Sayonara

How much was the Iridium?

It's vital to the survival of our entire species, and the protection of our sum knowledge.

Assuming you mean Saddam, I can think of other motives. You're simply choosing the one that works best for an anti-Saddam theme, versus one that sounds stupid. Also consider that when we 'hear' (your word, not mine) that Saddam paid the families of suicide bombers, it may (a) not be an accurate description of events, (b) may not be in the least bit true, or © may not actually have been Saddam as such. I'm not sure what you mean by a payment being an Atta-boy. Surely that is property that is attributed to humans? Not a pro-Saddam post, but a pro-objectivity post

Tut tut tut. You forgot to say " some time later".

I'm all in favour of closing any threads in which certain people take the opportunity to spread bigotted, ill-founded views, when more informed members have worked hard to dispell such views in previous discussions with exactly the same people.

****ing **** that **** **** ****** **** ******** bloody ****.

What? You (or rather "we") invaded - yes, invaded - Iraq after the attack on the WTC, which had nothing to do with them. Beyond political tub-thumping, one cannot "declare war" on terrorism - it's an abstract concept. One declares wars on nation states. Saying that we can attack anyone we like because we've declared war on terrorism, and we reckon the dirty feckers are terrorists, is the equivalent of me going to the mall with a hand-canon and blowing random people away because I think they had something to do with my car being keyed last Thursday. Nothing on the same scale if you artifically compress the time allowed, I think you mean. By changing your scope to include non-Americans, you run the risk of undermining the consistency of your argument, since this originally began with an interjection on the value of American lives. And I'm saying "what has that got to do with anything?" We were discussing the relative values of human lives, and how humanity needs to change; not who thinks ol' George is a jolly good fellow. He's not relevant. Well, it's Blike's thread and I'm too tired to sort through it, so let's just wait and see if he wants to split it. Funny you should mention that, because he's not there any more. Yet somehow we are. Perhaps if we'd actually tried to whack him, we may have succeeded. It would have saved plenty of time, effort, money, international rage, and above all, lives. On all sides. As I have indicated, I am not interested in bashing the Bush administration (or any other for that matter.) You raised the issue of the 9/11 report as a flippant retort to a post about the political standing of Iraq, and I replied to ask which of the reports you were referring to. My interest lies in the fact that they were both shams, which leaves you with the unenviable task of showing otherwise, or re-replying to the post. Sorry

One would imagine these payments to be reconciliatory, rather than "bribes", although it's difficult to see it that way from the point of view of a society that does not need to spawn suicide bombers in order to repel cultural intrusions.

It's not so much that it had never happened previously, but that it was not - as I mentioned earlier - reported in the correct (or possibly any) fashion. Like JaKiri said, we can't really consider something that is not known.

No, it isn't really fair. But the simple fact is it will always require more steps in the process.

You realise "Expatriates" is the first word in the headline, in case we don't know what the article is about?

I was rather hoping with my cake analogy that you'd catch the relationship between theory of relative space, and recipe for cake. I suppose I could have been more explicit.

You didn't lose 3,000 people though, did you? The World trade center was populated by workers from a range of nationalities. Regardless, that has nothing to do with Iraq. Or maybe by "we" you mean the USA and her allies, in which case the figure had risen significantly beyond 3,000 a long time before your government decided to be more active. Don't take this to mean that the world wasn't appalled by the attack. It's just a reminder that there was terrorism before that. Lots of it. What has that got to do with anything? Are you actually suggesting that people ought to roll over and die to keep someone in an administrative roll for a four year term? Primarily for your benefit. I could just as easily close or split the thread; it's all the same to me. Anything. Seriously; any truly surgical operation, no matter how long it takes. I think, as a coalition, we've demonstrated quite well over the past year that the slash 'n' burn approach does not work. Which one? The UK report that was written to justify the war and subsequently torn to shreds because it was full of demonstrable lies, or the USA report that was based on that and CIA intelligence that was shown to be incorrect? I'm going to have to split this thread, aren't I?

What label are you referring to? That of 'relative space'?

Keeping this in mind, it's a terrible shame we don't have more precise ways of targeting them. If we did, we would not need to level cities in order to reach them

Compare the number of American (or even global) deaths due to "Iraqi terrorism" over the past ten years with the number of deaths during the occupation of Iraq over the past ten months. If the purpose of this endeavour is to save lives, then something has gone horribly wrong. No, but do try to stay on topic within threads. We all digress at some point or other, and obviously I can see why you'd respond to a post in a 'live' discussion rather than one making the same point in a thread that's a few months old.

If you refer to the part in parenthesis, then fair enough. But the point that staying = more deaths (or, in fact, going in the first place) still stands.

We are talking about something that either did or did not happen.

Well... yes. As far as those fruitless endeavours go, anyway; not necessarily losers per se.

There's going to be a slap-down if this carries on.

Don't make me come in here.

Let me put it this way: If Newton was the first person history recorded as coming up with cake, which he developed from pre-existing milk, flour and eggs, we wouldn't credit the creation of cake to the people who originally decided that those ingredients were good things to eat.

It's not a matter of assertion, but of the order in which things happen.

That's not related to whether or not he was the first person recorded to introduce the concept of relative space to science.