US soldiers that bombed Canadians honored as heroes

[Zero]

Originally posted by Asher
Of course they didn't do it intentionally...if they did it intentionally it'd be murder instead of manslaughter, wouldn't it?

The idea behind punishing these pilots is to try to ensure people in the future are far more careful about who they drop their bombs on, perhaps even followinng procedure.

Praising them as heroes disgusts me, though, and I do still think they need to be punished.

Now I'm going to get the hell out of this thread before Tingkai comes in blasting anti-American rhetoric and starting typical flamewars.

well u shut me up since u just about said wat i wanted to say

let me just repeat hailing them as hero is retarded

but in addition

"It shouldn't destroy more lives," says fundraiser John Russo.

That line is dumb since that line would indicate punishing any offenders of any crime is wrong.

EDIT:
one more addition:
Friendly fire should be a tolerable thing during war. I dont know exactly what the situation is but they should still be tried at least as man slaughter and let the court decide from there.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Don't worry, Moby, I'll get around to you, but it's late and I'm coming down with a cold or some such crapola.

Besides, we've already done the so-called Highway of Death thing over and over. Most of the dead were vehicles. WTF would you have done, handed 'em flowers and kissed 'em on the cheek as they drove on out with heavy weapons and armor? **** 'em, if they wanted to leave that bad, they wouldn't have taken their AFV's with 'em, and when they bailed from the vehicles, most of 'em survived.

Anyway, I'll get to the rest of your "war of the roses" stuff tomorrow.

Originally posted by - Groucho -
The thing I don't get is that both the pilot and the AWAC seem to have decided (if the leaked transcript is correct) on the basis of unidentified ground fire to just bomb something. How did they know those weren't American special forces down there? It was ground fire, not directed at the plane, so how could they not think that SOMEBODY on their side was likely down there fighting?

It just seems insane to drop a bomb on a firefight that doesn't threaten you when your own guys could be involved.

If if was a firefight involving friendlies, AWACS would have had comms either from JSTARS and/or from staff pukes on the ground, to coordinate air support and transport elements. Since there was none of that going on, there was no reason to assume that there was a firefight, which there wasn't. (firing is not the same ) What these guys saw was lots of muzzle flashes, some tracers (can't see the angle accurately), so they assumed from the lack of info that everything down there was a message for them. Who FUBARed is up for grabs. Nobody here has actually seen the inquiry evidence, and such inquiries often shaft lower level people in the field, even if there are FUBARs up the chain of command.

[The Mad Monk]

[disney]

A-L-L F-U-C

K-E-D-U-P

[/disney]

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by MOBIUS

What happened to the pilots of that jet that sent those civilians plunging to their deaths in a cable car in Italy?

Dont carve it in stone, but as I recall they were at least partially exonerated. They werent hot-dogging or doing any of the other bull**** they were accused of by the press.
The ski resort including the cable car was not on their maps at all.
It was shown (with some very cool computer simulations) that given the type of exercise they were flying and the difficulty of the terrain (very steep mountains and valleys) that it was impossible for them to accurately differentiate the heights and so always stay above 500 ft.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Asher
The cable car thing was way more than a year ago, I think it's more like five years.

And the Wedding thing and the Canadian one aren't "peacetime".

Sorry, I don't think "regular" cuts it.

Oh, I forgot the US sub surfacing under the Japanese ship carrying those school kids...

Sorry.

[Saint Marcus]

they weren't school kids...were they?

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Asher
The cable car thing was way more than a year ago, I think it's more like five years.

3 actually...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by MikeH


Oh come on, you know better than that. Apart from all our special force involvement our Tornadoes took on the most dangerous ground attack missions on the runways and our armoured units attacked into Iraq the same as yours did.

Don't change the facts just to respond to troll with troll. If there's any nation the US can't criticise for not fighting it's the UK, mores the pity.

Actually, your SOF guys and the RAF did a pretty spectacular job. Your Royal Engineers also.

It wasn't the fault of your armoured forces, but they did attack into a relatively quiet area, because the two remnants of divisions they hit were pretty low on motivation and had been pretty heavily worked by air strikes during the air phase. MOBIUS' complaint, to the extent I can figure it out, is that more British soldiers were killed by the US in a fratricidal incident than were killed by the Iraqis. The totals for killed (in the ground phase, don't know if there were British air or SOF fatalities) was nine killed by US close support (in one or two recce vehicles), and four killed by the Iraqis, IIRC.

My sarcasm/trolling to MOBIUS was because it seems he'd have been happier if it was a couple hundred killed by the Iraqis. (that would be the more likely case without close air support, which you don't call in unless you need it)

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
What happened to the pilots of that jet that sent those civilians plunging to their deaths in a cable car in Italy?

IIRC, the crew were found not guilty at an initial trial and then the pilot was convicted for tampering with evidence. I think he did something to the instruments.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Sarcasm old boy… The point is that it is unfortunately impractical to bring up the past and punish the perps of My Lai, what we can do however is prosecute new cases to the fullest of our ability – if only to show the military of today that it cannot get away with the excesses (My Lai) of the past…

The fact that you compare deliberate murder of clearly unarmed civilians in a secured village in daylight by a large ground force to a possibly unauthorized or else mistakenly authorized air attack at night on misidentified friendlies reveals either incredible ignorance, or desperation for troll material. Which is it?

I’m sure you can, but I have to say that the Germans killed an awful lot more US soldiers in WWII than the British did…

So perhaps we should withhold all support missions from British troops in future conflicts, so the enemy has better opportunities to kill your troops? Is that what you're aiming for, or is this just another ignorant comparison/troll?

That they are – in which case there are far too many ‘people’ in the US military and not enough soldiers…

Piss off, you're not qualified to judge. Yes, you can have whatever ignorant opinion you want, but don't pretend it's more than that.

Which is precisely why I don’t understand how you can kill so many British and Canadian troops – there are so few of us around!

The war of independence finished hundreds of years ago, OK! You won, so please stop killing us!

Over 99% of close air support missions are on the target area, and an extremely high percentage are effective on the target (suppression, driving the enemy out of a position, damaging the enemy or destroying him) There were thousands of close are support sorties in the Gulf war, accounting for hundreds of Iraqi AFVs, resupply points, etc. being destroyed. The enemy to friendly casualty ratio was probably 500 to 1 - IIRC, there were about 40 killed and wounded attributable to fratricidal air support missions, compared to elimination of some 10% of total Iraqi line combat strength and destruction of resupply and rally points, command posts, communications posts, and artillery. Would you rather have all that back in action, to get back your nine fratricidal KIAs?

Despite the small percentage of ****ed up missions, close air support shortens wars and saves lives on the ground. <-- Period. End of story. It will never be a perfect process.

I don’t have to, I get some poor grunt to do it for me – preferably from another country.

Then you don't have any competence to make judgments.

I am ‘cool under fire’ in an office situation…

The question is would you **** your pants under fire. Maybe even miscall coordinates for artillery or close air support. Maybe even misidentify friendly forces. Maybe move past assigned phase lines, or outside your assigned sector and into the security zone or operational zone of another friendly unit?

Uh, riiiiight – so your logic is that because we’re not at the front fighting the Iraqis, we can’t be killed by them. OK, makes sense – so how come British troops got killed by the US, if they were obviously so far away from the fighting?

My "logic" is that because the Iraqi forces you fought were effectively demoralized, suppressed, shot up (somewhere around 50-60% combat effective), and were aware that their rally points, resupply, and HQ's (all behind them) were under heavy attack from US air assets (army aviation elements from 1st ID, 1st and 3rd Armored Divs. plus USAF A-10s), they weren't in position to do much fighting back against your ground troops. About ten percent of that front line damage and ALL of the rally/resupply/HQ/coms/ damage, plus whatever was left of Iraqi DivArty for those front line divisions was taken out by close air support.

Yes, you’re right about the sorties that were so effectively on target – they did a good job annihilating a routed Iraqi army on Highway of Death. Bravo!

A "routed" army doesn't retreat with it's heavy equipment.

Well ours don’t get the chance because apparently as you would have us believe they’re killed behind the lines or on exercise – they would but they keep getting killed…

Let's see you fly a military aircraft 200 feet off the ground at 400 knots in the first place. Then once you can do that, let's see if you can identify a pink Cadillac from a green Mustang convertible on a parking lot.

Now that you're real good, try doing it under fire, in conditions of smoke, haze, and try to spot, let alone identify, camoflaged AFV's. Now you have about 5-10 seconds (10 is pretty lucky, if you've got good visibility), to acquire, identify, line up your aircraft, target and fire on that AFV. Now let's see you do it with 100% accuracy every ****ing time. That's what you're whining about in the gulf war.

I notice you can’t even argue against the fact that they are too trigger happy.

I considered it such an ignorant claim it wasn't worth responding to. Would you really like to see what the US can do if we went "trigger happy?"

I’d check the US casualty list in Afghanistan if I were you – at one point something approaching 50% of US casualties KIA or wounded were are a result of US fire…

Not to mention the Canadian friendly fire/hostile fire ratio.

Hopefully you're not this obtuse in other areas? Reread the first word in "close air support." See if you get the concept. You can't effectively target or engage enemy ground forces from miles away. You have to get right up their asses, both on the ground and in the air.

I don't remember, weren't you one of the ones *****ing that it was going to be another Vietnam, and that the big bad tough Afghans were going to turn the place into a bloodbath, and we'd have a flood of body bags coming home? The same type of horse**** that was said about the big, bad, tough, veteran Iraqi army that was going to dust our asses?

What you don't get is that despite the low level (yes, I said LOW level) of fratricidal casualties, integrated close air support is a key part of combined arms doctrine, and that is what puts the *******s down so effectively that they don't inflict much higher casualties on our forces.

Ask any front line troops if they'd prefer combat with close air support and the level of risk of fratricidal casualties, or combat with no close air support at all. When the poll results come back in, let me know.

You even almost killed Hamed Karzai before he came to power – imagine what a colossal f*ck up that would have been!

(a) Close doesn't count. This isn't horseshoes or dancing.
(b) I'm sure we would have found another lackey in the country somewhere.
(c) Ask him if he'd rather be where he is, or still watching while the NA ineffectively fought against the Taleban.

There was that artillery incident about a year ago in Saudi or Kuwait that plastered those poor hapless Kiwis, hell the US has even shot down at least one airliner – not to mention all the many ‘000’s of civilians in Afghanistan, Somalia, Panama, Iraq, Serbia…

Casualty numbers for civilians in Afghanistan are uncertain and unreliable. Such reporting as was done was inconsistent, and generally relied on either second or third hand reportage, or reportage made under Taleban "supervision."

Somalia? Sod off. What was your solution, Einstein? And what "civilians" are you referring to?

Panama? A joke, except for Noriega's "Dignity Brigade" retreating into the barrios and fighting in civilian clothes.

Iraq? There was this little thing called a war, and the Iraqis used civilians, reporters (the sub-basement of the al-Rashid hotel where foreign journalists were required to stay was a corps level command center for Baghdad defense forces, and also a major C&C center for central Iraqi air defense) as human shields/dummy targets. That and their hundreds of thousands of rounds of indiscriminate AAA fire, yada yada. Cry me a river.

Serbia - I ignored that one. We should have left it to you Euros. Would you have given the Sudetenland to Slobo then come back and proclaimed "peace for our time?"

Face it – the US army is hooked on blowing innocent people away, something needs to be changed to prevent this from happening as often as it does!

Was that smart-arsed enough for you?

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
they weren't school kids...were they?

No. IIRC, it was a freaking fishing boat. Fishing, I might add, in American Economic Zone waters.

[Drake Tungsten]

No. IIRC, it was a freaking fishing boat. Fishing, I might add, in American Economic Zone waters.

It was a fishing boat, but there were students on the boat. They were observing how Japanese fishing boats work or something like that. Very unfortunate accident...

[Lonestar]

That having been said, it takes several months for an enlisted sailor to go through sub school/ "A" achool, etc. It was pretty, *ahem*, stupid to let a civvie drive a boat.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
The question is would you **** your pants under fire. Maybe even miscall coordinates for artillery or close air support. Maybe even misidentify friendly forces. Maybe move past assigned phase lines, or outside your assigned sector and into the security zone or operational zone of another friendly unit?

I doesn't matter what the job is, if you cannot do it competently you should not be doing it. It doesn't matter whether that is an office job or a highly dangerous military job, although the consequences for incompetence in the military are often a lot worse. The US spends a huge amount of money on their military so there is no excuse for having poorly trained personel.

Mobius is not in the military so he doesn't have to worry about whether or not he would '**** [his] pants under fire'. But he should be able to expect a degree of professionalism from the people who are paid to do these jobs.

Could you safely run a particle collider? I suspect not, and I would not expect you to since it is not your job. But if my workplace screwed up and irradiated half of Switzerland I am sure you would bray for blood.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh

I doesn't matter what the job is, if you cannot do it competently you should not be doing it. It doesn't matter whether that is an office job or a highly dangerous military job, although the consequences for incompetence in the military are often a lot worse. The US spends a huge amount of money on their military so there is no excuse for having poorly trained personel.

Mobius is not in the military so he doesn't have to worry about whether or not he would '**** [his] pants under fire'. But he should be able to expect a degree of professionalism from the people who are paid to do these jobs.

Training is only part of the equation, nothing compensates for combat experience.

Could you safely run a particle collider? I suspect not, and I would not expect you to since it is not your job. But if my workplace screwed up and irradiated half of Switzerland I am sure you would bray for blood.

Theres a vast difference between operating a particle collider in a nice warm building and flying close air support. How well would y'all do if the sirens were blaring and the lights were flashing a meltdown?