Holy shit. I’ve always suspected it, but now I’m certain. You really are that fucking dumb.
Damned proud of it, too. Probably makes it worse, huh?
Wait, how is that a diversion? It’s a direct rebuttal to your argument. You’ve suggested that, because a system (extra judicial executions) is flawed, it’s morally indefensible. Finn pointed out a number of other systems that are also flawed, in ways that can be just as fatal. Surely, by the standard you’ve applied to extra-judicial executions, you must also conclude that law enforcement (say) is immoral, no?
This is what is pissing me off most - its not that they were wrong to get caught, its that they were wrong to do it. PERIOD.
What has New Zealand ever done to Israel that you get to go there, break the laws and subvert our passports? And then say, meh, its ok because our intentions were just to use those passports to kill one of our enemies in a third countries territories. How is this not harmful to New Zealand’s integrity? Even if its that we were stupid enough to let our passports be forged in the first place.
If we want to get involved is our decision - its not up to you to drag us into it.
Yet again, address the actual issue.
You can have targeted assassinations that, most of the time, involve the loss of no innocent lives and no external innocent suffering. Barring that you can have a war and even the cleanest wars have significant collateral damage, or sanctions which affect a broad swatch of people and often not the warlords who horde supplies anyways. Or you can just let the terrorists go about their business while you hide in bunkers.
Out of all the options, you claim that assassination is the wrong one. Justify causing greater suffering for less gain when you have a more humane option available.
Decaf.
You’re making it sound like a huge deal. Some passports got ripped off, call out the army, the police, the cub scouts! Subverting blah blah blah, as if your nation was special. Yet again, every spy agency on the planet uses false documentation to hide the identity of their spies. It kinda goes along with the word ‘covert’.
Because only a nutbar or a hyperventilating jackass takes the forgery of documents as somehow undermining an entire nation’s “integrity”.
No, see, that’s the whole point of covert operations. If you first have to ask permission from the folks you’re impersonating, it’s not very covert any more.
This is pretty much it. If Israel wants to implicate the US we have pretty much given it free rein. It’s totally different, and inappropriate, to do it to a country like NZ. The shit Israel has to endure means NOTHING in the ultimate morality of its actions. Go ahead, turn my nation into an enemy of all Muslims. We’ve done plenty to do it ourselves. But your fucking national security should not be used as an excuse to drag OTHER countries into your fight. That drags the last of Israel’s “moral superiority” to the graveyard.
And there was a time when you assholes were respected and had the support of much of the West. We felt bad about the Holocaust and all of those mean Arabs ganging up on you. America dislikes bullies, but Israel has become the bully. The cheap punk on the corner who thinks he can do whatever he wants because he wants to. Israel has thrown to the ground and stomped on the moral high ground. It’s become a bad guy, and many Americans are angry about that.
Stay within your fucking borders. Leave people outside them alone. And don’t use the US as a counter example because a lot of us, including the President and members of your faith, are also angry at the recent extracurricular activities of the US and are trying to clean up after them.
Um, this may be because, “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,” doesn’t end up in the Torah. The OT Ywh was a badass. The NT God isn’t so much.
I am trying to.
The killing of this guy, justified or not is one thing. I do think that you get to kill your enemies, or of those you are at war with.
What this is all about is HOW Israel went about it. They did it in a country that is not a part of that war, using illegally obtained passports of an ally. An ally that we have to presume did not “approve” of the killing. (yeah, they may well be happy he’s not around, but that is different from approving an assasination)
I can also make a pretty good argument for why the assasination is right and just - I am not neccessarily disagreeing with you there. But I think the way it was gone about was immoral.
OK - pulling an analogy our of my arse.
A has the mandatory death penalty for child rape.
I see somebody committing child rape.
Can I then kill him with no repercussions, or will the state have something to say?
That’s because it is a big deal, it’s state sponsored law breaking. Yeah I agree a passport is pretty minor, but Israel, as a nation, has so little respect for the laws of New Zealand and England that they feel like they can break them. How is that ok? It doesn’t really matter what your ultimate goals are - if the reasons for it are just, why not go through the New Zealand intelligence community and get an “official” passport? It wouldn’t be because you think New Zealand would DISAGREE with how the passport was to be used would you? If that’s the case it makes the act much worse.
Except that it does - if its known that a particular country is so porous, or that their documents are so easy to obtain, or their security forces so incompetent it does have an effect on national security.
Let’s play what-if.
What-if it had been a New Zealand passport found at the murder site, and the headlines had been “New Zealand implicated in murder of…” \
That wouldn’t have negative effects on New Zealand? And no, its not unrealistic, if you have murderers running around with New Zealand passports its entirely possible.
What if a six-inch Spicy Italian sub from Subway (with spinach, green peppers and extra onions) had been found at the scene? Would Subways all across America be shut down for fear of retribution, resulting in Quiznos cornering the market?
It is terrible to contemplate, at least from the standpoint of lunch.
You’re right. Only a murderer would put spinach on a sandwich.
What an unmitigated load of shit!
To suggest that anyone given a medal for heroism or sacrifice by George Bush not only doesn’t deserve it but should hide it away in shame is one of the most stupid, prejudiced, narrow-minded, asinine things I’ve ever read on this board.
You don’t know the first fucking thing about whether or not those people deserved that award, but I’d be willing to bet that the lesser of them has a hundredfold the balls that you do.
Dude, I’m sorry, but NZ doesn’t have any reputation on the world stage. People think more frequently about Iceland.
Then maybe you might want to edumacate yourself just a bit.
For those in the know new Zealand actually does quite well for themselves,
Besides being the first country in the world to give women the vote, it also was the leader in a nuclear free zone (which is now looking a bit silly), regularly scores super high is quality of living, is one of the freest countrie sin the world to do business, normally scores in the top five in any anti corruption listing…
And sheep everywhere know that a New Zealand male is to be feared
Yeah, but that’s because Iceland had a spectacular economic meltdown that nearly collapsed the entire country. I know they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but…
Would it have been better or worse if Israel had hired New Zealand or Canadian nationals as assassins, who then went about their killing business using legitimate documents, but later got caught? Serious question.
At least more honest. If a country wants to hire mercaneries that is their business. It is an individual decision on the hired persons part. They are not subverting the law of New Zealand or Canada or cheating the respective governments.
Then the issue only becomes one of whether or not it is right to hire such people (for what its worth I say Israel can hire whoever they like)
But which is worse for the ‘integrity’ of New Zealand – that another country forges its documents to help killers cross borders, or that it’s citizens are occasionally hired as international assassins?
I would argue the latter is worse, in that all New Zealanders might be given additional scrutiny crossing sensitive borders. Better the documents face additional scrutiny than the people.
OTOH, do we know whether the passports were actually forgeries, or real ones that were stolen or otherwise illegitimately acquired?
There there, SA, I think you missed Jim’s point. He wasn’t saying that NZSAS didn’t deserve a United States Navy Presidential Unit Citation for their efforts in Afghanistan. Indeed, those NZSAS lads are quite the daring winning bunch and the massiveness of their balls is not in question.
What Jim was saying (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not without point) was that the well-deserved citation might be seen as tainted by its association with the particular President who awarded it.
And when you consider that Bush handed out, for instance, the Medal of Freedom like Halloween candy to such dubious recipients as notorious human rights violator Alvaro Uribe and the stovepiping, waterboarding CIA head George Tenet, and that he’s also made headlines bestowing inappropriate commendation on screwups like hapless FEMA head Michael “Heckuva-Job-Brownie” Brown…
…well, you can see how the brave boys from Papakura might not feel particularly flattered to be lumped in with that crowd. 
They seem to have figured out a workaround, though: their Wiki page documents their United States Navy Presidential Unit Citation but never mentions Bush by name. Smooth work, mates. 
I added the missing words to your post, for you, Mr. Chamberlain.
I’ve also been trying to to alienate this religious group. Could you tell me which part of the pamphlet this is from? I’ve got the version where the important bits are highlighted in red.