Affentitten

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I was also puzzled by a safety sign I saw on a tour boat on the Perfume River in Vietnam. It said "No boarding with human body parts, cattle or radioactive materials." I mean, why? There must be a reason they listed those three things to the exclusion of all else.

I remember once seeing the dress rules at a club I was entering. One of the rules was "No wearing of t-shirts with objective slogans."

I'm not a journalist. I base my assumptions on several years of research, including publishing research papers on Libya and the particular mechanisms and processes of Gadaffi's power. I really object to you continually lauding yourself as some sort of reasoned debater who loves informed discussion. Yet you never actually show any evidence of that. You just toss off the party line. You've been told for years that Saddam was the worst guy since Hitler so that for you has become fact, based also on the fact that you've been to Iraq. All the the things that you say happened in Iraq happened. Yet they also happen in Libya too, and probably on a more comprehensive basis and the link with world terror is demonstrably greater. Hence my strenuous objection to the glib assertion that Iraq was worse or a better case for intervention. Saying that you have been personally thanked, have heard from witnessess, blah blah blah....sorry, but it doesn't make an "informed debate" because you have no data from the other side of the assertion you are trying to make.

On what basis do you make that call? The way you toss off subjective assumptions as facts is ridiculous. And that is exactly why I oppose statements like "The case in Iraq was even stronger than Libya..." Or "people in Iraq are better off..." or "Prisoners in Guantanomo are better off..." You seem fixated on the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the Anfal campaign. Fine. But Gadaffi has arguably got an even worse human rights record in the long term and arguably has a far more oppressive (and effective) state security apparatus than Saddam ever had. Partly that's because of the particular mechanisms of the Jamahiriya system and partly it's because of the greater isolation of his people that Gadaffi has been able to enforce. On top of that, Gadaffi was vastly more active in the sponsorship of international terror than Saddam was and did have a WMD program. So no, the cases are not parallel and are not similar. They are different, both in terms of the extant regimes and the situation with the citizenry at the time of intervention (or potential intervention).

Exactly my points. Like many I thought that Afghanistan had some justification but Iraq was a retarded idea based upon a faulty world view and badly executed to boot. You can certainly be against intervention in Iraq and pro intervention in Libya (not that I am at this point). To say that you must be for intervention OR against it in all cases is childish.

Yes, it's really a great idea to lump every single case together in a black or white worldview.

I'd say it's too late now anyway. The Benghazi Handicap has been run again.

Hey SO any info on what aviation assets were lost at the Sendai airport? I'm pretty sure I saw a few military aircraft smashed up onto a hangar there.

I'm still waiting for a freaking huge lizard thing to do battle with a nuclear boosted giant squid in Tokyo Bay. With jet planes and tanks unable to do any damage to their thick skins weeping PURE unobtanium hydroperoxide. Then I'll take notice.

And be using it against a mob prone to breaking at the first salvo. Or at the very least unable to tactically respond to a serious fight.

Imagine the giant lizards that are now stirring under the ocean!

The no fly zone is a bit like asking a rapist to wear a condom. It falls into that Western conception that air power is always the key. This Libyan issue will not be decided by a few dozen MiG sorties dropping dumb bombs in the vicinity of the rebels. I have no doubt that the USA alone could reduce the Libyan Airforce (the working parts of it) by about 90% with a single volley of Tomahawks. It will even the odds and make everyone feel like they've done something, of course. But it's the ground elements and the civilian opinion which will win things. The rebel rabble, if it wants to go all the way, needs some stiffening. But the issue there is that once you start committing 'advisors', it's a slippery slope and certainly allows Gadaffi to prove his point about foreign perfidy.

Well if you ignore the medical outcomes, the golden age for living in Britain would have been at the height of the Saxon period. say about 950 - 1050 AD. Low population density, good weather, no real shortages, no real need for money, enough food for everyone, no Normans bossing you round and telling you not to hunt deer in that forest over there...

Well I think the same about the whole pirate thing. What's so great about pirates? If you say to the mum of a toddler that it's a pirate themed birthday party, they will think it's cute and dress their little one up. But if you say it's a rape, murder, theft and slavery party they won't be so keen.

My wife is always mooning over Jane Austen type historical dramas and saying "I would have loved to live back then." I say, "Yeah, as long as you were not in the 99% of the population killing themselves to make a few pennies a day. Or you don't mind dying from something as simple as a tooth abcess. Or botulism from the canned ham you bought. Or the fact that you'd have to press out twice as many kids because half of them would die. Or else you'd beed to death delivering them. Oh yeah, and we wouldn't be having this conversation because as a woman you'd just have to STFU if I told you to."

Well it's always very hard with the campiagns pre-20th century to assign casualties given the prevalance of disease attrition. Certainly there's also the civilian losses to consider too. Ans as somebody mentioned, the recovery rates from wounds. Loss of 'manpower' is also a long term effect. The guy who was a miner or a logger or a farmer who comes back home without enough limbs to return to his former profession.

Gee. D'ya think?

I guess it would be pretty hard to be taking sextant or astrolabe readings from the seat of an F-22.

I seem to recall a Tom Clancy style novel where this was the basis of nobbling the US military.

A logical fallacy since it means there is no room for innovation or change, since the professionals would always be right. A contention even more likely to be wrong at points of great paradigm shift like WW1. The experts of long experience were the same ones who kept thousands of men and horses sitting around nursing a woody for the next big cavalry charge....since that was the way battles were won.

Well according to the Wiki article, ACW KIA = Union 140,000 + Confed 72,500 = 212,500 Plus of course a lot of non-combatants. They list The Oxford Companion to American Military History as the source.

All of the things you mention take time and are expensive. The BBC budgets are quite frankly 20 - 30 times what the shows I worked on had to play with. The BBC pursues a quality over quantity model, which is fine for them because they have lost of other streams of content and genre to make up their air time. A cable channel that specialises in history doesn't have that luxury. Time Team is very cheap to make. A bunch of modestly paid or unpaid archaeologists grubbing about in a field in Cumbria.

I don't understand why you think that TV producers are obliged to shoot for greatness or that they somehow don't have the commercial pressures that any other business faces. Turning out something to a cost is how it works. Coming up with an hour of full HD CGI tank battle to satisfy the very few grogs whingeing about the antennas not being right just isn't a viable commercial decision.

But this is my point....what is the degree of imprecision you're willing to accept?