I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Twice in one day
Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
This guy is SO right.
The fewer battles we fight the closer we come to victory.
That "Al-Qaida" means "The Database" is... angrifying on many levels. Those fucking morons!
The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error.
====
Prett damn consistent error-making, if you ask me.
you can see why Robin Cook had difficulties with Blair.
last paragraph:
And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday's atrocities should prompt heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.
I've seen references to a muhajadeen database that bin laden had, I'd just never seen it connected to the name.
who are the Bin Ladens of tomorrow? considering Iraq bears starking resemblence to what went on in Afghanistan.
Cook's comments are entirely too sane to be given a great deal of credance.
Great post.
How do you say "bingo!" in Arabic?
Robin Cook gets it!
George Galloway gets it!
Why can't the wingnuts!
Robin Cook for President!
Oh.
-
How do you say "bingo!" in Arabic?
al something.
"Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us."
Here here!
Keep this uncomplicated notion as the key talking point for 2006 and we will have a chance of convincing the majority of Americans to kick out the Republican dividers.
See here
Although "al-Qaeda" is the name of the organization used in popular culture, the organization rarely uses the name to formally refer to itself. The name "al-Qaeda" was coined by the United States government based on the name of a computer file of bin Laden's that listed the names of contacts he had made in Afghanistan, which talks about the organization as "the base" of the jihad.
for some corroboration.
We haven't the faintest idea who is attacking us.
We pin bin Laden who happily took credit but his connection was very very tenuous in nearly all ways.
He may be the spiritual leader but aught else.
"The Database"? WTF?
Robin Cook uses too complex language for Bush and his wingnut junta to understand.
where's the flypaper?
They most likely refer to themselves as Martyrs or Holy Warriors.
We haven't the faintest idea who is attacking us.
====
Thank you.
where's the flypaper?
matthew
You're soaking in it!
He's an obvious Islamo-symp who would prefer therapy and cookies for the terra-ists!
"Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."
wrong.
"These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it."
Oh well. Water, duck's back, etc.
He's an obvious Islamo-symp who would prefer therapy and cookies for the terra-ists!
Derelict
nintendo camp is out
Maybe they have a symbol like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince did for a little while. It was sort of like an ink blot thingy in silver I think. I always thought it looked like the Virgin Mary's vagina.
Just checked my handy arabic-english dictionary, and it doesn't mention database anywhere. It mentions foundation, groundwork; basis, fundament; base (military); support, base, scole and on and on. Many synonyms for base, but no database.
"Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."
wrong.
"These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it."
Oh well. Water, duck's back, etc.
Your second quotation does not refute the first. Citations please.
That "Al-Qaida" means "The Database"
i'd always heard al qaida meant 'the base' -- 'database' is a completely different animal.
god, these guys are idiots. can we defund the cia before they kill us all.
Good thing Hat's around to correct those mistruths by the former British Foreign Secretary.
How's about the Queen? She tell any egregious lies recently?
Ewwwww. Someone (s)hat. Right here in the thread.
-
I shudder to think of the millions we have misspent on security. The building where I work went from being completely open, to a secure building, with guards at every entrance and electronic picture badges issued to all employees. You have to preregister all guests. And that is just one building. Multipy it out and we could have supplied health care to every person lacking.
And again, because I'm so thrilled that this forum helped me get a good grip on this: How many more "moderate voices in the Muslim world" could we recruit in this effort if it was a law enforcement effort, an attempt to stop criminal activity. It puts exactly the wrong kind of energy into the mix to call it a war. However, it's way more butch that way, I guess.
hat have you ever been the foregin secretary for Great Britain?
I thought that "al Qaeda" translated as "Usul." Or perhaps "Muad-dib."
Oh, the moronic brownshirt trolls
are arriving.
In that case, I'm off to quaff
elitist chardonnay with my satanic
commie buddies.
See you folks later!
And don't feed 'em unless you
have to.
i heard a story last week that translated Al-Qaida as 'the base' and said that it referenced the training grounds in Afghanistan.
i think the fallout is the same though.
now, this is the part where i depart from my fellow liberals. Cook's reasoning and the never-disputed fact that we created Al-Qaida is precisely why i opposed the war in Afghanistan. That war should have been an international police action. People who get upset about the anti-war left should reexamine the war in Afghanistan, which, apart from being later diluted by the war in Iraq, was fought using the proposed framework. The left now loves to say 'i was onboard with the war in terror when it meant going into Afghanistan, but i oppose the war in Iraq,' which is a great argument when you're responding to the right wing straw-man arguments, but not so great when you want to argue their lack of diplomacy, cultural understanding, or strategic acumen.
I've seen references to a muhajadeen database that bin laden had, I'd just never seen it connected to the name.
Atrios - well as always, the non-technical community misunderstands the difference between a 'database' and a 'textbase'. However, this was probably set up in DBase III and then never ported to FoxBase. The mistake's an easy one to make. Probably the only person who could extract information was the GS 5-7 Computer Assistant who left after she was told that a GS 9 wasn't in the cards.
GWPDA,
I thought they upgraded to PeopleSoft for the Y2K switch
Database!
Luckily, we won't change our disastrous approach in this country, because some people would have to admit they were wrong. That will never happen. God help us.
Why Moonbootica - Obviously what's his name knows more than Mr. Cook. I always take the word of a high school student over that of someone who has studied and worked in the field for decades. Just as the policy wonks over at the State Dept. predicted Iraq descending into civil war if Saddam was kicked out. Why would the cowboys listen to them. What did they know.
Hah.
The left now loves to say 'i was onboard with the war in terror when it meant going into Afghanistan, but i oppose the war in Iraq,'
No, the "left" does not.
I've seen references to a muhajadeen database that bin laden had, I'd just never seen it connected to the name.
Atrios - well as always, the non-technical community misunderstands the difference between a 'database' and a 'textbase'.
But is it a tracked and armored vehicle, dammit?!?!?
later peeps.
Oops, It looks very much like Tony and George are having a falling out.
Or did we talk about this and I missed it?
However, this was probably set up in DBase III and then never ported to FoxBase
is that why Fox TV has all the wrong data?
QL: the US State Dept. seems to be run by hysterical 5 year olds.
Abort, Retry, Fail.
How is this different from all the other arguments about the Iraqi invasion? Many of us argued it would radicalize the Muslim world against the West.
The left now loves to say 'i was onboard with the war in terror when it meant going into Afghanistan, but i oppose the war in Iraq,'
This Leftie never said any such thing.
Criminal investigation, not war.
-
as I have argued before the Neocons are bloody stupid fools who cannot even run a fucking war.
Jeebus if they were smart cookies they would of gone into Saudi Arabia but then again they are not the bightest bulb in the box.
... it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
Well, it occurred to me, and I'm far from a genius.
The first I heard of this was in about 1980 in a report on the CBS Evening News by Dan the Man Rather from a mujahadeen base in Afghanistan, about all the good work the "freedom fighters" were doing against our mortal enemies, the Russki's. I turned to my g/f at the time and said "This can't be a good thing". He devoted a show or two to the activities of the mujahadeen. I'd love to see a tape of those shows, now.
Juan Cole speaks Arabic. Has anyone emailed him and asked him what he thinks about Cook's translation?
Abort, Retry, Fail.
Basil, it's more on the order of:
SELECT 1
USE ENTRY
SELECT 2
USE ALQAEDA
SELECT 1
JOIN WITH ALQAEDA TO NEWDBASE FOR terr_id = TERRORISTS->terr_id FIELDS
TERRORISTS->terr_name, terr_id, entry_time
Shrub's little war in Iraq has made the terrorist threat worse.
End. of. story.
The left now loves to say 'i was onboard with the war in terror when it meant going into Afghanistan, but i oppose the war in Iraq,'
No, the "left" does not.
rorschach
Well, I have certainly said that, and I am only now understanding how wrong I was.
Husband is telling me that the BBC website reports police-controlled explosions in B'ham. Detonating suspicious objects.
this is interesting. liquidlist has posted about the aspen inst mtg in colorado with all the usual suspects and recounts this statement by colin powell:
"At the end of the speech, Powell told a story about a student exchange program he had with Jack Straw and later Robin Cook, foreign secretaries of Tony Blair's government. Two recently reformed rough kids from London were given a White House tour by Powell who took them in to see Bush. Both kids had recently quit using drugs, and Bush urged them to stay clean, and said that it is possible to recover your life. Bush told them, according to Powell:
“I had an addiction. I did drugs, I had a real problem with alcohol.”
http://www.liquidlist.com/
"These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it."
Give me a citation.
Little Brøther, on the thread below, has put into words the feelings I was wrestling with Thursday evening, but was too emotional to articulate. I hope he will repost up here, but if not, I'd urge anyone to read what he has to say.
i am fond of saying all religions are whacked, and islamic religion is the most whacked of all.
i know, i was once one of the born agains we so often rail against. (never scientology, i never believed in scientology and since i've studied scientology...) but this much is true.
The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
you can not prevent an asymetrical threat. no matter how big your army is , no matter how resolutely brain damaged your president is. bush must somehow be stopped. i'm not kidding.
the bite is, most true believers do not stop believing. if there is any evidence of god to me, it is that i did.
Where is my COMMENT!!!!!!!?????
wasted wit
wealy
"Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."
wrong.
Uh, no, actually that's completely right. Read "Ghost Wars" by renowned Marxist-Leninist Steve Coll sometime.
Did you know Dana Rorabacher (R-Orange County) used to go over to Afghanistan to kick it with his Taliban and al Qaeda homeboys back when the CIA thought they were the good guys?
"So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail."
That's it in a nutshell, but I think we can count on clown prince w to resolutely stay the course, straight into the ditch.
islamic religion is the most whacked of all.
Dead wrong.
Al-Qaida actually means "foundation" or "base" but not database.
mena -- i thought it was great, too, and asked him to repost it up here.
ah, I love it when we get to play "dana's got a secret." it's my favorite game.
OK, Pandora, listen to me very carefully: Whatever THE HELL you do, don't open this little box.
Abort, Retry, Fail.
Although I have no Idea what GWPDA, Irate Scholar is talking 'bout
Selecting any of the 3 DOES NOTHING
Then
ctl alt del
.
Well, Damn! That sounds perfectly reasonable.
(and, as such, will be completely discounted by the Neo Con Nazis)
"These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it."
Give me a citation.
NTodd
I believe he/she/it/hat was confusing Bin Laden and "Arab outsiders." Bin Laden was involved in one firefight, according to a book titled Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. Other Arab fighters were involved in many fights.
monkeywrench-- yes.
Of course Al Qaeda is a CIA creation. Everyone needs to know that.
You should probably also know this:
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames
Found another good article with a similar theme on Common Dreams, written by a former Labor minister named David Clark.
This Terror Will Continue Until We Take Arab Grievances Seriously
What most people seem unwilling to face up to is the stark reality that the Bush cabal has no more real interest in winning the 'War on Terror' than Orwell's fictional nation of Oceania had in winning the war against Eurasia. Or was it Eastasia?
..
You know, I realize that bin Laden was probably committed to a pure Islamic state from the start, but imagine if we had had a single ounce of foresight and actually remained engaged and supportive of the mujahedeen after the Soviets bugged out. I mean, can anybody say "shades of Ho Chi Minh"?
islamic religion is the most whacked of all.
See, to me, it doesn't make any difference whether you believe supernatural explanation A or supernatural explanation B. I can't get supernatural explanations, so the "most whacked" category has been dropped from lack of relevance.
Note that I am not in any way hostile to anyone's particular supernatural explanation (my best friend, I swear, is some kind of crypto-christian buddhist), just that there is not a whackometer ranking I can relate to.
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames
PrisonPlanet.com, hmm? Any updates on UFOs and Area 51 while you were over there?
This is desperately re-posted from the thread below with a slight change at the end; I think it's germane. Thanks, mena, for inspiring me to repost...
"al Qaeda" was never anything but a way to label fear. It's like calling people "freedom fighters" or "minute men".
spinoza - 5:21 pm
A couple of weeks ago my brother sent me an e-mail including a few links to web sites devoted to the events of 9/11. He joked that I shouldn't stay up all night, and wondered why I hadn't put him onto such sites in the first place.
I didn't stay up all night, but I did get caught up in a merry round of cybersurfing that left me worked up and disturbed.
I've tried to comment about this on open threads, but no matter how hard I tried to pare it down, the comment grew like a rank and tangled version of Jack's magic beanstalk. Plunging into those sites raised thorny questions both about the events themselves, and the epistemological difficulties they engender.
For instance, I was dismayed to realize that I'd readily accepted the simple explanation that the WTC towers collapsed neatly solely as a result of the hijacked planes striking them. After all, I'd watched the NOVA episode laying it out! You know, NOVA-- with that grave and thoughtful narrator and the interview clips with qualified, no-nonsense experts and authorities. And nifty visuals and graphics, too. Case closed.
I realized that for all of my settled belief that I'm skeptical and hard-headed, that it didn't take much for me to accept the Official Version. Even the appalling fact that a proper forensic investigation of the WTC site was neither proposed nor conducted went right past me!
I bring this up now because it affected my reaction to the London explosions. It struck me much more forcefully how almost everyone readily buys into the prefabricated scripts right away, and how such facile first impressions soon "set" into a general understanding. Thus, we all pretty much start with the assumption that the Usual Suspects are at the bottom of it, even if it remains to be seen exactly which ones. And in our horror and pious bravado, we neither expect the unexpected nor aggravate ourselves further by taking into consideration that the manufacturers of consent, who incidentally are the Masters of War, are manifestly indifferent to shedding blood and wreaking wanton havoc in the course of accomplishing their dubious aims.
So I heartily agree, Spinoza. We really need to be more careful about stopping at every step to consider what we think we know, and why we think that. Even if it means doubting NOVA, or refusing to accept it as the final word...
Al-Qaida actually means "foundation" or "base" but not database.
Minsane - Lot of words in ancient lanaguages have no direct equivalent in Modern English. It's a fair enough translation likely, although probably the implication is in fact more nearly 'textbase' in the sense of a list of alpha information kept on a computer, than that of 'database'. It's the kind of half-baked, cross lingual sorta pun that is reasonable to assume was in place. Whether it was in fact produced in DBase III+, Lotus 1-2-3 or WordStar, the gist is that it was originally a large list of names and information associated with those names.
And like hell, agave transcendental texan you don't know what I'm talking about. You were probably an early adopter of Access.
who are the Bin Ladens of tomorrow? considering Iraq bears starking resemblence to what went on in Afghanistan.
Moonbootica
And who's funding them and maintaining *this* database.
imagine if we had had a single ounce of foresight and actually remained engaged and supportive of the mujahedeen after the Soviets bugged out.
That would have been a whole 'nother nightmare, given that the mujaheddin are fundie assholes fond of maiming and such.
I believe he/she/it/hat was confusing Bin Laden and "Arab outsiders."
Assuming arguendo that hat's statement is true, it still does not serve to refute the earlier statement that OBL and other arab outsiders were being funded and trained by the CIA.
See, to me, it doesn't make any difference whether you believe supernatural explanation A or supernatural explanation B.
The single defining characteristic of any religious fundamentalist, in my experience, is the utter inability to distinguish between God's Will and one's own personal prejudices and desires. I qualify this by noting that I have never made the acquaintance of any Buddhist or Zoroastrian fundamentalists, but I think it's a good rule of thumb.
Bush told them, according to Powell:
“I had an addiction. I did drugs, I had a real problem with alcohol.”
Of course, he was just giving an update of how he spent yesterday evening.
One, two, three strikes, you're out
It struck me much more forcefully how almost everyone readily buys into the prefabricated scripts right away, and how such facile first impressions soon "set" into a general understanding.
