Oh my goodness I think I'm going to cry. I can't handle the internet where people are so childish that they need a computer to ignore things for them. It's sad. Pathetic.
You guys are paranoid, that's all. You look for people pushing conspiracy theories but that closes you off to actually thinking about certain ideas.
You start off with a principle, the U.S. Military does no wrong, then you have to protect it. Rather than entertain the idea that the U.S. Military might not be all pretty, you freak out as if I'm saying they should all be shot. I become a "U.S. hater" or whatever the new catch phrase is.
I speak about a hypothetical, and you conservatives freak out as if I'm satan. It's sad really, that you can't even consider this a possibility. It shows your dogma. You can't even reason through the possibility. To you it's not even possible that the U.S. is making a decision like this.
I think that's a flaw in your reasoning abilities, not mine.
Bad policy? That would be lunacy. But by saying this you're essentially saying that we would have to go overboard for you to think we've done something wrong. That anything less than targeting restaurants is OK. That is essentially what you're saying with this. That the bar is set so high, anything less we can just sweep under the table.
I'm saying the opposite. That it looks like we are doing things at a smaller level to be 'safe' for our troops, but it ends up reversing the mortality rate from 3 to 1 to 1 to 10. That's quite a reversal.
EDIT: Alclimedes, in a previous post I said "This is silly." I said that because I'm arguing a hypothetical point and you were asking for concrete evidence. I think you've been seeing me as a conspiracy theorist paranoid, when in fact I'm just hypothesizing a point. If then next. I used to program and I use the If then next statement in a lot of arguments. It's because I can acknowledge that I'm ignorant of most things, specifically what's going on behind the scenes like in the 'war room' where a decision like this would be made.
No way you can legitimately argue....
With that ratio our military looks disgusting.
Morally repugnant.....
Pretty strong words for a hypothetical....
Actually I think it is you who have been inflexible in your thinking here Bunge. It isn't that people believe that the military can do no wrong. Rather it has been stated that the U.S. military doesn't wish to kill civilians and the number reflects imprecision and error. You were told that the margin of error was .00004% and asked since it couldn't be zero what was acceptable. You just went on and on about ratios.
You used ratios from a time when the armies consisted of "every service age male we can draft into service on both sides" leaving literally old men, women and children as civilians. Despite this, an extraordinary number of people were killed on all sides. We say things are better than that now, and you agree but you keep the ratios as vestages of what should be right from that time.
You attempt to apply this to a day and age where we have an all volunteer force fighting against an army largely made up of bands of forcedably conscripted young men which really aren't "military" per se (they pretty much wish to give up ASAP and not die), but are made to be there largely due to threats to their families. They are backed up and held in line by paramilitary/terrorist type troops who will execute civilians in attempts to bring bad press, hold the enemy at bay and also the conscripted troops in line, and lastly will dress as and intermingle with civilians. They will force civilians on suicide bombings and will kill troops while poising as civilians or conscripted men surrendering.
You stated that ideally war would be conducted with no deaths on either variable, civilians or military. I consider the difference between those two variables to be acceptable considering we control all the variables on our side but not on theirs. We cannot control where all 22.5 million Iraqi's happen to be, if their leaders are going to use them for troops or kill them in an attempt to bring about compliance, or use them as shields.
This understanding that I type above does not represent me dogmatically defending a predetermined position. It represents a reasonable expectation considering what war consists of and how it is carried out. Lastly it represents an informed and contemporary view of what is occuring and is not justified by how we fought war 50+ years ago.
You have been asked what ratio you think is best, what percentage of error you think is acceptable and lastly how can we prove systematically that what you claim is occuring.
You have not responded to any of these questions.
Someone here is dogmatically arguing a position, and it isn't me. I'll give you a hint. It starts with a "B" and ends with an "unge."
I already stated that those words were too strong. Why do you bring them up again?
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
You were told that the margin of error was .00004% and asked since it couldn't be zero what was acceptable. You just went on and on about ratios.
This argument is sad. Nick, do you know what number is valid? Do I know what number is valid? Can anyone know what number is valid? No. So why keep asking it? You can pretend that a percentage is good enough, but it's not the number that matters.
I'm attacking the decision making process. No one here has addressed that. The 'best' argument I've heard is "Do YOU know what decisions they're making?" That's about as mature as saying "Well take your ball and go home then."
If the decision making process behind the war is valid, then 0.1% percent is acceptable. If it's illegal, then 0.00004% is not acceptable. If our Military is risking civilians to save troops, I believe that's a violation of the Geneva Convention.
