... To Geoff, I apologise for insinuating that you supported a mass killer because you kept making excuses and trying to pin this on the other side and misrepresented what was posted to you. ... Had Geoff made such accusations against a member that was not me, then he probably would have been booted and I doubt a single moderator would have said boo. I don't absolve myself of responsibility for my behaviour when fighting with Geoff. I never have. And neither should he. You are not innocent Geoff, nor are you a victim and neither am I. And we both have a choice in how to carry on after this. You can gloat because you feel you have won something that you never had in the first place, or you can stop acting like a dick and move on.
Back to topic..
In post 814, GeoffP admits to first calling you a "twit" and apologizes, saying that was inappropriate. In post 819 you say: To Geoff, "I apologise for insinuating that you supported a mass killer ..." which I think is quite generous as anyone responsible for 100,000 dead, many being innocent civilians, has earned the label of "mass killer"
IF not done as part of war, like the intentional and needless fire-storm English bombers made in Dresden. (Needless as the war was won. Dresden had no military significance. It was destroyed in a single raid to impress Stalin. Dresden was chosen as it was untouched as too far east for bombers to make round trip until some airfields had been captured in western Germany.
The mass killing Dresden fire storm was intentional: For several months before the raid a dozen or so math, probability and other experts had been locked in an Army barrack computing what was the optimum mix of HE bombs (to block roads so fire truck could do little and to put fuel into the streets; What fraction of the incendiary bombs should have hooks to catch on the roof gutters, preventing citizens from putting them out, etc. This is all well documented in Book
Fire and the Air War* which focused entirely on the un-insulated barrack, with 24/7 guard at the door, where the raid was carefully planned.
My point is that War makes men and governments, even the best, into monsters with zero humanity; But to repay you for reading this far, I'll tell a very small part of the book's story:
Coal was rationed, and only a small bucket full per day was provided to those calculating with pencils, so they went on strike for more coal, saying they could not hold the pencils their fingers were so cold. It took a couple of weeks, and several threats that they could be tried for treason, before the "won't calculate without more coal" problem worked it way up thru the chain of command all the way to Churchill, who promptly said: "Give them their God Dam coal." So work resumed to make the first well planned fire storm in history.
Their work was "Perfect" - In only half a day there was no oxygen left in the ground level air in central Dresden - so all died - That could even be called massive chemical warfare; but the heat continued for days. When a week or 10 days later the more shallow bomb shelters (often just a basement) could be entered, many had an inch or so of grease on the floor. The heat had rendered the fat out of the dead bodies, still sitting on benches.
So, yes, back to the topic: Both the Syrian government and those trying to topple it are behaving as men usually do when fighting for their lives in a war, but England had no military need to kill the population of Dresden. That they carefully planned to is not well known as the victor get to write the history of wars.
* I read the original edition, more than 50 years ago - Amazon says it is no longer available but they still have four copies of this 2005 one:
Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor (Jan 18, 2005) and many copies of a relatively recent one with the original's same title.
As I said: The victors get to write history and remove now embarrassing books. The original is rich in details about what happened inside the un-insulated barrack so I suspect the author was one of those who did the calculating - perhaps a feeling of guilt drove him to write the book.
