Out of order snippet? WHAT out of order snippet?

kzt wrote:

Bruno Behrends wrote:First Mesa is not part of the League. Second Mesa has always had a bad reputation. Third there is the minor fact that the Bloody Sunday did happen but Mike's alleged bombardment of Mesa did not. And very important - to me at least - is n7axw's pointing out that this alleged bombardment by Manticore does not fit a perceived pattern - contrary to the Northern Ireland situation.

Green Pines did. This was totally caused by Manticorans.

But not a generally perceived pattern of Manty behavior. And it could legitimately be argued (not that this would --- or should --- make it any "better") that Green Pines was part of a mission which had never been authorized by either the Manticoran or the Havenite governments. Victor and Anton were there far more in the service of Torch than of either of their own governments, even though the information they got there was shared with both those governments and led directly to the creation of the GA. It's a very . . . tangled and morally ambiguous situation and I thought long and hard about telling Eric we couldn't go there. Then I decided that (a) the way genetic slaves and seccies were treated on Mesa would genuinely have generated enough hatred to fuel such an act and (b) that allowing a Manticoran to effectively enable the attack would add a tinge of gray to the otherwise apparently clear-cut difference between Manticore [GOOD] versus Alignment [BAD]. Mind you, I think the difference really is clear cut, but not everything the Alignment wants is evil and not everything done by someone nominally on Manticore's side is Good, and I felt this entire scene illustrated that.

Now, the only people who really know that Manticore was genuinely involved in Green Pines are the same people who are claiming they've just strewn nukes randomly around a star system and who have a certain reputation for failing when fact-checked. So Manticore has a choice to make: (1) deny the allegations and argue that they're coming from people who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them; (2) ignore the allegations with a sort of "I won't dignify that with a reply" attitude because they're coming from people who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them; (3) announce that while the employment of the bomb against Green Pines was never part of the ops plan, Torch did have an op going on Mesa at the time, that the use of nukes as minimum-casualty diversions was, indeed, part of the ops plan but the guy who actually deployed it went toally of the rails (which, golly gee, no one can blame us for), but the Gamma Center explosion was the Mesan Alignment, honest!

I honestly don't know which way they'll go with this in the end, but I promise you that both Elizabeth Winton and Honor Harrington do lose sleep over the entire horrific incident. For that matter, it'll be more than a teeny problem for Helen Zilwicki if she ever finds out the full story!

n7axw wrote:Pretty much my point all around... Bloody Sunday is vivid and immediate in Ireland. Go to Japan and the result of bringing the subject up would be ... eh??? Now imagine traveling half way around the galaxy.

Secondly, the League itself has been a very bad actor and the alignment even worse. Imagine what happens to the credibility of its finger pointing when that comes out.

I reiterate my final point. Manticore's reputation will depend more upon its pattern of behavior than it does one incident. As for the so called pattern mentioned in one of the previous posts is all I got to say is that there is such a thing as ax grinding and the truth will eventually be outed.

Don

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A good point, but it also illustrates something that occurred to me after my reply to Bruno. Derry really isn't the right analogy for Mesa. Hiroshima or Nagasaki --- or maybe Dresden --- would be a much better one in light of the casualty totals. In fact, I think that's very much the way it will be viewed, with the addition that the horrendous attack was launched after the system had surrendered. It's as if the Hiroshima bomb was dropped while MacArthur was signing the articles of surrender aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

That's how it's going to be portrayed. And the fact that the US had a pretty fair reputation around the world before WW II hasn't stopped generations of Monday-morning quarterbacks (including myself, upon occasion) from second-guessing Harry Truman for using atomic bombs on cities to compel an end to the hostilities (without killing a few million more Japanese and a million or so of his own Soldiers and Marines) from the nice, safe vantage point of history. If Manticore can't be conclusively cleared of responsibility for these explosions, the stain is going to linger a long, long, long time, no matter what their previous records may have been.

runsforcelery wrote:

n7axw wrote:Pretty much my point all around... Bloody Sunday is vivid and immediate in Ireland. Go to Japan and the result of bringing the subject up would be ... eh??? Now imagine traveling half way around the galaxy.

Secondly, the League itself has been a very bad actor and the alignment even worse. Imagine what happens to the credibility of its finger pointing when that comes out.

I reiterate my final point. Manticore's reputation will depend more upon its pattern of behavior than it does one incident. As for the so called pattern mentioned in one of the previous posts is all I got to say is that there is such a thing as ax grinding and the truth will eventually be outed.

