|
Tremblay posted:Don't worry, Obama's NSC staffers will direct the next guys actions. He just needs to be there legally. No kidding. Maybe they can move McDonough over to SecDef and just make it official already.
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2014 03:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 00:31 |
|
|
justice4trayvawn posted:10 shots can be heard, audio only from someone on a video chat iirc Yeah someone who was recording a video chat with an "acquaintance" and includes the phrase "I was just going over some of your videos." Said individual doing the recording was an overweight single male in his 40s. I'll let you surmise what the subject of the video chat was.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2014 04:24
|
|
|
ActusRhesus posted:Doesn't Missouri have stock jury instructions that (presumably) include all relevant case law developments? They do. I'm too lazy to go dig up a link to the article because I saw it months ago but the jury instructions regarding use of force by law enforcement used in MO explicitly discuss Garner as well as the fact that MO law hasn't been updated and that the portion regarding the fleeing felon rule should be disregarded. So either the ADA in question is unfamiliar with the stock jury instructions used in every case involving use of force by law enforcement in the state in which she practices law, or she deliberately misled the grand jury. Neither option reflects highly on the St Louis County DA's office...not that anything will come of it because lol at holding anyone in the justice system accountable for gently caress-ups. As long as you aren't Nifong-levels of incompetent at your buffoonery, you're pretty safe. As for why MO hasn't updated the actual law,  . Also Missouri.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2014 02:19
|
|
|
ManMythLegend posted:lol I was thinking the same thing. lol knew what the link was to before I clicked on it. We'd just hit them with a couple Preds today though
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 20:44
|
|
|
Dead Reckoning posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtx1tYc7PxI Pretend I posted a link to the guy in Las Vegas who got shot to death in Costco after being given two conflicting directions by cops. Of course that's Las Vegas Metro and they cap someone (usually unarmed) at least once a week without any repercussions or investigation or accountability so yeah.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2014 04:09
|
|
|
Also this. I was going to try and quote it but then I realized that I couldn't really because the entire article is just a bunch of pull quotes/summaries from all the SIGAR reports detailing the massive amount of money that has literally been wasted in Afghanistan...not wasted as in "yeah this whole war was poorly executed and completely pointless therefore money spent in fighting it was a waste," wasted as in "yeah we built this $36M ops center that was never used and no one knows why it got built, then we spent tens of millions of dollars on incinerators that we didn't use so they sit next to burn pits, then we spent $800M on shiny new PC-12s that the Afghans can't fly and can't maintain, then we spent half a billion dollars on old decrepit transport planes, scrapped them for 6 cents on the pound (about $30K) because they were old and decrepit and were therefore maintenance pigs with no spare parts that could never be flown, so in their place we spent another $80M on slightly less old and decrepit transport planes...that also can't ever be flown because of logistics support issues, then we spent about a billion dollars in guns, ammo, and spare parts but didn't bother to set up a system to track any of it, and then we spent about a billion and a half dollars on fuel but don't know how any of it is used." The amount of money that has literally been wasted in Afghanistan is obscene.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2014 18:23
|
|
|
Equine Don posted:Wasn't there a C-130 full of pallets of money that disappeared or something. I feel like that was in Iraq but I could completely believe it happening in Afghanistan too. fake edit: Yeah it was Iraq.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2014 18:54
|
|
|
MassivelyBuckNegro posted:Why are you dorks arguing about art in the 'pyf syrian civil war/isis video' thread? Because officers
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2014 08:15
|
|
|
holocaust bloopers posted:Yea, I dunno why the F-35 program is just now getting to this issue. I also completely doubt we're getting the full story either. It's likely that they've never had to operate the jets in an extremely hot environment where this would be encountered. It's an issue, but a rare one. Guys can go their whole careers with never having to deal with fuel being too hot. I only know of it from anecdotes. I'd be willing to guess that it's a combination of: a) Not actually doing an "official" hot-weather evaluation yet since it hasn't officially hit IOT&E...and all the previous flying they've done at places like Edwards hasn't been under "operational" conditions so they've likely been using all sorts of non-operationally representative workarounds. Whatever hot-wx evaluation they did was likely done in a cooler climate and was likely done under the same contrived conditions. b) Waiving a significant portion of the full-up hot-weather evaluation in favor of modeling/simulations/bench-tests/runs through McKinley/etc. c) Fuzzy math on the previous two resulting in some fudging of the numbers and the "surprise" at realizing it was actually an issue when the system got to the field and started flying operationally (as opposed to DT flying at Edwards or Pax River or wherever).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2014 06:37
|
|
|
Nostalgia4Infinity posted:I know some folks are worried about anti-American backlash as a result of it. Man it's almost like if you don't want people to hate you don't do lovely things like torture people. I'm not saying that a lot of those people wouldn't have the same opinions about us if we hadn't tortured, but the fact that US Senators can say with a straight face "don't publish this report about the really bad things we all admit that we did because it might make people not like us" is sadly hilarious to me. Also this is a pretty pro-read on the subject. Best Friends posted:I don't see how torture is much worse than burning someone to death or shooting their guts out, which are both things 99% of people are just fine with, but it doesn't actually seem to do anything except make fat dickless talk radio fucks and their fans feel manly. A non-zero portion of the people we tortured hadn't actually done anything against U.S./coalition/whatever forces, which means that outside of collateral damage/targeting mistakes/whatever we wouldn't have been trying to burn them to death or shoot their guts out. e: Nevermind turns out the CIA program did torture some people who hadn't done anything, welp lol the CIA tortured people who were sources for allied governments, people who were there solely because someone else being tortured said they were bad, and a retarded person. This is like something out of a bad movie. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Dec 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
gfanikf posted:Was the fixed
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2014 21:41
|
|
|
Equine Don posted:They might not be torturing anymore but god help you if you're wandering around Waziristan and hear a single engine aircraft. Or southern Somalia, or western Yemen, or... Waroduce posted:Yes they did This stuff you're doing is cruel, degrading, and inhumane...but it's not torture, so knock yourselves out!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2014 02:26
|
|
|
In actual news as opposed to the DnD discussion section, there's a woman in Kabul with a death wish. Also Supreme Group just got taken to the cleaners by the government for fraud regarding food/fuel/other logistics support poo poo in Afghanistan...total penalties are a little under half a billion dollars. The whistleblower is getting $16M from the deal, which isn't too bad of a deal.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2014 20:48
|
|
|
Equine Don posted:In the 70s they had short skirts lol. Allah ackbar Kabul 1970:  I think this one is a nice metaphor for what's happened to Afghanistan: 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2014 21:06
|
|
|
Omi-Polari posted:(^ he's got beats headphones!) lol Omi-Polari posted:of course it'll be interesting to see what happens when the U.S. reconstruction money runs out. The same thing that happened when the Soviet reconstruction money ran out
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2014 08:03
|
|
|
Genocide Tendency posted:I thought the law of armed conflict said we couldn't shoot a person, but we could shoot military equipment. Like the uniform they were wearing and well.. poo poo happens when some cloth can't stop bullet travel. That's a myth, there's nothing in the LOAC about "only shooting 'equipment' *wink wink*." Provided you hit the four principles AR laid out, and you meet the ROE, you can shoot (or otherwise kill) someone even if they're naked. Also regarding lasers, there's the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, but that really only applies to utilizing lasers in a fashion intended to blind/maim (LRDs and the like) not lasers that make poo poo blow up (the navy weapon). e: ActusRhesus posted:That actually isn't a proportionality problem. If under LOAC I'm justified to kill someone with a handgun, I'm also justified to kill them with a nuke. Proportionality deals more with the collateral damage. the nuke isn't disproportionate because it's a nuke...it's disproportionate because it killed way more people than it was worth. Although to be pedantic when you're talking about WMDs there are portions of international law that would argue that some weapons are so heinous that their use can never be proportional and as such their use is always illegal under LOAC (possibly outside of a second strike response, depending on how you interpret the specific protocols and conventions.) This is more focused on bio-chem since nukes have other political concerns that mean they will never* be utilized as commonly (relatively speaking) as bio-chem weapons have been regardless of international law considerations. All that doesn't take away from the general concept of the proportionality point you laid out, I just felt like being pedantic. * Never say never, yadda yadda yadda iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 11, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2014 19:07
|
|
|
ActusRhesus posted:And yeah, a recognized combatant? You can shoot them on the toilet if that's where you find them. Insert story here about the two guys that got JDAM'd while loving in an Afghan drainage ditch. I think it was OGA that posted that story.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2014 19:16
|
|
|
/\ The basically endless AUMF plays a pretty big part there /\maffew buildings posted:I'm just baffled that laws are brought in to the equation in the first place. I understand why it's done, but my brain starts to just shut down when I think about it in depth. If you're using drones to strike people in sovereign countries, sometimes without their permission, how is coming back to "Well it's legal under US law" a valid point, unless US law is "We will do whatever we want whenever to whomever". Which I wish we'd just come out and say instead of all this bullshit rigamarole. The first part (striking people in sovereign countries maybe without the country's permission) has to do with international law/concept of a nation-state; as far as US law is concerned it falls under external armed conflict and as such US law doesn't really give a poo poo about it* as long as you aren't doing way out there poo poo like torture (lol). The second part (whether or not it is legal to strike those individuals, particularly when it comes to US citizens) has to do with restrictions we choose (in theory) to place on ourselves with regard to how we use armed force as an instrument of state power. * I'm way oversimplifying here but that's the general idea Zeroisanumber posted:I thought that Johnson's legal justification was post hoc, something that he threw together to make wasting Americans with drones sound dubiously legal after we wasted al-Awlaki and that propagandist butt boy of his from Virginia. Nope, it was penned before the al-Awlaki strike. Also yeah Jeh Johnson's logic is legitimately scary. Taken to the logical conclusion it basically is "the executive can kill anyone they want, anywhere they want, based on criteria determined solely by the executive without any Congressional oversight; the target having US citizenship changes nothing about this process." iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Dec 11, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2014 20:20
|
|
|
Dead Reckoning posted:I'm not going to say Brennan's a liar or that you shouldn't trust him, since I'd guess if nothing else he has access to a lot more information than I do, but: lol yeah, Brennan is loving lying through his teeth just like every other member of the IC on this. If they had any direct examples where torture did a goddamn thing they would be crowing it from the rooftops. Instead we have the CIA's own history that states "well we tortured this guy, and he was sort of kind of involving with the planning of one out of a series of attacks that were allegedly in the planning, and none of the attacks happened, so torture works I guess? (Ignore the fact that the Pakistanis had enough intel to stop all the attacks from other (non-torture) sources well before we started torturing the guy)." Also a bunch of non-specific bloviating from IC officials about that one time that torture worked, just don't ask me for specifics, trust me on this. This ranks right up there with Clapper's "no you guys, we don't intentionally spy on the American people, seriously" testimony to Congress--*is explicitly shown to have perjured himself from Snowden's documents* Jarmak posted:I'm not sure how you can say it makes no distinction, it makes a very clear distinction. Unless you're trying to say Toronto is in a territory unserviceable by traditional judicial means because it's occupied by a group in a state of conflict with Canada, and you think we're in a state of armed conflict with the ELF The problem is (among others) the distinction you lay out regarding traditional judicial means is introduced, according to Johnson, solely at the executive's prerogative. According to Johnson's logic, if the executive decided that he/she wanted to broaden the scope of the drone strike envelope to include bloggers in countries that are friendly to the US, the executive would be totally allowed to do that because determining who is/isn't a valid target of e: Courthouse posted:It's being released because it appears the people doing this stuff have been lying out their asses over what they were doing, and how well it worked, not only to media but to their own bosses. And much of it was made secret not to protect national security but to protect their own asses from having to take responsibility for breaking the law and general incompetence/disloyalty. Just a reminder: the CIA destroyed tapes of No one has yet been held accountable for this. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Dec 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2014 03:35
|
|
|
Lazy Reservist posted:This is exactly what happened during Afghanistan and Iraq. The executive ordered military action, and Congress continued to vote to pay for it. Well, there's the AUMF in the case of Afghanistan (which included language stating it constituted meeting the requirement under the WPR to gain Congressional permission) and the Iraq Resolution in the case of Iraq (which also contained similar language). Not a formal declaration of war, which I agree raises issues, but it was at least a vote that Congress passed, in both Houses, authorizing the use of military force. Compare that with Libya, where the House said "we're not going to vote on whether we authorize the war, but we will vote to slap you on the wrist for ignoring the WPR," the Senate didn't do anything, and the Executive said "well that's cool but regardless I'm going to keep using force, nyah nyah nyah," and Iraq Part III/Syria, where the justification is the 9/11 AUMF...so an authorization explicitly authorizing force only against "those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons" is being used to justify the use of force against an organization that didn't come into existence until a decade after September 11, 2001.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2014 06:01
|
|
|
So in non torture/AUMF/legalese news...ded posted:I hope we get another government shutdown tonight. lol...that was a little unexpected. It'll be interesting to see if anyone in the Senate pitches a shitfit...Warren seems pretty fired up over the inclusion of the derivatives trading language.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2014 06:35
|
|
|
ded posted:A 2 day extension. Oh boy. Whole thing passed the House, they also did a short-term 2 day CR to give the Senate time to consider the whole cromnibus. I'm lolling pretty hard over the fact that Boehner almost didn't even get the thing to the floor for a vote, only happened because one GOP Rep changed his vote from nay to yea when they were voting on the rule.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2014 06:46
|
|
|
Nostalgia4Infinity posted:Remember when we had a functioning government? What I'm confused about is the fact that they guy who changed his vote is on his way out, he lost his primary. So it's not like Boehner could promise him some plum committee position in the next Congress, I wonder what he offered to get him to change his vote.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2014 06:54
|
|
|
Victor Vermis posted:So? Victor Vermis, unlikely voice of reason. Yeah ISIS is evil and all, but I'm pretty sure the Turks/Iraqis/Saudis/rest of the Gulf Arabs/Iranians/Syrians/Jordanians/etc have much more of an incentive to deal with the problem than we do, but if Uncle Sucker rides to the rescue yet again (as we're currently doing) they'll all just continue freeloading like they have for the last 50+ years. lightpole posted:Pretty sure most of the African conflicts were/are much worse than ISIS. The subjugation and enslavement of women in countries such as Pakistan where the ISIS papers are the unwritten laws (because they are living in the stone age and can't write most likely) continues without much notice or rage from the civilized world. Yup. Read this book if you think ISIS is somehow beyond the pale in the brutality department. Since we're talking about rape and ISIS, I'll just toss this link out there. ISIS needs to step up their game if they want to come anywhere close to the poo poo that's been going on in the DRC for decades. The funny part is that nothing has really changed in the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda are still trying to start poo poo...it's just that since the people involved aren't Arab and the media can't spin a TERRORISM!!!!1111 angle no one really gives a poo poo about it. e: Omi-Polari posted:Friendship is a virtue, the Kurds are our friends, and ISIS hosed with the Kurds. You back up your friends, right? Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests. So no, you don't back up your friends, not when it doesn't support your interests (and waging war on ISIS really does nothing to further our interests.) \/ lol yeah also that. There's stuff I'm not going to get into details about but yeah, loving the Kurds has not been a solely Turk/Arab undertaking. \/ iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Dec 14, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2014 00:09
|
|
|
maffew buildings posted:Wish we could see the internal ISI response and what they tell Paki military and civilian officals. Maybe they'll stop being dickheads and Pakistan can get it together to start eliminating these assholes (requires ISI not be terrible human beings, won't happen) I mentioned this several pages ago but the people who carried out the attack are Pakistani Taliban, which the Pakistan government is already trying to eliminate (hence why they regularly indiscriminately bomb up and down the FATA). It's the Afghan Taliban who the ISI and Pakistan government all but openly support, and this will do absolutely nothing to change their stance on that because India. Exhibit A: Paradise Lost posted:A Pakistani officer in one of my co-workers classes spent 15 minutes today attempting to explain how it was really India behind the school attacks. A bunch of kids dead sucks no matter what but gently caress Pakistan so much.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 03:12
|
|
|
RonMexicosPitbull posted:Sudan has calmed down quite a bit theres some serious deals to be had touring Darfur lol as long as you avoid that new country to the south.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2014 03:00
|
|
|
Godholio posted:But that guy was the most worthless loser I ever knew in the military. More worthless than the guy who beat his baby to death?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2014 01:25
|
|
|
Godholio posted:Yeah, that's worked well for us in the past. There's no point taunting if we're not prepared to respond when they do something stupid. And we're not...but they might. Well we could always use the show of force in support of Operation Paul Bunyan as a benchmark.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2014 09:08
|
|
|
Master Bateman posted:gently caress those commercials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpOb_qSggGE e: For actual content, this is a really good article. It's worth reading in full, because the entire article is full of goodness, but here's a few pull quotes: quote:Qiao and Wang's argument goes something like this: Americans love their luxuries. The ultimate luxury in warfare is zero casualties. Therefore, the Americans will spend prohibitive amounts of resources to achieve zero casualties. So, if you can keep one or two wars simmering at all times, then American's military will unsustainably consume its materiel and its people outside combat, bureaucratizing itself to death. It wouldn't be the first time that this strategy has worked, of course. I'm not quite sure how many Roman soldiers it took to get one outside the wire, but, like us, their inefficiency and overextension created a market for a Visigothic Blackwater. (As later Goths would instruct them, subcontracting out your security isn't the smartest idea.) quote:If I were playing the bad-guy side of this long war, I would set up a few franchises to keep one or two wars simmering at all times. Then I would sit back and watch our side spend itself to death, deploying people who don't need to be deployed, flying sorties that don't need to be flown, making our numbers look great so we can award ourselves combat medals for sending e-mails. quote:Like performing a safety investigation on a mishap, the historical flight recorders tell of Cicero shouting, "This is stupid!" at Marcus Crassus prior to the calamitous battle of Carrhae. Unfortunately for Crassus, and for those under his command, ancient Rome didn't have a two challenge rule. The tape ends with the sound of Parthian mounted archers slaughtering the entire Roman force. quote:This isn't rocket science--you don't need better graphs and multiple regressions and analysts to figure these things out. You just need the humility to listen to your people and the maturity to admit when they're right. quote:When an operator says, "This just doesn't make sense," he or she should be taken seriously. The distance between the acquisitions community and the operators must be reduced, and priority must be given to the needs of those on the tip of the spear, not to the desires of the contractors or the whims of the program office. quote:"Who is on the pointy end of the spear?" is not the most useful question because this war and its successors have many fronts, and all of us will at one time or another find ourselves at the pointy end of one of those fights. The better question is, "What is my war, and how can I fight it better?" iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Dec 23, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2014 19:14
|
|
|
Zeroisanumber posted:FreeRepublic.com was a full-on Putin lovefest before the whole Crimea business, and he still has a substantial fanbase. Dubya: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country." I'm more partial to Gates' assessment: "I looked in his eyes and I saw the same KGB killer I’ve seen my whole life."
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2014 19:43
|
|
|
Spicy Guacamole posted:Say what you will about Heinlein, but: One would hope that we don't think a valid policy is to use violence against our own people as a regular problem solving tool. Also NYPD caught planting guns on black men, also committed some minor crimes like perjury, water is wet. The cases described in that article bear a striking resemblance to a case where a black teenager was shot by the NYPD last year and was alleged to have had a gun on him. Also also, another cop killed an unarmed black man, another grand jury failing to indict. And seriously gently caress the NYPD union. Patrick Lynch is a colossal cock and it's a shame de Blasio can't just run his rear end out of town on a rail.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2014 09:23
|
|
|
Cross posting from the Vet thread...The Rat posted:Good article, more serious than the usual stuff here: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/ iyaayas01 posted:When the civil-military relationship in this country inevitably self destructs in another decade or two (right around the same time DoD as a whole finally collapses under the weight of its ineptitude and incompetence), we can point to this article and say "well he tried to warn us." quote:If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously. As a result, what happens to all institutions that escape serious external scrutiny and engagement has happened to our military. Outsiders treat it both too reverently and too cavalierly, as if regarding its members as heroes makes up for committing them to unending, unwinnable missions and denying them anything like the political mindshare we give to other major public undertakings, from medical care to public education to environmental rules. The tone and level of public debate on those issues is hardly encouraging. But for democracies, messy debates are less damaging in the long run than letting important functions run on autopilot, as our military essentially does now. A chickenhawk nation is more likely to keep going to war, and to keep losing, than one that wrestles with long-term questions of effectiveness Also worth reading this companion piece, which is the 2011 memo (briefly mentioned at the end of the first piece) that he and some other dudes put together and sent to Obama, where it was promptly ignored. Contains some concrete recommendations for how to fix what he identifies in the first piece.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2014 22:27
|
|
|
The handgun was/is a symbol of the regime's boss-man in Middle Eastern countries run by tinpot dictators (i.e., Saddam's Iraq). So when a guy with a handgun showed up, people took it as a sign that poo poo was about to get real (i.e., quit doing whatever it is you're doing and go the gently caress home because if you don't a platoon of the regime's soldiers is going to waste your entire village.) e: Also like VV said, executions were (and still are!) frequently performed with pistols.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2014 18:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 00:31 |
|
|
Zeris posted:Current events thread Is Iraq part III a war yet? It has a snazzy operation name now. Also In actual current events, sounds like we blew up some more al-Shahab dudes. I know that one's not a war but I don't know what else you call using military force to achieve political ends. Oh wait we don't have any political ends, we're just trying to kill people.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2014 00:41
|
|