America about to shamed before the world on Italian Satellite TV

If he'd intended to insult the Army, he'd have said "the ****ing US Army." "US ****ing Army" is intended to emphasize the credibility of his source.

 

It's completely disrespectful anyway you slice it. Just because he was in the Army 13 years ago doesn't give him a free pass by any means.

 

It's not.

"A source in the Rockets front office told me today that we will be trading for Tracy McGrady. This is not a Peter Vecsey rumor - this is coming from the Houston ****ing Rockets."

(For example.)

 

Brah,

Kos actually served in the Army, so I don't think he needs to justify his support of the military to a keyboard warrior such as yourself. Anybody who reads his writing regularly can see that he is a huge supporter of our soldiers. The difference is his support is authentic and deep as opposed to your faux slap another yellow ribbon on my SUV support.

 

typical bigtexxx (aka right-wing noise machine), attack the source, ignore the substance

 

This thread is hilarious.

Watching bigtexxx (armchair warmonger) lamblast a former member of the US military as not "supporting the troops" by quoting a military publication is just pure poetry.

 

Lol, I swear I was gonna post that but I skipped it.

Ah, it's great to see someone around here isn't too big to make a retraction. Good for you.

We're all subjective so I don't think its realistic to claim you're 'objective' and others are not. If we're dealing in facts then maybe, but these are opinions. Besides I did say that this isn't a definitive opinion. I pointed out a couple of examples where I was struggling to reconcile the whole moral/immoral - civilian targeting issue. However, we shouldn't get too off track. In this case the US did NOT target civilians. If you're talking about the USE of Mk77 and WP then should we at least examine the reasons for its continued use rather than assuming it shouldn't be used. In this case for example, who is to say that this reporter wouldn't have started her show with the same Vietnam era film even if we hadn't used WP? Or maybe she'd have used film from My Lai. The bad perception would be the same, no? The ill will would be the same, so there is no unique impact to using WP or Mk77. On the other hand there is a tangible military benefit.

What about in Serbia? What about Germany - they haven't started any world wars lately.

Yep. I alluded to this earlier when I pointed out there was a particular commander, Air Marshal something or another - later criticized by Churchill among others over Dresden.

 

You are referring to Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command. He was a great proponent of night area bombing. He's famous, or infamous, for saying this after the raid...

"I assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier." (That was a deliberate riff on a famous quote from Bismark, "The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.")

From Wikipedia:

Dresden was known as Elbflorenz, or Florence on the Elbe, regarded as a beautiful city and a cultural centre, with noted architecture in the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House, and the Dresden Frauenkirche, its historic cathedral. Before the war, the city's main industries had been china production, cups and saucers, and cigarettes. British historian Anthony Beevor writes [44] that having been spared previous RAF night attacks Dresden was considered relatively safe and that at the time of the raids there were up to 300,000 refugees in the city escaping from the fighting in the east.

The absence of direct military presence in the centre of the city, and the devastation created by firebombing, is regarded by advocates of the position that the bombing represented a war crime as establishing this "on its face". For many, there is no need to argue any further than the absence of military necessity, the civilian death toll, and Dresden's cultural significance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II


So it goes...



Keep D&D Civil.

 

so because the left shows concern that we (America) might not be following the treaties and conventions that we agreed to, we're traitors and anti-troops?

if that is true, than what does this say about your party?


Veterans Lash Out at Loss of Voice on Capitol Hill

11/10/2005 11:09:00 AM

To: National Desk

Contact: David E. Autry of Disabled American Veterans, 202-314-5219

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A proposal to end the long-standing practice of veterans groups addressing a joint session of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees is an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution, according to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV). And in a strongly worded letter to House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), the DAV has urged him to continue the joint hearings as an invaluable tool in formulating public policy toward America's veterans.

Chairman Buyer recently announced that veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees.

"The tradition of legislative presentations by veterans service organizations dates back to at least the 1950s. And the timing of this announcement -- just before Veterans Day -- could not have been worse," said DAV National Commander Paul W. Jackson.

For several decades now, these joint hearings have been held each year to allow the elected leaders of veterans groups to discuss their organization's legislative agenda and foremost concerns with the lawmakers who have jurisdiction over federal veterans programs. Senators and Representatives who serve on those committees also get the rare opportunity to address the hundreds of constituent members from these organizations' who make the annual pilgrimage to Capitol Hill.

"The right to fully participate in the democratic process is a cornerstone of our nation," said Commander Jackson. "Eliminating these joint hearings is an insult to the men and women who have fought, sacrificed and died to protect our Constitutional rights, including the right to petition the government."

This important dialog between veterans and their elected representatives is crucial to the democratic process and a unique opportunity for the men and women who've put their lives on the line for America. Many of the veterans who take part in the hearings view it as their patriotic duty, as well as a fundamental right.

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=56522

---

Remember that Buyer was handpicked by criminally-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to replace former veterans committee chairman Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who had been extremely vocal about the consistent underfunding of veterans causes.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/10/veterans-day-outrage/

 

Hasn't this been sufficiently been proven to be false? We're not a party to the 1980 Treaty banning napalm and the 1997 CWC Convention doesn't ban napalm.

 

The point is there was concern we weren't sticking to our treaties. Whether we were or not, is irrelevant to the bigtexxx's accusation that this proves we don't support the troops.

 

"SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!
.........."

