It seems to me that there is pretty much an infinite regress of grievances on both sides: "You bombed and devastated my home! "Yeah, but you shot rockets at mine!" "Yeah but you blockaded mine!" "Yeah, but you kidnapped a soldier..." ad infinitum.

The solution is not going to come from the warring parties. It is going to have to be brought about by pressure applied to both sides by their allies.

And that's what depresses me most of all: as long as there's more net benefit to both sides in prolonging the conflict (a bulwark against the Arab world for the US, a bogeyman to rabble-rouse against for leaders of Muslim countries), ain't shit gonna change.

I guess this comment is just me trying to talk myself out of getting into a pissing contest on this thread.

Why not answer Glenn's question?

These cases will have different treatment before the law and different moral implications even though they all involved the action “kill”. I hope they are not morally equivalent.

...like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie...

These cases will have different treatment before the law and different moral implications even though they all involved the action “kill”. I hope they are not morally equivalent.

...like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie...

he's selling Elephantman's false equivalence, but with loopy Engrish phrasing.

respond if you feel you must, General Poster, but it doesn't seem like it will be that rewarding...

In A.D. 2101

War was beginning.

Retired Military Patriot: What happen ?

ondelette: Somebody set up us the bomb.

Retired Military Patriot: We get signal.

ondelette: What !

Retired Military Patriot: Main screen turn on.

ondelette: It's you !!

jtom99: How are you gentlemen !!

jtom99: All your base are belong to us.

jtom99: You are on the way to destruction.

Captain: What you say !!

jtom99: You have no chance to survive make your time.

jtom99: Ha ha ha ha ....

I got the gist of your gest.

Sure, they won't serve time, but they will have the albatross of guilt on their shoulders.

I do hope that was deep irony.

玄之又玄

Chinese

1. mystery of mysteries; extremely mysterious and abstruse; the most mysterious of the mysterious; occult

2. nonsense

the nonsense that can be named/ is not the true nonsense

Journalists have personal conversations with people on a daily basis. When these conversations produce professional scoops, they're supposed to ask for permission to use them.

This is a precise inversion of how journalism is taught, and how it should (but seldom does) work in the real world.

That may be what they teach at the Lewis Carroll J-school, but it ain't Journalism 101 on this side of the Looking-Glass.

Glenn, don't you mean February, 2009?

I just bought tickets for an event that took place a year agp... this is Boston, you can do stuff like that.

Had the flux capactior all spun up and everything.

What the hell is the "Genever Convention"?

And who is this "Al Quaeda" guy? Cause he sounds like kind of a dick.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." So goes an aphorism that needs to be applied to the current debate over whether those who authorized and used torture should be prosecuted. In the very different country called Sept. 11, 2001, the answer would be a resounding no.

IOZ notes (link @ sig) that this quote is actually from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley, "a novel about the tragic personal consequences of the inescapable past, how acts long since undertaken echo forever through our lives: inescapable, indelible, ineradicable."

I often wonder what consequences will befall our torture-excusing pundits. None, probably, of the poetic-justic kind... but it does seem to me that the kind of person that can comfortably ignore such ill deeds probably has some stains on his own character.

Who is going to pay their federal taxes this year?

I am. I'm guessing you're not? Kudos, and here I was thinking you're all talk.

How do you deal with the penalties? And possibility of a garnishment coming your way?

he provide support for his position and counterarguments to my assertion

Here's the thing... an assertion is just that. Some words. It's NOT proof of anything. It's just you saying something

You asserted, flatly, that Israel's blockade of Gaza was "to deny an enemy access to weapons it seeks to use against you." My response was "O RLY?" And I asked if you had any evidence that the blockade of five border crossings from Israel into Gaza was to prevent the movement of weapons from Israel. You didn't. So, my work is basically done at that point. Your assertion, your burden of proof. QED, pretty much.

It is impossible to prove a negative, even if I asserted that NO weapons had ever passed from Israel into Gaza (hint: I didn't). However, you would think that it would be pretty big news if it ever happened, wouldn't you? Why do you think we've never heard of such an event taking place?

The burden is on you to demonstrate the border crossings do not present a smuggling risk. You're the one claiming they present no smuggling threat, so it's up to you to demonstrate that is true.

How do you figure? You came on this board making an assertion, unsupported by any evidence, but the burden is on me to show the assertion that you plucked from your nether regions is untrue?