Now, regardless of if it is true or not, your reasoning is probably more flawed than his statement. Unless you really think that weapons all come in giant crates with WEAPONS painted on the top in plain view of satellites and clearly marked inventory sheets. The really ironic part of your post is that you point out the conspiracy theorists...yet show your own paranoia believing that every inch of the earth is under that close of a constant watch.
The only disagreement I have is the hiding of arms. He buried french jets whole. Jets that he shouldn't have been able to purchase for one. So yes france and russia were selling crap they shouldn't have, not that their crimes justify the whole mess, they were selling conventional weaponry anyways not WMD stuff (except MAYBE the missiles the french were getting Iraq through Korea but the missile itself isn't WMD stuff, and as far as I know warheads weren't part of the deal). We had Iraqi's defect over the years (like many years ago, not during this nonsense) telling us exactly where stuff was. One scientist defected said he had been hiding enrichment parts under a rose bush in his back yard for some years because of the sanctions. You are right that Saddam was more concerned about staying dictator than arming neighbors, but selling off extra crap so that noone finds it gets him a return on his investment and keeps pressure from the UN away. Because it would have taken a mushroom cloud for the UN to actually do anything about it. He knew that as long as he laid low it would eventually go away (well except for that whole pesky part where the US elected a cowboy who would ignore the UN and come anyways). But as I said, I don't believe he had any WMD type stuff operational at all, I believe it was taken apart and buried in the sand until he could pull it back out and start working on it again. So no "immediate" threat as Shrubco announced it was.
Beyond that, you said exactly what I said about the neocons. They are not conservative by any stretch of the imagination. They are insane, paranoid, and driving this truck down a long and dark road.
Yup... Pretty much how it went down... Doesn't mean France and Russia weren't covering their asses. You are absolutely right though, as soon as it looked like they were going to be defeated, they started their song and dance with falsified information that eventually lead to the "well you already said we could so it doesn't matter" and then off we went without any kind of approval. We haven't found any evidence of a operational WMD program (though I have no doubt the evidence that they had one at one point in time long ago is buried away hidden all over the place) What we do know is that we have dug up a bunch of French and Russian stuff that wasn't supposed to be there...but seriously, do you think this administration would be THAT stupid to try and point a finger at ANYONE for doing ANYTHING at this point?:)
The whole Iraq tie in thing with bin Laden and 9/11 is a travesty and assault on reason. Something like 70% of Americans believe that Saddam and Osama were partners. When Osama wants Saddam dead probably more then the US ever has or ever will. Saddam has a thing for killing muslims of the same branch that bin Laden comes from...so I don't really see them working together.
Many of us did. The problem is that the rational ones were outnumbered by the ones by the ones suddenly terrified of anyone with dark skin, or afraid to be in an air port. The ones that can't get past the reality that you are unbelievably more likely to die in a car crash on your drive to work than in any kind of terrorist related activity. Fear can be a powerful motivator.
Except the WMD thing. They are there (or were and sold off) and are likely still buried in various parts. The real lie involves that they were somehow in a position to make any real use of it in a short time frame. They have had the stuff for a long while, they just buried it a long while ago. Iraq is a big place, and combing every inch of sand where it could be buried isn't exactly a top priority at the moment. There are some really funny photographs of french jets being dug up that were completely buried. So most WMD parts are considerably smaller, so if they buried entire jets, I think its safe to assume that they buried the more valuable stuff too. Now again, the nonsense about "immediate threat" is a load of horseshit meant to justify some cowboy nonsense.
Its not a right wing talking point because the right wing does the same bullshit. That is why it never became much of an issue. And no I will not stop bitching at France and Russia for doing that shit, just because you assume that I didn't mention the US that I'm not irritated at the US doing the same.
This is the classic leftist crap that I have a problem with. Just because I disagree that the French and Russians were not some moral high horse trying to stop the evil empire, and that they just like everyone else, are trying to cover their own greedy asses I suddenly become a right win flag waving Bush supporter. Just because the right wing is wrong, doesn't mean the left is any more right, they can be equally wrong too, and they are more often than not.
Now, I am not even going to try to claim the US isn't a major arms dealer, because that would be stupid and everyone pretty much knows we are. What I will point out is that a pretty chart on wikipedia is hardly authoritative, and even beyond that, if we knew the source and destination of every illegal arms deal, well, this whole mess of sorting out who has been selling what to nations who aren't supposed to be buying would be a tad bit easier to sort out don't you think? So I am gunna go out on a limb here and say that a chart on wikipedia likely does not reflect all of the illegal arms dealings, and more than likely reflects the legal arms trade.
I'm not even going to complain about you using that whole "neocon" buzzword, as the Republican party has been highjacked big time by a new breed of paranoid old men, except that they are ANYTHING but conservative, they are big spenders and very demanding with their "morality laws" crap. Libertarians seem to be the group retaining their sanity for the most part from these days and are close to what Republicans actually used to believe in once upon a time such as small government and less interference in daily life and seem to be gathering quite a large crowd of the more rational individuals with both D's and R's in front of their names. Hopefully someday soon we can get our government back from the power hungry greedy bastards that run the show and do such a bang up job of playing the left wing vs the right wing so that no one is paying attention to what is really going on. (Remember, the republicans took control of congress under a massive reform banner just like the dems did this time. Its the same thing all over again, a bunch of ineffective greed pricks paying lipservice to get the vote)
However, this whole "no WMD" shit is such an insane load of crap. They are there, we know they are there, everyone but the protesting populace basically understand they are there...we had Iraqis defecting over to the US telling us where they were...and THAT is the catch. The real lie isn't that they had WMD, that they had nuclear research programs, or that they had biological research (we know they did because they got great deals of samples on sale from the CDC right here in the US under the lies of legitimate research). The big lie is that they were any kind of immediate threat, that they had ANY of these weapons online and operational. All their WMD crap was sold off to neighboring terrorists or buried in that vast expanse of a country, and anyone who knew where it is is probably long gone or dead, and all papers are probably destroyed. An entire WMD program doesn't just get shitcanned just because the UN said so...its a huge investment, and they are going to keep or sell as much as they possibly can get away with. The real lie was the pathetic dog and pony show put on about how if we don't go rush right in we will all be doomed. When those lies broke down they started on the story about Saddam supporting bin Laden, good ol Tenet wrote a nice book about it, and his senior guys have all come out talking about how much of an incompetent prick he was, and how the whole terrorist/Saddam link was basically invented by him against all reasonable evidence. The sad thing is, there was more than enough
One would certainly hope, but as I have met people that are that prone to irrational upset, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. With a divorce rate of something like 50% these days, and the fact that it has become easier to get a divorce than to cancel with most telecom/ISP services...well...
I think you should probably go ahead and file the divorce now. If you are that upset about a $200 bill (its happened here, me n wife had words, but nothing even remotely close to divorce) all surrounding an increased frequency of communication with a pregnant friend....boy are you screwed if she ever gets pregnant. EVERYONE friends, family, calling all time time to see how everything is and chat about it.
Incidentally, you might want to do the math on what long distance calls cost. A landline can murder you just as fast if not faster on long distance charges than any decent cellphone plan.
I agree the US wasn't exactly playing by the rules either, mostly was just addressing the common leftist "See France is perfect happy anti-war funland!" when France didn't give a shit about anti-war, it was about not getting busted when we found the weapons they sold them illegally (and we did, some awesome pictures of french made jets completely buried in the sand) or any of the other evidence of violated UN programs, but this whole thing has been a unmitigated disaster from day 1. The US was also the first nation (ok not exactly the very first, its documented farther back, but first of the modern age) to use biological warfare on civilians (see smallpox blankets), we were also the first to use nuclear weapons on civilians. So any of the flag waving crap about how everyone else is too dangerous to own nukes is a bit, well, pot/kettle/black. I understand it was designed that way for a reason, but the problem is nuclear nonproliferation works completely counter to fixing things. You only get a voice with a nuke, and you can't develop nukes, so only us in power get to stay in power, no new people allowed. Creates a bit of an unbalance. Especially considering the high probability that Israel has hidden nuclear capabilities, and that the western world has pretty much sided with Israel on all things, there is certainly reason for the various Arab nations to be a little concerned.
