To take your questions, rants, whatever you call your verbage, in reverse order. I have been in quite a few mosques over the years. I see no need for an inordinate amount of testicles to enter one.
Furthermore, I assure you I have never once “shat in an Arab soveriegn.” It would be extremely rude to shit in an Arab soveriegn and I suspect they would be a bit peeved by it. How would one go about this, anyway?
As far as the rest of your little hissy fit, I believe you should either be a bit more coherent or lay off whatever you are taking before posting.
I assume from your tone that you support Dinsdale in his desire for more casualties in Iraq. Would that be the case?
I agree with you whole-heartedly. I suppose I would be considered “somewhat left” on certain issues myself. Actually, I’m not mad at Kerry, just irritated and appalled by Dinsdale.
Truly, I wish we had more viable choices in the US. One party seems more concerned with the welfare of corporations than humans while the other seems to be constantly hijacked by some lunatic fringe. Whatever happened to opponents you could live with?
I’m not going to go into the Dinsdale thing. I’m just here to wonder, not why Dinsdale is still posting, but why Milum is, after posting this delightful nugget:
I predicted (somewhere on these boards) that there would be those who wished failure on the US during this war for the same reasons Dinsdale expressed. I hate being right.
Jack, what Eva said was perfectly clear. It is only that infinitely dense brain of yours that cannot wrap itself around it. As for my supposed “dodge,” you are putting words in my mouth. It is a contemptible form of debate.
As for my supposed “dodge,” you are putting words in my mouth. It is a contemptible form of debate.
[/QUOTE]
Many people think you are so frustrated over your inability to respond rationally, that you can only resort to feeble insult.
Luckily I’m still really, really tired and have a huge pile of crap on my desk to deal with, so I’m not terribly inclined to waste much energy arguing with someone who continues to twist my words.
However, I still fail to see any contradiction whatsoever between “really significant numbers of U.S. troops are going to die” and that the loss of life will be “dramatic.” Or even that stating that “things aren’t getting any better” is somehow incompatible with stating that “the threat is worsening.” No, they aren’t 100% synonymous, but that’s hardly the point. And jeez, I thought I split hairs for a living.
I have no crystal ball telling me that the rate of casualties in Iraq will continue to increase. However, to me the current evidence points in that direction, and you have no crystal ball that I’m aware of, either.
What the U.S. is doing isn’t having the (ostensibly) desired results, which is to bring peace and stability to Iraq. So I say we should try something else.
I’d love to get more sleep, and my doc has already told me to cut down the caffeine (stupid mitral valve). However, lately John Ashcroft, my radiators, and a host of clients have other ideas.
One last attempt to clarify, before I return the attention of my foggy, sleep-deprived brain to the Huddled Masses:
What the U.S. is doing in Iraq right now isn’t working, and is getting people killed, both Americans and Iraqis.
Admittedly I haven’t done a comprehensive quantitative analysis (difficult in any case with all the conflicting numbers being bandied about), but it’s my perception that the number of attacks on U.S. servicepeople has been increasing over time, and that Iraq Is still pretty darn lawless and chaotic. These conditions will logically continue to get people killed.
Bush, et al. aren’t showing signs either of admitting that the current status quo sucks rocks, or that a change or two in policy and behavior might be advisable under the circumstances.
A dramatic upswing in U.S. military deaths might make them reconsider their positions. (Then again, maybe not; I’ve never overestimated the current administration’s inability and/or unwillingness to change policies based on factual evidence and/or contrary informed opinions.)
Since it seems significant numbers of people are going to die anyway, however sad and pointless that may be, it’s not completely unreasonable to hope that those deaths are not in vain.
(And Jackmanii, nice thought about the sleep and caffeine, but I currently have quite the oversupply of Jewish mothers. Anyone need a spare?)
P.S. One further point I missed earlier about my journalist cousin. No, I have not spoken personally to him in great detail about his experiences in Iraq. He lives 800 miles away from me, so I don’t get to chew the fat with him very often. However, a) he’s my first cousin and I’ve known him my whole life, so I can extrapolate a bit regarding what he has said and not said under various circumstances, and b) I have certainly read numerous publicly available accounts written by him and many others regarding past and current conditions in Iraq. Indeed, you all have access to his work, but for privacy’s sake I’m not going to tell you what organization he works for except to say that it’s a household name.
The only specific knowledge I have of conditions in Iraq that is not available to others is that gained by my past experience handling political asylum cases. The substance of analogous information is duplicated in many other places, notably here:
Several posters in this thread could really use the latter…
Whaddaya say, Dinsdale…
[Towelie]
Wanna go get high?
[/Towelie]
BTW I’m with you on this one, Dinsdale, the people here that are just so outraged really don’t seem to get your point. I’m sure that the fact that I think I do fills you with a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Time this endlessly repeated canard was finally put to bed. What the US did* was use every freaking method at their disposal to win the war – short of nuclear devices and even those were considered at one point. Period.
To quote the Times reporting on the briefing and
interviews with chief allied war commander Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley:
*Not saying any other invading army would have acted differently. Simply pointing out that the oft repeated “every possible effort was made to avoid civilian casualties” is simply propaganda of the worst kind.
It should aslo be noted that it is official US policy NOT to count Iraqi casualties. How fucking insulting is that?!
No more insulting than having a helicopter pilot’s body dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, or being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton. If I’m fighting, I’m not stopping to count to appease you. Neither is anyone else. Sorry if you find that callous, but that’s how it is.
It should also be noted that it is NOT official US policy to attack civilians. If there was approval needed for airstrikes and it was granted, then there must have been an essential target there. But your cite doesn’t say anything about that, does it? No, it just says that 50 times approval was given to attacks that killed a larger number of civilians than was the norm. I guess that means that the civilians were targeted, eh? :rolleyes:
Airman, hopefully I’m misunderstanding you – surely you’re not saying that the Pentagon is morally equivalent to Hanoi torturers, are you?
'Sides which, comparing atrocities committed against soldiers to counting the deaths of civilians is really apples-to-oranges. The only good argument I can think of against keeping track of how many civilians are killed is that it would take too much legwork; given that civilians seem to be doing it, I don’t think that argument holds much water.
It seems much more likely that the deaths of Iraqi civilians aren’t being logged because doing so would generate information that reflects unfavorably on the US military. I’d be happy to hear another explanation.
Who says civilians were targeted? It’s absolutely no fair rolling your eyes at statements other people make, when they don’t make those statements. Redfury and I both point out that the US knowingly took actions that would kill civilians, and they did NOT, contrary to Debaser’s assessment, take every possible effort to prevent their deaths.
That’s very different from targeting civilians. A cop who engages in a high-speed chase to catch a petty thief, and who subsequently runs over an innocent bystander, didn’t target the bystander; at the same time, she didn’t take every possible effort to avoid killing a bystander.
In this case, we accuse the administration of recklessness, not malice.
I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to point this out, but apparently it is.
Dinsdale’s logic and motivations are exactly the same as the terrorists who bomed Madrid.
They also wanted an increase in casualties, so as to affect an election. The only difference is that they had the balls to act on their beliefs. Dinsdale would apparently prefer to cling to the illusion that those he wishes dead aren’t real people, and their lives aren’t worth anything much.
I happen to believe that Bush is a better President than Kerry. And that a terrorist incident close to the election would increase Bush’s chance at re-election, since it would lead to a “rally 'round the leader” effect.
Suppose I had posted that I hoped for a major terrorist attack in October, with significant loss of life. How much slack are you willing to cut me?
Sometimes you people amaze me. And that is not always a good thing.
Looked at a bit calmer than my USAF pal, it is probably a step away from the infamous bodycounts during Vietnam which turned war into some sort of sick game, with weekly rundowns of the scores and everything.
(Robert McNamara channelling Red Allen) “Yeah, we may have lost fifty Americans this week but we got FIVE HUNDRED OF THEM!”
Plenty. I would assume, as I did with Dinsdale, that as you have demonstrated in the time that I have known you that you are not some sort of closet terrorist and that you were probably having a bad day or have begun to identify too closely with the issue. Then I’d suggest you take some time off from the boards to regain your perspective.
OTOH, had a newbie done the same thing I’d fry him or let somebody who is better at it fry him. That’s the problem with us getting to know each other here. I may rarely agree with you on political topics but I at least know you aren’t TOO crazy. But I’m going through that anger and frustraction thing with Jackmannii so I should probably take my own advice. That would mean SOMEBODY here takes my advice.
I have to interject here. The above quote isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever read on these boards , but holy fuck it’s close. Are you seriously saying that, when deciding who to vote for, you place more stock in the opinions of some dolt on a forum on the arse end of the internet that in the actual issues?
Please, do the world a favour and don’t vote. Please?
