Ding! Ding! Ding!
End of round!
To the corners.
Another faulty "debating technique" just showed up.
Insults like "genius", "your mother" show that you need to sit on the stool in the corner for a few moments until your head clears enough to bring facts back into the ring.
No low blows are allowed or I'll have to get my rubber chicken from my "torture bag". Warning: it won't be pretty.

Back to the topic, please.

You are right. I apologize.

Timmi, i said in the beginning that i wasnt going to story tell or namedrop. Lets just say that I know what im talking about. Believe what you will. If you really think that name, rank and serial number are all that are asked during these "interviews" then you are certainly entitled to that fantasy. If you think that no one dies at our secret bases around the world, again, believe what you will.

How many innocent Iraqis died as a result of our illegal invasion of Iraq?

Dala,
I've heard numbers all over the place. Both sides have put out plenty of propaganda.
One side says 30,000-35,000...the other says over 100,000.
In between is probably accurate if you figure those that died from disease, lack of clean water, and other non-direct "military" causes.
If the "civil strife" (not civil war) between the Shias and Sunnis comes into the equation, I'd think a higher number might be more realistic.
Do you know an accurate number?

Yes, that clarifies your position somewhat.

With regard to our invasion of Iraq, I still don't understand why people in the Middle East would be angry about it. If the Iraqi people did not want us to invade, then I would understand why people in the Middle East would be angry. But that's not the case. The vast majority of Iraqis wanted us to come in and "liberate" them and get rid of Saddam. All the polls does in Iraq within a year of the invasion showed that.

I can understand why Americans would be angry about us invading Iraq, but for people in the Middle East to have been angry makes no sense. If the Iraqi people were suffering under Saddam and they wanted us to "liberate" them, then nobody in the Middle East should have been upset at the time. The polls done in Iraq even a year after we invaded showed that the huge majority of Iraqis were happy that we came despite the fact that some people got killed and the country was still in bad shape.

Why would you view Iraqis as victims of US agression, if Iraqis don't see it that way at all?

How many Iraqis was Saddam killing every year? Let's suppose that he killed 20,000 people a year for the last 10 years(200,000 people). If that is the case then if 30,000 people died during our invasion, then wouldn't the invasion be worth it? We would actually be saving lives overall.

Rupert,
Please provide a link to the polls you cite.
Thank you.
DTS

Dalakhani: Apology accepted! I will take you at your word that you have facts, however, despite the onslaught of MSM, there were sufficient facts and intelligence from numerous sources in and out of this country that supported the war in Iraq! A number of high level military people have said that there were WMD's in Iraq. A book called 'DISINFORMATION' written by a respected journalist detailed what Hussein had in his arsenal, and these are backed up by various intelligence sources. I've posted this book here at least 3 times before and yet nobody bothers to check it out. I'm not naive enough to believe our agents don't resort to means that are controversial. The rules here are vague, because the enemies of this country are clandestine. It's seems like a pre-WW3 buildup, especially with the fanatical religious nature of the drama before us! Hopefully...things will calm down...but the basic tenets will still need to dealt with for sanity to prevail.

Who is doing the polls and who is being asked Rupert? Polls can be spun a million different ways. Such is the way of propaganda. Not to say that there werent many people that werent people that were elated to have US intervention but at the same time i think those polls are pretty worthless.

I think Iraqis ARE the victim of US aggression. It is clearly obvious to most that the war was a bad idea. Who were the victims? More than anything, it was the Iraqi citizen. Death by the thousands. Many homeless. Some starving. Lives completely uprooted. I think there victimization goes without saying.

Of course the other victims are the soldiers fighting over there and their families. They had no choice either.

As far as why the other Arab states are angry, many view this as another humiliation to the Arab world. It is yet another example of Western powers dictating the course of action in what they view as a regional struggle.

Agreed with much. AGain, thanks for accepting my apology because i was indeed behaving like a child.

It wasnt really the WMD's that i thought were misrepresented as much as the terrorist ties. They KNEW Sadaam despised Al Qaeda yet they still misrepresented it to the American people. Sad.

The following is from Andrew Sullivan's website. Guys, whatever terrorists might do to captured soldiers, it does not justify us torturing enemy combatants. We must never cede the moral high ground. And yet Bush does so. Shame on all of us, for tolerating it-- we are putting future soldiers in danger by going along with this. Anyway... most of it is the reservists; the last sentence is Sullivan's (I put the reservist's words in between quotation marks)

What We've Lost

15 Sep 2006 04:38 pm

A reserve soldier who fought in Iraq writes:

"I was deployed in my reserve unit (USMCR) as part of operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Marine infantry, and we were on the front lines, supposedly to guard a gunship base, but really, though, the gunships guarded us.

Not too much later, it was time to take prisoners. One of the platoons went north, and when they came back, there were stories about how Iraqi soldiers lined the roads, trying to surrender. I spent a week guarding Iraqi men in a makeshift prison camp, a way-station really, and more than I could count. They didn't look like they were starving or dehydrated. Apparently, once the ground war began, they just pitched their weapons and headed south at first opportunity. The more I've thought about it, the more I realize that they knew bone deep that they'd get fair treatment. We gave them MREs (with the pork entree's removed) but almost immediately some Special Forces guys arrived and set up a real chow line for them. We gave each man a blanket, (I kept an extra as a souvie) and I think I saw a Special Forces doc giving some of them a once over.

Once, only once, one of them got all irritated and tried to get in one of the Corporal's faces, loud. (I was a lance-corporal). He wouldn't back down, so the Corporal gave him an adjustment, a rifle butt-stroke to his gut, not hard, but he went down. The Corporal sent me for the medic. The guy was ok, and now calm (or at least understanding the situation), and hand-signed that he was out of smokes and really, really needed one... Not a bad guy, just stressed-dumb and needing a smoke. None of the others prisoners in the camp even registered it.

We went north to mop up not long after that. I saw the Iraqi weapons: rocket launchers a little smaller than semi-trailers, hidden in buildings, AKs in piles, big Soviet mortars and anti-tank mines, everywhere but unarmed. They had food too. Pasteurized milk to drink, but most gone bad by then. Some of the mortar rounds were still in crates. They had long trenches that were hard to see in the dunes, bunkers with maps, fire-plans laid out, and blankets, all placed with decent vantage for command and control. They even had wire laid for land-line communications. The point is, they could have fought. Not won, no they couldn't have won, but they could have fought. Instead, they chose to surrender.

Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men's heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they'd get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were.

Thinking hard on what I now know of history, psychology, and the meanness of politics, that reputation for fairness was damn near unique in world history. Can you tell me of any major military power that had it? Ever? France? No. Think Algeria. The UK? Sorry, Northern Ireland, the Boxer Rebellion in China... China or Russia. I don't think so. But America had it. If those men had even put up token resistance, some of us would not have come back. But they didn't even bother, and surrendered at least in part because of our reputation. Our two hundred year old reputation for being fair and humane and decent. All the way back to George Washington, and from President George H.W. Bush all the way down to a lance-corporal jarhead at the front.

Its gone now, even from me. I can't get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I'm not what you'd call a sensitive type. You know the picture. And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn't torture. That hypothermia isn't torture. That degradation isn't torture. We don't have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think. And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines' lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this ******* who never once risked anything for this country?"

This president must never be forgiven for what he has done to the reputation of this country.

Not to belabor this(as if it couldn't be) by the US had warnings from intelligence sources outside this country as far back as 1999 about the connections of Al Queda and Hussein. This country is damned either way,huh?

Accoding to the CIA and 9/11 commission, that intelligence was inaccurate.

GR,
Thanks for putting this up.
It's kind of ironic that I disagree with Sen John McCain on many issues, I really DO agree with him when he states "We must preserve the moral high ground". It give credibility to the United States as much as that torch held by the beautiful lady in New York harbor does.

Anyway, last report I saw said that Sen Frist was going to block the debate on the bill that McCain, Warner and Graham presented.
DTS

I don't have a link to the polls. These were polls that were done about a year after the invasion. They were failry well publicized at the time. They were done by independent media groups. All the polls done pretty much showed the same thing. They showed that about 70% of the citizens of Iraq were glad that we came. The thing that was so significant to me about it was that the people were glad we came despite the fact that things were still really bad there and the people had suffered a lot.

