apples, oranges?

Post #370,925 by hnick 2/6/13 10:55:15 AM Reply	apples, oranges? WWII and Korea targeted groups of soldiers on specified battle fields. I seem to recall there was a stink because we blew away a Japanese admiral in what was more of an assassination than aerial combat. Obama blew away a 16 year old kid miles from any defined battlefield because his father was a (deceased) (alleged) bad guy, with no oversight whatsoever. We are not talking about comparable types of warfare. Defining the entire universe as a battlefield and defining the enemy to be whoever he says, is no different than unsupervised execution. Having an underling designate people he doesn't like as bad guys isn't a lot different than my retriever giving me permission to trap squirrels (currently illegal) because they are a hazard to the village. Well, my retriever probably has a lot more integrity, and would abuse the privilege less, but not a LOT less difference. Not liking the AUMF is insufficient. There needs to be real means of restraint, even on the powerful; one set of laws for all. Break the law and suffer the consequences, and same consequences for all. Even the rich and powerful. Or the country has had it. Sorry, but Obama should not be allowed to be high executioner even if it is inconvenient. Even if others have done it before. If we're going to have rules, they must be for everybody.
Post #370,927 by mmoffitt 2/6/13 11:07:23 AM Reply	Now whose glasses are getting rosy? If we're going to have rules, they must be for everybody. When in the history of this country has there ever been a time when there were one set of rules for everybody? Notwithstanding our propaganda, we've always believed that "All men are created equal. And some are more equal than others."
Post #370,928 by hnick 2/6/13 11:15:26 AM Reply	Eh, I don't have a lot of illusions about success... At one point it was at least an ideal. If there isn't even an attempt to approach the ideal, the country is doomed. I like this country to think it's worth something of an effort to try to save it. If that's overly rosy, then I guess I'll just have to live with it.
Post #370,929 by mmoffitt 2/6/13 11:23:43 AM Reply	Point taken.
Post #370,949 by a6l6e6x 2/6/13 5:34:12 PM Reply	Re: blew away a Japanese admiral Admiral Yamamoto is the guy who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. Decapitating military leadership is a fairly conventional tactic of war. If that was an assassination, so was the killing of Osama bin Laden. Alex
Post #370,951 by hnick 2/6/13 6:24:28 PM Reply	Didn't say there was anything wrong with it. Yamamoto was clearly an enemy combatant in a war zone in a military aircraft. Sucks to be him. It was unusual to specifically target flag grade officers, but if they were accidentally caught up in affairs, as it were, too bad. There were complaints that they knew specifically who, where, and when, and shouldn't necessarily have popped him. Too bad. OBL nominated himself as a target VERY deliberately. I'd give that a pass just to shut him up. We live in a culture of death unless you're a zygote. We aren't going to get rid of death. We used to have a constitution that guaranteed certain rights, including not being killed out of hand by cranky bureaucrats or bored operatives. I'd like to see some of the thuggery of our political overlords reigned in a really considerable amount. Meh... I'm probably just getting old and ornery. They say it beats the alternative. They won't say who told them.
Post #371,021 by a6l6e6x 2/7/13 3:32:48 PM Reply	Re: Yamamoto Yamamoto had a fetish for punctuality that was his downfall. The message with his itinerary was decrypted and flight schedules were known. His flight passed barely within flight range of US fighter planes. There was no more than 10-15 minutes available to the fighters to locate Yamamoto's plane before they had to return home. There's a nice write up of the incident in the "Codebreakers" by Davis Khan. I read it in the mid 1960s. Alex
Post #371,063 by Andrew Grygus 2/8/13 12:47:42 AM Reply	The Japanese had a lot of structural problems. One of those problems is they could not get their new code books out on time. This meant that once the Americans broke a code book, it was quite a while before they needed to break a new one. Doing a major operation on an old code book was disastrous at Midway - the Americans knew the timing of the operation and positions of the ships. I seem to recall this was a factor in Yamamoto's being shot down. The Germans had told the Japanese "Purple" had been broken early in the war, but they considered that a false story. Americans just weren't smart enough to do that, so the code books weren't a high priority. No Purple machine survived, they all being ground to sand size, but a small section of one was found in Germany. Interestingly, in trying to build an imitation, the Americans had selected the same telephone switch used by the Japanese. It is possible there is one on Musashi, sister ship to Yamato, that could be within reach (expensively).
Post #371,091 by Ashton 2/8/13 4:19:02 PM Reply	Excellent book.. herewith an interesting 'review' https://www.smalldem...oned_In_This_Book Pix of many mentioned in the book: mouse-over each pic!
Post #371,093 by drook 2/8/13 4:50:20 PM Reply	Wow The bibliography would make a book on its own. -- Drew
Post #371,112 by a6l6e6x 2/9/13 12:24:12 AM Reply	Very nice find! Thanks. Alex
Post #372,278 by Ashton 3/7/13 7:11:50 PM Reply	Our 'culture of death' Focussing upon the wild-ass possibility of Mad President X getting even with his own personal High School Bully: simply distracts. [apparently today a reeel-common phenom, that bullying thing: goes with the general meme of Violence everywhere?] What about a bloody Majority of the place, millions of whom are daily menaced by the easy, sub-rosa, cheap Guns.. now in every teen-age gang, and on up? Congress / The Executive / The Courts--merely the usual suspects and easy to blame (why's there no Law against [this Bad thing?] But we have made the bed we lie in, over decades of surrendering to Gun Nuts USA--still a small minority/no-where a plurality: via a highly biased non-reading of that 2nd Amendment. We have agreed to look away as it is interpreted by thousands-with-small weinies: Who Feel Better About Themselves ..even when nobody-else Feels Good about Them? IF we let them buy any fucking cannon imaginable. So.. WHO's To --> BLAME!? Walt Kelly knew: We have met the enemy and it is US Akin: $245 BILLIONS last year! to treat 'diabetes'--much of which appears to devolve from the Murican Three of ez-fast-not-cheap 'food': Sugar/Salt/Grease So.. WHO's To --> BLAME!? Sucks to be 'US' Carrion.
Post #372,279 by drook 3/7/13 7:45:11 PM Reply	Nit Grease doesn't contribute to diabetes. -- Drew
Post #372,283 by folkert 3/7/13 9:43:29 PM Reply	Re: Re: Nit Grease doesn't contribute to diabetes. It does when its in combo of adding on pounds that exacerbates the diabetes, making it far worse... That is partially why losing weight is so important in type 2 diabetes. -- greg@gregfolkert.net PGP key 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05 Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
Post #372,293 by drook 3/8/13 8:44:42 AM Reply	Wrong cause/effect Metabolic syndrome causes both weight gain and diabetes. They are both effects with a common cause. Which is why most of the things that fix one tend to fix the other. -- Drew

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