Posted on 03/17/2004 4:17:06 AM PST by T-Bird45
Point is that if your neighbour committed a murder it is no good reason to accuse you of domestic violence.
But your sophism is a cute one. It might trick people even with IQ around 115.
X is a bad guy who deserves punishment. X is not guilty of a crime Y which deserves similar punishment. It is fair to punish X for Y. If it is fair to punish bad X for crime Y when it is not committed by X then it is reasonable to punish every person which is bad for any crime no matter who committed it.
But will it be an efficient way to wage a war? Imagine if after Pearl Harbour Americans attacked some nasty dictator in Latin America and started war against Stalin? You are not saying that Stalin was a good guy?!
Hate to reply and run, but I've got to go shovel snow.........(Eat your heart out)
Uhmm, when I joined the Guard, there was a draft and no war. "They" said that a military obligation could be fulfilled by spending 8 years in the Guard instead of 2 years in the regular Army.
"They" also said that, if activated to regular deployment, the entire division would be called, not individuals or select companies.
All these promises turned out to be lies.
The Guard was sold as a home guard that would get paid only about one-fourth as much as a regular, but it would be possible to have a civilian life as well.
It was NOT sold as becoming a reserve bin of soldiers that would be the first to man the depleted ranks of the regular military at the first hint of foreign conflict.
After the abuses of the government in these last few years, we'll probably find there is going to be no one willing to be a part of the home guard at all. It's difficult enough living for 8 years as never a soldier, never a civilian as it is. And, oh, by the way, National Guard alumni get no GI bill and no veteran benefits.
It is if I'm beating my wife.
You act as if there's no connection between Iraq and terrorism. You and I both know that's not correct.
I nominate this post for the SPOTD award!
Huge standing army is a threat to freedom and prosperity. It was necessary to face the global Communist enemy. After collapse of Soviet block (caused in part by excessive costs of arms race) the downsizing is the only sensible thing. America should keep a few key bases abroad and have a moderate size agile military able to respond quickly and efficiently againt precisely selected targets.
Blind indiscriminate lashing out is a sure way to squander ones strenght and to lose.
I cannot - you need a high level clearence to know the real reasons :). I guess you do not know them either.
I didn't realize I called it the "War Caused by 9-11." Perhaps you could point out where I did.
So, you think Saddam didn't support terrorists, huh? Like Abu Abbas who recently died in Iraq? Or how about the northern terrorists who we've linked to al Qaeda?
And just because we haven't found WMD's yet . . . I suppose it didn't bother you beforehand that Saddam wouldn't explain when and where he got rid of all the WMD's he "supposedly" had during the Clinton Administration, WMD's the UN Inspectors even said he had? Thinking of Saddam with biological and chemical weapons doesn't bother you? How about with nuclear weapons? Does that bother you? It's patently unfair to grade our before-the-war efforts by what we "supposedly" know today. EVERYONE agreed Saddam had WMD's . . . it was up to him to prove he didn't. And we gave him twelve years to do so.
Lastly, don't try to paint me with your race-baiting brush to justify your position. I purposefully didn't use race because it gives those spoiling for a fight . . . like you . . . such an easy target. Are you denying that those who willingly commit suicide in the name of Allah, while murdering as many innocents as they can, are not "religious zealots?" It doesn't matter to me if they're Muslims or Baptists . . . if they're committing suicide and murdering innocents in Whatever name it is they call their God, they're religious zealots. Your race-baiting says much about you.
Evidently, you're against the War on Terror or the War in Iraq . . . which to me is part and parcel the same, but evidently it's not to you. So, instead of taking pot-shots, why don't you tell me what you would do instead. Would you have us hide under our beds like the Spanish? Would you have us waste another twelve years playing kissy-face at the UN? Would you have us withdraw ALL our troops from the "100 countries" and have them build fences around our borders so we could hunker down like the Alamo defenders?
Just what is it you would do? Naysayers are a dime a dozen. It takes nothing to take potshots. But do you have a better alternative? That is the question. I await your reply.
Your nephew is doing great work -- he deserves a huge thanks.
And I gotta say that stories like this really piss me off too. I don't know why so many people (even some Freepers) feel so comfortable with putting down the valor and sacrifices of soldiers in the Guard and Reserve. It makes no sense. Guard and Reserve service has its own unique difficulties, and it's kept this country strong since the 1600's. You'd think the Guard and Reserve would have earned a little more respect after 400 years of successfully defending liberty.
1000 bases in 140 countries? What are you counting? What is the source for that bit or data?
Saddam was bankrolling many terrorist groups. He is gone. There is now a chance of a democratic Iraq prospering in the middle east, which can affect the whole region.
Why do you think the house of saud does not want to see the new Iraq succeed, because they know they are next.
But you go ahead with your Buchannite/DU shortsighted rants.
If I may say so, what many here don't seem to understand is that this "issue" is a total, 100% illusion created by the press to get their readers riled up and sell a few newspapers.
In fact, retention rates in the first Gulf war went up for units mobilized for war. It's too soon to get real good data about retention rates in this war, but lack of data never stops the press from whipping up a non-story into something that naive readers will believe.
After the real numbers come in, the press will just shrug and go on to invent some other imaginary story to write about, without putting out any corrections or apologies.
Meanwhile, unsophisticated readers get the impression that the Guard and Reserve is filled with whiners, which also isn't true, and these soldiers deserve a better "thanks" for their service than this kind of abuse.
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