quote:
Channeling the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, Mod absently fondled Watson and proclaimed:
I was responding to Naimah saying that a 25:1 kill ratio was equal to victory, not making a point about Vietnam in particular.
Ah, carry on, then. You're absolutely correct: kill ratio has nothing to do with victory, really. 
One of the interesting things about Vietnam is that the NV fought it in two phases: an insurgent phase and a traditional phase. The US reacted to the former as if it were the latter, and transitioned to counter the former just as the NV began the latter phase. Bloodsage fucked around with this message on 03-25-2006 at 12:55 PM.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
quote:=treason
ACES! Another post by Azakias:
Hell, that one journalist who was imbedded with the army in Aphganistan should have been charged and tried when he drew that fucking map in the sand for the camara.
Stupid hippies are anoying, but counting their verbal shanagins as treason much worse
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-- George Herbert Walker Bush
quote:
How.... Bloodsage.... uughhhhhh:
One of the interesting things about Vietnam is that the NV fought it in two phases: an insurgent phase and a traditional phase. The US reacted to the former as if it were the latter, and transitioned to counter the former just as the NV began the latter phase.
I have no idea what the fuck you just said.
quote:
Quoth Snoota:
I have no idea what the fuck you just said.
At the beginning of the war, the NV were using non-traditional troops and tactics to fight a guerrilla war. Not being well-equipped to handle that, the US tried to fight back as if it were a conventional war, using bombing raids and patrols but not really bothering to secure the villages. The Tet Offensive was a large conventional offensive using regular troops in standard military roles. Although caught by surprise, the US reacted quickly and crushed the offensive. By that point in the war, though, the analysts had figured out ways to counter the insurgency tactics from earlier, and, through sheer bureacratic inertia, these changes went into effect. So, ironically, just as the bad guys started trying to fight our kind of fight, we switched tactics and started programs to secure villages and win the "hearts and minds" instead of defeating the enemy in the field as was then possible.
We made several other gross errors, but that was one of the worst in terms of overall consequence.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
Of course, when the attack goes off it fails miserably and a lot of aircrews don't make it home.Alaan fucked around with this message on 03-26-2006 at 08:23 PM.
