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  • Locked thread
iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

For officers it's more limiting

FWIW the Congress/legislature bit in Art 88 has been held to only apply to to Congress/a legislature as an institution, so while an officer could get in trouble for calling Congress a bunch of baby murdering dumbasses, feel free to mock Congressman Internfucker to your heart's content.

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iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Casimir Radon posted:

Mega stupid:


lol at CAP in the background

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Obama Africanus posted:

Now maybe.

I had at least 15 loving LOR's from one super retarded superintendent at one time. I'm guessing you mean the legit, signed by the commander, start a UIF type of LOR.

Yeah, there's "LORs" and then there's :ducksiren: LORs :ducksiren:.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Courthouse posted:

BTW, does the Budapest Memorandum actually have any guarantees?

No. All it was was a promise for the five NPT approved nuclear powers (France and China agreed to the same conditions in a separate document) to refrain from doing mean stuff like invading or otherwise interfering with Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nukes. The only thing that is required is to "consult" with one another if questions come up regarding those requirements, which the US and the UK have done.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
That sound you heard was ALCOM and 11th AF popping the world's biggest boner.

Time to dust off those OPLANs last updated in 1989!

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

gfanikf posted:

Can anyone comment if the SSBN crews are anymore dedicated to the "mission" than their Missiler or Bomber Pilot counterparts in the Air Force? In short is the Navy just better at hiding the nuclear mission rot? I mean the bomber crews had the Barksdale incident, but it's still pales to the Missile Crews in terms of constant gently caress ups. I guess part of it is Missile crews have the least "work" of the three parts of the triad, so I would suspect they could screw up far more with less...deadly consequences...than the other parts.

This missile test scandal is kind of an outlier although still related to the overall rot in the USAF nuke enterprise. With the other stuff (accidentally flying live nukes to Barksdale, failing a NSI because a cop was playing a game on his cell phone while guarding the WSA, etc), it was all just straight up endemic stupidity. With the test scandal, they weren't cheating because they were too stupid to pass the test (and were therefore unfit to be carrying out their duties), they were cheating because the tests were composed of nothing but gotcha games and because there was a culture of zero tolerance for anything other than 100%, in both "practice/learning" environments as well as actual evaluations. Here's an example of the kind of gotcha games that were played with the tests:

"You are driving to the Missile Alert Facility after the sun has set; you therefore have your lights on and since it is a rural road you have switched on your high beams. You are on a two-lane road when a car is approaching from the opposite direction. You should ________."

So let's say the standard for dimming lights is when the opposite car is within 200 meters of your vehicle. You would then answer "You should dim your lights upon coming within 200 meters of the approaching vehicle."

The question continues:

"Upon passing the first car, another car is heading towards you in the opposite direction. You should ________."

If you answered "dim your lights upon coming within 200 meters of the approaching vehicle," you would be wrong because you were never told you went back to high beams after the first vehicle. And since you got it wrong, even if you were in a training environment you just failed the exam with negative repercussions and career impact to follow.

So not only were the tests written in a completely idiotic and counterproductive way, but the consequences of failing (particularly in a training environment) were completely out of whack with how a well run training and evaluation program should operate. I'm not trying to excuse the cheating, but it's quite a bit different from "forgot to check markings on warhead, accidentally flew live nukes halfway across country."

And oh by the way, that culture of gotcha games and zero tolerance for anything less than perfect was in no way isolated to Malmstrom, that's why I'm not too surprised to see that the OG/CC at F.E. Warren got fired today and I won't be surprised if there are firings at Minot in the near future.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

That's doesn't sound too far off from the Navy cheating scandal. The creme de la stupidity there was the idiot typing up a cheat sheet of classified material on his home computer.

You'll notice in the article in the AF cheating scandal there's a couple individuals who are still subject to an additional criminal investigation involving unauthorized use of classified information...apparently a small amount of the cheating stuff involved classified material, and these idiots were sending it via SMS.

So there's some endemic stupidity with the cheating thing too.

Snowdens Secret posted:

posting OPLAN details on an open comedy forum.

lol

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
lol

Remind me again why NATO is still a thing?

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

orange juche posted:

Edit: Much as all of the countries that border the South China Sea actually have no right to any of the body of water that is there nor the resources under it, it all belongs to China after all, according to 300+ year old maps, and furthermore


E2: May as well lump in the Sea of Japan as well, as that is owned by China on some old maps as well, I mean gently caress, just throw in everything west of Hawaii because China was probably there first.

