Posted on 12/22/2006 9:01:22 PM PST by HAL9000
Exactly. I did a 3 month and a 4 month. I talked to guys who had been there on their 4th or 5th tours, and they had the "1000-yard stare". Burned out. But these were only 90 or 120 day tours. Holy crap. It was a work camp. Nothing but work, eat, and sleep. Couldn't go off base due to the threat.
But, all that was nothing compared to what our combat grunts are going through now.
When the Commandant of the Marine Corps says the grunts are approaching the breaking point, the damned politicians better be listening.
It's not just the grunt that is affected, it's the wife, husband, kids. Stuff goes wrong when the other half ain't around to help out.
What we need to do is to erect oil drilling platforms in Iraq and Afghanistan which can drill diagonally under Iran and suck all of the oil out, subsequently causing it's entire land mass to collapse into a 25,000 foot deep sink hole.
Our military is not stretched too thin. We haven't even hardly utilized the strategic arm of the Air Force.
Excellent idea.
Exactly. The US air power can absolutely demolish all of Iran military infrastructures, command and control centers, and their nuclear facilities, with extremely small losses on our side.
BUT it ain't airpower that will ever win a war. That turf ain't yours until some 18-year-old kid with a rifle goes in and stands on it and plants the flag on it. Air is useful in SUPPORTING that kid, though, make no mistake about it. When I was in, during and subsequent to Vietnam, Marine Air (my helos) would haul the grunts around, resupply them, haul out their dead and wounded and then the fixed wing guys would fly close support for them. (Oh, and the Navy would send the USS New Jersey or some of the 8" gunned cruisers out to provide naval gunfire support, something sorely lacking these days. One of the really fun things I would LOVE to see would be a Time on Target of all nine 16-inch guns off a battlewagon. From a very SAFE distance, of course. But eighteen tons of high explosive going off all at once would be a sight to behold, not to mention the flame-wall when the guns went off!!!) But it was the grunts who were and are truly "kings of the hill" for going out and taking that turf and paying the butcher's bill to do it. (And then, in Vietnam, unlike ANY of our previous wars, we'd give back that turf to the VC or NVA, until some dic?head decided we needed to pay another butcher's bill to take it back again, for another week or two.)
Bump that.
BTTT bookmark for reference to after the holidays
I wonder if the Iranians sued us for the Vincennes incident.
BUMP
Ooh....time to take some Iranian toys away. Hey Ahmanutjob, it's all your fault. Hope the Iranians appreciate it....not.
Hope they like those lovely sanctions as well.
It's a pretty futile exercise and waste of court time. I imagine Iran has many legitimate grievances against the US and Great Britain that it either already has filed or can file in its own court system.
So US citizens can be killed by foreign governments and the US government does not consider it an act of war?
Like the Islamos will take heed.
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