Two wars at once?

[Mark]

Occhi,

You have an amazing grasp of history as well as laudable grasp of the English language and grammar.

One question: You are a woman, you debate well, and you play games, would you marry me? :) Of course I'm married with a set of twins (damn cute ones too) but goodness, I've never seen such a combination of desirable characteristics.

If oppposites attract, perhaps the reverse is true, therefore we are way too much alike to enter into matrimony. :(

Keep writing I enjoy your POV.

M

[Griselda]

Considering that Occhi is also a married father of (I think) two. ;)

-Griselda

[Dani]

Really?  You call the stated goal of the Arab League, going back to 1948, as being the obliteration of the State of Israel, a state expressly founded as a homeland to Jews, as not being a problem in the modern world?

Policy which has been repealed since then.

It's clear to me, that you have unfortunately been conditionalized to defend the Israeli point of view, which is in no way surprising, stemming from the reason I have stated earlier in this thread. As I also said earlier, on your next trip to Israel, try living in the Palestinian West Bank, and THEN tell me what is the TRUTH of the matter there.
The Israelis worry about bombs (and this is not that unusual for many Europeans, ask Londoners or Parisians), the palestinians worry about survival.
Terrorism is bad, but government sponsored apartheid is so much worse.

[Mark]

Oh, oops :lol:
I thought 'he' was a 'she'. Must have been the Angela part of the name Occhidiangela.

Mark

[AtomicKitKat]

That "the home country"(Jerusalem/Bethlehem/whatever you call it) be split into a no-man's home. A sacred place for all the religions, BUT, each faction controls their own gate into the place(I have no idea how many, so I'll presume Jewish/Christians on one side, Muslims on the other), for pilgrims to enter/leave as they please. BUT, each faction is WHOLLY RESPONSIBLE for checking ALL PILGRIMS(that pass through their particular gate) for:

Weapons
Offensive materials(hatred propaganda, pork, whatever)
Bombs

Would that solve all the problems? No. But it would certainly ease up on the multiple claims that "this is the birthplace of *insert religion's name here*" since all sides would then have "equal stake" in preserving the peace of the place.

People would stop over-estimating themselves, or under-estimating others. If it came down to it, the US Armed Forces could be beaten by savages with spears and atlatls. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. It's not the machine, it's the man inside/behind it.

Personally, the world needs a leader(male/female, whatever), not a council of leaders, but someone who is the final arbiter(based on proposals from national representatives) I would personally like to be that person, but I know that I am sometimes very quick to temper(but only for trivial things), and this would colour my thoughts. However, that does not discount the possibility that my clone/children will become that leader.

[Brimstone]

Personally, the world needs a leader(male/female, whatever), not a council of leaders, but someone who is the final arbiter(based on proposals from national representatives) I would personally like to be that person, but I know that I am sometimes very quick to temper(but only for trivial things), and this would colour my thoughts. However, that does not discount the possibility that my clone/children will become that leader.

:blink: Hmm...I sure hope that was sarcasm... if not, Dear God, man, see a shrink! :P

[AtomicKitKat]

*mysterious smirk*

[Jester]

I apologise for not using an anthropological definition of the word. While the descendents of Shem are many, the term "Anti-semitic", and the semites it refers to, means the Jews. When one proclaims oneself anti-semitic, you would not be delcaring that you dislike Babylonians, Assyrians, Caanites, etc... You would be anti-Jewish. That is the definition currently operating. It is both precise and useful, if etymologically incorrect.

Jester

[Jester]

"The West was for it, as The West recreated it after WW II via the U.N. To then support its dissolution is a profound hyprocisy"

And I agree that the West generally bears some responsibility for this. I, however, am not the West. I am myself, and nobody else. We are also democratic, and hence have obligations to serve the current will of the people, not the past. There is a contract with the past, but that can only partially determine each nation's actions, balanced with the present and the future (to paraphrase Burke). It sure isn't going to determine my opinion, and I don't see why it should, or why I'm a hypocrite if I don't.

The Jews do NOT exist as a single coherent unit. They have coherence, yes, and vastly more than most races. But that's nowhere near enough to treat them as a single group, as if they spoke with a single voice and acted as one. Israel is NOT simply an appenage of the Jewish race. It is a nation state.

The Jews do not speak as one any more than Slobodan can justify himself by drawing false legitimacy from every Serb everywhere by their simple existence.

