[peirrotlunaire]

Likewise, countries like Mexico and Canada have gone about 140 and 200 years, respectively, without significant armed activity on their territory, at least in part because of their proximity to the United States.

..except that it was the US that attacked Canada and Mexico 200 and 140 years ago.  The British and Canadians beat you back to a draw and you took Texas and California from Mexico.  So proximity to the US seems to have made armed activity worse.  I'm being a little silly here now that we are all allies, but you see my point.

[Lingster]

Oh, and as far as letting another nation be the earth's emergency number to dial… and I honestly write this with all due respect to the other citizens of the world:  who do you wanna nominate?  :-

But that's the point – the rest of the world still wants the U.S. to do the work, it just wants to tell us how and when it should be done.

[Richard]

While I hope that the majority of your armed forces are intelligent responsable individuals it is a fact that your government now allows people with criminal convictions and no Highschool education into your ranks. It troubles me to think that these individuals are in life and death situations. Sort of reminds me of the British sending the Back and Tans to terrorize Ireland.

[Lingster]

The government has always allowed people with criminal records to join, if they can acquire what's called a "moral waiver" – basically they have to show repentance and be considered a low risk for recidivism.  Then and now such people make up a tiny fraction of the enlistees.  Less than a thousand enlistees last year had felony convictions prior to being granted a moral waiver.

[whitemott2004]

Hey Jimmy,

You're right about some terrorists being educated.  I'll still maintain though, that the uneducated do a substantial amount of the "blowing themselves up thing."  Just in case I wasn't clear, I'm referring to the terrorists as uneducated rednecks (again, for the most part), not our troops.

I also understand your point about weeding out terrorists but… I just think the way we do it isn't going to work.  I'm not going to pretend to have a solution… other than an extraordinary amount of ordinance that the rest of the world would scream bloody murder over the use of. 

In my garden, if the weeds get too overgrown, it's time for a huge amount of Roundup followed by a complete roto-tilling.  I have a distinct impression the Europeans wouldn't like the analogy being carried out in the real world.

[ze fly]

Hmmm.  I hadn't realized that Germany had any troops in Afghanistan until I'd seen a DW documentary on Hong Kong's channel ATV World. 

Germany is very reluctant to send troops outside her frontiers, due to world war II syndrome. Generally, they send medical staff, or Engineers. Exception may be here in France at Strasbourg for the Eurocorps, but there is no conflict… ;D 

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