rjung, any chance you know what the Iraqi security men are being equipped with?
-Joe
Sorry, nope. My current AOE is future ad-hoc wireless C3I networks.
Ah well.
I imagine it’s along the lines of an AK-47, a canteen, and a bandanna, but I suppose I could be wrong.
-Joe
Well, Walloon pretty much nailed it, I thought, but really, considering that there hasn’t been any terrorist attacks on the US since 9/11 and it’s highly unlikely that the Patriot Act prevented any, nor would it have prevented the 9/11 attacks had it been in place, it seems pretty remote to me that a Republican would be able to unseat an incombant simply because they voted against the Patriot Act. But hey, if you want to live in a paranoid world, then we’ve certainly got the right Administration in charge.
Well, considering that many of them have prior military service experience, and that they’re not being trained for operations in a foreign land, plus they’re using a lot of the existing military equipment (mostly unsophisticated Soviet stuff), I don’t really see how you can compare the two.
Yeah, and they’re doing a bang up job of it, aren’t they? :rolleyes: That’s why we’ve got this thread of paranoid notions about the draft, because they’re not ready to take things over from us.
rjung, it’s the maintence aspect I was speaking of, plus the care and handling of the gear. If you’ve got a bunch of guys who are barely capable of understanding how to operate the stuff (and let’s face it, if a criminal’s in prison, they’re not all that bright to begin with), they’re not going to be able to maintain it or take care of it properly. This means that you’re going to have to reassign your smarter soldiers to care and mainience, which is a bad thing. A stupid soldier is worthless on the battlefield. He’s not going to be able to recognize opportunities when they arise, nor is he going to be able to effectively follow orders. Plus, the military is currently support heavy as it is. I don’t remember what the exact number is, but there’s something like 10 or more support troops for every frontline soldier. That’s not including all the various civilian contractors which have been hired to free up more men for the front lines.
Well shit, if you have such a rosy view of politics in America, good for you.
Then again, it doesn’t matter if it seems “pretty remote” that…ah, fuck it. Obviously no point. I could point out Max Clellan again, but since it wasn’t 100% precisely the Patriot Act, I expect you’d just ignore that, too.
Yeah, that’s it. This is the same army that, in 1991, at the height of their power, dragooned a guy visiting from Chicago, gave him a rifle, and stuck him in a trench, right?
I’m sure that will make them into effective security forces.
Wait…so the Iraqis are good for the job or not?
:rolleyes: <---- Ain’t that fun.
What’s the intelligence prospects of someone who ended up in the Iraqi army between 1991 and 2003?
Just wondeirng.
-Joe
I don’t have a rosy view of politics in America, but I do have an understanding of how things work. It’s damned hard to unseat an incumbant member of Congress, no matter what the party.
It’s generally accepted in politics that if an incumbant doesn’t win re-election, it’s because he/she blew it. The solution to voting against the Patriot Act is to have your name on a more effective bill, doesn’t matter if it passes or not. Ever talk to a reporter about the kinds of bills which get brought up in Congress? It’s pretty interesting, because a good number of bills are brought before Congress with the knowledge that they’ll be voted down the moment they’re proposed. Why do politicians do this? So that at election time they can blather on about all the great bills that they’ve proposed while they were in office.
Is that the guy who, when he saw the rest of his unit breaking and running, stripped off his gear, put on a hawaiian shirt and jams, and greeted the American troops with, “What took you guys so long?” Or are you talking about someone else? IAC, that’s a perfect example of why conscripted troops don’t work. Because they’re more likely to want to get the hell out of Dodge than stand and fight.
Well, it’s not like the Iraqi security forces will need all that sophisticated gear if things ever settle down in Iraq. We’re not going to want a well armed and equipped Iraqi military in case our puppet state gets out of hand. A lot easier to bitch slap them around if they’ve got less sophisticated gear than we have.
If order can be restored to Iraq, then they’ll do fine. After all, a peacetime army does little more than spend it’s time training.
Well, the ones who broke and ran were pretty smart, because they knew that there was a whole lotta nuttin’ they could do.
