BabaYaga

Why would they? All the international pressure and condemnation is on Israel. Each side is fucking the civilians. They have no representation in the region. Hamas uses them as human shields, and Israel doesn't fucking care. Those that can/did evacuate, again - to where? A camp? You return to a house of rubble and no hope? If there is a ceasefire - then what? Back to BAU. The whole thing is untenable and we all know it. People talk about "privilege's" - it's not being fucking born in Gaza. Or maybe a Cobalt mine in Africa.

Yeah, that's the rub. According to Israel, which take that for what it's worth, 85% of the people were "shifted" away from the areas of attack. Even if accurate, still leaves a ton of people on the X. All true. I read something like 25K civilian casualties in Baghdad? Less, but not great Bob. I'd compare Fallujah to Gaza, not Baghdad

Baghdad offensive capabilities & infrastructure were targeted - electricity, sanitation, water, communications, etc. in additional to military and dual-use sites. As for evacuations, I read that 85% of civilians were evacuated in Gaza

Yeah, I'd heard it was close to a million. Afghanistan had/has little infrastructure to destroy, but we did destroy hundreds of poppy fields, but in Iraq we leveled close to 60% of all the buildings in Fallujah and just fucking wrecked Baghdad (including the use of cluster bombs - hardly precise) As for Israel, I'd be curious (which we'll never know) what their intel reports were? Were there JTACs on the ground? Was Hamas embedded in those areas? Apparently that happened all the time in Iraq (according to us anyway). I tend to think Hamas is using their tried/true tactics of embedding.....but we all know this. The IDF got pulled into a fight they can't win without turning the entire city to rubble and now they are stuck. They fucked around and let this come to a boil, and now they are fighting a war they can't win - just like we were in the ME.

No, I get it - there is little attention given to minimizing civilian casualties in urban combat. Hamas and the IDF know this. If Cartels invaded from Tijuana into SD and did what Hamas did, we'd nuke TJ from fucking orbit. There's no moral high ground here. There are no "proportional" response arguments that were entertained. Hamas knew the IDF would lose their shit. Just like OBL knew the US would lose their shit. Israel also knew that if they keep shitting on the Gaza strip this shit is very much a probable outcome. Israel isn't the good guy here, but they are allowing themselves to get pulled offsides and embroiled in the exact fight Hamas wants. Israel has the tier 1 & 2 assets and decades with of urban fighting experience to do this in a more surgical way, they didn't fucking want to....and now it's too late. History has too many examples illustrating that once you level a city, the advantage shifts to the defenders. As for OBL. They wanted a scalp and got it. You could argue they needed DNA confirmation, they also probably wanted the site intact. They left with a shit ton of hard drives, cell phones, written material, etc.

IDF has stated around 13K Hamas fighters killed. Hamas says 32K civilians killed. Both are probably inflated. As for an airstrike vs a raid - OBL was in a compound and never left. It was a static target. They didn't drop a JDAM on it because it was in Pakistan. We were not supposed to be in there or cross the border. That's how he escaped the first time at the battle of Tora Bora. If you watch the movie or read the book, that was the reason for the modified, stealth helicopters. The other big reason was DNA confirmation was needed. This is more akin to the Battle of Fallujah (1 & 2) where the US basically leveled the entire city and inflicted tens of thousands of civilian casualties. Neither the US or Israel did/is doing even a halfway decent job of distinguishing friend from foe and in both cases soldiers embed themselves extremely well in populated areas. It's clumsy and crude and if you go house by house, can take months if not years to clear a city. I think it was Chris Kyle talking about how the Marines used tanks at point blank range on buildings. If they were getting shot at, regardless of who was in there, that building was gone. Every urban battle turns the city into rubble and grinds the civilians into dust. Look at what's happening in Ukraine now, Russia can't ferret them out, so they just fuck it and level everything. The Balkans, Hue, Stalingrad. More recently Mosul. Historically the ratio of civilian casualties to soldiers is 9:1. That's not a justification, just that urban conflict when a portion of the population won't evacuate is a no-win situation for everyone. With all the tunnels, drones won't really work.

There it is.

Take a check.....;)

So like, canned Raviolis?

It wasn't the Austin protest that is the basis of this thread

I'm not far off. Hundreds of rounds in various calibers, but outside of .22lr, not "thousands" as I'd like. I can say, for the average shooter there isn't much better than a PCC (besides a slick-ass lever action)

If we're just talking about the Texas protest, 100%. But you reference anti-Semitism going back to 2016, Now we're talking across the country, and it very much is being weaponized across campuses besides Texas. You're talking about Nazi rallies. That wasn't Austin. And no, it's not "helpful" - it's talking about wiping an entire race of people off the face of the map. This is about what happened in Austin, and they did nothing wrong, but against a backdrop of other campuses, what they are shouting seems problematic. This isn't death to "America", this is targeted on a very specific ethnic and religious group.

