Aileron

There currently is a resonably large hurricane in the Carribian. That means Nintendo64, who lives in the Dominican Republic, is unable to get online. This topic has no mod! SPAM THE FORUMS!!!

Ailius' bots were now reprogrammed to incredible durability. They were now immune to ultrasonic and EMP. To augment his shapeshifting abilities, all bots were directly linked to his brain. This allowed more direct control in positioning of the bots, which allowed Ailius to move them around however he liked. The side effect of this was that now the bots could not be reprogrammed. After leaving the lab, he headed down to his ship's comm system. There, SE hackers were at work hacking into everything they could on the Ithkul capitol. "I've got the employment records!" "Hmmm...long list. I'm going to need to impersonate somebody working at or around the life support." The hacker inputed some information, and the list was narrowed to about a dozen. "I'm also going to need a weapon, and no doubt they will scan for any I would carry. How many of these are security guards?" "Just one, Natalie Starscraper" "What the? A top government facility and all they have guarding it is one guard?" "Apparently" "And what kind of genetic engineer would use a female for a soldier?" "She's not genetically enhanced, sir. It says so right here." "What the heck? Where are the uber-enhanced ex-commandoes wielding fusion cannons and gatling guns? You must have the wrong list!" "Hmm...there are many of those types on the list of guards. I guess no one bothers to protect the life support since they terraformed the planet. After all, no hostile fleet has been close to here in a couple centuries." "Apparently not. Alright, I'll grab one of our small transports and head to the planet." With that Ail got in a normal Warbird and headed to planet Ithkul.

The SE meeting brought new clarity to their plan. The fleet split up, a small portion towards each target. Then, Ailius would infiltrate the government caves on planet Ithkul. After he poisoned the life support systems, the fleets would bombard their targets, and their collective fire would make the planets uninhabitable. Then, they would send signals to the dormant Gehenna to block the Ithkul fleet. The SE would then consolidate themselves and make and decide whether to make an escape or occupy Ithkul territory. As they made their way towards their targets, Ailius had his bionanobot altered. With severe modifications, he made himself almost immune to both EMP damage and Ultrasound emmitters. However, it was at such great cost that it could not be added to the Gehenna.

1) I meant patient with the UN. 2) The wall could be used as an armistace. Maybe, I know its unlikely, but just maybe both sides will actually stay on their side of the wall long enough to negotiate a permanent solution. 3) The situation cannot really get much worse. Fueling hatred is of little consequence, both sides already have more than enough hatred of each other to continue. Adding more hatred is not going to do much. Thus, its worth it to take a long shot plan like this at the expense of creating Palestinian hatred, because they had enough to begin with. I said so from the beginning though. Its not opposition to the plan itself that bugs me. I will admit that there are better things that can be tried. It would be better, for example, that international troops occupy a no-man's land between them until things settle down. The point was that the UN vote was almost unanamous over a debatable plan. This plan could work, but they threw it away without even thinking about it.

Teh Uber was in a death spiral she couldn't get out of. However, this was not it for the bionanobots. She used most of her available energy to get directly above where the Gehenna had the strongest hold on the ground battle. She rolled over stern first, so that her weapons would be positioned upward and made a crash landing. A cloud of bionanobots was spread into space, and settled over many of the fleeing fighters and most of the rest of the station. The battle onboard the station became hopeless, as bionanobot spawned creatures and structures covered % of the station at this point. In some areas, the Gehenna had even set up landing zones and anti-fighter turrets. Teh Uber was still operational, but would never be able to move again. The Ghenenna slowly began to replicate her systems through out the station. In the mean time, her weapons and cloaking field served as a stationary defense. It was done at great cost, but the Gehenna got what they came for - 17th Parallel station was now in their possession. Meanwhile, there was major outcry in international conventions over the Exis recent attack on Terran space. However, the Exis knew that this meant nothing. The Kanatis were busy fighting the Gehenna, and the Ithkul would soon have their own worries. The SE leadership had finally decided on their targets. Using their miniature Arbiter cannons, they would strike at Feldeshon, the most populated Ithkul planet, Suprdonia, their major military starport, the trade planet of New Constantinople, and the center of government, planet Ithkul. The last one was going to be tricky. The planet used to be uninhabitable. The first colonies here were located in a massive cave in which the first settlers had sealed the entrance. After technology for terraforming was practical, they did a massive terraforming project to make the planet habitable. However, all the major government centers used the same buildings they used for centuries in the deep cave. If the SE merely did an Arbiter cannon strike, the survivors would flee to the anchient cave, and the old life support systems would be activated. Being too deep to strike directly, the SE could not use Arbiter cannons here like they would elseware. Besides, they were here to cripple the Ithkul government. The SE needed to somehow infiltrate the caves and sabotage their life-support system first. This would be the ultimate test of Ailius' guile, as well as the shapshifting ability of his bionanobot body.

