Apache Vs Innocent Photographers??

[TimberWolf7.62]

Jail needs to be hell on Earth, and a place where no man or woman dares to enter.

QUOTE]

My idea to save money on prisons is to make an arrangement with some South American or Asian country like Pakistan, for example, to house our prisoners. The cost to fly them over there and paying a fee per prisoner per year to the host country would be a mere fraction of what it costs to feed, guard, and house them over here. Cost savings for us is a good thing.

Secondly, the conditions over there would be terrible (indeed, that would be one of the priority points on the list - the worse the prison is, the better). The result is that when a convict did get released, he would be unwilling to regress and his horror stories would prevent others from risking prison. Of course, a lot of them simply wouldn't survive their sentences, since the FULL sentence would be carried out, no parole, no "good behavior", no plea bargaining for lighter sentences, etc. Death from disease, old age, and maltreatment would take out quite a few.

So we'd have cheaper costs, a prison system that was truly feared, and no crimes from recently-paroled criminals. I only ask for a mere 1% of the costs savings.

 

[texas skeeter]

6'6" 275 lbs (last time i weighed, though I've been hitting the cream cheese bagels a lot lately)
ya owe me a dollar.
LoL

You win!! I'll paypal it to ya. yup, and i gotta lay off that damn icecream while watching fox news!!

 

[texas skeeter]

Jail needs to be hell on Earth, and a place where no man or woman dares to enter.

QUOTE]

My idea to save money on prisons is to make an arrangement with some South American or Asian country like Pakistan, for example, to house our prisoners. The cost to fly them over there and paying a fee per prisoner per year to the host country would be a mere fraction of what it costs to feed, guard, and house them over here. Cost savings for us is a good thing.

Secondly, the conditions over there would be terrible (indeed, that would be one of the priority points on the list - the worse the prison is, the better). The result is that when a convict did get released, he would be unwilling to regress and his horror stories would prevent others from risking prison. Of course, a lot of them simply wouldn't survive their sentences, since the FULL sentence would be carried out, no parole, no "good behavior", no plea bargaining for lighter sentences, etc. Death from disease, old age, and maltreatment would take out quite a few.

So we'd have cheaper costs, a prison system that was truly feared, and no crimes from recently-paroled criminals. I only ask for a mere 1% of the costs savings.

as i agree with you 1 million percent!! it will never happen for too many people here it the states have bleeding hearts for the criminal element!! " Oh they come from a broken family"!! give me a break!!!!!!!!

 

[Wolfwood]

i tend to agree on that point.
people generally aren't product of their environment. the choice to be morally bankrupt is just that, a choice.
and the morally bankrupt shouldn't be another venue for making our country and us as citizens financially bankrupt.

skeeter, i thought you used all the exclamation points... i think you are hoarding them like txredneck hoards small pistol primers.

 

[Roscoe]

As far as what the pilots were saying during the video (if it is the actual pilots talking), men have different ways of reacting to combat. No one in their right mind takes killing another human being lightly. Some very tough men break down and cry after such a situation. Others try to cover up their true feelings with ill advised or irrational humor - trying to project a tough guy image. You may remember five years ago during the battle of Fallujah a young 18 year old Marine was brought up on charges for shooting a wounded insurgent who failed to show his hands. He made a typical kid statement, saying something like "well regardless, he's a good Iraqi now". An on the scene newsman made out that the shooting was murder. The marine was later cleared of all charges, unfortunately the newsman wouldn't go out on patrol with the marines after the event. Sometimes you have to be in the situation to fully understand the issue. If I read correctly the person writing the article states the pilots gunned down the little children, but allowed the wounded individual to crawl away from the X. I'd say anyone who would knowingly shoot little children would have no problems shooting a wounded insurgent. Current rules of engagement do not require our military personnel to refrain from firing at a wounded insurgent who is obviously just trying to get off the X. There are too many discrepancies that need to be resolved before any real conclusion is drawn on this issue. I will say the Army here in Iraq is not treating this case seriously; and with all the PC butt-kissing that goes on over here, I don't see them missing the opportunity if anyone thought there was a real chance of prosecuting this case.

 

[texas skeeter]

i tend to agree on that point.
people generally aren't product of their environment. the choice to be morally bankrupt is just that, a choice.
and the morally bankrupt shouldn't be another venue for making our country and us as citizens financially bankrupt.

skeeter, i thought you used all the exclamation points... i think you are hoarding them like txredneck hoards small pistol primers.

yup Wolfy ya got me, i did pack a few away for a rainy day!!

