I don't think moral superiority matters a hill of beans. If that is what gives you comfort in supporting the war, so be it. But morality is not necessarily == rationality (and I'm not too happy about the subject line US military == terrorists either).
Looking at the morality is a convenient way to not have to look at the reality. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Israelis vs. the Palestinians. Why is there no peace? Because neither Arafat nor Sharon would profit from peace. Civilians don't enter into the equation, except in the case of Sharon, and only to the extent that they seem quite happy to vote for the man who believes the best defense is a strong offense.
Undoubtedly, every dead Iraqi is "point" for the insurgents. Or maybe it's better stated that it takes a point away from the Americans, for I don't think too many Iraqis are in favor of getting blown up, regardless of who's blowing them up. Our failure to protect for the very people we're liberating is, I think, the clearest sign that we are losing. There doesn't seem to be any decrease in the car bombings or IEDs either.
Before the war, and still now, I was of the opinion that it wasn't worth losing U.S. lives to depose Saddam. But this was not a moral judgement. In fact it was probably pretty immoral, since I am quite content to let people suffer wherever they might be in the world, so long as it's not my own country. There's plenty of injustice here in America to keep us busy without trying to save the rest of the world.
But this is all moot anyway. The official reason for this war was never to liberate Iraq, it was to prevent the transfer of Saddam's WMD to terrorists. "We don't want the warning sign to be a mushroom cloud" or whatever it was Condi said.
It seems like now that that's accomplished, we've searched high and low and not found the WMD, we might as well just get the hell out.
The other lesson from this war is: If our lean and mean military can't cut it in Iraq, we have absolutely no chance of taking on Iran or North Korea without a serious increase in troops (or using nukes, which of course would be immoral). Maybe we'd be able to handle Syria, but undoubtedly we'd get some help (or the perception would be that were were in cahoots with) Israel and then we'd have the same problem we have in Iraq; that of being occupiers and not liberators.
Finally, I have significant doubts about the plan to create a democratic Iraq. The US has a long track record of subverting democracy, including the CIA coup in Iran in 1953 which installed the puppet monarchy of the Shah. You can pretty much draw a direct line from CIA coup in 1953 to Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. Why should things be any different now?
Maybe I don't have much in the way of morals. I guess the only issue I can think of where my morality comes into it is abortion, and strangely I'm of the opinion that baby killing is just fine, since said baby resides in a host who has the ultimate right to decide whether or not she wants to play incubator.
Okay so perhaps my response has suffered some "mission creep." To sum up: Your argument is that it's morally superior to kill civilians in the cause of a free Iraq than it is to kill civilians in the cause of an Islamist Iraq. I trust that you can at least understand how an Islamist would find his killing of civilians to be the killings which are justified. From his perspective, he is fighting for a free Iraq -- one free of foreign invaders. What can be a more moral cause than defending one's homeland?
Personally I say let's just stop the killing. Unilaterally. Maybe we can't get Islamists to stop blowing up their own country, but we have no obligation to stick around and blow it up more.
"Isn't knowing the size of the opposing force, and how many have been eliminated, the the easiest way to chart progress (or lack thereof)?"
Short answer: No
Man, all this time I thought it was just a matter of depleting the insurgents' spawn tickets. You mean we could only suffer the deaths of say 60,000 soldiers, and at the same time kill a few million, and we'd still lose? What is this, Vietnam?
Ironic, though, that in this conflict we get the daily body count of U.S. losses, but no mention of enemies killed. It's almost like we're fighting ghosts or the undead or something.
When a lion wipes out the other males, he's ensuring that his (stronger) genes are the only ones passed on. It's not slaughter for the sake of slaughter, it has a very clear genetic purpose.
Some viruses are so lethal that they tend to destroy their host before they can spread. I think Hanta or Ebola is in that category -- it's incredibly dangerous but a widescale outbreak is unlikely since it's so powerful. But I'll be happier with this argument if we stick to animals... otherwise we'll be talking about genocidal crab grass or something.
Maybe fire ants might be a good example of human-like behavior among the animals? I have this notion that they tend to kill off other bugs in the region (and you too if you're unlucky) when they sweep in. But I can't think of anything else that kills just for the sake of killing, or tortues its own kind, the way we do.
