Yes, any French/German politicians or military personnel who were involved in those things should be put before the world court as well. I know it's utterly improbable, but it would have to be that sort of thing we'd aim for if we were to have a world court. No immunity anywhere.

Torture is any un-necessary psychological or physical unpleasantness inflicted on a prisoner.

Threatening him with a dog? Yes. Pissing on his holy book? No, that's just utterly retarded, since it'll just make him hate your guts.

I'm having a hard time following your logic here, honestly. You're saying that because the "bad guys" don't play nice, the "good guys" are under no obligation to, either?

And, uh, I really hope you're not under the impression that your US soldiers behave any better than the UN peacekeepers.

As for Israel, yes, Israel sometimes does some shitty, careless things that gets civilians killed when they don't need to. I respect that a lot of it is necessary, because it's, quite frankly, an "us or them" situation. But half the time it's like they're not even trying to minimize casualties.

I've tried reading the EU constitution, and frankly it reminds me of another example, the US declaration of independence vs the regulations on selling cabbage. link

I've tried reading the EU constitution, and frankly it reminds me of another example, the US declaration of independence vs the regulations on selling cabbage. link </font>[/QUOTE]And that's why we and the French voted no, and we currently don't have a constitution. They'll probably shove the next one down our throats, because if they let us vote again, it's going to be a big no again, and again, and again.

A constitution should not be some vast, rambling legalese piece of crap. It should be a short, concise document outlining the principles which every future piece of legislation should be based on, and the limitations that they must adhere to.

Still, if we cannot agree on an EU constitution at some point, we may as well just scrap the entire union in my mind. Because that would be the first useful thing the EU would do other than instituting the Euro.

My previous post answered the question at the top of this post. I won't lose any sleep over any convicted criminal going to jail, or getting hanged, no matter how sloppily, or the firing squad, what have you. Criminals get what the court passes down, after a trial. It's beyond the scope of my control, or concern.

I seriously believe that if you make a parking lot out of a terrorist supporting nation, immediately following any terrorist attack, there will be fewer surviving terrorist supporting nations. It's all good for the Iranian president to talk about the war to end all wars, while he's not having his ass shot off. I've been on the business end of a gun, it's not so easy to trash talk the guy with the gun then.

War doesn't have rules. Civilizations have rules. To quote Guns n Roses, "what's so civil about war anyway". People die, both combatants and non-combatants. It's how a war is won, as I said before. We lost in Viet Nam because we did Police Action, instead of going in and doing what needed to be done. It's a damn good thing for a lot of people that we didn't do the same in WW II. We're doing the Police Action thing now in Iraq, and we should have been done channeling resources and people there years ago. Use conventional bombs, and level the whole country. If destroying Iraq doesn't end the war on terror, pick another country, and level it too. They didn't think about killing women and children when they flew the planes into the towers, or the Pentagon. They didn't differentiate between military and civilian targets, they just killed as many people as they could. The response should have been immediate, and final.

Which reminds me, they let the Danes vote on wheter they wanted the € or not, and some 75% of the people voted no, am i correct ?

Can't quote the number at you, but a majority disliked it, yes. Personally I like the idea of greater standardization in legislation and policy within the EU. It'll make things easier for everyone.

And Robert: War needs to have rules, otherwise you get terrorism. If you win the war with minimal civilian casualties and a respect for the enemies(Enough not torture and etc.), even if it loses you more troops, then you've won the war for a good distance into the future. Otherwise, the people whose parents you blew up, the guys whose brothers you tortured, the men whose daughters your soldiers raped, those people are going to be strapping bombs to themselves and blowing your country up for decades to come.

War without rules is exactly why the West currently has the problem it has. Exploitation and no care for those involved in the war not from our countries has lead to this situation.

The world has no rules at the core of it, but if we don't make rules, act consistently and hold ourselves to a higher standard than animals, then none of it matters.

If you level all of Iraq, then the neighbours are going to screw your shit up. If you don't kill half of Iraq(Which you won't, using conventional weapons.), then they will find a way to screw your shit up. The reason they don't care about what targets they're taking down is because most of them are fanatics, and the reason they've been made into fanatics are because Western policies have killed their families, starved their friends and allowed their enemies to wield some of humanity's more horrifying weapons without any care for the consequences except the consequence that is their wallets getting fat.

Don't be nice to people because of some greater philosophy or desire to care about others, because you obviously don't have that. Be nice to people because it benefits you. Be honourable and considerate in battle, even if it's "silly," because that's how you win the battle in the long run.

Every time you don't care about killing women and children, you create a thousand people who don't care about killing your women and children. "They did it first!" just creates a never-ending cycle of death and destruction where both sides accuse the other of starting it, and say that they're just fighting fire with fire.

