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Google Earth and "Collateral Damage"
netbuzz writes "British news reports say insurgents are using Google Earth to pinpoint vulnerable targets within bases in Iraq. Could Google be doing more to prevent this? Should they be doing more? They certainly could explain more."
Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq, p. 359. It happened to an Australian journalist who was kidnapped from the front steps of his hotel.
"What, you mean they were peachy keen with us the FIRST time they tried to blow up the World Trade Center?"
I hate to break it to you but they were not iraqis.
"And when they blew up two of our embassies in Africa"
They were not iraqis either.
"And they hit the USS Cole with a missile named Studied Indifference?"
Still not the iraqis. Oh and it wasn't a missile either, it was a boat.
I know facts are kind of annoying but you should still try to place one or two in your post.
evil is as evil does
The data and pictures used by Google to render maps in Google Earth have been bought by Google. Pretty sure Military Departments can buy these too, and I wouldn't even be surprised if they had access to even more detailed maps and data.
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nico
Nico-Live
You've set out the case for the war in Afghanistan, which was a retaliation against a government which harboured and financed Al Qaeda. Motives for the (entirely separate) Iraq war range from non-existent WMD to freeing the people to daddy's unfinished business, but there was no link between terrorism and Iraq until after the fall of Saddam's government.
This works great in the Netherlands. Here's our Ministry of Defense and this is the air force headquarters. If you can't see it on Google Maps, you can't bomb it. </sarcasm>
There's more of this nonsense, but these two are close to home for me.
Maybe
On Jan 29th, 2002, Bush named 3 countries as the "Axis of Evil" - Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Of those three countries:
Who'd we invade again?
Actually, most foreign wars work like that. The British lost very few engagements in the US Revolutionary war. However, the war functioned to create lots of dead bodies in red uniforms, and that was not popular back home. The democratic people of Britain were scratching their heads over why exactly they were sending their soldiers overseas to kill a bunch of Americans who really just seemed to want to just be left alone.
I tend to agree that on a tactical and strategic level the war in Vietnam was successfully fought (not wisely fought, mind you, but even if we did manage to kill thousands of our own soldiers with dumb policies we still managed to get the job done on the battlefield in spite of ourselves). Now, the whole notion of limited war was dumb, and prevented the US from just cleaning up. Korea is a better example of what could have been achieved, but I'd hardly consider North Korea a great success story. And that brings up the bigger issue - if you want to get involved in foreign civil wars you're going to find that social change is a lot messier than just winning battles.
So, yes, in Vietnam the US probably didn't lose a single engagement, unless you count the decision to send troops in at all...