As an analogous response to David's header, your statement does look different in that context. It gets damn hard to follow who's responding to who when the threads get extended to that point, but that's no excuse.

This doesn't change the fact that the "equivalence" argument is used a lot. It's not like you are the only liberals I ever deal with, and many are both less reasonable and wield a lot more political and cultural power than the people on this board.

Speaking of equivalence: as a justification for interfering with another society, are you really comparing executing retarded people tried and convicted of a capital crime with a regime that shoveled a third of a million innocent people into mass graves and killed entire villages with nerve gas? Never mind. I'm probably misinterpreting that one, too.

If I am cantankerous, it's because I am being exposed to a constant barrage from people and groups (not just here by any means) telling me that our president is a monster from hell for the crime of removing what is probably the second worst living dictator on the planet from power. I can't understand this, and it's painfully obvious that pious references to "national sovereignity" and other abstractions are simply the most effective excuses to attack this administration, and there is no history of such justificiations with these same people and groups. This includes people running for the highest offices in the land, some of whom have specifically said that if they gain power, they will give Iraq back to the monsters.

For sure, people here get caught in the crossfire who are not intended targets. That's my fault for the way I put things, and I apologize for it. I don't apologize for the position I'm taking.

As for my reading speed, when it was last clocked early in high school I had a reading speed of at least 2,000 words a minute (as high as the test went) with a comprehension rate of almost 90 percent. I was trying hard for the test, and obviously my "cruise speed" would be lower. Also, this rate is not valid for documents with detailed formulas and other things, but it does get me through the internet damn fast. I do read everything I post links to, and when I have not had time (like that recent CEIP paper) I say so.