5,911 Forum Posts by "Jimsween"
At 9/5/05 12:19 AM, MALforPresident wrote: stop pointing fingers.
Grow up. There are thousands of people still stuck in New Orleans, children, babies, sick, elderly, all still stuck there. There is no more appropriate time to point fingers. It took 4 days to even start, thats simply too long. More troops were evacuated out of Vietnam in less time, and that was on to ships, since the phillipenes was out of range.
look, nobody knew untill a few days before that a cat. 5 hurrican was going to hit such a large area.
A few days is more than enough to bring the national gaurd in. One day is enough. Half a day is enough. Wheres the national gaurd though? Oh yeah......
or that so many people weren't going to leave the areas being evacuated.
Why not? Are they retarded? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize some people don't have cars. That alone is something to be pissed at, why did nobody realize that?
you can't really expect people to take drills seriously.
You can expect the government to, thats why we have the national gaurd, and FEMA. Why the fuck do we have them if they aren't going to do thier job?
it takes a disaster like this to open eyes and fine tune certain emergency services.
DERRRR!!
We have had disasters for years. Our emergency services were fine tuned, they were untuned. Our National Gaurd was sent to Iraq and the budgets for emergency services were cut for homeland security and so more money could be spent on Tax cuts.
the military can't do much right now because the city is under so much water and has a lot of debris under that water.
That is incorrect. Thousands of people are within range of roads where they could be evacuated but they are not allowed to. It's literally like the movie resident evil apocalypse where they have the city quarantined.
Also, nowadays, we have these crazy inventions called HELICOPTERS! But for some reason none of our helicopters were around..... wonder what that was....... hmmmmm..................
last thing we need is 30 marine attack boats sinking before they even get to people who need the help.
Because its not like attack boats are prepared for debris. Everyone knows wars are nice and tidy.
but yes, in any event there is always room for improvements.
Tell that to the possibly thousands who already died and the thousands more still stuck in the city.
i think that maybe the US government could have started getting ready for the worste case scenario while the storm was moving in, instead of waiting to find out what will happen.
Or maybe even immedeatly after the storm? No?
At 9/5/05 12:47 AM, FAB0L0US wrote: Wheres Jimsween? Havent seen him forever.
Wow, wierd. I suddenly got a feeling to post. I think this means were supposed to get married or something.
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. Just like Elfer is saying. We have to make it, in the end we still need to get our power from somewhere. Except instead of the oil going to our cars, it will go to power stations, and then the power from those stations will go to hydrogen extraction plants.
I don't worry about all this, mainly because I don't pay for my gas. But secondly, because I know that the capitalist system is designed perfectly for this. Now there is a huge demand for fuel, the supply of oil is dwindling, but the demand is getting bigger, so there is a huge demand for someone to come up with a new fuel source, and by demand I mean $$$.
At 9/2/05 03:03 AM, Sivak wrote: The main problem here is greed. The companies can get away with it, so they can. They take every excuse they can to raise the price. They said once production got up to speed, it would go down. Lie. When new oil is found, they say it takes a few days for the prices to adjust. But when a sparrow farts, price goes up the very next day!
No, your wrong. Only 50-70 cents of the price of gas currently go to American companies. The rest of the cost is taxes ~60 cents and crude oil ~1.65 cents.
The price of crude oil has doubled since 2003, there can be greed, but mostly, if anything, its the greed of OPEC.
I need ideologies to be presented to me in the form of symbols to understand them. It's just like watching the movie instead of the book, its easier.
If we make flying spaghetti monster buttons and wear them were going to get alot of people to realize god is fake, because up until now, they just thought that the reason we think hes fake is because we hate him and not because its facetious.
Blah blah blah whatever. Athiests are dumb. Anyone who can be that sure about god either way is just deluding themselves, but with the Athiests its not even because of fear or hope, there really is no reasoning.
At 9/1/05 08:05 PM, altanese_mistress wrote: Thats because of a hurricane; something that has been happening for billions of years. Not global warming's fault.
The reason Katrina was so powerful was directly because the waters off the Gulf Coast were unusually warm. Of course, it's impossible to prove wether or not that was in some way because of Global warming. The point is, it's not just a hurricane, it was a very strong hurricane. Something that can in fact be caused by global warming.
At 8/18/05 10:48 PM, Jerconjake wrote: All the serious attempts were. And yeah, in France they were more geared toward withdrawal, since it was obviously impossible not to until the West Wall.
Serious attempts? I'd like to know exactly what your definition of 'serious attempts' is. I'm baffled as to how an attempt they chose to do on their own would be less serious than one they were told to do. Most definately they were much more coordinated, and larger, but that doesnt really help your argument at all. Also, what made it impossible not to withdraw? Specific troop numbers dont exist, in relative to the size of the eastern front, the western front stayed at a 2:3 ratio with the eastern front if not matched the numbers.
That sentence doesn't make sense. What commander?
Any commander, you said they were unable to give orders to thier troops in Stalingrad.
Replacements are not driven to the front, they are moved by rail. It's faster, produces much less ware and wastes less fuel.
No, they were often driven. They used rail when they could but as you stated, rail wasn't always an option.
That they maintained more or less stable numbers despite this.
Yes, your point? That by no means means that they had reserves of manpower they werent using, that just means that they couldn't afford to use any less troops.
That's because the Germans left Paris without much fight.
Its not entirely true to say the populace of every Russian city hated them. And I think you know that. Nevertheless, didn't you just acknowledge thier disadvantage in Urban warfare? Unless your trying to say Russians hated the Germans much more of the French hated them.
Agreed. But those same troops had victories in numerous other states when they weren't afraid and desperate, and lost when they were.
Are you trying to claim that that was because thier fear of communism had a negligible effect on how well they fought? If so thats a very half-assed way of doing it, because it not at all proves that, those are all different situations with different opponents and troops numbers. I was by no means saying that they would never lose because of thier fear of communism, I was saying that thier fear gave them added incentive to fight, to the death at that.
That was seen as impossible because they lacked the resources to stop them. In Italy they resisted fiercely, and they managed to stabilize that front.
And they didn't lack the resources on the Eastern Front? If anything, they had a better chance of the Western, because they didn't have to deal with a brutal winter every year. And they did not succeed in Italy, they failed, Italy was taken, they just managed to garrison in the mountains so well that the Allies decided to avoid fighting.
Went around again?
Err... not at all sure what that was supposed to mean.
The latter. I meant that we would be speculating about how the Germans treated ports.
Not entirely all that, but to an extent. It's not just how they treated thier ports, its also speculating on whether we would have been able to capture a seaport, or that we even needed one. I dont see your point though, weve always been speculating.
But it's still a base which was vital to the campaign, by all accounts. We're not talking about Vietnam anyway. Circumstances there were very different.
Yes its different, but it proves that its possible. So maybe we have to have our scientists work on it for a while, its still possible. I've said before, we clearly have the time advantage here, neither Japan or Germany can afford a long drawn out war.
How do you figure? You have to supply far less men with food, ammunition, reinforcement, etc.
Iwo Jima is a small long Island, with only a small percentage of its coast even scaleable. Theres no port. We were able to supply nearly a hundred thousand US troops nonetheless. In comparison, there are thousands of miles of beach along Normandy, and even ports (but I guess those would all be destroyed by the all knowing Germans). So whats the problem? Do we not have enough boats? Thats the only possible problem I can see that what you just said right now could highlight. But of course, this is entirely disregarding the fact that your argument now is nothing like what your original argument was.
It was still possible to resupply over land, and most of their difficulty came because air superiority couldn't even be contested by the Germans.
You dodged the point. Yes it was possible, but they weren't able to. Thats the main reason they lost the battle of the bulge.
Germany didn't consider Britain a threat when they were at war, let alone if they were at peace.
By the end of the war (d-day statistics are pretty much the same, we scaled back naval production early on as we had already defeated the japanese navy) we had 28 fleet carriers (80+ aircraft each) and 71 escort carriers (around 25 planes each). Trying to compare that to modern day carriers is faulty on many levels, the least of which being price. That alone is enough for 4,000 planes. Ships are of no shortage for the US during ww2, I've yet to hear any historian say we couldn't build enough ships, we were building ships at an amazing rate.
No shit. That doesn't mean that the two were constantly engaging each other.
So your saying the US just watched the Japanese sail right up next to Hawaii even after Pearl Harbor? Right...
...Yeah. Of course.
The Luftwaffe wasn't given priority? Wow, I'm amazed. Your the only person I've ever heard say that. The Luftwaffe was given too much priority, it drained off the other divisions. Yeah land bases are easier, but as we figured out in the pacific, we can get them later, we use the carriers to get land bases.
I am arguing on the basis that Germany has already occupied the western USSR, because war between the two was inevitable.
We'll I'm not even factoring Russia into this. I don't think it was inevitable for them to go to war, it was likely but both of them could have easily realized the futility of such an act. Trying to predict the events in Russia during ww2 in a different timeline is futile, because there are so many different possibilites. Germany could fell because of the massive difficulties of occupying Russia. Japan could have declared war on Germany over a dispute about conquered Russian land.
