[human]

ChrissyP,

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Wow Rev 5000 posts! You have been busy. That being said IMHO I think we should allow Americans to stay here who do not want to participate in a war that even Rumsfeld had to admit isn't entirely legal. If they feel that the war is illegal it is their duty even under American military law to disobey orders or face prosecution. Now we all know that no prosecution for particiating in the Iraq war will even be brought about but that does not take away from the legalities. And yes before some of you start some of my spelling may be wrong and my sentences may run, however if that is all you can find wrong with my opinion save your breath I already know that.

Those are not people who refused to get enlisted to the war, but rather deserters, which means legally if we allowed them, and a USA court issued a judgement against them we will be interfering in the laws of a neighbour country, after all we will not allow any other country including the mighty USA to interfere in our laws, do we?

I want to see, how our politician are going to defend their decision if an extradition order slipped to them...

What are the legal and not the emotional ground here?

There is none...

What they going to say?

Illegal War, like the Revlon 5000 "one sentence" posts says...


Sorry, rev, I couldn't resist...

[human]

Rev_Blair,

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Careful Chrissy...Jack will call you a terrorist if you insist on telling the truth.

Now, Rev, be reasonable for once, if I do it to you, it does not mean that I have to GENERALIZE...

[ChrissyP]

To be honest Human your response didn't make much sense to me and I am not trying to be offensive. I don't recall stating anything about emotional standpoints. Emotion has very little to do with legalities. As far as the US interfering in Canada yes they absolutely do, look at the wrangling going on with Canada trying to legalize pot. As far as an extradiction order if Canada in short says sit on it and rotate to the US it would not be the first time. Do you deny that it is an American soldiers duty to disobey orders that they believe is wrong?? Saying I was ordered to is not a defence in the US Military. I would also like to know why it is you think that the US actions in Iraq are legal. I would like to assure you if it was any other country except the US in Iraq the poop would be hitting a massive fan!

[Rev_Blair]

US laws do not apply in Canada, Godz. What does apply is Canadian law and various international agreements that we are party to. The war in Iraq is illegal, so just going there is obeying an illegal order. There have been several instances of US military personnel commiting atrocities in Iraq. Many of the methods that the US employs as standard operating procedures are against international law. It is perfectly reasonable for a soldier to expect that he would be put in a position of further violating international law should he go to Iraq.

Have you contacted the US military about signing up to go to Iraq yet, Godz? Are you still afraid to put your ass on the line for the country you love so much?

[Deancoo]

Godz46 Godz46:

Here's the situation, the soldier signed up and made a comitment to the United States military and by refusing orders, he has broken that treaty. Were not talking about him refusing an order to shoot Iraqi children at close range, were talking about a refusal to go into the country in the first place. A war which has been authorized by the US Congress and the Executive Branch. So regarding US law, he has broken it. And its just a matter of justice to send him back and let him take the consequence for that action. There were some consicous objectors to this war, but did they run to the border the first chance they got? No. They stood up in court martial, served their time (18 months) and got discharged. He has to take responsibility for his decision. When he signed up, he should have thought things through.

I don't think US-Canadian relations should be jeopordized becuase some idiot did'nt read the fine print in his contract.

"Here's the situation..." Oh how black and white you make it seem Goofz. In the US, when you want a post secondary education, but can't afford it, you join the military. The kid got more than he bargained for. He even went to Afghanistan, but with regard to Iraq, his argument is that this is a war not sanctioned by the international community (which includes Canada). That’s why he's here as apposed to Poland, genius. And how many commitments to it's soldiers has the United States broken? XXX-extended duties, etc...

[Deancoo]

Godz46 Godz46:

...and whenever I get my green card that's when I will be registered on the SELECTIVE SERVICE list. And should my number come up, I will serve.

You know what dude, I hope this really happens too you. And I hope you have to shoot a kill people. I'd like to talk to you then, and see if you're still an arrogant war mongerer.

[Deancoo]

Godz46 Godz46:

Deencoo, to your standards Winston Churchill must be the devil becuase of his hawkish war mongering.

Are you comparing yourself to Churchill?

Have a read. http://www.duckdaotsu.org/070704-hinzman.html

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Jeremy Hinzman: Military hero




Lou Plummer,
Fayetteville, North Carolina

In January, Jeremy Hinzman, a paratrooper from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division loaded his wife, son and a few possessions into their small car and drove from Fort Bragg to Toronto, Canada. In a journey reminiscent of one taken by another generation of soldiers, Hinzman committed a felony punishable by death, in order to avoid serving in a controversial war.

