Venezuela: la mierda hits el ventilador

[untermensche]

I see no mote around Gaza. They can import as much food as they want.

Your vision suddenly becomes very cloudy when you look at Israel.

The Palestinians do not have a port or an airport.

They import as much as the master allows.

The master controls the flow, not the people who live there.

The master always says the things they are doing are perfect and they always say the flow of goods under their control is always exactly right.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Of course they matter. They're just impossible to quantify in terms of causality and it is unfair and spurious to assign blame to indirect deaths to the actions of one government or another. That, at least, is the reason you refuse to attribute indirect civilian deaths of Palestinians to Israelis, or the massive death toll in Iraq to the U.S. invasion, or the 300,000ish serious cancer cases and resulting deaths in Vietnam to the U.S. use of agent orange.

Palestinians: You need to show a mechanism of those civilian deaths being Israel's fault.

Just as you need to show the mechanism of those deaths being Ho Chi Minh's fault.

I do not blame the US for the Shia/Sunni fighting that followed.

Exactly.

Agent Orange: I don't believe we have good data on how many it killed.

Exactly.

I see no mote around Gaza. They can import as much food as they want.

So could Cambodia after the war. So clearly the communists weren't responsible for the famine there, it must have been the farmers.

The numbers you give are what I found for total dead. I think you're looking at mislabeled data.

I'm looking at data compiled by the Vietnamese government from 1991, 1995, 2002 and 2004 studies. Apparently they revisit this topic sporadically, usually whenever someone in Vietnam discovers a previously unknown mass grave.

Most of those bombs were aimed at BUILDINGS AND INFRASTRUCTURE that supported the north, the majority of which was run by civilians. This means power plants, truck parks, factors, quarries, mills, warehouses, oil fields, etc.

You don't carpet bomb buildings.

24 bombs dropped in two consecutive strikes isn't "carpet bombing." IIRC, John McCain's A-4 was carrying 6 500 pounds to hit the power plant at Hanoi the day he was shot down. Four planes in his flight, 24 bombs between the four of them. They bombed the fuck out of that powerplant.

Typical strike on ANY high value asset would usually involve not less than 6,000 pounds of ordinance (usually ALOT more). No consideration was given to whether or not these were civilian targets or not; if the North was using it, it was a target. Train yards, bridges, truck parks, boat docks, everything was on the buffet table.

There was heavy air defense around the fixed targets in the north. Mobile targets hiding in the jungle were another matter...

And MOBILE targets weren't engaged by heavy strikes, nor were they the majority of where that firepower was directed. All-weather attack aircraft do not (normally) fly close air support.

A target hiding in the jungle will have no defense against being carpet bombed.

You don't carpet bomb jungles to get rid of guerillas, dude.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I see no mote around Gaza. They can import as much food as they want.

Your vision suddenly becomes very cloudy when you look at Israel.

The Palestinians do not have a port or an airport.

They import as much as the master allows.

The master controls the flow, not the people who live there.

The master always says the things they are doing are perfect and they always say the flow of goods under their control is always exactly right.

Except there is no control of the flow. It's required to go through their checkpoints to ensure it's really food (Israel finds plenty of contraband disguised as acceptable stuff) but that's all. The flow is only stopped when Hamas attacks the crossings.

Gaza's problem is that they have wrecked their economy (deliberately--Hamas wants to be the only game in town) and can't afford what they need. Their low-grade civil war with the Palestinian Authority has made things worse--the PA has cut back on what Gaza expenses they will cover. (Thus, for example, blackouts because the electric bill wasn't paid.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And MOBILE targets weren't engaged by heavy strikes, nor were they the majority of where that firepower was directed. All-weather attack aircraft do not (normally) fly close air support.

A target hiding in the jungle will have no defense against being carpet bombed.

You don't carpet bomb jungles to get rid of guerillas, dude.

You carpet bomb to hit a dispersed target or a target whose exact location you are uncertain of. That's mostly stuff hidden in the jungles. Your example of John McCain's strike is what happens to buildings--at most small sticks of bombs. Carpet bombing was things like the Arc Light strikes--where the bombers carried over 100 bombs. (And note that most of those were dropped in South Vietnam--where the only target would have been infiltrators.)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And MOBILE targets weren't engaged by heavy strikes, nor were they the majority of where that firepower was directed. All-weather attack aircraft do not (normally) fly close air support.



You don't carpet bomb jungles to get rid of guerillas, dude.

You carpet bomb to hit a dispersed target or a target whose exact location you are uncertain of.

Assuming the target itself is valuable enough to warrant the bombing in the first place. When fighting lightly armed guerillas hiding in trees, you send a platoon of marines in a Sweep and Clear mission. Carpet bombing is used for softening up fortifications or suppressing massed groups of attackers (e.g. the Tet Offensive, the assault on Hue, etc).

All of which is a digression. Carpet bombing wasn't the only form of ordinance release in Vietnam, nor was it even the most common one. Again: having 4 planes drop 15,000 pounds of ordinance (18 to 24 bombs) is not "carpet bombing" by any stretch of the imagination.

Your example of John McCain's strike is what happens to buildings--at most small sticks of bombs.

Six 500 pounders from four planes each is not what I would call "small sticks of bombs," especially to the hundreds of people who are WORKING in that factory when it blows up. The A-4 was capable of carrying a bomb load similar to a B-17 (or twice that in a short-range strike). The A-6 intruder could carry more ordinance than a pair of B-25s. All told, a single fighter squadron over Vietnam could deploy more destructive power than a hundred of their WW-II era counterparts.

And note that most of those were dropped in South Vietnam--where the only target would have been infiltrators.)

I know of at least three lightning strikes that were deliberately targeted at villages.