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Scratch Monkey
Oct 25, 2010

👰Proč bychom se netěšili🥰když nám Pán Bůh🙌🏻zdraví dá💪?

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priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/election-forces-ottawa-to-drop-back-room-bid-for-french-built-helicopter-ships/article26447129/

Stupid election :mad:

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

bewbies posted:

For what it's worth, in a wargame I just did the Air Force of 2030 got absolutely ripped apart by a third rate IAMD to the point where they had to literally turn off every system that wasn't shoulder fired in order to get at some of the experiment objectives. This didn't involve any of the low slow cas planes we've been discussing on here but you can probably project pretty well how that would have gone

How many HARMs can a 777 carry?

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003

hobbesmaster posted:

How many HARMs can a 777 carry?

Well, according to Russian ADA forces,

inkjet_lakes
Feb 9, 2015

buttcoinbrony posted:

oh cool, the guy from war is boring got a new job

Given some of the things that have been said about Vice recently it may well be advertorial, it sure reads like one. gently caress knows who it's targeted at though?

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Dead Reckoning posted:

Any ammo savings is completely obliterated by the costs of the specially trained crew, the modifications to the airframe, and closest to my heart, the need for tanker support. The gunships absolutely do have some unique capabilities worth maintaining, but they shouldn't be the core of our CAS forces.

There's a reason they reside solely in AFSOC while the core of the CAS forces are in the CAF proper. Different roles/missions, even if gunships are capable of plain jane vanilla CAS in certain situations doctrinally they're supposed to be doing other things (things tied to those unique capabilities you mention), which is why they're in AFSOC and not ACC.

e: Of course those lines have become blurred to the point of incoherency over the last 15+ years

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye


We coulda had a flagship

Well, we still could, depending on how fast other nations can commit.

e: read this and maybe it isn't a loss, as we don't have supply ships or destroyers to escort it.

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Sep 20, 2015

mlmp08
Jul 11, 2004

Prepare for my priapic projectile's exalted penetration
Nap Ghost

bewbies posted:

For what it's worth, in a wargame I just did the Air Force of 2030 got absolutely ripped apart by a third rate IAMD to the point where they had to literally turn off every system that wasn't shoulder fired in order to get at some of the experiment objectives. This didn't involve any of the low slow cas planes we've been discussing on here but you can probably project pretty well how that would have gone

The Air Force should use the Marine solution to semi-modern IAMD in exercises: Just attack from outside the play area but swear up and down that it's totally legal because after leaving the game area where we can't shoot them, you scooted across the line for 10 seconds to launch ordnance, then bugged out into the no-go area.

A thing that really happened. Several years in a row. I'm not sure if they still do it or not.

OhYeah
Jan 20, 2007

1. Currently the most prevalent form of decision-making in the western world

2. While you are correct in saying that the society owns

3. You have not for a second demonstrated here why

4. I love the way that you equate "state" with "bureaucracy". Is that how you really feel about the state

Clicked on this link and my eye immediately went to this headline: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/canada-does-not-need-fighter-jets-period/article19503129/

What :crossarms:

Mr Crustacean
May 13, 2009

one (1) robosexual
avatar, as ordered

iyaayas01 posted:

gently caress it, let's build the entire US military around the idea of conducting endless Operations Useless Dirt and watch the world go to poo poo when everyone realizes that Uncle Sugar no longer has any conventional capability

At least the War is Boring's of the world will get their wish

Lol. drat bloody right. But blame stupid rear end US foreign policy for putting the US military in 15 years of meatgrinding Operation Useless Dirt. The last 15 years of US foreign policy have not only been detrimental to the United States but also to the rest of the world.

It's because the US military has been used as a big sledgehammer to try and enact diplomacy, to enact cultural, political and economic change around the world. When in the end, like all militaries, the one thing it does well is break things and kill people.
It's been used as the worlds shittiest NGO, seriously, where in the gently caress does nation building come under the domain of military operations? Who is stupid enough to smash a country completely to bits to, invade it, occupy it and try to build it back up into a liberal democracy, all in the span of a decade. Any other nation in the world would barely be capable of doing a single one of those things. But the US military is tasked with doing all of those things, at once?