- BIGTEXXX

 

Yeah, I'm not entering into that discussion. To be fair I thought the issue of the thread was not wholly about the possible treaty violations - rather as some have voiced whether its worth it to be using these weapons. With that in mind I didn't see the point of bringing that (proven) false accusation of treaty violation up again. The post could have read: "so because the left is showing concern about the weapons we're using, that means we're traitors and anti-troops?"

 

your right

The question here should be the use of a weapon that is further eroding the US's moral standing in this war. We're supposed to be the bigger people here, we supposally went to war because Saddam uses WMDs and tortures people - and now WE stand accused of doing the same things to the Iraqi people, putting our troops in greater danger - but the left is the one accused of being traitors to our troops

 

I'm not making the accusation bigtexx is, I just thought you were repeating the false allegations put forth earlier in the thread.

 

My primary concern is the somewhat deceptive way in which the military responded to the questions about napalm. If they really do feel that it is something different, a course of full disclosure would seem to be appropriate. In other words, when asked about napalm they should respond, "No we don't use napalm. We do use this other stuff which replaced it. Here's why it's different..."

Instead, by simply saying, "No we don't have any napalm." and not mentioning the psudo-napalm substance until confronted with facts by reporters much later, they have created a clear case where the military, while technically short of lying, was deceptive.

If the military is so willing to provide deceptive responses over such a trivial mater, what is to say that they aren't being deceptive about Abu Ghraib, or the allegations by the Italian news station.

I apreciate that deception can potentially have a positive effect, but it is clear to me that these effects are transient and brief, and the potential long term damage is great. That was the analogy I attempted to draw with Louvain.

The Germans were doing something that they found perfectly reasonable which protected soldiers in Belgum for a while, but the sacking of Louvain along with the sinking of the Lusitania (which apparently was another legal act as there were munitions on board) were both legitimately defensable moral positions with short term benefits which were disasterous in the long run.

The issue I had was the deception about its existence and use.

In Serbia the bombings were of things like power stations and bridges. These were bombings that hurt civilians but didn't cause moral outrage like bombing an orphanage or a market would.

I would say that the fact that we defeated the Germans completely had more to do with continued German peace than the killing of civilians did. I think the remaking of German sociey occured in spite of rather than because of the bombing of civilians.

 

I see it more of a knee jerk 'oh boy, here we go' denial than anything else. 'You've been accused of using napalm' - 'we don't use napalm anymore.' But I don't think you concern is off base or unreasonable.

True, but again these are conflicts I'm having that I'm trying to hash out. While they weren't bombing houses, those were civilian targets. While I understand the practical difference between firebombing a city and destroying civilian power and water infrastructure - in principle they are both attacking civilians, right? Or does morality hinge on not attacking civilians physically themselves?

Could be. But there is a pretty darn big pacifist streak in both Germans and Japanese. First hand citizen accounts put that to seeing horrible destruction first hand in their own towns.

 

Am I the only one who thinks this (bolded part) is obvious?

 

Wow. Just when you think you've seen the height of Republican Leadership stupidity and hypocrisy, they manage to top themselves. What absolute BS.

Come on, Republicans... what have you got to say about this??



Keep D&D Civil.

 

In my mind the difference is righteous indignation. Blowing up bridges is anoying, but when you see people flayed alive it shocks you. Think about the 9/11 attacks. The response was fierce because people felt that they'd had a horror commited against them that was beyond all reason, and that it had been wronged. It wasn't so much that all this stuff had gotten blown up, but that these innocent people had been blindsided for no good reason. Also, think of how much more play the beheadings in Iraq get than average killings. Because the results were gruesome and in your face, people payed more attention.

I think there is a difference in the amount of effort applied. If you want to fight a Civil War type of conflict we might be able to get them to the same state, but I think that would escalate into a pan-Arab conflict and Americans wouldn't want to pay that price.

Like in a boxing match, the Germans and Japanese were eventually worn down and the punches in the 12th round don't hang in your memory? I don't think we are ready to commit to beating on Iraq to the point of KO, and I think if we did, we'd just inflame other Arabs into conflict who would see a heavyweight beating the crap out of a beaten down old man.

I also think there are coping mechanisms that come with total defeat. The inability of many Japanese to admit their own atrocities in WWII and the ability of Germans to shovel the load onto the Nazis as a result of the very public Nuremberg trials are ways of deflecting the rage.

There's a film I recently saw called Der Untergang. It's in German so you need to deal with subtitles, but the important thing is that it's a German film about the last week of Hitler's life. It is truly interesting because you can feel all of the tension and conflict that still exists around the issue in some part of German culture. Ultimately, I wonder if it will totally be released before everybody who was alive at the time has passed away. The Neuremberg Trials lasted for four years, and the Germans were regularly dealing with "war crimes" into the 60's.

Quotes at the beginning of the film by the real Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary:

[rquoter]
Traudl Junge: I've got the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this young and oblivious girl. Or that I'm not allowed to forgive her for not seeing the nature of that monster. That she didn't realise what she was doing. And mostly because I've gone so obliviously. Because I wasn't a fanatic Nazi. I could have said in Berlin, "No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to go the Führer's headquarters." But I didn't do that. I was too curious. I didn't realise that fate would lead me somewhere I didn't want to be. But still, I find it hard to forgive myself.

Traudl Junge: All these horrors I've heard of during the Nurnberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn't made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn't know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn't an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.

[/rquoter]