First, Rosie O'Donnell was not fired. Rosie felt that with her hateful, anti-American rants she should be free to sell her lies to NBC or CBS if they offer her more next year. ABC wanted to lock her anti-American lies in for three years. In other words, ABC wanted to reward her for her vile and moronic anti-American statesments and Rosie felt her vile and moronic anti-American statements were worth more.
Okay...let me explain. I do not call people names. These are words that I chose carefully and her claims, for example, that America blew up buildings in the World Trade Center complex are not only moronic -- she basis her claim on the "fact" that "never before in history has fire melted metal. How does she think metal is shaped? Does she think there are "car mines" where cars are dug out of the ground fully formed? Has she never seen a smelter or molten metals being poured into molds? Is she truly that stupid or is she intentionally lying in order to promote a vicious slander against America? Those are the only two possibilities.
So why does Barbara Walters continue to employ her? Why does ABC allow this? Money? Don't you think Rush Limbaugh would bring in a good deal of money with a similar show? Wouldn't the show do better if it had intelligent conservatives watching and not just angry, New York City single women? No, it's not money.
It's because truth means nothing to the left. Nothing. So when Peter Jennings died the same Barbara Walters who allows these anti-American lies to be spread by an upside-down, hanging angry women incapable of maintaining a normal relationship with the opposite sex who pops pills because never having worked for a living, her millions of dollars leave her so depressed she has to pop pills is considered, lauded her deceased colleague by saying "what made Peter great was that he knew there was no such thing as the truth."
To Barbara Walters Rosie and her friend Peter are one and the same. People to whom truth is meaningless.
616 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 616 Newer› Newest»I IGNORE diversions me. You keep bringing up "excuses" and not arguments.
It's no my yob.
American people are dumb
Minorities in Congress are Spectators
Bush is a liar
You ignore my diversions
Why did Bush invade Iraq, me, WHAT exectly did he gain?
Fj, why don't you want to simply restate some historical facts? It's easy, you just copy and paste, really.
What's the problem?
As for congress, how feasible, do you think, it was politically for anyone who didn't believe the case on the Republican side to vote against the President?
The president tells you, I've got rock=solid intelligence on this guy, you're not going to believe me? Are you questioning my integrity? My Patriotism? The american people are facing an imminent threat and you want subponeas? LOL Good luck with that, it's like shooting yourself in the head.
Do you think that all Republicans somehow magically believed what Bush was saying, and that's why all 50 of them in the Senate voted for Bush? Or maybe there was just a teensy weensy bit of politicking involved?
Foundation not established. Fish elsewhere, counselor.
New excuse...
Republicans can't be trusted to vote their conscience and NOT the party line...
Somebody ought to tell THAT to the Republicans.
You are VERY funny, me. You write excellent jokes.
Government IS ALL politics, me. That is ALL Government is.
Don't you think there were politics going on?
Do they serve Chinese food in a Chinese Restaurant?
WHY did Bush invade Iraq, me?
Avoidance is becoming your middle name.
All right, let's take baby steps. I will write below the reasons why the CIA and MI6 overthrew Mosadegh in Iran, and you tell me if you disagree:
MANN (voice-over): Iran in the `50s was as important for its oil as it is now, and it was the oil that set off the chain of events. Iran's petroleum was, for years, under British, not Iranian, control.
When Iran nationalized the industry, the British government, under Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was furious. London set out to topple the man it blamed - the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.
The British government enlisted the help of the Eisenhower administration in the United States, which was drawn in by a very different concern - the spread of Soviet influence.
MARK GASIOROWSKY, AUTHOR: They felt that in Iran, while Mossadegh was certainly not a Communist, that the things that he was doing might give the Communist Party of Iran an opportunity to strengthen itself and perhaps eventually take over.
MANN: So Britain and the United States stepped in to prevent it.
...
MANN: The plan immediately ran into trouble, but eventually it did succeed. It succeeded in giving Iran a weak and indecisive man as an authoritarian ruler and it change the course of the country's history. It took the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to finally undo the West's work, and it took nearly half a century for the United States to offer even last month's tepid apology.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development, and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0004/19/i_ins.00.html
Okay, so you tell me if you disagree with any of the above, okay?
Government IS ALL politics, me. That is ALL Government is.
Not all government, but certainly the Congress and the President.
If Congress is politics all the time, then all their votes were not really on whether the intelligence was convincing, but were for political reasons, right? Repubs go with the prez, some Dems don't want to look weak on national security only a year after 9/11, some Dems gamble that this is a really bad idea. But none of their votes have anything to do with whether the intelligence was concinving, right? so then, the votes you love to cite, that the congress approved it, so it must be true, is actually a fallacious statement. The votse have no bearing on whether it was true, and the truthiness of the intelligence has no bearing on the votes. So, stop citing the votes as proof that the intelligence was convincing.
"Let me guess what's coming: more non-responsive answers and more ad hominem. Lovely."
I already answered that question. I suggest you read it again.
Bush did not start a war, becuase the president does not have the power to do that. Congress authorized the war. Maybe you need to read the Constitution again.
The video I gave showed many Democrats when Clinton was in office that believed Saddam had WMD. It also had Democrats when Bush was in office that believed that Saddam had WMD. Therefore, these Democrats did start a war based on this intelligence considering they voted on it. 81 Democrats in the House voted for the Iraq Resolution and 29 Democrats in the Senate voted for it. That means that 21 Democrats in the Senate voted against it and 126 Democrats in the House voted against it. You can deny reality all you want, but the 110 Democrats that voted for the Iraq Resolution voted for war based on the intelligence. If you really believe that these Democrats were all duped by the President, then I suggest they should all step down because they are not fit for public office. Bush made me do it is not a defense.
The only one engaging in ad-hominem attacks is you calling the American people stupid. Get off your high horse. Who else believed Saddam had WMD? French President Jacques Chirac, who said in February 2003: "There is a problem — the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right . . . in having decided Iraq should be disarmed."
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/elder052506.asp
xkvsxe,
Can I ask you a question? Why did all the Republicans vote for the war, but not al democrats, if the vote was based on the veracity of the intelligence? How did this intelligence somehow manage to convince all the Republicans, but less than half of the Democrats?
Awaiting your response.
Nope - No disagreement on Iran except for a few unnecessary perjoratives. What's your point? When, if ever, are you going to make it?
But none of their votes have anything to do with whether the intelligence was concinving, right? Nope, strawman.
Politics is always something different than the truth content of intelligence? Is THAT your new "fallacious" argument?
congress approved it, so it must be true, is actually a fallacious statement.
Indeed it is. I never made that statement. I simply stated that 1/2 of the OPPOSING Party in Congress may have believed the President case and perhaps 1/2 didn't. And that it was Congresses responsibility to learn the truth, not simply the President's to provide it.
And you are the one that has to prove that the President magically and deliberately DUPED Congress and that they were not self-duping.
The votse have no bearing on whether it was true, and the truthiness of the intelligence has no bearing on the votes Really? Do "lies" make for good politics, then?
So that whole Iran affair in 1953 -- it was done for oil, you understand?
Regime change is sometimes done for oil.
That's my only point.
but let me enter one more "small" fact into the record as evidence on Iran.
Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil inductry and then "collectivezed" all agriculture/farms. When the Shah deposed him, the Communists rioted and forced his reappointment.
America's fear ...
"They felt that in Iran, while Mossadegh was certainly not a Communist, that the things that he was doing might give the Communist Party of Iran an opportunity to strengthen itself and perhaps eventually take over."
...was NOT unfounded.
Any objections to the point?
Indeed. Regime changes ARE done for oil. If that is your argument, I won't disagree with it, that Iraq was ALL about oil.
But it wasn't about America "stealing" Iraq's oil. Or Bush "profitting" from oil. It was about Iraq's oil would be used to fund terrorists, and enemies of America... like Saddam Hussein, or whether they would go to provide for the well being of the Iraqi people.
No objections on the 2nd paragraph, but please note, that he was not a communist, and that what he was doing MIGHT help some quasi-communist people? Sounds kinda tenuous to me.
Communism may have been a collateral secondary reason, a justification for the US, but the overwhelming and main reason was oil: BP didn't want to lose all that oil.
And where did you get this:
Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil inductry and then "collectivezed" all agriculture/farms. When the Shah deposed him, the Communists rioted and forced his reappointment.
Do you have a cite? As far as I know, after the CIA reinstalled the Shah, Mossadegh spent the rest of his life under house arrest, while the CIA helped Pahlavi build his secret police, which stifled any democracy movements and free speech rather successfully until 1979.
Are you trying to say that America has NO strategic interests worth preserving in the Middle East? Do you believe that an American withdrawl from Iraq will in any way serve those interests?
Wikipedia... just read it.
...this was pre-CIA plot... the reasons WHY America got involved at ALL.
I also draw your attention to the "year" in which those "fears" of "Communists" arose...
unjustified? Not hardly.
Well, maybe Iraq was not "ALL" about oil. I withdraw that statement. There are some other "strategic" reasons for invading Iraq as well, that I'll only go into if the need arises.
Well, I'm glad we agree about Iraq and oil. My only point in presenting the Mossadegh story was to nip in the bud any obejctions that regime changes are never done for oil. They are, quite often, done for economic reasons, including oil. So let's just drop all this pretense about WMDs and democracy-building, shall we? It's really quite insutling to the intelligence.
But it wasn't about America "stealing" Iraq's oil. Or Bush "profitting" from oil. It was about Iraq's oil would be used to fund terrorists, and enemies of America... like Saddam Hussein, or whether they would go to provide for the well being of the Iraqi people.
Bush may not directly profit from Iraq's oil, but the plan was to have american oil companies in Iraq. Maybe the profits would go to the Iraqi people, maybe even the ownership of the wells, but having American companies control those oil fields -- very important. Furthermore, Bush's friends have certainly benefitted, and once this adminsitration is out of office, watch how quickly they end up in the private sector, in very lucrative positions in those companies that benefitted from the Iraq War economically. Futhermore, and I don't know if this was foreseen or on, but the high price of oil that resulted because of the Iraq War -- a windfall for the oil companies, n'est-ce pas?
As for Iraqi oil being used to fund terrorists, please, again, don't insult my intelligence. Even with the corruption in the oil for food program, the money being made off that oil is not substantial compared to the moeny being made off of oil and gas in other parts of the middle east. Furthermore, if you're worried about oil being used to fund terrorists, you should invade Saudi Arabia. Where in the world did bin Laden's money come from? They are, as far as I know, a family that built its wealth through construction in Saudi Arabia. But surely, you understand, had it not been for Saudi oil, there would be no money for any kind of construction.
"Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil inductry and then "collectivezed" all agriculture/farms. When the Shah deposed him, the Communists rioted and forced his reappointment."
Please provide a citation.
Yes, Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, taking away control from BP. How dare he repatriate Iranian assets to the Iranian people instead of letting the colonial power continue to exploit them, right? How DARE he?!
Are you trying to say that America has NO strategic interests worth preserving in the Middle East? Do you believe that an American withdrawl from Iraq will in any way serve those interests?
No, i'm not saying the US has no stragetic interests, but I do think that deposing democratically elected leaders, of whatever persuation, is a bad idea. It damages America's reputation and makes people around the world more cynical about America, more distrustful, and less willing to help America.
Like, with Iran right now, Mossadegh is a little-known fact here in the US, but in Iran, it is THE event in Iranian-American relations, equal to if not more important than the hostage crisis, because Iranians know what american regime change is, and they don't what American regime change. They already had it once, thank you very much, and it sucked so bad they revolted. The government they have now is much more democratic than the one the US gave them, ironically, even with the Supreme Leader.
I also don't think deposing people like hussein, especially in the stupid way we have done it, is productive at all.
Fine, let's agree, we need regime change. But why do it the way it was done? It's not the only way to do these things.
That's what I don't get about this administration: such bad ideas, AND SUCH POOR EXECUTION!
I guess, in a way, i hope there are other reasons for this war than wmd and democracy, because if those really are the only reasons, our leaders are incompetent fools. it's just hard to believe that people could be that stupid, you know.
No, no, no. Lets NOT drop WMDs OR democracy building. In '91 Hussein signed a treaty with us, that he then proceeded to violate flagrantly and deliberately. Violation of that treaty became the official "causus belli." And contrary to DNC statements, it was sufficient cause for the UN to "permit" a "forced intervention" all on it's own.
As for democracy, you can't whine that the US "thwarting Iranian democracy" by aiding the Shah and at the same time say that aiding democracy in Iraq was not a collateral benefit. Why would it be important in "one case" and inconsequential in the other? Illogical.
Speaking of which, these all go nowhere either...
Bush did not profit from the war but his friends did.
Since his friends were Americans, what really is your point? That America can never commit an act of aggression if under any circumstances an American stands to profit from such an act? illogical.
the war was for "windfall" oil profits
This is really absurd... so the longer the war goes on, and the lower the President's aprroval rating gets, the more it motivates the President to "stretch out" the war... illogical.
As for the rest... indeed. The Saudi's will reap what they sow. All in good time.
And surely you know that if it weren't for western technology, Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves and wealth would now be and forever remained, "worthless black goo".
Here's your cites from Wiki's bio
On 28 April 1951 the Majlis named Mossadegh as new prime minister by a vote of 79-12. Aware of Mossadegh's rising popularity and political power, the young Shah was left with no other option but to give assent to the Parliament's vote. Shortly after coming to office, Mossadegh enforced the Oil Nationalization Act, which involved the expropriation of the AIOC's assets....
Taking advantage of his popularity, Mossadegh convinced the parliament to grant him increased powers and appointed Ayatollah Kashani as house speaker. Kashani's radical Muslims, as well as the Tudeh Party, proved to be two of Mossadegh's key political allies, although both relationships were often strained.
Mossadegh quickly implemented more sociopolitical changes. Iran's centuries old feudal agriculture sector was abolished, and replaced with a system of collective farming and government land ownership.
The government of Britain had grown increasingly distressed over Mossadegh's policies and were especially bitter over the loss of their control of the Iranian oil industry. Despite Mossadegh's repeated attempts to negotiate a reasonable settlement with them, they refused outright the same terms, and later total control over Iranian oil.
Unable to resolve the issue singlehandedly due to its post-Second World War problems, Britain looked towards the United States to settle the issue. The United States was led to believe by the British that Mossadegh was increasingly turning towards Communism and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere at a time of high Cold War fears.
And contrary to DNC statements, it was sufficient cause for the UN to "permit" a "forced intervention" all on it's own.
Are you an UN legal expert? I am more than you are, and no, it wasn't sufficient. The SC never authorized the use of force.
As for democracy, you can't whine that the US "thwarting Iranian democracy" by aiding the Shah and at the same time say that aiding democracy in Iraq was not a collateral benefit. Why would it be important in "one case" and inconsequential in the other? Illogical.
Not at all. Iranians had elected a leader, democratically, who was in power. There was no war within Iran at the same, DEMOCRACY WAS WORKING, and the US came in and fucked it all up, on purpose, and reinstalled a MONARCH and helepd him build a secret Stasi-type police to repress all dissent.
Compare that to Iraq: to call Iraq a democracy is to make a really sad joke.
Bush did not profit from the war but his friends did.
Since his friends were Americans, what really is your point? That America can never commit an act of aggression if under any circumstances an American stands to profit from such an act? illogical.
You're mixing up the order. It's okay to commit an act of aggression that incidentally benefits an American's profit. It's not okay to commit an act of aggression to benefit an American's profit. Big difference.
the war was for "windfall" oil profits
This is really absurd... so the longer the war goes on, and the lower the President's aprroval rating gets, the more it motivates the President to "stretch out" the war... illogical.
Maybe, why not? He doesn't give a crap about his approval ratings, he's dunzo. He's not spending his own money or his own life on this war -- it's other people's lives and money. But homeboy is going to have to feed his family somehow after he leaves office, and helping his Texas oil buddies, who were so instrumental in putting him into power, is no small favor. Remember, Bush used Ken Lay's offical Enron plane to get around during his first campaign for president. The ties run deep. Bush scratches their backs now, they will help him, or someone in his family, later.
The government they have now is much more democratic than the one the US gave them, ironically, even with the Supreme Leader.
You can't be serious. The Supreme Leader scratches off ALL candidates he doesn't like. Some "democracy". Reminds me of the old USSR days when there was only one name on the ballot and he always got elected "unanimously".
and we're on separate pages anon. about deposing Saddam. It was NOT done in a "stupid way". It was done "the only way".
So in fact, your citation makes no mention of what you previously wrote, "When the Shah deposed him, the Communists rioted and forced his reappointment."
The article paints quite the picture:
The United States was led to believe by the British that Mossadegh was increasingly turning towards Communism and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere at a time of high Cold War fears.
The US "was led to believe" -- was there really a threat? Apparently, Truman had previously refused to be involved, but Eisenhower was game. Whatever the communist threat from Mossadegh, it was negligble compared to the main reason for the coup: BP's loss of oil.
You can't be serious. The Supreme Leader scratches off ALL candidates he doesn't like. Some "democracy". Reminds me of the old USSR days when there was only one name on the ballot and he always got elected "unanimously".
(1) Umm, what kind of elections did they have under the Shah? Oh that's right: NONE. I said it was MORE DEMOCRATIC than the Shah. You can't argue with that.
(2) How exactly do you think elections in Turkey work? The military bans political parties that are too Kurd-y or too religious -- is Turkey not a democracy either? Why aren't we invading them? In fact they are our best buds, they're even in NATO!!! And what about Pakistan, with "President" Musharaff? Is that a democracy according to you? LOL But i digress.
and we're on separate pages anon. about deposing Saddam. It was NOT done in a "stupid way". It was done "the only way".
Again, was Mossadegh deposed in this way? No. Allende? No.
They sure left a loophole big enough to drive 200,000 American troops through then.
Forced agricultural collectivization... "democracy was working"... like it's working in Venezuela right now, I suppose.
Iraqi's, too have elected a leader. blah blah blah.
I'm mixing up the order? Your notional timeline hasn't exactly been established yet. You have yet to prove that is the reason WHY Bush invaded. As an invasion premise, "some Americans profitted" stands classified in the "beyond ridiculous" category. Your other instinct explains it MUCH better. American profit were "incidental" to invasion.
Bush is dunzo His family will profit "later". Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Those are all your reasons? So far none have been demonstrated to be even REMOTELY plausible. A man, from one of America's richest and most powerful families decides to invade a foreign country for "future unamed favors" to a couple of un-named buddies.
Can't you do better than that?
The USSR. Was there really are threat? I know, you weren't born yet. Yes, there was a threat.
and here's the rest of the wiki cite. Was that necessary, other than to prove that he had become a MILITARY DICTATOR??
Despite the economic hardships of his policy, Mossadegh remained popular, and in 1952 was approved by parliament for a second term. Sensing the difficulties of a worsening political and economic climate, he announced that he would ask the Shah to grant him emergency powers. Thus, during the royal approval of his new cabinet, Mossadegh insisted on the constitutional prerogative of the prime minister to name a Minister of War and the Chief of Staff. The Shah refused, and Mossadegh announced his resignation....
Ahmad Qavam (also known as Ghavam os-Saltaneh) was appointed as Iran's new prime minister. On the day of his appointment, he announced his intention to resume negotiations with the British to end the oil dispute. This blatant reversal of Mossadegh's plans sparked a massive public outrage. Protestors of all stripes filled the streets, including communists and radical Muslims led by Ayatollah Kashani. Frightened by the unrest, the Shah quickly dismissed Qavam, and re-appointed Mossadegh, granting him the full control of the military he had previously requested.
"Can I ask you a question? Why did all the Republicans vote for the war, but not al democrats, if the vote was based on the veracity of the intelligence? How did this intelligence somehow manage to convince all the Republicans, but less than half of the Democrats?"
First of all, six Republicans in the House voted against it and one Republican in the sentate voted against it, so not all the Republicans voted for it. You may have not meant "all" literally, but I thought I would make it clear that not all of them voted for it.
I do not think it had anything to do with the evidence. It simply has to do with different values. Many Democrats are less willing to use force, and some would rather take a pacifist approach to all problems. It is the "war is not the answer" mentality. If you believe war is not the answer, then no amount of evidence could convince you to go to war. Even if you were positive that the evidence was true, that does not necessitate that you believe the war in Iraq was a good thing. You appear to be implying that if you believe Saddam had or was obtaining WMD, then you must believe war in Iraq is necessary. I simply do not see how the premise dictates this conclusion.
Secondly, it probably had a lot to do with party lines. Democrats were more likely to oppose a Republican president and Republicans were more likely to support a Republican president.
I said it was MORE DEMOCRATIC than the Shah. You also said democracy was working... and that proved to be false.
You claimed also that this brilliant Iranian dictatorial democracy should be compared to Iraq? Is it really the examplar of a working democracy?
But I grow tired of your endless digressions vis a vis Iran. Make your point or drop it.
Anonymous, so for all those reasons you just gave, I think it's safe to say that the voting numbers in Congress on the Iraq War resolution actually had little to do with whether the evidence was credible and true.
Sorry, I wrote under anonymous again.
Me is a troll who gets enjoyment from constantly changing the point and does not want to directly talk about one thing at a time. Therefore trying to reason with Me is a waste of time.
Funny. I quote a classical text, me goes apeshit about worthless digressions. I summarize a page of wiki, she goes apeshit about NOT posting the citation of every point...
Somebody needs her Midol.
Again me ignores the point. LIES and DELIBERATE INTELLIENCE SCAMMING makes TERRIBLE politics. It DID have a bearing on the vote.
Unless, of course, you're simply using it as an EXCUSE for DNC INCOMPETENCE...
In summary, refer to "THE BIG LIE" post.
I think it's pretty clear now WHO the liars were. The Congressional Democrats.
(1) If Mossadegh was really a military dictator, why on earth did Albright apologize for his overthrow?
(2) He wasn't really a military dictator. You wrote: "Protestors of all stripes filled the streets, including communists and radical Muslims led by Ayatollah Kashani. "
But in fact it was the CIA and MI6 who were stirring up dissent and revolt in the country:
"Meanwhile, the CIA stepped up its operations. According to Dr. Donald N. Wilber, who was involved in the plot to remove Mossadegh from power, in early August, Iranian CIA operatives pretending to be socialists and nationalists threatened Muslim leaders with "savage punishment if they opposed Mossadegh," thereby giving the impression that Mossadegh was cracking down on dissent, and stirring anti-Mossadegh sentiments within the religious community.[citation needed]
Mossadegh became aware of the plots against him and grew increasingly wary of conspirators acting within his government. He set up a national referendum to dissolve parliament. Some purport that the vote was rigged, with Mossadegh claiming a 99.9 percent victory for the "yes" side. Allegations that Mossadegh was resorting to dictatorial tactics to stay in power were in turn cited by the US- and British-supported opposition press as a reason to remove Mossadegh from power.[citation needed] Parliament was suspended indefinitely, and Mossadegh's emergency powers were extended.
Inside Iran, Mossadegh's popularity was eroding as promised reforms failed to materialize [8], and the economy continued to suffer due to heavy British sanctions. The Tudeh Party abandoned its alliance with Mossadegh, as did the conservative clerical factions."
So, you stir up revolution against a guy, and then you depose him for trying to stop it. Lovely.
The democracy WAS working until the CIA and MI6 started interfering and stirring up trouble. Funny, eh?
Goodness, even the British state-owned media has owned up to it:
Oil played its part in a 1953 coup in Iran - organised by the US and Britain. They managed to overthrow an elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and installed Shah Reza Pahlavi whose reign came to an inglorious end at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists in 1979.
Mossadegh's main sin was to have nationalised the British-owned Anglo Iranian oil company.
Just how far the United States was prepared to go for oil was shown by the recent release of documents from the British National Archives.
An intelligence assessment by the British government in January revealed that in 1973 Washington drew up a plan to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to counter an Arab oil embargo against the West.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/3625207.stm
I'm not changing the point, i'm refuting your points, and it makes you mad.
Like, citing the UN when its actions support your views, and dismissing it as useless and corrupt when they don't. Both can't be true. It was like when John Bolton, who said the most ridiculous things about the UN's credibility and power then wanted to use the UN to act against Iran. Which is it, Johnny?
Saying that the votes in Congress prove the intelligence was true, and then saying that the votes in Congress went the way they did because of different values and party lines. Both can't be true.
I know, it would make me angry too. But hey, I don't dare to be stupid like you guys.
No point, just more digression.
The Administration drew one conclusion. 1/2 of the pacificist Reps drew a different one.
If the intelligence was baked, then the fault lies squarely at the feet of baked Congressional Democrats. They were, after all, responsible for the recipe and that the chef followed their directions.
QED.
Next!
Ah, finally I've made FJ angry enough to resort to Rightwing Insult #50, "You have PMS."
Do you see how stupid you make yourself look with these kinds of quips and ad hominems? You know how this makes you look, don't you? that you can't win on the points, so you resort to ad hominem?
If I were you, I'd be pissed too. You're a veteran, a macho macho man, living in some backwater where some latin and some virgil makes everyone think you're the most brilliant genius in town. (and btw, you can live in a backwater anywhere - it's all about the people you choose to surround yourself with). And so you come on to the internet, and this lawyerish girl makes a fool out of you thrice over. I'd be mad too, if i was insecure about myself like you are.
"Anonymous, so for all those reasons you just gave, I think it's safe to say that the voting numbers in Congress on the Iraq War resolution actually had little to do with whether the evidence was credible and true."
You are missing the point. The truth of the matter does not matter to those that are going to oppose the war regardless. There is no logical connection between believing Saddam had WMD and believing we should wage war in Iraq. It is possible to believe the "evidence is true and credible" and vote against the resolution. You are assuming that one necessary follows from the other.
It is also safe to say that the majority of the free world thought the intelligence was true. This intelligence was thought to be true when Clinton was in office. It was Clinton that made regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy. After 9/11, Bush decided it was time to implement that policy.
President Bush never said the threat from Saddam was imminent. In fact, in his 2001 State of the Union speech, he said just the opposite:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
me doesn't "dare to be stupid". She has no choice.
The reason for my Midol ad hominem was given. You had your flip-flops on again. But I no longer need reasons to let ad hominems fly. I've already been given more than enough.
Why did Bush invade Iraq, me? Why?
Can't manage a simple answer?
The conspiracy of the half-baked intelligence doesn't cut it with Ockham. There's a much simpler answer. It wasn't any more baked than it usually is.
The reason for the baking... motive. What was Bush's motive?
Opportunity? Maybe.
Surely you've heard the term "motive" used before.
The truth of the matter does not matter to those that are going to oppose the war regardless. There is no logical connection between believing Saddam had WMD and believing we should wage war in Iraq. It is possible to believe the "evidence is true and credible" and vote against the resolution. You are assuming that one necessary follows from the other.
Fair enough, you're saying that those who voted against the resolution did not necessarily disbelieve the intelligence, they were just against the war. But is believing the intelligence a necessary condition to vote for the resolution? are you saying that everyone who voted for the resolution believed the intelligence? Are you not admitting the possibility that some people may have voted for the resolution to stay with their party, or because they wanted the war, regardless of the veracity of the intelligence?
It is also safe to say that the majority of the free world thought the intelligence was true. This intelligence was thought to be true when Clinton was in office. It was Clinton that made regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy. After 9/11, Bush decided it was time to implement that policy.
But does regime change necessarily mean exactly and only the kind of war we have now in Iraq? Wanting regime change, and actually engaging in the kind of war we have in Iraq are not logically related. You are assuming that one necessary follows from the other. :)
And are you saying that this kind of talk is not talk of an "imminent threat"?
"Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
October 7, 2002
President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
What was the motive?
You like Latin: Qui bono?
America.
Sounds like the right reason, me. Thank you for admitting that "Bush Lied" is THE BIG LIE.
--------
And Under the '91 treaty, Saddam agreed to unlinited WMD inspections. Did he comply... time after time... after time?
No. He did not.
So after the umpteenth violation, the UN gave him a Hans B ultimatum. Which Saddame then fudged up on. AND THAT IS WHY (officially) the UN sanctioned the American invasion of Iraq.
Of course, the terrorists immediately targetted the UN Ops in Bagdad, and the UN went scurrying out of Iraq with their tails between their legs.... AS USUAL.
And so all the talk about "Mistakes" to drive the Baathists out of the officer corps were NOT mistakes. Could an Iraqi democracy ever arise in a Sunni majority country dominated by a Sunni minority military that went into an active guerilla campaign mode against US forces on D(I)-Day? No.
erratum - Shi'a majority countery above...
"...are you saying that everyone who voted for the resolution believed the intelligence? Are you not admitting the possibility that some people may have voted for the resolution to stay with their party, or because they wanted the war, regardless of the veracity of the intelligence?"
It is of course possible that people voted for the resolution irrespective of the evidence.
"But does regime change necessarily mean exactly and only the kind of war we have now in Iraq?"
I suppose not, but it was one possible option for "regime change" and Congress voted on it. It is possible that those that voted against it also believed in "regime change" in Iraq.
"And are you saying that this kind of talk is not talk of an "imminent threat"?"
Nothing directly says that the threat is imminent, although I suppose you can interpret it that way. However, that would go against exactly what Bush said in 2001 when he said the threat was not imminent. It may simply mean that if we wait too long it will be too late.
No, he didn't comply. But we know now that he didn't lie either -- he actually had no WMD!!! Amazing how that works.
Qui bono? America? LOL.
A sad, sad joke, FJ. Really, you should know better.
Qui bono? Iran. Al Qaida. Halliburton and its shareholders. Oil companies. Saudi Arabia (yes and no). Nouri al-Maliki, Mktada al-Sadr and other Shias, who, in the words of Christopher Hitchens, "get to fuck the Sunnis with George Bush's dick." In fact, anyone who benefits from increased terror has won. Except Bush & Co., because they're responsible for the increased terror. But companies that provide anti-terrorism data mining, screening, security services -- the more terror, the more business they have. Both in Iraq and here.
Who lost? America lost its global credibility and most of its allies. Turkey lost stability. The Iraqi people may have gained an election or two, but they have not gained freedom -- the radicals are terrorizing them, killing people for "provocatively displayed vegetables in a grocery stand."
Thousands upon thousands of people have lost their lives.
Israel may have lost an enemy, but because its relationship with the US, all the countries angry at the US about Iraq are also angry at Israel. And that war in Lebanon sure didn't help shit.
Sorry. I mean 2003.
xkvsxe
I appreciate your reasonable tone. Seriously. :)
It looks like you and I agree on what is possible regarding the resolution vote. My point was that the outcome of the vote is not really related to the veracity of the intelligence, because people had different reasons for voting for and against, so citing the vote as evidence of the veracity of the intellgience i think is not correct. It shows that Congress wanted to go to war, but that doesn't meant that it was on necessarily on the basis of surefire intelligence.
Look at the quote i posted, Bush says "clear evidence of peril." Can you honestly say that it was clear evidence of peril? Especially now that this intelligence has been investigated?
Perhaps it seemed clear at the time, maybe because it was selective, and if that is the case, don't we need to find out who did the selective selecting and why, instead of just saying, "well, we voted for it, so that's that"? I think we need to find out what was really going on. Information is still coming out -- only now do we hear Tenet's case and pleas, 4 years later.
Bush invaded Iraq to benefit Iran and the terrorists! LOL!
And all attempts by the LEFT to justify their political "deceptions" based upon the "Bush Lied" talking point are admittedly, CRAP!
And me turns out to be little better than a typical DU lick-spittle blogger with nothing better to do than pretend to be different posters, pretend to know ANYTHING about logic and reason, and insult and browbeat decent people, throwing out DELIBERATE lies of her own, just to justify her own precious desire to fornicate in public.
So much for John Lennon's "Imagine", the Summer of Love, and the power of Empathy.... her "stated" motives.
Nietzsche. Will to Power. Nihilism. Yep.
me I'm gonna enjoy this far, far too much.
Modern logic...
Bush wanted everything that happened in Iraq to date, to happen. THAT was his MOTIVE for invading Iraq.
Bush is really an Anti-American evil genius working for Osama. LOL!
Time's up, me.
No motive.
Couselor, your case has been dismissed.
Wow, FJ, once again with bucketfull of ad hominem. Losing on the points, so you gotta resort to the personal attacks? You're so predictable.
Look, it's not my fault your dick is tiny, babe, so don't take it out on me. I know it's been a big problem for you your whole life, that's why you joined the military, and that's why you troll the web and insult people. But I had nothing to do with it. Blame God, or something, maybe he's punishing you for being an idiot in your past life, I don't know, or come to terms with your shortcomings.
Sad. Really sad.
Me,
You wrote:
"I also don't think deposing people like hussein, especially in the stupid way we have done it, is productive at all."
Errr... how would you have done it?
A song to the same effect, called "George Bush is an Islamic Fundamentalist":
http://www.ironcircus.com/The_Rub_-_George_Bush_is_an_Islamic_Fundamentalist.wma
They managed to depose Mossadegh quite easily, without a big old 4-year (and going) war.
We're working on deposing The Supreme Leader and Qaddafi, right? What's the difference between Qaddafi and Saddam? Or worse, Musharaff? Nothing really.
What's the difference between Saddam and Musharaff? They're eerily similar except that Musharaff actually HAS a NUCLEAR BOMB, and this is all fine and good while he's cooperationg with the US (just like Saddam used to, remember?), but what if he is overthrown? Or what if he turns on the US? What are we going to do, bomb him? he's got a fucking NUCLEAR BOMB! Then you could have an Islamic fundamentalist government with a nuclear bomb. That's INSANE!
So you'd think the US would be thinking about this possibility? There were some recent pro-democracy protests in Pakistan, and the State dept stood by Musharaff 100%. What was that about spreading democracy in the middle east? Or is Pakistan technically not in the Middle East, so it's okay if there's a military dictatorship there?
I don't know. I just see that no one is worried about Pakistan, but it's a place that could easily turn into a big ole shitstorm orders of magnitude worse than Iran.
Of course a large part of the reason why people are re-thinking the evidence is because after we went into Iraq we did not find WMD. This does not mean that the evidence at the time was exaggerated, ignored, or "cherry picked" - it simply means it was wrong. Of course not finding WMD is not proof that there was no WMD. Some have suggested the WMD was moved to Syria. Regardless of whether or not this is true, before we were able to search Iraq our intelligence concluded from the available evidence that Saddam had or was seeking WMD. It is not fair to start with the known fact that there is no WMD in Iraq and then work backwards. That is why it makes little sense for Hillary Clinton to say "if I knew then what I know now" I would not have voted for the Iraq resolution. That is like saying if I knew the winning Keno numbers before the game started I would have picked those numbers. Decisions must be made on incomplete knowledge.
An article written in the National Review talks about George Tenet. It concludes that "Tenet shouldn't be so offended when people quote his words, since they reflect an essential truth — that he indeed had no doubt that Saddam had WMDs." You may want to dimiss this because it was written for a conservative magazine, but the National Review has not always been favorable towards the war in Iraq. William F. Buckley was opposed to it from the start.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/30/opinion/main2741351.shtml
Painfully obvious fact:
The poster above called Me is a brainwashed liberal.
Thanks to people like Evan speaking up, these people are having the light shined on them and they're becoming easier for the rank and file to recognize. I think we're beginning to get things back under control.
And thanks to Farmer John and XKVSXE for showing how flawed ME's way of thinking is.
This does not mean that the evidence at the time was exaggerated, ignored, or "cherry picked" - it simply means it was wrong.
It doesn't conclusively mean that either. When there are ex-CIA operatives who come out and say that the evidence WAS cherry-picked, that should raise alarms. When the evidence failure was SO CATASTROPHIC, so COMPLETE, that should raise alarms. After all, one might come to the conclusion that our intelligence services are not exactly to be trusted or are all that powerful, skilled and knowledgable, if they failed SO BADLY in this case.
I am simply quite doubtful that our whole intelligence establishment could have gotten it so wrong, and i think for good reason. These are very skilled, highly educated professionals who have an unlimited budget. It is very convenient that their operations are very classified, it helps prevent serious inquiry. That they were so completely wrong raises my suspicions.
Further, it is a great excuse, that the intelligence is wrong. It's the perfect way to pass the buck to someone else.
Bush, with his intelligence excuse, insulated himself in all cases from responsibility. If the WMD were found, he would claim victory, he would get the praise, but when they were not found, it was the intelligence community's fault, not his, even though he's their boss in the executive branch. It's like his recent blurb that the number of suicide bombings is not an indicator of success or failure: if the bombings actually went down, he's be claiming that it's his policies that are causing it, but when they don't go down, it's always something else.
Was there due diligence? Imagine a corporation where a lot of the numbers and SEC submission turn out to be wrong. The CEO has to sign (thanks to Sarbox) personally that he is personally responsible for the veracity of the contents of the SEC filings. He didn't make all of them, obviously, but he's responsible for nonfeasance and malfeasence below him. It encourages him to make sure his people don't make mistakes. imagine if rumors come out about a corporation, its employees start saying that the numbers were cherry-picked, that the discussions inside the company were very different from the discussiont to the publc. All of these people would be investigated and if true, would be in prison, especially the guy at the top.
But if you're a government official, and you do the same thing, you can just blame your underlings, from the DOJ to the CIA, to the NSA, it's never your fault. And you are not investigated, you get your own presidential library.
LOL. Bush has his worst approval rating ever, and you guys are getting things under control? Don't make me laugh.
You can think i'm brainwashed, if it makes you feel better. But the thing is, the better educated you are, the more likely you are a liberal.
Now, you'll start saying that it's the brainwashing of the left-wing academe, but you can't prove causality. Is it left-wing academc bias that makes the educated more left-wing, or is it education that makes people more left-wing because they are simply more capable to examine the world around them?
Reality has a well-known left-wing bias. :)
It is clear that the CIA thought Saddam had WMD, it is clear that the Clinton Administration thought he had WMD. It is clear that British intelligence thought he had WMD. It was not simply our own intelligence that was wrong. None of this is about pinning the blame on anyone. It has to do with an accusation you have made. All you need to do Me, is answer one simple question. Did George Bush believe Saddam had or was obtaining WMD?
"You can think i'm brainwashed, if it makes you feel better. But the thing is, the better educated you are, the more likely you are a liberal."
That is some BS.
I think you are associating "education" with indiscriminate thought and indiscriminate thought makes you have to diliberately ignore the facts as to not discriminate.
Go take another bong rip dude.
I don't know what he believed, I really don't. I suspect that he wanted to go to war before he had the requisite intelligence basis. See Downing Street Memo.
I don't think any of those things are clear: "It is clear that the CIA thought Saddam had WMD, it is clear that the Clinton Administration thought he had WMD. It is clear that British intelligence thought he had WMD."
Like I said, very conveniently, none of us can examine the intelligence ourselves, really. We only get what the public gets, and who knows how that is sourced? Have you seen the intelligence? I haven't.
You still don't answer though, how could this have happened? Did everyone at the CIA suddenly have a lobotomy?
How was this allowed to happen? AFTER 9/11, when intelligence was supposed to improve? if it is the fault of the intelligence community, it's a catastrophe. they are incompetent. how are they going to prevent terrorist attacks if this is how well they work?
And yet, they do manage to prevent attacks orchestrated by a few random guys through email, like the london plane bombing, the LAX bombing, Sears tower bombing. They even had a memo in August 2001 saying "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the US." There's terrorists on trial all around the world, plots are disbanded, people are arrested. This is highly competent work.
And yet, somehow, with a STATE ACTOR, not just a few random guys, they failed. With people on the ground, UNMOVIC, they got it completely wrong. just COMPLETELY wrong. How is this possible? Doesn't it seem suspicious to you? It sure does to me.
Here:
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=945
Scroll down to the second graph. Read it and weep into your GED.
Me can't stop thinking about my penis. Freud was right about the "envy" thing, too. Too bad she was fantasizing about me in a cold shower... she could have given herself her first real 'O'.
When there are ex-CIA operatives who come out and say that the evidence WAS cherry-picked, that should raise alarms. When the evidence failure was SO CATASTROPHIC, so COMPLETE, that should raise alarms. After all, one might come to the conclusion that our intelligence services are not exactly to be trusted or are all that powerful, skilled and knowledgable, if they failed SO BADLY in this case.
Oh, please, save the hyperbole.
So what are we to think when Liberal shills who manufacture their own missions to suit an independent political agenda like Joe Wilson & Madame "l'affaire Plame" also come forward to complain... cases when we catch glimpses of just how far the rott within the American political system has begun to reach into our intelligence agencies? Is this a sign of things to come? Is Two-party government just around the corner?
And finally, note how hysterical me gets over the thought of an Islamic fundamentalist regime with a nuclear bomb. It is precisely THAT kind of girlie-girl Leftist hysteria that drives Bush to err on the side of caution and invade a country like Iraq. The liberals get their panties all in a wad, demand Presidential action, and when no WMD's are found scream "How dare you void Iraq's sovereignty! We need to void Sudan's!"
Straighten out your Maxi-pad me, your likely to experiencee leakage, otherwise.
they got it completely wrong. just COMPLETELY wrong. How is this possible? Doesn't it seem suspicious to you? It sure does to me.
Hold onto your hats folks, I gotta feeling someone's headed to Area-51 with the Lone Gunman people.
Oh FJ, you WISH i would think about your penis. I can imagine: 50-something or 60-something overweight, arrogant guy who is a comic spectacle in that he thinks he's so brilliant because he's even heard of Plato, probably can't even get it up without viagra. Do you smell like an old man too? Mmm, that' sexy.
And maxi pad? Maybe your i'm sure SEXY wife (i can only imagine the hag who would marry a toad like yourself) wore maxi pads...
As for saving the hyperbole:
JANUARY 28, 2004: Iraq Survey Group inspector David Kay reports "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing."
MARCH 31, 2005: Silberman-Robb commission, the presidential commission on Iraqi WMD, concludes: "[T]he intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments."
DECEMBER 18, 2005: Bush: “[M]uch of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.”
It's not hyperbole. Maybe if you'd get laid at least once a year, you wouldn't be so bitter and stupid.
You pegged it anon. Indiscriminate thought. Let loose the imagination and picture the CIA planting explosives in the Trade Center Towers.
"I don't know what he believed, I really don't."
Then how can you accuse the President of lying? You do understand that a lie is a "an intentional untruth", wich means that if Bush lied he would have to have known, or at least not believed, Saddam did not have or was not obtaining WMD and yet said otherwise. That is what it means to lie. To simply say something that is untrue is not the same as lying.
The Iraq Intelligence Commission looked into the intelligence failures and gave recommendations to fix these problems. Bush accepted the majority of these changes. The report concluded that there was "no indication that political pressure had been applied to distort the Intelligence Community's assessments on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." If there was any evidence of serious misconduct, this commission would have found it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Intelligence_Commission
Hyperbole. CATASTROPHIC and COMPLETE FAILURE!
?!?
And don't worry, with you on the rag 24/7 there's little chance you smell very good either.
Farmer John, you're a classy lassy. I'm sure that Socrates and all those guys would totally approve. LOL
Care to address the substative points? *yawn* No, didn't think so.
Why don't you go sleep with your haggy wife? I bet your daughter is getting fucked right now in her dorm room LOL Beautiful spring afternoon, everyone's in fucking mode.
I'd love to address a substantive point, but I have yet to find one.
And if you don't like getting dirty, me perhaps you shouldn't roll around in the gutter so much. The regular dogs are gettin' jealous.
Cheech & Chong - "That b*tch is ALWAYS in heat!"
ME, you and your circle of girlfriends (and/or boyfriends) may sit on anything phallic, but some parents raise their children to know when to control themselves. So speak for yourself and your own children.
You must be one dry Park Avenue hump, that's all I can say.
Yes boys and girls, just follow the Liberal lead and you too can learn to cuss and swear like a sailor.
Manners? Who needs manners in a cat house?
(Apologies to all people who actually possess manner and good taste). The rest of you can go 'F yourselves.
skvsxe,
Point, set, match. The victory is yours.
Nicely played. Congrats!
I'm a liberal, and in the time that conservative, Christian Britney Spears has been married and DIVORCED TWICE, i've been in the same relationship. Goodness me, imagine that! Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country, home of liberals and gay marriage!
And please, FJ, don't tell me about "cursing" -- you're a master of it yourself.
PS When your daughter comes home from college, are you going to check that her virginity is still in tact? She might be damaged goods, a sinner in god's eyes.
A paean to the Victor!
The Philosopher's Drinking Song
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, 'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed; A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
-- Monty Python
xkvsxe,
I take back my "i don't know." I think he lied. I can't get into his head, can you? I think he lied.
As for the Iraq Intelligence Commission, if it is indeed true that there was no political manipulation of intelligence, against all the evidence about Doug Feith, etc., then, we're fucked, really, aren't we? If that is the best our intelligence community can do is be "dead wrong."
Stupid or evil reemerges once again. Now, it doesn't matter whether one is stupid or evil, either way, one is not qualified, competent or to be trusted with national security.
All I got to say is, do you think the CIA ever used LSD on unwilling uninformed people to test it and experiment with it? Do you think the joint chiefs of staff ever plotted terrorist attacks against US civilians to have a pretext for a war? Do you think Richard Nixon signed a document to overthrow Allende? Do you think Eisenhower did the same for Mossadegh?
If you answered yes to all of the above, you would not be in conspiracy theory land, you would be in reality land. Unbelievable but true, and the truth only came out decades later.
FJ, every sophomore in a halfway decent college got over that song 2 months after discovering it, and you're an old man, and you still think it's cool?
*eye roll*
Speaking of funny report, though, how about this ditty from the Pentagon's Inspector General about Douglas Feith's office of undersecretary of defense?
inspector general's report states that the office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The inspector general's report further states that Feith's briefing to the White House in 2002 "undercuts the Intelligence Community" and "did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence."
Here, look you can read all about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_J._Feith#Feith_and_the_Office_of_Special_Plans
It's all carefully cited for your reading pleasure:
Feith led the controversial Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon from September 2002 to June 2003. [41] This now defunct intelligence gathering unit has been accused of manipulating intelligence to bolster support for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. [42] According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, "This rightwing intelligence network [was] set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force."[43] According to Feith's former deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, the Office of Special Plans was "a propaganda shop" and she personally "witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president." [44] [45] Senator Carl Levin, in an official report on Feith's Office of Special Plans singles Feith out as providing to the White House a large amount of Iraq-Al Qaeda allegations which, post-invasion, turned out to be false. [46]
Your conclusion now is that Bush is evil then. If Bush were simply stupid, he would not have lied, becuase he would not have known, but since you believe he lied, then he must have known he was telling something that was untrue, thus making him evil. Is this what you believe?
Again, it was not simply our intelligence that was flawed. British Intelligent was also flawed. The Hutton Inquiry also cleared the British government of wrong doing. The Butler Report also concluded that "there was enough intelligence to make a 'well-founded' judgment that Saddam Hussein was seeking, perhaps as late as 2002, to obtain uranium illegally from Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo (6.4 para. 499). However, simply because our intelligence made mistakes in this case does not mean that they will make the same mistakes in the future. Intelligence is a difficult job and it is not always going to be accurate.
Your second point I take it, is simply pointing out that our government is cabable of doing bad things, and since our government is cabable of doing bad things, it is possible that George Bush did a bad thing. I understand that, but I do not wish to talk about whether or not the CIA used LCD on civilians. I am sure you understand that showing that the government did something wrong in the past is not evidence that Bush did something wrong. The only thing I am discussing here is whether or not Bush lied, and I think the evidence clearly illustrates that he did not.
In the same wikipedia article you posted, it notes that "the Defense Department Inspector General Thomas Gimble found on February 9, 2007 that Feith's office did nothing unlawful, unauthorized or that attempted to mislead Congress." This was also investigated.
Yes that is my second point, and I make it because a lot of people seem to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that the government is not capable of these things. But it is. It is capable of pretty horrible things, and lying to get into a war would not the first or last time this has happened, or arguably the worst thing ever done in this context.
As for "evil" in "stupid or evil" (something i came up with myself), "evil" is shorthand for knowingly deceiving, knowingly lying, conniving, etc, knowing what you're doing full-well. I don't actually think Bush is "evil," not least because i think it's a pretty nonsensical word. Evil just means "I think this person is really really bad." But I digress.
As to the intelligence, what about this report about Feith's office? You don't think that's evidence of manipulation?
The Bulter Review also concluded:
" our view, having reviewed all of the material, is that
judgements in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the
intelligence available."
"We also conclude that
intelligence reports received in 2000 which suggested that Iraq had recently-produced
biological agent were seriously flawed."
The British intelligence substantially relied on American intelligence.
This is from an interview with the former chief of the CIA's Europe division, Tyler Drumheller. Here's the story on Curveball, the source for those mobile biological weapons labs:
SPIEGEL: The German government was convinced that "Curveball" would not be used in the now famous presentation that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave in 2003 before the United Nations Security Council.
Drumheller: I had assured my German friends that it wouldn't be in the speech. I really thought that I had put it to bed. I had warned the CIA deputy John McLaughlin that this case could be fabricated. The night before the speech, then CIA director George Tenet called me at home. I said: "Hey Boss, be careful with that German report. It's supposed to be taken out. There are a lot of problems with that." He said: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Dont worry about that."
SPIEGEL: But it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell's presentation -- and nobody had told him about the doubts.
Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech. We checked our files and found out that they had just ignored it.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,462782,00.html
If evil means "really really bad", then evil is not nonsensical; considering you just made sense of it. It is interesting that you would even suggest evil is nonsensical, since I thought you were denying Sayet's point that liberals did not believe in good and evil. It sounds as if you do believe in evil, but that you simply do not like the word evil. Apparently you have little problem with "really really bad".
The Butler Review concluded that the intelligence was flawed. I never denied that, but it also does not conclude that there was any misconduct.
As far as Feith's office is concerned, I already posted what the Defense Department concluded.
But they also concluded what I posted. Maybe what he didn't wasn't illegal, and didn't deceive congress it seems it may have been quite improper, even if the word is not used.
As for the word "evil," what I wrote is "I think this person is really really bad," not just "really really bad." My point is calling someone "Evil" is saying "I think this person is really really bad." The latter statement doesn't really mean anything until you elaborate on what is so bad about them: they gas jews, they kill puppies, they whatever. But in and of itself, "evil" is just a stand-in for substantive ideas. It's just an expression of opinion with no substantiating evidence. Kind of like "immoral" -- you don't know what it means until the person saying it explains their morality to you. I think it's immoral to start wars, you might not. So, when you and I call someone "immoral," because our moralities are different, you don't really know what the underlying judgment really is, the underlying bad thing.
Welcome to the self-refutation of me, Chapter II - An Extension and Diversion of Chapter I
Nietzsche, "Genealogy of Morals"
I was given a hint of the right direction by this question: What, from an etymological perspective, do the meanings of “Good” as manifested in different languages really mean? There I found that all of them lead back to the same transformation of ideas, that everywhere “noble” or “aristocratic” in a social sense is the fundamental idea out of which “good” in the sense of “spiritually noble,” “aristocratic,” “spiritually high-minded,” “spiritually privileged” necessarily develop—a process which always runs in parallel with that other one which finally transforms “common,” “vulgar,” and “low” into the concept “bad.” The most eloquent example of the latter is the German word “schlect”[bad] itself—which is identical with the word “schlicht” [plain]—compare “schlectweg” [quite simply] and “schlechterdings” [simply]. Originally these words designated the plain, common man, but without any suspicious side glance, simply in contrast to the nobility. Around the time of the Thirty Years War approximately—hence late enough—this sense changed into the one used now.
As far as the genealogy of morals is concerned, this point strikes me as a fundamental insight—that it was first discovered so late we can ascribe to the repressive influence which democratic prejudice in the modern world exercises over all questions of origin. And this occurs in what appears to be the most objective realm of natural science and physiology, a point which I can only hint at here. But the sort of mischief this prejudice can cause, once it has become unleashed as hatred, particularly where morality and history are concerned, is revealed in the well-known case of Buckle: the plebeian nature of the modern spirit, which originated in England, broke out once again on its home turf, as violently as a muddy volcano and with the same salty, overloud, and common eloquence with which all previous volcanoes have spoken.
...continued
We see exactly the opposite with the noble man, who conceives the fundamental idea “good” in advance and spontaneously by himself and from there first creates a picture of “bad” for himself. This “bad” originating from the noble man and that “evil” arising out of the stew pot of insatiable hatred—of these the first is a later creation, an afterthought, a complementary colour; whereas, the second is the original, the beginning, the essential act of conception in slave morality.
Although the two words “bad” and “evil” both seem opposite to the same idea of “good,” how different they are. But it is not the same idea of the “good”; it is much rather a question of who the “evil man” really is, in the sense of the morality of resentment. The strict answer to that is as follows: precisely the “good man” of the other morality, the noble man himself, the powerful, the ruling man, only coloured over, reinterpreted, and seen only through the poisonous eyes of resentment.
Here there is one thing we will be the last to deny: the man who knows these “good men” only as enemies, knows them as nothing but evil enemies, and the same men who are so strongly bound by custom, honour, habit, thankfulness, even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy inter pares [among equals] and who, by contrast, demonstrate in relation to each other such resourceful consideration, self-control, refinement, loyalty, pride, and friendship—these men, once outside where the strange world, the foreign, begins, are not much better than beasts of prey turned loose. There they enjoy freedom from all social constraints. In the wilderness they make up for the tension which a long fenced-in confinement within the peace of the community brings about. They go back to the innocent consciousness of a wild beast of prey, as joyful monsters, who perhaps walk away from a dreadful sequence of murder, arson, rape, and torture with exhilaration and spiritual equilibrium, as if they had merely pulled off a student prank, convinced that the poets now have something more to sing about and praise for a long time to come.
At the bottom of all these noble races we cannot fail to recognize the beast of prey, the blond beast splendidly roaming around in its lust for loot and victory. This hidden basis from time to time needs to be discharged: the animal must come out again, must go back into the wilderness,—Roman, Arab, German, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings—in this need they are all alike.
It was the noble races which left behind the concept of the “barbarian” in all their tracks, wherever they went. A consciousness of and a pride in this fact reveals itself even in their highest culture (for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians, in that famous Funeral Speech, “our audacity has broken a way through to every land and sea, putting up permanent memorials to itself for good and ill.”)—this “audacity” of the noble races, mad, absurd, sudden in the way it expresses itself, its unpredictability, even the improbability of its undertakings—Pericles emphatically praises the rayhumia [mental balance, freedom from anxiety] of the Athenians—its indifference to and contempt for safety, body, life, comfort, its fearsome cheerfulness and the depth of its joy in all destruction, in all the physical pleasures of victory and cruelty—everything summed up for those who suffer from such audacity in the image of the “barbarian,” the “evil enemy,” something like the “Goth” or the “Vandal.”
The deep, icy mistrust which the German evokes, as soon as he comes to power—even today—is still an after-effect of that unforgettable terror with which for centuries Europe confronted the rage of the blond German beast (although there is hardly any idea linking the old Germanic tribes and we Germans, let alone any blood relationship).
Once before I have remarked on Hesiod’s dilemma when he thought up his sequence of cultural periods and sought to express them as Gold, Silver, and Iron. But he didn’t know what to do with the contradiction presented to him by the marvelous but, at the same time, horrifying and violent world of Homer, other than to make two cultural ages out of one and then place one after the other—first the age of Heroes and Demi-gods from Troy and Thebes, just as that world remained as a memorial for the noble races who had their own ancestors in it, and then the Iron Age, as that same world appeared to the descendants of the downtrodden, exploited, ill treated, those carried off and sold—a metallic age, as mentioned: hard, cold, cruel, empty of feeling and scruples, with everything crushed and covered over in blood.
Assuming as true what in any event is taken as “the truth” nowadays, that it is precisely the purpose of all culture to breed a tame and civilized animal, a domestic pet, out of the beast of prey “man,” then we would undoubtedly have to consider the essential instruments of culture all those instinctive reactions and resentments by means of which the noble races with all their ideals were finally disgraced and overpowered—but that would not be to claim that the bearers of these instincts also in themselves represented culture. It would much rather be the case that the opposite is not only probable—no! nowadays it is visibly apparent. These people carrying instincts for oppression and a lust for revenge, the descendants of all European and non-European slavery, and all pre-Aryan populations in particular, represent the regression of mankind! These “instruments of culture” are a disgrace to humanity, more a reason to be suspicious of or a counterargument against “culture” in general!
The progressive Marcusian project... to free the lion from his cage (Eros & Civilization)
The 60's counter-culture. Nietzsche was born 100 years ahead of his time.
So needless to say, you consider yourself as one of the aristocracy, the powerful, the blond beast, and consider me, on account surely in part of my Jewish heritage, as one of the "slave morality"-bearers.
Please, let me know when it's okay to stop laughing...
Fire has never been hot enough to melt steel :).
However the coals beneath it can, but it takes a long time to do it.
Minor technicality
I mean, frankly in Geneology, Neitzsche despises ascetics like yourself, and praises healthy, powerful beasthood. Would a beast not have sex because it's not married? Surely it would not be contrained by such stupidity. In a way, the sexual revolution was a return to beasthood, a finding of power within oneself instead of through societal structures, stupid morals and standards, don't you think?
If you want your daughter to be a blond, healthy barbarian beast, why teach her not to have sex before marriage?
Me? Do you own stock in wikipedia? Nobody with any brains uses it seriously.
"So, when you and I call someone "immoral," because our moralities are different, you don't really know what the underlying judgment really is, the underlying bad thing."
Evil has to be quantified. I do not think anyone would argue Osama bin Laden is evil because he is evil. That goes without saying. People would say he is evil because he murdered nearly 3,000 lives on 9/11.
Nietzsche despises ascetics...LOL!
Yep, a modern Wikipedia-based law school education is a mile wide. It's just a shame that it's only an inch deep. And of course, like any portrait of Daedelus that isn't nailed down, quickly flies away.
SOCRATES: You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of Daedalus; but perhaps you have not got them in your country?
MENO: What have they to do with the question?
SOCRATES: Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.
MENO: Well, what of that?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain.
I guess your Hephaestus has not yet secured Prometheus to the promitory w/adamantine bonds (Aeschylus, "Prometheus Bound"). You allow him to run around. It is painful when the Eagle eats one's liver, but it always grows back. And in the end, it's the only way mankind can triumph over Zeus.
Anonymous said...
Me? Do you own stock in wikipedia? Nobody with any brains uses it seriously.
Of course not, except those federal judges in their opinions:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html?ex=1327726800&en=695df31f21874777&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Wikipedia: Good enough for federal judges, but not good enough for "anonymous" on the internet.
xkvsxe said...
Evil has to be quantified. I do not think anyone would argue Osama bin Laden is evil because he is evil. That goes without saying. People would say he is evil because he murdered nearly 3,000 lives on 9/11.
Unfortunately, some people do say that, and it makes it hard to argue with them. But again, we agree then.
Fj, cowardly runs away and changes the topic when challenged.
Yeah, guess what? Asceticism is battling the beast inside, and that is stupid, so asceticism is pointless. Now, N-boy went to great lengths to justify his own proclivities by showing that the asceticism of the philosopher is actually really good -- but, are you a philosopher like Nietzsche, or just a regular joe shmoe? I would argue for the latter. So, I think if you take essay 3, holding up asceticism as really great, and compare it to what he says in essay 1 about the beast and the inward battle, they don't exactly match up.
Wiki educations are an inch deep.
Nietzsche, "Zarathutra"
I LOVE the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye saith it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still spirit in it!
Would that ye were perfect—at least as animals! But to animals belongeth innocence.
Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice.
These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out of all that they do.
Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth this creature follow them, with its discord.
And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied it!
Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful of your doggish lust.
Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers. Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering?
And also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who meant to cast out their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves.
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell—to filth and lust of soul.
Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do.
Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.
Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you.
They laugh also at chastity, and ask: "What is chastity?
Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it.
We offered that guest harbor and heart: now it dwelleth with us—let it stay as long as it will!"—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
There are lots of things that don't match up me, UNTIL you think about them.
...and tie them fast with an adamantine chain of cause.
Ok, well it's becoming obvious that, just like Nietzsche, you have a LOT of issues regarding your sexuality and you use Nietzsche to justify your own sexual hangups and idiosyncracies. Well, that's fine, but just remember, Nietzsche is not an infallible god. he could have been very right on some things and very wrong on others -- you're taking his word as gospel, it seems.
Thinking, critical minds don't do that with anyone's word.
pearls before swine... the flies of the marketplace.
Please, FJ, tell me that Nietzsche is infallible and prove my point.
Besides, the whole preals before swine thing, I used that against you a few weeks ago. Don't be such a cheap copycat.
Until you learn to suspend judgement and take someone's word as "Gospel", you'll never truly believe it or ever really understand it.
It's kind of like a scientific hypothesis... that you test out later.
Was Nietzsche "infallible"? About some things, he was.
Until you learn to suspend judgement and take someone's word as "Gospel", you'll never truly believe it or ever really understand it.
It's kind of like a scientific hypothesis... that you test out later.
Suspending judgment is no virtue, except for the religiously-inclined, like yourself.
Was Nietzsche "infallible"? About some things, he was.
Are you retarded? Like, seriously? You can't be infallible "about some things."
http://m-w.com/dictionary/infallible
You're either infallible, or you're not. It's like being "a little pregnant."
I guess science will never progress, then. Woo-Hoo!
I AM INFALLIBLE! Oooops, perhaps I am wrong.
I AM A NIHILIST! Oooops, perhaps I am wrong.
It's hard to be "any" absolute, me.
And you'll never believe ANYTHING I ever say that is contrary to your pre-existing opinion.
Sad, really. Very, very sad.
....I'm a nihilist, but I believe...
in my own ability to define my existence.
?!?
Got any more oxymorons today? Plain, simple, moronic statements? Points, substantive or otherwise?
I AM infallible...until I am not?
Ever study ontology, me?
Of course not.
To be or not 2b, what was the question?
Shakespeare, "Hamlet". On spannungsbogen.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
The parsing of me's hero:
"It depends on what the meaning of the word is is. If the...if he...if is means is and never has been, that is not - that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement"
I understood what he meant...
"Nietzsche is dead." --G_d
Maybe he is infallible... now
...and an infallible god? He never was that.
Einstein on imag-i-nation
What is imagination? Does it require a temporary suspension of judgement?
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
Nietzsche, and Plato, communicated in aphorisms. Aristotle did not.
Funny, I always have a hard time remembering Aristotle's first principle..." the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect."
But Socrates' first principle is so easy to remember, "it is better to suffer an injustice, than commit one."
I guess Plato was simply a better painter of portraits of Deadelus. Either that, or his painting could not be bought without the nails.
Here's one that might be germane
Old men support abstinence well: people of a ripe age less well: Young folk badly, and children less well than all the rest, particularly those of them who are very lively."
It goes well with Plato's, "Republic" in a quirky, subjective sort of way...
And these are not the only evils (of democracy), I said--there are several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young.
Don't you have finals to study for, me? Then why aren't you studying?
Odd how that Bridge in Cali. collapsed last week after the truck that caught fire melted the steel, causing it to collapse.
Must have been the CIA.
FJ, a self-styled blog-comments-section James Joyce, stream-of-consciousness spouting final arbiter of fallibility in philosophers who preceded him.
You're such a joke.
Still clinging to your Webster's Wiki Wisdoms I see.
Just carry a dictionary around with you all the time, that way you can leave your brain at home in bed, sleeping!
You've got your crutch, I've got mine. This pot-kettle stuff is just too funny!
count.
No. Mossad. The CIA doesn't work outside of Manhattan.
My crutch, the dictionary, is also a favorite of Scalia. :D
I am evil. Bush is merely bad. If the citizens want to be good, then their governments have to be evil.
Somebody has to execute murderers. Somebody has to conquer new lands. Somebody has to ensure a decent supply of raw materials flows in from undeveloped countries. Somebody.
Either that, or we have to move "Beyond Good & Evil" (Nietzsche). But that would require the progressive to stop morally regressing.
"generation" from opposites. The "golden rule" of philosophers.
(+)pole ******current***** pole(-)
the movement's in the middle...
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" — which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. --from The Wisdom of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan
Stream of consciousness writing demonstrates the direction of the modernism. Instant messages, wireless communications, etc. What has become of spannungsbogen? --from the Lamentations of a Mad Philosopher, trapped in the Post-modern World.
Will? Will-Power? Virtue?
Welcome my friend, welcome, to the machine... Pink Floyd
blahblabdidy blah blah. So you like to imagine yourself as a "will to power," powerful blod beast? But you're just a fat old man who sits on his ass and argues over the internet. You're completely impotent. maybe it's fun to live vicariously through wars other people wage and fight, but don't lose sight of reality: you're sitting on your ass, not fighting anything.
And quoting pink floyd? Again, you're such a sad, dated, tragic almost, joke.
You know the end of King Lear, when he's all crazy and old, raving about how he's the powerful king? That's all you, babe.
Nietzsche "Will to Power"
966 (1884)
In contrast to the animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.-- Moralities are the expression of locally limited orders of rank in his multifarious world of drives, so man should not perish through their contradictions. Thus a drive as master, its opposite weakened, refined, as the impulse that provides the stimulus for the activity of the chief drive.
The highest man would have the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, where the plant "man" shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g., in Shakespeare), but are controlled.
What caused Lear's misfortune...
Sonny to Cher- "I've got you (pegged) babe"
Or even more pertinent, Titus Andronicus'?
Pride, lack of mercy, overconfidence. That's all you, buddy. You can't even ever admit you made a mistake or were wrong, as if you imagine yourself as some sort of infallible god.
You're human, you're base, like the rest of us. We all make mistakes, we all have our flaws. To pretend otherwise is... hubris?
Othello's?
So much for affirmative action, then...
MacBeth's?
Nope. Lear divided and gave away his power to his unfit daughters (all but one).
Andronicus gave it to the unfit "traditional" son of Caesar.
And so would you.
Now repeat your last post to me to yourself. Look in the mirror...
Pride...
I'm your shadow, me. Only these are the thoughts you repress and pretend you don't have...
I'm the Anti-me. I'm "you."
What was Lear's downfall? That he felt he knew better than Cordelia what real affection was. He was a fool for people caressing his ego, stroking his pride, than real life. It was his vain senility, his overconfidence in his own judgment as an infallible king that caused him to banish the only daughter who really loved him.
Andronicus -- he executes Alarbus contrary to Tamora's wishes, in a fit of overconfidence, of lack of mercy. She vows revenge. Had Tamora not sworn revenge, none of the problems that befell Titus would have happened.
Othello refuses to doubt himself, to check himself.
Macbeth has too much confidence in his own immortality.
All victims of their own hubris, too much self-confidence, too high of an opinion of themselves, thinking themselves infallible, omnipotent almost.
Had Lear kept his power instead of dispersing it, what misfortune's would have befallen him?
If upon Caesars death Andronicus had assumed the mantle as the people bid, no misfortunes would have befallen his clan.
MacBeth & Othello's lessons are not pertinent to this conversation.
Alice, what do you see through the looking glass?
What lesson can a democracy learn from Coriolanus?
I don't think those are the messages of those plays, frankly. Do you? Do think that those are the ideas Shakespeare is trying to convey?
And you brought up Macbeth and Othello. Now they're not pertinent? LOL... it's like arguing with a random number generator. what it says has no bearing on what you just said, or what it just said itself.
...that she hates the evil man, but could not survive without him. For his existence allows them to be good.
Marie to Louis XVI The peasants are revolting!
Coriolanus' mercy is what matters. Not the tribunes of the plebs.
I have not read Coriolanus.
Socialized pity and good will simply aggravates and extends Rome's problems. Bread & circuses are what the people demand. But it is not good for them.
I'm starting to hope you're not a raving lunatic/psychopath...
In a nutshell - Coriolanus is a typical/traditional republican that honours the "old values" and makes the starving work instead of giving them bread. He is a great warrior who saves Rome many times. After making him humble himself, the in public, wearing rags and showing his scars, and pleading for the people's votes, the people, even though they hated him for his social stance & loved him for his courage, promise to make him consul (one of two). The tribs of the plebs double cross and humilate him. He leaves Rome and raises an army from his former enemies (another Nietzschean blond-beast type guy) and returns to "sack" a defenseless Rome. His mother talks him out of it. He is killed by his former enemies (they got no booty from the proposed sacking).
Did you ever see "Annie Hall"? Maybe you did, maybe not, i don't know. There's a scene where this guy is going on and on about Marshall McLuhan, and Woody Allen's character tries to disagree. The guy erupts, "i happen to teach a course at Columbia on TV, Media and Culture" and Woody Allen says, "Well, I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here" and woody allen pulls out Marshall McLuhan from behind a billboard, and McLuhan says, "I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work. You mean to say my whole fallacy is wrong."
Similarly, I wish I had Stephen Greenblatt right here, to hand you your ass on a plate regarding King Lear and Titus Andronicus. Really, you'd have to be the most fucking dense person on earht to think that the message of King Lear is "don't divide up your kingdom," and the message of Andronicus is, "Don't give your kingdom to Saturninus."
It would be like watching Schindler's List and concluding that the message is "It's better to not be Jewish."
PS I have magical powers to see the future: I see that, seeing how you're losing this idiotic Lear argument you've embarked upon, you're going to try to change the subject, possibly to Schindler's List or Woody Allen or Marshall McLuhan. I'm a fucking modern-day Cassandra.
There are TWO moralities. Master & Slave. Leader versus Lead.
A leader must treat the lead as objects (immoraly) to accomplish "ends". he must sometimes sacrifice a "few" for the good of the "many". He must sometimes pick who dies. This is a Master morality.
In the eyes of the slave... he is evil incarnate.
Bush 3,000. He picked them. They died. For the good of the many. Most liberal find him evil He lied us into going to war... he deceived us.
He did what he thought was best.
In those Shakespeare tragedies I simply ask you to ask yourself this question. What one thing, if done differently, could have averted the entire tragedy.
In light of your love for Coriolanus, do you even support the kind of democracy we have here?
How about the idea that the leader must be willing to step into the shoes of those he sacrifices? Bush never did, he actively avoided serving in combat when he had the chance. And he did not choose the 3000 who would die. He knew people would die, surely, as any leader who sends people into war, but he did not choose those three thousand.
Regardless of all of the above, however: just because people die in wars does not mean that all wars are justified or that all deaths are justified or worthwhile. It is possible to fight a pointless, unjustified counterproductive war. None of the realities of war make it any better that he lied. I don't really see how the two are related.
Othello could have promoted Iago, instead of the "college kid" to be his Lieutenent. Iago was "passedf over for promotion" though he had served his master faithfully through many battles.
MacBeth over-reached for power, without thinking through the consequences. He didn't have the allies.
Yes, these men all had fatal flaws... for as Lord Acton (?)once wrote...every institution perishes from an excess of its' own first principles. Democracy will perish from an excess of "liberty".
In those Shakespeare tragedies I simply ask you to ask yourself this question. What one thing, if done differently, could have averted the entire tragedy.
I'm not sure what your point is with this question. It seems kind of nonsensical, especially since there are plenty of answers.
(1) Lear could have had just one heir.
(2) lear could have given the kingdom just to one heir.
(3) lear could have killed himself instead of diving up his kingdom.
(4) lear could have killed 2 of his heirs and given the kingdom to the one left
(5) lear could have given his kingdom to another kingdom.