A military is there to break things and kill people, you do not use it to build nations, enact political change or social change. Just like you don't send soldiers onto the streets to police. And just like you don't do surgery with only a hammer. But hey, when you have the biggest and best hammer in the world, every problem looks like a nail
:v: :patriot:

I totally agree with you that the US Military should be refocused on being a force that is capable of Hi-Intensity warfare to deter war around the globe. Because a peaceful, free trading international order benefits everybody involved. America most of all.
The US military should not be the loving cause of those wars and it should not be forced into being the world's shittiest NGO. Just because it can conduct war, doesn't mean it should do.

However, I don't agree with you on why the world is going to poo poo. The world has gone to poo poo not only because the United States has cracked it's hammer from smashing too many skulls to pieces, it's also because the rest of the world saw the US smashing skulls and is emulating it as the way of doing business. If the US, with all its economic, diplomatic and cultural power, has to resort to this in the 21st century, well surely so do we.

The world is literally a worse place than it was at the beginning of the millennium because of that hammer being swung round. Less hammer swinging please. It's not only the US that has to pick up the pieces.

Mr Crustacean fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Sep 21, 2015

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

mlmp08 posted:

The Air Force should use the Marine solution to semi-modern IAMD in exercises: Just attack from outside the play area but swear up and down that it's totally legal because after leaving the game area where we can't shoot them, you scooted across the line for 10 seconds to launch ordnance, then bugged out into the no-go area.

A thing that really happened. Several years in a row. I'm not sure if they still do it or not.

This is a reasonable simulation of the Vietnam war.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

lol

I love how he references the 6 Defense Priorities of Canada or whatever as support for his "no fighters required" position and if you actually go to them the first one literally requires fighter jets unless you're just going to cede air sovereignty for the entire border except for the southern with the US as well as any claim to the Arctic.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
Pretty surprising opinions on fighter jets coming from a guy nicknamed "Buzz", tbh.

But yeah we get quite a few of those type of thinkpieces ranging up to and including "Should Canada have a military?" which thankfully doesn't seem to be the thinking of any of the major political parties.. Even the Greens talk about the need for defense, mostly to keep countries from fishing our poo poo.

The 65 F-35s planned for seemed like a really low number to start off with, pretty much "bare minimum" numbers tbh. I shudder to think what their lifespans would be like going from the 130 or so CF-18s down to half the number of fighters.

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

Mr Crustacean posted:

A military is there to break things and kill people, you do not use it to build nations, enact political change or social change. Just like you don't send soldiers onto the streets to police.
Some countries do, actually! And I don't mean just dictatorships.

Maybe the USA need to have a sixth branch to their armed forces, with the addition of a gendarmerie corps.

Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Sep 21, 2015

Mr Crustacean
May 13, 2009

one (1) robosexual
avatar, as ordered

Cat Mattress posted:

Some countries do, actually! And I don't mean just dictatorships.

Maybe the USA need to have a sixth branch to their armed forces, with the addition of a gendarmerie corps.

Yeah well those Gendarmes are souped up police officers conducting SWAT duties and the like.
They are not an Infantry battalion whose raison d'aitre is to close and kill with the enemy, patrolling the streets in a foreign country they have just invaded. They are not a tank brigade driving between traffic, after destroying the remnants of that country's military.

If you put your own troops in that situation then you have really hosed up, they are going to merk a bunch of people since that is all they know and have been trained to do. And that's going to make the population hate them so everyone's going to want to shoot their rear end.

Quite frankly, if you are a military and you are conducting military operations against a civilian populace. You are one of the loving bad guys. There is no way around it, you will kill civilians. If there were foreign soldiers and tanks on your streets who 'accidentally killed a few civilians', you would want their blood, you would be shooting and bombing the poo poo outta them. Troops should have never, ever been put into that situation in the first place.

Mr Crustacean fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Sep 21, 2015

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003
Separate medical branch or bust! On that note: tight uniforms.

drgitlin
Jul 25, 2003
luv 2 get custom titles from a forum that goes into revolt when its told to stop using a bad word.

FrozenVent posted:

It's worth a read but it's not as mind blowing as Command and Control.

Really? I would say exactly the opposite. It's not quite as accessible as C&C but far more fascinating about just what the Soviets were building (and may still have operating).

AceRimmer
Mar 18, 2009
"Doc" getting a little closer to flying again. :toot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ItppiCAVI

Mortabis
Jul 8, 2010

I am stupid

Mr Crustacean posted:

Yeah well those Gendarmes are souped up police officers conducting SWAT duties and the like.
They are not an Infantry battalion whose raison d'aitre is to close and kill with the enemy, patrolling the streets in a foreign country they have just invaded. They are not a tank brigade driving between traffic, after destroying the remnants of that country's military.

If you put your own troops in that situation then you have really hosed up, they are going to merk a bunch of people since that is all they know and have been trained to do. And that's going to make the population hate them so everyone's going to want to shoot their rear end.

Quite frankly, if you are a military and you are conducting military operations against a civilian populace. You are one of the loving bad guys. There is no way around it, you will kill civilians. If there were foreign soldiers and tanks on your streets who 'accidentally killed a few civilians', you would want their blood, you would be shooting and bombing the poo poo outta them. Troops should have never, ever been put into that situation in the first place.

We deploy the national guard for civil emergencies all the time, from riots to hurricanes to chaperoning idiot G20 protesters. This isn't a misuse of military forces. "Killing people" isn't all they know; in fact, most of them are trained to primarily do other much more mundane things like cook, drive trucks, set up telecommunications networks, etc. Some of them are even actual cops! These things are Really Useful in emergencies. And just because people have been ~~trained to kill~~ doesn't make them unqualified to do things like fill sandbags and pass out gasoline and MREs.

e: lol I should read more carefully

Mortabis fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Sep 22, 2015

mlmp08
Jul 11, 2004

Prepare for my priapic projectile's exalted penetration
Nap Ghost
Holy poo poo lol at all of the above, both from Crustacean and Mortabis.

vains
May 26, 2004

A Big Ten institution offering distance education catering to adult learners

Mortabis posted:

We deploy the national guard for civil emergencies all the time, from riots to hurricanes to chaperoning idiot G20 protesters. This isn't a misuse of military forces. "Killing people" isn't all they know; in fact, most of them are trained to primarily do other much more mundane things like cook, drive trucks, set up telecommunications networks, etc. Some of them are even actual cops! These things are Really Useful in emergencies. And just because people have been ~~trained to kill~~ doesn't make them unqualified to do things like fill sandbags and pass out gasoline and MREs.

the national guard deploying for disaster relief and the us military conducting nation building as part of coin operations are dramatically different things

kind of stupid that it would even have to be mentioned

Mortabis
Jul 8, 2010

I am stupid
Whoops I didn't read carefully enough, I thought he was talking about deploying your own troops domestically :downs:

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

The success or failure of post war reconstruction and nation building is more complex than just who the enforcers are. It has q lot more to do with the previous political traditions and how well the old elites are either rehabilitated or how well a new ruling elite establishes a broad base of support in the local population. The post WW2 governments in Germany both recycled non top level nazis and had the governments run by anti fascist men and women who had been prominent before 1933. It also helped for W Germany that they had experience with every day democracy going back to Imperial Germany. . In the Japanese case the emperor signing off on the new govt was huge. Meanwhile SVietnam [not an occupation but hosed ip nation building] was always a small group of elites with low popular support n a nation with near zero experience with democratic politics. In Iraq debaathization was even more ham handed than early denazification and in any event the young democracy quickly was dominated by groups with very narrow sectarian support bases. It wasn't the anti American insurgency that hosed it up there for the most part it was the sunni/Shia civil war. Same deal in Afghanistan broadly. Little to no previous experience with democratic politics and leaders who couldn't pull together a broad support base. All this was exacerbated by the corrupt nepotistic and croniest activities that came later.

edit: not that militaries are especially great at rebuilding civilian governmental structures, but they are very good at supplying the security that a new government needs. I've got an entire chapter in my dissertation about what a gold plated clusterfuck the policy of the Education & Cultural Relations Division was within the American occupation forces. As lovely as it was it was also hamstrung by the army not giving a gently caress about it. I forget the exact rank now, but the highest ranking guy in it was either a Captain or a Major which is a huge hurdle when you're trying to get resources allocated for as huge a task as, for example, repairing bomb damaged school buildings and getting all new educational materials. What made it work in the end was the civilian German government, which was established really damned early in both the West and the East. I'm most familiar with the states of Thuringia and Hesse, but in both instances they had appointed civilian officials by mid 1945 and in Hesse had a no bullshit elected government by '46. Those civilian administrators - men and women who usually had strong anti-nazi credentials and strong pre-war commitment to either democratic government or some form of socialism (depending on what occupation zone they were in) and who really gave a poo poo about forming a stable government for their fellow citizens - are the people who resurrected German education. The same pattern broadly holds true for other areas of government and civil administration. The Allied armies made it 110% sure that there wouldn't be any military backsliding to endanger the peace, but hte most important aspect was dedicated German civil servants who were part of a professional civil service tradition that emphasized competency and not being corrupt and which was heavily invested in putting together a non-nazi government.

Seriously, the presence or lack thereof of qualified, competent, non-corrupt administrators and government officials who are invested in building a viable successor to whatever got toppled in the war is a big, big deal and one that is lacking in most of the instances you can point to of failed nation building. That's not something that can be conjured out of thin air, either.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Sep 22, 2015

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003
The similarities in academic discourse between comparative post-conflict- and economic transition studies (from say, planned to Washington consensus, or war to peacetime) are pretty striking to me. It seems you've broadly got the same convergence/divergence, path-dependency, institution building, and organizational learning argument sets going on with both subjects. I think it also helps that great work has been written on succesful 1950s-70s economic policy in W. Germany and Japan, where wartime factors have been put up against postwar 'clean slate miracles', showing the importance of continuity in personell for example.

Arishtat
Jan 2, 2011

Cyrano4747 posted:

The success or failure of post war reconstruction and nation building is more complex than just who the enforcers are. It has q lot more to do with the previous political traditions and how well the old elites are either rehabilitated or how well a new ruling elite establishes a broad base of support in the local population. The post WW2 governments in Germany both recycled non top level nazis and had the governments run by anti fascist men and women who had been prominent before 1933. It also helped for W Germany that they had experience with every day democracy going back to Imperial Germany. . In the Japanese case the emperor signing off on the new govt was huge. Meanwhile SVietnam [not an occupation but hosed ip nation building] was always a small group of elites with low popular support n a nation with near zero experience with democratic politics. In Iraq debaathization was even more ham handed than early denazification and in any event the young democracy quickly was dominated by groups with very narrow sectarian support bases. It wasn't the anti American insurgency that hosed it up there for the most part it was the sunni/Shia civil war. Same deal in Afghanistan broadly. Little to no previous experience with democratic politics and leaders who couldn't pull together a broad support base. All this was exacerbated by the corrupt nepotistic and croniest activities that came later.

It cannot be emphasized enough how much the De-Ba'athification of the Iraqi government and civil service hurt the early occupation's efforts to stabilize and govern the country. And then the police and army were dissolved. In one fell swoop the US occupying forces created a power vacuum *and* offered the nascent insurgency a pool of disaffected Sunnis with not much to lose. Oh and it possible for the Shi'ite majority to assume control of the bureaucracy with little or no opposition and we all know how well that turned out.

Arishtat fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Sep 22, 2015

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010

Arishtat posted:

It cannot be emphasized enough how much the De-Ba'athification of the Iraqi government and civil service hurt the early occupation's efforts to stabilize and govern the country. And then the police and army were dissolved. In one fell swoop the US occupying forces created a power vacuum *and* offered the nascent insurgency a pool of disaffected Sunnis with not much to lose. Oh and it possible for the Shi'ite majority to assume control of the bureaucracy with little or no opposition and we all know how well that turned out.

The entire post-war planning for Iraq was so unimaginably bad it is hard to fathom. It really looks like the US government fully and truly believed that a) they would be greeted as liberators and b) everyone everywhere wants to live in a liberal democracy with checks and balances and is willing to accept a loss of personal power to make that happen because they believe so strongly in the concept of democracy. if you look at footage from late 2003/2004 they seem genuinely confused as to why there are still people fighting them when they just liberated the country and turned it into a democracy.

TCD
Nov 13, 2002

Every step, a fucking adventure.

bewbies posted:

For what it's worth, in a wargame I just did the Air Force of 2030 got absolutely ripped apart by a third rate IAMD to the point where they had to literally turn off every system that wasn't shoulder fired in order to get at some of the experiment objectives. This didn't involve any of the low slow cas planes we've been discussing on here but you can probably project pretty well how that would have gone

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/strike/2015/09/21/norway-australia-team-to-develop-missile-for-f-35/72590888/

Would that help any? I thought making GBS threads out a ton of SDBIIs from JSFs would have helped unless you still can't get close enough... then I guess you'll need internal carried HARMs or something like the above.

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003
I think - but don't remember exactly how much - it was touched upon in Tom Ricks' Fiasco, so go read up on Republican junior staffers loving up a country 100x worse than IMF stooges preaching voucherization in Central Europe or the loving Treuhandanstalt liquidating East Germany lmao.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Arishtat posted:

It cannot be emphasized enough how much the De-Ba'athification of the Iraqi government and civil service hurt the early occupation's efforts to stabilize and govern the country. And then the police and army were dissolved. In one fell swoop the US occupying forces created a power vacuum *and* offered the nascent insurgency a pool of disaffected Sunnis with not much to lose. Oh and it possible for the Shi'ite majority to assume control of the bureaucracy with little or no opposition and we all know how well that turned out.

Hey, Iraq was going to be Year Zero of the objectively correct way to run a government, with the invisible hands finally being unshackled from burdensome government interference.

Of course when these ideals face-planted immediately, it was the fault of 'violence' or something, not the ideals themselves.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Hey, Iraq was going to be Year Zero of the objectively correct way to run a government, with the invisible hands finally being unshackled from burdensome government interference.

Of course when these ideals face-planted immediately, it was the fault of 'violence' or something, not the ideals themselves.

Well it wasn't the fault of the ideals themselves. It was the fault of the idiots who took past occupations out of their historical contexts and didn't comprehend that something as complex as democracy requires many, many years of institutional and cultural familiarization and practice with them. If there was a coup and France turned into a despotic dictatorship for a decade or two it would be entirely possible to reboot democracy in it after that government fell. After a century? Less likely but probably not a completely impossible task as any dictatorship that lasted that long would probably have had to make some concessions to how things were done before that. A country that has had nothing but colonial governments and dictators? Good loving luck.

With the way the CCP holds local elections for lower level officials China would have a far better chance at transitioning to democracy following a coup than any place you choose to name in the mideast. This is also a big part of why Africa (indeed most post-colonial states) has had such terrible luck with getting stable, democratic governments.

edit: nm, I misread that as being you saying a democratic transition wasn't possible, not the privatization end of it.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Sep 22, 2015

Biffmotron
Jan 12, 2007

ArchangeI posted:

The entire post-war planning for Iraq was so unimaginably bad it is hard to fathom. It really looks like the US government fully and truly believed that a) they would be greeted as liberators and b) everyone everywhere wants to live in a liberal democracy with checks and balances and is willing to accept a loss of personal power to make that happen because they believe so strongly in the concept of democracy. if you look at footage from late 2003/2004 they seem genuinely confused as to why there are still people fighting them when they just liberated the country and turned it into a democracy.

It was insanely bad. My go to on this is Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, which documents the first 15 months. Bremer was given almost no time to plan, all the State Department experts were locked out because they weren't Bush administration political appointees, and then when they finally got to Baghdad, there were no clear lines of communication between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the military which didn't run through Washington DC (Chandrasekaran says the office of the Vice President, and Dick Cheney). The people they brought in were selected on basically the same criterion as Congressional interns (some donor's kid with a newly minted BA in political science) and they were there for 3 month tours, so there wasn't even time to get to know the situation on the ground. Not that you could, because leaving the Green Zone meant a full Black Water security escort, and Iraqis weren't allowed inside.

The whole privatization thing was nuts. The idea was that the free market would swoop in, and invest in and modernize all of Iraqi's decrepit industry. Investors took one look at Iraqi's industry, which were decades old factories that hadn't received major spares since Desert Storm, in a country with failing infrastructure sliding into civil war, and sensibly decided that the whole thing was worth a large amount of negative dollars and refused to invest.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Cyrano4747 posted:

edit: nm, I misread that as being you saying a democratic transition wasn't possible, not the privatization end of it.

TBH your post is a good one anyway; the fact the democracy was just something that flourishes was an assumption of the Iraqi occupation. The assumption that democracy can just work without any sort of ground conditions preceding it is an idea that only died a slow death - frankly, I'm not sure if it is dead or not.

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010

Nebakenezzer posted:

TBH your post is a good one anyway; the fact the democracy was just something that flourishes was an assumption of the Iraqi occupation. The assumption that democracy can just work without any sort of ground conditions preceding it is an idea that only died a slow death - frankly, I'm not sure if it is dead or not.

I thought it was well and truly dead until the Arab Spring made the corpse shamble back to life. I mean, with hindsight we can all see that Egypt just transitioning into a stable democracy ala Eastern-Central Europe post 1990 was a long shot at best, but at the time it felt like it might just work.

Alaan
May 24, 2005

There are a lot of countries that will be REAL interesting when the old farts start keeling over and/or their demographics explode in about 20 years. Hopefully when they start getting into the age of getting power all the Arab spring kids actually remember they wanted not to be run by a theocracy from the middle ages.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Alaan posted:

There are a lot of countries that will be REAL interesting when the old farts start keeling over and/or their demographics explode in about 20 years. Hopefully when they start getting into the age of getting power all the Arab spring kids actually remember they wanted not to be run by a theocracy from the middle ages.

I think Iran has a fairly large population of relatively liberal youths already.

SeaborneClink
Aug 27, 2010

MAWP... MAWP!

Alaan posted:

There are a lot of countries that will be REAL interesting when the old farts start keeling over and/or their demographics explode in about 20 years. Hopefully when they start getting into the age of getting power all the Arab spring kids actually remember they wanted not to be run by a theocracy from the middle ages.
Pretty sure the American youth has been saying this since 1945, look where it's gotten us.

Alaan
May 24, 2005

One step forward two step backs.

The internet and overall level of global connection is likely to hit harder in the more repressed countries. If there is anything a dictator or very controlling leader hates is easily spreading information. But that's a Pandora's box that's not getting closed in all but the most backwards countries like NK with their 10 IP addresses dedicated to dear leaders warez.

Even in China they can only really cut off so much since a good chunk of students are over here in the US for college. It's not like they'll stick to List of Proper Internet Sites while here. And HK is kind of the awkward tumor latching onto them they can't get rid of.

Tythas
Oct 3, 2013

Never felt at home in reality
Always hiding behind avatars


I had the privilege of working the Japanese-American friendship festival at Yokota AB this past weekend and grab some pictures for you guys











the rest of the pictures are here in this album http://imgur.com/a/pPViS

Tythas fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 23, 2015

stealie72
Jan 10, 2007

Tythas posted:

Awesome pictures
I know that they are a real thing, but every time I see a modern military plane with a red ball on the fuselage and a mum on the tail, my brain refuses to let me see anything but and Ace Combat CGI plane.

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iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Biffmotron posted:

It was insanely bad. My go to on this is Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, which documents the first 15 months. Bremer was given almost no time to plan, all the State Department experts were locked out because they weren't Bush administration political appointees, and then when they finally got to Baghdad, there were no clear lines of communication between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the military which didn't run through Washington DC (Chandrasekaran says the office of the Vice President, and Dick Cheney). The people they brought in were selected on basically the same criterion as Congressional interns (some donor's kid with a newly minted BA in political science) and they were there for 3 month tours, so there wasn't even time to get to know the situation on the ground. Not that you could, because leaving the Green Zone meant a full Black Water security escort, and Iraqis weren't allowed inside.

Just a reminder that when Bremer was in the process of issuing CPA Order #1, Jay Garner, the CIA Baghdad Station Chief, and a couple other high-ranking folks got wind of it, went to him, and basically said "this will jump-start the insurgency, give us an hour and we'll have a counter-proposal for DC that makes a lot more sense." He said "I was given my orders."

And then 2004 to the Present happened.

(this is a good interview if you haven't seen it already)

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