LowerCaseRepublican

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 4, 2005 -> 08:48 AM) Anytime I hear about people abusing and mistreating children like this it makes my blood boil. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/family.torture/index.html Death penalty is too easy. Just imagine what his life would be like in prison for the rest of his life.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 10:55 PM) Now, now, now, he only represents LAS at UIUC. Hey now! I represent LAS at UIUC as well (History/Secondary Education). Not all of us in LAS are idiots.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 10:17 PM) Things sound like they have really changed in the 15 years (holy crap!) since I was there. The police were in general exceptionally cool about drinking at private parties and stumbling home. As long as you weren't driving and only had a few blocks to walk, they pretty much let you be. They were also very cool about breaking up house parties. A couple of visits after neighbor noise complaints, turn down the music, etc., and it usually wasn't until the third visit that they broke it up. Sounds like it's very different now. Hell, I bet your Hash Wednesday's suck now! Hash Wednesday sucks. I mean there is a big informational campaign from Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (http://www.ssdp.org) and NORML discussing the whole drug war but outside of that, its not much at all. The cops have cracked down on booze because it is a cash cow for Chambana. But luckily the new county sheriff is totally pro-decriminalization of pot like has been done in Ohio, etc. so he's good people.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 09:25 PM) Sounds romantic. LOL I'm kind of glad that the frats probably put down their cases of Milwaukee's Best and Busch Light to go out for the night and drink a higher class beer like Miller or Bud -- meanwhile leaving lots of good beer for people like moi.

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 05:28 PM) That's too bad, I really like this country politically. Umm...being a political junkie that I am, I'm gonna bite -- what's to really like about the choices we get in this country?

Don't you hate pants?

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 05:09 PM) I choose none of the above. We've had intelligence that these people were cooking up stuff for years and it came from the CIA through aerial reconnaissance and through defectors who worked in Saddams WMD programs. Those "assets" you speak of were a small piece of the equation. People in government, including most prominent Democrats, had been saying for years the exact same things Bush was saying. Iraq was a major threat and needed to be dealt with, including John Kerry and Al Gore. The only difference between W and all those prominient leftists is that he actually did something about it. I wonder if you would have been this upset if Bill Clinton had gone into Iraq back in the fall of 1998 like we were about a hairs breadth from doing. Nuke -- calling the majority of Democrats actual leftists makes me laugh. In one of my favorite quotes about our government "We don't have two parties. We have identical twins played by Patty Duke." Our government is filled with greedy whores -- and to answer your question, yes I would have been angry if Clinton did commit an invasion force on this bulls*** WMD claim.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 04:56 PM) For you guys this is a game. HEY! Look how many died today! It's almost a source of glee for you guys because you can sit there and point and yell about how we shouldn't be there. We should not have been there and it is a sadness that Chimpy in Chief said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction...or was it weapons of mass destruction related programs....or was it weapons of mass destruction related program activities? Fact is at best Bush and his administration was terribly incompetent taking stovepiped information from notoriously unreliable Iraqi groups and Iranian and Israeli spies all the while the PNAC neo-cons egging the war closer because they've wanted it since the mid-1990s. At worst, he was complicit in allowing this to go forward knowing that there were no WMD and he lied to the nation. So, take your pick.

Nuke, don't whine about violence when you're in the military -- especially after Lt. Gen. James Mattis, came in at a panel discussion in San Diego...He said in reference to fighting insurgents in Iraq. He went on to say, "Actually, its a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for 5 years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis continued. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." "I was a little surprised," said Retired Vice Adm. Edward H. Martin. "I don't think any of us who have ever fought in wars liked to kill anybody." http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/4153541/detail.html So who is the violence important to again Nuke?

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 04:48 PM) Cops just stop you while your walking home and ask for id? I was stumbling a little bit and looked drunk off my ass. So they thought I was underage and were gonna hit me up with a public intox but luckily I was close to home and the cop was cool.

QUOTE(AddisonStSox @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 04:39 PM) Dude, CO's? ...and you thought the cops wouldn't show? :headshake You should know better. You should be thanking your lucky stars you didn't get hit with that $280. Both the cops and the EMTs down here have no sympathy for drunk college kids (illegal and legal alike). No fooling, the cops are all about the campus bars...and some cops do have sympathy. Last year when I was 21, I was at a shindig one of my friends held for my b-day and walking home a cop saw me and after showing her my wallet and telling her I was going straight home (I was like a block/2 blocks away), she just let me go.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 01:45 PM) Back in the caveman days when I was there, Kam's had a supersecret Batcave basement that dorms used to rent out for underage drunkfests. I went to exactly one of those as a freshman and realized that paying $5 to drink stale beer and stand in line to get into the bathroom to wade though and/or contribute to a small sea of vomit was not my thing. Thanks for that touching memory, Flaxx. I just have to wonder how the Hell Kam's is still in business if it sucks so goddamn bad.

