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ROLL CALL in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #49
quote:
Originally written by Amitiel:

This is why I love my optical. Don't worry, though - it's just plutonic. :P

Double-posting, tut-tut, but manoc?

I wrote an article on the subject once.

Also: manioc is a kind of starchy potato.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
THE GREAT DEBATE, PART III in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #6
Sounds like a winner. Your position?

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
THE GREAT DEBATE, PART III in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #4
I will take you any day of the week, provided we disagree.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Michael Jackson Walks free... in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #31
quote:
Originally written by Unpleasantness for its Own Sake:

If 12 men and women, competent to make a fair decision based on the facts presented to them, can agree that he's not guilty of the crimes of which he is accused, then he is not guilty. Unless you can think of a reasonable argument why your prejudices trumps the entire corpus of law, might I advise that you adopt rationality?
Not to mention the fact that the average poster here knows next to jack about Jackson, whereas the 12 men and women of the jury sat through months of testimony against and for him.

...

My personal opinion has always been that Michael Jackson is innocent. He clearly has a mental problem and ought to be put in a hospital, but I seriously doubt he would molest a child. He's a man-child, basically, and I don't doubt that he's had little boys in his bed, but I seriously doubt he molested any which might have been there.

The last twenty years of Jackson's life have been spent in pursuit of a boyhood he never had, a family life he never had, and a father-son dynamic he never had. He was on the spotlight from a young age; whatever monster he is is a monster society created, and that society turning around to beat on him more after he's been vindicated in court is savage and terrible.

My opinion on the man: he needs serious psychological help, but not because he's a danger to anyone. Because he's a miserable person with a gaping void in his soul and he will never be happy until he can find a way to fill it.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
What is yours favuorite in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #20
IS BEING FATHER

PLEASE TO BE TELLING BREZHNEV

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
How do we pronounce... in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #40
quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

quote:
Originally written by An Upright stranger:

BTW, what is the origins of the name "Arkansas" anyway?
I can only assume it's French. There's no other good explanation for a silent S at the end of a word.

It's a French interpretation for an Indian word that has little relation to the actual place.

The same word was used as the root of Kansas, I believe, but the French never disambiguated Kansas from the rest of outer Louisiana, and the Americans did, so they got to figure out how to pronounce it.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
RP: The Empire Always Loses in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #38
The Golddale campaign - Day 11

Golddale

Colonel Wade Meriwether, along with a few official subordinates and a dozen troops, made a leisurely walk through what was, in days of peace, the richest city in Valorim.

Golddale, as it now stood, was shattered. Its forces had been massacred in three open battles - on the third, the fifth, and the sixth day of the siege - and from there on out, the battle was on Meriwether's terms. The Mayor, Meriwether had been told, was dead - and with him, any real prerogative outside of the Legions to rule Monoroe Province entirely. (By law, the title of governor had defaulted to the ruler of Golddale - which was now an ignoble committee and thus ineligible.)

The city had surrendered yesterday. Meriwether refused to either negotiate terms or appoint a diplomat to do so for him.

"The city of Golddale and all its surroundings are to immediately and unconditionally surrender to the rule of law enforced by Shao's Legions and the Black Rock Clan, and shall maintain a station of permanent subservience to the both in whole and part in perpetuity, with violation of the onus being carried out with pain of death."

Those were the terms Meriwether had given to the city demanding its surrender on the first day, and repeated every time they demanded peace. Now, with the ire of its citizens - who supported anyone strong and capable of fending off the Nephilim, and who had taken the greatest abuse from the siege - and facing an invincible enemy, Golddale was ready to see the light.

On the eleventh day of the Golddale campaign, the Council surrendered, and the provincial flag of Monoroe was pulled down and replaced with Legion colors.

Meriwether's experienced eye scanned the smoldering skyline of the town, making notes for a grand campaign of conquest and subjugation to be fought aganst the entire province from this burned-out base of operations.

...

Imperia

The Imperial capital is abuzz with military activity. The Empire, such as it is, is busily ensuring that it will not be defeated in its own backyard.

