Call me uneducated. But am I the only one who finds it strange to see Albert Einstien being number 1?

Unless, I'm missing something here.

Quote from: Lord Starch on May 27, 2015, 08:18:33 PM

It is when the end result was a ton of lives saved and the liberation of the Indian people.

Lol, Mother Theresa is probably responsible for the deaths of more people than their saving.

And read this about Gandhi.

It appears I have so reading to do. I'll try to get the facts.

Bush used black magic to change the chemical properties of steel to lower its melting point so the WTC could be destroyed. That's pretty darn evil.

This is literally the most stupid thing I've seen in awhile.

To be fair, Bush was a pretty terrible person who began an unnecessary and illegal war that cost our country trillions of dollars we didn't have, thousands of lives of soldiers, and the lives of 100,000+ civilians. So...it's not like he should be ranked up there with MLK and Jesus.

Plus the proximity to his actions leaves it feeling pretty fresh.

Quote

illegal

Yeah, it wasn't illegal.

I'd consider waging war under false pretenses pretty illegal...

Not that it matters. Even if it were proven to be an illegal act, Bush and friends will never see a courtroom.

Quote from: Mad Max on May 29, 2015, 10:13:45 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on May 29, 2015, 10:08:13 AM

Quote

illegal

Yeah, it wasn't illegal.

I'd consider waging war under false pretenses pretty illegal...

The only institution with the authority to rule a certain war as illegal--the UN Security Council--hasn't done so.

are you arguing from authority here

or are they also the only institution with access to all intelligence that could lead to such a rule?
because... i don't think so

that would seem rather suspect

So... uh... what exactly did Princess Die ever do again?

"humanize" the royal family

that's it

To be fair, Bush was a pretty terrible person who began an unnecessary and illegal war that cost our country trillions of dollars we didn't have, thousands of lives of soldiers, and the lives of 100,000+ civilians. So...it's not like he should be ranked up there with MLK and Jesus.

Plus the proximity to his actions leaves it feeling pretty fresh.

You're an embarrassment bro. Thank God you don't teach children history.

Who gives a fuck if a war is illegal

It's a fucking war nigga

More to the point, who gives a fuck if the UN says it's illegal.

OK, college students hating on Bush Jr is par for the course. Still, putting Joseph Stalin above him is laughable. Those guys have obviously never heard of the Katyn Massacre, among countless others.

I'm far more surprised that Che Guevara was one slot below Winston Churchill.

Also, it's funny that Karl Marx ranked fairly high, but almost everyone who put his ideology into practice ranked pretty close to the bottom.




AND GORBACHEV WAS AT 28?!

HOW THE HELL IS THAT POSSIBLE?!  You're telling me that the man who instituted the economic and political reforms that led to the end of the Soviet Union was two spots above Napoleon Bonaparte? Gorby's one of the main reasons World War III was avoided. If a Party hardliner had gotten into power, I'd probably be typing this with a chisel on a cave wall, because that's all that would be left in the world.

And evidently, the guy between them brought democracy to China... (thx Wiki).

Quote from: Mad Max on May 29, 2015, 10:13:45 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on May 29, 2015, 10:08:13 AM

Quote

illegal

Yeah, it wasn't illegal.

I'd consider waging war under false pretenses pretty illegal...

What were the false pretenses?

The fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction as had been reported.

Quote from: SgtMag1 on May 29, 2015, 07:57:05 PM

Quote from: Mad Max on May 29, 2015, 10:13:45 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on May 29, 2015, 10:08:13 AM

Quote

illegal

Yeah, it wasn't illegal.

I'd consider waging war under false pretenses pretty illegal...

What were the false pretenses?

The fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction as had been reported.

I mean, not unless you consider chemical weapons to be WMD's...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0

In which case, yes, there were WMD's in Iraq. The problem wasn't that they didn't have any WMD's, it was that our intelligence suggested it was an active program. It wasn't, but the fact of the matter is, Iraq had WMD's. More than 17 sites were discovered during the war that acted as storage for Iraq's stockpile of chemical weapons. But, this just isn't coming from The New York Times. So, to reiterate, Iraq had chemical weapons. The bad intel lies in that we thought their program was active; most cases found present the case that they just stockpiled weapons and were not creating any new ones.

A chemical weapons facility was also found in a joint US SOF-Peshmerga raid in northern Iraq against Ansar al Islam in Jan. 2003. To my knowledge, it's still not clear how Ansar al Islam had their hands on chemical weapons. It has been theorized that Saddam transferred some to them as Ansar al Islam was predominately preoccupied with fighting the Kurds and not the Saddam regime.

Do you also think al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq pre-invasion? I could gladly clear that up too.

Quote from: SgtMag1 on May 31, 2015, 12:13:23 AM

Quote from: Mad Max on May 30, 2015, 09:29:14 PM

Quote from: SgtMag1 on May 29, 2015, 07:57:05 PM

Quote from: Mad Max on May 29, 2015, 10:13:45 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on May 29, 2015, 10:08:13 AM

Quote

illegal

Yeah, it wasn't illegal.

I'd consider waging war under false pretenses pretty illegal...

What were the false pretenses?

The fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction as had been reported.

I mean, not unless you consider chemical weapons to be WMD's...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0

In which case, yes, there were WMD's in Iraq. The problem wasn't that they didn't have any WMD's, it was that our intelligence suggested it was an active program. It wasn't, but the fact of the matter is, Iraq had WMD's. More than 17 sites were discovered during the war that acted as storage for Iraq's stockpile of chemical weapons. But, this just isn't coming from The New York Times. So, to reiterate, Iraq had chemical weapons. The bad intel lies in that we thought their program was active; most cases found present the case that they just stockpiled weapons and were not creating any new ones.

A chemical weapons facility was also found in a joint US SOF-Peshmerga raid in northern Iraq against Ansar al Islam in Jan. 2003. To my knowledge, it's still not clear how Ansar al Islam had their hands on chemical weapons. It has been theorized that Saddam transferred some to them as Ansar al Islam was predominately preoccupied with fighting the Kurds and not the Saddam regime.

Do you also think al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq pre-invasion? I could gladly clear that up too.

So you don't consider those to be false pretenses to the war?

How is that a false pretense? One reason for the war was that Iraq was in possession of WMD's, which they were.

Quote from: SuperIrish on May 30, 2015, 10:16:32 PM

This could be a commentary on the stupidity of students (or rather, ignorance), or how the media portays these people to them.

I mean, Hitler was bad, but I would argue others have been worse, both in killcount and method of death as well as other things.

Meanwhile, Einstein is apparently a hero though IIRC he was a part of the Manhattan Project which resulted in over 200,000 deaths?

You know, they weren't exactly sure what they were up to at the time. I know being ignorant doesn't neccessarily excuse it. But the team(s) were kept in the dark about things a fair bit. There was pressure to find a solution because of the war.

Hell, the pilots who dropped the first bomb weren't even told what the fuck exactly they were dropping.

And, you take a look at the recordings of one fellow after they dropped the first bomb? It's not a lie that sometimes there is no "good" way out of things. And I have no doubt that any of the people who worked on that project, walked away from it unchanged. A bet you they carried that guilt with them up until they died.

Which, again, may not excuse it. But there are some people on that list who probably didn't even possess the capaicty to feel guilt.

Some did have immense guilt, as did others who were part of later projects that haven't even been used in warfare (Oppenheimer and the H bomb), but as you say ignorance can't save them here. Sure they may not have known the true effects of the first atomic weapons, but they did know it was going to win/end a war.

What else ends wars but a more efficient destructive weapon? The fact they continued even in the dark about what they were making makes it even somewhat worse.