Posted on 10/17/2014 3:53:20 PM PDT by Mariner
I’m going to go out on a limb here...
There is extreme suffering going on in West Africa right now. If something isn’t done, and clearly they are not able to help themselves sufficiently, that suffering is going to increase to millions of people and those millions won’t be limited to Africa.
If, and this is a big if, we have the resources and the training in our military to stop this from continuing to spread then we should intervene while it is still possible to do so.
I’ll leave it at that.
Now we want the military to take over health care? Why not the business sector as well to help redistribute the wealth?
Sorry, I don't trust the military that much.
So, what you’re saying is that the military has NEVER been involved in a biological battlefield. Your saying “they have always been deeply involved” gives the impression of past experience. It is good that you clarify yourself, because now it is evident that the US military is engaged in an entirely new endeavor.
Also, the field manuals you discuss ALL say that the first principle is to AVOID such areas.
exDemMom, the military has never been on a biological battlefield, and to the case in point, they never have been deposited in the middle of an ebola contamination zone.
Have surgeons had to fight normal infections in trying battlefield conditions. Sure. Have soldiers succumbed to everything from dysentery to trench foot due to the location and or fighting conditions. Sure.
Those, however, are not biological contamination zones, and I think most people with military experience shudder at the prospect of a biological attack with lethal bio agents, either natural or laboratory created, that have little to zero treatments/cures.
An enemy would direct those agents at our troops who would then have to react to them. The primary principle is to avoid such areas if you are a unit that has not been directly attacked.
So, our president has served in the capacity of enemy by placing our troops in the middle of a lethal biological contamination zone. Were he a commander of friendly forces, he would have had non-affected troops avoid such areas.
There is no part of the US military that has participated in a known chemical, biological, or nuclear battlefield.
The last units to have done so would be WWI vintage...the early 1900’s.
Aside from the way you ping others to help you which is pathetic enough when you as ex Christian clergy want to go after people, your dishonesty is shocking. You are one of those types that continually tries to rewrite what we actually post and misdirect, twist facts and claim falsehoods in your own posts. I don’t know how you could be so ignorant of military involvement and study on biological warfare and threats, and infectious disease.
I never said anything one way or the other about actual combat history, including bio warfare, merely that it is something that our military, especially the Army, has always been deeply involved in researching, studying, and being prepared for.
Quit looking for gotchas and ways to distort and twist things, just discuss them honestly.
If you have any Christian honesty, why don’t you respond to what I actually post, and what you really think that I am saying, rather than waste all this posting back and forth on your fake stuff?
To: Mariner
We need to know that our military is competent, so far we have learned that no one in the civilian sector, from the government down to local hospitals has a clue, or seems to have ever had any interest in this stuff, or to have taken it seriously.
Contrary to what so many here seem to think, the military has always been deeply involved in this kind of thing and being able to survive and operate in the face of not only infectious disease, but even weaponized bio agents and carefully planned and delivered threats.
5 posted on 10/17/2014, 4:04:12 PM by ansel12
Just a hint.
“”he United States initiated its weaponization efforts with disease vectors in 1953, focused on Plague-fleas, EEE-mosquitoes, and yellow fever - mosquitoes (OJ-AP).””
“”The United States Army Chemical Corps then initiated a crash program to weaponize anthrax (N) in the E61 1/2-lb hour-glass bomblet.””
“” United States President Richard Nixon signed an executive order on November 1969, which stopped production of biological weapons in the United States and allowed only scientific research of lethal biological agents and defensive measures such as immunization and biosafety.””
“’During the closing stages of the Rhodesian Bush War, the Rhodesian government resorted to biological warfare.””
“After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq admitted to the United Nations inspection team to having produced 19,000 liters of concentrated botulinum toxin, of which approximately 10,000 L were loaded into military weapons; the 19,000 liters have never been fully accounted for.”
“According to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment 8 countries were generally reported as having undeclared offensive biological warfare programs in 1995: China, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Syria and Taiwan. Five countries had admitted to having had offensive weapon or development programs in the past: United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada.”
“The U.S. military acknowledges that it tested several chemical and biological weapons on US military personnel in the desert facility, including the East Demilitarization Area near Deseret Chemical Depot/Deseret Chemical Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah, but takes the position that the tests have contributed to long-term illnesses in only a handful of exposed personnel.”
“The U.S. military acknowledges that it tested several chemical and biological weapons on US military personnel in the desert facility, including the East Demilitarization Area near Deseret Chemical Depot/Deseret Chemical Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah, but takes the position that the tests have contributed to long-term illnesses in only a handful of exposed personnel.”
And again you acknowledge that our US troops in an ebola contamination zone in Liberia have zero experience with bio contamination areas, much less with ebola. And that is no twisting of your words. It is simply derived from reading the words.
As I stated, every Field Manual on the subject insists that the first principle is to AVOID bio contamination areas.
I know from having both taught and participated in battlefield ethics classes that the ‘schoolhouse’ solution to ‘rescuing’ troops in a bio/chem contamination zone is that you don’t intentionally contaminate combat effective troops.
