General Schatten wrote:
Well look at his fucking salad bar!
Hell, most of it is obscured by his lapel!
Color me unimpressed. It was better in the old days when they just let the conspicuously competent jump a grade instead of covering their uniforms with little bits of metal and ribbon.
Okay, just a clarification, is that unimpressed at the look of the salad bar? Or unimpressed at the general himself?
Because, while I think those overly decorative ribbons look a bit silly (not to mention horrendously time-wasting when pinning them on), I don't think the actual accomplishments needed to merit getting all that are anything to casually dismiss.
Last edited by Ilya Muromets on 2010-06-02 11:44am, edited 1 time in total.
Simon_Jester wrote:LeMay, like a lot of other cases who were working up through the mid-20th century, are borderline cases.
Someone who retired in 1990 could probably be brought up to speed more or less seamlessly. The doctrine and equipment have changed, but not as much; they could catch up. They're not in the absurd position someone Lee was in, having to drill out a lifetime of thinking that weapon range is a few hundred yards and that no force can move more than twenty miles an hour at best. They understand ideas like communication security, battlefield intelligence being important, air and artillery support being devastating, and so on, even if the tools have changed a bit.
LeMay didn't retire in 1990, he died in 1990. He retired in 1965, foolishly joined George Wallace's political party because they sort of agreed on military doctrine, then after the 1968 election, quietly went to private life and ran some charitible organizations.
LeMay is probably not that trainable in modern warfare, I'd suspect. Not to the degree of General Lee, but there is a significant enough uphill climb that you can undoubtably find someone better with more experience whom is already trained.
Assuming, of course, once they dig him out of the Pit, he wants to go back to work.
Someone who retired in 1950 is in a much worse position. They retired in an era when foot infantry were not uncommon, when infantry heavy weapons could not reliably kill tanks except at point blank range, when support forces were less mobile, and so on. They might be able to pick up modern tactics with relatively little training, but in this case "relatively little" would probably mean more like five or ten years instead of twenty.
LeMay might be genuinely useful in some ways, because of certain virtues that would still apply, such as leadership ability. The ability to lead men and inspire loyalty and hard work is valuable even when the details of the work change.
Would LeMay go back to being a General when there are people rising to the position? I would think that if there was a spot open for a General, he's let the guy who'd normally rise to fill it take the job.
The same goes for other areas when we're talking about people who retired in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Maxwell would be useless as a physicist today if we found him, and Einstein would be of little use for years, but someone more recent like Feynman could actually be helpful because the magnitude of change since he left the field is smaller.
Maxwell would have alot of learning to do and might be hopelessly lost. Einstein might have some catching up to do, but he understands more than the classic picture of physics and could no doubt be educated to be useful as a physicist. Feynman certainly would go back to work, I can't imagine anyone stopping him from setting at some New Rome university and exploring the brave new world of Quantum Field Theory from Hell while spending eternity finding new ways to be eccentric. The heavies of the 20th century, like Einstein or Fermi or Rabi... remember, they've got a rich and verdant NEW area of physics to explore that no one on Earth up to the last couple years even knew about. Physics are clearly different in Hell; translational motion doesn't even commute entirely! That sort of thing would definitely be the bag of they guys from the early to mid 20th; the science of the higher dimensions, made tangible and testable and they are uniquely positioned to continue their work there. Once they are out of the Pit and get used to their situation, they are going to find work, with alot of new training being how to deal with modern academia and the power of computers (alot of those guys who works on the Manhattan project would have had infinitely simplified lives if they had personal computers, rather than mechanical adding machines to crunch integrals).
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Now, I have an interesting question that occurs to me in the discussion about scientists and their present capabilities.
What if Stephen Hawking elects to commit suicide so that he can pop up in Hell in a fresh body, without crippling disabilities, ready and able to do a whole lot more than he can at the moment? That body would be basically human-in-their-prime instead of him being twisted due to muscular dystrophy, right?
Steel, on nBSG's finale: "I'd liken it to having a really great time with these girls, you go back to their place, think its going to get even better- suddenly there are dicks everywhere and you realise you were in a ladyboy bar all evening."
Kuroji wrote:Now, I have an interesting question that occurs to me in the discussion about scientists and their present capabilities.
What if Stephen Hawking elects to commit suicide so that he can pop up in Hell in a fresh body, without crippling disabilities, ready and able to do a whole lot more than he can at the moment? That body would be basically human-in-their-prime instead of him being twisted due to muscular dystrophy, right?
