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Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Sjurygg posted:

Is loving with the Hormuz strait shipping still a Big Red Line as far as the US is concerned?

As in, "a red line they actually will enforce".
Military fuckery in the Persian Gulf and SoH is a typical weekday. Actually interdicting ships of any nationality or mining the Strait would almost certainly be treated as an act of war.

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Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Courthouse posted:

Are we taking bets on when Putin decides to send in the 'peacekeepers' yet?
I figure he gives it a respectable ~48 hours, probably until early Monday morn when most Americans are asleep.

Comedy answer: Putin, in his wisdom, had already deployed Spetznaz to E. Ukraine in anticipation of such a calamity.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

iyaayas01 posted:

Yeah, I thought the common opinion was that Spetznaz or other Russian spook types were already in E. Ukraine, it was just a question of a) how many and b) when they decided to sort of come out into the open.

Pretty much, b) is what we're taking bets on.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

ded posted:

Hey doc, when I pee... uhhh... fire shoot out my dick.

Scene: The pilot is doing his walk-around before the flight departs Thailand.
<Flight engineer walks up>
FE: "Hey pilot... I'm having a problem with my foot."
AC: "What is it?"
FE: "My dick keeps dripping on it."
AC: "Let's get the flight doc."

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Twenty-something's be twenty-something's. People at that age feel like they're discovering everything and think they're going to overturn a calcified order. Converting the world is a righteous crusade. The same thread goes through new MBAs, "tech evangelists," and SJWs. SJWs are just extra insufferable because they consider themselves victims breaking their chains rather than geniuses revolutionizing the world.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Good thing we're de-funding NASA and their near earth object tracking program.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Irrespective of his original intentions, I doubt the Russians are giving him much choice about his level of cooperation now that they have him by the balls.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Courthouse posted:

We are all animals under a thin veneer of civilization, etc, etc. What's more strange to me is that we are so thoroughly traumatized by what in the rest of the animal kingdom is fairly normal behavior.
Gonna take a wild stab at this and say it's because we are not like other animals in all the ways that matter.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
I think the dude is just a little irritated that people keep trying to dismiss him as some low-level Geek Squad IT flunky while also saying that he caused irreparable damage to our national security.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Dantu posted:

Did I miss the discussion of the presidents "chilly" reception at West Point? My FB feed is alive with mostly hilarious, but some scary comments about this.
LOL at the idea that the enthusiasm of West Point cadets is in any way a valid means of assessing something's value.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
All he really had to do was to wrap up with, "...and to compensate you for taking time out of your day, I'm authorizing a weekend pass for the entire Corps" and walk off the stage to a standing ovation.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
I'm OK with us cutting a bunch of old Taliban loose in exchange for a dumb boot. Yeah, he deserted, but the five years in militant custody probably gave him enough time to reconsider that decision. More to the point, we're trying to wind down Afghanistan. We are going to have to do something with all these guys in Gitmo that we nabbed from Afghanistan eventually, and Congress doesn't seem to want to fund anything besides "keep pretending the problem doesn't exist."

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

FIDEL CASHFLOW posted:

Paywall, care to summarize?

The families of civilians kidnapped in Afghanistan/Pakistan would also like us to trade Talibs for their loved ones. Also, Republicans want to know why we didn't demand the release of every single American held by militants in exchange for the five we gave them, because if they had been in charge clearly we would have got a better deal.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Snowdens Secret posted:

It's also a perfectly valid question why we didn't at least demand a package deal
I imagine the main reason is that all those different prisoners are held by different militant groups who aren't a part of a single entity to be negotiated with.

Snowdens Secret posted:

Shalit's kidnapping itself shows the consequences of these devils' deals.
On the other hand, one could say that being willing to make a deal encourages militant groups to treat American prisoners well in hopes of seeing their bros again rather than going the YouTube beheading video route.

The possibility of released detainees returning to the fight has been a consideration for the whole history of warfare, but in this case I think the immediate, real good of bringing one of our own home outweighs the potential harm of releasing enemy prisoners.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Also, Maliki says Iraq is buying Russian jets, because F-16 deliveries are too slow for his taste. Since they don't have the time to train all their pilots in a new aircraft type, I'm guessing he's also opting for the special Russian "trainers" that deliver the planes and then fly them in local colors.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Somewhere deep in the CAOC, and at ops buildings across the land, planners and office bitches are opening file cabinets that just barely had time to get dusty, and pulling out binders labeled "Operation Iraqi Freedom New Dawn".

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

iyaayas01 posted:

You laugh, but...
What makes you think I was kidding?

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
"Are our alien overlords complicit in the Zionist oppression of the Palestinian people? Why is there no transparency in the process by which their Flesh Harvesters select humans to be deliquesced in the enzyme tanks?"

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
I'm on board with this, but we need to bring back napalm, Big Belly B-52s wall to wall with Mk82s, and the really bad cluster bombs that leave UXO everywhere for future generations. Military version of throwback jersey night at the stadium.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Genocide Tendency posted:

I might be wrong on this but I believe napalm was outlawed, so the US renamed it incendiary gel and listed it only use is as a defoliant. It's a fuckin desert so unless we can convince the rest of the world that camels and scorpions are trees, napalm is off the table.
As mentioned, napalm and WP are still totally legal, as long as you don't use them on civvies. Some of the confusion stems from an incident where we dropped incendiaries on Iraq and some reporter asked if we'd used napalm. The official response was, "Nope..." without adding, "...napalm is gasoline, benzene and polystyrene. The Mk 77 contains JP-8 and a special thickening agent." The other part is from a bunch of peaceniks trying to get incendiaries, WP, and FAEs classed as chemical weapons because both the fuel and the combustion byproducts are toxic.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
"Please fill out these forms to reactivate you AKO account; you're showing overdue for all the CBTs and we have to brief that at the Brigade meetings."

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Israeli Police just stormed the Al Aqsa mosque. It's going to be an interesting week.

EDIT: On a second watch, it looks like they were just clearing the courtyard around the mosque, and the video is a day and a half old.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jul 20, 2014

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
Yeah, the cocksuckers at the Washington Post buried the important details (like "Mosque" versus "Mosque Compound") on that one.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
CVR replaced with one hour of Vladimir Putin making fart noises with his hands and mouth.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Man Who Couldn’t Defeat George W. Bush Attempting To Resolve Israel-Palestine Conflict

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Genocide Tendency posted:

They could, and should turn Gaza into Dresden circa 1945.

Looks like they're giving your advice a shot:
The Atlantic: Bloody Weekend in Gaza :nws:



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Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
The only reason we give a poo poo about Israel is that there isn't a well-financed Palestinian lobby that can turn out the vote.

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