The navy thought that a story about a suicidal sailor in a bizarre homosexual love triangle would be a good advert for the navy? Who are they trying to recruit these days - depressed members of the Village People?
ps Elvis shot JFK from space - the total lack of evidence proves it 
True enough, the girl who appeared before Congress was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, but this was more a case of Kuwaiti propaganda than anything on the part of the US government per se to create information. I recall, having been working for a news agency at the time, that a great deal reported back then was from the mouths of people fleeing Kuwait. Since the Iraqi troops did commit ‘atrocities’ such as rape and widespread looting, a note of exageration crept into the stories. That’s not the same as the deliberate creation of the Hearst press.
Which wars do you mean? Are you making a blanket denial for the entire period, 1990 to 1999? I’d like to cites for that.
I never heard anything of this sort, could you care to provide some support for this assertion?
I heard plenty about Croat war crimes (e.g. against Serb speakers in reconquered areas after the Serb/Yugoslav Federal army was driven out) and to the extent the Bosnians committed atrocities --war does tend to see such-- I also recall reading about them. The focus came to be on the Serbs because they were in fact the worst offenders and generally had the remnants of the still formidable, given the circumstances, Yugoslav federal military behind them.
That Slobodan allied himself with criminal elements in his bid for power and freely used violence against the republics which wished to secede of course immediately put Serbia in a bad light.
It was a case of a bunch of big bad Serbs --not all Serbs but a terrible minority exploiting religious sectarianism for their own profit and to cling to power. Civil wars tend to be terribly bloody things, but to the extent the Slobodan clique created the conditions, Serbia the country bears the responsibility.
Shrug. If one reads critically one can get better news. With internet you should be able to read reputable European papers for another point of view. Of course lots of folks BESIDES the guvmint lie.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Collounsbury *
As graphic and memorable as it is, it is also pretty well accepted here (I believe) that the photo in question was, at best, the product of manipulation (good old fashioned propaganda). This is the only link a brief search brought up and it’s from the Serbian perspective. I feel sure there would be better examinations of the image had I looked further:
http://compuserb.com/bosnia/boslie01.htm
Whenever something like the USS Cole occurs I’m always reminded that the invasion of Grenada took place less than 48 hours after 241 Marines lost their lives to a suicide bomber in Beirut. Personally, I believe that what happened in Grenada might have happened anyway (under Reagan) but the timing is a little suspicious.
Not suggesting anything at all in relation to the current situation in the Middle East, just that it is not necessarily beyond the bounds of reason to think it possible that politicians would sacrifice members of the armed forces.
Officially, 19 Americans died during the Grenada invasion.
Also, German reporters checked out the supposed “concentration camp,” and they verified that the photo is fake.
Another “Wag the Dog”-type incident was when we fired missles at the supposed “chemical weapons” factory (or was it biological weapons?) in the Sudan. This occurred out of the blue and right as Monica Lewinski was about to testify before Congress. What a coincidence! It probably wasn’t a chemical weapons plant, either. The U.N. was all over that place after the attack, and not the slightest hint of anything chemical or biological was found. It is almost certain that the plant was exactly what the Sudanese said it was: a perfectly normal aspirin factory. For this we can thank Bill Clinton, Foreign Relations Genius :rolleyes:
London_Calling: What’s the word in Europe about losses during NATO’s war with Kosovo? NATO claims that it only lost two or three aircraft and had no casualties, but I’ve seen other lists saying NATO lost 30-40 manned aircraft and around 100 people. A few of the aircraft were large helicopters filled with special forces troops. This accounts for about half of the casualties. The majority of the planes alledgedly lost were European ones, like the Tornado, but quite a few were American. Offhand, I can remember the list containing several F-15’s and F-16, a B-52 or two, and three F-117A’s. We already know that NATO lied to about about what the Serbs did, so I don’t think it’s such a stretch that they lied to us about their casualties. What does the European media say about it?
<<<<<<I heard plenty about Croat war crimes (e.g. against Serb speakers in reconquered areas after the Serb/Yugoslav Federal army was driven out)…>>>
Do you know what are you talking about? A little bit? Some basics, perhaps. There are no “Serb speakers” in the Universe. No more than there is a Serb language. The two peoples speak the one and the same language, called Serbo-Chroatian. It has two different alphabets, Cyrillic-based and Latin-based, but it’s still one language. An illiterate person could never tell the difference between a Serb and a Chroat.
