Quote:
Originally Posted by bbobb
What can I say, Haoh is better at spoonfeeding his points out than I am. I'm glad you understand him if not me.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bbobb
What can I say, Haoh is better at spoonfeeding his points out than I am. I'm glad you understand him if not me.
I guess its just the difference between believing the rest of the world's opinion matters, or it doesn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by SpoDaddy
So whats a proper contrast Spo? Tell me. I do know about that stuff. Should we report only the lollipops and candycorns or should we report just the bad. I don't think you understand how absurd a newscast would sound if the 6 o'clock news said, "Three American soliders were killed in a horrible car bomb attack. In other news a new school is being built over there."Quote:
The Daily Show (or most other "news" sources for that matter) don't tell you about it, but we're actually building schools and infrastructure and an economy in Iraq. They have a constitution and a higher ratio of women in positions of power in their government now than we do, they've even got a burgeoning film industry when 2 1/2 years ago it was only legal to watch propaganda pieces made or approved by Saddam Hussein. The media makes it look like we're just re-enacting the climax of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie out in the desert.
Look this whole argument that I keep challenging you own really does come down to perception Spo. When they were getting ready to go to war, all I saw on the news day after day, was Colin Powell, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfield, implying to me that any moment Saddam Hussien could give his nuclear weapons to Osama Bin Laden, and Boston could be under a radioactive fire bomb days after. Thats all I saw. Thats what they were selling this on the country on. I believe they were lying and knew it, you don't. But we both agree thats pretty much what they were selling us.Quote:
I defend Bush on Iraq because we're doing good over there and making the entire worlda safer and more free place, you say I defend him only because he's a republican and yet I gave you a laundry list of issues I take with him. Can you name that many things you think he's done well, if you're not just attacking him because he's a republican? Or are you about to admit that it's all over sour grapes that your man Clinton ran the administration with the most scandal, criminal indictments, and criminal CONVICTIONS in the history of our country?
When the vote came down to congress, everyone said, "Well the intelligence looks good, lets approve this war, most of which (republicans included believed would be as a last measure).
Now we haven't found any. We haven't found anything close to what they believed were there originally, and no one has payed for it. This is where you and I differ. I want my government accountable Spo. When they aren't accountable, and no one high in office gets in trouble over something like that, theres a problem with democracy. A big problem.
It doesn't matter if it wasn't their fault, it doesn't matter if their intelligence was faulty and they couldn't know, it doesn't matter if EVERYONE believed it compeletely. People died, under false assumptions of what they were doing, and no one took the blame for it. I won't even say lied. I'll just say they fucked up.
But still No one has taken the blame for it.
Did Bush pick up right where he left off? Should 9/11 have happened? Did 9/11 Work in his favor for his agenda, or against it? I never said Clinton was blameless, and you shouldn't claim Bush is either.Quote:
Yup, I guess you are. For the ten millionth time, it wasn't about a fucking blowjob. It was about a blowjob from someone working under him (sexual harassment under any legal definition), then he was PROVED to have lied to the people of the United States, then he was proved to have committed perjury. Don't bother trying to do the old media "it's just about sex" cover up, it's not going to fly here. By the way, why was Hillary shredding documents next to Vince Foster's corpse, was it just her own personal way of dealing with grief? Did he neuter the CIA to the point where they couldn't even communicate with the FBI or hire spies with actual ties to the people they were spying on to help balance the budget? Was Sandy Berger stuffing classified documents down his drawers during the 9/11 commission hearings because he ran out of toilet paper? Did he overlook every escalating Bin Laden attack on this country during his presidency because, after all, if we just ignore jihadist murder long enough it'll go away?
Are you watching the same press conferences as me? Seriously, this idea that the media has utter control over everything is ridiuclous. I didn't see The Media asking hard questiosn on 9/11. I don't see the media throwing anything but Bush and his administration softballs in press conferences.Quote:
Yeah, why would I be defensive, it's only me vs. just about the entire misinformed mud-slinging message board when it comes to politics. If only you would stop looking at the world with the Oliver Stone magnifying glass you'd see the truth, that the only profiteering going on over this war is right under your nose: THE MEDIA.
