Weirder election than Battlestar Galactica's

Pat Flannery wrote:


Atlas Bugged wrote:


No. The entire problem with radical Islam can - and likely will - be
solved with a few very intense strikes, not even nuclear. What's
needed to win a war is that the enemy has to have their will broken.


Remember how well the Luftwaffe did in breaking the spirit of the
English populace during The Battle Of Britain?
You think they were angry and united before, just try killing their
children and watch what happens.

Pat

Indeed.

Sometimes I think the best solution is to cordon the whole area (M.E.)
off from trade and any outside influences and see how long it takes for
them to fix things themselves. It'd be a fair solution except for a lot
of the bleedin' hearts.

Meanwhile we'd free up hundreds of billions of dollars to put toward
energy independence.

/rant

A

Scott Hedrick wrote:
CatPanDaddy wrote:

But radical jihad Islam is more like the common cold than Rome ever was.
It knows no physical boundaries and it mutates and assimilates. You
can't exterminate the common cold.


Make enough martyrs, the problem goes away.



Oh, really?

A

Johnboy wrote:

No, not so. Custom has nothing to do with it. Rights of passage through the
Suez Canal was codified in the Convention of Constantinople of 1988.



I assume you mean 1888, as it would be rather difficult to have a treaty
meeting in a city that had a differnt name by 1988. ;-)

Pat

Johnboy wrote:

Here's a thought - stap them to chairs and throw them in the river, and
those that float are tyrants and those that sink are Pure and Clean.
That'll put the fear of God into them, 'cause God will be the one who
decides.




Don't forget the scales and the duck.

Pat

"Andy" wrote in message
...
Pat Flannery wrote:


Atlas Bugged wrote:


No. The entire problem with radical Islam can - and likely will - be
solved with a few very intense strikes, not even nuclear. What's needed
to win a war is that the enemy has to have their will broken.

Remember how well the Luftwaffe did in breaking the spirit of the English
populace during The Battle Of Britain?
You think they were angry and united before, just try killing their
children and watch what happens.

Pat

Indeed.

Sometimes I think the best solution is to cordon the whole area (M.E.)
off from trade and any outside influences and see how long it takes for
them to fix things themselves. It'd be a fair solution except for a lot of
the bleedin' hearts.


I believe the difficulty with that idea is we need their trade more than
they need ours. I would imagine that in a world with absolutely no ME oil
that western economies would spiral into meltdown before their's did.

Meanwhile we'd free up hundreds of billions of dollars to put toward
energy independence.


Not likely to happen quickly enough - you'd have to achieve that *before* a
ME blockade, and not after.

Cheers,
Johnboy

/rant

A

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in message
...


CatPanDaddy wrote:
But radical jihad Islam is more like the common cold than Rome ever was.
It knows no physical boundaries and it mutates and assimilates. You
can't exterminate the common cold.

Make enough martyrs, the problem goes away.


Make enough martyrs and you end up with more converts. Including many, many
more from within your own society.

As I mentioned to someone (one of the Bobs?) that is how Christianity first
got a foothold - all those wacky little stunts with the lions didn't seem to
deter the early converts.

Cheers,
Johnboy

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Johnboy wrote:

No, not so. Custom has nothing to do with it. Rights of passage through
the Suez Canal was codified in the Convention of Constantinople of 1988.


I assume you mean 1888, as it would be rather difficult to have a treaty
meeting in a city that had a differnt name by 1988. ;-)


Yes, sorry, since corrected. 1888 indeed.

Cheers,
Johnboy

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Johnboy wrote:

Japan didn't like us cutting off their access to oil, that's for sure,
but we hadn't done anything militarily against them (although they
probably didn't much like the Flying Tigers either.)



Despite the proganda of the time, I believe the Flying Tigers didn't
engage the Japanese until December 20 1941

Better late than never, though.


I checked- you are correct on this.
That came as a real surprise to me- I'd assumed that they were in combat
before Pearl Harbor.

Pat

They were recruited well before Pearl Harbor but (again, at variance to the
war-time propaganda) the quality of the recruits left a LOT to be desired.
Chennault was canny enough to realise that they would be slaughtered by the
Japanese, so it was train, train, train, and then more training before they
were ready to fight. And by that time the war against Japan was already
into it's second week.

Blame Hollywood - they would never let the truth get in the way of a good
story, and John Wayne looked very heroic in that leather helmet.

Cheers,
Johnboy

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 13:15:56 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Bob) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 19:41:22 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

If it were really a fascist country, nutcases like you would have been
locked up or executed long ago.

Ad hom noted.

Sorry, but merely calling someone names is not an ad hominem, unless
it's used as part of an argument to discredit them. If I'd said, what
you're saying is wrong because you're a nutcase, *that* would be an ad
hominem.

My point remains that, contrary to the nutty claims from people on
both the right and the left, this is not a fascist country. If it
were, they'd not be allowed to make such nutty claims. Chomsky would
have been clapped in prison, or worse, years ago, if we were as bad as
his demented fantasies.

Andy wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:



Atlas Bugged wrote:


No. The entire problem with radical Islam can - and likely will - be
solved with a few very intense strikes, not even nuclear. What's
needed to win a war is that the enemy has to have their will broken.


Remember how well the Luftwaffe did in breaking the spirit of the
English populace during The Battle Of Britain?
You think they were angry and united before, just try killing their
children and watch what happens.

Pat


Indeed.

Sometimes I think the best solution is to cordon the whole area (M.E.)
off from trade and any outside influences and see how long it takes for
them to fix things themselves. It'd be a fair solution except for a lot
of the bleedin' hearts.

No cordon would work either.

Here is a historical question: What became of Carthage after the Romans
destroyed it thoroughly (The Romans wrecked all the property, poisoned
the soil and killed a half million Carthagenians)? The answer is
Carthage dissapeared. It fell never to rise again. Attacking Carthage
did not toughen it. The Romans destroyed it. The made a Desolation and
they called it Peace.

Delenda Cartogo Est!


Meanwhile we'd free up hundreds of billions of dollars to put toward
energy independence.

We could do that any time we wished. We currently do not have the
political will. We get only thirty percent of our oil from the M.E.

Bob Kolker