[Ramona_A_Stone]

Talk about patronizing attitudes, it's kind of interesting that hellbound chose to overlook this, which is the only example of anyone being condescending to her gender that I can see in this thread, while jumping on the knife.

Courage. Determination. Integrity. Balls. Albed's chief reason for participating in this forum seems to center on these concepts, not for the purpose of proving he himself has any of these qualities, not to prove that his champion, George Bush, has these qualities or even to say that the great cause, the war in Iraq, is based on any of these qualities, but to simply accuse anyone with the slightest ambivalence toward any of these of having an abject lack of these qualities.

It's interesting that even though it's quite easy to see that albed pretends that Bush is utterly infallible and the war in Iraq is of primal necessity, he has absolutely no valid arguments beyond a handful of platitudes for either, so instead he busies himself shooting at the feet of the opposition with equally weak and inane platitudes. In using this approach, ironically, he comes off like a cowardly little sniper, hiding behind the immutable facts of war and Bush's presidency for the sole purpose of putting other people down.

If he believes it shows he has 'balls' to attempt to discount all debate and dismiss all sentiment by claiming it arises from 'whiners and sore losers,' cry babies and women, we can only pity him for being so pathetically devoid of the integrity he claims to so prize.

Bush has spent enough time with live soldiers, visiting them in hospitals and in the field, to show his consideration.

Following primitive rituals involving corpses has always struck me as ridiculous. Doesn't do the corpse any good at all.

Yes, I'm sure dishing out turkey last year in Iraq was entirely out of consideration and had absolutely nothing to do with the kind of self-serving political strutting we saw on the Mission Accomplished carrier photo-op.

Also, primitive rituals involving corpses certainly are ridiculous, however Vlad wasn't talking about those, he was talking about "a funeral of a US service casualty" in which case the 'corpses' are real human beings with real identities and real families and friends, and everyone knows they are not designed to 'do the corpse any good'--they are a matter of respect and an act of honor among the living. The fact that you are willing to dismiss the value of such solely to justify every nuance of the behavior of your infallible hero is predictably sickening and equally ridiculous.

It also goes to show why you cannot be taken seriously in talking about any aspect of the true human cost of this war--or indeed just about any other topic. If one claims to be concerned about Iraqi civilian casualties, albed will have a ready label for it. If one claims to be concerned about American service casualties, albed will have a ready label for it. If one claims to be unconcerned about either, albed will have a ready label for it. Apparently, if we cannot simply see death and destruction itself as a statistical footnote to the great aim, we're all just a bunch of women.