Well you see, there is this line with nine ten dashes, and as we all know the international standard is to draw a line with dashes on it

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Also I came across a pretty detailed article in GQ about the Bastion attack...interesting reading.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

gfanikf posted:

There are far far better arguments for the latter than the former. He tried selling poo poo to a bunch of different people, including the Pakistanis. His stuff also wound up with the Soviets, which the Israeli's willing gave to them and was also lost by Soviet penetration of the Mossad. Pollard stole more than anyone else had in such a short time, with the exception of Snowden. The Israelis installed a high speed copier in a secure apartment because he was bringing them so much stuff (stuff beyond "oh America should have been giving us this anyway"), including the NSA's Signals Intelligence Bible. The US also started losing a lot of intelligence channels because of Pollard, sources that started closing up.

And just to add to this, even if none of that was true, just the simple fact of revealing unsanitized stuff, even if it was the same basic info that we were sharing with Israel, would reveal means and methods, which in many cases is more valuable than the information itself.

gently caress Pollard, he deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life and it pisses me off that he's eligible for parole next year because of that rule.

Snowdens Secret posted:

Also Americans have no loving clue who NATO is.

That's really what it comes down to...I guarantee you that if the poll asked a follow up question with "is this country a member of NATO" the only ones who would break 50% correct would be the UK and France. Also that most Americans have no clue of how Article V works.

Trabisnikof posted:

Well, it is an online poll so take it with a grain of salt, but those are getting more and more accurate. Re: Turkey, I think this chart is also interesting as it reminds me of a lot of issues in America where Americans don't actually understand what they are agreeing to.



Like I said, I'd be willing to guess that around 85% of Americans have no clue about how Article V actually works.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Bolow posted:

Maybe this will finally light a fire under Congress's rear end to fund NASA more :unsmith:

lol

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

This is exactly the sort of thing our foreign agencies should be doing.

Not USAID.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

JSARSOM posted:

Yeah isn't this the primary reason affiliation with these aid agencies pretty much kills any chance at a security clearance.

Not a security clearance per se, but I'm pretty sure there's some kind of a cooling off period between going to/from an intelligence focused gig...similar to the requirement that any Peace Corps volunteers aren't allowed to hold an intelligence position for 4 years after leaving, and that they are forever prohibited from doing any sort of intel work regarding any country they volunteered in.

psydude posted:

There's been enough NDs here on BAF to convince me that military members should generally not be allowed near firearms.

I think my favorite on KAF was either the AF member who ND'd their M-16 into the engine block of a pickup because they thought it was a good idea to be cleaning their weapon while driving down perimeter road or the Army Lt Col who ND'd into a Lt.

The AF member who ND'd during a function check because they dropped the mag from their rifle after pulling the bolt back to clear it (:wtc:) was pretty lol too.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

permabanned posted:

Ukraine isn't a member of NATO, even though some Ukrainian troops participated in FOB maintenance operations and small-scale patrol duty in Iraq.

Detachments of the special forces of the Russian paratroops for the Ukraine - 55 men per regiment. GRU 'engineering' forces for the rest of the EU.

So just so we're clear, you're claiming that the Russians are deploying (covert) military forces into the "rest of the EU" (which presumably includes NATO countries)?

I'll completely buy them moving into Ukraine but NATO countries is loving insane and you need to provide a source.

(Because I don't believe you.)

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
So did Ukraine seriously think that the Budapest Memorandum was a binding document that committed the US to come rushing to defend their territorial integrity?

I'm sorry, I don't understand how it's suddenly US "weakness" because a bunch of drunk Eastern Europeans couldn't be bothered to understand basic loving language in a non-binding memorandum. Guess you should've had someone halfway competent in the reading comprehension department heading up your foreign policy thinking?

Also yes, this is 100% an effort by the right-wingers in Japan to use the issue to further bolster their push to get a real military.

\/ welp \/

iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 5, 2014

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

The Budapest Memorandum isn't quite as open and shut as iyaayas is making out. This is practically the whole thing:


Points 4 and 5 are clearly about nukes, but 1, 2, 3 are not, and it's arguable that Russia has violated all three (you can argue whether Russia has 'used' their weapons in Crimea or not.)

