crozby

For decades the USA based its security on the concept of mutually assured destruction. If it worked against the commies, why woudn't it work for Israel against Iran? It's not as if Israel would be left to face them alone. As soon as any nation uses a nuke the whole world is going to get involved pretty sharpish.

Ron, I feel you are being overly agressive towards me. Does that mean you actually are being overly agressive towards me? Is my perception of someone's behaviour towards me always correct? Is yours? From memory he stated that noone was actually rude to him, he just felt snubbed. Maybe you would like to dig up the original post and we can take this conversation to a new level of pettiness. No Ron I didn't say that. People from different countries have different traits. It is reasonable to characterise people from a particular nation as having certain traits. It doesn't mean everyone from that nation has them, only many of them do. The French are different from the Germans are different from the British etc. If you haven't travelled you'll just have to trust me on this. If you did a poll of Brits on this site I expect the majority would agree that Americans are more open and friendly than the English.

I wouldn't advocate terminating smokers - they are the victims. Many millions of them need society to give them a helping hand to quit. I was only able to once all my smoking friends had quit or gone someplace else. It is much easier to quit if there is no temptation. Are you a smoker? If so, maybe you could answer this: If you weren't a smoker, knowing everything you know right now, would you start smoking?

If they choose to peddle highly addictive cancer causing filth, then yes I guess burning them is probably even better than shooting them

Not if it was made to look like someone else did it.

Why is that so? What do you think will happen if they do get some nukes?

I never understood why that option wasn't used. Anyone think they know?

It is if: * Smokers spend less hours immersed in their work because they are haffing ciggy breaks. * Smokers smoke is breathed by other company employees. * Smokers stink of smoke around the office. * Smokers have more days off sick each year. * Smokers hang around outside the company offices smoking like a bunch of kids. Lets be honest about this: smoking is a disgusting dangerous habit. Smokers smell really bad. In fact that is an understatement: they stink. Most smokers only do it because they are addicted and simply do not possess the willpower to quit. We do not want our kids smoking. I know this because I finally managed to quit after being addicted for 20 years. The tobacco companies are run and staffed by evil cynical bastards who should all be rounded up in a field and shot. They are no different from heroin pushers and suppliers.

I think maybe the problem lies in the fact we Europeans spend a lot of energy criticising our own policitians. We have very little respect for any of them and consequently we take the piss out of them a lot. I've had a US poster respond to my posts on Bush by taking the piss out of the Queen of England on a couple of occasions. Very few Brits would be offended by that. Juanesky: We constantly take the piss out of the Queen - when you do it to offend, it misses completely. I think for the most part when non-Americans on this site criticize America they are having a go at the US government not the people. They don't realise you guys are far more patriotic than we are and actually find it offensive. Most people I know here in the UK don't like US foreign policy, but I can honestly say that I don't know anyone who doesn't like Americans or America. Considering the proportion of US posters on this site anyone who is really anti-American would probably be better off finding a new skydiving website (Yeah i know its run by a south african and hosted in canada...). And yes, I did wince when I saw the title of this thread because I knew it would really piss some people off.

Man that was a let down. With a filename like that I was expecting a REALLY hairy nipple.

What happened to him? And Kallend? And Peaceful Jeffrey? Are posters from Speakers Corner being vanished?

For starters that jumper said he felt snubbed. No one was rude to him. Europeans are not as gregarious as you guys. It could have been anything. He and you choose to interpret it as anti-American. And secondly, don't judge an entire continent based on one guys vague feelings about how he was treated. There are lots of us over here who think Americans are top banana. (But we still think Bush is a bit of a tit)

Turkey is a Muslim nation that operates a secular democracy. Or an Islamic democracy to put another way.

The man hid a plane in the desert. So he MUST have hid WMD there too. It's logic Spock, but not as we know it.

That is exactly why he did it. There is not a chance in hell that he would do it again though. Having to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with Bush throughout the last year or so has made him look like a prize-turd at home and in Europe and he is well aware of it.

Actually jump tickets were a shitload more expensive last time I went. Price of fuel has gone up.

How would you describe Turkey?

Bush mentioned freedom about a trillion times in his speech yesterday. Do people here think personal freedom in the USA will be increased or decreased during his second term?

They are communists and by definition their mission, like all communist states, is to spread communism throughout all the world. The strategic location of US allies and the presence of US personel and military hardware within those nations is all that prevents China from doing what you suggest.

But if they nuked the USA and destroyed all the stuff they had already sold then the USA would have to buy a whole load more stuff from them to replace it. It makes perfect business sense.

No, no no! We should let everyone have nuclear weapons. Otherwise law abiding people will be unable to defend themselves from the villains who will get hold of nukes whatever the law says.

i knew that

Maybe he IS arguing the other side and has been all along...

I think Palestine is different. The situation there has been going on for decades. Palestinians have conditioned themselves over time to find suicide bombings by family members, including children, to be somehow necessary and acceptable. The insurgents primarily consist of SH supporting Baathists and foreign fighters. I very much doubt that foreign fighters have brought their children to Iraq in order to blow them up at check points. The Baathists had a good life under SH. They had jobs and their kids went to school. I can't see how people that essentially lived lives like you and I would turn into the sort of people that would murder their own kids for political gain in only a year or so. With regard to religion, Iraq was a secular state. Saddam tolerated religion, even pretended to be religeous when it suited him politically, but Iraq was never the kind of place that would have people queuing up to blow themselves up in order to be with their God. If what you say is true - that Iraqis are using children to attack the coallition - why haven't the press picked up on it? Afterall, you've got to admit, it is the kind of story they would love to tell. [Flame retardant: SH is a shit-head, so are suicide bombers, etc. etc.]

Do you have any kids? Because I do, and I find it extremely difficult to believe that any parent would deliberately drive at a checkpoint knowing that by doing so they are going to kill their children painfully, or wound them or leave them alone, parentless. I don't disagree that there are some evil barbaric shit-heads operating over there, but suggesting Iraqis would use their own kids like that smacks of demonisation to me.