Nidan1

You are really stretching here, you could probably take any group in a society and plug them into a category of doing "harm" But honestly do you equate the financial "wizards" and politicians who made decisions that made them rich, but ruined a lot of others financially, with people who seek to physically harm, maim or kill innocent people? And if you had any children (and I dont know if you do) you would realize that parents must raise their children, so that they can be productive members of the village. Not the other way around. We don't live in prehistoric tribal situations anymore, but maybe you and Hillary Clinton think we still do. You are right about a society paying for the upkeep of those we incarcerate, otherwise we would be headed back to the prehistoric tribal societies, and either banish or kill offenders. outright.

Like what? When a person serves notice on any society that he/she is not willing to live within the rules/laws that that society has put in place and accepted, what can be done with them. Human nature being what it is, there will always be predatory individuals who will seek to do harm to others in order to satisfy some need that they have which cannot be satisfied any other way. What other options are out there that have not been tried already? Imprisonment, mental health facilities, lobotomys, shock treatments, hanging, firing squads. I can go on and on because this is a dilema that has plagued humankind for centuries. The law does its best to make the punishment fit the crime, we are fallible beings, but there is a need for a society to be able to protect itself from criminal behavior.

Dzhokhar Tsarnev is sentenced to death.

Yeah, no problem, I figured it was a matter of practicality. Trying to parse out sections of a large post in order to answer specific points while maintaining the poster's identity can be a pain in the butt.

Guys, just a peeve of mine that I've noticed lately on these new boards. There are times when posts are quoted where the name of the poster is omitted and it just says QUOTE. For example Lethaface, your post above contains a couple of quoted posts, but no name as to who made them. I'm not picking on you,,,,I've seen it on other posts with quotes as well. Is this deliberate, or does the forum somtimes leave off the name from a quoted post. When multiple quotes are involved, and the discussion has generated a lot of interest, it's really annoying not to know who a person is quoting when responding to a post. It's no fun scrolling back over a long list of posts to try and piece together the multiple quotes and who they belong to. If it happens deliberately, guys, please try to make sure your quotes have the name of the poster in them, if it is something with the board itself, BF please fix or do sumfink!

I heard he went out to the privy to take a dump and the hogs ate him.

I'll address this one section first, I'm a little pressed for time right now, but you made some interesting observations. What you say about 19 year olds is probably very true. However for me personally, when I was 19 I was up to here in rice paddies, different times no doubt, but I was definitely politically ignorant at the time. I believed in the "Domino Theory" and the Red Menace had to be stopped no matter where it reared its ugly head. My experience in Vietnam made me feel exactly as you describe, of course Iraq had more urban areas than where I was, so you were in contact with locals a lot more than I. I think that feeling may be a fatal flaw in Americans, especially when in the military in a foreign country in wartime. Hell we interrupted our lives, or had them interrupted because the draft was still in force back then, and we came over here to help you, and you dont seem to give a damn. The ambivience of the South Vietnamese made us furious. Of course we knew nothing of them as a culture or anything of their history, no one ever bothered to give us any information about the place before we went over there. So if most of them considered us just another colonial master, and the farmers just wanted to be left alone, we (I) understood none of it. So we went along feeling superior and then resented the people we were there to help. What made things worse was that we were castigated by our own people when we came home. A little catharsis for me here, but I find it very interesting that 50 years later American military men have similar attitudes and gripes about what their country was asking them to do. It boils down sometimes, and this is true in many walks of life, the higher ups never ask the people that are doing the job what they need to do it better.

Yeah I noticed their expressions as well. They seemed genuinely proud to be there. Some of them also looked suntanned. Where would Russian soldiers get a suntan in early spring, is the Black Sea Region that warm this time of year? Of course they may have had someone dressed as Krusty the Clown mooning them as they went by, but that would have been off camera.

Trying to match Kettler post for post, is a difficult thing. At times he is very rational and puts forward arguments that are both relevant and interesting. In mind mind he is somewhat of an enigma, claiming to have problems which effect his ability to think and read, but yet is capable of posting enormous rambling items, with numerous links and expert use of the coding of the forum. Someone else is doing this or he really has no cranial difficulties and uses it as a defense against some of the severe and maybe mean spirited criticism he receives here. I am sometimes intrigued by what he posts, and I am often at odds with his viewpoints, but I can never match him for pure ability to frame any argument, back it up with dozens of internet links, and make claims that sometimes are totally unverifiable. Still, he is an interesting character and adds a lot of flair to otherwise dull exchanges on military and game related matters. You seem like an intelligent guy with a lot of in the first hand field experience with the goings on in the post cold war realm of the military. You at least also take the time to propose your point of view with no apologies, and no concern for the sensibilities of other posters. Which I am sure will rile some folks up, but is often needed for an honest discussion of things that have nothing to do with the game. The Admin folks have been fairly benevolent in allowing discussions not directly related to game play to go on, especially in the Black Sea Forum. Once an East vs West argument reaches critical mass, I'm sure they will step in a lock things up. Who do you dislike (I won't say hate, too strong a word at this point) more, the Iraqis or the Russians? I'm may be one of the ones who thought that going to war in Iraq would turn out to be a good thing. I also believe that war used as a political tool is usually the cause of problems later on. Maybe if we had crushed Sadaam Husein in 1991 when we had sufficient power on the ground to enforce a surrender we could have avoided 2003. If warfare is used one side or the other must totally impose their will upon the other. The last time this happened was in 1945, look how nice the Japanese and Germans have been since then. Especially in the light of how horrible they were prior. Mutually Assured Destruction changed the ground rules of warfare we could kill each other with glee as long as it didnt get to the point where one side would drop the bomb. The age of total conventional war was ove, and all of the unresolved conflicts that we have had since have come full circle in the behavior of the Russians in the current Ukraine situation. IMO of course.

