Bush lied & the confession of an ashamed man
As you may be aware, two non-profit journalism organizations cataloged the false statements uttered by President Bush and his administration regarding the threat posed by Iraq for the two year period beginning in September 2001. If you haven't heard about it you can read about it here and here. According to the paper Bush & Co. uttered 935 false statements during the period covered. Most of this is actually old news to most of us political bloggers.
I thought about writing a diary about this study on its own but decided against it because I thought it wouldn't generate too much useful discussion. I changed my mind when someone over at Balloon Juice reminded me of an article written by John Dean. link The article was written in June 2003 and its main point was that Bush would be in big trouble if WMD were not found in Iraq:
To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
It turns out Mr. Dean was very wrong about that. Bush didn't suffer at all for taking us to war based on bogus info. In fact, he got re-elected and his party gained seats in both houses of Congress in the 2004 election. I hadn't thought about that for a while and it bummed me about a bit. The Bush Administration has basically gotten off scott free. It is too late to impeach any of them and time has greatly dulled the public outrage about Bush's failures in Iraq. To top it all off Iraq will be someone else's problem about a year from now and Bush will go back to his fake ranch in Texas, write his memoirs and earn a ton of dough on the lecture circuit.
To all of you reading this thinking that I have BDS and/or that Bush didn't do anything wrong I want to share with you what Bush said that got me to support the invasion of Iraq: (see link above)
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."
The man told us that Iraq had drones filled with WMD and Saddam was figuring out how to attack the US with these weapons. When I heard that I figured it had to be true because no President would repeat such a thing if he were not absolutely sure it was the God's honest truth. It was only a year after 9/11 and the idea of getting attacked was fresh on my mind.
Just writing that last paragraph makes me feel like an idiot. I believed Saddam Hussein had remote controlled planes filled with nerve gas and he was planning on attacking Newport, Rhode Island. Five years later that sounds absolutely stupid and I am ashamed of myself for being so naive.
My guess is many Americans feel the same way. We trusted Bush and he took advantage of our fears. Anyone trying to figure out why many people can't stand the Bush Administration don't have to look too much deeper for an answer. The guy lied to us about our lives being in danger. That is just plain wrong.
--
But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
- Blue Neponset's blog
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Link.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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)they have always had a strict "no hallucinogens in the plant" rule. The retail stores, on the other hand ...
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Do you have any idea how easy it is to obtain hallucinogens over the internet? Most people don't, but I assure you, two hours of diligent searching, a couple of emails, and a Western Union payment later, you can be the proud possessor of gray-market "research chemicals" in enough quantities to dose the entire state of Vermont.
I fully expect some kind of large-scale incident in the near future. I'm really surprised it hasn't happened already.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )save me the two hours of diligent searching? Western Union?!! They don't accept PayPal?
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )and no, I couldn't. Nothing personal, but it's in everyone's interest that the bar not be too low.
I will say that "animal testing" serves admirably as a reason for procuring these materials, with the animals left unspecified. And I'd caution you that possession of most RCs could open a person up to prosecution under the Analog Act, even though the chemicals themselves are not specifically scheduled by the DEA. Google "Operation Web Tryp" sometime. One more thing: no one based in the USA is legit and there are a lot of scammers out there.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I understand! To be fair, no matter what you said, there was no way I was going to divulge my secret location for picking the ultimate Chantrelles!
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )After a spring rain, you can't throw a rock here without hitting a patch of P. azurescens.
Drug wars and prohibitions notwithstanding, anyone with enough motivation has always been able to acquire his DOC (or a very close approximation -- LSD itself is admittedly difficult these days).
The internet has made things considerably easier, though. Very potent hallucinogens, cocaine, morphine, semi-synthetic opiates, absinthe... all of them can be acquired through legit or semi-legit channels now. If I had kids, I'd be really worried.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )of this movie? There are some things I'd be less likely to do than eat a shroom I found growing in the NW woods, but I can't remember what they are.
AFA your third para, what the hee?!?! I thought erowid was cutting edge, but apparently I'm way behind the curve.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )is not in the business of telling people how to get drugs, as they'd be the first to insist. They're a harm-reduction site, and a damn good one, I might add. Not everyone is so responsible.