The polls that have been done more recently are not nearly as favorable but that's because the insurgency has been really bad and things are really bad over there. The people are starting to wonder if it was all worth it or not. The people were originally expecting the same thing that we were. They figured that after Saddam was gone that everything would be great. It hasn't happened thanks to the insurgency.

The same Senator Frist that said, after viewing videotape of Terri Schiavo, "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office," he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."? THAT Senator Frist?

He's such a good lapdog for GW. Here, Fristy! Here's your treat! Good boy, blocking debate! Good boy!

The war looks like it was a bad idea now. Things are not good over in Iraq at all. But hypothtically, let's suppose that the insurgency wasn't so strong. Let's suppose things would have gotten under contorl after a couple of years the way we thought and everyone was living in realtive peace right now in Iraq. Would you still be upset about the invasion or would you be happy about it and figure that they are much better off in a free Iraq with no Saddam?

Technically, after 9/11, Bush was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. It sucks.

I thought the same thing about Terry Schiavo. she seemed to respond when they would talk to her and pat her on the head. I'm far from a pro-lifer. I actually support Dr. Kevorkian. But I thought it was absolutely wrong for them to starve her to death. Her family was willing to take care of her. I thought the whole thing was disgraceful.

Ain't it sad that just when you think you've got the monkey by the nuts, a coconut falls out of the tree and knocks you out. Not that I'm referencing the esteemed "macaca" senator from Virginia.
Here's a question that I'll preface with one of my favorite quotes, "those that ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them."

Here's the question...
How did Americans react when an invading force attempted to dictate our decision to have independence, and sought through armed conflict, on American soil, to instill subserviance to their demands?

Follow up...
Would we expect the Iraquis to respond differently?

I don't think he was damned if he didn't. There was no real compelling case to go into Iraq at that time. I'm not saying that there wasn't any good reason to go into Iraq. There were some good reasons but there was nothing that was absolutely compelling. I don't think Saddam was that big of a threat at the time. I am partially speaking in hindsight though. If they really thought he was getting close to developing nuclear weapons(we now know that he wasn't), I can see why they thought they needed to go in.

I remember at the time when I heard they were talking about going into Iraq, I was kind of surprised. I totally understood them going into Afghanistan and I totally favored that. I didn't know why they wanted to go into Iraq but I figured they must know what they're doing. I figured that they must know something that I don't know. It turns out that they didn't.

Yup,
Same guy who lead the Fed interference in a family matter during a time of crisis, by passed Florida law and made it federal.
Same guy.
Guess he can't bring "flag burning", gay marriage, or any other diversions to current issues before the senate, and the election is coming in 49 days...
guess he's got to do something.

Ok, let me just say this... if you really believe that the Iraquis LIKED to be tortured by Hussein, then you have another thing coming. I have several friends who serve and ALL of them told me that the Iraqi people were GRATEFUL that we were there. They lived a life that we as Americans in today's world know nothing about. I think we tend to take for granted the freedom that we have and our ability to decide things for ourselves. The Iraqi people did not have that luxury.

I remember there being press about how there was a possiblity of nuclear weapon development. Let's just say that we decided to NOT invade instead of taking the current path that we did and it turned out that there WAS in fact nuclear weapons being developed and we had a similar situation to 9/11 happen AGAIN, wouldn't you think that Bush would have been damned if he didn't? I do.

That was a totally different situation. We were trying to gain independence from Britain. In the case of Iraq, the people had no means to overthrow Saddam. We were their only chance. As I said, the vast number of citizens supported us. The problem was that if you have even 1% of the citizens who are against you and are well-armed and are getting support from outsiders and are waging a guerilla war against you, you're in trouble.

There were a lot of outsiders from Syria, Iran, etc who did not want us to suceed in Iraq. They were helping with the insurgency. These outsiders don't have the best interest of Iraq at heart. They don't want Iraq to be free. They don't want there to be free elections.

What are we doing that's bad over there? We want to get the hell out of there. We want the people to be able to have free elections and be free. The vast majority of people there want the same thing. It's not like we're trying to force them to do something that they don't want to do. The vast majority of people there want to have free elections and they want to be free. Under Saddam they had no freedom. If you spoke about Saddam they would kill you.

Yes, that's true.

I think different soldiers in different areas are going to have different accounts. There are large numbers of people that did NOT appreciate what the US did.

And lets not turn on the spin machine. We didnt go there to provide freedom to the Iraqi people. Our main purposes for war, as outlined to congress and the UN were because of the non-existant wmds and the non-existant ties to Al Qaeda. Now, the oil and the reconstruction money had NOTHING to do with it:rolleyes: .

When we talk about nuclear weapon development, you have to understand how far behind a country new to the game would be. You cant hide nuclear reactors. The switches not to mention the plutonium arent easy to get.

Since we are playing hypotheticals, lets just say the country became nuclear (which is way far from reality but regardless). In order to be a threat the US, do you realize what type of technology goes into an ICBM? They couldnt even hit Israel right with scuds and they arent that far away. How would you expect them to deliver said missile ten thousand miles away and have it work once it got here? And they are going to develop this type of technology in the dark under US surveillance and what would stop the US from bombing any reactor that was developed anyway? We owned the skies over there didnt we?

Wmd's were always a smokescreen.

The invasion actually was not illegal. When Iraq invaded Kuwait and we came to Kuwait's defense, we ended up winning that war. Iraq ended up surrendering and there was a cease-fire. We could have have marched into Iraq right then and overthrown Saddam but we didn't. He signed a cease-fire with us and in that cease-fire he agreed to a bunch of different things including inspections and that type of thing. He also agreed that he would not fire on our planes over the no-fly zone. When you sign a cease-fire and agree to abide by the terms, you have to abide by the terms. The terms stated that if he did not abide by the terms that the cease-fire would be null and void. When he started firing on our planes over the no-fly zone and when he started throwing the inspectors out, he was violating the terms of the cease-fire. Therefore, we had the right to terminate the ceas-fire and go back to war with him. That measn the invasion was not illegal.

A few questions:

1. Did the USA supply weapons of mass destruction to Saddam during the conflict between Iraq and Iran during the 80's?
2. Did he use those weapons on the Kurds before or after a CIA sponsored insurrection had been initiated by the Kurds and failed to be supported by the USA?
3. Were there UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq (Hans Blix), two containment no-fly zones prior to the presentation of "yellow cake" theory to both the UN (48 hour ultimatum) via Colin Powell and to the American people via GWB in his "State of the Union" address?
4. Are there current plans for four major military bases to be located in Iraq?
5. Is there interest in using Iraqui natural resources (oil) to repay the costs of the "liberation"?
6. Are there any connections between Halliburton (no bid contract), Brown Kellog and Root, and the Bush administration?
7. Have detainees been treated "fairly" or has there been a suspension of "habias corpus" for those "enemy combatants"?

Thanks in advance for answering these questions. I have a few more that I'll post later.

1. I know we gave them weapons. I don't know if we gave them any WMDs.

2. I think it was after but I'm not sure.

3. I'm not sure I understand this whole question. With regard to the part about inspectors, Saddam would go back and forth. He wasn't cooperating with the inspectors. He was playing a lot of cat and mouse games. Once he saw that we were serious and we were going to invade, then he became more cooperative. So the answer is "yes" that I think there were inspectors there at the time, but that's irrelevant because much of the time leading up to that time, Saddam had not been cooperating with the inspectors. I don't understand your question about the "no-fly" zone. I do know that Saddam had been firing on our planes there for several years.

4. I don't know if there are plans for military bases. It would not surprise me if there were. We have bases in the countries of several of our allies.

5. Yes, but thanks to the insurgency attacking the pipelines, the oil is not producing all that much revenue.

6. I don't know who Brown Kellog and Root are. I think a big company like Haliburton has ties to politicians in both parties. Cheney used to work there.

7. I don't know what your definition of "fairly" is. I don't know if you are referring to the prisoners at Gutanomo or where. The prisoners at Guantanomo are interrogated very aggresively. All types of techniques including sleep deprivation and things like that are used. The prisoners are certainly treated far worse than they would be if they were being held in jail in America. In America, they read you Miranda rights. On the other hand, these prisoners are being treated a helluva lot better than they would be if we sent them back to their own countries. Do you know what they would do to them at the prisons in Egypt or Saudi Arabia?If we sent them there, they would wish they were back at Guantanomo. With regard to the "habeus corpus" thing, I think that a judge just ruled that we can't contiue with the current practices at Guantanomo. But that doesn't mean anything. Every legal scholar that I've listened to both liberal and conservative said the judge's ruling has little or no basis in law and will surely be overturned.. they said the judge's rling was titally partisan and the arguments she made were very poor.

I think that's enough questions. I don't have all day to answer your questions. I hope there is a point to all this.

To me, it's ok to ask questions. If you don't know the answers, that's ok too.
The answers are easily found.
In a way, it seems that our country wouldn't be in the situation that it's currently facing had not those that brought them to the fore been branded as "unpatriotic".
At this point in time, since I've used up most of the plastic sheeting and duct tape that I bought a few years ago, and since we've had the "regime change" and "mission accomplished" on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln, and there are no WMD's...only a few questions remain.
One is:
Have the actions initated by the administration created more or fewer terrorists?
Follow up:
Are American citzens "safer" now?

altho it is generally believed we are safer, many don't feel safer....law of averages and all that....after all, one has to believe that eventually a plan will come to fruition.


as for iraq and wmd's...i think they had them, and we knew they had them, because we gave them to them. or gave them the know-how. also, don't forget that saddam gassed the kurds--altho poison gas isn't nuclear, it most definitely has been considered a wmd.

Danzig,
You are correct that the US supplied Saddam with wmd's. They were obsolete as the "shelf life" is limited. They had been dismantled, and Saddam was "bluffing" to the UN inspectors, as he didn't wish to admit "powerlessness".
Yes, he used them against the Kurds. The Kurds had initiated an insurrection on assurances of CIA support. The US "left them out to dry".
Israel took out the only nuclear power plant during the 80's.
There was no "yellow cake" from Niger, no centrifuge tubes.
Now, I'll post an article regarding the need for clarification of treatment of prisoners.
DTS

Bush's Paltry Excuse for Subverting Geneva Convention
by Robert S. Rivkin

President Bush claims to be worried that our CIA interrogators are confused by the rules that govern them. This claim is hogwash.

While addressing the post-Hamdan v. Rumsfeld battle going on in the Senate over the U.S.’s treaty obligation to adhere to the terms of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, President Bush claimed at Friday’s press conference that all he is seeking to do in his proposed legislation is to define the Article’s “vague” provisions.

He said, “the standards are so vague that our professionals won’t be able to carry forward the [interrogation] program, because they don’t want to be tried as war criminals. They don’t want to break the law.” Providing a congressionally-approved, American definition of Common Article 3 would supposedly provide CIA interrogators of terror suspects with clear guidelines as to which interrogation techniques are legal and which are illegal. Sounds simple and straightforward -- but is it?

A prohibition contained in Common Article 3 (which is enforceable criminally through the 1996 War Crimes Act which Bush seeks to change) forbids “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” Clearly, many of the nauseating abuses committed by Americans at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere (stripping detainees naked, dousing them with cold water, bombarding them with loud music for hours, putting them in stress positions, depriving them of sleep and light) would constitute violations of Common Article 3. Those military members who have been prosecuted, however, were charged in military courts under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Some of the UCMJ’s provisions are just as vague as those of Common Article 3 – if not more so.

For example, the UCMJ’s Article 93 makes it a crime to engage in “cruelty, oppression or maltreatment” of a subordinate. Is “cruelty, oppression or maltreatment” less vague than “humiliating and degrading treatment”? The Manual for Courts-Martial, the official guide used by all military lawyers to implement the UCMJ, does list specific acts which could constitute violations of Article 93 or other articles of the UCMJ. These sample charges are known as “specifications.” The Manual makes clear that a military accused can be charged with a specification which is not listed. If an accused claims that a new specification does not amount to a violation of an article (such as 93), his lawyer could make that argument to the court, and if necessary, to the appellate military courts. That is the way our system works, because it is impossible to describe in advance all the permutations of bad behavior that humans are capable of that are sufficiently evil to be deemed criminal.

Other articles of the UCMJ that are even more vague than Article 93 are 133 and 134. Article 133 prohibits “conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.” Article 134, long known as “the devil’s article” because it has been used for several decades to punish behavior that was undefined in advance, makes criminal “all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces” and “all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” The appellate courts have upheld these articles against challenges by defense lawyers that they were “unconstitutionally vague.”

During the President’s press conference, it would have been reasonable to expect at least one White House press corps reporter to ask Bush why Common Article 3 was deemed by him to be too vague -- while the UCMJ Article 134 was not. Not a single reporter posed the question.

The Bush Administration’s real agenda likely has at least three goals: first, to allow CIA interrogators to continue to engage in “soft torture,” so long as it doesn’t “shock the conscience”; second, to provide immunity for all those interrogators, civilian and military, who committed outrages upon detainees’ personal dignity and engaged in humiliating and degrading treatment in the past few years; and third, to give congressionally-granted immunity to senior Bush Administration officials for their having encouraged field operatives to inflict degrading treatment and outright torture in the past.

Myriads of articles have been published about the notorious “Torture Memo” of August 1, 2002, and others, which defined torture so narrowly as to “legalize” what most people and nations would regard as torture. These law-twisting memos, bitterly contested at the time by the Judge Advocates General of our Armed Forces as violating our most noble traditions, told President Bush exactly what he wanted to hear – that he and he alone, could decide what interrogation methods may be used in the “war on terror.”

Even after the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld buried their arguments in justification of the tyrannical (“unitary”) Presidency, Bush’s operatives continue to push for congressional approval to water down established international standards. If Bush’s version of interrogation rules and military tribunals (including use of coerced and secret evidence) becomes law, not only will U.S. soldiers be put at greater risk of torture by other countries; the U.S.’s reputation in the world will be further diminished, and the moral high ground will be gone forever.

Robert S. Rivkin, author of GI Rights and Army Justice, is a San Francisco-based writer and lawyer who specialized in military law for many years.

Unfortunately, I would probably say that more terrorists have been created. I thought about this long and hard a few years ago and I thought the result would be the opposite. I was wrong.

By the same token, I still think we are safer here in the US. You may think it is paradoxical that I think that more terrorists have been created yet I still think we are safer, but I can explain why I think this. I basically think that there are definitely more angry Muslims in the Middle East right now than there were a few years ago. However, just because you have some angry people in the streets in the Middle East, that doesn't necessarily put us at greater risk. Most of these people don't have the means to hurt us. A guy like Bin Laden can hurt us because he has the money, his group is well organized, etc.

I think the biggest threat to us was always from someone like Bin Laden. But I think that all the things we've done since 9/11 like improving and totally revamping our intelligence(CIA, FBI, informants, etc.), being more careful who we give visas to, putting Bin Laden on the run, and all the other things we've done have made us safer. Although we may not be safer from small isolated attacks from lone people acting on their own such as the guy who shot a few people at the ticket counter at Los Angels Airport. We actually are probably at greater risk when it comes to lone people acting out on their own.

I rarely agree with articles that you provide but I actually agree with this article. Everything he's saying is right on. It doesn't mean that I think our guys shouldn't use the interrogation methods that they are using. Here is something to think about that is not far-fetched. Let's say that we capture one of these guys overseas and we treat him really badly. We do the things that this guy talks about in the article but it leads to an admission of a terrorist plan that we thwart because of the admission that was obtained due to the methods used. Let's say that 1,000 lives were saved as a result. Would you rather that we didn't do the harsh interrogation if it ended up saving 1,000 lives? That's a tough question.

Rupert,
I'm gratified that you and I are exchanging "meaningful questions".
I'm also thrilled that you and I agree on some issues.
In answer to your question, I'd be in support of one life being saved, let alone 1,000 if done within non-torturous techniques. That includes ALL humans, not only Americans.
The USA continues to set the model for the rest of the world.
I agree with Senator McCain regarding the preservation of "moral high ground".
DTS

I agree that we are at greater risk and that more terrorists have been created.
I wish it wasn't so.
I have no plans to travel abroad. As far as safety in the US, many places are unprotected, unfortunately.
Chemical plants, port facilities, water supplies, power grids...
Sad situation. We are very vulnerable, and I truely wish it wasn't so.