The most wonderful irony of watching all of this unfold is Bush say "You are either with us or against us" and then all the lefties cry about how ignorant that is and horrible and yada yada yada. But God forbid you disagree with ANY leftist stuff, because if you do you are suddenly a mindless Bush supporter, because you are either with them or against them. *rolls eyes* I look forward to the day that all the little peoples of the world figure out that their politicians have been playing them against each other for their own stupid goals, and that it is indeed possible for all sides to be wrong. In the meantime the people that don't swallow left wing or right wing groupthink whole are left to be attacked by both mindless hordes:(
You must be new here. Facts are only considered fact around here when they revolve around the Bush/US is to blame for everything mentality. Anything that would run counter to that is ignored completely. Rational solutions to this lunacy are prohibited, we must respond with knee jerk methods to everything! Republicans are all evil, Democrats are all good, Service members are all murderers, all Copyright/Patents should be invalid so we can all have our free movies and music legally!
Someday I hope we can eventually get away from that nonsense, but not sure that its gunna happen anytime soon.
And the unfortunate reality sets in. So many years of the left and right wings convincing people they need government protection from this that or the other. The documents say "if it ain't in here, the government can't do it". That didn't stop them from legislating on education, on health care, on income tax, on corporate benefits, and any number of other things that the government should have stayed the hell out of. Now we have this monumental monolithic waste of money that does little more than sell new laws to the highest bidder. With an ever increasingly complex legal system that feeds this notion that our "Intellectual Property" and lawyers are more important than our actual ability to actually produce things and our workers.
In the meantime I think I will call up TIPS and see if they are still paying for terrorist tips, revolution of monumental proportions sounds pretty bad... I bet you are a radical jihadist who hates America because we are free with lines like that! *cough*
Oh and God told Adam he couldn't smoke marijuana. Right after that moron got us kicked out of paradise for believing his idiot girlfriend talked to a snake about the fruit she brought back. "Woman! None of the other damned snakes here talk, what the hell is wrong with you listening to a talking snake!" would have been the right answer not "Wow, the talking snake really said it was ok?" And God spoketh "You have had enough, get the hell out"
BZZZT Wrong answer. The French and Russians threatened to veto the war because they were violating international law by selling weaponry to Iraq. Now Germany on the other hand was right. They didn't violate the law, and they said "We are going to vote no, but go ahead and bring your vote to the table". Spain was right "We are not going to fight, but we will supply medical troops" France and Russia said "we will veto it so don't bother!" Aside from French jets, or French deals to buy large missiles, or Russian equipment that was being calibrated by Russian technicians days before the whole mess kicked off, you also have the various oil for food fiasco's with the same people that made Saddam very rich and enabled him to crush his own people. No France was not right, and neither was Russia. And now we have problems with Iran and North Korea rushing to build nukes because while Iraq was breaking the law too...Iraq had no nukes...Iraq got punished. France and Russia have nukes (and thus veto power) and were breaking the same laws, and nobody said crap. The lesson we taught the world is that if you have nukes you get to break the rules and no one will say anything, that your voice will actually matter at the table if you have nukes.
I think I understand now. You lump every Iraqi and Afghani into a huge bucket and say they all hate us or want to kill us or are otherwise hostile to us, which ironically is the same mentality that keeps all these problems going. No one wants to be bothered to sit down and figure out all the various little groups motivations and how to actually solve this problem beyond blowing it up. The left chants "they all want to kill use, they all hate us, we should leave" and the right chants "They all want to kill us, we hafta kill them first, or they will come back later". That and you are convinced that no good deed counts and that its all naivety, that and you have no awareness of what kind of good deeds happen, you just latch on to the candy thing and the disgusting reconstruction contractors. Which really no amount of discussion will fix, that is just a horrible world view. You accuse me of ignoring reality and being naive but insist that every single living Arab wants us dead. I would suggest you actually read about their culture and the actual history there. There are more than a few groups that are still very friendly. There are communities in northern Iraq where its actually quite safe for US soldiers to be walking around town because the locals have announced they will kill 100 jihadists for every 1 American killed in their areas. In Afghanistan there are quite a few of the various tribes that we supported during the Russian invasion that were oppressed once the Taliban came into power, and they are reasonably happy that the Taliban crew are gone.
Beyond that, I would point out that in 2006 there were more people coming from the 55-60k income than the 30-35k income. The vast majority come from the 40-55k range, which is more than comfortable living in most of the nation. The median income thing shows that the average household is making over double the poverty level income. All this chart shows is that the military comes predominately from the middle class. Below median is nowhere near the same thing as poverty.
Before you go apeshit on the income thing, I will give you a small thing here. 40-55k/yr can be kinda low in some areas, but with any kind of financial intelligence its more than enough to live comfortably in most places. The primary problem with 40-55k being hard to live on isn't tied to any kind of poverty or horrible state of the nation. The problem there is that credit is too easy to get. With 40-55k/yr its really really easy to get tons of lines of credit extended to you so you can buy all the happy horseshit you could ever want, and then be pissing away most of your income on interest payments.
For example, at that income its terribly easy to get yourself into a brand new car paying 300-500 per month in payments alone, and not even counting the fact that you have to have full coverage insurance (god forbid your driving record sucks, then your really screwed). All of this on a piece of shiney hardware that devalues at an astounding rate, that most people will roll into their next new vehicle anyways. The smart thing to do would be go spend $2000 or so on a used car. If you are paying $300/mo vehicle payments then by the end of the year I am $1600 ahead in car payments alone. A decent used car for $2000 will easily last you more than a few years providing you don't drive like a fool and do basic care and maintenance. Even a simple TV purchase will cost most people hundreds of dollars more in interest because they slapped it on a credit card with a rate like 20% and make minimum payments until the end of time instead of paying for it with money they have saved. Go look at a Sears card application, 25% APR and people pick that stupid crap up in droves because they will offer stupid little incentives like 10% off your first purchase that only mean anything if you pay off your card in full every month. But really all of this has more to do with a culture of "I want it now!" than any cost of living issues.
With that, and this might be a little bit of a shock, the military frequently won't take you if you have too much debt.
I'm not even going to bother anymore. I am saying that you shouldn't just focus on all the negative shit, but its perfectly clear that even if you were ever to see any of the positive you would simply discount it out of hand. I have said from the very get go there are problems, but they are getting blown out of proportion due to media coverage. You insist on saying that I am denying that there are any problems and they are all happy halo wearing angels. I am saying that the majority of people there are doing good things, or at the very least not involved in that fraction of idiots doing stupid shit, you insist that none of them are doing good things saying 50% of them are bad and the rest are helping them(incidentally, I think its safe to assume that the 10% of criminals would be in the 40% who wouldn't report not an additional 40%, but you are kinda showing your negative bias there). The VAST majority of bloodshed over there has no US troops involved. You insist on telling me I live in a fantasy land and refuse to believe the "Facts" twisted by the mass media outlets. Facts don't make very good evening news, or left/right wing propoganda, facts tend to be much less dramatic, taking those facts and putting enough spin on them makes for great sensationalist crap though. I have been there, I have seen the people, I have seen our troops, and I have talked to the locals, it is not at all like the crap they show on the news.
