Brian Ross wrote on May 19^th, 2013 at 1:37pm:


Yes, because everyone that works for an intelligence agency is James Bond and there's no way they'd use the internet because they're to busy killing terrorists and schtupping babes in exotic locations...

No, I'm an analyst with the Missile and Space Intelligence Center at Redstone Arsenal. No licenses to kill, no shoes that turn into antitank weapons, and the closest I get to traveling to exotic climes is the occasional trip to PMRF Barking Sands in Hawaii or the Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands.


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Do you even know what ToT is or how it works?


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The purpose of Allied Strategic Bombing over Europe wasn't to make Germany surrender.  The point was to destroy and disrupt German industry and draw men and materials from the Eastern Front in order to increase the rate of attrition on the German military. Less men and materials being sent to Russia means the more Germans die on the Eastern Front and less can be spared for reinforcement. Destruction and disruption of industry means the Germans are less able to recover from equipment losses.

Thanks to those bombing raids several hundred thousand 88mm guns and dozens of divisions never went to Russia because they were needed for air-defense against the bombers and Speer's Miracle went from increasing German industrial capacity by 4-7% a year from 1939-1942 to 0% growth by mid-1943 onwards.


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Learn your history. Imperial Japan was making overtures towards peace to us well before we gave Instant Sunshine to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They looked to save face and we would accept nothing less than their full and unconditional surrender. His=roshima and Nagasaki drove home to the Japanese that if they continued to fight we wouldn't make war on them any longer. We would instead destroy them root and branch in a manner they had no way to defend against.

That is what made Hirohito finally get off his butt and order Tojo and his staff to end the damn war.


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If you believe that then you've never read von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu. Both advocated the use of counter-population warfare as a means of breaking an enemy's political will and physical capability to continue to fight.


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Glad we agree then.


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He's an example of the right person at the right place at the right time. Very much the kind of person that should be locked in a glass cage with a placade stating "break only in the event of total war". Then again, at that level of the game a bit of sociopathy is not only expected, it's actually a requirement for being able todo the job effectively. 

Think Lemay was bad? Eisenhower and MacArthur we the ones that thought letting a closet pyromaniac with a disturbing fascination with strategic bombing loose in two theaters.


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In his experience Lemay dealt with societies like Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, and Imperial Japan, all of whose governments were either the result of massive public support or centuries of blind obedience to authority. He was also a huge advocate of the concept of total war and was of the opinion that if you weren't going to totally commit to a war then you shouldn't go to war in the first place.

Man, hated war.  To bad for him he was frighteningly good at it.


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No matter how advanced the weapons, tactics, and grand strategy gets it always comes down to that contest of wills that is ultimately decided by who can kill enough of the other guy's people to break their will to continue.


smacking ten-k limit...

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Now now, you know who you're begining to sound like with talk like that 

polite_gandalf wrote on May 19^th, 2013 at 10:50am:

Everywhere.

Chard wrote on May 19^th, 2013 at 2:39pm:


The first rule of spookdom is not to advertise you work in spookdom.

I've known spooks and those that boast of it invariably are at the lowest end of the pecking order whom need to boost their ego by boasting about it.

Further, those that boast the most about "blowing things up and killing people" are those have the least experience of it.   It's rather like the US soldiers and their juvenile views on the "Warrior ethos".  It's just so much wankery to inflate their egos.  Real soldiers don't prattle about such things.   

Me, I always prefer to speak about logistics.  As the old saying goes, "amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics..."  Simply "blowing stuff up and killing people" doesn't win wars, logistics do.  Trying to break your enemy's will, invariably fails as I've already mentioned, however having sufficient logistics on-site, on-time, with the manpower to utilise it will ensure that you can defeat them.

(to be continued...)

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And his unwillingness to obey the orders of his superiors?  His unilateral and unauthorised overflights of the fUSSR were dangerously reckless and provocative.  He wanted a nuclear war, which would have resulted in the destruction of both the fUSSR and the USA and a large part of the rest of the world.

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Eisenhower warned of such dangers in his “military-industrial complex” speech.   Macarthur was another who could not adopt to the strategic realities of “limited war”.  His egomania was why he was sacked.  Of the two, Eisenhower was a much smarter man IMHO and one of the American Presidents I actually admire the most.

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For a man who you claim “hated war” he was more than willing to provoke it. 

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Yet, as I've pointed out, such a view has failed when it has been applied.  Whether it was the German strategic air war in 1916-18 or 1940, or the Allied effort throughout WWII, the will of those attacked remained resolute and unbroken.  QED.

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Soren wrote on May 19^th, 2013 at 7:24pm:


WTF???

I'm talking about what you allege Brian said. He's not a muslim, why would he be saying any of this?

You have really lost the plot Soren.

There was a point to avoid?