Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilometres

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Fearandloathing said:

The Canadian Armed Forces is a small standing army with multiple roles. From combat to disaster relief, wilderness searches etc. It is known in NATO circles to have the most highly trained personnel of any of NATO's allies. All soldiers are trained in multiple disciplines or "specialties".

And you're right. It's rather un-Canadian to talk about it

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I have had the pleasure of working with the Canadians at CFB Comox.

I have never felt more welcomed by base staff and personnel than during those two weeks.

Kudos to the sniper.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

After reading many military unit war diaries and soldiers' personnel memoirs about WWII it became clear how much Allied commanders and soldiers hated enemy snipers and despised their methods. Yes, the Allied nations used them and with good effect but with the exception of the USSR snipers were seen as a necessary evil by the allies.

How things have changed over the last eighty years. Now snipers are seen as superstars and heroes, rather than a morally dubious but necessary military expedient. Perhaps we should remember the brutal reality of what they do rather than ghoulishly celebrating their skill. I don't know the peculiar circumstances of this record breaking shot but I do know that a human being's life was ended by it. Perhaps the target was a vicious and brutal fanatic or perhaps he was an honest man defending his homeland from savage, foreign invaders. We don't know but we should consider that while we celebrate, toast success and pridefully wave flags. There were human beings at both ends of this record breaking shot and in some sense at both ends their lives have been diminished by this encounter. While this was a triumph of skill, it was also a tragedy of the human condition. So while I will acknowledge the shooter's skill, I will not celebrate the death of this unaware fighter on a distant battlefield in a land we have no business ravaging.

V/R
Evilroddy.

Click to expand...

Your opinion is noted....

Door is that way --------->

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

braindrain said:

Complete and utter garbage.

What this was, was a worthless pile of crap being removed from this world so he can no longer hurt anyone else or force his BS interpretation of Islam on his fellow man. In a small way the world is better off without him. And trust me the life of the Canadian sniper is not diminished at all. I have no doubt he removed plenty of price of crap humans before this shot and hopefully he will remove plenty more. I doubt he will lose any more sleep over this then he does when he takes the garbage to the curb. Because that is what he did.

I am sorry that you are to blinded your nonsense to see Isis for the scourge that they are and that anything we can do to remove that scourge makes the world a better place. You should try living in the real world.

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Braindrain and Fledermaus:

If either of you have information about the identity and character of the sniper's target and it can be legally shared here, then please by all means do tell. If not then you are just band-wagoning and declaring what you believe to be true in the absences of factual evidence. I am not blinded to the evil and wickedness of ISIL but nor do I blindly endorse everything done in the name of fighting it, or terrorism more broadly, by the Coalition. ISIL has killed tens of thousands in its pursuit of their grand caliphate but the Coalition has killed hundreds of thousands directly and many more indirectly through its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and its illegal operations in Syria.

There was a time not so long ago when our people looked at military personnel and held them up as heroes and role models for risking all and confronting evil head on in open battle during declared wars. Now the best soldiers, sailors and airmen are deployed in special operations teams and are ordered to skulk in the shadows, on the edges of legality, by covert means and without the knowledge and oversight of the people or their elected representatives whose names they fight in.

This type of military action has isolated the military from its own fellow citizens and has resulted in the growth of a insulated military culture which is more and more disconnected from the values of the general population and more beholden and subservient to the interests of cynical and wicked power elites whose interests are not aligned with the general population. It's gotten to the point where wearing a military uniform openly in Canada has invited attack and our military has cautioned serving members to avoid wearing uniforms openly and publicly in Canada during times of high stress, unless absolutely necessary. That kind of polarisation and social distance may be necessary in a state which seeks to dominate others and impose a world order for the benefit of its own and foreign allied elites. Canada is however not such a country and refused to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But somehow, by back-room deals and sub rosa channels, which our electorate vigorously opposed at every stage, we find our soldiers of JTF-2 nominally training Kurds but actually acting in kinetic SF operations and directly killing Iraqis.