True. But I doubt that'll be in the story. Too much discomfort in portraying the suicide of a real and really ill man who might, given his constantly deteriorating condition, actually die some time soon.
Yeah. I wasn't recommending working that in, it's just a passing thought more than anything else.
Steel, on nBSG's finale: "I'd liken it to having a really great time with these girls, you go back to their place, think its going to get even better- suddenly there are dicks everywhere and you realise you were in a ladyboy bar all evening."
Chris OFarrell wrote:
You have to wonder if he'll finally understand that he might have misscalculated when reports about the NUke come in. Most of Heaven don't have a clue what happened, but *he* will understand perfectly well exactly what just happened, and he has said in the past more then once that his worst nightmare is HUmans coming into Heaven with WMD's and a big big big big big BIG BIG BIG chip on their shoulder.
Well, how much of an idea does Michael have about the powers of nuclear weapons? He had a pretty close shave with one in Nayipidaw but he might have thought it was just some generic high explosives. If he already knows what they can do and realizes that he underestimated HEA"s willingness to deploy nukes, it might be a good idea for Michael to set up shop in another pocket universe.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
Saint_007 wrote:Why thank you for pointing out the obvious, westrim. Yes, I do feel stupid for posting that. What I should have said is why would he be jumping for joy at the use of a nuke? If he built the goddamn nuclear air force, it's not like he hasn't seen it before. Unless of course, the poster meant he's finally seeing his years of work in action.
It's okay, we all have to do or say something stupid occasionally. As to your query, he was an advocate of preemptive nuclear war (though not to the extent that some believe, and this was before MAD doctrine set in), so the assumption that some are making is that he would be happy to see nukes finally used in combat, not just waiting in silos for the day we all blow each other to hell.
westrim wrote: As to your query, he was an advocate of preemptive nuclear war (though not to the extent that some believe, and this was before MAD doctrine set in), so the assumption that some are making is that he would be happy to see nukes finally used in combat, not just waiting in silos for the day we all blow each other to hell.
Not quite. Saint Curtis loathed war and all it stood for. His position was that any war was an abomination and should be avoided if at all possible. However, if war could not be avoided, it should be finished as quickly and decisively as possible since no matter how horrible the quick and decisive finish was, at that level of technology, a long, drawn-out war would be much worse. He wasn't actually proposing a pre-emptive attack but did propose that, if a war started, the United States should go straight to whatever level of effort was required to bring about a quick and decisive victory and not mess around with intermediate steps. If that was nuclear, then so be it.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
General Schatten wrote:snip
Well look at his fucking salad bar!
NZ army joke is that US service personnel get a medal for flying over northern Ireland.
Yup, they do indeed seem to award a great many decorations. It's interesting to compare with General Sir Mike 'Darth Vader' Jackson, who is serving as his CoS, in the HEA.
They both have broadly similar careers, though, interestingly for his current position, Jackson has a longer period of service than Petraeus. It just looks like the British Army doesn't give out decorations with the sort of generosity that the US Army does.
'Fire up the Quattro!'
'I'm arresting you for murdering my car, you dyke-digging tosspot! - Gene Hunt.
Ironically, that tendency seems to be part of why the MOH became so rarely awarded.
"Yee's proposal is exactly the sort of thing I would expect some Washington legal eagle to do. In fact, it could even be argued it would be unrealistic to not have a scene in the next book of, say, a Congressman Yee submit the Yee Act for consideration. " - bcoogler on this
"My crystal ball is filled with smoke, and my hovercraft is full of eels." - Bayonet
Stark: "You can't even GET to heaven. You don't even know where it is, or even if it still exists." SirNitram: "So storm Hell." - From the legendary thread
Anyway getting back on topic, I wonder if we've been able to find Beethoven? I wonder how he would view being called one of the greatest musicans of all time?
If Dr. Gatling was a nerd, then his most famous invention is the fucking Revenge of the Nerd, writ large...
"Lawful stupid is the paladin that charges into hell because he knows there's evil there."
—anonymous
"Although you may win the occasional battle against us, Vorrik, the Empire will always strike back."
Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven.
For a brief second, it just didn’t make sense. Keisha Stevenson knew what the wailing sirens and ear-splitting rattle meant but the knowledge didn't make the needed connection to her brain. Then, the connection was made and the knowledge sent her running for her tank. All around her, the initial shock had worn off the men and women of the Spearhead Battalion and they were heading for the comforting bulk of their armored vehicles. Stevenson reached hers, scrambled up the side on one continuous motion and pushed herself through the cupola on the turret. In doing so, she banged her face on the breech of her .50 machine gun and managed to mash her breasts on the cupola ring. That hurt.
That didn’t stop her movement, she resisted the temptation to hold herself, instead reaching up to the hatch and pulling it shut. Then she span the locks that held it in place and spun them again to make sure the hatch was tight.
"This is an exercise, Ma'am, right?" Her gunner was looking at her with eyes wide open. "A dummy drill?"
She shook her head. "We don’t play games like this in operational zones. This is the real thing. Somebody is about to pop a nuke."
"That's us right?" The voice was trembling.
"I sure do hope so. Hokay, brace for nuclear initiation procedures." She leaned forward and cushioned her head on her forearms. Surreptitiously, she rubbed her breasts, quietly wishing she was back with her old tank crew. They'd been a small, self-contained little community, one where the Army had got mixing compatible people up right for once. And hitting herself on the cupola ring had really hurt.
What happened next was eerie. There was no sound, no warning, no movement, but from every crack and crevice in the tank, a pure, blinding white light poured in beams that had an almost tangible quality to them. Dust mites hanging in the air were brilliantly spotlighted, swirling in patterns that defied any easy analysis. The tank was supposed to be airtight and leakproof but the light was strong enough to show how wrong that belief was, The holes were no greater than pinpoints in size yet there was enough light coming through them to illuminate the whole of the inside of the tank. It caught in people's hair, making them seem as if they were crowned with halos of pure light. Braced in her Commander's seat, Stevenson was counting seconds in an effort to work out how far away the initiation had been.
She'd reached one minute and thirteen seconds when the tank was hit by what felt like an underground sledgehammer. The ground wave, she thought. The egg-heads will learn all sorts of stuff from that. The irrelevance of the thought surprised her. The front of the tank was lifting with the ground shock, then her head slammed forward as it dropped. She hadn't felt anything like this since she'd been taken to an amusement park for her birthday and had insisted on trying the roller-coaster ride. This had all the characteristics of that ride, only the tank was shaking violently as well. The three-dimensional movement made her feel violently ill, another phenomenon reminiscent of the ride she had taken so many years ago. The only difference was that this time she wasn't filled up with cotton-candy to make sickness a reality. All around her the air was filling with dust, the red dust from Hell, the yellow sand from Iraq, the brown grit from wherever it was in the States that this tank had come from. Instinctively, with the conditioned reflex of a First-Life human who had spent a lot of time in Hell, she clapped her bandanna over her nose and mouth. Anything to avoid breathing in the pumice. Unfortunately, her gunner misunderstood the movement, decided that if his Colonel could be sick, so could he and vomited all over the main gun.
"You'll clean that up." Stevenson was in no mood for the smell in her tank while the violent shaking continued. Then, to her immense relief, the vicious movement subsided. Her mind was still ticking away the seconds. One minute and forty three seconds since the flash of light, roughly 23 miles from Ground Zero. General Dynamics Land Systems, just how big was the nuke to give a ground wave like that this far out? Then, the air-wave and sound of the blast hit. The 70 ton tank was lifted slightly, the howling blast-wave catching the barrel and causing the turret to turn against the gears that rotated it. Stevenson could feel the heat rising in the tank, and the air conditioning laboring to keep conditions under control. Even with that aid, she could feel herself sweating and that was when she realized what she could hear wasn't air conditioning, it was the tanks positive pressure system trying to ensure that the air pressure in the tank was higher than that outside. Only, the air pressure sensor was trying to cope with conditions that the tank designers had considered only in their worst nightmares and the positive pressure system was working overtime to match. Stevenson felt her ears pop as the pressure climbed.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shockwave was past. The tank radio crackled into life, ordering everybody to remain under cover while the surrounding area was checked for radioactive contamination. Stevenson sat back in her seat, then opened up the tank's electro-optical system to see what was going on. What she saw made her catch her breath. On the horizon was the familiar mushroom cloud. It was no longer glowing, she'd missed that part of the display but it was still a dull reddish color in hue. Just like Hell, she thought. She couldn't see the top of the cloud, from her knowledge of nuclear weapons she guessed it was at least 12 miles high, extending well into the stratosphere and far beyond the elevation limit of her equipment. As she watched, she saw the great mushroom cloud slowly turning white as it cooled and started to absorb moisture from the air around it. The thermal currents and winds were already interacting to wrap the mushroom cloud in a strange, impressive and incredibly beautiful system of cloud layers.
It had all the fascination of a train wreck. Stevenson wanted to look away from the great cloud but couldn't. For a brief second she thought there had been another initiation and started to duck away to save her sight but then she realized it was just lightning. The massive electrical charges in the atmosphere from the initiation plus all that condensing water vapor was a perfect breeding ground for thunderstorms. There would be tornados as well, all around the blast area. Idly, she wondered if Heaven had ever seen tornados before.
"Attention. For your information, there has just been a 1.2 megaton nuclear initiation over the main body of an Angelic Host twenty four miles due west of our position. The initiation was a high air burst using a nuclear device optimized for clean performance. We do not expect excessive radioactive contamination. Specialized reconnaissance elements are in action now, checking for fallout and other effects. All personnel may now leave cover but be prepared to find shelter at short notice. Message ends."
Stevenson sighed, she guessed that her battalion would be getting orders soon, ones that would direct her to advance on Ground Zero.
Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.
"We're getting the data in now. The initiation was complete and on target. The preliminary estimate is between 150,000 and 250,000 dead. I'm sorry, General, but military targets are obdurately linear and nuclear blast effects are obdurately circular. We planned this one so the Host was caught between two hills and that squeezed the circle into an ellipse. Still, the nose and tail of the column were out of the immediately-lethal area."
"You're sorry." Petraeus couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "We kill a quarter of a million people in a split second and you're sorry because you didn't get more of them. Just who are you anyway?"
The Targeteer smiled sadly. "Brennan, Don Brennan. By the time this thing has run its course, there'll be a lot more than a quarter of a million dead. Even allowing for the way angels and Second Life humans recuperate, we'll be way over four hundred thousand. Look on it this way Sir, if we'd done this to a city, we'd be looking at half a million dead right now and more than a million by the time the week is out. If the powers that be in the Eternal City get the message, we'll all be spared that."
Brennan was interrupted by a messenger from the National Reconnaissance Office. "Global Hawk pictures Sirs. Obliques of course.
"Which RQ-4 took them?" Brennan sounded interested. "Did she survive?"
"Donde Esta, Sir. She's fine, circling out of harm's way."
Brennan nodded. "That's good, I like that one. She always comes through with the goodies." He flipped through the photographs and nodded with satisfaction. "Most of the Angels were within the total kill zone. Including the big one who was leading the Host. No sign of who he was I suppose?"
"No Sir. Without radios to intercept, we're a bit stuck there."
"No problem, we'll find out eventually. Thank you." The messenger left, privately glad to be away from that flat, uninflected, monotone voice.
"We used to get lectures on this but even the films didn't convey the reality of it." Petraeus was speaking very quietly.
"They never do sir. You have to be there when one goes off to really understand it."
"You have of course."
"Of course. Not an American test, but I was invited there as a guest. It's something everybody who wants to run a country should see."
"I'm inclined to agree with you." Petraeus pushed a button on his desk intercom. "Sir Michael? I'll be resting for a couple of hours. If anything comes up, handle it. There shouldn't be, everybody has their mission objectives and we've got good people in command slots."
He paused and got up from his desk. "Brennan, if there are any developments at Ground Zero or if we get warning of fallout, call me immediately." There was a long pause. "You know, I could almost wish that the things didn't work up here. Almost, but not quite."
10 miles from Ground Zero. Heaven
The great ball of glowing light in the sky had been more than 700 times brighter than the normal light of Heaven. Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael had been blinded by the flash even though, by pure chance, he had been looking the other way. His partner in the scouting team, Amanael-Lan-Asohar had not been so lucky. He had been looking west at the time and he had been blinded as well. Only, for him there would be no recovery. His eyes had melted.
Uxhalar wasn't well, but at least he was alive. The great thunder and the howling wind that had followed the flash of light had thrown him from the sky and damaged his ears. There had been an eerie silence between the flash and the crash of thunder. That's what had amazed him so much. In a way, it had shocked him even more than the thunder, though the display was far greater than anything he had seen before. When he had risen, bruised and shaken, he had looked out from the crest of his hill across a sight he had never expected to see. The whole area was blackened, the grass seared away to bare soil, the trees burning. Everything that could burn was burning and the pyre of black smoke stretched high into the sky. Not high enough though for he could still see the great mushroom-shaped cloud that glowed red as it slowly changed color. Red was the color of Hell, and, impossible as it might seem, the humans had brought Hell to Heaven.