(6) lear could have killed his heirs and himself.
(7) lear could have banished 2 of his daughters and given the kingdom to the third.
and so on. the anwers are limitedless. the best part, as always in your infinte widsom, is that if lear had not divided up his kingdom, and then died, the 3 daughters would have probably fought over it, so it would not have prevented much of what happened.
I mean, to write a play, you need an intrigue, a problem. You could address all works of art with this insipid view: if the conflict didn't happen, there whole work of art could have been avoided. How stupid, really.
This war is NOT pointless. It has a very necessary point. That you do not understand it is NOT surprising.
"It is better to be feared than loved."--Machiavelli
You want the world to love us. It will NEVER happen... as soon as they smell the stink of civilizational rot, the Arabs will attck. They've been smelling it since WWI... the pan-Arab movement is gaining, not losing momentum. The collapse of communism created a POWER VACUUM which mullacracy stepped in to fill.
Shakespeare was a revolutionary. The freedom we enjoy today were largely "imagined" and "popularized" by him. He de-mystified the monarchy. The English Civil War was the eventual outcome. A Constitutional Monarchy.
The Power of "Art"
And my prediction about you changing the subject from Lear and Shakespeare comes true. Most shamefully, with the most overused, trite, cliche quote from Machiavelli that ever was.
I didn't say ALL war is pointless, but some wars are. Are you going to argue this point? Or is any war justified simply by existing?
Shakespeare's approach was multicultural... and more importantly... multitempral.
You ignore the past. You live in today's newspaper.
Shakespeare was a revolutionary. The freedom we enjoy today were largely "imagined" and "popularized" by him. He de-mystified the monarchy. The English Civil War was the eventual outcome. A Constitutional Monarchy.
The Power of "Art"
Well, that's a bit of an overstatement, if I may. But what does this have to do with anything? I've let you free-wheel the discussion for a while, skipping from one topic to the next, you would be livid if i did this, but don't think i haven't noticed. Even your phenomenally idiotic ramblings are getting boring... i wish you would make just a little bit of sense, have just a little bit of consistency. otherwise, it really is like talking to a crazy person, which i am suspecting you really are...
War is inevitable. There will always be war.
And what, exactly, was the point of this conversation. I was simply illustrating the differences between "good and bad" and "good and evil."
War is inevitable. There will always be war.
Still doesn't mean that all wars are justified or right or worthwhile.
proving you wrong has lost its thrill. it's like making chidlren laugh, it's just too easy.
I often realize that liberals do not even understand their own positions. Many of them engage in doublethink. Liberals will profoundly affirm their pacifism when they say "war is not the answer", yet at the same time they will attack strawmen by arguing that conservatives only see things in black and white. War is not the answer is only true in the context of a question. If the question is welfare reform, then no, war is not the answer. Nothing is more black and white or absolute than pacifism. The middle ground is found when violence is justified, i.e. self-defense or in the defense of an innocent third party.
It is also interesting to note that in order for there to be grays, there has to be black and white. Gray is simply a mixture of black and white and thus without black and white it is impossible for there to be gray.
Do you believe the war in Afghanistan is justified?
xkvsxe,
I am not a pacifist, I never said i was. Just because wars happen, that doesn't make every war a priori justified, as FJ seems to have been alleging.
The war in Afghanistan -- I will be honest, I was against it before it happened because, being from the USSR and all, I had already lived through a war in Afghanistan, and seen how very difficult it is, and how almost fruitless the effort is.
I suppose it's not such a bad thing, that war after all, but to call it a success is also deceptive. Opium production is at a high, kidnappings and violence continue, warlords rule a significant part of the country, and the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is a disaster area, in terms of security and terrorism. North Wuziristan is a haven for the Taliban, which is planning a "spring offensive." We must also remember that it's not just Afghanistan that is at stake -- Afghanistan shares a border with Iran on Iran's east side. Ostensibly, having coalition forces surrounding Iran could provide an adfantage, and I've read rumors that that border is a staging area for Sunni terrorists Jondollah to launch attacks against Iran.
The "war" in Afghanistan seems to me like it will morph into a more or less permanent occupation of that country to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban or something like it. But i don't think it's a "war" that can be "won." If the coalition forces leave, it will descend back into chaos, and make take Pakistan down with it, and no one wants that.
PS With regards to Jondollah, once again, the US seems to be supporting terrorist groups that will fight its battles for it. Haven't we learned the lesson of al-Qaida?
War is the natural state of animal, vegetable, and mineral. It's a pre-requisite of life to consume and transform other forms. To deny war, or to renounce force or violence, is to deny life itself. It doesn't have to be right, justified, or worthwhile. If a weakness is detected that can be exploited, it will be exploited, it's only a question of when. It's as simple as that. Power abhors a vacuum. Almost every war on the planet at the moment is a result of the Soviet collapse.
Haven't we learned the lesson of al Quaeda... why do you think it is so important for us to be there in person? Training "up" surrogates leads to downstream problems. It's essential that we go in to Afghanistan to transform it... either from a "tribal" state to a nation-state OR a "reformed" tribal state. And that's what General Pace intends to do.
There is a tremendous power vacuum in the Middle East and Africa at the moment. We can let those regions descend into chaos and perhaps spread further through the Balkans and -stans, or we can attempt to transformit. But to transform is a long, long term project and requires an extensive commitment. Especially in economics and infrastructure development.
The lesson from al-Qaida is:
Don't give terrorists money, weapons, resources or training to fight your battles for you. Because, after all, they're terrorists, and they don't do you any favors. They have their own agenda, and you might not know what it is, and you can't predict the future, so they might turn on you, and fly planes into your buildings, blow up buses and trainstations, and so on.
It would see that supporting Jondollah and other Sunni terrorist groups who are, for the moment, fighting the Shias, would be a bad idea, in light of the above, but we continue to do it.
As for your generalities and waxing poetic about war, are you saying that because "war will always happen" that any war that happens is a priori justified, reasonable, worthwhile? That if for some strange reason, Bush started an aggressive campaign to go to war against... pick any country you like, you would support it no matter what
Right now it is of vital importance that the velayaat al-fiqh system in Iran be brought down, by hook or crook, and a more modern democratic Shi'a state be established throughout Persia. Many Iranians do not want a mullocracy. And in order to "reform" Iran, we must not let it be run by 8th century Koranic Shari'a law. We must also steer their "marriage" system away from cousin marriages and empower young females to choose their own mates (eliminate arranged marriages).
Almost every war on the planet at the moment is a result of the Soviet collapse.
I'm sure you could make an attenuated argument. Here's one: the sri lankan civil war.
Here, enjoy, a list of ongoing conflicts:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html
Please note, a significant number of these conflicts existed before the soviet collapse.
If my government lawfully declared a war against any country, I would support it until my government declared it to be over.
...and yes, almost every one of those wars in Africa & the ME on that list were former Soviet "clients" who can no longer prop up their central governments.
If you're worried about arranged marriage, there are countries where the practice is FAR more prevalent, namely Pakistan.
If you are worried about funds for terrorism, again, worry about the Arabian penninsula and Pakistan. Iran does it too, but not to the same degree.
If you are worried about 8th century Sharia law, Iran is actually quite progressive compared to its middle eastern counterparts. Still very bad, but better than Jordan, Saudi ARabia, and Pakistan for sure. And why don't you read about the "democracy" we've brought to many parts of Iraq where women used to be able to walk around without a hijab, and now can't.
And your complete disregard for human life is quite disturbing.
The Yemeni unification was almost coincident with the USSR collapse. The wars in Somalia, Ethiopia, etc... all the same.
Islam is a very good "substitute" for government stability and control. That is why Islamic fundamentalism ala Islamic Courts Union in Somalia has become so powerful. It provides a social organizational skeleton upon which to build.
I never suggested you were a pacifist. I only mentioned the deep confusion that many on the Left suffer from. Just because a large amount of anti-war protesters suffer from doublethink does not mean you do.
How do you define "winning" in Afghanistan? The war we are fighting is not a coventional war because we are not fighting nation states even if we are fighting in nation states. Do you expect a formal surrender?
If you believe it would be a disaster for the coalition forces to leave Afghanistan, how can you believe differently for Iraq? Do you believe it would be good thing to pull our troops out of Iraq?
"PS With regards to Jondollah, once again, the US seems to be supporting terrorist groups that will fight its battles for it."
It is called being smart. It is the same reason we supported Stalin when we fought Hitler. It would have been stupid to fight them simultaneously. We cannot possibly fight ever battle at once.
My disregard for human life?
If I wanted to disregard human life, I'd be fighting on YOUR side!
Pull out and let the whole region burn! Isn't fifty thousand years of inter-tribal warfare enough? Integrate the region into the world economy. Allow them the ability to syupport their own populations without having to "raid" their neighbors and take what's theirs.
A modern economic system can support many, many more people than a nomadic, agricultural, or even industrial society can support. Haven't you ever heard of Toffler's "Third Wave" economic systems?
Arranged marriages perpetuate the "tribal" system. The USA and West does not have this kind of "tribal strife" because fathers do NOT tell their daughters who to marry, so as to create the "defensive umbrella" necessary to sustain life in the absence of a strong central government.
The Greek city states formed around "strong" families... feudal castle like societies... keep wealth in the family and have lots of "pirate" sons...
The birth of democracy in Athens came when the blood-tribe were replaced with "political tribes"
Kingdom
Phylum (tribe)
Class (noble)
Order (priest)
Family
Genus
Species
...and merit needs to replace nepotism in the "business" sphere. Just becuase your dad was a shoemaker... doesn't mean you should be one.
I'm for "nuclear" families, not extended Don Corleone style "crime families" and networks (again an "economic based system needing "protection")
...and those "nuclear" families need protection from the tribal-crime families either from a strong central government or church co-operative like Shari'a Courts... that eventually merge into Unified Shari'as Courts (as was happening in Somalia until recently) Shari'a Courts is a grass-roots organizing system be funded by Yemeni's through Eritrea and across the Red Sea. The Yemeni's were an ex-Soviet client... Osama bin Laden is a Yemeni. He's intermarried the sons and daughters of his own with powerful Taliban families in Afghanistan...THAT is why he has their loyalty... all funded through Saudi family connections.
What do you think Osama was doing on the Horn of Africa before he went back to Pakistan to take on the USA and draw them into Afghanistan?
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