So I don't blindly accept the disinformation, the spin and the overt propaganda which seeks to disable peoples' morality and willingness to question the actions of their military and political leadership in order to induce compliance by doing an end-run around the people. This is done by waging covert and in Syria illegal war against the expressed will of the people and hiding the grisly consequences from our eyes. If you don't see it that way then fine, that's your prerogative in a free society. But in a free society others have the right to challenge what you believe to be true publicly and to question why we are doing what we're doing. I will not be a meek and grovelling peasant who capitalises the nouns soldier, sailor or airmen and kowtows to militarism by thanking any and all in uniform for their service in pseudo-wars which the electorate expressly forbade but happened anyway.

Thus fledermaus I will not use the door you so generously pointed me to but will instead stay right where I am and debate on Debate Politics Forum.

V/R
Evilroddy.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

JANFU said:

The Canadian Soldier did not die.
Perhaps you should read the article again.

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Camlok is a CT nutjob.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

camlok said:

Cute, but no Kewpie doll. Wherever there is terrorism in the world, the Uncle Sam has his big mitts in it.

America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group

America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

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Ah, look at that. More CT nonsense.

No, the US did not "create" either Al Qaeda or ISIS. Only people as historically ignorant as you are would fall for that line.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

jimbo said:

The one video I saw of an actual sniper shot, I believe it was the US soldier on the list, the target stood there while the zeroing in shots hit around him. I never understood that.

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What else could he really do? There was nowhere to run. The sniper was hidden and out of effective range for the target to be able to return fire......people freeze up when they run out of options.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

camlok said:

Of course you do, JANFU, that is the cognitive dissonance that has hit you big time.

You gotta ask yourself, when the USA has illegally invaded sovereign nations over 70 times since WWII, murdered tens of millions of innocents, stolen unimaginable wealth from the poor of the world, raped, murdered hundreds of thousands of children, supported the most vicious right wing dictators imaginable [always right wing], ... how could any of the propaganda we are fed be true?

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And yet, you've repeatedly refused to condemn the invasion of Cambodia by your North Vietnamese heroes who propped up the Khmer Rouge. Gee pal, seems to me you are perfectly willing to excuse war crimes when Anti US forces commit them.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

After reading many military unit war diaries and soldiers' personnel memoirs about WWII it became clear how much Allied commanders and soldiers hated enemy snipers and despised their methods. Yes, the Allied nations used them and with good effect but with the exception of the USSR snipers were seen as a necessary evil by the allies.

How things have changed over the last eighty years. Now snipers are seen as superstars and heroes, rather than a morally dubious but necessary military expedient. Perhaps we should remember the brutal reality of what they do rather than ghoulishly celebrating their skill. I don't know the peculiar circumstances of this record breaking shot but I do know that a human being's life was ended by it. Perhaps the target was a vicious and brutal fanatic or perhaps he was an honest man defending his homeland from savage, foreign invaders. We don't know but we should consider that while we celebrate, toast success and pridefully wave flags. There were human beings at both ends of this record breaking shot and in some sense at both ends their lives have been diminished by this encounter. While this was a triumph of skill, it was also a tragedy of the human condition. So while I will acknowledge the shooter's skill, I will not celebrate the death of this unaware fighter on a distant battlefield in a land we have no business ravaging.

V/R
Evilroddy.

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War isn't supposed to be fair man. This isn't the Middle Ages, where you had knights duking it out, or the seventeenth century where people lined up in rows and blasted away at point blank range. Fairness shouldn't enter the picture.

I'm sure Allied soldiers and commanders didn't much like being ambushed either. Should we declare that all ambushes are now a bad thing then? After all, the whole point is to take the enemy unaware.

You do realize that immense numbers of ISIS fighters aren't from Syria.....right? Not to mention they are fighting both the government of Syria, the Kurds and a number of rebel groups. It's hard to argue they are "defending their country" from "invaders" when 1)they aren't Syrians and 2) their main opponents are Syrians.

