There’s a “Best When Used By:” date on the damn things. Use 'em or lose 'em.
Also, it’s the Earth-shattering KABOOM!
There’s no military objective. The objective is to give Trump and his people hard-ons.
Do…not…need…imagery!
Stranger
Its called “Urban Renewal”, Republican style. With a blast radius of one mile, it is impressive indeedy!
Yeah, but it still makes more economic sense than not fucking up the water supply of a small city of mostly black people. Right?
I read that this particular bomb is great at killing lots of soldiers on the surface of the ground and for knocking stuff down, but is not meant to penetrate the earth to any great extent. Wrong tool for the job, just like Trump.
I can’t give a cite because I read this yesterday after I had been, ah, drinking. I know it’s an SDMB cardinal sin, but it’s the Pit, so fuck it.
In Afghanistan the U.S. spent many millions of dollars per enemy killed.
In Iraq, to get the $-per-death under $3 million you have to include the million-plus deaths of innocent civilians indirectly attributed to the U.S. invasion.
The name “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” kind of gives it away. Wide spread, but not deep.
That’s insane.
This is crass - but is that typical for war? I know war is expensive, but that seems absurdly high. Is that a typical number for modern (past 20 years or so) warfare?
And those wars aren’t really sustainable either.
Afghanistan has 33 million people, average income is 600 dollars/year = 19 800 000 000 dollars.
With Iraq it would make about 175 000 000 000.
Combined 195 000 000 000.
I have no idea how much US and others spend there, but here’s some perspective to taxpayers…
Heck, use half of that to digging wells, irrigation systems and stuff, and the folks will be much less angry to you. Always think WWJD, espcially when it saves money, right, righties? And it’s one-time expense, unlike this what you’re having last 16 years…
( Who knew beating terrorism would be this easy :smack: )
Yes. If there were some way to arrange bribes to a broad population, and a grateful flush-with-cash people therefore laid down their arms and started befriending each other, U.S. interventions would have been less expensive and yielded much better outcomes.
Of course, exactly such opportunities were passed up. Saddam under increasing pressure was soon to accept a sweet exile as a billionaire (U.S. pledging no assassination) — that’s one reason the Cheney-Roveists had to hurry the start of Desert Storm.
Similarly, training the Iraqi Army while maintaining their wages would have been a cheap-enough bribe compared with the alternative. If Bremer wasn’t a deliberate fomenter of the ensuing anti-America Iraq rebellion, he did a good imitation of such.
The Afghan official on CNN today explained that the network of tunnels and caves that was used by ISIS in the area was heavily mined with the IEDs.
The MOAB was used to create the concussive pressure inside the tunnels to explode the IEDs.
In an area with over 700 terrorists, AND loaded with IEDs, we killed three dozen? I like a dead terrorist (actual terrorist, not just brown people) as much as the next guy, but shit, could we look any more incompetent for this one? What a waste of a beautiful boom.
This may seem like a stupid question, but why would ISIS heavily mine their own tunnels and caves?
To prevent Afghan troops from going in? I posted a link to the video explaining it.
From the very beginning, I’ve argued that the best course for afghanistan was infrastructure building. (not here, obviously, as i’ve only been on the board a few years.)
People are hard to recruit as suicide bombers when they are fat and lazy.
Those with nothing to lose, however, are very dangerous.
Our Vacation President today: CNN: “As North Korea brews, Trump again in Mar-a-Lago”. This nugget from the article:
“I will say this, I think China has really been working very hard and I have really gotten to like and respect, as you know, President Xi. He’s a terrific person,” Trump said. “We spent a lot of time together in Florida and he’s a very special man so we’ll see how it goes.”
He sounds like he’s had a couple of dates with the President of China and is now thinking of bringing him home to meet Melania. I guess we’ll see if he can get to second base with Xi, and maybe get a threesome going with Putin as well.
Stranger
In Russia, you do not have threesome with Putin, threesome has Putin with YOU!