Well, it really depends on the available means of cooking on the island. If there was some kind of charcoal grill, I'd go with barbaqued Criznittle with french friest. If we instead had a large pot, I'd go with boiled Tipme with some rice on the side. If there was just a campfire with a frying pan, I'd go with fried Raem or Samapico. If we were forced to eat raw meat, I'd really prefer not to eat anybody because of all the diseases. Instead, I'd cut WarCC's intestines out and stretch them to make some kind of fishing line. I'd cut the rest of him into small bit-sized bits, make some kind of makeshift hook, and go fishing.

Well, if you can use Z-space systems to warp a ship across large distances, why shouldn't you try to do the same thing to some kind of balistic weapon? Basically, instead of firing a Z-space weapon, you warp it around to the target.

D & D usually suxors. Either A) you play a fighter, which requires no strategy whatsoever or you play a mage, where you get your -*BAD WORD*- kicked five ways from Sunday. (That's why I usually play a druid/fighter combo, but.) Some editions have good mage spells, which can make the mage a very good choice if you play smart, but most of the time spells just don't have the mus-*BAD WORD*- to be usefull. Speaking of D&D, I'm kinda working on a Neverwinter Nights module. Its a humerous module, so if there is anything odd or funny about the D&D world that you think would be funny, please run it by me. Ok, back to the topic... How about this weapon idea? Z-Space weapons: Ever since Z-space technology was created, scientists have been trying to build a Z-space weapon. The general concept of which is either a bomb or missile that is fired into Z-space and warps directly inside the target over a riculously long range. It is a terrifying concept, the idea of detonating a bomb inside an enemy ship's reactor from accross the galaxy. Although there has been much research into the concept, it has never really worked. One method is to fire bombs directly into Z-space with a pre-set fuse determining where to appear and detonate. However, this type of weapon requires a huge planetary base. However, the real problem is that since the bombs are piloted by a dumb fuse and that Z-space travel is impossible around gravity wells, the range of the weapon is limited by nearby obstacles. While this is usually still very long range, it is not long enough to justify the cost and the devotion of an entire planet to the weapon. The other attempted method was a Z-space missle, programmed to pilot through space the same way a ship does, by exiting Z-space every so often to make piloting corrections and to go around gravity wells. However, the problem with this is that the missle can be intercepted just like a ship, and really isn't any more effective than sending a fighter to the task. Still, a few weapon scientists are still trying to think of a practical implimentation of this type of weapon, and all four of the major empires have programs devoted to the subject. Well, good thing about the new characters. I'm thinking something along the lines of Intergalactic pirate rather than intergalactic terrorist.

[OOC-Please get rid of Teh Uber quickly, that battle of yours is lasting way longer than I wanted it to. It was only supposed to be a diversion after all.] Ailius began implementation of the SE plan. The Ithkul fleet was normally mostly stationed at the border, and with recent events, they reinforced their borders even more, leaving few ships in their core systems. However, any sign of SE action would change that. So, the SE was spreading dormant versions of the bionanobots on a mul!@#$%^&*ude of domestic shipping, colonies, and stations. The idea was to create a line of secret Gehenna which will activate themselves just as the SE strike the core planets, putting a barrier between the SE fleet and the Ithkul fleet. Their escape plan was to have the Gehenna on both the Kanatis and Ithkul sides sandwich a single system, and letting the SE out that way. Right now, the SE were spreading the nanobots, and deciding what exactly to do now that they were deep in Ithkul territory. They had dreamed of being here for years, but there were too many opportunities for them to cause damage for decision to be made quickly.

Really, though, it doesn't matter how good or bad the UN is to the rest of the world - it just matters if they or if they did not deliver to Israel specifically. Israel has been being attacked for the longest time now, and the UN has not given Israel peace. Israel definitely should have been patient at first, which they were, but now there patience should be long gone. The UN had their chance in Israel and they failed. Israel needs to move on to the next idea. Look, the reason why peace hasn't been achieved is because the foreign community is making judgements. They try to decide which side is wrong while the bombs are still falling. Right now, it doesn't matter. It will matter later when we can work out a long-term peace plan, but right now we need to seek a simple armistace. The wall has about a good 30% chance of working and probably can't make the situation worse. Considering it is already built, those odds are good enough that it is worth a shot at this point.

