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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

Ah and since I feel like rubbing your nose in it a bit tonight, especially when it comes to this particular topic.
The Geneva Conventions which were adopted before 1949 were concerned with combatants only, not with civilians. Some provisions concerning the protection of populations against the consequences of war and their protection in occupied territories are contained in the Regulations concerning the laws and customs of war on land, annexed to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

The unbolded part of your quote seems to contradict the bolded part.

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

"Civilised people have rules."
Just what are those rules during a period of "total war "...pray tell enlighten us?

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Just gonna reply to one quick thing that you just wrote with your own words... in your most recent post you claim

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You probably ought to learn to read because that is not what I said.
What I said was that Napoleon was busy in Europe with his own wars and could not afford to be distracted by Americas adventurism.

and your words from the original thread were

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The "Voyage of discovery" Was a military expedition into a foriegn country and was armed with the most modern of auto loading rifles...22 .40 cal rounds without stopping to reload.
France saw this military expedition as a military threat that she would not be able to respond to effectively.

Those are your words, not mine.

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You stated that the reason the French saw a fait accompli was the overwhelming military expedition that they could not repel or react to, when asked about this overwhelming force you claimed it was the "Voyage of Discovery"

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

Tommie there is a new thread you might be interested in ....I think it's called the "Katyn Forest" are some such thing...stop by and be ignored there....lol.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Thad,

I've got to agree with mike in this case.

As far as I can remember, thompsonx has never admitted that he was wrong, and never admitted that he has learned anything, or admitted that someone might actually have a point when it comes to a discussion.

Firm

Firm you are a fucking liar.
Please go back and look at our discussion about DDT.
You will find that not only did I admit my error but I thanked you for disabusing me of my ignorance.

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ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou

So, I guess the consensus is shoot anyone carrying anything..., because all kinds of things look vaguely like all kinds of thing. Is that honestly the standard for killing people..

Lovely.

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ORIGINAL: InvisibleBlack

-FR-

I was against going into Iraq. I'm pretty much against any war unless there is a very clear and present danger. I absolutely do not believe in "pre-emptive warfare".

The sad and terrible fact is that even in a "justified" war, innocents are killed. There is no "neat and clean" way to fight an armed conflict, certainly not in an urban environment. Urban warfare is about the messiest, nastiest and deadliest form of conflict. You send a couple of thousand men into a foreign country and give them a batch of machine guns and rocket launchers and tell them that people are going to be shooting at them and they will react and sometimes mistakes will be made.

That's the choice you make when you go to war. That's all there is to it.

The only real question is - is the purpose you're trying to achieve worth the price that will be paid?

I don't believe that Iraq was - and I opposed it back when everyone and his brother Fred was for it.

FWIW, I was an officer in the U. S. Army, about twenty years ago. I was lucky enough to never be in active combat but I went through all the training, and the mandatory military ethics courses and all the rest of it. I can assure you that you do not get deployed anywhere without the Rules of Engagement being made extremely clear to you.

I don't know what the Rules of Engagement were in that particular engagement. I don't have the feeds from the other vehicles. I don't know what had been going on that day - whether this was a hot combat zone, whether anyone else had taken fire in the area, or whether this unit had been specifically tasked for a combat op.

I didn't watch the video at first. I just listened to the audio and thought about what I would have done. If I'd been Hotel Two-Six and been informed that there were "individuals with weapons", "five to six individuals with AK-47s", that they "have eyes on an individual with an RPG" and that "we had a guy shooting" - I would have authorized them to engage as well. I then would have had to live with the fact that I ordered the killing of a dozen or so innocent men.

Watching the video ... I'm not sure. The guy looking around the corner with a camera looks like he's got a rocket launcher or RPG. But I know he's a reporter with a camera. If I'd been in that Apache, with everything shaking and rattling around me, looking out a gun-site - if we'd been in a combat zone - and we've got a batch of guys with guns and one with an RPG - I probably would have ordered them to open up on the 'hostiles'.

From the ways these guys are acting - it's clear to me that in their minds they thought they were engaging hostiles. They believed they were following the Rule of Engagement and at no time did they have any idea these guys were civilians or that they were doing anything illegal, immoral or wrong. I don't know enough about the situation to say whether the military acted incorrectly (and if they were it was a lot higher up than the guys in the chopper or on site) or if the reporters were blithely wandering around a kill zone unknowingly.

It's easy to sit back and arm-chair general. It's easy to say "I would have done this" or "I would never do that". The reality of it is - you don't know. You just don't know. I'm not in a position to talk, really, since I've never been in combat but I'm smart enough to wonder just what I would do, how I would react, in extreme circumstances. No one wants to be in charge of an atrocity - but no one wants to be the idiot who got their own squad killed and if you'd going to err - you err towards the former rather than the latter.

Watching those men get gunned down and then the van get blown apart is an awful, ugly tragedy - but it's also an unavoidable one. Even if you could somehow have prevented that one - there's a hundred other incidents that didn't get caught on film where civilians were killed, bombed, shot or whatever - where helicopters and planes collided or crashed due to errors in judgement having nothing to do with combat - where soldiers shot each other by accident and got recorded as 'friendly fire'. I have no doubt that sometime during the war someone got drunk, fell asleep, puked while he was out and choked to death in his bunk and got recorded as 'KIA' or a 'training accident' so his family would get benefits now that he's gone. That's it. That's what happened. It happened in Iraq. It happened in Viet Nam. It happened in World War II and you know what, it or something like it happened in every war that was ever fought anywhere.

