Posts by Rich Lock
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OnPoint: A Friday-Appropriate Hager Excerpt, in reply to Just thinking,
Wow SAS Officers just do logistics.
I can understand the confusion. Their Corp belt is like a logistics blue seatbelt.
The supposed "vote" was about commiting a War Crime.
They train harder, and have other qualities, a propensity to murder isn't one.1. Don't confuse US special forces, which the are 'vote' troops in question, with the SAS.
2. No, they don't 'just do logistics'. However, they don't tend to go out in the field as much as NCO's. They are generally more concerned with strategic considerations and support (logistics) for smaller teams in field. The strategic aspect outweighs the logistics aspect.
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Officers are mostly involved in logistics and strategy issues, and generally do not deploy into the field. NCO's do most of the in-field work, and it is usual to deploy in teams of four, or thereabouts.
NCO's joining the SAS lose all previous rank and have to work their way back up. One of the selection criteria is the ability to act independently and on your own initiative to achieve the wider strategic objective.
The argument would have been that to leave them tied up would have inevitably led fairly quickly to their discovery and release, and the local bad guys would then have known there was a US team, on foot, in the local area. Dead bodies are easier to hide, and can't give out useful information like numbers, direction of travel, etc.
In my view, it is a failure - a horrendously bad failure - of planning and intelligence that the team didn't have an extraction option in the situation they found themselves in, except to start killing locals. It is also symptomatic of their mindset that that was a seriously discussed option in relation to the very people they were supposedly there to free and protect from Al-Quaeda and the Taliban.
Guess they just had to destroy the village in order to save it, right?
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Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Rich Lock,
Probably "Psychopaths and big money - it all adds up" from NZH.
Dr Robert Hare puts the incidence in the general population at 1%.
Apparently, this can rise to 4-5% in upper management, although I don't have a handy reference for that.
Still, this is an interesting article. -
...and even if you consider that it would have been justifiable to protect yourself and your troopmates, on the basis that you were effectively alone and unsupported and releasing them would have been signing your own death warrent, I'd like to know how that argument applies here:
A UN complaint contained in the latest batch of cables published by the whistle-blowing organisation suggests that in 2006 US troops killed at least 10 civilians, including five children and an elderly woman, in the central town of Ishaqi.
The incident is raised in a letter from Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Mr Alston's letter to US officials, which went unanswered, challenges the American military version of events. It says that autopsies carried out in the nearby city of Tikrit showed the victims had been handcuffed and shot in the head. They included a woman in her 70s and a five-month-old.
insert disclaimer about 'alleged' here, yadda yadda.
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OnPoint: A Friday-Appropriate Hager Excerpt, in reply to Tristan,
It wasn't so much that he said those things, and they didn't actually kill the goatherds.
However, in my opinion, the most striking, and chilling part of the account is that the discussion took place at all. They clearly considered that killing at least one unarmed and blameless teenage boy in more or less cold blood was a viable option. From a purely military PoV that may well be the case. But....that's pretty fucked up.
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A little harsh, Paul. Asking a question to which you personally already have an answer is quite a well-known rhetorical device intended to provoke thought in the mind of the one or ones to whom the question is addressed. It does not necessarily indicate that the one asking the question wants or requires an answer.
For the record: Personal answer = never.
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Does anyone know what it's like these days? Are The Kidz still as violently tribal? Or are friends eclectic?
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OnPoint: Other People's Wars, in reply to Stewart,
Let's be honest - if you were a military commander (Mr Mataparae, for instance) would you want to divulge all your plans for the NZDF and its deployment to a slack-brained lightweight like our current PM?
Well, that raises an interesting question. Let's flip the point around: if you were a military commander, would you want to divulge all your plans to a greenie tree-hugging unionist proto-commie, just because they happened to be PM, or in cabinet as defence minister?
There are plenty of current politicians who cut their teeth in radical movements back in the 1960's and '70's, several of whom have accumulated quite extensive Intellegence Service files.
So: when, if ever, is it appropriate for the military to act independently and withold information from the government of the day?
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Some US soldiers in the same position would have seen an Afghan with a gun and simply shot him to avoid the mission being compromised.
Or, just shot a teenage goatherder who didn't actually have a gun.
As the morning wore on, three local goat herders stumbled upon the SEALs' hiding place. Unable to verify any hostile intent from the herders, Dietz attempted to contact HQ via radio, but was unable to get an answer from anyone. Absent any higher-level guidance, LT Murphy put the decision as to what should be done with them up for a vote: Axelson voted to kill the Afghans, stating, "The military decision is obvious," in reference to the near-certainty that the herders would alert the Taliban. Dietz abstained, and Murphy allowed Luttrell the deciding vote, but warned him that the killings would have to be reported, and that they would be attacked by the "US liberal media" and would almost certainly face murder charges. Luttrell voted to release the herders. He would later state, "It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lame brained decision I ever made in my life. I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I’d turned into a f—ing liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit."
Hearts and minds, boys. Hearts and minds.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to recordari,
We are a pretty critical bunch, to be sure.
A critical mass, even...