 |
| |
|
| |
|
|
shawnmmcc
|
|
Ramo - you and Whaleboy have nice posts.  I disagree, but I enjoy being disagreed with intelligently, and with well thought out ideas. 
Imran and GePap, I feel sort of strange saying this, but I think Berserker in his libetarian and original constitutional arguments has a point. This kind of abuse is inevitable given our large, standing army. It's happened multiple times since WW2, the only way to deal with this is to go back to a professional Navy but an army Cadre/Reserve system, or...
We can change the constitution. The dynamics of the constitution, and the division of powers between the President as CIC versus Congress and it's sole perogative to declare war are totally unbalanced by this large standing professional army. Of course it is going to get used, and abused! I don't know what the changes would have to be, I've never really thought about it that way before. They would have to be either elegantly simple, or fiendishly tricky.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Drake Tungsten
|
 |
Knee deep in alien womyn...
Oct 2001
time: 14:37
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Ramo
1. Re-examing our RoE. Frankly, it's heavy-handed and totally unjustified in an urban environment. If we see an RPG coming from an apartment building, don't bomb the apartment building! Not only do we kill innocent civilians, Iraq's clan based society means that all the victims' brothers and cousins are gonna join the insurgency. The Brits have had more realistic RoE, and it's a terrible blow to the occupation that several thousand of them are leaving next year. As I asking, why oh why can't Blair be in charge?
2. Take another look at our detention policies. There's no better recruiting poster for Iraq than Gitmo. This whole business is still mindboggling to me. According to various studies, such as Red Cross, a lot of the people the vast majority of people we're detaining there and (less prominently, but no less importantly) at Iraqi facilities are being held unjustifiably. There's no transparency, contact with relatives, etc. A large scale prisoner release program is needed ASAP. Luckily we are going in that direction (there were some prisoners released from Abu Ghraib today), if at an anemic pace. |
Given some of the reporting I've been reading, neither of these seems to be a pressing issue. Our soldiers' ROE are more restrictive than I imagined and terrorists are being released from Abu Ghraib to return to fighting American troops...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ramo
|
 |
Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:37
|
|
quote:
Given some of the reporting I've been reading, neither of these seems to be a pressing issue. Our soldiers' ROE are more restrictive than I imagined and terrorists are being released from Abu Ghraib to return to fighting American troops... |
I don't see what your link has to do with RoE. The Brits (and the Iraqis) have been highly critical of our RoE, and I think there's something to that:
quote:
According to senior British officers, US military operations are typified by "force protection" - the protection of troops at all costs - that allows American troops to open fire, using whatever means available, if they believe that their lives are under threat.
By contrast, the British military has a graduated response to a threat and its rules of engagement are based on the principle of minimum force. Troops also have to justify their actions in post-operation reports that are reviewed by the Royal Military Police, and any discrepancy can lead to charges including murder.
A British officer said that some of the tactics employed by American forces would not be approved by British commanders.
The officer said: "US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk.
"It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.
"I explained that their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we ex-plained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed." |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...15/ixworld.html
And your link cites the release of a single terrorist, rather than multiple terrorists, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, a systematic study (albeit dated) done by the Red Cross estimated that 70-90% of Iraqi detainees were held in error, so Nohe (incidentally, I can't find a reference to him outside of that blog post and those who linked to it) seems like the exception rather than rule. Yon mentioned that he was told of other such cases, but failed to provide any specifics.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
shawnmmcc
|
|
Drake - do you really want to give Al Quaeda any more recruiting opporunties? Guilt by association, shooting people in the back fleeing who may be innocent (and stupid, it is a VERY bad idea to disobey military types with weapons who just shot someone pulling a weapon on them), do they need any more help via Al Jazeera? Unless our PR is so f*cked that frankly it's moot, and we have more to gain by shoot/detention orders.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Drake Tungsten
|
|
Knee deep in alien womyn...
Oct 2001
time: 14:37
|
|
quote:
Drake - do you really want to give Al Quaeda any more recruiting opporunties? Guilt by association, shooting people in the back fleeing who may be innocent (and stupid, it is a VERY bad idea to disobey military types with weapons who just shot someone pulling a weapon on them), do they need any more help via Al Jazeera? Unless our PR is so f*cked that frankly it's moot, and we have more to gain by shoot/detention orders. |
I think the fact that a terrorist can openly walk the streets, have one of his associates open fire on US forces and then flee, knowing full well that US soldiers can't fire on him at any point as long as he doesn't attack them does a hell of a lot more to encourage would be jihadists than a more lax ROE would. The threat of death seems a lot less imminent that way.
I guess the fear of capture is still there, but odds are good you'll eventually be back on the streets. The Americans can't do much to you if you're smart.