Don

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A good point, but it also illustrates something that occurred to me after my reply to Bruno. Derry really isn't the right analogy for Mesa. Hiroshima or Nagasaki --- or maybe Dresden --- would be a much better one in light of the casualty totals. In fact, I think that's very much the way it will be viewed, with the addition that the horrendous attack was launched after the system had surrendered. It's as if the Hiroshima bomb was dropped while MacArthur was signing the articles of surrender aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

That's how it's going to be portrayed. And the fact that the US had a pretty fair reputation around the world before WW II hasn't stopped generations of Monday-morning quarterbacks (including myself, upon occasion) from second-guessing Harry Truman for using atomic bombs on cities to compel an end to the hostilities (without killing a few million more Japanese and a million or so of his own Soldiers and Marines) from the nice, safe vantage point of history. If Manticore can't be conclusively cleared of responsibility for these explosions, the stain is going to linger a long, long, long time, no matter what their previous records may have been.

Your comparison is persuasive If a secret conspiracy had blown up say - Osaka - after the Japanese capitulation and blamed it on the US that would certainly have caused an uproar (I hope at least). And the conspiracy part would of course be looked at as a rather lame excuse.

I do kind of trust however, that the Alignment will be unmasked in-universe at some point. At which point the conspiracy theory won't be a theory anymore.
I know, that is meta-reasoning. And ultimately you decide that. But still.
Once it is uncloaked half of the Manty story will be proven already. And thus people have incentives to finally really look at all the clues that do not fit with the Manticore-did-it claim.

Bruno Behrends wrote:

n7axw wrote:Pretty much my point all around... Bloody Sunday is vivid and immediate in Ireland. Go to Japan and the result of bringing the subject up would be ... eh??? Now imagine traveling half way around the galaxy.

Secondly, the League itself has been a very bad actor and the alignment even worse. Imagine what happens to the credibility of its finger pointing when that comes out.

I reiterate my final point. Manticore's reputation will depend more upon its pattern of behavior than it does one incident. As for the so called pattern mentioned in one of the previous posts is all I got to say is that there is such a thing as ax grinding and the truth will eventually be outed.

Don

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runsforcelery wrote:
A good point, but it also illustrates something that occurred to me after my reply to Bruno. Derry really isn't the right analogy for Mesa. Hiroshima or Nagasaki --- or maybe Dresden --- would be a much better one in light of the casualty totals. In fact, I think that's very much the way it will be viewed, with the addition that the horrendous attack was launched after the system had surrendered. It's as if the Hiroshima bomb was dropped while MacArthur was signing the articles of surrender aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

That's how it's going to be portrayed. And the fact that the US had a pretty fair reputation around the world before WW II hasn't stopped generations of Monday-morning quarterbacks (including myself, upon occasion) from second-guessing Harry Truman for using atomic bombs on cities to compel an end to the hostilities (without killing a few million more Japanese and a million or so of his own Soldiers and Marines) from the nice, safe vantage point of history. If Manticore can't be conclusively cleared of responsibility for these explosions, the stain is going to linger a long, long, long time, no matter what their previous records may have been.

Your comparison is persuasive If a secret conspiracy had blown up say - Osaka - after the Japanese capitulation and blamed it on the US that would certainly have caused an uproar (I hope at least). And the conspiracy part would of course be looked at as a rather lame excuse.

I do kind of trust however, that the Alignment will be unmasked in-universe at some point. At which point the conspiracy theory won't be a theory anymore.
I know, that is meta-reasoning. And ultimately you decide that. But still.
Once it is uncloaked half of the Manty story will be proven already. And thus people have incentives to finally really look at all the clues that do not fit with the Manticore-did-it claim.

Oh, Bruno. I'm so sorry, but . . . .

[The book makes my ellipsis' significance clear. Until then, alas . . . . ]

I mean, if I were to go around making Everything Clear, whatever would Raoul and Kathrine do when they grow up?!!

runsforcelery wrote:
Oh, Bruno. I'm so sorry, but . . . .

[The book makes my ellipsis' significance clear. Until then, alas . . . . ]

I mean, if I were to go around making Everything Clear, whatever would Raoul and Kathrine do when they grow up?!!

NAUGHTY AUTHOR. NO CELERY.

roseandheather wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
Oh, Bruno. I'm so sorry, but . . . .

[The book makes my ellipsis' significance clear. Until then, alas . . . . ]

I mean, if I were to go around making Everything Clear, whatever would Raoul and Kathrine do when they grow up?!!

NAUGHTY AUTHOR. NO CELERY.

E-ARC!!!!

GregD wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:

No, it's not reasonable to believe that 1 day ofter the Manties arrived they were capable of doing that, without a single missile trace showing up anywhere.

