Sunday, May 28, 2006

bailing out

The axis of feeble is further disintegrating
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10 comments:

The Darkroom said...

this is out of a contingent of 8,371 - a whopping 12%!

5/28/2006 9:10 PM
Tecumseh said...

The arithmetic is obviously wrong, in the grand "fake but accurate" tradition:

* The figure of 1000 missing is cumulative over 5 and a half years, not for this year:

Figures for those still missing are 86 from 2001, 118 from 2002, 134 from 2003, 229 from 2004, 377 from 2005, and 189 for this year so far.


* The figure is for the whole of the British Army, which numbers some 190,000 personnel, not for the contingent in Iraq, which indeed counts close to 8,500 troops.

* Finally, as the MoD makes it clear, the Beeb is tendentious in its headline (duhhh...):
the soldiers currently missing were considered to be "absent without leave" and would have to be court martialled before they could be found guilty of deserting. She added only one person has been found guilty of deserting the Army since 1989.

Desertion is a crime. In a democracy, it has to be proven before a military tribunal, you know?

5/28/2006 9:41 PM
The Darkroom said...

you are right about the numbers. still it is an encouraging trend.

5/28/2006 9:49 PM
Tecumseh said...

I find this turbo parachute more encouraging. A chacun son gout.

5/29/2006 10:55 AM
The Darkroom said...

yet another total waste of money : isn't it comical how hundreds of billions of dollars were spent over the last say 20 years fattening the weapons industry, yet the us is now being trumped by a smal group of bedouins with technology a small step above the molotov cocktail? Prettry dismal ROI if you ask me.

5/29/2006 11:42 AM
Tecumseh said...

More encouraging news:

The Pentagon plan calls for deploying a new nonnuclear warhead atop the submarine-launched Trident II missile that could be used to attack terrorist camps, enemy missile sites, suspected caches of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and other potentially urgent threats, military officials say. If fielded, it would be the only nonnuclear weapon designed for rapid strikes against targets thousands of miles away and would add to the United States' options when considering a pre-emptive attack.

Of course, this does not go well with the Gray Old Lady. Oh well, can't please these guys, no matter what. They'd rather defend the US with BB guns, or perhaps adopt the French solution?

5/29/2006 3:42 PM
The Darkroom said...

yes - i remember clinton using remote weapons on "terrorist" camps in Sudan and elsewhere. Quite a success that was.

5/29/2006 4:58 PM
Tecumseh said...

Yes, that was pretty pathetic. But ICBMs are better than Tomahawks:

The system would use satellite tracking to improve its accuracy. General Cartwright asserted that a test demonstrated that a nonnuclear version of the missile could fly thousands of miles and deliver its payload just five yards away from its target.

Not bad, huh? Now, if only we had actionable intelligence to match such capabilities...

5/29/2006 5:44 PM
Tecumseh said...

Bill O'Reilly is jumping ship on Iraq. What's his first name, again? Guillaume?

5/30/2006 10:21 PM
The Darkroom said...

une lueur d'intelligence illumine o'reilly ? ca ne saurait durer.

5/31/2006 11:29 AM

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