You're right about the dangers of eating wild mushrooms. If you pick one of these by mistake, you'd best have your affairs in order. (The interesting thing about A. phalloides is that you could be sitting in a hospital bed when you ate it, and most likely all they'd be able to do is make you a little more comfortable before the end. There is no antidote.)
In case I was unclear, I'm definitely not recommending that anyone take drugs, in fact I'd strongly recommend not taking them. Especially addictive ones. I've been fortunate myself -- other than a prolonged battle with nicotine I've had no real dependency problems -- but it's Russian roulette. What can I say, I went through a young and dumb phase, like a lot of people do.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Certainly there is enough material to indict.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )but I somehow knew you'd say that.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )is the same with other attempts to prove the Bush Lied - Chicken Fried" argument: the fact that statements about Iraq's possession of WMDs were proven wrong after the invasion are spun as supposed proof that those statements were known to be false when they were made.
I picked out a few of the supposed lies at random and searched the "database" to see what kind of arguments were offered to show that the statements were known to be false when they were made. What I found were quotes from various "white papers" (with no links or cites to the actual source material) followed by some strained parsing and arguments that, say, the Bush Administration was given intel indicating "Iraq might have stinkbombs" but then told Congress and the public that "Iraq really, really might have stinkbombs." In other words, arguments but no hard evidence.
I can't comment on the UAV statements because I personally don't even remember them. (I focused more on the weapons themselves, and presumed a delivery method could be found.) But I have never come across any valid basis for the administration to have made those particular statements; in fact, they're counterintuitive, given the decades of research and development it's taken for our own forces to get RPVs to work in a reliable, useful fashion. So that that talking point was completely unsupported AFAICT, and you have a right to feel angry and cheated for relying on it. No BDS accusations from me.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that these outfits you are quoting are Soros-backed. If Rupert Murdock funded a "media research project" proving Bush resembles Abe Lincoln in every way but height and hat, wouldn't you expect someone building a diary around that statement to clue you in to the political connection?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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)Bush & his gang turned out to be wrong about everything. It would actually be better if they lied about that stuff. I would rather deal with a competent liar than an incompetent honest person.
The only person I quoted was John Dean. As far as I know he doesn't get paid by Soros. To me, the studies don't mean much. My mind has been made up for quite some time when it comes to Bush's statements prior to the war. I would guess that most of the people who participate here have already made up their minds about that as well. That was the main reason I wrote:
I personally wanted to talk about the Dean article rather than the studies. In June 2003 Dean sounded positive that Bush would be impeached if no WMD were found and he also came to the same conclusion that I did about the "evidence" Bush & Co. presented, basically, that Bush wouldn't lie about something so important. We were both wrong about that.
Re: Bush Lied - Chicken Fried
Looking back on it now I think Bush & Co. believed there were WMD in Iraq. They lacked enough evidence to prove it, however, so they exaggerated the importance of the evidence they did have. That is lying. YMMV.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )I firmly believe that any president who takes the CIA at its word is ignorant of the history of his office, negligent, or both. I don't believe there is any valid defense against that charge. Bush is the only president whose father once ran the CIA, so he should have known the CIA's history more than anyone else. (Did Bush Sr. ever act solely on information he was given by the CIA? I doubt it.)
Believing something that you shouldn't have because you're being told what you want to hear isn't the same as lying; the outcome can be the same, though.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )The CIA's was one of many resources the Bush Admin used in order to form its Iraq policy. The failure of that policy is not a result of the information Bush was given by the CIA.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )I'm certainly not. But if you know of some other intel source that contradicted what the CIA was saying, please tell me.
AFA teh CIA being a bunch of tools, I agree in the sense that you might tell someone bothering you in a bar to "quit being such a tool."
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )have you seen my table saw? It's kind'a funky.
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )A few weeks ago I made a couple of cuts on a piece of 1" plywood with a brand new state-of-the-art table saw that must have dropped right down from heaven. I've used a few in the past, but this one had stuff on it I've only vaguely heard of before. I've never owned or plan to own so much as a saber saw, and am a pretty lousy carpenter, truth be known.
