Sand

You gain the abilities on top of your abilities you had for your first class. They simply build on one another. A good class to multiclass with Rogue is Fighter. Go even with rogue and fighter till fourth, the focus on rogue. You can get the extra feats to set yourself up as a decent dexterity based frontliner with the ability to handle most traps and locks without the use of thieves' tools. The two best races for that combination are human and lightfoot halfling. Human for that extra feat at first level and the extra skill points. Lightfoot halfling for the dexterity bonus, the bonus to saves, and the bonus for attack and defense due to size.

Well, my Basic Training was rather skimpy compared to others. A mere 6 weeks long. They skipped a lot of stuff from what I have heard, like the tear gas exercise.

When I joined the military back in '93.

I shall remain skeptical.

Yep. BG2's poor attempt to capture the essence of Durlag's Tower in the form of Watcher's Keep was horrible.

They weren't part of my training when I was in boot camp.

It isn't about being ignorant of the law, but the mental training that is conducted to ensure that orders are obeyed without question.

Any car can fly... if you use the right sized catapult.

It shouldn't be.

I don't really care about point 3 to tell the truth. Each nation needs to be responsible for their own actions and their own people. If the people of a nation doesn't like the government then it is their responsibility to change it, not a foreign power.

Of course they do. Once they have felt enough pain and suffering they will come around. People need to make their own choices in their own time. The more you force change the more resistance you will have.

Irrelevant Tale. If there are international laws that dictates what a soldier can and cannot do when occupying a foreign country such laws need to be readily available and our soldiers trained in obeying them to the letter. Our military does not do this, yet seeks to hold them accountable. A soldier cannot afford to second guess him or herself in the field. There are only 2 recourses. One) Train our soldiers in International Law in regards to the Geneva Convention or Two) Not place our soldiers in such positions of accountability in the first place.

They don't exactly tell you what the Geneva convention say is legal or not legal in boot camp so how is a soldier to know? They just drill into you that you are to follow orders no matter what and no questioning of those orders are allowed. So, with that in consideration the best course of action is not get into the situation of Abu Graib at all by not going to Iraq in the first place.

Did he ever give it back?

Then the UN should have approved and asked us to invade. They didn't.

That is okay, Pixie Stick. We have the Chinese to play Missile Command LARP. :D

Man, I really need to brush up on my latin.

Iraq was no threat and had no means to attack the US. This has been proven over and over and over again. There were no WMDs. Iraq had no way of even getting the WMDs to the US if they had them. Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda. Everything Bush has said about Iraq on how it was a threat was a lie. He lied to invade anothe country that was no threat whatsoever. That makes it an illegal invasion.

I think you guys are way too harsh on yourselves.

So how can a soldier determine if the orders are against the law or not? What does he have to gauge it by? After all international law does not equal national law. If your country is doing something questionable, such as invading another nation that poises no threat, how can not be seen as not a illegal order compared to a legal order? How can one determine which one is legal and which one is not when it is the duty of the soldier to obey no matter what, right or wrong? If he has no choice but to "just follow orders" he shouldn't be held accountable for war crimes.

So, he should just follow orders that he is given no matter what those orders are?

Should soliders be accountable for the orders they follow, meta? Yes or no. Yes, he joined the Army after Iraq, but at the time the truth about the falsified intelligence reports were not known. If he knew the reports were false do you think he would have still joined? I don't think so. He joined on false pretenses set by the Bush administration.

I think the scariest thing I had to deal with was when I was 12 and I ended up climbing about 40 feet in a tree. I looked down, got a bit of vertigo, and well fell straight down in hard earth. Heights are not something I like a whole lot. As for games and media, I don't get frighten by those. In the back of my mind I know there is always an off swtich.

Its the US, land of the hipocrisy. It fits in quite well.

Agreed.