BHS

This is kind of a dog's breakfast of comparisons, isn't it? The English in Quebec were the masters prior to the quiet revolution, but as far as I know they didn't impose laws to disenfranchise the French. (Correct my ignorance, please.) Meanwhile, the whites in South Africa had democracy among themselves and knew full well what extending democracy to the blacks would entail, which is why it took so long for them to do it. I guess they're similar in that they both represent minority groups that held positions of social superiority which has since been taken away by events in modern times, like the Sunni. On the otherhand, the Protestants in (independant) Ireland (note: which is neither Northern Ireland nor pre-independance Ireland) and the Christians in Lebanon are minority demographics who presumably have always been under the heel of the majority. So why are you lumping these two groups together?

Did you read the terms? Seems be something doomed to fail unless there is a major change of attitude in Washington I'd think the UN approval hurdle isn't really much of a problem, in that the UN doesn't currently have much to say on the issue. I'm imagining that the once the US has approved of a timetable for withdrawl (and assuming that it does approve such a timetable) then getting UN approval will be pretty much a matter of taking the timetable to the Security Council or the General Assembly or the Secretary General's office or whoever and getting them to sign off on it. So, the biggest hurdle is getting the US to agree to everything. That the American ambassador was involved is a good sign, to start with. Up until this point, the support for American withdrawl on a timetable has been weak in the US because all of the proposals have been unilateral and have assumed an incomplete and weak government in Iraq. If the Iraqi government show the resolve to formally request a withdrawl and stipulates a timeline, it will give a great deal more weight to the idea in the States.

I see. So when write out a list of all the things you dislike there is equality between them all? All things you dislike you dislike equally? The word dislike is an absolute statement? Like "four" or "affirmative"? No, like "good" or "bad" and "love" and "hate", dislike IS a relative statement. Unless you "love" steak equally as much as your wife, or you "dislike" eating liver equally as much as you "dislike" finding a toenail in your ice-cream. By all accounts those words are relative and require context. This is ridiculous. Dislike in no way requires a comparative to be valid, any more than like does - it is completely valid as an unqualified absolute. When you tell your mother you love her you aren't required to qualify it by comparing her to cinnamon toast, which you merely enjoy. I don't know where you got this idea from, but it seems to me you're just being contrarian and petty. If by that you mean that you now realize you shouldn't have been snotty or at least shouldn't have been so without expecting return treatment of the same, well alright then. No biggie. Misunderstandings like this happen all the time and I suppose this one can last as long as either of us wants it to. . Look, if anyone is being snotty it's the guy who can't quit with the endless ad hominem attacks, being you. I mean, you can't even let it go long enough to accept me resignation from the argument without lecturing me on how snotty I've been, again resorting to cheap ad hominem. Good arguing skillz, hombre.

A false dilemna and a strawman in the same thread! Are you trying to set a record or something? Yes, theoretically a strawman, in that I'm putting words into your mouth and ideas into your head, whereas in reality there is some point of public policy out there espoused by GWB that you agree with. Though I've never seen any evidence that such a point of policy exists. And for the record, my false dilemma argument is being applied to your own strawman, based on the above definition for what makes a strawman argument. Touche.

From the Times: Great news, regardless of your take on the war. I, for one, am hugely interested to see how this plays out.

Your ignorance is astonishing. If I agreed with you I'd be embarrassed to have you defending my position. Every post I make indicates my identity in the lefthand margin. That information quite clearly includes that fact that I'm posting from SOUTHERN ONTARIO. I'm a Canadian, as were my parents, and their parents, and their parents, going back at least five generations on each side. Further, no one in the industrialized West owned slaves during the Second World War. Slavery on the North American continent ended 80 years before then. Saying that the sins of the forefathers of our forefathers sullied the good fight in the 20th century means that no one on Earth can escape from your cheap denigrations, because everyone has skeletons if you go back far enough.

Uh...no. That, friend, is a false dilemna. IOW there's a world of options between ignoring the problem and running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Right. And the only right ones are the ones that George doesn't persue. Gotcha.

Dislike isn't relative. If I say I dislike liver it's not because I prefer steak, it's because I can't stand the taste of liver. There's no relative component to the concept. As for the rest of your, um, critique, I'll say this - I won't make the mistake of faking enthusiasm over any of your proclivities anymore. My smart ass is getting sore, for no good reason.

The alternative being that we assume there is nothing wrong, that vigilence and investigation are a waste of time and money, and that we can just go back to the Sept. 10 world where we assume our peace and security are invulnerabe by divine right.

It's a hyposthesis. The procreative drive is a function of brain activity. I believe that it is hardwired into the brain during fetal development. From a biological standpoint, the procreative drive is intended to produce offspring. When the procreative drive is hardwired in such a way that offspring cannot possibly occur there has been an unintended variation, like being born with an extra finger. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the difference or that it's necessarily something that needs to be fixed, but that like autism it is a form of brain damage. Which is pretty much what I said.

My point is, that in the portion of the conversation that was included in your post the interviewer's statement was technically not correct as it was worded, and therefore Ann Coulter's reply, within that context, was in fact correct. Perhaps hate is too strong a word. You clearly dislike Ann Coulter. There isn't much to like. My apologies for the affect that my too-strongly worded estimate of your feeling had on your self-esteem. But so far I haven't directly attacked you personally, as you have me. I can take it.

Um, no, I don't. See a pattern. What you've written more resembles a scattering of windblown leaves than a Japanese rock garden For instance I thought, in your prefered meme, that the idea that Saddam having WMD was THE lie. So, to which lie are you refering in the phrase "...which turned into invading Iraq on a lie..."? Is there an even greater lie that precedes the WMD lie? What is it? Also, invading Iraq included the goal of overthrowing Saddam all along, so I couldn't really say that invading Iraq "turned into" the overthrow as if it had never occurred to anyone until the project was already underway. Let's call getting Bin Laden the "main goal" of The War on Terrorism Strategy Phase I (being the neutralization of Al Qaeda's HQ and infrastructure and Taliban support in Afghanistan). Strategy Phase II is the establishment of a long term base of operations for a rapid reaction force in the centre of the Middle East, the region of the globe perceived to be the source of international terrorism. There was no such obvious "main goal" for Phase II, but one of the bigger goals was target selection. It was really easy to achieve this goal. As you've pointed out, the US administration (and the administration before it) already had the goal in mind of deposing Saddam. Congress actually passed a resolution in 1998 declaring it's intention to achieve regime change in Iraq. The US military had already undertaken the objective of containing Saddam and preventing him from re-arming. Also, Iraq is geographically central to the Middle East. An invasion aimed at producing a US-friendly democracy in Iraq amiable to the idea of a long-term US base on it's soil killed many birds with one stone. Strategy Phase III is long-term, low intensity, and has no clear-cut goals. It's like the Cold War phase of the War on Terror. The general objectives are to prevent terror at home, to root out and destroy terrorist infrastructure abroad as needed, and to convince the other peoples and governments of the world that rejecting and eliminating terrorism is beneficial to everyone and that we need and want their co-operation.

Buddy, are you for real? Iraq is completely and totally a command failure at the top. The poor soldiers there have been put into the position they find themselves in as a result of lies and exaggerations. The real enemy is still in Afghanistan, or on the Afghan/Pakistani border. Don't come here trying to tell us there is some kind of coherency entwining planning and policy because the current political administration has shown anything but. They assumed that their men would be treated like saviours, and they went to war on the cheap, but all that has happened is that the soldiers doing to hard work are put in situations that allow this sort of crap to occur. I'm surprised that you didn't say "Mission Accomplished". If anything, now that they opened the can of worms, America should be expanding their Army, drafting people if they don't volunteer, and putting the economy on a war footing, which means rationing gas etc. America could accomplish what you say, but they'll need at least half a million boots on the ground to do it. Trying to kep this fight cheap is laying American soldiers out to dry, but they'll do their best regardless. There should be at least a full company maintained in every Iraqi town, constantly patrolling and setting up an informants network. what use are troops bunkered down in huge camps, conducting the odd foray into the countryside. clear goals my arse.... Sorry, I was out committing some serial killings. What was that again?

And Halliburton thanks you for your comments. Oh newbie, whatever will you do to make jokes after November 2008? I suppose Haliburton will still be there, but by then the hardee-har-har factor will have dwindled to practically nil, especially if Wesley Crusher or whoever is in the Whitehouse.

No, sorry, I don't know that. I murderous tyrant has been removed from power and the Arab world's first democracy has taken his place. These are both facts, not opinions or spin. So let's get something clear: do you support people who desert for reasons of concience in general or only for reasons of concience that you find personably agreeable? Because if you're advocating a general principle, it must be that individuals should be able to choose whether or not they want to fight in any particular war regardless of the commitments they've made or their responsibility to the common good. Which makes raising an army a bit tricky. Which makes winning any particular war a bit tricky. If our forefathers had shared your view I'd be typing this in German, or Russian. And if you aren't advocating a general principle, then you're just advocating these soldiers' spineless refusal to uphold their oaths as a means of justifying your own skewed take on this war, or more accurately on this American president.

I was serious, by the way, about the autism thing. I think all three conditions indicate a subtle form of brain damage that may or may not be treatable by gene therapy at some point in the future. If the therapy occurs in utero I don't know that homosexual activists would be able to stop it, without foregoing the current view that an embryo is just a clump of tissue subject to it's mother's wishes, and not a human being. On the other hand, if the therapy occurs post-pubescence I don't see how it's anything other than individual choice, which again is hard to argue against. Quentin Crisp rather famously said that he hoped that science would one day find a cure for homosexuality, because it made life so hard. He would have known, given the extraordinary and often difficult life he lead. Life is arguably easier for homosexuals today than it was when he was fighting his way through the world, but I don't think it will ever be the case that homosexual ostracism no longer exists, no matter how Utopian a world we might develop otherwise.

Except, of course, that it's not a cycle of violence. The US has clear goals - to bring democracy to Iraq, to ensure that a democratic government has the tools to maintain law and order, and to establish good relations with the Iraqi government such that it is agreeable to hosting a long term rapid reaction force a la Germany and South Korea. When these goals are accomplished the bulk of the American forces will be withdrawn from the country. Your implication that there is an element of random violence or vengence to America's motives and actions is just plain wrong. The American military takes extraordinary measures to ensure that it's soldiers act within a strict code of conduct that involves no vendetta taking at all, and imposes severe punishments on soldiers who cross that line. And take a good look at those faces again, because the next images you see of their bodies won't be including those faces or anything else from the neck up. They were found headless, and I'm confident we'll be hearing about the videos appearing on Al Jazeera in the next few days. Every aspect of what has happened, including our own cable news networks' unwillingness to subject their viewers to real torture (as in, torture not involving female underclothing) illustrates the difference between the two opposing sides between which you are so casual to assume a moral equivalency.

That's an astute observation. Same with the types that feel that have the 'wrong' sex. I think both conditions are akin to autism. How do you like them apples?

Keeping in mind that Shady said "physiological" and not "psychological"... Really? Who believes that religious belief is a psychological error? Provide a non-lunatic link, please. Because given the homogenous predominance of religious belief of one stripe or another throughout all of known human history, you'd think it was the people who don't believe in some sort of religious system who have the psychological issues. Generally, psychologists try to analyze behaviour that is out of the norm, and not shared by large sections of the population. I think you're just injecting your atheism into the mix to be needlessly contrarian.

This is actually being pushed, by a clinical psychologist in California. Which goes to show what a politically driven crock the psychological profession can be.

I don't disagree. I'm not defending her. In fact, if you reread the portion of my post that you quoted I specifically said "this is probably not what Coulter meant". So I don't really get the point of your reply, other than to take a shot at me. You certainly didn't bother with the actual point I was making.

It seems to me that you're being sly with your phrasing. You are correct that asking and forcing are not the same thing. But the school board didn't ask. They told. They edited text to remove passages they found offence, based on their ad lib criteria, and informed the student that only what was left was acceptable speech. And when she refused to follow their direction they silenced her. So, if the valedictorian was a music major bound for a music program at college, she would have to forego talking about her love of music because there might be non-musicians in the audience? Does this not fit with your logic? No? Okay, let's extend the analogy, and say that there had been a squabble over funding between the sports and music departments that the music department had won, such that there was genuine animosity between the jocks and the band camp types. Would it be okay for her to talk about her musical experiences in that case? Are we really talking about avoid polarization, or are we talking about authorities taking steps to actuallize their misguided take on the seperation of church and state? There's nothing in the article to indicate that anyone was actually offended by her speech, such as it was. There's no indication that anything she intended to say was anything but positive and generally agreeable, even to non-Christians. In fact, the audience responded angrily when she was cut short.

Excellent Post. I couldn't have said it better myself. Yay! You both hate Ann Coulter. Good for you. Moving on... The phrase "Canadians never went to Vietnam" is incorrect because it implies that no one with Canadian citizenship joined the American armed forces for the express purpose of going to Vietnam. This is probably not what Coulter meant, but stating pointedly that Canadians did not go to Vietnam is factually off the mark.

Strawman alert! Where's BD? Putting words into someone else's mouth and then arguing against their non-existent statement is poor form. If those guidelines included manditory statements of religious neutrality that the girl couldn't utter in good conscience, would you still be in favour of forcing her to follow them? Isn't editing text out the same as editing text in? My reading of this story is that the powers that be in the school system made an arbitrary judgement call about what was acceptable, based on their own sense of ethics. (Ironic, no?) There didn't seem to be hard and fast rules in play about what wording could and couldn't be used. When I was a wee lad we were made to say The Lord's Prayer every morning, and I'm sure the people who went to this school were made to follow a similar morning exercises in the past. I'm certain that past valedictorians must have made at least passing references to God in their speeches without having big hunks of their written material excised. Such things used to be common. It's since been decided that forcing children to recite religious pledges is wrong. Fine, and I agree. But isn't forcing children to not make religious declarations equally wrong? If not, why?

Only a raving atheistic nutjob would take offense at a positive religious reference in a public speech, regardless of the religious persuasion. The irony of this situation is that if she'd made statements pertaining to her own atheism and her belief in the the non-existence of God (an equally, if opposite, religious sentiment) she probably would have been left alone. Free speech rights are limited only by the prospect that public harm might result. Saying "God bless this graduating class" or whatever harms no one, not even the God-haters.