Who would win if it were up to us?

[Dragonsbane]

Originally Posted by Thanatos

Military: We are all tired of seeing our citizens going dying in foreign wars, but war is an inevitability. So, how do we solve this problem. Well, I've been giving this a lot of thought, and have figured out a way to kill two birds with one stone. We have another major problem, prison overcrowding. So here's what we do. We take our death row inmates and drop them on the frontlines with guns and explosives. They have already proven they have no qualms about killing people, so we put this to good use by letting them do the brunt of the fighting. If they die, oh well we wer going to kill them anyway. If they survive their sentence will be commuted to life without parole. The second wave of fighters will be the lifers. I can create military positions for every criminal out there, and if they prove themselves, their sentences can be reduced.

Fascinating...not only is this idea quite interesting, but it also reminds me of the Sardaukar troops in Frank Herbert's Dune series, elite warriors created by recruiting the toughest inhabitants of an extremely harsh prison planet. With some training, you could make a lethal batch of stormtroopers from your idea.

Originally Posted by Orkaxe

Bush.....

George Bush.....

How can anyone be proud of a president such as him? His name is like ash in my mouth.

If you have an opinion beyond just bashing Bush in an attempt to appear liberal, please state it. If not, try expanding your mental capacity enough to form an intelligent opinion...whether or not it agrees with mine, I'd rather not "duel an unarmed foe" in a debate such as this. Simply stating "Bush BAAAD" without supplying reasons, supporting arguments, or evidence is an extreme sign of ignorance.

Originally Posted by My Lead Airbag

Secondly, to all the Bush haters going on about the war, just stop. Yes, there have been a lot of American lives lost and there have been civilian casualties, but we also managed to get rid of a despotic mass murdering psycho.

This is one of the things most people seem to miss. Ask someone why war is bad, and they'll most likely tell you that it's because of the deaths involved. Saddam Hussein mass-murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children. His sons raped 12 and 15 year old girls. We hunted Osama Bin Laden for killing thousands of our people, should Saddam be spared simply because the people he killed weren't Americans?

It seems that we have a tendency to believe that events that don't effect us, don't concern us. Are people not still people just because they dwell in another nation? Is murder not still murder when the victims aren't our citizens?

Some have said that America can't be the "world's policeman", that is it not our job to protect the lives of innocents in other countries. The answer to this is simple: If we don't, then who will? The U.N. has repeatedly shown itself to be incapable or unwilling to stop genocide, and the French government seems to have forgotten the persecution it suffered under the hands of a brutal Dictator. Would they have wished us to mind our own business back then, and leave them under the rule of Germany? If not, why would they want us to leave the Iraqis to suffer under Saddam?

Originally Posted by My Lead Airbag

Soldiers lives and Civilians lost - Yes, we've lost a thousand or more to the war. But everyone is acting like Bush picked out the ones who would die. No one picked those guys and gals fates. There is no draft, we live in a country where you have to volunteer to fight, they knew what they were getting into. And judging from the fact that a good 90+% of the Armed Forces vote Republican might be construed as an indicator that maybe they agree with the war.
Civilian wise, I can't defend Bush beyond "War is hell."

Again, that is true. The people who are fighting in Iraq volunteered to go, and yet many presume to make light of their sacrifices by using them as a weapon, a political tool to wield against Bush. It seems a grave dishonor that such bravery be debased in the hands of power-hungry politicians in order to further their own agendas.

Bush isn't perfect. Far from it. Many of his policies at home I disagree with, and some make me fervently angry at him. However, in this case he did the right thing. Think about it.

[Toastburner B]

Hmmm...if it was up to me, who would of won?

Powell or McCain! Anyone but Bush or Kerry! I wasted my vote on Nader just to spite those two.

I'm hoping that in '08, we get some real choices instead of the choice of two evils that we got this time around.

[Archbio]

This is one of the things most people seem to miss.

Your extremely innovative argument has blown my mind.

Whoa.

German could be France's official language! I've never heard this before, and now my world view is entierely changed! Iraq and Nazi Germany's occupation of France are two situations so similar, I can't believe I didn't equate either earlier. Thank you, Dragonsbane! I can now state that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do.

Humanitarian justifications for war are trump-all arguments, even when demonstrably used disinginuously and as a substitute for a few other different pretexts!

[This post brought to you by Heavy Sarcasm, because there's no way to respond to these arguments seriously, and this is the Off-Topic forum, whatever other people seem to think]

[Arlia Janet]

I mentioned that "put prisioners on the front line" comment to my boyfriend- a US Marine who has been in combat zones. He said, "That is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. If you don't have people of character out there, everyone suffers."

[Dynamite220]

Originally Posted by Archbio

Your extremely innovative argument has blown my mind.

Whoa.

German could be France's official language! I've never heard this before, and now my world view is entierely changed! Iraq and Nazi Germany's occupation of France are two situations so similar, I can't believe I didn't equate either earlier. Thank you, Dragonsbane! I can now state that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do.

Humanitarian justifications for war are trump-all arguments, even when demonstrably used disinginuously and as a substitute for a few other different pretexts!

[This post brought to you by Heavy Sarcasm, because there's no way to respond to these arguments seriously, and this is the Off-Topic forum, whatever other people seem to think]

If there is no good rebuttle to an argument than that usualy makes it a good argument. I don't see where your anger is coming from. Also, we know that it's the off topic forum, but it was good of Less Than Jake to put it here. It could have turned into something very rediculous, but here, that's fine and this is fine to. There is more leniency here.

