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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (4552)	2/17/2003 6:08:25 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

"Do you not see how black and white that is?" Yes. You apparently think that he can be convinced to compromise in an acceptable way. Do you not understand the nature of despotic tyranny? That is what you are offering as a compromise...you just want to contain that. Nice, as long as your relatives are not forced to live under it, right? and if someone you cared about was? "We can also defer action until there is a better international consensus," You left of the... <g>..this time. It aint a light switch were operating ya know. Its the most powerful and organized superpower the world has ever known. "Containment and deferral are not support for him and his regime." Unfortunately, by default it is.

To: Lane3 who wrote (4552)	2/17/2003 8:16:12 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 7720

There are containment options that are popular among the peaceniks. You may not favor them, but they are, indeed, options. There are always options in theory. One option is to send a load of dates to Saddam as a gift and hope that he will choke on one of the date seeds. Sure, that's an option, at least in theory. I wouldn't count on that one. But it is an option. Remember Nancy Reagan and "Just say No"? That was an option for ending drug use. Our tax mess? We have the option to abandon the IRS entirely and make all taxes voluntary, and trust people to pay their fair share. That's an option. We can just pray that God will come down into a burning bush and take Saddam away. That's an option, too, and one that should appeal to the religious right. The issue is not that there aren't options. You're right, there are always options. (Heck, one can even say that there's the option to turn our country over to Saddam and appoint him dictator-for-life of the USA. It's an option!) The issue is what the realistic options are which have a reasonable chance of attaining your goal. (Assuming you understand what the goal is, and I think that's part of the problem with Iraq, quite different goals, and therefore of course quite different options.) That's a pragmatic, rather than a theoretical, use of the term option. I suspect that's the way in which Jewel was using the term.