quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
mmmmm....could be an asshat!!

Does this hat make my butt look brainy? Or succulent?

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
lol @ all.

A successful amputation was never even concieved of until the us civil war...

You are joking, aren't you? I know from my own reading that there were plenty of successful surgical amputations as early as the 18th century, and according to Wikipedia, there was already a fairly standard medical literature on amputations by the 16th century.

Not to mention that various cultures have practiced amputations as punishment for... I don't know. A really, really long time before the US Civil War.

Aw shit, I can't believe I'm still reading this thread. See what you made me do?

heh.
I haven't been serious for months....
trollbait.

Stop fucking around in the news threads and write something SC.

Glad to have you back.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Stop fucking around in the news threads and write something SC.

Glad to have you back.

Hey, my brain is percolatin'. I've got a load of bullshit a conference presentation to write, then I'll get to it.

I'll be in Spokane next week, though. Spokane always gets the creative juices going for me. Then again, I do plan on being drunk the whole time, so maybe it won't be so productive.

Linnie's Thai Cuisine west downtown.

The Shack used to make a great breakfast, but that's gone.

Spokane's a nice place to live but I'd hate to visit here.

It’s nice that we’ve got into an argument about semantics, but can we focus on the fact that charging the United States with conducting a policy of terror bombing is completely ridiculous for a minute? First off, the USA Today article linked to in the original article (Bravus’ link is out of date) doesn’t cite sources, so I can’t really respond to the question of the number of bombings. Suffice to say that 1,140 seems high. What I can do is link to the military’s own statistics about the first half of October. (It’s down at the bottom.) Note that the military dropped a grand total of thirteen bombs and missiles, a bit more than one per day over the whole country. It may also be educational to note that, out of 473 close air support sorties, only 13 weapons were used. I’m guessing that this data doesn’t include strafing passes, or gunfire from helicopters and AC-130s, but it is an accurate count of the large weapons employed. More likely, the high ratio of sorties-to-weapons is because most sorties don’t end up using their weapons. It is possible that the military was using many more weapons during the first nine months of the year, but I can’t find a reliable source for the numbers.

Thirteen weapons in eleven days is a pretty low number for an air force engaged in a terror bombing campaign. Even if you assume the USA Today numbers are accurate, eleven thousand weapons in nine months still comes out to slightly more than four weapons per day. You can fit more bombs than that on a single bomber. Frankly, if the Air Force was bombing to attack a neighborhood, it wouldn’t bother with a few precision guided bombs, because a residential district isn’t something that has to be hit within a few feet of a DMPI. This suggests that what the Air Force is engaged in is “bombing in an urban area”, not “bombardment of civilian neighborhoods” like the article claims. This may seem like an overly fine and arbitrary distinction, but the difference can be seen by comparing Baghdad to Grozny.

All of this doesn’t change the fact that this sort of thing sometimes has horrible consequences. The people maimed and killed by bombs are not always going to be the people the bomb was intended to hit. It’s the inevitable result of fighting war (and especially true in a war in a crowded urban environment against an enemy that does not respect the rules of war.) If you think that the war is horrible, then please, make every effort to bring it to an end. But if you are going to, please also be realistic in your assessments, and focus on ending the war instead of looking for every possible opportunity to smear Bush, which is in the end what Greenwald's article is really about.

quote:

Originally posted by Splitcoil:

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
lol @ all.

A successful amputation was never even concieved of until the us civil war...

You are joking, aren't you? I know from my own reading that there were plenty of successful surgical amputations as early as the 18th century, and according to Wikipedia, there was already a fairly standard medical literature on amputations by the 16th century.

Not to mention that various cultures have practiced amputations as punishment for... I don't know. A really, really long time before the US Civil War.

Aw shit, I can't believe I'm still reading this thread. See what you made me do?

Before the US Civil War, the limbs kept growing back!

Ha!

quote:

Originally posted by kenmeer livermaile:

quote:

Originally posted by Lester Zombie:
You never show yourself. How do we know you have a hat?

Clever, Les. As any zombie knows, where there's a hat, there's a suckable brain.

I believe you are on his ignore list as well, Liv.

quote:

Originally posted by BlueShift:Thirteen weapons in eleven days is a pretty low number for an air force engaged in a terror bombing campaign. Even if you assume the USA Today numbers are accurate, eleven thousand weapons in nine months still comes out to slightly more than four weapons per day. You can fit more bombs than that on a single bomber. Frankly, if the Air Force was bombing to attack a neighborhood, it wouldn’t bother with a few precision guided bombs, because a residential district isn’t something that has to be hit within a few feet of a DMPI. This suggests that what the Air Force is engaged in is “bombing in an urban area”, not “bombardment of civilian neighborhoods” like the article claims. This may seem like an overly fine and arbitrary distinction, but the difference can be seen by comparing Baghdad to Grozny.

The the insurgents/Al Qaeda are not conducting much of a terror campaign either seeing as they do not deploy four bombs per day.

quote:

(and especially true in a war in a crowded urban environment against an enemy that does not respect the rules of war.)

You should do stand up, this is killer material. Do you beilive in unicorns as well?

quote:

If you think that the war is horrible, then please, make every effort to bring it to an end. But if you are going to, please also be realistic in your assessments, and focus on ending the war instead of looking for every possible opportunity to smear Bush, which is in the end what Greenwald's article is really about.

I don't see how quoting meaningless statistics has anything to do with the reality of war nor it's ending.

quote:

Before the US Civil War, the limbs kept growing back!

But in the wrong place.

quote:

I believe you are on his ignore list as well, Liv.

Zombies are subtle, though. Sneaky. One can't be too careful.

Incidentally, there's a special kind of attention conferred when someone declares you're on their Ignore List.

quote:

ignominy

Etymology:
Middle French or Latin; Middle French ignominie, from Latin ignominia, from ig- (as in ignorare to be ignorant of, ignore) + nomin-, nomen name, repute — more at name
Date: 1540

1 : deep personal humiliation and disgrace 2 : disgraceful or dishonorable conduct, quality, or action

That's pretty cool, I say. Love the etymology. Kinda like the invisible man blushing.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kenmeer livermaile,

I like the irony of touting someone is on your ignore list and then proceeding to not ignore them. It's paradoxical likesways.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I like the irony of touting someone is on your ignore list and then proceeding to not ignore them. It's paradoxical likesways.

I assumed that was their primary, if not sole, purpose.

It's like the mysterious dark matters and dark energies that must exist if QM/Einst-relativity are not to tumble into some new prognostic paradigm.

Ever notice the poetic resonance between proboscis and prognosis? Stick your nose into the future and there's no telling what you'll predict.

If I could just get enough people to put me on their IL, I might have a chance at ruling this local bit of universe.

Why Iraq will win the 2012 Olympics, and never forget the USA: The water bottle.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDuck:
The the insurgents/Al Qaeda are not conducting much of a terror campaign either seeing as they do not deploy four bombs per day.

Being unable to do something and refraining from doing something are two different things (unless you read too much Ayn Rand.) But thanks for the bullshit, straw-man argument to knock down.

quote:

You should do stand up, this is killer material. Do you beilive in unicorns as well?

This isn't so much a specific criticism, but since you keep throwing slow ones over the middle of the plate, I'll take a swing. Suffice to say that when a group flagrantly violates Art 4, Sec A(2) of the Third 1949 Geneva Convention and Article 37 of the Additional Protocol I of 1977 it makes it much more difficult for soldiers to apply the just war principle of discrimination.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BlueShift,

quote:

Originally posted by BlueShift:This isn't so much a specific criticism, but since you keep throwing slow ones over the middle of the plate, I'll take a swing. Suffice to say that when a group flagrantly violates Art 4, Sec A(2) of the Third 1949 Geneva Convention and Article 37 of the Additional Protocol I of 1977 it makes it much more difficult for soldiers to apply the just war principle of discrimination.

Again, priceless comedy. Articles and protocols have so much to do with war and you put them in, like, your argument, pure genius. You are really, really smart. Just war. Ha! You are fucking hilarious!

Do you really believe you exist in the world you purport in your mindless recitation of menaingless facts that have nothing to do with the actuality of the subject you discuss? Cause if you do, can we all go live there? Anyplace where pedantry can make war just is a place I for one have got to see.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDuck:
Again, priceless comedy. Articles and protocols have so much to do with war and you put them in, like, your argument, pure genius.

Um... the original article was all about how we're supposedly breaking said rules by bombing too much. I suppose that one does have to assume that there are rules to argue about whether or not they are being broken.

quote:

Do you really believe you exist in the world you purport in your mindless recitation of menaingless facts that have nothing to do with the actuality of the subject you discuss? Cause if you do, can we all go live there? Anyplace where pedantry can make war just is a place I for one have got to see.

I'm honestly not really sure what you're saying here. Clarification?

OK, my point, and I am sorry if I've misunderstood yours, is that there isn't any way one can apply rules to war and expect them to be followed nor make a war just in any meaningful way that subverts the hell and chaos of war from the get go.

Also, American violated its own "rules" of war by attacking Iraq to begin with so how can said nation then debate the rules they are or are not breaking by being there?

War is beyond human ministrations. That is my point. Attempting to clarify what is essentuially a manifestation of human thanatos is more absurd to me than diving into the maelstrom in the first place.