Before posting anything in front of teeming masses, shouldn’t you guys do some sort of remedial learning? Being able to operate a computer does not fill you with common knowlege.
Well, on your list of losses, what gets considered a “loss”?
There are training mishaps and general accidents all the time. Whenever one of those occurs during a military event, it gets registered as part of the event–even if it had nothing to do with military action.
I remember the shocked reactions to news reports that were broadcast throughout the “Desert Shield” period, commenting on just how many F-14s and H-60s we had been losing on training missions. Then some enterprising reporter went out and got a list of aircraft losses for the preceding 10 years. The “Desert Shield” losses were a little bit higher than the monthly average, but they were just about normal for the rates experienced during any NATO joint exercise. However, all those losses got blamed on Hussein and Iraq.
For example, I suspect that it would have been really hard to conceal the information if the Serbs had successfully shot down a B-52: the Serbs would have been broadcasting their triumph to the whole world and no news service would have agreed to keep it quiet.
So, where is a list of aircraft losses–including the reasons for the loss?
First, London:
Please provid me with some source other than a website of “The Serbian Defense League
exposing racism and hate
http://www.CompuSerb.com/SDL”
I’m sorry but I take such things to be highly suspect at best. As an ex-journalist (ten years removed) I don’t pretend the press is infallible, but these sorts of things are oft asserted.
Frankly, I find the Wag the Dog scenarios you and others put forward in re the Cole to be fantastical. Looking at the facts as known it appears that a routine refueling stop was probably leaked from within the Yemani government or the private firm, that the American sailors were less than fully rigorous in following security procedures (no one is perfect, I am not imputing anything on them) and a terrible price was paid.
All this Clinton hating WtD stuff smells vaguely of paranoid obsession. Keep some sense of perspective folks.
Now onto Peace’s explosion.
Calm yourself, although I misspoke above, I am well aware that Serbo-Croatian, like Czechoslovak forms a single standardized language and that those who identify themselves as Serbs are Orthodox, those who identify themselves as Croat are Catholic and Bosnians is the general appelation for the Muslims who are S-C speakers, although some Muslims are turkish speakers.
I will add, just to make you happy, that I am also aware that the Orthodox Serbs use the Cyrillic based alphabet, derived from the same Greek sources as the Russian and other East European Orthodox (good old Cyril being an effective fellow) while the Croats use a latin alphabet for the obvious reasons. Does that precision make you feel better?
My original phrasing above was incorrect and came from inattention. I apologize for that, you are quite right it was a blunder. However:
Well, I might well ask the same for some folks who post complete nonesense about race and the like, but generally speaking a little more calmness and a little less vitriol is better. Except when one has had a lot of coffee.
Diceman, you’ve been here long enough to know that rants don’t belong in General Questions. Cool it.
Meanwhile, a GQ-type detail:
Quoth Diceman:
A nuclear weapon cannot be detonated accidentally, at least, not as a bang-bang. The worst case scenario for a magazine explosion with nuclear weapons present would be a radiation flash from subcritical fission, and a bunch of plutonium scattered across the area of the explosion: Admittedly pretty bad, but not city-leveling. In order to get the full bang out of a nuke, you need to very precisely set off explosives uniformly and simultaneously around the fissionable material: If you don’t, then subcritical fusion will blow most of your plutonium apart before it has a chance to “burn”.
Sorry about that, Chronos. That one slipped out.
I have a link to a list of alleged NATO losses. The website is venik.way.to. Click on Links at the top, then NATO losses. Venik has obvious Russian sympathies, so I’d take the list with a grain of salt, but he seems to be pretty knowledgable about aviation. He claims to have contacts in Serbia and, interestingly, a few of the entries list such details as the name of the guy who shot down the aircraft.
Apparently, when a plane is hit with a missle it’s usually blown into thousands of pieces. That’s why there are so few pictures of shoot-downs (both NATO and Serbian); there’s rarely an intact airframe to show on TV.
Something that I hadn’t noticed until just now was how many Harriers are on that list. I do remember hearing that those things are supposed to be pretty hard to fly.
Whoops. Let’s try that link again
http://venik.way.to/ It’s not a “www” address, so that may be screwing up the board’s system.