Slashdot Mirror
US Military Launches YouTube Channel
Jenga717 writes "The US military has launched its own channel on YouTube, in efforts to shift the media's focus of Iraq from a negative to a more positive light, and to 'counter the messages of anti-American sites.' From the article: 'The footage is not picked specifically to show the military in a good light ... and is only edited for reasons of time or content too graphic to be shown on YouTube ... And while all the clips currently posted have been shot by the military's combat cameramen, soldiers and marines have been invited to submit their own clips.' The question is, where are they supposed to submit them? Starting 'on or about 14 May 2007', the Department of Defense will block troop access to Myspace, Youtube, MTV, and more sites, due to a 'growing concern for our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET'." More commentary below.
The troops will be unable to access these sites from any computer on the DoD network, yet are still able to access them from their home computers — which they can't use on the DoD network. So why the censorship? The DoD cites security reasons, but the Commander of Global Network Operations (DoD's Joint Task Force)"has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites." The PDF released by the DoD reminds troops that this "benefits not only you, your fellow Servicemembers, and Civilian employees, but preserves our vital networks for conducting official DoD business in peace and war." Sounds like quite a sticky situation."
They have done other things like this with other media formats - like Soldier Radio in the 50's.
Isn't that called "propaganda"?
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I understand that being deployed military is quite a bit different from working in an office, but there are many, many sites I can't get to from my desk at work that I can get to at home. If I try to go to somewhere the network gods say I shouldn't, I get a big Websense error message instead.
Gaming sites? Filtered. Hacking sites? Filtered. Gambling and porn as well (I assume, haven't tried those.) Recently, they've figured out how to filter the google cache of pages sometimes, too.
Unfortunately, sometimes the hacker sites have been the sites with the info I need for work, but the guy two cubes down has a VPN to his home up most of the time, or I just wait until I go home and look stuff up there.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
the whole bit about footage too graphic for you tube... well by its very nature that is what puts the military in a bad light. sounds like propaganda to me.
on another note... I'm in the air force, and for quite some time the base network has blocked access to the following (though some of the blocks have since been rescinded):
1.e-bay
2.something awful
3.any flash content
4.any URL with the word "game" in it
5.any URL with the word "forum" in it
6.countless other harmless sites that don't come to mind right now
just because the military puts up its own youtube channel doesnt mean you HAVE TO watch it. the right to speak/broadcast doesnt mean anyone will listen. keep that in mind
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
... until it has sleeping cats falling off TV's, narcoleptic dogs and drunk people doing the Macarena.
Here is a nice video from the good american army educating the Iraqi population?
Is that the kind of classified information we should not allow the marines to post?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6c4_1176720508&p=1
John Vai
The only way to get positive feedback is to not exist, at least if you're in authority.
How many bad cops are there, really? But there are plenty of people that paint them all with the same brush. I'm not saying that the military is filled with righteous humanitarians who just get stuck in a rough spot every now and again. But the fact is that bad news sells and good news doesn't. When given the choice between bad news and good news, the bad news will win every time. That having been said, I don't think the DoD should be in the business of making sure their side of the story gets told. I know people over there now, and have few friends that have made it back. It's still a war, they're still in the military, and the story isn't going to be all rosy. Or all bad.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Failed? Didn't you see that "Mission Accomplished" speech that was on the news a few years ago? We must have won.
I never quite understood though why a "victory" speech about a war in a virtually landlocked country was made from an aircraft carrier sitting in an ocean hundreds miles away. Besides, according to Bush the people of Baghdad would great us (and therefore him) "with open arms".
Oh really? So what is the criteria then? number of shots on target? cost to the taxpayer of munitions expended? rounds discharged per second?
Entertainment value?
I mean, c'mon, that's just such a silly statement. What other reason can the military ever have for releasing any media at all beyond terse official communiques?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
The military is a spiked club, they dont think they just do. And what they do is the will of the Executive and Legislative branches. If you have such a issue with the militarizes actions why dont you get off your fat ass bitching on a computer and let your state representative and the moron you voted into office KNOW that. And if they dont listen then you need to get every single person you know to vote them out.
The only people who we have to blame for this whole war disaster is the entire population of the United States. The republican supporters for being idiotic sheep, and the loony ass democratic supporters for doing a shit job and showing the idiotic sheep exactly what they are and coming up with a solution instead of just saying "the republicans screwed up." If the democrats had actually HAD a plan to get the troops out last election, there wouldnt have been a re-election of Bush.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
The military has no business telling people what to think. The consensus is that this is a failed mission (as the world warned the US it would be) and they have to live with that.
The military isn't the one that said that we should invade Iraq. All CIA and defense intelligence reports supported the worldwide consensus that Iraq could be contained and that the WMD reports were not conclusive. But Bush and Cheney's lackeys liberally interpreted those reports and suppressed others to make their case to invade Iraq. The military isn't part of the political decision process that failed us, nor did we empower them with any means to do so. The military is just trying to win an unwinnable war that they were forced into by the President and Congress.
If you want to blame someone, blame those who doctored the intelligence briefings and who exaggerated the claims. Blame those who gave the President the power to wage war without any checks and balances. Blame the new political class who has not only discarded isolationalism, but has completely embraced interventionalism. Blame those who ignored President Eisenhower's extremely blunt warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex (his speech at the end of his Presidency). Blame those who think we need to keep a standing army of the same size we had during the Cold War. Don't blame the 18 or 20 year old kids who are over there because or system failed them. If you are an American, then you are part of the system that *ordered* those kids to go over there and die. Don't blame them when you don't like the results that your system chose.
If only Bush had choked to death on that pretzel, the US might not have how many dead? I stopped paying attention to the media after they said like 3000-4000.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
And if you get blown up by an IED, just hit replay and you're good to go.
well better post some true history on what the usa and uk are up to then so i'd better link these vids on mp3's to the site!
. mp3
. mp3
Rory Bremner gives a hilarious and historical look at the history of conflict in Iraq.
1 Between Iraq and a Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by43joQLYj8
2 Beyond Iraq and a Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2JCLwhwTmM
3 Beneath Iraq And A Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipa8DuKyN6I
Robert Newmans History of Oil:
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Ecd6361Ls
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZefONsT1E8
3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0RX3vz-Og
4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLxxybJWVRI
5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsknJvrfSYA
WE ARE NOT IN IRAQ FOR OIL !!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWiLshk6fSU
an interesting lecture by Michael Ruppert: part on starts after brief music:The Truth and Lies of 9-11 A lecture by former LAPD narcotics officer, Michael Ruppert, held at Portland State University in November 2001. He explains how September 11th is connected with oil, gas, heroin, money laundering and the US stockmarket
1: http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug95-hour1mix
2: http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug95-hour2mix
The Truth Is Out There:
This is completely pointless. I already support the troops. By and large, they are just doing what they have been told to do. I also have no doubt that Abu Ghraib and others all began at the top of the chain of command and worked their way downward, providing plausible deniability to the people who were actually responsible for it all.
The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false pretences. It is about our soldiers dying not for our safety, to keep the country free, or to liberate an oppressed people, but simply for oil interests. It is about the Iraqi families which have been torn apart, killed, and subjected to death and destruction every day, caused by both extremist groups and U.S. forces. It is about placing the security of the country in the hands of NATO, aggressive multinational diplomacy, and rebuilding the infrastructure of a decimated country.
Showing us that the U.S. troops are performing their given tasks is going to accomplish absolutely nothing at all.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
- accidently shooting your friend in the back
- blowing up children by mistake
- shooting at reporters as they wave the white flag of war... ect
Even if the military is spreading propaganda, it is always good to listen to all sides in a debate. Even if you disagree with someone its a great idea to learn why they hold a certain belief. Once you understand someone's point of view, it is easier to persuade them to change their mind or to argue against them. Its even possible that you might agree with them.
Heres a cute comic that neatly summarizes what I mean: http://xkcd.com/c106.html
If you think the generals aren't up to their ears in this fiasco, you're living in a fantasy land.
Play Command HQ online
I don't suppose they will be posting these:
The famous "Awe Dude" air-strike on a crowd of civilians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQUK5rA4DaI
Or this apparent murder of civilians driving by in their cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnyjH5wusqs
Or the Apache killing these unarmed men in a farmers field, working on a tractor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZRyNd6ru8
Or executing a wounded Iraqi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W41srr6CQU
Blowing up Mosque's doesn't look so good either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFVnqUJWsiU
Because the army had to lower their standards in order to fill recruitment quotas, they also had to launch The Dislexic Soldier Channel. Their motto is "Can All You Be Can". (ripped off from Bill Mauer)
Table-ized A.I.
I JUST POINTED OUT the fact that the democrats did a piss poor job at SHOWING REPUBLICANS these facts...
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Okay. The last election was in 2006. There was no presidential race that year. A lot of Republicans got voted out of both houses of Congress, so I think some Americans are losing patience with the Republican war strategy. Congress attempted to pass a defense bill with a named exit date this year: that's another sign.
The last presidential election was 2004. Maybe we should've known to kick our current president out by then: I mean, Fahrenheit 9/11 was already released. But, even though things looked bad then, they looked better then than they do now. (When did we learn about Abu Ghraib, anyway?)
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Actually, I think people who are attracted to positions of authority are, in fact, assholes.
That being said, the people in the military are not actually in a position of authority.
Thus, it's entirely possible to paint the military in a good light while letting the authority decisions be painted in a bad light, and I think that this type of PR works perfectly for their target market: new future soldiers.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
No one is even pretending that American mass media is for the dissemination of unbiased facts anymore. Read the article, read the slashdot summary... all of it contains biased wording.
I accept that this may be modded offtopic. It just pisses me off that everyone is pushing their agendas via a medium that has such potential to empower.
The media climate has reached a point where even if I were to put together a youtube series depicting the life of veterans after returning to the states, chronicling both their triumphs and their tragedies, the series would be politicized by all the f*cking pundits and bloggers and politicians to where very few people could view it without preconcieved notions about my own personal opinions about war, politics, and the state of our democracy.
