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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
You can’t believe that I don’t follow this?!?!? Either you are unbelievably stupid or a total Jerk. You are basically saying “asked and answered” here. I asked whether or not torturing the terrorist in this case is MORAL. Not whether it was the lesser of two evils or whether one should or should not do it. Can you really not see the difference? How can you possibly argue that the above statement is an answer to the question of whether it is MORAL? Do you remember the discussion about IMMORAL IMPERATIVES? Taxwonk and Sam both argued that there was such a thing as an immoral imperative. You did not disagree with them. So if it is even remotely possible that there is such a thing as an immoral imperative, then how could your response be considered an answer to the question? Can’t you see that? Maybe this answer wouldn’t be so painfully stupid (but still pretty stupid), if we hadn’t already discussed moral imperatives, but we did.

I don't recall your discussion of moral imperatives with other people, and don't understand what part of your question you think I'm not answering. It seems to turn on some aspect of the word "moral" that I guess I didn't learn in Sunday school. If you'll explain, I'll try to answer.

I don’t. What in my post do you think indicates that I do? Again, you are not paying attention to what you are saying. You said: “What I didn't think I needed to say -- but I see that this omission confused you, and for that I apologize -- is that because EVERYONE agrees that success is important”. Please pay special attention to the word “everyone”. You thought that is was so obvious that ALL pundits and politicians consider it important that we succeed that you didn’t even think you needed to say it. You did not limit it to serious people (whatever that means) or people I take seriously.

So many people think that Iraq policy is important that I -- and, I suspect, most commentators other than political hacks trying to score cheap points -- don't expect them to need to say this. My point -- which must have been too subtle for you -- is that I assume that commentators believe that Iraq policy is important unless they say otherwise. This being the case, it would be odd to go looking for people who say it. You'd end up with a bunch of the aforementioned political hacks.

Agreeing that the ticking time bomb situation presents a MORAL imperative either refutes your assertion or demonstrates that you lack values by your own definition.

Again, you seem to have translated something that I said into something nonsensical using an English-to-Spanky translator. If you'd care to link to whatever it was that confused you, I'd be happy to try to clarify.

You have no respect for language, and that is what makes discussing things with you so difficult and often pointless. The point is NOT whether they think the Iraq policy is important or unimportant; the point is whether or not they appreciate how important is that we succeed. There is a massive difference there.

That depends on what you mean by success. The problem is that they want our foreign policy to be a success, while you are focused more narrowly on realizing the CPA's pipe dreams of an Iraqi democracy.

Among other things, she said it directly to my face two weeks ago. Unfortunately for me, because of certain relationships in my family, I am forced to spend some time with the idiot. Any time is too much time. But if you agree with me that Dr. Caldecott is a complete moron, and no one should ever listen to anything she has to say, I will agree that what she says in context here has absolutely no relevance. In other words, when you use the term “everyone” I will assume you mean people with an IQ above four, and she clearly does not fall in that category.

I don't know much about Dr. Caldicott and am happy to accept your characterization of her for these purposes. Since she continues to be Australian (I thought she was a Kiwi, but Googled), she continues to be irrelevant for present purposes, which have to do with whether your outlandish smears of your political opponents have any basis in reality.

The problem here is not the definition of success, that “problem’ was dealt with; the problem is your inability to follow a logical train of thought. It was obvious to me earlier (but unfortunately not for you) that we needed an agreed upon definition of success or the subsequent discussion would be pointless. I made clear that I thought that success in Iraq means leaving a stable democracy in Iraq. To reiterate what I already said, leaving a stable democracy in Iraq would be an almost priceless accomplishment for the people of Iraq, the people of the United States and the people of the Middle East. As I said, before, accomplishing that goal would be worth spending ten times the lives and money we have already put into the operation. We discussed Iran in relation to this, but in the end my definition was left as the definition. If that was not the case, and the definition of success was undefined, entering into the subsequent discussion was pointless. That is why I went to such great pains to establish the definition. I assumed you understood this; I won’t make such an assumption again. If you remember what I said, that if there was any chance of success in Iraq and our continued presence there would make it more likely than not that we would succeed, there is no question we should stay.

Under the definition of success we are using, you claimed everyone (and that includes Murtha) wants us to succeed. Clearly under the definition we were using that is wrong. You are now realizing this, so now you want to put into question the definition of success.

People like Murtha think that our continuing efforts in Iraq are (a) prolonging Iraq's agony by worsening the conflict and forestalling national reconciliation, and (b) undermining our national security in a number of other ways. You don't get (a), and you ignore (b) by defining "success" to ignore things like the state of our military, international standing, etc. The point I was making before is that (a) is, for many people, sufficient. The idea is that the Iraqis are never going to get their shit together until we set a timeline for departure.