Perhaps there are nations which are not states, and perhaps there are states which cannot consider themselves nations, at least by that definition. To treat them as synonyms, even in the closest cases like Israel, is too easy a switch. It's just not accurate.

Jester

[dwa]

F-16s still in service in USAAF are just upgraded 60s technology. Point is, that unlike the Iraqi airforce in 91, the NK one would not run away. There would be US planes dropped.[/quote]

As was pointed out already, a) you've got the tech era wrong and B) unlike the North, our planes have had the benefit of new technology upgrades. They have not. The tech gap is huge; they only have a very small number of MiG-29's (the one involved in the intercept represents 1/9th of their total. Speaks volumes, doesn't it?), slightly more MiG-23's, but the bulk of their air superiority fighters are MiG-21's and MiG-17's. The air battle will not be a fair fight, period. And seeing as how the MiG-29's are all assigned to the PDC, the only US planes that are going to get dropped are by anti-aircraft weapons on the ground (of which there are scary numbers), not in the sky.

The terrain in NK doesn't favor large armored concentrations. It would be very much like Afghanistan, only the opposition is organized, and has fifty times as much troops.

I dare say that I am well aware of what the terrain of NK looks like, and what kind of operations are possible. And the major restriction, throughout the peninsula, is on East/West movement. There is more than enough room in the Kaeson-Chorwon corridor and the Koksan valley to allow significant armored movement. If anything, this benefits us, as we can steam roll their armor and mech forces (which is a joke; truck mounted infantry does not a mech corp make, but that's neither here nor there) through the main avenues of approach when the counter-offensive starts.

They do have rocket launchers, mines and other infantry weapons that are effective against any modern armor. And effective doesn't mean you stand in front of the tank and aim at it's strongest armor.

Up to "...infantry weapons" is correct; they do have those items. The rest is utter nonsense, and I have no idea who told you that RPG-7's and 1950's era anti-tank mines are terribly effective against chobham armor, because they aren't. The best they could hope for is to bruise the decals, maybe get a tread to fly off, which is a bitch to fix, but doesn't kill a tank, by any means. I can't remember offhand what their most modern anti-tank aircraft is, but I don't think it's capable of taking out an Abrahms either. And their tanks definately aren't up to snuff, but that's what you get when you're fighting with T-54's and T-34's.

[AtomicKitKat]

War strategy: Going through any narrow pass is the absolute WORST strategy EVER. ESPECIALLY A VALLEY. Altitude=the more you have, the better your visibility= the lower the chance of you being ambushed. And if I knew in advance that somebody was coming through the valley into my turf with a convoy of armoured trucks(tanks are little more than that), I'd set the area up with enough mines to make them rethink their strategy. And I wouldn't just plant them at the entrance either, I'd likely set up explosives at/near the entrance so I can collapse the avenue of retreat on top of the last few tanks, and the front row will be forced to advance.

As for tank vulnerability, the softest part of anything mobile is the belly. Tanks are generally built to withstand frontal and side-fire. Their rears are typically less(not by much), and on the underside, it's relatively laughable(not saying much, but it's significantly lower, since you won't want to slow your tank down with TOO much armour)

And as I mentioned before, it's not the machine, it's the man inside. In this case, find something irritating(doesn't need to be a conventional chemical weapon, burning leaves might do it), find a way to get it into the air system, the men will either choke to death or pop their tops to take a breather.

When you're the future king of the world, you plan for any contingency and know your enemies' weaknesses.

[Rhydderch Hael]

The worst strategy ever is not being able to go anywhere anytime soon because there is no pass or corridor to navigate!

Sure, a valley pretty much dictates a path of advance, but predicts the enemy's avenue of attack either, which pretty much simplfies mine-clearing operations and whatnot.

And modern MBTs have a chem warfare overpressure system where the internal atmospheric pressure of a tank is slightly higher than that of the outside air. Abrams' are not airtight, but they need not be, because with the overpressure on, the clean air is constantly leaking out, which prevents contaminants from leaking in.

[Occhidiangela]

This has not happened since the DSF days.

Married father of two, as Gris points out, 43, live in Texas.

Now, my alter ego, Occhi the Rogue, is a hard drinking, smart alecky Diablo I rogue who has been known to toss off the occasional bawdy limerick now and again. She is addicted to caffeine, and if she weren't such a self centered bi --

*OUCH*

She just hit me with a bow! :D

[Occhidiangela]

Egypt is the sole Arab nation of any note to who has entered into a sustainable peace agreement with Israel, which action brought about the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

As for conditioning, I have evaluated the positions in the mideast for some time --, considering how aggressively some Prime Ministers have settled the West Bank -- and find the Palestinians be malcontents who "cannot get along well with others." King Hussein threw them out of Jordan, for goodness sake, in 1970, and he was an Arab. They have been used as saps for the failed Arab cause ever since, in a not particularly well aimed attempt to destroy Israel 'via other means,' might of arms having come a cropper since by and large Arabs have been shown to be spectacularly incompetent in the profession of arms.

'Apartheid?' Nice try. It is the Palestinians who want their own "sovereign" turf. It is Arafat who screwed his people, when Pres Clinton got him about 90% of what he was asking for, and he was not satisfied. He killed the best chance he had for quite a while to keep progress moving forward. The only answer the Palestinians appear to have anymore is bombs and blood.

Why would anyone want such folk to enter the international community?

They will spare no Israeli citizen's life in their quest to achieve "more." Why you champion their cause puzzles me, unless you are the usual closet anti-semite, or media dupe.

[Occhidiangela]

Occhi di angela is bad Italian for "Angeleyes" I used the 'a' ending since a rogue is a female in Diablo I, but i has been pointed out by those who know Italian far better than I, that:

Angel in Italian is "angelo" so the character I was stealing the name from, Lee Van Cleef's "Angeleyes" in "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" should have made it 'Occhidiangelo.' But a rogue is a she . . .

At least I did not name here "Nice_RacK" or "BimBow" or "Bimbo_With_A_Bow"

"Where should I put this"

[Occhidiangela]

Send you pictures. :) Getting a scanner this weekend.

[Griselda]

new techs!

[Dani]

Egypt is the sole Arab nation of any note to who has entered into a sustainable peace agreement with Israel, which action brought about the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

Define "nation of any note". Unless you're excluding some pretty important countries in the region, your statement is plain wrong. Maybe you haven't read news for the past 10 years or so? ;)
More below.

As for conditioning, I have evaluated the positions in the mideast for some time --,

I believe this. And I know that it is very likely that the sources you have used are biased pro-Israeli. Not your fault, just you live in a society which works like that.
For example, Elie Wiesel speaks about as much truth as Goebbels, and is in many ways as bad, if not worse than Arafat.

'Apartheid?' Nice try.  It is the Palestinians who want their own "sovereign" turf.

For the third time, I recommend you spend your next trip to Israel in the Palestinian West Bank. Better yet, try to blend in as a Palestinian. I bet you won't last 15 minutes in a check point before you go flaunting your US passport.

when Pres Clinton got him about 90% of what he was asking for

Media myth pushed by, you guessed it, biased US media.
In relation to the first question. If Israel was so generous, what is the logic behind the "death by silence" esponse given to the Saudi peace plan? There is none. It is Israel who refused a solution, that would've led to peace and stability in the region. Now, why would they do it? Maybe they really don't want to solve the problem, or maybe they're paranoid, that I do not know.

Why you champion their cause puzzles me, unless you are the usual closet anti-semite, or media dupe.

I champion their cause, because they are morally in the right. They are being occupied and oppressed by a foreign invader. Because the UN has done hundreds of resolutions to solve the problem, 99% of which have been vetoed by US or just generally ignored by Israel.
If Palestines were black, and Israelis not jews, what do you think would've happened long time ago? As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm afraid it is you and yours who have been duped by the media, but it doesn't matter. I can't make you see that, especially not with the limitations of the internet. So best let sleeping dogs lie and realize that we both think the other has been duped, and that neither of us will change our views because of said duping.
Once thing we can agree on though, Arafat is a bastard. I'd like to add that the Israeli leadership has rarely been any better, and certainly not barak, the supposedly peaceful man, who upped the settlement program quite drastically.

[NiteFox]

...in "coinkidinky."

I haven't been payin' much attention to this particular thread. Yet before I decided to go scrounging through this behemoth for anything interesting I gazed upon Occhi's name in the forum view and said to myself "Hmm, I've been meaning to ask him what it means..."

Saves me the bother now :P

[Occhidiangela]

in this country.

The answer begins with education . . .