Anyone else out there feel like you can't even trust what you see with your own eyes anymore? Do any other Americans out there feel like it is damn near impossible to speak directly to your fellow countrymen without having your words filtered through the opinions of the talking heads that fill their t.v. screens and babble out of their radios?
Regards.
The abuses are isolated. The enlisted men that are honestly "good guys" trying to to good in a bad situation are many and plenty. The crap reasons that we're over there is another story but the everyday soldiers bearing the brunt of it take it really well and do a lot of good. I agree its a fubar situation but the average enlisted guy dealing with it over there is doing a damn fine job.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Hunderds of thousands. It's more the norm than an exception. It's like they say, there's a fine line between being a cop and being a criminal. Both careers attract the same sort of people.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I would say it is safe to say that the number of soldiers handing out candy and flowers vastly outnumbers the numbers that are stacking up naked Iraqi's in pyramids.
Personally, I am sympathetic to the idea. Not every soldier that goes to Iraq raps a few women and then guns down some kids. Hell, the entire 'surge' is based around the idea of sacrificing more Americans to save more Iraqis. Right now US soldiers are setting practically undefended in outposts all over Baghdad instead of turtling up in their bases and air striking anything that looks threatening. The point of the shift in strategy was basically to put Americans more in the line of fire and restrain the force they can use so that fewer civilians die. They are focusing on civilian protection instead of force protection.
I don't think people fully realize what this means. We KNOW that more soldiers will die as we expose them in an effort to defend the civilian population. I am sympathetic that the army is a tad irritated at being called baby killers while everyone ignores the fact that they are paying in American blood to reduce civilian casualties inflicted by both collateral damage and intentional terrorist/sectarian attacks.
Now, it can certainly be argued that this is a complete waste of American lives. It can certainly be argued that we would be better off to saying we are sorry for kicking over their iron fisted dictator that kept them you line, write out a big check, and tell them good luck on not committing genocide against each other. That said, give the army some credit. They are being told to pay in their own blood to achieve some political objective. If they want to show that they do more then gun down civilians, let them. God forbid anything other then tragedy be reported from Iraq.
They think...that's why we have generals, which in turn, is why someone like the president *should* rely on feedback from these strategic positions. If there's any absence of thought regarding Iraq, it's certainly not with the military - it's with the commander-in-chief and his neo-con know-it-alls.
Is there really some reason they needed this when they already have DVIDS?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
And what about those of us who opposed this war BEFORE we invaded?
Propaganda is a funny word with a million connotations. Sure, this could be called propaganda, as could much of the reporting coming out of Iraq from various outlets.
Wars are hard to cover, and the mish-mash conflict/counter-insurgency that is Iraq is no exception. The problems are similar to those of any other big, contentious political conflict, such as elections, only now people are shooting each other, a reporter's access is often limited to a certain area and frequently only to one side, and the emotions run about 100 times stronger.
I like the use of the word "propaganda" in Spanish better, as a word used to describe any advertisement as well as its perhaps less savory meanings. Propaganda tries to influence people, yes, but it can play a role in informing people. A car ad, for example, informs me about say the gas mileage of a car and attempts to convince me to buy the car at the same time. The information regarding gas mileage is accurate and factual, but it is not simply handed to me straight - it's done in a persuasive manner.
News "reporting" has become more of the same, as the 24 hour networks seem to have a system where supposedly unbiased reports - and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're all biased - are viewed, and then commentary from a pundit whose main qualification is having an opinion is solicited, and this commentary runs just as long if not longer than the report itself. I for one am tired of hearing Jack Cafferty, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs (I particularly dislike Dobbs, but that's another post), Hannity and Colmes blabber on.
The problems are not simply ones of bias - it's a lack of depth, and this problem exists on the supply and demand sides as well. American news outlets have consistently cut back on international news for well over a decade now, and other than a few select cities worldwide most simply don't have correspondents overseas. The results of this problem could easily be seen in the recent Israeli-Lebanese (well, whoever exactly the other party was - it was pretty nebulous) conflict last summer. The major wire services, news outlets, etc. simply didn't have many reporters in Beirut to keep track of things. They flew out their usual talking heads and depended on the information of local stringers, who often have their own agendas and biases built in. A textbook example of this would be the Adnan Hajj photography controversy - a local stringer who doctored photos and used misleading captions to get his point across.
Keeping reporters overseas is expensive, and combat embeds - the safest method of transportation for journalists in Iraq - isn't exactly cheap, either. If you notice, television coverage in the U.S. is often interspersed with clips of combat and other footage from the Iraq conflict recorded during the invasion over four years ago. Or from the latest 12 - 24 hour embed a reporter did with a unit, which is hardly sufficient time to get to know things. Troops also hate these short embeds, something I say from personal experience not as a soldier but from long discussions I had with a French friend talking about his military experience in Afghanistan as a unit commander. Reporters often kept his group from getting the job done. After putting up with a few embeds, he told all those who followed that if fighting occurred they were on their own - and he sure hoped they brought weapons and ammunition.
But there's another reason for this lack of depth of coverage: Americans don't really care about what's going on in the world. Fewer than 20% of Americans have a passport at any given time, and I'd wager that 4 years into a massive troop deployment in Iraq more than 50% of the public still couldn't find the place on a map or identify its capital city. Americans tend to have strong moral feelings about war in general, good and bad, but few and far between are those actually informed. This apathy combined with the extremely
Take some literary theory classes and you will quickly begin to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to seperate writers from bias. In the few rare occasions that you can (stereo instructions for example) the READER will still add their own bias to their interpretation of it.
The media is doing exactly what it always has done. Provided facts laced with opinions. This has been going on since the dawn of time. Our jobs as readers are to parse that information as best we can. Reading it is a active, not passive, experience. You can't expect to be spoon fed the truth. The truth itself is subjective and often subject to interpretation.
if they can only access the internets to actually upload stuff *at home* then anything they upload will be 6 to 15 months out of date. Firstly, this means that it's unlikely that anything that would compromise current operations would get out and secondly, it means that as Iraq descends further into chaos, the youtube clips will be showing an Iraq 6 to 15 months earlier when it wasn't quite so bad.
FGD 135
Big Grin :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You make me sick. The number of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines over there doing good things for the locals VASTLY outnumbers your disgusting stereotypes. Yes that shit happened and more than a few service members we upset by it too, because ignorant asshats like you start running around proclaiming that everyone is doing it. How much charity have you done for the people over there? I have known airmen that have setup donation programs for the kids out there for blankets, food, clothing. These men and women giving up their precious off duty time (which you have terribly little of out there) and their own money to reach out to the local community and help. I bet you don't know anything about the parts of northern Iraq where the locals have announced that for every American killed or kidnapped in their community they will hunt down and kill 100 of these little militia members running around causing problems.
I'm sorry for the 3 people you know that came back. I know a few that didn't come back, and I know hundreds who have been over there for months to years. I suppose the fact that I was there makes me a baby killing, civilian raping, prisoner torturing asshole too huh? Well I'm certainly glad that the people like you are far away from the field and with no weapons, the 15-20 iraqi locals riding on a flatbed doing random work on the base (trash, sandbags, etc) all started waving and smiling at our group on my first day there. I would much rather be surrounded by the people that see that the military is doing its best to try and help (far from the politicians goals).
Go watch your local news and see how many 'good deeds' type stuff gets reported, and then see how many murderous rampages and serial killings get reported, and how much coverage each gets. Then ask "gee, I wonder what more people watch and where they get their ratings". Then think for just one moment "I wonder if the news channels are doing the same thing with the war that they do with our local news, showing the most disturbing and horrific things for ratings and glossing over the mundane and good because noone pays attention to it".
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
in the last presidential election did not vote for Bush in 2004, nor did we really in 2000.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams: 'Anyone who wants a position of authority should under no circumstances be allowed to do the job'
FGD 135
According to the article, the channel is named "Multi-National Force-Iraq", but a search on YouTube does not turn up anything.
The article states it is the 16th most subscribed channel on YouTube, but I don't see it anywhere in the top subscribed channel list.
Did the military or YouTube remove it?
...According to the most recent government figures, 37 million Americans are living below the official poverty threshold, which is $19,971 a year for a family of four. That's one out of every eight Americans, and many of them are children.
...
More than 90 million Americans, close to a third of the entire population, are struggling to make ends meet on incomes that are less than twice the official poverty line. In my book, they're poor.
The number of poor people in America has increased by five million over the past six years, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to historic proportions. The richest one percent of Americans got nearly 20 percent of the nation's income in 2005, while the poorest 20 percent could collectively garner only a measly 3.4 percent.
So, what makes America more secure? "Fighting" "terrorists", or using the 150 Billion to support those at home?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
What planet are you from? The U.S. military operates at the behest of our elected officials... We call them politicians.
I can't help but get the impression that when you use the word politician you mean it in a slanderous manner to describe someone who doesn't share your opinion.
Everyone has an agenda, get over it.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Probably. But that doesn't matter.
The IMPACT of a single innocent child being killed by our troops outweighs a literal TON of candy and flowers being handed out.
Meanwhile, comments from REAL military leaders
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/12/ap/nati
So dead women and children don't matter to the officers in charge.
Again, read the above link.
The problem is that this is now an occupation. We are occupying Iraq. But we are still treating it as an invasion.
We need to switch our strategy to law enforcement now. No more bombings. No more tanks.
The war is over. We won. But we're still going to lose Iraq because we cannot understand that police work is not the same as calling in another bombing run.
And the fault of that is our government AND the military leadership.
Our troops WILL crack under pressure. We KNOW that. Yet we keep putting more pressure on them because we still believe that Iraq is a "war" when we are really an occupation force.
The military leadership refuses to tell the politicians "NO".
Iraq IS a tragedy.
