Soul Raven
Member

Registered: Dec 1999
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Posts: 239 |
quote: Originally posted by dietrichbohn
In fact, thinking of it as a "war" is wrong...
This has been floating around in my head, too. I know people complained about calling the Korean and Vietnam Wars as police-actions. OK, well at least on re-runs of M*A*S*H* they complained about it. The government called those conflicts 'police actions' when they were, in effect, 'wars'.
Now we have this, which the government is calling a war, when it is obvious to me that it is a police action. This is not a war in the aspect there is no line on a map, and all the people on this side of the line are the "good guys" and all the people on that side are "bad guys". We are not going to deploy a division of tanks to level City X and destroy the fuel/ammo dump. The B-52s will not carpet-bomb large areas of real estate. Instead, we will see a SEAL team sent to an area to capture 1 or 2 individuals. We will have a company of infantry deployed to search a city for bomb-making materials or a weapons cache. I expect very little of it to show up on TV (which is good because it protects national security, and it's bad because now the government has carte blanche to do what they want, and aren't answerable to us, the taxpayers/voters). Bush mentioned that in his speech, "many [missions] will be secret, even in success." I think many people want a smoldering pile of rubble to point to and say, "Ha! We got you! That'll teach you to screw with us!" and I don't think that is going to happen.
Can I rant a little bit about the new FAA regulations? There is now (or will be) a no-fly zone around every large gathering such as concerts and sporting events. It is a 3 mile radius with a ceiling of 3,000 feet. Pilots who violate the no-fly zone will "be subject to stiff fines and possible revocation of their license." Oooooh, scary, I'll bet there were dozens of terrorists who packed it in after hearing that. The only thing that this new law prevents is the Goodyear blimp aerial shots. There are many private planes that can cruise at 200 knots and would cross that 3 mile zone in 47 seconds. A commercial airliner would do it in half the time. Unless you have an F-15 in the area or a Patriot battery in the parking lot, there isn't a lot that you can do except watch.
In the miniscule hope that anyone in a public office reads this board: don't create stupid new laws to give us a false sense of security. Enforce the ones we have already.
OK, I'm done ranting. Back to work...
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Soul Raven - "Sm� hjerne, stor gl�de"
Wherever you go, there you are.
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