The number of troops dying is so low because we bend over backwards to protect them. I think the number of civilians would be lower if we went to greater extremes to protect civilians than we do our troops and that's how civilized combat is supposed to function.
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
You have been asked what ratio you think is best, what percentage of error you think is acceptable and lastly how can we prove systematically that what you claim is occuring.
You have not responded to any of these questions.
I'm typing my fingers off, so don't condescend and tell me I'm not responding. You're not listening because perhaps you don't want to hear what's being hypothesized.
The only valid criticism I hear is that of the human shields. If those human shields are included in the number of civilians killed, and it's a significant number, then that would pull the totals into a different light.
If WE are responsible for killing 1000 civilians (and I don't include Human Shields in that definition) then I see a potential problem.
actually, that's exactly what i mean. we don't make a habit of targeting resturants. we targeted this one place, one time, in a unique instance to kill a specific high value target. odds are if we killed saddam, it will save more lives in the long run, and i think you know that.
again, this was an exception, and an exception that happened once.
i don't consider that to be indicitive of a US military policy to protect our troops at the expense of civilian lives.
you say that we're risking civilians to protect our troops. i've asked for examples of the US military doing that in any systematic manner. the reason i ask for a systematic, or repetitive example is that people can make mistakes, and there are always exceptions to the rules.
do you have any examples of US military policy (via their actions) that shows we are putting civilian lives at risk to save our troops?
i've given a number of examples where our troops are (consistantly) behaving in a way that puts their lives at risk to save civilians. you've given zero as to how they're putting innocent lives at risk.
i'd love to see this conversation go somewhere, but unless you can answer my question above, this is pointless. you can always "feel" like we're doing wrong, but unless you can show HOW, it's just a feeling.
i'd love to see this conversation go somewhere, but unless you can answer my question above, this is pointless. you can always "feel" like we're doing wrong, but unless you can show HOW, it's just a feeling. [/B]
Well I'm glad I'm not the only one wanting to see the conversations going somewhere.
That said, let's use the JDAM as an example. These were used in Baghdad.
Just so you know, most of this is my instincts. Looking at the numbers, thinking through this from the military's point of view in a practical way. But this article is good evidence for what I'm saying.
Cut away the emotional language and look at the range of destruction and then imagine this in a city. It's designed to land within 40 feet of its target...half the time. I believe the JDAM was a big part of the 'shock and awe' which took place in a metropolis. The blast radius of the 2,000 pound bomb kills anything within 100-120 feet. That's immediate. In order to be outside the range of its complete potential you need to be nearly half a kilometer away.
Half a kilometer in a city.
Four of these were dropped on the restaurant in the middle of the residential area in order to tag Saddam. I have no idea how many others were used, but they were supposed to be used extensively.
I'm looking these exact statistics up for the sake of this argument and it's stunning. Things are worse than I though.
That said, I know building a military structure next to a church or school doesn't take the military structure off the target list, it puts the church or school on the list. That's Saddam's fault. But if try and use that as an excuse, well that's kinda pathetic in my eyes. Morally we should do more, even if legally we can get away with it. If we need a 'technicality' as a crutch, I think our philosophy is wrong.
My theory (apparently) holds true for Iraq II, Afghanistan & Kosovo. It's not a partisan issue.
SWAN: Well, the -- I'm sure that the desired effect was to basically destroy the building, the target that we gave. And again, that goes back to somebody deciding that, you know, we want to minimize collateral damage, since it looked like it was in a suburb- type of an area. So by using a GBU-31 or Joint Direct Attack Munition, Version 3, which is the hard-target penetrator that would bury itself in farther before it exploded, which would minimize the collateral damage around the area, it will take out that particular structure, but it's going to minimize the fragmentation of the weapon and also the target itself into the outlying areas. And so that's why we used that weapon. And it's got a delay built into it so that it penetrates into the ground and then goes off.
Does that make sense?
taken from a breifing after said bombing. the entire text can be read
ok, i started thinking about your posting as to the losses being unacceptable compared to what they used to be to i decided to look them up for myself.
The military deaths on both sides in Europe numbered 19 million and in the war against Japan, 6 million (25 million total)
The human cost of the war fell heaviest on the USSR, for which the official total, military and civilian, is given as more than 20 million killed. The Allied military and civilian losses were 44 million; those of the Axis, 11 million. (75 million total)
so that would be civilian casualties at 50 million. a 2-1 ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths.
that sounds really interesting, but then you break it down and here's what it amounts to.
