D'Torchia,Ahhhhh, really? So you can pull another F-Sharp move? This "pretender" gave your buddy F-Sharp below every opportunity to do just that. I wasted one of my Thursday nights waiting at a bar to see if he would show up after all the s*ht talking he did. Surprise, surprise when the rubber had to meet the road he was nowhere to be found. No, he's much better at hiding behind skirts like yours.
I think the debate was on the reasons why France and England declared war on Germany.
I've stated that when I was in graduate school I and everyone else was taught that the German invasion of Poland was a pretext, and that the reasons were different from that given to the public.
I've already spent way to much time pointing out some of your ridiculous assertions. Including the one above. As if NO historian other than YOURS is capable of figuring out the reason that led to the outbreak of WWII. As if no one in the 60 years since has been able to differentiate between what was told to the public and what actually took place. You know things like, declassified material, transcripts of meetings. The "public" has gotten insights into some of the most secretive meetings that took place during WWII through the release of some of this material, such as what took place inside the Wannsee Conference in regards to implementing the "Final Solution", but only you and your fellow grad students are the ones privy to that sort of info. Well, and Stephen Ambrose.
I've asked you why England and France didn't also declare war on the USSR as well...you have no answer.
When I point out that Keegan and Ambrose have written what the services learned about morale problems during the war you merely dismiss them with ridicule but have no rebuttal to the facts.
Come on man, on one had you want to claim some "inside knowledge" that ONLY a grad student could attain and then you throw out an author like Ambrose to make your case? Is Ambrose required reading in Grad school now? I happen to like his books a lot for entertainment and general info but I certainly wouldn't base any serious research on his books. In fact, let's just get to the AMBROSE situation and why I don't consider him a serious source of detailed WWII history. If my opinion isn't enough for you TAE, maybe you'll accept HIS OWN WORDS below. I took the liberty of highlighting them for you and F-Sharp.
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book, The Wild Blue, by Sally Richardson and others.[22][23] Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania.[24] Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks, numerous passages from Childers' book.[23][25] Ambrose and his publisher, Simon and Schuster, released an apology as a result.[citation needed]
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:I tell stories. I don't discuss my documents. I discuss the story. It almost gets to the point where, how much is the reader going to take? I am not writing a Ph.D. dissertation. I wish I had put the quotation marks in, but I didn't. I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I went to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote. I just want to know where the hell it came from.[23]A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral thesis.[26] The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's works--The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer--that copied twelve authors.[25]
But WAIT TAE, it gets BETTER, trust me!
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
[edit] WWII
In the 1973 ITV television series, The World at War, episode 35, From War to Peace, Ambrose made basic factual errors. He said:"Manpower losses were almost insignificant; compared to the other combatants, insignificant. Only slightly more than a quarter of a million Americans died during the war. America was the least mobilized of all the nations, of all the major combatants in World War II. Altogether, we had an army and navy and air force of 12 million men out of a total population of 170 million. And of that 12 million, probably less than six million ever got overseas."[27]The population of the United States during the war was 131 million, of which nearly 16.6 million served in the armed forces during World War II, including 241,093 in the Coast Guard, and 243,000 in the Merchant Marine. Military deaths were 416,800, the most of any Allied country except the Soviet Union.[28] According to U.S. census data, 73 percent of military personnel served abroad during World War II.[29] The United States did not create the United States Air Force as a separate branch until passage of the National Security Act of 1947 (Pub. L. No. 235, 80 Cong., 61 Stat. 496, 50 U.S.C. ch.15), two years after the end of World War II.