At 8/18/05 08:15 AM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: I'm aware of that but it is still a theory. And even if the meaning of the word theory is different in a scientific contxt(as has been pointe dout) Intelligent design still has a following. so its still technically a theory in that sens eand if Evolution is taught in thats ense why not Intelligent design?
It is not a theory. In scientific context, it is not a theory at all. It's a hypothesis with no scientific backing.
what you said is fact. I can't deny that and I wouldn't even if I could I think Intelligent design is bullshit. But I just think it should be taught so kids can make up there midns on the subject. Chances are (provided they aren't brainwashed biblebashers) that they will see the lack of evidence and think " Hey thats a load of BS!" but you still need to give them the chance to make the chocie on what theory they believe. After all, isn't that what freedom is all about? Making choices?
But in order to teach it to the kids, you have to not respond to the arguments intellegent design puts forth, which would be wrong because they are all easily answered. If we taught it and responded to the arguments, then we would be taking sides. Intellegent design requires teaching opinion, any way you teach it.
look i'm not saying,and never have said that they say " OOOO Intelligent design worls like this. Therfor eit must be right!" I'm saying that they should MENTION IT. Explain WHY people berlieve in it. And then MOVE ON.
That would be like saying the reason people believe that the US attacked the Pentagon on 9/11 was because there was no plane debris, and then never pointing out that much of the aluminum would have melted and any debris would be inside the building.
it is an advent of religions but that sil doesn't mean that schools shouldn't give kids the knowlegde that the theory exists.
It's not a theory though, it's just some persons opinion. It's not the schools job to teach opinions. If some kid wants to believe that, fine. If there were legitimate arguments backing up that opinion we could consider teaching it, however there are none, anyone who knows something about evolution can explain away them.
rofl. that made me laugh. 'tis a good thing I'm not a creationist.
Indeed. However people who believe in evolution but explain it wrong anger me just the same, so watch out. It's not that I'm against religion, the catholic church even acknowledges that evolution is probably right, it's that I'm against pretending that something we can see with out own eyes is still up for debate. It's not, creationists cannot debate evolution anymore, all they can do is claim that since its too hard for them to understand it cant have happened.
At 8/18/05 07:43 AM, Jerconjake wrote: All attempts to relieve Berlin were by Hitler's orders. But the German army was trained to do stuff like that. Part of the reason it was so effective was because its commanders were encouraged to take initiative in the field. In fact, the entire Nazi state was organized this way.
First off, these were most definately not ordered by Hitler. Second, thats my point exactly, they were trained to do so, but did not in the western front. It would seem very much that they did not fight as fiercly against the Americans and British.
You obviously have a very limited understanding of this battle. You're saying that they both fought harder because of fear of capture and that they surrendered en masse in violation of Hitler's orders. In fact, very good surrender terms were offered to the Germans there, and still they continued to fight while encircled and facing almost certain defeat because of Hitler's orders. That's how bound they were.
I find it odd that surrender terms can be offered to an entire army but orders from a commander can't. Your contradicting yourself.
Tanks are not meant to be moved long distances on their tracks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_tank
The Sherman can go 240km on it's fuel tank, I don't think the US army was too concerned about wear and tear of tanks, this would be the only time they would use them.
Over several years, with many casualties.
Yes, your point?
German pullouts from cities came from their eventual realization that they heavily disadvantaged their tanks and their overall maneuverability in urban warfare, and also to preserve cities like Rome. Germans too had to garrison, and there were 800,000 in France alone.
Actually, it was 500,000 until the Allies started preparing for D-day. And now your just splitting hairs. The Germans no doubt were worried about the tanks, but that can be solved by just pulling the tanks out, fear of the civilian populace no doubt played a big part in deciding not to use Urban warfare. Paris was taken over almost completely by civlians.
The army favored ending the war actually, but they fought on because Hitler refused to surrender.
And they fought harder because they wanted to stop the Communists espescially.
Knowing that and being able to do something about it are two different things. And have you ever been faced with the choice of just giving up a bunch of gains quietly or fighting for them? Your argumentative nature seems to indicate that you would fight.
Funny that they didn't fight at all as fiercly on the western front then to keep thier gains.
The former refers to the civlian population's fears, and the latter the army's. That was a mistake, but both are revelent anyhow.
Okay, well since both are already being covered in this argument I think this point is moot.
Well yeah, that's what I was saying. Casablanca was more relevent. It meant that Germany couldn't decide any of the terms. Even if what you're saying was universally true, it would still mean that they were afraid of, and united by Allied terms.
Allied terms, yes. They were probably united by them. However such terms wouldn't exist of the war went around again, it would all be up to the US. We may have even seen a resistance force in Germany.
