The Glade 4.0

Yes, I can't imagine how anyone could reach the conclusion that you were implying exactly that after reading this thread.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Believe what you will about whatever implications you think I'm I am making. Since you only joined the site after The Earth Healer was in office, posting history is light in those areas. Could it be that your opposition to many things quickly went the way of the war protesters?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

ROTFL. Keep talking. Its funny.

And since we're all big boys and like to provide 'proof' --and most of the proof is gone with the previous board iterations, you would think I would be unable to back that statement up. However....

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/ ... 70225.html




At which point I rejoined the board, nearly a full year before Obama took office. But more to the point, I was a member of The Glade back in Velious/Luclin days when it was run by Sunmoon. And this is always been the username I've had.

As much as I may dislike his attitude and various views he has espoused, Riov was indeed on the old Sunmoon-run RG.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

I think Vindi is aware you have been an on and off member.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

He used to have a Jolly Roger avatar.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

His name is Robert Paulson.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Yes. That's the exact take away everyone should get from that statement.

That's very convenient for Riov to have a posting history that we can't look up.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

And he's anonymous too... on the internet ...

I know folks that would damn him for just that alone.

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In time, this too shall pass.

You caught me. I deliberately crashed the last three glades just to erase my past, in case this thread ever came up.

Only... I've never tried to be anonymous. I've got pics on the board, my facebook account is easily findable (and Indeed I actually challenged glade members to do so at one point)

What else you got?

Huh? Are you getting your panties in a twist yet again by reading something into things that aren't there?

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

nah. I only wear panties on special occasions.

Nobody's suggesting that.

No, the point is simply that you "challenged" Vindi or whomever to find posts of you decrying "no war for oil" in the Bush days, but the time period where those posts would have existed predate this incarnation of the board.

I challenge you to find any post where I admit to have played a Ranger in EverQuest.

See? You can't, can you!? It must not be true, despite many posters' recollections to the contrary, and the (quite possibly accurate!) reputation that I carry that derives from those recollections.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If only there were some sort of, I don't know, Wayback Machine for the Internet.

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Fair point Kaffis. But since Vindicarre clearly doesn't even remember my presence, I hardly think he can attribute any position on the matter to me, let alone the one he stated.

But let me spell it out, so we're clear.

I was against the war in Iraq. I thought our reasons for going there were murky, and I feared a lengthy police action against an insurgency. I actually believed that Iraq had WMD. I was highly suspicious of the Bush administrations ties to Haliburton.

I have never suggested that Iraq was bout ethnicity, nor that it was soley about oil. I might have (in passing, mostly as a joke, not as a serious theory) implied that GWB was trying to prove something about being able to succeed where his daddy GHWB failed or simply trying to clear the family name.

And, with 10 years maturity on me, I'm probably a little more likely to suggest that war is occasionally necessary. I'm far more pragmatic than I was 10 years ago.

So there you go, no research needed. But don't try describing my positions from 9 years ago, if you can't even remember if I was a member 3 years ago.

HAH!

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=4095&p=95986&hilit=ranger#p95986

Bah. Who says I was "Wylias"?

I suppose it does serve me right for not running the search before picking that one. I just figured it was the most outlandish claim I could make, though.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah, the reasons for going into Libya were so much more clear than those for going into Iraq. I mean the President told us that it was a "kinetic military action", so that clears it up right there. If that wasn't clear enough, then we were very clearly informed that our forces were only there to provide "logistical support, intelligence, and reconnaissance". When our bombs and missiles started flying, we were there to "enforce a no-fly zone". Never mind those artillery pieces, truck convoys and troop formations that are being targeted, we're blowing those up to "prevent a civilian massacre". I mean c'mon it's so clear; it's right there in black and white.

I can't believe the reasoning behind this much needed "immediate action" is still not crystal clear then no less than the Secretary of State summed up very nicely for us: "Why -- how could you stand by when, you know, France and the United Kingdom and other Europeans and the Arab League and your Arab partners were saying you've got to do something."

You can be sure however, that we're not there for "regime change", and it'll only take "days, not weeks," to accomplish our clear and defined goals.

Just to make sure you aren't unduly threatened by the stark reason why we need to go to war "kinetic military action" in Libya, Libya does not "pose an actual or imminent threat to the United States", and "it was not a vital national interest to the United States."

Clearly this is radically different than the "murky" situation in Iraq. In Libya there is a dictator who has brutally controlled his people for decades through kidnapping and torture, had a nuclear weapons program, sponsored terrorists, massacred thousands of his people with WMD (multiple times), continually threatened his neighbors...oh, wait...



edit: citation added

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The Al Samoud 2 counted as a weapon of mass destruction regardless of what type of warhead it employed.



WMDs were certainly not found in Iraq in the quantities expected, and we can discuss whether there was sufficient threat to justify the war. It could be argued that the amount of Botulinum Toxin Iraq had produced, combined with the unbelieveable lethality of this substance plus Saddam's intentional ambiguity as to what exactly he was doing regarding his weapons programs created an unacceptable risk simply by virtue of the uncertainty.

In any case, the fact is that Saddam Hussein was in violation of UN 1441 (useless as the UN may be) and did, by virtue of having ballistic missiles in excess of 150KM range, posess stocks of weapons of mass destruction which were found after the war (in addition to the aged and relatively trivial quantities of chemical weapons that were located here and there), and were, in fact employed against U.S. troops. Specifically, the headquarters of 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division was attacked by ballistic missiles. The myth that "no WMD were found" comes from the fact that "WMD" in the public mind means "gas, disease, and nukes".

These missiles are, in reality, quite pathetic weapons without such a warhead, but the fact is that they do count as weapons of mass destruction under the common international definition. Certainly it can be argued that the missiles didn't jsutify invasion, but he did, technically, have them and they were found and in useable condition. So let's not have any more of this "look how clever I am with my citation needed" picture crap.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Didn't we find aircraft the French sold Saddam that had certain tech that was prohibited at the time? I distinctly remember the French govt trying to downplay the incident even tho it indicated under the table arms sales to Iraq.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I'd need to look into that. I don't recall the discovery of actual new whole aircraft, but it could have happened. Saddam also had a number of various types of Mirage fighters in his air force, and parts for them could easily have been sold to him.

The U.S. may be the biggest arms dealer on earth in terms of dollars, but that's because we sell the most expensive stuff. We're a lot more selective about who we sell to and what we sell them than the French, Russians, or Chinese. The common myth is that "we" armed Saddam; in fact the only things we sold him were some aging artillery pieces. All his WMD we "gave" him were dual-use chemicals.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."