All your arguments about the Israeli crap has to do with the politicians and precious few US forces have been involved in any of that garbage. They have been playing these nations against each other for a long time, and you are right, that bullshit has got to stop, and its no surprise things aren't going as well as Rummy and crew said it was. They are starting to figure out that they have been getting played, which again is the asshats in charge not the military members on the ground, despite popular left reasoning they are not one in the same. You tell me I am building strawmen and then explain that the Arab men remember killed sons and brothers and dig up hidden AKs... I was talking about documented history where the locals were actually being very cooperative and helpful because *surprise* a group of our soldiers said "Hey, these are people too, with their own customs, and I bet we would get alot farther finding the bad guys by treating the average joe's like normal people" Again, you can't accept that any of our service members are people, only that they are cold blooded killer crimials. The vast majority of these people are not jihadists and murderers, they just look the other way, are threatened into silence, or otherwise scared that we will bail out like we did in the first gulf war when Saddam rounded up all the Iraqis that welcomed us waving flags hoping that we would help and then murdered them while Gdub senior turned his back.
Your link proves exactly what I said so I'm not sure why you think I am the one ignoring reality here. Unless you are part of the rich and powerful, then I might understand. The poverty level for a 4 person family is around 20k/yr. The vast majority of people in that graph of yours are 40-55k/yr which is FAR from poverty. Your little graph there shows more people even in the 90-100k/yr range signing up than people in poverty level income. I don't know about you, but I consider 40-55k fairly well off middle class, though not wealthy, and I consider 90-100k/yr pretty well off. I even agreed with you that the rich don't exactly line up to join, but I would suspect that if you totaled up all the people who joined from 90k/yr or more households the numbers are still larger than the number of recruits from the poverty level incomes. So just like I said, the military is predominately the middle class.
As far as your silly crime rate nonsense. Military communities (base housing, dorms, etc) have a lower crime rates than similar civilian communities. I suspect you knew exactly what I meant there, and just chose to bring in some nonsense to avoid a real comparison.
Don't believe it! Please! For your own good! Never forget Starcraft: Ghost! They will review their earnings on WoW and once again decide that all other things are worthless! Remember the minds that made all our beloved Blizzard classics have pretty much all bailed out!
You insist on saying all troops would behave this way because the conditions have not changed (incredibly false, but since I doubt you have actually been there I'm not even going to get into a discussion about the changing situation there) because a few Army and Marines folks in a survey. I'm not discounting the study, I am discounting your reasoning that all troops to include the services not polled would behave the same way and actively commit atrocities.
Maybe you didn't see it from the outside, but the guy that sent out that mass email of dogmatic crap got his balls in a bit of a vice over it. So its not like that behavior is exactly tolerated. In fact the Air Force is probably the most tolerant branch in regards to other beliefs.
I could say the same of your grasp of history. Vietnam was another trainwreck war. Instabilities set off by the French and then the US decided they needed to rush in to prevent the spread of communism all the while allowing the politicians to run the war from Washington. Stupid, ineffective, and got tons of people killed. To call those idiots the last sane ones in that mess is unbelievably blind. Those "sane" people were the ones that started that mess, imposed idiotic rules, did the draft, did the criminal exchange program, and then (just like today) changed their damned minds and relied on the incredibly short American attention span to become the heroes for pulling out of the mess that they started. In the mean time, the soldiers that were sent into that shithole came back baby killers, murderers, or in boxes, and were abandoned by their government and their people because some idiot asshat politicians fucked it all up. Here we are again, justifying how evil the soldiers are, for suffering through bullshit caused by idiot politicians who won't see a SHRED of accountability for the fucking mess. Just another generation of young men and women to be demonized for serving their country under the will of madmen voted in by the same civilians who think its kosher to treat them like shit.
You are clearly ignorant of military history and customs. The US military is nothing like those other armies. The US military has historically gone through insane lengths to protect civilians and minimize casualties. Standard practice in the Korean army...you fall asleep on post, they take your gun and kill you with it for your utter failure. Standard practice in the US military, you might get some paperwork and if it was a really important post you might lose some rank. That is pretty different. The US military will sacrifice hundreds to save a few, others cut their losses and there is no "no man left behind" mentality. It would be a hell of a lot easier if we just shot anyone that came within range of our rifles, but we don't do that. In the early days of the war the first special forces on the ground quit shaving to respect the local customs while they were going door to door, they allowed the men of the house to hide the daughters in the back as is custom and everything, it was incredibly effective, the locals were much more trusting and the forces on the ground were getting much more accurate information. Why did it stop? Because a bunch of pictures of these bearded US soldiers made it back stateside through the media and some idiot asshat political types demanded that our troops start shaving because they are supposed to be clean cut! And now we are back to kicking down doors and waterboarding as "viable" methods of getting information. Once again a nice cute political decision fucking it all up, and the troops bearing the blame for it.
I'm glad you work for military intel with those numbers about how they all want us dead. Oh wait? You mean you got that from reading the mainstream news too? Unless of coarse you are using the stuff that came from the various terrorist news organizations. You aren't on the ground there, You haven't been on the ground their, you only source of information is people who get paid to get you to watch, or who want
I'm a little surprised here. First, my only real point is that the government has basically made it impossible to discipline your kids. If you even so much as yell at them in public these days the cops are likely to show up. The whole kids going wild with crime comes from 1. Parents not actually raising their kids, and the ones that DO are frequently hampered by the government (discipline and abuse are two VERY different things, and its typically only the people without kids or with unholy terror children that confuse the two, if you smack a kid on the ass to hurt him you are wrong, if you smack a kid on the ass to scare the crap out of them and get their immediate undivided attention you are getting it right). and 2. Kids knowing that they can literally get away with murder with little more than a slap on the wrist.
More importantly I'm a little confused as to your upset here. Unless you really believe that I can sue you for the use of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6,7, 8 and 9, I fail to see why this part would suddenly be taken so seriously.
Global Warming - The far right is just as dangerous as the far left because they have both managed to turn this into an economic or emotional issue that nothing progressive will ever be seen. Dubya n crew burying evidence isn't much worse than the tree huggers drumming up stupid scenarios. Both are unbelievably dangerous to reason. Most of the neutral scientific minds I have read on the subject basically say this. "Its a real problem, we should start looking for solutions, but its not a doomsday scenario anytime soon and we have plenty of time to enact sane policy that won't destroy our economy or way of life" Too bad the knee jerk reactionary crowd has pretty much drowned out the sanity of that.
Iraq - Its too late to quit now. Hopefully the lesson we learn in vietnam is that when politicians run the war instead of the military there is no possible good outcome. The reasons for being there are sketchy at best. Saddam was a murderous asshat, and the delivering freedom lines are all well n good, except that Rummy was kinda in charge, and Rummy was kinda the one that supported Saddam, so it stands to reason that the locals would be a little confused and distrusting, unfortunately the American people are woefully ignorant of even the most recent past and no one seemed to catch that. In the mean time we have both parties once again playing politics with the war, trying to attach stupidity to funding, and then vetoing funding over said stupidity. The Republicans have the PERFECT scapegoat by letting the Democrats fuck this all up, because now they can say it all fell apart because of the Democrats, and not because of their piss poor planning and execution in the early days of this mess. I'm glad so many lefties are supporting giving the Republicans the free and clear exit strategy on their responsibility but not the war itself. Once again, the knee jerk reactionary crap takes over any rational thought processes and solutions.
Net Neutrality - Honestly I don't even know what to say here. Both sides of this trainwreck are such a mess that its pretty much impossible to sort out in any sane fashion. Personally I figure the best thing to do is stay hands off and let the cable and telephone companies murder each other while various RF technologies advance and eventually negate their stranglehold on things. In the mean time we just have to hope the various "intellectual property" crap doesn't get to far and that Senator "Internet Tubes" and his ilk don't legislate too much other stupidity into the mix. Incidentally I am thinking of a previously undocumented number that if you happen to use any portion of I will sue the shit out of you. Please discontinue the use of the following symbols representing a part of my intellectual property, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 9, thank you.
Supreme Court - This is another one of those things have gotten too stupid to have a simple fix. The belief that the constitution is a living document is dangerous at best. Yes it says "constitutional right to amend it" so yeah, you can change it...BUT it also says "any powers not enumerated here are reserved for the people"...so very simply put this means that you can change it, but only to remove more powers of government, not add them. The government does not have the power to add more powers, it only has the power to remove powers. The arguments that the founding fathers had no idea how technology or whatever would change are irrelevant because they DID know how government would change, it would attempt to grow its powers as every government does. The additions that ended things like slavery or gave the women the right to vote are stupid because all they basically say is "Yeah, we were confused by that 'all men are created equal' bit, sorry" This is why many of the founding fathers did not want a Bill of Rights, because they feared that eventually it would be used to justify the idea that we only have rights that the constitution spells out, when the truth is only the
Once again you say that 50% of them are demons, based on a random sample of CURRENT combat troops. This is flawed logic. If you are going to say 50% of the current combat troops have problems then we only have a disagreement about you demonizing them rather than doing anything to try and get them the relief they need (IE, less warhungry politicians, because the Dems voted for this bullshit just like the Reps but they act like they didn't). You also are back on this broad generalization nonsense about Christian Dominionists running the Air Force which is once again just ignorant, opinionated, and just as offensive as saying that Islam preaches spreading Islam by the sword.
The comparison to Vietnam shows a complete disregard or lack of education on the situation. Vietnam was fought by a VERY large portion of nonvolunteers, or criminals who volunteered for service instead of prison time, not exactly the kind of people you want out running about with weapons or you wind up with the kind of atrocities mentioned with a disturbingly high frequency. We have had an all volunteer force for a very long time now. Nevermind that the political interference in Vietnam was MANY times worse than this current crop of nonsense. "You can kill the soldiers that come close, but you can't bomb the factories feeding their war machine" Our politicians created an impossible to win conflict with their stupid target restrictions and then just fed unwilling people into a meat grinder for years, that is not at all the same thing, althought people like to claim it is. Further you seem to assume that the media spin of "see they would violate civilians, they hunt down civilians to hurt and not report" is correct rather than "would you report your buddy for shooting an unarmed civilian rushing the gate prior to proper identification and authorization". Not that either scenario is good, but one is a demonizing political agenda, and the other is a scared 18-20yr old with a gun, which do you think is honestly more likely?
You also seem to think that no Navy or Air Force personnel are on the ground in Iraq in combat zones. When in fact there is a great deal of them on the ground in combat zones. I am going to go ahead and guess you haven't actually studied war in any detailed fashion, or possibly even American warfare and military issues, else you might have chosen a more accurate number of years. One that is actually recorded with meaningful accuracy for one (5000 years, not so much), or one that actually coincides with the history of America. Don't EVEN begin to tell me that you believe that the Chinese military, Korean military (north or south), the Israeli, Iranian, Syrian, etc militarys behave ANYTHING like each other or the US Military. There are a lot of reasons to not like the current situation, but this moronic demonization of the military is just pathetic and weak minded. There are far more stories of charitable actions, of happy locals, of better living conditions, but they don't generate huge ratings so they don't get told in the mainstream media. Bad shit happens, kinda goes with the territory of dealing with large numbers of people trying to kill each other, that doesn't mean these kinds of abuses are the norm.
Look, if you are hell bent on believing that all service members are demons then that is up to you. I find it ironic that people are so quick to maintain that flawed reasoning yet attack the people who say all muslims are terrorists because a few idiot assholes strap bombs to their chest and blow up innocent people. The muslims that held prayer vigils after 9/11 barely got a shred of media attention, but the few idiot assholes burning flags in the street was the focus of every news paper and TV broadcast in the nation for the next 5 years. They never talk about the kurds in northern Iraq who have declared that for every American killed or kidnapped in their areas they will kill 100 jihadists. I'm not fond of this invade everywhere nonsense, I think this war on terror justifies insane privacy invasions is pure shit, and I think good ol Rummy did a bang up job of screwing the shit out of military members by cutting pay and benefits to the bone. People bitch that the military should just not follow orders and do their own thing instead, but they are ignorant asshats that don't realize that a military coup would leave them in a rather unrecoverable position, while at least now with democracy (marginally) in tact the CIVILIANS who are primarily responsible for this mess can be replaced.
If that reflected the average service member it would have to be a random sample, and a bunch of soldiers and marines in a combat zone are not a random sample. If you want to argue that the troops in the combat zone are stretched thin, stressed out, and prone to making bad judgments due to combat stress then I have no problem with that, in fact I think that was the whole point. But to base an opinion that all service members are like that based on that poll is ignorant at best. It didn't sample service members that have not been in combat, it didn't sample service members who have been removed from combat for some time, it didn't sample 2 entire branches of the military.
That is a sketchy statement. That is what they WANT you to learn. Kinda one of those relations to overloading of homework and having everyone sit quietly and work. They condition you to doing repetitive meaningless work, which is one of those core values of the corporate machine. (Note: Not all homework is like this, plenty of it is legitimate practice, exploration, or study, but a great deal of it is mindless repetitive crap that has little value).
The strange irony to this is that the ones that don't fall into the 'accept the bullshit' are the movers and shakers in the world. They dream up wonderful and great things to advance humanity, are ostracized and sometimes murdered, and then years later touted as the greatest minds of their time. Just look at what happened to the folks who dared challenge the idea that the sun rotated around us, or that you could sail off the edge of the world (In a strange bit of irony that is ultimately what space travel involves, but it takes much more planning and effort than the accidental falling off the world that was claimed at the time)
Double edge sword. If it DOES violate anything other than their own, THEY go down too. Novell + MS deal? So now Novell and MS can be charged for attempted piracy by stealing IBM intellectual property. GPL violators get life in prison for making embedded devices that COULD be related to life and death. This law will so totally hork things up on a such a massive scale it will eventually have to be fixed.
Look on the bright side, if this does go into effect and people start getting prison time I am reasonable sure there are more "pirates" then there are other crimes, and by the severity of the punishment it would obviously be more important to catch the pirates and lock them up! (They aren't wiretapping for gangs, drugs, or murderers, just copyright infringers and terrorists) So now we have jails FULL of copyright violators (see geeks)... Don't hafta work, don't hafta pay taxes, can't get productive jobs such as programmers, engineers, and whatnot. Everyone wins. The geeks get a nice cable TV + internet free ride of lan games and other geek socializing (look at that, geeks will socialize in real life) and the major corporations will get all the Visas they could ever dream of because all of the qualified workforce will be in prison! If there are any more REAL criminals left in the prisons at this point, the geeks can just trade tech support skills for protection from the guards!
If you believe you should pay for linux, and use linux, that is attempting to pirate and punishable under this law! That cleans up this Novell problem quite nicely! Further, all of these companies that violate the GPL and embed linux into crap without opening the source could be held liable, even more if any of those devices are life/death equipment! Life in prison for violating the GPL! Piracy will be such a risk that people will start to shy away from pirate copies of Windows, forcing them to cough up the insane prices or to find an alternative.
I am reasonably certain that this is one of those laws that will make such an unholy clusterfuck of things that it can't help but force some fixes to start happening. Of coarse I could be wrong and all the sheep line up to be slaughtered and we all wind up screwed.
My point is that nobody ever talks about the good things military members do. When its negative things its attributed to the military as a whole, when its positive (if it even gets mentioned) its only attributed to an individual or small group. I know its not safe there, I was there, it sucked. And maybe I just have a different view as I wasn't around the Marines or Army much. I am far more familiar with the good deeds that are done around the Air Bases in the area.
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Now, regardless of if it is true or not, your reasoning is probably more flawed than his statement. Unless you really think that weapons all come in giant crates with WEAPONS painted on the top in plain view of satellites and clearly marked inventory sheets. The really ironic part of your post is that you point out the conspiracy theorists...yet show your own paranoia believing that every inch of the earth is under that close of a constant watch.
The only disagreement I have is the hiding of arms. He buried french jets whole. Jets that he shouldn't have been able to purchase for one. So yes france and russia were selling crap they shouldn't have, not that their crimes justify the whole mess, they were selling conventional weaponry anyways not WMD stuff (except MAYBE the missiles the french were getting Iraq through Korea but the missile itself isn't WMD stuff, and as far as I know warheads weren't part of the deal). We had Iraqi's defect over the years (like many years ago, not during this nonsense) telling us exactly where stuff was. One scientist defected said he had been hiding enrichment parts under a rose bush in his back yard for some years because of the sanctions. You are right that Saddam was more concerned about staying dictator than arming neighbors, but selling off extra crap so that noone finds it gets him a return on his investment and keeps pressure from the UN away. Because it would have taken a mushroom cloud for the UN to actually do anything about it. He knew that as long as he laid low it would eventually go away (well except for that whole pesky part where the US elected a cowboy who would ignore the UN and come anyways). But as I said, I don't believe he had any WMD type stuff operational at all, I believe it was taken apart and buried in the sand until he could pull it back out and start working on it again. So no "immediate" threat as Shrubco announced it was.
Beyond that, you said exactly what I said about the neocons. They are not conservative by any stretch of the imagination. They are insane, paranoid, and driving this truck down a long and dark road.
Yup... Pretty much how it went down... Doesn't mean France and Russia weren't covering their asses. You are absolutely right though, as soon as it looked like they were going to be defeated, they started their song and dance with falsified information that eventually lead to the "well you already said we could so it doesn't matter" and then off we went without any kind of approval. We haven't found any evidence of a operational WMD program (though I have no doubt the evidence that they had one at one point in time long ago is buried away hidden all over the place) What we do know is that we have dug up a bunch of French and Russian stuff that wasn't supposed to be there...but seriously, do you think this administration would be THAT stupid to try and point a finger at ANYONE for doing ANYTHING at this point? :)
The whole Iraq tie in thing with bin Laden and 9/11 is a travesty and assault on reason. Something like 70% of Americans believe that Saddam and Osama were partners. When Osama wants Saddam dead probably more then the US ever has or ever will. Saddam has a thing for killing muslims of the same branch that bin Laden comes from...so I don't really see them working together.
Many of us did. The problem is that the rational ones were outnumbered by the ones by the ones suddenly terrified of anyone with dark skin, or afraid to be in an air port. The ones that can't get past the reality that you are unbelievably more likely to die in a car crash on your drive to work than in any kind of terrorist related activity. Fear can be a powerful motivator.
Except the WMD thing. They are there (or were and sold off) and are likely still buried in various parts. The real lie involves that they were somehow in a position to make any real use of it in a short time frame. They have had the stuff for a long while, they just buried it a long while ago. Iraq is a big place, and combing every inch of sand where it could be buried isn't exactly a top priority at the moment. There are some really funny photographs of french jets being dug up that were completely buried. So most WMD parts are considerably smaller, so if they buried entire jets, I think its safe to assume that they buried the more valuable stuff too. Now again, the nonsense about "immediate threat" is a load of horseshit meant to justify some cowboy nonsense.
Its not a right wing talking point because the right wing does the same bullshit. That is why it never became much of an issue. And no I will not stop bitching at France and Russia for doing that shit, just because you assume that I didn't mention the US that I'm not irritated at the US doing the same. This is the classic leftist crap that I have a problem with. Just because I disagree that the French and Russians were not some moral high horse trying to stop the evil empire, and that they just like everyone else, are trying to cover their own greedy asses I suddenly become a right win flag waving Bush supporter. Just because the right wing is wrong, doesn't mean the left is any more right, they can be equally wrong too, and they are more often than not.
Now, I am not even going to try to claim the US isn't a major arms dealer, because that would be stupid and everyone pretty much knows we are. What I will point out is that a pretty chart on wikipedia is hardly authoritative, and even beyond that, if we knew the source and destination of every illegal arms deal, well, this whole mess of sorting out who has been selling what to nations who aren't supposed to be buying would be a tad bit easier to sort out don't you think? So I am gunna go out on a limb here and say that a chart on wikipedia likely does not reflect all of the illegal arms dealings, and more than likely reflects the legal arms trade.
I'm not even going to complain about you using that whole "neocon" buzzword, as the Republican party has been highjacked big time by a new breed of paranoid old men, except that they are ANYTHING but conservative, they are big spenders and very demanding with their "morality laws" crap. Libertarians seem to be the group retaining their sanity for the most part from these days and are close to what Republicans actually used to believe in once upon a time such as small government and less interference in daily life and seem to be gathering quite a large crowd of the more rational individuals with both D's and R's in front of their names. Hopefully someday soon we can get our government back from the power hungry greedy bastards that run the show and do such a bang up job of playing the left wing vs the right wing so that no one is paying attention to what is really going on. (Remember, the republicans took control of congress under a massive reform banner just like the dems did this time. Its the same thing all over again, a bunch of ineffective greed pricks paying lipservice to get the vote)
However, this whole "no WMD" shit is such an insane load of crap. They are there, we know they are there, everyone but the protesting populace basically understand they are there...we had Iraqis defecting over to the US telling us where they were...and THAT is the catch. The real lie isn't that they had WMD, that they had nuclear research programs, or that they had biological research (we know they did because they got great deals of samples on sale from the CDC right here in the US under the lies of legitimate research). The big lie is that they were any kind of immediate threat, that they had ANY of these weapons online and operational. All their WMD crap was sold off to neighboring terrorists or buried in that vast expanse of a country, and anyone who knew where it is is probably long gone or dead, and all papers are probably destroyed. An entire WMD program doesn't just get shitcanned just because the UN said so...its a huge investment, and they are going to keep or sell as much as they possibly can get away with. The real lie was the pathetic dog and pony show put on about how if we don't go rush right in we will all be doomed. When those lies broke down they started on the story about Saddam supporting bin Laden, good ol Tenet wrote a nice book about it, and his senior guys have all come out talking about how much of an incompetent prick he was, and how the whole terrorist/Saddam link was basically invented by him against all reasonable evidence. The sad thing is, there was more than enough
One would certainly hope, but as I have met people that are that prone to irrational upset, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. With a divorce rate of something like 50% these days, and the fact that it has become easier to get a divorce than to cancel with most telecom/ISP services...well...
I think you should probably go ahead and file the divorce now. If you are that upset about a $200 bill (its happened here, me n wife had words, but nothing even remotely close to divorce) all surrounding an increased frequency of communication with a pregnant friend....boy are you screwed if she ever gets pregnant. EVERYONE friends, family, calling all time time to see how everything is and chat about it.
Incidentally, you might want to do the math on what long distance calls cost. A landline can murder you just as fast if not faster on long distance charges than any decent cellphone plan.
I agree the US wasn't exactly playing by the rules either, mostly was just addressing the common leftist "See France is perfect happy anti-war funland!" when France didn't give a shit about anti-war, it was about not getting busted when we found the weapons they sold them illegally (and we did, some awesome pictures of french made jets completely buried in the sand) or any of the other evidence of violated UN programs, but this whole thing has been a unmitigated disaster from day 1. The US was also the first nation (ok not exactly the very first, its documented farther back, but first of the modern age) to use biological warfare on civilians (see smallpox blankets), we were also the first to use nuclear weapons on civilians. So any of the flag waving crap about how everyone else is too dangerous to own nukes is a bit, well, pot/kettle/black. I understand it was designed that way for a reason, but the problem is nuclear nonproliferation works completely counter to fixing things. You only get a voice with a nuke, and you can't develop nukes, so only us in power get to stay in power, no new people allowed. Creates a bit of an unbalance. Especially considering the high probability that Israel has hidden nuclear capabilities, and that the western world has pretty much sided with Israel on all things, there is certainly reason for the various Arab nations to be a little concerned.