From here on in we'd both be speculating.
Almost this entire argument is speculation. Mine is basically that the US massively outweighed them in production and manpower, yours is that either we didn't or we would have never been able to put that advantage to use.
I meant the initial force that was landed. You deployed a lot of men by helicopter, and you had the Phillipines which was vital for a whole host of military necessities.
I'm not familiar with helicopters being used to deploy troops into Vietnam, I wasn't aware we had any helicopters in range. The phillipenes is at least 600 miles from Vietnam, much longer if you take the route taken by the US, in order to avoid provoking North Vietnam or China.
Yes, exactly.
Which has nothing to do with supply.
I know they were both having trouble transporting over land, that's what I've been saying.
Your not listening, I'm specifically saying that tehy had trouble even though it was on thier own turf, despite railroads and highways they still were unable to supply thier troops. This greatly downplays the advantage you say Germany has.
I would say that the landings are a considerable obstacle.
This is of course assuming that Germany doesn't think of Britain as a threat at all, which is unlikely in any circumstances. Our air superiority would come from carriers, and more transports can be built. We have time on our side, unlike both Japan and Germany. Germany has to deal with a huge military and costly occupations. Also, we would have a nuclear weapon before both Japan and Germany.
Japan wasn't facing any other naval powers in the South and Central Pacific though. That's like planting your flag on the moon, there's no one to stop you. Only when faced with a serious threat in the form of the US navy does this become a problem for them.
Midway was a long time after the US declared war on Japan.
I disagree. German and Italian aircraft would have bases on land, which could be resupplied in the middle of a battle.
Your version of what would happen is exactly the opposite of what did, German and Italian aircraft were defeated, and nobody recognized the threat. You seem to take any chance you have to downplay the US army and claim it was unable to do many things but when it comes to the axis you are more than ready to claim near perfection.
Haha, nice.
We are assuming that America is alone though, which means that the Germans must already have defeated Russia and/or made peace with Britain, and captured all the resources therein.
We were assuming that they invaded neither. Of course if Germany had taken over all of Europe we would be unable to invade, thats a given. But it is unlikely either of those things would happen, the German army would have had to take Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad in the first year in order to defeat Russia. Either that or they would have to plan for a long war, which still ties up resources. If Germany conquers Britain, it is just better for us. Britain is the perfect invasion point.
At 8/18/05 10:08 AM, Slizor wrote: A study done by the economist Amartya Sen compared India and China, their population and their development. He found that because of the reforms made in China during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (which killed a fair amount of people) it had actually killed less people than India. India, through sheer apathy to the plight of the poor, diseased and starved, was responsible for more deaths.
Do you have any secondary sources for this? Or even a primary one? I'm curious of the exact details of it.
And is this over the entire history of India as a democracy vs. a small period of time in China?
And finally, arguments could be made downplaying both the universal sufferage of India and exaggerating that of China's.
Nevertheless, the argument is not that democracy will never kill people, it's that it has a much better track record than everything else, and doesn't rely on complete chance to have prosperity.
At 8/18/05 09:05 AM, hired_goon wrote: How long on average, does it take for a country that's lost many lives being bombed by the US during its 'conversion', to 'earn back' the lives it would otherwise have lost in that time if it was still dispotic / dictatorship / communist?
About a year. Your safer being bombed by the US than driving a car.
Infact, the glorious democracy that Iraq now is (to me) looks like it has a few years to go yet until anyone can say "it was worth it".
Yep, and weve got plenty of time. It's not like the world is ending anytime soon.
At 8/18/05 01:02 AM, TheShrike wrote: Captions? Anyone?
I made this for some photoshop contest that never materialized, months ago. Just found it, and thought it needs a caption.
"This is your plane on drugs"
"Hudson Hawk 2: OMGWTFBBQ!!11shift+1"
"Why Photoshop should come with Ritalin"
"mah brannne hutsss!"
I'm sorry, those aren't funny at all. Thats just not a funny picture shrike. I'd have to write an essay to encompass all the shit going on.
If we didn't have parties people would find different ways to be dumb. At least now we have people telling them what to think so they are all collectively dumb instead of individually dumb on different levels.
At 8/18/05 04:53 AM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: Why the hell should Evolution be taught and intelligent design not? They are both theories , both have flaws( althought intelligent design does sem to be based around the holes in the theroy of evolution which somewhat damage its credibilty.), and neither can be proven 100%.
No, it doesn't work like that. Evolution can be proven 99%, intellegent design can be proven 0%.
Thats like saying we should teach the "US bomb the pentagon" version of 9/11 because neitehr can be scientifically proven.
