Alright Al Zarqwai Is Now Dead Good job fellow veterans

[Houdini 0]

I am a Vietnam Era Veteran and was highly disrespected during and for a while after my service by those in my own country. At the time it was mandantory to sign up for the Selective Service. Then at the time I was in what they called a lottery where each year they announced your lottery number which wa based on 366 balls falling from a big basket in whatever order the birthdate came out. My number was 167 which was in my 19th year on earth my chances of being called up (which is about one in two). One of my cousins was 18 from the year before (he was definately gonna be drafted) and another cousin of mine got 366 (never had to think about the draft).My other cousin joined the Army National Guard and I ended up joining the U.S. Navy active for 4 years with a two year reserve requirement (total six year obligation). I wnet to boot camp and completed it and then went to my first school in the military to learn Basic Electricity and Electronics, then I was sent to Avionics "A" school and after that went on to Tradevsman "A" school. These were self paced courses and were graded by either pass or fail, in other words if you did not score 100% correct on all questions asked you failed that test, and were allowed to retest after a review. If after three retests you still failed you were dropped from the school and sent to the 'Fleet' to do whatever (quite a motivation in my opinion). I then completed my three schools and was sent to my first duty station where I went to even more schools. There was ground traning for the A7E attack aircraft and mini and micro circuitry repair sponsered by N.A.S.A. to be qualified to repair circuit boards that were one of a kind including the boards that landed the first Lunar Module on the Moon. It seems that any air pockets in a solder joint can be catastrophic in outerspace, and the sam can be said of the epoxy that the circuitry is encapsulated within.I also had acces to and trained twice a month the delivery of a nuclear weapon to pilots and aircrew. There is a procedure that must be followed until the last two minutes at which time the pilots and aircrew will take no communication from anyone and will conduct the mission of delivering the weapon. Even the President of the Untied States can not stop it after the two minute warning...until then it can be stopped, otherwise it will happen as planned. This was 30 years ago, but the nuclear weapon delivery will never change, it will happen if all procedure are inplace. So why am I saying all this...because my missions were conducted from the air with no contact from those on the ground that we conducted these missions on. Just fly over avoid fighters and kill the bad guys on the ground. We got communications fromthose foot soldiers on the ground as to where to deliver the weapons.Al Zarqwai was on the other hand a terrorist, and stayed on the fround using any weapon he could imagine or use to cause destruction to the U.S. Armed forces and later on the people of Iraq bar none to cause strife. The tactics were to attack footsoldiers and then attemp to blend in with the general populace, aven hiding in their homes and acting like everything was alright then to shoot the footsoldier in the back as they left...no uniform no symbol of any sort that they are the enemy. This makes them a terrorist or at best an enemy combatant and rules of war do no apply to them because they are cowards trying to use the rules of ared combat against our own trooops.I do not doubt that these terrorists have not produced some photographs that indicate that it was our own troops that violated rules of war (even though they are the one that actually did the misdeed). I am sick of the politics of it. There are three places in Iraq that are having problems, and in my opinion I would just carpet bomb the three area of concern after telling the residents to either get out right now or be killed within a week and be done with it. The military can do it and should in my opinion and put a stop to this all. Oh sure there will be complaints but in the end it will settle the problem, and then we can bring our footsoldiers home.

[yeh 0]

There are three places in Iraq that are having problems, and in my opinion I would just carpet bomb the three area of concern after telling the residents to either get out right now or be killed within a week and be done with it.

Well, the terrorists can always move out like the rest of the residents???

[organicbmx 0]

There are three places in Iraq that are having problems, and in my opinion I would just carpet bomb the three area of concern after telling the residents to either get out right now or be killed within a week and be done with it.

MIght that attitude not be the reason that coalition troops are still fighting increasing insurgents who hate them and wish to remove them from iraq? as previously pointed out the fighters could also leave. making carpet bombing [which would almost be a violation of the rules of war laid down by international law, btw] a compleatly pointless and mindlessly dis-structive was of money, time and resources.

sorry to flame so bad but that was a misguided comment. do not get me wrong, al qaeda and all similar groups are the ememy of the iraqis, the usa and all of mankind. and i feel for the lottery of the draft for you. i had no idea recruits were selected on such a basis.

[unimatrix 0]

MIght that attitude not be the reason that coalition troops are still fighting increasing insurgents who hate them and wish to remove them from iraq? as previously pointed out the fighters could also leave. making carpet bombing [which would almost be a violation of the rules of war laid down by international law, btw] a compleatly pointless and mindlessly dis-structive was of money, time and resources.
sorry to flame so bad but that was a misguided comment. do not get me wrong, al qaeda and all similar groups are the ememy of the iraqis, the usa and all of mankind. and i feel for the lottery of the draft for you. i had no idea recruits were selected on such a basis.