It had a laser light set to draw a red line on your wood so you can see ahead to where the saw is going to cut. A blade like no other I've ever seen. I've seen table saw blades and saber saw blades, but this one had little metal things adhered to each tooth, set at different angles and stuff, and it looked really expensive and heavily engineered. But the most interesting feature is a blade braking system that can stop the blade instantly. You can stick a hot dog into the spinning blade and the blade detects the capacitance of the hot dog and stops before the hot dog is cut. Amazing technology. This feature is not easy to demonstrate because it costs about $100 and a bit of time to replace the thing that self-destructs whenever anybody is stupid enough to stick a hot dog or a hand into the spinning blade of a table saw. I'll betcha somebody has posted a video of this online somewhere but I'm too lazy to look.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )I'm in the market for a new one to replace my 15 year old Hitachi, and am painfully aware of the fact that by far the most accidents that occur while carpenting involve a table saw. IIRC the emergency brakes on those things actually blow a bolt through the sawblade to stop it dead.
BTW, if you're ever in the market for a cheap 'n cheerful chopsaw, the Hitachi is excellent. I paid less than $100 for mine. It can make crosscuts in 15 seconds that it would take 5 minutes to set up a table saw for, and do them over and over again to within a fraction of a millimeter repeatability. Absolutely essential for installing wood flooring.
My carpenting is below mediocre. The last thing I made that worked well was a trebuchet for my son's medieval history class, but that was supposed to look rustic. It really works well though, throwing a tennis ball about 100 yards.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )take a deep breath, tomsyl! Checkout what it does to that wiener! And then look at the price.
http://www.sawstop.com/products-cabinet-saw.htm
My advice--buy a near top of the line DeWalt or Delta and always use a push stick!
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )Just keep your wiener away from saws!
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )OTOH, the $2800 price means I would have to give up my plan to buy a TaTa Marudi 800 and soup it up with a turbo, fartpipe, rear deck wing etc. - no way can I see myself riding around on a table saw.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Three HP, left tilt, Biesemeyer fence. About $2k.
You'll need 220v service to power it.
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| parent )But it's not mobile (I don't have room in the shed I call my shop), very heavy, can't run off an extension cord, and is more than twice as spendy as I am.
My Hitachi lasted 15 years, had a sliding table, and cost me $395 with a stand. Plus it was a cool green that acted as camouflage when I left it out in the yard for months at a time.
Some of the Grizzly Chinese import stuff gets written up as the Unisaw equivalent at half the price, but you can't get a Ferrari for the price of a Maxda.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Don't know the brand. I'm not near it today. It was pretty big and bolted to the floor. I'll try to get the make and model next time I'm nearby. Don't think it's a Unisaw though, but I could be wrong.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )it was a Sawstop. They're the only ones I know to have the system.
http://www.sawstop.com/products-cabinet-saw.htm
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )are a GOOD carpenter?
Or would you say you are a guy with a funky table saw in his garage?
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| parent )they took the CIA at its word?
Remember Fieth's Office of Special Plans?
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )Yeah. Are we talking about the same CIA that was vilified during the run-up to the invasion and after by many on the right because some of its analysts resented the White House's efforts to interpret the intelligence in the way most likely to lead to war?
But now we're to understand that that same bunch tricked or deceived* the President into making the decision?
Kinda like what happened to Snowball?
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*Or just grossly inaccurate. Medal of Freedom inaccurate.
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| parent )Pincus and Priest (surprisingly) tell both sides of the story: the inevitable "senior intelligence officials" (did they get the names from Seymour Hersh?) say they "felt pressured", while named sources say Wolfowitz was asking tough but reasonable questions and trying to get hard evidence instead of speculation. Nothing unique about that.
Who are the "many on the right" who vilified the CIA in the way you describe? I certainly vilify the CIA, but for its long history of gross incompetence, not for anything unnamed "senior intelligence officials" may have said to try to cover their own a$$es. Notice, for example, that Tenet's abandoned his attempt to exculpate himself from this snafu, probably because he's realized people know a lot more than he thought they did about what went down in the runup to the war.
