Conservative
A place to discuss pro-conservative stuff
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We are a Pro-Conservative forum. Posts must have a clear pro-conservative, or anti left-wing bias. We are interested in promoting conservatism and discussing things that might get ignored elsewhere. All sources are acceptable, however reputable sources with a reputation for factual reporting are preferred.
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As a conservative myself, NYP and Fox News messaging doesn't represent the true values or positions of the GOP base.
While most Republican politicians support continuing to fund Ukraine with no end, most Republicans are at most cautious of that idea, if not opposed to it altogether. There's a big reason why the GOP presidential candidates were trying so hard to convince the audience that funding the war is a good idea.
I strongly suspect that most Democrats don't actually want to fund a bunch of forever wars either. I mean, that's what Obama was elected for, he just turned out to do the opposite of everything he was elected to do. "Help the poor, end the wars, shut down gitmo? I agree but let's tweak it to help the 0.1%, keep the wars going forever, keep gitmo going!"
Everyone has said they would shut down Gitmo, and then they do not.
Gitmo served a purpose in the early days of the war and quickly lost that purpose. It should have been shutdown a long time ago.
I don't think I agree with you about Gitmo ever serving a purpose. It was entirely outside of Geneva Conventions and served as a secure prison for anyone deemed an enemy of the state, including US citizens. Torture was regularly practiced and there was no oversight; it was an oubliette into which people disappeared for years, with no representation or recourse. Gitmo was everything the US should stand against, when we consider our highest ideals and morals.
The US has plenty of blood on its hands, but Gitmo was out in the open; there was no subtlety, it wasn't a "dark secret." The only thing it accomplished was to prove that you can scare the current American public enough that they'll accept nearly anything, including stuff that would have outraged the WWII US public.
Gitmo had nothing to do with Geneva. It dealt with US law. If we brought them back to our soil, they’d have full protections under the constitution.
Gitmo was supposed to be a stop gap while we figured out what that meant.
I was there for about six months. Obviously can’t get into details but it needs to be shutdown. It’s lived long past its purpose. The things that went on there are a black eye to our country.
Isn't that where the GC comes in? The convention isn't about applying your country's laws, but about ethical standards for treatment of enemy combatants. Gitmo being not on our soil is where Geneva should have come into play.
I'm sorry about that; maybe some people enjoyed working there, but I think it would have messed me up.
No. Geneva has nothing to do with it. We have to comply with Geneva anywhere.
We picked gitmo specifically because it’s not US soil.
There is the whole debate if they weee protected under Geneva and if they was law enforcement, etc. but gitmo was only selected to avoid US law.
Yah I think we're talking past one another. I wasn't debating where Gitmo was located; when I said it was "outside Geneva" I meant it was operating outside of the agreements of the Geneva Conventions. Torture is not allowed for captured enemy combatants under the convention; prisoners at Gitmo were tortured. Gitmo was not obeying the conventions.
I'm sure there are all sorts of loopholes engaged in what went on there; were insurgents technically "enemy combatants?" By classifying them as "terrorists" were they excluded from protection? Since they weren't wearing military uniforms, were they excluded from protection? Is waterboarding technically torture?
But nobody in the world is going to being the US in for trial, so the question was moot: we all knew Gitmo defied the spirit of the Geneva Convention; this is why I say it didn't serve a purpose. We know torture is an unreliable way of gathering intel. If I waterboard you enough, eventually you'll name your own child as a terrorist if I want you to.
The torture is a whole different debate. It was called enhanced interrogation techniques. I’ll leave it at I wouldn’t want that shit some to me. I’ve been through many of the techniques and they’re no joke.
I suspect we disagree on a lot of things, but this one thing we're in complete alignment. There's a golden rule concept floating in here: I think if one takes the position that waterboarding isn't torture, they should try it sometime. I don't want to be incarcerated, but I'd be willing to try it for a while it if meant proving it's not inhumane. Very few of the "approved" interrogation techniques I've heard come out of Gitmo would I willingly subject myself to.
I have been through them all but in a much milder manner. Also, when we did SERE training, they subjected us to techniques.
I can't say I am a fan of them or approve of their use in 99% of cases.
I have never been incarcerated but I think it should be humane and try to better the person. Just warehousing like we do currently is not a solution to any problem.
