BHS

You are the bottom of the barrel when you suggest that Canadians would derive please from seeing American cities bombed. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But wouldn't they only be getting what they deserve?

There's the side that I'm on: that the reasoning behind terrorist attacks is irrelevant, and we should pursue an aggressive policy of pre-emptive action to prevent further terrorism. Then there's the side you appear to be on: all terrorism against us finds it's roots in our own actions, and so terrorist attacks are justified if not morally equivalent to our wrongdoing. Since terrorism is a product of this wrongdoing, we are morally obliged to put up with terrorism, and treat it as a crime stemming from our failure as a civilization. On further reflection, my statement that we were waiting for others to pick a side for us is wrong. It's pretty clear which side we've chosen to be on. As you yourself have noted (at least I think it was you) market forces and new technology will take care of the energy supply situation. I'm not saying it's good or bad, just that in the event of a dirty bomb, this is what is likely to happen. Congratulations. I believe you're the first person to infer that I am a Nazi in my history of posting to the web. In a way, it's kind of a right of passage for a Bush supporter, so I guess I should thank you. At the same time, way to scrape the bottom of the rhetorical barrel.

I'm not getting that from his post.

Black Dog: Your suicide bomber analogy is wrong. Given a choice of targets, American bombers would concentrate on denser military targets and leave individual gun placements in residential areas for last, hoping that they wouldn't need to be bombed at all. That a suicide bomber's first (and last) choice for a target is a single marine, surrounded by children, speaks volumes about why your moral equivalency is off base.

No one said we had to "put up" with terrorist attacks. That our government has chosen a passive stance in the war on terror has been notably lauded by the Canadian Left. It's so much easier to remain judgemental if we don't pick a side, and let others pick our side for us. Just don't be surprised that nobody in the rest of the world gives a damn when it happens here. You say "alternative sources of energy" as if the thought had never occurred to anyone else. What a brilliant idea! Which allies? I thought the whole world was against America lately. You'd love it if a dirty bomb went off in Washington, wouldn't you? The schadenfreude would be so stimulating. Here is the problem for the anti-Americans though - the American response to terrorism has been restrained, compared to what they are capable of. If a dirty bomb goes off in a major American city, you can count on Americans upping their efforts to remake the Middle East, not pulling out. And you can count on harsher attacks on civil liberties, to make the Patriot Act look like something the ACLU cooked up. And if there's any indication that Canadians were involved, you could pretty much expect our economy to tank with new, stricter border security measures in place. In other words, every element of the war on terror that you despise would become that much greater overnight. I hate to break it to you, but history is moving ahead with or without your approval.

An interesting concept from Max Boot writing in the LA Times: Max Boot LA Times I went looking for the book mentioned and found a pdf file that I haven't had time to read: Unrestricted Warfare If anyone has time to read it and summarize, please do.

Has anyone seen the huge, long mult-trailer trucks they use in Australia? They call them road trains: Road Train Any comments?

Agreed, the Worldcom example doesn't belong in this discussion. The people who lost money in Worldcom were investors who knowingly opted to take a risk. Government programs are manditory. EI is nothing but a tax, as far as my finances are concerned. I applied for EI once but after a month of jumping through hoops I didn't receive a nickel. I doubt I'll ever apply again, because I generally have a new job lined up before I leave my current one. There were construction workers in my resume class who had been there a dozen times, and had no interest in looking for work. My EI payments subsidize their wages during layoffs, and I guarantee they make more money doing that than I do.

It seems to me that you'd be in favour of the American administration's idea of abolishing income tax altogether in favour of a higher sales tax. What do you think of that idea?

I'm not sure I understand you completely. Are you saying that people on welfare should have a larger tax burden than those who require the fewest possible government services for a given year? Should trucking companies pay more tax than internet based companies, because they use roads less? Please explain. How do you feel about flat taxes?