You can understand and decide what you like about who told what to whom here; my point is and has been that claims that the CIA intel contradicted the Administration's public positions (which some here are using to argue that Bush lied about all this) simply don't hold up. Was Bush justified in believing that the CIA's conclusions were accurate? Personally and in retrospect, I don't think so. But that's still different from claiming that Bush was told one thing by the CIA and then told the country the opposite, or that the CIA gave Bush a different story than it gave Congress.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )This is a summary of the Pentagon IG's report on Feith's activities at the Pentagon.
It tells us that Feith's office (a policy office, not an intelligence office) collected and then disseminated intelligence and analyses to leadership which was at odds with "Intelligence Community" consensus (specifically, the Iarq-al Qaida connection). It confirms what we already supposed about stove-piping and cooked intelligence. It tells us that there were some in the Intelligence Community who would not provide the intelligence policy-makers wanted.
It tells us policy makers decided to gather the intelligence they wanted on their own.
Here's a view of the period from a named source.
Given the reports of "pressure," named and unnamed, the activities at Feith's OSP, the timing, production and language of the October NIE, I don't think we can credibly say that the President's decision was the result of bad intelligence. I think we can say the policy was decided and the intelligence that could support it was sought. And I think we can say that President & Co spoke with certainty about intelligence and analysis that was uncertain.
-------------------------------
**Edit** maybe later I'll try to support the "vilified" comment.
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| parent )begrudgingly agree.
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )I think Bush & Co. wanted to believe there were WMD in Iraq because post 9/11 it was a convenient vehicle with which to sell the idea of regime change and nation building to a Congress and public that would otherwise normally expected to be quite skeptical of such a venture. This was confirmed by our newly announced head of a high-level advisory panel on arms control and disarmament, who just happens to be the recently disgraced and discarded chief architect of the disaster that is now the Messinpotamia. The Downing Street Memo would appear to be apropos as well.
Bhushco leveraged the trust and faith of a nation reeling from 9/11 into a disastrous policy they stood no chance of getting off the ground under more normal circumstances. A far worse crime than the mere lying and their continuing post invasion incompetence.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )Any other interpretation of the events of 2003 asks us to believe three very implausible things:
1. Bush & Congress genuinely believed Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States, and yet perversely never mentioned this fact or made any preparations to act on it prior to 9/11;
2. The presence in Bush's inner circle of people who had wanted to invade Iraq, for their own reasons, since Gulf War I was a mere coincidence;
3. Contemporary accounts such as Clarke's and the Downing Street Memo have absolutely no basis in fact and were simply written by men with partisan axes to grind.
When we get to the point that we're arguing over whether Bush lied to others or only to himself, it seems to me we are in hair-splitting territory. Tomsyl and others contend that the two are completely different, but I don't see it.
I'm pretty sure I know how the history books will be written. By then, of course, it will be too late to matter for this war; and Americans being who we are, it will probably do little to prevent the next one.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )and shade the truth to achieve their objectives, even no doubt in many instances to themselves. This is normal and to be expected. But rarely do they do so for such high stakes nor complemented by such a stunning degree of incompetence as has become self evident and yet get away with it. Because such behavior normally incurs the kind of electoral sanction that has been notably absent for much of the period in question. When the history of this period is written some years down the road, I fully expect the historical record will focus on the Presidential election of 2004 as the low point of what has become the national disgrace that is the Messinpotamia.
It is crystal clear to me that those within Bushco who were involved in the decision to pursue regime change in Iraq were primarily motivated by the opportunity to exploit the post 9/11 situation because they could, while never allowing themselves to second guess their desire or give much thought to determining if they should let alone how they might competently achieve it. Genuine concern or desire to mitigate the threat posed by terrorism and rogue state actors on US national security was peripheral and not in my opinion a primary motivating factor.
What remains unclear is whether they and the Republican party who were willing enablers will pay a price sufficient to atone for their exploitation and whether the next Administration which will likely involve change of party will continue what was begun under this one, qualifying the Messinpotamia for a new chapter to be written for inclusion in the next edition of The March of Folly
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )counts as lying by most standards. Particularly once it turns out to have been dead wrong in fact. Particularly with such momentous consequences -- it's a combination for catastrophic failure of leadership.
And that was just for public consumption. For Washington Belt-twit circles there was the famous 1% doctrine, holding that we must treat any maybe as a certainty, no matter how farfetched. Another bankrupt doctrine, and a whole nother league of perfidy.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )It's more like someone being told "Iraq may be working on WMDs and delivery systems" and then telling the public "Iraq is a clear and present danger, they definitely have WMDs and the methods to deliver them to the continental US". If you can't see that is a lie, I doubt anything would ever meet your definition of "lie".
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Yeah, that sounds about right.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )If you read my post, you'd see my point that there likely was no credible basis for claiming Iraq had any significant or threatening unmanned vehicle technology - the Chinese haven't deployed anything significant, nor have the Russians.
Are there other things I don't remember remembering that you'd like to contradict? Because I'd really like to know if I got a C+ or a B- on that calculus exam back in high school. Please help me out.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Plenty more where that came from.
--“Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
John F. Kennedy
January 20, 1961
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)although admittedly I haven't made much progress to this point. But I do have some old scraps of metal buried in the back yard, does that count?
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )...as my own program comes to fruition. For a small fee. :^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent ). . .two neighbors with hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a ten-year period--and are you currently violating a duly signed treaty agreeing to meet certain conditions regarding proving you're not resuming your production of weapons of mass destruction?
If you are, I must sadly advocate a pre-emptive strike against you.*
*--Query to moderators: is that covered by the rules?
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| parent )but only against small. defenseless opponents whose citizens deck your tanks with flowers when they roll into town.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )and anyway you told me you were on my side there, you gave me water balloons and stuff. The second neighbor was a mistake, I admit it, but the cops took all my squirt guns after that.
As far as the treaty goes, they keep shutting off the water to my house, even though I have no more water delivery systems (ok, ok, I have a few balloons from the 1980s, but I think they have holes in them now). I'm sick of your imperialistic demands!
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )Having all that oil lying around in a house riven by revolution (get off the lawn, you kids!) was very provocative. They were kind of jerky, which is why we ended up giving you (and them) weapons and rooted for injuries.
As for the imperialistic demands, they'll be the least of your problems if bombs start falling.
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| parent )Saddam wasn't enough of a threat to go to all the trouble of invading Iraq. I will never understand why Republicans and their supporters were so afraid of Saddam.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )The correct question is: "Why did we tolerate his continued existence for so long?" Saddam would have been a lot easier to deal with *before* Iran recovered from its wartime miseries, the US military was downsized, and before Al-Queda started becoming a problem. If the twentieth century had a loud message, it was that the will to keep expansionist powers under one's heel is limited, and that when they get up they will be spoiling for blood. Every breath that Saddam took after Iraq was driven from Kuwait and its armies were scattered is a reproach to the common sense of the Western World.
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| parent )The threat of Saddam was just another lie of course, and if anyone here still takes it seriously, it reflects pretty poorly on their acumen.
It was exactly the lack of fear of Saddam that lead to the invasion of Iraq. It was called low-hanging fruit, or a cakewalk by the war's architects in unguarded moments. It was seen as the first step in a escalating conflict that would ultimately see regime change in Iran - the big prize.
As to the need for the threat of Saddam, this was succinctly covered by Hermann Goering in the days before his suicide in Nuremberg:
Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )Salivating.
They thought it would be easy, Saddam was the low hanging fruit.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )idiots.
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| parent )The material question here would be, which of the liars in question was CIC at the time, hence best positioned to savvy the truth.
"Look! Over there!" is not an argument.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )Their responses are so predictable. In fact, if you'll scroll down a bit, you'll see that I did predict it.
Oh, uh, welcome back, I guess.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent ).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )Calling Timmy a hard-core partisan? Or calling him predictable?
I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand by both statements. I tend to doubt even Timmy would have a problem with either description.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )to make arguments about the topic, not the person. We can spend all day calling one another all kinds of perfectly true and applicable names, the only trouble is it interferes with actual discussion. The song just ain't about us, no matter how vain we are.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )On reflection, you're right. I apologize to The Forvm for making an inappropriately commenter-centric post.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I. Don't. Give. A. Crap.
I wanted Ba'athist Iraq ground off the face of the planet (and as an aside, it's not the only place I'd like to see get the same treatment), I'm happy it got done (wishing only that they'd been much more thorough about it) and I don't much care about what Shrub had to do to _get_ it done. You have been and remain wrong-headed about the good reasons for doing so, but at this point it's a done deal either way, so _I don't care how hurt your feelings are_. Welcome to the real world, son.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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)It's refreshing. Then, I'd like you to ask yourself whether you really want to live in a country that works this way. Finally, I'd like you to ask yourself whether the men who fought and died for America, who wrote and ratified its Constitution, would agree with your contention that it's OK for our leaders to lie to us because Daddy Knows Best.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )...of history, you are already aware that we, nay, all of humanity, have lived in that country since time immemorial. Every single one of your political heroes lived there.
The sausage factory was not invented last week or last decade. Treaties are snapshots of inter-state power balances, and laws are snapshots of intra-state power balances. If I had my druthers, I'd ignore the lot of you from Shrub on down and do precisely as I please. But I don't, and neither do you, so we put up with each other to the extent it feels less bad than actually fighting about it. Until it feels less bad to fight it out, at which point we do. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )So if the ideals of democracy don't matter to the political sausage factory, then we are left with a practical difficulty: accounting for the differences between American-style, liberal-democratic government and, say, despotism. People seem to find the former product a good deal tastier.
Really? Then you're a unique human being. Most people get most of their satisfaction in life from relating to others.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Surely, on a voluntary basis. Nobody that I know of enjoys taking orders from anybody else, though. Why do I need Shrub to tell me where my charity should go? Or you or Nancy or Obama or Rush or the Pope?
Let me put it another way, s. People do not enact laws to control themselves. What would be the point? If I do not like murder, I'm not going to commit one. If I push to outlaw it, it's because I think one of the rest of you is going to do something I don't like, such as commit a murder. At the least, I'll be pushing to outlaw something I really don't want you to do even if I'm not too bothered by my own similar action, i.e. speeding. At the end of the day, law is about applying controls to other people. Democracy is simply the clever (and utterly correct) notion that a control favored by a majority is less likely to result in violent opposition or flagrant disregard.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )soldiers enjoy taking orders
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| parent )Military discipline does not impose itself. In the way-back-when, militaries had to take fairly draconian steps to control the troops even in volunteer forces. The Continental Army during the Revolutionary War comes to mind.
I find it more likely that the attitude of most is similar to what mine was: It was something you wanted to do for some other reason (glory, money, patriotism or what have you) and having to follow orders was an unpleasant but ultimately necessary precondition for the rest.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Ultimately a soldier knows that he's a politician's pawn. I can understand the money imperative, but the rest of those who enlist are, as you admit, quite aware of their "unpleasant" fate. So really, we're just arguing about degrees of masochism.
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| parent )Democracy as tyranny-of-the-majority doesn't work very well. American democracy, more broadly liberal democracy, appends the idea of "inalienable rights". For example, the majority cannot vote to imprison people named Pauly Shore, even if we would very much like to.
Now why do you suppose we voluntarily give up our rights like that? I think you will have a bit of a challenge explaining behavior and outcomes without reference to ideals; for example, the ideal that a free society depends on freedom of speech, and freedom of speech means putting up with incredibly annoying ex-veejays, among other things.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )..."First they came for the Jews" reference. It is not sophistry, my friend, it is cold practicality. There are good reasons for limiting yourself if you think it helps get you similar or better limits on everybody else, just like there are coldly practical reasons for social safety-nets and universal education. Simple rules can result in complex systems when they interact.
"the ideal that a free society depends on freedom of speech, and freedom of speech means putting up with [people we don't like]"
I don't think you just stated an ideal, I think you just stated a mechanism. Something along the order of "retaining your own right [X] relies on preserving [X] as a general rule; the other equilibrium is that one guy gets [X] and everybody else gets a boot on the neck".
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )I don't see the difference, and I suspect we're saying the same thing in two different ways. What it amounts to is an understanding that I need to support certain broad principles of good government, even when those principles limit my own actions and even when they can provide me no conceivable direct protection, because the free, open, tolerant, pluralistic, rights-respecting, law-abiding society that they create is a very good thing for me (and everyone else) in general terms.
