Attack on Falluja - Video

I just saw my brother-in-law for the first time in over a year tonight. He's been in Iraq. He showed me some pictures and video he shot. It is seriously fucked, just like in the video that was linked.

I'm just glad he's home.

What? Seriously Fucked?
Ok, how would you describe someone loosing a limb, or thier life?
Triple Dog Seriously Fucked?
Seriously fucked things happen in Iraq, but this isnt even close.
I AGAIN looked at the video, just to make sure.
Your scale of fucked-ness is seriously fucked.
[Edit to add]
Maybe its my scale thats fucked, since I have spent a lot of time researching vietnam.
Here, lets calibrate your scale: Seriously Fucked

[Edited on Nov 26, 2004 by dspsg]

Mellow out, this isn't an indignation contest.

It isnt indignation. Its confusion. Like I said in my original post, if this video was 'as bad as it gets', that would be great.
Seriously fucked, in my mind at least, is very near the 'bad as it gets' end of the spectrum. That is reasonable, yes?
Pointing to this video and saying "seriously fucked" ... such a lack of meausre is shocking.
But it does make sense, if you are told, over and over, "yes, its hard work, but things are going well in Iraq". Then this video must be as bad as it gets.

"Hi, we're from the government, and we're here to kill you!"

What, in the video shown are they shooting blanks? Are the bombs hollow? Someone is getting killed, I assume.

The things I saw in some of his videos are fucked. Sorry if I thought it was fucked to see someone shot in the head, or to see his convoy under attack in an ambush, or to see the explosions of laser-guided missles going off around him.

And this thing is not fucked in just the way of "people are getting killed and maimed," but it is fucked that crap like this is going on after a year and a half. Like, "we're gonna flatten this fucking city to bring you freedom!"



[Edited on Nov 26, 2004 by lukieplatz]

Sorry then. I guess my post was a reaction to my fear that the sanitizing of the war (no images of american dead or coffins, 'we dont do civilian body counts', etc) is going to cause american voters to rubber stamp BushCo's military adventures.

[Edited on Nov 26, 2004 by dspsg]

This is the best coverage of the battle for Fallujah I have ever seen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/news_web/video/40566000/bb/40566639_bb_16x9.asx

that does seem quite a bit more comprehensive.

question: i've absolutely no clue when it comes to warefare strategy, but i'm wondering why marine snipers don't target the minarets first thing off as they come to them, rather than the shell fire and 150-man rushes?

i'm also kind of wondering why we don't seem to have an effective med-to-long range, targeted, light-to-medium damage explosive; some kind of propelled "smart grenade" that could get into and around the corners and cracks the insurgents favor.

i'm sure there's incredibly logical answers to both of these, as i'm neither very informed about military strategy nor terribly intelligent, but i guess when you see a ton of people risking their necks to get the one or two guys in that tower, it does cause you to wonder the reason behind there not being a better way.

edit: or a temporary, non-long term damage (in case civilians are nearby) propelled gas canister to make it more dificult to see / run. rapidly expanding colored foam to make moving insurgents easier to spot, etc, etc...

(...okay so it's probably not a good idea to have a graphic artist cooking up crackpot strategy and weaponry, or we'd all end up with rainbow cannons that deliver fresh fruit or something.)

but seriously, i'm one of those people that complains about the massive military budget during peacetime, and the american media is often showing these remote control camera operated bots inventions and such that budget affords, but whenever a real situation arises, we're largely dependent on conventional weaponry. or is that a false assumption?



[Edited on Nov 27, 2004 by thehedgehog]

I'm really glad that you're interested enought toask these questions.

First military technology seems to come in waves, we are making due with warfighting technology that is at least thirty years old and are on the cusp of seeing breakthrough technology fielded.

"i'm also kind of wondering why we don't seem to have an effective med-to-long range, targeted, light-to-medium damage explosive; some kind of propelled "smart grenade" that could get into and around the corners and cracks the insurgents favor."

Funny you should ask, I give you the XM307.
XM307



And about the directed sniper fire. Funny thing about the enemy-they just don't like to die. They keep hidden.

Also please note, military weaponry is not nearly as lethal and effective as Hollywood would like you believe. Grenades don't blow up houses. Stone structures can really take a brutal beating.

The woman in the centre of this picture is alive and well and living in Toronto.

sure, fair enough - all technology does - but i've gotta wonder if there wasn't an earlier concept that was slightly less advanced that could have seen action at present.

i imagine there must be a lot of channels and red tape something has to pass through before it can hit the ground, but you'd think technology deemed beneficial to current conflicts would be taken out of retirement or ramped up in the que, no?

well, yeah of course; i'm not imagining the enemy is like some video game with lazy AI or anything, i just found it odd when it's showing maybe ten guys appearing to me at least to be pinned down and stuck on a roof, and not one of them has any means to counterattack the key problem in terms of holding or advancing from that position. surely the people that ordered the attack would predict snipers at that location since it's become an almost cliche pattern at this point.

i dunno, maybe it's different if you're trained to have absolute faith in your team and reinforcements. what seems like a completely fecked situation in my mind is maybe standard fare that doesn't bother those guys nearly as much as a dozen other things going on.

heh, yeah and running away from a building doesn't cause it to spontaneously explode; so noted :]

i guess my suggestion of something like what you've got pictured here was hoping that it would at the very least keep them pinned down for a few, or a bit of shrapnel might slow them down or get them a bit desperate. i'm imagining there's usually only one or two insurgents at at any one location or traveling to another point typically? if so i imagine that's the thing that complicates it most.

course really the best weapon i can think of is the "getting-everybody-home-and-teleporting-innocent-civilians-to-a-day-spa
-and-making-all-the-insurgents-suddenly-take-an-interest-
in-shuffleboard-or-candle-making-instead,-or-heck-even-voting gun".


[Edited on Nov 27, 2004 by thehedgehog]