He stretched his wings and started to fly towards the cloud. The small forests that had once been scattered so artfully over the landscape were gone. Some were still burning but others were just scattered around, all over the track that the Host had been following on its way to do battle with the humans. On an instinct, he flew down to look at one closely, landing on the track in the midst of a cluster of burned tree logs. As he walked towards one, he heard a long, rasping groan of agony. It seemed to have come from one of the logs. He looked more closely and saw just a burned, charred log. Then, it opened its mouth and groaned again. To his horror Uxhalar realized that the 'logs' were all that was left of the human levies that had formed part of the column. He hurried away, taking off as quickly as he could, anything to be away from the sight he had just seen.
To his relief, the 'logs' vanished after a while. He realized they had to be the ones who had been on the outer edge of the strange weapon that had wiped out The Eternal Father Of All's personal guard. Rigt on the edge, to close in to escape, to far out to die quickly. Further in, all that was left was the blackened stains on the ground where the people had exploded into flames and burned to ashes. And yet still further in there wasn't even that trace of the survivors. Just the shadows of the dead, burned into the bleached ground. Human, Angel, it didn’t matter. They had died as if they had never existed, leaving only a shadow behind them
That was when Uxhalar stopped in his tracks, backwinging so he could absorb the immensity of what he saw. For, in front of him, the landscape had changed and become something he couldn't have imagined. For at least three miles in front of him, the ground had been completely flattened and turned into glass. Soil, trees, grass, animals, people, Angels, all had gone leaving nothing behind but the sheet of glass. He tried to imagine what could have done this, what great power could fuse soil unto glass. He flew over it, looking down, realizing that this glass plain was the only memorial to the Army that had been once marching through the valley. Through the valley, that was not true any more for even the valley itself had been changed. The hills had been distorted, their pleasing symmetry destroyed, looking as if a giant hand had pushed them away.
Another strange sight caught his eye. Right in the middle of the great glass plain was a lake where no lake had been before. An odd, perfectly circular lake that was slowly expanding as it filled with cobalt-blue water. Uxhalar could sense evil from that lake and he stayed well away from it. The sight distracted him though and he was shaken by a flash and another thunderous roar. For a hideous moment he thought it was another one of the great explosions but he quickly realized it was just a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. Not that thunderstorms were common in Heaven unless He Who Is Above All Others willed it. And yet, it was a storm unlike any other he had experienced. The rain that began falling from the sky over was jet black, a mixture of water that was condensing on the plentiful dust and smoke particles. The black rain soaked into his wing feathers and along his back, causing an intense burning sensation on the patches of skin they touched. He tried to brush them off, but they stuck to him and all the efforts he made just spread the burning sensation further. He gave up, he would just have to tolerate them.
Eventually, the plain of glass with its strange, evil lake was behind him. He pointedly did not look at the track below until he was clear of any hint of the 'logs'. It was then that the one thing he had not seen struck him. On all his flight over the site where the terrible thing had happened, he had not seen a living creature. Had the entire army been destroyed in that one great blast?
He flew a little higher and started a methodical hunt for any survivors of the Host. It took time and he was rained on again in the process, but he found them. A ragged column of survivors headed west, away from the death of their army. Had he not known better, he would have assumed they were Fallen Ones, for they were black overall. Even from above, it was obvious that few could see, most staggered along, their hand on the shoulder of the one in front of them. As he winged down, Uxhalar tried not to look at their faces, he knew what he would see there and he had already seen too much this day.
On the ground, he tried to find an angel he could speak to. Surrounded by the moaning of the survivors, he searched for anyone who could tell him what had happened. He saw hands with the fingers so burned that the knuckles stuck through the flesh and the skin peeled off in cylinders that retained the shape of the fingers within. He saw muscles that had once been red turned black with deep splits that ran to the white bone beneath. He pushed through the crowds, trying to hide his eyes and feeling only shame that these were suffering so much while he was unharmed. Then, at last, he found an angel, one badly injured where debris from the blast had carved deep into his body but an angel nonetheless.
"I am Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael. What happened? Where is our leader."
