Yeah, It's not like the USA had to haul ass out of Vietnam with it's tail between it's.... uh... oh wait it did....
Huh?
Have you read ANY history books? EVER?
Let's break that down, shall we?
"had to" - Why did they have to? Because the politicians back home were worried about getting re-elected? "haul ass" - Yah, an organized withdrawal over several years... that's now the new definition of "haul ass". "tail between it's..." - The military won every battle, and had the victory thrown away by politicians. Dunno which of the two you're referring to, but you're dead wrong either way.
Check out the USA's actions after WWII instead; they got worse and worse and worse.
They did? Can you quantify that?
Vietnam, overthrowing Latin American governments and installing puppet dictatorships, overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected government and installing the Shah, etc. We're certainly not doing anything noble in Iraq right now.
Oh, I see. You're just on the everything-that-America-does-is-bad bandwagon.
No, the US hasn't gotten any worse since WW2 - if anything they've gotten better. The only thing that's changed is popular opinion. If people in the 40's had thought the way that you do now, they'd have been condemning the US for turning Germany and Japan into puppet states, and would have been demanding that Truman be prosecuted for war crimes. That didn't happen because most people back then had a much more pragmatic outlook on life. Fighting a real war tends to do that.
Thanks:) That was the same thought I had. I'm not sure how anyone can look at a claim which seems to have been pulled whole from the asses of a bunch of anti-war quakers, and unquestioningly accept it as a proven fact. This is why critical thinking needs to be taught in schools!
The charity we should stop is the welfare that goes to big, rich corporations (like IBM and Kodak), which dwarfs what goes to the poor.
Why? The Big Rich EEEEEVIL Corporations actually produce stuff. If I get a say in whether my money goes to productive people or the ones who produce nothing... guess how I'm voting?
Of course, given the choice, I'd say screw 'em both. The government shouldn't be involved in wealth redistribution at all, regardless of who's getting the money.
Despite what you may have heard in the Church of Science Fiction, Mr Clark is neither the messiah nor infallible. You don't get to quote him and just leave it at that.
Where in hell did you get the idea that the US' (or the Allies' for that matter) objective in WW2 was to exterminate Germany and Japan? or are you one of those ignorant idiots who think the objective of *every* war is to annihilate the enemy to the last man, and define 'success' or 'failure' by casualties rather than strategic objectives?
Read the comment I was responding to, numbnuts.
I highly doubt it. Remember, the last time your countrymen thought likewise your White House ended up in flames.
I'm Canadian, you jackass. Read the fucking sig. Not only that, but I spent about 12 years in the Canadian military, so I'm well aware of what the US could and couldn't do to us.
I have always respected JMS for how 'realistic' he chose to portray space physics with the movement of his StarFury ships and the beam weapons.
Too bad he ruined it by having psychics and alien space-gods, and messiahs coming back from the dead. Love the stories anyway, but as far as realism goes.... not so much.
(As a side note, I could never understand how the station was able to rotate under the support struts when the station was obviously move massive.
I always assumed that the stationary portions of the station had thrusters. You use the stationary structure to induce a rotation in the rest of the station, and then use the thrusters to counter the natural reaction. Once everything's rotating at it's proper speed you'd only need the thrusters once in a while in order to counter whatever friction is present in the system.
The problem is that reducing the profile in one direction means you have to make it larger in a different dimension. Now, that's not much of a problem when you're fighting 2D land-battles, but zero-gravity gives you the ultimate 3D battle-space. If your enemy is smart enough to put one fleet directly in front of you while having another flank from the top or bottom, all you've done is make your ships easier to hit.
If you're looking at it purely from the perspective of presenting the smallest profile possible, your best bet would be a needle-shape. Very long, and as thin as possible. However, that runs into other problems, such as maneuverability.
Oh, why the hell not. I know I'll get at least a little pleasure out of exposing you for the twit you are.
Apparently you do know how to use wikipedia, at least, so you can't blame lack of technological know-how for your failure to look up Al Qaeda:
The origins of al-Qaeda as a network inspiring terrorism around the world and training operatives can be traced to the Soviet war in Afghanistan.[29] The United States viewed the conflict in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Marxists and allied Soviet troops on one side and the native Afghan mujahideen on the other, as a blatant case of Soviet expansionism and aggression. The U.S. channelled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the native Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation in a CIA program called Operation Cyclone.[30][31]
At the same time, a growing number of Arab mujahideen joined the jihad against the Afghan Marxist regime, facilitated by international Muslim organizations, particularly the Maktab al-Khidamat,[32] whose funds came from some of the $600 million a year donated to the jihad by the Saudi Arabia government and individual Muslims – particularly independent Saudi businessmen who were approached by Osama bin Laden.[33][page needed]....
