I would say this pretty much makes sex illegal in Louisianna. Half of the population are animals anyway...

Oh, I completely agree. All I'm trying to demonstrate is that there is NO moral authority anymore: the Vatican is made up of wealthy plutocrats, the UN is controlled by different plutocrats, the Europeans are largely anti-semetic amongst a host of other issues, everyday Americans are so wrapped up in their cheeseburgers that they are sloughing away their civil liberties, and most of the third world nations are dictatorships so evil that Kim Jong Il would point to them and say, "why the hell didn't WE think of that?"...So who do we listen to? I can't support anarchy, because I just don't think the average person would be better off under it.

Do people remember all of the full "usable" gene mappings and correlations that were going to come out of the human genome project? We had smart genes, violence genes, political genes, blah blah blah, even though most of the genes were filler/junk lines of "code", which basically just meant we didn't know WHAT the hell they did. There was even a span of time when bio-med and genetic engineering firms were scrambling to patent various genes and their effects. It all turned out to be mostly a big joke, and I can see the same thing happening with a brain map--a la, "We've found out the part of the brain that makes people stupid! Line up at our testing centers to find out if YOU are a dumbass!"

The question with these types of criticisms always becomes, "How long in the past before you draw the line of irrelevance?" The USA is an easy target right now because of the wars of the 90's and new millenium. But some of the nations criticizing our actions have histories that make our exploits seem laughably small. I mean, when Germany asks us to use restraint, doesn't it kind of make you laugh? Or when Putin thinks we shouldn't get involved in Afgahnistan, given the Russian's long history of involvement there? Or when China decries our sanctions against Cuba as being a human rights violation? At some point, reasonable people are just going to have to agree on what the fuck reality is and leave everyone else to their rabble rousing.

I'm with you most of the way. I don't LIKE war, but I think it's unreasonable to think that you can peacefully work things out with everyone out there. Some people are just plain evil, the problem is they don't get punished early on and are allowed to go completely out of control (I.E., some Nazis might have been punished, but what about the bankers/politicians/industrialists in Germany, Europe, and AMERICA most of all that brought themm to power because they thought they could use them). What it boils down to is this: I would much rather YOU be in charge of things in every possible case, but there are people out there that will use your peacefulness against you. That's when you need me, to preserve an arena where you can operate peacefully.

Er...1)Lack of training -- I never said anything about that, but how do you train to fight enemies that look like civilians and in fact ARE civilians w/o killing innocent civilians? 2)"onveniently forgetting we are the invaders, and single-handedly caused the war" -- Actually I think all I said was place the blame at the feet of the politicians instead of the soldiers. Bush/Cheney fooled MOST of us, on both sides of the aisle, but to try to over emphasize some of the negative things going on in Iraq to drive home a point diminishes that point and just makes you look foolish to the people that bothered to serve their country. 3)Single handedly caused the war? That's so provably false as to be ridiculous. If we have learned anything from the conflicts we've participated in over the last 200 years, it should be that there are NO MORE good guys in the world on a macro level. I happen to also believe that the US was wrong to invade Iraq, even though I think that toppling the Saddam regime was the right thing to do. But if Saddam had wanted to grasp on to his power and avoid a war altogether, all he had to do was let the inspectors do their jobs. HE threw them out, not us, and when he did that, he broke the CEASE FIRE (not peace treaty, as so many citizens thought existed), and in effect redeclared war on the USA. Again, no one handled this correctly, but the truth isn't that the USA single handedly, or even unilateraly went to war in Iraq, and suggesting otherwise is reprehensible as it confuses the sacrifice that SOME of us were willing to make.

Out of respect for a great many other soldiers, I feel obligated to say that I wasn't really on the front lines either. I spent most of my time aboard an aircraft carrier, and while I spent some time on the ground and in some danger, very little of it was inside Iraqi borders. Most of it was aboard a carrier. I know this isn't a political forum, but one thing that I think tends to get lost in these conversations is that the Iraqi people are a proud, historic civilization. The picture that gets painted of them in the media simply isn't accurate, just like those of the ground soldiers doing the fighting. Everyone appears to be misrepresented by a class of elite shitheads trying to make a buck off of their back. To see Konami attempt to do it right...well, I guess I'm proud of what they're doing.

I have no problem believing that the US Military will have its hand in this for recruiting purposes as well. I kind of accept that. As member of the US Navy, I just don't think we should trivialize the game just yet before we get an idea of its content. If it's real, and I mean REALLY real, it could be a great thing for people on this side of the world to get an accurate depiction of what happens over there. If that accomplishes getting more benefits for our veterans or helps convince people to elect people in into office that respect the soldiers' lives that are under their command, I'll call this a win.

As a former member of the military, and someone who spent time in the Gulf, I can tell you that NOTHING is as cut and dry as civilians try to make it. When you're a twenty year old stuck half way around the world in a dessert city and people are literally trying to kill you everyday with road side bombs, sniper attacks, and suicide bombs as they HIDE AMONGST the innocent public, it is very easy to cross the line and hurt/kill the wrong people. It's also just as easy to get a limited viewpoint of what happened and say things like, "The military is bad", or "Fallejuh was a massacre", or "What happened there is sick". No, it wasn't bad, a massacre, or sick...It was war. Label the politicians with those monikers, not the war itself. Along those lines, I think that if this game accurately depicts both the good and bad sides of war, the internal struggle of the soldiers as they tell their stories and follow orders they might not like, the reactions of ALL the towns people, favorable and unfavorable...Well, dammit, I think that would be a great game and one that US Citizens might actually be better off having played it.

Er, panty waste would be something completely different....

"That's the second biggest monkey I've ever seen" I would have been more impressed if he declared "my name is Mr. Fossey" and challenged the visitors to insult sword fighting...