It is therefore important to choose the one that suits you best.

Bucksbaum sent tens of thousands to Mr.

Exactly. I am at about 3 out of 4 minipulations now.

I think I have to allow myself just one “lol” now.

Thus….ROTFFLMFAO.

Vincennes or cut and run again?

Morality and ethics is the chain by which violence and rage is controlled, and funneled to proper use. Proper disciplined use.

However, if you truly want to save the lives of innocents, then you will have to make the same choice that I did. Will you favor total war and total violence, in the hopes of getting rid of enough evil men and women such that innocents can safely live their lives in order rather than chaos? Or will you shirk from your duty to the innocent, conduct less violent operations, and allow the evil sadists to overwhelm those who you are sworn to protect because you felt guilty?

It goes both ways. You can be guilty of killing someone that didn’t want to hurt you, and you can be guilty of not killing someone that meant to hurt you or your family or those under your care.

The situation as it exists right now, with Bush giving Geneva Convention protection to terroists, with Bush refusing to take on the legal claptrap that says terroists are protected by the US Constitution, and in which the Bush Admin does not conduct punitive or public executions in order to prevent the 2 executions of captured US military men, is not an example of violence taken too far. Rather the opposite

How many children, women, wives, brothers, and sisters will the Iraqis suffer having seen torn asunder in front of them before they will unleash the full might of their armed forces? We protect Iraq and our strength outmatches them 1000 to 1, what duty do we have to protect innocent Iraqis who just want to live in peace, from the murderous terroist jihadists when their own forces are incapable of exerting enough power to do what they need to do?

Your trainer did you a favor, because he saw how happy you were. It is best to prepare for the ethical challenge now, rather than later when he will not be there. But this is not an excuse when people are under your protection as it they are under Bush’s protection. And it is irrelevant when you realize the target you are killing is indeed responsible for death and destruction and will be responsible for more death and destruction until you end it.

It is not an excuse to choose less violent more peaceful methods, when peaceful methods do not work.

I or those part of the military, I presume, do not feel an ounce of guilt for having seen a successful assassination operation of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi or any other terroist. We indeed feel joy. Joy that a human being was liquidated literally from the inside out by sonic shock waves and over pressure? yes, indeed. Your trainer put more pressure on you because nobody would be responsible for who you shoot or what your ROE would be, civilians had to go by their own ethical compass and make their own decisions to shoot or not to shoot. Thus your standard is higher, yet your chances of kill or be killed are lower.

Doubt is a useful counter-balance to rage and anger, but it does not excuse us from making the hard choices when it is time to make them.

Lyndon B Johnson wanted the same thing that you wanted, less casualties. That was not an excuse to fight a war of attrition, and it did not help at all, if you ask the Vietnam veterans.

David Weber has explored the dichotomy between peace and war, attack or defend, surrender or victory through his Honor Harrington novels. While they are gripping, they are also educational, in that it forces the reader to see it from all perspectives, enemy and friend alike.

I’ll give you a little story, a true story. The first time I shredded a target. The ladder was perfect, one over, one under, range established, the third round found its mark. All done on a radar screen. I was ecstatic. Jubilant. My supervisor, an E-5 Southerner who had been in Vietnam a year or two before, I can’t remember now, said the following after congratulating me for a good shot: “I hope you never have to do that for real. You just killed someone, shredded someone’s father, husband , or brother. A mother, a sister, a wife, a child, will be crying because of what you just did. Don’t ever forget that. Ever.” He said it in that very slow Southern drawl, you know, that redneck drawl, emphasizing each word, telling me I had, if it were real, just destroyed a family. Destroyed hopes and dreams. I never felt the same jubilance again. That’s why my nerves jangle a bit, even though I never had to destroy those hopes and dreams. I’ve children of my own now, and his words are even more poignant

I want the fewest deaths of my people, and the innocent Afghanis and Iraqis, and even the insurgents, as possible to prosecute these wars.

My position and belief is that what people think is more important than whether they agree with me or not. Therefore I tend not to have emotional connections if you disagree on fundamentals, which is true for many people who don’t go crazy because of politics. But fundamental things like human decency, the lives of virtuous men and women, those things matter, and people who push those people into the mud, anger me as any injustice would.

It’s not that they don’t care (or because everyone agrees with the neo-cons), it is just that if it was really important, they’d be killing people for it, and since they aren’t willing to kill anyone thus it must not be so important.

The importance of a belief, I tend to judge, is based upon how many are willing to die and kill for it. On this scale, Islamic JIhad ranks pretty high, but so does American patriotism.

Boy you write fast. Where we disagree, let’s agree to disagree. Clarity is more important than agreement.

And I will show you courtesy for courtesy.
Fair is fair.

I work with what I have, I don’t have enough to engage in any reasonable discussion with you, Ariel, over what I should or should not tone down in whatsoever manner was deemed fitting.

So what I do is outline what I do, and if that seems upset, then that is probably because I keep it short and to the point, so that the tone becomes frank, cutting, and curt. If you criticize a flaw in my beliefs, I will correct that flaw to the best of my ability, and then stop.

I try not to go into tangents until people I’m talking to, like you, have a chance to further explain themselves. This may also seem upseting and emotional, but it’s just curt.

I’m looking out for your interests, Ariel, if you want to tone it down, then I don’t see why my comments can be considered more egregious to you than wasp’s or your own. If you notice, I didn’t get on your case about talking to Confude, from the time you started to now. As I said before, it’s wiser to let people discover for themselves rather than trying to convince them otherwise.

I understand now that the military gung ho ness jangles your nerves. I don’t presume to know why, but I do know that it jangles Confude’s nerves as well. Now I don’t lie outright about assassination or what not, I get the benefit of both. I don’t have to insult Confude, to make him lose temper or emotional balance. I just tell the truth, okay, the truth with some manipulation of COnfude’s meanings.

As for the point about not talking to someone, instead talking about them. i think the most effective way to do that is to be ultra-rational and logical. Extra work must be conducted to take a subject matter, and integrate Confude’s words into as an example rather than a thesis. If all you do is talk about what Confude has talked about, then he sets the subject. But instead, if I derive a point from Confude that he did not mean, and then talk about it with references to confude, then I believe that is effective in creating understanding and enlightenment.

I don’t disagree with Ariel on the principles of cooling down by talking about someone, as if they aren’t here, rather than talking to them like a heated argument.

I disagree simply with the devil, in the details that is. If the militaristic gung ho stuff annoys you Ariel, then I can only promise to tone it down if I talk to you. However, give me the same benefit of consideration I gave you, in not trying to dictate what I say to other people. Otherwise, I don’t feel the need to give you the same freedom of tolerance in conducting your own affairs here according to your conscience and not my judgement that you are unwilling to accord to me. Fair’s fair after all.

Don’t worry I know, I decided to play his game for a short time because he is too easy. And you have to admit I resisted a long time.

Don’t get upset on the tone it down, there is more than a generation between us, partly because I wasn’t raised by my parents, and some of the military gung-ho does jangle my nerves. It wasn’t a rebuke. And if you were playing your own game with Fudd that is certainly OK.

Sally,

Australia is a great country. Fudd uses the “I don’t care I’m not a nationalist” as part of his cloak of superiority. Think of how he mocks us if we defend our country, notice how his feathers ruffled so easily once Australia is demeaned. Australia does have racism as part of its past, as i wrote elsewhere my family could not have migrated there, but began the final dismantling in 1972. I’ve read the Krauthammer article, it puts Fudd in a most humorus perspective.

Talking about him indirectly, I mean addressing some of his points, but never directly to him, will cause him to explode. Attention is only truly satisfying if direct. Anything else is infuriating for him. Until he goes away, I thought it would be fun to watch him go up in small explosions.

Remember what Brad wrote, Fudd’s a nasty bully. Go after him as he does you and he starts whining and crying while his insults keep increasing. He depends on others to follow the rules he won’t. Its the advantage he needs in arguing. He won’t concede a point no matter how wrong, because he can’t be wrong.

His words no longer have any real meaning to me so the insults no longer work. Look at them for the silliness they are and the only emotion they’ll invoke is laughter. Mixed with a tinge of sadness that there are people actually like him. Sad caricatures. That was the tone of “silly little fool. Look at what you’ve written.”

I’ll take both your replies as rebukes to stop.

People in power have ways of using it, it doesn’t matter if they have laws backing them or not. What really matters is if they have the country backing them, and not having good laws in place to protect sources will allow Hillary to expunge the records, agents, and sources and then claim credit for reconstruction after an attack.

Ariel You do need to tone it down a bit. Violence can sort out a clear cut problem, like the Nazis, but used too early and easily just makes a mess. And people die, innocent people.

Tone it down to what, I’m talking to Confude here. If I’m talking to you Ariel, I would take different positions, but this is Confude here. See the difference?

I’m not doing the personal insult route with Confude, I take a different road.

If you want to tone it down, Ariel, stop insulting Confude as Wasp does continually and you do directly and indirectly. People and I didn’t come here to read who can insult who better with snappy retorts and all that, if I wanted to see that I’d be watching Crossfire and Michael More.

The Official Secrets Act is any of several Acts of the United Kingdom Parliament for the protection of official information, mainly related to national security. The latest revision is Official Secrets Act 1989 (1989 chapter 6), which removed the public interest defence by repealing section 2 of Official Secrets Act 1911.
…
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