The angel looked at him. One eye was clouded and blind, the other reddened and inflamed. "The mighty Elhmas, son of He Who Is Above All and leader of our host? He is back there, I think. He was over the column when the thing happened. He is part of the glass and the black rain. Our Eternal Father has no son any more." Then he pushed past Uxhalar and was lost in the shuffling column that wound past him.
Uxhalar tried to take off but the effort suddenly seemed too great for him. He inflated his flight sacs to the maximum but it was no use, he was just too heavy to fly. So, he turned around and started to walk west with the rest of the survivors. As he did so, he noted that his wing feathers, once a pristine white but now stained with the black rain, were beginning, one by one, to fall out.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Grim stuff. It's good to see the subject treated with the gravity it deserves. Is the cobalt blue lake the groundwater collecting in the crater? Or is it something else?
I suppose that in order to stop a repeat performance, Michael now has to act very swiftly with his coup to stop Yahweh from presuming as Satan did that this is such powerful magic that it can't happen again for ages and pressing on with the attack.
"...a fountain of mirth, issuing forth from the penis of a cupid..." ~ Dalton / Winner of the 'Frank Hipper Most Horrific Drag EVAR' award - 2004 / The artist formerly known as The_Lumberjack.
Evil Brit Conspiracy: Token Moose Obsessed Kebab Munching Semi Geordie
El Moose Monstero wrote:Is the cobalt blue lake the groundwater collecting in the crater? Or is it something else?
What happens is that the blast wave heading downwards compresses the ground underneath it so that it forms a perfectly symmetrical depression in the ground. In doing so, the structure of the ground itself is crushed. Water then seeps upwards through the crushed ground and fills the depression. The water is intensely radioactive and chemically poisonous.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
El Moose Monstero wrote:Is the cobalt blue lake the groundwater collecting in the crater? Or is it something else?
What happens is that the blast wave heading downwards compresses the ground underneath it so that it forms a perfectly symmetrical depression in the ground. In doing so, the structure of the ground itself is crushed. Water then seeps upwards through the crushed ground and fills the depression. The water is intensely radioactive and chemically poisonous.
Ah, I see, thank you! I should also thank you for the description of the initiation in the previous chapter, as regardless of the altered information, the description of the mechanism where even the casing itself played a role was fascinating. I think it's amazing for both the science and the engineering to consider the countless potential interactions occurring, I assume even down to the trace imperfections in the components.
A question, which I don't know if you want to or are allowed to answer, so no offence taken if not: you're obviously always very careful about what you post and discuss, but do you ever get reminders or 'we're keeping an eye' type messages from whoever enforces classified information? Or do they just keep tabs without giving physical reminders that they're doing so out of professional courtesy?
"...a fountain of mirth, issuing forth from the penis of a cupid..." ~ Dalton / Winner of the 'Frank Hipper Most Horrific Drag EVAR' award - 2004 / The artist formerly known as The_Lumberjack.
Evil Brit Conspiracy: Token Moose Obsessed Kebab Munching Semi Geordie
westrim wrote: As to your query, he was an advocate of preemptive nuclear war (though not to the extent that some believe, and this was before MAD doctrine set in), so the assumption that some are making is that he would be happy to see nukes finally used in combat, not just waiting in silos for the day we all blow each other to hell.
Not quite. Saint Curtis loathed war and all it stood for. His position was that any war was an abomination and should be avoided if at all possible. However, if war could not be avoided, it should be finished as quickly and decisively as possible since no matter how horrible the quick and decisive finish was, at that level of technology, a long, drawn-out war would be much worse. He wasn't actually proposing a pre-emptive attack but did propose that, if a war started, the United States should go straight to whatever level of effort was required to bring about a quick and decisive victory and not mess around with intermediate steps. If that was nuclear, then so be it.
Thank you for the clarification.
Also, wow. I can already see the glassed valley becoming a monument of sorts to why war really, really sucks. And Jesus (the Not So Way Cool now) is gone, so it'll be only little bit longer before Michael shows Yahweh to be the madman he is and makes his play.
Very well done, yet another pretty chilling description of the after effects of an initiation.
Petraeus is being pretty formal towards Jackson; I'd have thought he'd have called him Mike by now rather than Sir Michael. Mind you I have always gotten the impression that US Army officers are a little more formal than their British counterparts.
'Fire up the Quattro!'
'I'm arresting you for murdering my car, you dyke-digging tosspot! - Gene Hunt.
" - 
