Current Events Thread: You know shit is bad when even we aren't joking.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Current Events Thread: You know shit is bad when even we aren't joking.

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

PLANES CURE TOWERS posted:

He is.

Here, I went through and copied/pasted all of them so far, because it's interesting as gently caress.

edit: Copied/Pasted the rest of the tweets.

Thanks for putting these together, was a pain trying to read them on Twitter.

So it sounds like Bergdahl and 4 other dudes are rotating sleep/post at a position up the hill from the COP. While this guy is standing his watch outside of the post, Bergdahl exits with his own camera and journal but no equipment. If nobody disputes that narrative I don't see how that is anything but desertion, all "suspiciously cerebral" opining aside. (lol at it being suspicious that a boot bought an AK47 and bothered to try learning local languages in his free time. Sad but true.)

Any part of this sound off to anyone?

quote:

If I had to guess B slipped out around 0300-0430 local time. And I think he picked that night because it had the lowest moon lumens

We now know that he knew he would be leaving on the final trip. He just picked the best time to do it.

Having extensive knowledge of the tiny OP and terrain, he knew the dead spots of where we on guard could see and where we couldn't.

My TeamLeader, PLT forward observer, A SGT, myself and a private. Were all tasked to man the bunker on the hill during the last rotation

We all rotated on 3 hour guard rotations. Mine came up at 0500. Bunker was small especially with 5 grown rear end men in it

So I stood up put my plate carrier on and helmet, guy takes my places and goes to sleep. It's still dark, so I out my NODs on

I walk outside the bunker, take a piss and throw in a dip. Walk back in the bunker, do a radio check and begin my guard shift.

Gets boring real quick, so I walk outside the bunker and just kinda stand there looking around for about an hour.

So after an hour of scanning my sector and what not, Roll Call and accounting for sensitive equipment begins.

I'm on guard still in the bunker, so I count heads, guns and radio down saying we are up. I'm not gonna be a dick and wake people up.

I hear 1st Squad give their 100%, then 3rd, still no 2nd squad yet. A scene similar in Ferris Bueller plays out.

Call it whatever you want, at this point I began waking up B and I's TL. Frantically. He woke up and all I said was "he is gone"

He said "gently caress me" and knew who I was talking about. Up to this point I had spoke to a few guys about B.

Always thought something was just a little off. Like mental off, I felt like he thought he life was a movie in his head

And wanted to act it out in real life

(The French Foreign, Beating up drugs dealers, wanting to get lost in mountains and find his way China.) Proves my point.

TL and Me look at each other like what next? I tell him to ask if his gun and kit is still there. We are then summoned to the OPs lower

We start checking his poo poo. Gun, Ammo, Plate carrier, Nods all good. Only things missing are a camera, journal, compass....

An MRE might have been taken too but those things are a dime a dozen and uncountable.

This is all kinda of a WTF moment going around with leadership. Everyone is looking around puzzled. Minus me and TL

We both look at the SL, PL and PSG and say he is "loving gone"

# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 01:31

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 22:39

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

JSARSOM posted:

Taliban released video of the Bergdahl handover.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2014 19:10

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Softface posted:

This happened, too.

quote:

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a former Alaska commander for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said he does not remember a case of Russian strategic bombers coming that close to the U.S. coast.

�Again we see the Obama administration through their covert � but overt to Mr. Putin � unilateral disarmament, inviting adventurism by the Russians,� McInerney said in an email.

�At the height of the Cold War, I do not remember them getting this close. Mr. Putin had to approve this mission and he is just showing his personal contempt for President Obama right after meeting him in Normandy less than a week ago,� McInerney said.

McInerney said no American president has been treated with such disrespect in U.S. history.

�A sad day indeed and at the same time Mosul and Tikrit [Iraq] fall to radical Islamists after the Obama administration�s failed Iraq policy,� he added. �He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.�

lol

# ¿ Jun 14, 2014 08:33

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Snowdens Secret posted:

Did you even look at what you linked? The 'terrorist incidents' listed are suicide bombings, which are pale shadows of the open sectarian war pre-Surge, and which essentially bottom out in '09. Weak groups sending out suicide bombers aren't seizing police stations or whole towns; by Mideast standards of chaos that's about as peaceful as it gets. US media was having fun pointing out how more Americans were dying in a normal weekend of Chicago violence than in months in Iraq. Guys in this very forum were griping about how boring deployments were getting, how they didn't have any chance to 'get some' etc.

I was in Al Anbar in late '08 to early '09 and this sounds right. I couldn't tell ya who was suicide bombing who but between the oodles of sleepy payroll'd militia watchmen, and lack of any clear objective for us since SOFA confined us more or less to the COP and IP stations, there was a feeling that absolutely nothing was going on.