Well, it's happened on more than one occasion. How about the Bradley fighting vehicle that was blown up, a crowd of civilians surrounded it chanting and what not, and then the Apache came in and fired a missile at the burned-out Bradley. You can see that one on tape if you like, including the TV reporter dying as he's giving his report of the situation and the missile hits.
There have been at least one wedding party we blew up, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we blew up nine kids playing in a courtyard, going after the terrorists who was supposedly in the house. We missed the target on that one to boot.
But if you think about it, the "we don't deliberately target civilians" makes perfect sense. Rumsfeld stated emphatically that what we did at Abu Ghraib "wasn't torture" because, according to the famous Rumsfeld memo, it isn't torture unless you are inflicting pain for the sole purpose of inflicing pain. And even then, it's not torture unless it leaves permanent and meaningful physical and mental scars.
In other words, it's not torture to sodomize an Iraqi with a glow stick, if the one doing the inserting does so with the belief that his actions will cause the subject to break down and spill the beans. Sodomizing someone would only be torture if the *only* reason it was occuring was for the personal pleasure of the one doing the sodomizing.
Now, surely that doesn't prove anything, it's just an analogous mode of thought. But with logic like that coming right from the top of the DoD, I certainly wouldn't put it past the military to hide behind the half-truth that they aren't targeting civilians. Sure, they aren't targeting them, but they don't go out of their way to not take a shot just because there will be some civilian casualties.
This is the same approach that the Israelis have, who routinely kill Palestinian civilians when going after Palestinian militants.
As for news sources, at least Al Jazeera provides the body count. But I haven't really found a good one yet. The best seems to be blogs and letters home from people on the ground. That stuff gives you a sense of what it's like, what's going on.
For fairness I should point out that we aren't the only ones killing civilians. A recent car bombing killed something like 28 children, celebrating the opening of the new police station. The kids were hanging out hoping American soldiers would arrive and give them candy.
Though, if you apply the Israeli logic, those kids were unfortunate but necessary losses to destroy a headquarters building of the enemy forces. They weren't the target of the car bomb, the police station was. The Americans would surely add "we had good intelligence that military personnel were inside." (Can we really buy that "good intelligence" story after not finding any WMD? After falling asleep at the switch on 9/11? Sorry I guess my opinions are showing.)
Hey, it's war, bad things happen.;)
But don't worry too much, Bush will fly into Baghdad next month with another plastic turkey. It will warm our hearts and make us be thankful for what we have.
It was never intended to kill civilians. Ah, the "not my intentions" dodge.
Sure, we don't target civilians. But we have a proven track record of killing civilians, based on rather shoddy intelligence.
The lack of intention to kill civilians doesn't amount for much. Take this real-world example:
Iraqi: "The bad terrorist is in that apartment building."
Pentagon: "Okay, thanks."
Pentagon bombs said building at 2AM when everyone is likely to be sleeping.
Then it turns out there were four other families living there. (Along with the terrorist, and his family, including young children.) Result: One dead terrorists, 20 dead civilians.
Pentagon: "We do not deliberately target civilans."
Is the Pentagon lying? Technically, no. The civilians were never the target. But there is a very high tolerance for collateral damage. Perhaps far more than you realize.
Just to point out quickly: The WTC in NYC would be considered a "dual-use" target by the penagon (communication and transportation infrastrucure) and the Pentagon is clearly a valid military target. Arguably, the White House or Capitol is as well.
Now, the way these targets were attacked, in my opinion, is what makes the attacks of 9/11 terrorism and not war. And the fact that al Qaeda isn't a country... so it's sort of impossible for them to declare war. Despite Osama bin Laden doing that several times in the 1990s.
Hmm this is getting kind of confusing. Well this much is clear, this is not your Grandfather's war. But if your dad was in Vietnam, it's more that kind of war. Which was always just a "police action" if I recall correctly.
War is defined as a conflict between two nations. Indeed 9/11 was not an act of War, and neither is our response. Well, it was a war, briefly, first against the Taliban and then against Iraq, but at this point it's not a war, in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I guess you'd have to call it counter-terrorism. War on Terror is kind of a disingenuous thing to call it... and if you add in the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, looks like we're about to go 0 for 3.
That reminds me of my favorite quote from General Wesley Clark, which is rather politicized, but ultimately true I believe:
What I learned in the armed forces is this: To be, to be really cold about it, the Republicans are mostly interested in weapons systems. The Democrats are interested in people. And the more senior I became in the armed forces, the more clear it became to me that it's the people that matter the most, not the weapons systems. -- Wesley Clark, Nov 5 2003
As you might be able to imagine this causes several problems. The largest of these is the man... at the top. Remember that this person generally has little or no experience in distributing information in any meaningful way
Agreed, but I think it runs far deeper than that.
In our present circumstance, the problems with the Man At The Top are best expressed in his own words:
I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes. -- George W. Bush on avoiding Vietnam, 1990.
I would not expect a man with that selfish, cowardly attitude towards serving in his country's uniform to have a realistic grasp of the myriad challenges of military conflict.
The are a large number (50%?) of the "resistance" are really just jihadists from neighboring countries that are there to "kill the infidels"
Which demonstrates, in my opinion, the biggest failure of the occupation: Disbanding the Iraqi army. Or rather, not forming it again as quickly as possible, including bringing in some of Saddam's generals who are respected leaders among the soldiers.
Bremer took de-Baathification too far. Way too far. Can you imagine how France would have looked if de Gaulle had sent every government official from the Vichy regime to prison? There would be noone left to run the country. The common folk would be stipped of the illusion that, while the average Frenchman was tacitly complicit with the Nazi occupation, they were "resisting" by what little means they had.
Utterly erasing the army, and deposing the thousands of mid-level Baathists for the "crime" of doing a good job running the country for a bad leader, crushed the Iraqi spirit and sense of nationality.
Radical Islam has filled that void.
By the way, I pretty much borrowed that argument directly from "Long Shadows" by Erna Paris, ISBN 1-58234-210-5, which deals with how societies pick up the pieces after the horrors of war.
Well, that's a good start, but your best bet is to trust noone and think for yourself.
For example, and on the obvious side of the coin, I won't trust anything Condoleeza Rice has to say when everything she's said about Iraq has turned out to be false.
With respect to the Dan Rather memos, it's quite possible that the memos are fake but the story is true. Sure, the messenger has been shot, and rightfully so. That doesn't mean much to me.
I'll leave IBC out of this. But from the point of view of the Pentagon, I simply don't understand their statements that they don't know or even care how many enemy they kill.
I mean, how are you going to know if you're winning if you, in Rumsfeld's words, have no "metrics." click click
I think the Pentagon must have at least an idea, but they are unwilling to share that information with the public, for a variety of reasons that we need not debate. But if indeed the Pentagon isn't even tracking how many enemy are killed, I mean, what the fuck? Isn't knowing the size of the opposing force, and how many have been eliminated, the the easiest way to chart progress (or lack thereof)?
In fact, the sooner they start acting like human beings, the sooner we're likely to leave.
Ah, so they brought this invasion on themselves.
Only civilized people are allowed to have countries. Isn't that the reason we had to ethnically cleanse America of the Indians?
I would submit to you that human beings are the only species even capable of genocide. The lion does not kill the gazelle for pleasure, but for sustenance. So I'm not sure what your statement "acting like human beings" is supposed to mean, but you don't find too many examples of torture outside the realm of homo sapiens.
However, if they had been fighting a better opponent, there probably would have been more serious consequences.
Correct. Hence, the decision to pick on Iraq, with no WMDs and a rather shoddy army, rather than Iran or North Korea, with WMDs and bigger, better equipped armies, capable of fighting back.
Not to mention that if you want to compare Iraqis in Iraqi prisons, you have to compare them against those that were in the same prisons before the invasion.
So when Americans do bad things to Iraqis in Iraqi prisons, that's okay because at one time an Iraqi did even worse things to Iraqis in Iraqi prisons?
Tell me, how do you feel about moral relativism?
Your argument was making sense until you tried to explain away current injustice because somebody else once did the same thing. Two wrongs don't make a right, and a previous wrong doesn't give you the right to keep doing wrong.
The need for tort reform is but a tiny fraction of what's wrong with the u.s. healthcare system.
