You wound me.

That's why this post is longer, isn't it?

Naturally. ;-) Historically, all these posts are short by my standards.

Shooting at ships or planes is about the same thing.

Sinking neutral merchant vessels is not the same as taking ineffectual potshots at military aircraft.

Tell that to the pilots who have to hit their afterburners to narrowly escape missiles that surely would leave them in bits and pieces.

In essence we could have resumed the war after the first such incident of demonstrated hostilities.


In theory, not in essence. And yes, we could have resumed hostilities.

Well despite the grammar lesson - at least you admit this much. Most of the left was convinced that not only did we not have the right to attack Saddam but that import sanctions should've been ended years ago.


We gave Saddam time enough to bury the Queen Mary if he wanted to and time enough to wipe out the people who buried it.

Really? What the hell are we paying all these taxes for satellite surveillance for? Hole on Tuesday, trench on Wednesday, filled on Friday. No scars? No clues? No photographs? I thought they were plentiful...or so I was told.

Tom touched on this and its a lot more complicated - every satellite has its orbit mapped and even our spy satellites' orbits are not secrets to those who are seriously looking and can assume from our launch locations and craft, etc - just which orbit a satellite is bound for. The sad truth of the matter is that Russia and China and other nations sell such secrets to foreign nations for tidy sums. So then organizing either cover - such as the oil well fires that raged for over a week around Baghdad - or timing movements to avoid known observation times is par for the course. That is why we have invested so much in drones - which can fly lower under cover of weather and also do so at irregular times. But our drones were not present for much of the time Saddam was preeparing and even their capacity for observation is limited.


So your family has a history of looking the other way when mass murderers are on the loose.


I'll thank you not to draw parallels between my family and yours.

You were the one who brought up your family - not me.

So that is where that came from. It was only a guess. OK.

I wasn't talking about Pete. ;-)

Yes and in the thirties it [isolationism] was a wise policy.

So, when it's a position espoused by a member of my family, it's "looking the other way when mass murderers are on the loose". When it's a Republican Party position, it's "a wise policy".

I always thought it was a woman's prerogative to change her mind. Would you care to make up yours?

I said that until we started losing shipping, I would also have agreed it was a wise policy - after that it was clear we were no longer in a position to take a non-combatant stance.


Hitler's track record was established early on and there were still folks who believed in his right to attack the other nations and occupy them. [emphasis mine]

Ummm... I have carefully avoided comparisons like this. Are you sure you want to go there?

Yeah...I'm comfortable going there. Poland wasn't shooting at German planes. Poland didn't accumulate and develop WMD and Poland hadn't thirteen years earlier invaded Czechoslovakia.

Kristallnacht occurred in 1933. By 1938 all Jews required identification cards. All this was well known

You see what I mean, then, about the "wise policy" of the 1930s Republicans.


Of course. All Republicans are racist and anti-Jew, everybody knows that.

Just as an aside, we all know now where this was leading, but at the time, this was no more brutal than the treatment American blacks received under the Jim Crow laws. The occasional lynching, the segregation, the restrictions on voting rights and property ownership, the miscenegination laws. Of course, black Americans were never required to wear badges and carry identity cards... but then, one can usually tell without the paperwork.

Yes, yes...we have a wonderfully rich history of racism. We also rounded up anyone with slanted eyes and threw them in concentration camps. But wait! It was the Republican Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and the Democrat FDR who signed the order to round up US citizens of Japanese ancestry. So obviously racist behavior was not party specific.


Part of the reason the Holocaust was so shocking, once Allied soldiers saw with their own eyes what had been done, is that so few people believed that such a thing was possible. A little brutality, some Jews and Gypsies and Japs thrown in some camps -- hey, we all do these things. But 6 million people systematically murdered in cold blood during a 4-year period (1941-45) in what was presumed to be a civilized nation because of racial bigotry? This was beyond imagination.

Our imaginations have been educated.

You conveniently omit the thirty million who had already been murdered between 1925-35 under Stalin's wonderful utopian communist regime. A figure that makes the holocaust look like the work of some Johnny-come-lately amateur and our "Jap" internment appear like a summer camp.


Saddam's brutality is well known but brushed off by the left.


Remember "our buddy Saddam", every bit as brutal but less brazen, who merrily exterminated Iranians? Who supported and supplied him? Who made him what he was? Who brushed it off for years, and even fed it weapons? Hint: it wasn't the Left.

Yes, and when the Iranians were apparently more fundamental and rabidly anti-US then Saddam such was a useful if not shortsighted policy. Hostage crisis anyone? I still remember the humiliating "day count" on the front page of the local paper. Do you?

You read leftists write "Saddam clearly never had any WMD. They don't exist."


You read Leftists saying that, or reports on Right-wing websites saying they said that. I read Leftists saying, "Saddam didn't have WMD at the time the US used their existence as an excuse to invade a sovereign nation." The Left hasn't said he didn't have them, nor has the Left said he didn't use them. But it appears he hasn't had any recently.

Yes. Of course. Gotcha. If I build an atom bomb in 1997 and you dismantle it and take it away from me are you going to trust me six years later when I say I don't have any intention of building a bomb after I forcibly kick out the people you left to keep an eye on me?

I would think you might have some reason to suspect I was less than truthful.


The organization I saw most thoroughly denying Saddam's use of chemical or biological weapons over the past 10 years has been the US Veterans Administration, trying to discredit Gulf War Syndrome so it wouldn't have to be treated in VA hospitals. But they did that with Agent Orange, too, so I wasn't surprised.

Yes. I'm not particularly proud of the US at times either. Painting me as a blind partisan, like Lindy does often - is ridiculous.

Bottling one's compassion and reserving it for strategic usage when it gives a political advantage only hurts oneself.

Well said. I'll have to bookmark this for a discussion of domestic policy.

Don't forget to tell it to Don.


Being correct about a tragic outcome and then pointing that out is not equivalent to "rejoicing". That's like saying that people who work in emergency rooms "rejoice" when one more brain-dead helmetless motorcyclist is wheeled into the ER because his injury supports their research about head trauma. They know the consequences. They preach the consequences. When their words are disregarded, the anger they feel at the tragedy is not "rejoicing". It's grief and frustration. They know that another brain-dead helmetless rider will be in next week, and they can do nothing to stop it. This is the anger of the Left. "Rejoicing" isn't even in the picture. It feels to you as if the Left is gloating because the situation in Iraq shows that the Administration's projections look more and more simple-minded and unplanned as each week passes, and you dislike the embarrassment.

Oh there is not only rejoicing but heartless exploitation of such deaths for political gain. The stories I'm reading offer no compassion for families or the victim - but rather only demonization of Bush and political pandering. Perhaps we read different stories. Each soldier denigrated to a number and when the number increases - the left rejoices. Don did handflips like the rest of the exploiters when the number who died after combat ended exceeded the deaths during combat. All symbolic garbage of course - since this conflict has been sanitary and clean by any sane historical standard.

I know it would be difficult to try to understand the other side, because it would be necessary to put some value on them, and that would imperil your positions.

Yes. I'm just a partisan meany.


Regards--
Mary Anne


Do me a favor and look closely at the next article you read about a fatality in Iraq - imagine its a friend of yours. Is the way the article presents his/her death dignified or respectful of their sacrifice or is it just another partisan article attacking Bush?

Which side has really lost it's compassion and sensitivity?

Take care MA,

SDAI-Tech1