Wave and his party of 'refugees' surveyed the scene - and saw dozens of similar parties converging upon the city walls, and some brought to their fate a lot sooner living in shanty-towns outside of them. Not a good sign, the Ratbane man thought to himself.

An Imperial commander walked by with a cadre of military police, watching over the dangerous slum. "Sir! We need your help - Golddale has been sacked by Generalissimo Shao, who has betrayed the Empire in a lust for power!"

The commander's features sagged somewhat. "Shao? Gods damn it all. I will tell my superiors, but do not expect your home to be liberated any time soon. Shao was sent to put down the governor of Execa a year ago, and having reported success, has defied our every effort to remove him. Now our forces are stretched to the limit and mutinous whenever too far from Pralgad. Any men we sent to fight him would eventually find their way under his banner. He is the greatest hero the expeditionary militia have - he is sure to inspire rebellion among the general ranks if he, himself, has taken up its cause."

Wave muttered under his breath. The campaign against the Legion invaders would be all the harder.

[ Saturday, June 11, 2005 11:42: Message edited by: CSTR. ]

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
BoA is out, Gene3 is coming... So what's next? in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #3
I'm going out on a limb here, but: Avernum 4.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
ROLL CALL in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #4
I AM GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER!!!

I AM FOR KILLING SOUTHERNERS AND INDIANS!!!

I AM IMBAN!!!

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
ROLL CALL in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #0
WHO ARE YOU!!!

WHAT ARE YOU FOR!!!

ARE YOU IMBAN!!!

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
LHS. in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #8
Okay, so here's the deal: the parents agreed that the school can restrain and confine their students. The confinement borders on absurd, but the parents agreed to it and the school has a uniform standard for enforcing it. I expect the school is just on the right side of legality on that one.

However, if school personnel are beating students - slapping them around, physically accosting them, etc. - and I mean unambiguously beating them, as in we're not talking a fistfight between school staff and a student they're trying to restrain here, but just the staff getting physically abusive - then they're over the line if they're dealing with legal minors.

I'd look up your local Child Protective Services, and possibly call the Department of Education. The physical restraint is probably legal, but physically accosting students definitely isn't, and if parents sign waivers allowing it they're committing at least one or possibly several of neglect, battery, or child abuse, depending on local statutes (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not). If anyone else knows any more relevant organizations, input would be appreciated; those are the ones that spring to my mind (besides the obvious call to a police department - but that should, ideally, happen as soon as possible after you witness a beating; otherwise the school can get a layer of plausible deniability on its side and, if it's corrupt, start deleting records, making future investigation much more difficult).

With the school having the kind of draconian restraint policies it does, though, I'd recommend to your parents or whoever's enrolling you there to find an alternative, and quick. No school which places that much of an emphasis on physical subdual and control can create an environment conducive to anyone learning anything except fear.

When military school would be an improvement in disciplinary, the school has definitely gone overboard.

To summarize: Look up and call the local offices of Child Protective Services, the national Department of Education, and your state's equivalent. If you witness an incident of excessive or unwarranted physical activity, waste no time in calling the police.

Hope that helps.

P.S.: Remember that if Lighthouse is a private school, their 'police force' are NOT ACTUAL POLICE. They are like security guards, with no connection with or certification from the actual police department. Public schools do have REAL police, but if the school is making parents sign waivers it isn't public. Don't be afraid to go to the local police on this one.

P.P.S.: I don't doubt what you say about slapping etc. - but don't call on thinking something's happened, even if it's obvious it has, or on hearing something's happened. Make sure you're a witness or you know a witness to the physical abuse. (If you know a witness, have them call it in instead.)

[ Wednesday, June 08, 2005 19:08: Message edited by: Custer XVI ]

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
RP: The Empire Always Loses in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #35
234 days after Shao's secession - dusk - near Golddale

Homurr sighed loudly. "The giants are incorruptible. They have made an agreement and they seem to insist on sticking to it."