We paint schools and then shoot the parents of the children because they're traveling too fast when they approach our road block. How is that anything other than tragic?
Our troops are PEOPLE, not machines. They cannot take the continued stress.
And now we're extending their tours.
Or not kill innocent people
Or not rape their girls
Or make a youtube channel
Seriously, I'm not sure about the first three.
I was out protesting with MILLIONS of other people.
I wrote letters to my representatives.
Senator Patty Murray voted AGAINST the war.
Fuck your sophomoric "we're all to blame" bullshit. Many of us stood up and opposed this war. We are not to blame. We are still trying to get our troops back before any more of them die.
"oh look... a clip of marines handing out sweets to Iraqi kids. How did that get in there? Damn, That doesn't leave any room for the torture and rape videos we were going to post."
God Be Gone
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Sure, that's probably one of the reasons why the administration wants to have a new surge of troops. Others are to quell the rising amounts of violence and set an example that America won't accept looking like it lost and is retreating. The actual result of such a surge, though, is most likely going to be a rise in violence. When we phased out of Vietnam, we experienced the bloodiest time of that war.
Yeah the truth can get pretty ugly. Can't have you see any of that.
What?
What the anti-war and anti-troops (two distinct, sometimes linked groups with separate agendas) don't want is a source of public information that they cannot control or spin for their own purposes.
I'll bite...
Who is anti troops? The only people who are anti troops are the right wing nuts that want the troops to die because of their crazy religious beliefs. We all know that during Vietnam a lot of people WERE anti troops. It was a terrible thing but we moved past it. People understand not to blame the troops anymore. It's a really easy way to attack someone to say they are anti troops but it just isn't ever the case any more. By using this arguing tactic you are showing how morally bankrupt you are and how indefensible your position is.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Thank you for invoking Godwin's Law.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
English is easier said than done.
I don't get it. What does this have to do with censorship? Since when have other journalists been barred from reporting stories and posting Youtube videos that portray the military in an other-than-positive light?
Or is Slashdot/submitter suggesting that the military should be censored?
Please explain.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I did let my Member of Parliament know how I felt about the prospect of invading Iraq, and my country made the correct decision on the matter.
The military is intended to do, not think, and that's part of the problem. There needs to be a mechanism for the military, at all levels, to understand when they're in a bad mission and make the best of it. As opposed to sticking their heads in the sand and crying "support the troops" when they do something stupid.
The so-called "censorship" exists because:
1. Congressionally-mandated enforcement of business ethics. It is a waste of taxpayer resources to have GIs visiting sites such as YouTube, MTV, etc., as these sites are not mission essential. (Something possibly only the over-30, not still living with mommy crowd might understand.)
2. Operational security prohibits visiting any web site that permits posting of messages, or in this case, videos. Residents of the 5-pointed cesspool have seen too many instances of publicly accessible forums used by DoD personnel to post information about operations that are yet to occur. It's the old, "Loose lips, sinks ships," mindset. Rightfully so.
!%$@#%#@! Slashdot is blocked on my DoD system, so I had to go home to Mommy's house and post this.
All militaries (not just the American one) have a need to feel that their mission is worthwhile. That has to be corrected. Quite often, militaries get sent off on fool's errands, or have to stay somewhere they shouldn't have gone into in the first place.
I'm not blaming the poor SOBs who signed up under Clinton for getting sent to Vietnam 2.0. I'm blaming them for sticking their heads in the sand and pretending it was a good idea, when it's been made quite clear to even the thickest redneck that it wasn't.
Oh, and I'm not American. I, along with the rest of the world, warned you that this was a bad idea. I bear no responsibility for your mistakes.
The military is partially responsible for the outcomes due to the way they have carried out their mission. I don't think the US trains their soldiers to deal with people from other cultures and religions all that well.
meh
Yes because troops are not allowed to disobey orders they see as illegal. Troops are not allowed to think for themselves so we can't blame them can we?
As far as I have heard troops are obliged to refuse to carry out clearly illegal orders, I think that rule was created after Nuremberg trials
I am sure more than one philosopher has written about this at length. Doxa vs. episteme etc.
Anyone who thinks the Game (I call it "The Second Great Game" to put its proper historical perspective) is over when we have Persia in a pincer between Bactria and Babylonia, what a lightweight twit to be so blown about by public opinion, so ignorant of history... well I am hoping that reality is far more textured and profound than any consensus!
Consensus is doxa, hearsay, trivia, rumor, crap. Even legend and outright myth have more truth than does public opinion.
If we do lose this, well I am sure more than one good author has written at length about that scenario, that desire of public opinion that fart of a million asses:
Dan Simmons
Orson Scott Card
After perusing this thread, I'm holding out for the MySpace site.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I mean, that's what these guys want... right... to disseminate the Truth that the evil Western decadent nations are refusing to let be known.
Or something like that. Whatever.
You're kidding right? Did you bother to read those?
First link:
Wednesday, 12 August 1999: The first surveys since 1991 of child and maternal mortality in Iraq reveal that in the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the findings reveal an ongoing humanitarian emergency.
The surveys reveal that in the south and center of Iraq -- home to 85 per cent of the country's population -- under-5 mortality more than doubled from 56 deaths per 1000 live births (1984-1989) to 131 deaths per 1000 live births (1994-1999). Likewise infant mortality -- defined as the death of children in their first year -- increased from 47 per 1000 live births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame. The surveys indicate a maternal mortality ratio in the south and center of 294 deaths per 100,000 live births over the ten-year period 1989 to 1999.
Ms. Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."
Second link:
"Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades,"
The latter link is from a suspected CIA plant, but lets say it's factual. SC sanctions and Bush Senior killed at least 210,000 more BABIES than Hussein's government killed men, women, and children (combined).
An enlightening pair of links. Thank you.
Since when has the US military abided by an international treaty on war?
can we say Guantanamo....
They're being purposely disingenuous. If they were honest about their reasons for wanting to occupy Iraq (securing oil), we could have an informed discussion on the merits of their position.
That's not what they're doing. They're using buzzwords intended to invoke an emotional response in support of their position.
Pardon my French, but these "efforts" are a fucked up mismanaged mess that have slanted all by themselves towards the negative - it's what happens when you roll into a country and toss the government that's been in charge for twenty years without any reasonable plan to end the power vacuum and restore order. What the anti-war crowd wants is for the Bush administration not to fuck this situation up, but it appears to be too late for that. The situation is a mess, it's been handled terribly from every point of view except the military one (I will give them credit - they've done an admirable job when they've had missions to accomplish, the only reason they didn't win the war yet is that the politicians forgot to pin down exactly what "win" would mean in this context, they just thought that things would magically heal themselves and it would be obvious). Yes, America has a badass army that can destroy whatever it wants with very little trouble; unfortunately it also has some mentally challenged leaders that forgot they would need to clean up the mess left by removing an active dictator from a country that's forgotten how to rule itself.
Iraq is no longer a war, after all. A war involves two organized armies having at it, as in with actual commanders and weapons; Iraq is just a bunch of idiots blowing crap up on the roads to scare the people trying to calm things down. We're now trying to quell an insurgency, which is exactly what the anti-war set warned would happen, and warned that we didn't have a plan to deal with. If I recall the response from the Bush administration was that the Iraqis would not do this because they would be so happy to be rid of Saddam. If that had been true, we would have stopped arguing this crap two years ago.
So we're screwed? Should we leave? Who knows...it doesn't appear that things are going very well, which I'm pretty sure even Bush admitted himself, and I really do feel for the Iraqis, so maybe it would be worth sticking it out a little longer to see if we can at least leave things slightly less dangerous than they are now. But as you get yourself all heated up about the anti-war leftist commie shitbag bastards with their patchouli douche and smokable underwear, don't forget this key fact - they were right. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. The entire justification for this war was mistaken, even if it was not an outright lie. Iraq was not even on the radar when it came to being a dire threat to the United States. I know the standard right-wing line from here: Saddam was a bad guy, are you saying it would be better if we left him in power? Well, no, I would never argue the world was better with him, yes, he was a real nasty leader. But there are a lot of bad guys out there. If we start wars with each of their countries just because they're bad guys...well, we just can't, for lack of resources, troops, and morale. There are too many places where we don't like the current leadership, and these kinds of missions do not tend to turn out well, either for our country or theirs. We don't have the energy as a nation to keep reliving the same military regime change nightmare over and over. And the fact is, without the WMD "proof" showing that Saddam was a clear, imminent threat, we would never have gone in because people wouldn't have supported it. Unlike politicians (real or armchair), most real people like to be extremely careful about sending their children off to war, so don't underestimate how totally messed up it is that thousands of our people have now died and killed because of a war that probably shouldn't have started at all.
So whatever...the point of this rant is that the Republicans in control of this war are the ones that messed up - it's ridiculous to point a finger at the media and scream "BIAS!" for reporting on it. You can try to spin this a
The full version of the "helicopter kill" video was shown on ABC Nightly News. Watching it, it's pretty obvious the guys who were killed were looking around, trying to make sure they weren't being watched, and trying to minimize the time they were actually in possession of what looks a lot like a SAM launcher tube. It's very ironic that a version of the video edited to make the military look bad should show up in a discussion criticizing the military of propaganda.
Even if the DoD blocks these sites, who says soldiers who arrange for temporary satellite internet services won't be able to access them?
Kyle
Gulf War I - Military recognizes the importance of public support for a war, and how important media portrayal is to that support. It controls reporters mixed with troops, and censors news reports back home.
Gulf War II - Military attempts to reproduce media strategy from Gulf War I. It works initially, but as the occupation drags on it starts to fall apart. Military again perceives the media as focusing excessively on negativity. The military realizes they can bypass the media, using the Internet to reach the public directly
The Internet has ushered in a new age in which duplication and distribution of information has (for all practical purposes) zero cost. A lot of the old models we've grown up with aren't going to survive this. We all know what's happening to the music and movie industry. A similar thing is going to happen to the press - they are just the middlemen in the distribution of newsworthy information to the public. They're not going to survive the Internet in the form we all grew up with. The emergence of blogging was the first salvo. There are going to be many more. I don't know where all this is going to lead, or what solution will be the best if we want to preserve some semblance of "objective reporting". But the notion that only the "official press" can distribute true news, and anything else is propaganda, that notion isn't going to survive much longer.