Veterans of troop carrier units, who transported paratroopers in the American airborne landings in Normandy, have severely criticized Ambrose for portraying them as unqualified and cowardly in several of his works, including Band of Brothers and D-Day.[citation needed] Among the numerous errors he asserts in an open letter posted on the War Chronicle website, Randy Hils notes that Ambrose did not interview a single troop carrier pilot. This becomes highly relevant in light of Ambrose's assertion that the pilots sped up while the paratroopers were trying to jump. Hils hypothesizes that if Ambrose's only sources were inexpert witnesses whose only indication of airspeed were the sound of the engines, the maneuver of using the propellers as an airbrake would have sounded like power being applied.[30]
In the HBO series, Band of Brothers, as well as Ambrose's book, a certain Private Albert Blithe is said to have been shot in the neck while scouting a farmhouse. Ambrose states that Blithe never recovered from his wound and died in 1948, when in actuality, Blithe recovered from a wound to his right shoulder and rejoined Easy Company for Operation Market Garden. Blithe appears to have left Europe shortly after that due to his wound but later continued a career in the Army until his death in 1967.[31]
Two Ambrose accounts in D-Day, of alleged cowardice by British coxswains, have also been challenged as inaccurate. One, in which Sgt. Willard Northfleet is portrayed as drawing his gun on a coxswain when he tried to offload the men 400 yards from shore,[32] is corroborated by Sgt. John Slaughter (who was on the boat) in a C-SPAN video recording veterans' D-Day experiences.[33] It was disputed by Kevan Elsby, however,[34] on the basis of a contemporary debriefing which stated: "Four hundred yards from shore the British coxswain insisted that he could take the craft no farther so the men must swim for it. He started to lower the ramp but Platoon Sgt. Willard R. Norfleet blocked the mechanism and insisted that the boat was going farther."[35] The other, in which Capt. Ettore Zappacosta was portrayed as drawing his gun on a coxswain to make him go in when he protested he could not see the landmarks, was challenged by Pvt. Bob Sales as untrue.[36] Both Ambrose and Sales assert that Sales was the only survivor from that landing craft.[37]
Ambrose asserts, in several works, that the German Panther tank used an 88mm gun. It did not. It used a 75mm gun. The German Tiger I and King Tiger tanks used the 88mm gun as did the Jagdpanther ("Hunting Panther"), a turretless tank destroyer version of the Panther.
Of course now it makes PERFECT sense where you got your info on the cowardice of troops at Normandy and their huge "morale problems". It wasn't "grad school" it was a popular book you read by Stephen Ambrose, many facts of which have been proven to be false and much of his "research" shown to be filled with inaccuracies.
So I'm very sorry that I offended you TAE by not accepting Ambrose as a serious source or your buddy Keegan for that matter whom I've already pointed out is a laughing stock among serious scholars for his treatment and dismissal of Clausewitz in his book.
So if these two are your GRAD SCHOOL sources that you base your WWII history on, then I respectfully have to call BS!
When I point to a scholar like Trita Parsi and his work on Israeli-Iranian relations you ridicule him because his book was published by Yale University....and you've never been to a University.
Some more brilliant clairvoyance on your part? Funny, to this day I'm still in touch with some of my professors. Unlike you, I simply don't have the need to scream...."I went to the University, I went to M.I.T." every time facts fail me in a debate. Second, I'm not sure WHAT Walter Mitty type career you DID have but obviously it couldn't have been much if you go around telling any and everyone who will listen what a "burned-out old intelligence hand" you are. That with all of 4 years of government service IF that.
You imply that because you've been to Iraq recently that you are more qualified than I am to speak on issues of why the Bush administration made the decison to attack Iraq, and lied about the reasons for it.
When you can't support your arguments with facts you imply without any knowledge that I'm not who I say I am, and otherwise resort to your childish gigling, laughing, and pathetic attempts at ridicule.
I try to maintain a sense of humor when dealing with YOU and F-Sharp (though I still suspect you may be the same) because sometimes laughing is the only thing you can do. The alternative would be to take you seriously....you know....when you say things like.....the Holocaust wasn't that big of an event. Yeah, you're right, I will continue to laugh at statements like that.
You've never been to University, have contempt for intellectuals, and are unable to support any of your warlike views with argument or evidence
More clairvoyance. Funny, just like you though, I have my college transcripts. Mine may not state "M.I.T." but if MIT is what got you
your views on the Holocaust and some of the other warped stuff you've thrown around on these boards, I'll stick with my University.
As for evidence, every single source I've ever listed you mock as being "popular" opinion even when it comes from historians with a few more credentials than Ambrose (and less accusations of plagiarism I might add). When facts fail you that's when you resort to "only in grad school would you learn"........Come on! LIST your grad school sources. You paid good money to attend that fine institute of high learning, the least you can do is put it to use by sharing just what author you're quoting in all your WWII assertions. Surely with the thousands upon thousands of dollars you or someone else spent on Grad school you can come up with a better source than Ambrose , whom by the way does NOT mention in his books how it was France and England that forced Germany into the War. So you're gonna have to do better than that. All the anger in the world doesn't make up for some plain, solid facts and sources to accompany those facts. Please share.
I would have to repeat what I've stated before....