Quote:
USSR more than 13,000,000 military and 7,000,000 civilian; China 3,500,000 and 10,000,000; Germany 3,500,000 and 3,800,000; Poland 120,000 and 5,300,000; Japan 1,700,000 and 380,000; Yugoslavia 300,000 and 1,300,000; Romania 200,000 and 465,000; France 250,000 and 360,000; British Empire and Commonwealth 452,000 and 60,000; Italy 330,000 and 80,000; Hungary 120,000 and 280,000; and Czechoslovakia 10,000 and 330,000.
Russia 2:1 military
China 3:1 civilian
Germany 1:1
Poland 44:1 cilvilian
Japan 4.5:1 military
Yugoslavia 4.3:1 civilian
Romania 2:1 civilian
France 1.5:1 civilian
UK 7.5:1 military
Italy 4:1 military
Hungary 2:1 civilian
Czech 3.3:1 civilian
so which ratio is the right ratio? the ratio idea is bogus. it doesn't work that way.
those are nice quotes about the JDAM, but i'm betting they aren't taken into account the various setups the JDAM has.
again, we blew up the resturant to get Saddam. to me that's worth the exception to the rule. it's noteworthy that we dropped those 4 because it's one of the few times we bombed a residential area. to me that just goes to show we're being exceedingly careful to not hurt civilians. am i wrong in that perception? if so why?
Thank you alcimedes for taking the time to factually debunk what has to be one of the stupidest theories I've ever read otherwise intelligent people support.
(Well...I'm not reading them now. Someone let me know if anything changes.)
so which ratio is the right ratio? the ratio idea is bogus. it doesn't work that way.
That's fine. I've said a number of times that I don't know what if any ratio is correct.
Take a look here. The first paragraph is really telling. It touches on what I've been saying. The idea of 'zero casualites' for the troops is the root of the problem, and I think that's the motivation behind modern armies.
I don't want this discussion to spread into long term civilian mortality rate though, which is part of what the article is about. I mean, I'll gladly discuss it, but they're too debatable and would skew the numbers drastically in my favor.
This is just the first 'document' I could google. I'll continue to find more to try to substiantiate my argument. Tomorrow's Friday, I'll be less busy....
Comments
Originally posted by mrmister
Bunge is now on my ignore list.
Oh my goodness I think I'm going to cry. I can't handle the internet where people are so childish that they need a computer to ignore things for them. It's sad. Pathetic.
But it gives me the giggles.
Originally posted by bunge
James Brown: Do you see the light?
Elwood: What light?
You guys are paranoid, that's all. You look for people pushing conspiracy theories but that closes you off to actually thinking about certain ideas.
You start off with a principle, the U.S. Military does no wrong, then you have to protect it. Rather than entertain the idea that the U.S. Military might not be all pretty, you freak out as if I'm saying they should all be shot. I become a "U.S. hater" or whatever the new catch phrase is.
I speak about a hypothetical, and you conservatives freak out as if I'm satan. It's sad really, that you can't even consider this a possibility. It shows your dogma. You can't even reason through the possibility. To you it's not even possible that the U.S. is making a decision like this.
I think that's a flaw in your reasoning abilities, not mine.
Bad policy? That would be lunacy. But by saying this you're essentially saying that we would have to go overboard for you to think we've done something wrong. That anything less than targeting restaurants is OK. That is essentially what you're saying with this. That the bar is set so high, anything less we can just sweep under the table.
I'm saying the opposite. That it looks like we are doing things at a smaller level to be 'safe' for our troops, but it ends up reversing the mortality rate from 3 to 1 to 1 to 10. That's quite a reversal.
EDIT: Alclimedes, in a previous post I said "This is silly." I said that because I'm arguing a hypothetical point and you were asking for concrete evidence. I think you've been seeing me as a conspiracy theorist paranoid, when in fact I'm just hypothesizing a point. If then next. I used to program and I use the If then next statement in a lot of arguments. It's because I can acknowledge that I'm ignorant of most things, specifically what's going on behind the scenes like in the 'war room' where a decision like this would be made.
No way you can legitimately argue....
With that ratio our military looks disgusting.
Morally repugnant.....
Pretty strong words for a hypothetical....
Actually I think it is you who have been inflexible in your thinking here Bunge. It isn't that people believe that the military can do no wrong. Rather it has been stated that the U.S. military doesn't wish to kill civilians and the number reflects imprecision and error. You were told that the margin of error was .00004% and asked since it couldn't be zero what was acceptable. You just went on and on about ratios.
You used ratios from a time when the armies consisted of "every service age male we can draft into service on both sides" leaving literally old men, women and children as civilians. Despite this, an extraordinary number of people were killed on all sides. We say things are better than that now, and you agree but you keep the ratios as vestages of what should be right from that time.
You attempt to apply this to a day and age where we have an all volunteer force fighting against an army largely made up of bands of forcedably conscripted young men which really aren't "military" per se (they pretty much wish to give up ASAP and not die), but are made to be there largely due to threats to their families. They are backed up and held in line by paramilitary/terrorist type troops who will execute civilians in attempts to bring bad press, hold the enemy at bay and also the conscripted troops in line, and lastly will dress as and intermingle with civilians. They will force civilians on suicide bombings and will kill troops while poising as civilians or conscripted men surrendering.
You stated that ideally war would be conducted with no deaths on either variable, civilians or military. I consider the difference between those two variables to be acceptable considering we control all the variables on our side but not on theirs. We cannot control where all 22.5 million Iraqi's happen to be, if their leaders are going to use them for troops or kill them in an attempt to bring about compliance, or use them as shields.
This understanding that I type above does not represent me dogmatically defending a predetermined position. It represents a reasonable expectation considering what war consists of and how it is carried out. Lastly it represents an informed and contemporary view of what is occuring and is not justified by how we fought war 50+ years ago.
You have been asked what ratio you think is best, what percentage of error you think is acceptable and lastly how can we prove systematically that what you claim is occuring.
You have not responded to any of these questions.
Someone here is dogmatically arguing a position, and it isn't me. I'll give you a hint. It starts with a "B" and ends with an "unge."
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
No way you can legitimately argue....
With that ratio our military looks disgusting.
Morally repugnant.....
Pretty strong words for a hypothetical....
I already stated that those words were too strong. Why do you bring them up again?
Originally posted by trumptman
You were told that the margin of error was .00004% and asked since it couldn't be zero what was acceptable. You just went on and on about ratios.
This argument is sad. Nick, do you know what number is valid? Do I know what number is valid? Can anyone know what number is valid? No. So why keep asking it? You can pretend that a percentage is good enough, but it's not the number that matters.
I'm attacking the decision making process. No one here has addressed that. The 'best' argument I've heard is "Do YOU know what decisions they're making?" That's about as mature as saying "Well take your ball and go home then."
If the decision making process behind the war is valid, then 0.1% percent is acceptable. If it's illegal, then 0.00004% is not acceptable. If our Military is risking civilians to save troops, I believe that's a violation of the Geneva Convention.
The number of troops dying is so low because we bend over backwards to protect them. I think the number of civilians would be lower if we went to greater extremes to protect civilians than we do our troops and that's how civilized combat is supposed to function.
Originally posted by trumptman
You have been asked what ratio you think is best, what percentage of error you think is acceptable and lastly how can we prove systematically that what you claim is occuring.
You have not responded to any of these questions.
I'm typing my fingers off, so don't condescend and tell me I'm not responding. You're not listening because perhaps you don't want to hear what's being hypothesized.
The only valid criticism I hear is that of the human shields. If those human shields are included in the number of civilians killed, and it's a significant number, then that would pull the totals into a different light.
If WE are responsible for killing 1000 civilians (and I don't include Human Shields in that definition) then I see a potential problem.
Originally posted by groverat
[cunt!]
Now groverat, why not try and help the discussion instead of throwing around personal attacks?
actually, that's exactly what i mean. we don't make a habit of targeting resturants. we targeted this one place, one time, in a unique instance to kill a specific high value target. odds are if we killed saddam, it will save more lives in the long run, and i think you know that.
again, this was an exception, and an exception that happened once.
i don't consider that to be indicitive of a US military policy to protect our troops at the expense of civilian lives.
you say that we're risking civilians to protect our troops. i've asked for examples of the US military doing that in any systematic manner. the reason i ask for a systematic, or repetitive example is that people can make mistakes, and there are always exceptions to the rules.
do you have any examples of US military policy (via their actions) that shows we are putting civilian lives at risk to save our troops?
i've given a number of examples where our troops are (consistantly) behaving in a way that puts their lives at risk to save civilians. you've given zero as to how they're putting innocent lives at risk.
i'd love to see this conversation go somewhere, but unless you can answer my question above, this is pointless. you can always "feel" like we're doing wrong, but unless you can show HOW, it's just a feeling.
Originally posted by alcimedes
i'd love to see this conversation go somewhere, but unless you can answer my question above, this is pointless. you can always "feel" like we're doing wrong, but unless you can show HOW, it's just a feeling. [/B]
Well I'm glad I'm not the only one wanting to see the conversations going somewhere.
That said, let's use the JDAM as an example. These were used in Baghdad.