[OOC-BTW, I already did a quick dock with you. I picked up your cargo and paid in full.] The defenders of the station began to breath easier, atleast those who weren't still fighting. The space battle was reaching conclusion, and reinforcments just arrived. A powerfull cruiser, Teh Uber, just arrived. Those fighting the space battle gave a shout for joy. The battle had been won, or was it? "All glory to the Gehenna! Annihilation to the humans!" The remaining Gehenna ships rallied around Teh Uber, hiding in her cloaking field. The ship started to charge up her Arbiter cannons, and locked on to the station. However, the Gehenna wanted to capture the station, not destroy it. A new wave of weasels left the cloaking fields to reinforce the ground battle. Meanwhile, Ailius had good reason to give a sigh of relief. The Ithkul's fleet was located almost exclusively on the border, and the SE fleet just past beyond their radar range. They now had an entire fleet deep inside Ithkul territory! The SE leadership began to make their plan. The new strain of bionanobots were given protection from ultrasonic waves. More importantly, the second strain was programmed to be "dormant". They would still infect and spread, but they would leave almost no sign of their presence. That is until they recieve a special signal, at whihc case they go active. The SE began to secretly set these lose among the Ithkul population, and amongst ships.

(2) No, it would be exceedingly more difficult. (3) Both sides don't need to decide where there wall is placed to generate peace. It needs to be as such for the wall to be placed in a fair manner, but not to achieve peace at least in the crudest sense. (4) The Palestinians won't like the placement, but they would eventually forget it, especially when they are no longer losing territory. (5) The UN is an organization devoted to world peace. If they are incapable of delivering that to Israel, why should Israel listen? Its like any business - if the customer doesn't get the product, the customer doesn't pay. The UN is kind of like a business. It serves world nations by delivering the product of world peace. That product hasn't been delivered to Israel. (6 & 7) Sane people don't blow themselves up for little or no reason. They would like to make it count. Sane palestinians are the ones who throw rocks. It doesn't take much to make a Palestinian hate Israel - it takes a lot more to get a Palestinian to blow themselves up. ( I didn't mean with the wall specifically. The point is that it is irrelevent which side is right and which on is wrong, and we shouldn't let such judgements interfere with a peace plan.

Just a few lightyears from the station, Teh Uber was setting a grueling pace to reach the station in time. They did not have enough time to run proper scouting. She was moving far to fast to see the string of mines set in her path. While the field was set by a much weaker vessel, the hits were direct, causing a large amount of damage. Teh Uber's energy reserves were directed to the shields. The Gehenna corvette that laid the mines acitvated her portal, leaving her directly behind the Cruiser. She unloaded all her energy into her nanobot deployment weapon, just punching through Teh Uber's shields and infecting the ship's engineering compartment. The corvette had to use her rockets to flee before the cruiser's energy reserves recharged. However, the damage was done, and after the cruiser was infected, she continued on her journey to provide reinforcement for the battle at the station, only now for the side of the Gehenna. Meanwhile, on the Ithkul-Kanatis border. The Gehenna made scattered raids on the border, so when human refugee ships showed up, border patrols let the SE fleet through. After inside Ithkul territory, the SE started to search for an abandoned station to serve as a base of operations. On the Exis-Terran border, a handfull of Terran systems fell to the attacks made by the Exis fleet. While the Terrans were prepared for the Exis, they were not prepared for the Arbiter-style cannons that were installed just after Ailius sold them the schematics. The fighting was fierce on both sides, but between the new weapons systems and the lack of Kanatis support, the Terrans were eventually forced to withdraw from their border stations.

That last comment was to describe the situation in the minds of Israeli soldiers, admittingly a surmised comment. The actual legal status of the territory is relevent, but not in this specific case. I see I cannot quite describe my arguement, so I'll try a simpler one: Suppose the wall stands. How, exactly, could Israel justify large action east of the wall to their people, their troops, and the international community? What type of idiot Israeli settler would settle east of this wall? The point is, Israel has been gradually moving east. With construction of this wall, Israel won't move farther east. I will agree with no contest that the wall happens to be placed too far east. So, Israel should just drop everything and listen to the UN? The UN is irrelevent. If the UN was relevent, they wouldn't have this problem in the first place! The UN is too weak, stupid, and divided to give any suggestions that will work. Listening to "joe smoe" Palestinian sounds nice. However, it isn't "joe smoe" Palestinian that becomes a terrorist, rather than "crazy nutcase" Palestinian. That doesn't make what Israel does right. However, does that really change anything? So, we need to let people die just because Israel's decisions haven't always been moral? Peace first, judgement second. We need to stop the blood fued first, then worry about who is right and who is wrong.