You are not a professional soldier. I've worked with SAS, Delta operators, Legionaires and others who are real professionals...WAIT!! I missed that the first time. Did you say Legionnaires (at least get the spelling right) and then talk about being 'real professionals'? Oh yes, you and I definitely need to get together. How much time exactly did you spend with these Legionnaires? I'm VERY curious. Tell us what's located in Les Rousses, (French Foreign Legion related) France and tell me if you've ever been there. Please! You are talking about the organization that prides itself not on how many victories they've obtained but on how many 'last stands to the last man' they've made in the course of their history? You ARE talking about an organization where I witnessed first hand a young Brit who was wanted for robbery and aggravated assault in England sweat out his enlistment interview, only to be granted not only enlistment, but a new french name to go with it. Where I witnessed first hand the dregs of Eastern Europe, many fresh out of prison after being released as "political prisoners" (most of them were actually in for rape, theft, robbery etc but had all claimed "political persecution" when given the opportunity after the collapse of the Soviet East Bloc countries) coming to the Legion in 1990 and turning BACK the professionalism that the LEGION had TRIED to build throughout the 1980's prior to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yes PLEASE enlighten me with your detailed knowledge of the French Foreign Legion, I'm excited to hear about it.
While there are certainly SOME professional NCO's and Legionnaires in the Foreign Legion, their desertion rate is fairly high compared to modern armies, alcoholism is rampant, and if you EVER, and I mean EVER had spent any time around them you would know just how "professional" they can be when a member from another branch of the French military enters a bar they're in. But I digress. Let me sit and wait to hear about your detailed knowledge of not only the SAS but now the Foreign Legion as well.
Now let's do the math. You yourself claimed you were a "low level intelligence hand that never contributed much of value to anything you participated in". You further claimed this was during the "early 80's". That would mean that all of these "DELTA and SAS OPERATORS" that you claimed to have "worked with" are now retired. It would also mean that the time has long passed for you to be bound by any security clearance. So, tell you what. Give me the name of just ONE, just ONE Delta or SAS operator that you worked with in the early 80's. Ok, tell you what. I know you'll come up with some "secret squirrel" reason why you won't do so on the board. Just commit ONE name of any DELTA or SAS operator to your memory, in what context you met him and you can tell me in person when we meet. To this day USSOCOM is a small community so your claims won't be that hard to verify.
and you are not like they are. You certainly have none of the intellect, maturity or conviction of the West Point grads I went to school with for that matter.
Of course I don't have the maturity, intellect and conviction when I commit the faux pas of pointing out that someone in your current line of work probably isn't the best judge to determine whether or not someone meet's the criteria of being a "professional" in my line of work. I know you're angered by the fact that based on the things I've learned about you, your Walter Mitty fantasies of being some type of dark, troubled former intelligence agent simply don't add up.
You are little more than a low-level self-appointed hero who travels the world looking for someone to shoot at because you think it's fun, and you convince yourself in your own mind that virtue and honor is on your side when it's clearly not. That's why I've said someone with your beliefs would have been typical of the German police, soldiers and others who perpetrated the holocaust, which you consider was something committed by people morally inferior to yourself.
Again says the owner of The Austin Escort Agency........Yes I know in your mind you were some kind of "burned-out old intelligence hand".
Didn't you brag on this board how you were written about in GQ? As I recall though it wasn't quite in the way you spoke of.
I suggest you pause, take a deep breath and then take a good, looooooong look in the mirror before you decide if you really want to go down this road with me.
By the time I'm done with you, there won't be ANY DOUBT in anyone's mind on who the true "POSER" is on this board.
As I've stated, my work and my career stand at face value. No glorified Pimp can ever change that.
As I've commended you to do before, next time you're in Iraq continue looking for those WMDs you believed so strongly were always there.
A fitting end to your usual posts. When you have no facts to back up your allegations you run around screaming "WMD's", "WMD"s much like your cowardly friend below. Then you want to talk about someone being childish?
Make sure to point to the link too where I stated I went to Iraq because I was looking for WMD's. Guess I went to Afghanistan looking for WMD's too? Oh wait, no....I went because I was "looking for someone to shoot at because you think it's fun". Ahmm yeah! I think that statement pretty much stands on it's own for the level of ignorance it shows on your part.
Your beliefs about those have as much merit as your other opinions.
ps....
Anytime you would like I will meet with you so you can see what the truth really is. We can start by going directly to the UT registrar where my entire record from MIT is found, and then proceed from there. If you're not prepared to do that please refrain from any more insinuations over the internet regarding my career. I'm sure however you would never meet with someone like myself, a real person as opposed to an internet phoney/pretender as you are. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
Look TAE, when I'm Texas, I'm not a hard man to find. I've attended a SC social, I've met with posters on here to have some drinks. Usually all it takes is a simple PM to my mail box here stating the time and place and I'm there. I have people here that can vouch for that. So ANY time you want to talk to me face to face, I will be there. Trust me when I say that I'll make sure you're the first to know when I arrive back in the United States a few months from now.
Originally Posted by F-Sharp
China could not be allowed to control that much oil. 
