[Rictor]

What the hell is going on? I though Olmert was all nice and peaceful and diplomatic, and now we're seeing the most serious military action in years?!

[aldo_14]

1 israle soldier to 65 pala's. 2 for 2000 pala's, and 3 for around 3500 palas.

I say, go israle! I say 'kill all the palastinions and\or kick them of israles land (gaza strip and the other place. West bank?)'. I say israle, dont take ****, go kick their ass. Give no one of their fukin ases back. Kill all 2000 and ship their heads to them and threaton the laboninites, to give israle their guys back or they will kick majoir ass. Thats how thsi **** should be done.
Israle should take back its birthright land.
This whole arab\muslim thing all hapened cauze israle did a dumbass move and disobeyed god way back when. Now look at the trouble its gettin them into? Constant wars with the group of people they should have wiped out in the first place b4 they became a problem.

~Ephili~

Theres one thing worse than someone who puts no value on human life whatsoever. And that's someone who can't spell putting no value on human life. Does it occur to you, for example, how many Israelis would die in that sort of conflict? But then, you don't care, it's not in your country, so let's get on with the big explosions

Quite frankly, I've had it up to here with fundamentalist assholes trying to start World War Three and then turning round and saying "Look! Rapture! The Bible was Right!', because they are making a self-fulfilling prophecy and are yet too blind to even see what they are doing. It's as bad as the actions of Fred Phelps or Jack Thompson or the like... 'The world isn't revolving around what I want it to be! Waaaaaaah!!'.

I agree with your sentiments exactly flip (you can probably tell that from my earlier postage)

What sort of world do we live in when people will cheer onwards the death of thousands, just to satisfy their own ferverous blood lust because of a belief?  We've gone a long way downhill, when we're hearing this extremist, racist, sectarian, quasi-fascistic and bigoted type of sentiment expressed openly without shame, particularly from someone who can't spell 'Israel', 'Palestinians', '****ing', 'lebanese', 'major', 'this', 'getting', or 'before'.

In fact, I'd go to say it's the sort of sentiment you'd expect to hear from the likes of Bin Ladin, just with roles reversed.  Well done Charismatic (a contradiction in terms, surely?), you're using terrorist rhetoric.

[Nuclear1]

So obviously the T-72's that most of the neighboring nations have would be no match for the Merkava.  A group on group probably would result in total destruction of the T-72 platoon with few losses.

Its fortunate that you haven't been called up...hopefully this doesn't get any worse.

The M1 wiped the floor with Saddam's T-72's in the Gulf War, and if the Merkava Mk. IV is as superior to the M1 as Sandwich says, than it should have absolutely no problem rolling over that old Soviet equipment. The targeting systems between the M1 and the Merkava seem to be of reasonably equal capacity; the M1 can kill a target 2 kilometers away on the move.

They've had them since around '97, so it'd have to be Clinton's.

Oh, I suspected as much anyway.

As far as the course of war is concerned, I support Israel all the way, and I've actually considered changing my language of choice from Mandarin to Hebrew or Arabic should this escalate (I'm going into the USAF as a linguist).

[Ford Prefect]

Theres one thing worse than someone who puts no value on human life whatsoever. And that's someone who can't spell putting no value on human life.

Hahaha!

[IceFire]

Theres one thing worse than someone who puts no value on human life whatsoever. And that's someone who can't spell putting no value on human life.

Hahaha!

It's a good thing that Firefox 2.0 is going to have built in spell checking

[aldo_14]

Theres one thing worse than someone who puts no value on human life whatsoever. And that's someone who can't spell putting no value on human life.

Hahaha!

It's a good thing that Firefox 2.0 is going to have built in spell checking

Hmm.  I wonder, can you drive a browser rampant?

[Black Wolf]

As far as the course of war is concerned, I support Israel all the way, and I've actually considered changing my language of choice from Mandarin to Hebrew or Arabic should this escalate (I'm going into the USAF as a linguist).

No offence to you, but surely they'd want to get native or at least first generation non-native speakers (i.e. the children of immigrants) of those languages for their linguists?

[Styxx]

The M1 wiped the floor with Saddam's T-72's in the Gulf War, and if the Merkava Mk. IV is as superior to the M1 as Sandwich says, than it should have absolutely no problem rolling over that old Soviet equipment. The targeting systems between the M1 and the Merkava seem to be of reasonably equal capacity; the M1 can kill a target 2 kilometers away on the move.

I think that the onboard systems are roughly on parity. The thing with the Merkava is that it can be much heavier... I think it's officially stated as being around 60 tons, as most other first-rate MBTs, but that it's actually much heavier than that. If it's heavier, it can have more armor, and hence have higher survivability. Since it doesn't have the need to be easily transportable, and doesn't have to work on every environment (it can be very specialized for the terrain and climate in and around Israel), I'd say it's slightly superior to an M1 of latest model, if both are being employed in Israel.

Anyway, it would effortlessly kill T-72s right and left. I just wonder what type of tank was the one destroyed by the mine - one of the older M60s? Can even be an IFV, the press seems to think of anything with armor, tracks and a turret as a tank.

[Sarafan]

Does anyone knows some place with pictures of the Merkava? And if possible the current arsenal of the Israel military?

[Turambar]

and a list of their weak points would be nice too.

[redmenace]

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/tanks/merkava/MerkavaMk4.html

[Styxx]

Damn, that's a fine looking tank.

[Shade]

the press seems to think of anything with armor, tracks and a turret as a tank

Indeed. Though even the turret and even armour are often just an optional extras for a tank in their eyes, I've seen M113s counted as tanks more often than not, and those things have neither a turret nor armour enough to stop anything above a standard .556mm rifle bullet.

They just don't seem to think about what they write, just take this from a quote in the initial post as an example of press stupidity: "Israeli tanks were also firing artillery rounds at southern Lebanon". Tanks. Artillery rounds. It should have been obvious to the writer at this point that something was not right, but no.

[Flipside]

If you glued 2 together, it'd look like a Cyclon BaseStar for Men

[Shade]

Hmm... looking at the description and pictures, the thing is supposed to be designed at least partially with urban warfare in mind. Now, is it just me or do the engine ports, given that intended role, look uncomfortably vulnerable to the old 'burning gasoline soaked rag' trick that takes out Leopard 1 tanks in minutes by overheating their engine?

That's of course assuming that those nice, juicy looking engine ports are in fact that, and not some decoy put there to attract attention - Something which I would be not at all surprised by given that it's an Israeli design

[Styxx]

Well, considering that that's the most basic urban warfare threat to tanks, I'd imagine they have at least some kind of countermeasure against it.

[karajorma]

If you glued 2 together, it'd look like a Cyclon BaseStar for Men

Personally I'd rather have a cylon basestar for hot naked Boomers but you can't have everything

[Flipside]

Well, if there were more Hot Naked Boomers in the world, there'd be a lot less tanks, I feel

[aldo_14]

Well, if there were more Hot Naked Boomers in the world, there'd be a lot less tanks, I feel

They'd be a lot less of everything not involving look at, chatting up, or making *squishy* noises with hot naked Boomers.

[TrashMan]

Crazy people..

The Palestinian extremists and the Isreali government and military should all be rounded up and shot.
And then we wpould have peace.