Intellegent design has absolutely zero science involved. None, whatsoever. I challenge any advocate of intellegent design to present a scientific arguent for it. All it consists of, is claiming evolution doesn't make sense, like saying the eye is too complex. The eye is not too complex, your just too dumb to understand it, the eye in its most rudimentary form is very simple, and it is made more complex through evolution.
To teach intellegent design is to teach what we know for a fact is wrong. The only way a teacher could teach intellegent design and not be lying is if they didn't even know how evolution worked. All of the fundamental claims that make up intellegent design can be easily explained away. Just take a look at wiki-evo and you will see.
Most importantly, however, even beyond the fact that all the claims against evolution that intellegent design has are bullshit, is that when intellegent design comes to the conclusion that evolution is flawed through flawed science, they then assume that the reason for this is there is a god directing human existance. This is based upon absolutely nothing, and is simply an advent of religion.
The moral of the story, creationists are morons. If a creationist is reading this, you are a moron, and I hope your feelings are hurt, I don't care if your a nice person, your an idiot, and for your idiocy you should be publically ridiculed.
At 8/18/05 04:26 AM, SEXY_FETUS wrote: Thats how it is now. What if it were more cost efficient to keep ourselves in stock of our own oil? LEt japan and china deal with the middle east.
No.... I just explained why. Because its cheaper to ship it from the middle east then to build a pipeline down the country.
At 8/17/05 05:26 PM, wondereyes wrote: there's a shit load in alaska, but they cannot mine it
First off, tons of oil is pumped out of Alaska. They can indeed mine it. Your referring the the area in a nature reserve, which is thought to have some oil, although only a small amount has been proven.
Second, not one drop of that oil will ever go to America. We sell a great deal of our Alaskan oil to Japan and China because its more cost efficient to sell there and buy from the Middle East.
Mainly the fact that democracies kill way less people then the other two you listed. And also partially because democracy allows people to choose what they want to do, while they other two allow one person to choose what they want everyone else to do.
I'm sure this was a hot topic of debate around... 200 years ago, now its actually pretty obvious though.
Didn't you just give them like.... a third of Canada?
This whole situation is proof that nearly everyone in the world is retarded and undeserving of life.
My preferred outcome? Tucker sues greenpeace for libel, wins millions, greenpeace goes bankrupt, Tucker gets hit by a cessna.
The end.
At 8/15/05 11:07 PM, Jerconjake wrote: What counter-offensives? And of course fear would make them fight harder, but that doesn't mean that without fear they're not a formidible force.
I'm suprised that you were unaware of such counteroffensives. Most of them don't have names because they were so numerous. Two name only a couple, the counter-offensives done by the 9th and 20th army to try to relieve Berlin.
The men at Stalingrad endured hell you and I will never understand for months because they were forbade to surrender.
Yet they surrendered, nonetheless. However loyal they are, they are not binded physically to fight. One could easily argue that the reason they fought so hard in Stalingrad was because they faced almost certain Soviet capture.
Not for infantry, but for armor and supply they are essential.
Thats really odd, because I was under the impression Tanks were self propelled. Germany is not a dense jungle, in fact at that time Germany had the finest road system of any country.
In the end, yeah. Not during the majority of the war.
During the majority of the war they had only 4 million men.
I meant in France and the Low Countries. There's nothing to suggest that you could have used them all, because if you could, your lines should never have been so hard-pressed.
In most of those countries we were aided by the civilian populace, in fact the battles to relieve those cities were small, because the Germans evacuated. They feared Urban war more than us because we had the favor of the civilians. And our lines were often hard pressed on purpose, we were under pressure to advance quickly for many reasons so we spent little time in one place, and when new troops did come it was preferred to let some troops go back, to avoid shell shock. The amount of time spent fighting by the average American soldier in ww2 is actually low compared to other wars.
Kinda reminds me of what I said. The army knew it was over after 1942 and continued to ferociously resist on all fronts.
Indeed, thats my point completely. They fought even though they knew they wouldn't win. They wanted to protect Germany from communism and the Soviets.
How do you figure? They can't surrender. And of course there's logic behind it. If you invade them, they'll be afraid of you. You'd be the only thing between them and total prosperity.
If they knew Hitler would never surrender they would know fighting would be pointless, because even if a stalemate was reached he would still provoke aggression. And as for the second point, keep in mind they declared war on us, and our terms for surrender as per the Atlantic Charter were not entirely unprosperous.
Nope, it's both.
Okay, then where is your argument for the former and why are you brining up the latter instead?
Dude, I'm not speculating about their dispositions. For the love of God, go check. Unconditional surrender scared and united them, not the Atlantic Charter. This is from the mouths of people who were there.
I realize they may be saying that, but thats probably because Unconditional Surrender came after the Atlantic charter, and thus it is more relevent to mention that. Just like it is more relevent to mention the Patriot act 2 when talking about civil rights even though they basically said the same thing. The fact remains that the terms for unconditional surrender couldn't possibly be any worse than those already layed out by the Atlantic charter, as pretty much every possibly term was already covered in some way by it.
No, it was built in Britain.
Ohhhh I see what your saying. Such a port could have been made in North Africa instead. If it was even vital.
You realize that your involvement lasted over a decade, right? You realize that their deployment failed to neutralize North Vietnam, right?
First off, claiming that that was why we failed to secure Vietnam is ludicris. Second, the fact that we were there for a decade does not change that we were able to send large contingents there without a port quickly. And your last two points make the assumption that it takes months to get across the Atlantic, it doesn't, we could transport troops within days.
The point is that the campaign wasn't going to last as long as a European campaign would.
Because it was done with smaller amounts of soldiers, yes.
Which other side? I was talking about both sides. How are they not examples of it being easier to transport over land??
Both Britain and Germany had a sea port in North Africa, they were having problems transporting troops over thier own land. And that was the same with the Battle of the Bulge, Germany was unable to transport troops over thier own land, and supply lines without even a seaport were able to exceed thiers.
Obviously having them all in Italy was an exaggeration. If they were that stupid, they never would have built the Atlantic Wall.
So your saying they would build up those numbers, I completely agree with that. But then you get to an issue of manpower, where we completely beat them. The only way they can win is by preventing us from even landing, which so far seems impossible.
You mean in raids? That's a far cry from naval dominance my friend.
Up until Midway it wasn't. And even past then, Japan dominated parts of the pacific much farther than the distance from New York to Europe. Ships are big, and can go long times without resupply, and often can be easily resupplied at sea.
But the Italians and Germans don't have to bother with that, since they could rearm and even reinforce much faster.
Which only goes more to prove American dominance in the air. We focused on constructing aircraft carriers, and that proved to be massively successfull. The problem is, even if Japan or Italy or Germany could figure out to counter our aircraft carriers, it would be too late by then, because we would already be able to strike thier ports. It only takes one bomb to ruin a ship in construction.
And then you get into an issue of industrial strength, where the US beats all of them even more. Japan being a mostly agrarian country, and Germany being a country with few resources, and Italy being one of the laziest countries in human history.
Why is it that when we have a blackout, or a riot, people decide to take that oppourtunity to steal and kill.
It's because we teach you that the reason you shouldn't steal is because you will go to jail. You never need to develop morals, you have people to make sure you don't do anything wrong.
We have indisputable proof that punishment, corporal espescially, doesn't work. We had corporal punishment for thousands of years and had higher crime then ever, only when we made punishments less and less strict did we see crime go down.
Basically, the reason we have so much crime is because nobody can ever get away with a crime anymore.
At 8/13/05 05:04 AM, Nietzschean_Ideal wrote: Such as "that've"?
Adorable, just adorable.
At 8/13/05 03:54 AM, Nietzschean_Ideal wrote: I submit proof that they in fact do, though Canadians know moreso where to place their punctuation.
That've worked better if you didn't make up words.
At 8/12/05 09:01 PM, Jerconjake wrote: Sure is, because I know the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS were afraid of the Red Army. That doesn't affect the amount of resistance Hitler commits to the front. If anything he should have ended the war long before it did end, if he really cared about the sentiments of his men.
Alot of the resistance was not ordered by Hitler, several of the counteroffensives were done of the army's own choice. And the fear of the Red Army would effect how hard they fought too, your militia argument is not applicable here because a militia is innefective for completely different reasons.
And commanders and armies swore an oath to Hitler himself which meant that they had to obey his command.
I seem to remember that Hitler ordered the soldiers not to surrender at Stalingrad, yet they did. Funny that the magic binding of this oath didn't kick in and stop them.
That doesn't counter anything I said.
Okay, I will grant you that it is tougher to advance without taking the cities. But lets keep in mind you could walk across Germany in a week. Railroads can be bypassed, too. If thats the only problem then there isn't much problem at all.
What? How's that?
If were going to use the 10 million+ number, thats counting alot of militia and poorly trained conscripts.
In a liberation? And garrisoning a lot of troops never changed the fact that you couldn't use them all, so that point is moot.
I said invasion, not liberation. The Germans didn't really think of it as a liberation. And while we could have removed the garrisons, we didn't, so your point is moot. All you essentially end up doing is arguing if we had the numbers again.
Soldiers fight to the death every day. That's what they make armies for. Unless you mean hand to hand, which is not how the majority of the war was fought.
Theres a difference between fighting to the death and dying in combat. I'm going by the common meaning of the phrase, which is fighting and refusing to surrender even when you know your going to lose.
We are in agreement about that first part, but that doesn't mean that the German army will only fight its hardest against Russians. If you were the only threat, and they knew that the fuhrer would accept only victory or the total destruction of Germany, which they did, they'd fight just as hard.
You have no logic for that. They fought harder because of ideals and fear, not because they knew Hitler would never surrender. If anything, that would give them more motivation to surrender.
And the general idea was that the Allies would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, which they knew Hitler would never agree to.
So now its gone from 'they were afraid of the consequences of unconditional surrender' to 'they knew Hitler would never accept unconditional surrender'?
I'm only going to say this one more time, and then I'm not going to respond on it anymore: The Germans were afraid of, and united by unconditional surrender. I can't explain it to you apparently, but please do check into it.
And I've already explained this. Anything they would have to fear from unconditional surrender was already layed out in the Atlantic charter, so they would be just as united by that if there was no policy of demanding unconditional surrender.
It was barely possible to get it across the Channel, let alone the Atlantic.
Thats a whole new point entirely, but I'll rebut it anways. We made it across the Atlantic, didn't we?
The first troops to go were 3,500 which added to the 25,000 that were already there. They were able to deploy more over the course of the year, not within a few weeks.
Okay... you realize that we eventually brought a half a million troops into Vietnam... right? 25,000 is a small contingent. And we deployed 50,000 more within a few weeks, so I don't know what your talking about there. Seriously, did you really read the article?
We were talking about the Battle of Iwo Jima, which lasted from February 19th to February 23rd, 1945.
I mentioned other islands as well. Iwo Jima was not the only one without a port.
Oh, also, thats not when Iwo Jima ended. Thats just when we raised the flag. The battle wasn't even done for another month.
Tobruk was important to Rommel because his supply lines over land were far too long. This was a major factor in the see-sawing of both armies back and forth across the desert. The Battle of the Scheldt was fought to open the estuaries leading to Antwerp,
because Allied supply lines were over stretched across 'injin country.' The Battle of the Bulge was designed to close Antwerp and stem the Allied advance.
And how are they not examples of it being easier to transport over land? I was presumptious in thinking you actually had an argument, rather you just completely ignored what I said. Look at the other side.
Because Italy is the next logical target.
So if they are all waiting in Italy, we could just go to one of the other places I mentioned.
If you were a serious enough threat, they would raise just as many men as they did in real life. The Wehrmacht had over two million men in 1939.
And two million men is more then 3 percent of thier population. Germany was able to conscript another 3 million because those men were actually doing something, but having 5 million men (almost 10% of thier population, nearly a quarter of the workforce) sitting around in southern Italy isn't too appealing.
They attacked them from France. What does Kwajalein have to do with anything?
They attacked our convoys right in American waters. Not 100 miles off the east coast.
And I'm using Kwajalein to show you that the Japanese were able to attack Hawaii from a distance comparable to the distance between the US and North Africa.
That doesn't change the fact that you'd need bases in the Mediterranean in order to control it. You have nowhere to refuel and rearm, which means you can't maintain a constant presence. Think of the Battle of Britain, the Germans had the same problem only with aircraft.
No, thats just not true at all. You can refuel from convoys, you can go months without rearming. And at that, ships can be constantly taking turns patroling and then going back to port. Midway is thousands of miles from the nearest Japanese port, how were they able to have practically thier entire fleet extended so much then?
At 8/13/05 02:10 AM, bcdemon wrote: Well shit, it's the Dom Perignon of beers, whaddya expect?
At 8/12/05 06:37 PM, MikeZan wrote: Yep it Unionist from now on unless you prefer confederate you choose.
I submit, proof that Americans and Canadians do not in fact speak the same language.
At 8/12/05 06:14 PM, MikeZan wrote: yeah that true when you got friends like the unionist you dont really need enemys
Unionist? Crazy Canadianais...
1000 guys huh? we just 1/4 of that number and plenty of beer and we could take the US on.
I'm telling the CIA about your little beer plan. Not that it matters, Canadian beer is so damn expensive you would have to sell Nova Scotia.
Hahahahahaha. No.
I know for a fact me and jake had a longer one previously. And I've had longer than that easily. I've even had longer than the one with Balsac about mcdonalds coffee.
At 8/12/05 05:43 PM, MikeZan wrote: That true to kill allies in time of war you guys win the gold.
I cant argue there.