I’ve known Hinzman since he arrived from advanced infantry training, which he completed in the same place I had years ago: Fort Benning, in Georgia. We met in an unlikely place, Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I was there to attend a meeting of an anti-death penalty group and he was there to talk to the director, a man who counsels soldiers on discharge issues.

When I left the military after completing my enlistment, I went to work in a southern penitentiary. It took years for me to realise that the racism endemic to the prison was something I could not tolerate. I was able to quit and walk away from that job.

It didn’t take Jeremy Hinzman quite so long to realise that he was participating in something that was wrong. At Fort Benning, instructors led a chant during bayonet training “What makes the grass grow?” His fellow trainees exclaimed, “Blood, blood, blood” and Jeremy started to question his enlistment decision.

There aren’t many places in US society where it’s OK to scream one’s bloodlust. Some people willingly train to kill for their country. Others realise they can’t. That’s why the US military has a conscientious objector discharge program. The all-volunteer military stops being all volunteer the day that a person enlists. Even the Pentagon realises that people can change.

After spending a few months training with his unit at Fort Bragg, Hinzman filed a conscientious objector application. He hadn’t been a slacker while contemplating this decision. He’d been awarded the highly coveted expert infantry badge, worn only by those who master dozens of tasks involving deadly military skills. He’s aced parts of the army physical fitness test and was admired by his superiors for his work ethic.

After receiving his application, the army removed him from training and assigned him duty as a guard at the gates of Fort Bragg, checking IDs to keep terrorists from invading the home of the Airborne Infantry. Yet when his unit received orders to deploy to Afghanistan, Hinzman was ordered to go with them. His superiors claimed they had no record of his conscientious objector application.

Hinzman deployed and while on a clerical detail, discovered his application in, of all places, his personnel record. A hearing was convened and after Hinzman explained that, in the event of an attack he would defend his friends in the unit in which he’s served for two years, his application was denied. The Army wouldn’t discharge him.

When he returned from that deployment, I saw him often. We marched against the war in a demonstration at the state capitol. We attended meetings of a local grassroots peace group. Hinzman never used his unique position to generate attention. He participated as a believer in peace, not as a novelty act from the 82nd Airborne.

We talked about computers and cycling as well the war and the occupation. I watched his son grow. When his unit received orders for Iraq, only five months after returning from Afghanistan, I was saddened beyond words. While defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld held press conferences proclaiming that the soldiers he professes to support would receive real breaks between deployments, the people in military communities like the one I live in saw the real truth as we watched our friends prepare to depart to yet another combat zone.

By necessity, Hinzman planned his move to Canada secretly. Rather than laying low and avoiding the spotlight once he arrived, however, he decided to speak out for the first time, willingly drawing attention to his decision. To those who know him, he isn’t a novelty act or a weakling who couldn’t hack the rigours of the infantry. I know men who’ve served in Iraq and I admire them. I admire Jeremy Hinzman as well. He’s not a typical military hero, but he’s a hero nonetheless.

[Deancoo]

Godz46 Godz46:

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Are you comparing yourself to Churchill?

You claim that those who are for war, are evil. So therefore you must believe that Churchill was evil as well (He did'nt have much military experience under his belt either).

Godz, since you seem to be the master of putting words in peoples mouths (as you're trying to do with me here), I'm gonna try and explain it to you real slooowwwww.

I have seen the most despicable and vile posts from you, where you cheered the deaths of Iraqis. That's what makes YOU a heartless arrogant warmonger.

[Scape]

DU is a war crime and they use it all the time.

The problem is that the US military is still thinking of being an offensive wave moving forward towards a decisive engagement which will end the involvement. From the end of Vietnam until 2003, this was the political objective of military force, and therefore "rolling offensive" doctrines were correct. But they are not now.

Consider the following from FM 1-114: Air Cavalry:

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Ensure maximum reconnaissance forces forward. The maximum number of intelligence-gathering assets and their capabilities are involved in the reconnaissance effort. Air cavalry is most valuable when it is providing essential battlefield information. To do this, it must be positioned as far forward as METT-T factors allow. It operates at a distance supported by CS and CSS assets.

Develop the situation rapidly. When the enemy situation is vague or unknown, the air cavalry deploys to gather information for the supported commander. Immediately on gaining enemy contact, it deploys to cover, maintains observation, and reports and develops the situation. It develops the situation based on the tactical order, unit SOP, or the directions of the commander.

This doctrine is not applicable to an insurgency of the type faced in Iraq, because the insurgents are not localized forward of safe US positions. As the cracking of the green zone demonstrates, there are no safe zones, there is no "forward" concentration. Air cavalry is then locating probable forward concentrations, and leaving flank concentrations without observation. That which is missed, stays missed.

