Prometheus wrote:
Prometheus wrote:

And you keep ignoring the fact that we are purposely targeting
civilians because a terrorist lives next door to them.

We are purposefully targeting the terrorists. And most of the targeting is
done with an attempt to ascertain if civilians are present. Your attempt to
flip this as a purposeful attack on a civilian element is pathetic. But I
suppose you know that.

and we drop a MOAB on the building to get those three guys, we are
intentionally targeting civilians to acheive an objective.

MOAB hasn't been used in the theater, and is not an urban weapon. Again,
your premise is false, but that is the type of pathetic dribble your ilk
continually spouts.

Now, if I
was the hypothetical falafel vendor's brother, I'd be looking at that
bombing in exactly the same way as I look at 9/11 as an American.

Uh, huh. Sure. Of course we don't have a clue, what you really felt about
9/11. To bad your justification of terrorism is as flaccid as your
"hypothetical". Why don't you "hypothetically" blame the terrorists for the
collateral loss of life, instead of America? Oops, I guess you've already
answered that question.

Instead of joining the military, I might hook up with a terrorist
cell.

Of course you would; we've already been able to see where your allegiance's
lie.

It's not a flaccid argument....

It's so flaccid that even a rhetorical dose of Viagra won't help.

The thing is- if we have the right to kill civilians in a foreign
country, we have declared total war.

We are in a war. Wakey, wakey. And even in your rambling re-invention of
something called "total war", civilians are avoided as targets as much as
possible. That doesn't mean they can always be avoided, and depending on the
scope of the war, they may, by necessity, even be involved; ie Dresden,
Hiroshima, Berlin, Hanoi.....

Once we as citizens have
endorsed total war, it grants the right of our enemies to engage in
total war against us.

Whether or not your mind can grasp the concept, Islamic Fascists HAVE been
engaging us in total war.

They then have the right in the eyes of the
greater world to kill US civilians as part of their campaign.

Uh, you DO remember the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks? Or hows
about the '98 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie? And I suppose you have
heard of the Bahli night club bombings in 2002 which killed over 200; not
to mention 6 other bombings by terrorist in Indonesia since then? Or how
about the 2004 Madrid bombing? Or maybe you picked up on last year's
bombings in London? Etc. etc. Nope, no history of a war by the bad guys,
and certainly no thought to them targeting civilians.

That's
why we have rules of engagement... snip of the patronizing blah, blah.

There is a city burning in the middle east every day of the week. In
Iraq- and you've just said they're appendages of Iran and Syria. So
how does destroying Iraq and killing the population help us win a war
against terrorist organizations?

Killing the population? shaking head in disbelief Better check your
sources, bubba. The terrorists are the ones that are purposefully targeting
and killing the civilian population. They are the ones who are targeting the
Iraqi police. They are the ones who are killing the democratically elected
leaders, and desperately trying to terrorize people from the polling places.
Your terrorist heroes have been responsible for the death of thousand of
Iraqi citizens, and have been responsible for the bombing and sabotage of
the power, water and other infrastructure in locations in Iraq. Not to
mention their continual attempt to damage the oil production capability that
Iraq needs to gain capital.

It's not about peace, it's about persuing war in the correct way.

Now that is telling. Thanks for sharing.

I don't have a problem with fighting a just war- I have a serious
problem with misguided and high-handed attempts to "spread democracy".

Yeah, that horrible democracy. Yuck. Give us Saddam.

If the terrorist organizations are direct appendages of Iran and
Syria, we have no business overextending our servicemen and women by
sending them into a senseless battle based on a submoron's whim.

The military capability of America is hardly overextended. What is
overextended is relying on a small portion of our overall ground forces to
be recycled and sent on multiple tours.

By the same token, it is your ilk that said that we shouldn't have invaded
Iraq to take out Saddam, and any capability he had to produce or use Weapons
of Mass Destuction. Your comrade's stellar strategy was to "contain" Iraq
and Saddam by the deployment of far more troops in various neighboring
countries, on a never-ending assignment to surround Iraq.

They
need to be fighting Iran and Syria, and Iraq should have been left for
the time being. We do not have infinite resources with which to fight
the entirety of the world just because you said so.

Fighting the "entirety of the world"? Bwahahaha. Yer just making this up as
you go, right? I agree with you though, we need to take out Iran and Syria.

What about North Korea? Iran? Syria? Saddam wasn't going to do
anything- he was a paper tiger, and now it's a reeking mess.

Right, that's what France said about Hitler's rise.

You
can't just say "terrorist" and justify any senseless act of agression
with it.

No one but you has suggested that.

Doing things like that is going to get us in a deep pile of
****, alone and cut off.

Well, first, you have produced a thesis about "senseless act of agression"
that I reject outright. Second, "deep pile of ****"? What are you, some
teenage kid afraid that mom is going to find a pile of porn under his
mattress? Oh, I get it; yer afraid of the big, bad UN. Third, Earth to North
Korea: Don't look now, but we've got satellites overhead that can see any
run-up bloom of a missle launch, and a Trident parked close enough to send a
few megatons down the pipe before yer bird has time to launch.

I know the country singers and close
personal friends of GWB will tell you that we can do anything we want
because we're the USA,

I love the patronizing and purulently bigoted tone you guys always seem to
take.


but there have been powers with empires as
relatively mighty as ours throughout history, and where are they now?
Rome at the height of it's power was an unstoppable military force-
but they are now part of the history books. There is a limit to what
we can do- and if we "stay the course" too much longer, I believe we
will see those limits firsthand.

So you believe that America and other democracies are Evil Incarnate? Again,
thanks for the insight into how your mind is working.

No, I have been making the argument that we are engaging in the
wholesale manufacture of enemies by blindly thrashing around without a
clear plan or vision. The Bush administration's handling of our
military has been akin to a bully on a playground who got his pants
pulled down by a sneaky kid, and decides to cream everyone on the
playground because he's embarassed.

Right, I forgot you believe that Islamic Fascist terrorism only existed when
Bush was elected. And I forgot that we took out Saddam PRIOR to 9/11.

I was ****ed off about 9/11, and
I still am. I'm even more ****ed that we are not doing thing one
about it. We invaded Afganistan- good move. We were going to find
Bin Laudin, great. But that turned out to be too hard, so let's all
just skip merrily off on a side track to bring democracy to Iraq,

So, if the one person, Bin Laden, had been caught or killed, things would
have ended? The fact that the vast majority of the terrorist kingpins have
been decimated is a failure otherwise? You believe that a war on terrorism
is only on one front... Afghanistan? So you are privy to all the tactical
details that are going on in Afghanistan? Gee, from what my friends tell me
when they get back from Afghanistan, things have been difficult, but they
are holding nicely. The democratically elected and constitutional government
is growing stronger by the day. The agricultural drug problem -- opium
production -- has grown; which is the primary reason the Taliban fragment
keeps popping up. They act like south american drug lords, only with the
objective to get as much of the cash crop as possible to fund terroism.


and
in so doing, remove the only secular leader in the entire region.
Saddam was not a good man- but he was not an Islamic extremist.

Again, I appreciate you revealing the way your mind works.

He
kept them out, in large part, because they were rivals for his power.

Problem... he didn't keep them out. He funded them, gave them sanctuary, and
allowed training camps to exist. They weren't rivals for his power, that's
just a plain silly statement. What they were, were allies against the West.

Now we got rid of him- how does that help? Instead of a political
roadblock for the extremists, we have made them a new nest.

Unbelievable... but you stand in good stead with the Cindy Sheehan
irregulars.

That's right, it isn't the guy in rags in the small village doing it.

Then why did you say it was? Talk about ducking and weaving.

That's why I am saying we should not blow up his house and kill his
family.

That is only a relevant argument if that was the mission of our military.

Yes, I know it is more difficult to take the time to find the
persons responsible for terrorist attacks-

Even in house-to-house missions, accidental civilian casualties occur. Hell,
they even occur under police action in America; innocents are accidentally
hurt or killed while trying to apprehend a suspected criminal.

and that doesn't fit with
the American 'I want it NOW so Get 'r dun' ethic- but that does not
mean we should not take the time to kill the right people.

Again, that snot-assed patronizing attitude toward Americans. Your concept
of a fast-food military response is ludicrous, and obviously coming from
someone who knows squat about what it takes to accomplish a military
mission. It's too bad that your mislead concept about how he military
functions in Iraq is sooooo far off base.

We kill
the right people, and the problem is on it's way to being solved

News flash.... we are killing the right people. Lots of them.

- we play "Shock and Awe" by blowing the hell out of Bagdad, we just make
the problem worse.

If we wanted to really blow the hell out of Bagdad, there would be nothing
but dust there. But it is sad how you would like to ignore all tacticle
advantage that would allow our soldiers a better chance of staying alive.

Haven't years of total failure shown you anything
yet?

Again, it is remarkably telling the way you view America. Your words speak
for themselves, I don't need to say a thing.


No, I want a real war faught by real generals who have a sense of
diplomacy,

Right, you want a politically correct war. Hint: Generals exist for the
purpose of knowing the best way to kill as many of the enemy as possible and
destroying their assests. That was why Lincoln turned Sherman lose -- sadly
and with regret -- on the south. Diplomacy exists prior to war and when the
enemy is defeated. Generals worth a damn leave diplomacy to the diplomats.

.......snip of the self-serving crap.

We're not as tough as the media says we are. We lost Vietnam, too.

Really? Can you name one major battle that we lost there, one campaign? As
far as I know, the South Vietnamese lost because we departed too soon,
allowing the North to overwhelm their army. They weren't ready. In the same
exact way that your ilk want us to abandon Iraq today. It was your ilk that,
politically, forced us to abandon Vietnam prematuraly. It was your ilk that
threw bags of urine, vomit and feces on me and my comrades when we came
home. It was your ilk that accused us of reeking purposeful atrocities on
civilians as part of our mission. And it was your ilk who made us feel
abandoned and alone in our own country because of your political "views"
opposing the war.

Your statement is the most telling thing about your whole babblecrap
post..... your ilk want to set us up to lose, because you can't stand the
fact that America DOES see itself as winners, as the most productive people
on this planet, as a people with a generous heart and spirit willing to
stand up to evil and spit in its eye. And we don't ask "permission" to do
so.

So global opinion matters.

Right. That and 4.50 will buy a latte down the street.

We no longer produce our own goods- China
does.

China, and other countries do produce a lot of goods that we buy. But that
doesn't mean that we do not have the capability to put our industrial
capacity up to speed if desired. Don't confuse fiscal decision making with
industrial capability. The Japanese and Germans made that mistake at Pearl
Harbor.

We don't grow enough food to feed ourselves.

What planet are you living on? We not only feed ourselves, we export HUGE
quantities of surplus around the world. Again, you confuse trade and cost,
vs. capacity. Yes, we import a lot of some food stuffs, but we also EXPORT a
lot of foodstuffs. I think the grain farmers and fruit producers here in
Washington State would be surprised to read your opinion.

We have huge
debts that are held by other countries.

Because they get a great return on their investments. Hint: most countries
have debts from foreign investors. In fact, my portfolio holds a number of
such foreign investment.

We don't have enough oil to
keep the status quo.

That is fixable. Between shale oils, gassifying coal --- to which we are a
leading resource holder -- ethanol production, and beginning to drill for
known and yet to be discovered oil reserves, we can make ourselves far more
sufficient. Not to mention that with continuing technological research into
hydrogen fuel cells and other alternatives, oil may not be a primary fuel
source within the next twenty years.

What, pray tell, are we going to do when no one
will stand alongside us in ten years, or twenty?

And what will you and your ilk do when your self-serving delusion in this
regard never materializes? Yes, I know you hope it will, but hope is not
reality.

Will jingoistic
sentiment ..... snip

Again, the rest of your diatribe falls into the same multi-category of
self-loathing nihlism. It is a mark worn by your ilk as a badge of honor.
But the fact is that those who profess your beliefs do so out of a basic
hatred of the current administration, and not of some fantastical illusion
of what is best for this country. You have regurgitated a specific political
mantra without a smattering of anything based on historical context, in
ignorance brought about the blind hatred you feel toward those who oppose
your vision.

You have much in common with those who believe in the Biblical
"Tribulation". The difference is that your ilk get goosebumps of joy at the
future hope of America's doom. You wallow in the seething cauldron of a
hoped for American Apocalypse; you want to see the Horsemen gallop, cutting
their way through the goodness of a traditional America ---- a Traditional
America which embitters you and makes you retch in political agony. You
would rather see America suffer defeat than be victorious, when victory
demonstrates the failings of your political desperation.

You and your ilk are America's bitter spawn.
--
Dave
www.davebbq.com