This season of the Serial podcast is about GitMo and it's very interesting. Would recommend.
I may have to check that one out.
What disappoints me is both parties have lost interest in closing gitmo
Well, I don't know. Democrats are more vocal about it for sure, but that's just because many of them hate either Jews or Israel. Democrats seem to love Ukraine, and would like to keep funding them, while Republicans seem to not care about them at all.
I'm making a distinction between the rank and file and the media, I don't really believe most rank and file are really like whatever the media or the like claim.... I mean if they really did flip 180 like that then it makes them incredibly disingenuous people...
I support Ukraine, but we have to limit what we send. We can't send things that most likely would be captured, or that would put the United States at risk by depleting our stockpiles. It isn't our war to fight.
It isn't our war to fight? Do you have idea what happens if Ukraine loses, and Putin absorbs that territory? Don't suffer Trump's lies, we absolutely do need NATO.
If Ukraine falls, as an American how does it change my life? It doesn’t. What treaties do we have with Ukraine for defense? Zero.
And who mentioned nato? Ukraine isn’t a member of nato
If Ukraine falls, it makes Russia more likely to invade other places, and it makes China more likely to invade Taiwan.
We can either end this war now by punishing Russia enormously, or the war grows to become WW3.
Maybe our NATO allies should have spent that 2% as was suggested.
We need to prepare for Taiwan, where we have a verbal agreement.
I have no issues sending weapons to Ukraine but it can't be at the expense of Israel and Taiwan.
I am 100% against sending boots on the ground unless they keep attacking nuclear plants. That is an attack on humanity.
Fuck Israel, they’re genocidal dipshits. They don’t deserve aid.
According to our government they are not. We also have strong support for Israel. We have to meet our obligations else others won’t take us seriously.
If you feel our support is unjustified. Write your senator. Israel has a special relationship with America and right or wrong, I don’t see that changing.
That’s such a weird question. No but I don’t see a mass order or genocide and the government validates what I’m perceiving.
The government validates all the lies I’ve heard about a genocide. It confirms what I already thought was true
No, it's called validation. A confirmation bias is where you seek sources that agree with you.
I know it stings to be wrong but there isn’t a genocide according to the government and most governments of the world. It’s weird you want to say they are wrong on Israel but right on Ukraine.
I will not convince people who are disconnected from the real world. My goal is to make sure the truth is out in the open.
So the Ukrainians are morally wrong for killing Russians? I don’t think so.
Eh. The US has twice proven that it can ramp up war production enough to go from essentially no war capacity to overwhelming force very quickly. Weapons manufacturers are salivating at the chance to satisfy wartime demand. And who are we holding back in fear of? China? If we get into a tangle with China, weapons reserves are going to be the least of our concerns. Russia? Ukraine - tiny little Ukraine - is showing that the mighty Russian war machine is mostly façade over rusting or entirely missing parts. The only threat Russia presents the US right now is nuclear - and weapon stockpiles aren't going to protect against that.
So who are we afraid of? Canada? Honestly, I think Canada is the real threat; I think they've been putting on a friendly face and biding their time, waiting until we've given all of our ordinance in support of another country, and then they'll sweep in and take back Old Fort Niagara, Youngstown, and Buffalo, and then they'll have all the tourists mwahahaha!
This "holding in reserve" is a cop-out. We're giving Ukraine stock that was due to be rotated out for newer stuff anyway; they aren't getting latest-gen anything, and if the US goes into any conflict and burns through enough latest-gen munitions and has to reach into old stockpiles, I think we're in for a rough ride no matter what.
Are you talking about ww1 and Ww2? Those were very different times.
This is the easiest way to tell someone never served or has any military experience.
The javelin, patriot, 155mm, stinger, mlrs rockets, etc are all current issue. Isn’t the exact same thing we fight with. It’s the latest generation of fighting weapons.
Oh, yeah? Your meter is completely off, then.
Ordinance gets replaced on the regular. A lot of it gets used during training. When I was in, once a year we'd go to the range and get issued a ton of everything: cans of ammo, grenades of all sorts (but mostly smoke, and no CS, and no LAWs). We'd be there most of the day. More than once Saw gunners from our platoon would would melt barrels trying to go through all the ammo we were issued. One time, there was still a dead tree standing down range and my buddy and I spent about an hour trying to cut it down by shooting it with our M16s. Even the TOW gunners were there doing their thing, and they were usually pretty stingy with the TOWs. I think they left out the CS and LAWs because someone in command decided that was just a little too risky; but otherwise they have us a ton of everything. Like, we would be there all day, trying to find things to shoot at from our trench.