Last edited by Drake Tungsten on 28-08-2005 at 14:22
|
|
| |
|
|
|
shawnmmcc
|
|
Since I have a friend in law enforcement Drake - not really, since sometime in the 70's or 80's. The imminent danger bit. Quite a few police have lost their careers, or spent time in prison, for doing exactly that. If the police shoot an unknown person who runs after they shoot somone they are walking with because that person posed a threat, they will be VERY lucky to dodge a manslaughter conviction. Now if they shoot a known fleeing terrorist in the back, they stand an excellent chance of it being called a good shoot. That's the problem with your scenario, it mixes both.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
GePap
|
 |
of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:37
|
|
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/w...ew/28smith.html
quote:
Big Guns For Iraq? Not So Fast.
By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: August 28, 2005
EVEN though President Bush keeps saying American forces won't leave Iraq until its forces can fight on their own, the United States isn't rushing to give the Iraqi military heavy weapons.
There is an official explanation for that - that such things take time.
But there is also another reason to go slow, one that illustrates how tightly American military success is intertwined with the political prospects of Iraq itself. This reason is little discussed in public by military officers, but it was evident last week on the explosion-scarred streets of Baghdad, in the skirmishes between rival Shiite forces in Najaf, and in the confusion of Iraq's struggle to complete a new constitution.
Simply put, Iraq remains too fragile for any planner to know what shape the country will be in six months or a year from now - whether it will reach compromises and hold together or split apart in a civil war.
And that presents a conundrum for American military planners. With those questions up in the air, they have to fear that any heavy arms distributed now could end up aimed at American forces or feeding a growing civil conflict. And the longer Iraq's army has to wait for sophisticated weapons, the longer American forces are likely to be needed in Iraq as a bulwark against chaos.
In public, the commanders cite many reasons for the slow pace of equipping the Iraqis: the supply chain is long, Iraq's soldiers are barely trained and largely untested, and the rebels they face are better fought with rifles than tanks.
In private, some officers acknowledge other concerns, too. "We're worried about civil war or a coup," said a senior American officer in Baghdad charged with outfitting Iraq's new army. He would not agree to be identified because the concerns he was discussing are so sensitive.
Indeed, Iraqi commanders are growing restive, saying their troops are dying at three times the rate of American soldiers because they lack basic equipment.
"Soldiers with Kalashnikovs and pickup trucks is not an army," said Gen. Abdulqader Mohammed Jassim, commander of the Iraqi ground forces, during a recent interview at his office in Baghdad. "To make the Iraqi Army stand on its own without American or coalition forces, we need command and control equipment, transport vehicles and training." He wants helicopters and artillery, more powerful guns and bigger tanks - weapons the Americans say he doesn't need now.
At the same time, the Americans are building at least four semi-permanent military bases that could hold 18,000 troops each. These are usually described as way stations on the eventual route home for the Americans, places where they will stay while ever-more-capable Iraqi troops engage the insurgents on their own. But that will clearly take time. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top military commander in Iraq, when asked this month about how the bases would be used, dismissed the question: "You're talking years away." And if Iraq's politics remain unstable, the bases could offer a continuing rationale for not providing heavier weaponry, since the Americans would still be close by for the Iraqis to rely on.
"We're trying to build an army to fight the current fight," one American officer said when asked about the Iraqi complaints. "It's too early to start talking about M1A1 tanks, and they don't need helicopters when they have American military support." The officer couldn't be identified by name under military rules that restrict attribution without clearance from higher up the chain of command.
These days, with the possibility of civil war in the air, the Americans emphasize diversity when organizing Iraqi units. Still, the officer corps draws heavily from Sunnis, troops in the south are largely Shiites and troops in the north are largely Kurds.
"Just as there isn't one Iraqi people, there isn't one Iraqi army," said Peter Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia who is now in Iraq and has worked closely with the Kurds. "We won't be arming a national army, but armies that are loyal to three different groups."
The current draft constitution would also let each region maintain its own guard force, making the Kurdish pesh merga the military force in the north and the Shiite Badr Corps the likely force in the south. "But the Badr Corps is very heavily influenced by Iran," Mr. Galbraith noted. "Are we going to be in the business of arming them?"
"There might be a certain logic to postponing much of this arming until you've resolved the issues that might in fact trigger a civil war," he said. "The other peril," he added, "is that we may be arming people that may be at best only temporarily our friends."
American officers say that isn't what worries them now. They say they try to balance "speed and need" in equipping the Iraqis, and in some cases they blame logistics for slow delivery. For example, they are trying to get the Iraqi infantry armored personnel carriers and armored Humvees to replace unarmored Ashkok Leyland flatbed trucks and Nissan pickup trucks. But the first 100 of 2,073 Humvees ordered aren't expected until November, and orders for the rest are competing with urgent demands from the United States Army and the Marines.
The American military also notes that it takes time to train mechanics and gunners and drivers to use new vehicles, communications equipment and weapons.
"The pace is as rapid as we can handle right now," the senior officer said.
Meanwhile, the American military and Iraq's Ministry of Defense have been scouring former Soviet bloc countries for equipment that can arrive faster. Pakistan is supplying six Vietnam War-era M113 armored personnel carriers and 20 armored jeeps, and the American military hopes to deliver 468 wheeled armor vehicles late next year. Iraq's Defense ministry has ordered 600 Polish Dzik-3 armored personnel carriers and 115 BTR-80 mechanized combat vehicles for a total of $150 million. And Hungary has donated 77 Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
General Jassem wants more. The AK-47 assault rifles his troops use, he notes, cannot be fitted with laser aiming devices and night-vision sights. "The Russians stopped using this weapon in the 1980's," he said. He wants the more modern and powerful American M4 or Russian AK-105.
He also complained that the United States wants to supply his troops with RPG-7's, the Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "Why are they always giving us the oldest models?" he asked, saying he likes the more modern, larger caliber RPG-29, which penetrates armor better.
But such weapons could raise a threat against the United States if they fell into the wrong hands, a concern that General Jassem acknowledges. "They are thinking they will only give new weapons to the Army when everything has calmed down," he said.
American officers insist that the old Soviet equipment is easier to maintain, that Iraqi troops are familiar with it and that a huge amount of ammunition for it is stockpiled in Iraq. "The RPG-7 is more versatile than other antitank weapons, which really only have one use - destroying armor," the senior American officer said. The insurgents, he noted, have no armor.
"We don't want it to become overly complicated," the American officer said, adding that the day will come when a stable and secure Iraq needs a fully equipped military, but that day is still years away.
General Jassem isn't mollified.
"We want helicopters," he said. "We need them because we don't know what the war is going to look like." |
Not surprised by ther fact the uS is unwilling to start dumping serious weaponry in Iraq. Only problem is, until we do, the US can't possibly withdraw in any real measure.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
MOBIUS
|
 |
Prifysgol Caerdydd
Dec 1999
time: 15:37
|
|
Here is a good article...
Apparently they're lowering the bar on who they take in now...
It's from a couple of months back - so the situation is probably worse now...
quote:
US lowers standards in army numbers crisis
Jamie Wilson in Washington
Saturday June 4, 2005
The Guardian
The US military has stopped battalion commanders from dismissing new recruits for drug abuse, alcohol, poor fitness and pregnancy in an attempt to halt the rising attrition rate in an army under growing strain as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An internal memo sent to senior commanders said the growing dropout rate was "a matter of great concern" in an army at war. It told officers: "We need your concerted effort to reverse the negative trend. By reducing attrition 1%, we can save up to 3,000 initial-term soldiers. That's 3,000 more soldiers in our formations."
Article continues
Officially, the memo, reported in the Wall Street Journal and posted on Slate.com, ordered battalion commanders to refer cases of problem soldiers up to brigade level. Military experts warned that the move would make it more difficult to remove poor soldiers and would lower quality in the ranks.
A military spokesman told the Guardian yesterday: "It was merely a question of an additional set of eyes looking at an issue before we release potential recruits."
The Wall Street Journal quoted a battalion commander as saying: "It is the guys on weight control ... school no-shows, drug users, etc, who eat up my time and cause my hair to grey prematurely ... Often they have more than one of these issues simultaneously."
Asked what the new policy meant, John Pike from the thinktank Globalsecurity.org said: "It means there is a war on. They need all the soldiers they can get. But it is a dilemma. You need good soldiers more in wartime than peacetime."
The latest controversy comes amid a growing recruitment and retention crisis in the US military. Last month the army announced that it was 6,659 soldiers short of its recruitment targets for the year so far. On Wednesday, the department of defence withheld the latest figures, a move seen by most commentators as heralding more bad news.
The military's target is 80,000 new recruits this year, but the army only managed 73% of its target in February, 68% in March and 57% in April, forcing the expansion of a pilot programme offering 15-month active duty enlistments, rather than the usual four years.
The crisis has even led to fears - despite repeated denials by President George Bush - of a return to the draft system that conscripted 1.8 million Americans during the Vietnam war.
Major General Michael Rochelle, the head of army recruitment, said this was the "toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer army", with the war raising concern among potential recruits and their families.
"Recruiters have been given greater leeway," said Mr Pike. "By doing things to increase quantity you are also doing things to decrease quality, but they have made the judgment that that is the way to go."
One recruiting standard that was about to be lowered was a rule governing tattoos in the navy and marines. "If you have excessively prominent and vulgar tattoos they will not take you right now, but that is about to change," he said.
A commander quoted in the Wall Street Journal linked the growing attrition rate among new recruits to a slipping of standards by recruiters, who were under pressure to meet their monthly quotas.
An army spokeswoman said: "We are doing our best to decrease attrition level, but we have not and will not lower our standards for recruiting and retaining soldiers."
Yet in March 17.4% of all new army recruits failed to complete training, while another 7.3% did not finish the first three years with their unit.
Last month it emerged that one recruiter gave advice on how to cheat a mandatory drug test to a potential would-be soldier who said he had a drug problem.
In another incident in Texas, a recruiter threatened a 20-year-old man with arrest if he did not turn up to an interview. As a result all military recruiters stopped work for one day to attend retraining classes on acceptable practices. |
That is some pretty scary reading in there if you're relying 100% on volunteers...!
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:37.
Apolyton Time is 00:37. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
28-08-2005 09:30
.. BUT it was most likely made by middle aged ugly Finnish people!
|