Slashdot Mirror
Army Plans Overhaul of Infantry Gear
nxg125 writes "Wired is running an article about a seven-year, $250 million revamping of the US Army's uniforms. One of the major obstacles is going to be how to power all the electronic devices that the soldiers will use. 'They have at least one idea, though. "Avoid the use of Microsoft Windows operating systems," a recent memo on the subject directed. FFW is going open source. Cleaner software needs less energy to run.'"
"Once you're in an urban environment, it strips out a lot of (America's) technology advantages," he said. "It puts you in a fair fight. And you don't want to be in a fair fight."
So why are guerilla tactics used by an opposing force often decried as unfair or underhanded? The side at a disadvantage uses any and all means at their disposal to help make the fight more "fair". This fellow seems to back that up, unless having a lopsided fight is only sporting when it's his team doing the slaughtering.
Trolling is a art,
Awww. I was so looking forward to the Yankee "Blue Soldier of Death" putting fear in the hearts of the enemy from the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Our Armed forces are going to be one giant beowulf cluster!
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
Non-bloat software? I'm surprised the Army didn't just try to strap a nuclear power plant to the soldier's back.
Pork! Pork! Pork!
Who do you want to conquer today?
...which already has some open source ties.
For example, the Vishnu planning engine (source code and project site here) is being used as part of FCS logistics planning.
The Army reading list
Pengiuns now in the military? :)
*ducks*
How to power those things? Haven't they seen the Matrix?
Billy boy ain't gonna like this...
I can't wait till the army rebels against M$!
What distro would be appropriate for the soldier of the future? RedHat, Slack, Mandrake, Suse? Interesting that they're being open-minded about open source. I wish more branches of the government would consider it at least.
Boy you know it's not going to be very easy to edit whatever.conf on your jacket. Maybe they should reconsider this.
Well, the USMC uses suits like this that are powered by sound. Tiny receivers built into a Marine's helmet transmit sound energy into a belt-mounted unit to the rear. Guttural, high-pitched sounds generate the most energy, so when you see a sergeant right up in a private's face screaming, he's actually just recharging the private's batteries. No, really!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
There are very good reasons for the military to avoid using Windows.
Being closed-source, Windows wouldn't be peer-reviewable by the army, nor could the army fix its own problems with the code if they encounter any.
No need for a cheap-shot.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Just as you see the whites of their eyes
FIRE.EXE has performed an illegal operation and w.....
If it's "our army", it's good. Otherwise, it's always whack.
The best possible solution for a problem like this, as the military well knows, is a custom-designed one, whether the code is published in the end, or whether it relies on OSS or CS resources, or not.
This borders on propaganda - taking the slightest excuse to launch a barb, every time, like clockwork.
So eventually I'll be able to compile a wardrobe that will make me tougher than anyone else on the street?
All I got when I was in the military was a gun, uncomfortable boots, and a pair of clean socks. Luckily, I didn't see any combat or I would have needed an extra pair of clean underwear too.
Cause everyone wants a free Xbox360
Hauling 30,000,000 lines of code around will wear anyone out!
Get help writing battle plan.
Set us up the bomb.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Once Linux penetrates into systems used on the battlefield, Slashdot posters will be able to whine: OH NOES! BABY KILLERS ARE USING TEH LUNIX! as opposed to just saying the same stale jokes about M$/micros~1/whatever all day long.
Well, anything for variety I suppose.
"We're stripping the soldier down to his skin, and ..." said ... De Gay,
Methane power! Just pop a fuel cell up the poop tube, and give the soldiers double helpings of beans.
2) Get shot in the chest by an AP round. Play taps, or a user designated song like, " Stairway to Heaven"?
3) They run away from a fight. Will their back turn yellow?
I'm sure they will have some way of tracking the people that go awol eventually. Like a permanent tracking device in the base of the skull.
Inquiring minds want to know.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
One of the major obstacles is going to be how to power all the electronic devices that the soldiers will use
Build their helmets with solar panels
(that the US army spends most of it's time in deserts or barren hills would tell you that this'd be the most efficient thing to do)
they better be having one hell of a bake sale to make that kind of money...
Open source in the military? Has anybody made a Colonel Panic joke yet?
If they are equiped with *BSD as the battle-suit's OS, the world will quake in fear at the prospect of American zombie troopers!
...but what the hell is a beowulf?
Unless you are using British English, in which case you conjugate verbs as though the noun were plural if the noun is a group.
So much for "don't ask, don't tell".
"Enemy spotted, 100 yards and closing.
"Open fire soldier!"
"Sir my weapon says it's not responding"
"Reboot soldier!"
"I did sir, but each time I reboot it still says "Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service terminated unexpectedly.""
"Disable your wireless connection soldier and switch to manual override, we're being exploited!"
Meanwhile somewhere in the middle east...
"Heheheheh.........silly Americans...."
i can see it now
some U.S. general in 2020 controlling his brigade with a souped up version of Command & Conquer from the relative safety of the Pentagon.
Like, quietness - I wouldn't want a loud fan, or any fan for that matter, on my back.
Battery life, reliability stability - wouldn't want any of this going down in a critical moment.
Redundancy/Backup system - wouldn't want to be unable to complete tasks if electronic gear is down.
Liability - I can see gunsight video appearing on the internet (already is for some aircraft videos)
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
Even though he seems to be the real deal, somehow the idea of someone named Jean-Louis DeGay talking about "stripping the soldier down to his bare skin" makes me vaguely uneasy.
So how exactly is the bag on the inner thigh supposed to aid the soldier to go no. 2?
Is that where you can keep your leaves?
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
when they aren't in deserts or barren hills. The military does just as many operations under the fall of darkness and places where the sun doesn't go (pun intended).
Hmmm.
'DeGay and his fellow Future Force Warriors call it a "load-bearing chassis."' - load-bearing chassis, reminds me of some PC term like 'Big Boned'. She ain't heavy, she's just got a load-bearing chasis.
"If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
If this means full iPods built into the suit, count me in! Where's the nearest recruiting office? Who needs ammo when you are armed with 5,000 songs.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
As a consequence, the military has chosen to provide the utmost camoflauge, while at the same time provide a uniform that simply scares the hell out of the enemy. HERE is the prototype. (I know geocities, I'm lazy it's the first imge I could find)
DeGay said. "He doesn't have to waste brain matter moving from this rock to that one. And that's going to make him fight better, in the end." ......heaven forbid we have to use our minds..
A bunch of Tech Stuff
I can just see it now... in the next major war soldiers will mysteriously develop the l33t h4xx0r syndrome.
Officials will deny its existence.
Don't confuse me with a Windows appologist, but there is no direct relation between "cleaner" software and energy use. It is quite possible for software to be "dirty" but use energy efficiently.
I'm all for jumping on window's faults, but assuming that windows uses more energy because it is not "clean" is wrong and biased. When it becomes a requirement to use less energy to sell a bazillion copies of Windows to the military, MS will throw a bazillion and one programers at the task. Then there will be a "dirty" but energy efficient version of windows (maybe thay can call it an earthen wall).
Even more importantly, assuming that a "clean" program will use less energy is absurd. There is no direct relation between the two. A clean program in general will be easier to maintain, tweek, etc, and may be easier to make energy efficient, but being "clean" doesn't make it energy efficient.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
It's a similar way too forward-looking military thing. The plan is that by 2020, every soldier will have an IP address.
Using a Windows version could really bring about a whole new meaning to the phrase "Blue Screen of DEATH"
I'm only paranoid because everyone is against me...
"Avoid the use of Microsoft Windows operating systems,"
Too bad. I guess that means no MS Word either. I guess that means no clippy, and I guess that means no:
It looks like you're killing people. Would you like help?
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Non-combatants.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I think a bsd platform would be better for the government and/or military to utilize in specialized applications. That way they can choose what code they want to make public and share with the open source community. Would not make much sense to have the programs that helps america defend themselves on the battlefield posted on some opensource website for the entire world (enemies included) to see.
Even some of our so called friends we don't want having access to that. Like France, I am sure they would help anyone around work against the United States if they were willing to pay up, maybe with illegal contracts or under the table exchanges of money.
If I were them, I'd take a blanket storage approach to power. Use extremely efficient power drains, coupled with a battery for storage of energy. Then they can harness it in multiple ways: solar (during the day), kinetic (from movement), wind (small portable turbines in a windy environment, or over the shoulder while walking), and water (when camped/resting near a river or stream--you could even use the same turbine you use for wind power).
You wouldn't need to power a city off this stuff, just keep a continual charge building, and add perhaps a max of one-pound of weight for the turbine. Most of the time these special components would not be needed, and any time they aren't used, they can recharge...
Am I missing anything here? Is there some reason the Armed Forces aren't doing this? Or are they?
-The Libra
"You've got no kids, no wife, no job, and you're not in The Tigger Movie!!!"
- my best friend's son, Gabe, at 5 years old.
-The Libra
"Please be patient--The future will begin momentarily."
Secondly, it is common in British-English to use 'are' after a noun that indicates a plurality. In this case Motörhead is/are made up of multiple people and is/are plural.
So, put down your grammar swastika and become an informed poster.
anyone who's been in the army knows what I'm talking about.
Your GPS has this big whack battery that only works in it. Your NVG's are the same (well, the 'new' ones will actually takee AA's as well). That big 'ol SINGARS radio, what a beast of a battery. The secure comm unit for it, again another specialised battery.