Forget for a moment any biases you may have for or against the military. If any group of people felt (rightly or wrongly) that they had been misrepresented by the press in the past, would you expect them to react any differently? Say a Canadian citizen was unjustly deported by the U.S. during an anti-terrorism investigation to a third country where he was tortured. Say you felt the mass media were not giving his story enough coverage, so you decide to make a web site and post some videos on YouTube publicizing the story. Does that automatically make it propaganda?
Our concepts of "news", "reporting", "objectivity", and "propaganda" are going to go through a lot of changes in the next 20 years.
Wow, a blanket statement based on a relatively few well-publicized - and rightly so - incidents. Gitmo was a bad decision by the U.S. government when faced with an influx of prisoners of questionable status... in practice, Gitmo's facilities fulfill Geneva standards, have trained and well supervised guards... it could be a lot worse, and if it's a violation of international law, that falls on "The Decider's" shoulders, not the U.S. military. Secret prisons? That's the CIA's bag. Abu Ghraib? Some redneck reservists are given vague orders, too much power and no supervision - call it the "Stanford Prison Experiment 2", but don't call it a grand plan by the U.S. Military to break international treaties.
Those aren't facts those are misguided opinions with no real evidence. 1. I am not and have not ever been very poor, nor were most of the people I served with. That only the poor bullshit is a line that frequently gets trotted out because the ultraprivlidged manage to dodge the bullet on service, but that does NOT mean that the people who are serving are only the poor and I resent your bigoted classification.
2. Unless you served both in Vietnam and in Iraq you are hardly qualified to say this, and I sincerely doubt you did either. Once again I have served with a great many outstanding leaders that have been put in a horribly unfortunate position of fighting this conflict (its not a war, lets get that straight). Rummy and the Shrub have dictated insane policies and have cut our service to the bone while attempting to fight on two fronts. Now just in case you missed your history lessons, the military leaders in vietnam werent the problem, it was congress and crew dictating how to fight the war with stupid policy and target restrictions.
3. Every group on the planet has its scum, and you insist on pointing at the few that get trotted out in the media and saying that everyone is a model of that person in the military, further you continue with this only the poor bullshit line. Oh and very clever AbuGrave did you think of that yourself or is that your groupthink helping you there? I am glad you can make such promises as to how it all went down, maybe you should just go ahead and testify that you know all the answers and you can clear this whole mess right up so easily. I am so fucking sick of assholes like you trotting out this bullshit that because I am proud of the military and I am proud of my service that I am proud of what the CIVILIANS ordered us to do. Remember that ugly little truth? That the constitution demands a military controlled by the public? I seriously can't believe that you are defending Saddam saying he kept the killing to a minimum...so you support Rummy before the war but not after the war? Good lord...so its ok for us to support Saddam and his murderous regime and ethnic cleansing, but its not ok for us to do anything about it. (Now I think our pretense for going there in the first place is about as strong as a wet tissue, but its a little late to argue about why we shouldn't be there because we are there now and we need to find a way to make things right and not continue to play assinine politics with soldiers lives). I defended a pathetic attack on the character of all military members based on the actions of a few low integrity pieces of shit and suddenly I am a flag waving boot stomping murderous imperialistic monster? I have served, I know how it works, and I know that the vast majority of people I worked with were of the highest caliber, but I also know that there were more than a few that were worthless pricks, and contrary to popular belief MOST of the worthless pricks don't make it all that far.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Who modded "War is HELL" informative? Go outside.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
"of the 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines covered in the survey" So because 179 marines said they wouldn't report it that means that 40% of ALL marines wouldn't report it? I'm so terribly happy that you are so good at buzz and alarmism and so horrible at math, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun to laugh at this. I would be willing to put large ammounts of money that every single last one of them that answered they wouldn't report has spent at least a significant ammount of time in actual real bullet flying people dying combat. Because the kind of stress that puts on a young guy trying to survive, making it through the realization that this is all real, and that his friends are dying around him...well they start to get a little twitchy and suspicious since the enemy is terribly good at pretending to be innocent noncombatants. So not that its a good thing by any means, or that it should be condoned, or that it should not be looked into, but this overblown media hype about what it really means is just disgusting. I don't think it means they go hunting down civilians to hurt, it most likely means that they wouldn't report someone misidentifying a target and hitting someone who probably wasn't in the fight.
I don't like what is going on over there right now, but idiots like you are no better than the assholes who send Americans over there in the first place. A bunch of civilians living a relatively cushy lifestyle who have never had to live in a combat zone suddenly are experts on combat and able to pass judgment and make 'expert' decisions about it. The only difference is the people who send the Americans over there get paid for it, but you all do it.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Your comment fails to appreciate (a) the fact that most of the violence in Iraq comes from native Iraqis; foreigners, while not insignificant, are the vast minority; and (b) that doesn't take very many civilian deaths to really annoy an occupied population.
Leaving wont change this. It isn't like the US pulling up stakes and leaving is going to make the violence suddenly vanish. The vast majority of deaths in Iraq these days is not collateral damage, and it isn't Americans even kill insurgents. The vast majority of deaths stem from Sunni and Shiites trying to kill each other with a helping of Al-Qaeda suicide bombers to keep everyone perpetual pissed, as if Saddam's brutal treatment of the Shiites wasn't enough. Look, we have seen this kind of warfare before.
After the Jews Holocaust of World War II, the world declared never again. Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur are all examples of the sort tide the US is desperately trying to push back. The 'never again' mantra has rung hollow in the face of these horrific genocides.
Right now the US stands in an ugly place. One option is to spend money and lives trying to hold back the genocide that is all but certain to take place in the absence of a hundred thousand+ multinational forces. The US can probably stabilize things in the end, but it might take years, and it might require more American blood and money. Iraq can't stay in genocide mode forever, and as long as the US is there outright genocide is impossible.
The other option is for the US to pack up their bags, offer some empty apologies for killing the brutal authoritarian who was keeping chaos at bay, hand the current government a check, and give any who help us and fears for their life US citizenship for them and their family and a free airplane ride to the nation of their choice. I am not completely against the idea.
That said, we really need to understanding what the 'screw you guys, I am going home' option means. We need to consciously recognize and accept that by doing this, we could kick off a true genocide and spawn a massive three way regional proxy war with 'moderate' Arab states funding the Sunnis in a battle against Iranian funded Shiites. Further, we need to accept that the one group that really would be sad to see us leave, the Kurds, are going to get the pissed pounded out of them by the Turks when they declare an independent Kurdistan. Further, we need to accept that the one Arab state that can honestly claim to be a moderate democracy, the Turks, are going to have a large hunk of their nation flare up in violence as Turkish Kurds try and join Iraqi Kurds in independence.
If we can consciously accept all of this, bow to idea that all of this might come to pass, bow to the idea that we are going to wash our hands of this mess, and bow to the idea that America spawned a genocide and refused to pay in blood to stop it, THEN I am fine with us leaving. Sadly, this is not what is happening. The people that want to pull out frame the retreat as if as soon as the US leaves the Sunni, Shiites, and Kurds will all of a sudden put down their weapons and hug. Listen to the people who want to pull out, and you get the impression that leaving would be doing Iraq a favor and that a simple retreat will solve all problems. It wont. It will solve the Americans problem for sure... they will stop paying in blood and money to fix the mess they made, but it will not solve anything in Iraq. Instead, the one force that is desperately trying to keep the waring parties from slaughtering each other will be gone, and only Iraq's weak and pathetic central government will stand in the way of genocide.
The Administration? The CIA? These are all components of the United States, and that nation bears full responsibility for the actions of all parts of its government and its agencies. You can't dismiss these things as "oh, the CIA's bag", and "it could be worse" is simply a cop-out.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Aside from the obvious politcal spin this is trying to accomplish I have a big problem with what continues to be a major issue in my opinion. Videos and photos of dead enemy comabatants. We strongly condemn it when our dead troups are photographed or video taped, however we aparently have no problems doing the same to our enemies. And before anyone says it, I firmly believe they are either enemy comabatants and subject to the laws of the Geneva Convention or they are terrorist, and since terrorists get trials.... well you get it.
No, the screen name is MNFIRAQ
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MNFIRAQ
What is your good news? The mainstream media is reporting that people are dying. From what I understand, people are dying. Also, their country is being looted, a couple of hundred thousand Americans, both military and civilian, are roaming Iraq with complete immunity from Iraqi law. The security contractors are, from what I can tell, immune from any law. Iraqis can be jailed just for criticizing the USA. Iraqis can be tortured to death for being Sunni, or blown up for being Shiite. What the hell would you like the media to report? "A flower bloomed today?" "A dog had puppies, and they were cute?"
Since the media sucks so much, please link to this good news we're missing.
The problem I see is that we consider "being a good person" to be an innate, defined trait, not an character assessment made on your actions. If someone supports torture, I don't consider them a good person, even if they give candy to kids and scratch puppies behind the ears. Most of us have the assessment backwards, thinking that someone couldn't have done what they clearly did so we can continue to think what we already thought of them. Consequently, reports of widespread torture, abuse, beatings, unecessary killings, etc are discounted so we can continue to think rosy thoughts.
It isn't that Americans are bad or that soldiers/seamen/marines/airmen are bad, but that people all have the capacity for evil, and the situation our government has put them in makes it surface and blossom. And is it still their fault? You're damned right it is.
If you support torture, much less engage in it, you are a bad person. I don't care if someone is wringing their hands and saying "but you have to understand what they've been through!" We don't ask what the suicide bombers or death squad members have "been through," and I don't care what a torturer has been through, even if we share nationalities. Americans don't get a free pass on morality.
