fire4effect
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Posts posted by fire4effect
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10 hours ago, uhhello said:
Will be very interesting to see how the rhetoric about hitting the cartels will come to fruition.
Hopefully something like this.
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53 minutes ago, brabus said:
For anyone adding to the list of events that made voters rebuke the Dems, we now have a woman imprisoned for 9 years because she argued 2020 voting machines were compromised*, but we have several Dems in Pennsylvania outwardly admitting to violating voting law because they want to count invalid votes. Literally breaking the law trying to sway an election in their favor and not one mention of bringing charges. The gross imbalance of legal action depending on party affiliation is sickening and a major reason voters have walked away from the Dems. I will happily eat crow in the future if every one of them ends up in prison for years.
*For those interested in what actually brought a 9 year sentence:
“Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.” Of note she didn’t actually manipulate any vote counts, unlike the Pennsylvania people mentioned above. So I guess they need over 9 years of incarceration…
Not saying it happened here but so many infractions it seems especially at the federal level have the potential for some pretty draconian penalties. Prosecutors love when something can carry a 25-year sentence even when they rarely get that much because it's a really big club to coerce a plea deal and they don't have to actually prove anything in court. Trial penalty is real especially when most of us can't afford a high-priced legal team to keep the government honest. They have unlimited taxpayer money and will go home at the end of the day no matter the outcome.
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16 hours ago, TreeA10 said:
I'm baffled in this age of near instantaneous information exchange, Google searches in microseconds, and real time tracking of millions of package locations by freight carriers, why the hell can't votes be counted in a day? A week is just plain stupid.
Ironically the cumbersome and widely varying (read inefficient) processes across states makes it more difficult to instigate large scale fraud.
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Another case involving Alexander Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh (2 of the 4 "Beatles" terrorist cell) got life in SuperMax because the Brits don't have the death penalty and that was the condition for cooperation. To me the solution is easy. Put them all in general population in USP Hazelton WV where Whitey Bulger lasted less than an hour.
This time they'll get a real "jury of their peers" and the problem will take care of itself.
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42 minutes ago, ViperMan said:
Boomer.
Sooner
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You know as I stood in line to vote yesterday, I thought back to 2005 and Iraq's first election post Sadam. No armored vehicles surrounded my polling location, and I felt pretty sure a VBIED wasn't going to plow into the parking lot. What a country we have.
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On 10/30/2024 at 8:02 AM, tac airlifter said:
Side note on your last sentence- I’m a member of several GWOT groups and I’ve been shocked how many are full are army dudes with serious psychological issues allegedly from their single deployment… whether or not they saw combat. I say allegedly because I don’t know these people so am taking their comments at face value. I wonder if the Taliban is full of sad ex-fighters dealing with regrets and nightmares. I’m sure not the same due to cultural differences but I am curious what lasting effects they’ll have. Genuinely curious, don’t mean to sound disparaging.
For the first part, I’m not sure we actually do know how to kill people and break things on scale. Tactically yes or course, but at the operational to strategic level we proved incapable of leveraging violence successfully to achieve desired outcomes. Yes nation building was a fools errand in AFG, but imagine we didn’t have restrictive ROE and every enemy identified was killed. We would have “won” by pure attrition; or at least not been driven out in shame.
Our self imposed rules (from 09-21) made killing them in amounts necessary simply impossible; as they advanced using large convoys in the open we were too caught up in “near certainty” and “proportionality” to be decisive and ruthless. Even the fact we used Type 2 CAS procedures instead of SCAR for interdiction missions with no friendlies present speaks to an obsession with control at the expense of combat effectiveness. I will continue to blame our generals and be convinced we could have killed our way to victory, and although our captains are great at killing our leaders suck at aligning those actions into a sum greater than its parts.