The weasel fleet was beaten badly. Over 75% were destroyed, and there were not enough of them to use their swarm tactics. The Gehenna could defend their capital ships with the fighters they infected, but they needed reinforcements on the ground. Then, scans revealed a compound filled with ship parts. One warehouse was filled with decoys. An infected corvette hit the building with an L5 bomb. Decoy greens were scattered throughout the battlefield. The weasels picked up some of them, and turned to targets on the surface. Deploying the decoys, the defense gunners had additional difficulty picking out proper targets, and the weasels hit various tactical targets. By this time, almost all of the stations defenses were destroyed, as well as the attacking weasels.

.... You miss my point as well. I didn't mean in terms of raw capability to hit a target on the other side of the wall. The wall has gates, so they still have the capability of striking any target they want, even with tanks or the like. Now, the wall does limit their capability to wage long term conflicts, because it forces supply lines to go through certain gates. However, I didn't mean in terms of that either. I meant in terms of the fact that military forces needs to be rallied, and have a morale factor. I'm talking in terms of the psycological impact on the soldiers participating, as well as the need to rally public and international support. Before the wall, all the territory was Israeli. The troops were acting on their own terf. They were police forces removing criminals from places they had no right to be. The people throwing rocks were silly rioters that didn't know what they were doing. Now, the area over the wall in enemy terroritory. Any troops on the east side will be invaders. Those they are attacking are now foreigners. Those who throw rocks at them are only upset about the breach in territory. It will get much more difficult in respect of rallying forces and justifying action.

[OOC-Oh, I forgot to tell you, although the more scientific of you probably knew. Ultrasonic vibrations is a fancy way of saying high-frecuency sound waves, which don't work in space. Pretty obvious, but I should have stated it.] Priority alerts from the battle of the station were heard through the whole galaxy. It became time for the next phase of action. The Exis fleet, equiped with the Marathon's weapon system, started to make their move on Terran space. The Kanatis fleets had been recalled to fight the nanobots that were now attacking off and on all over the place. Most of the Terran fleet was preoccupied with rescue attempts. It was time for the SE to make their move as well. As soon as Ailius arrived, they rallied their new fleet, and headed for Ithkul space, using clever means of disguising themselves as refugee ships. They came accrossed a large convoy of the real thing, and joined their ranks. The secret SE base was still manned and left under command of Dr. Farson. Suddenly the Marathon realised what happened to her weapons. EMP bolts disbled the weapon, and if she attempted to fire before the EMP damage was repaired, she would be destroyed. Although such an explosion could create enough infected shrapnel to win this battle, the bionanobots decided against it. However, they had already attempted to charge up for it, and the ship would be destroyed if that power wasn't put somewhere. Seeing the devastation on the station caused by a single portal, the Marathon diverted the power to the anti-warp system, which quickly overloaded. A massive energy wave covered the entire battlefield, which reaked havok to all Z-space and Portal systems, disabling all of them. Just to be sure, the other infected ships kept Anti-Warp on for the rest of the battle. Meanwhile, a small Gehenna corvette was rerouted from a nearby raid. Its orders were to infect Teh Uber before it could arrive, and waited in ambush in her path.

Yeah, Israel and Palestine will always fight unless you put some kind of barrier between them (maybe a large concrete wall) rendering them almost unable to strike at each other. Saying "its just complicated" and then opposing every proposed solution that comes up isn't intelligent, its pessimistic. A glove does not have to fit each and every line on your palm in order to fit. Thus, a solution does not necessarily need to cover every detail in order to solve the big problems. You are just slightly missing my point. With the wall in place, they CAN'T REFUSE certain resolutions. We can use the wall as political leverage to prevent Israel from taking any more actions against the Palestinians. A wall is a sign of a defensive mindset. Walls have no offensive capabilities. They are actually counterproductive to offensive action, because it creates supply line problems. By building the wall, Israel has given up most of their offensive capability. They now established a border. The east side of it is Palestinian turf. It takes a lot more resources and a lot more justification to warrant military actions on the east side of this wall. You'd try "something else"? -*BAD WORD*-, "something else" seems to solve every problem, and I have never found a flaw with "something else". I think the wall is a good enough idea until "something else" is defined. We can't prevent the application of real solutions for the sake of those that aren't even stated. Unless you have an idea more structured than "something else", I don't want to hear this kind of criticism, and Israel probably doesn't either. Well, then, its clear what Israel is trying to do. The wall works really well with the rest of their policy. This policy might work, it might not. The point is that it COULD work, and the UN voted against it, because they too compared it to "something else".