Somebody who purposefully murders innocent civillians in the way that ISIS does doesn't deserve the label of "human" IMO.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Tigerace117 said:

War isn't supposed to be fair man. This isn't the Middle Ages, where you had knights duking it out, or the seventeenth century where people lined up in rows and blasted away at point blank range. Fairness shouldn't enter the picture.

I'm sure Allied soldiers and commanders didn't much like being ambushed either. Should we declare that all ambushes are now a bad thing then? After all, the whole point is to take the enemy unaware.

You do realize that immense numbers of ISIS fighters aren't from Syria.....right? Not to mention they are fighting both the government of Syria, the Kurds and a number of rebel groups. It's hard to argue they are "defending their country" from "invaders" when 1)they aren't Syrians and 2) their main opponents are Syrians.

Somebody who purposefully murders innocent civillians in the way that ISIS does doesn't deserve the label of "human" IMO.

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Tigerace117:

The sniper was shooting in Iraq and not Syria. The JTF-2 personnel are there in Iraq to train Kurds (advise and assist) and their mandate does not include direct combat except in immediate self defence. This was a promise made to the Canadian people, many of whom opposed this mission from the start. The promise has been broken again and again. The fact that JTF personnel are also fighting in Syria is even more problematic as they have no legal authorisation to do so unless one claims that the authorisation balloons off the Iraqi Kurdish mandate, but then that precludes combat except in immediate self defence.

I agree that war is not fair and that terrible things are done in the pursuit of quick victory in war. My objection is to the celebration of these terrible acts done in the name of war, which tend to lower societies' barriers to allowing wars to be fought in their name.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

Tigerace117:

The sniper was shooting in Iraq and not Syria. The JTF-2 personnel are there in Iraq to train Kurds (advise and assist) and their mandate does not include direct combat except in immediate self defence. This was a promise made to the Canadian people, many of whom opposed this mission from the start. The promise has been broken again and again. The fact that JTF personnel are also fighting in Syria is even more problematic as they have no legal authorisation to do so unless one claims that the authorisation balloons off the Iraqi Kurdish mandate, but then that precludes combat except in immediate self defence.

I agree that war is not fair and that terrible things are done in the pursuit of quick victory in war. My objection is to the celebration of these terrible acts done in the name of war, which tend to lower societies' barriers to allowing wars to be fought in their name.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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Served with a number of former members. Good Soldiers- In Iraq they would have stringent ROE to adhere to.
We have no idea who the target was, how critical he was to ISIL, and my opinion is, a good kill.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

braindrain said:

I am sure you want to believe that but that doesn't make it true.

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It's probably subjective, but FandL didn't just make that up. It's been said by others.
Whatever your take, I doubt you can deny that Canadian ground forces punch above their weight.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

Tigerace117:

The sniper was shooting in Iraq and not Syria. The JTF-2 personnel are there in Iraq to train Kurds (advise and assist) and their mandate does not include direct combat except in immediate self defence. This was a promise made to the Canadian people, many of whom opposed this mission from the start. The promise has been broken again and again. The fact that JTF personnel are also fighting in Syria is even more problematic as they have no legal authorisation to do so unless one claims that the authorisation balloons off the Iraqi Kurdish mandate, but then that precludes combat except in immediate self defence.

I agree that war is not fair and that terrible things are done in the pursuit of quick victory in war. My objection is to the celebration of these terrible acts done in the name of war, which tend to lower societies' barriers to allowing wars to be fought in their name.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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But ISIS doesn't respect borders, for both practical and ideological reasons. As they are fighting both the Iraqis and Syrians, and the Kurds in both countries......it would be a legitimate target. Preventing ISIS scouts from reporting back with important information about Iraqi Kurdish bases is an important role.

If the Canadian people oppose fighting ISIS they should inform someone in charge of that. As it is, preventing ISIS from gathering intelligence on Kurdish and Canadian dispositions saves lives.