When I was in the army I always thought our biggest weakness was every single piece of electronic gear took a specialised battery that would only work in that item. Nothing could just use commodity batteries.
I think they are just taking this a step further. You guys whine about windows but, this is REAL vendor lock-in. You get batteries from us or all your shit stops working.
You've been watching too many of those killer zombie movies, and think that armies of the dead are more effective than they really are.
Those would be nice and they certainly qualify the "unfair advantage" requirement. We could sell the technology for these to other nations, let them build the suits and then hijack them with a Knoppix disk! Muwhahahahahaha Just my 2 cents on how to lower our miltary budget / get kickass robo-suits for cheap.
I boycott signatures
So I suppose you would have to 'upgrade your underpants' once a night...
Nick
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~ebarnhar/sketch/stor mtrooper.jpg
But the scarab-like shell can take five to seven direct hits from a machine gun, and it doubles as a holster for ammunition and grenades
i feel like storing grenades on your bulletproof vest is a bad idea. sure the vest can stop a bullet but when that bullet sets off the grenade, you're in trouble.
This is what the Wired story says, but exactly what does the memo actually say? Simply saying "Avoid the use of Microsoft Windows operating systems" does not in the least imply they are thinking of open source solutions. What they are much more likely thinking about is proprietary embedded systems.
Honestly, when was the last time a multi-zillion dollar military contract involve Open Source?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Linus could beatup Bill any day.
Clean software is better than bloated software.
No software is better than clean software.
No matter how clean it may be, it will still potentially have flaws. In the case of "army stuff", I'd tend to think that traditional computing systems would not be suitable or efficent for that matter. Any software which has to 'boot up' is probably bad.
QNX on the other hand, may be good. It's used pretty widely, is lightweight, and supposedly rock solid. But, still, if the task can be accomplished just as efficently without computers at all, it's probably a better idea.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
To refresh your ram
US Army ?going to Linux? after OS switch for GI PDA
US Army Marches to Red Hat
What Distro Do You Want To Wear Today?
I remember a few years ago, seeing a bunch of high-end wrist watches that charged up through regular motion while wearing the watch. Or you could just flick your wrist a few times to store some extra energy. I think one of them was called "Kinetic" or something clever like that.
I wonder if there's any possibility for motion-charging batteries to succeed as a power source for soldiers. I admit I didn't rtfa, but obviously the overall power requirements would be relevant to the success of something like this.
Redhat -- too visable...give away the soldiers position.
Slack -- great, soldiers who are lazy....er wait...
Suse -- Yeah right, our men in arms go to battle with a girly name
So Mandrake it is!
*ducks*
Huh?
Who needs projectile weapons once every soldier has a holographic-emmiting projector that displays Goatse right at every enemy troop? No one would ever think of advancing through that, and the traumatic flashbacks of this horrid image will haunt them to their graves.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Windows has detected new hardware. Please insert the Windows installation disk."
WWJD? JWRTFA!
...or does "Future Force Warrior" sound like a bad anime title?
"History is written by the victors!" -Chancellor Gowron
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
This is /.
massacring the language is one's right
why the hell do stupid ACs always crib about Grammar!?!
and why is he reading my hard disk?
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
7 years?
Maybe they should fork over that money to the *current situation* and give the troops some bullet-proof vests NOW!
Considering recent events, "Future Force Warrior" would make an excellent snuff pr0n film title.
I have an XP-based home-office PC that has to stay on in my bedroom. The damn thing spins-down the hard drive for a net time of approximately 20 minutes per day, even though the machine isn't running anything !!
I've even tried disconnecting the LAN cable... XP is just kludgey bloatware. That's no way to manage a high-tech soldier.
Regards, Lex
The quote is right after the zipper text.... Quote: "A bag has been attached to the inner thigh, for an easier time going No. 2."
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
As in do you want the enemy (in this case enemy being a major force like the US) to leave your schools, hospitals, churches, and the like alone? The US (and most other nations) is a nation that obeys the Geneva Convention. Part of that is that deliberate attacks on civilian targets aren't allowed. Specifically, hospitals and churches (mosques, temples, etc) are off limits. If you are a soldier wounded in battle and are taken to a hospital, they aren't allowed to blow up the hospital.
This is all well and good but only applies if the structures are NOT being used as military staging areas. If you turn a hospital into a military base and launch attacks from it, it is no longer a civilian target and it not protected under the Geneva Convention. Ther Germans found this out in WWII. They took over a monestary, which was protected under the Geneva Convention, and used it to launch attacks (it was a very strong structure). Well the allies were having none of that, it was now a military target and they reduced it to rubble.
So that's the reason for not using tactics like this, your hurt your own nation and the people that you claim to be trying to protect. That is the point of a military, remember, to protect the people.
How far would I go? Well it depends. If a foriegn dictatorship was trying to take over the US, I'd fight to the death. Of course I'd do that by joining the military. If the US had fallen into dictatorship (and I hadn' already gotten out) and the force was here to liberate me, I'd help THEM.
You are an idiot. The parent never made the claim that all US tactics have been moral.
Destruction of civilian targets was commonly accepted practice during World War II. I can't say the same for the use of hospitals and religious sites as hideouts in the present time.
FFW is going open source
Not necessarily. Not going the Windows route does not automatically mean Open Source. There are dozens of proprietary, closed-source alternatives out there.
Where did anyone imply the US military never does anything immoral?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I'm disappointed I saw no mention of the liquid body armor Army scientists are working on. Basically you take Kevlar, which is already pretty protective, and soak certain chemicals into it. Then when you get shot or stabbed, etc, the liquid hardens instantly and the wearer remains unharmed. I guess it's a possible future improvement, but perhaps the more conventional body armor is more reliable and tested for now. Less fun to talk about :/
An always relevant speech, especially considering that over half of US casualties have come from a weapon that was perfected in the same year that that famous speech was given. I wish the technologists all the best, but in 10 years a uniform will still do what it does now, provide an easily identifiable target.
> and I know that a prompt end to WWII in fact saved lives
Oh really? You should have informed Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, who wrote to Truman about how there was absolutely no need to nuke Japan, since they were getting ready to surrender anyway. You probably should inform Truman, too, who wrote in his memoirs about how immoral it would be for us to nuke a city, and who, in his first speech after the bombing, referred to Hiroshima as "a military base".
The "either we nuke two Japanese cities within days of each other, or we do a full force invasion and fight every Japanese man, woman, and child" is a false dicotomy as well. There were tons of intermediate options, from nuking things that were actual *bases* or fleets (as opposed to cities), giving a prearranged demonstration, etc. And, unless you don't trust Szillard, we could have had several more bombs in a few months.
I should add, there was yet another option that it was pointless for us not to take: conditional surrender, in which the condition was the survival of the emperor (something we voluntarily did anyway). Our insistance on "unconditional" instead of setting that minimum condition cost many, many American lives.
When it became evident that the US was going to use The Bomb on a city, not a base, many of the scientists involved quit on the spot. When we actually used it on a city, many more quit.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Having been involved with quite a few government contracts, government and military project proposals are often drafted and worded specifically to push certain vendors to bend over backward. Even if, in the end, that certain vendor gets the contract with changes.
For example, I was with a company that tried to bid on a state-wide law enforcement data-sharing app. The proposal stipulated that the source code had to be given to the state along with the product. While you'd think that might convince some vendors with pre-existing "off-the-shelf" solutions to bow out of the bidding, what it really did was convince them to lower their licensing in order to get the state to lift the source code from the proposal.
My sigs always suck.
Maybe we could forgo the technology that we don't need and have longer enlistments for infantry with more Special Forces type training, i.e. winning hearts and minds. Make it a lifestyle choice with more and better training, higher physical standards, better pay.
Go ahead and shoot me down but I'm going off of 8 years of Marine Corps Infantry.
Some of the new technology is great like the new ACOG 4x scope for the battle rifles. You can use them with both eyes open. My little brother is deploying to Iraq as a Marine Scout Sniper and bought his own (out of his pocket!) Eotech 552 scope. You can see from the link provided that it can be used even when half the lens is damaged.
In keeping in line with my comment about the rifle scopes/sights, the basic gear still needs to be revamped. Tear away chest harnesses are in high demand with most Marines choosign to buy them out of their own pockets rather than use the issue gear. The Marine Corps is still trying to deal with their mistake of using the MOLLE gear system. The MOLLE's plastic pack frame was breaking left and right in Afganistan and now the Marine Corps is replacing the pack with a new design.
So stop fantasizing about the choice of OS on pie in the sky dreams/future projects and get the grunts gear that works.
This guy is way out there
Conditional surrender too often leaves too much wriggle room.
And, if the Japanese were ready to surrender, why did it take two bombs?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
They certainly weren't. Even after one nuke, they were not. It took a 2nd one.
"or we do a full force invasion and fight every Japanese man, woman, and child" is a false dicotomy as well. There were tons of intermediate options"
The other immediate options would not have resulted in surrender, and would have resulted in continued very high civilian casualties (such as the firebombing plan)
"Our insistance on "unconditional" instead of setting that minimum condition cost many, many American lives."
Unconditional was the best way, there was no legitimacy to the Japanese imperial side.
Commander: "Here they are men, coming over the crest...!"
