crozby

Are you guys in the US made aware of this kind of thing? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3798581.stm

Hypothetical situation: You've captured somebody who has information that you know will prevent 10,000 civilian deaths in the near future. He will not provide the information voluntarily. What do you do?

Does anyone know how many terrorists have been detained and convicted as a result of the increased security at US airports? Does anyone know how many terrorists that would have used the airlines have been deterred from carrying out an attack as a result of the heightened check-in security? Do any of you Americans know how much of your tax is being spent on protecting your freedom in this way? Why would anyone choose to go down the same secutiry route on buses when it has yet to be proven to be uneffective on aircraft?

Hey Rhino did you hear? Apparently they're taking the world gullible out of the next version of the Websters dictionary. Pass it on...

its nearer 80%.

war isnt about honor. if you want 'honorable' combat, fight a duel instead... No everyone thinks like that, thank God. Here is the speech given to the British troops on the eve of battle by Col. Tim Collins. If this doesn't prescribe honorable behaviour I don't know what does:

You've got to admire his stamina though - he's like a Duracell Bunny!

and "Centence" ?!?

In the 80's Singapore attempted to compensate for all the stupid people having babies by introducing a scheme which benefited bright educated women who had kids whilst at the same time offering a cash incentive to less intelligent women to get themselves sterilized after dropping a couple of sprogs. Maybe western governments could introduce a similar scheme with regard to food: compensation for thin people and sterilization for fatties. An incentive of a years supply of McDonalds would probably draw them in.

I can't recall ever hearing anyone I've met from Europe saying they hate America. But I regularly hear people getting extremely angry about Bush, his team and their foreign policy. Anyway, America bashing is soooo last year. Maybe a more interesting question is "How was Bush able to do so much damage to the reputation of the USA abroad?"

We should leave well alone. This is natural selection at work. Nature is attempting to counteract the trend of stupid people out-breeding intelligent people.

What is this obsession that US military types have with the President's war record anyway? Do all the US firefighters think its really important that the next President has a convincing record at putting out fires and getting cats out of trees? What the fuck has the activities of a squaddie 20 years ago got to do with running a country? Rhino, you're military or ex-military, what position within your govenment does that qualify you to do?

I guess at some point in the past or future, soldiers who are Christians are going to be asked by their governments to participate in a war they don't consider to be just. Does your church advise how they handle being pulled one direction by their faith and another by their elected leaders?

Jaybird I am curious because I have followed other posts where you have defended your faith single handedly against a load of, more often than not, severely offensive, non-believers. Very impressively if I might say! Were you a Christian whilst you were on active service? And if so, did you ever find that your work and your faith clashed? I am comparitively ignorant when it comes to the Christianity - i have never done Bible study, only religious studies many years ago at school and i am not a believer now, but I understand concepts like the "just war". How does fighting in a situation like Iraq where it is not really a clear cut case of "us or them" sit with your faith? How do you rationalise your successes as a soldier, which most likely have inflicted pain or death on your neighbor, with your faith?

Can't you differentiate propaganda from reality? I bet you fell for the tale of the heroic exploits of Private Lynch and her dramatic rescue too? Here's an alternative version of events: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=527299

You really should swot up on your world history before churning out this tired old line. Two excellently readable books I recommend you take a look at: Berlin and Stalingrad, both by Antony Beevor.

You seem to have misinterpreted my post. Because at no point do I say it was OK before and not OK now. I'm making the statement that the context of the act affects the way the public feel about it - the same act can be seen as OK in one context but unacceptable in another. In GW1 the public were more in tune with the military view of the Iraqis – that they were the faceless enemy. In GW2, because of the dubious reasons for going to war, the public see the enemy as people and they feel sorry for them. It’s a PR nightmare that is going to get harder and harder to deal with.

There is a mental gulf between the military and non-military contributors here. The soldiers on the ground are trained to do what we all see on the CNN video. They don't question the morality of what they are doing because they've had it trained out of them. They just follow orders. That man they shot wasn't a fellow human being to them, it was the enemy and the enemy is bad. They don't consider why he is there or how his death will affect his family and friends, or how his kids will cope without a dad any more than the enemy give a shit about them. And to live with killing other men they must by necessity become very good at convincing themselves they did the right thing. Soldiers with too much of a conscience simply aren’t very useful. Violence like this goes on all the time. In 1980 in the UK when the SAS spectacularly raided the Iranian embassy they killed all but one of the terrorists. Hostages later reported that several terrorists had dropped their weapons and tried to surrender but they were shot anyway. The SAS were considered heroes. That was no different to this except that there weren't cameras witnessing the actual killings back then. Today the US troops could be trained to behave differently. UK forces are trained to be less trigger happy, partly because every time a UK soldier killed innocent Irish at a road block in NI there was pandemonium. Political pressures meant they were trained to be more careful about who they shoot. There is a cultural difference too: compare the beautiful speech made by Col. Tim Collins to the ‘Its Hammer Time’ cry made by Vice Admiral Tim Keating – one could easily be mistaken that these two leaders were talking about different wars. It is safe to say that the increase in public awareness of what goes on in war has driven the US to create smarter and smarter weapons in an attempt to keep public opinion on side. So whilst it's shocking when this kind of video comes out it’s also a good thing that the cameras are there. To the soldiers on this forum who keep defending the footage by hollering school yard insults at the others: it would save a lot of bandwidth if you simply said the troops on the video were just doing what they are told, that is after all what your point is, isn't it? And lastly, the general public wouldn't find this all quite so disgusting if the invasion was properly justified in the first place. After all, in Gulf War 1 US bulldozers buried scores of Iraqi conscripts in their trenches and mercilessly bombed the retreating Iraqi forces but I don't recall much of an outcry about that.

Do you really believe that the US has its fingers in so many pies around the world just to keep the folks at home safe and sound? Isn't it more likely that the USA is behaving in the same way as all previous empires, i.e. spreading its influence and control way outside its own borders to achieve ever greater power and wealth throughout the world. I'd put money on China taking over as number one in another 50 or so years.

Thats a killer comeback! Are you in a debating society by any chance?

It's a dumb concept - it is also one of the arguments for going to war that Tony Blair gave to the UK parliament on the eve of the invasion.

Well I'm European and I don't see average American like that. Anyway, that guy is NO WAY average. He must be XXXXXXXXXL at least.

Yeah, but forgetting the politics, less dead Iraqis per annum is a good thing isn't it?

At the time we invaded Iraq Saddam was killing many times that number of civilians a year. Isn't it better that significantly fewer Iraqis are dying now per annum than before the war?

And oldie but it still makes me giggle: A little old lady visits her doctor. "Whats the problem" asks the doctor. "Well.." says the old lady, " I've got this terrible wind see. I seem to be farting all day long. The only saving grace is that they're silent and they don't smell" "Ok" says the Doctor, "take these pills 3 times a day and come back to see me in a couple of weeks" A couple of weeks later the old lady returns. "Doctor I don't know what you think you're doing but since taking these pills I've still got my wind, but now my farts smell AWFUL!" "Good" say the Doctor. "Thats fixed your sense of smell, now lets do something about your hearing problem."