Affentitten

In the case of the former, a commander (or manager) may fire less staff because he doesn't let them do anything anyway and micro-manages. Another leader may fire a lot of staff because he gives them loads of responsibility and then gets rid of those who can't handle it. As for casualties.....depends who you're facing and what your objectives are. Losing 300 men to take a prison camp unecessarily is not better than losing 3000 men to take a vital beach-head.

Gotta love that they have an "add to wishlist" button on the pages!

Of course you kind of also put you life on the line every time you get in a car. Especially a taxi. Mrs Affentitten was alarmed the other morning on a 5 am trip to the airport to find that the taxi driver had nodded off and she had to punch him awake just as they strated to drift towards the barrier. Regarding the Greek thing, I think you have to take into account just how the Greeks tend to think of Albanians. Somewhere between donkeys and cockroaches would be about right. Useful for heavy work, but maybe still better off being eradicated.

Ahh yes, but because it's the NHS there would be a 14 year waiting list and you'd end up being serviced by an overweight Ghanian with almost no Englsih skills.

More proof of the uselessness of cats and women.

http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/US-Field-Manuals/abrams-oif.pdf#prof This gives some AARs and lessons learned. The basic thrust is that no M1 was ever 'killed' in the sense of the vehicle being destroyed. The combat losses due to enemy fire were mobility kills, especially penetration of the track skirts and ignition to ammo stores in the turret. The tanks thus disabled were from anti-armour RPG rounds and even 25mm fire into the engine compartment. Not a bad kill for a 25mm crew though you'd have to have balls of steel!! PS: I think SO that you might be thinking of a discussion on the Merkavas in 2006 Lebanon.

It's even more annoying when I finally get to watch them on a non-commercial network.

They eat bushes?

Oh, everybody was there. But I believe BP had the biggest chunk. What Exxon etc had in Libya was nothing compared to what they had elsewhere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oil_Corporation

I'm just saying that it's not totally altruistic. Mainly I am refuting SO's idea that removing Gadaffi would be a bad thing as far as the oil people are concerned. Britain and France (Britain especially) has the most historic interest in Libyan oil. It was BPs significant assets and contracts there that Gadaffi nationalised back at the start of his power. You can just imagine the corporate lawyers circling. The French are slighly newer on the block but they have made a lot of headway following their own reconciliation with Gadaffi over the UTA bombing.

I'm going through the same issue with my car. Vaguely planning on seeling it so the service has been overdue about a year now! I drive past the Qantas Avalon service facility a couple of times a week now.

By the standards of most North American carriers, Qantas is still in pretty good shape as far as maintenance goes though. No dilemma for me. On domestic flights Qantas is regularly about triple the price of the other carriers so I don't fly with them. On international flights I'd rather opt to fly Singapore, Emirates or Malaysian for about 25% less cost than Qantas.

There was a need to get rid of Gadaffi to maintain capitalist style access to the oil. For the last two or three years he has been threatening to nationalise the oil assets again and he has form for that.

It may be different over there, but a lot of the Australian correspondents I have seen covering Libya are.....not in Libya. They're in Tunisia, Malta, Rome, Egypt. Pretty much everywhere BUT Libya. It's no wonder things get mixed up.

Of course. But often journalists have to write about everything these days, and one cannot be an expert in everything.

Of course not. They are not technical military experts. They are a news outlet. And the news that American aircraft are attacking Tripoli is far more important than the specific model of jet dropping the bombs.

On the other hand, they get it right on a lot more occasions than they get it wrong.

As I recall Billy Connolly saying about the time he was swimming in Australia and the shark alert siren went off: "I came up out of the water like a Polaris missile....throwing young children over my shoulder to distract the thing..."

And now the Arab League, after weeks of clamouring for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone, are complaining about the damage caused by enforcing a no-fly zone.

Just to pick a nit, it was Robert A. Heinlein.

There is a slightly different scale in terms of budget and poipualtion though, remember! Our police strcuture is also much flatter. We only have State cops for each state. The Aus Fed Police are mainly concerned with stuff like transnational crime. They don't really over-ride the state cops. When I read somewhere that in Washington DC there are something like 7 different police style agencies from National Parks upwards....that to me is crazy!

It's a slippery slope. In both of our countries, the military (which is voluntary) exists to serve and protect the people, carrying out action as deemed fit by their elected representatives. If only military people were allowed to formulate policy for the military you have quite a different kettle of fish. Firstly you get the issue of whether the military policy makers would oppose orders given by the people's representatives. ("Nope, we won't do that because we think it's a bad idea and too dangerous.") Then you get the even greater can of worms of only current or ex military people are allowed to serve in government or even vote (Starship Troopers).

There have been cases of rivalry between the AFP (which acts in a kind of similar role to the FBI) and ASIO (domestic intel) and ASIS (foreign intel). They don't like each other much. But we don't have the huge number of extra things like you guys have created under homeland security, nor things like a separate Secret Service, ATF etc etc.

It was intentional. It was a comment on the opinion that only those with military service should be allowed to be politicians.

I wonder if the inter-agency rivalry is now greater given the huge new number of agences?