Leon wrote:


"Fly-by-Night CC" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"Leon" wrote:

In this case, you have to fight fire with fire if the other side does
not
abide by the rules. The enemy brought all this on upon them selves.
They
thought they could hide behind the Geneva convention but not abide by
the
Geneva convention. Can't have you cake and eat it.

I disagree Leon. Lowering our own standards will not further our cause.

It's great that we can disagree. I wish we could have higher standards
but
this is a different kind of enemy. They go after civilians. War is war
and
you simply do not want to be on the loosing end. If the enemy understood
diplomacy we would not be at war.

To parallel past woodworking conversations, consider Delta's woes. To
compete with lesser quality imports they apparently lowered their own
quality standards in order to compete against this perceived (import)
threat and in the process still lost market since a segment of the
consumers valued quality over price.

I think the problem here is that way too many in the U.S. feel that they
have a right to things that perhaps do not have a right to have. Delta,
and I am sure the labor union that its workers belong to are both to
blame. Call me a bit cold hearted but the workers manufacturing the Unisaw
and
other products here in the US are over paid plain and simple. Delta could
probably compete with a great product if it was not strangled with
overpaying its workers. While the workers probably have been loyal and
know their craft well, Delta has deminishing returns on its investment of
employees. Simply put, Delta could compete and build a better product, if
it could pay the employees what they are "really" worth. Lets get real
here. These tools are way behind the technology curve when it comes to
needing "know how" to manufacture them. The simple solution here is to
simply pay the workers what they are really worth so that Delta can
compete or Tax the hell out of the imports like the import automobiles are
taxed.

So what exactly is the tax rate on import automobiles?

And I guess the Japanese workers are also overpaid--the Japanese are moving
jobs to other countries with lower labor costs too.

How about the labor in the Third World is just _under_ paid? Because what
happens is that as soon as one of those countries gets any kind of real
economy going the labor rates climb right up to something approximating
First World levels.

The US needs to be the leader in human rights and conforming to
conventions and treaties - if one doesn't fit current times then take
the high road to change the agreements while still abiding by the rules
currently in place. An eye for an eye only makes the government look as
brutal and uncivilized as the perpetrators.

Again I totally agree, but I would rather win the war that has been
declared against us rather than loose because we were the only ones
following the rules.

In war, rule number 1: Survive. That has to be the first priority.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

In article ,
"Leon" wrote:

I blows me

Just the other day, Olive Oyl told me she was wonderin' why you haven't
been visitin' much lately.

--
Owen Lowe and his Fly-by-Night Copper Company
Offering a shim for the Porter-Cable 557 type 2 fence design.
http://www.flybynightcoppercompany.com
http://www.easystreet.com/~onlnlowe/index.html

"Nate Perkins" wrote in message
m...

Yes, I believe there is no proof that Iraq provided any aid at all to
the 9/11 attackers. Do you have any proof to the contrary?


I use tha analogy that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, smells
like a duck, it must be a duck. Not everything in this world appears as
black and white. Some times you have to rely on life experiences to make
your decisions. Iraq had its chance to avoid problems and it chose to
ignore that chance.


The attempt on Bush Sr was 1993. We already bombed the Iraqis in
retaliation for that.

And still this mess lingers because we did not do then what we are doing
now.

"Fly-by-Night CC" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"Leon" wrote:

I blows me

Just the other day, Olive Oyl told me she was wonderin' why you haven't
been visitin' much lately.


Ugh gug gug gug gug... Brutus has been keeping me busy. '~)

The radio audio clip I heard a year ago still echos, Dubya saying "He
tried to kill my Dad" but I heard 'Daddy'!

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:56:54 GMT, "Leon"
wrote:

The attempt on Bush Sr was 1993. We already bombed the Iraqis in
retaliation for that.

And still this mess lingers because we did not do then what we are doing
now.

"Leon" wrote:

I use tha analogy that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, smells
like a duck, it must be a duck. Not everything in this world appears as
black and white. Some times you have to rely on life experiences to make
your decisions. Iraq had its chance to avoid problems and it chose to
ignore that chance.

I agree that not everything is black and white. But faulty logic like
yours is pretty obvious to spot. The fact is that our stated reasons
for going to war were bogus. Our intelligence on Iraq was all screwed
up. We have a bunch of guys running the government who think that
pretty much everything "looks like a duck."

The attempt on Bush Sr was 1993. We already bombed the Iraqis in
retaliation for that.

