Can this guy get any dumber? As it turns out, yes.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Oh i thought you said laws didnt matter ... since people will "do it anyways" "no matter what".

[exatreide]

Thats not true at all.

Your body can not develop a dependence or addiction to marijauna and any atempt to leave it is mearly a will power ordeal

And its true about tollerence it will take the heaviest marijana smoker three tokes to feel a buzz compared to the novice's one.

Going from mariajana to crack? Thats two completely different drugs, two different types of buzz. And is totaly wack.

Trust me here i know what im talkin abooout  ;)

[Wolf]

Philisophically, that makes a huge amount of sense, Scytale. Legally, however, we can never use that as any sort of practical form of judgement. First off, how do you gauge self-awareness? How can there be an objective test for it? Secondly, if we, by law, require passage of some sort of self-awareness test in order to become human, we can thereby dehumanize anybody. Hey, let's say I don't like a person. Then let's say I ramp up some charge of "inhumanity," or whatever, and I get it to pass and I prove this person isn't self-aware. Then I can kill him, since he isn't human, he doesn't matter, right? Or, what if some genocidal maniac creates some bizarre standard of testing to test for "humans" and "nonhumans." And then proceeds to kill anyone who doesn't meet his exacting standards.

No, either we have a status of "humanity" for everyone, everywhere, at any time, or we have it for no one, no where, and never.

[Edric O]

Hell, did you ever consider that your god might have designed it that way for a reason?  Why do you have it stuck in your head he wants you to overpopulate and drain the earth to the point of a massive ecological collapse?

Funny, I was under the impression that something called a "condom" has been invented. I was also under the impression that Europe and North America have stable population numbers, and that the real danger of overpopulation comes from the third world, due to poverty, inadequate education and a lack of - you guessed it - condoms.

Maybe it's for the same reason you think he wants you to bomb the living crap out of THIRTEEN THOUSAND innocent Iraqi civilians.  Which leads me to my umpteenth plea to GET BACK ON TOPIC!

Maybe you haven't read my posts on the previous page.

Abortion has nothing to do with the war in Iraq, and a person (such as myself, for example) can easily be against abortion and against the war.

[DukeLeto]

Wolf, Edric, you need to understand that when I start yelling and ranting, I'm usually aiming at the real hard asses, like Emprworm or Gunwounds.

Now, adressing NO ONE IN PARTICULAR, just the right in general, if I've not yet made it clear enough, here's my stance on abortion, again:

I do not consider an embryo/fetus a human being until it could be removed from the mother (by natural birth or c-section) and survive, even if one life support or some such.

[Edric O]

And Edric, watch yourself.  There are few groups more conservative than the Christain church.

Socially conservative, you mean. As in the Y axis on the Political Compass chart. I have no particular qualms with social conservatives, although I am a strong social liberal myself. In fact, I agree with the typical social conservative views on abortion and the right to bear arms, while I am also a staunch supporter of gay marriage and the legalization of drugs (among other things).

My sworn enemies - the ones I utterly despise - are the economic conservatives (that is, right-wingers), regardless of their social views. They are the filthy lackeys and supporters of capitalism.

Ever heard of the "religious left"?  Neither has anyone else.

Funny. I guess you never heard of Jesus Christ, or Buddha? Or Liberation Theology, for that matter? Or Christian Socialism?

You need to listen more carefully. ;)

A few more years in that pew and you could be kissing Bush's @ss alongside Gunwounds and Emprworm. ;)

Watch it, comrade. There is no greater insult for a communist like myself than to be called a right-winger. And you shouldn't be the one to talk - since, as it just so happens, I am much further to the Left than you.

Need I remind you of the ridiculously right-wing and social darwinistic comments you've made on previous pages? Hell, you've made Gunwounds look left-wing by comparison!

[Wolf]

Right. And Saddam is guilty of stuff like... invading Kuwait, possessing WMDs before 1996, gassing 80,000 Kurds, fighting two wars with Iran that cost 2 million lives...

That sort of stuff. And I can see a "human rights" justification for the war on Iraq.

As Edric eloquently pointed out, however, the real focus of the war was on WMDs. Right. The problem is that there really hasn't been any in-depth investigation since the US invaded. A lot could have happened, and we might not know until a long time from now. Listen, Leto you claim that Iraq is an unstable country. If that's so, we need to wait for things to stabilize before we can talk about this issue. Make sense? Becase we need stability to determine what happened.

[thomas]

and the US is guilty of what? massacaring tens of millions of native americans, stealing their land and fucking them in the ass with a nice donkey punch at the end. . .

even bush sr. said an all out invasion of Iraq qould be stupid.

[Wolf]

Scytale, we're talking about Iraq. Please limit your commentary to at least the same time-frame. Attempting genocide on the Native Americans was bad, I agree. Too bad that has no relevance to whether or not Saddam Hussein was guilty of his own humam rights abuses.

