“If I’m in the business of defending myself, I care about legality. I leave the morality argument for others to complain about once I’m defended to the point where they can’t touch me 😀 ”

but dont forget you cant kill an ideal or a belief….
.
..so how do you defend yourself then?

there will always be someone prepared to drive that truck bomb or hijack that plane to get to their god that bit quicker….and it isnt just an Islamic thing…

“Hence the desire to assist NK and Iran with their nuclear programs so we could keep tabs on the signatures of the stuff they’re producing.”

and what happen’s if it comes from elsewhere?

That’s why it would only be applicable to an attack by a state-sponsored/directed terrorist group acting on the orders of a foreign power (or, obviously, it’d be applicalbe to a direct attack by a foreign power). Random extremists are obviously not acceptable targets for thermonuclear weapons. Also, consider that only two major terrorist attacks have taken place in the USA, and both by Al-Qaeda, which was clearly not state-directed by a foreign power. Bin Laden would be taken to task if we enacted my foreign policy. He’s claimed that his beef with us stems from supporting Israel, having forces on Muslim lands, and being involved in the Middle East. I won’t be doing any of that. We were even offered a truce a year or so back, that was on all the news networks. Of course we ignored him, but if I take this path, we’ll see just how much his reasons for jihad or whatever really mean, or if he’s just an idiot who wants to be famous. If he goes away, fine. If he keeps pressing the issue after I’ve vacated the Middle East over a lack of caring anymore, then I’ll be altering my strategy, and no nation in the Middle East (or Pakistan, Indonesia, and a whole mess of others) will like what comes next. If the man is the problem, then I should have fixed his problem. If it’s the ideology that is the issue, then I have ways to deal with that as well and effectively consign it to the history books. Personally, that’s whay I would have done at about 11AM on the 11th of September, 2001, anyway.

Deal with an idealogy? how? and what would you do to the likes of Pakistan?

Surely under america’s belief in freedom of thought and speech ,diverse beliefs are something to be fostered and understood rather than destroyed?.

mind you that seems to have been the American Admin’s attitude for years!

Quite right, A330-300. Why, I’m even given to understand that it was an Australian that scored the first of Everton’s 3 goals against Liverpool on Saturday last.

Something must be done. 😎

ahhhh ..come on now…..no Henry?No Saha? No Duff? No Given? No Giggs? No Ballock? No Rooney? ( well he is a scouscer after all!!!!)

and think about what we would have missed in the past;

Cantona, De Canio, Hughes,Viera, Best, Keane, Law, O’Leary, Dalgeish,Brady,Rush,Guillit, Zola, Toshack,Bremner,Ginola…

could be a whole new tread!!!

I can just hear the outcry coming from that one…”the US is weaponizing space!” 😀 Thing is though, were we to employ such a system, it’s completely legal as it’s non-nuclear.

legal ..maybe….but moral?

A nuclear attack, for one. I’d consider any WMD attack grounds for retaliation in kind with our own WMD arsenal, which is pretty much nuclear weapons. Would I nuke Fallujah if a bunch of extremists fired chem rounds at US troops, for example? No. Would I nuke Damascus if a Syrian state-sponsored and directed terrorist group employed biological weapons in Chicago? Yup.

would want to be on a better intelligence basis than whats presently acceptable….Hopefully it would work as well as MAD did during the cold war….mind you with the suicide bombers mentality….

Don’t you believe it! The British security services made life so difficult for the PIRA, that Adam’s and Co decided to got for the peace option without reuniting the Island as they had discovered that they were not going to beat the British (and they told the British that! Help us stop the war, because we cannot win it). The British knew that they were never going to beat the PIRA and were looking for a way-out without the government having to commit political suicide). Hence it ended in a Draw, with some major concessions given to Adam’s and Co about the Republic’s involvement in the North and Prisoner releases (Those guys are however out on Licence. Break the law and they are banged up for the rest of their sentences). Only pity is that the Orange Nutters (who started the problems in 1968) and the more extreme Republicans have not yet woken up to the fact that the troubles are over.

Anyway as a mate of mine told me, when he was in Dublin doing a job, he got friendly with loads of Dubliners and a lot of them told him in that in the eyes of a lot of the people in the south, the UK is welcome to keep the North, as they have to pay the money to keep the place afloat, money that would have to come out of the south’s coffers should Ireland be reunited.

I doubt if anyone ever thought that the IRA could defeat the British Army much in the same way that the NVA could never have defeated the American armed forces in a stand up war…the aim would appear to have been to make the war so unpopular at home to force a government decision to withdraw.

Yes there was a ” truce ” as such and now it looks like a complete end of ” hostilities “. Hopefully the politics have taken over from the Armalite for ever, though i find it hard to trust someone who stuck a gun in my face !!!….as you say it is mostly the extremists who are causing problems .

but the point is their ” belief ” of a 32 county Republic remains but as a political aspiration rather than a military objective.

You might be right about the Dubliners…a lot of them head north for cheap booze , food, electrical gear etc on a regular basis…Sainsburys have that much business from the south that their trollies take both stg and Euro !!!!!! 😀

Nope….I have definitely lost the plot here! I’m confused. So DB was a Japanese Irishman living in some hotel during his “lost” years of the war then? And this was all so simple when we started this thread! I am sure Truthspeaker will much appreciate Ken’s note of caution, though! Andy

NO NO NO!!!! you have it all wrong!!!

that was lord lucan who used to ride around on shegar before hoping onto I Earharts Electra to fly to atlantis….

For goodness sake……..

That attitude is the legacy of George Tenent and Colin Powell. W@nkers, the both of them.

And Condi Rice?

Still Jap crap. Thing is, being a Norfolk boy, I ‘ates the japs. You would too if you were a Norfolk boy and reflected on 60+ years ago and Singapore.

EDIT 😡

We can all live in the past..plenty of Irish served and died in Singapore and the far east as well…..plenty of Irish died fighting Germany as well …

But people have to try to get over their hatred before it eats them alive, unfortunately not enough of my Countrymen up north think the same way…but then this is a bit off topic isnt it!!

Back to topic:
2008 is still too far away, who knew about Clinton in 1990 or about about George W. Bush in 1998 as a nominee? 😉

Listening and reading american tendicies here over in Europe, I presume, the next president will also be an Republican, but more to the middle than to the right as Bush and Co.

A woman as president:
A great article in TIME Magazine:

Source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1229103,00.html

Condi Rice would fit in that role, but she isn’t married and hasn’t got a family!
Nothing against the way she lives her privat life 🙂 , but these stupied campaign aids on both sides of the congressional aisle would use this point against her.
I presume after 2008 she will go back to university as a decan.

That TV-Series “Commander-in-Chief” series shows how hard to become and be a female president.

Having seen her actions as SOS would she really be any improvement over whats there now? dont think so!

C R doesnt fit the bill…..Wrong Sex, Wrong colour,single,childless and i dont think she served in the military(?)…

Its a stupid , mindless ,TV dominated selection process!

however there have been plenty of examples of a negative campaign against a woman working against those opposing her! So who knows…

Maybe we will get lucky and some goddddammmmm leftie, pinko, commie, tree hugging European lover will get in!!!! :diablo: