The Chilling Toll of Allah's Sniper
- Thread starter Fred Fuller
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Justin
Moderator Emeritus
This is something I've noticed about middle eastern culture: they are the worst smack-talkers in the world, but when it actually comes time to put up or shut up...
skidmark -- you have any sources or reference materials you can point me to (preferably web based) that get into the Arab mind/communication methods? After 9/11 I tried to learn everything I could about radical Islam. I'd love to figure out how these people think...becaue you are right...it certainly seems infantile and archaic way of thinking/communicating.
Sistema1927
Member
BS, BS, BS. A guy uses a Dragunov (that's what I assume would be the "Russian-made sniper rifle") from 1,000 meters (isn't the SVD only accurate around 300 meters?) because he likes Enemy at the Gates and Playstation games and is responsible for half of our direct fire casulties.
Not to mention that there was a big hubbub about one of our guys making 1 kill with a M82 from 1,000+ meters.
Not to mention that there was a big hubbub about one of our guys making 1 kill with a M82 from 1,000+ meters.
If he can consitently hit man sized targets with an SVD, "beyond 1000 meters", I'll buy you a Daniel Webster cigar! In urbanized terrain fining a 1000 meter shot would be a chore. Seems like more press driven crap to break the will on the home front.
I don't think I've ever even heard of a Russian Sniper rifle with 1000 meter capability.
Russian Dragunov? Nope.
Russian Mosin Sniper? Uh....nope.
Russian captured German K98? Possibly, if the deer hunting game included, how to glass bed a stock, adjust windage, etc.
Russian Dragunov? Nope.
Russian Mosin Sniper? Uh....nope.
Russian captured German K98? Possibly, if the deer hunting game included, how to glass bed a stock, adjust windage, etc.
Well, we have now heard the Tokyo Rose version. Excuse me, Tehran Tonya.
Here is a much more likely version:
Abu Othman "The Syrian Smackie" lay face down on a Ramadi rooftop and cradled his mighty Russian-made sniper rifle, the AK-47. The rust wan’t too bad, and the stock looked much better with the duct tape around the big crack. In case Abu was having his usual banner day, he was backed up by Achmed and Yasser, his "Iraqi" counterparts with the thick Iranian accents. They had a nearly-new RPG-7 with a couple of rounds they figured would go off this time.
They carefully concealed themselves behind a busy playground, on the roof of a wrecked building. Abu knew better than to tangle with a U.S. Infantryman with a rifle in his hand, so he waited until a random man slung arms and prepared to relieve himself behind his track. Taking careful aim at the man a frighteningly close 150 yards away, Abu closed his eyes against the expected mighty blast and prepared to yank the trigger on that kick-of-Allah cannon the AK. Tiredly, Achmed and Yasser prepared their RPG for use after Abu wasted his magazine.
200 yards away to the flank of the three “snipersâ€, the gunner on the one of the overwatch team’s Bradleys called over the comm., "OK Frank, duck!†Gently, he pressed the button and the 25mm began spewing death.
Achmed and Yasser had a moment to contemplate their colossal mistake in leaving Tehran at the behest of their oh-so-brave Mullah. Just a short moment though, as the first two 25mm rounds ripped into Abu and sent him off to wherever hot place Allah puts the misguided fools who die trying to hand their brother Muslims back into the hands of a apostate madman like Saddam. And a moment later, the 25mm API-T rounds walked over their own shredding bodies, ensuring that they too could explain to Allah why they felt more innocent blood should slake the insane lusts of apostate madman.
"Nice shootin Earl. It was great how you shielded those kids with the building the idiots were using as a perch."
"Thanks Frank."
"OK, this time you wag your wanker at the impotent fools and _I_ chop them down with the cannon."
“This is Charlie-Two-Six. We’ve had our fun. Now we finish this sweep by the book.â€
“Roger that, Two-Six. Charlie-Two-One moving, out.â
Here is a much more likely version:
Abu Othman "The Syrian Smackie" lay face down on a Ramadi rooftop and cradled his mighty Russian-made sniper rifle, the AK-47. The rust wan’t too bad, and the stock looked much better with the duct tape around the big crack. In case Abu was having his usual banner day, he was backed up by Achmed and Yasser, his "Iraqi" counterparts with the thick Iranian accents. They had a nearly-new RPG-7 with a couple of rounds they figured would go off this time.
They carefully concealed themselves behind a busy playground, on the roof of a wrecked building. Abu knew better than to tangle with a U.S. Infantryman with a rifle in his hand, so he waited until a random man slung arms and prepared to relieve himself behind his track. Taking careful aim at the man a frighteningly close 150 yards away, Abu closed his eyes against the expected mighty blast and prepared to yank the trigger on that kick-of-Allah cannon the AK. Tiredly, Achmed and Yasser prepared their RPG for use after Abu wasted his magazine.
200 yards away to the flank of the three “snipersâ€, the gunner on the one of the overwatch team’s Bradleys called over the comm., "OK Frank, duck!†Gently, he pressed the button and the 25mm began spewing death.
Achmed and Yasser had a moment to contemplate their colossal mistake in leaving Tehran at the behest of their oh-so-brave Mullah. Just a short moment though, as the first two 25mm rounds ripped into Abu and sent him off to wherever hot place Allah puts the misguided fools who die trying to hand their brother Muslims back into the hands of a apostate madman like Saddam. And a moment later, the 25mm API-T rounds walked over their own shredding bodies, ensuring that they too could explain to Allah why they felt more innocent blood should slake the insane lusts of apostate madman.
"Nice shootin Earl. It was great how you shielded those kids with the building the idiots were using as a perch."
"Thanks Frank."
"OK, this time you wag your wanker at the impotent fools and _I_ chop them down with the cannon."
“This is Charlie-Two-Six. We’ve had our fun. Now we finish this sweep by the book.â€
“Roger that, Two-Six. Charlie-Two-One moving, out.â
this writer is brilliant!
He has managed to get dead americans, noble insurgents, evil video games AND the wicked effects of the vietnam war into one article! Holy crap! That's a lefty dream screed.
Remember folks the camel-loving towel in this ridiculous story doesn't exist: 99% of journos are lefty '*****, 99% of lefty '***** are bold-faced liars, ergo this story is twaddle, QED.
My man Blade; now he'all speak da trufe.
Word.
G
He has managed to get dead americans, noble insurgents, evil video games AND the wicked effects of the vietnam war into one article! Holy crap! That's a lefty dream screed.
Remember folks the camel-loving towel in this ridiculous story doesn't exist: 99% of journos are lefty '*****, 99% of lefty '***** are bold-faced liars, ergo this story is twaddle, QED.
My man Blade; now he'all speak da trufe.
Word.
G
guys...don't tell anyone, but I am training in counter terror tactics by playing SOCOM on my PS2.
sssshhhhhh.........It's a secret.
sssshhhhhh.........It's a secret.
Yeppers. It's BS. If the BGs were as skilled and determined as this mythical character they wouldn't be blowing themselves up everytime you turn around. Does anyone remember the news item a while back where the BGs recruited a mentally retarded guy to be a human bomb.
That tells you volumes about the "value" of their cause.
Blade
Very funny!
S-
That tells you volumes about the "value" of their cause.
Blade
Very funny!
S-
Wow I got through Doom, Quake, MDK, Ghost Recon, Medal of Honor, Rising Sun, Manhunt, The Suffering, Halo and Halo2. I'm calling my nearest recruiter tomorrow to offer my services, I'm sure they'll send me straight to the front.
I call this Islamist Propaganda and "useful idiots" giving comfort to the enemy.
I call this Islamist Propaganda and "useful idiots" giving comfort to the enemy.
Does that remind you of the story of the sniper in Stalingrad?
Probably just propaganda, plus in the Middle East people are very prone to hyperbole, it's part of their culture.
Probably just propaganda, plus in the Middle East people are very prone to hyperbole, it's part of their culture.
"In this picture, we have Mrs. Agatha Higgins from 124 Church Street. Mrs Higgins, will you please stand up?"
*BOOM*
... sorry if this is inappropriate, but I couldn't resist...
What is it about this turn of phrase that makes all kinds of writers seem to love using it?: "Blah blah ...or more." It's so ridiculous!
Semantically, this would mean that he dispatches no victims from ranges under "1,000 metres," and that the upper limit of the ranges from which he dispatches victims is not known. Duh.
Ohhh, it's from a British publication. That explains all the fawning over "Allah's servants."
-Jeffrey
skidmark -- you have any sources or reference materials you can point me to (preferably web based) that get into the Arab mind/communication methods? After 9/11 I tried to learn everything I could about radical Islam. I'd love to figure out how these people think...becaue you are right...it certainly seems infantile and archaic way of thinking/communicating.
__________________
Kris Rich
I wish I had something down & dirty to give you, but alas, I do not. Most of what I've picked up on the Mid-Eastern/Arab culture has been from some very limited travel many years ago plus knowing a great number of them both in person and over the internet over the years. I got a smattering of info back in grad school, but promptly forgot the source immediately affter the exam. (I did retain the info )
I am at the office now (goofing off, obviously ) and can't get te time to google arab cultural anthropology to pick out some sources for you. Who knows if I'll remember to do it tonight -- got to go pick up my back-up BUG and make sure the new firing pin works.
I seem to recall something on Blackwater Tactical Weekly a while back, but am not willing to swear to anything these days.
Wish I could help you out more. Will tryb to keep the topic in mind and PM you if I can put together a small reading list.
stay safe.
skidmark
__________________
Kris Rich
I wish I had something down & dirty to give you, but alas, I do not. Most of what I've picked up on the Mid-Eastern/Arab culture has been from some very limited travel many years ago plus knowing a great number of them both in person and over the internet over the years. I got a smattering of info back in grad school, but promptly forgot the source immediately affter the exam. (I did retain the info
)I am at the office now (goofing off, obviously
) and can't get te time to google arab cultural anthropology to pick out some sources for you. Who knows if I'll remember to do it tonight -- got to go pick up my back-up BUG and make sure the new firing pin works.I seem to recall something on Blackwater Tactical Weekly a while back, but am not willing to swear to anything these days.
Wish I could help you out more. Will tryb to keep the topic in mind and PM you if I can put together a small reading list.
stay safe.
skidmark
There was a LONG (full page) article in the Gulf News (a paper from Dubai, UAE, I belive) that was an interview with an Iraqi insurgent sniper. I read just enough to piss me off.
I wondered if it wasn't BS, though, as the man claimed that prior to killing 20 Americans, he'd learned about sniping by reading on the internet and practiced by playing shooter games on his Playstation...
I wondered if it wasn't BS, though, as the man claimed that prior to killing 20 Americans, he'd learned about sniping by reading on the internet and practiced by playing shooter games on his Playstation...
Kris,
Here's a starting point for you. I used to work with this gentleman, he knows whereof he speaks. Once again, to read the entire article you will have to follow the link provided- it's too long to post.
lpl/nc
=============
http://netwmd.com/articles/article742.html
The Arab Mind Revisited
by Norvell B. De Atkine, October 11, 2004
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2004
http://www.meforum.org/article/636
Editors' preface: In the spring of 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal drove headlines in the United States and the Middle East. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a report in The New Yorker, entitled "The Gray Zone," describing the abuse of prisoners as the outcome of a deliberate policy. Hersh also made reference to a book, The Arab Mind, by the cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai (1910-96):
The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was The Arab Mind, a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression.… The Patai book, an academic told me, was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior." In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged—"one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation."[1]
This mention of Patai's book (on the sole authority of "an academic [who] told me") sent journalists scurrying to read it—and denounce it. Brian Whitaker, writing in The Guardian, called it a "classic case of orientalism which, by focusing on what Edward Said called the ‘otherness' of Arab culture, sets up barriers that can then be exploited for political purposes." He quoted an academic as saying, "The best use for this volume, if any, is for a doorstop."[2] Ann Marlowe, in Salon.com, called it "a smear job masquerading under the merest veneer of civility."[3] Louis Werner, in Al-Ahram Weekly and elsewhere, embellished Hersh's account with a made-up detail: The Arab Mind, he wrote, "was apparently used as a field manual by U.S. Army Intelligence in Abu Ghraib prison."[4] (Hersh made no such claim.) Only Lee Smith, writing in Slate.com, suggested that critics had misread Patai, whom he described as "a keen and sympathetic observer of Arab society," a "popularizer of difficult ideas, and also a serious scholar."[5]
No one took the trouble to crosscheck Hersh's academic source on the supposed influence of Patai's book as the "frequently cited … ‘bible of the neocons.'" A more accurate description of The Arab Mind would be a prohibited book. Edward Said had denounced Patai twenty-five years earlier, in Orientalism;[6] in academe, The Arab Mind long ago entered the list of disapproved texts. It was easy to point an accusing finger at the book (again). Patai himself was also a convenient target. A Hungarian-born Jew and lifelong Zionist, he lived in British-mandated Palestine from 1933 to 1947, and in 1936, earned the first doctorate ever awarded by the Hebrew University. He edited Theodor Herzl's complete diaries and served as the first president of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University. For many antiwar conspiracy theorists, the idea of someone like Patai as intellectual father of the Abu Ghraib scandal proved irresistible.
The only concrete evidence for the book's use in any branch of government appeared in the foreword to the most recent reprint (2002) of The Arab Mind, by Col. (res.) Norvell B. De Atkine, an instructor in Middle East studies at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School. De Atkine wrote that he assigned the book to military personnel in his own courses because students found its cultural insights useful in explaining behavior they encountered on assignment.
===end snip
Here's a starting point for you. I used to work with this gentleman, he knows whereof he speaks. Once again, to read the entire article you will have to follow the link provided- it's too long to post.
lpl/nc
=============
http://netwmd.com/articles/article742.html
The Arab Mind Revisited
by Norvell B. De Atkine, October 11, 2004
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2004
http://www.meforum.org/article/636
Editors' preface: In the spring of 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal drove headlines in the United States and the Middle East. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a report in The New Yorker, entitled "The Gray Zone," describing the abuse of prisoners as the outcome of a deliberate policy. Hersh also made reference to a book, The Arab Mind, by the cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai (1910-96):
The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was The Arab Mind, a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression.… The Patai book, an academic told me, was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior." In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged—"one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation."[1]
This mention of Patai's book (on the sole authority of "an academic [who] told me") sent journalists scurrying to read it—and denounce it. Brian Whitaker, writing in The Guardian, called it a "classic case of orientalism which, by focusing on what Edward Said called the ‘otherness' of Arab culture, sets up barriers that can then be exploited for political purposes." He quoted an academic as saying, "The best use for this volume, if any, is for a doorstop."[2] Ann Marlowe, in Salon.com, called it "a smear job masquerading under the merest veneer of civility."[3] Louis Werner, in Al-Ahram Weekly and elsewhere, embellished Hersh's account with a made-up detail: The Arab Mind, he wrote, "was apparently used as a field manual by U.S. Army Intelligence in Abu Ghraib prison."[4] (Hersh made no such claim.) Only Lee Smith, writing in Slate.com, suggested that critics had misread Patai, whom he described as "a keen and sympathetic observer of Arab society," a "popularizer of difficult ideas, and also a serious scholar."[5]
No one took the trouble to crosscheck Hersh's academic source on the supposed influence of Patai's book as the "frequently cited … ‘bible of the neocons.'" A more accurate description of The Arab Mind would be a prohibited book. Edward Said had denounced Patai twenty-five years earlier, in Orientalism;[6] in academe, The Arab Mind long ago entered the list of disapproved texts. It was easy to point an accusing finger at the book (again). Patai himself was also a convenient target. A Hungarian-born Jew and lifelong Zionist, he lived in British-mandated Palestine from 1933 to 1947, and in 1936, earned the first doctorate ever awarded by the Hebrew University. He edited Theodor Herzl's complete diaries and served as the first president of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University. For many antiwar conspiracy theorists, the idea of someone like Patai as intellectual father of the Abu Ghraib scandal proved irresistible.
The only concrete evidence for the book's use in any branch of government appeared in the foreword to the most recent reprint (2002) of The Arab Mind, by Col. (res.) Norvell B. De Atkine, an instructor in Middle East studies at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School. De Atkine wrote that he assigned the book to military personnel in his own courses because students found its cultural insights useful in explaining behavior they encountered on assignment.
===end snip
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