Yeah. The [Bush Family/Jews/Blair/Carlyle] did it.
Read this.
The US army says it has launched a fourth major offensive in Iraq in less than a month, this time near Falluja.
The army said on Saturday that about 600 US Marines and Iraqi soldiers were participating in a major counter operation near Falluja.
Operation Scimitar started on Thursday with targeted raids in the village of Zaidan, 30km southeast of Falluja.
That would have been a whole 'nother nightmare, given that the mujaheddin are fundie assholes fond of maiming and such.
Not an expert, but I'm not sure I would conflate all of the mujahedeen of the 1980's with the Taliban of the late 90's. Power vacuum and all, you know. If I'm totally off-base, I'd be glad to know.
And that is just one building. Multipy it out and we could have supplied health care to every person lacking.
QL in NY
That's what pisses me off every week when I spend 40 minutes standing in airport security lines just to make sure grandma's manicure scissors don't make it on the plane.
The amount of resources being completely wasted that *should* be spent securing ports, chemical plants and nuclear facilities makes me see dark red.
If Free Republic merged with Al Qaeda, would they call themselves Freebase?
I'll be here all week.
Dead wrong.
rorschach
no, but see, that's how you feel. that's not how i feel. creates a tension.
i think all religion is whacked. it creates the conditions, and the impetus for war.
but i'm willing to concede. you believe what you want to believe. even if you want to kill me. and i've hung around here long enuf to know you don't. not all people are so reasonable.
Operation Scimitar ~ sounds sort of phallic.
a curvy pointy sword.
This relates to a previous post. For both the most stridently pro-war people and the terrorists hate is the highest human value. The greatest hope of the pro-war people/terrorists is that each attack by either side will make the more moderate people hate as much as they do. Hate bonds them together. They all want us to join them in one big family of hate. They want us all to hate, to be obsessed with vengeance. Nothing makes them more angry than to deny the bonds of hate.
later peeps.
watertiger
Cool.
Now don't tell her, but I woke this morning, still puzzled by one of her comments.
It just didn't seem like her, but ofcourse I don't really know her, and... and then I GOT the joke!
She's too funny.
(and I'm slow)
.
Not an expert, but I'm not sure I would conflate all of the mujahedeen of the 1980's with the Taliban of the late 90's. Power vacuum and all, you know. If I'm totally off-base, I'd be glad to know.
Doc
Not all, sure, but the mujaheddin that we supported in Afghanistan against the USSR were fundamentalist extremists who were unafraid of hacking the limbs off women who dared to dress incorrectly.
It seems to be a confusion between the meaning, in Arabic, of al Qaeda, and the etymology of how bin Laden's rag-tags came to be called that.
Bin Laden had a database of his jihadi buddies, that he had built up during his work with the CIA and subsequently. He referred to the folks in the database as his base, hence the term, and Cook's confusion.
That's what it seems like to me, at least.
*Heh* sure doesn't want anyone having that conversation, does *heh*?
I wish I saw more questioning of fundamental assumptions going on, but I suppose people are already dealing with a lot. Although I know it marks me as a crank, I don't think the possibility is all that remote that we are being terrorized by our own governments.
Now, flame on.
One thing that this major terrorist attack in London will bring is an open debate in English, readily accessible to any American who looks for it.
I've never heard this from the American press:
Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
Yet it's common sense.
Not all, sure, but the mujaheddin that we supported in Afghanistan against the USSR were fundamentalist extremists who were unafraid of hacking the limbs off women who dared to dress incorrectly.
I hate to be a nitpicker, but those were freedom fighters we were supporting. Freedom fighters who were unafraid of hacking the limbs off women who dared to dress incorrectly.
i think all religion is whacked. it creates the conditions, and the impetus for war.
Sure, but saying that Islam is somehow the worst is just insupportable, as far as I can see.
well my wonderful atriots I have to retire to bed.
ciao all
Assuming arguendo that hat's statement is true, it still does not serve to refute the earlier statement that OBL and other arab outsiders were being funded and trained by the CIA.
Omnes Omnibus
Agreed. I think it is interesting that OBL and the gang were playing all sides against the middle. They were heavily funded by Pakistan, Saudis as well as the CIA. The CIA budget went through several fluctuations. It seems we were competing for influence and the joke was on all parties.
Moon -- three cheers for the re-re-re-liberation of Fallujah!
I'm just testing my gravatar thingey. Please ignore me.
The Debka file is reporting that Birmingham was evacuated and police detonated bombs. The BBC says that Birmingham was evacuated:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/46.../uk/
4668313.stm
The preachers will express condolences for the victims and condemnations of the criminals. Then they'll add, "But Britain should have never invited this kind of response by joining America in the invasion of Iraq."
The trouble with this line of reasoning is that terrorists have never needed an Iraq debacle to justify their violent jihads. What exactly was the Iraq of 1993, when Islamic radicals tried to blow up the World Trade Center? Or of 2000, when the USS Cole was attacked? Hell, that assault took place after U.S. military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia.
If staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism, then why did "insurgents" last year kidnap two journalists from France -- the most anti-war, anti-Bush nation in the West? Even overt solidarity with the people of Iraq, demonstrated by CARE's top relief worker in the area, Margaret Hassan, didn't shield her from assassination.
These are the facts that ordinary Muslims must take to their preachers at Friday's sermons. A clear repudiation of the London bombings will not bring back the dead. What it can do is help the rest of the world differentiate between the moderates and the apologists.
Interestingly, "al" is Arabic for "U," "qa" is Arabic for "S," "e" is Arabic for "S," and "da" is Arabic for "R." And "bin Laden" is Arabic for "Lenin."
"Yet it's common sense."
Problem with holy wars is that idea (common sense) goes right out the window, first thing.
Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.
-Ronald Reagan, Afghanistan Day, March 10, 1982
just that there is not a whackometer ranking I can relate to.
Virginia
Best abridged explanation of agnosticism I've ever heard.
The VC hacked the limbs off of people that didn't go along with their program as well. What happens is that, when you refuse to engage the moderates on the reasons that they are fighting, or would fight, you create an opening for the extremists who tend to take over because they are the most committed to changing the order of things by whatever means necessary. We ought to identify and support our friends out there instead of creating conditions that force them to capitulate to those who would destroy everything to achieve their goals.
"i think all religion is whacked. it creates the conditions, and the impetus for war."
did anyone read "the end of faith" by sam harris?
We all know that the present "stratergee" isn't working. Will they rethink? I doubt it.
duncan hack is an idiot.
If staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism
But . . . this man is made of STRAW!
President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.
Well, ya know, "home" can only be one place.
And it can't be furrin'.
*Heh* sure doesn't want anyone having that conversation, does *heh*? I wish I saw more questioning of fundamental assumptions going on, but I suppose people are already dealing with a lot.
I value Eschaton for its sanity and its exchange of basically mainstream ideas. Kos got sick of the diarists posting conspiracy theories and banned a bunch of people making nutty accusations about Bush and Blair and the "enemies." Even the notoriously tolerant moderators at Democratic Underground got sick of it and banned a bunch of people.
If you want to have conversations on the Internet about how the WTC was wired with explosives and Blair blew up the London Underground and you want to "question fundamental assumptions," fine. Go to Rense.com or listen to Art Bell.
If staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism, then why did "insurgents" last year kidnap two journalists from France -- the most anti-war, anti-Bush nation in the West?
Going into Iraq WON'T STOP TERRORISM.
Wingnut logic is tuly an inscrutable pancake.
But . . . this man is made of STRAW!
Oh the thoughts I'd be thinkin'
I could be another Lincoln
If I only had a brain.
And don't feed 'em unless you
have to.
Feed 'em their own dicks.
FUCK THE TROLLS
there is no invisible islamic army poised to destroy the west. the sooner our leaders quit pretending that there is, the better off we will be.