Grunt: "Sir, it looks like they are using flame throwers! We were only equipped for ballistics and hand-to-hand combat."
Commander: "No problem soldier, we'll upgrade to flame-resistant armor. I'll issue the command."
Grunt: "Hurry! They're coming over the hill!"
Grunt: "They're getting really close now!!!"
Commander: "Hold them off!"
**flames erupt**
[ENTER SCREEN, TOP RIGHT: Clippy, a handsome rogue]
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The armed forces don't care if a solution is proprietary or open. They can get whatever budgets for technology they want ("Senator, you'll be a traitor if you don't approve our stripped-down trillion dollar clothing budget for our new RoboMilitia!")
More likely, the government simply puts Microsoft OS products on par with Gnu Hurd and Amiga OS: "Not quite ready for our needs." There are still many other proprietary OS options available considering the levels of money the war mongers are willing to throw around.
They are very selective. They select everyone in their path. They hit their intended targets and killed who they were intended to kill, which was everyone in the city.
The fact that a BETA version uses XYZ open source really does not mean much. First of all, the military simply isn't going to get involved with GPL or anything else like that for combat gear, if you think so, you're dreaming. Second, when the project hits a defense contractor for production, it may look nothing like the BETA. Defense contractors do not make money by pushing Open Source. They make money by building something that LOCKS IN them and their sub-contractors.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You need to re-read your japanese history.
Ask yourself, how often did any japanese surrender, in or before WWII?
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
...soldiers strip YOU!
(Microsoft looses millions in DOD revinue)
Ha-Ha.
After the first bomb was dropped the Japanese tried to pass a message through the Russians that they wanted to talk, however the Russians did not pass the message along to the rest of the Allied forces, because they wanted some on thier troops in theater in order to claim a portion of the spoils(territory lost in thier earlier war with Japan, and part of China/Korea).
That being said I think the US was wrong to drop the second bomb with or without getting this message.
Ahh, A nice legally binding electronic signature...
It didn't *take* 2 bombs, they *had* 2 bombs. You never hear of the battles of Hiroshima or Nagasaki because there weren't any. Here were 2 convenient coastal targets to try this new fangled A-Bomb on. Japan would have surrendered shortly in any case. Since then, the US is the ONLY country to have ever used a WMD against an other country.
yeah, interesting though, at least they wont be using anything windows based :)
As opposed to how things work now where the bullet contacts the grenade before it gets to the bullet proof vest?
I read Slashdot for the
What ever happened to don't, ask don't tell?
Ok, enough playing with ppl's names.
Man he's got a cool job. GI-Joe mixed with geeky technology. Sounds like an awesome gig. Wonder how he got into that? I'm sure there are many others who agree that's everything awesome in the world merged into 1 job. Would be neat get a
No, but the processes, consequences, outcomes, etc. are all very different for violating a treaty vs. breaking a law. These differences aren't necessarily moral differences, but they are important differences.
Before the war, the Undersecretary of the Navy found that the *government* (not individuals) was getting ready to surrender. After the war, the Strategic Bombing Survey found the same. Read it:
http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
It's not going to run Windows because there's probably not going to be a machine that's capable of running Windows (or Linux, for that matter)
It will likely be a low-power, sleep-capable PIC that doesn't have an OS. To run some bloatware (any operating system is bloatware on a low-power system) would be absolutely ridiculous. The software will be custom-written for the suits and work on the machine level.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
This is an "urban legend." A look at news footage puts it to sleep quite nicely. And I know for a fact that none of the guys leaving our installation (Fort Lewis / McChord AFB) leave without vests.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
It had already been proven that N battleships and/or aircraft carriers could be built, but as a "wonder weapon", the atomic bomb wasn't all that devastating unless we could demonstrate we could drop dozens. I mean, think of the efficiency... one plane, one bomb, one city.
Up to that point, it had taken hundreds of aircraft and thousands of bombs to acheive the same destructive result. Tokyo had been under a fire-bombing campaign for months.
I also think it might have had something to do with the Japanese philosophy toward war at the time - they were willing to fight to the last man. Perhaps the U.S. needed to show they were willing to kill to the last man, were that what Japan required.
Hi, I am a third-world dictator,
In anticipation of the new wired US soldier I would like to start a research grant on guided small ordinance. Funding amount to be disclosed later.
The initial project will be the guideance of mortar rounds onto radio frequency sources. I expect you will need a small RF receiver lets pick 1GHz for now, this will be in the tip of the mortar shell. Guideance will be the adjustment of the mortar tail fins to guide the shell down onto the RF source.
Parties able to demonstate this technology in 2 years will be eligible for advanced funding for the modification of other systems.
All it takes is one strategicly placed EMP (electro magnetic pulse), and everything electronic is toast.
This article, along with the constant trashing of MS on TechTV, makes a strong argument that the 'open source' meme is finally starting to overtake MS FUD.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Does this idea remind anyone of a certain soldier, his AI and special combat suit?
The soldier with an AI watching over and monitoring movement alone would be a nice thing, a'la "Bitching Betty" voice warnings in military fighters.
If the AI suit has as nice of a voice as "Cortana," so much the better.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
With all the gadgets the infrantry will have, all an enemy has to do is knock them out with EMP and everyone's goodies will get knocked out or frazzled... goodbye mesh network, goodby VoIP headsets, goodbye translator PDAs etc. Better look into EMP-proofing technologies in addition to the GAP-inspired pocket-for-everything-under-the-sun fatigues.
I work for this company, and sometimes I get to go into the lab to fix the printer or PC that these guys use to build this stuff. Its kinda neat. Sometimes I get to talk with the engineers and they share how this stuff is going to work. Kinda neat that a company I work for got recognized on slashdot. ;)
+40c heat in desert, -40c frost in finland,
deep mud, pouring rain, dust, dirt...
Environment puts the hardware to strain and wearing extra weight while taking cover from enemy fire, or just on transfer march to somewhere doesn't sound very tempting to me..
Sure it would be nice to have gps locator and map which would give you exact location all the time, but once you run out of duracells, you're lost in the woods. Compass+paper map weights much less than gps+some cpu device with map display and endures diving to dirt better.
Uniforms shouldn't really contain any electronics at all. They are one of the most strained items in the army, crawling in ground gets them dirty and they need to be washed every now and then. Having to remove and reattach bunch of electronics to them before and after laundry would add much work to equipment maintenance.
The page 2 in the article refers transferring some of the carried weight to robotic mule. I don't think it's very convinient to drag some robot around in battlefield since the terrain adapts from plains to steep cliffs and water areas to cross.
The robots would also add another step in logistics.. more stuff to drag to battlefield and back.
Modern warfare is very fast advancing on battlefield, and sadly most of the infantry tactics still are based on stationary warfare.
Mounting night goggles to helmet doesn't really help that much nor does radio headsets.. simply too fragile in real combat.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
"Shock and awe" was aimed entirely at Saddam's military system. You are wrong about that one.
"And torturing innocent civilians is perfectly acceptable as long as its an outlet for frustration or they might have useful information."
You are only slightly correct on this one. The idea that it is acceptible is not US policy, but is instead something being used by Rush Limbaugh to justify everything.
(with the exception of some no critical, off the shelf stuff)
How is it that we come up with a plan and a budget to refit army uniforms over seven years, but we can't figure out a way to stop the loss of American lives in Iraq? I know one has nothing to do with the other, but let us not forgot that American soldiers are STILL dying almost every day in Iraq.
Erm. No. The Soviets would not have beaten the Germans without the other allies. Without all 3 major allies (Britain, US, and USSR) hitting Germany from both fronts, Germany would not have fallen. The USA has a lot to do with the defeat of Germany, just like the UK and USSR had a lot to do with it.
If you are going to be honest, at least stop lying. The retaliation against Iraq has greatly strengthened the US's ability to deal with terrorism. We have taken out a major terrorist leader, after all. It has decreased the probability of further attacks, and those that happen are now happening inside Iraq instead of over here.
And in if you're going to use 20-20 hindsight, you have to remmeber that back then, they didn't know about all the nasty aftereffects of nukes. They thought it was "a bomb, but with a whole lot bigger bang".
At the time it wasn't considered a "weapon of mass destruction". It was a big bomb that we had. We wanted to force Japan to surrender, since we really didn't want to invade the islands -- that would cost hundreds of thousands of US military, Japanese military AND CIVILIAN casualties. Instead, we figured, "We've got this big ol' bomb that'll scare the hell out of them, so let's use it!"
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
"Sir, I think I Just got port scanned."
- "My name is Legion, for we are many" -Mark 5:9
You post makes no sense. The Gitmo situation is a topic of worldwide interest, and has been a massive headache for the Administration.
One might wish to consider that the Administration is utilizing Gitmo is because interrogating terrorists and not sending terrorists back home is a no brainer, and any responsible leader would do the same.
You are an impostor. When real grammar nazis meet the sig, they say "Sig Heil" :P
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Ahem. Only country to use WMDs? Iraq and Iran?
--Kevin
... says a man whose country was founded by non-uniformed irregulars. General Washington belatedly established a uniform in 1779, but even then many troops could barely afford food and ammo, much less color-coordinated suits.
Sarcastic inference is left as an exercise for the reader.Current and likely future vests aren't stopping a standard 5.56mm round, period. Hate to burst your bubble.
