Shock & Awe

Has it occurred to anyone else that ``shock and awe'' is a pretty good definition of terror?

And how is this so different from what "Uncle Adolf" did to Poland in 1939? He called his version of it "Blitzkrieg".

And how is this so different from what "Uncle Adolf" did to Poland in 1939? He called his version of it "Blitzkrieg".

Great. Here come the U.S. = Hitler allusions. I thought we were above this...

If Iraqui forces continue to adopt some of the tactics of "embedding" in communities, somehow fail to heed our calls to cave in, and delay the speedy conclusion of this war in a way that leads to a steady increase in US/UK casualties, I wonder how long it will be before Tommy Franks asks his people to tone it down on the whole S&A/smart bomb thing and we just start shelling the living crap out of various suburbs of Baghdad?

Tony, this seems like exceedingly bad math.

On another note, they're saying on CNN right now that U.S. Intelligence has it that Republican Guard members have orders to use chemical weapons if the coalition makes it to Baghdad. There's a shock.

avoiding anything that looks like collateral damage and ramping up humanitarian aid quickly. And that will only work up to the point.

I would love to know where that came from...

Basically, I think the general public is really mistaken about how much a war or conflict helps the defense industry.

How is Raytheon going to make money off the Apache that didn't return yesterday? I can't even begin to imagine that connection.

A lot of that money is spent on supplies that most people don't consider. Stuff like fuel (last figure I saw said the M1 got something like 5 gallons / mile - we have a lot of vehicles burning a LOT of fuel), food, hazard pay, medical supplies, water.

You know where most of that money is going to go? Services. Everything from lawyers to porta-potties. The military contracts people to come in and set stuff up, even for tent cities. It isn't for weapons. Its for support. Do general contractors count as military industry in this instance? When I hear the terms military industry or defense contractors, I (and I'm willing to bet most people) think of the Lockheed Martins, Northrop Grummans and Boeings.

But I hope that you're right. I hope they used a $30k JDAM rather than a $2.5M Tomahawk.

What I'm really feeling, though, is that the poor, shoeless, malnourished, uneducated 8-year-old girl who we are getting ready to maim or decapitate on a 100, or 10, or 5-to-1 basis doesn't matter nearly as much as the Marine second lieutenant who was the star quarterback on his high school football team in West Virginia.

I will stand skeptical on this CNN reporter's statement overall, though "they're ambushing us and shooting our POWs in the head". On the first point, I have been remarking to myself that the term "ambush" seems to have come into a new, liberal usage that smacks of propaganda. On the second, I will wait for more information; the reporter's clear implication is that they were executed -- taken prisoner and then executed. I would say that the 5 poor bastards who could speak to that are not feeling the liberty to do so at this moment. CNN must have an inside source.

Doug took some grief for raising "blitzkrieg" and, while I think the parallels aren't supportable, I'm not sure that our intentions, our optimism, our faith in our PGMs, and our sense of righteousness are going to make much difference to those 5, 10, or 100 innocents if events and Saddam "force our hand" and compel us to act more aggressively to protect that second lieutentant. I think it'll pretty much be all one, big blitzkrieg to them.

Boeing is the second largest defense contractor - Lockheed Martin is the largest. If the Northrop Grumman / TRW deal ever goes through, they will become number one.

Boeing is the second largest defense contractor - Lockheed Martin is the largest. If the Northrop Grumman / TRW deal ever goes through, they will become number one.

Thanks. I worked for Lockheed Martin a while back, and was going to correct this error, but I wasn't sure if Boeing had somehow passed Lockheed in the 5 years since then. Though since Lockheed got the JSF contract, that would be rather surprising.

What's changed since then? JSF?

How about $700+bn tax cut, mostly for corporations and upper income brackets?

but you didn't directly draw that parallel, yn0t_ did, so perhaps I should be taking him more to task. Let me think about that...

I will tell you my electric blanket story sometime.... Nine.... Mmmmmmm.

Shock and Awe will be lost on that little girl.

I think we need one that goes up to 11.

I just think maybe I appreciate what he was saying from a "functional" perspective.

Well, we can take comfort that Sarab simply died, but her little sister Yasimina lost one arm, a foot, and part of her lower jaw. Not so simple. Also not so simple the poor lance corporal who lost both legs this past weekend to a land mine.

Aw, I was gonna say that.

Aw, I was gonna say that.

You're losing your touch, Tony.

This military strategy is about doing what's best for the largest amount of people.

Ah, so finding WMD and frustrating terrorism have been placed on the back burner, have they?

If you can't tell, this "sliding scale" of relative worth that you have put forward still disturbs me. I mean, once we have put any of our reservations aside about the justifications for this invasion and are fully committed to "Support Our Troops!", who gets to decide what the ratio is? Is it 1-to-5? 1-to-100? or maybe 1-to-200?

Like Yasimina was going to hop in the Mercedes with her mom and zip across the desert for a brief vacation in Lebanon?

Hmmm. Again, I thought this was all about WMD.

I have to ask: What would have been the negative consequences if we had delayed this 6 months -- had a little more parlay with the countries whose support we *said* we wanted? How about 12 months?

July 2002. Take what you like from this. For me, it just confirms the feeling that the decision to invade was a done deal long ago and that all of the dancing around about WMD, terrorism links, UN resolutions, and weapons inspections were immaterial as regards the outcome.

Also in that issue, Seymour Hersch's recap on how the administration falsified "proof" of Iraqui nuclear capability (and did a laughably bad job of it at that....What, you say that 98 percent of Rush listeners still consider this fabrication to be the gospel truth? I'm shocked!)

Don't forget there are stories coming out of Basra (which may or may not be true) of people being shot because they tried to leave the city.

it's *they* who are ultimately responsible for collateral damage caused by civilians being too close to the fighting.

You say that you're opposed to this war

but you don't seem to take that into account here. If we weren't there fighting a war that most of the world is opposed to, then US soldiers wouldn't be killing any Iraqi civilians.

It's pointless to lay blame. Noncombatants have been being killed ever since wars stopped being personal fights amongst aristocracy. It sucks, but there's nothing you can do about it.

The same goes for Basra. The attacks from there were staged from a hospital. Obviously those are not exactly at the top of a target list. Any civilians in that hospital were put at risk because of the Iraqis purposely using them as a shield.

I'm saying that you can trace these problems pretty far back. I suppose that there's no point at which it makes a lot of sense to either pass the buck or stop it.

Yeah. The CIA in no way helped the Baath takeover in the late 60s or their Communist executions and assassinations before and after that. Sure.

I also have strong problems in saying that an American life is worth more than an Iraqui life, especially when that Iraqui life isn't a combatant.

I've seen a couple others use Iraqui, but when the Grammar Cop is doing it, I need to speak up.

if the American forces accomplish their objective, many more Iraqis are likely to have a good life

The reason we have so much stockpiled is because of minimum production rates. Any production facility needs to keep the lines moving. If you stop the lines, the price per unit skyrockets. To keep that from happening with really important stuff (like ammo), the government has a minimum that they have the ATKs produce per month. This builds up, because even if they have surplus, the government charges the services to fire those weapons. During the late 90s we didn't exactly go through a lot of tank rounds, or other ground vehicles (like MLRS or Bradleys).

That means it is a surplus. Know what is funny (since it is your tax dollars at work)? It is cheaper to have this surplus than to stop the lines and start them again.