That's quite different from the Niemoller quote, at least as I read it. By Niemoller's reasoning, had he not himself been a member of an unpopular minority (distinct from the "they" who came for the Jews) he would have had no reason to speak up, and that's not true. For example, a great deal of MLK Jr.'s support came from white people who had no worries about their civil rights being violated on the basis of their race.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )...between means and goals. In this case, the goal is maximum personal freedom. The means, or rather one of them, is broad support for similar freedoms for other entities, such that they have an interest in supporting my own. There isn't much in the way of a goal there; there are plenty of people that, ceteris paribus, I'd be happy to see shut up. It just so happens that I undermine my own position by doing so and the cost/benefit isn't worth it.
Concerning the Niemoller story (which may be apocryphal), there are two levels of interests operating. The more obvious one is the point that "threats to minority X can be taken to threaten minorities generally", the less obvious one is what I take to be your point, that is "threats to a given right Y can be taken to threaten all the holders of said right generally, including me regardless of my membership in X".
There are, of course, countervailing calculations of interest. For instance "minority X acts in a way which threatens my rights" (i.e. the Nazis mistaken calculation with regards to the Jews) or "right Y results in a threat to me when possessed by other people", etc.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )No; people have many goals. One of them is the happiness and well-being of other people. I'll grant you that we put ourselves first, generally, but in many cases there is either no direct conflict or the cost to oneself is so small, compared with the benefit to others, that we behave altruistically.
This is perhaps my biggest problem with rational-choice theories of economics: they fail to adequately account for the human desire to make other humans happy and fulfilled, or ease their suffering. Compassion, in a word. And the more we understand about ourselves, the less we tend to locate our ego at the center of the universe, and the more compassion is manifest.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I'll agree with PM. I believe that "altruism", as a large-scale (rather than local) phenomenon strikes me as a crock. And I'll venture that what we actually see and measure of human behavior backs up my position.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Here in Portland there are people who stand on street corners collecting money for African victims of genocide. If they weren't getting any, I assume they would stop.
Of course it can be argued that people give merely to feel good about themselves, but this simply raises the question of why it makes them feel that way.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )why does anyone stand on street corners collecting money for African victims of genocide?
I mean, beyond the very few with personal connections to the tragedy.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Did anyone ever tell you that you need to hang out on a few more bittorrent sites? It might soften your world view (and your rough edges) a bit?
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )what else would be in that list?
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| parent )Also, behavioral economists have established an altruism motive, much to their surprise, in even the most anonymous and dictatorial of games.
For example -- say I'm in a room by myself. I'm told there's another player, but I never see him or her. The game is: I'm given $10 to split between me and the other player. We will never see one another again. There is no possibility of knowing who was who.
The other player still generally gets $1-3.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )...laws reflect the current balance of power, except when folks are acting in enlightened self-interest, at which point they can reflect an ideal.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I'd say that ideals are another word for desires, that your preferred world-state is a function of your desires, and that the actual world-state is a balance-of-power weighted function of many, many such preferences.
"Enlightened self-interest" is just figuring out that the closest you can get to your preferred world-state is not necessarily by pushing equally hard in all directions at once. :^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )You don't believe that people can be altruistic -- that they are capable of taking others' desires and needs into their decisionmaking when those persons are not closely connected to them.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )...power balances require coalitions, and coalitions require uniting principles. If the uniting principle is less physical ("This guy is my cousin.") and more abstract ("This guy is a human being with rights.") then laws can become something both exactly what you describe and something much more.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )The lesson of "First they came for the Jews..." is not lost on me, I assure you. Each general right you acknowledge by definition is one you grant to yourself. The balancing act or cost/benefit comes into play insofar as you feel like controlling other people's behavior, as they are unlikely to accept such cotrols unless you at the least apply them to yourself (and maybe not even then, as I don't suppose either you or I are particularly enamoured of the idea of living under, say, honestly, sincerely and even-handedly applied Sharia.)
