Oh, the irony. Finland plans to send 250 soldiers to Lebanon.

On the contrary, the real irony is that Israel wants UN resolutions to disarm Hezbollah to be implemented, and yet when the boot’s on the other foot, namely implementation of UN resolution 242 (return to 1967 borders) Israel doesn’t want to know!

Instead, just keep building more settlements on the West Bank (financed by massive US taxpayers money-it’s only the annual US Aid Package subsidy that allows Israel to do this), to create “facts” on the ground. O what a tangled web we weave! 😀

What a shock -heard it on the 6 O’clock news this morning.

Sad news indeed as he was a great character (“you’re a bit grumpy today” he’ll say to a snake just inches away that just missed his face!). He must have been swimming pretty close to the stingray to trigger the reflex sting that caught him. Still, he was a lucky man to be doing what he loved for a living.

Only 44 but what a legacy- his love of animals and nature was infectious. We need more people like him in the world.

There lies the rub. You either treat the situation as a police action and throw the events into the muddle with pickpockets and purse snatchers, or you treat the situation as a war with enemy combattants wanting to kill you simply because you exist.

When an Islamo-fascist looks you in the eye and tells you he is going to “kill you or convert you”, you’d better take him at his word! There is no psychobabble exercise you can undertake that will change his intent. You might not want to participate in his jihadi religious war, but rest assured he will bring his war to your doorstep. So the choices are to warehouse enemy combattants into a POW camp (like Guantanamo) or make sure no prisoners are taken, ever. I believe warehousing is more humane. Warehousing also beats being bankrupted by taxpayer-paid legal services in the courts.

It’s a difficult one. When someone is crazed enough not to accept another point of view or worse so convinced thay are right they have to kill you, what do you do? The Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban had no qualms about not taking any prisoners. The Taliban treated their prisoners equally badly, often mutilating them before a hideous death just like the Spanish Inquisition-that’s just gratutious violence and not in any religion!

When you add religious fanaticism to these bombers (fascist is quite an appropriate tag to anyone that wants to impose their religious views on you – I suppose using the Bible to turf out Arabs from Palestine to create Israel because the Bible says that land is theirs could also be construed as “judeo-fascism”) then you have a devasting combination with pig-headedness and stupidity on both sides in a never ending cycle of violence.

The Taliban or Arab states don’t have state funded legal challenges against their State terror and I can see your point about not wasting our hard earned tax on funding legal challenges for these bombers. I’d like to ask them if they think the wicked West is so decadent why don’t they live in Khandahar or Saudi?

We should allow a robust debate and allow free speech even from fanatics otherwise we are no different from them-those muslim cartoons were doing the rounds for half a year in Arab countries with no problem before some idiot picked up on it to stir up trouble. That’s the beauty of a true democracy but when bombers target innocent people should be where it ends for them, including indefinite detention but, my point is, after a fair trial.

Careful there! You are beginning to sound like one of us knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathers. The enlightened leftist elite would be quick to issue an ASBO and send them on their way. After all, we made them mad at us through 1,000 years of imperialism…blah, blah…cultural diversity…blah, blah, blah…moral equivalence…blah, blah, blah…make love not war…blah, blah…can’t we all get along?…blah, blah…where did I put my doobie?

By the way, I agree with you (don’t be surprised! 😮 ) there is no excuse for those idiots who tried to bomb these planes and kill innocent civilians. The full force of the law should be used against them. They are not so smart and sadly cannot get past their conditioning or brainwashing to connect to the humans they might hurt; be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian or whatever. They would pretty much find it almost impossible to imagine people that don’t even believe in any organised religion!

Just as in the same way, there can be no excuse for the Israelis to kill hundreds in Lebanon.

Careful there! You are beginning to sound like one of us knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathers. The enlightened leftist elite would be quick to issue an ASBO and send them on their way. After all, we made them mad at us through 1,000 years of imperialism…blah, blah…cultural diversity…blah, blah, blah…moral equivalence…blah, blah, blah…make love not war…blah, blah…can’t we all get along?…blah, blah…where did I put my doobie?

God forbid I’ll sound like one of you lot! 😮 😀 :diablo: Otherwise I’ll never be able to show my face at next meet of the Tooting Liberation Front (back room at the Coat and Badge pub last Friday of every month-try not to bump into the Henrys on thw way in :p )

But it seems you missed my caveat:

But if you bring them to Gitmo, either just shoot them or give them a trial. Even Tony Blair, as a former lawyer, can’t quite stomach locking people up without trial forever. Just because these people have no standards, scruples or marbles for that matter, doesn’t mean we should be like them!

No one, including a President, should be above the law. If we set high standards and have some principles, we shouldn’t stoop to the level of those that would impose their narrow views on us. That’s why for the Gitmo detainees, I said just shoot them or give them a trial.

The minute you think you can justify e.g. war crimes, because you also can “take out some of the bast@rds” means you’ve lost any moral ground (and your marbles). Clearly this matters little to those like Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who by killing thousands, caused what amounted to war crimes, in trying to show how tough he could be in defending Israel (or depleting Hezbollah’s missile stockplie ahead of any possible bombing of Iran). Olmert would do well to consider there’s a fair chance he might be arrested for war crimes in a similar way to Pinochet was when he visited Britain (was Pinochet OK to kill thousands when asked by the CIA in overthrowing a democratically-elected government?;are war crimes like killing hundreds in My Lai in Viet Nam by US soldiers getting beyond themselves (to say the least!) OK as well?)

And just because I can’t agree with the Bibical or moral basis of Israel’s existence (because God “gave” that land to the Jews in the Book of numbers, just like God created the first women Eve from one of Adam’s ribs) does not make me anti-Jewish! There would be few who can fail to be moved by the futility or stupidity of labelling people on the basis of their religion or culture after reading say, ‘If This Is A Man’ by Primo Levi (a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp).

Good work. If found guilty, there’s plenty of room in Gitmo for these losers. Hanging at the Tower of London, or worse would be prefered though.

I hate the bast@rds who wanted to kill thousands in these planes. If only they knew how horrible their mates, the taliban, were in killing and maiming innocents who didn’t agree to their warped and narrow religious view of the world were, they might think hanging’s too good for them!

But if you bring them to Gitmo, either just shoot them or give them a trial. Even Tony Blair, as a former lawyer, can’t quite stomach locking people up without trial forever. Just because these people have no standards, scruples or marbles for that matter, doesn’t mean we should be like them!

If it’s ok for you yourself to expect a fair trial then you got to extend that to everyone. Warlords like “General” Dostum of The Northern Alliance, fighting with the Allies, just locked up hundreds of Taliban in air tight containers in the hot baking desert to die- a nasty end to a bunch of nasty people. Some unkind people might say these nasty people deserve each other! :diablo:

Again, what is great about America can be summed up in some great lines from a Few Good Men:
Jack Nicholson: You fcukin’ people. You have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Kaffee. That’s all you did. You put people’s lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son.
Tom Cruise: Don’t call me son. I’m a lawyer and an officer in the United States Navy. And you’re under arrest, you son of a bitch!

Now that’s what I’m talking about and why America can at times be a great country. When people get beyond themselves, even Presidents (e.g. Nixon), they can be taken down a peg or two.

Be a pretty huge screwup to get this much wrong with this many pro security people involved.

I know you’ve lived in Britain but not everyone in America might be aware how much some British police forces were corrupt – it’s not all Dixon of Dock Green!

Crime squads dealing with porn and armed robbery routinely took money and turned a blind eye. It’s all pretty much cleaned up now, but recently when they screwed up killing that innocent Brazilian in the tube, they told a lot of lies to cloud over their c@ck ups and tried to cover up their mistakes.

People just couldn’t believe British cops could lie in court and try to frame innocent people. Some squads were just so riddled with corruption they had to be disbanded like the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad who ‘fitted up’ (framed) so many innocent people (including some Irish people they picked up off the street in Birmingham and framed for IRA bombings- it was the damning indictment of the judges in the Court of Appeal that led to the disbandment of that squad). That’s why people have a healthly scepticism and take with a pinch of salt whatever any politician or people in positions might say.

Well said.

Thankfully, there are Neanderthals (like the security folks who spoiled the plot) who are willing to work long hours to keep the droolers safe.

You sound awfully like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men:

Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. I know deep down in places you dont talk about at parties, you don’t want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

Well, it seems some of us ‘just can’t handle the truth’! 😀 :diablo:

As some forum members might seem to you like mealy-mouth liberals :p I’m sure you’ll love another great line from Jack Nicholson:

‘You see Danny, I can deal with the bullets, and the bombs, and the blood. I don’t want money, and I don’t want medals. What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth extend me some fcuking courtesy. You gotta ask me nicely.’

I saw the French documentary…there were more holes in that goofy story than the sub itself.
The TV show had some UK based “ex-submariner” (not an expert in US weapons) say the US torpedo was specifically designed to go to that precise part of a Russian sub. I believe in precision weapons, but I don’t think anyone’s torpedos are THAT precise (to go X many feet in back of the bow or some other nonsense).
Also ignored was the point that the Dutch salvage company cut the whole…and the fact if it WAS a US torpedo entry hole…why did the Russians show it to the media for a couple of days before coving it up? Come on, the Russians are not that stupid.

We are talking about the same thing if the documentary you saw was the same broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 recently. I don’t know if it can be downloaded so people can make up their own minds.

The Pentagon confirmed the Russian exercise was monitored by two American Los Angeles class nuclear attack subs, and both USS Memphis (SSN-691)and USS Toledo (SSN-769) were in the area. I am sure there are enough experts in the Naval forum that know more about Mk 48 torpedoes and their characteristics than me. Perhaps someone could enlighten us. We don’t know if the subs were ‘head on’ or ‘side on’ to cause the hole where it was. In addition, the entry hole was too neat to be caused by a collision or explosion. There could have been more than one torpedo fired.

The Russians are no more stupid than other nations but sh$t happens. They cut out the bow section but could not cut off the hull section with one of the holes as the purpose of the salvage was to recover the bodies of the sailors. Most of the bodies were found in the mid section near the conning tower.

The USS Toledo would have been damaged in the collision 12 August 2000 and had to limp to Norway to get repairs done but at I doubt if they’ll ever release dates and type of damage as normally classified.