IGX

Ok. It was a rhetorical question, but thanks for answering. I was blown away by the pics of the country in th 50s

Radical Islam fucked up that country, along with a lot of other factors.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Is anyone very there innocent?

Officially, if you are in a house and the US decides to blow it up, you're a bad guy unless they can find enough of you to prove otherwise at a later date.

Sort of the same argument that Al-Qaeda used when they kill infidels.

"It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

"Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world ... wanted=all

Fuckthe place. Nuke it at least twice.

Terry B. wrote: Officially, if you are in a house and the US decides to blow it up, you're a bad guy unless they can find enough of you to prove otherwise at a later date.

Sort of the same argument that Al-Qaeda used when they kill infidels.

Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

If that were true, it would be the first occupation ever where mistakes weren't made, people didn't get lazy or vengeful and would be quite miraculous.

The problem with occupying a foreign country is that the menfolk Don't like it. Particularly if from a different religion and particularly if there's a stron feeling of injustice (think wounded and killed children, women, old people, checkpoints, searches etc.) Soon, anybody can become a "terrorist". They're occupied. They don't like it. At one end of the spectrum, they're blowing people up in suicide attacks. At another, they're not giving information, sheltering those on the run, passing on intel, lending cars - the soft support required by every terrorist organisation. The rate, frequency, accuracy and devastation wreaked in US forces and British forces indicates to me that there is widespread support amongst many Afghans for armed resistance.

You can blame imams, tribalism and pop music for this. It doesn't matter. The facts strongly suggest that it is so. "Bad guys" are being made. Created. Programmed. Conditioned. Trained. Used. GTFO in as orderly a manner as possible, learn some fucking humility an lessons about taking over other countries an try to sanction/support/steer if you must, in as moral a fashion as possible. The genie is out of the bottle. This is no time to stand around admiring the precision or rigour of supposed intel and strikes. It has cascades into something bigger than is capable of being controlled.

powerlifter54 wrote:

Terry B. wrote: Officially, if you are in a house and the US decides to blow it up, you're a bad guy unless they can find enough of you to prove otherwise at a later date.

Sort of the same argument that Al-Qaeda used when they kill infidels.

Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

I thought it was confirmed that completely innocent dudes had been sent to Gitmo. No so?

Grandpa's Spells wrote:

powerlifter54 wrote:

Terry B. wrote: Officially, if you are in a house and the US decides to blow it up, you're a bad guy unless they can find enough of you to prove otherwise at a later date.

Sort of the same argument that Al-Qaeda used when they kill infidels.

Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

I thought it was confirmed that completely innocent dudes had been sent to Gitmo. No so?

No. They were Muslim.

Well written Gorby.

Taking over another country's opium trade is messy business.

BucketHead wrote:

Grandpa's Spells wrote:

powerlifter54 wrote:

Terry B. wrote: Officially, if you are in a house and the US decides to blow it up, you're a bad guy unless they can find enough of you to prove otherwise at a later date.

Sort of the same argument that Al-Qaeda used when they kill infidels.

Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

I thought it was confirmed that completely innocent dudes had been sent to Gitmo. No so?

No. They were Muslim.

Not far from the truth.

Ask anybody in prison the question, and they are all innocent. OBL's driver was innocent. The kid standing in the battlefield with an AK was innocent.

The dude we released and then caught again after a firefight is innocent.

And a US media can't get enough of it.

Once again, i repeat, i support ending Mr Obama's war.

powerlifter54 wrote:

BucketHead wrote:

Grandpa's Spells wrote:

powerlifter54 wrote:

Terry B. wrote: Officially, if you are in a house and the US decides to blow it up, you're a bad guy unless they can find enough of you to prove otherwise at a later date.

Sort of the same argument that Al-Qaeda used when they kill infidels.

Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

I thought it was confirmed that completely innocent dudes had been sent to Gitmo. No so?

No. They were Muslim.

Not far from the truth.

Ask anybody in prison the question, and they are all innocent. OBL's driver was innocent. The kid standing in the battlefield with an AK was innocent.

The dude we released and then caught again after a firefight is innocent.

And a US media can't get enough of it.

Once again, i repeat, i support ending Mr Obama's war.

But you're still making shit up. The US gov't.'s own files indicate a large number of errors. Not: "They guy says he's innocent and we can't prove anything." More like, "The guy had a similar name to, but not the same name as the guy we were looking for, and now he's been here for years. Oops."

I'm sure the people involved were doing their best, but there were colossal fuck-ups and innocent people got scooped up.

Wrong thread, doh!

Luckily both parties are equally focused on this war, as reflected in their convention speeches.

Gorbachev wrote:If that were true, it would be the first occupation ever where mistakes weren't made, people didn't get lazy or vengeful and would be quite miraculous.