Look, are you really missing something so obvious? Picture a couple of hundred thousand foreign military and civilians occupying your country, with complete immunity from the laws of your country. They paint some schools, hand out some candy, and then shoot your wife at a checkpoint. Which of their actions do you really consider relevant to evaluating the impact of their presence in your country? How much "balance" would you have?
We are killing a lot of noncombatants over there and then saying "well, sorry about that" and actually thinking that people should just judge us by the nice things we do. Sorry dude, the bad things carry a lot more weight than the nice PR handing-out-candy things. The problem is that you want credit for your virtues but not commensurate blame for the ill effects of your actions. While I consider that desire normal, I don't consider it realistic or moral.
I am anti troops. Reason?
1. Spray'n'pray
2. Abu Ghraib (do you really believe it has stopped only because cameras were prohibited?)
3. Death count of civilians
4. Nobody forces them to go there.
5. They are occupying force
And no, I'm not right wing nor religious.
Ahem!
> People understand not to blame the troops anymore. It's a really easy way to attack someone to say they are anti troops but it just isn't ever the case any more.
And still our troops are exploited on a daily basis for political gain. Whether it be a bold politician, such as John Mccain, advocating support for the surge in the midst of chaos, a weak politician, such as Nancy Pelosi, undermining this administration's foreign policy by talking to our enemies (the president of Syria), or the infamous al Qaeda propaganda machine. Our troops are being politicized left and right!
> The only people who are anti troops are the right wing nuts that want the troops to die because of their crazy religious beliefs
*sigh* I rest my case.
I'd like to believe that. But I have a sneaking suspicion we only found about Haditha and Abu Ghraib was because someone took pictures. What happened at other incidents where there were no cameras? Did the army succeed in covering up like they were trying to with Haditha?
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
A person is responsible for their actions even if they are just there to earn a living, just following orders, don't really believe in what they're doing, or secretly think that the Decider is a moron. If they torture someone, they're a despicable person, even if it's okayed or ignored through the chain of command, and even if they get away with it. Our troops are human beings doing a job for pay, and shouldn't be viewed as sainted martyrs incapable for shouldering responsibility for their actions. They chose to take the money, chose their actions, and are no less culpable for their actions than the CIA or State Dept civilians. That they didn't make the policy doesn't exempt them for moral responsibility for implementing the policy.
A few fun facts:
- 650 thousand civilians dead since the 2003 invasion. Total population: 28 million.
- 20 billion dollars of iraqi money was stolen by the US appointed "manager" for Iraq.
- Another 20 billion dollars from the US Govt. is being spent in Iraq supposedly for reconstruction. Millions of dollars are given to Haliburton, etc. in triple or more digit percentage profits.
- There are 30000 mercenaries in the service of foreign companies in Iraq, above the law, mostly caring about their own safety even at the price of serious damage to the iraqis. It is not isolated cases, a lot of the mercenary companies actively promote themselves with videos showing how they "protect" their client, while disregarding the safety of the natives (firing at cars that come too close - less than 50-100 meters, bumping cars out of the way and that kind of stuff).
- The iraqis you mentioned working on the base are selection bias. They wouldn't work on a fucking military base run by the USA, if they were hostile against you. Or even if they were, they wouldn't show it.
So yeah, you can reconstruct the houses you've bombed from the iraqis' own money, but don't expect them to thank you, especially if a few relatives were killed either directly or indirectly due to the US. Statistically, there isn't anyone in Iraq who hasn't lost a relative.
Look, I understand what you or the lower ranks of the military personnel try to do. I do believe most of you are there against your will and while there, you're trying to help. But, you need to understand that there is a reason why the military and the police is separate. Iraq isn't in a war, but in a state of unrest. You can't apply military methods to an occupation because the people generally speaking don't trust you. To win their trust you'd need to stop thinking like the military and start thinking like police. You'd need to take even more risk by not approaching every situation as a military matter. You'd have a lot more american casualties, but either that and try to bring peace, or you should just pull out before doing more damage.
You need to look at this from the iraqis point of view. From their POV, they had a dictator, but it was their countrymen, then a foreign country landed troops on them, things were bombed, then a lot of people started to die, they see that while you preach freedom and democracy their government is literally a puppet of the USA, the media setup by the USA is biased to the end, the iraqi oil revenue is used to rebuild their own country so it's not like you're doing any favors for them, the common soldiers like you treat them as a potential military threat, they have no national identity, etc.
Baghdad has the green zone, an ultimate symbol of occupation. You can't expect the average iraqi to distinguish your mood when you're following orders from your politicians or when you're in the charitable mood. They think that "We were just following orders" is not a valid defense, rightly so. In my opinion the whole "I oppose the politicians but support the troops" is not a valid viewpoint, because the troops are human too. They have a brain to think and if they don't, only they can be faulted for that. When you join the military you agree that you're willing to risk death and that you're supposed to follow orders even when you're disagreeing with them because they come from corrupt politicians pawing their own agenda. You are supposed to stick to your ethics when a superior orders you to do something unethical. Lack of forsight is not innocence, it is just stupidity on the behalf of military personnel.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
That's lovely, but the US does have a clear history of ignoring anything it doesn't deem "in its best interests" like...the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction it fails to recognise.
Hey, good idea. Let's send an army of rappers: Snoop Dogg, DMX, 50 Cent, Ja Rule etc. Not only these guys are mean, but I am sure the Iraqis will be easily corrupted by the display of women, money and sex.
So, where would you find statistics on that? There are no hard numbers, but all you have to do is observe how cops behave in the real world, and you'll see that most of them aren't shining examples of humanity.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I am one of the troops and believe me there really are people who are still anti-troops. Some people do still freak out when we try to do normal everyday things. I've been called freak, monster, murderer, nazi, and baby killer. Now I'm not saying a large portion of the population is anti-troops; for the most part people can separate between the war and the troops.
And it's no surprise that DOD will be uniformly blocking access to these sites, for several years it has been specifically forbidden by the regs to us DOD computers for personal use. By most accounts, Myspace, YouTube, and the like are all for personal use. In fact many bases already block these sites on their networks. And it isn't censorship either. The government is paying for that bandwidth for official use only. We can't have our networks go down because too many people are trying to read their personal e-mail or post videos online, for the military this is our job, this is what we do every day.
There are plenty of sources of information that the military can't spin. If we want to we can post on Myspace or YouTube from our personal machines. If you're in the desert then you can visit those sites from the computers in the MWR center (Morale, Welfare, Recreation Center) or from the internet cafe if the base has one.
Nobody called you in the first place.
Why don't you go free Pakistan? Musharaf is a dictator as well.
Google News Search for "Quagmire"
Oh...and it's a QUAGMIRE! QUAGMIRE! WE'RE LOSING!
I hate the world .. I hate the world .. I hate the world .. I hate the world
... I love the world ... I love the world (no more than that please)
[valium-intake]
I love the world
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
That's funny. I can say the same thing--only in reverse. Take a look at cops in the real world. Most of them are shining examples of humanity. As a former EMT I worked with a lot of officers each and every day. They were good people. Out of a group of about 30, there were 2 bad apples. They were both terminated for their bad behavior. The rest of the officers were kind, caring, and compassionate. They may not be perfect like a lot of people would want them to be, but they are decent human beings.
There's no place like
Statistical sampling is great when you are dealing with things that it applies to well. Coin tosses for example...a coin doesn't have a good day, a bad day, or really much of a choice. A coin doesn't have its words taken out of context. And most importantly coins don't generally have emotional lunatics on either side chanting with a fervor about how the coin should always be heads or always be tails. I'm saying they talked to people, and that most of those people were probably coming out of combat zones, where they have had a long string of bad days.
.09% sampling is valid enough for you to make these broad sweeping claims? Oh and by the way, be sure to use coins that can change their results after being flipped. Now also that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the Air Force, Navy, or Marines.
You are terribly confused about what I said. I said you think you are some expert on the state of the troops and can make all of these wonderful decision calls on it and how all troops are screwed up. I'm freaking glad the Pentagon is the one doing the study, because it means they have a little more insight into what the answers mean, and what was asked, and specifically how it was asked. You are just being an armchair quarterback reading media snippets and making broad judgement calls on how a very small statistical sampling of people with ever shifting opinions make. There are approximately 1.1 million Army members counting active and reserve, they talked to a little over 1000 as cited by your link. Now since you are so hot shit to explain to me how I deny statistical sampling, would you care to explain in what field that approximately
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Thank you! It blows my mind that one screwup soldier makes everyone in the military a demon is a perfectly accepted reasoning. But one Arab strapping a bomb to his chest does not justify demonizing all of them. Its insane that nobody seems to want to admit individual responsibilities for actions when talking about 'the enemy' but is quick to accept it when defending their side.
There are idiot asshole soldiers just like there are idiot asshole muslims, that doesn't speak for the whole group or even the majority! But a bunch of asshats have decided it does and now we have two large groups in charge with one screaming all arabs are evil bomb em all, and another screaming all soldiers are evil the muslims should kill them all! In the meantime soldiers are being sent to die by their 'supporters' as well as their detractors, and precious few Americans seem concerned about the father, son, brother, neighbor that gets killed or maimed in Iraq in this mess, only that he is a murderer and rapist because he happens to work with a few idiot assholes that are pathetic excuses for humans.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Please. The US has refused to follow Geneva conventions (Alberto Gonzales called them "quaint") and said they don't apply, they risk American lives, they hold us back, etc. The US tortures; ask the ex-prisoners, the former guards, and even the chaplain. The UK at least has the guts to call us on it in documentaries.
Code of ethics?
You can't take the sky from me...
Poverty is one of America's most persistent and serious problems. The United States produces more per capita than any other industrialized country, and in recent years has devoted more than $500 billion per year, or about 12 percent of its gross national product, to public assistance and social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps, and Medicaid.i tedStates.html
http://www.econlib.org/library/ENC/PovertyintheUn
The poverty problem is not essentially a money problem. We already spend fortunes of money on poverty programs, have for 40 years, and it's getting worse, not better.