Do you seriously believe that if you eliminate or severely limit damages, health care will become markedly better? That one action alone isn't going to amount to much. In fact my belief is it will lead to a decline in the quality of care, since without the "big stick" of punitive damages and pain and suffering awards, medical companies will have no incentive to provide adequate care when such care is a negative cost proposition for the recipient.
I agree that the insurance situation is out of hand. However I think that has everything to do with profiteering by insurance companies, and very very little to do with runaway juries and excessive awards.
That girl that got her guts sucked out her asshole when she sat on the pool drain, John Edwards got her 25 million. Turns out the exact same thing had happened a dozen times. It takes a 25 million dollar award to make companies stop doing bad things. By contrast a 25 thousand dollar award represents what, about five minutes of operating expense? Great for shareholders, not so great for everyone else.
You have to hit them where they hurt. That is why, from an economic standpoint, a cap on damages is a windfall for large corporations and does nothing to help the little guy, who would be wiped out just the same by either a 25 thousand or a 25 million dollar judgement against them.
Anyway, just my two cents. When it comes to tort reform, the cure is worse than the disease.
Confirms what we all know...
on
Saving Huygens
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Government should be after big-time counterfiters, those settled in Colombia or North Korea.
Is it even a crime to make counterfeit U.S. currency if you're not in the U.S.? What would you have the Secret Service do, send in Delta Force and/or Arnold Schwartzenegger to liquidate the operation?
Taken on the whole, I'm sure the devaulation of U.S. currency due to counterfeit is more than offset by the fact that if you want to buy oil, you have to spend U.S. dollars, which keeps demand artifically high. (See Also: Reason For Invading Iraq.)
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Well, I sent off an email asking if those goal numbers had been reduced as a result of the stop-loss orders. That way we'll know for sure.
I don't think moral superiority matters a hill of beans. If that is what gives you comfort in supporting the war, so be it. But morality is not necessarily == rationality (and I'm not too happy about the subject line US military == terrorists either).
Looking at the morality is a convenient way to not have to look at the reality. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Israelis vs. the Palestinians. Why is there no peace? Because neither Arafat nor Sharon would profit from peace. Civilians don't enter into the equation, except in the case of Sharon, and only to the extent that they seem quite happy to vote for the man who believes the best defense is a strong offense.
Undoubtedly, every dead Iraqi is "point" for the insurgents. Or maybe it's better stated that it takes a point away from the Americans, for I don't think too many Iraqis are in favor of getting blown up, regardless of who's blowing them up. Our failure to protect for the very people we're liberating is, I think, the clearest sign that we are losing. There doesn't seem to be any decrease in the car bombings or IEDs either.
Before the war, and still now, I was of the opinion that it wasn't worth losing U.S. lives to depose Saddam. But this was not a moral judgement. In fact it was probably pretty immoral, since I am quite content to let people suffer wherever they might be in the world, so long as it's not my own country. There's plenty of injustice here in America to keep us busy without trying to save the rest of the world.
But this is all moot anyway. The official reason for this war was never to liberate Iraq, it was to prevent the transfer of Saddam's WMD to terrorists. "We don't want the warning sign to be a mushroom cloud" or whatever it was Condi said.
It seems like now that that's accomplished, we've searched high and low and not found the WMD, we might as well just get the hell out.
The other lesson from this war is: If our lean and mean military can't cut it in Iraq, we have absolutely no chance of taking on Iran or North Korea without a serious increase in troops (or using nukes, which of course would be immoral). Maybe we'd be able to handle Syria, but undoubtedly we'd get some help (or the perception would be that were were in cahoots with) Israel and then we'd have the same problem we have in Iraq; that of being occupiers and not liberators.
Finally, I have significant doubts about the plan to create a democratic Iraq. The US has a long track record of subverting democracy, including the CIA coup in Iran in 1953 which installed the puppet monarchy of the Shah. You can pretty much draw a direct line from CIA coup in 1953 to Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. Why should things be any different now?
Maybe I don't have much in the way of morals. I guess the only issue I can think of where my morality comes into it is abortion, and strangely I'm of the opinion that baby killing is just fine, since said baby resides in a host who has the ultimate right to decide whether or not she wants to play incubator.
