Al-Qaeda BEHEADED U.S. Contractor

[livendive 8]

How many of our bombing targets do you think we have identified as factories of any sort, much less unoccupied factories? I'll grant you there have likely been plenty that we ID'd as weapons caches, but it's just as likely that those represent <25% of all targets. Whether a building is a palace, a mosque, or an apartment building, the reason for hitting it is to kill the people inside it, not because the structure itself is inherently "evil." From the get-go we have stated that we would do as little damage as possible to infrastructure so that the people could resume a "normal" life as soon as possible after hostilities have ended. Destroying all the factories would mean they would have no jobs to go to and thus does not fit into that objective.

We have intentionally dropped plenty of bombs into civilian population centers. We may have justified them by saying there were "insurgents" there, and that some "collateral damage" was inevitable only because those civilians were being used as "human shields" but the effect remains the same. We tried to kill people and we succeeded.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[livendive 8]

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Face it. They want to "reduce the number of (American) personnel" and with Nicholas Berg they reduced the number by one and provided a very public discouragement to others.

Nope-

The beheading was a dramatization. Sensationalism.

i.e. a very public discouragement to others, as I said before.

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But is is also murder. There is a diference betwqeen murder and killing combatants in a war. If you cannot differentiate the two. . .

I can absolutely differentiate between the two. I'm also perfectly confident that the young children we've killed were not combatants in a war. We call them regrettable losses but supposedly worth it in the big picture. I can imagine the insurgents qualifying Nic Berg's death the same way. I'll grant you that we likely don't intend to kill those children, while these guys did intend to kill Berg, but both sides have taken actions they knew would result in the gory, horrible deaths of innocents. As I said in my initial post on this topic, I believe the biggest difference is denial. I think a fair amount of the outrage over Berg's death is that we can't imagine doing such a thing face to face. It seems inhuman to us to cause such a horrible death without a "get out of jail free" card to play afterwards, such as "we didn't KNOW there were children in there" or "we didn't MEAN to kill those particular people".

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[turtlespeed 212]

I think a fair amount of the outrage over Berg's death is that we can't imagine doing such a thing face to face. It seems inhuman to us to cause such a horrible death without a "get out of jail free" card to play afterwards, such as "we didn't KNOW there were children in there" or "we didn't MEAN to kill those particular people".

as you pointed out - We did not mean to kill them - there is the difference in it's entirety. On the other hand - the terrorist do that - just because they can.

. . . and it not only "seems" in human - it IS inhuman, as well as Barbaric, Evil, and the main reason we are in there to begin with.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[funks 1]

Our government DOES mean to kill people and they DO it on a very frequent basis. One major difference between our government and other governments is that ours is better at hiding the evil acts that they commit.

[kelpdiver 2]

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All of my students intended to get "A"s in physics. The outcome didn't work out that way for most of them. If intent is more important than outcome, maybe I should change all their grades to "A"?

Are you sure they all intended to work at that level?

If any are lower division, I bet many are shooting for a gentlemen's grade (B- these days).

It's a crappy analogy in any event. What we're talking about here is the distinction between first degree murder and something that lies near involuntary manslaughter (with great negligence).

[kallend 1,683]

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All of my students intended to get "A"s in physics. The outcome didn't work out that way for most of them. If intent is more important than outcome, maybe I should change all their grades to "A"?

Are you sure they all intended to work at that level?

If any are lower division, I bet many are shooting for a gentlemen's grade (B- these days).

We don't have gentlemen, we have engineers.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[livendive 8]

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as you pointed out - We did not mean to kill them - there is the difference in it's entirety.

Well, not in it's "entirety." When we hit a building with a big-ass explosive device, we pretty much "mean" to kill everyone in the building. Other forms of denial include "We didn't KNOW those women/children were in the building", and more recently/disturblingly things along the lines of "Well we knew they were in there but didn't have a choice." Real world examples of this one include those people who said "If those people didn't want to die, they shouldn't have gone to a mosque where they knew combatants were holed up." and similar variants.

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On the other hand - the terrorist do that - just because they can.

I don't see any purpose in trying to dehumanize the enemy. If you think about it rationally, I imagine you'll reach the conclusion that they don't do these things "just because they can," but rather because they think these kinds of actions are justified by their goals (whatever those may be). If it were "just because they can", they'd kill each other off and save us the trouble.

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. . . and it not only "seems" in human - it IS inhuman, as well as Barbaric, Evil, and the main reason we are in there to begin with.

Well shit. I thought we were in there to find WMDs or oust Saddam Hussein or something. If someone had simply told me at the outset that the main reason for invading Iraq was because the people there are inhuman, barbaric, and evil, I'd have been supporting it all along.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[kallend 1,683]

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Well shit. I thought we were in there to find WMDs or oust Saddam Hussein or something. If someone had simply told me at the outset that the main reason for invading Iraq was because the people there are inhuman, barbaric, and evil, I'd have been supporting it all along.

What you need is a subscription to the Reason of the Month Club.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 2,476]

>and it not only "seems" in human - it IS inhuman, as well as
>Barbaric, Evil, and the main reason we are in there to begin with.

I love it! At first our primary reason was to disarm Saddam Hussein. But then we couldn't find the vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons we claimed he had.

Then it was to free Iraq; the Iraqi people, free of the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, would welcome us as liberators. Well, it turns out they're not so happy we're there.

So now it's mainly "the war to stop evil." I guess if you redefine the war every few months it's easy to always be winning. What will it be next year? "The war to destabilize the middle east?" "The war to scare Jordan into cooperating with us?" Hopefully it won't become "The war to remind us Vietnam wasn't so bad."

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Let's also not forget that it's still not too late for GWB to turn the Iraq war into WWIII (he seems to be headed in a long drawn out affair with no solution in sight). Like the previous WWs, #3 (if it does happen) will be like no other war mankind has ever seen.

I better jump my ass off while I can, because who knows how long society as we know it, can survive the egos of the people in charge.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[turtlespeed 212]

I somehow doubt that - just because you need to argue - we have told you that now - and your position won't change until there is something else to argue about. Kerry is the same way. He needs a cause to defend from the underdogs position, try to convince everyone that he is correct and then if it doesn't fit what he thinks everyone wants to hear and see - he changes his mind.*shrug*

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[billvon 2,476]

>Kerry is the same way. He needs a cause to defend from the underdogs position . . .

Sometimes it almost seems like there's a right-wing form of Tourette's Syndrome that causes its sufferers to blurt out "Kerry! Kerry!" in the midst of completely unrelated conversations. It seems to be gradually replacing the old disease, which involved blurting out "Clinton! Blow job! Lewinsky!" during otherwise unrelated discussions.

[storm1977 0]

I'm a righty and i have to agree with here on that one Bill.

What's Kerry got to do with it?

Chris

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[Steel 0]

The reality is that your not completely wrong here. Its true that the reasons for going into Iraq continue to be restated and may also continue to be. But this is only to please outspoken opposers like yourself.
Most clear thinking people can see that the overwelming amount of terrorism which has changed our way of life has been caused by ISLAMIC radicals. Let me say that again ISLAMIC radicals. Sure the majority of them may want nothing more than to live their lives in peace. But there are enough crazy suicidal ones to ruin the world. And its no coincidence that since this religion was first invented in the 6th century, thre has been enough crazy radical ISLAMIC fundamentalists to cause trouble around the world. Last I heard there was about 200 million of them surrounding Israel. (I heard that number in the mid 90's from an Israeli college buddy, for all I know it probably has increased).
Even if 99% of them were peace-loving people and 1% were psycho- terrorists. That would still mean that there were 2 million psychos out there endangering the security of the world. The fact is that there is not anywhere near 2 million suicidal people of any other religion ready to happily kill themselves as long as they kill there enemy.
So to end here, the reason we are in Iraq is for terrorism control. Hopefully after we solve the problem there, Iran will have gotten the message and if not we will need to go there as well. If this ends up as a 3rd world war, well that is the worst case senario that I hope will not come. However, I prefer that this end up in a third world war in which my side destroys the entire Arab pennisula, rather than listen to liberals be applogetic to the ISLAMIC radicals, while they bomb major western cities around the globe, purposefully targeting women, children and innocent civilians.

If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass.
Can't think of anything I need
No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound.
Nothing to eat, no books to read.

[Skyrad 0]

What a load of CRAP! There wasn't a terrorist problem in Iraq until we invaded the place. As for 9/11 they were mostly Saudis. Talk about Islamophobic republican indoctrinated bullshit.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Ron 7]

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What a load of CRAP! There wasn't a terrorist problem in Iraq until we invaded the place. As for 9/11 they were mostly Saudis. Talk about Islamophobic republican indoctrinated bullshit.

Saddam giving 25,000.00 to every family of a suicide bomber that kills himself in Israel is not a terroist problem?

You have a very strange sense of what a problem is.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[Gravitymaster 0]

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What a load of CRAP! There wasn't a terrorist problem in Iraq until we invaded the place. As for 9/11 they were mostly Saudis. Talk about Islamophobic republican indoctrinated bullshit.

Struck a nerve, did he? Outside of your juvenile name calling, was there something specific about what he said you disagreed with?
Of course there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the "coalition" invaded, there were very few targets of their hatred available then.

[Steel 0]

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What a load of CRAP! There wasn't a terrorist problem in Iraq until we invaded the place. As for 9/11 they were mostly Saudis. Talk about Islamophobic republican indoctrinated bullshit.

that is the typical liberal spin. It wasn't Iraq it was the Saudis, No this came from Jordan. No it was Saddam the madman, No it was Kaddafi that held the American Hostages, no the Taliban in Afganistan, no wait it was really Al Queda. Like you really don't see the connection with all these places. Pluueez.

If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass.
Can't think of anything I need
No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound.
Nothing to eat, no books to read.

[Skyrad 0]

Sadam giving them that money didn't change the fact that they were doing it before he started giving up the cash. Now he's not giving up the cash and if anything there are more suicide bombings. Conclusion? Sadam made no difference to the terror problem.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Skyrad 0]

***Of course there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the "coalition" invaded, there were very few targets of their hatred available then. ***

Q.E.D

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Skyrad 0]

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that is the typical liberal spin. It wasn't Iraq it was the Saudis, No this came from Jordan. No it was Saddam the madman, No it was Kaddafi that held the American Hostages, no the Taliban in Afganistan, no wait it was really Al Queda. Like you really don't see the connection with all these places. Pluueez.

It was America that...............

Supports the corrupt and despotic house of Saud
Supported and supplied WMD to Sadam the madman
Bombed Tripoli killing Kaddafi's (sic) infant son.
Trained the Taliban during the Afghan/Soviet war (Along with OBL)
That supports and has one of its own as the Queen of Jordan.............


The connection?.....................Places that America has fucked up and interfered with when it suited?

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Gravitymaster 0]

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***Of course there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the "coalition" invaded, there were very few targets of their hatred available then. ***

And I had a hive of yellow jackets in in my backyard last year. They hadn't stung anyone yet, but I felt if left there long enough to breed and multiply, that one day they would be a threat. They had, after all began swarming and buzzing us at dinner time. We felt given enough time, someone would get stung.

Would you have just waited until they started attacking and stinging, or would you pre-emptively removed them?

In removing the nest, I realized I had to put myself in danger, but decided the risks of being stung trying to remove the nest far outweighed the long term threat. I was stung because I had to put myself in harms way to insure our long term security.

Please explain to me what I did that was wrong.


Q.E.D

[PhillyKev 0]

That's an interesting analogy. Can you please relate the swarming and buzzing to what Iraq was doing to us before the invasion?

[Michele 1]

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Please explain to me what I did that was wrong.

You shoulda called a professional. .

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[Ron 7]

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Sadam giving them that money didn't change the fact that they were doing it before he started giving up the cash. Now he's not giving up the cash and if anything there are more suicide bombings. Conclusion? Sadam made no difference to the terror problem.

OMG that is backwards thinking.

It was clear he was SUPPORTING TERROISTS. And we are in a WAR ON TERROR...See the connection?

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334