tac airlifter

Just curious how the A-29 for CAA thing is going. “Not according to 6SOS planning” is my charitable characterization of where we are now. We could have an interesting discussion on how and why this played out the way it did, lots of good lessons learned.

“Working” was defined as causing the populations to rise up. I agree NK is dark at night. Does that mean sanctions are working or does that mean civilians are miserable? I get it. Everyone disagrees with me, and that’s fine. I offer a perspective for consideration so that we think carefully and choose to do things deliberately. Laughing at hungry civilians is for pussies, not warriors.

Seeing as how both locations are decisively NOT resolved in our favor, I’ll disagree. None of the sanctions have caused the populace to rise up. They just suffer. I do not think this COA is wise.

Copy the idea. Has this particular method of pressuring a dictator ever worked? It didn’t on Saddam, and it didn’t on Ghadafi. Or Milosevek. It’s not working in Iran or N Korea. When you target civilians for suffering, all it really does is hurt civilians. If you have a counter example I’m game to hear it.

Have all the sanctions you want. I love the ones targeting their elite. But celebrating bread lines? Do you think that will make people hate the dictator or hate us? I know it’s an unpopular opinion. But I’m uninterested in hurting civilians. I don’t think it will be effective and I don’t think it’s a good look.

I think it’s a terrible idea to hurt Russia’s economy and their people just because we don’t like what Putin is doing. Mass punishment doesn’t work on me or you or anyone. Human beings hate that shit. i’m not sure what specific military effect we want to achieve by turning off some grandmother‘s credit card, or what we expect Russian civilians to do, but I’m not going to chuckle at starving civilians standing in food lines. They are innocent.

Because they aren’t. They’ve done everything possible to shit on domestic production. My brother works in the oil industry, it’s heartbreaking to see what this administration has done: appeal to domestic environmentalists by crushing domestic oil, simultaneously increasing reliance on brutal dictators. I love the environment, but green energy isn’t ready for the volume our nation requires. And sending money to OPEC instead of US based production has been awful for national security.

Welcome to Base ops. Knowing what one is talking about is widely admired, but not strictly required. It’s more fun with whiskey.

I don’t know about any of that bro. You asked a direct question and I gave you a direct answer in the form of a sourced quote from Ukraine’s president. Cheers.

Sure, you missed the quote from Ukraine’s president saying he wanted more than blankets from the aide package. The one I highlighted in my link. Blankets clearly weren’t all that was in the 2014 non-lethal aide package, but he was dissatisfied with the lack of helpful support which he said included blankets. Personally I think we stop nitpicking past mistakes & focus on the present— making policy decisions which maximize dead Russians while staying below the threshold of starting WW3.

“ Poroshenko said blankets and night-vision goggles from the USA are important, "but one cannot win a war with blankets!"” USA Today article from 2014.

9/11 happened because AQ were assholes who wanted violence. Ukraine invasion happening because Russia are assholes who want violence. Brainstorming ways current & past policies could have slowed or prevented things has value to future policy decisions. But Russians are responsible for Russian behavior. I get your point and it’s fair, but you also have TDS. Recommend pointing your anger at Putin; Trump is not relevant in this moment… and likely not ever again.

Flea, great post. I 100% agree with all your observations based on my brief time in NATO as well. Also agree on your comments WRT Gabbard’s post. It was foolish and naïve of us not to acquiesce diplomatically to Russia’s need for a land buffer between NATO & Russia. We need to stop calling every adversary evil because it makes fighting them the only answer. Not everybody is “literally Hitler.” We’ve definitely fought evil people where destroying them was our only option— ISIS, AQ, etc. But I think we could have negotiated better with Russia. Now there is real war which is horrible. To be clear- it’s Russia’s fault for the things they’re doing. But did our insistence Putin = Hitler blind is from taking seriously Russia’s desire for border security? Maybe.

Our “influence” has not been positive in many of those locations. Our history, especially our recent history in Afghanistan, should give you serious pause before committing to action. Here’s my actual opinion since it appears you want that: we the people are owed a debate about this topic in Congress before embarking upon a course we cannot change. I may or may not agree with your statements above, I don’t know because I lack a sufficient grasp of the facts. And we’ve been doing this a lot lately: rushing haphazardly from one decision to another without stopping, fact gathering, fact checking and thinking. It’s not working out great, and I propose a more methodical approach to serious issues.