Al-Qaeda evolved from the Maktab al-Khidamat, or the "Services Office", a Muslim organization founded in 1980 to raise and channel funds and recruit foreign mujahideen for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was founded by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian Islamic scholar and member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
MAK organized guest houses in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, and gathered supplies for the construction of paramilitary training camps to prepare foreign recruits for the Afghan war front. Azzam persuaded Bin Laden to join MAK.[when?] Bin Laden became a "major financier" of the mujahideen, spending his own money and using his connections with "the Saudi royal family and the petro-billionaires of the Gulf" in order to improve public opinion of the war and raise more funds.[35]
There ya have it. Now you can either show that you're a decent person and apologize for lying, or you can fuck off. I don't care which avenue you chose; since you decided to decline my earlier offer - instead deciding to act like an ignorant deuchebag - I'm done with you either way. Ta ta!
Oh I see, so in addition to being the chief sugar-daddy and arms supplier to Al Qaeda throughout 1980s...
Seeing as how your very first sentence is a complete lie, I see no reason to wade through the rest of your comment.
If you're honestly mistaken instead of intentionally deceitful, I suggest you do a bit of research and then come back here and post an apology and a detailed explanation of why you were wrong. Under those circumstances I would be willing to continue our discussion. Otherwise, I'm not wasting any more of my time.
Well, its a fine demagoguery you got there, but the actual reality was that the Taliban demanded to see evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility before handing him over... and the USA flatly refused.
Your first mistake is assuming that operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan started in 2001. The rest of your argument is rendered moot by that mistake. The US has been operating in Afghanistan since the 90's, as a response to earlier Al Qaeda attacks. The 2001 invasion was just the final commitment in a much longer campaign.
I'd say the odds of "victory" in Afghanistan for the USA are pretty much on the same level as those of all the previous Empires... not entirely zero but any Vegas slot machine looks like a guaranteed retirement plan by comparison.
That, of course, hinges on how you define "victory". If all we care about is maintaining majority control over the country and preventing it from being used as a staging area for further attacks against the west, then we've already won. The Taliban is now using Pakistan as a staging area for it's attacks in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda is broke and mostly useless.
Under any other reasonable definition we... we haven't achieved all of the goals we've set for ourselves, but the odds of eventually meeting them are pretty much 100%. The opposite forces have no chance of achieving a military victory - the best that they can hope for is that we get bored and go home. As long as we're willing to stay, we can't lose. Unfortunately, it seems likely that we will decide to leave, largely due to opinions such as yours. I find that truly depressing. Seems like people didn't learn a damn thing from the American mistakes in the 80's.
Yes, it did. Not that the Taliban didn't have it coming, but the USA was still the attacker.
If your friend shoots one of my family members and then goes and hides in your house, I'm not picking a fight with you when I come to drag him out. If you decide to get in my way, that's your problem.
The pathetic thing here is that Taliban, Al-Qaida and bin Laden are all still alive and at large, so it could be argued that the US actually lost, failing to meet its goals for the invasion.
By the same logic, Germany and Japan still exist today so I guess the US lost in WW2, also. Good thinking!
They do seem to be quite primitive, actually, considering how quickly their defense collapsed, and how few casualties the attacker suffered.
Frankly, the US could probably roll over the Canadian military tomorrow, just as quickly, while suffering not many more casualties. I guess Canada is primitive too, huh?
You're confusing American dominance for Iraqi incompetence, and then assessing their entire nation based on your misunderstanding. That's just silly.
Tend to agree, especially since current strategy is to only pick fights with opponents one step above the stone age, then bomb them right back into it.
If you're referring to Afghanistan, the US didn't pick that fight. If you're referring to Iraq, they are/were quite a few steps out of the stone age.
Yah. I'm technically an ethnic African, since we all descended from Mitochondrial Eve and her tribe... but I'd still get my ass kicked if I walked into the projects shouting "WADDUP MUH NIGGA!".
Bingo! I mean, I find his actions despicable, but then I think it's despicable any time a person misleads another purely for personal gain. Why should this man go to jail for 44 years just because he happens to have a weird sexual perversion, while a "miracle healer" who indirectly causes the deaths of dozens of people gets to live a free life while rolling in dough? Just because his victims were 15? So what? If they had all been 19, we'd still consider him an immoral asshole, but we wouldn't lock him up. Yet one of One of them WAS 19, and clearly her "greater maturity" didn't lead her to make any wiser decisions, so what does age really matter in a case like this?
I don't have any easy answers on this one, but I do know that setting arbitrary age limits for the commission of a crime is completely ridiculous.
Heh. Very mature. Instead of being an adult and admitting that you're wrong, or at least trying to make an honest argument to support your assertion, you stick your nose in the air and storm off in a huff. Why did you even bother responding if you didn't have a point to make?
But for you to ignore the implications of the Israel/Arab conflict by saying "this is about a laptop" means you are either choosing to be disingenuous yourself, or you are woefully ignorant of the situation over there.
Until you explain how the living conditions of Palestinians have anything to do with the shooting of an Americans laptop, I'm going to assume you're just talking out of your ass.
wasn't assuming she was Palestinian, but I would bet the farm the Israeli guards did
Yep, the Israeli guards checking her American passport assumed that she was Palestinian. Makes perfect sense!
or at least that she was anti-Israel which was basically what I meant.
Ah, so it's a case of "listen to what I mean, not what I say!". Sorry, but I'm not puh-sykik.
And sorry, but this is not off topic.
Sorry, but it is.
If she wouldn't have had anti-jewish stickers on her laptop
She didn't.
I am guessing this would not have happened, so it is very on topic.
You still haven't explained how. Now you've gone from arguing that Palestinian suffering is related to the shooting of a laptop, to arguing that it happened because of anti-Israeli stickers. You haven't just moved the goalposts so much as teleported them to another galaxy.
So clearly you are not clear about what I meant, so please do not try to speak for me, or explain to me what I meant.
Ok, I'm not clear on what you meant - in that case, what you meant is clearly not what the original commenter was talking about, so his comment is still way off-topic.
It is a story about Israeli guards acting against what they perceived may be a Palestinian threat. How could that post be any more on topic?
Huh?
First of all, it's not automatically a Palestinian threat. If she had been a terrorist, she could have be working for any number of terrorist organizations which regularly attack Israel. Hezbollah is one example.
Second of all, your excuse is idiotic even if we presume she's Palestinian. How in the world is the plight of the Palestinian people related to an Israeli response to a perceived threat? That's like me refusing to buy a Chinese car because of their poor safety record, and you going off on a tangent about the poor state of the Chinese economy. I don't give a fuck WHY the car is shit, I just care that it IS shit. I base my actions on an assessment of the situation - the reason behind that situation is completely unrelated to my actions.
It's quite clear that both he and you are simply looking for any opportunity to slam the Jews. THAT is why his comment is off-topic; it's an attempt to inject his personal political views into a discussion that has nothing to do with them.
Well, when civilized (that is, evolved) people see the way the sionists behave like primitive savages (bombing children with white phosphorus), it is not surprising that they get upset at a bunch of assholes who have their head inflated by their mindboggingly stupid primitive religion.
Naw, it's not that. It's a direct result of the fact that one of the few things that the far-right and far-left have in common is that they both hate Jews. Ergo, any time you have an article about Israel, it brings out the idiots from both sides of the political spectrum. Add to that the fact that the more moderately political people generally don't understand the security needs of a nation which is constantly under attack, and you're bound to end up with a hate-fest, every time.
Is it wrong for an American to expect better treatment in Israel than in Iran?
Of course not. Which is why she GOT better treatment. Try flying into Iran with a "fuck mohammed" photo and hebrew stickers on your laptop. As a best case scenario you'll lose the laptop without compensation. Worst case, you won't be posting on slashdot for a long, long time.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, It's not like the USA had to haul ass out of Vietnam with it's tail between it's .... uh... oh wait it did....
Huh?
Have you read ANY history books? EVER?
Let's break that down, shall we?
"had to" - Why did they have to? Because the politicians back home were worried about getting re-elected? ... that's now the new definition of "haul ass". ..." - The military won every battle, and had the victory thrown away by politicians. Dunno which of the two you're referring to, but you're dead wrong either way.
"haul ass" - Yah, an organized withdrawal over several years
"tail between it's
Check out the USA's actions after WWII instead; they got worse and worse and worse.
They did? Can you quantify that?
Vietnam, overthrowing Latin American governments and installing puppet dictatorships, overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected government and installing the Shah, etc. We're certainly not doing anything noble in Iraq right now.
Oh, I see. You're just on the everything-that-America-does-is-bad bandwagon.
No, the US hasn't gotten any worse since WW2 - if anything they've gotten better. The only thing that's changed is popular opinion. If people in the 40's had thought the way that you do now, they'd have been condemning the US for turning Germany and Japan into puppet states, and would have been demanding that Truman be prosecuted for war crimes. That didn't happen because most people back then had a much more pragmatic outlook on life. Fighting a real war tends to do that.
Thanks :) That was the same thought I had. I'm not sure how anyone can look at a claim which seems to have been pulled whole from the asses of a bunch of anti-war quakers, and unquestioningly accept it as a proven fact. This is why critical thinking needs to be taught in schools!
The charity we should stop is the welfare that goes to big, rich corporations (like IBM and Kodak), which dwarfs what goes to the poor.
Why? The Big Rich EEEEEVIL Corporations actually produce stuff. If I get a say in whether my money goes to productive people or the ones who produce nothing ... guess how I'm voting?
Of course, given the choice, I'd say screw 'em both. The government shouldn't be involved in wealth redistribution at all, regardless of who's getting the money.
Despite what you may have heard in the Church of Science Fiction, Mr Clark is neither the messiah nor infallible. You don't get to quote him and just leave it at that.
Where in hell did you get the idea that the US' (or the Allies' for that matter) objective in WW2 was to exterminate Germany and Japan? or are you one of those ignorant idiots who think the objective of *every* war is to annihilate the enemy to the last man, and define 'success' or 'failure' by casualties rather than strategic objectives?
Read the comment I was responding to, numbnuts.
I highly doubt it. Remember, the last time your countrymen thought likewise your White House ended up in flames.
I'm Canadian, you jackass. Read the fucking sig. Not only that, but I spent about 12 years in the Canadian military, so I'm well aware of what the US could and couldn't do to us.
That said, theories are only theories.
That's what I keep telling those Evil-lution guys, but they just refuse to listen. Thanks for backing me up on this!
I have always respected JMS for how 'realistic' he chose to portray space physics with the movement of his StarFury ships and the beam weapons.
Too bad he ruined it by having psychics and alien space-gods, and messiahs coming back from the dead. Love the stories anyway, but as far as realism goes .... not so much.
(As a side note, I could never understand how the station was able to rotate under the support struts when the station was obviously move massive.
I always assumed that the stationary portions of the station had thrusters. You use the stationary structure to induce a rotation in the rest of the station, and then use the thrusters to counter the natural reaction. Once everything's rotating at it's proper speed you'd only need the thrusters once in a while in order to counter whatever friction is present in the system.
The problem is that reducing the profile in one direction means you have to make it larger in a different dimension. Now, that's not much of a problem when you're fighting 2D land-battles, but zero-gravity gives you the ultimate 3D battle-space. If your enemy is smart enough to put one fleet directly in front of you while having another flank from the top or bottom, all you've done is make your ships easier to hit.
If you're looking at it purely from the perspective of presenting the smallest profile possible, your best bet would be a needle-shape. Very long, and as thin as possible. However, that runs into other problems, such as maneuverability.
Oh, why the hell not. I know I'll get at least a little pleasure out of exposing you for the twit you are.
Apparently you do know how to use wikipedia, at least, so you can't blame lack of technological know-how for your failure to look up Al Qaeda:
The origins of al-Qaeda as a network inspiring terrorism around the world and training operatives can be traced to the Soviet war in Afghanistan.[29] The United States viewed the conflict in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Marxists and allied Soviet troops on one side and the native Afghan mujahideen on the other, as a blatant case of Soviet expansionism and aggression. The U.S. channelled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the native Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation in a CIA program called Operation Cyclone.[30][31]
At the same time, a growing number of Arab mujahideen joined the jihad against the Afghan Marxist regime, facilitated by international Muslim organizations, particularly the Maktab al-Khidamat,[32] whose funds came from some of the $600 million a year donated to the jihad by the Saudi Arabia government and individual Muslims – particularly independent Saudi businessmen who were approached by Osama bin Laden.[33][page needed] ....
Al-Qaeda evolved from the Maktab al-Khidamat, or the "Services Office", a Muslim organization founded in 1980 to raise and channel funds and recruit foreign mujahideen for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was founded by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian Islamic scholar and member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
MAK organized guest houses in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, and gathered supplies for the construction of paramilitary training camps to prepare foreign recruits for the Afghan war front. Azzam persuaded Bin Laden to join MAK.[when?] Bin Laden became a "major financier" of the mujahideen, spending his own money and using his connections with "the Saudi royal family and the petro-billionaires of the Gulf" in order to improve public opinion of the war and raise more funds.[35]
There ya have it. Now you can either show that you're a decent person and apologize for lying, or you can fuck off. I don't care which avenue you chose; since you decided to decline my earlier offer - instead deciding to act like an ignorant deuchebag - I'm done with you either way. Ta ta!
Oh I see, so in addition to being the chief sugar-daddy and arms supplier to Al Qaeda throughout 1980s...
Seeing as how your very first sentence is a complete lie, I see no reason to wade through the rest of your comment.
If you're honestly mistaken instead of intentionally deceitful, I suggest you do a bit of research and then come back here and post an apology and a detailed explanation of why you were wrong. Under those circumstances I would be willing to continue our discussion. Otherwise, I'm not wasting any more of my time.
Well, its a fine demagoguery you got there, but the actual reality was that the Taliban demanded to see evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility before handing him over ... and the USA flatly refused.
Your first mistake is assuming that operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan started in 2001. The rest of your argument is rendered moot by that mistake. The US has been operating in Afghanistan since the 90's, as a response to earlier Al Qaeda attacks. The 2001 invasion was just the final commitment in a much longer campaign.
I'd say the odds of "victory" in Afghanistan for the USA are pretty much on the same level as those of all the previous Empires ... not entirely zero but any Vegas slot machine looks like a guaranteed retirement plan by comparison.
That, of course, hinges on how you define "victory". If all we care about is maintaining majority control over the country and preventing it from being used as a staging area for further attacks against the west, then we've already won. The Taliban is now using Pakistan as a staging area for it's attacks in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda is broke and mostly useless.
Under any other reasonable definition we ... we haven't achieved all of the goals we've set for ourselves, but the odds of eventually meeting them are pretty much 100%. The opposite forces have no chance of achieving a military victory - the best that they can hope for is that we get bored and go home. As long as we're willing to stay, we can't lose. Unfortunately, it seems likely that we will decide to leave, largely due to opinions such as yours. I find that truly depressing. Seems like people didn't learn a damn thing from the American mistakes in the 80's.
Yes, it did. Not that the Taliban didn't have it coming, but the USA was still the attacker.
If your friend shoots one of my family members and then goes and hides in your house, I'm not picking a fight with you when I come to drag him out. If you decide to get in my way, that's your problem.
The pathetic thing here is that Taliban, Al-Qaida and bin Laden are all still alive and at large, so it could be argued that the US actually lost, failing to meet its goals for the invasion.
By the same logic, Germany and Japan still exist today so I guess the US lost in WW2, also. Good thinking!
They do seem to be quite primitive, actually, considering how quickly their defense collapsed, and how few casualties the attacker suffered.
Frankly, the US could probably roll over the Canadian military tomorrow, just as quickly, while suffering not many more casualties. I guess Canada is primitive too, huh?
You're confusing American dominance for Iraqi incompetence, and then assessing their entire nation based on your misunderstanding. That's just silly.
Obviously they don't think it's a big issue. And they're right. What's the worst case scenario here?
Last words overheard from an Al Qaeda satellite-intercept house: "Hey, look, I'm on TV!"
Tend to agree, especially since current strategy is to only pick fights with opponents one step above the stone age, then bomb them right back into it.
If you're referring to Afghanistan, the US didn't pick that fight. If you're referring to Iraq, they are/were quite a few steps out of the stone age.
Yah. I'm technically an ethnic African, since we all descended from Mitochondrial Eve and her tribe ... but I'd still get my ass kicked if I walked into the projects shouting "WADDUP MUH NIGGA!".
I wonder how many times he used the foster girls without their permission.
You deserve the +5, but in the interest of accuracy I should point out that the answer to your question is "zero".
Bingo! I mean, I find his actions despicable, but then I think it's despicable any time a person misleads another purely for personal gain. Why should this man go to jail for 44 years just because he happens to have a weird sexual perversion, while a "miracle healer" who indirectly causes the deaths of dozens of people gets to live a free life while rolling in dough? Just because his victims were 15? So what? If they had all been 19, we'd still consider him an immoral asshole, but we wouldn't lock him up. Yet one of One of them WAS 19, and clearly her "greater maturity" didn't lead her to make any wiser decisions, so what does age really matter in a case like this?
I don't have any easy answers on this one, but I do know that setting arbitrary age limits for the commission of a crime is completely ridiculous.
Sorry, but I am secure enough in my own beliefs that I don't need the childish reassurance. Have a nice life.
No worries, I know better than to argue against deeply held religious beliefs. Take care.
Heh. Very mature. Instead of being an adult and admitting that you're wrong, or at least trying to make an honest argument to support your assertion, you stick your nose in the air and storm off in a huff. Why did you even bother responding if you didn't have a point to make?
But for you to ignore the implications of the Israel/Arab conflict by saying "this is about a laptop" means you are either choosing to be disingenuous yourself, or you are woefully ignorant of the situation over there.
Until you explain how the living conditions of Palestinians have anything to do with the shooting of an Americans laptop, I'm going to assume you're just talking out of your ass.
wasn't assuming she was Palestinian, but I would bet the farm the Israeli guards did
Yep, the Israeli guards checking her American passport assumed that she was Palestinian. Makes perfect sense!
or at least that she was anti-Israel which was basically what I meant.
Ah, so it's a case of "listen to what I mean, not what I say!". Sorry, but I'm not puh-sykik.
And sorry, but this is not off topic.
Sorry, but it is.
If she wouldn't have had anti-jewish stickers on her laptop
She didn't.
I am guessing this would not have happened, so it is very on topic.
You still haven't explained how. Now you've gone from arguing that Palestinian suffering is related to the shooting of a laptop, to arguing that it happened because of anti-Israeli stickers. You haven't just moved the goalposts so much as teleported them to another galaxy.
So clearly you are not clear about what I meant, so please do not try to speak for me, or explain to me what I meant.
Ok, I'm not clear on what you meant - in that case, what you meant is clearly not what the original commenter was talking about, so his comment is still way off-topic.
It is a story about Israeli guards acting against what they perceived may be a Palestinian threat. How could that post be any more on topic?
Huh?
First of all, it's not automatically a Palestinian threat. If she had been a terrorist, she could have be working for any number of terrorist organizations which regularly attack Israel. Hezbollah is one example.
Second of all, your excuse is idiotic even if we presume she's Palestinian. How in the world is the plight of the Palestinian people related to an Israeli response to a perceived threat? That's like me refusing to buy a Chinese car because of their poor safety record, and you going off on a tangent about the poor state of the Chinese economy. I don't give a fuck WHY the car is shit, I just care that it IS shit. I base my actions on an assessment of the situation - the reason behind that situation is completely unrelated to my actions.
It's quite clear that both he and you are simply looking for any opportunity to slam the Jews. THAT is why his comment is off-topic; it's an attempt to inject his personal political views into a discussion that has nothing to do with them.
Well, when civilized (that is, evolved) people see the way the sionists behave like primitive savages (bombing children with white phosphorus), it is not surprising that they get upset at a bunch of assholes who have their head inflated by their mindboggingly stupid primitive religion.
Naw, it's not that. It's a direct result of the fact that one of the few things that the far-right and far-left have in common is that they both hate Jews. Ergo, any time you have an article about Israel, it brings out the idiots from both sides of the political spectrum. Add to that the fact that the more moderately political people generally don't understand the security needs of a nation which is constantly under attack, and you're bound to end up with a hate-fest, every time.
Is it wrong for an American to expect better treatment in Israel than in Iran?
Of course not. Which is why she GOT better treatment. Try flying into Iran with a "fuck mohammed" photo and hebrew stickers on your laptop. As a best case scenario you'll lose the laptop without compensation. Worst case, you won't be posting on slashdot for a long, long time.
Because SHE said so. Seriously, read the fucking article at least once in your life!