If you mean the perception the media has given Bush. I'm pretty sure its not too far from the truth that he's a bumbling speaker, with a shitty agenda, that only knows how to spend spend spend, and hasn't said anything different since 9/10/2001.
In my opinion, it would be really hard to put a good image on that.
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I was waiting for oil to come into the debate. Here's a reality check, now be careful because I'm about to use a really dirty word: Haliburton. Yes, Haliburton, that megacorp that is behind the whole war and profiting off of it like mad?
Bill Clinton gave Haliburton the no bid contract back in the late 90's when he wanted to invade Iraq himself (because they were the only non-French company capable of doing the job) before deciding it'd be better to just bomb an asprin factory in the middle of the night, killing the janitors, and call it even. Haliburton's crazy profit margin on Iraq? 2.4%, less than they could have made just sticking their money in a bank and collecting interest. That's why they're trying to sell off the entire division handling the Iraq contract, but that's not as relevant as the coincidence that Cheney worked for Haliburton and is now the Vice President. If his allegance was still to Haliburton he'd have saved them some money by convincing Bush NOT to go to Iraq so they could shred that bad contract. Cheney doesn't even own Haliburton stock anymore, but a certain fatass named Michael Moore does.....
Apparently you were waiting for oil to come into the debate.
I highly doubt Cheney has nothing to do with haliburton anymore and you'd be a fool to think otherwise.
That being said I agree with you about everything else.
What I meant by the Scott Peterson thing is that yeah, he did it, but they didn't prove it in court. They proved he was an asshole, and he was the assholiest asshole ever, but they got scientists who conclusively stated that the blood in his boat wasn't Lacey's and they convicted him. Blood in his boat not being hers equals reasonable doubt.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mykozo
That's why "news" outlets like CNN and Fox are pieces of shit because they care if that above sentence sounds "absurd." Gotta please your viewers, assholes.Quote:
Originally Posted by youandwhosearmy
C-SPAN would run that line and not think twice about it because they're actually a credible news source.
Great new piece by Christopher Hitchens on the senate votes:
http://www.slate.com/id/2130293/?nav=fo
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What do you have to believe in order to keep alive your conviction that the Bush administration conspired to launch a lie-based war? As with (I admit) the pro-war case, the ground of argument has a tendency to shift. I saw two examples in Washington last week. An exceptionally moth-eaten and shabby picket line outside Ahmad Chalabi's event on Wednesday featured a man with a placard alleging that Bush had prearranged the 9/11 attacks. I know a number of left and right anti-warriors who have flirted with this possibility but very few who truly believe it. (Even Gore Vidal, who did at one point insinuate the idea, has recently withdrawn it, if only on the grounds of the administration's incompetence.)
But then there is the really superb pedantry and literal-mindedness on which the remainder of the case depends. This achieved something close to an apotheosis on the front page of the Washington Post on Nov. 12, where Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus brought complete gravity to bear. Is it true, as the president claimed in his Veterans Day speech, that Congress saw the same intelligence sources before the war, and is it true that independent commissions have concluded that there was no willful misrepresentation? Top form was reached on the inside page:
But in trying to set the record straight, [Bush] asserted: "When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support."
The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.
A prize, then, for investigative courage, to Milbank and Pincus. They have identified the same problem, though this time upside down, as that which arose from the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, during the Clinton-Gore administration, in 1998. That legislation—which passed the Senate without a dissenting vote—did expressly call for the removal of Saddam Hussein but did not actually mention the use of direct U.S. military force.
Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the "shocked, shocked" faction, we already know who you are.
It was, of course, the sinuous and dastardly forces of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress who persuaded the entire Senate to take leave of its senses in 1998. I know at least one of its two or three staffers, who actually admits to having engaged in the plan. By the same alchemy and hypnotism, the INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That's what you have to believe.