Just to clarify, the random lottery is used only during a draft. Currently there is no draft in the United States. The US military is a 100% professional volunteer force at this time.

That being said, the west has no idea how to fight a war outside of contintel Europe. I will argue, and currently arguing in a Masters Thesis, that the Geneva Convention should be revisited internationally, because the likely hood of seeing an other conflict between two uniformed armies is unlikely. Even then, it's not like no side in any war has ever abided by any so-called "rules of war". Even back in midievil Europe, the Pope declared the Cross Bow to be illegal in combat...that didn't stop anyone from using it.

The last General that understood how to fight a war got fired because he voiced his opinion, MacAuthur in Korea, because things were being controlled by politics and not the generals. Just like the United States lost very few battle tactically in Vietnam. The US lost that war politically.

Gulf War I was one tactically, but not politically. Why? Saddam was left in power. If the international community was serious about emlinating threats to global stablity, they would have called for Saddam to be captured and turned over to the Hague.

Sanctions don't seem to work. All they do is punish the people, not the regieme. I'm not sure how well argued that sanctions played in getting Libya to do a 180 after twenty years...from my understanding there was a new guy in charge of their economy that went to the Son of the dictator and basically said: "Look if we just pay this money now say we were wrong, and apologize to the west, the sanctions will be gone and we'll make far more money being able to trade again with those folks." I personally would argue that a missle through Quaddfi's bedroom window in 1986 and a new president that didn't look like he was going tolerate this crap renewing libya as a possible target helped change their opinion.

I understand the idea, and still support it, of creating a free democratic Iraq. I knew back in 2002, and told folks, that if we suceed, we'll be there for the next 20 - 30 years. There was also a chance that the historical enthnic and religious conflicts would resurface and you'd get a balkanization. Before the 1940's and 1950's one could argue that there were no such thing as Iraqis...Iraq was just a line drawn on a map by some British guy.

Setting up a democracy, and then leaving American troops in country (we could ask for some land for a couple bases out in the middle of no where Western Iraq for an Airbase and Army base and tell them we'll deal with external threats, you govern yourselves) is Pax Americana, but it seemed to work for Germany and Japan after World War II. It also seems to work for a couple dozen Latin American countries who have a small para-military police force, but no standing army. Why? They figure if anyone attacked them, there are enough US interests that we'd bail them out and chances are we would.

I had several Germans argue with me when I lived there in 2002 that we were setting up a new Empire. Told them the same thing I'll say now: "The American people wouldn't stand for building an empire. Plus we suck at the whole occupation and colony thing. Why we never did it..."

So what do we do now? People don't like to hear "stay the course" because politically it's vague and people want to see concreately what are the steps to win. We've never got out of the mind set of fighting asemtric wars with no front lines in the past century. The British fought such conflicts for centuries during the period of Empire. It is not a popular position, but the mentality of "We stick with it until things get stablized" is the right one. That's not to say we've made mistakes. That's not to say that we really do not understand the people and culture of the middle east. That's not to say that we may need to revisit the Geneva Convention and seriously have to ask ourselves, "Is this document really valid on the 21st century warfare?" My personal opinion is that War is war and it's pretty damned hard to find the moral high ground when both sides are stuck in the mud."

I really don't know, despite asking Marines, National Guard, and Army troops I've talked back from tour, if the terrorist mentality in Iraq is the same as the Palistinian mind set or not. I may not be the same, but I think it is similar. The Palesitinian mind set is this: If one Israeli soldiger is killed, it is a victory no matter how many of their own they loose. Bin Laden has said since Somelia that we have no stomach for a fight. What really makes my stomach turn, and ever since 9/11, is that the SOB just may be right. And if we don't stop him who will? If we don't stop Iran who will?

[yeh 0]

I had several Germans argue with me when I lived there in 2002 that we were setting up a new Empire. Told them the same thing I'll say now: "The American people wouldn't stand for building an empire. Plus we suck at the whole occupation and colony thing. Why we never did it..."

The last General that understood how to fight a war got fired because he voiced his opinion, MacAuthur in Korea, because things were being controlled by politics and not the generals.

In the first quote, American people would resist the building of an empire. This means politically, there is a huge road block to building an empire. Of course, whether that is true or what factors/assumptions made it true, is another topic altogether. In the second quote, and also throughout your comment, politics get in the way of winning or solving a conflict. So, is there a contradiction here? And the final thing is, what is the role of politics in war, then?