After further review, it seems soldiers fighting in civilian clothes is NOT a violation of the Geneva convention, however, those capture fighting like that would forgeit certain rights as POW’s. Perhaps being shot as spies might be a legal reaction?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030327-3d18e5c6.htm
F_alk, nobody is forcing western culture on Iraq. Democracy and basic human rights are not unique to the west.
F_alk, you state that starting a war is always wrong. All I have to do is show an example that is contrary to that point to show your premise is flawed.
Attacking Germany in 1938 would have been better for the world rather than waiting for Germany to attack on Sept 1, 1939.
Of course the question is WHEN is it just to invade and yes, subjective decisions are the hardest of all.
I think the risk of making a mistake is lower then the risk of doing nothing and waiting to be attacked.
The old adage ‘the best defence is a good offence’ is true.
Your argument might make sense if it was the US forcing the French to save Iraqi lives. What gives France the right to prevent Americans from risking their lives to save Iraqis from Saddam? I am not saying the US has the right to trade 10 French for 100 Iraqis.
I don’t think Germans are genetically evil or any different from anybody else for that matter. Yet Germans by the millions willingly died to defend Hitler. The allies had to practically destroy Germany to get at Hitler yet nobody said it was wrong to kill german soldiers to accomplish this. (Dresden and carpet bombing of civilian targets on both sides excluded).
What gives people the right to do this? Often it’s the ability to do something and the willingness to do it.
You argue subtle semantics like that is the real issue. A lesser evil is not good compared to a greater evil. What kind of sophistory is this? A lesser evil is always better then a greater evil.
Let’s use Occams razor. You have a choice, less dead or more dead. Saddam = more dead.
What gave the allies the right to fight the Nazis?
BB
F_alk, if you don’t know what 9/11 has to do with Iraq you don’t understand what the Americans are thinking do you?
I’m not sure what your quip about “What do the acronyms ETA, IRA, RAF tell you?” is about, are you implying you don’t know what 9/11 means? Sept 11 terrorist attack win which more US citizens were killed then during the Pearl Harbour attack.
ETA is either Estimated Time of Arival or a terrorist group.
IRA is Irish Republican Army, a terrorist group.
RAF is Royal Air Force.
What’s your point?
As for me using Europe, I should have said Old Europe, that should clarify it for you since I obviously confused you as to what I really meant.
Uranium is a heavy metal, so yes it is not good if you get it into your body liked lead or cadmium. But as a source of radiation it is harmless. Since uranium is 70% heavier then lead it tends to sink to the bottom of things like deserts. Since U-238s radioactive half-life is 4.5 billion years it is rather stable. Meaning NON ACTIVE. Plutonuim has a half life of 24, 000 years hence it is ACTIVE. That’s why Plutonuim makes bombs and U-235 makes bullets.
Did you know that Abrams battle tanks use U-235 as armour? If tanks crews don’t get any more sick then the general population and they spend lots of time inside a shell made of tonnes of U-235 what makes you think a few burried bullets will make people sick?
Frankly, there is only about 2 or 3 cubic metres of depleted uranium in Iraq, compare this to 50 Exon Valdez tankers worth of Oil Saddam dumped into the environment.
In a contest Saddam wins hands down as the environmental villan.
BB
I think 99% of the fighting will be over by June 1. Once the Median and other 3 republican guard divisions are crushed within a few days and people really start to believe Saddam is history you will have an Iraqi bloodbath as Iraqi on Iraqi violence erupts.
The allies will recruit Iraqis to clean up the garbage that is left taking pot shots.
BB
I’m not to fond of rely in tech rolls for a strategy myself. I might do tech rolls as Japan if Germany is about to fall.
What’s the point of spending all your money, losing territory and income so that by the time your empire is just about doomed you get some techs. Pity you don’t have any money to leverage the tech.
However if Japan is in a strong income position and gets Ind Tech or Hvy bmbrs they might survive if Germany falls. Any other tech is kinda useless towards late stages of the game IMHO.