The company I work for, Foster-Miller, actually develops multi-functional clothing for the military for just this sort of application. This page gives a very brief example of including antennas in "electro-textiles". We also produce a number of other really cool integrated electronic capabilities for armor and clothing, but my NDA prevents me from listing them here. I can tell you though that clothing specifically designed to meet the future electronic device needs of the military is being developed and is well beyond the prototype stage.
This is true, but another motivation for it was that the russians where moving into the area and the administration was already concerned about what they did in europe and thus wanted to expidite the end of the war.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Oh really? You should have informed Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, who wrote to Truman about how there was absolutely no need to nuke Japan, since they were getting ready to surrender anyway.
Bard may have said that, but how did he know? According to Japanese rcords, Hirohito had no plans to get involved in the process of forcing his government to surrender until AFTER Hiroshima.
Also, the dichotomy you describe must be analysed within the scope of recent events. The Japanese civilians on Guam all commited suicide rather than be captured by the Americans. Kamikaze aircraft were causing more damage to the 3rd/5th Fleet than the rest of the IJN ever had.
"Conditional surrender". I take it you think the Russians should have pulled out of the war with the Germans? Unconditional Surrender was a policy adopted at the highest level, between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. We had to carefully avoid even the possibility that something might be seen as a separate peace, or risk having the Russians quit. And remember, right up till the end of the European part of WW2, it was none too clear that we'd be able to beat the Japanese without Soviet assistance (at least for kicking the Japs out of China)
Sounds like a lot of hypocritical scientists. It's not like they weren't aware of the British and American bombing campaigns. Incidently, did you know that the firebombing of Tokyo did FAR MORE damage than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima? The scary thing about Hiroshima was that it could be done with one bomber, not that it was the most destructive attack in history (it was no better than fourth, I think - two attacks on Tokyo, and one on Dresden were certainly worse. there may have been others)
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And when has the US used WMD since Nagasaki?
Send The Marines [spoken] What with President Johnson practicing escalatio on the Vietnamese and then the Dominican crisis on top of that it has been a nervous year and people have begun to feel like a Christian scientist with appendicitis. Fortunately in times of crisis just like this America always has this number one instrument of diplomacy to fall back on. Here's a song about it. [Cassons song intro] When someone makes a move Of which we don't approve, Who is it that always intervenes? U.N. and O.A.S., They have their place, I guess, But first, we'll send the Marines! We'll send them all we've got, John Wayne and Randolph Scott, Remember those exciting fighting scenes? To the shores of Tripoli, But not to Mississippoli, What do we do? We send the Marines! For might makes right, Until they've seen the light, They've got to be protected, All their rights respected, 'Till somebody we like can be elected. The members of the corps All hate the thought of war, They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means. Stop calling it aggression, We hate that expression! We only want the world to know That we support the status quo, They love us everywhere we go, So when in doubt, Send the Marines!
Forgot to make it "plain old text" rather than HTML. Sorry; here it is, corrected.
Send The Marines
[spoken]
What with President Johnson practicing escalatial on the Vietnamese and then the Dominican crisis on top of that it has been a nervous year and people have begun to feel like a Christian scientist with appendicitis. Fortunately in times of crisis just like this America always has this number one instrument of diplomacy to fall back on. Here's a song about it.
[Cassons song intro]
When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,
They have their place, I guess,
But first,
we'll send the Marines!
We'll send them all we've got,
John Wayne and Randolph Scott,
Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
To the shores of Tripoli,
But not to Mississippoli,
What do we do? We send the Marines!
For might makes right,
Until they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
'Till somebody we like can be elected.
The members of the corps
All hate the thought of war,
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
Stop calling it aggression,
We hate that expression!
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo,
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt,
Send the Marines!
I specifically did *NOT* say that the bomb saved lives - I said a prompt end to the war did. The vehicle to that prompt end was the bomb. You can't therefore (logically) assume that the bomb saved lives. I know some people have that opinion, I am not one of them.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
effective I'd think, soon the individual troops will be so TOTALLY dependent on heads up display and computer guidance and computer assisted weapon targetting that a local emp blast will leave helpless blind soldiers wielding their only remaining weapon, the officers' .45 and the knife/hatchet we just payed 57 million dollars to develop, look a lot like an indian hatchet :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I just want to make this clear to you, since you obviously have chosen to ignore it.
The use of the bomb, in the end, was entirely political. Although there is much evidence to suggest that the Japanese emperor was pushing for an end to conflict, his staff and military brass were all against unconditional surrender. The possibility of peace was stagnating, and might have failed altogether if an invasion took place.
The other key player in the politics involving the bomb were the encroaching forces of the Soviet Union. Truman was quite aware that letting the USSR participate in a Japanese invasion would be a foolhardy move with long-standing reprucussions, but there was no way to prevent this if full-scale invasion took place. The bomb was seen as a way to shake the Japanese spirit quickly before invasion was imminent.
The final political factor: we had a weapon with a development cost that was absolutely unprecedented. With very little oversight during the war, the completely unused weapon would garner much displeasure and political pressure after cessation of hostilities.
It is argued that we could have performed a warning fire on Japanese soil, but that would have left us down to one bomb if they decided to call our bluff. While it is true that more plutonium core (fat man) bombs were in development, they were expected to arive too late to stop the rapidly approaching invasion. As I mentioned above, invasion would destroy any chance of a quick peace because nationalistic soldiers and civilians would fight to the last man. Two bombs were all we had to work with to realistically stop an invasion, so we used them to their greatest physical and psychological effect: we targeted cities with large populations that had purposefully been spared bombing in the previous months.
There was no real moral impediment involving use of the bomb. We had already fallen off the moral highroad and into the gutter with out firebombing of Japanses civilians. The total death tolls produced by our firebombing of over 60 cities was greater than the immediate casualties of the two bombs combined. As far as we were concerned, anything with an industrial complex was considered a "base", and Hiroshima certainly qualified in that respect.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
If someone just dropped a big-ass bomb on me, I don't think I'd rely on a middle man to get my message of "ok, that's enough" to the right people.
But that's just me, and your mileage may vary.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
The whole point of the Wired article was that the Army is redesigning the entire set of gear that a grunt carries. It mentions how the current setup is a piecemeal patchwork of upgrades and addons. The idea behind the FFW project was to get the total carry weight down, and have a soldier's gear designed with the entire package in mind. Now, it wouldn't appear as though this deals with weapon technologies like the scopes you mentioned, but harnesses and body armor certainly are. The SlashDot blurb (unsurprisingly) focuses only on that which deals with Microsoft & Open Source. --LordPixie
The Geneva convention only applies to nations at war, and the legal forces under their command (ie IN UNIFORM)
Even under geneva convention rules, if you are shot at by someone not in uniform you have the right to execute them on the spot.
You can read the text of the Fourth Geneva Convention Here
While I don't think the people in Cuba are being detained fairly, unfortunately they were explicitly violating the Geneva convention by not openly carrying arms or wearing a distinctive uniform, nor was there a clear leader to whom they answered.
Further, the people in Cuba are being treated a lot more fairly than the German POW's were at the time the Fourth Geneva Convention was ratified, so that should give you some sense of how much that treaty really is significant.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Go back to the WWII Uniforms. The were much more classy. Indead of spending 250 million on this stuff - spend that money on training our men how to FIGHT. We have become way too technical and soft, and it's costing us. The Army should train like the Marines - Every Man is a Rifleman FIRST AND FOREMOST. They ALL know how to fight - even the Clerks. The Army only trains the Infantry to fight. Everything else is just support of that. That's not quite right... I have a lot of criticisms of the Military because I was in it. 8 years US Army Infantry, Light Fighter. While I was in, we transitioned from the Steel Pot to the K-Pot (helmets). The old Steel pot was better in my opinion. Better jackets too. This new stuff might be high speed, but it lacks character. What were we talking about?
MadOgre.com
Do not use equipment purchased from eBay.
I don't care WHO refurbished 'em, sojer. You fall out and get your gear NOW
> Once (when?) it fails
Like when someone explodes an EMP bomb over your troops and fries all their electronics.
There's still a shortage of body armor in Iraq. The Beretta pistol-breakage problem hasn't been totally solved. The replacement for the M-16 is behind schedule. And everything with batteries needs more battery life. Let's get those problems solved.
If they used microsoft, it might bring new meaning to a blue screen of death..
i hate it when people talk about the infantry. it's like some mystical world full of video game and movie references and abstract concepts that seem totally logical to someone who hasn't done it. it's a culture shock and a different, very real, very harsh world. it's really agonizing to hear it discussed but that being said:
being in the infantry you get used to everything just being heavy and ungangly. it would be a shock to most slashdotters just how cumbersome our gear is. fighting at night with NVG's on is NOTHING like in a video game. half the time you can't see a thing because it focuses like any other optic. you have to adjust the focus everytime you look at something more than a few feet closer or further than what you were last looking at. and don't get me started on the skull crushers and rhino mounts. i've never been able to get a PVS 14 to sit properly over my eye. shooting in the prone position is even worse.
here's something funny to illustrate. in the army we have this thing called a PLGR (Portable Lightweight GPS Reciever) or "plugger". i assure you that there is nothing portable, lightweight, or GPS about it. it's huge, like the biggest text book you've ever seen. the batteries don't last for shit, it has only an alphanumeric display (no arrows and maps), it weights a good few pounds, it is TERRIBLE at getting a GPS signal. you practically have to climb a tree or be in the middle of open desert to use it.
which leads me to this: most of us use civialian and so called "special ops" (usually just civilian things that have been ruggedized) gear. we use alot of civialian GPRS/FRS radios (though ours can be encrypted), we use lots of civilian GPS too. pretty much anything special forces uses too gets trickled down into infantry use because our gear sucks and they've got the common sense and freedom to use what works.
now to counter that we do have alot of things that really give us a leap over the enemy. we have infared targeting lasers we use at night which really help in a fire fight. other cool things i dont' want to talk about. but of course the bad guys have night vision too. yea, they do. it's not really that expensive these days. good thing most of them are poor shots.
being a terrorist has it's advantages. you can really be effective in small groups. but our tactics work great too and we are constantly adapting. what they gain in autonomy is thwarted by lack of C2 (command and control), training, and good support channels. besides, we can move and act autonomously too.