Which is what Obama is doing. It violates the “avoidance” first principle and it violates an obvious combat power degradation rationale.
No I didn’t say anything about zero experience in contaminated areas, why would I? Why waste time on whether some of these people have been involved in past Ebola outbreaks, or the Cholera operations in recent years and so on?
You have no idea what all the manuals say, so I don’t know why you want to pretend that you do.
You seem to think that the American military is to avoid any nations or regions of the world with disease, or bio threats which is ridiculous, although our enemies would sure like that if it was true.
How can you just ignore post 26 and any facts, and keep playing this internet child’s game of whatever you are doing to avoid the actual discussion?
We are trying to keep the bulk of Ebola in Africa, and keep it from bursting out into Latin America and Europe and Asia and the United States.
We are sending a few thousand of our military to build 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each, a 25 bed hospital for the health workers, and to train 500 health worker assistants per week, and to handle logistics and supplies for this complex mission.
“We had a large footprint in Africa,” Cummings said of the Defense Department’s response to the first Ebola cases reported in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire. Since that time, the Defense Department has answered numerous calls for assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO), nongovernmental organizations and ministries of heath and defense, he said.
Ansel, in my view, you keep claiming this great experience and expertise for these soldiers in Liberia, and I know it simply isn’t fact. In my view, you have been misled.
Why are you lying over and over, for instance I have never claimed what you just said there.
When I posted this “”Contrary to what so many here seem to think, the military has always been deeply involved in this kind of thing and being able to survive and operate in the face of not only infectious disease, but even weaponized bio agents and carefully planned and delivered threats.””
You have wasted all kinds of posts trying to lie about what it said, and now you are claiming that I am speaking of the individual people being sent to Liberia.
What is with you? What internet game are you trying to win so desperately?
Instead of your continual accusations that I’m lying, what is wrong with an understanding that I really see it the way I’m saying? I see you saying that our military is more than ready to meet this ebola threat in Liberia.
When you keep posting obvious lies like this one “”you keep claiming this great experience and expertise for these soldiers in Liberia, and I know it simply isn’t fact.”” over and over, then you are lying, and you have done that through all of your posts to me, which has made this incredibly lengthy exchange useless, because you prefer doing that while avoiding my actual posts and addressing or recognizing what I am actually posting.
You think the military should stay away from Liberia, and perhaps Africa, fine, got it, that is your opinion, but don’t keep falsely portraying why they are there, what they will doing, and their capabilities for performing what they are there to do.
I say that our military darned well better be able to go over there and build those treatment centers and build the hospital, and run those training classes, and handle equipment and supply logistics.
What if the "draconian measures" are precisely the end in view?
But you know they can't be ready for all that. On paper, they are .... but if Obama ships them out, it'll be the Spanish American War and the War of 1812 and Bull Run in 1861 all over again. Paper army gets ass kicked in field.
"Spanish American War meets the Black Death" .... how's that work for you?
It'll work for Obama. The white Infidels will die like flies, and Obama will secretly gloat with his CAIR/MB/Boko Haraam brothers.
No, Seabees and engineers can still do construction, and logistics and supply people can still do supply and logistics, and headquarters people can still run a headquarters, and instructors can still teach classes, that isn’t theory just on paper.
They are there because a president has them there under false pretenses, political ones; they are there to ‘support’ in addition to setting up some level of camp; and their capabilities in a contaminated ebola environment are limited by their experience, which is virtually nil.
I read support and train and hear what my experience says. You read it and appear to take it at face value. I know better.
And there’s been no lying about anything. Your last 2 paragraphs pretty well confirm that I’ve understood you correctly.
Again you have your opinion on the motives, and then you doubt that they can do what they are being sent to do, “”their capabilities in a contaminated ebola environment are limited by their experience, which is virtually nil.””
They are going to Liberia to build 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each, a 25 bed hospital for the health workers, and to train up to 500 health worker assistants per week, and to handle logistics and supplies for this complex mission.
I think the American military can do that, and that they are trained to do that.
And I think they have a serious risk of infection because of their limited experience, not to mention that this is not their mission. I also think something entirely different when I hear the word “train” than I’m betting that you do.
Limited experience in what, construction and aviation, logistics?
As far as being their mission, the military does do aid and rush in to help in events like a Cholera outbreak, and we have been involved in all of the big Ebola outbreaks, but this time the world is going in to try and break this worst outbreak in the almost 40 year history of Ebola outbreaks, before it spins completely out of control and spreads around the globe.
I get that you have an opinion, but that seems to be it, stating your opinion shouldn’t involve all the wasted posting on this thread.
We already have a large military presence in Africa outside of the Ebola areas (so far), if it spreads through Africa it can reach our Navy base and our military stations and posts in the region.
I have innoculations for both cholera and bubonic plague. I got them in the army. As you know, there is no shot for ebola. It just kills. So, of course I was talking about the army having no experience with logistics and aviation.
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