Use Your Illusions

[ddoss]

"The Illusionist" was as good as I had expected. Ed Norton is one of my favorite actors, and I liked Paul Giamatti in Sideways. It is a love story and a mystery revolving around a stage magician and the Crown Prince of Austria in Vienna. I'll admit to a weakness for stories involving stage magic, as I idolize Harry Houdini and James Randi for

Comments

[timesend]

Iraq is FUBAR because of what it symbolizes. The idea that is America vs. the idea of terrorism, or everything Al Qaeda stands for, and what it will eventually come down to is which idea is stronger. The war IN Iraq, as they call it, is apt, because it's not a war with Iraq. We beat Iraq, or Military scored a stunning victory. What is going on now is a war of ideas. Because we cannot attack the idea terrorism, we have given it a way to manifest itself, and a stage for it to take form on. This is the biggest, best strategy we've come up with, and the fact that it has been so cleverly effective does not take away from how terrifying the concept is.

[ddoss]

I agree and disagree. Terror is just a tactic. It seems to me to be a war between civilization and barbarism. Once Islam was a very progressive religion, contributing much to science and learning. Now that it is being corroded from the inside by fundamentalist forces that will kill those who disagree with their efforts to drag everyone back to the Dark Ages

[timesend]

Civilization vs Barbarism is accurate, and terrorism is a very powerful tool to prop up the ideals of Al Qaeda. It is truly coming down to who has the stronger ideas and convictions, us or them. People don't seem to realize that this is a battle for survival, not just random crazies and isolated incidents, and that astonishes me. By taking the war to Iraq, we have disrupted them bringing it to us. How long will that hold up as a defense? Not forever. So far it has worked because our war leaders were clever enough to realize that the ragheads bought into their own bunk about Americans being evil and wanting nothing more than to steal everything they have and ruin what they hold dear, so any invasion of an Islamic territory was confirming the bullshit the leaders fed their followers and just vaacuumed their forces into Iraq en masse where they are fighting a war against the US that really... has absolutely no cost to us, whatsoever. I mean sure, there's a SHIT TON of money going into it, and lives are being lost, but it's just...

[ddoss]

I concur.

I think that if we "pull out" of Iraq we might as well call it "Operation: Sorry Israel, You Are on Your Own." It could come to an head much sooner, if Iran persists in developing The Bomb. A state controlled by these fanatics armed with nuclear weapons is an intolerable state of affairs, especially for Israel. Just the past few days the evidence that Iran is playing a major role in maintaining the level of violence in Iraq is mounting. From Iraq to Hamas to Hezballah, Iran seems to have it's finger in every terrorist pie.