lol, i've never heard it put like that, but good. Their economy would crumble with out us.

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"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."- Ronald Reagan

"If the first amendment doesn't work, the second amendment will." - Michael Badnarik

Itdoes strike me as ironic that the U.S. Army has such a difficult time with guerrilla insurgency, considering that the U.S. Army basically started off as one. We were England's Vietnam

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"Oh people, know that you have committed great sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you!" -- Genghis Khan, Bukhara 1220

the reason we have such a hard time with them, is because we are bound by the International law. The "Guerrillas" aren't. if we were able to use the full extent of our military, they wouldn't last long.

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"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."- Ronald Reagan

"If the first amendment doesn't work, the second amendment will." - Michael Badnarik

Using gas is a violation of the war conventions...we used CN gas in Viet Nam in the tunnels. Torture is likewise forbidden. We use methods on suspects that we prosecuted the Japanese for after WWII. It seems we are not bound by law.

Counter insurgency technique has been known almost as long as war has been around, and Petraeus wrote the current army manual on it, it has not been followed, this was known going in, its known now, and the US refuses to ante up and commit what is needed. You can have all the military might in the world but if you do not use it correctly it will fail.

Two choices:
go in and kill everything that moves

or

traditional counter insurgency means literally living with the indigenous and flooding the country with troops to a 20-30:1 or better ratio, controlling all borders, providing food, water, healthcare and aid and doing something about the refugees which is part of being an occupying power bent on doing "good"

building bases and patrolling is a well known failure, counter insurgency is up close and personal, long, grinding, and involves some attrition, comes with the mission, the original recommendations by the Generals, specifically Shinsecki was for in excess of 600,000 men, minimum.......thats 40:1

is it an embarrassment to waste soldiers by using them improperly and knowing it ahead of time? going into an occupation short handed on purpose?

or a crime?irresponsible?

invincible? not with civilian leadership around

You're kidding, right? What a totally ridiculous question. You actually doubt that the U.S. is the "the greatest fighting force on the planet called Earth..."? The answer to your question as to what makes the U.S. Number One militarily, is that it has poured billions and billions of dollars into perfecting the art and science of war. Much more than any other country on Earth!

Does any other country on Earth have:

Aircraft carriers, strategic stratospheric bombers, nuclear submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles (on land, sea and air -- and maybe in space too), stealth aircraft, spy satellites, microwave beam weapons (the death ray), the Airborne Laser to shoot down missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator and Global Hawk, tank busters like the A-10 Warthog and Apache Longbow helicopter gunship, the M.O.A.B. (Mother Of All Bombs), plus watch FutureWeapons on The Discovery Channel for all the whiz-bang weapons that the U.S is developing still! It's enough to straighten your curly hair, to see what's on the drawing boards and in the field being developed to better kill one's fellow man. You actually have to ask what makes the U.S. the most powerful military force that there's ever been on the planet Earth?

The problem with the U.S. is that yes, it has all the big, bad weapons, but it lacks the intestinal fortitude to use them to their full capability. In other words, it's too soft to really be a true bad-ass. Its leaders have too much compassion or cowardice to really go all out and wipe out its enemies off the face of the Earth and simply take what it wants. I find this rather puzzling that it has this huge arsenal, yet it doesn't use it to get the natural resources it needs, like petroleum from the Middle East. It just makes those camel jockeys in Saudi Arabia call the shots while Americans keep paying more and more for gasoline, food and everything else, as oil keeps going up and up.

It could have easily carpet-bombed Iraq into rubble from 50,000 feet with B-52s or launch wave after wave of cruise missiles from offshore and not have risked even one American soldier. Did it do that? No. Why? It does not have the stomach to kill civilians. Oh, boo hoo hoo. Please. The big, bad Uncle Sam is a paper tiger that is afraid to eat all the villagers when it comes down to it. What a pathetic and incompetent country it is! The Roman Empire, for example, had no qualms to do what was needed to be done, in order to remain the number one superpower of its day. So, too did other empires. The Spartans, the Huns, the Chinese, the British, the Nazis, the Japanese, the Soviets, -- but NOT the Americans. This softness and lack of will to fully exercise power, is the U.S.'s Achilles' Heel and will lead to its destruction.

zZz, lets not make naive and foolish statements. If the US showed that type of aggression, it would be first damaging to US economic status. You can have the most powerful military in the world, but it will collapse right along side your economy. The International Community wouldn't stand idly by as Nazi America takes over world resources. Actually, a Chinese embargo could bring down the US economy, along with its military pretty quickly.

Also lets learn from the mistakes of Hitler. It is not smart to start carpet bombing important nations randomly for their resources, you'll end up fighting on multiple fronts which will end in someone getting nuked. This is exactly what people mean by "bad strategy". A bad strategy is what ended all great empires, excluding Nazi Germany. Hitler could of taken over all of Europe and eventually the US if he would have played his cards right, but instead he provoked US into the war...pulling US out of a depressing and turning US into a war machine that eventually contributed towards kicking his ass.

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Other countries on this planet will not sit idly by and watch the USA nuke half the world. Get Real zZz.
If the US lauched such an attack it would also be wiped off the face of the earth.
That's the problem with all these terrible weapons. They are toooo dangerous for any country to use, except in defence.
It doesn't matter a toss how much of a deadly military arsenal the USA has, it cannot use these weapons unless seriously attacked by another country.
As to the billions spent on these weapons, maybe the poor of America would have appreciated some of that being spent on them.

Naive and foolish statements I make, eh? No, you're naive and foolish, Kenny. If you use your military to get what you want and subjugate those that you conquer, that INCREASES your wealthy not reduces it. Look at ancient Rome. It conquered the known world and got very rich in the process. So too with Alexander the Great before Rome. So there, Kenny.

Oh yeah? Is that right, Kenny? So what could the international community DO to the U.S. if it did? The answer: nothing. As we've seen already the nations of the world did NOTHING against the U.S.'s aggressions against Afghanistan and later Iraq. Why? The answer: the fear of being next. They just shut the hell up and let Uncle Sam roll over whomever he wants to out of fear of incurring Uncle Sam's wrath as well. They don't want to make waves.

No country's going nuke the U.S., Kenny. Why? A little thing called Mutual Assured Destruction, Kenny.

Hitler didn't have The Bomb, Kenny. Nor did Hitler have the vast resources and industrial capacity the U.S. does, Kenny. In fact, when Yamamoto visited the U.S. in the years prior to Japan's attack of Pearl Harbor, he saw firsthand what industrial might the U.S. had. Do you know what he said after his country attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor? He said, "We have just awakened a sleeping giant." In other words, he knew Japan's goose was cooked from that point on, Kenny.

A) The U.S. would not nuke half the world. If it did, it couldn't even use the natural resources of those nuked areas, mairead.

And B) Even if it did, what is the world going to do but sit idly by? So, YOU get real, mairead.

Hmm, mairead. It seems that you just answered your own question about "the USA [nuking] half the world". And you know what, mairead? The U.S. doesn't even have to nuke half the world to get compliance with its wishes if it wanted to. How? The U.S. has developed the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb (colloquially known as the Mother Of All Bombs).

It's a huge conventional bomb weighing 21,000 pounds. It's like having a small nuke but without the radiation ill-effects. It makes the MOAB an even more dangerous weapon than real nukes. Why? Because, with this one, you might actually use it in anger. It can be used against an adversary, if so desired, to drive your point home.

In fact, it was fired in a demonstration in the Florida Everglades and was widely publicized and covered by the news to show Saddam Hussein what he would be facing if he did not comply with the U.S.'s wishes. Strong-arm tactics to be sure and clearly it drove the point home to all to not fuck with the U.S.

Like it or not, the U.S. is the biggest, baddest, most powerful military force on the planet. The world is just lucky that American politicians are soft, weak-willed, jelly-bellies that don't have the balls to do what the Chinese and the Soviets and other dictatorships around the world have no qualms doing.

More on the MOAB here at Wikipedia:
GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb

This is a reply to Chesty Puller. I'm sorry I couldn't reply to you in a PM, Chesty. When I did, and tried to send it off, the system said that I wasn't allowed to PM because I didn't have 50 posts yet.

Anyway, hi Chesty Puller!

Thanks, man, for what you said in your PM. It's so true, you know. What irks the hell out of me is that we pay all these high costs to have such a premiere military machine, but the lilly-livered politicians in Washington are too fucking stupid and/or gutless to reap any real rewards from all that taxpayer investment. Shit, then let me have my money back, if you aren't going to use it to make my life better! Shit!