Cheney you are full of ****

[midnight Target]

Originally posted by john9001
for them whats slow in the brain, i explain.......the prisoners in gitmo want to KILL YOU.      they is yo enemys not yo friends.

This post says so much with so little work by brain cells of any kind.

[Yeager]

uhmmm...Dick is correct.

GO DICK!!!!!!

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by rpm
My response to your post was about the dress comment. Again, you brought up the subject, I replied. Now if you brought up the subject of the blue dress and I replied with "Oh yeah, where's the nonexistent WMD's?" that would be changing the subject.  Hopefully you have slept off whatever it was you were on by now and can understand.

It is simply amazing to me that you (and MT) think that the subject of my post was Clinton.  

I clearly pointed out, with a well known example, that the use of the tactic of deny, admit nothing, and accuse, and showed that it was common throughout the political spectrum.

While I knew that the example would elicit some backlash, I thought that some would have the intelligence to read the post and ascertain it's true meaning (as explained above) and not respond with a knee-jerk.  You and MT were among those I expected to respond appropriately.

[Nash]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
I clearly pointed out, with a well known example, that the use of the tactic of deny, admit nothing, and accuse, and showed that it was common throughout the .political spectrum.

That was kinda plain to me. But then personally, if I were trying to make a point, I wouldn't combine Rove and Clinton's blow-job in a single sentence and hope to make a clean getaway. History is too full of relevant examples without having to resort to those.

The result was that your point wasn't made. Which is just as well, because your point was that by virtue of the existence of lying politicians, Cheney's lies are a-okay.

That's not much of a point.

[LePaul]

Originally posted by lazs2
1k3..  Do you think that mlk should have an entire holiday in his name?   Is he the most important person in the history of the world?  the only man to have a holiday in his name?

lazs

Its called "appeasement"

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Nash
That was kinda plain to me. But then personally, if I were trying to make a point, I wouldn't combine Rove and Clinton's blow-job in a single sentence and hope to make a clean getaway. History is too full of relevant examples without having to resort to those.

The result was that your point wasn't made. Which is just as well, because your point was that by virtue of the existence of lying politicians, Cheney's lies are a-okay.

That's not much of a point.

Close Nash, my comment was in response to a comment referring to Karl Rove; the whipping boy of the political left as much as the Clintons are whipping boys of the right.  I inferred Rpm's comment was to point out that "all these republicans are liars."  Which is, of course, false, or at the very least incomplete in it's condemnation, as the tactic is all too common.  

People in power tend to be adept in the use of smoke and mirrors no matter their political persuation.  True believers in politics are rare, and holding one party or another to a higher standard is rediculous. We should hold all our officials to the fire, and demand straight talk. Perhaps if we held integrity above party, we may get somewhere.

[Nash]

You're gonna get no argument out of me on that. Agreed, completely.

When it comes to lies, though, I would only add to this equation the significance of scale. The ramifications of them. Their relevance to people's everyday lives. Because there are lies. And God knows, there are lies.

How can you reasonably compare "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" to the consequences of the multitudes of lies Cheney told in order that good folks just like you felt inspired to talk your sons and daughters into going to war?

There are lies, and then there are lies. We've come to expect them. They are politicians, after all. But I don't think we should feel lulled into accepting them as equal. Lulled into acting on them as if they were the same thing.

One demands the ignoring of a blow job. The other demands self sacrifice. They are not the same.

I honestly think that when you ignore this, you are doing nothing more than signaling to the politicians that just about anything goes. That you will reward their lies. Yes, you can take a stab at it in terms of relativism, but they aren't really that related. The consequences are dramatically different.

[Holden McGroin]

Instead of the finger wagging, I could have used other lies as an example, such as Gulf of Tonkin, "It's just a weather plane", the trail of tears, or to internationalize, even the Dreyfuss affair.  But I used a contemporary example as I thought reaching back in history would overly stretch the discourse.

