Prosecuting != Persecuting. The government retains the right to control the activities of individuals. You do not have an inherent right to ingest THC any more than you have a right to ingest Cyanide. Personally I think weed should be legalized, but only because we have no hope of ever properly controlling it's use amongst the general public. In any event, claiming that you're being "persecuted" is preposterous. You know the law, and you choose to break it. You're a common criminal, and I have no pity for you.
Funny that you mention Ghandi. His life was quite public, and his supporters well known. Privacy is only important under truly oppressive regimes, which is why they go to such length to eliminate it. It's only important when people have a legitimate fear of their government.
Eh? So when someone violates an end user agreement, the law-firm which drafted it is the aggrieved party? Interesting interpretation. I'd like to see you explain that assumption in a court of law.
"International Law" is a meaningless concept. Laws only exist when they are enforced, and enforced consistently. Laws which are only enforced at random are not laws at all, but are simply a lottery disguised as a legal code. Moreover, even if we accept the legitimacy of "international law", it is a long standing custom that the violation of the terms of a ceasefire by one party is sufficient reason for the resumption of hostilities. You clearly do not understand this, nor do you seem to grasp the concept that you cannot condemn an invasion simply by pointing to other cases where no invasion occurred. It's illogical. You cannot base an argument on a non-sequitor.
As for the "lies", they're simply irrelevant. We're not discussing the truthfulness of the Bush administration. Either stick to the topic at hand, or don't start what you can't finish.
Try to be adult about it? Sorry, I just find it hard to take you seriously when the best response you can come up with is "OH YEAH?!! Well they should have invaded North Korea too!".
Look up the term "logical fallacy". When discussing Iraq, NK is irrelevant Also, stop bringing up the UN. They have nothing to do with anything either.
Iraq violated the 1991 ceasefire, and continued to violate it for 12 years. If you don't consider that to be justification for a re-invasion, you must be a few cards short of a full deck.
Seriously, do a bit of research before mouthing off on topics you know nothing about.
The fact that you're using the phrase "illegal invasion" tells me all I need to know about the value of your opinion. You talk a good game, but you're just as clueless as 90% of the US population. There's no such thing as an illegal invasion, and there was certainly nothing unusual or wrong about the invasion of Iraq. Nor does it have anything to do with 9/11 directly. Whether it was a good idea or not is open to debate, but the basic facts which people like you continue to get wrong, are NOT open to debate. The truth is not determined by consensus.
Yes, the Dixie chicks are the premiere military strategists of our age. Maybe you should put them in charge of your military. They can organize the military to hold hands and sing songs, and surely that will stop religious maniacs from crashing airliners into your buildings.
You know why the shopping cart is rusty? Because hundreds of people just like you have walked by that quaint little stream, and the stones, and the grass, and said to themselves "oh look. how horrible. an old shopping cart". And then they carried on strolling and humming, leaving the cart for the next passer-by to tisk-tisk about.
I'd just like to point out that all of you posting on this thread got here by clicking a link which says "Click Here To Infect Your PC!". Therefore, by the authors logic (and the logic of many of the posters themselves) you're all a bunch of morons. Congratulations!
The auto industry -- and I think this goes for both the U.S. and most of the other ones -- have very little interest in anything that's going to fundamentally alter or shake up the landscape.
Sorry Kadin, but you're wrong. I have it on pretty good authority that GM and Ford are working on developing vehicles which will run on crushed babies and blended puppies, respectively. That should certainly "shake up the landscape".
Well at least that was more intelligent than your initial post. You're still not comprehending the basic differences though. Being a service-oriented society doesn't mean we stop manufacturing/producing physical goods, it just means that we do so to a lesser extent, and require less individuals to do the job. The majority of goods available for purchase today in North America are made in other countries. In addition to that, people in industries ranging from agriculture to automotive have found themselves replaced by machinery. That means that the manufacturing jobs which would once have existed to create those goods have now moved elsewhere. Meanwhile the population has continued to increase. As a result, a disproportional number of jobs in north are "services". Plumbers, electricians, mechanics, programmers, telemarketers, advertisers, lawyers and politicians, they're all services. There IS a clear distinction between manufacturing and services, even if you personally fail to see it.
My prediction is that as computers start to replace people in the service industries (as they did in manufacturing) we will start to see a decline in the number of people required for those positions. This will, over the course of decades, lead to a move away from such jobs and toward information discovery, accumulation, and management jobs. While those could still be considered "services", they'd be markedly different from traditional services. However, I don't think we can predict exactly how such an industry would operate any more than a farmer from the 1950's could have predicted the existence of "webmasters", or search engines.
What's the over/under that this technology will be bought by ford / gm and killed in development?
About the same as the odds that those chemtrail spraying planes that keep circling your house may have accidentally caused a malfunction in your rectally-implanted alien mind-probe.
It' just the next logical step. We've progressed from a manufacturing-oriented society to a service-oriented society, and are moving toward an information-oriented society. As goods and services decline in value, it's only natural for information to increase in value, and for people to start controlling what information they give out to whom.
Oh, I agree leaving now would be a disaster. This is going to take a while to finish. When I asked if it was worth it, I meant was it worth it to invade in the first place-- was invading really the best option?
Good question. I'm not even sure any more. I initially agreed with it....but if I could have foreseen the lack of support amongst the US public only a couple years down the road? I would have advised against it. Modern wars are fought more through PR than they are on the battlefield. No matter what happens now, this war will be seen as a loss for the US. This conflict COULD have served to not only help establish a friendly democracy in the centre of the middle east, but to serve as a warning to other hostile nations, and as a moderating influence in the region. Instead it seems only to have further re-enforced the view that the US is incapable of fighting a drawn-out conflict. So I don't know. I think it will be many, many years before we're able to figure out whether it was really worth it.
What's your point? Are you calling for moral relativism? That one person/one culture and its values is equally as good as another? It's nice that other societies care about life less. It's also irrelevant.
Just thought I'd put your righteous indignation into perspective. It's quite obvious that most people do not care about the deaths of others, unless those deaths can be used to pursue political goals.
You can't tell me that all 60+k additional dead in Iraq post invasion were all enemy combatants about to blow up a marketplace.
The problem with fighting terrorists and insurgents is that they often get classified incorrectly, but no, chances are that most of those 60,000 were not combatants. Even your own source contradicts your conclusion. If you take a look at the database you'll see that the top death is listed as 2 civilians killed by "suicide oil trucks". I somehow can't see US forces using suicide oil trucks to kill civilians. Your mileage may differ. I don't have the time to see how many of those are legit civilian deaths caused by US forces, but it's obviously not the full 60,000. My guess is it's a LOT less.
Suicide bombers are a tiny minority of the population, but the deaths there haven't been terribly discriminatory.
Says you. That's a personal opinion, not a statement of fact. Also, your own figures contradict that statement. You've attributed some 16,000 deaths directly to the US military. Even if true, those figures show the exact opposite of what you've just stated. If the US military was killing people indiscriminately I can guarantee that number would be a lot higher.
The topic is civilian deaths, which compose the vast majority of violent deaths in Iraq right now.
Civilian deaths also comprise the vast majority of violent deaths in the US. What's your point?
I do have a problem with killing non-combatants just trying to get on with their lives.
Good, me too! Why don't you go petition the terrorist and insurgent leaders, and let me know how it turns out?
If you want to go back further in time, wasn't it the US government that put Saddam in power, and gave him those evil weapons of mass destruction?
No, and no. That's just another case of the America-caused-everything-bad-in-the-world silliness. Once a lie is repeated often enough, it comes to replace the truth.
Still, 26% of 63k is still 16k, a lot of dead people.
In the bombing of Berlin alone, more civilians were killed than in the entire Iraq war. Perspective is important. Civilians die, yes, and it's a horrible thing, but that's war. Your final question is really the only thing that matters:
Is it all worth it in this case?
And the answer is yes, absolutely. If the US leaves, hundreds of thousands more die in sectarian violence, and Iraq turns into either an oppressive theocratic dictatorship, or it becomes a proxy state of Iran (same thing more or less). If you think that a continued US presence would lead to a worse result, I have some beach-front property to sell you....
Murder is a high crime precisely because the death of a human being is a great loss.
Only in civilized societies. In Africa, and much of the middle east, a human life is worth less than a bullet. Don't be so quick to attribute your own moral judgements to the rest of the human race.
However, the damage per death caused is exactly the same, regardless of the motives of the killer.
Nonsense. A soldier who kills a terrorist before the latter is able to trigger an explosive device in a crowded marketplace has just SAVED lives. That's a lot different than someone who blows up an orphanage because he thinks George Bush is the devil. Peoples inability to see this difference is exactly why we have no chance of winning the war on terror. People simply "don't get it".
The issue becomes more a matter of how many people were killed than why, and the fact is that the US's invasion of Iraq has caused far more civilian deaths than Islamic terrorists have for American civilians plus Saddam's ethnic cleansing of the Kurds
More nonsense. If you blame every single Iraqi death on the US presence, then why not blame the US presence on Saddams refusal to cooperate? Why not blame Saddam ascension to power on the Iraqi people themselves? Why are you being so selective on how far back through the levels of responsibility you're willing to go before you place blame? The fact of the matter is that the only ones responsible for those deaths are the terrorists, insurgents, and Iranian agents who continue to intentionally target civilians. Blaming the US for it is ridiculous.
(And admittedly, the perceived gain is basically nothing, as far as most people can see, I think. Killing Saddam was a goal that people found supportable, bringing democracy to a country that seems positively uninterested in it doesn't seem to be.)
You nailed it right there. Most people these days are unable to think strategically, or plan for the long term. They also seem to be unable to understand anything at all about the rest of the world. The war is seen as "unwinnable" because the public cannot see any benefit to it. It's the same reason that Nevile Chamberlain was willing to believe Hitler, and that the US was initially unwilling to enter WW2. People in general tend only to see short-term gain, and are unwilling to make great sacrifices until forced to do so.
Kinda how Kim Jong Il is almost universally adored by North Koreans? Watch this clip for some chilling insight into the control that totalitarian regimes can have over their people.
Slashdot Mirror
Prosecuting != Persecuting. The government retains the right to control the activities of individuals. You do not have an inherent right to ingest THC any more than you have a right to ingest Cyanide. Personally I think weed should be legalized, but only because we have no hope of ever properly controlling it's use amongst the general public. In any event, claiming that you're being "persecuted" is preposterous. You know the law, and you choose to break it. You're a common criminal, and I have no pity for you.
Funny that you mention Ghandi. His life was quite public, and his supporters well known. Privacy is only important under truly oppressive regimes, which is why they go to such length to eliminate it. It's only important when people have a legitimate fear of their government.
Eh? So when someone violates an end user agreement, the law-firm which drafted it is the aggrieved party? Interesting interpretation. I'd like to see you explain that assumption in a court of law.
"International Law" is a meaningless concept. Laws only exist when they are enforced, and enforced consistently. Laws which are only enforced at random are not laws at all, but are simply a lottery disguised as a legal code. Moreover, even if we accept the legitimacy of "international law", it is a long standing custom that the violation of the terms of a ceasefire by one party is sufficient reason for the resumption of hostilities. You clearly do not understand this, nor do you seem to grasp the concept that you cannot condemn an invasion simply by pointing to other cases where no invasion occurred. It's illogical. You cannot base an argument on a non-sequitor.
As for the "lies", they're simply irrelevant. We're not discussing the truthfulness of the Bush administration. Either stick to the topic at hand, or don't start what you can't finish.
Try to be adult about it? Sorry, I just find it hard to take you seriously when the best response you can come up with is "OH YEAH?!! Well they should have invaded North Korea too!".
Look up the term "logical fallacy". When discussing Iraq, NK is irrelevant Also, stop bringing up the UN. They have nothing to do with anything either.
Iraq violated the 1991 ceasefire, and continued to violate it for 12 years. If you don't consider that to be justification for a re-invasion, you must be a few cards short of a full deck.
Seriously, do a bit of research before mouthing off on topics you know nothing about.
The fact that you're using the phrase "illegal invasion" tells me all I need to know about the value of your opinion. You talk a good game, but you're just as clueless as 90% of the US population. There's no such thing as an illegal invasion, and there was certainly nothing unusual or wrong about the invasion of Iraq. Nor does it have anything to do with 9/11 directly. Whether it was a good idea or not is open to debate, but the basic facts which people like you continue to get wrong, are NOT open to debate. The truth is not determined by consensus.
Yes, the Dixie chicks are the premiere military strategists of our age. Maybe you should put them in charge of your military. They can organize the military to hold hands and sing songs, and surely that will stop religious maniacs from crashing airliners into your buildings.
heh. Yes, the first thing I thought was "...... MARVIN!". Someone would "clean up" that robot with a 2x4 in short order.
You know why the shopping cart is rusty? Because hundreds of people just like you have walked by that quaint little stream, and the stones, and the grass, and said to themselves "oh look. how horrible. an old shopping cart". And then they carried on strolling and humming, leaving the cart for the next passer-by to tisk-tisk about.
I'd just like to point out that all of you posting on this thread got here by clicking a link which says "Click Here To Infect Your PC!". Therefore, by the authors logic (and the logic of many of the posters themselves) you're all a bunch of morons. Congratulations!
Toyota Going 100% Hybrid, eh? Does that even have any meaning?
Well at least that was more intelligent than your initial post. You're still not comprehending the basic differences though. Being a service-oriented society doesn't mean we stop manufacturing/producing physical goods, it just means that we do so to a lesser extent, and require less individuals to do the job. The majority of goods available for purchase today in North America are made in other countries. In addition to that, people in industries ranging from agriculture to automotive have found themselves replaced by machinery. That means that the manufacturing jobs which would once have existed to create those goods have now moved elsewhere. Meanwhile the population has continued to increase. As a result, a disproportional number of jobs in north are "services". Plumbers, electricians, mechanics, programmers, telemarketers, advertisers, lawyers and politicians, they're all services. There IS a clear distinction between manufacturing and services, even if you personally fail to see it.
My prediction is that as computers start to replace people in the service industries (as they did in manufacturing) we will start to see a decline in the number of people required for those positions. This will, over the course of decades, lead to a move away from such jobs and toward information discovery, accumulation, and management jobs. While those could still be considered "services", they'd be markedly different from traditional services. However, I don't think we can predict exactly how such an industry would operate any more than a farmer from the 1950's could have predicted the existence of "webmasters", or search engines.
Heh. Well, "JoeBob", we are now a service-oriented society, so I suppose we must all be starving because we can't eat services?
You're being a bit simplistic here.
It' just the next logical step. We've progressed from a manufacturing-oriented society to a service-oriented society, and are moving toward an information-oriented society. As goods and services decline in value, it's only natural for information to increase in value, and for people to start controlling what information they give out to whom.
The problem with fighting terrorists and insurgents is that they often get classified incorrectly, but no, chances are that most of those 60,000 were not combatants. Even your own source contradicts your conclusion. If you take a look at the database you'll see that the top death is listed as 2 civilians killed by "suicide oil trucks". I somehow can't see US forces using suicide oil trucks to kill civilians. Your mileage may differ. I don't have the time to see how many of those are legit civilian deaths caused by US forces, but it's obviously not the full 60,000. My guess is it's a LOT less.
Says you. That's a personal opinion, not a statement of fact. Also, your own figures contradict that statement. You've attributed some 16,000 deaths directly to the US military. Even if true, those figures show the exact opposite of what you've just stated. If the US military was killing people indiscriminately I can guarantee that number would be a lot higher.
Civilian deaths also comprise the vast majority of violent deaths in the US. What's your point?
Good, me too! Why don't you go petition the terrorist and insurgent leaders, and let me know how it turns out?
No, and no. That's just another case of the America-caused-everything-bad-in-the-world silliness. Once a lie is repeated often enough, it comes to replace the truth.
In the bombing of Berlin alone, more civilians were killed than in the entire Iraq war. Perspective is important. Civilians die, yes, and it's a horrible thing, but that's war. Your final question is really the only thing that matters:
Is it all worth it in this case?
And the answer is yes, absolutely. If the US leaves, hundreds of thousands more die in sectarian violence, and Iraq turns into either an oppressive theocratic dictatorship, or it becomes a proxy state of Iran (same thing more or less). If you think that a continued US presence would lead to a worse result, I have some beach-front property to sell you....
Nonsense. A soldier who kills a terrorist before the latter is able to trigger an explosive device in a crowded marketplace has just SAVED lives. That's a lot different than someone who blows up an orphanage because he thinks George Bush is the devil. Peoples inability to see this difference is exactly why we have no chance of winning the war on terror. People simply "don't get it".
More nonsense. If you blame every single Iraqi death on the US presence, then why not blame the US presence on Saddams refusal to cooperate? Why not blame Saddam ascension to power on the Iraqi people themselves? Why are you being so selective on how far back through the levels of responsibility you're willing to go before you place blame? The fact of the matter is that the only ones responsible for those deaths are the terrorists, insurgents, and Iranian agents who continue to intentionally target civilians. Blaming the US for it is ridiculous.
Go on, pull the other one.
Kinda how Kim Jong Il is almost universally adored by North Koreans? Watch this clip for some chilling insight into the control that totalitarian regimes can have over their people.