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Affentitten

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Posts posted by Affentitten

  1. Patton fired less commanders and lost less men than Bradley but I always think that this kind of data in isolation means nothing.

    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.

  2. In general I have a mistrust of the medical profession..I know that I should not, and it is not a personal issue like "I hate doctors" just is more of a situation where, it is one of the few times a person is really entirely at the mercy of someone else's professional integrity and abilities, and that does tend to make me nervous.

    That said, even with it taken into account, if this is true it is one of the worst examples. Amazing that some of them were able to keep their license to practice medicine in Greece, or the EU.

    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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. I reckon it wasn't about oil before (with general rapproachment between Libya & the West in the last few years there was no need -

    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.

  6. However, one could also say, that to actually know what you are writing about, could be considered a part of your job, if your job is to write about it.

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

  7. BBC is not exactly well known for its military expertise, having reported on a US Navy carrier "F-16" being downed before during the Gulf War, as just one memorable example. Of course, the US Navy does not fly F-16s, they are F-18s. Also recall BBC commenting before on a harpoon missile being fired by an aircraft at a radar site..of course, harpoon is an anti-ship missile, not an anti-radiation missile. Usually with "media" outlets, it is a good idea to just get the basics of the story, and realize that in military matters they are clueless on the exact details.

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

  8. It's called "incentive" SO hahahaha..and doesn't matter if you can outswim them, as long as you are in the water with someone even slower than you :)

    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..."

  9. 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!

  10. 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).

  11. 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.

  12. Diesel, finished reading the link, and it is enough to make the blood boil...letting inter-agency rivalry stop them from doing their job.

    I still would not say they intentionally aided the attack, but in the end result, the difference between "intentionally aided" and "was so f%^*ing stupid that they let it happen" is pretty small....

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

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