People are not poor solely because they don't have money. There are many factors, and it's a complex problem. I submit to you that there are several things that could be done to dramatically reduce poverty in the US, and few of them require throwing more government-managed dollars at the issue.
The core issues revolve around what people consider to be an acceptable living standard in our culture, and what is "normal."
People who are able to work should work.
People should not borrow money for things that depreciate.
People who don't understand the consequences of borrowing money should not borrow money at all.
People who have no ability to earn an income should not start families.
People who do start families that way should lean predominantly on their family members to help provide food and shelter rather than turning to the government. If you can't pay rent on an apartment, then you should get roommates to help pay the bills. This is common in other cultures. In my neighborhood there are several first-generation immigrant families. Most of them rely on family members and non-family members to help pay the mortgage. To those of us who are not immigrants, this seems unacceptable. Why? Because we're spoiled.
I do have compassion for people, and know that there are some people who just cannot make it on their own. (Mental handicap, physical infirmity, crushing medical bills, etc.)
As I see it, the largest root cause of the poverty problem is
a) People are not willing to get the education that they need to provide the earning opportunities that are needed.
b) If they do have an education, they are unwilling to work hard and consistently to earn money.
c) If they do earn money, they do stupid things with it. e.g. play the lottery, borrow money to buy cars, run credit cards to the limits for crap they don't need, 100% mortgages with interest-only options, and
d) then get overextended, borrowing to their credit limit where they are abused by financial institutions who are driven by shareholders who care about profitability more than whether these companies are abusing people to drive up profits. These mortgages and credit cards should never have been issued in the first place. Those people could not afford to borrow that money.
e) refuse to learn how to develop relationship skills, and they buy into the lie that divorce solves your relational problems. As a result, children are thrown into poverty because the income that was insufficient to cover one household now is split to try to cover expenses for two households.
There are many things we can do to help reduce poverty. Most of them involve getting people to stop living above their means, learn to sacrifice a bit, hold people accountable for bad choices, and teach relational skills so that families are not broken into multiple households. It's not a money problem, it's predominately a character problem, and that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the money being spent in the war on terror.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I agree with you on several points. I would posit that the original person who identified two distinct groups was partially right, but that "anti-troop" is not really one of them. The two groups we have which are against this war are A) the people who thought that it was a bad idea based on logical reasoning and B) the people who are anti-war and anti-violence at all costs, who would protest WWII if it were going right now, and think that Ghandi could solve every problem in the world by rolling over and showing his belly. These groups do get mixed because they both have a problem with this war, only one is pointing out flaws in the reasoning while the other is holding up signs like "No Blood for Oil", chanting peace slogans, and giving more benefit of the doubt to our enemies than our soldiers.
As for the media, it is biased, there is no getting around that. Most of it is biased against the war but I believe that has a lot to do with the fact that the media is entirely uninformed when it comes to what is really going on in Iraq. If you read things published by those who are over there you get a very different take on what is going on than what the mainstream media gives you. You can hear success stories, things that are improving, things that work, and things that don't. On the news you hear the negative, the blood, the gore. It's just like the evening local news which talks incessantly about violence, crime, and corruption, only in the case of Iraq it is halfway around the world and nobody is actually living it so they take what is fed to them on face value. You have to realize you are being told news stories by people who are essentially hearing stories second-hand (or worse) and editing, filtering, and mis-communicating them whether intentional or not. People rightfully doubt the politicians behind this war because politicians often have ulterior motives but then they lower their guard and accept without question what the politicians on the other end of the spectrum tell them because they happen to agree on one point.
There are things called "line breaks" and "paragraphs".
If you want to be taken seriously, learn what these are, and use them.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, that's either a highly unusual police force, or you are looking at them with rose-tinted glasses. most cops really aren't decent. They don't have a good sense of ethics, and don't believe in innocence until proven guilty. Quite the opposite, they believe they are always right about who is a criminal. Most cops will take any opportunity available to inflict violence on a suspect. Most are willing to lie or exaggerate events in order to incarcerate someone they dopn't like.
Those who join the force as decent human beings usually leave, or the job drives them crooked. Honest people don't last very long as cops.
I imagine your perception of them is shaped by the role you were playing - they treated you differently because cooperating with you was part of their job. So, you only saw their good sides, not what they were really like. That's one thing cops are good at - creating a good public face to cover up their crimes. They are expert liars and deceivers.
... and then they built the supercollider.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234585&cid=191 06803
Kthx.
Quite the opposite, they believe they are always right about who is a criminal.
...or could it be that because they've been doing the job for a while, their skills and intuition do a good job of telling them who is a criminal and who is not. And don't forget, they don't decide who is a criminal and who is not. That's a job for the courts.
Most cops will take any opportunity available to inflict violence on a suspect. Most are willing to lie or exaggerate events in order to incarcerate someone they dopn't like.
Everyone gets 'amped' up in stressful situations. I don't think they *like* to inflict violence on someone. But let's face it. If you're chasing down someone who just robbed a bank and you tackle them into the pavement--well, they did just rob a bank at gunpoint.
imagine your perception of them is shaped by the role you were playing - they treated you differently because cooperating with you was part of their job.
A lot of people believe that misconception that EMS just cooperates with the cops. In actuality we have to follow the federal HIPAA laws. Unless a patient is currently in the act of breaking the law (shooting up in the back of your ambulance, or maybe assaulting your partner) you can't go tell on them to the police. Even if they just told you they were driving drunk and slammed into a school bus full of kids, you can't tell the law enforcement office. The officer has to get the information out of the patient.
The police aren't even allowed to copy the patient's information off our charts. They have to get name, address, etc from the patient directly.
The only way we can really cooperate with the legal system is through subpoena.
It caused quite a rift between EMS and our local police department for a while until we explained to them that if we said "he was drunk", they could have their entire case thrown out of court for using federally protected information.
There's no place like
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This is the same as the issue I discussed in another article here
Geeks strike again 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
And still our troops are exploited on a daily basis for political gain. Whether it be a bold politician, such as John Mccain, advocating support for the surge in the midst of chaos, a weak politician, such as Nancy Pelosi
McCain is bold and Pelosi is weak, eh? How about you have a nice, warm cup of STFU.
I'm sorry General. I had no idea that the same 120,000 troops have been there the whole time.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
*My* point is that there was so much shit that even if your eyes were closed you couldn't pretend not to smell it. Bush was re-elected because the Republicans didn't care or were happy to rationalize. Don't pretend like they didn't know.
Play Command HQ online
You are just like the people who think that the only thing that needs to be fixed in the US is to fire the people who allowed it to occur (like Bush and Cheney). Then everything will be alright. This is incredibly naïve. Bush and Cheney were allowed to gain power because of the underlying cause. They didn't bring it with them. Bush and Cheney are the lackeys of interventionalism and the military-industrial complex, not the other way around.
Right, and the Generals prop up the militaristic system that created them. They never saw a plan they didn't like as long as at expanded the role and influence of the military. They never saw a weapons system that couldn't kill terrorists (this year), a base that couldn't be repurposed, or an area of government that couldn't be absorbed by the Pentagon, from diplomacy to espionage.
Play Command HQ online
It does not take 3 years to conduct a poll, few weeks at the most, so troop rotation is not a factor as the poll is a snapshot of the state of the combat troops in Iraq.
Besides, as I already mentioned, that sample size is more then statistically adequate even for 1 million troops if it were to be used that way, since taking the great depth of rotation of US troops into account it would then mean that the individuals chosen presently in Iraq are representing a reasonable sample of all US troops, because of the fact that a great majority of US troups were by now rotated into Iraq at least once. At this point even Air Force personnel is being pressed into infantry duty.
Polls conducted in the US have sample sizes of 1000 - 2000 individuals for the whole country of 300 million, or so, individuals. There are mathematical formulae which govern this sort of thing which one can use to determine standard deviation and subsequently margins of error of such small samples, and as I said before, the sample size of the Pentagon poll is huge even if all active and reserve troops were taken into account, so it does not matter which way you slice this thing, really, all you are doing is increasing the statistical sampling error rate from less then 1% to around 2%, 19 times out of 20.
Then how,precisely, exactly, would YOU deal with a combatant you had reason to suspect may be armed and playing possum? Ask Jessica Lynch if she thinks wounded enemies should be executed on the off chance that they still have some fight in them.
If you defend your marines when they illegally murder wounded enemies, then you are telling the rest of the world to kill YOUR wounded. Why should they risk getting their hospitals attacked by bringing your blue eyed wounded there for treatment? It's much safer to just kill them in cold blood.
I would like the troops to be treated humanely when they are wounded by the enemy, you're telling your enemies it's better to shoot them like dogs.
You can't take the sky from me...
Look, if you are hell bent on believing that all service members are demons then that is up to you. I find it ironic that people are so quick to maintain that flawed reasoning yet attack the people who say all muslims are terrorists because a few idiot assholes strap bombs to their chest and blow up innocent people. The muslims that held prayer vigils after 9/11 barely got a shred of media attention, but the few idiot assholes burning flags in the street was the focus of every news paper and TV broadcast in the nation for the next 5 years. They never talk about the kurds in northern Iraq who have declared that for every American killed or kidnapped in their areas they will kill 100 jihadists. I'm not fond of this invade everywhere nonsense, I think this war on terror justifies insane privacy invasions is pure shit, and I think good ol Rummy did a bang up job of screwing the shit out of military members by cutting pay and benefits to the bone. People bitch that the military should just not follow orders and do their own thing instead, but they are ignorant asshats that don't realize that a military coup would leave them in a rather unrecoverable position, while at least now with democracy (marginally) in tact the CIVILIANS who are primarily responsible for this mess can be replaced.
