"Why I voted for Bush"

[Whaleboy]

But that still doesn't explain to me why I should feel more sorrow for a dead American than a dead Iraqi.

[The Mad Monk]

Strictly speaking, you don't.

Americans, on the other hand, might feel worse about dead Americans.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I believe the 24k dead Iraqis figure includes just about everyone who's died in the country since the invasion even if they never met an American.

EXACTLY -- not all Iraqi casualties have been the result of combat with American soldiers. There are Iraqis killing other Iraqis.


But unfortunately, some people are oversimplifying the war in Iraq in black and white terms.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I believe the 24k dead Iraqis figure includes just about everyone who's died in the country since the invasion even if they never met an American.

I stongly doubt that Iraq's mortality rate is only 0.1%

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm not sure where exactly the idea that 'your sexuality defines who you are as a person' came from - perhaps I missed something. It sounds like one of those phrases that oversimplifies what is really meant to be said, so I will not say more on it until I understand it.

Its the same as saying that your orientation cannot change, that it is a part of who you are.

Do gay people say this? Preferences can change, sure, but it's not something easy or very common. In my experience (granted this is a tiny experience compared to the world, but as it is the best one I've got I will use it) once people have reached sexual maturity their orientations generally do not change. For some people they do - but then some people actually change their genders. This is also not an easy thing to do, and I think it's not too outrageous to say that if you are 20-something and gay, you are likely to stay gay for the rest of your life.

I don't contest this point. Just because it can change, does not make it easy to change. But gay people deny that anyone who was gay, can ever change.

There are many testimonies of people who have changed, and I am sure, testimonies going the other way too.

What they will say, when someone says that I did change, is that you never were gay. You never were gay because you left the lifestyle. Which is just another Scotsman.

Sexual preference is (again in my experience) a lot more fixed than other 'fixed' characteristics of individuals.

What characteristics are you thinking of?

I am certainly surprised at the notion that one might be able to learn how to control their sexual preference. I don't think something like that is like a compass at all - maybe like the flow of a rive - it can change, but it's no simple task to change its flow.

I'm just testing the connotations of the word, orientation, trying a much different connotation that is usually associated with the word.

However, with practice, I do think people learn to control themselves, as they can for just about anything. Doesn't make it easy, but we do this for many other desires.

I am not accusing you of doing so. I am pointing out the dangers of the line of reasoning that homosexuality is abnormal, twisted, wrong, a disorder (and thus incorrect in some way by definition)

Consider someone with a mental disorder. Does their mental disorder reflect on their value as a person? That's what I mean by the use of the term, and the distinction that I am trying to get across.

This is an outdated attitude not even supported by the base of Christian belief (at least from the one version of the Bible I have read).

I find that curious, considering that the bible, both in the OT and the NT offer much stronger condemnation of sodomy.

Am I correct in thinking that, although you are not aiming to change gay lives and may not dislike gay people, you do not accept homosexual relationships are a legitimate way of living one's life?

How do I answer this.

When you want to help someone change their life, does this mean that you dislike them? Often the opposite is true that it is because you care for them, that you want to help them out. But that's a two way street. If they do not want the help, then I will not give that help to them.

However, I believe I also have a responsibility to act as a witness, and to encourage people to eschew these activities, if at all possible.

It is not so much taht the relationships are not legitimate, but that they are damaging and ultimately harmful to their participants.

Again, you have confused me a little here - if you deny one has a fixed preference, then necessarily does that not mean there IS no 'disorder' in homosexuality, merely it is the other preference... which can change?

True. The problem is that Mr. Fun will not concede even this much, that people can change their preferences. Regardless of whether you consider the actions to be disordered or not, you first must establish the point that people can choose to act on their desires, and can choose to resist them.

[Whaleboy]

BK, WRT people changing their preferences... why do you bring that into the debate?

EDIT: Or pick up upon it?

[Whaleboy]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Strictly speaking, you don't.

Americans, on the other hand, might feel worse about dead Americans.

Why should they?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I stongly doubt that Iraq's mortality rate is only 0.1%

I guess you are right but I haven't seen anything which would lead me to think that so many Iraqis have been directly killed by US action.

[Ben Kenobi]

WRT people changing their preferences... why do you bring that into the debate?

It's what changed my mind on this issue.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Drachasor

Those documents *were* forged and Bush used them as justification of the intelligence. It is just like the CBS scandal, apparently, except it was used to help justify war.

For the umpteenth time. NO. They used British intelligence and estimates. It was Wilson that assumed they had only the forged docs to go by. The media bought it hook line and sinker.

Now unless you can point to some passage, document or quote that says the administration relied on this document as prime evidence for the casus belli, it doesn't fly.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
For the umpteenth time. NO. They used British intelligence and estimates. It was Wilson that assumed they had only the forged docs to go by. The media bought it hook line and sinker.

Now unless you can point to some passage, document or quote that says the administration relied on this document as prime evidence for the casus belli, it doesn't fly.

You are forgetting that those documents were indeed forged. There may have been other evidence, but the same is true of the CBS scandal; the story was true, but part of the documentation was forged. In that I am wholly accurate, but I admit I was partly wrong about the nuclear material issue (though that wouldn't help them much reconstituting a nuclear program; afterall, they already had nuclear material and that was known).

-Drachasor

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Drachasor


You are forgetting that those documents were indeed forged. There may have been other evidence, but the same is true of the CBS scandal; the story was true, but part of the documentation was forged. In that I am wholly accurate, but I admit I was partly wrong about the nuclear material issue (though that wouldn't help them much reconstituting a nuclear program; afterall, they already had nuclear material and that was known).

-Drachasor

I forget no such thing. I also realize that the CIA realized this as well (unlike the CBS case) and advised the president not to go with the statement. Doesn't mean the CIA was not aware of other evidence and claims British intel was claiming, just that they didn't know at the time how strong a case the Brits had.

CBS story may or may not be true. The real point is who really cares if it is. As I indicated in my previous posts the real reason the CBS fiasco is a big deal is the degree to which CBS compromised its principals in order to do a meaningless yet coordinated hack piece on Bush. OTOH, given Bush has faced these allegations ever since his run for Texas governor you'ld think by now something provable would come out to show he was the benificiary of political contacts.

Finally regarding the reconsituation of the nuclear program. A big duhhhh, of course it takes more than simple raw yellowcake. It takes refining methods first and foremost as well as the knowhow to create the bomb. But more than anything it requires the politcal will to do so. And according to the Duelfer report as soon as Sadaam's mission one was completed (the dismantling/elimnation of sanctions) that was precisely what he was going to do.

[Drachasor]

And according to all experts on the subject, the sanctions weren't going anywhere, and Saddam was of NO threat when we went to war. He certainly lied about him being a threat, now didn't he?

Saddam wasn't a threat, and the sanctions were there to stay. No one on the Security Council was making any move to get rid of them. Oil for Food had its problems, but there was no evidence it affected how the governments were acting in regard to sanctions (in fact, all reports are to the contrary).

Will without means is nothing.

-Drachasor