Even elections went by relatively quietly. I can't even recall hearing of any snipers after the new year, and they were doing alright for themselves in late '08. Aside from 1 random KIA and a checkpoint in Fallujah getting hit with a suicide bomber, poo poo was completely dull in '09.

Dantu posted:

ISIS would pretty stupid to overrun and kill US contractors, it's pretty much they only thing they could do that would guarantee some type of response from the US.

I mean if they're terrorists this is probably not necessarily a bad thing for them.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2014 15:57

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Flaky posted:

Is it really necessary to point out that the various creeds say more about the desired messaging of the leadership than of individual soldiers? I mean this is basically explicitly stated in the article.

VVV

Obviously not. But the rewording permitting the crime of omission is equally obvious. Natch you don't actually write those type of orders down anywhere.

Ed. it seems this is an established principle of international law since Nuremberg, IANAL though.

"Hey troops you all are WARRIORS. MODERN DAY SPARTANS. You represent an ELITE CLASS in American society! ...(now go kill civilians)."

Amazing.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 17:18

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

I remember watching Faces of Death on VHS in middle school and one of the clips was crime scene footage from a pirate-plundered yacht.

Fuckin' pirates!

# ¿ Jun 17, 2014 02:43

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Snowdens Secret posted:

Please don't

Hey if you want to make a freedom omelet you gotta be willing to break a few Zweigs.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 19:56

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Bolow posted:

Max Max Relax human being

Try Lie Die =*(

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 20:21

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Zeroisanumber posted:

It comes down to liability. While you do want to do the best that you can for anyone who needs help in your facility, you don't want there to be a legal presupposition that everyone who walks through your door is a patient. Also, there's a good chance that whatever's wrong with the patient might be better handled at another hospital, and your average paramedic is pretty good at figuring that out.

That said, if I'd been one of the jackoffs just standing around in line I'd probably have gotten a couple other dudes to help me carry him to the ED. At the very least it gets him on oxygen and shaves a couple of minutes off of response time.

I worked at a hospital as a security guard for a little while and they were pretty fanatical about having a procedure in place for these kind of situations. Alerts go off and people haul rear end. I guess I'm skeptical that there are professionals all over the place who give a poo poo that a guy who collapses in the cafeteria was only there for lunch and wasn't a formally admitted patient.

edit: Article is light on details and I dont have time to look into it right now- if the staff was instructed to call 911 I'm guessing there's more of a disconnect between the facilities than a mere "500 yards" physical one. My anecdote probably doesn't apply.

Victor Vermis fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jul 9, 2014

# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 16:38

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Zeroisanumber posted:

It's not that they don't care, or that people weren't working to save the guy, it's just procedure. You don't want staff moving people or trying to render aid that they aren't trained to provide. So you keep it dirt simple (CPR) and tell them to call 911.

If your code/react teams aren't able to move people by gurney or render aid to someone...

I guess if they had their own vehicle available 24/7 and a plan in place to always go to that option because the cafeteria is a separate facility I could see how the ball would be dropped on redundancy.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 18:09

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Obama Africanus posted:

We needn't hide open contempt for these savages, honestly. gently caress them all, you've not seen a holocaust until you've peeped the directors cut remix. When the last Savage takes it's last breath in the last fight we'll finally know peace in the Middle East. But I kid you not, it'll have to be a peace on top a pile of skulls because anything less will just continue the same loving cycle that started before humans developed written language.

This is somehow more 40k than Booblord's explanation.

quote:

It's so loving Jewish to have the most blood thirsty and technologically capable military force in the cradle of human civilization and still make warfare into a loving Woody Allen movie.

lol

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 18:33

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Obama Africanus posted:

I sure hope no Austrian Archdukes were on the flight though, history being cyclic and all.

LOL'd at this.

Dry-heaved at everything else. Thanks guys, keep up the pants-making GBS threads color commentary.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 20:29

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

gfanikf posted:

Why the gently caress did I look?

Because you've always wondered what's left of people after a plane crash- do they even feel anything? Aren't they bashed to bits instantly?

And now you know. They stay pretty much intact.

It's been a pleasure, gentlemen.

o7

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 21:13

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Yeah, I'm gonna go find a cave to paint.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 23:15

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 22:39

Victor Vermis: Dec 21, 2004; WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

..with my jizz as I die to a combination of dehydration and alcohol poisoning.

edit: bloops you combobreakingsonofabitch

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 23:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Current Events Thread: You know shit is bad when even we aren't joking.