 

[ROGER4314]

Looks like a clean shoot to me. Note: If you are going to inbed during a war make sure your side had the best guns

I think the Journalists thought they had a "scoop" in being with and/or interviewing the bad guys. Unfortunately, they were with armed combatants and had no sign proclaiming "Good Guy" anywhere on them. It's a damned shame Jane Fonda didn't get some incoming when she went to sing hand in hand with the North Vietnamese.

It was a good shoot.

Flash

 

[M. Sage]

Read it... which is one reason why I find this discomforting.

Then you should know that this is the kind of mindset that's needed when it's go time. You have to want to do horrible violence to the other side when (as Grossman puts it) the safety catch is turned off, either through ROE, lawful orders or for civilians (includes police) a life-threatening situation where deadly force is legally and morally OK and the best/only option for resolution.

Maybe I'm just weird, but every time my wife has nudged me awake and told me to check a noise at night, I leave that bedroom with a grin on my face. My competitive mode kicks in and I'm ready to kick ass and win. When I'm that way, I will gleefully do things that I normally wouldn't even consider doing to another person just because they've crossed the line and become a threat to me and my loved ones.

A fight - any fight, from fists to thermonuclear weapons - is not a pretty thing. If your life is at risk in a fight, you cannot "fight pretty". You must be as ruthless and brutal as possible. This takes proper technical training, and it takes proper mindset (which can be achieved through training). War isn't pretty, and it shouldn't be. It should be as terrible and horrible as possible so that we'll fight fewer of them.

If you're eager for someone to step over the line so that you have an excuse, people tend to be a lot less eager to cross that line.

Anecdote! When I lived in CA, I rode a train to work for a while, and the stations were laid out in idiotic places. One day, I forgot to pay at parking and had to head back to the station I'd parked in, so I hopped off the train at one of the stations that shouldn't have existed. It was empty except for me waiting on a train.. and some sawed-off Sureno gang-banger who tried to intimidate my by staring me down. I'm only 5' 10" at 180lbs, he was about 5'5" 150. I could see he was carrying something stuffed into his oversize pants under his oversize shirt and by the way he was carrying it, it was a gun. He walked up to me nose to forehead (hahaha, sawed off runt) and tried to look down at me while he looked up. I was trying hard not to laugh at him, just because I didn't want him to make me late for work. Any other time, I'd have laughed my ass off because he was pathetic coming that close with a pistol tucked into his waistband. What was funniest to me at the time was the picture in my head - I knew exactly what I was going to do to him if he went for his gun so that he could "scare" me. I was going to reach out with my left hand, grab his right wrist and push down so that his draw would fail. At the same time, I was going to pull my Kershaw knife out of my pocket, open it and start poking really sensitive stuff on this douchebag.

I honestly think I'd have had trouble not ROFL if he'd have gone for the gun.

I'm not sure why he backed off, but I think it might have been my smile... or the fact that I was having to restrain myself from bouncing on the balls of my feet... Or both. I was just eager and I had the impression that he picked up on it.

I'm not saying this to try to paint myself as some badass - I'm not. I'm definitely no fan of violence. I think that MMA fighting is pretty disgusting and won't watch it. Sport fighting in general just rubs me the wrong way and I can't stand to watch the stuff. I'm telling you because I've been on the cusp of that "safety catch" threshold a handful of times in my life, and every time I know that if the situation had gone really AFU, I wouldn't have hesitated, I wouldn't have wavered and I wouldn't have shown a bit of "fair play" in what would have come next because I was eager to do horrible things to anybody who would be a deadly threat to me or someone I care about.

I could go on about the eagerness and how projecting it has an effect, but it's late and I have to work tomorrow.

 

[texas skeeter]

Damn fine post Sage!! Damn fine post. i was trying to say the same thing but you obviously have a better way with words. and i know exactly the dirtbag you're talking about. the little 100 pound soaking wet essay gangbanger that cant fight his way out of a paperbag and is a big man beating up a 10 yr old boy with 5 of his buddies. or the gun in his waistband and couldnt hit sh-t in a draw down scenario!!

