In fact in some ways "you're a human being" should be the real insult.
(I know we have redeeming features. Nonetheless the capacity of our species for cruelty and violence saddens me greatly.)
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
If I knew there was criminal activity and could give you names and evidence, than I should be hunted down as a criminal. I would be an accomplice.
I would love to be fighting terrorists, but the military wouldn't accept me even if I tried.
If I was an LDS Bishp who heard about a Murder, I would be abliged to endulge that information to the proper authorities. Part of repentance is accepting punishment. Mormons don't believe in confidentiality when it comes to legal matters.
If I was to express what I do here to my acclesiatistic authorities, they would challenge me as "regular people off the street," but do nothing about it so long as I offered it as my oppinions only.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:If I knew there was criminal activity and could give you names and evidence, than I should be hunted down as a criminal. I would be an accomplice.
Not everyone in the would-be crater has knowledge of terrorists.
posted
You haven't answered my question as to whether or not torture and such would be justified in the pursuit of crime.
I'm suggesting someone confessed something to you that might lead to the murderer, not that you know who the murderer is.
Say, for instance, that someone confessed to you they spent the night at a bar. Perhaps there was a murder there, and the police suspect (for whatever reason) you know someone who went to that bar. This person who confessed is the only person you know. Do you give up the evidence?
Oh, or even better. You don't know the least thing about the murder, or anything associated with it, but the police think you do. If torture is acceptable in the general case, is there anything wrong with them torturing you?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Ah, because clearly I can look at a person and know he's a terrorist. What, you mean you can't?
*rolls eyes*
Generally humans try to live moral lives. Your great willingness to do otherwise reflects a sad state. Get some counseling.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Carrying a gun openly is pretty much a "badge" as far as I am concerned. So, yes i would say they have one.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:even more scary is meeting these people in person. I've been told by a normal seeming guy that the Inquisition was really a good idea, and that the state NEEDED to be able to weed out people whose faith was impure. VERY normal seeming guy, but honestly believed this and a bunch of other stuff (like that slavery was a good idea, just people abused it)
Toretha...this sounds like some of the rhetoric put out by the Christian Reconstructionists. They're really scary people, and the scariest thing about them is that they advocate stealth candidacies for things like school boards and city councils, not revealing their real beliefs until they're already in office.
Edit to remove link, because I couldn't get it to work.
posted
I'm wondering about the people carrying guns in the US. I could carry guns around in the open quite legally around here, why wouldn't that make me a terrorist?
Is it only in Iraq that this standard applies? Certain parts of Iraq? Why or why not?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
You know what, you provide backup for a single thing you've asserted in this thread and I'll go dig some documentation up about not everyone with a gun being a terrorist tomorrow, OK?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Iraq is a very different place from the United States. You know they don't carry guns to hunt animals (non-humans) for food or fun. As for carrying a gun out in the open of a city in the U.S., yes they would be considered criminal unless they were cops.
No the troops aren't terrorists because they are in uniform and act under the authority of an internationally recognized country.
quote:Iraq is a very different place from the United States. You know they don't carry guns to hunt animals (non-humans) for food or fun. As for carrying a gun out in the open of a city in the U.S., yes they would be considered criminal unless they were cops.
quote: RICHMOND -- Philip Van Cleave, a slight, balding, 52-year-old computer programmer, chose beige corduroys to wear this morning, a blue tie and a white shirt with thin blue strips. And a gun to match the outfit.
Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, always carries a gun because you never know when you'll need it. But which one to carry and how can be complicated, he said, much like the choice a woman faces in accessorizing her outfit with the right shoes. Today, he picked a compact black .40-caliber Kahr pistol, slipped it into a special holster and dropped it in his front pocket.
"It's a pain to re-conceal it. Sometimes you may have to literally do a striptease," he said. "Isn't it asinine that I even have to worry about that?"
He walked into the restaurant. No one blinked. "Smoking or non?" the waiter asked.
Van Cleave believes that every citizen should have the right to carry guns virtually anywhere, at any time, with no background checks, mandatory training or any other interference from government. "If I do something wrong with a gun, put me in jail," he said. "If I don't, leave me alone."
The Virginia Citizens Defense League and its 2,400 members have gone a long way toward achieving that goal in Virginia. In the past few years, the group has successfully sought out and helped strike down gun control ordinances throughout the state.
Its members fought to overturn a decades-old ban on guns in state parks. Then they went after gun prohibitions in city parks. Some cities, such as Radford, acquiesced within days, quickly painting over "No Firearms" signs. Others, including Norfolk, put up a fight before giving in. They've taken on libraries and Lowe's hardware stores so that gun owners can carry inside. They've boycotted shopping malls that bar guns, and they've published "gun unfriendly business" lists.
They sued Fairfax County and "won big time," Van Cleave said gleefully, to prevent officials from banning guns at recreation centers and county buildings. Thanks, in part, to the league, gun owners soon will be able to carry their weapons as far as the terminal doors at Reagan National and Dulles International airports. But to get lawmakers to allow guns on those airports' property, gun owners lost the long-standing ability to carry weapons all the way up to the metal detectors at most other airport terminals in the state. The league won't stop fighting until they can do so again.
And the group won't stop fighting until gun owners can bring their guns inside, right up to the metal detectors, the way they could in most other Virginia airports until the new airport law passed.
In the past few months, Van Cleave and other group members have been turning up in Northern Virginia with their guns, at restaurants and malls and a contentious Falls Church City Council meeting. The show of weapons was intended to test the resolve of city leaders who, in Van Cleave's view, proposed to "harass" gun owners by calling the police if they showed up with any gun, concealed or exposed, on city property. City leaders called it something else: intimidation.
posted
When the U.S. invaded Iraq, some of the armories were opened and the contents rifled by civilians and the Iraqi military.
Subsequently, after we had seized Iraq, the Iraqi police force were disbanded, since a lot of the police were Baathist. You then had the much publicized situation where American troops and MPs were acting as police.
Much of the Iraqi military weaponry, of which there was a lot, fell into the hands of gangs who engaged in an orgy of looting and rapine. Again, well publicized.
People who didn't want to have their asses kicked, their stuff stolen, and their daughters abducted, raped, and held for ransom, quickly acquired guns of their own for safety. This kind of things was documented, for example, on Riverbend's site.
I am not sure how much of that kind of situation still exists in Iraq. From what I understand, it's still pretty chaotic, but getting better.
In any case, I don't doubt that some of the civilian populace was in cahoots with some of the rebels. That's been documented elsewhere pretty extensively, too.
The problem with the argument that we should be as ruthless as the rebels/terrorists is that it assumes that it would actually intimidate the rebels and the rest of the populace who weren't rebeling to behave. I think this is very questionable. I think, rather, that it would firm resolve against us. For instance, was the U.S. cowed by 9/11, or was our resolve stiffened? I think the answer is clear.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Even assuming they required a permit in Iraq, do you have some magical way of knowing whether or not someone has one? Not to mention, why can't they be a common criminal, or just a normal person illegally (if we're assuming the law requires a permit, and we can magically tell those who have them) carrying a gun in order to, say, protect himself from the terrorists who have sent threatening messages to him, because he continues doing his work (he's a power plant supervisor)?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I would agree with you on the last part Storm, except I am not talking about intimidation. I am talking about getting rid of them altogether. I believe that they are already resolved. Because of that, I believe that we should unresolve them to oblivion.
I do see your point on that one fugu, but that only re-inforces my stance that acting nice can only confuse the U.S. Soldiers to the point of danger and bad tactics.
posted
Partly Storm, yes. I guess I believe they really don't want freedom and certainly not Democracy. Some, but not enough to be worth the effort to try and salvage.
Why not call it a faliure and leave the Country? Because to do that would be a surity that it would someday become a hotbed of serious security risks.
posted
...occasional, what about Sodom and Gomorrah? Even god wasn't going to destroy the city for the sake of ten righteous people that my live there.
Are you above god, that you can judge an entire population, regardless of the ten that your god may judge righteous?
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Because they have proven that they would definantly kill us.
Mac, if they want to join the U.S. as allies and fight along with us (as some have), then we will spare who we can. But, not if they don't help and only hinder. If there was a general uprising against the terrorists I would be less heavy-handed about the whole thing.
posted
"non-democratic system of government and proof of killing you"
I was speaking primarily of Iraq. Just read about the beheadings. And don't tell me these aren't the people who would be in power if the U.S. was to leave right now.
posted
Occasional, I am not quite sure what you are saying.
Did you mean that you don't care about killing the Iraqi population because they don't (in your opinion) want freedom or democracy? That is how I read your post.
Incidentally, you still haven't responded to my post on the last page about the rules of war and international armed combat.
posted
"Did you mean that you don't care about killing the Iraqi population because they don't (in your opinion) want freedom or democracy? That is hwo I read your post."
Well, I do mean that somewhat. I think, however, you haven't read my other posts as I believe I touched upon this.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I have read all your posts. I didn't see an answer to my question.
The question was:
quote: Occasional are you suggesting that if one side does not follow the rules of war and international combat then the other side is no longer morally bound to do so as well?
[Edit: I ask morally bound because as a matter of international law such a statement is certainly not true.]
posted
Right. I was just seeking to clarify the matter.
Why then do you think there are rules of war if one is only bound to follow them if the other side does so also?
Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions is "The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances."
How do you reconcile that with your statement that it is moral to abandon the provisions of these Conventions?
posted
"How do you reconcile that with your statement that it is moral to abandon the provisions of these Conventions?"
By believing that those rules are stupid to start with. They remind me of that episode in Star Trek where they use machines and radar to determine who died in attacks so the infustructure remained intact. All it ended up doing was making sure there was no clear winner as it nuetralized the reasons for wanting to end a conflict.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
So it's not so much that it's ok to abandon the rules of war when the other side does but that the rules of war in themselves are stupid?
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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