If that reflected the average service member it would have to be a random sample, and a bunch of soldiers and marines in a combat zone are not a random sample. If you want to argue that the troops in the combat zone are stretched thin, stressed out, and prone to making bad judgments due to combat stress then I have no problem with that, in fact I think that was the whole point. But to base an opinion that all service members are like that based on that poll is ignorant at best. It didn't sample service members that have not been in combat, it didn't sample service members who have been removed from combat for some time, it didn't sample 2 entire branches of the military.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Once again you say that 50% of them are demons, based on a random sample of CURRENT combat troops. This is flawed logic. If you are going to say 50% of the current combat troops have problems then we only have a disagreement about you demonizing them rather than doing anything to try and get them the relief they need (IE, less warhungry politicians, because the Dems voted for this bullshit just like the Reps but they act like they didn't). You also are back on this broad generalization nonsense about Christian Dominionists running the Air Force which is once again just ignorant, opinionated, and just as offensive as saying that Islam preaches spreading Islam by the sword.
The comparison to Vietnam shows a complete disregard or lack of education on the situation. Vietnam was fought by a VERY large portion of nonvolunteers, or criminals who volunteered for service instead of prison time, not exactly the kind of people you want out running about with weapons or you wind up with the kind of atrocities mentioned with a disturbingly high frequency. We have had an all volunteer force for a very long time now. Nevermind that the political interference in Vietnam was MANY times worse than this current crop of nonsense. "You can kill the soldiers that come close, but you can't bomb the factories feeding their war machine" Our politicians created an impossible to win conflict with their stupid target restrictions and then just fed unwilling people into a meat grinder for years, that is not at all the same thing, althought people like to claim it is. Further you seem to assume that the media spin of "see they would violate civilians, they hunt down civilians to hurt and not report" is correct rather than "would you report your buddy for shooting an unarmed civilian rushing the gate prior to proper identification and authorization". Not that either scenario is good, but one is a demonizing political agenda, and the other is a scared 18-20yr old with a gun, which do you think is honestly more likely?
You also seem to think that no Navy or Air Force personnel are on the ground in Iraq in combat zones. When in fact there is a great deal of them on the ground in combat zones. I am going to go ahead and guess you haven't actually studied war in any detailed fashion, or possibly even American warfare and military issues, else you might have chosen a more accurate number of years. One that is actually recorded with meaningful accuracy for one (5000 years, not so much), or one that actually coincides with the history of America. Don't EVEN begin to tell me that you believe that the Chinese military, Korean military (north or south), the Israeli, Iranian, Syrian, etc militarys behave ANYTHING like each other or the US Military. There are a lot of reasons to not like the current situation, but this moronic demonization of the military is just pathetic and weak minded. There are far more stories of charitable actions, of happy locals, of better living conditions, but they don't generate huge ratings so they don't get told in the mainstream media. Bad shit happens, kinda goes with the territory of dealing with large numbers of people trying to kill each other, that doesn't mean these kinds of abuses are the norm.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The current troops levels are around 120000 mark which is what I was mentioning repeatedly. These are the only troops that count at the moment since they are the ones who are in Iraq and thus have opportunity to act on their opinions. You on the other hand keep trying to bring all of the states-side troops into this. Therefore I am simply pointing out to you that because the conditions in Iraq have not changed over a prolonged period of time, there is no reason to believe that the previous troop rotations were behaving any different under the same conditions. You claim otherwise. Could you explain why do you believe so?
Also I did not mention anything about demons, I simply point out that the attitudes and behaviour of US troops is consistent with those of all the other empires past, under similar conditions.
Although I did use a sweeping statement, it was based on repeated statements of the very top Air Force officials, disproportionately many of whom are Christian Fundamentalists and who use phrases such as ".. my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol." etc and on events such as the "top" Air Force Academy graduates engaging in wholesale spamming of all the other students with Christian Dominionist missives.
So you are saying that "volunteers", who originate mostly from poverty stricken strata of the society and who see the service as a way to get education or to lift themsevles from otherwise hopeless situations, and whose ranks are bolstered recently with the very criminals you bemoan, since the Army has significantly relaxed its rules due to the personnel crisis in Iraq, are cut from completely different cloth then Joe Doe picked up at random from any US city or town? That because they are "volunteers" (and I use that term rather sarcastically) then they are therefore pure as driven snow, since, clearly, they "volunteered" due to their heart-felt desire to purify the world of Evil. Getting money in exchange for a few weekends of excercises in the Reserve had nothing to do with it whatsoever. I sense that your desperation to somehow salvage the, so dear to you, image of exceptionalism and "inherent goodness" of the USA is starting to eat at your sanity.
Your grasp of history is somewhat amusing. Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities were bombed on a regular basis. So were the roads and railways supplying the NVA and VC. Even Cambodia and Laos were bombed. NVA simply was too resiliant and kept rebuilding. Also, due to the influx of Soviet-made SAMs the bombing campaings of the Northern cities were frought with danger resulting in large losses of US bombers. NVA also had an Air Force equipped with MIG fighters which defended those cities.
Unless of course by the "factories feeding their war machine" you mean the ones in the Ural mountains. In which case bombing them would have most likely ended the history of humankind.
You insist on saying all troops would behave this way because the conditions have not changed (incredibly false, but since I doubt you have actually been there I'm not even going to get into a discussion about the changing situation there) because a few Army and Marines folks in a survey. I'm not discounting the study, I am discounting your reasoning that all troops to include the services not polled would behave the same way and actively commit atrocities.
Maybe you didn't see it from the outside, but the guy that sent out that mass email of dogmatic crap got his balls in a bit of a vice over it. So its not like that behavior is exactly tolerated. In fact the Air Force is probably the most tolerant branch in regards to other beliefs.
I could say the same of your grasp of history. Vietnam was another trainwreck war. Instabilities set off by the French and then the US decided they needed to rush in to prevent the spread of communism all the while allowing the politicians to run the war from Washington. Stupid, ineffective, and got tons of people killed. To call those idiots the last sane ones in that mess is unbelievably blind. Those "sane" people were the ones that started that mess, imposed idiotic rules, did the draft, did the criminal exchange program, and then (just like today) changed their damned minds and relied on the incredibly short American attention span to become the heroes for pulling out of the mess that they started. In the mean time, the soldiers that were sent into that shithole came back baby killers, murderers, or in boxes, and were abandoned by their government and their people because some idiot asshat politicians fucked it all up. Here we are again, justifying how evil the soldiers are, for suffering through bullshit caused by idiot politicians who won't see a SHRED of accountability for the fucking mess. Just another generation of young men and women to be demonized for serving their country under the will of madmen voted in by the same civilians who think its kosher to treat them like shit.
You are clearly ignorant of military history and customs. The US military is nothing like those other armies. The US military has historically gone through insane lengths to protect civilians and minimize casualties. Standard practice in the Korean army...you fall asleep on post, they take your gun and kill you with it for your utter failure. Standard practice in the US military, you might get some paperwork and if it was a really important post you might lose some rank. That is pretty different. The US military will sacrifice hundreds to save a few, others cut their losses and there is no "no man left behind" mentality. It would be a hell of a lot easier if we just shot anyone that came within range of our rifles, but we don't do that. In the early days of the war the first special forces on the ground quit shaving to respect the local customs while they were going door to door, they allowed the men of the house to hide the daughters in the back as is custom and everything, it was incredibly effective, the locals were much more trusting and the forces on the ground were getting much more accurate information. Why did it stop? Because a bunch of pictures of these bearded US soldiers made it back stateside through the media and some idiot asshat political types demanded that our troops start shaving because they are supposed to be clean cut! And now we are back to kicking down doors and waterboarding as "viable" methods of getting information. Once again a nice cute political decision fucking it all up, and the troops bearing the blame for it.
I'm glad you work for military intel with those numbers about how they all want us dead. Oh wait? You mean you got that from reading the mainstream news too? Unless of coarse you are using the stuff that came from the various terrorist news organizations. You aren't on the ground there, You haven't been on the ground their, you only source of information is people who get paid to get you to watch, or who want
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Really? Conditions have changed? How? Did the "insurgency" spring up just in the last month? Did the sectarian violence pop up last Tuesday out of nowhere? Did the US troops become targets just this past Sunday? Or perheaps all of that was going on way back in 2003 already, no?
You are discounting my reasoning without providing any logical reasons for doing so. As I keep repeating, the poll applies to all the troops which saw combat in Iraq since the conditions of that place have remained unchanged since shortly after the 2003 invasion.
You are building strawmen here to burn. In no way shape or form did I endorse the reasoning behind the Vietnam war. I merely pointed out that even the idiot politicos had enough common sense not to go after the Soviets, in response to your assertion that they have somehow doomed the war effort by not allowing the US forces to go completely ape and presumably bomb Moscow (as that is the place where the NVA war materiel was being supplied from). Which you immediately assumed to be a wholesale endorsement of the whole Vietnam fiasco, even though I specifically said otherwise. You appear not only to ignore anything I write, you are debating with some phantom you have created for your own amusement.
If you are trying to make a point that politicians should be more accountable for attrocities on such battlefields then the soldiers, then I agree with you. That is why we had the Nuremburg trials. This does not however let the soldiers scot free. They are all complicit in this, both the masterminds and the trigger pullers.
That is a rather famous line uttered by every drill sergeant of every army in the world to every hapless fresh recruit they just managed to snatch.