It's not idealism, it's pragmatism.

I am nice to people all the time. Both in rl, and on the forums. Being nice has nothing to do with it. I see it like this. If I go to the bar, and get jumped by one guy, I'll try to talk my way out of it, at first. If he's determined, then let the chips fall where they may. I bounced for 5 years professionally, and am quite good at it, so it's usually his chips falling.

Now here comes dude's brothers, upset because he teased the lion. Well, I have to draw the line at nice somewhere. I'm not going to put myself at risk for the sake of being nice. If I'm dead, I didn't win anything.

Here in lies our disagreement, I think. You're fighting a war of opinion, where the rest of the people's/countries opinions of what you did matter. I'm fighting a war of, and in this case I think this is about the right concept, counter aggression. I don't pretend to know the logic behind attacking Iraq, at least not all of it, but some good things have come out of it, on top of all the US bashing that gets done, consistently. However, my personal position is this; I'm not fighting a war to gain somebody else's approval, I'm fighting it to gain a specific objective, whether that be genocide, I sincerely hope not, or to simply make an example of one terrorist supporting regime to all the others, it's not about what people think.

As to people starving over there, have you bought any gasoline lately? You're expecting me to believe that the largest, got the world by the balls and isn't letting go, oil producing region in the world has people starving in the streets because the country is poor? Sorry, I'm not buying into that. I may not be totally up on world events, but I do know that when 20% of the population control 90% of a country's wealth, people are hungry. Put the blame where it lies, on the peaceful, living like kings muslims, who can't be bothered with the 80% of their population that are living in squalor. It's not Western Civilization doing that, it's the people with the oil wells. I'm pretty sure that if they were our wells, the price of gasoline here wouldn't have tripled since the war started. Doubled, no doubt, we have greedy oil men here too, but...

Anyway, I digress. If we had leveled all of Iraq, there would be very few brothers looking for retribution. I think most of them would be looking for a place to hide. How much you wanna bet Osama would close what ever doors he has to them, in spite of what they may have done for him.
Honor in battle is a good idea, if a bit hard to define. In single's combat, honor is easy, but when you have 2,000 people shooting at you across a field, what's honorable? It's a real simple philosophy, kill or be killed. I haven't personally been in any of the latter type of situations, even though I have been in the military, albeit, briefly. I have, however, seen plenty of "single" combat situations, and I'll tell you, in a ring, it's about honor and fairness, but out here, in the world, it's about do him, before he does you.

<font color=8fbc8f>Not sure about Eastern countries, but at least the NATO and Western countries do in fact have a written, and followed doctrine of war. Most people would know this document by the title of "The Geneva Convention". The US has additional documents to support it as well.
1. Rules of Engagement (ROE).
2. The 10 General Orders of the CinC.
3. Laws of War.

All of which are binding, and will get people placed into court martial status.

However, it is the role of the media that differs the fact from the truths.

@Robert. There are two small problems that we have yet to counter. The first is; we actually do care about some folks in that region. And, by the time we could use the end product, we should have advanced into another technological stage.</font>

It's not so much their opinion of me that would matter, it's more the fact that if I piss them off badly enough, I'll make more enemies than I'm getting rid of. Simple to understand.

Let's say you were bouncing that dude, diplomacy failed, you had to save your ass. You deck him, nice and simple. Okay, maybe his friends will get a bit pissed, but there's also good chance they'll say it was his own damn fault. Now, if you pull out a gun and empty it into his corpse and maybe his girlfriend, then you can count on his friends coming for you with their guns.

See, that's the sort of difference I'm looking at here. Paving Iraq over with shells would be the "killing him and his girlfriend"-bit as opposed to just decking him. Firstly, you'd be killing Muslims, and if you murder 10000 Muslims in Iraq, then you can bet that 10000 Muslims in Iran are likely to get angry. Maybe they've got family that's out of the country, who will get angry, maybe one of the survivors is very, very pissed. Maybe he's got the will and the way to set you up with a very, very nasty surprise. WTC MkII, perhaps. Or maybe he's just an extremely good speaker, maybe the fire in his voice and his eyes will make a thousand others feel his pain.

And of course the countries aren't poor on AVERAGE, but the West has supported regimes that have very top-heavy wealth distributions. Dictatorships as opposed to democracies. Maybe if you distributed the wealth evenly they'd all be above the poverty line and wearing Nike shoes, but as it is, maybe 20 or 30% are in the top and the rest are suffering.

Honour is about not causing undue suffering or hurting people who do not have anything to do with the conflict. Yes, it'll make it harder to fight without dying. But if you want a long-term victory that does not make you more enemies than it rids you of, then you have to fight with some degree of honour or following some form of rules that minimize civilian casualties and the suffering for those that do end up dying(Both civilian and military.).