A lot is the daily grind for a solid year. Riding a dirt road in a Humvee day in day out wondering if the next turn has an IED. Think Bob Woodruff of ABC News north of Baghdad in 2006. He did a special where he returned to the scene of the attack about a year ago. Pretty powerful and its online. IDF can put everyone on the front line or as some would say the enemy is airmailing you the IED. Hell a guy in the gym on the squat rack was killed by a rocket in the Green Zone. I will certainly admit flying an aircraft any aircraft is way more fun. Though Tammy Duckworth and her Blackhawk caught the RPG not far away near a town called Tarmiya in late 2003. The town was a former "resort" on the Tigris River for the Bath Party, so they didn't think much of Americans. One way to look at it is the randomness of it all. You can patrol all day long and nothing happens so nothing memorable. The Humvee 5 minutes behind you gets hit and for them certainly a "significant emotional event" As many of you noted Afghanistan deployments had a wide variety of flavors depending on when you were there and your mission at the time. Same as it was in Iraq. My trip to Afghanistan was for me actually pretty tame by comparison but back to that one word "random"
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3 hours ago, ClearedHot said:
I've gone back and forth in my mind a thousand times, nine deployments was it a waste? Our yardstick of success tends to be the end state which is valid but doesn't tell the whole story. While it sucks the Taliban are running Afghanistan today I prefer to think about it in different terms like a relative peace at home for 20 years. Afghanistan was a flame the drew a lot of bad moths and we killed them all over there instead of here. Not necessarily the perfect metric of winning and losing but if you step back there is value to what you did, it was not a waste.
I cringe when I see the Vietnam comparisons. That was a fumbling bumbling proxy war against Russia, we wasted 58,220 American lives trying to keep South Vietnam "free." Our political and military leaders were stooges who tied our hands behind our back when it came to fighting. While far from perfect, the military was allowed to truly fight in Afghanistan and we created a killing machine that eliminated a lot of horrible humans.
The effectiveness of the War on Terror will be debated for many years to come. Wars always get front-page press because of the drama. A few stats for perspective:
From 2019 to 2022 107,941 Americans died from drug overdoses.
From 2011 to 2021 110,000 Americans died due to drunk driving.
9/11 alone we lost 2,977 Americans.
In 20+ years of fighting in Afghanistan we lost 2459 American service men and women.
I can't really argue with much in your post.
Comparing Viet Nam will never be perfect on any level, but it did remind me of a number of conversations I had with the Air Force relative (EB-66 pilot) that if they'd had even a small amount of precision/stand-off weapons we have now then the whole thing would have been over in short order. No way they could've massed forces for the Tet Offensive. Or the Dragon Jaw would have been a pile of rubble in the river in a matter of hours. etc.
Of course, communists are generally more pragmatic than religious fanatics.
I completely agree a lot of bad individuals were taken off the board and I can't help but wonder what the remaining Taliban over there in their hovels are thinking like us saying "what the hell did we gain"
Several weeks ago, I talked to an Afghan who has done very well assimilating into US culture and he hears from relatives still in country and in a perfect example of rules for thee but not for me the Taliban leadership send their daughters outside Afghanistan to be educated. Can I prove that? No but it wouldn't surprise me.
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3 hours ago, SocialD said:
Enjoyed the read and I hope this dude finds his peace. I really don't struggle to find meaning for my trips to Afghanistan (all post 2010), it can be summed up rather simply...a complete waste of my time away from family. Thankfully I'm at peace with that. Sadly, I think the lessons will be lost in time and the bureaucracy that is our government/military. If that weren't true, we wouldn't have made the same mistakes as we did in Vietnam.
I had a family member (actually two) who was a Viet Nam Veteran. When I was young, I never really comprehended his bitterness to the political establishment for pissing away the mission there. After Aug 2021 I had a much better understanding of his point of view.
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2 hours ago, Boomer6 said:
Glad to see Israel took care of business on their timeline and not our election cycle.
Point taken. I was thinking if they were going to hit their oil production it would be after the election to avoid a spike in prices. Of course, Israel is pragmatic enough to know they can't predict which administration they'll be dealing going forward so they try to maintain some semblance of balance between parties.
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On 10/22/2024 at 9:50 AM, FourFans said:
Peter Zeihan forecasts that Israel is going to smack Iran's oil production and distribution, which could spark Iran to ultimately push on Saudi. I'm not putting money on anything, but that's an interesting prediction.