Hell, I'm guess that the Manties hadn't even managed to get a single ship anywhere near a bunch of the places that were nuked.

The point is that the newsies (and the League) are being fed the "well, of course the records show no missile traces, but that's because the Manties control all of the sensors that would have seen them." The fact that Manticore has no explanation for how the explosions were arranged --- aside from "the Alignment did it" --- is falling on deaf ears (in many cases) because the existence of the Alignment has already been written off as a paranoid fabrication. In fact, you are right in a lot of what you're saying. My point is that Hanrahan has no access to any information other than that available to all the other newsies and that what she's saying at this point is that she doesn't know how the warheads were delivered, that she doesn't want to think it was the Manties, but that the only people who had ships in position to deliver them were the GA and that no one is offering any other explanation that makes sense. She is saying she will get to the bottom of it, wherever it leads, not that she already knows the GA did it.

And, trust me, the whole situation with the Alignment is about to get a lot muddier on the surface of Mesa, as well.

My point is that it isn't at all unreasonable for her to say that she doesn't see anyone else[ in a position to have executed the attacks, that they coincided with the Mantie's arrival; that they are fundamentally different from the "terrorist" attacks which preceded them, and thatg in the absence of independently verified evidence of how the warheads weren't delivered, the GA's claims that it didn't do it are unproveable.

If she were the only journalist saying that, if she were offering "evidence" that the GA did do it rather than saying that she doesn't know that it didn't then she might --- might --- be saying something sufficiently unreasonable for Mike to say to herself "Aha! This journalist who has spent decades, at the risk of her own life, uncovering one scandal after another and has never been caught falsifying evidence (who, in fact, apologized publicly when someone fed her falsified evidence) is obviously a member of the Allignment!"

Can you really not see how unlikely it is that someone with O'Hanrahan's reputation and proven chops as the gold standard of honest, investigative journalism would suddenly be seen as a member of the Allignment only because she is saying she doesn't know what happened?!

1: I'm not in the "clearly Mike will grab O'Hanrahan and question her with tree-cats" crowd. Sorry I didn't make that clear

2: We've routinely had comments about "neutral shipping", their scanners, and the information they could get with them.

3: The closest to "stealth missiles" I can recall seeing in this series are the Oyster Bay attacks against the GA.

4: The Mesa system has been mentioned as having a lot of shipping going through it

So I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be a dozen merchant ships that were in position such that they would have seen missile attacks, if that was what happened.

For that claim to work, michelle would have had to send boarding parties to every single ship in the system and force them to turn off their scanners. I can't think of any reason why she would do that.

I realize the Manties weren't letting any grass grow under their feet with respect to Mesa. Which is why I find it hard to believe that all neutral shipping is gone, or that the Manties have come even close to getting ships out to all the orbital places that had been bombed.

And "we have not the slightest evidence that the Manties did this, but hey, they're here, so it must be their fault" just strikes me as deranged."

And without scanner readings showing missile traces, they don't have the slightest evidence

GregD wrote:..snip..
1: I'm not in the "clearly Mike will grab O'Hanrahan and question her with tree-cats" crowd. Sorry I didn't make that clear

2: We've routinely had comments about "neutral shipping", their scanners, and the information they could get with them.

3: The closest to "stealth missiles" I can recall seeing in this series are the Oyster Bay attacks against the GA.

4: The Mesa system has been mentioned as having a lot of shipping going through it

So I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be a dozen merchant ships that were in position such that they would have seen missile attacks, if that was what happened.

For that claim to work, michelle would have had to send boarding parties to every single ship in the system and force them to turn off their scanners. I can't think of any reason why she would do that.

I realize the Manties weren't letting any grass grow under their feet with respect to Mesa. Which is why I find it hard to believe that all neutral shipping is gone, or that the Manties have come even close to getting ships out to all the orbital places that had been bombed.

And "we have not the slightest evidence that the Manties did this, but hey, they're here, so it must be their fault" just strikes me as deranged."

And without scanner readings showing missile traces, they don't have the slightest evidence

When Henke's task force hypered in I would expect all ships in the system make for the nearest point at which they can hyper out so there wont be that many ships left in the system except the token Mesan defense force and the unlucky ones that couldn't get their wedges up or was ordered to strike their wedges.

In other words, less ships around than normal that could pick up any missile traces.

All sorts of questions come to mind about what was happening in the Mesa System from the time that the combined GA fleet showed up till the Albrect Clean Up was triggered.