At some point, though, the general rights that in theory protect you also impinge on your ability to tell others what they have no right to do, and we monkeys love telling other people what they can and can't do. :^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )is a canard -- I've always despised that little piece of sophistry. My opposition to anti-Semitic laws has nothing to do with a fear that someone might pass an equivalent law applying to thirty-two-year-old half-Norwegians whose names begin with "S". Obviously, that's not too likely. Rather, it arises from a commitment to an ideal: the ideal that treating people differently on the basis of their religion or ethnicity is unjust. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as MLK Jr. put it.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )(immediately post 9/11) there was a lot of information flying around among intelligence sources. Just think of the disaster if a dirty nuclear explosion happened in Washington, NY and SF two months after 9/11. The point is that there were rumours all around the shop and no one knew what exactly was the truth. AQ Khan and his network were known entities then too (we knew about it in the subcontinent for more than a decade.) It was not unlikely that Saddam had some form of WMD within his capability - whether he acquired it from the west or Pakistan is not the point. And therefore steps had to be taken.
What is truly saddening is how little thought appears to have gone into planning the immediate aftermath of he invasion.
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| parent )It was pre-9/11. Most of it was very pre-9/11. The only thing that 9/11 changed was the political climate in America, so as to enable the people who wanted to invade Iraq.
Basically I can't add much to other posters' objections below WRT deterrence of state-sponsored terrorism. Saddam would have been out of his mind to initiate, aid, abet, mention in passing, or mutter to himself about terrorist attacks on the USA. The man was effectively deterred whether or not he had WMDs. Which was exactly what I (and a lot of other people) said at the time.
Proliferation of nukes is a serious problem, but people like Saddam, or the Iranian mullahs for that matter, are not the ones we need to be worried about in that regard.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Over 70%. Or so [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_popular_opinion_on_invasion_of_Iraq]the polls said, at the time[/url].
In this day and age, when Americans, arguably the freest (In the matter of information dissemination) and largest group of literate people on the planet with access to all the information available at the time on newspapers, internet etc - agreed to the invasion, then they were not all fools. There was an underlying fear of the unknown, particularly nuclear weapons and their rogue users which had to be articulated and responded to by their leader. Hindsight is a great thing, but it was impossible to rule out - at that time, and given the history - that Saddam had no WMD.
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| parent )to hold people to quaint standards like being "right" or "wrong", and I know the spinmeisters have evolved to the point that they wholeheartedly believe their own spin and are therefore much more effective, but I still can't help but think there is something fundamentally wrong with your analysis.
The American people were wrong to want to invade. They were encouraged in this wrongness by an administration that was also, willfully, wrong, whether intentionally deceptive or not. The press, supposedly the guardians of a free society, dropped the ball and declined to challenge any of the administration's assertions for fear of being thought "unpatriotic". Ditto for the "opposition party". People who spoke up against the invasion were objects of ridicule and referred to as either Pollyannas or traitors, depending on where they happened to fall on the political spectrum. I saw all these things happen.
Buddhists define the Three Poisons (analagous to the Seven Deadly Sins) as greed, anger, and ignorance. Many non-Buddhists argue with ignorance being classified as a sin rather than as a mere gap in one's knowledge. The attitude of our leaders, our press, and sadly, many of our people in 2002-2003 is the perfect rebuttal.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I'd say rather, that, post 9/11, there was a sudden increase in awareness in the USA of the nature of terrorism and the effects of its fallout - it would have been different in the UK or Spain, say, with their long history of dealing with terrorism. The government, the press etc were not willing to take even a small chance that nuclear/biological weapons were waiting in a faraway country ready to be used against the US. To my mind, this is a reasonable response. Not necessarily the correct response, I agree with you there, but a reasonable one. When doctors are taken to court for negligence, the onus on the defense is to prove that the doctor took a reasonable decision, in the opinion of his peers, given the facts available and the possible course of the disease which might not be predictable.
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| parent )A telling phrase, that is. Who had a sudden increase in awareness? The people who made careers out of studying terrorism and/or got national security briefings on a daily basis? Surely not. Joe Sixpack had a sudden increase in awareness, for sure, and some very cynical people used that to justify an invasion that Joe would never have gone along with otherwise.
I get what you're saying. I just think we need to be clear that it was human weakness that led to the Iraq invasion. This is one of those "let's learn and try to do better next time" moments, not a shrug-our-shoulders, "how could we have known better?" one. A lot of people did know better.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )