Lawyers, hey?

Off-topic
1

I found the following in Wikipedia, in an article about shotguns.

<<Due to the cramped conditions of trench warfare, the American shotguns were extremely effective. Germany even filed an official diplomatic protest against their use, alleging they violated the laws of warfare. The Judge Advocate General reviewed the protest, and it was rejected because the Germans protested use of lead shot (which would have been illegal) but military shot was plated. This is the only occasion the legality of the shotgun’s use in warfare has been questioned.>>

There were over 40 million casualties in that war, and around 20 million deaths. Fortunately, the use of unplated lead shot was illegal, otherwise it would have been a bloodbath. :roll_eyes:

2

I don’t understand how a War can have rules…

Oh hey there, don’t shoot me in the knees or you get disqualified.

3

Civilized people always have rules. Even for carnage.

4

We Americans call it the Geneva Convention. Or at least we used to…

5

Before WWI, warfare in general did follow a pseudo “code”.

6

What happens if a country does not follow that rule?

7

That’s the thing…prior to WWI, no country did that. Wasn’t until all that unrestricted submarine warfare that Britain and Germany decided to act like little kids and not play nice any more.

Obviously now-a-days it doesn’t really matter as much.

8

Imagine if North Korea just one day decided to nuke a bunch of countries… go rules.

9

That’s why South Korea needs to hurry up and put all those Starcraft players to work developing some crazy futuristic battle tactics.

10

Hahaha! Man I laughed so hard on that one! :smiley:

11

I recently saw a documentary (think it was History Channel) regarding excavations of Allied and German trenches at Flanders Field. Also went into all the tunneling under and blowing up the other side, as well as so much shelling that soldiers were incapacitated by Shell Shock.

Trench warfare was brutal. Good thing that inventions like tanks and air bombing rendered trench warfare obsolete.

12

So, I gotta wonder what the Geneva Convention says about dropping nukes on heavily populated civilian enclaves (Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind).

13

The fourth convention was the first one to mention protction of the civilian population. That was 1949, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

14

I thought it was a bit weird the first time I saw the thing about metal-jacket bullets… It basically comes down to that it’s considered more “humane” to have bullets that pass right though with “minimal” damage as opposed to a bullet that comes apart inside the body and wreaks massive damage that’s harder to heal.

War is full of little things like that. Did you know that anti-personnel landmines are NOT designed to kill? A guy steps on a mine and dies, well, too bad, nothing you can do for him/ He steps on it, and blows his leg off, well now he’s screaming (and rightly so) which is going to get on everyone elses nerves, then you have to get him off the battlefield, during which time you’re not doing whatever your initial task was… Killing one person removes one person from the battle, maiming one removes multiple people from the battle.

15

i like the geneva convention