I was expecting platoons of ants marching on each other in formation. This is a skirmish, at best!

I'd have to go with Adagio for Strings by Barber. But it isn't really sad per se, more of a "I've got something in my eye" kind of song. It's possible it's actually just a very beautiful song, but that Platoon was such a tremendously depressing movie and because they always play it at funerals, now its sad.

You've all heard it before, but here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQsgE0L450&feature=player_detailpage

edit: Oh, and also, maybe that doesn't quite count as a "song" in the strictest sense.

>> ^gwiz665:

Alcohol is not the killer, the gun is. You can't kill anyone with alcohol, you need the car (or a weapon).
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
This is why amateurs should not have guns and this is why gun laws in the states are also crazy.
Might as well outlaw alcohol too then. Idiot drunks kill people on the highway, so obviously no one can be trusted to drink.
On a side note, I know an "Alcohol Enforcement Officer"... drinks more than anyone I've ever met, and not in a good way.



the same could be said for guns. it takes someone pulling the trigger to kill.

i do want to add a bit of commentary on these developing stories. between this and the jose guerera case, both cases piss me right the fuck off and heres why. In both instances you have an overwhelming force subduing another. in this case, gun toting cop vs knife toting dude. in jose's case, an entire swat team vs one armed man. the end result was death, fucking wrongful, wasteful death.

now having said that, the commentary i would like to add is this: i know that in armed conflict and escalating situations such as these (presumably, even hypothetically, ie, he could have charged the cop with the knife off screen and an attacker can close distance in most cases faster than the shooter can react and fire) it takes steel nerves and lightning reflexes reinforced by training to make the decision to fire or not fire.

........however, when i was in afghanistan, i found myself in the middle of a legit "mexican standoff". long story short, my PCC team were to accompany the scout platoon to escort a rogue afghan border patrol police general back to our FOB to speak with his superiors. When we arrived to our PCC compound we found that he was there, along with over 100 of his loyals, preparing to mount a raid of their own (they were usually running illegal checkpoints, shit like that). Naturally when they figured out that we were there to detain their leader (in their eyes, our direct orders were to not detain but persuade him to come with us, if he refused we were to leave without incident). My CO talked with the general and persuaded him to willingly come with us.....but to his loyals, we were capturing him. within seconds, the guards they had in their towers had oriented their crew served weapons inwards, ANP loyals were loading their RPG's with armor piercers and taking fighting positions behind buildings oriented at us, you could hear dozens of ak's "racking" (chambering a round). There was over a hundred of them and less than 20 of us. Had it exploded into a firefight, we certainly woulved fucked all shit up.......but few, if any, of us were leaving alive. all it wouldve taken was one round to go off from either side to fully escalate that encounter to a full on gun battle. fortunately we kept our cool (as did the anp loyals), assessed the situation, navigated the battle space, reinforced by our training which emphasizes self control, discipline, and situational awareness, and we were able to diffuse the situation without incident. Not a single round was fired. and we had accomplished our mission (btw turns out the general had been hoarding police gun stocks, by the thousands, and had cached them at his house and was selling them off to taliban)

now my point being if i and the members of my team had the intestinal fortitude and mental tenacity to diffuse that highlyvolatile situation without incident, especially considering the higher stakes (this was in the middle of a fucking war, not in someones neighborhood or on a crosswalk), so to speak.......what is your fucking excuse Tucson swat team? what is your fucking excuse, cop in this video?

Amusing.

If the godless liberals made this man wear a helmet, and the unions, which steal corporation's earnings so that they have to skimp on manufacturing more durable products, this guy wouldn't have been able to do gymnastics at all! Did you see how small that truck was? Government must have bought GM.
Gay people were probably watching Platoon when this happened!
Let's hope he has insurance, because Obama may let this guy get past the US' borders, which have no mine fields, barbed wire or moats filled with snakes and alligators, and make babies! These babies would surely grow up to blow up Oklahoma and bankrupt hospitals.
This is the kind of thing that wouldn't happen if the TEN COMMANDMENTS were etched into every public school's drinking fountains!

If the godless liberals made this man wear a helmet, and the unions, which steal corporation's earnings so that they have to skimp on manufacturing more durable products, this guy wouldn't have been able to do gymnastics at all! Did you see how small that truck was? Government must have bought GM.
Gay people were probably watching Platoon when this happened!
Let's hope he has insurance, because Obama may let this guy get past the US' borders, which have no mine fields, barbed wire or moats filled with snakes and alligators, and make babies! These babies would surely grow up to blow up Oklahoma and bankrupt hospitals.
This is the kind of thing that wouldn't happen if the TEN COMMANDMENTS were etched into every public school's drinking fountains!

Homeworld was a blast - and so was part II. But where rlse do I know that music from?

Ahhh, Wikipedia had the answer: Platoon.

Would be nice to
have a
politician

Tough as nails.
Honest as Injuns.

Above!
Above you!

Look high,
My mighty platoons
And never forget

this moment

First:

When we fight a war, do we leave the tactics and battles up to individual divisions and platoons, or is there a "central command" coordinating the effort?

Given two armies, one that was left to "every division, platoon, and squad for itself" and one that was coordinated by a central command, which would be more likely to win the war?

Second:

We have been told time and again that only the wealthy know how to create wealth. We've been told that they are the only ones who know how to create jobs.

Well, over the past ten years, the rich have gotten twice as rich as they were before. So when is this prosperity of theirs going to spread down to us? Is there any evidence of it happening at all?

None whatsoever.

Is there any evidence that it will happen in the near future?

None that I can see.

You know, a fresh coat of paint, better looking wood stalls, and some germanic ancestory sellers there, and I'd thought it was a Texas gun show. Not much of a difference between the seller's and those I've seen at some gun shows. And the prices aren't to off either...

Seriously, if your going to make an arguement for or against, showing stastics that heavily favor your arguement will never win over the other side.

If firearms did deter crime, why is crime still taking place in those areas? Last I checked, a firearm can't protect you from identity theft, nor a chemical spill. They do not protect you from guys on Wall Street, selling you a derviatives future contract that will ulimately fail, cus they engineered it to fail (i.e. Goldman Sachs). Or your business of shrimp, cus some group of idiots short-cutted design plans that spills 18K of oil barrels/day.

Yes, a firearm would protect me, when some mugger attacks to. So would my man-eating dog, platoon of USMC's, or Ashbringer (WoW sword). So to, to being observant of the enviroment and hence, not walking in to an ambush in the first place!

hollywoodbob i was thinking the same thing

for the cost of that platoon we could probably feed a few of the starving children in the US

The LAST thing I would want with me if I were tripping my ballz off would be a rocket launcher, M16, and a full platoon of armed men.

Oh and alcohol...booze dont mix man...

In my own particular idiom, I want to comment on this whole "killing innocent civilians" line of thinking that some of you are using. For example - this guy in the vid. He isn't qualifying what he defines as an 'innocent civilian'. I expect his persective is something along these lines... 1. Iraq war is unjust. 2. Threfore all American actions in it are UNjust. 3. Therefore, aggressive action against anyone in Iraq is 'killing innocent civilians'. We don't know jack-all about this guy's actual situation except what he's telling us, which is obviously filtered, slanted, and biased to the nth degree. I expect the members of his platoon would have a very different interpretation.

People use the phrase to make themselves sound angelic, and to label things they don't like as demonic. So when you trot out the phrase 'killing innocent civilians' it makes it sound like the soldiers are going around, rounding up random citizens, and blowing them away. In reality, that 'innocent civilian' could very well have been a foreign nationalist Taliban jackass with a rocket launcher. Or (more likely) he had to shoot at a Taliban guy and innocent civilians were in the vicinity caught in the crossfire. It is vitually a complete guarantee that no person at ANY level ever told this guy, "Hey - go out and start shooting innocent civilians". That's in his head.

So this guy needs a little more factual evidence before I give any credence to his wild accusations. Especially since he loses 100 points on the 'sanity scale' for being a truther. Plus his language is idiotically generic. I very much doubt there is a scrap of evidence of any kind that American soldiers were ever ordered to 'kill everyone in a crowd once there is a single shot'. It is patently ridiculous to claim that 'EVERY apartment building in Bagdhad' has been blown up by the military. This guy is clearly two cans short of a six-pack.

I sent this to my friend Malcolm who is in charge of an AmeriCorp "platoon" in St Louis. I'm planning to go visit in about a month. I hope he can sneak me into one of the assassin training programs for a day or two.

Casualties of war; as I approach the barricade
Where's the enemy? Who do I invade?
Bullets of Teflon, bulletproof vest rip
Tear ya outta ya frame with a bag full of clips
Cause I got a family that waits for my return
To get back home is my main concern
I'ma get back to New York in one piece
but I'm bent in the sand that is hot as the city streets
Sky lights up like fireworks blind me
Bullets, whistlin over my head remind me...
President Bush said attack
Flashback to Nam, I might not make it back
Missile hits the area, screams wake me up
from a war of dreams, heat up the M-16
Basic training, trained for torture
Take no prisoners, and I just caught ya
Addicted to murder, send more bodybags
They can't identify em, leave the nametags
I get a rush when I see blood, dead bodies on the floor

Day divides the night and night divides the day
It's all hard work and no play
More than combat, it's far beyond that
Cause I got a kill or be killed kind of attack
Area's mapped out, there'll be no, Stratego
Me and my platoon make a boom wherever we go
But what are we here for? Who's on the other side of the wall?
Somebody give the President a call
But I hear warfare scream through the air
Back to the battlegrounds, it's war they declare
A Desert Storm: let's see who reigns supreme
Something like Monopoly: a government scheme
Go to the Army, be all you can be
Another dead soldier? Hell no, not me
So I start letting off ammunition in every direction
Allah is my only protection

But wait a minute, Saddam Hussein prays the same
and this is Asia, from where I came
I'm on the wrong side, so change the target
Shooting at the general; and where's the sergeant?
Blame it on John Hardy Hawkins for bringing me to America
Now it's mass hysteria
I get a rush when I see blood, dead bodies on the floor

The war is over, for now at least
Just because they lost it don't mean it's peace
It's a long way home, it's a lot to think about
Whole generation, left in doubt
Innocent families killed in the midst
It'll be more dead people after this
So I'm glad to be alive and walkin
Half of my platoon came home in coffins
Except the general, buried in the Storm
in bits and pieces no need to look for em
I played it slick and got away with it
Rigged it up so they would think they did it
Now I'm home on reserves and you can bet
when THEY call, I'm going AWOL
Cause it ain't no way I'm going back to war
when I don't know who or what I'm fighting for
So I wait for terrorists to attack
Every time a truck backfires I fire back
I look for shelter when a plane is over me
Remember Pearl Harbor? New York could be over, G
Kamikaze, strapped with bombs
No peace in the East, they want revenge for Saddam
Did I hear gunshots, or thunder?
No time to wonder, somebody's going under
Put on my fatigues and my camoflouge
Take control, cause I'm in charge
When I snapped out of it, it was blood, dead bodies on the floor

Wow - I honestly didn't think this would get sifted. I submitted because I was in the Korengal June - July of '06. I was an engineer so I never left the base. When we got dropped of by Chinook there (it is inaccessible by road during the spring months due to flooding from the snow melt) it was basically just one platoon of Marines living in makeshift bunkers made out of logs. No perimeter, no nothing. We spent the months establishing the perimeter (theres a chance that the Constantina wire in one of the shots was installed by me) and setting up a reinforced barracks area. In the month or so we were there there were 6 rocket attacks and two small arms skirmishes on the base. The Chinook that left before our leaving the base took small arms fire and one of the Marines inside got hit in the shoulder. So when we got our Chinook ride out it took evasive maneuvers. It was a pretty fucking crazy ride. One of my sergeants got sick and ralphed in his dirty laundry bags because of the banks the chopper was pulling. Crazy times. Its disheartening to see that 3 years later not much has changed.