Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Labels? Adjectives are not labels. I sincirely feel that your ideas are naive because you seem to assume all these extremely complex precision strikes will go off smooth and cheap. I think your ideas are not well thought out because you think reforming intelligence is some simple thing and you dont account for the time it will take or the enormous costs requited to reform the dozen or so major US intelligence organizations. You also seem to think its just a matter of finding the precise location of a particukar person and send in a precision team to arrest him quickly, well thats not easy. Thats exactly the mission profile of Mogadishu and those things dont go off easy, ever. Now you want to the same but with no close ground presence or armored vehicles for support and extraction. If you bring in heavy air support you just end up with a big price tag again. Not mentiuon that your plan requires many of these operations to capture the Al qaeda terrorists that you yourself admit would try to hide and be dispersed.
There are so many holes in your story that it would take hours of face to face discussion to maybe give you an idea of how wrong you are. But seeing that you threaten to make it even more personal and angry in a private setting I really see no point wasting my time to go see somebody who will yell and scream obscenties at me when I tell him his ideas are not well thought out and try to explain the weaknesses of his argument as I see them.
So why go on about this topic, Saburo?
My price tag is much cheaper than an invasion/occupation/govt building that we're prosecuting in Afghanistan right now. Success rate would be higher as covert ops are just that, covert.
You have the forces on the ready for standby when the need arises.
Big difference is that we are tracking/targeting suspects for extraction, not toppling govts and nation building. We don't need a major overhaul of our intelligence forces, they just need a common goal of actually gathering intelligence.
As far as my making it more personal and angry has to do directly on how you wish to pursue it.
You want to remain civil in private, I'll respond in kind (as I try to do here as well). If I'm yelling obsenities, it's only cause I'm responding to yours. I thought I was clear on that.
At near the start of this thread I posted I was against our policy on Afghanistan and Iraq.
You were surprised on Afghanistan. I gave you some of my reasons as to why.
Afghanistan:
How long have we been there as a military presence?
Projected for how long our continued stay?
Total dollars to date?
Total projected dollars for the whole campaign?
US and Allied casualties to date?
Projected?
Total Afghanistan civillians killed to date?
Wounded?
Al Quaeda bases/camps found?
Other terrorist bases/camps?
Where are the Al Quaeda members from Bin Laden's group?
Bin Laden?
Reason given for involvement in Afghanistan?
Bottom line is when any country invades another, the local populace tends to get up in arms about an invasion. The more civillian casualties, the breeding ground for hate and revenge.
The USSR couldn't control Afghanistan and it was on her border.
War on terror? We're going to lose if we keep invading/occupying/overthrowing other sovereign nations. We're not talking total war here where anything and everything is open for targeting (like WWII).
The only time I could recall it (non-total war) happening and working is when Vietnam invaded and overthrew Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces. After Khampuchia (former Cambodia) stabilized, Vietnam withdrew her forces.
Now we can keep going around in circles, or, how about you fill in the answers of the above questions. You should know them right? After all you're the expert.
After you're done, you tell me that the present ops in Afghanistan is the best policy.
Why don't we have Bin Laden in custody?
...And who's naive?
Unless you have nothing new to add and wish not to answer my above questions, we'll agree to remain gentlemen about it and agree to disagree.
History will prove one of us right.
Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Tell me, have you taken any cool pictures lately?
Actually sitting on some images that I have to process. Went to Vancouver, some good ones there.
How about you?