Throw in some secure digital radios and maybe some personnel-tracking gear (either GPS, EPLRS, or something comparable), and I’ll buy it.
You haven’t seen this stuff up close, I think. The gear that goes to the grunt is “ruggedized” like crazy – you could drop it into a river, run it over with a jeep, then wear it on your back while doing a 300-yard sprint and it wouldn’t bat an eye. Anything that can be field-serviced is similarly reenforced; the equipment might be heavy as heck as a result, but the soldiers are expected to carry 50-plus-pounds of gear anyway. Anything that requires specialized knowledge to maintain will also be locked up tight, requiring special tools back at base for the job, and might even be booby-trapped to prevent it from being captured/dissected by enemy forces.
Not to sound disparaging, but the US military maintains minimum standards of education needed before they’ll give someone the hardware – and those standards are pretty low. If you’re able to get on this message board and read these words, you’ve already met the qualifications needed to use this stuff.
Nope, haven’t seen it up close, other than the parts I make which is mainly barrel liners, triggers, butt places, and similar. Certainly none of the electronics comes through my shop, so I’ll take your word on it.
You’d be surprised how many ex-cons I know who aren’t capable of logging onto the internet. (Of course, I’m surprised by how many ex-cons I know…)
Why doesn’t the secret plan to reinstate the draft make sense? Well imagine this. Before the President could make a push to reinstate the draft, he would have to sit down with his cronies and look them all in the eyes and say, “Well, Iraq is a total clusterfuck. To rescue the situation we’ll need tens of thousands of new soldiers in Iraq. We screwed up, and now we’ll have to pay a hideous political price to salvage the situation. But, you know, the freedom of the Iraqi people is more important than our political careers. For the good of freedom, we must go to the American people and admit we were wrong and ask for more troops so we can do the job properly.”
Doesn’t sound very likely, does it? Yes, it seems increasingly likely that Iraq is going to be a lost cause. But why does that make you all think the president is going to ask for a draft? Look, the cooked up the Iraq invasion because they thought it would be pretty easy. Kick Saddam’s army of conscripts in the teeth, walk in, dig out Saddam, Uday, Qusay, and their Baathist buddies, put Chalabi in charge, and be back by Christmas.
Remember that. They thought we’d be home by now, except the guys deployed to garrison duty sitting on the borders of Iran and Syria polishing their M1A1s. They didn’t want a meatgrinder slog, they wanted to kick some Ayrab dictator in the nuts to keep the rest of them honest. All that talk about we’ll pay any price, bear any burden to keep Iraq free is just talk. You know it, I know it, the American people know it.
If the war takes another turn for the worse, and the only alternatives are to draft more Americans to throw into the meatgrinder, or declare victory and bring the boys home, which one do you think Bush and his team will pick? If a draft is neccesary to fight two wars at once, does that mean we will have a draft and fight those two wars, or will it mean that we will drop a few bombs on the second country, impose sanctions and call it good?
If a critical region of the world goes tits up, and only America can save the day, except now we are tied down in Iraq, what will happen? The critical region of the world goes tits up and we all wring our hands and complain and pass strongly worded UN resolutions, because we are not going to impose a draft on ourselves to police the world. We will police the world when it is convenient for us, when we have spare missiles and tanks and bombers lying around unused that we wouldn’t mind testing on some luckless third world shithole and we can be back by Christmas. But if it’s tough, if it requires serious sacrifice, then fuggedabadit. Let those crazy foreigners off themselves. Let the French send troops.
They thought Iraq would be easy, but it turned out hard. Any you think that means the Bush administration is just itching to invade some OTHER country? When they are trying everything to get rid of the problem they already gave themselves?
New Contingency Plan For Draft of Medical Workers
I suppose that this plan could be carryover from last year’s hysteria over Saddam’s nonexistent smallpox stocks. Or, it could be part of the normal ‘worst case’ planning our military is so fond of doing. On the other hand, it might reflect an early phase of the gearing up necessary to institute a more general draft. If that’s the case, I expect we’ll soon hear of provisions being made to draft police officers and security personnel, those being the groups most in demand as occupation forces.