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I thought I knew but after re-reading the orginal question I think he is asking if you can roll 12 dice if you have 7 or more units all of the same attack value.
I think they should have shipped the game with 4 dice colours. I’ve managed to find lots of colours “Red’s a 4, 4 blacks are 3s, the green is the sub and the blue is the carrier!”. I have a special trick die that has two 1s, two 2s and two 3s. I of course never use it for real…… :-)
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As for what Canada is doing in Iraq…… I’m not sure if anybody really knows. Our willy leader is an expert on sitting on the fence post and talking a good talk…
As for France and Germany backing a different process… If I thought they had a process that would be a common frame of reference. But both countries are on record as saying no matter how bad Saddam is, nothing other than more of the same should occur.
More of the same to the US means more 9/11, Europe just doesn’t get it. The last 12 years has been a disaster.
Europe says the US is unilateral, yet they unilaterally want to tie the hands of the US.
Dressing in civilian clothes is fine for troops provided they had no other clothes. Even so, they must distinguish themselves from civilians, a red bandana or anything according to the Geneva convention. This is good as it kills less civilians.
Depleted uranium amo has about the same background radiation has topsoil…
F_alk, in your post you included this:
“3. In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack. Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:”
And then I said:
"Your citiations all mention the same thing. Must show weapons and must try to distinquish oneself from civilians. "
And you said "That’s not exactly what 44. 3. says. "
You are right, that is not exactly what it says, but it says the same thing in effect. “Carries his arms openly” = “Must show weapons”; "must try to distinquish oneself from civilians. " =
“combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack”
Must you force me to constantly defend what I have said? I just slammed you again.
BB
The Governer-General is the Queens representative. There is a great deal of pomp and circimstance (great for the tourists I suppose) and linkages to the Queen. In theory the position holds power but the position is really a formality. It’s too much a bother, to change anything in the Constitution requires all the provinces to agree and usually the problem getting the French in Quebec to agree to any changes. (the Quebec government is currently a seperatist government just waiting for the right conditions to hold a referendum to seperate).
There are 2 bodies, the house of commons and senate. The house comes up with the laws and the Senate passes them while milking the country dry the blood sucking leaches. There are about 300 chuncks of Canada the each elect a ‘Member’ to occupy that ‘seat’. The party with the most seats can form a government, the leader of the party must be elected to a seat and then becomes the ‘Prime Minister’. The party can choose a new PM whenever they want. They come up with the laws and the Senate passes it.
I’m not sure how many lazy bastards are in the Senate. They are appointed by the current PM. If the ruling party is Liberal for 16 years then the Senate will be Liberal for a long time to come. They are never elected, rarely do anything and often hang out at mexican beaches while getting paid. Again, can’t change anything without changing the consitution and that nearly breaks up Canada any time we try to Change it. Heck we only got it back from England in the 70s and that nearly killed Canada.
But I ramble. For a bill to be submitted to the Senate it must be voted on. If the PM deems the vote to be important he makes it a ‘Confidence’ vote, if it’s voted NO the government falls and an election must be called. If the ruling party has a majority the bill gets passed on to the Senate. In practive the vote goes along party lines, if a Liberal party member votes against the liberal party the party can kick the member out and run a new candidate as a Liberal against the encumbant (now an independant) in the next election. So, the PM never has to withdraw a bill unless he has a minority. This happened in the 80s, we had a government that lasted like 7 months and lost a confidence vote, it had a minority and had to call an election, they lost seats and lost power.
Yes, some freaking idiot Canadian Politians do bad mouth the US government. Trust me, the average Canadian citizen is outraged. I urge US citizens to read comments from average citizens on the conduct of these morons.
Canada has a problem. We have two parties on the right that splits the vote, this has only been the case for about 10 years since the creation of a new western based right wing party. A party can get 20% of the popular vote and only get 3% of the seats. If the vote on the right is split, then the left takes the seat easily. Since there are usually 4 parties contesting each seat it is often taken with only 30% of the vote. The party on the left is the ruling Liberal party, they have won 3 straight elections, the PM is retiring but they will probably be in power for ever.
They have been in power too long, are arrogant and need to be replaced, they’re killing us….
BB
What if you have 12 infantry but some are Iraqi regular troops. How do you know how many have surrendered before you roll your dice?
The function doesn’t take into account the cost effectiveness nor effects of different movement rates. Nonetheless it’s a rather interesting excercies. Once you start to get into more subjective values like assigning values to movement rates it becomes a real nightmere. Way to many variables to try and optimize. Time to take out the trusty ole genetic learning algorithm, my favourite machine learning tool. :-)
BB
French and English disagreeing is a part of life in Canada chuckles. It’s odd how some French complain all the time yet our Prime Minister has been either French AND from Quebec or from Quebec and French speaking for 32 of the last 33 years and 50% of the time prior to that.
In any event, Canada does have a plan for putting nuke waste in the Canadian shield (A hunk of rock 3 billion years old that forms most of Canada’s North). I’d rather put up lots of wind mills but….
Thanks for the invite to the EU, I’ll think about it once I’m running the show over here!
BB
Algeria democratically elected a religiously fundamenalist governement. Of course the military steped in and cancelled the elections. Indeed democracy doesn’t guarantee a good choice. Look at the French for instance…. tongue in cheed
BB
Here are a few things the Iraqi’s are violating
Part III. Methods and Means of Warfare Combatant and Prisoners-Of-War
Section I. Methods and Means of Warfare
Art. 35. Basic rules:
3. It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.
Buring oil wells……
Art. 37. Prohibition of Perfidy
1. It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy: (a) the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender; (b) the feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness; © the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and (d) the feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.
Faking a surrender is one. Sure you might not need a uniform, but you can’t pretend to be civilians, that’s three now including the oil wells.
Your citiations all mention the same thing. Must show weapons and must try to distinquish oneself from civilians.
Art. 47. Mercenaries
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict; (b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities; © is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party; (d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict; (e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and (f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.
Sounds like this covers Al Quaeda
Part IV. Civilian Population
Section I. General Protection Against Effects of Hostilities
Chapter I. Basic rule and field of application
Art. 48. Basic rule
In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.
Iraqi’s troops are guilty again.
It sounds like France and Germany are backing some really bad people.
BB
Meijeng, I’m not sure exactly what that means n=1.41M? Does that mean you would need 41% more infantry attacking the same number in order to have a 50/50 chance? Ah yes, just ran it through a battle sim and that’s what it means. Nice bit of math.
BB
F_alk, the US never supported the Taliban directly. They supported all kinds of factions in Ahfganistan against the Soviets (the greater threat at the time I assure you). Once the soviets left, the US left, then years later the taliban emerged as the big kid on the block. So the US didn’t create nor support the taliban. Lets get the facts straight.
The US did support the B’aath party against a Soviet leaning governement long long ago. It about 10 years for Saddam to grab power. Again, the US didn’t exactly create Saddam either.
But so what?
Your point is what?
A) That since the US made mistakes before they should never do anything now since as a result of her past mistakes it proves she can do nothing right ergo this is a mistake as well?
B) The US created a mess in Iraq and should not ever clean up her messes?
These are brutally flawed arguments, sophistry at worst and irrelevant at best.
You claim that going to war is different then starting a war? So what exactly are you saying. That starting a war is always wrong? I see, so it’s best to watch a weak enemy get stronger and stronger, then watch it start to slaughter millions but you should do nothing because starting a war is always wrong?
I’m not clear what you are saying, I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone else but you know me…… Dumb dumb dumb as your thumb.
As for how you decide what is right or wrong. Simple.
Sitting on your ass watching Saddam cause 10, 000 deaths per month while planing future death and destruction is wrong.
Doing something that results in more good than harm is right.
Use occam’s razor, right and wrong are easier to spot then most people think.
BB
You only have to take bites from others if it is a zero-sum game, it is not. Grow the pie.
All the media in the US has been going on and on about how France is obstructing the US. Well, for the most part that has been replaced with images of dead US servicemen and POW’s.
Perhaps there is not cause and effect we can take from this. Nonetheless, if you are shown images of Chirac saying NO and then dead US soldiers the mind plays tricks and you start to relate the two……
BB
F_alk, you claim that Europe has a unique outlook on war because of their history, granted.
How do you think 280 Million US citizens feel just 18 months after 3000 people were killed. Since Mexico and Canada are more and more connected to the US we feel vulnerable now. My sister lives in the US, she flies across the continent a few times per week. She was trapped for days in an airport, her choice was drive 2500 KM North East to her family or drive 2500 KM South West to her husband. There were 100 of millions of people on this side of the Atlantic who were scared to death, I truly didn’t know for 36 hours if she was alive or dead. This memory is more painfull and recent then anything europe has to whine about.
Perhaps people in Europe thought it was ok to ‘contain’ Saddam. Most of us on the side think that is a mistake. European governements have the sovereign right to appease dictators. They do not have the right to force other countries into inaction when action is required in their opinion.
Debate us, offer suggestions but when we decide what is right for us, don’t undermine us. If europe can’t do anything for the allied effort they ought not to undermine it. At the end if the allies have made a mistake then suggest actions to punish those who made them.
My comment about Nazi’s treating western allied prisoners well is that it is a choice to treat prisoners well or not. The nazis made a choice to treat some well and slaughter others. So to have some Iraqi facists made a choice to disregard the geneva conventions. Don’t imply their excuse to ignore them is that it is impossible to adhere to them….
The threat of violence comes from the allies. It is very easy for ‘old europe’ to allow the allies to pay the price both in money and in bad feelings amongst the arabs. Hell, France has it great. They insist that the ‘threat’ is working, then allow others to critize the US for having forces there. It’s win-win, Fance pays no money, watches the US pay for it all, watches the arabs HATE the US for dragging out sanctions for 10 years while French weapons inspectors drink coffee and tea with Saddam’s cronnies.
The ‘premise’ that more years of ‘threat’ beyond the past 12 years is working is morally bankrupt.
Saddam was winning that war. Every month 10, 000 more innocent iraqis die (but not anyone of value to his regime of course). That is a fact you can’t deny.
Every month Saddam is closer to WMD. (OK, you choose not to belive this, can’t help that but even the French agree Saddam has them. Iraqi troops have gas masks, I saw it on TV. I guess your reply is it is Allied Lies or ummm, allied lies)
Every month arab anger increases over the plight of Iraqis thus fueling anti-american sentiment that works just well for those like France and Germany (by guilt of association with the French I am afraid).
Why is taking power from outside illegal? If we follow that premise then the allies in WWII had no right to invade Germany. Saddam like Nazi Germany invaded a foreign land. The UN voted to declare war on Saddam in effect. Part of the peace treaty was to disarm. He broke his part of the deal so the war is still on.
Either way you look at it you logic is as full of holes as swiss cheese is.
BB
djensen, do you have the content in electronic format already?
If yes then is there anything that can be used to delimit the fields you want or perhaps even a fixed field length? If so you can use Microsoft access to import a text document into an access database, link that access database into an Oracle/SQL server or pret’near any other database via ODBC and write simple querries to bang it in.
I hate microsoft but believe it or not I worked for a company that did data migrations from AS/400 to Compaq Alpha servers running NT 4.0 using a laptop running windows and access to ‘migrate’ the data over. Did it for fortune 500 companies no less. I know referential integrity rules like da back of me hand!
BB
I’m not sure about the Canadian news claiming the servicemen were captured at that violiation of the Geneva conventions (I do watch a few hours/day of it :-). I have heard them say those captured were part of a maintenance crew that was ambushed when taking a wrong turn.
The surrender thing was Iraqi irregular forces playing tricks. I hope it doesn’t end up costing the lives of legitimate iraqis trying to surrender, and of course that is the intent of those irregulars. Nothing like shooting prinsoners trying to surrender.
No doubt we will see hundreds of tricks over the next week, hardly anything will be said until one incident where the US makes a mistake and everybody will be all over it……
