Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

They are not new. Dazzlers have been around for some time, it is the size that has changed.
 
Yeah, he did.. all that. Imagine how much damage he'd done if he was twenty years younger.
 
Inside the Fog of War: Reports From the Ground in Afghanistan
Published: July 25, 2010

six-year archive of classified military documents made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.

The secret documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.

The documents ? some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 ? illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.

The material comes to light as Congress and the public grow increasingly skeptical of the deepening involvement in Afghanistan and its chances for success as next year?s deadline to begin withdrawing troops looms.

The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid.

The reports ? usually spare summaries but sometimes detailed narratives ? shed light on some elements of the war that have been largely hidden from the public eye:

? The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

? Secret commando units like Task Force 373 ? a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives ? work from a ?capture/kill list? of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.

? The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone?s weaponry.

? The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan?s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.

Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements ? attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos.

Rest of article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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Nothing all that surprising. Most of what is mentioned was already known or suspected for some time. What hits me the hardest is the fact that someone would release classified documents to a site like Wikileaks. It truly disgusts me and I hope those involved get lengthy prison sentences.
 
No at all. On the contrary, Julian should get a Nobel prize.

I can summarize the chance of "winning" in Afghanistan to "no chance in hell", and that's without the ISI who we know (and the documents show) are on the talibans side. The talibans are not really the problem, they're a local bunch without international ambitions, they're just rightfully miffed about the foreign occupation. ISAF should hoist the flag, call it a day and leave them be in their little sandbox. If the US stays they'll still have some playmates even.
 
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Well, considering that Obama got a Nobel prize for some reason I guess it would be fitting.
 
I agree, unlike the Obama, Assange has actually done something to earn the prize.
 
nomix said:
Yeah, he did.. all that. Imagine how much damage he'd done if he was twenty years younger.
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Ironically, 20 years ago he advocated leaving Saddam Hussein in power to maintain stability in the middle east.

jetsetter said:
Nothing all that surprising. Most of what is mentioned was already known or suspected for some time. What hits me the hardest is the fact that someone would release classified documents to a site like Wikileaks. It truly disgusts me and I hope those involved get lengthy prison sentences.
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I agree with what WikiLeaks is about. Transparency, even if just for it's own sake, is an admirable goal to me. Besides, nothing particularly damaging was released here. As far as I'm concerned it's all information that should be known. And I'm sure there will be some discharges and jail time for those who leaked the information. The US military is probably WikiLeaks worst enemy.

AiR said:
I can summarize the chance of "winning" in Afghanistan to "no chance in hell", and that's without the ISI who we know (and the documents show) are on the talibans side. The talibans are not really the problem, they're a local bunch without international ambitions, they're just rightfully miffed about the foreign occupation. ISAF should hoist the flag, call it a day and leave them be in their little sandbox. If the US stays they'll still have some playmates even.
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There will never be a conventional victory in Afghanistan, that much is true. I don't think the war should have ever been more than the CIA and 373 picking Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership off, but that doesn't score the big political points and neo-cons wanted to give nation building a shot. Plus drumming the fact that we were attacked by an organization, not a nation (or a culture/religion/race) into the heads of most Americans, rendering a conventional war somewhat useless; would have been impossible.

And as much as everyone hates the war, if we leave without attempting to rebuild (or at least give the Afghans the chance to rebuild, which they're evidently too corrupt to take) we're going to be shit on for it for decades. Of course, we'll get shit on for going to war in the first place anyway. Cache 22 I guess.
 
tigger said:
as much as everyone hates the war, if we leave without attempting to rebuild (or at least give the Afghans the chance to rebuild, which they're evidently too corrupt to take) we're going to be shit on for it for decades.
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Isn't trying to rebuild what they try down there for a few years now? The killing of innocent people interferes with that, of course...
 
DanRoM said:
Isn't trying to rebuild what they try down there for a few years now? The killing of innocent people interferes with that, of course...
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This is still a shooting war. Civilian causalities are expected.

I agree with what WikiLeaks is about. Transparency, even if just for it's own sake, is an admirable goal to me.
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Transparency is not always a good thing. Intelligence operations and many aspects of warfare need to be kept from the general public for obvious reasons.

I don't think the war should have ever been more than the CIA and 373 picking Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership off, but that doesn't score the big political points and neo-cons wanted to give nation building a shot
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Special forces and UAVs/Cruise missiles would not have worked. For any long term conflict substantial number of troops are needed on the ground.
 