And still this mess lingers because we did not do then what we are doing
now.

I must have missed the part of Bush's election campaign where he
promised he would invade Iraq for what happened in 1993. If he had
really told the people that was his plan, somehow I don't think he
would be President now.

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 20:36:14 -0500, Morris Dovey
wrote:

let's not
forget the heritage(s) from which they drew many of their best
ideas...

Heritage ? A lot of it was Tom Paine, making it up on the spur of the
moment.

The sad part is that a war of liberation from a colonial king turned
into a war of independence instead. Imagine if both populations had
turned against the king instead of being set against each other. The
French revolution, without the threat of English intervention to turn
it into a police state afterwards.

--
Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 21:11:23 GMT, "Joseph Smith"
wrote:

Same way with the Geneva Convention. None of our advesaries have ever
followed it.

The Geneva convention is almost always followed, because it's
implemented by people who know damn well that they might themselves be
in need of it all too soon.

Armies may abuse civilians (and I note that they've finally coughed to
Srebrenica) , but it's most rare for the solidery to begin abuse of
other soldiers.

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 01:46:51 +0100, Andy Dingley wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 21:11:23 GMT, "Joseph Smith"
wrote:

Same way with the Geneva Convention. None of our advesaries have ever
followed it.

The Geneva convention is almost always followed, because it's implemented
by people who know damn well that they might themselves be in need of it
all too soon.

Armies may abuse civilians (and I note that they've finally coughed to
Srebrenica) , but it's most rare for the solidery to begin abuse of other
soldiers.

Errrr, maybe you could list the wars since the Geneve Conventions were put
in place where both sides have strictly adhered to them?

-Doug

--
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples
then you and I will still each have one apple.
But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these
ideas,then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw

"Larry Blanchard" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
Same way with the Geneva Convention. None of our advesaries have ever
followed it.

Actually, the Germans stuck to it pretty well in WWII, as did
we. Neither side was perfect, but I personally talked to German
POWs and to US GIs who'd been prisoners.


Do you think the Jews would agree with that statement?

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 04:29:53 GMT, "Leon"
wrote:

Do you think the Jews would agree with that statement?

Jewish civilians weren't protected by the Geneva conventions.
Attrocities like that were such an aberration at the time of drafting
that they're simply outside the scope of Geneva.

One of the Nurnberg defences was that German soldiers acted no worse
than RAF pilots against Berlin or Dresden. This was rejected, partly
because someone else's crime is never a defence for your own, but also
because the Holocaust was treated as a non-military action carried out
by soldiers, rather than a military campaign. The much-quoted defence
that "we were only follwing orders" failed no only because there was
seen to be an over-riding moral imperative to disobey such an order,
but also because these orders could not _be_ valid military orders in
an operation that had failed to be "military" within the bounds of
military law.

Some cases that weren't presented at Nurnberg (and perhaps should have
been) involved anti-partisan actions on the Eastern front. In some
cases these _could_ be presented as legitimate military actions, and
it was their _manner_ that was under question, not their _purpose_
(unlike an extermination camp, which is basically morally wrong from
the outset). This is a much weaker legal case than for others, even
for those similar actions in the Baltic states that were carried out
by "civilian" "police" and were prosecuted.

There were also cases where western allied Jewish soldiers and airmen
were captured. They were generally (except for a few rare cases)
treated reasonably well as POWs and were not given the special
treatment they might have expected as occupied civilians on the basis
of religion. This was generally true for Luftwaffe prisoners, as the
Luftwaffe resented any intervention from other groups, mainly for
reasons of internal management poolitics. It was broadly true for army
prisoners too, although it's known to have broken down somewhat when
POWs found themselves under the forced labour organisations towards
the end of the war.

Sadly "Allied" prisoners have to be distinguished as Western Front or
Eastern Front though. Slavs captured on the East _were_ treated
primarily as untermensch to be abused with the worst excesses that the
civilians endured, not as soldiers.

One of the worst recent offenders against _the_Geneva_conventions_ is
the US' actions at Guantanamo and the like. Note that the US is still
a country with a good human rights record and a broadly fair treatment
of other nation's civilians (there are problems, for sure, but only
the worst of anti-US bias can really equate Iraqi prisons before and
after the war). However as it applies to Geneva, then the US is on
clear contravention of it, when most other nation's attrocities just
aren't applicable to Geneva's rules.

This is one of the strongest arguments for an international court of
human rights, despite the US' objections to it. Geneva is just no
longer enough to cover cases such as Rwanda or Srebrenica.

--
Smert' spamionam

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 18:52:07 -0500, "Todd Fatheree"
wrote:

You might ask the pilots who patrolled the no-fly zones while dodging SAMs
if they were ever attacked. Is repeatedly firing missiles at our aircraft
an act or war?

Iraq didn't "repeatedly fire missiles at our aircraft" - they didn't
have them to spare. During the "no fly" phase, any Iraqi SA radar
that went as far as illuminating a target (and that's about as far as
they got) found itself attacked.

--
Smert' spamionam

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 04:29:53 GMT, "Leon"
wrote:


You missed the point. War is war and no one sticks to the rules.

Arguments like this are purely mental masturbation.

If the soldier/civilians involved in the exterminations had refused to
carry out orders, they would have merely earned the same for themselves.
Further, the survivors of the camps, who survived mostly because they
followed orders, are never considered as anything but victims, when they
could have, at any time, and by the complicity "logic" employed by the ivory
tower Onanists should have, stopped the slaughter, if only temporarily by
refusal or sabotage. I really enjoyed hearing a former sonderkommando, who
drug the corpses out of the "showers" condemning the civilians who "must
have known what was going on and did nothing" as guilty of genocide. As if
he had some means of plausible deniability to soothe his conscience?

Returning Ostarbeiteren and prisoners were properly rewarded by the Soviets,
as you may recall. You also may recall that FDR and Stalin browbeat
Churchill into denying asylum to any of them, even including a number of
former "whites" who had never been Soviet citizens who had been captured by
the Germans. At least your SMERSH reference would suggest that you should
know.

It's said that the victors write the History books, but too many modern
Historians seem to write as if the wrong side won.

The argument for allowing the mice to bell or judge the cat is absurd on its
face.

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...

One of the Nurnberg defences was that German soldiers acted no worse
than RAF pilots against Berlin or Dresden. This was rejected, partly
because someone else's crime is never a defence for your own, but also
because the Holocaust was treated as a non-military action carried out
by soldiers, rather than a military campaign. The much-quoted defence
that "we were only follwing orders" failed no only because there was
seen to be an over-riding moral imperative to disobey such an order,
but also because these orders could not _be_ valid military orders in
an operation that had failed to be "military" within the bounds of
military law.

Some cases that weren't presented at Nurnberg (and perhaps should have
been) involved anti-partisan actions on the Eastern front. In some
cases these _could_ be presented as legitimate military actions, and
it was their _manner_ that was under question, not their _purpose_
(unlike an extermination camp, which is basically morally wrong from
the outset). This is a much weaker legal case than for others, even
for those similar actions in the Baltic states that were carried out
by "civilian" "police" and were prosecuted.


Sadly "Allied" prisoners have to be distinguished as Western Front or
Eastern Front though. Slavs captured on the East _were_ treated
primarily as untermensch to be abused with the worst excesses that the
civilians endured, not as soldiers.

One of the worst recent offenders against _the_Geneva_conventions_ is
the US' actions at Guantanamo and the like. Note that the US is still
a country with a good human rights record and a broadly fair treatment
of other nation's civilians (there are problems, for sure, but only
the worst of anti-US bias can really equate Iraqi prisons before and
after the war). However as it applies to Geneva, then the US is on
clear contravention of it, when most other nation's attrocities just
aren't applicable to Geneva's rules.

This is one of the strongest arguments for an international court of
human rights, despite the US' objections to it. Geneva is just no
longer enough to cover cases such as Rwanda or Srebrenica.

--
Smert' spamionam

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 13:38:57 +0100, Andy Dingley wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 18:52:07 -0500, "Todd Fatheree"
wrote:

You might ask the pilots who patrolled the no-fly zones while dodging
SAMs if they were ever attacked. Is repeatedly firing missiles at our
aircraft an act or war?

Iraq didn't "repeatedly fire missiles at our aircraft" - they didn't have
them to spare. During the "no fly" phase, any Iraqi SA radar that went
as far as illuminating a target (and that's about as far as they got)
found itself attacked.

Iraq shot at US and British aircraft in the no fly zones mostly with AAA,
but there most certainly were SA missiles fired also:

http://fas.org/news/iraq/1999/02/
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/25/iraq.attack/

-Doug

--
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples
then you and I will still each have one apple.
But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these
ideas,then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 18:52:07 -0500, "Todd Fatheree"
wrote:

You might ask the pilots who patrolled the no-fly zones while dodging
SAMs
if they were ever attacked. Is repeatedly firing missiles at our
aircraft
an act or war?

Iraq didn't "repeatedly fire missiles at our aircraft" - they didn't
have them to spare. During the "no fly" phase, any Iraqi SA radar
that went as far as illuminating a target (and that's about as far as
they got) found itself attacked.

--
Smert' spamionam

Oops. Guess you were wrong on that one. Apparently they also fired AAA.
I'm sure the American pilots take great relief in only having AAA fired at
them instead of missiles. I'm sure they also feel that being illuminated is
just a really fun game. How about this? I stand outside your house and
point a loaded M16 at your head. I don't shoot, just point it at you. Does
that make you feel good? Would you consider that an overtly aggressive act?
Don't be a stooge and start splitting hairs over whether Iraq fired missles
or AAA or just a few missiles or "hey, they just illuminated our planes".
The fact is they shouldn't have been doing ****.

todd

Leon writes:

In this case, you have to fight fire with fire if the other side does not
abide by the rules. The enemy brought all this on upon them selves. They
thought they could hide behind the Geneva convention but not abide by the
Geneva convention. Can't have you cake and eat it.


Neither can we, Leon.

Charlie Self
"The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the
exercise of his mind." Jacques Barzun

Oops. Guess you were wrong on that one. Apparently they also fired AAA.
I'm sure the American pilots take great relief in only having AAA fired at
them instead of missiles. I'm sure they also feel that being illuminated
is
just a really fun game. How about this? I stand outside your house and
point a loaded M16 at your head. I don't shoot, just point it at you.
Does
that make you feel good? Would you consider that an overtly aggressive
act?
Don't be a stooge and start splitting hairs over whether Iraq fired
missles
or AAA or just a few missiles or "hey, they just illuminated our planes".
The fact is they shouldn't have been doing ****.

The fact is, the no-fly zones (which covered almost 2/3's of Iraq) were
imposed on Iraq by the US, Britain, and France, not the UN. There is no UN
Security Council resolution that sanctions the no-fly zones (in other words
the no-fly zones were illegal under international law) and the Iraqi's had
every right to defend their sovereignty by firing on aircraft invading their
airspace.

Under international law (as if that is worth the paper it's printed on )
illumination by a targeting radar is a hostile act, like firing a shot
across the bow.

Search radar is not.

"Todd Fatheree" wrote in message
news
"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 18:52:07 -0500, "Todd Fatheree"
wrote:

You might ask the pilots who patrolled the no-fly zones while dodging
SAMs
if they were ever attacked. Is repeatedly firing missiles at our
aircraft
an act or war?

Iraq didn't "repeatedly fire missiles at our aircraft" - they didn't
have them to spare. During the "no fly" phase, any Iraqi SA radar
that went as far as illuminating a target (and that's about as far as
they got) found itself attacked.

--
Smert' spamionam

Oops. Guess you were wrong on that one. Apparently they also fired AAA.
I'm sure the American pilots take great relief in only having AAA fired at
them instead of missiles. I'm sure they also feel that being illuminated
is
just a really fun game. How about this? I stand outside your house and
point a loaded M16 at your head. I don't shoot, just point it at you.
Does
that make you feel good? Would you consider that an overtly aggressive
act?
Don't be a stooge and start splitting hairs over whether Iraq fired
missles
or AAA or just a few missiles or "hey, they just illuminated our planes".
The fact is they shouldn't have been doing ****.

todd

Doug Miller writes:

In article , Larry Blanchard
wrote:
With this groups propensity for off-topic rantings (yes, I'm
guilty too), how come I've seen no comments about the memos
surfacing that say the president can authorize torture?

Frankly, I'm appalled, and I wish the President would promptly and publicly
repudiate those memos and dismiss the people that wrote them.

My feeling is that we're in danger of becoming what we're fighting.

I agree.

Note that our military, in general, is opposed to this because
the Geneva convention and other treaties provide protection for
our troops as well.

Yep.

Only one disagreement. I was stunned, not appalled, when I first heard of this
statement.

Charlie Self
"The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the
exercise of his mind." Jacques Barzun

John McCoy responds:

"Leon" wrote in
m:

In this case, you have to fight fire with fire if the other side does
not abide by the rules. The enemy brought all this on upon them
selves. They thought they could hide behind the Geneva convention but
not abide by the Geneva convention. Can't have you cake and eat it.

Looking at it the other way, tho, it's kind of hard to take the
moral high ground and declare the other side to be evil and
odious, when our leadership appears to be just as lacking in
moral standing as the enemy.

Most of us would prefer to be able to say "we're better than
them" rather than "it's OK for me because they did it first".


It does seem to me that we lack the high ground when we react as our enemies
do. Yes, this is a different kind of enemy. Yes, it would be easier to do it
their way in retaliation. But where on earth did anyone get the idea it was
going to be easy, anyway? From our pols? From Mr. "I'll Bring Morality Back to
Government" Bush?

Talking to a friend who is 'Nam combat vet (USMC, Tet and a bunch else), and he
and I find some agreement. We're in ANOTHER quagmire like 'Nam, with no
resolution in sight. We do seem to develop leaders who have this type of
blindness, right across party lines.

Charlie Self
"The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the
exercise of his mind." Jacques Barzun

Leon responds:

"Scott Cramer" wrote in message
ws.com...
"Leon" wrote in
m:

Really? We were attacked by Iraq? When? Must not have made the
evening news that day. I know, they coulda- mighta- maybe- well it's
possible they were thinking about making weapons of mass destruction 'n
such, but we invaded them. They never attacked us.

So uh,,, you believe that Iraq was totally inocent, had nothing to do
with, did not help in any way, those that attacked us. The attempted
assignation on Bush Sr. does not count?
I guess I look at all things in general and come up with the obvious.

Yeah, in this particular instance, since the attack was based on what was
presumably going on in the field of WMDs in the immediate months before the
attack, Iraq was totally innocent. There seems to have been no al-Quaeda
involvement until recent months, which, no matter how you choose to tilt it,
doesn't ring true in tying Saddass Insane to the act.

When did Bush Sr. have an assassination attempt made on his life during his
son's reign?

Charlie Self
"The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the
exercise of his mind." Jacques Barzun

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 12:04:04 -0500, "Todd Fatheree"
wrote:

Oops. Guess you were wrong on that one.

Of course Iraq fired missiles. And if they did it twice (over a
decade), then I guess that counts as repeatedly. But you're trying to
inflate this into "going downtown", when it was anything but. The
allied forces had effective air superiority over the whole of Iraq,
and maintained it for years.

The one time this was allowed deliberately to lapse was, oddly enough,
when Iraqi helicopters were allowed to destroy those anti-Saddam
forces that were inspired to rie up in '91, then hung out in the
breeze to be wiped out.

The fact is they shouldn't have been doing ****.

Why not ? It was a sovereign country after all, and US and UK
aircraft were engaged in bombing it. I'm not disputing the positive
benefits of doing so, but the legal basis on which it was carried out
was _extremely_ thin.

--
Smert' spamionam

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 23:48:08 +0100, Andy Dingley wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 12:04:04 -0500, "Todd Fatheree"
wrote:

Oops. Guess you were wrong on that one.

Of course Iraq fired missiles. And if they did it twice (over a decade),
then I guess that counts as repeatedly. But you're trying to inflate this
into "going downtown", when it was anything but. The allied forces had
effective air superiority over the whole of Iraq, and maintained it for
years.

Well, it was more than twice. here's a SAM firing from 1996:

http://www.emergency.com/iraqusa.htm

And here's 20 more from late '98 and '99:

http://www.afa.org/magazine/July2000/0700deploy_print.html

And here's couple more with one SAM fired at a plane in Kuwaiti territory:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b5f5a7342af.htm

How much is enough?

-Doug

--
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples
then you and I will still each have one apple.
But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these
ideas,then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw

Andy Dingley wrote:
: On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 20:07:16 GMT, Bay Area Dave wrote:

:Since he was elected, let
:him do the job as he sees fit.

: No, how about holding him to the standards of the Constitution ?
: There are limits, even for a president.


Not according to the memos Ashcroft refuses to provide to Congress!


: I envy the US its constitution, and the fabled "checks and balances"
: of its government. On the whole I prefer the UK's political system to
: that of the USA, but your founding fathers did a damn good job on this
: bit.

Too bad the current administration is doing it's damndest to gut them.

-- Andy Barss

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 06:50:11 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Barss wrote:
Andy Dingley wrote:

: I envy the US its constitution, and the fabled "checks and balances"
: of its government. On the whole I prefer the UK's political system to
: that of the USA, but your founding fathers did a damn good job on this
: bit.

Too bad the current administration is doing it's damndest to gut them.

Like the last administration with the Second Amendment, you mean?