Aileron

I wasn't supposing over what different people would have done in the cage example, I was trying to point out what was the morally right decision. The often used and predicatable response to this that you have half-used already is the belief that there is no moral right and wrong. That belief is proven wrong at the beginning of most basic philosophy textbooks. A crude and rudimentary argument (I know it has some flaws, but the complete one is long and boring) would be that anyone who thinks that Ghandi was a better man than Hitler believes in right and wrong. Both made radical changes to their respective countries. Both changed the world. True, one preached pacifism and the other extreme violence, but that is imposing a belief of right and wrong, now, isn't it? I didn't say anything about sacrificing oneself for others, I only said you should sacrifice things for yourself, equivolent to saying you shouldn't eat a diet of all candy or your teeth will fall out. I'm not bull!@#$%^&*ting myself, I'm stating reality. The desire of the moment might have long-term consequences, so such desires should be fought. If said desire does have such a consequence, the Church merely tells people of the consequences of actions...the Catholic Church doesn't excommunicate fat people, but we do warn people that if you eat too much, you will get fat. [sarcasm]Ofcourse this is all bull!@#$%^&* and self deceit...go ahead, eat as much as you like, you won't gain a pound.[/sarcasm]

You know, at first glance I can see why someone might want to be a Satanist instead of a Christian. Satan tells you that you can do whatever you want, but Christ tells you that you have to conduct yourselves in a certain fashion, and provided codes and doctrines and tells you that you must follow them. It seems that the former wishes to give you freedom and the latter slavery. I ask you this: Suppose a man wishes to chain his hands and feet, lock himself in a cage, throw away the key, and not provide food or drink for himself, how do you protect his freedom? Satan says that it is his wish to enter the cage, and you should not interfere with it. Christ says that you should smash the gate, break his chains, give him food and water, and see to it that the man recieves psychiatric help. If you look at the results, if you follow Satan the man is trapped in the cage for the rest of his life, and will be a starved corpse in a few weeks. If you follow Christ, the man is denied one decision, but is given instead a lifetime of other decisions to make. It is clear that the majority of the man's freedoms were protected by the decision to break the cage. The case of letting him stay in it may have protected his one bad decision, but it destroyed a lifetime of good decisions he would have been able to make for himself. If you are still skeptical, suppose another man knocked somebody unconcious and was locking that person in a cage. This is clearly wrong by anyone's point of view except Satan's...Satan thinks its the man's freedom even to lock somebody else in a cage. Clearly, one should free the one trapped in the cage. Now, lets compaire the person in the second example to the one who locked himself in in the first. If either of them now wish to travel to Paris, can they? If either of them wishes to drink a gallon of water to quench their thirst, are they able to do so? No, they are trapped in a cage without water. If you compaire the present and future conditions of both people, their fates are identical. The second should clearly be freed...should the first be forced to die of thirst for one bad decision he made in the past, or would it be better to forgive that decision, break his bonds, and give him a gallon of water on the flight to Paris? Hence where Church doctrine comes from. You are free to do whatever you like as long as it doesn't lead to your own slavery. We think its better to tell people they can't be gluttons rather than watch as they trap themselves in a vicious cycle of gluttony, growing fatter, and despair. We think its better to tell people to be abstinant rather than watch them suffer from STDs and watch their children suffer growing up in unformed homes. We think its better to tell somebody not to be greedy rather than watch their material wealth destroy their wellbeing. We think its better to tell people not to be pridefull rather than watch their arrogance destroy them. We think its better to tell people not to envy than watch them suffer longing for something that they cannot have. We tell people not to be lazy rather than watch them come to regret not having accomplished something with their lives. We tell people not to give in to their anger rather than watch as that person's anger controlls them and denys them the things that will make them happy. Note that we don't punish people for violating these things. These aren't rules that have to be followed, these are warnings that should be heeded lest you punish yourself. Each of these things come with their own built-in real life consequences. Thus, we sometimes treat them as rules, because they function as such because you get punished if you break them. However, in technicality they are just warnings, because neither Christ nor the Church creates these consequences. Satan wishes humanity destroyed, so he offers these things. He lies and tells you they are freedoms, knowing full well that they only lead to self slavery and destruction, and in a bold move even makes the claim that we decieve ourselves!! Is it self deciet that if you eat in moderation that you will be healthy? Is it self deceit that if you remain abstinant that you cannot get STDs and your children will grow up in a strong household? Is it self deceit that if you don't put value on material things, that you won't miss the things that matter? Is it self deceit that humility will lead to self improvement and then to success? Is it self deceit that if you don't envy you will be happy with what you have? Is it self deceit that if you are industrious you will look back on life with a feeling of accomplishment over the tall towers you have built? Is it self deceit that you will be happier if you control your anger rather than have it control you? Thus, we end up with a conclusion so simple that it almost seems too easy to use as an arguement, though logically is completely sound. Satan lies, don't listen to him. Monte...I was joking about SeVeR ...nobody gets a 100% without retrying the test about 5 times to engineer a result. SeVeR isn't really a Satanist, he's more like those people who get multiple piercings and dye their hair a strange color just for the shock value (heck, he probably IS one of those people). However, when he makes real life decisions, he probably does good things just like everybody else.

I'm not kidding you with "women weren't considered property since before the Roman Empire" statement...its true! They weren't considered equal partners. She wasn't considered an equal economic or social partner to her husband, but in the medieval period in Europe (granted I don't know the details of every culture on the planet), one could not trade a cow for somebody's wife. I guess I should stop going over every detail and just end this particular stupidity right now...okay, "women shouldn't be the property of their husbands, therefore we should allow same-sex couples to marry." I think that statement is missing some logic. "emphasis"? Its a definition out of a dictionary...its nuetral. Definitions can change, but my point is that no historical social change involving marriage needed to. And the point is...inter-racial marriages fit in it. Marriages that were between different social classes fit. Heterosexual marriages that were made for family, sex, money, whatever also fit. Alternative lifestyles like celebacy or joining some commune don't fit, but they never asked that we call them a marriage. If Priests wanted to be considered legally married, it wouldn't fit, would it? If homo-sexuals want rights, can't they ask for rights as a homosexual couple rather than rights as a married couple? Why can't they bake their own pie? Why do they have to take a piece of ours? If they want rights to make medical decisions for their partners, they should change the laws concerning who is allowed to make medical decisions. The same thing goes for every one of the rights in Astro's link. Astro, true, but you have the oppression arrow pointed backwards. I pointed this out in my last post. Gay marriage of a case of the minority oppressing their will on the majority. The majority oppressing their will on the minority would be us forcing homosexuals to become heterosexuals. The two groups leaving each other alone would be us allowing gays to be homosexual while they in turn respect our beliefs. (Thus allowing gay sex) This is the case of the minority taking the beliefs of the majority and twisting them around to their own end. Or maybe people will come to their senses, realise what this issue is really about and drop it, and YOUR grandkids will wonder why you were such a nutcase. Put your crystal ball away Nostradamus. How many times do I have to repeat myself? Homosexuals are not the-other-black-people! Its a different issue, not a rerun of the 1960s civil rights movement. Monte...Fractal Theorey is a valid scientific theorey. Its main area of application is Mathematics, but shows up repeatedly in real systems. I figured if Social Darwinism holds water, this does too. First off, I will apply another scientific law outside its application...Newton's law of motion. A body at rest stays at rest unless there is an outside force acting on it. What this means is that if I want the status quo, I don't have to have a single shread of logic supporting it, unless somebody else tries to cause movement. You call it "scared of change" because I indeed haven't really put forth any logic...the reason I have not is because I don't have to and am waiting for Astro to make stronger positive moves before I do anything. I don't need a massive arguement supporting heterosexual marriage...I have one, but don't need it...and I think I will wait until I see a really good one supporting homosexual marriage before I'll use it. All I'm pointing out with fractal theory is that this issue is often viewed at small scale by supporters, usually asking us why a specific couple can't get married and pointing out that if those two were allowed to it really wouldn't affect the big picture. All I'm pointing out is that this isn't of such a small scale...its a very big national issue. By changing the definition of marriage, you slightly change the shape of what family is. This in turn affects how families interact with each other. Now, if you changed one family, it means very little. However, if you change the shape of all the families, the overall picture doesn't fit the same way. It doesn't prove much...it just proves that changing the definition of marriage would affect things on a national and societal level. Its not a cry of catastophe...I'm just saying that you affecting more people than just Jim and Bob.

Christianity - 83% Buddhism - 63% Paganism - 50% Satanism - 50% Judaism - 46% agnosticism - 42% Islam - 38% Hinduism - 33% atheism - 13% I'm sort of suprised...I thought I had more respect of Judaism than that. I'm also suprised that atheism scored that high...I'm more of a 2% in that catagory. I didn't think I'd be that much of a Buddhist...then again its not a technical religion and it does have some correct beliefs, so I guess the problem was my image of myself rather than the test. Paganism doesn't come to too much of a suprise, because a lot of Christian traditions comes from Paganist religions to facilitate in conversions. A simple example of this would be St. Patrick's use of a Shamrock to convert the Irish. (Thus you shouldn't really be suprised LerrJett+) Besides that, there's a connection...God created all of nature, thus you can find God's presence in natural phenomenon. Satanism isn't that much of a suprise for me either...I know I have a dark side. Monte...I didn't know you were muslim. (The computer mislabeled you...there's a tie there, and your agnostic nature probably only results from not being officially part of the muslim church) Just remember that if someone asks you to strap a bomb to yourself and blow up some civilians, just say no. Sever, you are going to !@#$%^&* in a handbasket I'd pray for you, but it seems like a lost cause. God doesn't interfere with free will and you seem to be enjoying your path to eternal !@#$%^&*ation.

Well, he did say he was quitting Continuum, but he isn't FULLY retired...the point being he's not really active enough to moderate.

Monte, if you mean 'traditional' as in 'used thousands of years ago before the Roman Empire', then yes I guess women were considered their husband's property. Since that time, while they weren't given equal rights, they didn't really have the property status. Don't I have a right to make my own arguement? Quit saying I'm supporting something that I'm not. Yes, people will get married for a lot of reasons, but the reason we have marriage as an ins!@#$%^&*ution is for family. Those marrying for other reasons might not fulfill the reason we have marriage, but they aren't expecting us to change anything to accomodate them. I don't know how gay marriage would affect heterosexual couples...its a crazy world. But isn't it logical to assume that if we change an aspect of family with about 6 million families in the country, that we would cause massive changes? Fractal Theory isn't an arguement for "always stick to tradition"...there is no valid arguement for that. It merely says that its everyone's business because such changes would affect everyone. You call it paranoia...I'm just saying we should be carefull which dominos we knock down, and that if someone wishes to knock down the domino right next to ours, it certainly is our business. This issue affects everybody. This doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, it only means that first off the opinion of the majority shouldn't be invalidated, because it is their concern too. They aren't pressing their opinion down the gay couple's, as a matter of fact its the gay couples who are pressing their opinion on the majority when the majority has every right to be concerned about this issue. Secondly, if you do want to change society, there should be a very good reason. Gays are not the-other-black-people. How would having gay couples enrich our family structure? How would gay couples enrich our communities? Why do such couples require a marriage certificate to do this? Answers to these questions may exist, but I for one would like them written down before we go turning society upside down.

You wanted an example and I provided it. Its not really about the English language, because the gay rights movement is changing the Spanish, French, and German defintions too. This is about the changing of society, not a mere literary definition. Interracial marriages weren't in and of themselves an expecation of the majority of society to turn itself around to accomodate a minority. It was a mere social stigma...similar to marrying somone "below your station". People didn't have a right to say "that's not a marriage", they could say they didn't approve of the marriage, but they had to admit that the relationship was a marriage. Besides, I'll provide ANOTHER example why I'm allowed to compaire gay marriage to polygamy and he isn't allowed to compaire it to interracial marriage... Suppose there was an airplane manufacturing company that made two airplanes...the 234 and the 345. The 234 turned out historically to be unreliable and dangerous...so dangerous that the whole fleet was banned from flying in 5 years. The 345 however had a marvelous safety record and was considered one of the best designs off all time. The company then decides to build a third model...the 456. Suppose they have to appear before some safety board before selling this model. Suppose a company chairman said "Its similar to the 345, we don't need to test it." That would be flawed, because the safety of the airplane is a very important thing. If the 456 is airworthy, it should be able to prove itself in independent tests. The similarities may be valid, but we couldn't risk the !@#$%^&*umption and not test it. However, if a safety board member pointed out that he noticed some design features similar to the 234 and that the 456 should be run under additional tests, he would be right. The safety of the airplane is a very important thing. The similarities might not affect the airplane's performance, but we couldn't be sure until we test it. Unfortunately, we can't test fly a society...all we have is logic. The point is still the same though. Anyone promoting a new idea has to get it past whatever gauntlett the opposers can lay down, and they are not allowed to themselves take shortcuts. That wasn't an example of how the social and economic fabric of the world would tear apart. The only case I can make supporting that I can think of is Fractal Theory...if you change something ever so slightly, but repeat the changes over many times, you change the big picture drastically. If you change family structure slightly, then multiply by 6 million families, you get a big change in how society functions (or might not function). Granted, this change may not necessarily be for the worse, it may be for the better (otherwise it would be impossible to justify any change)...the point is that we shouldn't underestimate the scale of the changes this issue would cause and the fact that this indeed does affect everybody. What the example was of is that gay marriage doesn't grant couples any rights, it only denys the rights of those who don't approve of gay marriage...the point there was the gay marriage law didn't give the gay couple any rights...it just denied the banker the right to give them the 7% loan. They didn't have a right to a 6% loan...its the banker's money, he gets to decide what to do with it as long as there isn't some government issued certificate in his face ordering him to do otherwise. The people who get married without having children aren't trying to replace societies' definition. The reason why some religions forbid sex out of wedlock is because they don't approve of sex as entertainment. Monte...you'd be suprised how long they stay sexually active, though you do have a point. I'll use a different one...Why do people cheat on their spouses then? If marriage was about sex, they would have as much as they ever needed and wouldn't want to go back to somebody else. Yes, gay sex is of nobody else's concern...but we aren't arguing over gay sex, are we? What am I afraid of? As I said...Fractal Theory. Women being their husband's property is a tradition only to chovinistic pigs. Its not part of any respectable person's definition of marriage. The only time it is part of said definition is when somebody who can't justify their own arguement says that it's their opponant's viewpoint. Since they can't argue with their opponant's real arguement, they concoct their own imaginary facade of an arguement, claims that it's their opponant's viewpoint, and blasts the facade. Its called a Straw Man logical fallicy. Its true Monte...the Catholic Church is far too old and traditional to have to run any disinformation campaigns. Now, there are a lot of cases of some power-abusing person with a !@#$%^&*le doing this, but that's the individual. Its been held that Richard Nixon was responsable for Watergate, not the United States Government. No Monte, there's only one truth, there may be many viewpoints, but only one can be correct in a definite system, such as the world we live in (except in Quantum Physics). Opinions are more ambiguous and there is the possibility of more than one truth there. The whole concept of tolerating other religions developed when everybody realised that we have no !@#$%^&*ing clue what the supernatural world is so we should stop argueing about it. Still, there only can be one way it could be layed out.

I don't know whether this should be pointed out here or to the 17th Parallel Forum moderators...either way the right people will read it here. The 17th Parallel RPG Forum has only one moderator...Manus Celar Dei...and he quit Continuum. I don't know whether a new moderator should be chosen or if the forum should be deleted entirely.

Actually I ran out of time and had to go to class and that's why I didn't come up with a good compairison. First off let me point out that I really didn't intend to make that a compairison, rather an analogy. However, to save your time, I'll give you the answer you want first. Cite any dictionary before 1990 and the definition of marriage would be something that amounts to a one man and one woman. The reason I said before 1990 is that they now include a second definition to explicitly make themselves politically nuetral on this subject. A Dictionary.com search gave the definition of the word marriage as: "a. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife." Admittingly, their "d." explicitily used an alternate definition for a same-sex marriage. However, this is the 1.a. main defintion that would still be in the books today were it not for the gay rights movement. So, lets see how inter-racial marriage and polygamy stack up to this. In an interacial marriage, there is one man and one woman of different races. But this still obeys the definition, the definition said nothing about race. In polygamy, there is multiple men and/or women. While this definition didn't explicitly say "one" (others do), it did use the word "a" and the words man, woman, husband, and wife are all in singular tense, making it clear that there is only one man and one woman. Thus polygamy is not in this defintion. Thus inter-racial marriages do fall under the traditional definition, wheras polygamy and same-sex marriages would require a change in definition, or the addition of a pathetic d. definition. I guess the word "legal" settles the debate of how long marriage has been around too...at very latest Sumeria, where the first known record of law was found....that's still about 30,000 years if I remember correctly. If you drop the word "legal" though, it still doesn't include same-sex couples and the time it goes back is who knows how long. Going back to why I made the implication, I was making an attempt at an analogy that I didn't really do around to making clear. Here's the new and improved version: Suppose some guy with a lot of money starts a bank. He decides to give out loans at 7% interest. He is a family man and somewhat of a philantropist so he decides to give a special 6% loan to married persons. Suppose he doesn't believe in gay marriage. A gay couple walks into the bank and demands a 6% loan. He has the right to say "Screw you, I don't believe in gay marriage, you get the 7% loan." However, add gay marriage being legal and a Certificate of Marriage, and he would be LEGALLY OBLIGATED to treat that gay couple as any other marriage no matter what his opinion is. Suppose in a different scenario the bank owner did believe in gay marriage. Suppose a gay couple walked in claiming they were married, but didn't have the certification because gay marriage isn't legalised. The bank owner can still offer that couple the 6% loan if he wants to. There's no such thing as a Certificate of Being Single, so the bank is under no legal obligation to consider the couple as two single people. The Greeks and Romans practiced homosexuality, but not gay marriage. Their practice of homosexuality mostly occured in the military as a way for their soldiers to p!@#$%^&* the time. It was about sex, not family. They might have had sex while away from home and were surrounded by men, but they came home to a female wife, and they viewed it such that only a man and a woman could start a family. Sex with a man was acceptible for entertainment, but marriage to a woman was required for a family. Marriage is about family, not sex. Those here who think its about sex should talk to a 40-50 yr old married man and ask him when the last time he had some was. It is in this where the thin line between gay sex and gay marriage lies. Gay sex is just a form of entertainment, and really is nobody else's concern. Gay marriage is different because marriage is a part of family, and family is the building block of society, and our society is everybody's business. Am I prepared to ban divorce? You don't know me very well, do you? I think there would have to be some sort of grey area between some chovinistic pig ordering his wife around and letting whoever marry whatever. A man controlling his wife is not part of my definition of traditional marriage...your attempts to make it as such amount to a straw man arguement. The traditional definition of marriage is dead? True half of our marriages end in divorce, but the other half still stay true to their vows...so the traditional definition is only half dead. Besides, that just implies that we have one problem with divorce, and the last thing we need right now is a second one with gay marriage. The Judeo-Christians destroyed the records? Who the !@#$%^&* did you think were safekeeping historical do!@#$%^&*ents in the medieval period? The King Arthur's Historical society? Every secular authority was too busy trying to make war with every other secular authority to give a !@#$%^&* about history! Monks and scribes were the ones keeping the records...during that period science and religion were the same body. Granted there was the situation with Gallileo, but they didn't destroy all records of his work and that was a exception to an otherwise fitting partnership. Don't use Darwin as a more modern example either...the science of eugenics started with a monk breeding peas. Besides, how would YOU be privy to this information? Do you have a time-machine in your basement or were you infact born a thousand years ago and discovered some anti-aging medicine? And what about modern archealogical digs? Most of the sites I spoke of were only discovered in the last century...do you think there is some sort of international conspiracy of Judeo-Christian homophobes devoted to not letting people know about homosexuality in ancient times, that manages to get to each dig before the archealogists discover it, take all evidence away, and bury the whole thing again? (phew, he almost had us figured out for a minute there...) For the record, Nazis and Fascists were the only groups in European history to burn books in general. The Catholic Church once or twice have ordered the burning of a specific editorial publications, some of Martin Luther's works come to mind, but never anything of scientific or historical value...these things, however disagreable they may be, are the truth, and that is one of the things the Church stands for. The Church would still be supporting the sciences today, except that most of our universities are public funded and those that aren't don't want anything to do with a religious body or they would scare away all Muslims, Hindus, as well as every Athiest whos scared to death that they might be wrong. Heck, we do anyways, haven't you ever heard of Notre Dame? Forgive me for devoting half a post to a single stupid statement which proves nothing except that we are all human and sometimes make stupid statements, but I'm in a bad mood.

Greased, it might not be unnatural...when the lemming senses they are overpopulated, they have a natural desire to kill themselves off...maybe we humans have the same desire. I do have the reasoning to "contradict" myself there...first off I never actually compaired gay marriage to polygamy, I just made a very strong implication. For a reason that isn't BS, I'm attacking gay marriage, but you are attacking the traditional definition of marriage. Gay marriage is a very recent and relatively untested notion that has been around for atmost 30 years. (Homosexual practices may have been around longer, but we are talking about gay marriage.) The length of time the traditional method has been used is by all true accounts unknown...though DEFINETLY pre-exists Christianity (All I have to do to prove this is point out that Jews marry too.)...there's evidence of traditional nuclear families in the ruins of Sumeria and Achient Egypt, and there's even some evidence of such families in prehistoric times. We can probably safely make the !@#$%^&*umption that cavemen married in the same traditional manner as we do. The evidence we have supports that conclusion. Interracial marriage is old - some of the societies that came before us were more racially accepting. Others had weak gene pools and HAD to practice it. Polygamy is also old, it pre-exists mormons certainly. However, the idea of it being wrong is dependant on the women's rights movement and is very new. You compaired something new with something old, hence the invalidity. I compaired it with something effectively new. (I once made an arguement that if you count a man and a woman mating for life and producing children as a marriage, which may not be the exact defintion we use today but does exclude gay marriage, that heterosexual marriage (no arguement necessary for heterosexual mating) pre-exists humanity...if we were created my God, He invented marriage...if we evolved from apes, some primate that we evolved from practiced it.) To shorten this because I'm running out of time...Astro, you are on offense. I am on defense. Because I am on defense I am allowed to make such comparisons and you are not, by the fact that your cause is untested and mine is ancient.

Astro, your comparison of gay marriages to interracial marriages is part of one of the things I hate most about the gay rights movement - the constant comparison to the racial civil rights movement. First off I don't like it because gay people are not a race. More importantly I don't like it because its a shortcut. Marriage has been defined as between a man and a woman for millions of years and ALL of history. To change something in our culture that is as fundimental as that we better have a !@#$%^&* good reason to do it...and the gay marriage supporters are trying to use a shortcut. This isn't an afterthought of the racial rights movement, this is something that is infact more important. It should have its own independant arguement supporting it. I've said this before though about the "rights" of marriage. They are infact psuedo-rights, because people have the right to get together, live in the same house, have relations, raise children, etc. without marrying. A Certificate of Marriage does not give you any rights at all...rather it forces the other 250 million people in the country to recognize you as married. For example: polygamists. Polygamy is not recognized as marriage in any state. However, there are people in Utah who practice polygamy despite this. The husband and first wife will be legally married, and any additional wives will be married in an unofficial ceremony. The group can live together like a "normal" polygamist family, and as long as the husband doesn't beat one of the wives or have relations with a wife younger than 18, this is perfectly legal. Where the lack of certification comes into play is when one of them tries to conduct business based on this. If the husband tried to go to the bank and get a loan, claiming he has 12 wives, the bank would have the right to say and act on the husband having only one wife and eleven freeloaders, because the husband only has one marriage certificate. If polygamy was legal and that man had 12 certificates, then the bank wouldn't be allowed to say that. So the real question ends up being: Do you want to force everyone in the country to recognize gay couples as married? I don't know about the tax breaks. The whole point of the tax breaks in the first place was to promote the raising of children and increase the national population level (which at the time was a good thing), and gay couples can't do this without some sort of a medical procedure. Whether or not our population has gotten so high that we don't want couples to produce children is another debate, but since gay unions can't produce children, there seems to be no logical reason to give them the tax break. (I personally wouldn't mind giving gay couples a tax break...I was just pointing out that there is no logical reason to do it.)

SeVeR, there actually was enough people in Iraq that wanted democracy and they did want it bad enough...they just didn't have enough firepower. There can be a massive uprising, but if Saddam's forces have machine guns and tanks, all they are is cannon fodder. Your logic is similar to the Boxer rebellion in late 1800's China. The Boxers thought that with Kung Fu skills and sufficient numbers and willpower that they could defeat the armed modernized foreign armies that were occupying China...they even laughably thought they could make themselves bulletproof by willpower. Obviously, it just didn't work and the Boxers got their !@#$%^&* handed to them every time they faced a military, though they did have a limited amount of success against unarmed civilians. Whether or not your cause is right and no matter how much you need victory or how much will you are putting into it, in war its usually the guy with the best weapon who usually wins. The forces trying to topple Hussein needed weapons and training to do it...and if we were willing to provide it we might as well make it easier and just take Hussein's forces out ourselves rather than giving somebody else some weapons and letting them handle it. (Besides, that's how Hussein came to power in the first place. We gave him weapons to fight Iran and he went psycho on us. That's also how Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora. We gave Afghan forces some weapons and had them do the hunting, and they weren't up to it. We learned from our own mistakes...if you want something done right you must do it yourself.) We shouldn't pull out of Iraq until the Iraqi forces are in a position to take over and their consitution writtin. Its not much longer now, so we should be patient. The key to the War on Terror was and still is Saudi Arabia...the problem is they are our ally, so any outright invasion is a betrayal and out of the question. We also can't cut the support we are giving to the Saudi Government because if we did the Wahhabists who are also supporting the other half of the Saudi Government will pick up the slack effectively allowing them to take over the country and thus make this worse. Monte, the problem is that the people fighting us don't believe a single word that comes out of our mouth. They suicide bomb us. They wouldn't do that unless they convinced themselves that their target was 100% wrong. No matter what proof we offered, the terrorists would view it as lies and would ignore it. Everybody else doesn't matter, because they would never be willing to fight us over Hussein's regime. Sometimes intelligence is faulty...Bush and Congress shouldn't be criticised for that...the spy who presented him that information should. Going into Iraq was a good move though...it may not look like a good move at the moment, but it was. If we got the foreign and domestic support Bush was expecting the situation would be looking a lot better right now. i88gerbills, did you get my pm? I'm very interested to know if you'd be willing to make that bot.

The Abbasids weren't really that anchient...they were kinda in the late mevieval/early Rennaissance period. They were basically a trading empire that developed with the overland trade routes from Europe to Asia, located in the Tigris/Euphratis valley...they started declining when the sea trade routes to Asia were established and ended with the Mongol invasion. They are kinda a nation only strict historians would bother learning about. I only learned of them myself when studying Iraq's history for a report, kinda a wierd bit of knowledge I picked up...If you asked me who any of their neighbors were I'd have no clue.

The civil war is a case of motive being in the eye of the beholder...some say it was fought to end slavery, others say it was about state's rights and to keep the union united...I do actually agree with the second one, but the first was correct enough and that's the one I needed. Hussein wasn't a grey, nor were the people supporting him.

A: sacrificing 99 lives to save 100 is still logical..."approaching" is insufficient B: I know the situation will eventually stop because it is impossible for a terrorist group to make strategic advances, and because the opinion of Muslims worldwide is gradually turning against the terrorists. Most of all, war cannot last forever. C: good point...I was only referencing the story though D: No end in sight? We we leave when the insurgency ends...we just don't know when that is. E: Just making that point to SeVeR.... F: True...but I didn't say it was a large time of letting them advance at their own rate G: The US achieved our democracy with French support...it is a historical fact that 3/4ths of all revolutions required foreign support to suceed. France was an exception...England just sort of stumbled on to democracy and never really had to fight for it. (They should be proud of this) H: Michaele Moore did...in Farenheit 9/11 he portrayed Iraq as children flying kites. I: I don't agree with our alliance with Saudi Arabia...I'd say Bush should invade Saudi Arabia too if it wasn't a betrayal.

First off the word trap shouldn't be in quotes...it was a trap whether or not it worked. Your faith in me is appreciated, it is intelligent to take somebody at their word when you have no reason not to. Because of this you are correct in that this doesn't really apply to you. All you did was trust that I gave accurate information. I mentioned Monte's name because undoubtedly he knows enough about history to recognize all the names except possibly the Abbasids (they didn't really accomplish that much). I was afraid for a while there that he would reveal my little trap before spin stepped in it. He too is smart enough to know that people don't lie without a reason, so this doesn't apply to him either. The trap was set for spin, because he is the one claiming that I know nothing of history and !@#$%^&*uming that everything I say is false. If he had any right to make such a claim he would have picked that up.

jeez...where did my post go? To sum it up: There were already rebellions in Iraq that had been going on since the Gulf War "ended". Virtually the entire Kurdish population was out to kill Saddam, they just didn't have the technology to finish the war. And the Iraqi people love the fact that we disposed of Saddam. That's what the no-fly zone was about. It was an effort to prevent Saddam's airforce from getting air superiority over the rebels...and to make sure that unidentified aircraft weren't cruise missles filled with chemical weapons. The problem is that we can't please everybody and it takes about 12 people to form a terrorist cell. I mean, in order to do a suicide car bombing you need a car, a driver, and a bomb. Getting a car is simple. Crafting a bomb is also simple. All you need to do is find one idiot to drive the car...the number of people who were in Saddam's not-so-inner-circle could provice the manpower needed for a suicide bombing campaign. We aren't fighting patriots who love their country, we are fighting s!@#$%^&* that had the good life under Saddam and don't like us because we evened out the playing field. There is no right and wrong? If that's true then great social reformers like Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther King were pariahs. They changed social systems that weren't wrong because there is no such thing as wrong. Abraham Lincoln would be terrible and on par with Hitler and Napoleon, because he fought the Civil War to end slavery...but if slavery isn't wrong all he did was fight a bloody war for no good end. But we regard such people as great heroes. The statement presents a contradiction...therefore right and wrong DO exist. Let nations advance at their own rate? We tried that at the end of the 20th century. The problem is that the rate at which they acquire modern weapons is greater than the rate their society evolves. This is the basic cause of terrorism....people with dark-age thinking that have modern explosives. And why shouldn't we advance their society? Their people have to live with it. If they come to advance on their own it is unlikely the tyrannical regime they live under would just step aside and let them take over, so it would either be a bloody revolution by our hands now or a bloody revolution by their hands later. As a matter of fact as this specific example pointed out its better if we do it because we have the military strength to make the military conflict short, but the revolutionaries always have to fight a long bloody war with the aim of depleting the tyrant's resources rather than defeating his army. The problem with this logic does not lie in the logic itself...rather the fact that this arguement was often falsely used to justify imperialism. The difference in this case is that the US plans on leaving Iraq in the near future, rather than hold onto it. You act as if Hussein was the justly elected and benevolent ruler of a people that loved him. He was a dictator that ruled by force and everyone hated his guts. The very very worst a foreign power can do is match him. Which brings me to the very predictable puppet government arguement. Maybe the new government will have a desire to follow US policy. However, such things would occur below-the-table, everything down above the table will be in the Iraqi peoples' best interests...which is still better than under Hussein, where the only thing done was Hussein's interests.

spin, you didn't read my post...I know you didn't read my post. I don't know why Monte didn't catch this...probably because he's only half interested in this topic. Now, the question you should have asked is "Who the !@#$%^&* were the Tylonians?". There was no such group. I made that name up. The fact that it sounds like one of the alien races from Star Trek should have set off a red flag too. Either A: you didn't read my post, B: you know nothing about history, or C: both.

hahahahahahahaha lol rofl lmao !@#$%^&* that's funny ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha erm...you need a new sense of humor...I think some guy on eBay is selling his.

Alright, no yays and a sh1tload of nays...I guess the old rules stay. I will however put 3,4,5 in the "recommended" column.

Monte, your reply doesn't work here, because having a couple children die from collateral damage is not as bad as having ALL of them die as in the origional story...and it doesn't work in Iraq because more people died under Hussein than are dying now...and the situation now will eventually stop.

I think you should read my posts before expecting Hackysack to read all of your sources, and he's right, while reading someone else's sources is usually polite, there are just too many there, and he can't possibly have the time. And the "that source is really biased" arguement does infact work. Bias has a tendancy to mess up scientific sampling, making the results fit what one is looking for. Professionals can limit this, but not if they are that far off-center.

jeez...half those people don't even go to the forums anymore, let alone play, let alone crazy enough to start a new zone. Oh well, I guess I *could* try to get their support *gulp*.

That's slightly off topic Bak...I'm looking for a bot-programmer, not adverting a zone. Well, if there are only 2 or 3 people gameplay will stop...as true in any zone...they will likely try to kill each other until more peeps show up or leave. I guess now that I think about it, the map has no boundary and has a large area of nothingness. It would be easy for somebody to hide. I figured I wouldn't have to worry about flaggers hiding, because they need a kill every minute or they lose the flag. However, there's no reason why a bountyrabbit holder or just someone with a really big bounty can't hide in the corner. I guess the pob bot will have to give periodic messages giving out the coords of all Blacklisted players and the rabbitholder who haven't gotten a kill in the past 2 minutes. I guess it should also give everyone's coords if there are less than 6 people on. I'm worried becuse all of the recent successfull new zones draw on new and interesting settings...and I don't have that...I'm counting on peeps from Chaos looking for a new challenge and players who want to learn SVS in a noobie-friendly environment. There's still a lot of distance to cover, but that's why freq 0 players are given free rockets. erm...dumb question for SOS...who are those three coders you speak of?

yeah, and one forum is too much for me as it is.