Crap Throwing Monkey

Alive and hiding in a cave somewhere in the Hindu Kush. Which, when you think about it, is the best thing for us. Kill him, and you make him a martyr. Capture him and put him on trial, and you not only make him a martyr but give him more credibility than he deserves. Keep him hiding in caves in the western Himalayan plateau, and he's as marginalized as you can likely make him.

Comparing Iraq to Afghanistan is like comparing Pennsylvania to Wyoming. You're not going to face the same tactical and operational problems in both. And I've been hearing rumbles about impending force reductions in Iraq for a few months now; longer than the muppets in Congress have been complaining about a lack of an exit strategy. Could it possibly be that the administration doesn't actually say much about their plans???? Nah...it's got to be something more reactive and sinister...

And don't think that's not in the back of my mind when I type all this. The necessity is obvious...but it's also uncomfortably like Clinton's infamous "operations other than war" mental oatmeal. Ideally, the military fights wars in order to win them as quickly and humanely as possible, and pansy-assing with qualifiers like "operations other than war" or "non-lethal combat" is not only cruel, but is indicative of a military being used for other than its core purpose (much as it is now in Iraq, which is why I was against the goddamned war in the first place. I'm nothing if not consistent. ) However, I recognize that we do NOT live in an ideal world, and allowances must be made (which is why I don't B word about the occupation of Iraq. ) My biggest fear, actually, is that there's enough lunatics in high office (and even high in command, judging by some of the previous administration's appointees and their decisions - "We'll all wear SF berets, because we're all special!" ) that actually think pansy-assing the military can lead to "gentle" or "polite" or "humane" warfare.

His daughter Haifa, actually. And targeted only one residence that I can positively identify...though we did target some barracks that he may or may not have been "known" to use (public information seems sketchy on that; media reports are all over the map on the whole thing). At any rate, Qadaffi Duck was a target as near as I can tell, and to the point of targeting structures his family was known or could reasonably be expected to be. The caveat being that the attitude seems to have been "Who gives a sh--, just so we get him"...more callous than but not entirely unlike the attempts against Saddam.

He's just getting gassy again...

Uhhh...that's what I'm saying. You don't limit casualties by fighting "nice" wars. You limit them by fighting with overwhelming force and ending them quickly. The protracted use of limited force has killed more people in warfare than the rapid use of overwhelming force. Doesn't mean you're indiscriminate about it, either...but it DOES mean that using this non-lethal nonsense to make wars kinder and gentler is going to have the opposite effect. War is brutal, bloody, and inhumane...but a war prosecuted by half-measures is even moreso.

Newsweek reports that Rove's lawyer says Rove talked to Time? That's barely credible. And don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Rove. If he did it, hang him. But first let's see a report that's objectively believable, rather than this fourth-hand nonsense.

But that's not a military application. I don't see anyone advocating military strikes on anarchists.

I think you're short a CB. You look about one or two injuries away from not being able to run a dime package. And seven LBs for a 4-3 seems like a little much...drop one and pick another CB, I say. I hadn't realized how deep they were at WR, either. I might keep Reed over Aiken...but honestly, if that's our biggest issue at WR, we don't really have any.

Libya. Targeted Qadaffi's family.

"What do you make of this?" "Well, I can make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl..."

I still disagree with it. The only humane way to fight a conflict is to end it as quickly as possible...and the only quick way to fight a conflict is to do it as violently as possible. All these techno-miracles that are supposed to make war more "humane" ultimately have precisely the opposite effect.

!@#$ing stupid. It's WAR! People die. If you don't want people to die. don't fight !@#$ing wars!!! Whoever came up with the phrase "non-lethal weapon" should be Tasered. Repeatedly.

Who's to say the CAIB's correct, anyway? Fundamentally, space flight will always be dangerous to some degree, and the only way to keep it from killing people is to mandate everyone stay on the ground at all times. As Sally Ride said after Challenger: "Perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." That's not to say, of course, that a spacecraft design that sheds pieces and basically kills itself on takeoff and a supposedly engineering-oriented organization that can't do a simple risk analysis aren't both seriously flawed, of course...

Debbie, this has got to be your funniest post ever. (Intentionally funniest, that is.)

Jay and I have actually met. He watched me splurge on an autographed football helmet. He also kept trying to throw me to the ground and calling me "Ling Ling" all night. Can't wear a tuxedo around the guy without him getting all confused...

Since we wasted all that bandwidth explaining how throwing a cup at Ron Artest differs from stealing movies off the internet.

Almost as funny as watching your legs dangle without your feet touching the floor...

Lots of people are, apparently. We can all compare them at the tailgate...

Makes you wonder if the sheep were all wearing cowbells, doesn't it?

But you're in your neighborhood, aren't you?

Considering the source of the original post, the current state of this discussion is deeper and more intelligent than we could have hoped for.

How are you doing today? 9/12 was pretty rough for me, as I recall. One thing that impressed the hell out of me this morning was hearing all the "man on the street" interviews from the financial district this morning, and hearing the rather overwhelming consensus from Londoners that "Yeah, it's hell...but you have to keep living your life or else the bastards win." I compare that to the typical American "We're all victims, let's wallow in it." reaction over here, and I wonder how England ever lost their empire...or how we'll ever keep ours. You Brits handle this a lot more maturely than my country of retards does...

Hell, I still play with Legos. Their robotic kit is a seriously smart piece of engineering.

Actually, the best term for them is "targets".