The finger wagging is a documented lie and is a good example of the rhetorical tactic that Sandman first mentioned, even tough it causes knee jerks.
 
{warning: tangent ahead}

The WMD issue is not as good of an example, even though the policies and decisions based of faulty intel are far more important, because one can make the argument that those in power (not just Bush, but several international leaders) thought that they were correct in assesments made in late 2002 and early 2003.  

I have searched diligently for a pre invasion statement by any leader other than Saddam that says Iraq was WMD clear.  I have found many statements of leaders asking that the inspections be given more time but I have had no luck in finding a leader saying that the inspections are complete and Iraq should be declared WMD free.

[Nash]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
I have searched diligently for a pre invasion statement by any leader other than Saddam that says Iraq was WMD clear.  I have found many statements of leaders asking that the inspections be given more time but I have had no luck in finding a leader saying that the inspections are complete and Iraq should be declared WMD free.

The reason why you can't find a leader who said that "the inspections are complete and Iraq should be declared WMD free" is because the inspectors were kicked out by the west before getting the chance to say that.

In essence, the inspectors were in there, and went to every single dang place that all this so-called world intelligence told them to look and they found nothing. Nothing.

I wouldn't blame you for saying that it was alright for some politicians to have thought that these weapons existed, but I would blame you for implying that all of these politicians continued to believe in the existence of them in the face of the inspections turning up nada.

Everyone started running from the idea as if it were leprosy incarnate.

Except the USA. Except Britain. Plus a handful of the joke foisted on us as the "coalition."

Now we know through the notes of the Bush/Blair meeting in 2002 that during these inspections, and before the inspector's conclusion of their futile work, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

So okay. And wow. It didn't really matter what the evidence showed. In fact, the lack of evidence was not good news to those in the administration.

Playing out at the same time, well before the inspectors were kicked out by the US, the US and RAF aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.

Ya don't say. This is all going on while these inspectors were there trying to get to the bottom of it.

And you wanna blame the world for faulty intelligence?

Faulty intelligence led to inspectors being there in the first place. It was only pure lies that whittled that world community down into a fraction of those willing to prosecute the war based on it.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Nash
Faulty intelligence led to inspectors being there in the first place. It was only pure lies that whittled that world community down into a fraction of those willing to prosecute the war based on it.

Wow, looks like I hit a nerve.  

I thought it was a UN mandate based on the end of the 1991 Gulf War armistice that put UNSCOM into the inspection business.

Then in Dec 1998 The UNSCOM Chairman concluded that Iraq did not provide the full cooperation it had promised on 14 November 1998 and UNSCOM withdrew its staff from Iraq.

In 1999 UNMOVIC replaced UNSCOM but did not enter Iraq for inspections until November 2002, after 1441 is passed unanimously and the threat of coalition invasion loomed.

I guess I was wrong.

[Nash]

No, you're right.

But... what to make of the events once the inspections resumed and turned up nothing, then were forced to leave not by Iraq but by the US?

Are you going to be one of those that say "it was only by threat of force that inspections resumed in the first place?" Are you going to say that it did not matter that the inspections turned up nothing, because there wouldn't even be inspections if it were not for the threat of force? And in so doing, make the funny argument that inspections didn't even have to happen because they wouldn't have happened without the threat of force and because it took the threat of force then force was really the only option therefore the inspections which turned up nothing to justify the force weren't neccessary?

[Sandman]

C'mon Nash... it's obvious (all evidence notwithstanding) that Hussein posed an imminent threat to the safety and security of the United States. Get with the program. He was plotting against the U.S. with Osama Bin Laden. Not to mention, he used chemical weapons on his own people and he was building a dirty bomb.

We're all safer because that brutal dictator is no longer in power.


Don't you feel safer?

[Nash]

Ah it's all roses.

[Sandman]

It helps if you just repeat it over and over again.

We are safer.

We are safer.

We are safer.

[Nash]

Well, there hasn't been a terrorist orange alert since last November, so maybe it's working.