Cool, Keith. You're right about a lot of that, and you may have even shown how I inadvertently colored the question. I titled the thread "Southbound Out of "... and you are entirely correct in pointing out that, at the time I wrote that thread title, I was confused, or uninformed, as to the absolutely precise details of that reported train direction.
But that may obscure the question. My built-in inherent assumption (on a wholly unofficial sense of the thing) is that
the rail switching/network is, to a great extent, invisible to us. I did spend a wee bit of time with the closely-related hobbies/pastimes, which surely has colored my biases; they included tabletop railroad model rail-roading ( I didn't get much further than dreaming of a layout and detailing a few boxcars) and tabletop railroad simulation management. Just today, I sent my three-year-old grandkid home with a request to ask permission of his dad for me for me to install a railroad management computer game on my 22" HD monitor computer. Think of what one could do with that in combination with Google Earth.... [Uh-oh, here comes a call from the Department of Homeland Security...]
I appreciate the deep nature of the argument that the US military is changing directions in terms of military strategy. I am also aware of the depth of unused military equipment inventory currently available and which the US taxpayer paid dearly over the last decades; we won't talk about the spare parts. I have seen and could have posted at least five such articles in the recent week; it is perhaps propaganda? I am well read in military strategy, from Sun Tzu (I have seven versions) to the copy of "Strategy" by Liddell Hart that is so beat up from multiple readings and annotations that its spine is broken, and on through to most of what is in easy reach about the use and application of the OODA loop.
It is reasonable to ask, then, if deception has ever played a role in warfare, is this a move of deception?
Whether one is a simple taxpayer -- watching with pre-traumatic gasp of breath -- who wants to know where his tax dollar is going, or whether one is much higher up in the chain of command wanting to know how to make best use of his available materiel, it serves to inquire as to t
he direction and purpose of the machinery of (
what?) a brigade, or most of a division, of armored warfare and support equipment.
This is true especially if there are multiple and nearly-simultaneous movements of matching materiel and support inside or near contentious borders of the USA and with
the added assumption that the mobilization of personnel from inside or outside the US (or the use of foreign soliders as mercenaries, keeping in mind the degree of training having been done or currently being done by major militaristic national players on the current world stage).
Keep in mind, too, that there are/were multi-agency crossover simulation drills in LA recently, and that there is a high degree of activity/awareness on the southwest border in terms of assault weapons, drugs, gangs, governments, mercenaries and spooks, to say nothing of the nervousness in and around the OWS events, especially in Oakland where, not having thoroughly read the reports yet), I understand there was tear gas and damage. And we must recognize the world-wide marketplace in arms, a demand for heavier arms among some parts of the population, etc.
Well, okay, so I'll call the question (if I have any seconds) and suggest that, at this time and for many of the same reasons, a good deal of thought be given to what should be allowed to be posted in current affairs environments about what used to seen as purely military matters. [I personally am in favor of open-but-supremely-well-regulated approach.]
We are in a world environment (and on a discussion board about them) that entails a blending of deep politics and military movement/capacity.
I appreciate your tip of the cap with regard to my posting.
But the game has changed... We appear on the verge of a pandemic of internal violence in many countries worldwide as well as a concerted effort on the part of both the US and Israel to export war (or ar least chaos along with militarization).
Should DPF directions, missions, focus, change?
Have the rules?
Does it matter?
"if deception is involved at the military level" becomes if deception is involved at the deep political level.
We are embedded in a world given to psyops, black ops, mindwars, cryptowar, robotic warfare , anti-civilian warfare, and the exportation of warfare.
And, if there are no seconds to my calling the question, I'll withdraw the motion by stating that I may have over-stepped my bounds in some extent, and
we'll chalk it up to to a minor personal explosion of my synapses given my background and reading. (It reminds me of what Bill Walton (the counter-culture hippie of UCLA-- said when asked why he would succumb to playing in the wholly-mainstream and rock-solid conservatism of the NBA, answered "It was the only place I could get up a game.")
It's been a lifelong wonder for me why someone has avowedly anti-war as I am is so damned well-read in strategy and tactics. But then I was a fellow who used to play Diplomacy with the children of James MacGregor Burns.
***
music video: Mark Knopfler with Emmy Lou Harris, "Done With Bonaparte"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgdQtACl5s
***
"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in..."
http://summonthemagic.blogspot.com/2012/...being.html
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music video:
Ray Brown Trio - Take The 'A' Train
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRaL7A1n4F0
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Having spent most of the last 24 hours listening to the best of the Concord Years by Ray Brown (two entire CD's and not a cut did I
not upload) and then wondering what a new local music education center might have in store for me tomorrow, I now retire to dinner.
"In the more intense moments, I have the feeling that the coherence of my life is breaking apart. What was once safely bound together begins to fragment. This breaking open or breaking apart allows a restructuring in the organization of our lives. The more present and awake we can be, the more we can learn about this process of restructuring."
http://summonthemagic.blogspot.com/2012/...y-and.html