Yes, war is hell. But congratulating a soldier on a job well done and potentially saving the lives of Canadians and Kurds alike is not a bad thing.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

Tigerace117:

The sniper was shooting in Iraq and not Syria. The JTF-2 personnel are there in Iraq to train Kurds (advise and assist) and their mandate does not include direct combat except in immediate self defence. This was a promise made to the Canadian people, many of whom opposed this mission from the start. The promise has been broken again and again. The fact that JTF personnel are also fighting in Syria is even more problematic as they have no legal authorisation to do so unless one claims that the authorisation balloons off the Iraqi Kurdish mandate, but then that precludes combat except in immediate self defence.

I agree that war is not fair and that terrible things are done in the pursuit of quick victory in war. My objection is to the celebration of these terrible acts done in the name of war, which tend to lower societies' barriers to allowing wars to be fought in their name.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Click to expand...

Canadians training Kurds have often engaged ISIS as part of their mission, but this incident involved a different mission, support of Iraqi government forces. Canadians in the area also work with Syrian forces.
The Canadian government is very secretive about these kinds of things. It's actually a little surprising this story came out. Probably someone else was going to report it, so the DND just beat them to it.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Tigerace117 said:

What else could he really do? There was nowhere to run. The sniper was hidden and out of effective range for the target to be able to return fire......people freeze up when they run out of options.

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They freeze instead of hitting the ground and then trying to get behind anything at all?

Hell the time of flight of the bullet was between seven seconds and ten seconds at that range so any movement of the target was likely to generate a miss.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

BillRM said:

They freeze instead of hitting the ground and then trying to get behind anything at all?

Hell the time of flight of the bullet was between seven seconds and ten seconds at that range so any movement of the target was likely to generate a miss.

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Do you really think a twenty something loser from Marseiles or Birmingham knows anything about combat? It's been shown time and again that when shooting starts inexperienced people have a tendency to freeze up. It's a case of "easy to declare from the safety of your couch, harder when the bullets actually start flying.

Additionally, you are acting like this guy knew there was a sniper there. The odds of that are slim to none. He probably didn't know what hit him before he died.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Tigerace117 said:

Do you really think a twenty something loser from Marseiles or Birmingham knows anything about combat? It's been shown time and again that when shooting starts inexperienced people have a tendency to freeze up. It's a case of "easy to declare from the safety of your couch, harder when the bullets actually start flying.

Additionally, you are acting like this guy knew there was a sniper there. The odds of that are slim to none. He probably didn't know what hit him before he died.

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Somehow the idea that someone can exist on a battlefield for any time at all without either getting killed or learning the ropes is questionable to say the least no matter what city they came from.

Next I never been in combat but I used to fly ultralights and parachute jump and minimum training and the classic book Stick and Rubber was more then enough to get me to do the right things when things went badly wrong in the air.

We all are after all decedents of countless generations of survivors who did not freeze.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

BillRM said:

Somehow the idea that someone can exist on a battlefield for any time at all without either getting killed or learning the ropes is questionable to say the least no matter what city they came from.

Next I never been in combat but I used to fly ultralights and parachute jump and minimum training and the classic book Stick and Rubber was more then enough to get me to do the right things when things went badly wrong in the air.

We all are after all decedents of countless generations of survivors who did not freeze.

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Arrogant amateurs specializing in butchering innocent civilians aren't exactly known for their combat instincts.

Nobody was shooting at you when you were flying around, or jumping out of a plane.

And there are countless more who did, and thus didn't make it.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Grand Mal said:

It's probably subjective, but FandL didn't just make that up. It's been said by others.
Whatever your take, I doubt you can deny that Canadian ground forces punch above their weight.

