Posts by John Holley
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Lets hope they are right for all our sake Russell.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Have to agree. We are just seeing the other side of the coin. You can understand the reaction of some in the US given the celebrations on the news through the last decades when successful terrorist attacks have occurred. Doesn't justify it but highlights something basic in humans best documented in "Lord of the Flies".
I watched the news today and it took me back the almost 10 years since 9/11. Watching the Twin Towers attack was a sobering reminded where this really all started and the 1000s who have died. (Personally I remember getting up in the middle of the night in time to watch the second plane attack - we were getting ready to deploy to East Timor and within hours the world had changed as we knew it - and we were about to deploy across the border from the largest Muslim nation in the world!)
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Not really. Al-Qaeda operates in a much different manner to the IRA. There is not the centralised command and control (and logistics) that the IRA had.
What we also ignore is the 100s/1000s of deaths Al-Qaeda has some responsibility for via aligned jihadi groups through the Middle East e.g. Gaza and Iraq, Africa and Asia. Al-Qeada is a trans-national terrorist organisation fundamentally different in it's organisation and influence compared to the IRA.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to webweaver,
So you are saying this was a unlawful, premeditated act? Where is your evidence?
I'm talking about a legal definition here of what murder is. You also seem to imply that shooting someone in self defence is murder? I guess you are taking a particular moral stance here? (Certainly not one based in law)
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to webweaver,
It would have been a bonus to see him captured, but given there appears to have been a fire fight, that was not an option. Killing isn't murder when they are wanted for mass murder and are shooting back at you.
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Hard News: Libya, in reply to Clint Fern,
Chinese embassy is an outlier. It was the only CIA directed strike of the campaign, but Tenet never admitted that the CIA deliberately targeted the embassy. The circumstantial evidence relates to the fact that Chinese agents were buying up F117 parts from downed aircraft so there is a suspicion this may have been to counter their intel gathering, but you can read more at Wikipedia
As an aside, the US provided around 70% of the aircraft used.
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Hard News: Libya, in reply to Neil Morrison,
The US/NATO did have the technology but terrain and weather made it harder. There was a belief from air power advocates that Warden's "Five Rings" theory would work and that Serbia could be brought to heel by air power alone - it wasn't until there was a threat of land invasion (NATO forces lined up on the border) that Serbia gave in.
If anything, the campaign highlighted that air power alone cannot achieve strategic objectives. In Libya, allied air power is providing freedom of action to the rebels that they did not have until the no-fly zone was enforced.
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Hard News: Libya, in reply to Clint Fern,
Nope. NATO was the reason. The NATO targetting process was a nightmare along with a reluctance to risk allied aircraft. The USA, for example, deployed at great cost, a AH-64 SQN, but never used them due to the AD threat.
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Hard News: Libya, in reply to Russell Brown,
another Kosovo?*
It would be good if the goals could be as well summed-up as “Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back”, in the words of one NATO spokesman. Not sure if that’s the case though.
which is far preferable to “another Bosnia”.
Which was the risk.
There are some very real differences here. The use of force by NATO in Kosovo was aimed at stopping ethnic cleansing. In particular:
President Clinton, on March 24, 1999 stated that the objectives for the United States were :1. To demonstrate the seriousness of NATO’s opposition to [the Serb] aggression [against Kosovar Albanians] and [NATO’s] support for peace.
2. To deter the Serbs from attacking helpless Kosovar Albanians and to make them [the Serbs] pay a price for their actions if they continued to do so.
3. To damage Serbia’s capacity to wage war against Kosovo by seriously diminishing [Serbia’s] military capabilities.Just a few days later the NATO Secretary General gave these as objectives :
1. Stop the killing in Kosovo
2. End the refugee crisis; make it possible for them to return
3. Create conditions for political solutions based on Ramboulliet AccordNow what happened was political considerations meant NATO gradually escalated the air war. But they never conducted a "Suppression of Enemy Air Defences" (SEAD) campaign meaning NATO air was kept about 15000 feet and was relatively ineffective against ground forces and let the Serbs accelerate their ethnic cleansing.
In Libya there have been no such constraints and the Allies started with a SEAD campaign so now have air superiority across Libya.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to peter mclennan,
Having been involved in the whole supercity creation I can say, personally, that the biggest challenge after Rodney and the ATA, was the culture that some Auckland City staff brought to the mix. Many just could not believe that other councils might do some things better. I could go through a long laundry list of stuff, but trust me, until the "Auckland City" culture is replaced with a truly inclusive culture across the region we will see these issues occurring.