Just so you know, most of this is my instincts. Looking at the numbers, thinking through this from the military's point of view in a practical way. But this article is good evidence for what I'm saying.
Cut away the emotional language and look at the range of destruction and then imagine this in a city. It's designed to land within 40 feet of its target...half the time. I believe the JDAM was a big part of the 'shock and awe' which took place in a metropolis. The blast radius of the 2,000 pound bomb kills anything within 100-120 feet. That's immediate. In order to be outside the range of its complete potential you need to be nearly half a kilometer away.
Half a kilometer in a city.
Four of these were dropped on the restaurant in the middle of the residential area in order to tag Saddam. I have no idea how many others were used, but they were supposed to be used extensively.
I'm looking these exact statistics up for the sake of this argument and it's stunning. Things are worse than I though.
That said, I know building a military structure next to a church or school doesn't take the military structure off the target list, it puts the church or school on the list. That's Saddam's fault. But if try and use that as an excuse, well that's kinda pathetic in my eyes. Morally we should do more, even if legally we can get away with it. If we need a 'technicality' as a crutch, I think our philosophy is wrong.
My theory (apparently) holds true for Iraq II, Afghanistan & Kosovo. It's not a partisan issue.
SWAN: Well, the -- I'm sure that the desired effect was to basically destroy the building, the target that we gave. And again, that goes back to somebody deciding that, you know, we want to minimize collateral damage, since it looked like it was in a suburb- type of an area. So by using a GBU-31 or Joint Direct Attack Munition, Version 3, which is the hard-target penetrator that would bury itself in farther before it exploded, which would minimize the collateral damage around the area, it will take out that particular structure, but it's going to minimize the fragmentation of the weapon and also the target itself into the outlying areas. And so that's why we used that weapon. And it's got a delay built into it so that it penetrates into the ground and then goes off.
Does that make sense?
taken from a breifing after said bombing. the entire text can be read
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0304/S00150.htm
from that link.
ok, i started thinking about your posting as to the losses being unacceptable compared to what they used to be to i decided to look them up for myself.
taken from here, not sure what it is but it looks legit
The military deaths on both sides in Europe numbered 19 million and in the war against Japan, 6 million (25 million total)
The human cost of the war fell heaviest on the USSR, for which the official total, military and civilian, is given as more than 20 million killed. The Allied military and civilian losses were 44 million; those of the Axis, 11 million. (75 million total)
so that would be civilian casualties at 50 million. a 2-1 ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths.
that sounds really interesting, but then you break it down and here's what it amounts to.
USSR more than 13,000,000 military and 7,000,000 civilian; China 3,500,000 and 10,000,000; Germany 3,500,000 and 3,800,000; Poland 120,000 and 5,300,000; Japan 1,700,000 and 380,000; Yugoslavia 300,000 and 1,300,000; Romania 200,000 and 465,000; France 250,000 and 360,000; British Empire and Commonwealth 452,000 and 60,000; Italy 330,000 and 80,000; Hungary 120,000 and 280,000; and Czechoslovakia 10,000 and 330,000.
Russia 2:1 military
China 3:1 civilian
Germany 1:1
Poland 44:1 cilvilian
Japan 4.5:1 military
Yugoslavia 4.3:1 civilian
Romania 2:1 civilian
France 1.5:1 civilian
UK 7.5:1 military
Italy 4:1 military
Hungary 2:1 civilian
Czech 3.3:1 civilian
so which ratio is the right ratio? the ratio idea is bogus. it doesn't work that way.
those are nice quotes about the JDAM, but i'm betting they aren't taken into account the various setups the JDAM has.
again, we blew up the resturant to get Saddam. to me that's worth the exception to the rule. it's noteworthy that we dropped those 4 because it's one of the few times we bombed a residential area. to me that just goes to show we're being exceedingly careful to not hurt civilians. am i wrong in that perception? if so why?
(Well...I'm not reading them now. Someone let me know if anything changes.)
Originally posted by alcimedes
so which ratio is the right ratio? the ratio idea is bogus. it doesn't work that way.
That's fine. I've said a number of times that I don't know what if any ratio is correct.
Take a look here. The first paragraph is really telling. It touches on what I've been saying. The idea of 'zero casualites' for the troops is the root of the problem, and I think that's the motivation behind modern armies.
I don't want this discussion to spread into long term civilian mortality rate though, which is part of what the article is about. I mean, I'll gladly discuss it, but they're too debatable and would skew the numbers drastically in my favor.
This is just the first 'document' I could google. I'll continue to find more to try to substiantiate my argument. Tomorrow's Friday, I'll be less busy....
EDIT: