Iraq's My Lai

[Ted Striker]

Yeah

They are pretty much guilty as charged and the head marine is there because of that

[Odin]

Ned, quit being a moron, we lost Nam because escalating the war any more then it was would of led to war with China.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Sikander
Nope, it was congress that cut off the ammo and fuel from RVN.

Byt that point, we'd already cut and run. What Congress did was say, we're not going back.

[Sandman]

A quick question: Why are America's marines more like an extra army (complete with tanks, etc) than, well, marines?

[Kontiki]

The theory behind the US Marines is that they are a rapid deployment strike force, so they need the full range of equipment.

[Zkribbler]

Damned if I know. They're supposed to be elite troops, used for quick deployment. But it hasn't been that way for the last forty years.

While it made sense that they were the first troops to be sent into Vietnam, they were never replaced by army troops there and, even since, they've been used in tandum with army troops.

[Sandman]

The Marine Corps is the second smallest of the five branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) of the U.S. military, with 180,000 active and 40,000 reserve Marines as of 2005.

(from Wikipedia)

Christ. I thought that there were 20,000 or something.

I don't approve of multiple parallel armed forces structures like this. But I bet nobody questions the existence of what seems like a duplicate army.

[Zkribbler]

Not if they know what's good for them.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Odin
Ned, quit being a moron, we lost Nam because escalating the war any more then it was would of led to war with China.

Odin, the time we speak of is post '73. We had withdrawn by then and war with China was not on the table. Nixon had already visited. Relations with China were improving.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by Sikander
Nope, it was congress that cut off the ammo and fuel from RVN.

Byt that point, we'd already cut and run. What Congress did was say, we're not going back.

Che, the way you rewrite history is interesting.

The ARVN got into trouble because they had no ammo. Congress had cut them off (actually, severely reduced aid). When the North attacked in '75, Ford requested emergency aid. That was denied.

I blame Ford, though, for not using the Air Force in support of the SV as we had promised. I think that he could have used his authority as Commander in Chief.

But he didn't. And the rest is history.

[Zkribbler]

...right. And soon we would be even exporting to China millions of jobs that used to be held by Americans.

[techumseh]

Road Rage

Things are continuing in the same vein. It sounds like things may be approaching a breaking point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1785599,00.html

[Geronimo]

Re: Road Rage

Originally posted by techumseh
Things are continuing in the same vein. It sounds like things may be approaching a breaking point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanista...785599,00.html

what exactly is continuing in the same vein as what?

The link isn't about iraq it's not even about Vietnam. It's about someplace where intervention was actually understandable.

[techumseh]

I'm not paying attention - that's Kabul, not Baghdad. Sorry. Still, US forces reported shooting at civilians after rocks were thrown, leading to riots. This in a place where intervention is "understandable". Maybe the moral is that if you send your army to someone else's country, even for the best of motives, you really lose control of how the situation develops, and how the population reacts to your presence.

[Dinner]

I love how Ned blames the Democratic Congress but convinently ignores that the Republican President (the one who controls the military) didn't do anything either.