 

[MiTX]

That is one way to keep from getting yourself screwed up. Alot of guys will disconnect themselves from the situation, some laugh hysterically, some seem to take joy in it. I knew one guy that when it came time to pull the trigger said all he saw was a bulls-eye target like most people use at the range. If you do not in some way disconnect from the death and you see and smell it on a daily basis or you have to deal it out you will have long term effects from it and you will be one of those that comes back all f**ked up. Most people that look at it from the outside try to say we are "desensitized" to death and killing which isnt true but we had to find a way to deal with it without getting drawn in and having mental breakdowns. When i fire my weapons i usually say something along the lines of "come and get it", "eat this" or something else. It gave me something else to think of instead of what that round did when it made impact. Which in the video it sounded like they were using the same coping mechanism.

RetArmySgt, I used to work in the medical field and while we were attempting to stabilize our patients, or acknowledge that there was not much else that could be done, stress triggers a lot of gallows humor. It is a protective mechanism used in most positions that require life and death decisions.
Why do you think there are people shamefacedly laughing at funerals? It is not the death that triggers it, it is a stress reaction.

God Bless Our Troops!
They were doing what they have been trained to do and do it to the nth degree.
The spin on the engagement is yet another example of sad sack, limp wristed, more hugs and kisses anti war proganda being fed to the sheeple.

Amen Alamo Ann.

Sage, that split second that the fight instinct goes into effect, it shows in our demeanor. I am by no means and intimidating person, standing 5' 3" in my bare feet, but I have been able to back guys down that looked like they could have squashed me like a bug.

 

[indpendnt]

Very good thread and I agree on too many points to bother with, without being redundant. I also think Sage summed up the entire discussion extremely well.
In the case of these journalists 'imbedded' with the enemy; I've always been told when you lie down with dogs you getup with fleas. Now I see a qualifier here; When you lie down with dogs that are going against the US military, you may not get up at all...
It's a bummer that it cost them their lives, but they're in a war zone, aligned with combatants, they had to know the risk. They took the gamble and they lost. To bad the stakes they were playing with was their own lives, but I'm not about to second guess a serviceman's decision in a combat situation. I wasn't there and I'm not about to lightly toss around judgment based on the court of public opinion from a snippet of video like the msm.
Stuff happens, twice on Tuesdays...

 

[DoubleActionCHL]

Then you should know that this is the kind of mindset that's needed when it's go time. You have to want to do horrible violence to the other side when (as Grossman puts it) the safety catch is turned off, either through ROE, lawful orders or for civilians (includes police) a life-threatening situation where deadly force is legally and morally OK and the best/only option for resolution.

I agree, to a point. This mindset is needed to get through a stressful situation, and "ideal" training employs safeguards so this isn't the natural, knee jerk reaction to every stressful situation. But as Grossman noted, the training isn't foolproof. Also, this mindset also comes from sources other than structured military training. Many of our young soldiers are already "trained" in this mindset without the safeguards from (according to Grossman)round-the-clock first person shooter video games or from simply living life on the wrong side of the tracks.

You can search youtube.com and find many videos of our soldiers doing so pretty sick things and calling them "funny." A soldier offers a kid candy and tries to give him a grenade instead. Soldiers taunting kids with bottles of water, seeing how far they'll run to after their vehicle. We've all seen the soldier throw the puppy off the cliff. These guys are under no particular stress at the time. Again, I'm not painting everyone with the same brush, just as those arguing with me can't attribute all of this behavior to the stresses of combat. I truly believe these are isolated incidents, but they are no less disturbing.

 

[M. Sage]

Sage, that split second that the fight instinct goes into effect, it shows in our demeanor. I am by no means and intimidating person, standing 5' 3" in my bare feet, but I have been able to back guys down that looked like they could have squashed me like a bug.

I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm not exactly a big guy, but I've backed down people bigger than me.

I agree, to a point. This mindset is needed to get through a stressful situation, and "ideal" training employs safeguards so this isn't the natural, knee jerk reaction to every stressful situation. But as Grossman noted, the training isn't foolproof. Also, this mindset also comes from sources other than structured military training. Many of our young soldiers are already "trained" in this mindset without the safeguards from (according to Grossman)round-the-clock first person shooter video games or from simply living life on the wrong side of the tracks.

You can search youtube.com and find many videos of our soldiers doing so pretty sick things and calling them "funny." A soldier offers a kid candy and tries to give him a grenade instead. Soldiers taunting kids with bottles of water, seeing how far they'll run to after their vehicle. We've all seen the soldier throw the puppy off the cliff. These guys are under no particular stress at the time. Again, I'm not painting everyone with the same brush, just as those arguing with me can't attribute all of this behavior to the stresses of combat. I truly believe these are isolated incidents, but they are no less disturbing.

That can be a reaction to repetitive stress and boredom. Doing screwed up things can turn you into a screwed up person if you only got the kind of mindset needed through training. The "naturals" don't really seem to have these kinds of problems.

 

[2nd Abeliever]

Unfortunately, I see many of those on here that agree with the shotting as brainwashed nazis. I hope my opinion doesn't infuriate the moderators enuf to ban me, but if so, oh well. I am pretty sick and tired of hearing/reading biased BS anyway. Just take as an example this small posting;

Originally Posted by Texas1911
"You kill one American, I'll carpet bomb your city with enough firepower to give the Japanese flashbacks."
Just as this small-minded poster believes its ok to bomb a whole city full of innocent civilians, there have been plenty more other posters that have posted similar small-minded "thoughts", if that is what one can call this type of "thinking" at all?
I believe the shooting to have been WRONG! Plain and simple! We, the U.S. shouldn't even be 'out there'. But oh well, who are we peasants anyway to tell/lead our REPRESENTATIVES what it is WE THE PEOPLE want anyways?
Those who forget the past.... It seems we have begun to tread the path of forgetfullness. To deny an injustice to an undeserving individual is to deny an injustice to all undeserving individuals. Many here seem to have forgotten this one important point. WHAT IF THIS TYPE OF SITUATION WERE TO COME TO THE HOMELAND?
Would you look at it differently then? It may be too late.....

 

[2nd Abeliever]

YUP!! im with Burt on this one!! and they were definately there in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it wasnt for reporting!! so they got what they deserved end of story!! i got a good idea, if ya dont want to get shot, stay out of a war zone!!!!!

How can they when THEIR COUNTRY is being OCCUPIED?

 

[2nd Abeliever]

Kill them all and let God sort them out. Videos and Photos of Army Special Ops, Navy SEALs, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard in Action - Shock and Awe - Military.com

GUNGHO, or however it is spelled. Another ....... This type of fella needs SERIOUS HELP!

 

[2nd Abeliever]

Hey Doubleaction I look at it this way, im glad if in fact those soldiers got some joy for killing those TERRORISTS/ENEMIES KIDS!!!! because those little F-CKERS grow up to be big F-CKERS!! and act just as their parents did!! and if in fact our soldiers were remorseful about killing future enemy soldiers, well then the next time they might refrain from doing what needed to be done in the first place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GETTING RID OF ENEMY/TERRORIST COMBATANTS!!!!!!!!!!!! no matter what their age!!!!!! and when they actually return from war, im sure they are debreifed here at home and go thru whatever post war shrink/phyc evaluations to be deemed ready for society. and if a crazy gets thru, well then you cant catch everything and might as well just not send soldiers to war at all!! i prefer our men and women do whats needed to get the job done!!! after all, we've been going to war for 100's of yrs, can you actually say the ratio is high for returning soldiers whom have actually snapped and did some serious damage here at home?? just sayin.....

This SOB needs the $hit slapped outta her.

 

[2nd Abeliever]

It's a good engagement, and if they were reporters, it was an unfortunate error on their part.

You don't go roaming about a war zone with your own personal militia near US troops and not expect to draw attention and possibly get lit up. They should have communicated with the local troop command that they will be operating in this vicinity and have clear identifiable markers. They obviously didn't, and died as a result of it. It's not the pilot's fault, or the gunner's fault. They were doing their job.

This is another reminder of the blinder mentality that the press seems to have. In Israel a few years ago a journalist caught the business end of a 120mm bee-hive round from a Merkava after his camera guy shouldered his camera to film the tanks. Tank ID'd the camera guy as shouldering an anti-tank weapon, traversed, and fired. Of course the media spun it as the Israelis were a bunch of murderous thugs.

...murderous dogs more like it.

 

[2nd Abeliever]

Here - check out the journalist's photos. Remembering Namir Noor-Eldeen - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com Hmm... how did he get on-scene that fast all those times? There are still insurgents running around in many pics. Are you telling me that a journalist can get there faster than Apaches that are already in the air?

What those photos tell me? He was buddy-buddy enough with the insurgents that he was the equivalent of "embedded" with them. I'm not saying he was one of them, but if you lie down with dogs...
Good spy work Sherlock.....

 

[texas skeeter]

OH my goodness, another terrorist sympathizer/apologist!!