is - that hardly anybody (besides ondelotte) - respects the Geneva convention and neither the Protocol on the use of gas and biological weapons.

The 'humanitarian' concerns of Sinnard are again minimal (at best) -

LL takes no prisoners and Heru definitely is using much to much gas!

And why -

Oh WHY!!! won't these dudes have mercy with the wounded and the shipwrecked on this threat?

Do we have to call the Hague to have them shut up?

Steele the first

"If today's news media will be the primary sources for future historians, what does that bode for the future of history?"

I think good historians don't rely only on news stories for their sources. They rely on a variety of sources.

Ahh! But that's the rub - for when future historians look at "a variety of sources," which will no doubt contradict the mainstream record of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc., then their work will be regarded as suspect, and be labeled "reactionary," or "radical," or "Leftist," or "Rightist" - exactly the same reaction that Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky recieve today.

The krauty Steelhammer is showing up...

listen to this bloke instead:

I’m here as the guest of the International Security AssistanceForce, which sort-of is Nato and sort-of isn’t — and, no, don’t try to resolve this: it can’t. My Isaf/ Nato hosts are welcoming and helpful; so I’ve been taking a courteous record of the many briefings by the clever chiefs they’ve been kind enough to arrange, though the swarms of acronyms began to defeat me. And yesterday I forgot my glasses. As I stared unfocused at my notes the acronyms swam forward, their small-print meanings swam away, and I saw only acronyms.

And in the meaninglessness I suddenly saw meaning. It is this. THE ENTIRE OPERATION IS UP ITS OWN BOTTOM, lost in committees, strategies and initiatives. Forget what these monstrous letters stand for. Grasp, instead, the essential incoherence.

AFPAK, ANCOP, ANDS, ANP, ANSF, APPS, ASNF, AAQ/FF, APP, CARD, CDC, CISCA, CISTICA, CJTF, CN, CNPA (ANP), COMISAF, CPCC, CSOFC, CSTC, ECC, EUPOL, FDD, FTD, GPI, HIG, HIGHK, ICPT, IDLG, IGLC, INFO-OPS, IRCTA, ISAF, IU, MCN, NDCS, NDS, OCCC, OEF, OMLET, OPDIESEL, PC, PRT, SITC, UNODC, UNPOL, TB .

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article6632876.ece

All you need to know is, like ondelette himself, the Afghan Mission is
UP ITS OWN BOTTOM! Or "Baire Space" as ondelette will insist on calling his ass.

and you think it's more realistic to believe that rich middle eastern dilettantes are financing some TNT chaos just for the hell of it?

BTW, for the second time, I tried to watch Reza Aslan speak and had to stop midway because I just couldn't digest any more of his liberal oatmeal. Which is to say, I think he's perfect a perfect guest for Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned five heroin smugglers, at least one of them a relative of a man who heads Karzai's campaign for re-election next month, a source and a government spokesman said.

A spokesman for Karzai Thursday confirmed the pardons, which he said came after the intercession of tribal chiefs, long a tradition in such matters in Afghanistan.

A source with knowledge of the case said one of those released was a close relative of Deen Mohammad, who is running Karzai's campaign for re-election in the August 20 presidential poll. ...

-------------
Wait a minute! How could the wonderful puppet government of Afghanistan pardon drug runners? Did someone here not say that the Taliban was the only people with dirty hands?

Damn humans, so complicated they give the "best and brightness" fits. It reminds me of JFK's "brain trust" -- like that went well.

In a world of 7 billion people and increasingly large democracies, I don't believe in the right of the electorate to be ignorant. If you're capable of being informed, I think you have an obligation to do so.

Exactly. Well, almost, but at minimum this cannot occur without the Fourth Estate doing its job properly, which takes us back to the thesis of Glenn's post. (We have argued the merits of war enough, no?)

We might (I don't know) quibble over mandates with respect to mitigating ignorance, but certainly we can agree that what we are currently doing, as nation, is not working. So, how do we mitigate the ignorance factor? It must be addressed, otherwise the problems we face will never be remedied.

Do we regulate the press? I don't think so, at least not in any conventional sense that I can think of. Kind of rubs against the constitutional protections afforded the press.

We can't force feed a minimum level of education (horse to the water and all that jazz). I should note that I mean force feed outside of academia.

Does the ignorance factor increase theoretically in some manner relative to population? In other words, is the problem (factor) substantially greater, the greater the population whereby at some point one reaches diminishing returns. (I'm no math whiz -- I've forgotten more than I ever learned which was through numerical calculus, so please bear that in mind.) I suppose the point I'm driving at is: while our form of government might have worked well in the 18th century with only a few million people, can we rationally expect it to function well, from an informed and engaged citizenry perspective, with 300+ million citizens?

I would have a hard time accepting an answer of "no it won't work" but I would have an equally hard time accepting a posit that our form of government will function without somehow ensuring, by whatever means, an informed and engaged citizenry.

How do we go about forcing the horse to drink? Or do we force the horse to drink and if not what are the consequences?

Saying that Hezbollah and Hamas have the right to run Lebanon and Palestine--really ultra-liberal. Pretty sure you didn't listen to any of it.