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Old 09-02-2006, 04:22 PM   #207
MaggieL
in the Hour of Scampering
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Jeffersonville PA (15 mi NW of Philadelphia)
Posts: 4,060
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hippikos
It is wrong because it doesn't fit your high moral world view?
I was actually addressing tw, who would still rather call me names rather than respond to the question. I think I'll go back to ignoring him now (since he's actually ignoring me); it's a fitting punishment. Far be it from me to continue to try to convince him that he might listen to a Lebanese national rather that his "centrist" (now there's a howler...pardon me, a fucking howler) BBC.

(I guess refusing to use the word "terrorist" at all might look "centrist" next to those who call the Israelis "terrorists". But I think that's a funny place to put your "center". )

There's a difference between using an area weapon and indescriminate bombing. An area weapon targets an area rather than just a point, but in the case of a cluster bomb the area is precicely determined because the weapon is precicely guided to a selected target.

A shrapnel-fiilled high-explosive warhead with no guidance system is indiscriminate; the person firing it has very little idea of or control over who it kills.

Of course, a nail-studden Semtex vest detonated in a pizza shop is an area weapon, but also indiscriminate; even though the human bomb is much more *capable* of controlling who is killed than a Hezbollah rocket artilleryman, he or she simply doesn't care; after all, Allah knows his own.
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