Were not your allies were just getting you to bring your entire army (1000 guys) across the world so we can close the trap.
At 8/12/05 03:41 PM, MikeZan wrote: plz the only thing the US army is good at is killing it own soldier.
WRONG!
Were also very good at killing Canadian soldiers. Pwned..
At 8/11/05 12:39 AM, Jerconjake wrote: Definately because of greater numbers. I mean, three German army groups were facing like 12 Soviet fronts of equal size. Also because Hitler ordered that not one inch of Soviet soil be surrendered, let alone German soil. Obviously there was also a strong sentiment against communism, and the Red Army in particular.
Wait... isn't that last line completely agreeing with what I said?
What's your point? The fighting continued after the war ended, not necessarily because people were afraid, but because the infrastructure was so wrecked that they didn't know to surrender. And as the entire war after 1942 will show you, surrender isn't always an option for German commanders or soldiers who are disallusioned.
Were not talking about just individual people. This is a commander and an army.
Cities in Europe often have rail and road networks that make them vital to continuing the campaign, but this is not so in the Pacific. In the Pacific, each island is like a city and though you could bypass all of them and head straight to Tokyo, many of them must be taken first.
I thought you said that troops could be transported much faster over land. We can bomb ships just like we can bomb railroads, and an army advancing on foot over land can be countered easily.
I forget the point of talking about how useless militias are outside of cities.
That cancels out alot of the German army.
Funny how you still had to thin out your lines though, huh?
In real life? No I don't see why thats funny. Thats normal in an invasion, you have to occupy to prevent insurgence.
Not principally, they were obligated to fight for their lives, no matter what enemy they were facing.
That is far oversimplifying things. They may be obligated to, but soldiers rarely fight to the death unless they have idealogical reasons to or have something to fear if they lose.
Okay, my point was 1) that they feared the Soviets a shitload, and 2) that they had a negligible impact. Ergo, those who were the most afraid had the least impact.
And I'm not making that point. I'm saying that removing the Soviets from this scenario isn't suddenly going to make Germany fall into your waiting arms.
I'm not saying it will. You yourself acknowledged that the Germans fought particularily hard against the soviets out of both fear and because they didn't want to submit to communism. France surrendered out of fear of an invasion, yet Germany didn't even surrender after practically thier entire country was demolished.
Policy is binding. So that whole unconditional surrender thing was just a practical joke? You're trying to say that they were not serious about unconditional surrender?
Policy is not binding. Where are you getting this from? Policy is policy exactly because it isn't binding, it just gives you a general idea of what you can expect.
Not really, considering that when it was conceived, actually having to submit to those conditions was the furthest thing from Germans' minds.
Whats your point? I don't really see how that applies to what I said. Anything they could fear was already mentioned in the Atlantic charter, so they would really be fearing that.
Wrong. You had mulberries.
That.. would just go to reinforce my point. We didn't have a port, so we made one.
http://en.wikipedia....S._Forces_Committed
Uhh, yeah that says exactly what I said. I don't see your point.
The entire island could be secured in only a few days, not over a number of weeks or months as would be required in Europe or North Africa. Also, the Japanese fought a defensive battle from square one, while the Germans would not. This meant that your troops and supplies landed considerably less molested, and the landing zones were never fully contested.
Hmm.. sure you don't want to rethink that? I can name alot of invasions in the pacific that took weeks if not months.
Haha. You crack me up kid. Go have yourself a lesson about those battles and get back to me.
I suppose the best way to not be proven wrong is to never present your argument.
So the entire German army is waiting for you in Italy, and you're going to walk right in? You'd need serious time to prepare which the Germans wouldn't let you have.
Why would they be waiting for us in Italy? Why not Greece? Marseille? Spain? Any of those can be done instead, Italy is just the most practical example because we did it in the past (yes I know we did southern France in the past too).
And keep in mind, it wasn't as if Germany had 3 million extra men that they decided to put into Russia, they raised more. They want 3 million extra soldiers to pay as much as we want an extra 10 million.
How's that, exactly? You have no bases whatsoever in the Mediterranean. Even the Germans could put uboats or whatever they wanted there. Good luck getting though the Straight of Gibraltar! Bottlenecks are great fun for attacking forces!
Did Germany have any naval bases in America? Wierd that they were still able to attack our shipping convoys then... How far is Kwajalein from Pearl Harbor (disregarding the fact that Kwajalein wasnt even where they all came from).
Your thinking too small. Remember that the pacific is much larger than the Atlantic. The distance from Honolulu to Tokyo is about the same as New York to Morocco. And the distance from Honolulu to Manilla is much much longer, as is the distance from Sydney to Manilla.
