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Clancy seems to have named chapter 24 'Rape' simply to fit in with a bunch of chapters that begin with 'R'. 'Ripostes', 'Returns', 'Rape'. It starts complete dissonance, the first scene is just Morris makes landfall in france. Starting to really dislike this book.
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Apr 5, 2018 08:28
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Anyone read John Hackett’s “Third World War”? It’s in the cold storage section of the uni library with 100 odd other Cold War books.
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Apr 6, 2018 00:34
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potentiallycool posted:Anyone read John Hackett’s “Third World War”? It’s in the cold storage section of the uni library with 100 odd other Cold War books. Read it on honeymoon last year. It’s a bit dry compared to Clancy, and while I enjoyed it I couldn’t get through the sequel/conpanion volume.
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Apr 6, 2018 12:27
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Is that the realistic one written by a general? In any other circumstances 'a bit dry compared to Clancy' would be severely damning.
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Apr 10, 2018 11:25
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Jaguars! posted:Is that the realistic one written by a general? In any other circumstances 'a bit dry compared to Clancy' would be severely damning. That’d be the one, yes. The author also spends a large amount of time attacking the Labour Party.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:37
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I haven't read Third World War in
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Apr 10, 2018 20:23
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We're gonna continue in Iceland because it's the one with aggressively bad writing and I can't muster the slightest enthusiasm for any of the other stories for the moment. After the initial invasion, there's a raid by the USAF. Wild Weasels hit a bunch of SAM installations but a wing(?) of 18 B-52s gets smacked up bad by fighters. Edwards and his mob head north to Grafarholt, where they observe a second raid on a power station and Reykjavik airport. Then they are ordered to move 100km north to Hjammsfjiord, one of the harbours that cuts off the northwest peninsula of Iceland. A couple of days later they need food and approach a farmhouse at the head of the Hvalfjordur. As they get close, a 4x4 with 5 Russians drives up to the house, breaks in and shoots the inhabitants. quote:A hoarse male voice shouted something in Russian. The front door opened and four men came out. They conferred for a moment, then split into pairs, going left and right to side windows, where all four men stood to look inside. Then there came another scream, and it was perfectly clear what was going on. Edwards immediately takes his troops in: quote:'I think it's time to do something. Anybody disagree?' Edwards asked. Smith just nodded, interested in Edwards's change in demeanor. 'Okay, we take our time and do it right. Smith, you come with me and we go around the left. Garcia and Rodgers go around the right. Go wide and come in slow. Ten minutes. If you can take 'em alive, that's okay. If not, stick 'em. We try not to make noise. But if you gotta shoot, make Goddamned sure the first burst does it. Okay?' Tense chord: quote:'Back me up,' Edwards whispered. He set his M-16 down and drew his combat knife. He pushes on inside: quote:Edwards approached the corner - and found himself faced with a russian in the process of unbuttoning his pants. There was no time for much of anything. Sgt Smith is a Marine NCO, he calls this friday night: quote:Smith came in. He looked around the room, then at Edwards. The wimp had fangs. 'I'll check the upstairs.' Edwards helps the victim, Vigdis Agustdottir*, which, dare I say it, is handled with some sensitivity and isn't too cringeworthy until this bit: quote:His heart went out to the girl. She had china blue eyes, obscenely empty of life though even now they caught the light in a way certain to attract any man's attention. As they just had, Edwards thought. She was only an inch shorter than he, with pale, almost transparent skin. Her figure was marred by a slight bulge at the abdomen, and Mike had a good idea what that was, the rest of her figure was so perfect. And she'd just been raped by one russian, paving the way for a long night of it, Mike Edwards thought, enraged once more that this foul crime had once more touched his life. Not a fan at all of the whole how hot Vigdis is repeatedly juxtaposed with rape. With the crisis half over, Smith and Edwards behave like the second echelon of a platoon deliberate attack on the last day of a field ex: quote:[Sgt] Smith regarded his officer with something akin to affection. 'Well sir, we got us a Russian lieutenant with a wet dick. A dead sergeant. A dead private, and two live ones. The lieutenant had this, sir. Some more corny poo poo that's probably cribbed from an action movie: quote:'Gentlemen, you are charged under the uniform code of military justice with one specification of rape and two specifications of murder. These are capital crimes.' Edwards said, mainly so that he could assuage his conscience for the other two. 