Problem with holy wars is that idea (common sense) goes right out the window, first thing.
nick carraway | 07.09.05 - 6:50 pm | #
I've been reading Ian Paisely website. Switch "Catholic" with "Muslim" and you have LGF.
Imagine if the British had approached the Irish with the same kind of imflammatory rhetoric we're hearing about Islam?
Imagine if they had invoked William of Orange and Cromwell in their attempts to get "moderate Catholics" on their side the way Powell used "Crusade" with the Pakistanis.
And yet the most powerful country in the world is under the control of people who to me seem to think about Muslims the way Paisely thinks about Catholics.
It's full of radical, right wing, pro Israel extremists. It's full of fundamentalist Christians. It's full of old cold warriors who see the whoel world as the Soviet Union.
I'll be here all week.
TKK - how's the veal? 
Heh -- I think most extreme tinfoil-hattery is challenged by reason, here. Or ignored.
Goddamn, is everyone changing their gravies every 15 seconds? I can't keep up. I'm still contemplating mine. That's because I'm an artist, and hate to commit.
there is no invisible islamic army poised to destroy the west. the sooner our leaders quit pretending that there is, the better off we will be.
Karla nd my invisible sky friend says "nuh-uh, is too."
All you have to do to reject the whole flypaper rationale is look at the picture of one Iraqi child who has been smashed to pieces by the fighting over there, no matter who did it. Anyone who can look at that and still assert that it's better to fight them over there is a moral cripple.
I don't think the possibility is all that remote that we are being terrorized by our own governments.
Now, flame on.
mena
I don't think we're intentionally being terrorized by our governemnt.
However, just like the war on drugs, I think there is developing a powerful set of vested interests who have every incentive to make sure we continue to be terrorized by someone. And that the vested interests are very closely aligned with the current administration.
I'm not sure there's much practical difference.
Well, ya know, "home" can only be one place.
And it can't be furrin'.
As they say, home is where the oil is.
I value Eschaton for its sanity and its exchange of basically mainstream ideas.
====
My goodness. I have been Told. I guess I sholud shut right up? Or stay inside the lines, at least?
Anyone who can look at that and still assert that it's better to fight them over there is a moral cripple.
That's true.
Don't forget, however, that a very large percentage of the people who make such assertions are also morons or lunatics.
Sure, but saying that Islam is somehow the worst is just insupportable, as far as I can see.
i sometimes put things in a indelicately. in that way i am like bush.
basically what we have is fundamentalist A vs. fundamentalist B. bush vs. osama. bad mix.
look, i believed, no, i knew jesus. then i found out i wasn't quite as sure as i once was. i believe in the spiritual, but as soon as you attach it to an organization it becomes political/economic. then you get competing ideologies, my god is bigger than your god.
each individual most make any spiritual trip alone. all other paths lead to violence. the path to truth, is a pathless land.
may we all arive before bush gets us all killed.
now i have to go eat. priorities you know.
All you have to do to reject the whole flypaper rationale is look at the picture of one Iraqi child who has been smashed to pieces by the fighting over there, no matter who did it. Anyone who can look at that and still assert that it's better to fight them over there is a moral cripple.
Indeed. Of course, Atrios did post this just today: "Flypaper talk is nothing new but it's a rather offensive thing to say about now"
And that strikes me as rather offensive, as it implies that NOW it's offensive, because Brits have been killed, as opposed to the Iraqis dying daily since our invasion... I guess it wasn't offensive then?
Just sayin'.
I'm not sure there's much practical difference.
====
That's a much better way to express it, Flory. Thanks.
CD C:
Delete *.*
.
De nada, mena
mena -- you've been served.
I know in my darkest and most cynical hours i can imagine that these fuckheads are capable of anything. I actually told my husband on 9/12 (I think I was kidding), "the Republicans did it." But I cannot truly imagine that they would be so stupid as to make themselves that vulnerable. More because of their cowardice to take responsibility for their actions than for their moral reserve.
There's gotta be someplace you can try out ideas and see what people say, and I can't imagine a better forum than this one. You can color anywhere on the page, as far as I'm concerned, she opined immediately before being banned.
The trouble with this line of reasoning is that terrorists have never needed an Iraq debacle to justify their violent jihads. What exactly was the Iraq of 1993, when Islamic radicals tried to blow up the World Trade Center? Or of 2000, when the USS Cole was attacked? Hell, that assault took place after U.S. military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia.
No, the trouble with this is, none of these examples involve attacks on British interests.
I don't think the possibility is all that remote that we are being terrorized by our own governments.
I think it highly unlikely that our own governments are behind any attacks, but Flory is right about being watchful against creating systems that might ever cause temptations like those you're proposing. We should be smarter than that. As far as the events now, I can't imagine cooperation on the scale needed to pull off such a ruse. Someone would have a conscience and try to stop such a horrible offense.
Won't presume to speak for Atrios or anyone else but me, but I have seen the flypaper theory disparaged here numerous times.
We are being terrorized by our government. They've worked overtime terrorizing us ever since 9/11.
Try and keep in mind that in February 1998 Osama’s “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," which basically serves as an umbrella organization to coordinate radical Islamic terrorism, issued a statement declaring it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens--civilian or military--and American allies everywhere.
If staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism, then why did "insurgents" last year kidnap two journalists from France -- the most anti-war, anti-Bush nation in the West?
I notice that there have been a great many terror attacks in France since 9/11.
My goodness. I have been Told. I guess I sholud shut right up? Or stay inside the lines, at least?
never stay inside the lines. well,...
That's because I'm an artist, and hate to commit.
mer
hear that. so just pick one, start changing, till it feels right.
Try and keep in mind that in February 1998 Osama’s “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," which basically serves as an umbrella organization to coordinate radical Islamic terrorism, issued a statement declaring it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens--civilian or military--and American allies everywhere.
There's a guy who rants stuff like this in Times Square every day.
Let's declare war on him (after arming him and training him to fight the Russians of course).
The flypaper theory was another ex post facto excuse for the invasion. It's so simple-mindedly wrong that it's a prime example of "Make Ship Go" government.
The only people who are stuck in Iraq are us. The terrorists can come and go - they aren't confined. That should be so damned obvious.
We are being terrorized by our government. They've worked overtime terrorizing us ever since 9/11.
Tena
True, dat.
However, in mena's sense of the word - I don't believe they're committing overt acts of terror against us.
We are being terrorized by our government. They've worked overtime terrorizing us ever since 9/11.
Tena
This is true as well, but I was refering to the 9-11 attacks and others (London being most recent). I can't accept the notion that our own governments were behind those attacks. The fact that they have used them since is offensive enough.
Hecate:
How's the baby panda?
However, in mena's sense of the word - I don't believe they're committing overt acts of terror against us.
flory
They have people for that.
mena,
I've been Told a few times here myself. Doesn't stop me from tuning in and presenting my viewpoint because I still think this is a fine forum for those of us who refuse to swallow whatever is shovelled at us. I'd still rather be "served" at Eschaton than treated as a fellow traveler at Free Republic or Little Green Snotballs.
However, in mena's sense of the word - I don't believe they're committing overt acts of terror against us.
For 99% of the terrorist attacks this is true.
However there's one case where I think some rogue invididual or group inside the US government did attack American citizens.
The anthrax attacks.
Try and keep in mind that in February 1998 Osama’s “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," which basically serves as an umbrella organization to coordinate radical Islamic terrorism, issued a statement declaring it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens--civilian or military--and American allies everywhere.
gbp
And yer point would be?
Seriously. What does this statement add to the discussion?
Yay, dinnertime! Have fun, ya'll. Love yas.
' So long as the struggle against terrorism (i.e.who and where is the real enemy?) is conceived as a war that can (only?) be won by military means, it is doomed to fail.'
For he's (Atrios) a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow...
Cheers
If staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism,
Huh? Who said staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism? The point is they are unrelated. Or were, pre-W.
