Well peeps, I'm not a fan of huge military spending either, but we live on a planet where, as nations go, America is the only moral force. We're the World Police whether we want to be or not. And that's on top of having the same legitimate interests--and therefore commitments-- around the world as other nations.

These other First World nations that barely step up with resources to solve international problems can go fk themselves, IMO.

The US should absolutley reduce the military presence in some theaters but not for the same reasons as the anti-war crowd. If you're going to fight a war, FIGHT IT. Level cities. Starve the enemy, cut his balls off. Otherwise, get out.

Unfortunately, because this world is insane: false morality, a refusal to accept collateral damage and timidity at the sight of blood has made us unable to properly kill, and the result is more good people than necessary get killed.

The money "saved" on wars belongs to the people, not government. The trillions for the wars do not belong to government schools or cowboy poets. They should never be returned to the federal trough for "local" politicians to hand out to buy votes, though that's what happens.

I agree with Obama that fiscally-speaking, earmarks are a drop in the bucket (especially with 60 BILLION being lost to Medicare waste, fraud and abuse every year). Yet I challenge anyone to look your unemployed neighbor in the eye and tell them why the cowboy poets are short on cash, or why a university needs a half-million dollar grant to study why men don't like wearing condoms<a rel="nofollow" href=" <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/19/nih-funds-study-men-dont-like-use-condoms/">http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/19/nih-funds-study-men-dont-like-use-condoms/"> (yes, that happened).

The same way all the others got dragged in - because you're here. Think of yourself as collateral damage.

In reply to this comment by wolfie:
how'd i get dragged into this convo? 83

To conservasift

There is no "conservasift." There's just me and I'm the janitor, or if you will, a guy in a janitor costume.

I love it, bloated fat drug addicted hypocritical liar Rush is an "Icon of conservatism", certainly he must be the pinacle of 'conservative' ideals and ideas today.

Yes, he's a flawed human being. All of his foibles put together wouldn't equal a liberal hollywood "genius's" average Tuesday night.

I agree, his comments here may be taken out of context here, and he may well be laughing at idiots that believe that your actions determine the reactions of 'god' (or gay-a, freudian slip Rush?).

You can expect any non-liberal comments by non-liberals to be twisted by liberals. I'm sure the reverse is sometimes true, but just quoting liberals and what they really mean is insanity enough.

It's funny, he doesn't seem to realize that that is a major tennant of Christianity, (that god is watching and cares what you do, and will punish or reward you for it at some time) and I don't think he meant to publicly degrade and denegrate the tennants of Christianity, collateral damage sucks, huh?

I think you want the 'Hate Glenn Beck Wing' of the asylum here.

That said, turnabout is fair play. Rush consistantly mis quotes and mis represents anyone that does not agree with him 100%, faux news style, and rarely if ever retracts his lies. Now you're crying him a river because it has been done to him.

Please see above

Rush has weathered the left's *cough* sanity for over two decades. This is nothing. In case you never heard it, he calls the powerful attacks on him by the left "BBs against a battleship".

Now you can incorrectly call me a liberal and ignore all my logical points.

Dear liberal, where are the logical points in your ague-ment?

No ill will dudes, your opinions are yours.


conservatism", certainly he must be the pinacle of 'conservative' ideals and ideas today. I agree, his comments here may be taken out of context here, and he may well be laughing at idiots that believe that your actions determine the reactions of 'god' (or gay-a, freudian slip Rush?). It's funny, he doesn't seem to realize that that is a major tennant of Christianity, (that god is watching and cares what you do, and will punish or reward you for it at some time) and I don't think he meant to publicly degrade and denegrate the tennants of Christianity, collateral damage sucks, huh?
That said, turnabout is fair play. Rush consistantly mis quotes and mis represents anyone that does not agree with him 100%, faux news style, and rarely if ever retracts his lies. Now you're crying him a river because it has been done to him.
Poor Rush, bad man make Rushy cry hurt.
Now you can incorrectly call me a liberal and ignore all my logical points.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Attn liberalsift, we know where you stand politically; stop fibbing about what icons of conservatism said (or didn't say). Internets won't let you get away with it.


To conservasift
I love it, bloated fat drug addicted hypocritical liar Rush is an "Icon of conservatism", certainly he must be the pinacle of 'conservative' ideals and ideas today. I agree, his comments here may be taken out of context here, and he may well be laughing at idiots that believe that your actions determine the reactions of 'god' (or gay-a, freudian slip Rush?). It's funny, he doesn't seem to realize that that is a major tennant of Christianity, (that god is watching and cares what you do, and will punish or reward you for it at some time) and I don't think he meant to publicly degrade and denegrate the tennants of Christianity, collateral damage sucks, huh?
That said, turnabout is fair play. Rush consistantly mis quotes and mis represents anyone that does not agree with him 100%, faux news style, and rarely if ever retracts his lies. Now you're crying him a river because it has been done to him.
Poor Rush, bad man make Rushy cry hurt.
Now you can incorrectly call me a liberal and ignore all my logical points.