'From the river to the sea' is a protest against the Israeli government?

I will say from a lifetime of exposure to many, many breeds - there are some really good ones. Generally, the larger the horse, as bred for labor and the accompanying personality needed, the more tractable they are. I've been around Clydesdales, Belgian "blues", even a Percheron once. Draught horses are pretty chill - as they need to be, either for the extreme weight of a mounted soldier or toiling away all day pulling heavy shit. Gentle giants. Being in Texas, we exclusively raised quarterhorses. Can't enough good things about them, but there are lemons on every lot. Generally it's about the amount of time you spend with them. They are also all prey animals and still spook easily. Thoroughbreds are nuts. The Weimaraner's of the horse world. Big and beautiful, but high-strung and can be a giant PITA. Lived in KY for a few years and spent a decent amount of time around them. Arabians are scary smart. Bred for endurance. The oldest pure bred line. Showed them as a kid at a place off Slaughter in Austin for 8 years. Appaloosas are my favorite. Large, but not a draught line, but with their temperament. Won't find a more beautiful breed. If you want a recreational, functional rider for trips, hunting, etc. Get a mule. I think they can legit read your mind. The whole "stubborn" moniker they have is BS. They are smart, but also have a "feel" for their surroundings, esp danger. In the mountains, snake on the path. Horse might throw you off. A mule will read the room, snake in front, cliff on one side, sheer wall on the other....ergo, fuck that snake and they'll kill it. They get that from the Donkey side of the house - which many know, if you run smaller livestock like sheep/goats, there's usually a donkey out there for predator deterrence.

Shetlands aren't horses. They're little fuck-waffle, devils with a temperament of a Canadian Goose and Chihuahua cross, but with an express intent to cause you bodily harm. See my post above about the one we had. Little shit tried to murder me on the regular.

Kewl. I showed Arabians from when I was 8-16yrs old. They're not the largest breed, and I got too tall to keep competing and I was much better at baseball/basketball. SMART animals. The oldest breed of horse

Swedish econ prof I had back in the day used to talk about growing up eating horse sammiches. Nope....

Let's leave the Charlie Strong of TX football out of this for now

New uername?

Shetlands are THE biggest assholes on planet earth. They are mean little fucks. Welsh ponies, fine. They are nice and need to be emancipated from pulling that stupid Sooner Schooner. So we grew up raising horses and my uncle had this mean and fuck Shetland that would kick and bite and basically try to murder you. He'd do the same with the larger quarter horses. He was a stallion so he had ONE job. We'd put him in stalls around brood mares and he'd tell us when they were in heat. Even that got to be too much as cleaning his pen or stall was like going into the lion cage. Finally sold him at auction. Few months back he's back? Uncle asks the guy what he's doing. Said he was so mean he gelded him, thinking it would calm him down. Now the ONE job this little shit had was over. Nobody would buy him and he had to turn around, load him up, and who knows what happened to him. I remember I tried to ride this little monster and teach it to neck reign. He's reach around and continually try to bite my legs, spin in circles, and try and drive my knees into the sides of the arena. Good news is my feet almost touched the ground riding him so I could plant a leg, and hop off easily and not get too hurt. The ones you see at petting zoos are usually so damn old and have the life beat out of them so kids can ride them and not die....

Mules > Horses Fight me....

Sucks. I get it. Hopefully that white horse is ok. They can fix most anything on a horse short of injured legs or stomach crap (colic) if not caught in time.

I've seen far too many horses put down due to being startled and inuring themselves, usually by getting torn up in barded-wire fencing. They're "prey" animals and act accordingly. I still get chocked up on wounded horse movies, especially war movies.

Sorry for partying....

That's horse blood. You can see briefly where it's most wet and appears to be flowing out. Horses almost never trample people if there is enough space to avoid it. They have fragile legs and enough self-preservation instinct to steer clear of people in their way, especially ceremonial horses. Used to work with a horse trainer that did a lot of work with the mounted officers in Austin. Now THOSE, are some damn well trained horses/riders. In the event of a riot, they can stand nose to tail and form a wall and sidestep and entire crowd off the street if they have to. That's a sad video of a couple of scared, wounded animals.