StrangeSox

I blame Tebow

The persecution/victimization complex is strong in that one.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 14, 2012 -> 07:40 PM) Vernon Davis Jimmy Graham Rob Gronkowski Aaron Hernandez The stars of today's games, yet Mike Martz has no use for a TE in his offense. Genius. Thank god he resigned.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Jan 14, 2012 -> 07:11 PM) Remember when Martz was OC of San Fran and didnt use Vernon Davis in the passing game Martz is really bad at his job, isn't he?

We did a power hour, but several of us felt pretty good so we kept going.

Century Club-not nearly as fun the next day when you aren't 21 anymore.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 14, 2012 -> 04:16 PM) Remarkably inauspicious start for Steve here. This does not bode well for his signature.

Saints are being completely dominated right now.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 05:17 PM) I just dont understand how you can screw this up. All of these guys have run in elections before, they all know you need to follow the rules. Just mind blowing. Gingrich's campaign completely fell apart before coming back together, so I get him being under-staffed and unprepared for this. But the rest? Yeah, it's pretty shocking.

what a terrible pick.

A judge rejected the ballot challenge by Perry, Gingrich, Huntsman and Santorum in Virginia. They won't be on the ballot. http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/politics/vir...llot/index.html scoped by NSS!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 03:24 PM) Then again, maybe the reason the soliders pissed on the bodies was because of 9/11... Maybe. Still a disgraceful thing to do, and monumentally dumb to film it.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 03:14 PM) And are those same farmers going to stop chasing the Taliban away now because 4 soldiers pissed on a Taliban corpse? Hell, they might even join the soldiers in pissing on the bodies. Maybe, maybe not. What about someone who's on the margins of helping the US? More, less or just-as likely to help after hearing that US soldiers desecrate corpses of their enemies?

Austerity Now, Prosperity More Austerity Later.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 02:12 PM) He's a very conflicted figure historically. He was clearly content to allow the regime to make a propaganda tool out of him and bask in the glory when things were going well, but then also hesitatingly gave his support to the '44 plot to kill Hitler after things turned poorly. Well "pretty decent" relative to the rest of the Nazis.

"Rahmel" is pretty clever. Rommel's usually regarded as a pretty decent commander from a humanitarian perspective, isn't he?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 01:48 PM) Well, to be a fair minded individual, this is a very good point and I wasn't really considering it. That's why I was bringing up those hypotheticals! Without at least trying to understand a situation from a radically different perspective, it's impossible to be conclusive statements. Granted, my cobbled-together view of "what an Afghan might think" is probably highly flawed at best. But even that realization helps grant further understanding of at least where your knowledge is lacking or your own blindspots may lie. I'll return the favor and say that hysteria of "OMG! this will get hundreds of US soldiers killed!" is overblown, but I still strongly maintain that this will have a negative impact and this will put US soldiers in increased danger. Really, if you get a chance read that CNAS paper. It's really interesting stuff. It wasn't universal for sure, but antisemitism didn't start in 1930's Germany. It's precisely because so many people were antisemitic or at least indifferent to antisemitism that their propaganda was so effective and why the rest of Europe didn't really care until Hitler started invading countries. And even then, they still didn't really care about the Jews.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 01:35 PM) It was also backed up by soldiers that would kill you if you didn't agree with it. I never said it was invented by them, but it was used by them and enforced in a way unlike most have ever seen. I believe Saddam used similar tactics to get people to buy into his propaganda. Hey buddy, I saw the temporary propaganda exhibit at the Holocaust museum recently, I'm an expert. Seriously though, it was really fascinating (we happened to get in as part of a guided tour) and detailed how effective it really was. I'm not passing moral judgement on all German people here--hell I'm part German!--but giving an example of how an Afghani may not see the situation from the same perspective or with the same information as someone from the US. edit: anti-semitism has been pretty wide-spread for centuries if not millenia and not at the end of a gun. The Nazis just stoked those prejudices to new levels.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 01:29 PM) Not quite on this one. My family is from that Germany, and it's not like they were given a choice to see through that propaganda...you either agreed with it, or they shot you dead. So they agreed with it. Quite a bit different than actually having a choice as a clear thinking individual. Anti-Semitism was a tool used by the Nazis to gain support, not something invented by the Nazis. Many Germans (hell, many Europeans and probably a decent chunk of Americans) were just fine with anti-Semitic views.

I want to highlight something from that CNAS paper that highlights just how important local relations are:

I forgot to acknowledge your statement that you haven't been defending these acts. You very clearly have not. Neither has jenks.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 01:17 PM) Nobody, from the start, argued that these weren't disgraceful actions. As a matter of fact, I outright said I didn't condone such actions, and they are clearly out of bounds for any military personnel. The argument I made was this incident was NOT going to create any new terrorists. That's all. This is a slight-of-hand. Balta explained his point in detail here and clearly tied it to local support. If this is the case, then you're arguing against a position that no one is really advocating, that this will create new terrorists. This is still ignoring local perceptions of foreign armies, availability of information and the effectiveness of propaganda. Any clear thinking individual in 1930's Germany should have seen right through the anti-Semitic propaganda, but it provided an easy scapegoat for their problems. More to the point, however, is that the importance of local support doesn't mean relying on a bunch of Afghan political junkies who will follow this story closely. They may only ever here of it from people sympathetic to the Taliban. Hell, look at the level of political and current-events ignorance in America, and that's in a country with huge amounts of freely available information.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 01:06 PM) That's not what I did...that's the problem. I NEVER said local support isn't important. As a matter of fact, nobody did. Let me rephrase that: the importance of local support in intelligence gathering. If you read these papers, you'll see that your rejection of how this sort of incident impacts local support and how that impacts intelligence gathering does not hold up. Afghanis are not static people whose opinions don't change. The US military does not rely on one or two key people in a village but needs support of the village as a whole to suppress insurgency. That is the importance of local support. If you accept that, then we're back to square one, where your claim is that this video has no impact on local support.

Here is another paper from a Major General who was in charge of intelligence operations in Afghanistan. Is he also wrong in claiming that local intelligence gathering is crucial? http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/public...e507_voices.pdf Reading through these two papers should give you a clearer understanding of exactly why many people in the military and intelligence community regard these disgraceful situations as so damaging.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 13, 2012 -> 12:58 PM) I give up. I am wrong to conclude that your central claim is that this will have no impact on support for the US military by local Afghani civilians?