1)Money. Lots and lots of money. See Iraq/Afghanistan. War is a racket.
2)If you look closely at the first shot in this particular video you can clearly see them. Pause the video at 0.17
3)You might want to look into who the residents of WT7 were. That's a very easy question to answer.
4)Small amounts of collateral damage are enough to wake the sleeping giant. Plus the trade centre building had just been re-insured.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

I want the dumb-fuck truthers to answer a couple of "simple" questions for me, or to STFU:
1)What is there to gain from it?
2)Where are the signature multi-level explosions used to fell a building?
3)How the fuck do you sneak all the explosives in with no one noticing?
4)Why would they bother making them fall straight down? Wouldn't sideways be better if you're going to kill a bunch of people?

4)Why would they bother making them fall straight down? Wouldn't sideways be better if you're going to kill a bunch of people?

People were collateral damage

You can see the vehicle did get some collateral damage. There's a crack in the windshield as they do an emergency maneuver to swerve. Other vehicle in front probably got some too.

Eh? Collateral Damage. I mean death star had to be destroyed right? They were going out anyway now they go out as hero's!

Ron Paul is 89% right in this instance.

Torture bad. Assassination bad. Secret prisons bad. Military courts bad. Immunity to whistle blowers good. Corporate/Preventative war bad. Collateral damage bad. Occupation/puppet governments bad.

China's exploitation based, pollution heavy economy is great for CEOs, executive boards and other profiteers whom are insulated from negative externalities; not so much for the rest of us. It is instructive that RP sees this as a positive model of capitalism. It is not.

RP is no Chomsky, but he has a decent handle on the symptoms. What he doesn't seem able to do is to connect the dots to see the bigger picture.

Follow the money. Who benefits from these wars? Big Oil, Halliburton and Military industries are the primary beneficiaries. If you want to get the government out of the war business, get the profiteers out of government. Curb the lobbyists, reform campaign finance laws and reverse the corrupt 5 to 4 supreme court ruling that gives corporations unlimited anonymous influence over our system. I understand that this is easier said than done.

Give the system back to the people and let us decide our own foreign policy.

>> ^blankfist:

Awesome speech. He's right on 100% of what he's saying. 100%.

Ah, let's just lean back and enjoy the show.

42.91 million now rely on the SNAP. You went from 26.5 to almost 43 million in less than five years. That's 6! (SIX) million more in the last 12 months alone. I was disgusted when it passed the 30 million mark, but when 40 was breached, my inherent cynicism took over. So now it's fun again.

And what about the FED audit?
It's fucking hilarious if you look at it. TALF, PDCF and whatnot, they made sure the casino could keep on playing. There's no denying that all those capitalists are hardcore socialists when their ass is on the line. Deficit, debt, inflation: irrelevant, big money needs its bailout.
And since all is fine now - except for some collateral damage like mass unemployment, mass foreclosure, explosion of the SNAP, etc -, the deficit matters once again. Woe is us if we don't cut social security.

For the grand finale, you need some Tea Bagger to run the show or a proper socialist. Either is fine by me, as long as it's entertaining. Though I do prefer the latter, just to see Goldman Sachs nationalized and then cut down into manageable pieces.

Or how about a race to the bottom, EU vs USA? You're in the lead now, but once Portugal and Spain go down, we might just have a chance.

It's not been limited to Obama, but a long thing in US (and other nation's) history, with the occasional "collateral damage" hidden in diplomatic paperwork.

I think Pakistan "closing down" the land-line to Afghanistan is a mere bargaining chip for reconstruction funds and an attempt to demonstrate its supposed national sovereignty to its own people in light of recent events (the flood-catastrophe, even requiring financial/humanitarian aid from its "nemesis" India).

With the local infrastructure weakened by the floodings Pakistan might even need US intervention to keep local landlords from returning back to power (you might recall something similar happening last year with parts of the pakistan border regions forming a semi-autonomous Islamic-sharia-state).

That's me hoping at least.

I'm going to do everything I can to make sure as many people as possible see this video, so that next time some asshole uses the euphemism "Collateral Damage" they'll understand what that really means.>> ^imstellar28:

What you gonna do about it? Thats right, nothing.

The "drones" aren't only the unmanned aircraft.
Trained mammals who kill other mammals with no thought. Just following orders.
Same old story, and the further away we get from the blood we spill, the easier and more detached the actions become.
Jinx, if you even bothered to look at history, you'd note that the percentage of military to civilian casualties has been flipped within the past 100 years - with a much higher percentage of "collateral damage" -- such a nice, innocuous term. And this type of "virtual reality" is a one-sided virtual. There is nothing "virtual" about being blown up. Rah Rah support of this technological travesty is as insipid as joining the military to protect "freedom" when all you really are is a pawn in the game of power projection.

>> ^Krupo:
Kind of hard to tell from the angle seen, but it looks like the Vatican Guards took her down before she got to B16, but they took him to the ground as well as a protective (over-reactive?) measure, at least that's how it seems to look. It would make sense to do that, anyway, cover him in case she's not attacking by herself, has explosives, etc.
It looked to me like they got ahold of her and began taking her down just as she got ahold of him, so he was actually "collateral damage."

You're calling a Swiss army knife a weapon? More to the point, using a Swiss army knife to eat is threatening how? Zero tolerance is usually a justification to get away from any actual thinking and just throw the book at people, or small children in this case. I think the mom in the AP video summed it up best saying hard and fast rules cause a lot of collateral damage, kids tossed aside needlessly to obey the letter of the law and not its intent.