This is not to single out Air Cavalry for specific criticism, nor to criticize a doctrine which, when it was developed, was perfectly appropriate to the strategic aims of US military deployment. What has changed is the nature of the mission, and therefore the nature of doctrine. These changes do not happen over night, and they do not happen without training.

Instead, however, the military is getting an adhocracy, one which is oriented towards losing, and not winning. This is a harsh criticism, but it is justified. Instead of creating highly cohesive units, which are better able to face the chaos of the post-territorial warfare that is going to be the fighting for the next decade at least as part of the Global War on Terrorism and the Occupation of Iraq - the US is now converting the regular army to a structure that has leaders without the lead, and command without control. Already it is clear that regular Army units are better able to deal with the challenges of the post-territorial battlefield. However, the structure being offered is far more oriented to absorbing more National Guard units into service.

In short, this structure is designed to take more militia units - people who were not recruited, were not trained and are not equipped as front line battle troops - and putting them into front line service.

This causes two problems: first it weakens the command structure of the military. Second, it delays the day of reckoning created by over-commitment of troops. Instead of creating more elite units who are trained for the kind of urban battlefield entered, it creates a vagueness of unit integrity, which is therefore prone to breakdowns in communication. Such breakdowns are fatal in the present, because they create openings for insurgents and other guerillas and para-militaries to exploit.

This is, again, not to criticize the officers of the army. This new unit organization bears the marks of orders from the civilian leadership, and it is the civilian leadership which is wholly, or mostly, to blame for the result.

And now your beginning to see the problems of that now with this armored hummer fiasco. The US military's logistical capacity assumes that control of most of the lines of supply. This conception is related to the air cavalry "forward deployment", and is, a bad decision based on the current mission of the US armed forces. The result has been fatalities and casualties among people driving trucks in Iraq - not reported as military fatalities because many are contractors - which have brought resupply to a stand still in many areas.

With typical pain adverse mentality on display, the answer has not been to produce an armored trucking force, which is what a mobilized US would do, but instead to shift to airlifting. The hazard of this cannot be overstated, it is a slippage in strategic position which could potentially have disasterous consquences for the US presence in Iraq. As with the armor shortage - it creates a vulnerability which the enemy shall, not might, exploit.

To understand why this is a problem, let us refer back to the Air Cavalry doctrine: namely that Air Cavalry's effectiveness drops when engaged. Air cavalry is most effective when it is moving, has control of the contact with the enemy, and can use surprise and stealth to take advantage of the lack of SA on of the enemy.

The Soviets, in their occupation of Afgahnistan reached the same point: roads were too hazardous, and therefore there was a shift to using helicopters. This is what made the supply of stingers so important: the Soviet supply jugular was exposed. Exposure of the logistical capacity is a tremendous risk of defeat - strategy may win praise, but it is logistics that wins wars.

This will compound the spare parts problem that US helicopters are already facing in Iraq. A military turbine helicopter is a giant vacuum cleaner in a land of sand. Air-ground ratios are higher, spart part consumption is higher, risk for extended operation without maitenance is higher, and operational capacity degrades faster. Increasing reliance on a wasting asset is strategic suicide. That the United States Department of Defense does not have the ability to convert industrial capacity to meet the challenge is saying that the war economy is being mismanaged.

And that again, rests on the actions of the civilian leadership.

In summary: American forces have tactical doctrines which are unsuited to current missions, because they assume forward control is sufficient. This defect shows up in logistical problems with trucking, and with the high percentage of personnel transport vehciles which are not ready to go through hostile terrain. The two problems reinforce each other - excessively forward tactical doctrine creates more chances for insurgents to attack flank and rear areas not covered by the forward deployed assets.

This problem is about to become a vicious circle: to make up for the failure of a forward deployed control, and having a logistical capacity that is a "soft white underbelly", in the old military phrase, the US is about to over rely on the already overtaxed rotary wing arm. Since this arm is already undersupplied with spare parts for current committments, it is gravely increasing the hazard being faced by US service personnel fighting in Iraq.

Instead of dealing with these problems, either by scaling back the mission, or demanding the committment of sufficient resources to accomplish the current mission - Rumfeild has instituded steps which are designed to delay the day of reckoning, but do so by increasing the risk to personnel. Just as with the armor shortage, this will eventually manifest itself as increased fatalities, decreased mission effectiveness - as hard choices must be made as to which objectives to abandon - and increased insurgent effectiveness.

The rising fatality and casualty rate is not, then, an accident, but the result of the failure of the civilian leadership to "bite the bullet". A war time economy should be managed, not to increase profits, but to win the war in the most effective manner possible. The failure to restructure the US to a war time economy has a cost - dead soldiers, and a live war.