This, beside being a seriously comical fit of stupidity, is yet another example of utter and complete ignorance of the realities of Middle East by fools with good intentions. The US has a very long and very negative history of meddling on the side of Isr
I'm not even going to bother anymore. I am saying that you shouldn't just focus on all the negative shit, but its perfectly clear that even if you were ever to see any of the positive you would simply discount it out of hand. I have said from the very get go there are problems, but they are getting blown out of proportion due to media coverage. You insist on saying that I am denying that there are any problems and they are all happy halo wearing angels. I am saying that the majority of people there are doing good things, or at the very least not involved in that fraction of idiots doing stupid shit, you insist that none of them are doing good things saying 50% of them are bad and the rest are helping them(incidentally, I think its safe to assume that the 10% of criminals would be in the 40% who wouldn't report not an additional 40%, but you are kinda showing your negative bias there). The VAST majority of bloodshed over there has no US troops involved. You insist on telling me I live in a fantasy land and refuse to believe the "Facts" twisted by the mass media outlets. Facts don't make very good evening news, or left/right wing propoganda, facts tend to be much less dramatic, taking those facts and putting enough spin on them makes for great sensationalist crap though. I have been there, I have seen the people, I have seen our troops, and I have talked to the locals, it is not at all like the crap they show on the news.
All your arguments about the Israeli crap has to do with the politicians and precious few US forces have been involved in any of that garbage. They have been playing these nations against each other for a long time, and you are right, that bullshit has got to stop, and its no surprise things aren't going as well as Rummy and crew said it was. They are starting to figure out that they have been getting played, which again is the asshats in charge not the military members on the ground, despite popular left reasoning they are not one in the same. You tell me I am building strawmen and then explain that the Arab men remember killed sons and brothers and dig up hidden AKs... I was talking about documented history where the locals were actually being very cooperative and helpful because *surprise* a group of our soldiers said "Hey, these are people too, with their own customs, and I bet we would get alot farther finding the bad guys by treating the average joe's like normal people" Again, you can't accept that any of our service members are people, only that they are cold blooded killer crimials. The vast majority of these people are not jihadists and murderers, they just look the other way, are threatened into silence, or otherwise scared that we will bail out like we did in the first gulf war when Saddam rounded up all the Iraqis that welcomed us waving flags hoping that we would help and then murdered them while Gdub senior turned his back.
Your link proves exactly what I said so I'm not sure why you think I am the one ignoring reality here. Unless you are part of the rich and powerful, then I might understand. The poverty level for a 4 person family is around 20k/yr. The vast majority of people in that graph of yours are 40-55k/yr which is FAR from poverty. Your little graph there shows more people even in the 90-100k/yr range signing up than people in poverty level income. I don't know about you, but I consider 40-55k fairly well off middle class, though not wealthy, and I consider 90-100k/yr pretty well off. I even agreed with you that the rich don't exactly line up to join, but I would suspect that if you totaled up all the people who joined from 90k/yr or more households the numbers are still larger than the number of recruits from the poverty level incomes. So just like I said, the military is predominately the middle class.
As far as your silly crime rate nonsense. Military communities (base housing, dorms, etc) have a lower crime rates than similar civilian communities. I suspect you knew exactly what I meant there, and just chose to bring in some nonsense to avoid a real comparison.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Before you go apeshit on the income thing, I will give you a small thing here. 40-55k/yr can be kinda low in some areas, but with any kind of financial intelligence its more than enough to live comfortably in most places. The primary problem with 40-55k being hard to live on isn't tied to any kind of poverty or horrible state of the nation. The problem there is that credit is too easy to get. With 40-55k/yr its really really easy to get tons of lines of credit extended to you so you can buy all the happy horseshit you could ever want, and then be pissing away most of your income on interest payments.
For example, at that income its terribly easy to get yourself into a brand new car paying 300-500 per month in payments alone, and not even counting the fact that you have to have full coverage insurance (god forbid your driving record sucks, then your really screwed). All of this on a piece of shiney hardware that devalues at an astounding rate, that most people will roll into their next new vehicle anyways. The smart thing to do would be go spend $2000 or so on a used car. If you are paying $300/mo vehicle payments then by the end of the year I am $1600 ahead in car payments alone. A decent used car for $2000 will easily last you more than a few years providing you don't drive like a fool and do basic care and maintenance. Even a simple TV purchase will cost most people hundreds of dollars more in interest because they slapped it on a credit card with a rate like 20% and make minimum payments until the end of time instead of paying for it with money they have saved. Go look at a Sears card application, 25% APR and people pick that stupid crap up in droves because they will offer stupid little incentives like 10% off your first purchase that only mean anything if you pay off your card in full every month. But really all of this has more to do with a culture of "I want it now!" than any cost of living issues.
With that, and this might be a little bit of a shock, the military frequently won't take you if you have too much debt.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Are you even paying attention? The 50% is from the poll. Let me repeat: nearly 50% of Army and over 50% of Marines answered that they would not report their buddies for commiting attrocities. I did precisely what you wanted and I included that 10% of those who actually admitted to committing the attrocities in the 50%. Otherwise the numbers would be over 60%.
Also nowhere did I insist that the remaining 50% does not engage in naive attempts at "good works". They might as well be doing that, but I keep pointing out that their activities, in the context of the large picture of the goings on in Iraq, are like trying to extinguish a nuclear explosion by pissing at it. And that is why their efforts are pretty much ignored by everybody, especially by the majority of the Iraqis, who are the only ones who count in this. And that is not even taking into account the fact that these "good works" are usually an incompetently executed mish-mash of corporate feeding frenzy, foreign contractors, corruption and cultural conflicts. Just last month it was reported (again by the US government study) that most of the major "reconstruction" projects marked as "completed" are already in total state of disrepair and decrepitude only 1 year after being declared "operational".
And no, handing candy on street corners so that the poor kids who gather around can be blown up by an incoming religious wacko who is driving a car bomb towards the soldiers doing the handing out is not very likely to count either.
You are again putting words into my mouth. Sure, it is quite likely that some US troops did precisely what you described, naivety of which I was laughing at, and it is also quite likely that the locals were "helpful" and "cooperative". Until an opportunity arouse to do some shooting at the said troops at night, that is.
Why is it always an assumption of naive "do gooders" such as you to believe that because someone is smiling at you and does not pull a knife on first sight then he is automatically a "friend" of yours? How do you suppose residents of an "insurgent" supporting neighbourhood would behave? Wear t-shirts with "I am with Al-Queda!" on them?! Or simply supply the "insurgents" with food, shelter and weapons at night, while being docile and "helpful" to the invaders when they come calling to search your house during the day?
I would not be at all surprised if the proportion of the active insurgents to those who "look the other way" amongst the Iraqis mirrored exactly the same proportions in the US troops, i.e. out of 61% of the Iraqis who think it is a good thing to attack the coalition forces 10% being those who do the attacking and the remaining 51% doing the "looking the othe
I think I understand now. You lump every Iraqi and Afghani into a huge bucket and say they all hate us or want to kill us or are otherwise hostile to us, which ironically is the same mentality that keeps all these problems going. No one wants to be bothered to sit down and figure out all the various little groups motivations and how to actually solve this problem beyond blowing it up. The left chants "they all want to kill use, they all hate us, we should leave" and the right chants "They all want to kill us, we hafta kill them first, or they will come back later". That and you are convinced that no good deed counts and that its all naivety, that and you have no awareness of what kind of good deeds happen, you just latch on to the candy thing and the disgusting reconstruction contractors. Which really no amount of discussion will fix, that is just a horrible world view. You accuse me of ignoring reality and being naive but insist that every single living Arab wants us dead. I would suggest you actually read about their culture and the actual history there. There are more than a few groups that are still very friendly. There are communities in northern Iraq where its actually quite safe for US soldiers to be walking around town because the locals have announced they will kill 100 jihadists for every 1 American killed in their areas. In Afghanistan there are quite a few of the various tribes that we supported during the Russian invasion that were oppressed once the Taliban came into power, and they are reasonably happy that the Taliban crew are gone.
Beyond that, I would point out that in 2006 there were more people coming from the 55-60k income than the 30-35k income. The vast majority come from the 40-55k range, which is more than comfortable living in most of the nation. The median income thing shows that the average household is making over double the poverty level income. All this chart shows is that the military comes predominately from the middle class. Below median is nowhere near the same thing as poverty.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I think I understand now that you keep reading in my messages what you want to read instead of what I am writing. I even mentioned that 61% percent of Iraqis consider US troops "a valid target of attacks".
Let me go slowly here because I have a feeling that you are not good with concepts such as "a half" or "two thirds" or "all" or "whole" or "nothing". They all seem to merge into "all" or "nothing" in your mind.
So: 61% is NOT equivalent to ALL. Got it? Let me try this again: if you take 10 apples and six of them have a worm in them, then there are still four without a worm! See?! Easy.
That is a nice sentiment but you are dealing with a gigantic knot of 1000 year old ethnic hatreds, wacko religions (just last week the oh-so enlightened Kurds stoned a 17 year old girl for daring to abandon their wacko religion for the the equally wacko Islamic one and took video of it on their ... cell phones ... talk about apes with laser pistols) add to it the politics of the last 50 years, the Palestine/Israel fiasco, the US support for Saddam, before that the Colonial powers, mix in warlords and tribes and chieftains and ... well ... I wish you luck. You will need it.
Sadly and ironically, Saddam was a secular thug who probably was the only one capable of maintaining Iraq as an entity with secular government. Now its pretty much a foregone conclusion that all of Iraq will fall into hands of neanderthal religious thugs. Nice job there, "liberators".
In short, this problem is not solvable by means other then slow evolution of Iraqi society out of the dark ages they are in, and definitely unsolvable by the US forces, presence of which simply has the opposite effect to the desired one. Institutions of democracy have to be constructed from within the societies and cultures, and cannot be simply imposed from outside. Iraq's society is simply not ready and any attempt to do so will result in chaos and bloodshed.
And before you claim that this a "racist" sentiment, I would like to point out that a very similar thing occured in France in 1789, where the democratic revolution took hold, only to self-destruct in an orgy of chaos and bloodletting.
Dude, I keep pointing out what the Iraqis think (according to polls). What I think about the reconstruction efforts is even less meaningful then what the "media" thinks of them. It is the Iraqis who count and they are definitely not impressed.
Again, your little problem with "all" and "half" and "one third" and the like is showing. See the lesson with apples above.
But of course. Example: Ahmed Chelabi and his pals.