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Without a doubt Canadian troops are well trained and do their country proud. And I don't doubt others have said it. Most likely other Canadians as most people tend to think of their country being the best. In my job I have had the opportunity to work with the militaries of many different nations both in training and in combat. As far as I can tell there is no real difference between the training level of countries like the US Canada Australia Germany and the U.K. The differences come down more to particular unit more then anything else. As far as punching above their weight class I would say that title has to go to New Zealand. For such a tiny country they do have some well trained soldiers. Their SAS guys are great. Unfortunately outside of that unit they are quite limited by there lack of equipment and combat experience. Even in their SAS it is getting harder to find guys with combat experience and from what I have seen the when that happens you stop evolving and getting better.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

Braindrain and Fledermaus:

If either of you have information about the identity and character of the sniper's target and it can be legally shared here, then please by all means do tell. If not then you are just band-wagoning and declaring what you believe to be true in the absences of factual evidence. I am not blinded to the evil and wickedness of ISIL but nor do I blindly endorse everything done in the name of fighting it, or terrorism more broadly, by the Coalition. ISIL has killed tens of thousands in its pursuit of their grand caliphate but the Coalition has killed hundreds of thousands directly and many more indirectly through its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and its illegal operations in Syria.

There was a time not so long ago when our people looked at military personnel and held them up as heroes and role models for risking all and confronting evil head on in open battle during declared wars. Now the best soldiers, sailors and airmen are deployed in special operations teams and are ordered to skulk in the shadows, on the edges of legality, by covert means and without the knowledge and oversight of the people or their elected representatives whose names they fight in.

This type of military action has isolated the military from its own fellow citizens and has resulted in the growth of a insulated military culture which is more and more disconnected from the values of the general population and more beholden and subservient to the interests of cynical and wicked power elites whose interests are not aligned with the general population. It's gotten to the point where wearing a military uniform openly in Canada has invited attack and our military has cautioned serving members to avoid wearing uniforms openly and publicly in Canada during times of high stress, unless absolutely necessary. That kind of polarisation and social distance may be necessary in a state which seeks to dominate others and impose a world order for the benefit of its own and foreign allied elites. Canada is however not such a country and refused to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But somehow, by back-room deals and sub rosa channels, which our electorate vigorously opposed at every stage, we find our soldiers of JTF-2 nominally training Kurds but actually acting in kinetic SF operations and directly killing Iraqis.

So I don't blindly accept the disinformation, the spin and the overt propaganda which seeks to disable peoples' morality and willingness to question the actions of their military and political leadership in order to induce compliance by doing an end-run around the people. This is done by waging covert and in Syria illegal war against the expressed will of the people and hiding the grisly consequences from our eyes. If you don't see it that way then fine, that's your prerogative in a free society. But in a free society others have the right to challenge what you believe to be true publicly and to question why we are doing what we're doing. I will not be a meek and grovelling peasant who capitalises the nouns soldier, sailor or airmen and kowtows to militarism by thanking any and all in uniform for their service in pseudo-wars which the electorate expressly forbade but happened anyway.

Thus fledermaus I will not use the door you so generously pointed me to but will instead stay right where I am and debate on Debate Politics Forum.

V/R
Evilroddy.

Click to expand...

more useless garbage.

I know the training level level and professionalism of the soldiers that make up JTF2. If they ID this price of garbage as an acceptable target then that is good enough to me.

SOF soldiers do not operate on the edge of legality and we very much do operate with the knowledge and oversight of our elected officials. I have been a member of the SOF community for over a decade know and can tell you with complete certainty that you are 100% full of crap. You know not of what you are talking about. As to keeping things hidden from the public eye. That is the way things have always been and it is needed to keep people alive and succeed in the mission. Do you think all of America knew of the invasion of Normandy before hand.

The bolded paragraph is little more then CT BS and needs to be kept in the sectioned designed for the garbage it is. And if Canadian citizens are attacking their service members that says a whole lot more about those citizens then it does the military.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Tigerace117 said:

Arrogant amateurs specializing in butchering innocent civilians aren't exactly known for their combat instincts.

Nobody was shooting at you when you were flying around, or jumping out of a plane.

And there are countless more who did, and thus didn't make it.

Click to expand...

So when the right wing spoiler engage and would not unengaged when you are headed in the direction of some tall trees at the end of the runway you life is less at risk then if someone is shooting at you?

Or the mechanic without you knowing it change the CG of the plane so on take off even with the stick all the way forward and even with the power down the nose keep climbing toward a stall condition is that less dangerous then someone shooting at you?

Of the small ultralight club I was a member of five members die in flying mishaps of one kind or another over a few years.

Now let look at the sky diving club I was a member of who loss four jumpers and a pilot with only one woman jumper getting out of the jump plane before it crash.

This was the result of a young pilot flying the jump plane without it flaps in working order and as he slow the plane without the flaps to let the first jumper out he stalled the damn plane.

The jumpers was not belted in and as a result all four came forward hitting the pilot so he could not regain control of the plane before it hit the ground.

I can still remember watching the plane go down that Saturday and waiting for the pilot to regain control of the plane that never happen.

Not having someone shooting at you is not the only way your life can be place at risk.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

BillRM said:

So when the right wing spoiler engage and would not unengaged when you are headed in the direction of some tall trees at the end of the runway you life is less at risk then if someone is shooting at you?

Or the mechanic without you knowing it change the CG of the plane so on take off even with the stick all the way forward and even with the power down the nose keep climbing toward a stall condition is that less dangerous then someone shooting at you?

Of the small ultralight club I was a member of five members die in flying mishaps of one kind or another over a few years.

Now let look at the sky diving club I was a member of who loss four jumpers and a pilot with only one woman jumper getting out of the jump plane before it crash.

This was the result of a young pilot flying the jump plane without it flaps in working order and as he slow the plane without the flaps to let the first jumper out he stalled the damn plane.

The jumpers was not belted in and as a result all four came forward hitting the pilot so he could not regain control of the plane before it hit the ground.

I can still remember watching the plane go down that Saturday and waiting for the pilot to regain control of the plane that never happen.

Not having someone shooting at you is not the only way your life can be place at risk.

Click to expand...

There aren't any rocket propelled grenades heading to blow off that right wing. Nor do you have to perform with a bullet in you.

Mishaps are one thing. If the casualty rate is that high in civvie circumstances, imagine what it would be like under conditions where if you aren't careful you'll end up blown out of the sky.

And yet, once again, that pilot messed up without actual shooting, imagine how easily it would be to do so in combat.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Tigerace117 said:

There aren't any rocket propelled grenades heading to blow off that right wing. Nor do you have to perform with a bullet in you.

Mishaps are one thing. If the casualty rate is that high in civvie circumstances, imagine what it would be like under conditions where if you aren't careful you'll end up blown out of the sky.

And yet, once again, that pilot messed up without actual shooting, imagine how easily it would be to do so in combat.

Click to expand...

LOL there is nothing special about military weapons as dying in a plane hitting the ground nose first as a hundred mile an hours due to a young pilot error is no less dead then if the wings had been blown off due to a hit by a sam.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

braindrain said:

more useless garbage.

I know the training level level and professionalism of the soldiers that make up JTF2. If they ID this price of garbage as an acceptable target then that is good enough to me.

SOF soldiers do not operate on the edge of legality and we very much do operate with the knowledge and oversight of our elected officials. I have been a member of the SOF community for over a decade know and can tell you with complete certainty that you are 100% full of crap. You know not of what you are talking about. As to keeping things hidden from the public eye. That is the way things have always been and it is needed to keep people alive and succeed in the mission. Do you think all of America knew of the invasion of Normandy before hand.

The bolded paragraph is little more then CT BS and needs to be kept in the sectioned designed for the garbage it is. And if Canadian citizens are attacking their service members that says a whole lot more about those citizens then it does the military.

Click to expand...