There was no objective to these exercises except to burn ammo. There were no targets except some rusted out old trucks, like maybe deuce & halfs? They were fairly unrecognizable by the time we saw them. Some long-dead tree trunks. Now that I've spent some decades in corporate US, what it reminded me must of was departments wildly trying to spend the rest of their budgets before year's end.
It was glorious; just sending destruction downrange with nobody shooting back. Maybe there was some hidden purpose, but there orders were: "here's ammo. Shoot it all."
Then you should know we are giving Ukraine very formidable weapons. I get tired of people downplaying the quality of weapons we are sending. We are sending some solid weapons to Ukraine. It’s not old obsolete equipment. It’s the same equipment we use.
And law? That would date you. I never saw a law only the at-4
I'm not downplaying what we're giving Ukraine; I was taking objection to the idea that the US barely has enough munitions to defend itself from a nebulous enemy and we need to be careful about how much we give out.
Yup, my service was decades ago.
https://www.voanews.com/amp/without-more-funds-us-unable-to-hit-ammunition-production-goals/7510881.html
Right now we are making 28k a month. Ukraine shoots 7k a day. That’s 210,000 a month.
That’s the issue. It’s one I didn’t know we had. I always assumed we could ramp up quickly since that’s a standard round.
It's the "without more funds" part that's misdirection. I still do assume that we could ramp up, quite quickly. These are private companies producing the munitions; if the gvmnt suddenly doubled the contract funding, I would be greatly surprised if we discovered production couldn't keep up.
Most the plants are not privately owned. They are government owned and contractors work in them.
Most of these plants were shutdown as a cost savings measure. That’s been the issue
https://thegunzone.com/who-manufactures-ammunition-for-the-us-military/
https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/artillery/
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/naval-launchers-and-munitions.html (just to include one of the other branches)
I could find more, if you like. All claim to be the manufacturers of ordinance. It's not just the ammunition, the guns themselves are manufactured by private corporations. The M777 Howitzer is produced by BAE Systems. It's always a private contractor who designs and delivers weapons and ordinance.
Yes the guns are but that isn’t where we have the shortage. The shortage is the ammunition. A gun isn’t useful without ammo.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2023/10/17/middletown-iowa-ammunition-plant-will-make-more-of-the-artillery-shells-ukraine-is-firing-at-russia/71134562007/
There is another in Pennsylvania. Both are owned by the army and contractors make the ammo.
Same with lake city but they make rifle rounds.
If you can find where private companies are making 155mm in their own facilities I’d like to see it. I’ve only found it made in army arsenals.
OK, let's ignore small arms and focus on things a civilian simply can't buy, like howitzers and tanks.
The actual munitions - not the weapons, but the ammunition - are manufactured by a variety of companies, including Aerojet Rocketdyne and Nammo. Nammo makes a bunch of ammunition, from small arms, to cannon ammo for the M1 to 155mm Archer L52 howitzers. AR also produces ammunition for the A10's GAU, and a bunch of other munitions and munition parts for more complex munitions (missiles & bombs). Both of these companies make TOW missiles - again, the munitions, not the weapon systems.
Lockheed Martin makes the actual Patriot missiles - that article incidentally talking about the very ramping-up we're discussing.
The US outsources all weapons and ammo manufacture to the private sector. This is exactly why it's called the Military Industrial Complex, and why Eisenhower warned against it.
Those are the contractors. The government owns the facilities at least for 155mm. Can you show which factory makes the 155mm round? You seem to be confusing the contractor with the factory. Two two are not the same.
Missiles may be done differently; I have not found an article talking in detail about who owns what with the production of The Patriot.
As I cited previously, we are ramping up, but not quickly enough to meet their needs. Ukraine needs about 210,000 155mm rounds a month. We are generating about 28K a month.
That goes against all the news article. We can’t keep up with the demand from Ukraine unless we deplete our stockpiles. If China acted up, Iran or if we needed to fight Russia we wouldn’t have the supply to do it.
And as we all know, the United States has never involved itself in other nations' wars