:(
The most wonderful irony of watching all of this unfold is Bush say "You are either with us or against us" and then all the lefties cry about how ignorant that is and horrible and yada yada yada. But God forbid you disagree with ANY leftist stuff, because if you do you are suddenly a mindless Bush supporter, because you are either with them or against them. *rolls eyes* I look forward to the day that all the little peoples of the world figure out that their politicians have been playing them against each other for their own stupid goals, and that it is indeed possible for all sides to be wrong. In the meantime the people that don't swallow left wing or right wing groupthink whole are left to be attacked by both mindless hordes
You must be new here. Facts are only considered fact around here when they revolve around the Bush/US is to blame for everything mentality. Anything that would run counter to that is ignored completely. Rational solutions to this lunacy are prohibited, we must respond with knee jerk methods to everything! Republicans are all evil, Democrats are all good, Service members are all murderers, all Copyright/Patents should be invalid so we can all have our free movies and music legally!
Someday I hope we can eventually get away from that nonsense, but not sure that its gunna happen anytime soon.
And the unfortunate reality sets in. So many years of the left and right wings convincing people they need government protection from this that or the other. The documents say "if it ain't in here, the government can't do it". That didn't stop them from legislating on education, on health care, on income tax, on corporate benefits, and any number of other things that the government should have stayed the hell out of. Now we have this monumental monolithic waste of money that does little more than sell new laws to the highest bidder. With an ever increasingly complex legal system that feeds this notion that our "Intellectual Property" and lawyers are more important than our actual ability to actually produce things and our workers.
In the meantime I think I will call up TIPS and see if they are still paying for terrorist tips, revolution of monumental proportions sounds pretty bad... I bet you are a radical jihadist who hates America because we are free with lines like that! *cough*
Oh and God told Adam he couldn't smoke marijuana. Right after that moron got us kicked out of paradise for believing his idiot girlfriend talked to a snake about the fruit she brought back. "Woman! None of the other damned snakes here talk, what the hell is wrong with you listening to a talking snake!" would have been the right answer not "Wow, the talking snake really said it was ok?" And God spoketh "You have had enough, get the hell out"
BZZZT Wrong answer. The French and Russians threatened to veto the war because they were violating international law by selling weaponry to Iraq. Now Germany on the other hand was right. They didn't violate the law, and they said "We are going to vote no, but go ahead and bring your vote to the table". Spain was right "We are not going to fight, but we will supply medical troops" France and Russia said "we will veto it so don't bother!" Aside from French jets, or French deals to buy large missiles, or Russian equipment that was being calibrated by Russian technicians days before the whole mess kicked off, you also have the various oil for food fiasco's with the same people that made Saddam very rich and enabled him to crush his own people. No France was not right, and neither was Russia. And now we have problems with Iran and North Korea rushing to build nukes because while Iraq was breaking the law too...Iraq had no nukes...Iraq got punished. France and Russia have nukes (and thus veto power) and were breaking the same laws, and nobody said crap. The lesson we taught the world is that if you have nukes you get to break the rules and no one will say anything, that your voice will actually matter at the table if you have nukes.
I think I understand now. You lump every Iraqi and Afghani into a huge bucket and say they all hate us or want to kill us or are otherwise hostile to us, which ironically is the same mentality that keeps all these problems going. No one wants to be bothered to sit down and figure out all the various little groups motivations and how to actually solve this problem beyond blowing it up. The left chants "they all want to kill use, they all hate us, we should leave" and the right chants "They all want to kill us, we hafta kill them first, or they will come back later". That and you are convinced that no good deed counts and that its all naivety, that and you have no awareness of what kind of good deeds happen, you just latch on to the candy thing and the disgusting reconstruction contractors. Which really no amount of discussion will fix, that is just a horrible world view. You accuse me of ignoring reality and being naive but insist that every single living Arab wants us dead. I would suggest you actually read about their culture and the actual history there. There are more than a few groups that are still very friendly. There are communities in northern Iraq where its actually quite safe for US soldiers to be walking around town because the locals have announced they will kill 100 jihadists for every 1 American killed in their areas. In Afghanistan there are quite a few of the various tribes that we supported during the Russian invasion that were oppressed once the Taliban came into power, and they are reasonably happy that the Taliban crew are gone.
Beyond that, I would point out that in 2006 there were more people coming from the 55-60k income than the 30-35k income. The vast majority come from the 40-55k range, which is more than comfortable living in most of the nation. The median income thing shows that the average household is making over double the poverty level income. All this chart shows is that the military comes predominately from the middle class. Below median is nowhere near the same thing as poverty.
Before you go apeshit on the income thing, I will give you a small thing here. 40-55k/yr can be kinda low in some areas, but with any kind of financial intelligence its more than enough to live comfortably in most places. The primary problem with 40-55k being hard to live on isn't tied to any kind of poverty or horrible state of the nation. The problem there is that credit is too easy to get. With 40-55k/yr its really really easy to get tons of lines of credit extended to you so you can buy all the happy horseshit you could ever want, and then be pissing away most of your income on interest payments.
For example, at that income its terribly easy to get yourself into a brand new car paying 300-500 per month in payments alone, and not even counting the fact that you have to have full coverage insurance (god forbid your driving record sucks, then your really screwed). All of this on a piece of shiney hardware that devalues at an astounding rate, that most people will roll into their next new vehicle anyways. The smart thing to do would be go spend $2000 or so on a used car. If you are paying $300/mo vehicle payments then by the end of the year I am $1600 ahead in car payments alone. A decent used car for $2000 will easily last you more than a few years providing you don't drive like a fool and do basic care and maintenance. Even a simple TV purchase will cost most people hundreds of dollars more in interest because they slapped it on a credit card with a rate like 20% and make minimum payments until the end of time instead of paying for it with money they have saved. Go look at a Sears card application, 25% APR and people pick that stupid crap up in droves because they will offer stupid little incentives like 10% off your first purchase that only mean anything if you pay off your card in full every month. But really all of this has more to do with a culture of "I want it now!" than any cost of living issues.
With that, and this might be a little bit of a shock, the military frequently won't take you if you have too much debt.
I'm not even going to bother anymore. I am saying that you shouldn't just focus on all the negative shit, but its perfectly clear that even if you were ever to see any of the positive you would simply discount it out of hand. I have said from the very get go there are problems, but they are getting blown out of proportion due to media coverage. You insist on saying that I am denying that there are any problems and they are all happy halo wearing angels. I am saying that the majority of people there are doing good things, or at the very least not involved in that fraction of idiots doing stupid shit, you insist that none of them are doing good things saying 50% of them are bad and the rest are helping them(incidentally, I think its safe to assume that the 10% of criminals would be in the 40% who wouldn't report not an additional 40%, but you are kinda showing your negative bias there). The VAST majority of bloodshed over there has no US troops involved. You insist on telling me I live in a fantasy land and refuse to believe the "Facts" twisted by the mass media outlets. Facts don't make very good evening news, or left/right wing propoganda, facts tend to be much less dramatic, taking those facts and putting enough spin on them makes for great sensationalist crap though. I have been there, I have seen the people, I have seen our troops, and I have talked to the locals, it is not at all like the crap they show on the news.
All your arguments about the Israeli crap has to do with the politicians and precious few US forces have been involved in any of that garbage. They have been playing these nations against each other for a long time, and you are right, that bullshit has got to stop, and its no surprise things aren't going as well as Rummy and crew said it was. They are starting to figure out that they have been getting played, which again is the asshats in charge not the military members on the ground, despite popular left reasoning they are not one in the same. You tell me I am building strawmen and then explain that the Arab men remember killed sons and brothers and dig up hidden AKs... I was talking about documented history where the locals were actually being very cooperative and helpful because *surprise* a group of our soldiers said "Hey, these are people too, with their own customs, and I bet we would get alot farther finding the bad guys by treating the average joe's like normal people" Again, you can't accept that any of our service members are people, only that they are cold blooded killer crimials. The vast majority of these people are not jihadists and murderers, they just look the other way, are threatened into silence, or otherwise scared that we will bail out like we did in the first gulf war when Saddam rounded up all the Iraqis that welcomed us waving flags hoping that we would help and then murdered them while Gdub senior turned his back.
Your link proves exactly what I said so I'm not sure why you think I am the one ignoring reality here. Unless you are part of the rich and powerful, then I might understand. The poverty level for a 4 person family is around 20k/yr. The vast majority of people in that graph of yours are 40-55k/yr which is FAR from poverty. Your little graph there shows more people even in the 90-100k/yr range signing up than people in poverty level income. I don't know about you, but I consider 40-55k fairly well off middle class, though not wealthy, and I consider 90-100k/yr pretty well off. I even agreed with you that the rich don't exactly line up to join, but I would suspect that if you totaled up all the people who joined from 90k/yr or more households the numbers are still larger than the number of recruits from the poverty level incomes. So just like I said, the military is predominately the middle class.
As far as your silly crime rate nonsense. Military communities (base housing, dorms, etc) have a lower crime rates than similar civilian communities. I suspect you knew exactly what I meant there, and just chose to bring in some nonsense to avoid a real comparison.
Don't believe it! Please! For your own good! Never forget Starcraft: Ghost! They will review their earnings on WoW and once again decide that all other things are worthless! Remember the minds that made all our beloved Blizzard classics have pretty much all bailed out!
You insist on saying all troops would behave this way because the conditions have not changed (incredibly false, but since I doubt you have actually been there I'm not even going to get into a discussion about the changing situation there) because a few Army and Marines folks in a survey. I'm not discounting the study, I am discounting your reasoning that all troops to include the services not polled would behave the same way and actively commit atrocities.
Maybe you didn't see it from the outside, but the guy that sent out that mass email of dogmatic crap got his balls in a bit of a vice over it. So its not like that behavior is exactly tolerated. In fact the Air Force is probably the most tolerant branch in regards to other beliefs.
I could say the same of your grasp of history. Vietnam was another trainwreck war. Instabilities set off by the French and then the US decided they needed to rush in to prevent the spread of communism all the while allowing the politicians to run the war from Washington. Stupid, ineffective, and got tons of people killed. To call those idiots the last sane ones in that mess is unbelievably blind. Those "sane" people were the ones that started that mess, imposed idiotic rules, did the draft, did the criminal exchange program, and then (just like today) changed their damned minds and relied on the incredibly short American attention span to become the heroes for pulling out of the mess that they started. In the mean time, the soldiers that were sent into that shithole came back baby killers, murderers, or in boxes, and were abandoned by their government and their people because some idiot asshat politicians fucked it all up. Here we are again, justifying how evil the soldiers are, for suffering through bullshit caused by idiot politicians who won't see a SHRED of accountability for the fucking mess. Just another generation of young men and women to be demonized for serving their country under the will of madmen voted in by the same civilians who think its kosher to treat them like shit.
You are clearly ignorant of military history and customs. The US military is nothing like those other armies. The US military has historically gone through insane lengths to protect civilians and minimize casualties. Standard practice in the Korean army...you fall asleep on post, they take your gun and kill you with it for your utter failure. Standard practice in the US military, you might get some paperwork and if it was a really important post you might lose some rank. That is pretty different. The US military will sacrifice hundreds to save a few, others cut their losses and there is no "no man left behind" mentality. It would be a hell of a lot easier if we just shot anyone that came within range of our rifles, but we don't do that. In the early days of the war the first special forces on the ground quit shaving to respect the local customs while they were going door to door, they allowed the men of the house to hide the daughters in the back as is custom and everything, it was incredibly effective, the locals were much more trusting and the forces on the ground were getting much more accurate information. Why did it stop? Because a bunch of pictures of these bearded US soldiers made it back stateside through the media and some idiot asshat political types demanded that our troops start shaving because they are supposed to be clean cut! And now we are back to kicking down doors and waterboarding as "viable" methods of getting information. Once again a nice cute political decision fucking it all up, and the troops bearing the blame for it.
I'm glad you work for military intel with those numbers about how they all want us dead. Oh wait? You mean you got that from reading the mainstream news too? Unless of coarse you are using the stuff that came from the various terrorist news organizations. You aren't on the ground there, You haven't been on the ground their, you only source of information is people who get paid to get you to watch, or who want
I'm a little surprised here. First, my only real point is that the government has basically made it impossible to discipline your kids. If you even so much as yell at them in public these days the cops are likely to show up. The whole kids going wild with crime comes from 1. Parents not actually raising their kids, and the ones that DO are frequently hampered by the government (discipline and abuse are two VERY different things, and its typically only the people without kids or with unholy terror children that confuse the two, if you smack a kid on the ass to hurt him you are wrong, if you smack a kid on the ass to scare the crap out of them and get their immediate undivided attention you are getting it right). and 2. Kids knowing that they can literally get away with murder with little more than a slap on the wrist.
,6 ,7, 8 and 9, I fail to see why this part would suddenly be taken so seriously.
More importantly I'm a little confused as to your upset here. Unless you really believe that I can sue you for the use of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
To respond with a little less venom.
Global Warming - The far right is just as dangerous as the far left because they have both managed to turn this into an economic or emotional issue that nothing progressive will ever be seen. Dubya n crew burying evidence isn't much worse than the tree huggers drumming up stupid scenarios. Both are unbelievably dangerous to reason. Most of the neutral scientific minds I have read on the subject basically say this. "Its a real problem, we should start looking for solutions, but its not a doomsday scenario anytime soon and we have plenty of time to enact sane policy that won't destroy our economy or way of life" Too bad the knee jerk reactionary crowd has pretty much drowned out the sanity of that.
Iraq - Its too late to quit now. Hopefully the lesson we learn in vietnam is that when politicians run the war instead of the military there is no possible good outcome. The reasons for being there are sketchy at best. Saddam was a murderous asshat, and the delivering freedom lines are all well n good, except that Rummy was kinda in charge, and Rummy was kinda the one that supported Saddam, so it stands to reason that the locals would be a little confused and distrusting, unfortunately the American people are woefully ignorant of even the most recent past and no one seemed to catch that. In the mean time we have both parties once again playing politics with the war, trying to attach stupidity to funding, and then vetoing funding over said stupidity. The Republicans have the PERFECT scapegoat by letting the Democrats fuck this all up, because now they can say it all fell apart because of the Democrats, and not because of their piss poor planning and execution in the early days of this mess. I'm glad so many lefties are supporting giving the Republicans the free and clear exit strategy on their responsibility but not the war itself. Once again, the knee jerk reactionary crap takes over any rational thought processes and solutions.
Net Neutrality - Honestly I don't even know what to say here. Both sides of this trainwreck are such a mess that its pretty much impossible to sort out in any sane fashion. Personally I figure the best thing to do is stay hands off and let the cable and telephone companies murder each other while various RF technologies advance and eventually negate their stranglehold on things. In the mean time we just have to hope the various "intellectual property" crap doesn't get to far and that Senator "Internet Tubes" and his ilk don't legislate too much other stupidity into the mix. Incidentally I am thinking of a previously undocumented number that if you happen to use any portion of I will sue the shit out of you. Please discontinue the use of the following symbols representing a part of my intellectual property, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 9, thank you.