1st. We haven't see what (other than sending a single DD in as advance stealth scout) the GA did right as it droped out of hyper IN A MASSIVE CLUMP. At the very least, I would have expected some contingent- of BC or other ships, possibly to include one or two SDs- to come out of hyper in an attack/blocking move at the Mesa end of the Mesa-Visagoth wormhole. At the very least, that would have stopped- shortly- any ships comming in from Visagoth from having an impact on the developing situation as even a DD parked relative to the opening of the inbound lane would be able to kill anything other than a freighter that came through. We also don't know what Visagoth has in the way of a SDF even if it decided it wanted to send forces to Mesa. Based on all the previous discussions in the boards, the last thing they would have wanted to try would be throwing a squadron of anyting through what they have to presume is a wormhole defended on the other end. If they send something, it is going to be through hyper.

2nd. There are always going to be the possibilities of merchant shipping being too far out within the hyperlimit to intercept either on a course where the GA comes into the hyperlimit from or by comming out of hyper somewhere else on the sphear of said hyperlimit. While a lot of traffic will have been from or to the wormhole, a lot (possibly a very lot) will be on course in or from other directions. Mike and the GA TF came "generally" from the direction of Meyers to get to Mesa even of the roundevous location would probably not have been on a stright line.
Mesa in relativly close to Talbot Quadrant and we can presume some volume of traffic which would use the wormhole to get to Mesa would then probably even skip the Mesa System unless it had cargo it must take directly there instead of dropping at a freight transhipment platform by the wormhole. "Just passing through" without stopping usually means you don't have to pay customs duties or be boarded for inspection- you pay your transit fee and head on the best economical course to where you need to be next. There is also all that lovely Manpower and Alignment traffic which may not want to use the wormhole in any case and just be comming in from or going to almost anywhere else. At the very least, a bunch of those ships may have played with the actual direction they appear to have come out of hyperspace from to mask last port of call, same with heading out-system at one heading but changing once in hyperspace.

3rd. While the GA brought a stupendous number of SD to bear on the Mesa system, I believe it also had a lot of lighter ships. It would make a great amount of sense if some of those would have been tasked to various places around the system hyper limit as stoppers for several scenarios. One would be to catch merchant shipping already comming into to the system (inside the hyper limit) or either try to run from orbit or are already heading out. How many of said merchants would have been Manpower or related controled plus ships beloinging to various Transtellars which at minimum might be carrying slaves. It also fits with the change in tactics of taking SL flagged shipping -which might have totaly ligitimate (non-slave) business there but are now just prizes. The other is to put combat ships closer to any number of MSN/MSDF ships than the primary GA force (of SDs) such that the GA lighter ships would be positions to "distract or dissuade" any MSDF ships from running (away to to the wormhole) or othewise interfearing with the hoped for surrender of the MSDF.
We have only seen a tiny bit of what happens so perhaps we will get to see a bagging of merchant ships such as Mike did at Meyers. Every little bit helps...big smile

4th. I earlier suggested that the MSN/MSDF, while having stood down in the surrender to the GA, was unlikely to have shut down their passive sensors and would have been able to see any impeller signatures -or launch signatures- from the GA ships. That would include the Mesan System tactical sensor net and local Astro Control. The GA DID NOT damage or destroy ANYTHING in orbit or even in-system (that we know of yet). So, while it is probable that the Mandarins's tame press and other new services my carry the Alignment version of Manticore committing an EE violation on Mesa, there WILL be good sensor records (not made by the GA) to show it didn't happen.

One of those things that will not ring true from the timing and placement of all those nuclear explosions is where they happened. Remote "weather stations", an remote-uninhabited -nature reserve out in some ocean, etc. Sure, the screaming and finger pointing and beating the drum of "murderous neo-barbarians" will go on, but some people are going to have to wonder why a bunch of experienced and apparently otherwise extremly precise people who are using sophistocated targeting systems and weapons would be shooting at such odd places- and doing a really good job of hitting ONLY those really odd places along with a lot of other targets that don't have any conceivable value even if the planet hadn't surrendered.
This is NOT FF acting on the orders of OFS or the local political despot punishing rebelling subjects.
But, then, when does logic and reason enter into a lot of political rhetoric and propaganda?

runsforcelery wrote:
If Manticore can't be conclusively cleared of responsibility for these explosions, the stain is going to linger a long, long, long time, no matter what their previous records may have been.

For certain parties the stain will be there whether Manticore is conclusively cleared or not. That is simply the bias against Manticore and the work of the folks for whom blackening Manticore is something they see in their interest.

As for others, I agree that there will always be a question unless the matter is cleared up.... And, of course, only a certain author whose work we have been discussing knows whether it will be cleared up or not...

Don

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