1. As a factual matter the statement from Tucker is correct. Ukraine is not a democracy, the central government does not respect or protect rights of cultural Russians living in the east, and free speech and freedom of the press do not exist. 2. that does not mean Russia is good by any means, just that reality is complicated. 3. Love or hate Fox, they are expressing what CNN/MSNBC are ignoring: the majority of our country opposes US participation in conflict with Russia over Ukraine.

CDC intentionally withholding COVAX data. I’m so confused why this would be. I thought vaccine efficacy and booster necessity was settled science. If there’s one thing I’m 100% certain of because I’ve been told by the establishment, it’s these vaccines are safe and effective. True you still get C19 after taking the vaccine even though they told us we wouldn’t, but I’m faithful the symptoms are more mild for vaccinated individuals. Given all that, why aren’t the experts being completely forthright with all the data collected? I want to prove these anti-vax science deniers wrong; if the CDC could be more open I’m sure it would reinforce their messaging.

It’s so fundamentally insulting to assume people with similar skin color think alike. People who say that are just idiots.

What’s the point of posting this year old declaration?

How dare they block roads. The business owners are mad! peaceful protesting is peaceful protesting; whether or not you support the cause it is our right and should be protected. I’m enjoying the irony watching the same people who supported “fiery but mostly peaceful“ BLM riots and the anarchy in Portland now saying we must slash tires and arrest people who are using the peaceful tactics of MLK and Ghandi. This is not necessarily aimed at you since I don’t know your opinion on what happened in the summer of 2020, but clearly the leftist news outlets are total hypocrites when it comes to protesting. And everything.

What in the absolute fuck am I looking at?

Well that’s just not true: Once reporters published a report on CURVEBALL the Bush administration released intelligence validating his role. True, many aspects of this remain classified to protect aspects of the intelligence apparatus, which makes sense. But it turns out you can release enough information about “sources and methods” to allow critical thought on the conclusions. For those who don’t know, intel from CURVEBALL was key in domestic legitimacy of the Iraq war and it was all made up by a guy who wanted us to start the Iraq war. Of note, German intel said exactly that and we all told them to shut up. Consider what a total disaster the Iraq war was for our nation. Think about how much it hurt international credibility, think about how Afghanistan could have been different had we focused there instead of had our bandwidth absorbed by Iraq, consider the rise of Isis, all the people killed there since 03. The magnitude of the terrible strategic decision to invade Iraq in 2003 using false assumptions about their WMD threat is almost incalculable. It was an intel fuck up of colossal proportions. And it could have been avoided had we exposed our sources and methods earlier…. because we ended up exposing them anyway. You are a smart dude but if you start with a false assumption you’ll arrive at a wrong conclusion. You assume the government never exposes sources and methods then follow that logic train to a place where society must remain ignorant of facts & trust experts running this process who are insulated from the consequences of their actions. False. That isn’t true and it doesn’t work. Fun and relevant Thomas Sowell quote: It’s hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way to make decisions than leaving them to people who suffer no consequence for the results. Stop trusting people who aren’t accountable. The experts have lied and been wrong in the recent past. Before we order my kids to war (which is possible despite your protestations) I want some public QC on the intel.

You might be too young to remember how the Iraq war started, but Colin Powell provided the ultimate “trust us, we have rock solid intel” and we spent trillions and suffered ten of thousands of casualties for nothing. Had we exposed the “sources and methods” for some critical QC we likely would have avoided that debacle. Our government lacks the credibility to play this card, especially when the consequence is war with a nuclear capable country.

I don’t think it will be the AT-6. AO is a U-28 replacement so the advantage of “filling squadrons quickly” is negated by already having a designated manning source to draw from. Also the AT-6 looks like it sucks for this mission. Just my outside opinion, I’m not involved in AO.

You really can’t figure out how Keystone factors into this situation and how we shot ourselves in the foot? As for NS2, you seem quite confused: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57180674 Not trying to be a prick but your reply indicates you have opinions without knowledge. Hate Trump all you want, he kept Russia in check when they tested him.

100% valid. I knew & flew with all 3 when I was hercs. Embarrassments to our service. Self-centered, lacking empathy, contemptuous of new guys, but most importantly none were actual warriors who embraced risk and led from the front by example. The truth is no community has a monopoly on good or bad leadership. In my opinion the best leaders put outcome over process, and value their team mates who do the same. Assume the best about others, use subordinate mistakes as learning points, and ruthlessly close with and destroy the enemy… or execute their support mission with similar single mindedness. It’s not rocket science.