'Do you have anything to say in your defense? No? You are found guilty. Your sentence is death.' With his left hand, Edwards pushed the lieutenant's head back. His right hand flipped the knife into the air, reversing it; then he swung viciuosly, striking the man's larynx with the pommel. The sound was surprisingly loud in the room, and Edwards kicked him backward. So yeah. I haven't been in life or death situations of this sort and while I guess some people go to pieces and some people just keep on trucking, the big incident doesn't have the slightest effect really. We get a little bit of Edward's inner monologue, because above all, Clancy tells, not shows. But the marines and the girl? Might as well be servants. If you compare the iceland group before and after, they behave the same, the group dynamic (ha! group static more like) doesn't change. They just keep going like they don't give a drat. Eventually Edwards gets wounded and evacuated when the marines retake iceland and then the plot just peters out 100 pages from the end. *Ugh, that first name
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Apr 19, 2018 08:44
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Yeah, "Vigdis" offered absolutely nothing to the story other than proving Clancy couldn't write women to save his life.
BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 19, 2018 09:08
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Madurai posted:I haven't read Third World War in It's not exactly entertaining. There's a brief intro narrative about the first combat of the war, but after that it takes a long, long time to get going. We're talking hundreds of pages on (fictional) "White Paper" analysis of third-world economies. If you make it through that the book gets a lot more engaging. The scenario he postulates seems wonderfully dated now - Iran is our staunch ally, for example, and his take on South Africa (Apartheid) looks quite embarrassing in retrospect.
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Apr 19, 2018 17:03
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Yeah, "Vigdis" offered absolutely nothing to the story than proving Clancy couldn't write women to save his life. Yeah, I got nothing. These characters are completely cardboard. To mock them is like stabbing a sponge.
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Apr 19, 2018 23:25
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What struck me was the White knight aspect, "Oh mr Brave American you stopped me from a gang rape and murder by the eeevil russians. Let me reward you with sex" She was there to bone our hero and be his "healing from his twu luv getting raped and murdered" But one good thing the insane politics from his later books aren't present.(much)
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Apr 29, 2018 20:50
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Couldn't agree more. Anyway, if anyone has any questions about 1052 frigates, 688 class subs, etc, ask them now, cause I've had enough and aren't going to bother going any further.
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Apr 29, 2018 21:23
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Read Cauldron or whatever by Larry Bond next
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Apr 29, 2018 22:00
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Wait wait don’t quit before we find out who wins!
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Apr 30, 2018 00:32
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Breezing through 800 pages and never having to think about it again is one thing. Having to write up the rest of it? I'd rather have Mike Edwards stab me and fall on top of me in a grotesquely sexual position. When I started I thought there'd be lots of stupid right wing nuttery and military ignorance to make fun of but the bits worth mocking are buried under pages of how to operate naval computers.
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Apr 30, 2018 00:49
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Jaguars! posted:Breezing through 800 pages and never having to think about it again is one thing. IIRC, the right wing nuttery doesn't really pick up steam until Clear and Present Danger, when Clancy had grown beyond control of an editor.
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Apr 30, 2018 05:41
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Madurai posted:IIRC, the right wing nuttery doesn't really pick up steam until Clear and Present Danger, when Clancy had grown beyond control of an editor. I sort of met - more like "was in the same room with and was introduced to" - him in the mid 90's at a Naval History conference; I attended because I was a museum curator at the time. It was awful. He was utterly full of himself and talking down to everyone, lecturing everyone who would listen to his - views - in a room full of Admirals and PhD historians. They were all such professionals that they were quite polite to him, even though he came off as a fool. It was just embarrassingly ugly. If he wasn't such a fatuous prick I would have felt bad for him.
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Apr 30, 2018 16:17
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if clancy was still alive which TRUMP JOB would he have I think he'd have Bolton's position
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Apr 30, 2018 22:56
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science advisor
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May 7, 2018 05:00
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