Except, of course, when the good ol' USofA was using Iraq as a weapon against Iran. Then, of course, we weren't staying out but going in as their pals. Can you say Rumsfeld?
What exactly was the Iraq of 1993, when Islamic radicals tried to blow up the World Trade Center? Or of 2000, when the USS Cole was attacked?
I believe those were both related to our establishing military bases in Saudi Arabia on Muslim holy ground. That's what UBL used to really stir up the troops. He wanted them out, and guess what? He got what he wanted while we piss around in Iraq.
BTW, echoing some above, this leftie never cheered a military invasion of Afghanistan. But I do think there are things we should have done there, since we left the country in the grip of the Taliban that we created.
The Flypaper becomes particularly bizarre now that we're left only with the humanitarian justification for the war in Iraq.
However there's one case where I think some rogue invididual or group inside the US government did attack American citizens.
Rogue being the key word here. You're positing someone working outside of official US policy.
Hence - NOT our government.
I can't be arsed to read the whole thread, but re: the 'base'/database-thing, this was touched upon at the Language Log yesterday where Tim Buckwalter was quoted:
"The word "qa'idah" ("qa'idat" in construct cases) is a neutral word meaning "base," as in "military base" (qa'idah 'askariyah) or "database" (qa'idat bayanat), and it collocates naturally and frequently with "jihad." So, al-Qa'idah is really "the Base for Waging Jihad," or "the Base" for short."
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/
l...02301.html#more
"So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail."
Same fucking mistake we made in Vietnam: believing that if we kill enough of them, we win. But "winning" is about hearts and minds, it's ultimately a political rather than a military problem. The VC/NVA knew this. So they were able to motivate their people to endure literally millions of casualties without giving up.
Uncle Sam, apparently, STILL does not understand this. When every tactical success alienates more people and makes strategic success that much more difficult to attain, that's a red flag that you are in a downward spiral and the harder you push militarily the more you are fucking yourself. Sure, Uncle Sam could kill more Iraqis, but that won't get us anything like "victory". Freepers, trolls, and simple-minded hyper-macho ghouls notwithstanding.
When was the last time anyone heard the anthrax attacks mentioned in the MSM? I mean, seriously, it's as if all of that was only a movie. If Republicans has been overwhelmingly targeted, don't you know there'd be glowing tributes to their fortitude and a convenient lefty suspect already tried and executed?
Rogue being the key word here. You're positing someone working outside of official US policy.
Hence - NOT our government.
True.
But it's also striking what a black memory hole it dropped into.
for those who missed it the first time around, mtv is replaying the g8 concert.
pink floyd is up now.
When was the last time anyone heard the anthrax attacks mentioned in the MSM?
I think some loon inside the government did it and that he's probably in jail now on some trumped up drug charge or other criminal charge.
That's pure speculation. But the anthrax attacks scared me more than 9/11 did.
They were the NYC version of the DC sniper attacks (which everybody talks about even John Tierny today in the NY Times).
But it's also striking what a black memory hole it dropped into.
SWR
Nothing visually interesting in tedious FBI legwork. Nothing to get the corporamedia excited.
That's assuming the feebs are even still working the case.
mena,
just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
i personally don't think the repubs would have conceived of, planned and executed the 9/11 attack, no matter how bad their poll numbers.
but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they knew about it and stood down from responding, coldly calculating how they could turn it to their advantage. perhaps underestimating the amount of damage, or not knowing the whole plot. what is acceptable collateral damage to the PNAC?
but them i'm pretty cynical.
The fact that they have used them since is offensive enough.
bill
As I heard a Brit say on NPR today, the real threat to our way of life is not from Terrorism but from our govs reaction to it.
.
Hey, don't listen to this Robin Cook fella. Sure, he wrote some, well, almost good books back in the '70's--not that I read any of them 'cause I was . . . "busy" doin' other things, if ya know what I mean--but what's he done since? Huh? Name one goddamn thing. Nothin', that's what. Me, I got the resolution to keep this country movin' right along, just as smooth and steady as when I'm out for my bike ride.
Fuck this guy. Vote for me and I'll set ya free.
Rap on wood, um, brother, and the rap will be, you know, twice as good. I think.
are blind cowards. You all still don't get it:
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/vid...ong-
murder2.wmv
I hope American troops drop an A-BOMB on the Sunni-Triangle.
uh, live8.
on a cool note, viacom got so much criticism for mtv/vh1 appalling coverage that they replayed the concert without interruptions today.
*heh* is an asshole.
but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they knew about it and stood down from responding, coldly calculating how they could turn it to their advantage.
They didn't even bother to wait a decent (strike that) "acceptable" interval this past time before they were crowing about how politically advantageous it was and how to make money off it.
Pretty good movie about Gettysburg on TNT.
Pickett's charge. That's kind of a summary of US policy towards 1 billion Muslims.
I hope American troops drop an A-BOMB on the Sunni-Triangle.
yes, THAT will certainly liberate our friends, the Iraqi people.
i personally don't think the repubs would have conceived of, planned and executed the 9/11 attack, no matter how bad their poll numbers.
Nor do I. But I do think that every right-wing idiot used the attacks as an excuse to dust off all their worst ideas. USA PATRIOT Act, Drilling ANWR, Invading Iraq, etc.
As I heard a Brit say on NPR today, the real threat to our way of life is not from Terrorism but from our govs reaction to it.
Bet Bush is completely pissed about the way things are turning out. I'm betting he thought that having the Brits panic would just make him so right as rain and he'd be able to shove a lot more of the "I told ya so" shit down everyone's throat.
Oh, so sorry, Chimpy. In a lot of countries the people can actually think for themselves. They don't need the govenment to tell them what they should be feeling.
Flypaper, people. Flypaper.
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzzzz.
Fight 'em over there, so we don't have to fight 'em here in New York, or London.
See?
Cause if they're fighting in Baghdad, they can't attack us in New York, or London.
Smart, huh? That's why I'm the "Flypaper Preznit."
Ask Mallard Fillmore. That's one smart black duck. Sumbitch cracks me up.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
i have no idea who did the 9/11 attacks. nobody does. there was never any real investigation of them. which is kind of a strange response to something like that.
Olaf glad and big,
You've got mail.
Yeah, nuking a million people who DIDN'T saw that man's head off will really improve everything over there.
every right-wing idiot used the attacks as an excuse to dust off all their worst ideas
Estate tax? Are you forgetting 9/11, you unpatriotic liberal swine?
she opined immediately before being banned.
Virginia
nobody ever get's banned from here.
except toby. because he's ugly and nobody likes him.
and even he was here the whole year and half i've been here.
I hope American troops drop an A-BOMB on the Sunni-Triangle.
If we do that and if some Congressman compares it to the Nazis destroying Lidice, I wonder if Abe Foxman and the gang at the ADL are going to ask him to apologize.
Is Osama still employed by the U.S. govt. or certain factions in the U.S. and is that why we can't find him?
i have no idea who did the 9/11 attacks. nobody does. there was never any real investigation of them. which is kind of a strange response to something like that.
Any real investigation would have shown all the people in the Junta who were sleeping on the job. Criminal negligence, you say? I think a case could be made.
SWR,
Watch the part about Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top. That one fight is why we still have an America today.
Of course, the Repugs will be the ones cheering for the 20th Maine to get overrun. They think the Confederacy is the Lost American Cause.
yes, THAT will certainly liberate our friends, the Iraqi people.
laughs, bitterly.
And the Right proclaims in the same fucking breath that it's all about bringing Democracy to little brown people.
It's enormously reassuring to me, and IMO critically important, that people are willing to HAVE THE CONVERSATION here. I don't have any fucking agenda, and I certainly don't want to have such suspicions. But it's getting harder not to.
it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
Don't get this...I have never seen a transcript of exactly what Osama states in his little videos and tapes. Since his first release of a tape, translation is forbidden for security concerns. We get offical summarys from the liars.
