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The US over estimated the Iraqi army in GW1 and learned a pretty valuable lesson in what overwhelming force and airpower does to even seasoned fighters. When you assume that people will just roll over and let you walk their streets after killing their people you end up with GW2, basically every other American conflict post ww2, and UA vs RF. Hubris has a ruining effect on great power.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:20
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Please don't expect or ask me to post “warez”. Being unable to bypass FT's paywall, or any other referenced in this thread – especially when people post explicit instructions on doing that every other page, including this very own page roughly two dozen posts ago – is a skill issue. Koos Group posted:a. Explain sources and links that you cite. This spares others from having to guess what point you're making with them. So is it the D&D rules or not? I don't think an emoticon counts as a summary of a link.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:20
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Kchama posted:Nobody has said that Ukraine is wrong or willfully overestimating things. They probably have a drat good idea. We were responding to someone who said that WE should intentionally overestimate Russia. Which is what I was responding to. Everyone outside of Ukraine extremely overestimated Russia and that was a large part of the reason why everyone just let Russia take Georgia and Crimea. About the only people who seemed to have a good idea was post-Crimea US, who started working to help Ukraine reform and arm for round 2. Everyone else thought it was basically a waste of time and money. That's why there was no real support until after Ukraine held off the initial invasion. No one thought they had a chance until they made it clear that they did. I mean the US didn't even think the Ukrainians could survive the initial invasion and were urging Zelensky to evac and form a government in exile. A lot of the initial failure seemed to have been on the tactical and strategic level, and that stuff is hard to account for in planning. A dumb but powerful enemy can always smarten up over time. Guess we'll all see if the Russian offensive bears enough fruit, they've been avoiding the second mobilization so far, which I think will delay any repeat offensives if this one fails.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:32
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Don't get pissy when people want summaries to pay walled sites, you loving bellend. The lovely, snide response is your post, ever so funnier by the ninja edit to add the second line to it. I posted a link to an article, a concise summary of what the article is about, and the money shot quote from it. Now, you could posit that I'm also responsible to read the article for anyone having any further questions about it, but, well, I disagree. Furthermore, I don't think that paywall is a convincing problem when a post on the same page of the thread explains how to bypass the paywall on that specific site on any device. ArchRanger posted:So is it the D&D rules or not? I don't think an emoticon counts as a summary of a link. Consider reading the post. cinci zoo sniper posted:To be fair, that would be ridiculous in a very specifically American way, and so the chances of it happening this decade are at least 50%. The bolded part does explain that Grozev's life is in danger, and that I'm glad to be reading news that he has made it to safety. The subsequent quote provides further details about the situation. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 15, 2023 22:33
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Christo is relatively safe in the US, but he's basically stuck there now because of the danger. I've spent more time talking to the police about my personal safety than I would have liked these past few weeks, but they don't know about any specific threats against me, at least.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:46
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TK-42-1 posted:The US over estimated the Iraqi army in GW1 and learned a pretty valuable lesson in what overwhelming force and airpower does to even seasoned fighters. When you assume that people will just roll over and let you walk their streets after killing their people you end up with GW2, basically every other American conflict post ww2, and UA vs RF. Hubris has a ruining effect on great power. You are conflating things that don't belong together. How much the US military actually overestimated the Iraqi army in 1991 I don't know, but the US military plan of 2003 was seemingly well laid and executed. The actual obstacles rose with the political plan afterwards (because there was none apart from grift). The same goes with Afghanistan, USA wouldn't negotiate with terrorists after defeating them so Taliban had no other option but to continue fighting for twenty years more. Meanwhile Russia didn't defeat Ukrainian military when they had their best chance so we will never know how the deukrainezation project would have fared in large scale (though we have glimpses from captured cities).
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Feb 15, 2023 22:52
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https://censor.net/ru/news/3399967/v_nebe_ukrainy_zafiksirovany_vrajeskie_shary_s_uglovymi_otrajatelyami_vozdushnye_sily Russian army seems to have been reading American news, since Ukrainian air defences are reporting air balloons with radar reflectors appearing in their skies two days in a row now. Brown Moses posted:Christo is relatively safe in the US, but he's basically stuck there now because of the danger. I've spent more time talking to the police about my personal safety than I would have liked these past few weeks, but they don't know about any specific threats against me, at least.  drat, I'll keep my fingers crossed for everyone, as I imagine that there could be concerns not just for Christo and you, but also Arik and others whose writing I'm less familiar with.
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Feb 15, 2023 23:07
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Nenonen posted:You are conflating things that don't belong together. How much the US military actually overestimated the Iraqi army in 1991 I don't know, but the US military plan of 2003 was seemingly well laid and executed. I can confirm that in the late 2000s I worked for a large defense contractor and the main project we were working on (without getting specific) was designed to address the fact that a lot of military logistics simply couldn’t keep pace with the insane rate of advance the US had in Iraq. We spent an insane amount of taxpayer money optimizing stuff so that on the off chance we needed to invade a country faster than Iraq in 2003, we’d be able to. So yes, the execution the Iraq invasion in 2003 was excellent. It was everything after that failed.
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Feb 15, 2023 23:49
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TK-42-1 posted:The US over estimated the Iraqi army in GW1 and learned a pretty valuable lesson in what overwhelming force and airpower does to even seasoned fighters. When you assume that people will just roll over and let you walk their streets after killing their people you end up with GW2, basically every other American conflict post ww2, and UA vs RF. Hubris has a ruining effect on great power.  ...they didn't. US DOD ran a number of simulations using a model that had been developed since the 1950s or 1960s. If the barracks at Riyadh airport didn't have a Scud missile hit it, the model would have been within a dozen or so KIA. It very accurately predicated that the Iraqi military would be annihilated.The problem was Vietnam. Political leadership at the time was very concerned that Americans would be concerned about getting into "another Vietnam". Nevermind the two conflicts had little in common: to the average American, war is war, and bodybags are all the same color. When DOD provided their casualty estimates, political leadership--probably correctly--basically said, "Nobody will believe this. Our constituents will think we're lying to them because they think that we think this will be worse than Vietnam." So they lied to their constituents and tossed around predictions that amounted to, "We'll totally win, but there will be several thousand casualties, and maybe several ten thousand casualties across the coalition." Remember there were all sorts of discrepancies between what was publicly-known about US capabilities and what they actually were. Enough people in DOD planning knew that Abrams armor was basically impenetrable from the front by Soviet-era tanks, but they didn't tell very many people, including American tankers. They knew that 25mm depleted uranium rounds would shred a T-72, but Bradley gunners found that out by doing it. Hell, I think the "official" range of the TOW missile was only 2000m, but it had a 3750m range. At any rate, the news media of 1990-91 repeated the high casualty forecasts often enough--and DOD didn't bother correcting anybody loudly in the years since--so the narrative has become "DOD over-estimated the Iraqi military."
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Feb 15, 2023 23:49
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Brown Moses posted:Christo is relatively safe in the US, but he's basically stuck there now because of the danger. I've spent more time talking to the police about my personal safety than I would have liked these past few weeks, but they don't know about any specific threats against me, at least. A long time ago, like maybe a decade ago I asked if you and I could be Facebook friends. You said yes but then *BAM* ghosted me like an ugly Tinder date. I kinda figured "Ya know, he probably can't be friends with a guy who's got an al-Aqsa tag and grew up with Russian/Ukrainian nationals in his home. Also he's more of a Twitter guy anyways." Do the Russkies read your posts here? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 16, 2023 01:50
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ArchRanger posted:So is it the D&D rules or not? I don't think an emoticon counts as a summary of a link. Saying, basically: "this link supports what I'm saying, and if you can't get past the paywall, then that is your problem, not mine", is fine as an initial post. Although yeah, if someone is then later challenged saying "this is paywalled, I need a summary", then they should probably give you a summary.
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Feb 16, 2023 02:00
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WarpedLichen posted:I mean the US didn't even think the Ukrainians could survive the initial invasion and were urging Zelensky to evac and form a government in exile. A lot of the initial failure seemed to have been on the tactical and strategic level, and that stuff is hard to account for in planning. A dumb but powerful enemy can always smarten up over time. The problem was that Russia was both dumb and weak, whereas everyone thought them brilliant and powerful. So what should have been an easy victory by a superpower ended up being the opposite. And the important thing is that people who are not actively battling them do not need to artificially inflate our estimation of Russia to avoid surprised. Doing that meant that Ukraine did not get all the help it needed in a timely manner. TK-42-1 posted:The US over estimated the Iraqi army in GW1 and learned a pretty valuable lesson in what overwhelming force and airpower does to even seasoned fighters. When you assume that people will just roll over and let you walk their streets after killing their people you end up with GW2, basically every other American conflict post ww2, and UA vs RF. Hubris has a ruining effect on great power. What the hell are you talking about? Ukraine vs Russia is nothing like GW2 and a lot of other post-WW2 conflicts. We completely destroyed them in GW1 and GW2. If you noticed, Russia still hasn't defeated Ukraine. Russia is not currently in the "pacifying the country after annihilating the army in days" stage that America so failed at in GW1 and GW2. Russia is still in the "actually fighting against a peer army" stage a year in.