I don't think that we need a barter system, Thanatos. What we need is a hard money standard instead of this "money is worth what people think it is worth" bull shit that we have been going through since we dropped the gold standard. Since then, the dollar has dropped from $80/ounce of fine gold to over $200/ounce of fine gold. I'm not saying that we need the gold standard back, but we do need some kind of hard money standard.

I was also offended by Bush's push to ammend the constitution to ban homosexual unions, but I don't think that Bush alone can cause that kind of permanent harm to a document that has lasted this long. If it is truly the will of the people, then it will happen, but Bush alone can not put anything permanent in place and if the next president is more lenient on the matter then all is well.

There is no hiding it, there will be a problem with social security when I retire. I'm not saying that Bush's reforms are the way to go, but I am glad that he was willing to bring it up. Now it will be on the table when the next president takes office. (If I had my way, then the whole damn program would be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch. When the government needs to intervene in something at all, then it is done for in my oppinion)

I have already stated what I think of all his other moves in my posts above.

[Archbio]

If there is no good rebuttle to an argument than that usualy makes it a good argument.

Not really. There is also immaterial arguments, and arguments that are so senseless that a logically rebuttal wouldn't be worth the time expended. And the time needed to clarify that sort of statements, I don't care to spend. My objections are contained within my first post, and if one cares to know why I find that throwing the Second World War into this without heed to the specifics of both situations is absurd, then let them try and understand how by checking up on history. I'll assume Dragonsbane knows his history but has taken an abberant point of view based on that.

I don't see where your anger is coming from.

Sarcasm isn't anger.

[Thanatos]

Originally Posted by Archbio

German could be France's official language! I've never heard this before, and now my world view is entierely changed! Iraq and Nazi Germany's occupation of France are two situations so similar, I can't believe I didn't equate either earlier. Thank you, Dragonsbane! I can now state that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do.

Ok, how about this then. A few years back we went to war against another small nation. That time our leader happenned to be a democrat. Why were we there? Because the leader of that country was persecuting a minority race in that country. We were told by this president that 100,000 people of this minority were being killed. This was a lie it was only 3,000. We were told that the war would last a week, it lasted 78 days. This was longer than the war in Iraq. Clinton knew there was no mass genocide in Kosovo, but said so anyway to justify the war. Bush did not know there were no WMDs. The CIA said there were WMDs. We know that Saddam had used WMDs on his people in the past. We needed to make sure this didn't happen again.
By the way do you know who we were supporting in Kosovo? The KLA (Kososvo Liberation Army) A group the US classified as a terrorist organization in 98 and that has links to Osama Bin Laden. In Iraq we are losing men every day because we are fighting terrorists, piople who look no different than ordinary citizens. We didn't lose anyone in Kosovo mainly because we were fighting on the side of the terrorists. We helped to ethnically clense Kosovo by driving out over 250,000 Serbs. Our soldiers in Kosovo are safe, mainly because the people in kosovo are afraid the serbs will return. They don't want to harm their liberators.
Lets compare Milosevic and saddam. Milosovic was elected. He had the support of the majority. Saddam however was not elected, and his supporters were a minority. Unlike Saddam, Milosevic NEVER invaded another country, or used Weapons of Mass Destruction. Milosevic never gassed anyone. Milosevic never used missiles on another nation. The only war Milosevic sent troops in was Kosovo: And that was a CIVIL WAR. Imagine Lincoln during the American Civil War. During the Civil War, over 500,000 Americans died, but Lincoln is considered a hero. The war is not viewed in a bad light because by nature a Civil War is natural to most nations.
Today democrats are attacking Bush on skipping the UN, but in 1999 Clinton skipped UN altogther. The reason was because he knew Russia would veto the vote.
They complain that in Iraq people are dying but people in kosovo did not. Actually, in Kosovo people ARE being killed. But they're not American, so no one cares. Those being killed are Serbs and Gypsies. A few weeks ago two Serb children were gunned down. The other crimes in the past week: A fisherman killed. A farmer killed. A bus blown up killing eleven. A gypsy girl raped and stabbed. A nun pelted with rocks. Children beat up by gangs. Over 1,200 Serbs are still missing. Most of them abducted or killed after Wesley Clark marched into Kosovo. Over 150 Christian churches have been blown up and destroyed. Some of them as old as 600 years old. Today Serbian children can barely go to school. Women are raped in the street. Even those Albanians who are friendly to Serbs are gunned down and killed.
If you're against the invasion of Iraq then you should naturally be disgusted and angered by the Kosovo conflict. If you're disgusted by the fact that no WMD were found in Iraq, then you should be shocked that no genocide was found in Kosovo. If you are angered that America bypassed the UN to bomb a soverign nation, then you should be pissed that Clinton avoided the UN vote to bomb Kosovo. If the deaths of innocent lives in Iraq disturbs you, then you should be upset that thousands of innocent people were killed in Kosovo at Wesley Clark's hand. Unless of course, you are partisan and only interested in the suffering of American lives.

[Archbio]

Unless of course, you are partisan and only interested in the suffering of American lives.

Yes, give me those souls! I want more souls to crush and devour!

[Krylo]

Closed, because this is about five seconds from turning into "I'm right!" "NO! You're a doody head, and also here's an arguement completely unrelated to anything you said!"

...Oh wait, it already did. Damn. I was late.