Ren stared back at him from the other side of the command table. "My bands are ready to show them their folly, then - that is, if they are present in numbers we would find palatable for an attack."

Homurr was quick to shake his head. "No. Too many of them. An open attack would be suicide, and would turn them into a permanent rather than situational enemy. But the giants are dumb, dumb creatures - they revealed conclusively what Generalissimo Shao has planned for the region."

As if on cue, cannons thundered off in the distance. Homurr looked almost insulted by the sound. "That sounds like it's them - the plan was to sack Golddale, place it under giant rule, and use it as a military suppory base - but it doesn't make sense. It's nighttime. The humans hate fighting by night. No stomach for it."

"He's got cannon," replied his second-in-command after a bit of silent thought. "No face-to-face honor in those things - you point them the direction in which you want something to die and fire. Not difficult to target; further, this terrorizes Golddale's guard and citizens. Hell, if we had cannons, I wouldn't use them by day given the choice."

Homurr shrugged. "A waste of supplies. We're fighting a rich enemy, and an arrogant one. Send for veterans - once the siege ends, we're going to get to work on curtailing both their hubris and their wealth."

Ren smiled by way of response. "And, I presume, their friendship with the big ugly ones."

Homurr nodded sharply and dismissed Ren for the night. It would be a long campaign; he relished the thought.

The Golddale campaign: day 1

[ Tuesday, June 07, 2005 22:20: Message edited by: Custer XVI ]

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
What are you addicted to? in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #5
Diet fruit drinks. (Mountain Dew, Sunkist, etc.) I don't drink much in the way of colas.

Then again: diet fruit drinks take better to being sugarless.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Have You Ever Used Alorael's Signature in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #21
quote:
Originally written by EraserHead:

Yea ive used Alorael's signature all the time. ESPECIALLY WHEN IM WACKING OFF ON IT.
Weak. It's spelled 'whacking', the turnaround is too quick, and the payoff is unsatisfying.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Insults in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #58
Ben is not implying any link between fatness and ugliness. Rather, ugliness and fatness. There is a distinct and tangible difference.

Further, he has a valid point. 'Unattractive' is easy - especially when everyone wants to be a supermodel - but 'ugly' takes work, and that work almost always involves fatness.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Worst Game EVER! in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #61
Man, you guys all suck.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Who are you? and What's your IQ? in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #172
quote:
Originally written by Ash Lael:

It's more likely that you'll learn something that might come in handy later in life by doing stuff in the real world than by going to Uni.
I particularly enjoy your consistent assessments of the value of information gleaned from universities vis a vis the 'real world' - e.g. same level of drunkenness, but less profound things to be said of and during it - while considering that your career depends primarily upon the high-learning-heavy skill of talking into a metal cylinder.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Karma and Bush, and also the WTC in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #170
quote:
Originally written by Andrew Miller:

The Pentagon is a pretty large target. Also, at the angle at which it was hit, the plane very well may have been heading into town.

Planes fly in close to the area all the time to land at Reagan National (as an aside, if you're flying into the area, National is the most convenient airport of the three to practically everything in DC), which is pretty much right next door to the Pentagon. That they were caught off guard isn't so surprising.

Was not aware they had a big airport next door. That seems to solve some of the issues with the Pentagon crash feasibly enough.

Mind you, I do not object in principle to conspiracy theories - only so when they have no clear merit. (I defy someone who follows the demolition theory of the WTC to tell me the last time they saw an actual implosive demolition.) There seems to be a consistent core of evidence that just doesn't march right in the Pentagon attacks, but much of the more convincing bits of it involve gov't seizure of surveillance tapes (hey, not like the Bush administration needs to be covering something up to engage in random secrecy), and the logistical problems of flying an airplane as low as that one was (with the airport nearby, not so much).

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Karma and Bush, and also the WTC in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #161
quote:
Originally written by Andrew Miller:

ef, I wasn't here at the time, but I know people who saw the plane fly into the 'gon.