One interesting thing to note is from the time of the Roman Legionnaires to today the combat load of a soldier has been around 45 pounds. Compared to the WW II infantryman, the uniform, weapon, ammunition and load bearing gear of today's infantry is lighter, but now they carry night vision goggles, radios and other electronics and body armor. Making it lighter is offset by carrying more stuff.
No matter how liberal they are, open source now has to support the military!
*ducks*
> According to Japanese rcords ...
...
... did about equivalent damage as Hiroshima, and took less lives (~100k vs ~140k by the end of '45). And was a war crime as well, just as Dresden was. That's not to excuse Japanese or German war crimes, but one war crime doesn't justify another.
According to US officials, who reviewed Japanese records after the war (the Strategic Bombing Survey), they were planning to surrender.
> The Japanese civilians on Guam all committed suicide
The Japanese stopped fighting as a whole as soon as the Emperor said so. The nuclear bombs had relatively little effect on the average Japanese civilian's will to fight, because they didn't see it. The key is not to get the civilians to surrender, but the leadership. The leadership was ready so surrender.
> I take it you think the Russians should have pulled out of the war with the Germans.
If the only constraint that Hitler would remain alive (but with no real power), then yes. Remember, if you're going to make an analogy, it needs to be an equivalent one.
> The firebombing of Tokyo...
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
i am american, and i hate to tell you--the US really has not adhered too closely to the Geneva Convention unless it suits their needs.
Biological warfare, torture, mass destruction of civilian areas--it has all been done by the US.
Read up, and you WILL be supprised what your country does without the public's common knowledge.
Propaganda is alive and well in EVERY country, the only reason we recognise it in other countries is that OUR country points out what OTHER countries did or are doing wrong, while overlooking and misdirecting their own activities.
People need to wake up and question the authority and demand answers. There IS A REASON (well many reasons) that the US is probably the most hated country in the world.
The Army and Marine Corps still teach the bayonet.
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A fully-efficient solar panel reflects no light at all. It would be like wearing completely non-reflective black, but it wouldn't get hot because everything is being channeled into electrical power.
It really doesn't matter, though, because they were talking about using 15 watts (if I had to carry around something dissipating 15 watts on my chest in desert heat, I'd be pissed off). You aren't going to get 15 watts from a non-flat surface on your helmet. Solar cells are not enough.
If I were working on a technological revamp, I think I'd:
(a) As mentioned, make infantry-carried parts physically fit together.
(b) Work on ad-hoc networks to help transmit data back to the support radio. The less signal strength required on a soldier, the less power dissipation, and the harder it is to spot a soldier's location. Ideally, computers would handle setting up an ad-hoc route if at all possible, and the only thing that commanders would have to do is to position radio repeaters with enough strength to reach the soldiers. You might have soldiers transmitting to a vehicle which transmits to another vehicle closer to base, which transmits to a base. Maybe a communications aircraft is part of the chain. The point is to make the only manual work that soldiers have to do WRT their electronic crap is to maintain a chain of communication and not worry about misconfiguration. Make *all* comm and data systems use the same system -- I keep reading horror stories about four different systems in place. That's way too much manual management effort in place if someone is shooting at you.
(c) Forget the heart-rate and pulse-rate sensor crap. The only thing that that's going to do is provide more useless data to command. It takes power, adds weight and complexity to the uniform, adds another system that can break. What are folks at command going to do "Oh, this guy's scared" or "This guy's heart meter has gone flat?" There are so many ways that a heart meter could be damaged in combat and return false data that I really don't think that this is a good idea. It's just as easy to have soldiers report in.
(d) I have a vision of future combat where each squad (or, ideally, each *soldier*) has a "controller" assigned to him back at base. This requires reliable communications, which is why having good automated ad-hoc networks is important. This controller serves something like an air traffic controller -- he is responsible for handling issues that the soldier/squad has and providing any information that the soldier/squad needs. If a soldier needs to know where he is relative to, say, an important building, the controller starts working on it or hands off his request to comm people. If a soldier starts screaming "Our air support is dropping bombs *on* me", instead of going from a soldier to the squad commander (possibly to the squad comm guy -- dunno about current military convention, though this would have been par for WWII) to the comm plane overhead to command and control to the air support plane, it goes directly (well, from a human interaction standpoint) to this soldier's controller back at base, who is responsible for getting a "stop bombing" message to command and from there to air support (he's much better suited than the commander in the field, who may be getting shot at and have a lot of other things to deal with in addition to having difficuty hearing what is going on).
I'd also like to see a log of audio messages available to such a controller. Every message that is broadcast by his soldier would appear on some kind of display in front of him. If he doesn't catch something because someone else is talking, he just plays back what the soldier just said. This means that humans don't have to handle retransmit-level protocol work. It also means that during quiet bits (or, say, if a soldier is killed, the controller can review the last data available from the soldier and try to figure out who killed him).
I'd standardize on a *single* comm system. Each soldier w
May we never see th
Soviet equipment was designed to be able to use captured US/NATO supplies.
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Why didn't they?! Getting ready doesn't cut it. To quote Colonel O'Neill, "that's what you get for dickin' around."
In English, it takes all of two seconds to state clearly, "We Surrender." I can't imagine it would take days, weeks, months, or years to say it in Japanese.
The (peace-loving) Japanese were gettin' ready to, gettin' ready to, was gonna, fixin' to, thinking about getting ready -- all a huge load of horse shit the anti-American imbeciles of the world will use to second-guess the most important decision in history and cast America as The Bad Guy in their own little mental melodrama.
If the Japanese were so damn ready to surrender, then why did they not surrender immediately after the first nuking? Certainly, many responsible human beings in their chain of command were thinking of it, but it took TWO nukings for this view to become predominant in the chain of command.
Even before the EM disturbances from the first nuking were over, the Emperor could have been on the radio offering surrender. Immediately! That he did not, shows exactly what he was getting ready to do until a second nuking finally changed his mind.
Your "intermediate options" are fantasy: if a nuking didn't convince the Japanese to surrender, why would a mere demonstration? These silly options amount to appeasement. We should have offered the Japanese the Hawaiian Islands after they dropped love-bombs on Pearl Harbor. It would have been better than war. Surrender like a Spaniard at the first hint of aggression!
(On the other front, was the destruction of Dresden a missed opportunity to make nice with the Nazis?)
When does a city of peace-loving children become an industrial center? How many armaments factories, port facilities, transportation facilities, barracks and airfields does a city need before the city as a whole might be considered a defacto (if not by doctrine) target? We shouldn't ever bomb any place, because it might make a child cry.
Cities are important places. Capturing or destroying them is the way war has been fought for millenia. Getting all weepy over it is to wallow in pusillanimity.
The way Hiroshima and Nagasaki went down saved lives then, and continues to do so. It kept the Soviets out of Japan, saving millions of lives and also creating the economic and scientific powerhouse that is postwar Japan. Nuking (baby-filled!) cities showed exactly how bad another World War would be, and this alone has kept that war from happening.
All peace-loving people should offer thanks to Truman and attempt the deepest possible understanding of the most important decision in history.
He probably took lots of technical training too.
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This doesn't prevent ratification. If the treaties were then later ruled to be unconstitutional,
It is a violation of the oath of office for a member of congress to vote for a treaty which they believe to be unconstituional. The proper approach would be to pass an amendment and then act on the treaty, if they wanted to sign the treaty.
The sad part is that alot of the stuff they'll end up adopting is stuff they already designed, turned down, and my branch (USMC) said hey thanks for the free R&D! and adopted.
Derek Greene
During recent weeks I have also had the feeling very definitely that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender.
Doesn't sound nearly like we "knew" the Japanese were on the verge of surrender.
Much as I respect General Arnold, the Strategic Bombing Survey produced all sorts of interesting results that agreed that our bombing campaign was overwhelmingly more successful than other, more unbiased, sources think it was. I pretty much discount anything from it out of hand.
If the only constraint that Hitler would remain alive (but with no real power), then yes. Remember, if you're going to make an analogy, it needs to be an equivalent one.
That's funny. The Japanese Emperor had no real power before the war. The Japanese High Command essentially wanted a status quo ante bellum agreement.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
In essence, no, al Qaeda forces are not required to be treated as prisoners of war, because they are not members of armed forces,
International law recognizes two classes of people:
combatents and civilians. If we don't consider al Qaeda to be combatents then they are due all the protections of civilians in those countries in which they reside. In essence, no, al Qaeda forces are not required to be treated as prisoners of war, because they are not members of armed forces,
International law recognizes two classes of people:
Combatants and civilians. If we don't consider al Qaeda to be combatants then they are due all the protections of civilians in those countries in which they reside. In particular we can't initiate attacks against them so most of the anti al Qaeda bombings in Afghanistan would have been illegal.
WMD were used long before 1945. Dead, diseased cattle loaded in catapults and thrown over castle walls during sieges (biological). Poison gas was used by both sides during WWI. (chemical).
The only reason the US dropped the first nuke was thanks to the Norwegians sabotaging Hitler's research facilities. Otherwise, London would have been the first city to see the first hand effects of a mushroom cloud.
I have a theory that says that, all things considered, the only way you can tell if a fight is fairly matched is if it ends in a draw. Otherwise one side had some cumulative advantage.
If true, this means that few fights are fair. But who who would willingly enter into a fight if they didn't think they posessed some advantage that would lead to victory?
I think there are two uses of "fair" at work here; one meaning "evenly matched" and one meaning "playing by the same set of rules."
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Using a technicality to justify different treatment is exactly the kind of thing that makes countries scoff at the U.S. when after the fact the government takes the moral high-ground about human rights. It may be 'legal' but, judging how the U.S. is perceived internationally these days, not many countries are fooled about whether or not it is right.
If America won't treat its prisoners by the same standards it expects American prisoners to be treated then there is no 'red line' anymore. Soon other countries will be using the words 'terrorist' or 'none-combatant' to justify egregious abuses whilst the U.S. sits quietly by because it can no longer criticize other countries failure to respect the Geneva Conventions in their 'fight' against 'terrorism'.
The U.S. declared itself to be at war against terrorism. The President has himself said that America is at war with terrorists who are the 'enemy of freedom'. How can the very people America is supposed to be fighting against -- who it is at war with -- be none-combatants? These disingenuous distinctions to create convenient excuses to circumvent international conventions that regulate the treatment of prisoners in a war bring only discredit to the very morality of the fight.
This President has in my opinion done irreparable harm to the prestige of the United States in the matter of human rights. The ends do not justify the means if you are a moral person; the same is true for a country.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
> "Enemy spotted, 100 yards and closing.
> "Open fire soldier!"
> "Sir my weapon says it's not responding"
"There isn't a driver for the magazine loader."
"The firing module wasn't compiled into the kernel."
"There's no documentation. Throw rocks at the enemy while I look around on Google, Usenet, and IRC."
"The trigger code wasn't tested with this distro. The programmer wants me to use JimBobsBaitAndTackle Linux instead."
AFAIK, there was no Geneva convention during the Revolutionary war.
One, what they have been doing is just willy nilly picking people up and calling them "al queda"- a far cry from actual true identification. And the origins of al queda go directly to the CIA, and some rich connected oil and construction people in the US with rich connected wahabists in saudi arabia. People with serious financial ties to the current administration. Then these alleged "al queda" "detainees" can be beaten to death, have glo sticks shoved up their ass, be forced to jack off into other "detaines" mouths, and other sorts of righteous "let's roll!" US army goodness.
I don't want to hear about it. I've handled a necklace made from human finger bones, bones that primarily came from vietnamese citizens who weren't communists,who certainly didn't invade the US, who never threatened the US,who just happened to be living in a vill that was declared a "free fire" zone.
The US is run by a fascist cabal,has been since before world war 2, with political front men who represent those fascists. These are called "politicians" and the media (that they own and control) and the public schools (that they own and control) insist you become brainwashed and "vote" for one or the other of these front men, election after election. The military (and now most of the domestic police force) is it's organized muscle, it's mercenary wing, who just follow orders, and very few ever say no, because it's a career killer. You go along to get along. Torture, abuse of prisoners, raping civilian women have always been part of the scene. Same as in other nations militaries. There is nothing glorius or "honorable" about it.
Iraq was not a threat to the US, but it was an embarrasment to the US, and saddam had announced he was no longer going to be accepting US dollars as payment. He also was a credible supporter of the palestinians who are on the third generation of being prisoners in their own lands, being persecuted by the radical likudnik zionists, another group of lying thieves who also like inflicting pain, and then crying foul when their victims fight back.
Chikenhawk israel firsters in this administration wanted to establish a beach head in the middle of the oil fields in the middle east, 50% to get ownership of the oil, 50% as a proxy army for israel. This is fucking obvious, so get over this notion that this was any sort of righteous war against some dicator, or that we were "getting" the people responsible for 9-11. We got dictators all over the place, it's only the ones sitting on the oil or drugs (like noriega) or any other very valuable property who get any attention. Wake up will you?
They did it, they followed orders like good little boys, the military people over there got faked out, they all got told that saddam = al queda = 9-11, plus, that any second saddam was going to launch WMD at the US unless he was stopped.
And other sorts of fairy tales. What rubbish. Must just suck to be that naieve,to be that stupid, but there you go, that's what you get, that's what you pay for, for drunks mostly, which is "the US military", mostly hard core drunks,the lifers, the kids are just young and stupid mostly, and they are encouraged to get ultra violent, something young men are wont to do anyway.
And now they really have created terrorists, a lot more than there were before. We had some before, that's a granted. Now we have untold millions. Millions and millions who despise the US.
Wasn't that just so clever of a plan.
The bush family was a business partner with both saddam, and with the bin ladens (no, osama was only disowned in the press, inreal life he's always part of the family), and the bush family has a long history of double crossing it's business partners. You can go back, google for prescott bush and see what he did during ww2, see where the grandfather's loyalties really were. Go look where george the elder was on november 21st, 1963. Not the 22nd, the 21st. You can find it. Check out the activities of the current dictators brothers with regards "banks and
Soldiers and Marines deserve better but, after depleting supplies and fulfilling current contracts, the soldiers will get new gear. Today's soldiers are still being outfitted with 50/60's contracts. The Marine Quartermaster's Pledge "If it was good enough at Iwo Jima, it's good enough today!"
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
There was no Geneva convetion at the time. Could you please provide some specific support about the "rules of war" of that era, such as the equivalent of a Geneva convetion that most nations signed at the time? If there wasn't something concrete regarding globally agreed-upon rules of war conduct, then there is no analogy to today. If there was, then please add it to substantiate your argument.
Couldn't that fall out of the plane as well?????
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Having a vastly superior force means that the fight is "unfair" as in more than 50% chance of winning for one side.
Using civilans as shields, attacking civilians and breaking all treaties and conventions means that the figt is "unfair" as in one side acting immorally, and generally being a sick bastard. But still possibly losing the fight.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
They're people held without trial.
Without exception those that have managed to negotiate a release have been held to be innocent by a court of law (they also told of routine torture, which nobody believed until recently).
All infantry men from any CENTURY has carried ~75 lbs. As technology improves and things are miniturized we get more gear. The total weight a riflemen carries will never change, we will just get more useful equipment in that space. I find a couple things interesting about that article: 1) "[The body armor] sits on a series of foam pads around the rib cage, so there's a 2.5-inch gap." The major problem with current armor is its bulk, not its weight. Pushing the armor out from the body 2.5 in. will have significant effects on mobility and functionality. 2) Zippers! Current uniforms do not have zippers, buttons and draw strings only. My understanding(I just use it, I don't design it) is this is to reduce injuries in high heat from explosions(metal melting on to the body is bad). 3) An improved integrated helmet is super critical...if they deliver a good helmet I don't give a damn about the rest. However, what riflemen are looking forward to right now is the XM-8...a much better weapon then the M-16A2/M-4...hopefully we have it by 2006.
How dare you use guerilla tactics on us! We outnumber you, we outtech you, come on out into the open and fight like a moron!
;)
Dang, another sniper attack.
Ok, maybe you didn't hear me, come on out into the open and fight like a moron!
Ouch, who fired that RPG?
Maybe you didn't understand me? I said come out of hiding and fight like a moron!
Look out, grenade! Everyone duck and cover!
Hey you, you don't fight fair, come on out in the open and fight like a moron!
Sniper attack again!
Let me boot up this Windows Tablet PC and see if it can help me translate this into their language. Ah no, blue screen of death! All my smart gear is down now! Must be that virus that is going around. Even my machine gun is jammed, it runs Windows too.
Hey, no fair using viruses! You guys play dirty!
-----------------
Yes you need all the advantages you can get in the battlefield. Don't go out into the open and fight like a moron. Also don't use Windows for critical mission systems that need to be online 24/7.
Make a smart helmet with a heads-up display that can track the direction that a bullet or RPG was launched from. Then have a sensor on your gun or rocket launcher that displays crosshairs in your heads-up display so you can match the direction and fire back. Let us see if Osama the Llama can match that technology.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"We're stripping the soldier down to his skin, and building out from there," said Jean-Louis "Dutch" DeGay
That says Hoax all the way
That's because they're enemy combatants, not criminals. The point of detaining enemy combatants is to keep them out of combat until the combat is over. They don't get hearings, trials, or whatever. They just get to sit out the rest of the war in the penalty box. Then they get to go home. Obviously, there's lots of room for refinements of this principle, and many such refinements have been made over the years, but the basic principle is still the same: They're enemy combatants, not criminal suspects. It has to do with the difference between "army" and "police", along with a lot of other things. Step back, take a deep breath and look at it again. Maybe then you'll see that the fact that our Supreme Court is reviewing the situation and ruling in favor of granting more than the customary privileges to these POWs is a testament to this nation's generosity and commitment to humane behavior.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Terrans always forget their upgrades don't they? I guess it doesn't matter in this case, since any strategy will work on a money map.
As the inventors of guerillia warfare (see the US revolutionary war), the US American people are the only persons who can fairly use guerilla warfare. It's our intellectual property, and those nasty enemy combatant fellows are stomping on our IP rights. It *IS* unfair for them to be profiting from the techniques we invented and clearly own outright. Only *WE* (and our licensed allies) are allowed these means!
This is just the outer-most expression of their depravity.
If they keep kicking our asses on the ground like that, we are going to send the RIAA and the MPAA after them with _LAWYERS_. We've been holding off because we don't want to breach the Genovia Convention like that unless we must. The enforced-sex dog-pile at least leaves some vestages of human dignity...
They are not only terrorists (sic), they are PIRATES! And the one thing we will not stand for as a country is a lapse in the feduciary custody of intellectual property.
All the WMDs were real you know, they had electricty and computers and could make the little metalized-plastic disks without paying a license fee. Thats right, Weapons of Media Distribution were commonplace, even to the unmitigated extent that the government operated the schools and state-run newspapers and television stations, none of which honored or taught the true doctrine of conformity!
And they still have printing presses and a spoken language. We will not rest until their ability to infringe on our god-given intellectual territory is abolished to the last sheaf of word-soaked paper and the last mumble of idea-burdened sound, and their godless freloading is wiped from their worthless, unlicensed paws!
They even know the words to songs.... heathen scum...
They should have stuck to posioning their own populace, 'cause then at least Disney wouldn't have had to become involved...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Silly American. The rest of the world speaks English, not American.
Absolutly true. The Air Force deals with Lat/Long because the earth is curved and the area they cover is large enough that computing distances and heading over a curved surface is computationally easier using degrees and minutes.
The Army, on the other hand, deals in distances much smaller, where the curvature of the earth is not a factor. The Army uses a system called the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS ).
This system suits the Army well because it is simple, accurate, and works in meters instead of nautical miles.
Army pilots, like myself, have to use both systems constantly. And we always have to convert between the two. Although when errors are made, it often deals with using different datums rather than computational error. The DOD is in the process of fixing this though by using a single datum for all maps. (WGS84)
You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em! They will expire before any good stories are posted.
Ok Troll I'll bite. IANAL, but I have received this advice from two lawers, pro bono. ANY user of the Linux kernel is an innocent third party, and under contract law not liable for the actions of others. if SCOs claims are true, then IBM owes them money, and Linus is responceable for removing the code from future releases, and that is all. So, the simple fact of the matter is, nobody should be paying liceces to SCO, and anyone who does is stupid. If sued by SCO, counder sue for harassment and legal expenses.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Code optimation went out the window in the 90's with ever increasing CPU and storage capabilites. Perhaps moving back to software coding as artform, designed to minimize CPU (and thus power) usage is one solution vice "more power". For example, KT-V2OIP compresses, and transmits symmetrically over 3G cell phones using a 85 KB compression engine that doeasn't require a hardware accelerator. Just try that with MPEG!
Making nearly impervious materials is easy.
Kevlar doesn't tear, and ceramic plates are relatively light and cheap.
The problem is dissipating the energy. The amount of kinetic energy in a large calibre round is insane.
To keep from breaking bones and big serious bruises they dissipate it over a large area, use a large plate, or thick bulky padding. If the dissipation area is too small, you only get a moderate reduction in impact force (for low calibres this is acceptable).
For large heavy rounds, you must have a large dissipation area, this necessitates bulky armour.
The simple physics of the problem make it difficult.
Too much money
- Garbage answer, a vest is dirt cheap compared to the logistical cost of providing food and water to an overseas soldier for a week.
Food soldiers are disposable
- It is expensive to train and equip solders.
- Bush won't win an election on saving a few bucks in vests when there are a pile of dead soldiers.
- The supply of troops is very limited, they're pulling them from North Korea (a nuclear power) to move them to Iraq.
They're not really bulletproof
- They aren't really bulletproof
- Even if they stop the bullet you may be seriously injured
- Most injuries are not caused by bullets. It's trips/falls accidents and debris/shrapnel. Vests (and helmets) do protect against this stuff.
This is why George always wear blue suits! God mode!
i was skimming this and noticed about half of all references made to the geneva convention in this thread were badly informed... the geneva convention deals with the treatment of prisoners of war, the treatment of wounded and injured persons/prisoners of war/civilians, and the treatment of civilians in times of war...
many people are actually refering the the hague convention 1899-1954, which deals with methods of warfare and limiting use of certain arms
i.e. the use of expanding bullets, or bullets that cause excess suffering
the invention of rapidly expanding bullets for use in cartridge amunition was actually one of the driving forces behind the original convention...
From the previous-previous post:
"One might wish to consider that the Administration is utilizing Gitmo is because interrogating terrorists and not sending terrorists back home is a no brainer, and any responsible leader would do the same."
The Geneva Conventions also cover this. If the classification of a prisoner is in doubt, then a tribunal will be held to determine the status of that prisoner.
A terrorist would be subject to the US's legal system or the legal system of the country they were captured in or whatever country the US released them to.
The key factor being that the STATUS of each prisoner is quickly determined to everyone knows EXACTLY what rights that prisoner has.
As it stands right now, the US government wants to be able to be able to do ANYTHING (up to and including beating them to death) to them.
"They're enemy combatants, not criminal suspects."
If they're terrorists, then they're criminals. The same as any mobster.
"Maybe then you'll see that the fact that our Supreme Court is reviewing the situation and ruling in favor of granting more than the customary privileges to these POWs is a testament to this nation's generosity and commitment to humane behavior."
No. The "customary privileges" that a POW has include the right NOT to be tortured.
Please.
While I don't agree that our government is entirely innocent (Rumsfeld apparently knew about the sanction given our intelligence forces carte blanche in anti-terrorist interrogations, and then (arguably) lied about it) the parent post is still spot on with respect to many of the arguments above it in this thread.
I agree completely with the opinion that terrorists - and insurgents in Iraq who don't follow the GC themselves - have no rights under the GC.
Leaving Iraq aside for a moment, let's consider this: EVERY CIVILIZED COUNTRY in the WORLD is "at war" with terrorism. Terrorists - those who would kill, en masse, unarmed and innocent civilians to make a POLITICAL POINT - are as the above AC pointed out, murderers and criminals.
Perhaps they should have trials. Ok, they should at least have an independent body or bodies consider the evidence against them. Unfortunately the WC is so busy examining it's own navel that it's unlikely anything would come of it.
To slow down terrorism, we have to punish those who commit *immediately* - because it's the only deterrent that the civilized world has against this particular kind of scum. Unfortunately some innocents will fall, even with that process, NO MATTER WHO IS DOING THE JUDGING, be it the US, the coalition, or the World Court.
\end rant
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Terrorists are criminals. Just like any mobster.
As such, the Geneva Conventions cover them under the requirement to have a tribunal identify the status of prisoners as soon as possible.
Therefore, the "terrorists" we're holding would be transfered to the US legal system. They have very specific rights under the US legal system.
But the US government does NOT want them in the legal system because the US government DOES NOT TRUST THE US LEGAL SYSTEM. (isn't that funny)
Anyway, back to Camp X-Ray. If we WERE hold "terrorists", then we're doing EVERYTHING wrong. We're allowing them to talk to each other. That way they can concoct FALSE stories but they will be consistent across all the "terrorists" we talk to.
The FIRST step in interrogation is to isolate the prisoners. You do NOT want to give them a chance to work on their stories.
Sir! I was only shooting at his helmet! Sir!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Simple solution, simply don't distribute it. Also anything they write that isn't based on GPL code does not fall under the GPL, there is a specific exemption for glibc to allow proprietary software to be written using gcc and linked against glibc, as long as it's source compatable with other compilers. So, no need to give out any source they don't realy want to.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
You're wrong. The geneva convention prohibits physical and moral coericion including threats. In particular,
So withholding pain meds, sleep deprivation, threats of torture, loud starvation, etc. are not okay according to the convention.
Also, threats of physical violence don't really do much unless it's credible in which case someone probably gets hurt in order to make sure prisoners understand that they might be next or that the interrogators are willing to go further.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
***"Shock and awe" was aimed entirely at Saddam's military system. You are wrong about that one.***
Tell that to the civilians that died, dumbass.
Nothing in the the 2 articles you list goes against the list provided in the parent post. If anything it backs it up. I don't see anything in those 2 articles that would prohibit the captor from playing loud music, waking someone up from sleep. refusing to give them an advil etc. And using the threat of violonce is not in violation of those articles either. Only if you use it on the captive.
How would you go about interrogating someone without using these methods? Would you just ask them nicely and if they say "i don't know" then they must be telling the truth?
Yup, they put on their armor; and a few seconds later ....FBOOOOOOM!.....WHUMPPP!...end of unit
that just got dressed. See the new armor that they just put on had RFID tags in them that could
under recently developed commercial technology
could be now read from over a mile away. So now a
troop in the enemy battalion HQ could see exactly
where you and your buddies were thanks to a new
marriage of GPS tech with the RFID tags. Under
federal law and the DMCA, the Army could not take
the tags out as that would be infringing on the
rights of the makers of the equipment. They could
wear 'blockers', but the maker of the tags and
the newly invented long range readers did not sell
them to the Army. The Army did not want to pay
for them. The company then sold the stuff to the
enemy after a small bribe to the enemy president's
brother. They even sold the 'law enforcement
work around equipment that bypassed the RFID
jammers the Army brass bought on their 'economy'
mission but only for use by the officers. So now the troops marched out to their
own destruction at the hands of an enemy that knew
exactly where they were courtesy of an American
DMCA company that sold their lives for 30 pieces
of silver and an American command structure that
lived in greater fear of big business than any
fear of any enemy of this nation.
And no soldier in is right mind would wear a vest with those plates in it. For one, they're not standard issue, they're an addition. Second, they're a general PITA, being both heavy and restrictive to movement. I'm speaking from experience here.
PS if our guys are getting hit with 5.56mm rounds it is either friendly fire our we are at war with NATO.AK-74's use a 5.45x39mm round. We saw enough of these in the former yugo. republic for them to be considered.
The M-16/Armalite variants are also a common weapon in a warzone. Not as prevalent as the AK/SKS variants, but I saw at least one a week during my time.
And for what it's worth, 7.62mm when fired at 100m from a Yugoslav M-70 (SKS variant) went right through two of our standard issue vests. That's four layers of protection.
In essence, no, al Qaeda forces are not required to be treated as prisoners of war, because...
That's probably true of any Al Queda prisoners. But I've seen no evidence that all or even most of the Guantanamo prisoners are Al Queda operatives.
Most likely the majority of them are Taliban. That is, the armed forces of the government of Afghanistan at the time, and as such most certainly worthy of POW status by any reading of the Geneva convention.
They knew what kind of carnage it caused after the first one. Why did they drop the second one?
There is no moral or logical reason to drop the second bomb.
evil is as evil does
The citizens of the United States were better off with that piece of shit Saddam running Iraq. They never should have changed the status quo of the situation in 2002 by invading Iraq.
Not because "war is wrong", but because once the US unilaterally invaded Iraq, it would have no way to get out, without a worse situation occurring (a theocracy against the US). Because we can't get out (without having a more f**ked up situation), 800 US citizens have lost their lives (and more heroes are about to die for their country), reservists are confronted with the situation of being a grunt for the next ten years, while their families fall apart and loss of potential civilian career, and the cost to the US taxpayer will probably ultimately go into the trillions of dollars for this escapade.
This result of this action was forseen by military & strategic experts before the actual invasion. It only could have been mitigated by better planning and execution by the U.S. Gov't. Obviously, they failed miserably (Invasion suceeded, occupation has failed). Now these same experts are indicating that our U.S. military will become unable to meet its world wide security committments (Korea & Taiwan) because the bulk of our force is now stuck in Iraq & Afganistan. Support the US and the troops all you want. But if you support Bush, then you support an administration that *failed* in reverting Iraq into a stable nation, and made the US geopolitical situation much worse than it was in 2002.
The "imminent threat" to the US by Saddam has been demonstrated to be a lie. A lie concocted by the U.S. Gov't, with the most likely culprits the Bush administration.
You think the lie was merely a mistake caused by British intelligence. But we had US personnel verify that the intel was wrong. When one of those gov't employees tried to point out that the administration was lying about not receiving the information, someone decided to tell the press that his wife worked as a deep cover anti-terrorist agent. There was no reason to reveal her name. Its a federal crime to do so. It damaged the intelligence network she setup against WMD terrorists, jeapardized her life, and now she can't work in CIA because she's been outed.
Why Bush decided to invade Iraq, who was behind it (Israel???), is all distracting speculation.
The only thing left to do is kick out the Bush administration for their egregious failure, and hope the next set of ass-clowns can do a better job. The current group has failed.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The Bush administration has said that they do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, and the administration's political history has been to circumvent any attempt by the World Court to subject the US military or politicians to trial for war crimes.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The same kind of carnage a firebombing occurred. They still didn't know about the nasty aftereffects.
Why did they drop the second? Because Japan refused to surrender.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
They never asked japan to surrender after the first one. Actually japan was ready to surrender before they evern dropped the first bomb. The japanese were using the russians as go betweens to arrange the terms for a conditional surrender. We dropped the bomb because we wanted them to surrender unconditionally.
There was no reason to drop the second bomb.
evil is as evil does
Hey! Hostiles coming straight at us! /dev/sda1 /mnt/gun /dev/sda1 on /mnt/gun /dev/sda1 /mnt/gun /dev/sda1 is not a valid block peripheral /dev/brain does not exist, using /dev/null instead
soldier@us.mil> mount
error: only root user can mount
Shit!
soldier@us.mil> mount
error:
They're coming near us!
soldier@us.mil> ps aux | grep enemy_soldier
soldier@us.mil> kill -9 2784
error: no such process
What do we do now?
error:
RUN!!!!!
maybe the history lesson from ww1 was why we wanted an unnconditional surender. maybe it was more of a payback or punishment for all the american lives lost. we are just guessing.
MY guess was to prove that we had more of the bombs and would use them if the fighting went on. This they were ready to surender is like saying i was getting ready to turn the wsdteering wheel in the car but it all the sudden fell of the cliff.
Maybe someday we can all join hands, rock back and forth and sing "I'd like to buy the world a coke", but until then I bet most of the world is going to keep running around killing each other, and that's not our fault. So blow me and my proud neuron. We're not perfect, but at least we're doing something, and at no small cost to ourselves.
If we could walk on water we'd run across the oceans of the world to try and help, and you'd be mad at us for ignoring trade agreements by not using ships.
Nothing in the the 2 articles you list goes against the list provided in the parent post.
If you are so fucking stupid that you can't read, you should perhaps consider taking some remedial courses and after that read those articles a couple of times again until you understand them.
I dont think you understand their objectives...
- The insurgents objective is to get the invaders to leave.
-
The US Armys objective is to occupy and pacify the country.
The insurgents doesn't need a military victory.It's standard tried-and-true assymetrical warfare.
All they need is keeping constant pressure on the invaders, eventually they will decide the price is to high and just go home. It has worked many times before in history, and they're betting it will work again...
To stop the insurgents, the occupiers can:
- Win popular support so the insurgency movement flicker out in a unsympatethic environment. Or...
- Use their vastly superior force to crush the insurgency (military victory).
The first alternative means more occupier casulties, because winning popular support means minimizing "collatteral damage", means more fighting on the insurgents terms.Increase the the US casulty rate can effect US domestic politics... definitly not desirable for the people in charge.
The second option means ruthless use of force on guilty and innocent alike.
The problem here is that the US has based the entire operation on claiming the higher moral ground (We will free the iraqi people from Sadam, and bring them Democracy!), so choosing option 2 is a serious loss of face for the people in charge... not so desirable either.
As I said, it has worked before (American Revolution), some people in Iraq are betting it will work once again.
Some of them are probably the same mujahideen that fought the afghani-soviet war you mentioned...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
"aybe the history lesson from ww1 was why we wanted an unnconditional surender."
Again that may be considered a somewhat valid reason to drop the first bomb.
"maybe it was more of a payback or punishment for all the american lives lost"
This sounds more like the real reason why.
"This they were ready to surender is like saying i was getting ready to turn the wsdteering wheel in the car but it all the sudden fell of the cliff."
We should have asked them to surrender after the first bomb was dropped. We never did that. We never really even gave them a chance to surrender. I think we did it just to kill lots of them. I don't think anybody in America cared about killing civillians at that point. To us they were barely humans.
evil is as evil does
Would you please point out where that phrase is in the Geneva Conventions?
. arrest.01/
:D
"If somebody were captured in the United States during the planning or execution of an act against the US, its government, or its people, then that individual would be summarily executed as a spy."
Ooooh, incorrect. Here's what REALLY happens:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/01/21/border
"Again, no. The status of prisoners doesn't matter to anybody until the end of hostilities."
Actually, it does matter. It matters to a lot of people.
"Prisoners taken during war, whether civilian or lawful or unlawful combatants, are basically stuck in a big hole until the fighting's over."
Read the Geneva Conventions. They cover how POW's should be treated. And they do NOT kick in only AFTER the war is over.
"And if they operate behind enemy lines (i.e., inside an allied nation's borders) under cover, they're spies, and they have no legal protection at all, criminal or otherwise."
But the people we have in Camp X-Ray were picked up in Afghanistan. Not in the US. How could they be "behind enemy lines (i.e., inside an allied nation's borders)" when they were in Afghanistan?
Hmmmmm?
Isn't that the MOST likely thing to get sucked out of the plane??????
Geesh, do the artillery guys sit down and do their firing tables by hand as well including wind speed. Then if the wind dies down, they have to redo their calculations.
OR
Do they simply look the stuff up in tables. OR
I dunno, you choose.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Gotta agree with you on that assessment. By his "logic", our "minute men" were ...... "unlawful combatants".
.........
And since we all know that "unlawful combatants" are, by definition, "evil" and "bad men" who commit "wrongdoing", well
Which is the problem when you try to "define" categories based upon what you want to think of as "good" and "evil" rather than on independant criteria.
If it was someone else invading Iraq, and it was happening 200 years ago, our government would have supported the Iraqi resistance against the foreign invaders.