Bah, we’re fine.
Anyone else having trouble getting this out of their head?
-Joe, Chewbacca, Kashyyyk, Endor, cerebral detonation
IIRC, they’ve been drawing up plans for drafting medical personnel in case of a bioweapons attack since 9/11, so this could merely be part of that.
That’s because you’re not using the right language. Here, try this:
“Well, Iraq is a total clusterfuck. The insurgents keep blowing up the pipelines, disrupting the convoys, and shooting every Westerner they can find who’s anywhere near an oilfield. Halliburton can’t get folks to sign up for truck-driving duties any more, even at $25,000 a month. The only way to rescue the profit margin is to get more boots on the ground, because otherwise this whole thing is going to be a big red splotch on the ledgers. I’ve already secured my place in history as the two-term Bush president who kicked Saddam’s ass, so I don’t care what some pissy crybabies think abou this. If anyone bitches at me for pushing for a draft, just tell 'em to fuck off.”
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.
But everyone knows that money can’t buy happiness, only power can do that. It’s not what you own, it’s WHO you own.
Let’s see if I can put this in terms you all can understand.
Even if we stipulate that the Bush administration is a bunch of venal amoral scumbags, they have to maintain power to continue their greedy piggy ways. George Bush isn’t going to torpedo the Republican party to make a few bucks, because that doesn’t make sense. The way you make the big bucks is to keep the Republicans in power. Haliburton doesn’t just need to make money for four more years, they need to make money forever and ever.
The powermongers who run the country are only interested in money as a means to an end, and the end is power and control. You don’t make money if you give up power and control. If Bush screws up his legacy what about Jeb? What about Jenna? What about all the other up and coming baby repulican overlords? You can’t be an elder statesman without younger statesmen owing you favors. If you think these people went to all the trouble to get their guy elected president just so they could retire to some carribean island with a few million dollars you are thinking to small. There are much easier ways to make a wad of cash like that if all you are interested in is money and the good life. These people are ALREADY rich. You think Bush needs a bigger nest egg so he can retire to some island?
What exactly do you think money is FOR? Sure, at our level more money means nicer cars, better houses, better clothes, private schools for the kids. But when you get to the uber-rich level, what does money MEAN? There’s not much difference between a 50 room mansion and a 100 room mansion, between a household staff of 20 and a household staff of 50. Very rich businessmen don’t make money because they want more creature comforts, they make more money because more money means more power, more ability to shape the future, it makes you more important. Didn’t you see Chinatown?
a) Uh, does this sound more and more like Vietnam? Remember what they once called French Indochina? Remember how the US was warned they could never win in Vietnam! Yet, despite all the negative feedback, we went into Vietnam anyhow, didn’t we? And, we drafted in boys too young to even vote!
b) Well, it’s time for all those Vietnam draftees to speak up and vote for a change in Washington before the Draft comes blowing on through again…!
Just because a draft might not be popular, doesn’t mean the W Admin won’t do it, anyhow! And once re-elected, who will stop the big W? - Jinx
I wanna see someone put there money where their mouth is. I got fifty bucks says there’s no draft, nor any moves toward it by the Bush admin for a minimum of one year after the election. Any takers?
Congress, not the President, decides whether to return to a draft.
Twenty-one years later, it still hasn’t become a thing. Oh, and it seems that folks in Germany from 1933-1945 who didn’t want to serve in the death camps didn’t face much blowback. Kind of a thing one might want to remember if they live in the US in 2025.
Yeah, I’m making the direct comparison because lots of my neighbors are Latine, as are about 90% of my coworkers, and regardless of their citizenship status, they’re at risk of being renditioned to a “Black Site” where for some reason, the laws of a country that have the words “all men are endowed” in their foundational documents, seems to think that there’s an exception for those who don’t happen to be on certain pieces of soil. I mean, call me crazy, but if you think that something is a universal law, it should apply to everyone on the planet, regardless of what country they might be a citizen of, or where they might be living.