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Feb 16, 2023 02:37
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Sergg posted:A long time ago, like maybe a decade ago I asked if you and I could be Facebook friends. You said yes but then *BAM* ghosted me like an ugly Tinder date. I kinda figured "Ya know, he probably can't be friends with a guy who's got an al-Aqsa tag and grew up with Russian/Ukrainian nationals in his home. Also he's more of a Twitter guy anyways." Do the Russkies read your posts here? I'll eat the probe but lmao at this post (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 16, 2023 02:44
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Antigravitas posted:And now for something completely different. damnit youtuber, russia didn't stop producing music in the 80s! it's rather odd they are apparently somewhat aware of this, but basically spent the entire video on Grebenshchikov and DDT, among other 80s legends. basically everyone since just gets sorta vaguely flashed onscreen and otherwise goes unmentioned. idk how you flash Monetochka onscreen without discussing her as a rather hilarious example of a bunch of otherwise liberal-ish Russians going all krymnash in 2014 and (mostly) doing an about face (her switching who has what opinions in the "<Папа> говорит, что Крым — не наш; Я говорю, что наш!" line from Украинский вопрос during a post-invasion benefit concert kills me every time i remember it) i guess realistically the reason for that focus is that all the 80s folks have been around long enough that you can easily find english-language media about them, whereas the rest are basically unknowns outside russia unless you're a weird nerd like me. alas. anyway, if you're interested in the subject, https://twitter.com/holodmedia_en/status/1607761664711233537 hopefully book 2 here is out soon (don't ask me why the page is called "reviews"--it's his book, the about page indicates it should go on sale soon after gathering pre-release press coverage) from the leading (only?) american scholar on russian popular music anyway, have some recent releases in the evergreen genre of new parent musicians writing songs about raising their children, with some very pointed color choices in the video's set and prop design https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTfntZ0nwo
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Feb 16, 2023 03:15
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As a guy who is only vaguely aware of Russian music because of Eurovision, I'm glad that Little Big was at least able to get out of Russia.
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Feb 16, 2023 04:03
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eurovision bands are consistently the least representative of any country's music scene lol and i say this as someone who loves eurovision
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Feb 16, 2023 05:48
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Brown Moses posted:Christo is relatively safe in the US, but he's basically stuck there now because of the danger. I've spent more time talking to the police about my personal safety than I would have liked these past few weeks, but they don't know about any specific threats against me, at least. It's interesting that the US (and likely Canada) is categorically different from Western Europe in this way. Has Russia ever successfully assassinated someone on US soil that we know of? Would they even try? I'm just wondering if it's a capability difference with the CIA/FBI vs, say, MI6, or if even Putin won't stick his hand in that cookie jar.
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Feb 16, 2023 07:11
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WarpedLichen posted:As a guy who is only vaguely aware of Russian music because of Eurovision, I'm glad that Little Big was at least able to get out of Russia.
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Feb 16, 2023 07:11
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Brown Moses posted:Christo is relatively safe in the US, but he's basically stuck there now because of the danger. I've spent more time talking to the police about my personal safety than I would have liked these past few weeks, but they don't know about any specific threats against me, at least. Thank you for what you and your team does! I'm glad to hear you're reasonably safe, stay safe!
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Feb 16, 2023 07:21
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VSOKUL girl posted:i guess realistically the reason for that focus is that all the 80s folks have been around long enough that you can easily find english-language media about them, whereas the rest are basically unknowns outside russia unless you're a weird nerd like me. alas. anyway, if you're interested in the subject, A lot also probably ended up being cut. You can hardly go into detail in a short video. The video on Peru's Psychedelic Cumbia is also very abbreviated, and their video about Ukrainian undeground bands doesn't have my fave in it (White Ward). But yes, thank you, as a weird music nerd (put the hyphen where you feel it's most appropriate), learning more about other music scenes is always appreciated.