Actually New York Times, Military Has Said The Taliban Use IR-MANPADs

The Washington news cycle will be dominated for the next few days by the Wikileaks document drop as the journalistic herd pores over the 92,000 mostly classified reports that went up on the Wikileaks site yesterday and provided to some media outlets weeks ago. Keep in mind, these are mostly tactical level SIGACT (significant action) reports, and thus present a very narrow, tactical level view of the war.

The media?s frenzied reporting on some of what is contained in those reports has already veered into the sensational and the incorrect. An example comes from The New York Times, one of those, along with the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel, provided the archive in advance by Wikileaks.

The NYT says Afghan incident reports show that the Taliban have used portable-heat seeking missiles (MANPADs) against U.S. and NATO helicopters, a fact, the Times says, that the military has not publicly disclosed.

?The Taliban?s use of heat-seeking missiles has not been publicly disclosed ? indeed, the military has issued statements that these internal records contradict.

In the form known as a Stinger, such weapons were provided to a previous generation of Afghan insurgents by the United States, and helped drive out the Soviets. The reports suggest that the Taliban?s use of these missiles has been neither common nor especially effective; usually the missiles missed.?​

Yet, during an April 2009 conference call with reporters and bloggers, Lt. Gen. Gary North, U.S. Air Forces Central Commander, acknowledged that the Taliban do in fact use IR MANPADs (heat-seeking, shoulder fired missiles) in response to a reporter?s question on the subject. Here?s what North said:

?We do see, particularly in our rotor force, RPG-7s fired, of course, unguided. We see occasionally the SA? 7 type handheld IRSAM. Every aircraft in our tactical lift and our rotor type helicopters have got defensive measures capability and our intelligence is very good and so our aviators going out are armed with the latest intelligence and the best in technology for IR missile defeat and so we?re very comfortable with the technology, the capabilities, and as you know, aviators, both rotor and fixed, have to keep their head on a swivel because it is dangerous out there on occasion.?​

http://defensetech.org/2010/07/26/a...s-said-the-taliban-use-manpads/#idc-container
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I consider media organization ineptitude to be far more troubling that anything the military kept concealed. The more I read of the major media organizations the more misinformed nonsense I spot.
 
Random question for you.

Is it still a lynching if they don't use a rope?

Lets say a group of white men drag a black man behind a car till he dies or chase him down and shoot him. Is that still a lynch mob? If a group of men beat someone to death with an iron bar is that still a lynching?
 
Legal Dictionary

Main Entry: lynch
Pronunciation: 'linch
Function: transitive verb
: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction ? lynch?er noun
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Going by the definition of the word then no. All are murder but the term "lynching" applies specifically to a hanging.

I am sure you have a point so just spit it out.
 
jetsetter said:
Going by the definition of the word then no. All are murder but the term "lynching" applies specifically to a hanging.

I am sure you have a point so just spit it out.
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The parentheses are simply giving a possible example and are not the only method.

This anti-lynching bill originally proposed in 1919 and brought up for a vote in 1922 states it as follows.

ANTILYNCHING BILL.

_______________

APRIL 20 (calendar day, JULY 28), 1922.--Ordered to be printed.

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AN ACT To assure to persons within the jurisdiction of every State the equal protection of the laws, and to punish the crime of lynching.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the phrase "mob or riotous assemblage," when used in this act, shall mean an assemblage composed of three or more persons acting in concert for the purpose of depriving any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the commission of some actual or supposed public offense.
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The rest of the bill details punishments for people who commit the crime of lynching or accessories to the crime.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lynch

Main Entry: lynch law
Function: noun
Etymology: William Lynch ?1820 American vigilante
Date: 1811

: the punishment of presumed crimes or offenses usually by death without due process of law
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No mention of hanging there.

I will get to the point in my own time.
 
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I will get to the point in my own time.
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You will without my participation. I will ignore further comments on this particular issue and whatever point you are trying to relate to it.
 
jetsetter said:
You will without my participation. I will ignore further comments on this particular issue and whatever point you are trying to relate to it.
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What ever gave you the impression I cared what you thought?
 
British_Rover said:
What ever gave you the impression I cared what you thought?
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You did ask a question to get this thing rolling so I assume you care about something. Let us please get to the point. Does it relate to the two articles I posted above in any way or my comments associated with them?

Edit: For some insightful conversation and arguments on the released information I would suggest http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/
 
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