The two situations (military occupation by a foreign power versus civil governance) are simply not analagous. The U.S. invasion precipitated the breakdown of the civil order in Iraq, therefore it is the occupiers' responsibility under international law (and their own standards) to uphold civil order. By summarily dismissing the entire Iraqi army, police, and security forces shortly after the war (without a back-up plan for maintaining order), the U.S. S. created the conditions for increased crime and lawlessness. Furthermore (as evidenced by the flurry of post-Saddam looting) the U.S. failed to fulfill its obligation to maintain public order. The only way your analogy would work is if the government of Canada first disbanded the RCMP, instituted mrtial law, but neglected to intercede in the resulting civil strife. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Excuse the lateness of my reply. Just something I'd like to add to the thread based on the above quote. By your logic, the best course of action for minimizing American responsiblility for deaths in Iraq would have been for them to pull out immediately after major combat operations had ceased, leaving the Iraqis to fend for themselves.

Goodness gracious, don't get him sending PMs my way.

I agree that religious persons should not be subjected to this so-called abuse and my solution is to abolish religions. No religions, therefore no religious people, therefore no religious people being so-called abused. The first step towards abolishing religions should be to immediately abolish tax free donation status for religions, and to abolish all religious schools. Why should my taxes be higher because of some religious nut getting a tax break? Who knows that religious nut could well turn out to be a suicide bomber. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> (Emphasis mine) Do I need to state the obvious?

Continued: Iraq Body Count Database This is the first of many pages to the database. Please note that the perpetrators for each incident are not listed. Please direct your attention to column 5, "Target", and column 6, "Weapons". Please examine the first entry in the database, and note that the target was a police convoy blown up by a roadside bomb. Please note that the Americans don't target police convoys, and don't employ roadside bombs. Feel free to peruse the rest of the database at your leisure, and be sure to take note of the high number of entries that don't apply to American Army activity. What the creators of this site are saying, in essence, is that the Americans are responsible for all civilians deaths in Iraq, regardless of whether it was their actions that caused the death. Insurgents killed by the US are claimed as civilians and added to the list. Children blown up by suicide bombers are treated as casualties of US actions. If a schizophrenic Iraqi with no knowledge or concern about the invasion was to get ahold of a gun and shoot his entire family, their names would be added to the list as well. How can anyone claim this is an accurate representation of what the US is doing in Iraq? All harm is treated as a US responsibility regardless of how the harm occurred. Here's an analogy to illustrate the faultiness of this logic: I don't support the Liberals, didn't vote for them, don't want them running my country. Does that mean I can blame every failure in our society on their misrule? Don't they have a responsibility to make Canada perfect, right now?

Still not disputing the 1700 American dead figure. But let's examine what antiwar.com has to say about Iraqi civilian deaths, shall we? antiwar.com Bottom of the page. antiwar.com has decided to forego keeping count of civilian deaths in favour of letting Iraq Body Count do all the work. Fair enough. Iraq Body Count is doing it anyway, no need for duplication. Iraq Body Count You'll note that the front page of the site is quite plain, showing an estimated range for the number of dead, labelled as "Civilians Reported Killed By Military Intervention in Iraq". This is done intentionally, so that a casual researcher, following the link to this site and taking the presented information at face value without delving further will simply believe that the Americans have killed a given number of civilians in Iraq. This extremely is misleading, as I'll explain in detail below. UPDATE: Dang, hit enter by accident and prematurely posted. See the next post.

And yet, it's not a federal jurisdicton. At least not welfare in the sense of giving money to the chronically unemployable. (Perhaps I should have been clearer, that "your" was a reference to the Federel government, not you. Not that you misunderstood.) As for the infighting between left and lefter, I could care less.

Again, I wasn't really disputing your figures. I was just plowing ahead with random gibberish as a way of flattering some other members, by way of imitation.

So how come you don't comment on about [OTHER MEMBER NOT NAMED, BUT (S)HE NEVER LINKS TO ANYTHING]'s crap like this? Ninety percent of the posts on this forum aren't backed up with URLs, and half of the ones that are use outside information that is unreliable and frequently wrong. If that's the way it's got to be, then fine. Your posts get linkrich replies from now on. But I expect the same from you. And do make an effort to quote someone who isn't a partisan nutcase every once in a while, kay?

Okay. Let's put the UN's ability to act in a beneficial manner to the test. The Americans, in the face of hostility from France and likeminded "allies", has been reticent to get involved in Darfur yet - let's see how the UN proceeds to rectify the situation. Maybe while they're in the neighbourhood they can have a little chat with Mugabe about throwing poor people into the streets and starving political opponents. PS - What to do about North Korea? Kim has already made it clear he won't deal with anyone but the Americans. How should that scenario proceed?

Newbie: By the way, linking to Antiwar.com isn't going to get you anywhere with me. I don't even follow those links any more. I don't trust a single number they post. Try finding a more reliable and neutral source in the MSM or even the UN.

But the numbers weren't exactly 1700 or $200B, right? I was just dicking around, as I said in that post. There weren't a lot of suicide bombers in Iraq before the war because there wasn't a lot of freedom in Iraq before the war. Suicide bombers rely on freedom of movement and a modicum of privacy in order to carry out their attacks. They rely on our humanity when their identities are discovered, where Saddam would have wiped out entire extended families. We could completely eliminate the threat of suicide bombing in the West as well, if we were willing to chuck civil liberties and common decency right out the window. But we aren't willing, and so we remain vulnerable.

Southern Lebanon elected pro-Syrian candidates, Northern Lebanon elected anti-Syrian candidates. Which makes sense, since Southern Lebanon is more or less owned by Hezbollah, which has deep ties to the Syrian Baathists. Okay, truce then about North Korea - neither of us will claim anything that Kim does to bolster our arguments. He's an isolated wacko anyway. The "reformers" in the previous Iranian government were serious about reform the same way that Joe Clark was serious about conservatism. The only progress towards a free society that has been made in Iran since the revolution has been among the student unionists, Iran's own Solidarity movement. And they haven't gone anywhere. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Russia already in Chechnya before 911? Wasn't China threatening Taiwan throughout the bulk of the 20th century? If these situations have been made worse by the Iraq invasion, I haven't heard anything about it. Sitting on the fence while Bosnia burned did more to disaffect European Muslims than anything that has happened since the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. Their hearts and minds were already turned away from us. The perception that America has Imperial intentions in the Middle East doesn't help for the time being (I will grant you) but that situation will slowly change over time as the Iraq situation improves and democratic notions spread throughout the Middle East. As I said above, Srebrenica was a more decisive event for British muslims than any part of the Iraq invasion was. All of the detainees sent to Guantanamo, who are still in Guantanamo today, are hard core Al Qaeda. The rest have already been released. We'll see if they end up blowing targets up. If they do, do you think that helps the argument that Guantanamo should be closed and the rest of them released as well? I'm sure that the Americans are happy with the notion that Al Qaeda guys hate them, and acknowledge fully that a large part of that has to do with America's recent actions. As for applying the same emotional state across the Muslim world, I'm afraid I have to disagree. Too many mental images of smiling Iraqis with purple ink on their fingers must be clouding my judgement.

Every [DELETED] word of this applies to you, more than anyone else on this site. You are nothing but a annoying troll that has no place butting in to legitimate discussions. Stay the hell away from my posts.

Good, good, I'm with you so far. Dang. You had me at the first paragraph, but the you lost me. "Paper tiger"? You've got to be kidding me. This is nonsense. The only response from other dictators of note: Qaddaffey duck relinquished his covert arms operation, Asshat pulled out of Lebanon, and Kim Jong Ill sang another verse of "I"m So Ronery" before heading back to the negotiating table. You should have stuck with you're 2003 line of thinking. Any danger incurred for "the world" (but I thought we were safe because we're a bunch of pansy fence-sitting "soft power" advocates?) has more to do with our own coddling of foreign cultures that harbour an active animus to our own, than the Iraq invasion.

You astonish me. You positively astonish me. In all of your posts, I've only ever once seen you link to a source that backs up any of the points you're trying to make. And that link was dead when I tried it. You quote newspaper articles that you half remember reading three years ago as if it was solid evidence. You pull facts and figures out of thin air, that are provably wrong. And when someone presents evidence from the real world that doesn't jive with your theories, you either ignore it completely or refute it using, again, facts and figures that you can't be bothered to back up with third party evidence. And then you have the gall to accuse other people of having an unfamiliarity with the facts? Who the hell are you? I'm starting to think you're some sort of super-troll, sent here just to stir up (WORD DELETED TO MEET FORUM LANGUAGE CRITERIA).