What is required is not restructuring the military until it is "the army Rummy wants", but the army America needs to prevail in the conflicts it is engaged in.

[Rev_Blair]

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Really? In that case..do you think a murderer or a rpaist should simply corss the border, and get refugee status and immunity becuase "US laws do not apply here".

Military laws are different than civilian laws, Godz. We also retain the right to not extradite certain people under certain conditions.

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Yes..and one of the international agreements which we have signed includes a contract which states that those who brake the law in Mexico makes them criminals in the US and Canada. Those who brake the law in the US makes them criminals in Mexico and Canada. And those who brake the law in Canada makes them criminals in the US and Mexico.

A brutal, almost incoherent, oversimplification.

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The stories of US soldiers going into Children's hospiltals and shooting babies point blank are bullshit Rev.

Abu Ghraib is documented, so is the use of DU, so is the arbitrary arrest of innocent people in their houses, so is the shooting of civilians approaching check-points, so is the bombing of civilian neighbourhoods. Cut the crap, Godz...the constant assault on international law by the Bush regime is a fact.

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What are you the tactical commandor of the 82nd Airborne? No one really knows what is the "standard operating procedure" of the US military is. You think they post their tactics on the internet where anybody can access them and putting their soldiers at risk.


Just stick to something along the lines: "There have been accusations against the US military breaking international law". That sounds believable. Don't pretend to know the tactical operation procedure of the US Marine Corps when not even the Army Times know what they are.

See above.

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Well I'm moving down there on Sunday Rev...and whenever I get my green card that's when I will be registered on the SELECTIVE SERVICE list. And should my number come up, I will serve. And I have stated this a million times.

So what you are saying is that you like the war, but will only participate if they make you. I suspect the truth is that if you got a draft notice you'd head for the border so fucking fast it'd make your head spin. You'd have a thousand excuses about your girlfriend and your mommy and that old football injury, but the truth is that you'd run away. You are a coward, Godz.

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You seem to think that only those who are actually in the military should be the ones to who voice their position on military matters.

When the hell did I ever say that? I didn't. What I did say is that if you are so happy about this war go and put your ass on the line. Put your money where your mouth is. Quit trying to misinterpret what people say, Godz. You aren;t smart enough to manage it.

[human]

Chrissy,

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To be honest Human your response didn't make much sense to me and I am not trying to be offensive.

That certainly is more depending on your perceived common senses...

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I don't recall stating anything about emotional standpoints. Emotion has very little to do with legalities.

Exactly my point, emotion has very little to do with legalities, but since your common senses seems like working on more of the anti-Bush, and anti-USA emotions, I had to bring it up since you are trying to hid it in the shadow of legality because as far as I know, the deserters are not refugees, but rather are trying to commit an illegal action according to their country's law, and for your information, and the information of the rest, Canada does not have a law that oblige her for protecting deserters; especially, they are not considered criminals facing executions.

So, I say this, before any one of the law and the legality professors make a claim, shouldn't he at least know what our laws permit, and that not to say what the word LAW means, or what that law's purpose is.

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As far as the US interfering in Canada yes they absolutely do, look at the wrangling going on with Canada trying to legalize pot. As far as an extradiction order if Canada in short says sit on it and rotate to the US it would not be the first time.

The only one who's interfering in Canada are the hooligans of anti-USA, which are LEGALY Canadians, but want to prove their Canadianism by introducing a new version of their own Canadianism that says, you must be anti-USA policy to prove your Canadianism, and along with them a category of Trudeaurian Canadian who are deceived by such people...

Well I have good news for all those people...

Recognitions are being optimized at this very moment.

Coming to a theatre near you.

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Do you deny that it is an American soldiers duty to disobey orders that they believe is wrong?? Saying I was ordered to is not a defence in the US Military.

I would also like to know why it is you think that the US actions in Iraq are legal. I would like to assure you if it was any other country except the US in Iraq the poop would be hitting a massive fan!

See unlike you, I don't mix and merge according to my emotional state of mind because this is not what Canadian do, but rather it is a well known trait of the Canadians wanabees...

American soldiers rights, obligations, privileges, and duties are to be discussed by them in their own country and not in Canada, and for your majesty, to allow deserters here in Canada in accordance of what you think is their duty is, you should remember that their duty is to face what ever they think is wrong in their own country and not Canada because Canada can't give them the Justus they ask for.

For you to understand from where I am coming on Iraq, you have to read my post about "The unilateral responsibility of saving the world."


http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?nam ... pic&t=3520

However the only poop that would be hitting the massive fan is the PRO-TERRORISTS poop, and not only in Iraq, but also in the world fan that is nicknamed the UN.