Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (24476)	10/23/2002 4:19:49 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Snowshoe, that was very good spotting to confirm all 3000 were Taliban through a pair of binoculars. I recall vast body counts of Viet Cong once upon a time. They totalled more than the population of South East Asia. Well, I can exaggerate too you know! Keep in mind that the spotter was just the eyes. There were a LOT of people upstream to produce the air strikes. Assuming 3000 of the 'Taliban' were actually soldiers, their pay rate was probably less than the cost of the incoming missiles, let alone the whole armada behind that. Today, 3 Kiwi SAS soldiers hit a mine with their vehicle. One of them had to have the remnants of a foot removed. One mine cost not much [maybe donated by the USA or USSR] but scored some high value people. So that was good bang for their buck. One day earlier this year, a helicopter from the USA got in trouble in Afghanistan and quite a few USA soldiers were killed by some opposition firing on the rescuers. I suspect that made up for the 3000 in the single day. As with most things, I suspect the technological leverage means the USA does in fact get more bang for their buck, despite high pay rates. It's better to pay one ace a fortune than 1000 monkeys some peanuts. No matter how many peanuts you give me, I couldn't invent CDMA for example. My point was that a simple bean count isn't a very good guide to military outcomes. Military success is a notoriously complex business with money not necessarily the determining factor. Mqurice