Braindrain:

The Miltary Civilian divide is not a CT. it is a real phenomenon. Since the adoption of the all volunteer and professional armed forces that gap has widened and is a cause of considerable concern to both civilians and military personnel in both Canada and the USA. Your own Secretary of Defence, Ret. Gen. James Mattis co-wrote a book on this gap and the growing isolation of the military from civil society. In the book, "Warriors and Citizens", he concluded that this gap is real and if the gap continues to grow then the results for both the military and the United States could be very bad.

On the question of legality there are many things which special forces do which are illegal. They illegally infiltrate into countries even when their parent state is not at war with the country they have infiltrated. They sometimes wear indigenous clothing rather than military uniforms which is also illegal. They collect intelligence covertly while infiltrated into foreign countries which is espionage and thus illegal. They train insurgents to better fight the insurgents' own recognised governments which is illegal. They kill and kidnap persons in countries they are not at war with which is illegal. I could go on but I think this is ample examples of how covert special forces operations are crossing the line into criminal behaviour.

As to the question of oversight, there is not enough in the US (which is limited to House and Senate leadership and some members of select committees). Here in Canada there is virtually none outside of select ministers and deputy ministers of the Cabinet of the Majority party. No one expects real time oversight of special forces operations so your Normandy canard is a spurious example but robust after the fact military, political and judicial review is absolutely necessary in both countries to avoid abuses and ensure best practices.

The fact that you claim to be a member of the SF community does not impress me. If you are indeed part of that community then one would expect you to deny illegality in the course of your operations. Or you could be telling the truth but based on incomplete and compartmentalised knowledge. If you are not what you say you are then you may have other motives for saying what you say. I don't know you, so I cannot judge the veracity of your statements. But I do know people who have served in the Canadian military who I do know and trust and they admit to deep concerns about the direction that SF warfare is going, how it crosses legal lines and how it is proliferating at a ballooning rate over the last quarter century. One need only look at the mushrooming of SF operations in Africa under AFRICOM which, according to Gen, Bolduc (?), has grown from about 1% of SF OP's to about 19% of SF OP's in just sixteen years. They have gone from just two bases in Djibouti to between 70 and 85 permanent and temporary bases in over 35 African countries.

So I don't think my analysis is CT clap-trap but rather a fair expression of concern about the role, the goals and the methods of modern special operations warfare in the contemporary world. You may disagree and argue with it but your calls to have it shunted off to the CT board is a transparent tactic to not have to deal with the hard questions being asked about covert SF operations done in the citizens' names.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

Evilroddy said:

Braindrain:

The Miltary Civilian divide is not a CT. it is a real phenomenon. Since the adoption of the all volunteer and professional armed forces that gap has widened and is a cause of considerable concern to both civilians and military personnel in both Canada and the USA. Your own Secretary of Defence, Ret. Gen. James Mattis co-wrote a book on this gap and the growing isolation of the military from civil society. In the book, "Warriors and Citizens", he concluded that this gap is real and if the gap continues to grow then the results for both the military and the United States could be very bad.

On the question of legality there are many things which special forces do which are illegal. They illegally infiltrate into countries even when their parent state is not at war with the country they have infiltrated. They sometimes wear indigenous clothing rather than military uniforms which is also illegal. They collect intelligence covertly while infiltrated into foreign countries which is espionage and thus illegal. They train insurgents to better fight the insurgents' own recognised governments which is illegal. They kill and kidnap persons in countries they are not at war with which is illegal. I could go on but I think this is ample examples of how covert special forces operations are crossing the line into criminal behaviour.

As to the question of oversight, there is not enough in the US (which is limited to House and Senate leadership and some members of select committees). Here in Canada there is virtually none outside of select ministers and deputy ministers of the Cabinet of the Majority party. No one expects real time oversight of special forces operations so your Normandy canard is a spurious example but robust after the fact military, political and judicial review is absolutely necessary in both countries to avoid abuses and ensure best practices.



Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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Note I had to remove your last two paragraph to get under the 5000 limit.
No there is virtually nothing that US SOF do that is illegal by US law. And if there is anything that is done illegally those people are punished and removed from SOF. And US law is the only law that matters when it comes to what SOF personal are doing. The more you talk though the more obvious it is that your understanding of this is based more from CT sites then reality. You simply claiming something is illegal does not make it so. Most of your examples show you don't really understand the different authorities that SOF can operate under. Sometime look up the difference between title 10 and title 50.

You claiming there is not enough oversite in the US is nothing more then your opinion and frankly I doubt to many people care about the opinion of a CTer. And just because people have served in the military does not mean they have any clue as to what is going on within SOF in fact the vast majority of people in the military don't. But yes I have met a few CT loons in the military so the fact that you ran across a few doesn't surprise me. And every combat operation is reviewed in detail by the military. Every military command has a JAG team do make sure everything that is approved is both legal and falls under the approved ROE and the higher commanders intent. And all the politicians involved in the descion making process can review it any time they like. I am sorry you feel this is not enough but once again that is nothing more then your opinion.

I could not care less if you are impressed or not as that was not my intent and more importantly I don't really care about the opinion of CTers. As to the increase in the use of SOF that has more to do with the type of war we are currently in then anything else. Large conventional forces have proven over and over again to be less then successful at dealing with these types of threats so why exactly would you not think the expanded use of a force that is more capable of dealing with that threat wouldn't make sense. It has nothing to do with illegal actions or anything else you dream up in your CT fairytale land.

Re: Canadian sniper makes history by killing ISIL insurgent from more than 3.5 kilome

braindrain said:

Note I had to remove your last two paragraph to get under the 5000 limit.
No there is virtually nothing that US SOF do that is illegal by US law. And if there is anything that is done illegally those people are punished and removed from SOF. And US law is the only law that matters when it comes to what SOF personal are doing. The more you talk though the more obvious it is that your understanding of this is based more from CT sites then reality. You simply claiming something is illegal does not make it so. Most of your examples show you don't really understand the different authorities that SOF can operate under. Sometime look up the difference between title 10 and title 50. ...

Click to expand...

Braindrain:

There has been an escalating conflation or blurring of the military Title 10 Authorization and the Intelligence Title 50 Authorization since 2001. Not even your own government and JAGs have been able to keep the two prongs of covert action from crossing over.

You may find this article helpful in this debate:

https://fas.org/man/eprint/gross.pdf

Your invocation of US "exceptionalism" and your assertion that US covert special operations conform to US law does not address the whole story here. This thread is about a JTF-2 Sniper making a world record shot but I contend he was doing it while allegedly operating beyond the legal mandate given by the Canadian Government to the Canadian people when the operation (Impact) was last extended on March 31, 2017. So in this case US law does not apply. And since the Canadian and US militaries are cooperating more and more under an integrated command structure that puts Canadians who cannot claim US exceptionalism in legal jeopardy even if they operate within US law because they are subject to Canadian law.

The implied claim that the US can ignore international law and conventions with respect to war and other military operations is a political assertion and not a point of law. The US is bound by treaties and conventions which it has signed and which its senate has ratified and thus it must refrain from certain actions while conducting military operations. Transferring soldiers from military to intelligence authority makes those operations no less legal or illegal. It simply makes them more easily deniable. So playing a legal shell game with authorities might have worked prior to 9/11, 2001 when these operations were fewer in number but since then the acceleration of use and the blurring between Title 10 and Title 50 Authorities has gone too far to systematically distinguish between the two in quite a few operations (and those are only the ones we know about). The fact that the US is conducting military operations against sovereign nations which it is not at war with is a war crime, pure and simple. These special forces are no OSS operatives dropped behind enemy lines to fight a declared war or to help partisans fight an occupying power with which you are at war. The SFO teams which are infiltrating into foreign state not at war with the US are conducting strategic reconnaissance, espionage (despite being soldiers and not spies), shaping the battlefield operations, insurgent training missions to destabilise legally recognized governments, killing people and kidnapping people on foreign soil while not at war and conducting sabotage and other mischief. That is not cool.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.