Non-Americans can be sooo gullible

[Evil Dave]

As I said before the Army has a moral obligation to all it\'s men. Believe me when I say, that the officers in the field are trying their damnest to keep all their men as safe as possible, but yo can only work with what you have.

No one ever said the military life was an easy life...except maybe the recruiters.lol

 

[vincegamer]

What about obligation to the civilians, particularly the families?
Was it Okay for the army to lie to the family of that football player who died in Iraq about how he died? (\"friendly\" fire)

 

[minimaker]

Origineel geplaatst door Evil DaveAs if those engineers lives are worth more than the average grunts?

I don\'t think that is what he means. He\'s not talking about personal value, he\'s talking about wasted capacity and potential.
Since Iraq is a country that needs to be rebuild it\'s best to use engineering and other specialists skill for reconstruction. The bad thing is that there is such a lack of capacity that these people can not do the work they are specially qualified for. Instead they walk patrol which is basicly a waste of skills and knowledge.

Edit:

Just because you have a specialty class does not set you above the grunt work.

On a \"personal soldier\" level I agree. In the army I was a radio operator on a mobile radio truck. Each of us was also required to do any kind of infantry duty, ranging from walking patrols to digging latrines. This is normal and anybody who feels he\'s \"too good\" that person does not just have a fallacy of the mind but worse than that is a risk to his comrades.
From an organisational level the problem is though that specialists are rarer so not using them right means waste of skills and risking somebody who can be harder to replace than for instance a pure infantry-man.

 

[MarkusTay]

Originally posted by reverend
But I live in miserable ol\' Wales Mr Tay!

Sorry, typical American Faux Pas. I\'m still confused by the nomenclature of the names of various parts of the British Empire. To us \"simple\" folk UK = England, we often forget about the \"other\" states (?). Since all states within in the US were never separate nations we find the distinctions between European \"territories\" confusing. Texas and Hawaii being exceptions. Texas technically has a different deal for statehood then the rest (hence the saying \"the Great FREE state of Texas\") Presumably they are the only state that could succeed without a fight. Presumably. I can\'t actually see that happening. Hawaii had an Emperor, and therefore is the only state with an Imperial Palace. Like I said, it gets confusing.

Now that I\'ve apologized for the second time in this thread, I have a few things to address...

The level of civility discussing this topic is amazing. Even Reverend is participating in a \"sober\" manner. lol

Originally posted by paintingploddy
When does the invasion of Iraq become bad? When more Iraqis are killed afterwards than by Saddam?

That is the one bit of integrity I see in this. If they had found some I imagine conspiracy theorists will have an even bigger field day.

To the first, in about 10 years after we have turned their female population into prostitutes like we did in Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, etc... and like the U.N. is CURRENTLY doing in the Congo and elsewhere.
To the second, integrity? Or stupidity? I heard a comedian (Lewis Black) say on an HBO special \"They didn\'t even have the decency to lie to us! Fake it! Throw a few nukes under a blanket in the middle of the desert and take some pictures! Don\'t start telling us the truth now, we\'ve had two hundred years of lies, we\'re used to it!\" Makes ya\' think, huh?

Originally posted by reverend
History will be the judge? A biased one at that...

History is written by the winners, and therefore is always biased AND inaccurate.

Originally posted by minimakerThat has always been the stereotype. I think it was started by the large amount of near \"stereotypical\" American tourists we get over here. Naive, uninformed, culturally insensitive, overly cheerful, etc.

Cheerful? They must not have been from NY. Sure they weren\'t Japanese?

As far as the \"Ugly American\" stereotype, Bush takes that to the extreme. The UN tells him not to invade, and he basically tells them to go F__k themselves. Putting the desires of a single nation above the consensus of the world? NOW THAT’S ARROGANT!

@DrSanch - Welcome to the Forums! You caught us at a good time, we\'re not normally this sane.

 

[minimaker]

Origineel geplaatst door MarkusTayCheerful? They must not have been from NY. Sure they weren\'t Japanese?

Yup, those run about so fast with their camera\'s you don\'t have much time to notice whether they are really cheerfull, or even to talk to them to find out about their lives. (By the way, this is because they get very little holidays. So for them \"Europe in three days\" is the only way to go on holiday.)
As to New York. Hmm, so is that the reason people were looking at me that strangely when I smiled at them when asking questions? Is the NYC Greyhound personel a special class if it comes to this kind of non-cheerfull behaviour? lol

By the way, Bush will be visiting the Netherlands this weekend. Don\'t let the pretty newspictures mislead you. Our prime-minister (yeah, the one that looks like Harry Potter) is probably one of the very few people who like Bush in this country. I\'ll be in Paris then but I will make sure there is no \"welcome\" matt in front of our door! For the Dutch on this list: http://www.stopbush.nl/

 

[MarkusTay]

Yes, New Yorkers are way too cynical to be cheerful. They usually have a look as if they have just eaten something nasty. I f you do see a New Yorker wearing a big \"Cheshire Cat\" grin, then it\'s for one of the following reasons -

1) He just screwed somebody (take that both ways)
2) He\'s suffering from dementia (and is too stupid to realize how crappy life is)
3) He\'s a Psycho (RUN!!!)
4) He\'s a tourist (and doesn\'t know there are a least twenty people trying to figure out how to screw him)

That\'s New Yorkers for you, extremely cynical. Thank God I\'m not.

 

[minimaker]

Hehe, that explains.

Origineel geplaatst door MarkusTayThat\'s New Yorkers for you, extremely cynical.

Any idea where that comes from? I know that NYC has a Dutch history and that the Dutch have some cynicism. But that\'s tends to be in a funny way.
By the way, a friend of mine who has lived in NYC said that Seinfield reminded her very much of the city. Is that so?

 

[MarkusTay]

That show is so close to the reality of NY life it\'s scary!

The whole cast is self centered, self serving, xenophobic, greedy, and just plain strange. Yup, that\'s NYers alright!

Like Seinfeld, a NYer will always be suspicious of nice people. They will always be thinking \"what’s the catch?\". I think this comes from a bad time when there were a lot of \"con\" men (swindlers) who took advantage of the many immigrants coming into this country through NY. Many \"new\" Americans first experience here was when they had their life savings robbed. This has created a very \"suspicious\" attitude in later generations.

 

[minimaker]

Ah, I see. That sounds like a good explanation. Interesting to see it passed on through the generations like this.

 

[Equus]

Originally posted by minimaker
Any idea where that comes from? I know that NYC has a Dutch history and that the Dutch have some cynicism. But that\'s tends to be in a funny way.

Maybe it\'s because they\'re packed in so tightly in the city and if they\'re not on their toes and paranoid, the rats and roaches will steal their furniture.

@ Dr Sanch - Welcome to the asylum!

 

[Trevor]

Well, since both terms are defined as \"having life\" I don\'t get the distinction.

There isn\'t one, I was trying to imply that a sperm is not technically living or alive, but also it clearly is living and alive, confusing eh?

 

[MarkusTay]

The roaches ARE pretty much everywhere, but the rats aren\'t as bad as people think.

Maybe we shouldn\'t be paranoid... after all, why would anyone want to hurt NY? It\'s not like somebody\'s gonna start driving planes into our coolest buildings...

Thank God I live in the \'burbs.

 

[Equus]

Are they as big as the roaches that they have here in Hawaii? Those buggers are monsters!!!

 

[paintingploddy]

History is very subjective, and therefore is always accurate. The past doesn\'t exist only in memory (which is inaccurate), and documents which can be faked/altered/misrepresented/biased.

This talk about cockroaches and rats in New York. How gullible do you think us Non-Americans are?

 

[Dr Sanch]

Thanks for the welcome

@evildave As for the engineers comment i didn\'t mean for it to sound like an ordinary soldier is worth less than an engineer, just that it\'s a shame they are having to do that rather than helping rebuild the place after we knocked it all down/blew it up. It was more a comment on the size and state of our armed forces ie. too small, too scattered and too poorly equipped for the task in hand. I think they do a bloody exceptional job in the circumstances.

 

[minimaker]

Origineel geplaatst door paintingploddyThis talk about cockroaches and rats in New York. How gullible do you think us Non-Americans are?

Yeah, everybody knows it\'s the alligators in the NYC sewers that are the main problem. lol

 

[Equus]

lol

Yup! Thank god I\'m not there! I just have to worry about sharks and morey eels. And centipedes. And cockroaches the size of the lens of my glasses.

...help!

 

[MarkusTay]

The alligator problem no longer exists AFAIK, there was a big hunting expedition back in the \'70s that supposedly got rid of them. I wasn\'t joking about the rats and roaches. My family moved to Long Island from NYC when I was three, and it took years and several moves to finally be rid of the roaches. The rats you don\'t see much, unless you’re down in the sewers or by the waterfront. However, The few I have seen are about the size of a cat, A VERY LARGE CAT!. When you see a rat that can kick an Opossum’s A$$ then you know that the sewer workers are waaaaay underpaid!

 

[vincegamer]

Somewhere along the line New Yorkers (meaning residents of the city boroughs, not the rest of the state) got this kind of reputation and now they feed it. They are proud of it.

I lived in up-state NY for a few years and when I moved there from Oklahoma I was told \"don\'t make eye contact or you could get beat up.\" This was odd to me since back in Oklahoma if you avoided eye contact you could get beat up.
\"You got a problem with me you can\' t look me in the eye and smile? That\'s it!\" *pow*

 

[darthfoley]

But what about the *zombies* in the sewers? How come nobody mentions them?