The problem with occupying a foreign country is that the menfolk Don't like it. Particularly if from a different religion and particularly if there's a stron feeling of injustice (think wounded and killed children, women, old people, checkpoints, searches etc.) Soon, anybody can become a "terrorist". They're occupied. They don't like it. At one end of the spectrum, they're blowing people up in suicide attacks. At another, they're not giving information, sheltering those on the run, passing on intel, lending cars - the soft support required by every terrorist organisation. The rate, frequency, accuracy and devastation wreaked in US forces and British forces indicates to me that there is widespread support amongst many Afghans for armed resistance.

You can blame imams, tribalism and pop music for this. It doesn't matter. The facts strongly suggest that it is so. "Bad guys" are being made. Created. Programmed. Conditioned. Trained. Used. GTFO in as orderly a manner as possible, learn some fucking humility an lessons about taking over other countries an try to sanction/support/steer if you must, in as moral a fashion as possible. The genie is out of the bottle. This is no time to stand around admiring the precision or rigour of supposed intel and strikes. It has cascades into something bigger than is capable of being controlled.

You gotta be smarter than the cattle you're herding. The lesson of AG is...we're not.

Gorbachev wrote:If that were true, it would be the first occupation ever where mistakes weren't made, people didn't get lazy or vengeful and would be quite miraculous.

The problem with occupying a foreign country is that the menfolk Don't like it. Particularly if from a different religion and particularly if there's a stron feeling of injustice (think wounded and killed children, women, old people, checkpoints, searches etc.) Soon, anybody can become a "terrorist". They're occupied. They don't like it. At one end of the spectrum, they're blowing people up in suicide attacks. At another, they're not giving information, sheltering those on the run, passing on intel, lending cars - the soft support required by every terrorist organisation. The rate, frequency, accuracy and devastation wreaked in US forces and British forces indicates to me that there is widespread support amongst many Afghans for armed resistance.

You can blame imams, tribalism and pop music for this. It doesn't matter. The facts strongly suggest that it is so. "Bad guys" are being made. Created. Programmed. Conditioned. Trained. Used. GTFO in as orderly a manner as possible, learn some fucking humility an lessons about taking over other countries an try to sanction/support/steer if you must, in as moral a fashion as possible. The genie is out of the bottle. This is no time to stand around admiring the precision or rigour of supposed intel and strikes. It has cascades into something bigger than is capable of being controlled.

Darth is going to lose his shit when reads this. And I can't wait.

*grabs popcorn*

The huge LULZZZ...is ...what woudl Darf do if he were an afghani teenager invaded and shit kicked six ways from Sunday for wrong place-wrong time violations?

Ummm...I'll take TOTALWAR for $500, Alex


Nation Building was a shit job back when the Brittania was doing it. They are probably the best that ever was and they got kicked out of the business permanently. A fool learns from his mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others

Objectively how does our performance stack up to how the Russians did?

re: no innocents at Gitmo:
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-224_162-4877395.html
former CoS to Colin Powell disagrees

information discovered via wikileaks:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ealed.html
"Only about 220 of the people detained are assessed by the Americans to be dangerous international terrorists. A further 380 people are lower-level foot-soldiers, either members of the Taliban or extremists who travelled to Afghanistan whose presence at the military facility is questionable.
At least a further 150 people are innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs and drivers who were rounded up or even sold to US forces and transferred across the world. In the top-secret documents, senior US commanders conclude that in dozens of cases there is “no reason recorded for transfer”."

not to mention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_det ... tanamo_Bay

powerlifter54 wrote:

Terry B. wrote:Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

This is an enormous sack of horseshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan
in Pakistan alone, drone strikes have killed 175 children

milosz wrote:

powerlifter54 wrote:

Terry B. wrote:Actually, the effort we go through to verify each bad guy is overdone, and collateral damage is why we have attorneys embedded everywhere.

If you get invited to Gitmo, struck, or engaged, you are a certifiable bad guy.

This is an enormous sack of horseshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan
in Pakistan alone, drone strikes have killed 175 children

You put words in my mouth!

However, you obviously do not understand US foreign policy.

1). If you are not with us, you are against us.
2). If you are against us, you are an evil doer.
3). If you are an enemy of the evil doers, you are our friend until you take our billions of taxpayer money we give you and use them to wage war against us. Then, you are an evil doer.

Sorry, screwed up the nested quotes.

You know you can argue policy all day but until you see its effects from a boots on the ground perspective and see the effects it has firsthand...happy second guessing.

True, TOM. And for me this isn't about having a cut off the military. They're at the sharp end. I cannot fathom the experiences they undergo.

But is there some huge compelling case to say - from ANY perspective - that the strategy is working? How do the military feel about it all, for example?