Special Ops or not : let's list the facts

Special Ops deal? Seriously? These guys were a bunch of total screw ups. One thing the military stresses-especially the elite forces-is teamwork.Holding a knife to another squad member's throat, sneaking live ammo, running away from the rest of the squad, a chain of command mutiny-none of that strikes me as very team-centric or elite.

As far as what the purpose was, it could have just been an orienteering exercise gone horribly wrong.

Hardin's transfer? I don't think the Guard has any say in where you can or cannot work.

Sorry but the premise of this being some black ops thing is really far-fetched.

ha ha ha, lmao. Anyway, its a dam good film and should easily be in the top 250 of all time!!!

Thats the stupidest thing I´ve ever read about this movie. Are you paranoid or what?

Of course they just happned to get lost. Louisianas swamps arent that predictable and I guess its not that simple to locate in there. Poole wasnt a very good mapreader annd maybe he just got it all wrong.

Nothing implies that it was some kind of secret military operation. Sometimes people get lost in the wilderness and thats all there is to it.

Okay there's a lot of speculation that this is not straight training but really some kind of special ops deal. This is not a debate wether they get killed or rescued in the end. I want to debate : Was the military in on it.

WHHHHAAAAAAAT?

This is a bizarre one, never heard this before. Its interesting, but am 100% certain you're completely wrong on that one. Just a bunch of National Guardsmen making a balls of map interpretation, angering some very hostile locals and getting in over their heads.

Its supposed to be a Vietnam War allegory, which would go right out the window if your interpretation is correct.

You've rebuked your own supporting facts anyway, tenuous as they were.

If at first you don't succeed, you're not Chuck Norris

What? How have you even begun to think this is what happens? Don't be so stupid; someone else said the film is an allegory for the Vietnam war. They are correct.

It's a fun little conspiracey you've cooked up, but it is so totally and obviously unbelievable and wrong that, well... shut up.

Yippee-ki-yay, mother - *sound of lift beeping*

A Special Ops setup?!!!! Jeez that's a dim take on what is essentially "kill all the witnesses"/survive against odds story, with nods to the war in Vietnam.

They pissed off the locals by stealing their boats.

They fired the blanks at them and one Cajun misunderstood/overeacted and killed the Guardsman. Now the locals know there will be a murder investigation so they decide to kill the witnesses.

They can easily hide the bodies in the swamps which they know better than anyone else. They are essentially living in their own society away from normal laws and that's how they like it.

So they hunt the Guardsmen down using their knowledge of the enviroment and trapping techniques they use everyday.

It really is THAT simple.

I had the impression Boothes character was transfered due to discilpine problems in his previous unit.

Brion James character lets the last pair live because they were the ones who saved him from being murdered by the other Guardsman when he was caught by them. However his buddies obviously don't share the same sentiments.

The Vietnam element can be interpreted from the way apparantly "high tech" modern soldiers are out of their element fighting in an alien enviroment against a poorly armed but well seasoned indigenous population.

I think that the problem with this argument is motive. What motive would the Command Authority have for such a plot...in my opinion, none. I have 17 yrs experience in the reserves: 3 in AF reserves and 14 in the Army Reserves and to me this is a classic SNAFU situation that occurs often (although not to this extent).
1) In my opinion, it was a classic situation of command and discipline breakdown amongst guardsmen who are only in the military one weekend at a time and many of whom have never had much active duty, if any.

2) It seems to me that it started with lack of discipline when the soldier fired at the Cajuns on the shore without forethought and consideration of what the perception on the bank would be. How were the "indigenous personnel" supposed to know that the Guardsmen were firing blanks. Maybe they (the Cajuns) didn't even stop to think that they were not experiencing any incoming rounds.

3) From that initial point the errors in judgement and the problems in lax problems just compounded themselves.

4) I personally been at a drill where the discipline was so lax but then I was never in the National Guard. In the 80's the Guard had a reputation of not having good discipline but whether that was true or not I don't know.

5) It is possible and occurs often for Guardsmen and Reservists to transfer from unit to unit and from state to state and even from the Guard to the Reserves and back again. Transfers even take place now between the Reserve forces and the Active force. The fact that the soldier transferred from the Texas Guard to the Louisiana Guard really doesn't surprise me especially if (as is often the case) when a guardsman's civilian job transfers him. It happens often. The soldier was a chemical engineer and this occupation is notorious for its instability.

6) I wonder how much military experience Arachno has.

They were 'special' alright, just had nothing to do with ops.