Obscure as it may be, I was listening to AM radio in the bay area, (San Fran) and I heard this guy on the ‘Savage Nation’ radio show. Being from the east coast I have never heard him and I was amazed at what he was saying. Anyway to the OP->
Imagine this obscurity: We take all the mass murderers, blood thirsty cannibals and dismembering psychopaths and arm them with the weapons of their choice. We then board them on a plan, then a chopper, then once they are on the ground near a terror camp we unleash them. We say, “…do your stuff…go in, be careful, and kill, dismember, eat for that matter, all the terrorists you can…”
Now unlike our green barrets and navy seals, these guys would take much pleasure in satisfying their personal demented fantacies, and at the same time they would be doing ‘US’ a favor in killing the enemy. Grotesque as it may be, its an interesting thought. The mental pictures associated with thinking of OBL being stalked, attacked, and dismembered by psychopathic cons is not that aversive to some people. As evidenced by phone calls to the radio show ‘Savage Nation’.
This follows the same tactic of recruiting mafia personnel from the prisons and the streets, to help find sleepers in and around NYC. The mafia, always knows who is who, where people live, and how to find previously unfindable peoples. Its an interesting topic, though fully unusual, it does conjure some interesting mental polaroids…
Just for the official record, reasons why the OP is ’ not a good idea’ [sup]TM[/sup]
(not necessarily in order of importance)
Many of those persons in prisons etc are people who should never be free, once you release them (even if it’s in Afghanistan or wherever), they’re released, free to cause harm to those we fear/hate and those who are completely innocent.
Many others of those in prisons are people who don’t deserve the fate that you’re chosing for them (ie minor drug offenses, shop lifting, etc.)
Those in the mental institutions in particular have illnesses, and who says they deserve any punishment at all? (yes, there are some there in ‘guilty but mentally ill’ kinds of deals but see above and/or you’re not differentiating).
Even if the folks you’re sending over deserver the worst of ever fates, their families don’t necessarily.
This is quite the facetious little post, I was just posting it to put a little candor on subject of the beginning of a long war. I know this would be a completely silly and horrid thing to do with psychopathic inmates. But when I heard it on the radio I did laugh a bit.
And if there are any dopers out there who can tune into 1010 radio in the bay area or all of southwest even, you may know who Mike Savage is. He seems to have quite a following CASDAVE I admit the first time I heard him I was a little skeptical of his motives, but he is just an ultra patriotic wack that offers some entertainment on the trip home. Lucky I’ll be headed back to the east coast soon and be rid of these small cerebrum radio hosts :D…Just kidding, just kidding…
One more serious point, even if the O.P. wasn’t really–special operations require a very high degree of discipline to be successful, not to mention a great deal of careful planning and cooperation by different elements of the special operations force. These are not characteristics which psychopaths and homicidal maniacs tend to possess to any great extent. If you parachute a bunch of serial killers and career criminals (who, incidentally, don’t know jack about the local languages, customs, etc.) into a hostile, alien, and heavily armed country, you’re just going to wind up with a bunch of dead sociopaths, plus maybe a few dead Afghan farmers or whatever. Even if you give them an actual mission (“Here are the blueprints to the secret Al Qaeda underground complex. Find bin Laden and kill him and maybe you’ll get a pardon from death row”) they’ll probably still screw up and die in fairly short order.
MEBuckner
and your point? the worse I see happening is that we lose a few farmers and we are doing that with our bombing already. My take is “what the hell, go for it”. What would we do with our empty prisons? maybe we could refill them and have room to deny parole for violent criminals. And I would limit it to only violent inmates and sex offenders of both the prisons and mental institutions. Its not worth the trouble to send the passive ones unless you consider them fodder for the enemy to waste time on. maybe thats the subject of another thread.
Frankly, it is such a ludicrously stupid idea that I’m stunned anyone is actually thinkig about this.
(a) It is a waste of precious miltiary resources, as the US has only limited in theatre transport capacity given overall needs
(b) It has zero liklihood of being effective. MEB has already adequately explained why. Sending in a bunch of prisoners against Afghans is quite simply cruel and inhuman punishment for the prisoners.
Oh, well, if the point is simply to empty the prisons of people we don’t consider deserve to live, then it would be simpler to just line them all up in public sports stadiums and machine gun them or something. We have plenty of stadiums, and I’m sure the Taliban could give us some pointers on the correct procedures for summary public executions. Of course, you could argue that if we felt these individuals committed crimes worthy of the death penalty we should have sentenced them to death during the ordinary course of their trial and judicial sentencing, but let’s not let any namby-pamby bleeding-heart Constitutional objections to “ex post facto” laws stop us.
Isn’t this idea just the omega force? Bunch of guys who like to kill and kill some more, have some mental issues and some were criminals, and are really good with lethal weapons.
OK OK OK let the author add a couple footnotes so this ultra ludicrous thread doesn’t go off on the wrong tangient. First of all there will be no training of the people [murderers, psychopaths], the army need not waste anyting on them. These would be volunteers, where all they want to do is kill and eat…
Send a cunning little demented person armed with a Tech-9 and a couple surgical knives into a cave and let them do whatever they want. If it is get killed and die, then so be it. They chose that as their death penalty.
The stipulation would be for those completely Wacked out crazy people who are nutty enough to want to pick this as their death…let them pick. Ya send them in, untrained limited gov’t money to get them to the entrance of the cave and you let them do their stuff. Simple as that. Granted they may get shot within the first minute or so, but some may get through.
Also, this thread is meant to be ludicrously debatable, not taken with any salt. So yes Collounsbury it is stupid, but it is meant as a stupid topic. I heard it on the radio in San Francisco whilst sitting in traffic on a business trip. I probably should have put it elsewhere, I don’t want to disrupt the harmony of GD. If Mods want it moved thats fine too.
I just wanted to post this here, because at the time I heard it, it formed a quite funny mental image of insane inmates armed with surgical equipement and with a Hannibal Lectar-like mind eating the poor Al-Qaeda as they slept. Thats all. If this is too gross then don’t debate about the impossible possibilities.
Well also bear in mind that real-life serial killers aren’t actually incredibly deadly fiends equipped with super-human strength and cunning. They’re often of somewhat above average intelligence, I guess; they may well be personable and charming (which would do them little good running around in Afghanistan, of course, where they don’t speak the language and stick out like a sore thumb. Talking your way into an al-Qaeda base ain’t like talking your way into a sorority house). But these guys can’t really escape from super-secure heavily-guarded prisons while locked in a straitjacket and a face mask and have only a piece of a ballpoint pen to work with.
I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death by another inmate with a broom. Hannibal Lecter would have taken the guy’s broom away and then eaten his liver, then escaped from prison for an encore, but Hannibal Lecter ain’t real.
I’d also guess that true sociopaths (all I wanna do is kill and eat) are exceedingly rare. Most convicts aren’t stupid enough to go for this. The remainder would turn tail and head for Uzbekistan and the Russian Mob as quick as they could (not that they’d make it). Some might even join up with the enemy, and a non-Arab or Afghan, English-speaking face could cause some damage and confusion on our ranks.
Dropping them near anyplace where we knew Al Qaeda/the Taliban is would compromise our intelligence. Not to mention risking American troops and equipment for transport, and PR concerns. Etc…
This would be an extremely inefficent and dangerous form of capital punishment, at best.
Plus, imagine what we’d have to give the crooks if they actually did catch Bin Laden…
Besides, if we knew where “the entrance to the cave” is, then all we’d have to do is drop a few SF troopers with a couple dozen barrels of napalm, pour it in, and light the match. Or drop a couple of bunker busters on it.
The premise of the OP is that if we had suicidal psychopaths of our own it would make it easier to take these people out. I disagree. If one psychopath could kill a couple of Al-Queda troopers, then a couple of SF squads supported by AC-130s could wipe out the whole bunch. The trouble is locating these people, not killing them. They don’t exactly have signs on them.
