Atheist Heroes?

[The Grand Nudger]

Everything you just typed is based on the assumption that our covert and intelligence agencies are so inept, so utterly devoid of competence that there is no way we could of resolved this surgically and ahead of time. 

You think that they could have?  Why didn't they, then?

To support his position you then have to compound that with the admission that you would rather foreign innocents die than friendly troops who volunteered for war. That minimizing damage to troops is more important than minimizing collateral.

Quote any such admission, douche, lol.  I think, that once the decision is made to trade volleys, minimizing friendly casualties - and "friendly" includes foreign civilians who are non-combatants..... in case you didn't realize........ is the best scenario we can actually manage, even if it isn't the best that we can imagine.  I said as much -explicitly-.  Wish in one hand Rob, shit in the other, and tell me which fills up first?

At no point was that conceded and at no point was a case made why another possibility simply was not possible therefore justifying the deaths of countless innocents.

Collateral damage is a fact, not an idea in search of justification.  Notify  me when you come down from the clouds.  The death of non-combatants is distasteful, but unavoidable.  It racks my dreams, it;s the most painful thing I can conceive of.  I don't decide whether or not charlie thinks of his fellow countrymen as meatshields, and the alternative is to let him shoot me or continue to fuck them over.  What would you do, faced with that decision, hold your fire?  Doubtful.  Nothing pisses me off more, than a person who forces me to shoot someone else to get to them.  Turns me into a real cunt.  All of a sudden, I want to kill their children and all their friends, and break everything they've ever touched.  I want to burn their city to the ground and drink from their busted skulls.  Can you put yourself in my shoes....and can you see why I take offense to the idea that I would rather innocents die than soldiers?  Soldiers agree to fight and die, and presumably they agree to fight and die against other soldiers.  I hate, -hate- people who fuck with that relationship.  Why should I have to explain this at all?  If your objections to either Hitchens comments or my own rest upon this.....is it even worth my time to straighten you out?

Fuck it, go ahead.  Tell us what we should have done, from the ivory tower, in the best -imaginable- scenario, when everything goes right and you don't have to make tough decisions.  Tell me I'd rather innocents die than soldiers if that's what you need to do, if it makes sense of the world to you.........I'll be that villain, if that's what you need.  You're absolutely right, fuck em, I'd rather they die than my buddy Smitty.   I don't get to make that call, though, so they continue breathing and my friends are buried in their stead, cut down and laid low for being foolish enough to stand up to the people who saw them as nothing more than cheap kevlar vests.  But, I guess, we should have just let them keep fucking their own people over - or wait for spies and assassins to solve the problem.  Mea culpa.

Or maybe, just maybe, you're reading something into my comments and Hitchens comments...that was never there to begin with. He and I both would (and do, and did) advocate for a war to remove a despot, neither of us advocate for the slaughter of "innocents" - whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.