Who is to say that Soviet soldiers would have performed any better in their equipment than their Arab counterparts? In 1973 they had very little practical combat experience in armored warfare. Soviet tank design during that time did not lend itself well to the deserts of the Middle East. Squat turrets and low silhouettes may have worked on the North German Plain, but not so much on the Golan or in the Sinai. Good hull down positions were difficult when the main guns could not be depressed enough to fire over desert escarpments. The Israelis with their higher Centurians and Pattons, could hide much better in defense and be able to fire first without exposing themselves.

The only gap was numerical, granted. Western tank design proved itself superior time and again before the Abrams was fielded, in 1967 and again in 1973 in the Middle East. Centurians, M-48s, M-60s and SuperShermans easily handled Syrian and Egyptian T-54/55s and T-62s. What caught the Israelis and Western analysts by surprise in 1973, was the extensive use of Sagger AT missles by the Egyptians, which effectively negated Israeli tank tactics early on.

I think that all military analysts of the Cold War era did a great dis-service to America by consistently over-hyping the capability of the Soviet Military in order to line their own pockets with lucrative Defense Department (taxpayer funded) contracts. I.e, the missile gap, the bomber gap, Soviet tank and aircraft superiority. It all turned out to be bunk. One case in point the Mig-25 hype job.

The Russians learned how to keep old vehicles running from the Cubans. Havana has more vintage American cars on the road than Jay Leno

Yeah but on this website posters are more likely to tear apart a WW2 movie because it has M-48 tanks in place of something that remotely looks like a Panther tank, than an actor playing a Cheyanne Warrior wearing the wrong style warpaint.

Cowboy movies are not meant to be historically accurate. The genre is about the state of mind and personality of people living in the American West in the early to mid 19th Century. Most cowboy movies revolve around people not historical events. Horses and six guns, damsels in distress and villans are all that are needed.

https://youtu.be/qioz4Aif-8o WW2 vintage aircraft fly over Washington DC.

Agreed, but Colonel_Deadmarsh was asking what would happen to a game in progress if both players intended to upgrade.

Yes, if you save your current turns in the COMMAND phase before upgrading.

I think its kinda creepy, sort of like the NSA or FBI checking on you. Perhaps he just dropped off the grid for a time....we all know how weird he is. Maybe a Reptoid got him, I understand there is a huge battle against them going on in the Pacific region.

Unfortunately you starting a new thread Story Teller, seems to have awakened groups of Aussies who have not been around here for quite sometime. We were quite happy with their absence, have you not heard of the phrase. "Let sleeping dogs lie"

Probably because there were no bites over there for several weeks. It was re-posted here, and now look, even you chimed in.... Out.

A great scenario for H2H play in the MG Mod is "Borderland" ++++++++++++++Spoliers++++++++++++++++++ This is a mainly infantry contest (Germans get three small tanks) simulating the shrinking British pocket at Oosterbeeck. Heavily wooded terrain with small villages and buildings scattered about. Deadly close quarter fighting. I suffered shocking losses as German player...you just keep walking into one ambush after another. So much fun! Probably easier for the Germans against the AI, but smart human defender (which I had) makes every inch of ground forward a deadly chore.

Actually the Irish Easter uprising began in 1916, pretty much all British forces were evacuated from the Dardanelles by January of that year. I must admit none of these posts (including mine) have anything to do with Normandy or NW Europe in 1944-45.

The landing of the ANZACs must have really annoyed the Turks who were also commencing their Genocide against Armenians on the same day as the landing.

John, I'm sorry to hear that you have issues that so severely restrict your ability to navigate through the game. How is it though, that you can pull off numerous links from the internet containing videos and written information when you want to make some point or provide others with arcane information. It puzzles me, having read your posts for years now, I can deduce that you are an intelligent man, but you try very hard to come off otherwise based on some nerve condition that you claim to have. I don't get it.