To give the moderates any chance for infulence Palistine must be able to form a government. Second the Saudi princes got to spend some of their oil money on something besides a new palace. How about a Mayo type hospital? Currently, Arabs can't get a kidney transplant unless to go to Israel or Europe.
but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they knew about it and stood down from responding, coldly calculating how they could turn it to their advantage. perhaps underestimating the amount of damage, or not knowing the whole plot. what is acceptable collateral damage to the PNAC?
Yeah. I could see a few PNAC types in CIA or NSA finding out about a plot to hijack a few airliners and - thinking in 1970's hijacking terms - figuring 'what the hell, we can use this'.
Not beyond these guys at all.
Still don't think it would've been officially sanctioned in any way. More likely the information that would've allowed it to be stopped wasn't passed to the proper people.
I don't think that's cynical at all.
They didn't even bother to wait a decent (strike that) "acceptable" interval this past time before they were crowing about how politically advantageous it was and how to make money off it.
Doc
Was it Brit Hubris that began talking about portfolio adjustments and investment opportunities? What an asshole.
Is Osama still employed by the U.S. govt. or certain factions in the U.S. and is that why we can't find
Porter Goss admitted that they know where he is. They don't WANT to find him. Once ObL is caught or killed, in the minds of most Americans, the whole thing is over. No more need for the Patriot Act, no need to keep idolizing an idiot as a War Preznit, no need to keep dumping truckloads of cash into Haliburtion. Time to go back to life as normal. No way, and I mean NO WAY, do they want to find Osama.
One's thing's for certain, if somebody pronounces the word "database" with a short first "a", then they've also, while being serious, said the word "databanks" within the last 24 hours.
Interesting attitude, Heh. As if there weren't such things as the Reichstag fire, Operations Gladio and Northwoods, MKUltra, etc.
Those things actually happened. There are of course thousands of examples of purely corporate disregard for human life in the pursuit of profit, many of them happening to us right now -- things like dioxin and mercury in your water, shit like that.
Does thinking like that make me a nut?
This is where people who reflexively spout "conspiracy theory" get my goat. We're talking about the motives of the most powerful military/corporate complex in the world, at a time when they face difficult battles on several fronts, all in an age of instant information.
They cannot survive for long if their weaknesses, hidden behind smoke and mirrors, become readily apparent -- and lo and behold the Bush administration stands as the most secretive we've had in our nation's history.
Why does ANYONE in power get the benefit of the doubt, as these people do again and again and again? How much baldfaced lying and malfeasance will it take for some people to at least consider the fact that those in power might consider keeping that power more important than keeping us safe?
I said "at least consider". Only a fool believes every nutty idea that comes along.
Then again, only a fool believes it's raining when someone's pissing down his leg.
Estate tax? Are you forgetting 9/11, you unpatriotic liberal swine?
Sorry, I was to busy swilling my latte whilst pulling the cork from yet another bottle of French wine to think of that. Oh, yeah, I was blaming America first too. In my Volvo.
No way, and I mean NO WAY, do they want to find Osama.
Hecate
Yep. Same theory as the 'War on Drugs'. Can't keep the industry profitable once the demand is gone.
Watch the part about Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top. That one fight is why we still have an America today.
I like the image of Pickett's Virginians better.
A lot of brave men ordered to committ suicide. And they do it.
It's enormously reassuring to me, and IMO critically important, that people are willing to HAVE THE CONVERSATION here.
It's "critically important" to you that we have a conversation about whatever bee is stuck in your bonnet?
How about we have a chat about this place called reality?
Was it Brit Hubris that began talking about portfolio adjustments and investment opportunities? What an asshole.
Now, to be honest, Brit's only problem is that one, his name sounds like the country he was talking about, and two . . . okay, his only two problems were the Ford Mentionalble and two, him and the guys are Fox--great fella, all of them--didn't let people know what the body count should have gotten to before shorting your future pants. Or somethin' like that.
Sorry, I was to busy swilling my latte whilst pulling the cork from yet another bottle of French wine to think of that. Oh, yeah, I was blaming America first too. In my Volvo.
Omnes Omnibus
I can smell the sushi on your breath from here, traitor!
Also Lee is basically insane in this movie. His generals keep telling them he's ordering them to do things they can't.
But he insists. They shut up, follow orders, and get killed.
So where's the backup copy of the database? Maybe they could print up the data on a deck or on several decks of cards and distribute them.
Dresden
On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.c.../
2WWdresden.htm
Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sla...ghterhouse-
Five
As I heard a Brit say on NPR today, the real threat to our way of life is not from Terrorism but from our govs reaction to it.
that was my first reaction to 9/11.
then when he gave the smoke 'em out of thier holes speech and my daughter started crying i knew we were fucked.
i think it was al qaeda, it's not like it was new info. they wanted to strike us. bush fucked up, and his PNAC buddies used it as their pearl harbor.
bush really believes tho, he's a true believer. this is a mission from god for him.
How about we have a chat about this place called reality?
Heh.
Who gets to define reality?
Warning: The following statements in a long post are grim, but my mind is weighed down with these thoughts, and I really need to get it off my chest. Please forgive me.
As said in the original post:
So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail.
The new "war on terror" (remember that this is #2) is never meant to succeed in the conventional sense of victory over a foreign foe, but is meant to continue without end against all who do not adhere to the U.S. institutions of power.
Unshackled from the need to hide U.S. projection of state terror under the guise of fighting communism, 9/11 gave our institutions a blank check to attack directly whomever we wish.
You and I, and all the citizens of allied countries will be sacrificed as collateral damage, just as the people of so-called terrorist states will be thus destroyed.
We do not matter to the institutions of power.
Those in power will never be touched--why should they care?
The profits are rich.
The opportunity to test new weaponry is fantastic.
The possibilities for disciplining the U.S. citizenry, believed softened by notions of entitlement and popular accountability, have never been so numerous.
At last, a rare moment is at hand to rid this country of what that neocon mentor, Leo Strauss, called "the parchment regime" of the Constitution--why should those in power care?
They have their slice of fame, fortune, and self-importance.
Senators, presidents, advisors and judges will come and go--the institutions will prevail, carrying out the policies developed over the last 50 years--perhaps longer than that, since the age of Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines.
The rhetoric is plastic and changes with popular mood, but the actions are always the same: project U.S. force directly or through client states.
Any attack on the U.S. or our allies only strengthens this will to power.
Terrorist attacks are mere fodder for more war, as we have become fodder to feed endless expansion of power.
War without end...
"Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement."
George Orwell, 1984
Who gets to define reality?
Why, whoever controls the media, of course.
How about we have a chat about this place called reality?
I've noticed you two nights in a row now, Heh.
What are you trying to sell?
OK, let's have a conversation. But it's a two way street...
Conspiratorial accounts are emotionally satisfying when they place events in a readily-understandable, moral context. The subscriber to the theory is able to situate moral responsibility for an emotionally troubling event or situation onto a clearly-conceived group of individuals. Crucially, that group does not include the believer, with the effect that he or she is excused any moral or political responsibility for remedying whatever institutional or societal flaw might be the true source of the dissonance. Where acting in such a responsible way is taboo or beyond the individual's resources, the conspiracy theory thus permits the emotional discharge or closure such emotional challenges (after Erving Goffman ) demand of us all.
Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities which are experiencing social isolation or political disempowerment. For example, the modern form of anti-Semitism is identified in Britannica 1911 as a conspiracy theory serving the self-understanding of the European aristocracy, whose social power waned with the rise of bourgeois society.[3] The apparent growth in the popularity of conspiracy theories since the 1960s might be understood in this light. Any such growth might equally be understood as an expression of a tendency in news media and wider culture to understand events through the prism of individual agents, as opposed to more complex structural or institutional accounts.[4]
From what little we have seen of the adoption of foreign and "modernizing" words, it is entirely possible that Arabic speakers could use an already existing word in a new sense for a new meaning. Nevertheless it is just so odd. If it is true, then the pre-emptive, disinformative translation is consistent with the American media pattern.