The big problem (from Ukraine's side) with the BM is, as the above text makes obvious, the only actual commitment in case of violation is to 'consult', which has been done (and is a total waste of time) and even if Ukraine was bathed in atomic fire the most action necessary is to bring it up in front of the UNSC (where all signatories have a veto anyway.) So basically we've followed the letter of the law, but clearly not done what at least the Ukrainians thought was intended, and it's understandable if countries without extremely explicit mutual defense agreements (i.e. NATO) are re-evaluating their dependency on the US umbrella.

And it's not because we're not running in guns a-blazin', it's because we explicitly and immediately ruled out use of force, which is a very different stance.

Again, I don't understand how the Ukrainians thought that it was anything other than a feel good piece of paper that convinced them (stupidly) to give up their nukes. Because that's all it was. If they honestly thought a piece of paper that the Russians agreed to right after the Wall came down was going to be enough to ever prevent them from being under threat of Russian aggression, they're loving idiots. And if we're going to play word games with what meant what, you could make a case that the UK violated paragraph three first through their inducement to get Ukraine to join the EU.

It's worth mentioning that most of the non-NATO countries who would fall under our umbrella have explicit mutual defense agreements with us (Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines are the first that immediately come to mind.) The big ones that aren't on that list would be countries in the Middle East, but that has always been a much thornier region as far as US engagement so I'd find it hard to believe that any of the players in the region (Israel, Saudis, the other Gulf States) would be hugely surprised if the US failed to fully come to their aid in a questionable circumstance.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Courthouse posted:

They did so because the signatories of said paper convinced them that's what it meant, that their security was guaranteed. (granted, it was 1994 US telling them that they would make sure 1994 Russia didn't pull some poo poo) Now you could say they should have realized that 20 years down the line there would be new people in all these places and anything not on paper would have been forgotten. But I don't think there is any doubt that in the smoke filled back rooms the Ukrainians were being promised and guaranteed their territorial integrity by the signatory powers in exchange for the nukes.


Now it turns out that it is a worthless piece of paper. And that American promises don't mean poo poo when the it hits the fan. The entire point of a guarantee is that you actually take real and meaningful action to back it up. Or else is is by it's very description not a guarantee of anything.


Point is, the US has said a lot of things over the years. And a lot of countries have based their policies on the understanding that the US would honor it's word. And this lack of meaningful action calls into question every last more or less formal security guarantee underpinning the world diplomatic status quo. It's a big loving deal.





Also, laughing and telling everyone "haha, those dumbshits trusted us" is not terribly good foreign policy.

That is one hell of an assumption, saying there "isn't any doubt" that we guaranteed their territorial integrity. I know you won't be able to prove it, so I won't ask you to, but I'll just reiterate that it is one hell of an assumption and I think saying there isn't any doubt is much too strong of a statement, seeing as how the lack of any concrete proof by definition means there is doubt.

As for American promises not meaning poo poo...well yes, if by "promises" you mean "supposed backroom dealings that no one has any proof of and that we can't actually definitively state even occurred," then yes, I guess those promises probably don't count for much. If by "promises" you mean "actual publicly agreed upon statements where we both signed on the dotted line and unambiguously agreed upon a given policy," I think we need to wait until Russian tanks are rolling into Poland or the Chinese land troops on the Senkakus before we state that American promises aren't worth poo poo.

So I think you're hyperventilating a bit when you state that it's a "big loving deal" that we didn't ride to the rescue of Ukraine based on some supposed unwritten unrecorded backroom dealings 20 years ago.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
I propose a third option: Ukraine gave up its nukes not because it exacted a (verbal, unofficial) promise from the US to protect its sovereignty, but because it perceived that in the post Cold War environment (when they were broke as poo poo and basically teetering on failed state status) it made more sense to give up its nukes in an effort to get increased Western aid because holding onto the nukes would've made them persona non grata as far as the West was concerned (their hanging on to nukes would've been a huge blow to the NPT construct) and Russia was even more of a failed state than they were, it's not like they would ever be a relevant threat again, right?

Just because something is incredibly stupid when you take a long view doesn't mean that a nation's leaders won't do it if they perceive it as being a good move in the short term.

For exhibit A to support my point, I direct you to the entirety of US post-WWII foreign policy.

You do bring up a good point about the perception piece...but unfortunately, unless we have another wikileaks cables dump we're not going to know what foreign governments are actually saying to U.S. diplomats regarding their perception of our lack of action (or not) in Ukraine. We have non-policy makers spouting off in a couple of different countries (e.g., the Japan article someone quoted earlier), but there's often a huge difference between what non-policy makers are saying they "are certain" is going on and what is actually taking place behind those closed doors and in diplomatic cables.

So yeah, you're making a lot of assumptions with nothing to back it up. As for hyperbole, what are all these "red lines" that you are referring to? I know of one, Syrian chemical weapons. That was incredibly stupid, but you're making it sound like the US has been making "red line" commitments willy nilly over the past 12 months and has failed to enforce any of them. Just because something happens in the world that we don't necessarily like and we don't instantly respond with a full blown military response doesn't mean that we failed to "meet our commitments" or whatever.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

quote:

Searching for new options, Mr. Kerry has been huddling with retired generals David Petraeus and Jack Keane, architects of the 2007 troop surge in Iraq.

There isn't an eye roll big enough. Rule #1 of American foreign policy: As long as you insist you were right and are a genius, the actual performance of the policies you advocated for in the past is irrelevant, you will continue to be asked for advice no matter how much of an idiot you actually are.

That crazy bitch Petraeus was banging deserves a medal from a grateful nation for getting his self promoting rear end off the national stage for at least a couple of years.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Koesj posted:

Then there's the unmarked Il-76s coming in and out Minhad every day, but hey what else is new.

Playing "guess that cargo" with the unmarked Il-76s coming in and out of KAF was a fun game.

It was always opium

Also lol at the new thread title.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Derek Dominoe posted:

KAF shares its runway with a civilian airport.

Yup.

That said, there were also unmarked birds that would occasionally show up and taxi to places other than Juliet Ramp (the airport). Didn't show up nearly as often as the weekly opium run Il-76, but they were definitely a thing. Usually they were unmarked C-130s or air freighters (767s, 747s, A300s, etc) but there was a sanitized C-17 that would show up once every couple of weeks. You could tell that it had national markings that had been covered up...for the life of me I couldn't figure out whose it was, because all the usual suspects who you would expect to be flying C-17s into KAF (USAF, RAF, Aussies, NATO, UAE) all flew their aircraft in the open. I dunno, maybe the Qataris were running guns to the Afghans too.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

BigDave posted:

You mean the president?

lol if you think a Park is going to resign over something like some teenagers dying on a boat.

It took one in the chest and one in the head to get her daddy to leave office.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA3Q05L20140427?irpc=932


Man, I wish we had ports like these when I was in. Subic would be an amazing place to be forward based compared to Guam.

There are still a lot of parts missing from the Asian Pivot (you know, like ships, aircraft, troops, funding) but this is an interesting step.

:woop:

I've been saying for a while that going back to Clark and Subic would be the best thing to come out of the Pivot.

Between this and the trips people are making to Poland and the Baltics now TDY opportunities are looking up.

gfanikf posted:

Let's not forget her mom too.

Haha, I actually did forget about her mom.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Countries making needs/capabilities based assessments of their defense policy and budget as opposed to freeloading off of Uncle Sugar, oh no!!

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

quote:

(the U.S. only verbally protested when China declared its East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone in 2013)

Did he miss the part where we continued to routinely fly bombers and ISR assets in the ADIZ without informing China of anything, or the part where China reacted by doing absolutely nothing to protect their precious ADIZ?

I'm with you that the "pivot" has been a joke but making it sound like we've completely abandoned the Pac Rim just isn't the case either. What would you have us do the next time China starts acting like dicks again in the ECS or SCS? Start shooting? Shows of force are how you respond to stuff like that. Yes, China knows we have those assets, but it sends a much stronger message when we demonstrate that we have them and we aren't afraid to send them 100 miles off their coast.

Derek Dominoe posted:

giving them opportunities to get a radar profile doesn't seem wise.

There are ways to avoid this.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
Yeah, I thought the common opinion was that Spetznaz or other Russian spook types were already in E. Ukraine, it was just a question of a) how many and b) when they decided to sort of come out into the open.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

The Stygian posted:

How old is oldest plane still in service?

It depends on if we're talking airframes or overall design. For example, the U-2 was designed in the '50s but all the airframes currently still in service were all physically built in the '80s (and have been upgraded continuously since being built). Same applies for the C-130 (designed in the '50s but new airframes are rolling off the production line as we speak and the fleet as a whole is pretty young). The oldest overall airframe in military service would probably be either the KC-135 (ones still in service physically built in the early to mid '60s) or B-52Hs (all physically built in the early '60s), so a little over 50 years old.

Of course, you also have to take into account the stress placed on the airframe and number of hours it's actually flown...for example, many of those KC-135s have a (relatively) young airframe by virtue of their spending much of their early years sitting ground alert at SAC bases. Contrast that with the F-15C fleet, where despite "only" being 30-35 years old we are literally flying the wings off them.

Godholio posted:

I've been saying this for years. Good luck maintaining air superiority in "The Big One" in the '50s with the 100 mission-ready Raptors and a handful of 80 year old F-15s. GG Gates, you shortsighted fuckwit.

Yup. Reading his memoirs, I get it, he was pissed off at the lack of support from the bureaucracy for troops in the field, who were dying (in some many cases unnecessarily) every day due in part to decisions (or a lack thereof) from the entrenched bureaucracy and by his own admission he was emotionally too close (I can't say I wouldn't have done the same in his situation). But dude, if you're going to focus on the today that's why you appoint someone you trust to keep an eye on the other stuff down the road, as opposed to going completely off the rails and making half-cocked decisions based on LockMart talking points as opposed to listening to the people who actually know what the gently caress they're talking about with this poo poo.

But it's okay, the export-level LO 4xAMRAAM carrying sort of supercruising F-35 will make a great air superiority platform, take that to the bank.

DAS Super! posted:

Or you could just load up a bunch of cheap drones with air to air missiles and call it a day...

That's not how that works.

Snowdens Secret posted:

True today or not, I certainly wouldn't count on that in the 2050 timeframe.

Any unmanned (whether remotely piloted or truly autonomous) aircraft capable of actual air to air combat certainly won't be cheap.

People assume that any drone is automatically cheap just because Preds are, forgetting that a Pred is just a glorified R/C plane made from plastic and balsa wood powered by a snowmobile engine with a camera strapped to it. A Global Chicken costs almost as much as a Triple 7 (which incidentally is more than an F-35...for now).

And yeah, I am extremely skeptical of the ability to deliver mature autonomous (which is what it would almost certainly have to be) air to air capability by the 2050 timeframe.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
If you're in USFK you should probably just kill yourself now, it'll be better for you in the long run.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Cole posted:

Korea made me understand why there are so many Asian chicks inside of PXs.

AAFES: Asian American Female Employment Service

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

First link from google news, someone could do a much better writeup:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/politics/va-scandal/


They're currently in the deckchair-shuffling phase but this very well might cost Shinseki his job. It's not taking much digging to find more and more and more rot, although the chances of real reform are pretty low at this point.

Note: Washington Times has really been the investigative drivers of this story (lol CNN, no planes there you dummies)

Also their response to this was to force a some functionary to resign. Said individual was due to retire anyway in like 4 months.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Courthouse posted:

Back in world events, the Thai military has unilaterally declared martial law, put troops in the streets, and taken control of tv stations.

So a typical Tuesday in Thailand

Snowdens Secret posted:

This was after an epidemic at the (mostly female) college of men supposedly getting gangraped in the showers by random roving packs of butch femmes.

lol

That feels like something that should be in the latest higher education satire film.

TheOtherGypsy posted:

A lot of schools (read: liberal ones that don't support the military) don't give room and board to ROTC kids.

Hell, Iowa State (pretty far from a bastion of liberal "you're all babykillers" whatever) didn't give room and board to ROTC kids, scholarship or otherwise.

In actual news, Boko Haram has been busy the past couple of days. Also this is from a few days ago but I didn't see it mentioned in the thread, we've been flying MC-12s over Nigeria gathering intel to help in the search for the missing girls, also flew a Global Chicken as well.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd
If you've read Gates's memoirs you're aware that the White House staff in general are a bunch of clowns when it comes to national security, with the NSS being particularly idiotic (on a sidenote, my favorite bit in the memoirs might be when Gates uses scare quotes around the word "expert" to refer to Samantha Power.)

Anyway, this probably won't do anything to change my perception of them.

In fairness, it sounds like some military press flacks also bear some of the blame here...but seriously, how does anyone see the words "CIA Chief of Station - Name" on an unclassified document and not freak the gently caress out?

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

The article also obliquely mentions how, after China set up their questionably legal air defense identification zone, the US made a show of buzzing it with unarmed B-52s, but doesn't mention that since then we've quietly redirected traffic around it, and that US-based civilian traffic has been following the new identification and traffic rules the Chinese set up.

When you say redirected traffic, are you talking about civilian traffic or military? I know the government has advised U.S. airlines to follow the published NOTAMs regarding the ADIZ and that the airlines have made some routing changes, but I would be shocked if we made any sort of change to our freedom of navigation/surveillance operations.

Also China sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat in the vicinity of that drilling vessel that Vietnam is all pissy about, just another day in the South China Sea.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

standard.deviant posted:

I'm guessing the usual reconnaissance flights that the US uses to tweak Chinese/North Korean/Russian/Iranian/whatever noses occur within their respective ADIZ, and this wouldn't be an exception. At the same time, it's not exactly newsworthy.

Pretty much this. The ones in the Chinese ADIZ just now have a freedom of navigation component to them as well, I suppose.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Dead Reckoning posted:

All he really had to do was to wrap up with, "...and to compensate you for taking time out of your day, I'm authorizing a weekend pass for the entire Corps" and walk off the stage to a standing ovation.

Gates has a great anecdote in his book where he went down to Camp Rudder to see some Ranger School students. One of his aides at the time had gone through the school and was like "hey sir, these guys are gonna be complete loving zombies, they aren't gonna remember anything you say...but they'll remember you forever if you bring them junk food."

So Gates gets up to speak and is like "before I get started, there's frozen snickers bars in these coolers in front of me. Come and get some and by the way, I'm ordering you to eat them now while I'm talking because I know if you don't you'll just get them taken away when your instructors come back in."

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Mike-o posted:

....but god drat it we enlisted everyone in the military are some dumb fucks :negative:

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

ManMythLegend posted:

That's exactly my point. The idea that someone is worried about retaliation from an adminstration because they are contradicting their message isn't really freeper madness.

Of course, the question here is what kind of retaliation we're talking about.

Being slapped with some sort of troubles with the law? Completely reasonable to expect and I'd honestly be surprised if they don't try something along those lines there's apparently some sort of NDA involved (regardless of how legitimate is actually is).

Being disappeared? That's deep into freeper territory. And whether he meant to or not, the use of the phrase "strike down" sends a connotation much more in line with the second type as opposed to the first.

\/ If he's who he says he is he's more than just some idiot on twitter. \/

iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jun 1, 2014

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Godholio posted:

He's a douche, he hosed up which led to his shootdown, he hosed up basically everything you're taught at SERE (they seriously use him as the example of what not to do), and he almost got himself killed by the Marines sent to pick him up by charging the helicopter with his loving pistol in hand.

lol

I still chuckle every time I think of him bounding towards the Marine helo, M9 in hand.

Also just a reminder that we court-martialed Charles Robert Jenkins when he came back from spending drat near 40 years in North Korea and gave him 30 days + a DD. And that was for a guy who didn't hazard anyone's life by his dumbass behavior.

It would be nice to see the same accountability here but I'm not holding my breath.

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iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

maffew buildings posted:

What the hell is this video exactly, is it some kind of recruitment piece? Or just "this week in state sanctioned executing teenage boys and decapitating old men"? loving don't get it. Glass all those faggots. Glass everything. Form a volunteer force devoted to skullfucking everywhere with a Shah. Namaste.

Total recruitment piece, hence all the shots of dudes holding up their passports and then destroying them. They're there for the duration, and you should totally come join them because you get to do badass poo poo like drive-bys on SUVs and executing kafirs.

None of that is state sanctioned, the idiots they're killing are the ones working for the (Iraqi) state.

Also watching it again, there's a pretty sweet satchel charge toss at 55:27.

Totally unrelated, apparently we're now also pivoting to Europe.

U.S. foreign policy: it's unresourced and completely pointless pivots all the way down.

And we handed over the keys to Manas today, last plane is gonna be wheels up by the end of the week. That place was a drat ghost town when I passed through in December, I think we were some of the last folks to rotate out of country through there.

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