Gorgon

I'm no expert on international law, i'm just going on reports. You would assume that a commitment to be a member of the UN, and to abide by it's principles and charters either matters, or it doesn't. In purely practical terms the president's prerogative trumps international commitment, the report you linked to in its conclusion states definitely that 'regime change cannot be the objective of military action', and yet the coalition is convinced, well, make a show of being convinced, that they got their resolution and with its somewhat ambivalent and emminently interpretable wording could do away with the say of the security council. There are way too many questions raised and conditions not wholly fulfilled for blatantly declaring that the war was sanctioned. The invasion of Iraq unquestionably weakened the already imperfect security council and organisation, because what does it really mean now that it can be sidestepped by a minority when the decision doesn't go their way.

Michael Caine was in every movie made in the late 70s and early 80s. Roughly.

The UN charter does not allow for the notion of 'preemptive strike', and the US and UK are signatories. The adopted resolution do not change that fact, neither do you start interpreting resolutions and going to war on your own. The war was technically illegal, thats not really in question, Kofi Annan said as much. Now as to whether being in compliance with the UN charter means that much in practical and legal terms to a head of state, that is something else, apparently it does not. This is a contradiction in national law that is expectable when you think about it, but in terms of the organisation's own rules, there is no doubt.

Well, how much is freedom worth in lives, to use Bush speak. I guess it depends on where you live. The Kurds are flourishing and clear of insurgency and terrorists. Of course now they have to deal with Turkey, who would like nothing better than eradicating them.

What ? The image loads slowly and whacks out the format on my screen. Thats it.

We don't have any clear idea of how many people have died in fighting or otherwise unnatural causes because both the US military and the Iraqi authority realise that the number would probably be very unflattering. No body counts, no images of soldiers in caskets. Where is the upside in meticulously documenting failure. A conjectured number is much easier to attack as politically motivated.

Yes, they stole the name from Norse Mythology, now is that any reason to spam the entire image again.

In any case, being a survivor in a post apocalyptic mutant infected earth might well lend itself better to the sketchy and temporary feel of 90% of the quests in a Bethesda game, as will the exploration, which they were always good at, now if they could only throw in something more rewarding for the trouble of exploring than a scamp, a pile of bonemeal and a ruby, we might be getting somewhere.

I played Oblivion almost to the end twice, the second time with the Shivering isles expansion pack, I thoroughly enjoyed many of the scripted encounters in shivering isles and the Dark brotherhood as well as the main quest, other than that I didn't get too involved in many of the guild quests except the thieves guild. I never bothered completing very many of the more mundane tasks people seemed to be handing out to me with alarming frequency. In the end my list of open quest was so long as to make me lose sight of where I was going. Then my inventory started randomly disappearing, none of the patches in between the first release and shivering isles seemed to have fixed it, so I gave up for the second time. I had some fun up to that point though.

UT 2003 and 2004 were some of the most enjoyable LAN shooters I have ever played. I like Unreal Tournament too of course, the buff heroes running around in spandex suits were awesomeness. I don't care about the single player games really, and even less about the billion different game modes - run around and shoot a ball into a hoop, build a series of interconnected blue beams across the sky and win - WTF ?- Just give me regular deathmatches or CTF games with lives, yes lives, if you die so many times you're out. So far I have disliked the implementation of vehicles in all the games.

I liked Oblivion a lot better, it had some semblance of a story, Sean Bean (Boromir) and NPCs who answered with more than the standard name, profession, location, rumors, etc. NPC interaction was still pretty stale though. Morrowind was good mainly for exploration, at the time it came out the graphics were unmatched, once the initial charm wore off though there was nothing left to do but mindless fetch this, kill that tasks. Well, thats what you had been doing all along, but back then you were fueled by the intense desire to enchant a silver claymore just so. I don't subscribe to any sentimentality about the greatness of Daggerfall, the dungeons were torturously horrible and the graphics ugly to an extreme reserved exclusively for DOS games. The system and character creation was the only saving grace.

When you chose to go to war I think it's important ,for obvious reasons, not to lie, and that includes lying by overstating the facts, to the people you are asking to make a sacrifice. I place absolutely no credulity to the assertion that the coalition acted out of fear of Sadam's weapons programmes. The Bush administration wanted to use the momentum of 9/11 and Afghanistan to change the political makeup of the middle east, change it fundamentally, and in doing so ensure long term strategic goals, yes that encludes oil, and no, stating that doesen't make me a conspiracy therorist. They embarked on their endeavor with the wide eyed optimism of a child, and predictably it turned out a great deal more difficult than envisioned, but really, 4000 dead would not be considered that much in the colonial era, merely the cost of doing business, and of course you can't discount that the Iraqis have gotten something really rare out of the whole ordeal, their liberty, well, while it lasts anyway.

*rimshot*

If all my opponents look like this i'm in trouble before the fight stars

You're certified, I mean certifiable.

China is both ass backwards and very evolved. I find it really strange that you should be able to get away with having a state controlled propaganda machine in this day and age. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that the Chinese at large are just indifferent about liberty and unaccustomed to challenging their own institutions.

What is the purpose of this.

Why is the bad guy a brittish guy named Caine.

It's a well known fact that you can become president by use of your dads old friends, even without any obvious outward signs of intelligence.

You should kidnap the sound mixers from the Rainbow Six series and put them to work.

Its true that the creationist got their hooks in primary education. The curriculum's are decided on the state level and following a judgment they now have to pretend that creation science is not complete nonsense, by 'allowing for the possibility of intelligent design'. Thats all fine, very egalitarian, but it doesn't belong in a science textbook. This battle was fought once before in the 50s and 60s, back then the US needed to go to the moon, to prove that they were more technically advanced than the soviets. The creationists were stamped out without a moments notice, no room for it in a cold war. Now they are resuirrging, and again choosing education as the battlefield.

If by smart you mean completely immune to logic, then yes.

mm, yes, and being smarter than a creationist is not really that impressive. He's like kicking someone who is lying down by default.

When you are crying about persecution it helps not to indulge in it yourself, makes the whole exercise a bit more believable

I hope you don't mean to suggest that offending creationists is the same as offending christians, because that would just be blatantly offending, to christians. On a side note, I hate having to worry about who I offend all the time. If people just grew tougher skin we would all get along so much better.