Okay so perhaps my response has suffered some "mission creep." To sum up: Your argument is that it's morally superior to kill civilians in the cause of a free Iraq than it is to kill civilians in the cause of an Islamist Iraq. I trust that you can at least understand how an Islamist would find his killing of civilians to be the killings which are justified. From his perspective, he is fighting for a free Iraq -- one free of foreign invaders. What can be a more moral cause than defending one's homeland?
Personally I say let's just stop the killing. Unilaterally. Maybe we can't get Islamists to stop blowing up their own country, but we have no obligation to stick around and blow it up more.
"Isn't knowing the size of the opposing force, and how many have been eliminated, the the easiest way to chart progress (or lack thereof)?"
Short answer: No
Man, all this time I thought it was just a matter of depleting the insurgents' spawn tickets. You mean we could only suffer the deaths of say 60,000 soldiers, and at the same time kill a few million, and we'd still lose? What is this, Vietnam?
Ironic, though, that in this conflict we get the daily body count of U.S. losses, but no mention of enemies killed. It's almost like we're fighting ghosts or the undead or something.
When a lion wipes out the other males, he's ensuring that his (stronger) genes are the only ones passed on. It's not slaughter for the sake of slaughter, it has a very clear genetic purpose.
Some viruses are so lethal that they tend to destroy their host before they can spread. I think Hanta or Ebola is in that category -- it's incredibly dangerous but a widescale outbreak is unlikely since it's so powerful. But I'll be happier with this argument if we stick to animals... otherwise we'll be talking about genocidal crab grass or something.
Maybe fire ants might be a good example of human-like behavior among the animals? I have this notion that they tend to kill off other bugs in the region (and you too if you're unlucky) when they sweep in. But I can't think of anything else that kills just for the sake of killing, or tortues its own kind, the way we do.
Well, it's happened on more than one occasion. How about the Bradley fighting vehicle that was blown up, a crowd of civilians surrounded it chanting and what not, and then the Apache came in and fired a missile at the burned-out Bradley. You can see that one on tape if you like, including the TV reporter dying as he's giving his report of the situation and the missile hits.
;)
There have been at least one wedding party we blew up, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we blew up nine kids playing in a courtyard, going after the terrorists who was supposedly in the house. We missed the target on that one to boot.
But if you think about it, the "we don't deliberately target civilians" makes perfect sense. Rumsfeld stated emphatically that what we did at Abu Ghraib "wasn't torture" because, according to the famous Rumsfeld memo, it isn't torture unless you are inflicting pain for the sole purpose of inflicing pain. And even then, it's not torture unless it leaves permanent and meaningful physical and mental scars.
In other words, it's not torture to sodomize an Iraqi with a glow stick, if the one doing the inserting does so with the belief that his actions will cause the subject to break down and spill the beans. Sodomizing someone would only be torture if the *only* reason it was occuring was for the personal pleasure of the one doing the sodomizing.
Now, surely that doesn't prove anything, it's just an analogous mode of thought. But with logic like that coming right from the top of the DoD, I certainly wouldn't put it past the military to hide behind the half-truth that they aren't targeting civilians. Sure, they aren't targeting them, but they don't go out of their way to not take a shot just because there will be some civilian casualties.
This is the same approach that the Israelis have, who routinely kill Palestinian civilians when going after Palestinian militants.
As for news sources, at least Al Jazeera provides the body count. But I haven't really found a good one yet. The best seems to be blogs and letters home from people on the ground. That stuff gives you a sense of what it's like, what's going on.
For fairness I should point out that we aren't the only ones killing civilians. A recent car bombing killed something like 28 children, celebrating the opening of the new police station. The kids were hanging out hoping American soldiers would arrive and give them candy.
Though, if you apply the Israeli logic, those kids were unfortunate but necessary losses to destroy a headquarters building of the enemy forces. They weren't the target of the car bomb, the police station was. The Americans would surely add "we had good intelligence that military personnel were inside." (Can we really buy that "good intelligence" story after not finding any WMD? After falling asleep at the switch on 9/11? Sorry I guess my opinions are showing.)
Hey, it's war, bad things happen.
But don't worry too much, Bush will fly into Baghdad next month with another plastic turkey. It will warm our hearts and make us be thankful for what we have.
Reenlistment is a record levels. All goals are being exceeded, with ease.
You sound just like the Iraqi information minister!
It was never intended to kill civilians.
Ah, the "not my intentions" dodge.
Sure, we don't target civilians. But we have a proven track record of killing civilians, based on rather shoddy intelligence.
The lack of intention to kill civilians doesn't amount for much. Take this real-world example:
Iraqi: "The bad terrorist is in that apartment building."
Pentagon: "Okay, thanks."
Pentagon bombs said building at 2AM when everyone is likely to be sleeping.
Then it turns out there were four other families living there. (Along with the terrorist, and his family, including young children.) Result: One dead terrorists, 20 dead civilians.
Pentagon: "We do not deliberately target civilans."
Is the Pentagon lying? Technically, no. The civilians were never the target. But there is a very high tolerance for collateral damage. Perhaps far more than you realize.
Just to point out quickly: The WTC in NYC would be considered a "dual-use" target by the penagon (communication and transportation infrastrucure) and the Pentagon is clearly a valid military target. Arguably, the White House or Capitol is as well.
Now, the way these targets were attacked, in my opinion, is what makes the attacks of 9/11 terrorism and not war. And the fact that al Qaeda isn't a country... so it's sort of impossible for them to declare war. Despite Osama bin Laden doing that several times in the 1990s.
Hmm this is getting kind of confusing. Well this much is clear, this is not your Grandfather's war. But if your dad was in Vietnam, it's more that kind of war. Which was always just a "police action" if I recall correctly.
War is defined as a conflict between two nations. Indeed 9/11 was not an act of War, and neither is our response. Well, it was a war, briefly, first against the Taliban and then against Iraq, but at this point it's not a war, in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I guess you'd have to call it counter-terrorism. War on Terror is kind of a disingenuous thing to call it... and if you add in the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, looks like we're about to go 0 for 3.
That reminds me of my favorite quote from General Wesley Clark, which is rather politicized, but ultimately true I believe:
What I learned in the armed forces is this: To be, to be really cold about it, the Republicans are mostly interested in weapons systems. The Democrats are interested in people. And the more senior I became in the armed forces, the more clear it became to me that it's the people that matter the most, not the weapons systems. -- Wesley Clark, Nov 5 2003
As you might be able to imagine this causes several problems. The largest of these is the man ... at the top. Remember that this person generally has little or no experience in distributing information in any meaningful way
Agreed, but I think it runs far deeper than that.
In our present circumstance, the problems with the Man At The Top are best expressed in his own words:
I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes. -- George W. Bush on avoiding Vietnam, 1990.
I would not expect a man with that selfish, cowardly attitude towards serving in his country's uniform to have a realistic grasp of the myriad challenges of military conflict.
The are a large number (50%?) of the "resistance" are really just jihadists from neighboring countries that are there to "kill the infidels"
Which demonstrates, in my opinion, the biggest failure of the occupation: Disbanding the Iraqi army. Or rather, not forming it again as quickly as possible, including bringing in some of Saddam's generals who are respected leaders among the soldiers.
Bremer took de-Baathification too far. Way too far. Can you imagine how France would have looked if de Gaulle had sent every government official from the Vichy regime to prison? There would be noone left to run the country. The common folk would be stipped of the illusion that, while the average Frenchman was tacitly complicit with the Nazi occupation, they were "resisting" by what little means they had.
Utterly erasing the army, and deposing the thousands of mid-level Baathists for the "crime" of doing a good job running the country for a bad leader, crushed the Iraqi spirit and sense of nationality.
Radical Islam has filled that void.
By the way, I pretty much borrowed that argument directly from "Long Shadows" by Erna Paris, ISBN 1-58234-210-5, which deals with how societies pick up the pieces after the horrors of war.
Well, that's a good start, but your best bet is to trust noone and think for yourself.
For example, and on the obvious side of the coin, I won't trust anything Condoleeza Rice has to say when everything she's said about Iraq has turned out to be false.
With respect to the Dan Rather memos, it's quite possible that the memos are fake but the story is true. Sure, the messenger has been shot, and rightfully so. That doesn't mean much to me.
I'll leave IBC out of this. But from the point of view of the Pentagon, I simply don't understand their statements that they don't know or even care how many enemy they kill.
I mean, how are you going to know if you're winning if you, in Rumsfeld's words, have no "metrics."
click
click
I think the Pentagon must have at least an idea, but they are unwilling to share that information with the public, for a variety of reasons that we need not debate. But if indeed the Pentagon isn't even tracking how many enemy are killed, I mean, what the fuck? Isn't knowing the size of the opposing force, and how many have been eliminated, the the easiest way to chart progress (or lack thereof)?
In fact, the sooner they start acting like human beings, the sooner we're likely to leave.
Ah, so they brought this invasion on themselves.
Only civilized people are allowed to have countries. Isn't that the reason we had to ethnically cleanse America of the Indians?
I would submit to you that human beings are the only species even capable of genocide. The lion does not kill the gazelle for pleasure, but for sustenance. So I'm not sure what your statement "acting like human beings" is supposed to mean, but you don't find too many examples of torture outside the realm of homo sapiens.
However, if they had been fighting a better opponent, there probably would have been more serious consequences.
Correct. Hence, the decision to pick on Iraq, with no WMDs and a rather shoddy army, rather than Iran or North Korea, with WMDs and bigger, better equipped armies, capable of fighting back.
Not to mention that if you want to compare Iraqis in Iraqi prisons, you have to compare them against those that were in the same prisons before the invasion.
So when Americans do bad things to Iraqis in Iraqi prisons, that's okay because at one time an Iraqi did even worse things to Iraqis in Iraqi prisons?
Tell me, how do you feel about moral relativism?
Your argument was making sense until you tried to explain away current injustice because somebody else once did the same thing. Two wrongs don't make a right, and a previous wrong doesn't give you the right to keep doing wrong.
Reminds me of Douglas Adams:
What's wrong with being drunk?
You ask a glass of water!
The need for tort reform is but a tiny fraction of what's wrong with the u.s. healthcare system.
Do you seriously believe that if you eliminate or severely limit damages, health care will become markedly better? That one action alone isn't going to amount to much. In fact my belief is it will lead to a decline in the quality of care, since without the "big stick" of punitive damages and pain and suffering awards, medical companies will have no incentive to provide adequate care when such care is a negative cost proposition for the recipient.
I agree that the insurance situation is out of hand. However I think that has everything to do with profiteering by insurance companies, and very very little to do with runaway juries and excessive awards.
That girl that got her guts sucked out her asshole when she sat on the pool drain, John Edwards got her 25 million. Turns out the exact same thing had happened a dozen times. It takes a 25 million dollar award to make companies stop doing bad things. By contrast a 25 thousand dollar award represents what, about five minutes of operating expense? Great for shareholders, not so great for everyone else.
You have to hit them where they hurt. That is why, from an economic standpoint, a cap on damages is a windfall for large corporations and does nothing to help the little guy, who would be wiped out just the same by either a 25 thousand or a 25 million dollar judgement against them.
Anyway, just my two cents. When it comes to tort reform, the cure is worse than the disease.
Berlusconi sucks!
Am I to understand that if the bubbles were on the outside you'd have applesauce?
Is this like the tinfoil hat thing, where it MUST be shiny side out?
Government should be after big-time counterfiters, those settled in Colombia or North Korea.
Is it even a crime to make counterfeit U.S. currency if you're not in the U.S.? What would you have the Secret Service do, send in Delta Force and/or Arnold Schwartzenegger to liquidate the operation?
Taken on the whole, I'm sure the devaulation of U.S. currency due to counterfeit is more than offset by the fact that if you want to buy oil, you have to spend U.S. dollars, which keeps demand artifically high. (See Also: Reason For Invading Iraq.)
Okay Brandybuck, on behalf of the entire Slashdot community, please accept the following apology:
We're sorry you're a conspiratorial nutbag.
Feel better now?
Dear Mr. Stephenson,
Is it true that your books were not in fact written by you, but by another man of the same name?
(With apologies to The Bard.)
Really? If we stopped dumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere that would make it worse?
How much knowledge do you need before you take action? Take the WMD claims and subsequent invasion of Iraq as an example.