...and why is that necessary? are Democrats supposed to defend anything any party member does? right or wrong? it's too weird - acting as if this is some 'reality show'?

if anything, there is little connection between what americans, and what the Rs & Ds, wanted or signed up for.

it's a paradox that in the US we have wanted better systems for education, health, or elections that reflexed our true needs...and the government thought they could do it there...while we are STILL waiting to get it here?!!

dude, the truth is what matters. maybe alternative reality is your gig, but some of us rather deal in the IS and not blind faith.

If...and that is a huge 'if'...you want some real light on the subject...try this;

https://www.yahoo.com/news/served-afghanistan-us-marine-twice-100000389.html


we were there to win hearts and minds, and we had a Republican administration to leave that charge?

see the example of a member of t͟h͟a͟t͟ glee and chess club above ˣ

signed up for rubbing out Bin Laden [and his pals], and after he was 'sleeping w/the fishes', our attention should have turned to the problems at home.

EX: again, see the comments above ˣ

didn't jump on the bandwagon for 'nation building' - especially when our nation is/was in need of repair at all most every level imaginable.

EX: like education...to repeat, referred to the example of the commentator above ˣ

Finally, to quote the author of the article, "What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you."


[To the others, can anyone explain the 'beijing biden' thing? is it one of those off-right things? like covid not being dangerous? or masks are oppression? would ask him to explain but that's too much like asking a heavy one-legged gal to a slow dance.]


BTW: give some odds on the '22 and '24 races!

* crickets riding tumbleweeds *


ˣᵀᵃⁿᵍˡᵉᵈ ᵀʷᶦˢᵗᵉᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵀᵒʳⁿ ᵀʰᵒʳⁿˢ

4:26....at the station, what he's calling a "sobriety test" is, in most states, a breathalyzer test that you must agree to, or blood, and not saying yes and taking it is considered refusal because people do waste time arguing in an attempt to score lower, and ain't nobody got time for that. They told him clearly you must answer yes or no, or it's considered refusal, which is absolutely normal procedure from what I've seen. He answered "Listen, I was a US Marine, ....bla bla bla...let's take a minute....bla bla bla...explain my rights...bla bla." and never took it, which is refusal under the law.
5:33 confirms this, breathalyzer.

They must have claimed he failed the field test or why cuff him and require more tests at the station, something he omits, which makes sense since he said he joked around while taking it, marching left right instead of heel toeing. At first he insisted on making numerous phone calls first, like that's a right....he knows his rights....Then he wants to stop to set up his camera to record the stop...Then argues more about the test itself. The cops were clearly annoyed with him arguing and not complying before he got out of the car, but he persisted right into jail.

I wouldn't trust his biased recollection to include all the facts, especially since he is "conducting a study on racial profiling". Sounded to me like a case of arguing himself into a charge he was lucky to get out of because the cops stupidly didn't record the stop. From his own descriptions, in California at least, he's totally guilty....you have no right to discussions, and only an idiot would believe the cops will tell you your rights honestly anyway, so why keep asking except to waste time and annoy?

The sheer energy advantage of jet aircraft overwhelms any maneuverability advantages of WWII aircraft, so when a modern aircraft can't outturn and/or out-energy a 40 year old fighter, it's a steaming pile of shit...

And it's always completely irrelevant until it's completely relevant. eg. new technology comes online jamming guided missles and reducing planes to cannon warfare...

And I'd love to see how your prancing sniper does when he has to get in to knife range (close ground support where cannon fire does matter...).

The plane is an overpriced turd that has been repeatedly polished to give it the shine of a gem, but ultimately it's still a turd.

I love the last line though... "then the rest of the enemies would be mopped up by..." By? By the 40 year old workhorses that the turd is supposed to replace... X D

The F-35 will replace the US Air Force A-10s and F-16s, US Navy F/A-18s, US Marine Corps AV-8B Harriers and F/A-18s, and UK Harrier GR7s and Sea Harrier

Two of your three mop up planes are already F35's. Good luck with that!

I don't think anyone is calling them unstoppable. There is just, as you point out, an unwillingness to do so. Internally to each warlord's zone, there is the inability to do so. Across the African Union, well, the majority dislike the precedent of unseating dictators for war crimes, so they are unwilling to help. The rest of the world is sitting far away, and comfortable. Our war hawks out here refuse to go in because there is nothing in it for them. Our peacniks refuse to go in because war is bad, end of conversation.

The sad truth is there are very few people in the world who both care about the plight of such people AND are willing to endorse intervention.

Look no further than Somalia. The world powers decide to use military escorts to distribute aid to the country fairly. A few US marines get killed, and immediately EVERY world power pulls out and leaves things alone. To this day standard warlord manuals clearly state that in the case of UN peacekeepers or foreign intervention, shoot 2-3 of them and wait a week for them all to go home.

One jarhead helps another?

(ok, that doesn't work since he's Russian Army? vs US Marine, but still...)

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video US Marines engage insurgents in Baghdad. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Details: CNN article

As both a human being and a former US Marine, I find this behavior deplorable and sickening. I hope that these individuals are quickly identified and face the full extent of the law.

Not only are the actions barbaric, but they also threaten to undo any "good" our mission in Afghanistan has tried to achieve; it undermines whatever positive influence we may yet possess on the Arab Street; it emboldens our enemies and critics; and it disgraces USMC forces who have and continue to serve with honor.

I think you misquoted that, shouldn't it read, ""The AlphaDog Proto is a lab prototype for the Legged Squad Support System, a robot being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA and the US Marine Corps. When fully developed the system will be capable of draining tax-dollars at a rate impossibe for current technologies to match."

This thing has Congressional Pork all over it. If they could just cut all the utterly stupid defense contracts like this one the US economy might have a fighting chance.

1. My online moniker is the first 8 letters of my high school nickname. The whole thing wouldn't fit on the scoreboard of a late 80s pinball high score board.
2. I was mute for a week with strep throat, and still managed to seduce someone using only physical comedy and facial expressions.
3. I've logged 79 of the 110 Messier Objects.
4. I once killed a groundhog because he was a legitimate threat to my food supply.
5. I can do amazing things with a map and compass.
6. I can do something with my tongue that I've never seen another human do. (This is in no way related to #2)
7. Al Gore once beat me in a foot race.
8. I can sing the theme to Land of the Lost.
9. I live closer to a trailhead than a gorcery store.
10. I am the only member of my family to live more than 25 miles away from where I was born.
11. I owe #10 to my time in the US Marines.
12. When someone asks "are there any questions" I almost always ask "What's the atomic weight of beryllium?"
13. When someone tells me the title of a book they're reading, I almost always ask, "did you get to the part where he dies yet?"
14. I can tell time and navigate by looking at the sky.
15. I love fast, upside down, looping rollercoasters, but the merry go round makes me sick.
16. I once filtered and drank mosquito infested muck as an alternative to dehydrating.
17. I bought my first couch at age 41.
18. I've never purchased a car, although I have bartered for many.
19. I once saw a medical professional use a frozen hotdog to insert a condom into a drunk guy's rectum.
20. I owe #19 to my time in the US Marines.
21. To this very day, I still have dreams about the Leonids Meteor Storm I saw in 2001.
22. I can prove the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
23. My favorite number is 23.
24. I brew damn fine apple cider.
25. I have seen many amazing things.

Your video, US Marine Raiders: the Origin of "Gung Ho" (10min), has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't know, Farhad, missing a party crammed full of US marines could be looked upon as a blessing in disguise.

Imagine Romper Room where all the kids are drunk, short-tempered, and can kill with their bare hands.

And, yes, the US is strange and hypicritical, and that's putting it nicely.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
I always loved the body-carpet (laying on the concertina wire) or the rifle stairs tricks.
I feel like a boyscout whenever I compare myself to these heroes.


Yeah, I asked a Marine buddy of mine, "Who actually does that body-carpet stuff?" Without breaking stride or cracking a smile, he said, "Privates."

>> ^nickreal03:
This is not a game these are people's life. Nothing wonderful about killing anyone. Get a life!


Oh but there is something wonderful about getting shot at.

In the words of Winston churchill, "there is nothing like being fired upon with no effect"

Also you gotta love snipers.

"As far as you, this particular Colonel might have never worked with armor"

Actually he was an Armored Colonel. Since when do Chaplains, Lawyers or Doctors command assaulting regiments? You're really overreaching here.

"Maybe he was briefed that he would be looking at the UK counterpart to the Bradley"

Maybe, if so the people who briefed him were idiots. The Scorpion is a light tank and plays a completely different role. In any case I didn't know a single soldier in my time with the armored who couldn't identify 99% of the armored vehicles in service from front or side silhouettes or from a picture ESPECIALLY not ones so common as a Scorpion and a Bradley. The zipperheads drilled on that stuff all the time.

When I was in Basic Training we had a US Marine who'd served for 5 years in the US forces in my platoon. He was a dual Canadian/US citizen and after working with the Canadian forces on an exercise he saw the difference in calibre and enrolled in the Canadian forces. He said that Canadian basic training was tougher than anything he'd gone through as a marine.

EVERY enlisted member goes through that training.

Really if you've never worked extensively with other forces what position are you in to compare?

In front of CFB Shilo there is an M109 which was LOST by American forces on exercise. For those who don't know an M109 is mobile artillery, it looks like a tank only taller. After a US exercise on a Canadian base it's common to find teepees made of M16s that have been left behind. These are not things competent soldiers do.

Oh that's okay, I don't have any expectations regarding you getting back to my inane internet correspondence.

The one saving grace is that the US has an entirely volunteer professional army (for now), although you may have heard the phrase "backdoor draft" which entails making those "volunteers" "volunteer" a little more than they might wish, by extending and adding tours of duty and such. We also have the National Guard, which is a part-time force of civilians, who ordinarily offer their services for something like a weekend a month during peacetime, but may be in for extended duties during times of conflict, such as now. There are laws to protect them, such as making it a legal requirement of their employers to have their jobs open for them when they return. These 'Guardsmen' do a lot of the heavy lifting and convoy work, and are in harm's way as much as any other soldier in the case of Iraq. Maybe they do patrols, too.

But by and large, you can shirk any amount of military duty as an American. Every male has the slightly ominous duty of registering for the draft at age eighteen, but aside from that for most Americans the conflict is just pictures on a screen. I think that's part of the problem. Without any real experience, war is fun adventure, a bold crusade for freedom for some of couch-bound America.

Except for the Mothers, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters of the slain. Then it's an entirely different story of immense sorrow mixed with some justifiable pride, one by the grace of God I can't tell.

There are many of these large SUV vehicles driving around getting 30L/100km gas mileage, with these little ribbons on the back that say "support our troops". The drivers clearly can't connect the two concepts of consumption and empire.

Get this, the ribbons aren't even adhesive. They're magnets, so they can be removed at the slightest whim, should the war become unfashionable. I often remove them and toss them up on their tall roofs, surely not to be found for years.

In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
Oh and sorry for the late reply, haven't had the time nor energy to do much of anything but work these past weeks. Just couldn't get anything remotely coherent written down, but hopefully you can discern what I wrote just now


In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
Yeah we've got *sort of* a compulsory military service, in that we're all drafted at the year we turn 18. Then during the draft, we're going through a series of tests to decide what position within the military (if any) we're most suited for/would like the most, and hopefully we're trained for that position for 9-15 months. If memory serves, the tests are separated between physical strength, endurance, intelligence and mental health, all rated from 1-9 were 1 basically means you're dead and 9 means you're in excellent condition for that particular test.
Thing is, about 1 in 10 willing people are actually put in military service today due to cutbacks, and the general concensus is that about 1 in 10 drafted say they want to do their military service at all. And as you can see, the ones who are willing do get some perks, like being able to goof off like that
But the decline of our military is not at all bad if you ask me, first of all because we don't have any enemies, secondly because we don't have much of anything that other countries would want and thirdly because we're members of just about every treaty and defence agreement you can think of. It's just necessary to get enough new blood in order to keep our arms industry going, which sadly is too important for our economy to scrap.

Guess it's kind of different from the states, eh? Don't have a clue how you guys go about it to be honest, but it certainly must be more serious. What with you being the world's only remaining superpower and all. Quite a reputation to live up to for sure!

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Well, I think that looks fun as hell! Is some amount of compulsory military service required of Swedish youth, as it is in some countries?

In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
Basically the reporter explains the situation, that the group of youngsters doing their military service training are making a video showing off some cool bazooka action in true US marine spirit, or so they gather from having watched war movies. For some reason they thought it'd be fun to do it in the nude (DON'T ask me why) and the reporter tells us why they should have clothes on (to avoid getting burned by the hot shells and bazooka pipe), then speculates if there really is a rule saying a soldier have to wear clothes or not. We're also told some bigwig in the defence department doesn't approve of the image this video conveys of the Swedish army, but seriously who are we trying to kid. Let them have their fun while they can, they've been educated about the risks and dangers of those weapons.
Personally, I'm in favour of dismantling our the entire defence establishment and just keep the weapon sales industry, because sadly that's one business we can't afford to lose at the moment.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Can you offer any additional insight, Kreegath? Personally I think it's perfectly healthy.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Naked-Swedish-Artillery