I don't put anything past powerful people, anything. Anyone who does hasn't been paying much attention.
What will happen when we find out that our most paranoid "tin-foil-hat" theories don't even scratch the surface?
Martin Sheen's Lee is problematic, and there were good reasons for the real Lee to believe his men could do things others considered impossible.
What moves me is the dig-in-their-heels guts of the Union soldiers, whose leaders never believed in them, at least not as early as Gettysburg.
It's sad, isn't it, what's happend to the Washington Post? What a load of crap, even, no, especially, the Sunday paper.
All your database are belong to us...
mena et al,
conspiracies are all around us. but when we recognize the fact and bring that fact up for discussion, we're treated like tinfoil hat nuts. why do you suppose that is? because a conspiracy has to be kept secret, and it is easier to ridicule and marginalize people that to disappear them. it's a a pattern that these guys use, and i am amazed how often they get away with it.
richard clark. paul o'neil. wilson. dean. blix. cook. ray mcgovern. how many others? people who were in a position to know, who come out and tell their story, ridiculed and discounted.
something happened on 9/11 besides the terrorist attack. a president was informed that his country was under attack and sat in a schoolroom and did nothing. fighters failed to be launched. air traffic control should have known, did know, should have sounded alarms, did sound alarms, and nothing happened. air traffic was grounded, but saudi royal family members where flown to safe spots. and flown out of the country without being interviewed.
conspiracy theorist? perhaps. naive? i don't think so.
and what are the two most common retorts to these allegations? not facts disproving them, but either 'that's old news, why bring it up again' (maybe becasue it hasn't been answered?) or 'why do you hate america?' (i don't; but maybe i don't trust certain americans)
Senators, presidents, advisors and judges will come and go--the institutions will prevail, carrying out the policies developed over the last 50 years--perhaps longer than that, since the age of Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines
"the institutions" being the military-industrial complex that the loony lefty Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about.
Uncle Smokes,
Now, you're making me sad.
that was my first reaction to 9/11.
then when he gave the smoke 'em out of thier holes speech and my daughter started crying i knew we were fucked.
I was in my office 8 blocks south of the WTC. At around 10 o'clock, security told everybody to go to the third floor or the basement (don't know why).
Anyway, a half hour later, they brought in TVs and turned on the news and I watched the towers come down again and again with the repetition of the phrase "we are at war we are at war".
But I was pretty calm during the whole thing. My defenses blocked out the fear.
But then it all came pouring out during the anthrax attacks. I was just freaked out by it. Then the suitcase nuke drumbeat started coming into the media, day after day after day.
On 9/11, everybody around me was afraid but deep down inside I knew it was a big but a limited attack and that it wasn't going to get me.
But the constrant drumbeat about suitcase nukes and anthrax and bio warfare just unnerved me to no end.
The events of the last four years are more complex than the narrative that we have been given. The narrative we have been given is for political/entertainment purposes. My daily experiences tell me that there is much more to these events than what we have been told on cable news. There are many causes to event, the trouble is when you start becoming reductionist.
How about we have a chat about this place called reality?
Heh.
Who gets to define reality?
People who use reason and empiricism to describe events rather than people who's ideas about vague plans and shadowy machinations that are beyond anyone's comprehension which are backed up by mere innuendo and ephemera.
"there were good reasons for the real lee to believe his men could do things others considered impossible."
-doc
no there weren't.
conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities which are experiencing social isolation or political disempowerment.
Ummmm....and the sun rises in the east.
Kinda makes sense that communities with political power aren't worried about conspiracies, don't it? Since they'd kinda hafta be the ones carrying out the conspiracies?
Now that DailyKos has 'purged' anything and anybody that doesn't march in step with the Gov't line on terrorism, The Database, etc., is it still safe to mention anything around here? (I hope so!)
Like, how Scotland Yard has just totally rewritten the history of July 7 2005 and suddenly claims all the bomb blasts were within "seconds" of each other, instead of spread out over an hour like we all sort of followed on the radio & Web as it happened?
Even the AP is using the phrase "police radically revised the timing of the deadly blasts" ...
(Not my usual handle, folks ... I've been banned enough today ... never thought I'd see the day where talking about holes in the official Bush / Blair story would get me banned from liberal blogs.)
Destroy All Humans!!
I value Eschaton for its sanity and its exchange of basically mainstream ideas.
BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
"there were good reasons for the real lee to believe his men could do things others considered impossible."
The two West Point roommates who die on the same day is pretty gut wrenching, melodramatic, corny, but I'm buying it.
Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities which are experiencing social isolation or political disempowerment.
What a lot of this is is NOT a conspiracy theory, my love.
It's government gone mad.
So, your next point is...
It's sad, isn't it, what's happend to the Washington Post? What a load of crap, even, no, especially, the Sunday paper.
Hecate
When I first moved to CA, back in the late 80's, I was so distressed at losing access to the WaPo that I suscribed to the national edition.
Wouldn't use it to line a birdcage today.
*heh* is one of us. A longtime poster here, now commenting anonymously under the guise of its alter-ego. Thinks its so smart, but it can't spell:
rather than people who's ideas...
heh.
Forgive me, Hecate, but there is such a feeling of isolation here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Only here, on this site, do I feel free to voice my doubts and concerns.
The longer I keep these thoughts to myself, the darker they become.
I have felt a growing kinship following and participating in these posts. I know its is merely virtual, a void that feels like human warmth.
I guess I am saying "thank you" to all the decent folk here.
Of course, leaping into a troll hunt has its rewards too.
I think a lot of the conspiracy theories were put out by the right to disorient the anti-war movement.
Pump a ton of noise into the debate, kind of the way the Japanese flooded the airwaves with meaningless chatter before Pearl Harbor.
Who gets to define reality?
I do you do we do
WE are all by definition at the center of the universe.
The whole fucking thing revolves around Me, You and Us, no matter who, where, or what we are!
Smoke that!
.
"there were good reasons for the real lee to believe his men could do things others considered impossible."
-doc
no there weren't.
Olaf glad and big
IIRC JEB Stuart had taken his light cavalry raiding deeper into PA rather than following orders using them for recon.*
*"Typical Cavalryman," mutters the Redleg.
I have thought about it a lot, and my opinion, for what it's worth, is that Bush and his coterie didn't conspire to cause 9/11, or even think it would really happen. They were warned, but they had their collective heads so far up their own asses that they wrote it all off to Clinton-era fuzzy-headedness.
In other words, it was criminal negligence rather than a criminal conspiracy.
Now, once it did actually happen, they were all just evil enough to IMMEDIATELY begin conspiring to figure out how to promote their own agendas because of it. The record bears me out on that one, I believe. That's where the true evil comes into play. The rest, as they say, is history.
BREAKING NEWS: New possible threat, Birmingham Evacuated...
i'm not a conspiracy theorist, btw. i'm a skeptic. i don't have any real theories to offer, i just don't believe what the government tells me.
Pump a ton of noise into the debate
They certainly are staggeringly good at that...
never thought I'd see the day where talking about holes in the official Bush / Blair story would get me banned from liberal blogs.)
Who are you?
Banned from liberal blogs?
Not this one. And you're leaving something out, methinks.
Anyone familiar with history knows that the danger of real hateful baseless conspiracy theories is never that some UFO enthusiast believes them but that the best and the brightest Harvard and Yale boys in the government take them for granted.
As far as I'm concerned, we invaded Afghanistan because of heroin. I have neither read nor heard anything that dissuades me from this notion.
Dunt dunt duh, duh-duh, duh-duh
Dunt dunt duh, duh-duh, duh-duh
Dunt dunt duh, duh-duh, duh-dah, dah-dah
Duh duh-duh-duh-dunt
Hey Fuck Bush
Duh duh-duh-duh-dunt
Hey Fuck Bush
Duh duh-duh-duh-dunt
Hey Fuck Bush
Fuck Bush, everybody.