A few little strokes of Occam's razor are enough to dispose of this whole accumulation of fantasy. Suppose that every single Iraqi defector or informant, funneled out of a closed and terrified society by the INC, had been a dedicated and conscious fabricator. How could they persuade a vast organization, equipped with satellite surveillance that can almost read a license plate from orbit, of a plain untruth? (Leave to one side the useful intelligence that was provided by the INC and that has been acknowledged.) Well, what was the likelihood that ambiguous moves made by Saddam's agents were also innocuous moves? After decades in which the Baathists had been caught cheating and concealing, what room was there for the presumption of innocence? Hans Blix, the see-no-evil expert who had managed to certify Iraq and North Korea as kosher in his time, has said in print that he fully expected a coalition intervention to uncover hidden weaponry.
And this, of course, it actually has done. We did not know and could not know, until after the invasion, of Saddam's plan to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from Pyongyang, or of the centrifuge components buried on the property of his chief scientist, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi. The Duelfer report disclosed large latent facilities that were only waiting for the collapse of sanctions to resume activity. Ah, but that's not what you said you were looking for. … Could pedantry be pushed any further?
We can now certify Iraq as disarmed, even if the materials once declared by the Saddam regime and never accounted for have still not been found. Why does this certified disarmament upset people so much? Would they rather have given Saddam the benefit of the doubt? Much more infuriating about the current anti-Chalabi hysteria is this: He turns up in Washington with a large delegation of Iraqi democrats, including a female Shiite ex-Communist, several Sunni dignitaries from the "hot" provinces, and the legendary Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, who led a genuine insurgency among the Marsh Arabs for 18 years. And the American left mounts a gargoyle picket line outside and asks silly and insulting questions inside, about a question that has already been decided. What a travesty this is. Not only do the liberal Democrats apparently want their own congressional votes from 1998 and 2002 back. It sometimes seems that they are actually nostalgic for the same period, when Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, and there were no coalition soldiers to challenge his rule, and when therefore by definition there was peace, and thus things were more or less OK. Their current claim to have been fooled or deceived makes them out, on their own account, to be highly dumb and gullible. But as dumb and gullible as that?
Heh, here's another article from that same site that tells a different story, focusing on the deceptions of Dick "I know something you don't know" Cheney.
Report the bombings but also report the good stuff we're doing over there. Actually reporting on everything that's happening in Iraq, that "contrast" sounds about right. I find it absurd that anyone considering themselves a journalist or reporter finds reporting the whole truth "absurd". They should quit their jobs and go pitch movie scripts in Hollywood if all they want to write about is bombings.Quote:
Originally Posted by youandwhosearmy
It dishonors our troops when you don't report what they're dying for, imagine if during WW2 all we heard from the media was the body count, if all the stuff about killing the Nazi's and freeing the Jews was considered too "absurd" to report? If you selectively report, you can make any war sound pointless.
You want to compare anything written by Christopher Hitchens to "John Dickerson"? Hitchens is one of the greatest journalists/writers alive today and he writes fact-based clearly sourced pieces after meeting in person with world leaders and VIP's. Hitchens was recently voted the 5th most brilliant intellectual on the planet (Noam Chomsky came in first). John Dickerson might as well be Ted Kennedy's press secretary or a clueless poly sci major writing from a dorm building named after Che Guevara.Quote:
Originally Posted by Melf
Slate's a fun website but Christopher Hitchens is the only content on the site worth taking seriously.
This is exactly why I'm in Iraq right now: to free the Jews and kill Nazis. I wish someone would report on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by SpoDaddy
Ah, I see. The only credible source on the site is the one you used. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by SpoDaddy
John Dickerson is a columnist and White House correspondent for Time Magazine. Hardly a "poly sci major." Comments like that only undermine your position even more, Spo.
You do have to admit, though, the amount of "feel good" stories coming out of Iraq occur about as often as Sony lavishing praise on Microsoft. :P