It's not a US pro-Israeli cabal anti-Palestinian plot. It was a plane flying into the side of the Pentagon.

Are you certain? I've never been sure about the Pentagon; compared to the other targets, attacking an unoccupied block of office space in a military structure just seems so... uncharacteristic.

That and all of the dodgy official statistics lead me to really wonder about that one. It's the only one the country didn't get video confirmation of, I know that much.

I'm not saying I blame anyone in particular - just that the official story on the pentagon attack leaves me cold. The WTC attacks make perfect sense to me, since they involve jetliners behaving as jetliners ought to, terrorists behaving as terrorists ought to, and skyscrapers behaving as skyscrapers ought to. The Pentagon had a tremendous jetliner performing like a cruise missile, ill-trained terrorists with no actual flying experience performing like hot-shot fighter pilots, and the Pentagon, to be fair, behaving like one would expect from the Pentagon.

But something about it doesn't seem to add up. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Them (TM) behind it, but I'm far more inclined to believe (esp. in light of current events) that They (TM) have just been covering something up.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
What's your sex? in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #64
Zeviz is from Russia. He went to Berkeley last I remembered.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
RP: The Empire Always Loses in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #26
Forward headquarters - 225 days after secession - Gale

Gale had fallen without a real fight. Its town guard did not relish the prospect of skirmishing with Imperial formations and surrendered readily; the citizen militia didn't much care, and after a brief massacre, had melted back into town, where they awaited either an opportunity or an amnesty.

Colonel Meriwether had made his headquarters in Gale - which he officially governed until loyal civilians could be sorted out - days after the invasion came. Days later, the giants arrived under a flag of truce; negotiations had been short and simple.

The Black Rock Clan would accept political, diplomatic, and military protection by the Legions; in exchange, the Black Rock Clan would assist the Legions in their efforts to stamp out banditry and lawlessness in Valorim. They also came to agreements on the specific division of territory within the continent itself.

The Restoration of Valorim Alliance, as the Legions have taken to calling it, has, as of 225 days after the secession of the Legions, begun amassing centuries and Giant combat groups outside Gale in preparation for a military exercise.

Colonel Meriwether, watching the proceedings and confident in his abilities to execute Shao's directives in Monoroe, penned a simple ultimatum to be sent to the north:

"The Ratbane Clan is to fully and permanently evacuate the continent of Valorim within two weeks or face immediate full-scale invasion by Shao's Legions and allied forces.

Colonel Meriwether, in the name of Generalissimo Shao of Valorim."

He dated the document, summoned an underling to send it off, and left his office to oversee drills.

[ Thursday, June 02, 2005 18:23: Message edited by: Custer XVI ]

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Karma and Bush, and also the WTC in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #157
Who was told to see anything? A nation watched it unfold on camera, people watched it happen in Manhattan, and suchlike. I mean, I can name maybe one or two direct and successful conspiracies in living memory which had an audience of more than a million people at any given time; when 9/11 happened, 100 million or more people were watching.

The theory that the planes were not the cause of the WTC collapse is utterly without merit; it would require superhuman feats of engineering and covert operations, technology which simply does not exist outside of the realm of theory, and a string of coincidences and dismissals such as to make an ardent flat-earther dizzy-headed. When I said 'incredible', I mean just that: it is not credible in any way, shape, or form. Even if you dismiss every law of physics dictating that the collapse could be and was caused by a jetliner crash, you would also have to flagrantly ignore every observable fact of covert action, intelligence, and mass psychology.

Speaking as one of SW's leading skeptics, I find the claim that the WTC collapse was not caused by a plane crash is factually bankrupt and theoretically unsound. It also has the fun side-effect of being politically dangerous, often used to further libel Israel in the Arab world and justify violence against it and the United States.

It is a conspiracy theory which has no real merit to back it, and advocating it is essentially irresponsible.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Karma and Bush, and also the WTC in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #155
quote:
Originally written by 4.808 x 10^3:

Yeah, that was pretty much just speculation on my part, though there is rumor that the two were somehow related. I don't know.