I mean, what's the point that you're trying to make? That the United States did Bad things 160 years thereby justifies all the Bad things Saddam Hussein has done in the last decade? Run that logic by me again.

On a sidenote, ever read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Wolf, Edric, you need to understand that when I start yelling and ranting, I'm usually aiming at the real hard asses, like Emprworm or Gunwounds.

Yea nice try....

seeing as how Emprworm has left the forums .... and seeing as how i have basically ceased debating the fine points of morality/logic of abortion DAYS AGO and have just been posting a few useful stats

[GUNWOUNDS]

Scytale, we're talking about Iraq. Please limit your commentary to at least the same time-frame. Attempting genocide on the Native Americans was bad, I agree. Too bad that has no relevance to whether or not Saddam Hussein was guilty of his own humam rights abuses.

I mean, what's the point that you're trying to make? That the United States did Bad things 160 years thereby justifies all the Bad things Saddam Hussein has done in the last decade? Run that logic by me again.

On a sidenote, ever read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee?

good call on the faulty time-frame Wolfwiz.... good to see that besides debating your view... you are also preserving thread/debate integrity....

[Dunenewt]

Is C-section the same as a Caesarean?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Is C-section the same as a Caesarean?

yes its what the C stands for

[Dunenewt]

Oh, my brother was born by that.

[Acriku]

I stepped out of this debate because it wasn't getting anywhere, but I do have one thing to say. GUNWOUNDS, you do not need to antagonize anyone (the half of your third to last post) because it doesn't make a point, it's irrelevant, and it does nothing to maintain a civil discussion. It's not only rude and stubborn, but also a step down in maturity. And making entire posts to "root on" your friend in the discussion is a waste of space and childish.

[Megashrap]

Well I've seen what you've described as "rude,immature behavior" fly around like shrapnel at times by way more than just one person. I think it would be one thing to never ever admit when one is wrong. But, I've read many o post where GUNWOUNDS has praised someone elses point or admit if he was wrong about something.

[ordos45]

even bush sr. said an all out invasion of Iraq qould be stupid.

Here's a selection from Chapter 19 of Bush Sr.'s A World Transformed (emphasis placed by me):

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different

[Wolf]

But, isn't Bush Sr. talking about the First Gulf War there? All of those comments seem to make reference to the world of 1990 -- not the world of 2004. "Arabs deserting out of anger" could apply to the modern era, as there were few Arab members of the Coalition save Kuwait. However, to me, that passage seems to be Bush Sr.'s justification for why he did not attack Iraq during 1990, and we can only draw inferences or assumptions as to what Bush Sr. would say about the 2004 world.

[DukeLeto]

Right. And Saddam is guilty of stuff like... invading Kuwait, possessing WMDs before 1996, gassing 80,000 Kurds, fighting two wars with Iran that cost 2 million lives...

And who sold him those WMDs?  Reagan.  The gas he used on those Kurds?  We sold it to him.  And why did we sell him those WMDs?  Specifically to use against Iran.  Not only that, we gave sattelite intellegence and military material to fight those wars with Iran.

Oopsie.

[DukeLeto]

Need I remind you of the ridiculously right-wing and social darwinistic comments you've made on previous pages? Hell, you've made Gunwounds look left-wing by comparison!

What is "right-wing" and conservative about either women's rights or Darwin?  WTF is conservative about Darwin?

[Wolf]

Right. I could be nice and assume that's all correct, but I would very much like to see citations about all of that. The United States sold Saddam WMDs? What about the nuclear reactor the French supposedly sold him? What about the military equipment the Russians sold him on the eve of US invasion? Further, when did the United States ever tell Saddam to go out and commit genocide?

Regardless, your point was "innocent until proven guilty." I hope that you see, even if everything you say up there is true, that Saddam is far from "innocent." When I first heard the Bush Administration talking about Saddam's supposed stash of WMDs, the first thought that occured to me was that this was Saddam Hussein. Knowing even a little about him, it would not surprise me in the least if everything that was said about his weapons were true.

Oh, and Darwin is the pure essence of conservative economics. Eat or be eaten. The survival of the fittest. Evolution through competition.

[DukeLeto]

He is innocent on the charge of having WMDs, the point I was addressing at the time.

And you want sources?

[Wolf]

Dude, Where's My Country? does not sound particuarly like the most scientific source out there, but I'll take your word for it that what you say is true. Why? Because the United States doing bad things in the past does not mean that we should continue to do bad and stupid things in the present. It seems your argument is, "We helped Saddam Hussein commit evils in the past, therefore, we should continue to help him commit evils rather than remove him from power." If anything, the United States' complicity in Saddam's schemes in the past give the country all the more reason to intervene and correct its past mistakes.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Well I've seen what you've described as "rude,immature behavior" fly around like shrapnel at times by way more than just one person. I think it would be one thing to never ever admit when one is wrong. But, I've read many o post where GUNWOUNDS has praised someone elses point or admit if he was wrong about something.

[GUNWOUNDS]

And who sold him those WMDs?