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Feb 16, 2023 09:37
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KillHour posted:It's interesting that the US (and likely Canada) is categorically different from Western Europe in this way. Has Russia ever successfully assassinated someone on US soil that we know of? Would they even try? Really good article on this subject: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/are-russian-operatives-attacking-putin-critics-in-the-us. Short answer is: probably, but it's obviously impossible to know 100% for sure.
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Feb 16, 2023 09:39
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KillHour posted:It's interesting that the US (and likely Canada) is categorically different from Western Europe in this way. Has Russia ever successfully assassinated someone on US soil that we know of? Would they even try? Part of the issue is the schengen visa area means Russian agents can travel around Europe freely once they pass the schengen border, so it's harder to track their movements and where they're operating. The UK is outside of that so it's less of an issue, but it doesn't resolve the issue of Russian spies being issued fake identities on official government systems. There's also the visa requirements to consider, Russian spies have fake companies which appear real unless you dig into them, and visa services in the UK and Europe don't really dig deeply enough to find out. Plus certain visa services have been infiltrated by Russian intelligence.
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Feb 16, 2023 09:52
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Brown Moses posted:Part of the issue is the schengen visa area means Russian agents can travel around Europe freely once they pass the schengen border, so it's harder to track their movements and where they're operating. The UK is outside of that so it's less of an issue, but it doesn't resolve the issue of Russian spies being issued fake identities on official government systems. There's also the visa requirements to consider, Russian spies have fake companies which appear real unless you dig into them, and visa services in the UK and Europe don't really dig deeply enough to find out. Plus certain visa services have been infiltrated by Russian intelligence. This is so loving nuts a year in, not only do you have people willing to sabotage their countries for a very hosed up Russian government and risk exposure, you have the whole government of Hungary that doesn't seem to care about being put in the toilet of history for what they're doing. The recent scandal of the MEP working for Qatar had sums in millions, while people caught working for Russia are constantly exposed with like 3-5k euros. We can create a goonfund and offer them more than that to push funny legislation I remember even before the war alarming articles about how hosed Hungary's and Austria's intelligence services are and that no one trusts them. Grozev mentioned that Austria is cleaning up supposedly, is anything at all happening in Hungary?
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Feb 16, 2023 10:02
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Honestly - why should they? Working with Russia is good for Orban, and probably good short term for Hungary. It also does look like international companies don't mind, and even increase the investments in Hungary. You get easily pleased corrupt government, access to cheap energy and a way in to Russia if things quiet down. But hopefully PiS is destroyed in the voting booths this autumn, so Poland switches back to normal. Then EU can tighten the screw.
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Feb 16, 2023 10:25
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Hersh interview, just in case you weren't already convinced he's lost contact with reality, he really spells it out here: https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1625989294371241984
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Feb 16, 2023 10:31
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Yeah but that's short term, with the huge long term risks isn't it the job of politicians to consider "hmm what if I end up in history books similar to those small pictures of those eastern European dictators that were ruling the countries under hitler and then were tried and executed" But even ignoring that, you'd think the evil imperialist NATO and EU projects have a way to bring a country in line not only when it's selling the economy to a hostile state in the process of the largest war in Europe since ww2, but also has itsintelligence services infiltrated top to bottom becoming a security risk for everyone else. Austria isn't in NATO so that's more understandable, Hungary is, and NATO has no leverage on them?
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Feb 16, 2023 10:35
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The EU has ways to suspend voting rights and funding to a member state if the other member states agree. The EU has no way of doing that if two member states (like Poland and Hungary) cover for each other while they engage on a Putinist project to destroy democratic institutions. There are ways the other member states are trying to apply pressure using creative means, but at the end of the day EU rules rely on Rule of Law in member states, and if enough members don't care about Rule of Law the whole thing becomes toothless. And before someone comments that this should've been accounted for during conception: It is unlikely that things like qualified majority voting for critical decisions would've been accepted by member states during the formation and expansion of the EU. The institution is and always has been a shambling compromise between diverging nation state interests. NATO is still just a mutual defence pact, it is not a political union beyond some general agreement of its members for cultural reasons.
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Feb 16, 2023 10:47
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WarpedLichen posted:As a guy who is only vaguely aware of Russian music because of Eurovision, I'm glad that Little Big was at least able to get out of Russia. They did speak against the war, so yeah, leaving was the move to go for. Most recently, they've been declared “foreign agents” by the Russian government, which is irrelevant now, but may complicate their return in the future.
