Riiiiiight. Gotta look out for that internal rule of law (whatever that is).

That's a reference to a Government's monopoly on violence. As in if there's a warrant out for one's arrest, one can be made to comply at the point of gun.

And yet lost the war, the consent of a generation, and moral leadership in the world. Discuss.

Did the North Vietnamese win by force? Yes they did. Moreover the luckless civilians in Vietnam and Cambodia died in the millions by the same wielders of force. It didn't matter whether you think Communism is good or bad. At that moment it was the defacto ruling philosophy. By force.

The League of Nations, and the United Nations represent two different attempts last century to buck the "guy with the gun makes the rules" idea.

And didn't that turn out lopsided. The UN is actually the "Brotherhood of Despots and Tyrants" enabling anything and everything within a dictator's borders. Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia are my favorite examples. Absolute rule by force in nutshells. In short, might is right.

There are tons of things we could do that could save American lives that we don't do because they're morally repugnant and wrong. -- scathew

Looking at this from another angle, there are tons of things we could do to save lives that we don't do because they're merely inconvenient. Reduced/enforced speed limits come to mind, enhanced [wink-wink] fire-safety requirements in building construction codes, enhanced consumer product protections, universal access to health care, stuff like that.

Unfortunately for you, you have no 'might' in this forum, and so your arguments remain unconvincing and silly. I only hope that you can back up your lame thinking with force in the real world, otherwise, your life must be a difficult one indeed. Which is actually not much of a surprise.

Glenn:

I've been following your posts on this subject for quite some time, and I'm glad to see that someone in the media is paying attention to these things.

The problem is that whenever I read one of your posts, I become frustated at my powerlessness. What can I do to change this? Write to my Congresspeople? I'm sure they're aware of the crimes committed by the Bush administration, and up to now they've done nothing. I really don't think that a letter from me is going to accomplish very much. Should I write posts on other blogs? That's already being done by others in abundance, yet we seem no closer to prosecuting Bush and Friends than we ever were.

Almost everyone who has responded to this post is expressing congratulations to you for writing it, and they are expressing outrage as well. Still I haven't heard anyone here put forward a technique for making sure that the criminals in our government are prosecuted. If anyone has any ideas, please post them here!

He's not basing his 'thesis' on moral standards. He's telling the hard cold way of the world as it is. In which case he is, in my opinion, correct on this one.

I don't think former officeholders can be "impeached" but they can be prosecuted under criminal law for crimes committed while in office.

Nothing immunizes anyone from the Constitution.

Still I haven't heard anyone here put forward a technique for making sure that the criminals in our government are prosecuted. If anyone has any ideas, please post them here!

-- rob515

The post itself is part of that process. It's a process. You don't just wave a wand and "make sure". You have to be the squeaky wheel to get greased so as to get the process rolling.

Just because I post a single 100% TRUE story from the field, and every single poster here chimes in like I'm some sort of liar?

I guess you're just shit out of luck then to have landed in a comment section where people don't swallow every piece of unsupported garbage that gets tossed at them.

You literally fell off the turnip wagon five days ago and rolled through the doors of Salon spouting this sort of horseshit:

Having lived in the middle east where homosexuality is rampant, I don't buy a "genetic cause." Guys do each other there because their options are limited, unless they are married.

In Greece, it was probably more prevalent because it was socially acceptable.

And I am also convinced that there are a good number who wound up in the lifestyle because of molestation, recruitment, or Freudian-basd reasons.

And, for now, mimicking lesbians seems to be a trend with young girls.

There may be a dozen reasons. Who knows? For most of the animal kingdom, sexual attraction is based on scent. Maybe the answer is somewhere up in the sinuses for all we know.

You have an unhealthy fascination with all things sinus. I'm guessing it's just displaced anxiety you have over other body cavities, but I'll admit that's just anecdotal.

And then there was your solution to the I/P problem:

Give the Baja peninsula to the Jews and let them relocate there. It's sort of shaped like Israel, it's bigger, and it's got beaches on both sides.

The Jews will create tons of jobs there for the local population, resulting in the long-awaited Mexican middle class that NAFTA promised.

Once the Jews are out of the middle east, the thugs who run the countries their will no longer be able to use them to unite their own people, and civil unrest will be widespread. We'll let social darwinism run its course, and keep assassinating their leaders until they instate democracy.

Simple as that.

Whoever it was that said you are all about "simple" sure pegged you. It's always simple when you don't make an effort to prove a single assertion and when your solution for every conflict is to just kill or torture everyone perceived as being "on the other side".

You are disingenuous, lazy and your homophobia and misogyny are showing as well.

Oh, and in one early letter you claimed your SpecOps info came from your son. In a letter in this thread you said it was your brother. If you are going to lie about where you get your anecdotes, and you expect anyone at all (let alone here) to believe you, then you ought to work on being able to keep your "facts" straight for more than a couple of days. Or is your family just a SpecOps breeding farm?