23 hours ago, uhhello said:Iran on Saudi Arabia with no outside interference is one I'd like to see 🙂 In a vacuum at least
From an economic perspective Saudi would make bank with a spike in oil prices as long as they could still ship oil.
On a somewhat related note, a fair number on this forum make their money in the Part 121 transportation industry so a lot of economic skin in the game to go around.
One way the US could be sucked into this would be the Iranian Navy trying to cut off the Strait of Hormuz and given Israel isn't known as a naval power that doesn't leave a lot of options to counter outside the US. Not that I have a problem with turning the Iranian Fleet into multiple artificial reefs that they have no real way to replace in a timely manner. No way they could really keep up in a sustained conflict.
Final question. Doesn't China get most of its oil from Iran? Interesting how they might react to this trainwreck.
If this happens, I don't see it before November 6.
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On 10/19/2024 at 1:14 PM, StoleIt said:
Tit for tat.
Makes you wonder just how much they're willing to poke the bear.
This whole thing could go sideways on a regional level really quick.
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2 hours ago, slc said:
Looks like the IDF had shot off his right hand before he sat down in the chair as well....
So, the next to last thing that went through his mind is how can I rub one last one out now?
Yes, my family says I'm warped.😲
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1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:
You didn't watch the video...He was alive but badly wounded when the drone went in. He weakly threw something at the drone so they backed up and a tank put a round into the room which ventilated his brain.
I think there were a number of stills from the drone in the media that may have implied it was from a troops helmet cam. It had me confused at first.
On a side note, this shows again how drones of all sizes are fundamentally changing warfare as we know it.
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I think its obvious that the the last thing that went through his mind was......high velocity
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42 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:
Or they've planted that story so his own people burn him; wouldn't be the first time! A kills a kill and all that 🇺🇸
Raise the collective paranoia in your enemy until they're combat ineffective. They can't know who to trust.
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19 hours ago, Inertia17 said:
Isn't it amazing what can be accomplished when everyone isn't so worried about not offending people, and risk aversion instead caring more about killing bad guys and breaking their shit? What if...
Remember Effects Based Targeting from ACSC? You know IMHO I've always thought a strike on the Iranian oil terminal facilities in the Persian Gulf or pipeline nodes in the desert would be the way to go. Enough to send a message they get 5X5 but without completely at this point destroying the infrastructure. Shut off their ability to export oil and the cash flow dries up. No more whack a mole trying to catch tankers circumventing an embargo. They'll be "squealin from the feelin" soon enough. Of course, oil/gas prices would spike which means it'll never happen before January 20th. Honestly Israel is the best pit bull we can let run amok on them now while having all sorts of plausible deniability.
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My money is on this guy
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28 minutes ago, GrndPndr said:
More heartbreaking news out of Lebanon...
Israel kills Ibrahim Aqil, Hezbollah leader who US said was behind 1983 Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 Americans
PS: Wow, I had no idea about AOC and her Oktoberfest qualifying protuberances.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer SOB.
These animals just can't get it through their thick skull (well maybe the ordnance did) that sooner or later justice comes from above.
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BOLO for this individual as being the mastermind behind the operation
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15 hours ago, ClearedHot said:
Now AOC is crying about the Israeli's "booby trapping" Hezbollah. What a twat, although she does have nice cans.
Well, I would say anyone with shrapnel to the face that's the new "Scarlett Letter"
Israel just branded the whole Hezbollah herd for identification.
BTW second that on the cans.
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Iran's ambassador to Lebanon injured by pager explosion | Reuters
As some have pointed out. Why was the Iranian Ambassador holding a Hezbollah pager? 🤔
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AFSOC OA-1K Incident
in General Discussion
Posted
Was taxiing at a midwestern airport a few days ago and watched one of these log at least 2 landings on one pass down the runway. In fairness there was a decent gusting x-wind but it appears the pilot had his hands full. I admit I probably would have too.