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 BaronIveagh wrote:

Relapse wrote:
Sorry, Baron, I have to call bs on your comments. When you were making jokes about the Cole getting hit by terrorists, I called you on it and you came back with stories of your exploits.

Direct quote from a PM of yours to me:

"US Servicemen die all the time. You put on a uniform, you have to realize that there is a very good chance that whoever your enemies are, they're going to take a shot at you. What I was laughing about was the first sentence (for reasons I will not go into here, I have fond memories of a heavily armed yacht being blown half way to the moon). The Cole was just an example of a ship gettign hit that occurred to me that everyone else might have heard of.

As far as saying gak in front of guys: I've been doing that for years. Wins so far the toll is three US marines (one single and one pair), one Royal Marine, one sailor off the USS Boxer (surprisingly, I grant, the most belligerent of them. I had to beat him unconscious.), one Navy SEAL (very fancy, very surprised when his big pressure point move didn't work), and two infantrymen from Texas (as a pair, and Texans live up to their rep, they were tough). Losses: Was held down by five guys once and beaten by a sixth. Was pistol whipped (poorly, they held the wrong end, which gave me scars on my arms for years from the hammer) by an angry Irishman once."

If anyone doubts I have a big mouth when pissed off, please check my post history.

Just because I'm a tech guy doesn't mean I can't win a fight. The SEAL or so he claimed, was a gentleman by the name of Mark Darcangelo in a bar near Grove City PA. the US Marines and the guy off the Boxer (who happens to be my brother in law now) were in San Diego, the Texans were in a bar in Virginia. The RM guy I was told about after the fact, I don't actually remember it. The five guys were in a bar near Mercer PA, called the Landmark. The Irishman was in my own home at the time, because he has seen a picture of me and Gerry Adams among my stuff. (I met Adams in the late 90's in Pittsburgh.) all of which, other than the Irishman, I've talked about before. I've also talked about a few other times I've gotten my ass kicked, some of which were much more recent than those. (most of that list is more than a decade old)

The yacht I still won't talk about. I didn't carry it out, I provided gear, and sat back and watched. And thought the target richly deserved it and do to this day.

If you don't think my explanation holds water, I'll happily mail you a copy of my most recent schedule A with the names and addresses redacted.

Baron, don't even bother. I have heard more than my share of war stories over the years to really believe much anymore. Put it down to cynicism on my part from getting taken by such tales one too many times in my teenage years.

I would love to see you cite some sources which lead you to this opinion. Where has the US gone against or gotten upset at the Geneva convention? How can you say that the absolute massive amount of embedded reporters in both Iraq and Afghanistan which have reported all kinds of stuff, coupled with reports from non-embedded reporters have equalled sanitization of all news about these wars? I would say the exact opposite is true, and you would have a very difficult time giving examples of better and more timely coverage of any other military operations.

The US government pressure the media into not showing non sanitized footage. I know people who work in media who tell me about how theirs pretty much an unspoken black list going on. The media is very afraid of pissing off the military because most of the stories they get are about the war on terror are from the military. Their were several videos on youtube showing footage of US troops in Iraq that have been taken off. One showed a group of US troops laughing at Iraqi children drinking dirty water, the soldier who posted the video received both a video from YOUTUBE and the US gov condemning him not for what he did but posting the video.

YouTube tried to get rid of the collateral murder video but people kept posting it and they eventually gave up.

Also Al Jazeera was bombed under somewhat suspicious grounds.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Alleged_Bush-Blair_Al-Jazeera_bombing_transcript_leaked

But its backlashed, citizens were deprived of US made news so now they've turned to foreign news. Its why Al Jazeera now has a US channel.

Ah, the old 'I know someone' and the 'collateral murder' video along with a conspiracy theory.

Nice.

Do you have similar credible sources about the US hate for the Geneva conventions?

And again, what examples of better and more timely military operation coverage do you have?

Ironclad Warlord wrote:
It seems to me that the US gov wants it both ways, they like the Geneva convention and don't hesitate to mention it when other groups disobey it but can't stand it when it gets in the way of what they want. They complain when groups like wikileaks give people a version of the war they don't like but at the same time sanitize all the news they give the American people inevitably leading to people getting info from people like assange.

It's a sticky, nasty business there, actually, and more or less depends on if you consider them to be criminals or irregular troops. Some countries see them that way, some don't. Whether or not they do frequently has more to do with history and politics than law.

The other problem is whether nor not a given group of terrorists follow part or even the whole of the conventions themselves varies wildly between groups, and sometimes even within a given group. Ostensibly, as an example, historically the IRA prefers to deal property damage and use lethal force on military targets only. In theory. The reality of it though is that you have individual commanders who will ignore those broad guidelines if it suits them or even splinter groups and rogue elements who are off the reservation entirely. And this is within a culture that shares the same values as the authors of many of the 'laws of war'.

A possible example, and I grant, I don't have a context for the Feb helo chase, other than the target was a dumptruck with a mortar. Crazyhorse 18 does the right thing here, he's unsure of how to proceed when the Iraqis driving it show 'intent to surrender' and asks his superiors. Depending on what they have been shelling, two different laws apply. If the were targeting civilians, then they are not protected under Hague. If they have been engaging military targets, they could be construed as irregular forces, and hors de combat applies. I can't say if this was the right call or not, based on the information I have. What makes it questionable to me is the lawyer claimed that one cannot surrender to aircraft. As far as I know, regardless of US policy, this is untrue. All that has to take place (at least under Hague) is that they demonstrated an understood intent to surrender for hors de combat to apply, and make killing them out of hand a war crime, IF they're irregular forces.

As you can see there's a lot of 'ifs' there. The conventions really need updated to take asymmetrical warfare and insurgencies into account. This would simply things a great deal of there were a clear set of rules to go by, but as stands there are a lot of grey areas.

An unverified document discovered by the UK tabloid The Daily Mirror claiming to have been leaked from Downing Street has been reported to contain a statement from US President George W. Bush about wishing to bomb the headquarters of Arabic TV station Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. According to The Daily Mirror, the President was dissuaded from bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The newspaper said its story was based on information from an unnamed source with access to the "top secret" memo of the President and Prime Minister's conversation.

Key words that debunked this off the bat

Unveirfied and a Tabloid

Also since I have a security clearance and pretty much deal with sensitive information.

unnamed source with access to the "top secret" memo of the President and Prime Minister's conversation

Yep going place all my trust with two words and a document on this perception

This 110% undeniable proof of a conspr....hoax...yep...and the moon landing was a hoax to right?

Calling someone a conspiracy theorist is just saying your sources are better than theirs. Isn't saying that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction a conspiracy theory?

Negative. Don't claim that defense. You threw that up on CPTJake as "proof".

Edit 1

Seriously?

Isn't saying that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction a conspiracy theory?

Same area of source but proven

The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein,[1] was internationally known for his use of chemical weapons in the 1980s against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during and after the Iran–Iraq War. In the 1980s he pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built.

After the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, the United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials throughout the early 1990s, with varying degrees of Iraqi cooperation and obstruction.[2] In response to diminishing Iraqi cooperation with UNSCOM, the United States called for withdrawal of all UN and IAEA inspectors in 1998, resulting in Operation Desert Fox. The United States and the UK asserted that Saddam Hussein still possessed large hidden stockpiles of WMD in 2003, and that he was clandestinely procuring and producing more. Inspections by the UN to resolve the status of unresolved disarmament questions restarted from November 2002 until March 2003,[3] under UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which demanded Saddam give "immediate, unconditional and active cooperation" with UN and IAEA inspections, shortly before his country was attacked.[4

Edit 2

On June 21, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released key points from a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center on the recovery of a small number of degraded chemical munitions in Iraq. The report stated that "Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent." However, all are thought to be pre-Gulf War munitions.[120]

These munitions meet the technical definition of weapons of mass destruction, according to the commander of the National Ground Intelligence Center. "These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee. The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, though agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said.[121]

Just saying since you appear to deny Saddam and Iraq to have produced chemical weapons. Majority of those recovered were two chamber 155mm shells. What clued Coalition forces was the Insurgents thout they were HE 155mm rounds. (Russian Equivilant)

Edit 3

Baron two kids were used as Sucide Bombers in Afghanistan. That and targeting local government gathering which, if I remember correctly involved school kids. Not to mention a couple IED's getting a couple buses of kids over time....the kid suicide bomber being smuggled into Afghanistan that Coalition troops captured and made news in 2008. No idea why I'm still dealing with you Baron but hey...3rd time the charm

 Jihadin wrote:

Baron two kids were used as Sucide Bombers in Afghanistan. That and targeting local government gathering which, if I remember correctly involved school kids. Not to mention a couple IED's getting a couple buses of kids over time....the kid suicide bomber being smuggled into Afghanistan that Coalition troops captured and made news in 2008. No idea why I'm still dealing with you Baron but hey...3rd time the charm

Ok that gives me some context for what Doc Bailey was talking about, and also tells me why I didn't hear about it. His blog was the only source I could find where a guy present discussed what constituted 'threat', since there seemed to be inconsistencies between the guys present if the van constituted a threat. He included children as a possible threat, which is what I was making reference to, but failed to make it clear what I was talking about exactly.

liberal media

No such thing, the media censors anything that could look bad on the government except for social issues.

[/url]http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nbc-fires-arnett-after-iraq-tv-interview/[url]

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War[img]

As far as the comment asking how the US military feels inconvenienced by the Geneva convention just Google use of white phosphorous.

I also feel guilt free mentioning "soldiers logic" given others on this thread have opened the door talking about having a society where only veterans could vote.

Ironclad Warlord wrote:

liberal media

No such thing, the media censors anything that could look bad on the government except for social issues.

Having a friend who spent many years in the industry, this is quite wrong as well.... It has more to do with advertising dollars.... Or, the money that comes into the Networks. Government doesn't really fund the news, so often times, the various networks will bash the gov't how they see fit (being too liberal if you're Fox, or being too conservative if you're just about anyone else, in the US)

Having a friend who spent many years in the industry, this is quite wrong as well.... It has more to do with advertising dollars.... Or, the money that comes into the Networks. Government doesn't really fund the news, so often times, the various networks will bash the gov't how they see fit (being too liberal if you're Fox, or being too conservative if you're just about anyone else, in the US)

Your misunderstanding what I'm saying, i'm not saying the US gov directly sensors the media, i'm saying the media censors itself to make money. Part of the reason is because the get a lot of their stories from the government. I remember hearing about a journalist who got fired for pissing off a senator who later refused to do an interview about an agricultural bill.

You know what this is my last post. I'm sick of explaining my point of view what it is and i'm aware no one is listening. I don't blame anyone I came on way to strong talking about weird encounters and fights at shady bars. Best to everyone, i''m going to do something else now.