The voices you're hearing are just people doing the best they can to win in tough circumstances and trying their damndest not to get killed. They didn't get up that morning hoping to kill a journalist and his camera or to shoot up a van with kids in it and this is probably going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. If you don't like what happened, the answer is not to get pissy about a video, or to yell that these guys should be tried as 'war criminals' or bitch about their inhumanity. Pretending that somehow this could be done without any accidents - without any innocents being hurt or any mistakes being made is just that - pretending. It doesn't work that way.

The real answer is Don't engage in stupid wars.  You stop the madness before it begins. You don't create a situation where these kinds of things will happen - because they do happen. Every time. They're happening right now even as we type - only you're not seeing them because they're not being reported. If you want to stop them, you need to stop the war.

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FirmhandKy:
Please correct me if I am wrong but I do not remember being snarky or dismissive towards you nor do I remember you being so to me...I do recall that our discussions are often sharp and to the point neither of which do I find offensive.  Many would characterize this sharpness as rude and obnoxious...my skin is thick and I would suppose that yours is also.
I am not unaware of what weasel word means.  My point was and is that you pointed out, and I agree with you, that science is most often someones best guess which is pretty much the definition of weasel word.  I do not see your voluminous post as to the meaning of weasel word as changing or disagreeing with my statements.
The last time I did any reading on DDT was in the early 70s and had not had the opportunity to do any current research.
The article you gave me a link to caused me to go to google and I found thisdwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C06/C06Links/www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html - 28k -
While it says pretty much the same thing it goes into a bit more detail.  Thank you for disabusing me of my misconception about DDT.
thompson

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

Well, thompson, I do fuck, and I've been known to occasionally lie, although not habitually, so perhaps I'll accept the term in general, although not in the specific.

I am afraid you will have to accept the term in the specific. 

I said, "as far as I remember",

Since in this case where the incident is between me and thee it seems unlikely that it would have escaped your memory.
Especially in light of the fact that I am seldom wrong, an admission of such and an apology would be close in magnitude to the second comming of christ.


and now that you mention it, I vaguely remember a thread in which I may have discussed DDT in relation to "junk science" and AGW, although I don't remember your specific comment/apology and/or acknowledgment of error.  However, if you would provide a link, I'd certainly modify my comment to the extent applicable to bring it into line with reality. 

It took me all of about ten seconds to find it.

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FirmhandKy:
Please correct me if I am wrong but I do not remember being snarky or dismissive towards you nor do I remember you being so to me...I do recall that our discussions are often sharp and to the point neither of which do I find offensive.  Many would characterize this sharpness as rude and obnoxious...my skin is thick and I would suppose that yours is also.
I am not unaware of what weasel word means.  My point was and is that you pointed out, and I agree with you, that science is most often someones best guess which is pretty much the definition of weasel word.  I do not see your voluminous post as to the meaning of weasel word as changing or disagreeing with my statements.
The last time I did any reading on DDT was in the early 70s and had not had the opportunity to do any current research.
The article you gave me a link to caused me to go to google and I found thisdwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C06/C06Links/www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html - 28k -
While it says pretty much the same thing it goes into a bit more detail.  Thank you for disabusing me of my misconception about DDT.
thompson

Ta Daa

Since in this case where the incident is between me and thee it seems unlikely that it would have escaped your memory. Especially in light of the fact that I am seldom wrong, an admission of such and an apology would be close in magnitude to the second comming of christ.

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

Would not the horrendous loss of Allied air crews speak to the fact that these cities were in fact defended ....and done so quite smartly.Someone else can go dig up the stats but it has allways been my understanding that the arm of the services with the highest casultie rate during WWII was the Army Air Corps(The Air Force had not been created till I thing '48?)

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ORIGINAL: domiguy

Wow, 14 pages and still going strong.

So, who won the argument?

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

Would not the horrendous loss of Allied air crews speak to the fact that these cities were in fact defended ....and done so quite smartly.Someone else can go dig up the stats but it has allways been my understanding that the arm of the services with the highest casultie rate during WWII was the Army Air Corps(The Air Force had not been created till I thing '48?)

Well the article speaks directly to undefended cities which is what we were discussing vis-a-vis "terror bombing" or "carpet bombing" of non military targets with the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population and not to effect any military goal.
The majority of the a/c shot down by the Germans were bombers on their way to the attack.  These bombers were shot down by a combination of AAA and radar vectored interceptors.
When bombers were shot down at the site of bombing it was typically when bombing military targets because those targets would necessarily be heavily defended...Polesti and the dam on the Rhur come to mind.  Civilian areas were not considerd to be primary targets so they were not defended.
What do you feel was the reason that the U.S. took such high losses compared to the Britts in their bomber forces?

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

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ORIGINAL: domiguy

Wow, 14 pages and still going strong.

So, who won the argument?

Entropy, as always.

Firm

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Entropy

Since in this case where the incident is between me and thee it seems unlikely that it would have escaped your memory. Especially in light of the fact that I am seldom wrong, an admission of such and an apology would be close in magnitude to the second comming of christ.

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Thad,

I've got to agree with mike in this case.

As far as I can remember, thompsonx has never admitted that he was wrong, and never admitted that he has learned anything, or admitted that someone might actually have a point when it comes to a discussion.

Firm