem to think so either. I don't have numbers handy, but I'm guessing you're lumping Iraq and Afghanistan together here. That would be a mistake. Wikileaks is not the victim here. Of course it is not solely to blame either, but it has willingly done it's part. We can talk about lax US security procedures if you wish, but that is not the subject of this thread. I'm not sure what you mean by "self-centered". If by that you mean caring about my countrymen in danger, which will likely include a member of my immediate family in the future, then I make no apologies. If you mean that I am being myopic in my criticism of Wikileaks while ignoring good things they may have done, then I will reiterate that I don't contest that Wikileaks has done some real good with some of their actions, nor do I even claim that a "whistle-blower" organization like Wikileaks is an inherently bad idea. I just think they have been reckless at best, malicious at worst, in some of their actions. And yes I do think Julian Assange is a scumbag. But that's not quite the same thing as condemning Wikileaks itself, as Daniel Domscheit-Berg would probably agree.

Absence of evidence... Link Emphasis added. Zero (0) that we know about is not necessarily the same as zero (0). If the number was greater than zero (0), would you even care? So you do not think that the release of the Afghan logs may make Afghans less likely to cooperate with NATO forces in Afghanistan i.e. that is an imaginary fear?

That would be subjective. I was referring to legality. Whether the Iraqi government was "correct" I will let you decide, but it was the Iraqi government and was recognized as such by the UN. As I posted earlier, the large majority of Afghan informants named were rounded up and taken to US bases for protection. A small number have not been found and presumably their fates are unknown. As for exact numbers, I don't have any.

Mother of god. Why am I not surprised? Do you realize that was a cut and paste from the article I linked to?! That wasn't even my words. The reason they were placed in quotation marks is because the original article I cut and pasted them from had them in quotation marks, hence the quotation marks were cut and pasted along with the rest! :confused: For me to remove the quotation marks would be to misrepresent the article. People cut and paste snippets of text out of larger articles all the time so readers don't have to wade through the full article to find the relevant part if they don't won't to. People do this all the freakin' time! You've been posting on this board for a decade and you need this explained to you? This is why when I posted the links to the anti-semitism articles I was sure to make the normally unnecessary disclaimer that I cannot personally vouch for their absolute accuracy. I addressed that disclaimer specifically to you because you are the only person who would take the mere posting of those links as claims to them being the word of god, and use that as a launch board into another insulting attack on my "critical thinking skills" or whatever the KR Strawman of the Day is. Ugh.

^^ Same here. After the first few games I turned them off permanently. It made it easier to listen for audio cues to events actually happening in the game.

Depends on whether the people who's names are redacted have done something criminal, and whether that possible criminal act would justify death. I think a reasonable person can make judgments on such things. People living in a war zone where one side has a documented history of killing informants is in a very different category than someone living in New York who may have committed tax evasion or bank fraud. Yes, it does mean taking a side! Thank you. Is there a problem with that? I do in fact support my own country's armed forces in whatever conflict they may be engaged in. That includes conflicts that I would have preferred they never to have become involved in, such as Iraq. They didn't make the decision to go there. As for the informants, no, the West is not the arbiter of right and wrong but after the fall of Saddam their soldiers were fighting on the side of the internationally recognized government of that country and therefore I find it highly unlikely that informants aiding them would have been breaking the laws in that country. Same in Afghanistan. It is true that some informants have deliberately passed false information in order to implicate rivals, but they are a minority. For the most part such information has been very helpful, and in fact anyone who is at all familiar with counter-insurgency operations knows that the cooperation of the local population is a critical element in the success or failure of such operations. My own brother's life was perhaps saved in Iraq by one such informant who approached their convoy one day to warn of a sniper ahead. I don't expect you to care whether or not my brother gets his head blown off, or for any other Yankee imperialist dog for that matter. But I note that you do live in the country that has the second largest Western contingent of troops fighting in Afghanistan, and did also in Iraq. As for Wikileaks in general, I'm not going to say that nothing they have done is worthwhile, just that they have been reckless at best, malicious at worst, in some of their releases. I'm not sure what to make of this. But if you mean we should not care about any of them, well, you go right ahead with that.

I'm not sure where this idea of a "room full" of reporters comes from. The initial Afghanistan leaks were only shared with 3 papers and the quote suggests they were seated with Assange together at a single table. It is consistent with his other quote in a different paper where he refers to the informants as "criminals". But whatever. People can believe or not, but actions speak louder than words and Assange's actions clearly say he's more than willing to risk people getting killed over what he does. That's enough for me.

This and this. And no, KR, I am not claiming anything is absolute irrefutable fact. I'm answering costard's question to the best of my knowledge.

First it was "critical thinking skills". Now it is proving a negative. You really need to stop using terms you obviously don't understand the meaning of. What, pray tell, is the negative I'm trying to prove here? If I were attempting to prove Assange didn't say what the Guardian claims he did that would be trying to prove a negative (i.e. proving the absence). Of course that is not at all what I'm doing. If anything that would be rather closer to your position. If I were attempting to prove anything it would be that he did say it (proving the presence). But I'm not even doing that. Let's look at this key sentence: It is true that we do not know for an absolute fact that he said those exact words. In American English that means that we don't know it for a fact. The phrase "do not know" should be a dead giveaway. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that could be construed to mean anything significantly different in Queen's English. So what I actually said was nearly the opposite of what you just claimed I said. Well done! Where did I claim it was a proven fact? I didn't. You just made that up. I'm quite happy to let people make their own judgment on its veracity, and quite happy to let you keep tripping over your own strawman arguments. What I do think is that it is an accurate assessment of Assange's view, at least in the general sense, given that he has been quoted expressing such a view by two different sources that are generally regarded as reputable. That is not the same thing as claiming that any one source should be regarded as God's own word. I wouldn't have thought that would need explaining, but that's the General forum for ya.

Link The subject of the OP was Assange himself more so than Wikileaks, so that's what I commented on. It's not just informants' lives that Assange's "strangeness" has possibly endangered. How many US and Allied service men and women are alive today because some local Afghan or Iraqi approached them to warn of an ambush or IED? If these releases put a chill on the collection of such information how many US and Allied soldiers will die that otherwise would not have? We will never know, but it is a valid question and a valid concern for anyone who actually cares about the people fighting over there. That would include me, but obviously not Julian Assange. Forgive me if I don't find his strangeness altogether harmless.