Ailius had his precious cargo. However, he had reason to worry. The last burst of communication between the SE and the Gehenna, reaveled that the Marathon was close to reaching 17th Parallel station. She had infested a heavily escorted convoy on the way there, so an entire fleet was due to arrive in a few minutes. Ailius had a few minutes to work. The old lab was abandoned too quickly, and the evidence inside needed to be destroyed. Ailius did a quick flyby, and dropped a beacon on the roof. Then, Ailius and the SE in the wyvern headed back to their secret base. Moments later, the Marathon arrived, accompanied by several motley smaller vessels. The 17th Parallel station responded by activating its poewrfull shields. Not one type of weapon in the universe could punch through this shield, except the secret weapon that was on the Marathon. First, the Gehenna sent their usual message. Then, the Marathon fired her secret weapon, which punched a small whole in the station's shields. The station responded in kind, firing all their guns, destroying a few of the smaller vessels. However, the fleet responded by firing their guns. Battle ensued. Kamikaze weasels were deployed by the dozens. They decended on the larger guns, as well as the marked warehouse. The station defense guns opened fire, obliterating the sitting duck weasels. However, three weasels managed to crash into their targets, one of them being the warehouse, they quickly infected nearby resources, and began a ground battle as well. Alarms now rang throughout the station. An announcement was made. "The station is under attack by the Gehenna. All armed ships are ordered to counterattack the fleet. All unarmed ships report to the nearest rally point in case of evacuation. We have security breaches on sectors G6, J17, and D5." Civilians began running to the rally points. Many freelance pilots quickly scrambled to their ships, and blasted away to fight the Gehenna, others to flee. Most of those with weapons, whether military or not, went to the sectors to fight there.

With the new ships captured and constructed, the now-named Gehenna started making more and more raids throughout Kanatis space. They would attack merchants, military, and even have done a few raids against colonies. All the while, nobody has been able to locate their base, or have any extrordinary success identifying or resisting the Gehenna. (ooc-basically, assume a constant string of raids all over the place.) However, in the rare instances they came accrossed an SE ship or installation, they would ignore it. This wasn't generally known, because the SE are a secret organization. News organizations misidentified the Gehenna as some kind of alien race. In cities, those who believed in aliens are doing "I told you so" type stuff, and a few civilians are beginning to flee to Ithkul and Terran space. Ailius, disguised as Maxmillian Sanders, had grown tired of wainting at the dropoff point. He headed towards the direct route from the pickup to the dropoff. There, he intercepted Harper. He docked with the Leviathon, and picked up the mysterious cargo and two goons. He set all off the money he owed Harper in the co-pilot's seat, only leaving a quick comment. "Thanks, this is close enough to the dropoff. I'll take the cargo now, here is your money" With that, they undocked and left Harper on his way.

I dunno, I thought I was being a serious RPG nerd here. So, in the intermission, I tried a couple other text based RPGs out there. I hated them. Basically, I spent a lot of time in it only to come to the realization that my game was lost from the beginning, because my opponants had better stats and would double team n00bs like myself. I thought I was an rpg nerd, but when I went to a couple real rpgs, I hated them. Moral of the story, you need to like a serious RPG to be a serious RPG nerd. This is not a serious rpg, in that there are virtually no statistics, and that the purpose of this rpg is to draw players to 17th parallel, rather than to itself. If anything, liking this one makes you less of an RPG, because this topic lacks that "my stats are better than yours" element.

Back on the deep space Bionanobot station, the infested fleet was prepared. The long range scanners picked up three (relatively) nearby merchant convoys. The hastily constructed weasels (sporting neither stealth nor cloak) chanced down the merchants. The escorting ships fired in retaliation, destroying many weasels, but were overwhelmed by shear numbers. Some of the remaining weasels kamikazed into the escort ships, infesting them, and soon bringing them under their control. The remaining weasels slammed into the merchant ships. Overall, the caravans were unprepared for this particular kind of threat. Out of the three, two were destroyed, and the third suffered 40% casualties. The new ships were sent back to the base, and the cargos of the merchant ships were used to build more weasels. Those surviving recorded recieving a cryptic message before the attack: "Glory to the Gehenna! Annihilation to the humans!" After that, the KAS Marathon, carrying 24 kamikaze weasels instead of 6 javs (you can fit four 1x1 slots in a 2x2). They had recieved encrypted order from the SE to expand their empire. She made a beeline course for 17th parallel station. Ailius approaching the pickup point with Harper. Then, he realised that the Wyvern he was traveling was an infamous SE ship. If he pulled up in it, any Ithkul pilot would recognize it as SE and any pilot as hostile. Ailius needed another ship. The Wyvern docked in a secluded location, and Ailius (disguised) walked to 17th Parallel bar. He looked at the ships in the parking lot. He checked out Tern's spider, but decided it was too crappy to steal. He moved on to some poor smoe's Warbird, and left the area in a virtually textbook shipjacking.

Yeah, I do think its time we all come to agree that Iraq was a grey area action - neither right nor wrong. Israel has made real moves for peace, and so have Palestine's official government. The problem is that Hamas does not, and Israel reponds to actions from Hamas by going back on agreements made with the Palestine official government. The problem here is that the real people Israel should be negotiating with is Hamas, and Hamas can't negotiate because they are a terroristic organization. The reason I supported the wall in the first place was that it is something Israel MUST agree to no matter what Hamas does. They can't really move the wall east offer good reason why they need to move farther east. Israeli settlers now would know that east of the wall is out of bounds. Basically, the wall shouldn't be torn down, there should be some obvious ground rules placed. 1) Palestine becomes a state. The wall becomes the border between the two countries. 2) Israeli settlers cannot settle on the eastern side of the wall. 3) Full trade embargo on the country that tries to advance beyond the wall. 4) Something has to be worked out for people who visit religious monuments on the other side of the wall. Basically, we can use the wall's presence as a springboard to handle the Israeli side of things. If you built the wall, you can certainly stay on your side of it. All we would need to do after that is get Hamas to stop messing up the works, and give Palestine a little economic aid. Unfortunately, they have few natural resources. I'd say the best thing they could produce is machinery for Oil drilling, which they could sell to neighboring countries. Really though, tehy need their own companies, with internationals investing in them.

Vile, first let me point out that all polls are -*BAD WORD*-. There are about 50 seperate ways the pollsters could get what they want out of the results, and they want results that sell. I'd also like to point out that its very early in the season. The Democrats have rallied. The Republicans have just started to collect money. However, I will admit Kerry would have a chance, if the Democratic party put major effort putting him in. However, their money would be better spent on their congressional candidates. The Democrates are currently out of government. They only have a slim majority in the Senate, and that was due to foul play. They want in badly. The best move they can make is to concentrate their efforts on gaining one of the bodies. Kerry is not as popular among democrats as Bush is among republicans. Remember, this time last year, the democrats didn't even have a leader. The democrats have a much better chance among the congressional races. Republicans love Bush, but feel only a slight liking of their congressional candidates.

hmmm....I'm gonna need a bigger getwithit stick *grabs a telephone pole and smacks everyone in one big cleaving blow* Look, WW2 is HISTORY. Both the US and Europe were different back then. (and FYI, the US could have easily stayed out of it, the Atlantic ocean is a barrier worse than the Swiss Alps. We also could have been like Italy and taken the Nazi side.) The point is that you guys are our allies. You should be turning a blind eye to the bad things we do and stop turning a blind eye to the bad things our mutual enemies do. Thats what allies are supposed to do, be politically supportive of one another. This obviously shouldn't be absolute, so don't bother posting a reply saying as such. The point is, when we kill a few thousand, and Hussein kills a few million, our allies should be pointing out the millions Hussein killed. That much should be expected if the casualty figures were even, and the casualty figures are not even - Hussein was ten times worse than we are! No, the outcry is about the US going agaist the opinion of her allies. Note that we did not IGNORE that opinion - we merely dissagred with it. First off, we had a clear right to do so - its our military. Secondly, we were certainly capable of doing so without our allies. The US is a superpower - Iraq was a third world country. We already had a overwelming advantage, and even today our European allies can only offer what we already have - conventional Cold-War era military. Look, Bush did all he could to be nice to your countries - remember he persuaded both the UK and Australia to help us out. Bush did everything he could, it was the British and Australian media, which dissagreeing with that decision, decided to use their great -*BAD WORD*- producing machines to attack the war, and pulled public opinion out from under your governments.