Supreme Court - This is another one of those things have gotten too stupid to have a simple fix. The belief that the constitution is a living document is dangerous at best. Yes it says "constitutional right to amend it" so yeah, you can change it...BUT it also says "any powers not enumerated here are reserved for the people"...so very simply put this means that you can change it, but only to remove more powers of government, not add them. The government does not have the power to add more powers, it only has the power to remove powers. The arguments that the founding fathers had no idea how technology or whatever would change are irrelevant because they DID know how government would change, it would attempt to grow its powers as every government does. The additions that ended things like slavery or gave the women the right to vote are stupid because all they basically say is "Yeah, we were confused by that 'all men are created equal' bit, sorry" This is why many of the founding fathers did not want a Bill of Rights, because they feared that eventually it would be used to justify the idea that we only have rights that the constitution spells out, when the truth is only the
Once again you say that 50% of them are demons, based on a random sample of CURRENT combat troops. This is flawed logic. If you are going to say 50% of the current combat troops have problems then we only have a disagreement about you demonizing them rather than doing anything to try and get them the relief they need (IE, less warhungry politicians, because the Dems voted for this bullshit just like the Reps but they act like they didn't). You also are back on this broad generalization nonsense about Christian Dominionists running the Air Force which is once again just ignorant, opinionated, and just as offensive as saying that Islam preaches spreading Islam by the sword.
The comparison to Vietnam shows a complete disregard or lack of education on the situation. Vietnam was fought by a VERY large portion of nonvolunteers, or criminals who volunteered for service instead of prison time, not exactly the kind of people you want out running about with weapons or you wind up with the kind of atrocities mentioned with a disturbingly high frequency. We have had an all volunteer force for a very long time now. Nevermind that the political interference in Vietnam was MANY times worse than this current crop of nonsense. "You can kill the soldiers that come close, but you can't bomb the factories feeding their war machine" Our politicians created an impossible to win conflict with their stupid target restrictions and then just fed unwilling people into a meat grinder for years, that is not at all the same thing, althought people like to claim it is. Further you seem to assume that the media spin of "see they would violate civilians, they hunt down civilians to hurt and not report" is correct rather than "would you report your buddy for shooting an unarmed civilian rushing the gate prior to proper identification and authorization". Not that either scenario is good, but one is a demonizing political agenda, and the other is a scared 18-20yr old with a gun, which do you think is honestly more likely?
You also seem to think that no Navy or Air Force personnel are on the ground in Iraq in combat zones. When in fact there is a great deal of them on the ground in combat zones. I am going to go ahead and guess you haven't actually studied war in any detailed fashion, or possibly even American warfare and military issues, else you might have chosen a more accurate number of years. One that is actually recorded with meaningful accuracy for one (5000 years, not so much), or one that actually coincides with the history of America. Don't EVEN begin to tell me that you believe that the Chinese military, Korean military (north or south), the Israeli, Iranian, Syrian, etc militarys behave ANYTHING like each other or the US Military. There are a lot of reasons to not like the current situation, but this moronic demonization of the military is just pathetic and weak minded. There are far more stories of charitable actions, of happy locals, of better living conditions, but they don't generate huge ratings so they don't get told in the mainstream media. Bad shit happens, kinda goes with the territory of dealing with large numbers of people trying to kill each other, that doesn't mean these kinds of abuses are the norm.
Look, if you are hell bent on believing that all service members are demons then that is up to you. I find it ironic that people are so quick to maintain that flawed reasoning yet attack the people who say all muslims are terrorists because a few idiot assholes strap bombs to their chest and blow up innocent people. The muslims that held prayer vigils after 9/11 barely got a shred of media attention, but the few idiot assholes burning flags in the street was the focus of every news paper and TV broadcast in the nation for the next 5 years. They never talk about the kurds in northern Iraq who have declared that for every American killed or kidnapped in their areas they will kill 100 jihadists. I'm not fond of this invade everywhere nonsense, I think this war on terror justifies insane privacy invasions is pure shit, and I think good ol Rummy did a bang up job of screwing the shit out of military members by cutting pay and benefits to the bone. People bitch that the military should just not follow orders and do their own thing instead, but they are ignorant asshats that don't realize that a military coup would leave them in a rather unrecoverable position, while at least now with democracy (marginally) in tact the CIVILIANS who are primarily responsible for this mess can be replaced.
If that reflected the average service member it would have to be a random sample, and a bunch of soldiers and marines in a combat zone are not a random sample. If you want to argue that the troops in the combat zone are stretched thin, stressed out, and prone to making bad judgments due to combat stress then I have no problem with that, in fact I think that was the whole point. But to base an opinion that all service members are like that based on that poll is ignorant at best. It didn't sample service members that have not been in combat, it didn't sample service members who have been removed from combat for some time, it didn't sample 2 entire branches of the military.
That is a sketchy statement. That is what they WANT you to learn. Kinda one of those relations to overloading of homework and having everyone sit quietly and work. They condition you to doing repetitive meaningless work, which is one of those core values of the corporate machine. (Note: Not all homework is like this, plenty of it is legitimate practice, exploration, or study, but a great deal of it is mindless repetitive crap that has little value).
The strange irony to this is that the ones that don't fall into the 'accept the bullshit' are the movers and shakers in the world. They dream up wonderful and great things to advance humanity, are ostracized and sometimes murdered, and then years later touted as the greatest minds of their time. Just look at what happened to the folks who dared challenge the idea that the sun rotated around us, or that you could sail off the edge of the world (In a strange bit of irony that is ultimately what space travel involves, but it takes much more planning and effort than the accidental falling off the world that was claimed at the time)
Double edge sword. If it DOES violate anything other than their own, THEY go down too. Novell + MS deal? So now Novell and MS can be charged for attempted piracy by stealing IBM intellectual property. GPL violators get life in prison for making embedded devices that COULD be related to life and death. This law will so totally hork things up on a such a massive scale it will eventually have to be fixed.
Look on the bright side, if this does go into effect and people start getting prison time I am reasonable sure there are more "pirates" then there are other crimes, and by the severity of the punishment it would obviously be more important to catch the pirates and lock them up! (They aren't wiretapping for gangs, drugs, or murderers, just copyright infringers and terrorists) So now we have jails FULL of copyright violators (see geeks)... Don't hafta work, don't hafta pay taxes, can't get productive jobs such as programmers, engineers, and whatnot. Everyone wins. The geeks get a nice cable TV + internet free ride of lan games and other geek socializing (look at that, geeks will socialize in real life) and the major corporations will get all the Visas they could ever dream of because all of the qualified workforce will be in prison! If there are any more REAL criminals left in the prisons at this point, the geeks can just trade tech support skills for protection from the guards!
Lets look at the unintended consequences!
If you believe you should pay for linux, and use linux, that is attempting to pirate and punishable under this law! That cleans up this Novell problem quite nicely! Further, all of these companies that violate the GPL and embed linux into crap without opening the source could be held liable, even more if any of those devices are life/death equipment! Life in prison for violating the GPL! Piracy will be such a risk that people will start to shy away from pirate copies of Windows, forcing them to cough up the insane prices or to find an alternative.
I am reasonably certain that this is one of those laws that will make such an unholy clusterfuck of things that it can't help but force some fixes to start happening. Of coarse I could be wrong and all the sheep line up to be slaughtered and we all wind up screwed.
I'm sorry General. I had no idea that the same 120,000 troops have been there the whole time.
My point is that nobody ever talks about the good things military members do. When its negative things its attributed to the military as a whole, when its positive (if it even gets mentioned) its only attributed to an individual or small group. I know its not safe there, I was there, it sucked. And maybe I just have a different view as I wasn't around the Marines or Army much. I am far more familiar with the good deeds that are done around the Air Bases in the area.