Example.

I'm leery of the source, to be frank - and it does not jibe particularly well with Usama bin Ladin's previous declarations on Saddam Hussein: infidel, unbeliever, communist, traitor, heretic, all sorts of nice things.

That, in addition to general policy by Muslim extremist groups, al'Qaeda in particular - to strongly limit reliance on sources foreign or hostile to their religious beliefs - suggests any link between Mr. Saddam and Mr. bin Ladin would be, at best, relatively tenuous, and marked by enough intermediaries that you could as well call Bill O'Reilly a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Karma and Bush, and also the WTC in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #152
quote:
Originally written by 4.808 x 10^3:

Oh, and there's no telling what secret relationship Saddam may have had with Bin Laden.
There's no telling what secret relationship Hitler might have had with Chamberlain, either - but Adolf and Neville had about as much political reason to maintain friendly terms, and were on much better personal terms, and yet history says nothing in particular about the two of them being in cahoots to invade Poland.

For the record:
Iraq had no particular immediate capacity to build WMDs, and thus invading it would be as legal and valid as invading Brazil for the same;If Iraq had either WMDs or the capacity to build them, invading Iraq instead of allowing inspections to continue would certainly result in either those weapons or that capacity going to other, less immediately observable organizations;Several documents used by the Bush administration as causi belli turned out to be verifiably false before the war - and as such, 'intelligence failure' cannot credibly be blamed - as the same intelligence provided the eventual justification for war and ought, by rights, have been reassessed;The administration was on record planning an invasion of Iraq as soon as the day after 9/11 - in spite of general suspicion and later proof that al'Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, had committed the attacks;The investment in creating a democracy in Iraq was not only much greater than would otherwise be possible due to local hostility towards the U.S., but also due to the lack of any tradition of open, democratic government - or even local self-government - in Iraq.The case for invading Iraq was flimsy. Ties to terrorism were false and mostly made as a means of scare-mongering. WMD claims were falsified where not ambiguous, and in any event, a WMD-based invasion was at best a tactical error and at worst a bungle of globally damaging proportions.
But the invasion of Iraq was not made in a hurry - it followed a year-and-a-half-long propaganda blitz. The Iraq war was a war of naked aggression. The errors made in justifying it cannot be attributed to a tough decision made in a hurry; all of the 'problems' posed by Iraq could as easily have been solved some time later.
Furthermore, if deproliferation and democratization are U.S. priorities, why not target Iran, which is markedly hostile towards the US, near-nuclear, and a one-party state? It's far closer to achieving WMD-production than Iraq was at the time of invasion, it's far less open to inspectors than Iraq was at the time of the invasion, and it already has a theoretically democratic structure in place.
Or North Korea - which has been spurning inspectors for a decade, has no religious support network at home or abroad, and which is ruled by a tyrannical madman, and which is as of 2005 and was not as of 2003 a nuclear power? It was, by all means, a monumental screwup in diplomatic terms. It could have been avoided by any attempt to invade and disarm North Korea, whose military budget is starving its people.

Iraq was chosen because of the neoconservative obsession with the country, the desire to establish a policing outpost in the Middle East to ensure oil shipping would go through as planned, and just about entirely to prove it could be done. The pretenses were invented after the decisions to invade and the strategic plans to invade had been made.

If you needed to have a war, Iraq wasn't exactly the best choice. Yes, perhaps better in PR terms than just randomly bombing the living hell out of, say, Senegal - but still, not good.

[ Thursday, June 02, 2005 16:44: Message edited by: Custer XVI ]

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Karma and Bush, and also the WTC in General
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
Profile Homepage #143
I find the assertion that the Twin Towers were not brought down by airplanes to be frankly incredible - I mean, millions of people watched it happen.

The Pentagon is more worth looking into.

They say even paranoids have enemies, and it's true; even though the conspiracy theorists are mostly idiots who believe Bush was going to declare himself Emperor of the First Galactic Empire immediately after the attacks, they might have gotten a few things right.

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The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00

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