Senator Tim Johnson(D) of S. Dakota Suffers Stroke

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Dec 16 2006, 10:53 PM) [snapback]363322[/snapback]</div>

Classic red herring. It's called war, started by radical Islamic aggressors who wear no uniform and hide among civilian populations. Unlike FDR and Truman (Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) who targeted hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the current crop of terrorists who strap bombs to their women and children to blow up innocents while firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian population centers, Israel does not have a policy of targeting innocent civilians.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(amped @ Dec 17 2006, 02:10 PM) [snapback]363400[/snapback]</div>

This is a lost argument on some people here. Some here would probably rather die at the hands of a criminal than allow me (forces of the Gov't) to use deadly force to save them. They cannot differentiate.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(amped @ Dec 17 2006, 09:10 AM) [snapback]363400[/snapback]</div>

Or so they'd have us believe. They want us to believe that when they bomb a schoolhouse it's an accident. Problem is, the IDF is just too good. When every Palestinian incursion is followed by an Israeli retaliation that kills ten times as many women and children as the provocation did, I come to the conclusion that it is intentional.

And in the end it's impossible to distinguish the provocation from the retaliation amid the continuous tit-for-tat violence.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Schmika @ Dec 17 2006, 01:24 PM) [snapback]363475[/snapback]</div>

If you can prevent my being hurt by a criminal through the use of non-lethal measures, or by the simple presence of your uniform, I'll be grateful. But I do not want anybody killing anybody for my sake.

Odd thing is, they made a religion out of a guy who said basically that. They made a god of him, but they threw out everything he said about violence being the wrong path. In fact, they threw out just about everything he said about anything.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 17 2006, 02:31 PM) [snapback]363495[/snapback]</div>

Daniel,

I am curious, do you believe that the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, during the height of the Balkan war, was intentional?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IsrAmeriPrius @ Dec 17 2006, 03:54 PM) [snapback]363523[/snapback]</div>

One of the reasons I oppose all war, is the inevitability of innocent civilians being killed and mutilated. However, I don't have enough background on the Kosovo war to form an opinion as to whether this particular bombing was intentional or not.

But the consistent pattern of Israeli bombing of civilians, and the exceptional capability of the Israeli fighter pilots (probably the best in the world) and the Israeli intelligence service (also very possibly the best in the world) finally convinced me, around the early 70's, that Israel was intentionally targeting civilians as retribution for Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. And of course the IDF has been much more effective than the Palestinian fighters have been.

FWIW, the U.S. also has a consistent pattern of targeting civilians. The American-trained and American-financed Contras in Nicaragua during the reagan years targeted above all else civilian medical workers, especially nurses, who were routinely raped and murdered. I have no proof that this policy was U.S.-inspired, but I believe it was. A routine strategy during the Vietnam war was to bomb a village, then napalm the people as thy tried to flee to the surrounding jungle, then bomb the village again as they ran back in, etc. And some reporters have made a convincing argument that the rocketing of the hotel in Baghdad where all the non-embedded reporters were staying, was intentional, as they had provided the U.S. forces with the coordinates of the hotel, hoping thus to prevent an attack. Throughout history, civilians have been the principal victims of war, and I suspect that an army that does not intentionally target them is the exception. Which, again, contributes to my opposition to all war.