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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
That is an act of war, and we would be best served to use what ever means necessary to fight this war.

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Okey-dokey Your Operativeness.

You murder children when U HAVE to....

Chrisisall

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Frem: But when they feel the pressing need to deprive others of that right by shoving their believes down the throat of others with fear, force, or legislation, that's where I draw the line.
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Rue: This is a seriously asinine statement. As long as you live in a society and reap whatever benefits you get from it, you have to live by its rules. If you don't like the rules then change them. But every society - even your vision of anarchy - has rules no matter how unstated. Just ask, in your mind of course, the person who shot the other person with their ever-present gun. What rule was violated that required the death penalty ? (Come to think of it, it's an interesting concept - the gun as legislature, police, jury and executioner. You get to make up the rules, enforce them and punish rule breakers - of your rules of course - all in one step.)
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Frem: Nope, possession of the weapon is by intent, to PREVENT someone from doing so unto you, or at the very least substantially discourage it.

And it's not asinine at all, the State should NOT control our morality when it has no significant impact upon others, it ain't got no right to, nor reason, beyond as a weapon of oppression.

Ordering a guy not to dump waste in the river upstream from his neighbors is one thing, sensible and affects others...

Ordering him not to bang his wife doggystyle under threat of imprisonment is something altogether different, as such has no effect whatever on his neighbors and makes no effective sense.

If you fail to see the difference between those things, you'll never understand my argument in the first place.
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Rue: But your statement was - as usual - very broad - 'society never gets the right to set any rules' - while indeed it does.
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Frem: Then lemme clarify.

Society, or the State never gets to set ANY rules on my morals.

Society, or the State never gets to set ANY rules on my conduct unless and until that conduct has some perceptible affect on another person without their consent.

Is that clear enough ?
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Rue:Sounds good to me.

"We have an accord."
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SergeantX:

I suspect not.

Or, rather, I suspect that you'd be willing to interpret loose connections to secondary and tertiary effects in the equation. eg. poor eating habits causing health insurance rates to go up.

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Originally posted by rue:
What it wasn't was visual enough for the camera. That's the difference between real life and carefully controlled and constructed fantasy. And there is a difference between the two, something I hope we all understand. In real life if one or two people are waterboarded - partially drowned - for hours in front of other potential victims - and THEN drowned to death - the fear left behind in the other victims would be immense. That would be really, really effective.

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Originally posted by rue:
We also don't label spam senders as terrorists, but we DO label people terrorists if they launch a dos attack or engage in business-unfriendly internet acts. I think the point is that terrorism has been so broadly re-defined that you don't need to be an idealogue with political aims engaged in violent acts anymore. All you need to do is step over the line, and if you are on the radar you get boinked by the terrorism fairy and magically get id'd as a terrorist. And indeed, Mal, with his modest goals, would be over the line pretty much all the time.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You'll get no arguments from me for any of that. For the record I am 100% against waterboarding, and even many of the non-physical methods of torture even, such as using sexy millitary gals to tease and tourment these deeply religious people with their bodies. If we're supposed to be this great beacon of hope and everything symbolic of freedom and justice in the world, we'd do best to play by our own damn rules. The fact that we use any kind of torture, period, in my mind is disgusting and beneath us.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
...I’m 100% in favor of sexy military gals. That’s the best kind of torture. In fact, some people good money for that kind of torture.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:


Who is murdering children ???
WE are saving them, Lameisall.

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An inquiry has been launched by the US Navy's Criminal Investigation Service after the military was presented with evidence that the 15 civilians, including seven women and three children still in their nightclothes, had been killed in their homes in the wake of the bombing. If it is proved that they died in a rampage by the Marines, and not as a result of "collateral damage", it would rank as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by US armed forces since the invasion three years ago.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
I agree that we need to draw clear distinctions, but I don't think war is a matter of scale. Using that as a guide is getting us into trouble and steering us toward foolish policy decisions.

It's possible, though not common, to see acts of war that are relatively minor, and crimes that are huge in scale.

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