jfuh

wow, awesome rebuttle by Billo. This true debate is how it should be on this site. Perfect

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The facts and science of the theory of anthropogenic Global warming

Cataclysmic 7.9 earthquake in China, how to donate to the relief fund.

Stinger

ToT good use of actual history and evidence to make your case of a basic stay the course solution.
BoR lots of assertions of how bad you claim things are but nothing to back this up or an alternate solution which would be better.

Points to ToT

cascadian

I have to say that Trajan is being very thorough, but a high percentage of his sources have an obvious bias. That in itself doesn't mean that the facts aren't verifiable, just that one would have to go somewhere else to do it. So the links wind up being pretty useless.

jfuh

Tot seems to be loosing it, in #17, how many times can we count responses that begin with "My Opponent" as well as the classic attack again on "the liberal left" as a reason of failures.

Korimyr the Rat

That's merely the respectful way to refer to the person you are debating with when you don't feel like being flowery enough to say "my esteemed opponent".

I prefer the respectful forms. Used in a straight tone, they help reinforce the camarederie and esteem that skilled debaters should hold for each other; with slight changes in inflection they can be used to express anything else from mild condescension to outright contempt without demonstrating any loss of control on your part.

It's like the popular myth that there ain't no swear words in Japanese, and that the language itself just ain't equipped for rudeness. What they miss is that the formal courtesy in the grammar allows you to be just as insulting without having recourse to crude language.

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jfuh

I'm not referencing to the grammatical usage, my reference is to the false attack on the opponent as opposed to any valid attack on the issue, which would be much more preferable.

AS for Japanese not having swear words. You're absolutely correct. Technically there are no such traditional "swear words" that are easily blanked up by this site. There is also no way of direct confrontational words or phrases (you can't say no). But it's still the same thing and understood the same way.
Would you like something to eat? "Keikko desu" or thank you, but actually mean no thanks and is understood as such.

GySgt

Well, as I suspected, some will vote on their personal sentiments towards the war instead of the debate.



TOT focused on the mission.
Billo focused on the emotional aspect of war.

I was frustrated at times with some of TOT's posts, because I kept wanting to interject and throw down some grounded reality where he missed opportunities, but unfortunately, some of Billo's "facts" were based on anti-war sentiments and non reality based ideology rather than the issues.

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GySgt
Semper Fidelis
USMC

Billo_Really

You do have the right to your opinion. But there's not much reality with TOT trying to educate me on power generation and distribution. I've been an Electrical Design Engineer for the last 20 years. So, if I deem it necessary to talk about something electrical, believe me, I know what I'm talking about.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners"
- Charlton Heston

Trajan Octavian Titus

It doesn't take an electrical engineer to know that 5,000 MW's is a higher electrical output than 4400 MW's. There is more electricity today than there was before the war that's why 56% of people say that their lives are better now than under Saddam while only 19% (the Sunni's in Baghdad who were the only ones with continious power before the war) say that their lives are worse, Saddam was using basic services (or lack there of) to control the populace, if you have contradictory evidence that says that more people had more electricity before the war than they do now then by all means present it.

Billo_Really

Listen, producing power does not equal receiving electricity. You have to have a closed loop for current to flow. So, for the sake of arguement, we say they are producing more, it doesn't do anyone any good if transmission lines are down or someones home is destroyed. Or, even better yet, if our American soldiers turn off basic services in a neighborhood to flush out suspected insurgents, thinking the neighborhood residents know where they are so they punish the whole block. In either case, average Iraqi citizens are not getting 24/7 electricity. I just posted a link that said Bagdad is only getting one hour of electricity a day.

Talk to me about electricity. I'm all ears!

You didn't prove jack-s.h.i.t!