War is peace, duh.

As a citizen of the US, I agree with you. Sadly, most of our populace is happy eating Mcdonalds and watching Snooki, so they're too apathetic to voice any opinions to our congress critters. At this point, I fear the military industrial complex is turning the cogs.

Pretty much this. My parents were super liberal, but always taught me that until told otherwise you maintain strict courtesy until told not to. So, it's always, "Yes sir, Yes ma'am." This works out great considering a LOT of the folks I work with, who are my seniors, are ex-military.

I agree with you, AC (first time I think I've ever said that). But I have a feeling we'll be hearing tons of excuses for this whole thing until the warhawks get their way.

I really wish that was true. There were videos coming out of Syria last year of a supposed chemical weapon attack that didn't show up in the media at all, and received no response (at least not publicly). There was also a reported incident earlier this year (in March I believe) that was reported in the media, but nothing came out of it other than some pondering about the action the US would take. This time we actually are paying attention. 3rd time is the charm I guess?

Technically, we already have a reason to attack, and we did the second one of their missiles hit our ally, Turkey. This is just casus belli.

For having a higher amount of melanin in his skin, and for not being George Bush.

You know, that's the first time I've seen someone raise this point, and it is a very good one. The sad thing is, the security council is pretty much, well, a stopping point for any effectiveness of the UN. It'd only get worse if we didn't keep ourselves there - at least we (theoretically) can push for our voice there to say something (if the people of the US could stop watching Miley Cyrus' twerking and stuffing their faces for the 2 minutes it takes to call their congress critters). To my knowledge, China doesn't offer that. And I won't say I have enough knowledge of Russia's civic system to venture a guess one way or the other.

Error, infinite loop detected.

That was something that always fascinated me. It seems like nearly all religions are organized against it. Even the normally super-tolerant Jains and Buddhists are anti-homosexual. Almost all cite it as "unnatural," and yet it's incredibly common in the natural world which completely guts that argument. So far as I know, the only older religions I've read about which were accepting of homosexuality were held by the Greeks and Romans, and some Native American tribes. Now, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of religions I'm unaware of, so there could be more. It just always seemed weird.

What say I? I say spend 2 months in the UAE, Qatar, or Bahrain. Not every place is what your caricature of the Middle East describes.

You mean the people are supporting the only group in the area that is offering to build and staff schools, give them food, add some stability, and provide some sense of a security force? I am shocked, I say, SHOCKED!

You mean a country that had a democratically elected leader until the US and UK organized a coup and then spent several years training secret police to murder and torture any secularists who didn't support the friendly puppet that they put in place? What do you have left when you have paid for all of the secularists to be killed? Let's be entirely honest about the history there. I admit that that country does have a grudge against us, but they have a really, REALLY good reason for it.

Fair enough, what I was reading apparently was misquoted. However, I am sure that there are negative things in the Jewish holy books, just like there are in the Christian ones and Islamic ones. None of them are innocent - that's my real point.

Fair enough - I am not a Talmud scholar, and I honestly don't care to be. It is a shame that most searches for the Talmud automatically bring up some pretty nasty things. Either way, all of the religious texts have horrible things. The bible talks about rape and murder in the name of God, incest to carry on the family name, murdering children for talking back to you, etc. I'm sure there is gruesome stuff in the Torah, Talmud, Zohar, and other texts. Likewise there is bad stuff in the Quran. All of them are guilty, probably due to having common Abrahamic roots. My real point is that despite the nasty things that are in them, most people realize that it's either dated or misquoted or injected due to racism and personal bias and not indicative of the religion as a whole. Christians in the west seem to be especially blind to this - some going so far as trumpeting how homosexuals should be killed, while talking about how Islam is an overtly evil religion that celebrates murder.