QUOTE(Jeckle2000 @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 12:33 PM) Exactly. The fact is inner city girls can't afford those dolls. I know my girlfriends younger sister collects them. I looked at the catalog one time and it just freaked me out. Expensive. Of course they are marketing it to the middle class. No snooty people want their daughter to play with a doll from the ghetto. :headshake I resent your implications about the ghetto, Joe Rog-- er, Jeckle.

I got a 30 out of 120

Which bar did you go to? Because if its Joe's, CO's or Kam's, it's pretty much a guarantee that the police will be there all the time. Plus handing out drinking tickets is a huge source of revenue for Chambana. When I was underage we'd hit up bars off campus where police never came, IDs were never checked and I got to get my drink on in a nice environment with no worries since it was assumed that nobody would take a 20 minute walk off campus. But now that I'm of age, I can't even stomach going into COs, Kams or Joes unless on a bar crawl with a bunch of people worth talking to.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 3, 2005 -> 02:32 AM) You guys just cannot stand that there is a television station that gives the conservative viewpoint. For the first 30 or so years of my life, you could not get this point of view from radio or TV unless it was on "Meet the Press" or similar show. Of course, you'd had to listen to the liberal rhetoric as well. I think it's about damn someone started putting it out there and making all the left wing dings squirm. No, its more the fact that the vast majority of FOX (or should it be Faux?) News anchors are Michael Moore-esque partisan hacks of the extreme right wing. I have no problem with conservative views and find myself in agreement with a lot of foreign policy of the Old Right. I don't know if you've read anything by Murray Rothbard but I agree with a lot of his views, not all but a lot. The problem with FOX News is that their anchors have been caught with their proverbial pants down numerous times regarding having incorrect information and at times blatant lies (O'Reilly making up the Paris Business Review for instance). The right wing for the most part gets angry at Moore for lying and distorting the truth when in actuality FOX does the exact same thing. Its not about squirming its more along the lines of the fact that Hannity and the rest of the hacks that thrive on throwing out two diametrically opposed positions that can see no compromise in order to keep their ratings up, their book sales up, their radio ratings up, etc. etc. "The candidate can choose one of two platforms, but remember - no substitutions. For example, do you support universal health care? Then you must also want a ban on assault weapons. Pro-limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion. Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly into one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegantly reflects the bichromatic rainbow that is American political thought." - Jon Stewart

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 05:52 PM) Your argument gets weaker and weaker by the post. How exactly were they investors at places like Cantor Fitzgerald? Was it some machinists 401K plan? You're making quite a stretch here aren't you? You say the only reason that the Army doesn't deprive U.S. citizens of food and medicine is because it has plenty of money in its budget? LISTEN TO YOURSELF! BTW Pre-Persian Gulf war there were no sanctions on Iraq. So explain to me how US companies selling him weapons was illegal and at the same time explain to me how that is relevant to the these 500,000 children that Hussein killed with his gross neglect. Nuke in the 80s, we knew he was a genocidal dictator and still gave him the weapons by which he was slaughtering the Kurds. After that there are the illegal technology sales like companies such as Halliburton. And the reasons about the Army having money was linked to the fact that the Army would also use guerrilla tactics if they did not have the money for stealth bombers, cruise missiles, etc. There's no moral higher ground saying that dropping bombs from thousands of feet up is more noble than accessorizing with dynamite.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 05:33 PM) Remember the last time we tried being Isolationist? It was the 20's & 30's In the 20's Isolationism led to massive tarriffs that were a big factor behind the great depression. In the 30's we stood around and did nothing while Hitler built his war machine and started taking over his neighbors. Do people like you and Buchannan not learn from history or do you choose to ignore its lessons? Non military targets in Dresden? I do seem to remember there was a significant amount of military industry in that town. Nice try. The 3 events you mentioned were regrettable incidents that ran contrary to our laws and morals and those responsible were punished. Fine with it? I think not. Again.. Nice try. Nuke -- "Isolationism" worked from the inception of the country until we decided to get involved in empire during the Philippine wars. And there is nobody like Hitler around in the world so your point is moot because the "isolationist" doctrine is that war is wrong unless our national interests are at stake. Foreign interventions for the sake of a foreign intervention are not in our interest. To have a state of endless war only means more government, more taxation and more authoritarianism [all of things I *thought* Republicans were against] "There are a good many Americans who talk about an American century in which America will dominate the world. . . . If we confine our activities to the field of moral leadership we shall be successful if our philosophy is sound and appeals to the people of the world. The trouble with those who advocate this policy is that they really do not confine themselves to moral leadership. They are inspired by the same kind of New Deal planned-control ideas abroad as recent Administrations have desired to enforce at home. In their hearts they want to force on these foreign people through the use of American money and even, perhaps, arms, the policies which moral leadership is able to advance only through the sound strength of its principles." -- Senator Taft As for Dresden -- In fact, little had been done to provide the ancient city of artists and craftsmen with anti-aircraft defenses. One squadron of planes had been stationed in Dresden for awhile, but the Luftwaffe decided to move the aircraft to another area where they would be of use. A gentlemen's agreement seemed to prevail, designating Dresden an "open city." Historians unanimously agree that Dresden had no military value. What industry it did have produced only cigarettes and china. Cigarette factories...oh s***! And by punishments for My Lai -- do you mean how the leader was acquited? Just saying.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 05:27 PM) Yeah, it takes a lot of balls to take a plane load of civillians at knife point hostage then crash them into another bunch of civillians who are sitting at their desks doing their jobs. A whole lot more than it takes for a fighter pilot to bomb a radar station or a bunch of tanks or a defense building with people shooting guns and SAM's at him. His ( and your ) argument is rediculous. BTW. How were these people "running the infrastructure of genocide"? Was it the bond trading? Was it the overseas shipping? Was it the guy serving appetizers to the people who happened to be eating dinner in the restaurant on the top floor? By your logic there are no innocent people in this country because we all pay taxes right? I guess that means we're all supporting the evil U.S. war machine. I guess that makes you a "little Eichmann" in this loony's eyes then. BTW No. 2. Obviously sanctions wouldn't work on Saddam since he basically said to hell with the citizens, I don't have enough palaces, there isin't enough gold in my existing palaces, I have to buy military hardware illegally from France and Russia......etc. etc...etc... Semantics nothing. He has no point. Nuke -- companies that develop weapons like cluster bombs were investors there. We both know the "collateral damage" that cluster bombs do. Nuke, if the US Army didn't have as much money, they'd be resorting to similar tactics to get things accomplished. With the Pentagon logic, these victims of 9/11 were collateral damage. Yeah and Nuke for #2, don't forget about the illegal items sold to him from US corporations from the 80s til now that haven't been discussed much.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 05:16 PM) Bill Maher should stick to telling jokes and forget about insightful commentary. They were cowards because they deliberately targeted civillians, that's something the US does not do despite your belief to the contrary. Pat Buchannan is a moron and an isolationist. Of course he'd be against the wars we're fighting now. You say isolationist like it is a bad thing. Show me where in the Constitution that it is the President's duty to expand the US sphere of influence in European affairs + to be entangled in foreign wars where our interests are not at stake. And Nuke -- My Lai, the Abu Ghraib scandals...there are plenty of incidents where the US has targeted civilians -- going back to WW II, the firebombing of Dresden was targeting of non-military targets and the US was fine with it. And even up to the 1970s (where the record currently goes dry) there were previously classified tests where the Army and CIA DELIBERATELY TARGETED CIVILIANS with toxins, diseases and chemical weapons (i.e. Operation Big City) So please, the US has gassed its own citizens so stop with the feigned righteousness when the US has no higher ground on which to b**** upon. Edited to add a few of the more notable civilian targeting cases: According to former State Department member, William Blum, and the US Army, the US Army has admitted that "between 1949 and 1969, 239 populated areas from coast to coast were blanketed with various organisms during tests designed to measure patterns of dissemination in the air, weather effects, dosages, optimum placement of the sources and other factors." Testing over such areas was supposedly suspended after 1969, but there is no way to be certain. Open air spraying even continued at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Here's a list of the places the US government sprayed with dangerous bacterias. Watertown NY area & Virgin Islands: 1950, the Army used aircraft and homing pigeons to drop turkey feathers dusted with cereal rust spores to contaminate oat crops to prove that a "cereal rust epidemic" could be spread as a biological warfare weapon. San Francisco Bay area: Sept. 20-27 1950, 6 experimental biological warfare attacks from the US Army. It began on a ship where the Army used bacillus globugii and serratia marcescens, at one point creating a cloud about two miles long as the ship traveled slowly along the shoreline of the bay. One of the stated objectives of the operation was to study "the OFFENSIVE (emphasis mine) possibilities of attacking a seaport city with a biological warfare aerosol" from offshore. Beginning on September 29, patients at Stanford University's hospital in San Francisco were found to be infected with serratia marcescens. This type of infection had never before been reported at the hospital. Eleven patients became infected and one died. According to a report submitted to a Senate committee by a professor of microbiology at State University of New York at Stony Brook: "an increase in the number of serratia marcescens can cause disease in a healthy person and...serious disease in sick people." Between 1954 and 1967, other tests were carried out in the bay area including some with a base of operations at Fort Kronkhite in Marin County. Minneapolis: 1963, 61 releases of zinc cadmium sulfide in four sections of the city involving massive exposure of people at home and children in school. The substance was later described by the EPA as "potentially dangerous because of its cadmium content" and a former Army scientist, writing in the professional journal "Atmosphere Environment", in 1972, said that cadmium compounds, including zinc cadmium sulfide, are "highly toxic and the use of them in open atmospheric experiments presents a human health hazard." He stated that symptoms produced by exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide include lung damage, acute kidney inflammation and fatty degeneration of the liver. St. Louis: 1953, releases of zinc cadmium sulfide over residential, commercial and downtown areas, including the Medical Arts Building, which presumably contained a number of sick people whose illnesses could be aggrevating by inhaling toxic particles. Washington DC area: 1953, aerial spraying of zinc cadmium sulfate mixed with lycopodium spores from a height of 75 feet. Areas sprayed include the Monocacy River Valley and Leesberg, Virginia...30 miles from the capital. In 1960, the Army conducted 115 open air tests of zinc cadmium sulfate near Cambridge, Maryland. Earlier in the 1960s, the Army covertly disseminated a large number of bacteria in Washington's National Airport to evaluate how easy it would be for an enemy agent to scatter smallpox through the entire country by infecting air passengers. The bacterium used, bacillus subtilis, is potentially harmful to the infirm and the elderly, whose immune system is impaired, and to those with cancer, heart disease or a host of other ailments according to a professor of microbiology at the Georgetown University Medical Center. A similar experiment was carried out at the Washington Greyhound bus terminal. Sometime during Richard Nixon's time in office, the Army "assassinated" him with germs via the White House air conditioning system. At a building used by the Food and Drug Administration surreptitiously placed a (supposedly harmless) colored dye into the water system. Whether anyone suffered harm from drinking a certain quantity of the water is not known. Florida: 1955, the CIA conducted at least one open air test with whooping cough bacteria around the Tampa Bay area. The number of whooping cough cases in Florida from 339 and one death in 1954 to 1080 and 12 deaths in 1955. The Tampa Bay area was one of three places that showed a sharp increase in 1995. Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida: 1956-58, The Army, wishing to test "the practicality of employing aedes aegeypti mosquitos to carry a biowarfare agent", released over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of this mosquito which can be a carrier of yellow fever and dengue fever, both dangerous diseases. The Army stated that the mosquitos were uninfected but prominent scientists said that, for several reasons, the experiment was not without risk and was a "terrible idea." The actual effects on the targeted population will probably never be known. New York City: 1956, a CIA-Army team sprayed New York streets and Holland and Lincoln Tunnels using trick suitcases and a car with a dual muffler. June 6-10, 1966, The Army report of this test was called "A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents". Trillions of bacillus subtilis variant niger were released into the subway system during rush hours. One method was to use light bulbs filled with the bacteria; those were unobtrusively shattered at sidewalk level on subway ventilating grills or tossed onto the roadbeds inside the stations. Aerosol clouds were momentarily visible after the release of bacteria from the light bulbs. The report noted that "When the cloud engulfed people, they brushed their clothing, looked up at the grating apron and walked on." The wind of passing trains spread the bacteria along the the tracks; in the same time it took for two trains to pass, the bacteria were spread from 15th Street to 58th Street. It will never be known how many people later became ill from being unsuspecting guinea pigs but the United States Army exhibited not the slightest interest in this question. Chicago: 1960s, the Chicago subway system was the scene of a similar Army experiment. Stockyards: November 1964-January 1965, The Army conducted aerosol tests over stockyards in Texas, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska using "anti-animal non biological stimulants". It's not clear why stockyards were chosen or what effect this might have had on the meat consumed by the public. Nuremburg: The International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg, Germany 1946-1949, revealed many details of the Nazi medical experiments on involuntary subjects, leading the judges to create a set of principles known as the Nuremburg Code...a bill of rights for people participating in medical experimentation. The Code's first tenet states: "The voluntary consent of the subject is absolutely essential." Very shortly thereafter, the US Army-CIA testing program began and although the tests, of course, were nowhere near as grotesque as those of the Nazis, and the subjects of the tests were not humans as such, but rather the behavior of certain substances in the air, the fact remains that the testers knew that untold numbers of humans were being directly contaminated and none of the reports of the tests mentions a word about obtaining the consent of any of these humans. If the testers did not "know" that the contaminating substances were potentially dangerous it can only be because they didn't investigate this question, which is saying the same thing as they didn't know because they didn't WANT to know. Face to Face Human Experimentation: For the human experimentation, the various government agencies appear to have chosen as their subjects primarily those who had the least political clout, such as servicemen and women, conscientious objectors, prison inmates, blacks, the poor, mentally retarded, the elderly, the young, mental patients..."It's a little cockail. It'll make you feel better." Helen Hutchinson recalled the doctor telling her in July 1946, during a visit to the Vanderbilt University Hospital Prenatal Clinic. It didn't make her feel better at all. It contained radioactive iron. She was one of 829 people to receive various amounts of the potion over a two year period. Both Hutchinson and the daughter she carried went on to suffer a lifetime of strange ailments. Hutchinson's hair fell out at one point, she suffers from pernicious anemia and she is highly sensitive to sunlight. Her daughter, now grown, suffers from an immune system disorder and skin cancer. In 1999, the American public might have learned something. When it was disclosed the government organization in Los Alamos National Labratory was going to release a strain of bacteria into the atmosphere to test new biowarfare detectors, the public outcry against it stopped it from happening. One resident said at the public hearing: "If the bacteria is so safe, why don't you release it into the office of some one in Washington DC?" source: Rogue State by William Blum

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 05:02 PM) I guess in addition to being an anti-american piece of s*** he's a liar as well Didn't favor the 9-11 attacks? -Doesn't advocate violence? See above. Victims are the perps and perps are the victims. Typical leftist trash. -500,000 Iraqi Children died as a result of sanctions? More like 500,000 Iraqi children died because Saddam Hussein used his oil for food money on golden palaces, military hardware and bribes to Kofi Annan and company to keep quiet about it all. -Comparing "technocrats" working in the WTC to Eichmann is not the same as comparing them to Nazi's? PUHLEEZE! Nice try but your little backtrack isin't cutting it with me. I'm sorry but there is no defense for what this guy said. f*** him. Nice cherry picking...but I'll bite. He said that it took a lot of balls for them to kill themselves while doing such an action -- just like any military activity that has gone down. Acknowledging the courage of a military activity does not mean you advocate it. I acknowledge the balls and bravery of soldiers being sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. It does not mean that I approve of the violence being used there or believe in the war. You're bogged down in his semantics while refusing to see his wider point that if the US goes around and bombs the f*** out of people then they really don't get to claim ignorance and innocent because the government is acting in our name. And Nuke, if he's right about the technocrats being supporters of the military destruction throughout the world then his claims are correct -- The other victims: "According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name." Also: "What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies." And the comment by Albright was after it was abundantly clear the sanctions were not working and there was no purpose for the sanctions to be in place. Under the ICC she could have been tried for intent to commit genocide.

I wonder what the meeting had to be like when they greenlit this idea. They're sitting around: "Damnit! We cannot find any American soldiers. We need something and fast." "I know!" "What?" "We shall get American doll and use it as kidnapped soldier. American won't be able to tell difference between real soldier and hard yet bendable plastic skin!" "Brilliant!" I mean, they went to the extent of markering the doll's eye to make it look like he had a bruise so they had to think it was going to fool people.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 04:36 PM) Al Jazerra is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Islamic terrorists across the middle east. And Fox News is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the extreme right to push their quasi-fascist, imperialist, un-Constitutional agenda down America's throats in the name of newscasting.

His response: http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/educatio...3512084,00.html And Nuke, in the same vein of Bill Maher's comments saying that the 9-11 hijackers were indeed not cowardly...Why is blowing something up from an airplane with a bomb so much more "noble" than flying a plane into a building? Both achieve the same results -- one just has more money than the other. War is the terrorism of the rich and terrorism is the war of the poor. -- Pat Buchanan

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2005 -> 04:18 PM) Maybe some people need it. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/31/professor.resigns.ap/ Nuke, here's his reply: * The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences. * I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable." * This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government." * In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths. * Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies. * It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them. * It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name. * The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else. * These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country. Ward Churchill Boulder, Colorado January 31, 2005