Return with us now to those glorious days of yesterpost, #37 specifically:
What are you like when you *are * being hostile?
It’s almost a pity you’ve obviously never worked in an industry that deals with military procurement, especially during wartime buildup. The system can always be short-cycled, even waived, when people’s lives are at stake. I’ve seen it and done it many times. When it doesn’t happen, it’s only because it isn’t being pushed from either above or below. You can blame bureaucrats hiding behind bureaucracy for part of that, but not for the absence of leadership.
You need to learn a great deal more about the nature of leadership, then - and why the definition is different for this President.
Yes, it *does * only take a phone call or two from above to get people off their asses and make the system work fast. That hasn’t happened. It has happened for every single family that’s gone right to the source and bought armor themselves, though. They’ve made it happen. You claim to be an engineer, but while claiming to look for the source of the problem you refuse to recognize it when it’s right in front of you.
Dipshit. I did. For almost fifteen fucking years I was an engineer/project manager for a defense contractor. Designed dozens of custom AC discharge plasma displays for all sorts of military equipment and vehicles.
Right. Like your WWII example. The outcome of which was many lives lost directly attributable to manufacturing and testing shortcuts. You want a product which will help save lives, you need to completely engineer and test it. Otherwise you have guys deploying it with confidence in situations where dependence on it is critical - and misplaced - leading to additional injuries and deaths where, if the commander knew his men’s equipment might be unsafe, he’d not have done so.
You may have half a point there. Yeah, it’s suppostion on my part, but supposition backed by actual history.
I’m a little curious - how many of you armchair commandos (on both sides of this debate) have geared up in full combat load and stepped over the threshold into the badlands?
But not, obviously, during wartime, when your equipment was needed on the front line yesterday. If it had ever come up, if there had ever been a phone call from above to *you * about getting off *your * ass, you’d damn well know it.
Already been done here. The supplier has made it clear that he could have made much more of this stuff much faster if he’d only had a single phone call, which as we know was never made. The rest of what you say is simply excusing foot-dragging and absence of leadership, even if you claim the opposite.
What actual history would that be? Or is that *once again * you “making up shit so you can complain about other people”?
I was a POW and would have wasted to nothing had not my dying cellmate lent me his knife. With that I was able to kill a guard take his gun and… step by bloody step… escape. Though that was 67 years ago I am still haunted by that experience to this very day.
I’ve earned the right to my opinion. I’ve paid for it in blood, the blood of fallen comrades and the blood of Nazi soldiers I killed.
I’ve lived more of war than you can ever conceive of, and I earned the right to peace.
I did my duty. More than my duty. As the only one ever to escape from that hellhole, my expertise was invaluable and they sent me back. I’ll never forget the carnage that ensued upon my return, the enemies I killed, the wounds I sustained.
Every night in my dreams, no, my nightmares, it comes back to me and I toss and turn.
Apparently, and through the merest happenstance, these plates just finished being completely engineered and tested at this particular juncture in the time space time continuum. Nothing more to see folks. The pentagon is caring for its most precious fungable assets.
An honorable soul in a sea of dimwits. Sarcasm was intended, insult was not - my apologies.
I don’t have to “conceive” of war. The blood I see when I close my eyes is still fresh - my own, my Marines’, and that of those I have killed.
I am not a so-called apologist, nor would I defend the idiocy of this war. It wasn’t my first, but it will be my last. I will say this - as far as our Commander-in-Chief is concerned - I’ve fought under four of them, and this one certainly isn’t the worst. My blood has without question earned me the right to never again vote for a career politician - no matter their party affiliation.
My issue with this debate is the endless string of morons climbing their pulpits and screaming about an issue that few, if any, have any grasp of the true reality of. Outfit us all with the latest and greatest, and guess what? We’re still going to die. That’s what happens in war - men, women and children die. Body armor and steel plated Humm-Vees won’t change that simple fact.
ok Scylla time to come clean re your post # 106 above. OUr guest has no way of knowing that you aren’t 80+ years old (67 years ago when you were a POW).
pmgheritage I hate to do this to you since you’re new here, but unfortunately, I gotta because this is getting on my last nerve.
You’re a fucking tool. I am allowed to have an opinion. An opinion on anything. You don’t have to be gay to have an opinion on gay marriage. You don’t have to be a woman to have an opinion on abortion. You don’t have to a Scientist to have an opinion on Evolution. And you don’t have to have served in the military to have an opinion on this war and how it’s being run.
I am so fucking tired of this fallacy. Perhaps your opinion can be weighted, just as any experts can, but that doesn’t make it definitive.
So you, and your ilk need to have a big ol’ cup of shut-the-hell-up when it comes to dismissing others who disagree because we are an “endless string of morons climbing their pulpits and screaming about an issue that few, if any, have any grasp of the true reality of”.
Get over your bad self already.
PS **Scylla ** was fucking with you. Sarcasm; learn it, love it.
Fucking with him? I live with it every day like it was yesterday. I still wake up in that chamber most nights surrounded by Nazis and their foul experiments.
You never ever really escape from Castle Wofenstein.
You’re right about at least one thing - I am a tool. Just as you are a fucking idiot.
You reside in the same bucket of shit as those legislators, military brass and executives you rail on. You scream, stomp, cry and whine over issues that you have absolutely NO firsthand knowledge of (you’re not related to Sen. Kennedy are you?). Perhaps that is my problem with all of this - I normally save my opinions until I do gain that level of knowledge. If I can’t, then I find it useless to form any opinion at all.
I also find it amazing that this entire tirade is based on an article out of the NYT. One of the most infallible examples of the infallible American media. This is old news boys and girls - where have you all been?
As far as getting over my “bad self” - fuck you. Come to me with your precious opinion after you take an AK round through your ‘inferior’ body armor. My ‘inferior’ body armor stopped more than a few. Most of the time, it does what it’s meant to. Sometimes it doesn’t. Come to me with your precious opinion when you ask yourself a thousand times a day “why did I live?” What are you, and again, the supreme American media and slime legislators with their “the people have a right to know” bullshit, gaining for those young men and women that everyone claims to be so concerned about? Head shots.
Hehe, you’re making me blush! You’re so cute when you’re angry. You remind me of my husband in that when he gets really mad he does stuff that’s supposed to be dramatic, and yet, always backfires. Like one time he slammed a door, and instead of latching, it bounced back, hit him in the face, and nearly broke his nose. It was really hard not to chuckle. Now enough about me, back to you.
It’s a shame you came back, because you were actually much better off with a dignified exit. You see when I called you a tool, I though at least you’d be something sharp, and useful; like hedge clippers, or a pocket knife. But it turns out; you’re big, dense, and not sharp at all. More like a sledge hammer. You’re Ok for the big jobs, but for the finer work; not so much.
You see; you need to avoid the clichés. “Liberal Media” and “Kennedy” are so trite. Leave them to Rush and Hannity. They have no place in a civilized debate.
Since you clearly don’t understand the issue; I’ll type it slowly for you. Hell, I’m feeling generous, I’ll put it in an outline
-The Marine Corps Believed there might be a problem with their armor so they paid $107,000 to conduct a study.
-The study was delayed from August 2004 to December 2004 due to lack of funding
-The study was conducted by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner on 93 Marines killed by wounds to the chest.
-The study found that of the 93 Marines 73 of them may not have received fatal wounds (80%) had they been wearing plates protecting their shoulders, sides or other exposed parts of their torsos.
-The study also found that 31 of the 93 (33%) fatal wounds struck so close to the plates that death might have been prevented had they just been a bit larger.
-The study was completed in June 2005, and the armor still has not been sent.
-The group that broke the story was called Soldiers for the Truth which is an advocacy group for the military.
-The New York Times picked up the story and printed it.
-The Straight Dope MB Community gets angry, because they believe that Current Administration is to blame for the oversight
-Others on the board believe it’s supply chain problems.
-Here’s where you come in:
-You ask who’s served in the military
-Scylla fucks with you
-You bite
-I tell you that having an opinion on the above does not require military service
-You have a hissy fit
Now you’re up to date. Next time read the damn thread yourself.
What’s your MOS? Shot “more than a few” times?[ul]
[/ul][ul]
[/ul]