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Feb 16, 2023 11:13
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Ynglaur posted:If the US had not supported Ukraine, Ukraine would have fallen. If the US did not act as the guarantor of Europe's security, the Baltics would be next. Could Poland defend itself against such a resurgent Russia, perhaps with support from the rest of Europe? Perhaps. But I don't think even Poland could do so. That's what I mean. Russia's military would be no better without the arming and training of Ukraine done by U.S. AND NATO. Arguably without the recent experiences it would be far worse. And now it would have Ukraine to occupy and fight a brutal guerilla war in a country the size of Afghanistan and Iraq combined. And it is going to invade the Baltics at the same time?  If EU was completely without NATO which had dissolved after Cold War ended or something, the Baltics would already be more militarized, probably in a conscription model. EU would have a military command structure of its own as well, at minimum. EU combined has exponentially more modern military hardware, trained soldiers, industrial base and oh, nuclear weapons in comparison to Ukraine. How would the Baltics be next, given all those facts? gently caress Poland, Finland would have hosed up the Russian military that invaded Ukraine. Poland would have wiped it off the map. Europe would have been in Moscow inside two weeks. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 16, 2023 11:13
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Antigravitas posted:The EU has ways to suspend voting rights and funding to a member state if the other member states agree.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:02
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Charlz Guybon posted:Hasn't Poland stopped covering Hungary due to their different view of the war? PiS still needs Fidesz on their odyssey of grift and lawlessness. But fingers crossed fuckers get voted off in autumn, and then Hungary will have a decision to make. They are very very close of being kicked off Visegrad Group. New reformed group without Hungary but including Romania and Ukraine would be pretty crazy.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:29
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DarkCrawler posted:Russia's military would be no better without the arming and training of Ukraine done by U.S. AND NATO. Arguably without the recent experiences it would be far worse. And now it would have Ukraine to occupy and fight a brutal guerilla war in a country the size of Afghanistan and Iraq combined. I still remember at the start of the invasion last year, US intelligent assessments of how Ukraine will fare(even how wrong it was at the time) in a guerilla war, they estimate a 10-15 years insurgency with Ukraine as the victor.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:33
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VSOKUL girl posted:eurovision bands are consistently the least representative of any country's music scene lol Eurovision sucks donkey dicks. I will take further questions off-air. And eat the probe.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:56
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Alchenar posted:Hersh interview, just in case you weren't already convinced he's lost contact with reality, he really spells it out here: https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1626176420648026113 Hersh's journalism since the 2013 Sarin attacks in Damascus has been thinly sourced trashed, so it's no wonder he ended up on Substack out of the reach of an editorial process.
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Feb 16, 2023 13:05
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The thing is if you add up all the people who would need to be 'in the know' for this story to work then you end up with tens of thousands all needing to keep quiet.
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Feb 16, 2023 13:08
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Blinken feeling Clancy Chattish about what will happen if Ukraine overruns Crimea. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/15/blinken-crimea-ukraine-putin-00083149
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Feb 16, 2023 13:30
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Watched the youtube and hard to turn it off soon. Imagine being such a colossal piece of poo poo that you go on to bemoan the poor germans having it economically hard because gas is more expensive. Parallel to the conspiracy theory the dictator defender is pushing, there are images of Ukrainians crying in bomb shelters, over their destroyed houses or corpses of their friends and family. Lol owned nazi grandma 
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Feb 16, 2023 13:32
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Brown Moses posted:Oliver did a good job digging into the positions of the ship and class of ship Hersh said was involved and data shows they weren't anywhere near the areas he claimed they were: correction: thinly-sourced pro-Russian trash.
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Feb 16, 2023 13:39
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cinci zoo sniper posted:They did speak against the war, so yeah, leaving was the move to go for. Most recently, they've been declared “foreign agents” by the Russian government, which is irrelevant now, but may complicate their return in the future. Aw man They did have a very critical view of Russia way before Putin's awful war, so I assume they must have been on some lists for awhile. I hope they manage okay, their take on the general Russian existential angst was very on-point.
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Feb 16, 2023 14:01
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Alchenar posted:The thing is if you add up all the people who would need to be 'in the know' for this story to work then you end up with tens of thousands all needing to keep quiet.
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Feb 16, 2023 14:07
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