I could not agree with you any more. Very well articulated however cousin Rob who joined to shoot tanks is fighting terrorist. You best friends sisters nephew who joined to be a supply clerk is fighting terrorist. The training ongoing as we speak is directed to fighting and surviving terrorist led battles. I guess my point, which in turn supports your point is that there is a severe lack of recruitment towards the pentagons dream to double our uniformed covert operatives. We are exhausting our special forces by winning the minds, training and supplying the resistance. Hardly enough left to actually fight the war. Our future battlefields, who knows but today's battle is against terrorist.
a force by the way that was cut in half by the clintons. The other point I falied to make earlier was that this is an insurgency. Throughout history there has never been an insurgency that was put down in less than 6 yrs. By contrast, any insurgency that was not put down in 6 yrs, was never defeated. FWIW
The Geneva Convention lists it as torture and that has to be taken seriously whether or not you agree with it. First, to limit torture to those techniques that cause physical pain is a very limited understanding of torture. Modern definitions of torture also include mental pain or anguish. By this guidline unrestricted waterboarding is considered torture. As such it should not be allowed. The end does not justify the means, and there are just as good if not better techniques to use. I have no doubt that waterboarding can be effective at getting information, but so can many other techniques like pulling fingernails out and no one would claim that this is okay. The issue is not its effectiveness of the technique, but the nature of the technique itself.
I would be interested in those techniques which did not cause mental anguish. Please advise. For the record concerning how its followers and how it is employed by its co-signees who observe the Geneva Convention, I prove the following: Back in the day, I was a member of a long-range surveillance detachment, which served as the opposing force for the entire 24th mechanized infantry division and one of the training sessions I attended was a Soviet Spetznatz course for two weeks. I shall omit the gore, but the Soviet regime at that time were observers of the Geneva Convention, their favorite interrogation technique was to file the teeth of their subject to obtain desired information. They did not have to do too much dental work to get what they needed. This was not here say, this came from file footage, among other things. Now we are talking conventional Special Forces and not the KGB. I would say the Geneva Convention was well written for the time but this is not the 1950's and we are not trained to the cold war. I respect the Geneva Convention and its intentions but not too many of our current and future foes do.
I don't think you're getting my point. It's not an issue of morality when one's life is at stake. We don't torture or kill for fun. It's should only be done as a last resort, just as it would be to kill an intruder to save your family.
If you are my brother-in-arms in a combat situation and you get captured.....I would use any means necessary to find out your location. Giving me an answer does not mean we release you. Lie to me, let my brother die, and you will regret it. Personally, I prefer the SSS plan. (Sudden Stop Synrome) Take Charley up in a chopper with a few of his friends. Interrogate. No talkie? Out you go Poppa San. Next!
Come on Red, you remember the huge drawdown that slick willie imposed. He cut the total number of our military almost in half back in the 90's we as a military have never recovered from it. Thats in large part to the war in iraq but the point is it was a bad move in my opinion. Look it up. He gouged us.
Reduction In Force (RIF) began at the very end of the Regan era. Daddy Bush worked it till the end of the gulf war paving way for more cuts. Clinton pretty much tore it down to the NEW CONCEPT called Force Realignment. I do not have the exact numbers for reduction but Bill did a ton of numbers damage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html In 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air..