That's all I have to say for now.
Now, once it did actually happen, they were all just evil enough to IMMEDIATELY begin conspiring to figure out how to promote their own agendas because of it. The record bears me out on that one, I believe. That's where the true evil comes into play. The rest, as they say, is history.
I'm in with that, because of D.C. only. Cheney, et al could have died that day, too.
bush really believes tho, he's a true believer
Who gets to define reality?
Hopefully not Bush
I have thought about it a lot, and my opinion, for what it's worth, is that Bush and his coterie didn't conspire to cause 9/11, or even think it would really happen. They were warned, but they had their collective heads so far up their own asses that they wrote it all off to Clinton-era fuzzy-headedness.
I think they realized that it was a possibility, but knew that it would work to their advantage, and therefore weren't motivated to make it a priority.
something happened on 9/11 besides the terrorist attack. a president was informed that his country was under attack and sat in a schoolroom and did nothing
Did it ever occur to you that Bush is a sheltered rich boy who was scared shitless with the thought that the country was under attack and he had no idea what to do without his handlers?
How about the stupifying incompetance of the CIA (who, by the way, has always been an institutionally stupid bureaucracy to the point where it failed to predict enormous geopolitical events such as the overthrow of the Shah, the collapse of the USSR and Pakistan and India's respective nuclear weapons programs, just to name a few of its failures) and FBI being the real scandal behind 9/11?
Occam's razor. These guys are bumbling idiots. Any handful of fleetfooted and marginally competant religious zealots with credit cards, internet terminals and boxcutters can easily outmanuveur the pathetic collection of midwestern hayseeds in charge an enormous, unweildy bureaucracy such as the CIA.
"there were good reasons for the real lee to believe his men could do things others considered impossible."
-doc
no there weren't.
Olaf glad and big
Citations? Rationale? Even opinion? Anything but bald-faced assertion? Based on what? I'm not saying Lee was right, just that he believed his army to be unstoppable.
People who use reason and empiricism to describe events
However, to use reason and empiricism to describe anything you need full and free access to all available pertinent info.
You're saying you believe 'all available pertinent info' is in the public domain?
In light of less than perfect info, mena's theories are as legitimate as yours, my friend.
i thought it was interesting that they managed to draft the enormous uspatriot act within days of 9/11. what is it, like 700 pages?
How about we have a chat about this place called reality?
Heh. | 07.09.05 - 7:36 pm | #
as well as your smarmy definitions of conspiracy.
i have a question for you:
did you blame gray davis and the left coast's liberal atmoshohere for the california energy crisis? the rolling blackouts? the astronomical price of energy during that time?
how did you feel when you found out that Ken Lay and his buddies conspired to create thos conditions for their own profits? and ridiculed poor people who were literally crying out for relief?
did you support the war in Vietnam? how did you feel when robert macnamara admitted that he conspired to sell it to the american people based on lies?
did you learn about the sinking of the maine in history classes? how did you feel to know that hearst and others conspired to portray that as an attack and so begin the spanish american war?
conspiracy is all around us, my friend. that doesn't mean every theory is true, and that some aren't generated more by emotion than fact. but to dismiss them all out of hand is childish at best.
No offense, but he is wrong. The CIA gave money and arms to the ISI. They determined which groups inside Afghanistan that got the most weapons, support and cash.
If you have read anything about Ahmed Shah Masood, or any of the other members of the Northern Alliance, that canard would not fly anymore.
Why am I surprised it is floated here.
One question, has anyone tallied the posts that are negative about Bush and this administration, all the mistakes they have made, and how their supporters are utterly evil, with the posts against terrorists/insurgents targeting innocent civilians?
Shocking.
BlakNo1 -- not heroin plus petrochemicals and Zbigniew's fetish for central Asian dominance?
i'm not a conspiracy theorist, btw. i'm a skeptic. i don't have any real theories to offer, i just don't believe what the government tells me.
I agree. I think most of the conspiracy theories are bullshit.
But I also have no way of knowing what to believe since I have no doubt the government lies and the press won't call them on it.
I feel more confident in my ability to know whether or not there's a God than in my ability to know if what the government's saying is true.
I'm a complete cynic about BOTH the conspiracy theorists AND the government.
i'm not a conspiracy theorist, btw. i'm a skeptic. i don't have any real theories to offer, i just don't believe what the government tells me.
Olaf glad and big | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 7:51 pm | #
====
I think I'd probably locate myself about there too, Olaf. It is pretty interesting though, that an effective climate has been established of not questioning TOO much, lest ye be ridiculed and discounted. It's astonishing to me how effective.
i thought it was interesting that they managed to draft the enormous uspatriot act within days of 9/11. what is it, like 700 pages?
I guess they could have stitched them together out of a bunch of wishlists they had lying around.
General Pickett. You must look to your division.
General Lee. I have no division.
I'd be sobbbing right now if I didn't know that most of the extras in the movie were probably Civil War reenacters and I really hate Civil War reenacters.
K + Y - Yeah, that works for me as well.
doc, i think lee thought his soldiers were braver than the union soldiers, and maybe they were- who knows? and he believed that that would make up for the fact that the union had better guns, more artillery, more men, more supplies, better supplies, etc. he was wrong.
rorschach, I don't think he was implying that it's not usually offensive but now is, but that it's particularly bad to talk about preferring people overseas to die when there are still bodies underground in London. Saying gays go to hell is always disgusting, but it would be particularly offensive said at the funeral of someone who died of AIDS.
Cog:
Your pathetic defense of Bush is revolting, to say the least.
Don't worry about "heh", mena et al. I'm staying right here, and I hope you are too.
Heh's cool and condescending response just makes my point. I certainly didn't identify the alternative theories heh mentions, nor did I suggest that I had fallen down a rabbit hole and awoken with a tinfoil hat. Indeed, one of the problems with exploring controversial subjects is that one will encounter all sorts of wacked-out rubbish and preposterous speculation. That's what I was getting at when I referenced NOVA-- during my little safari into the unanswered and unresolved questions about 9/11, I had to ask myself, "Who ya gonna believe, NOVA or some dodgy sites with unsavory themes and no discernible pedigree?" And I was annoyed that my intuition wasn't soothed by the NOVAs and the debunkers authoritatively quashing skeptical criticism on the circular theory that they simply weren't having it.
Wikipedia's helpful discussion of conspiracy theory notwithstanding, the old joke is true on its face: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you. Or may be out to get you, anyway.
I feel a bit like Frodo on Amon Hen; he unwisely puts on the Ring and is suddenly caught between two overwhelming and opposing currents of psychic energy. The Dark Lord urges him to reveal himself; Gandalf urges him to take off the Ring at once. Finally there is an instant where Frodo recovers himself and is able to choose freely-- to take off the Ring, incidentally, although that's not the point.
I feel caught between opposing forces of "tinfoil hattery" vs. "debunkers". Each stance, as far as I can determine, is more a function of temperament than superior wisdom, and I don't trust either. For instance, heh doesn't know any more about what really happened in London or NYC than you or I do; he/she/it is only expressing hostility to questioning received wisdom.
This same fog surrounds the recent elections and voting controversies, and I daresay that stern adult remonstrances that there are no monsters in the closet or under the bed, now go to sleep! haven't solved the problem.
NOVA (or even Wikipedia) said it, I believe it, and that settles it! doesn't do it for me. So I intend to keep on picking away.
And ask Seraphel about how armed and bankrolled Saddam for 30 years. Rumsfeld and the Reagan administration made a horrendous error, giving arms and money to Saddam during the war with Iran, who you will remember had several dozen Americans hostage for their "safekeeping". The total amount of that military aid by the US goverment over the last 30 years? Less than 1%.
Somehow that translates to the USA bankrolled and armed Saddam. Russia/China/Germany/France? Not a word.
Bash Bush all you want, bash the war all you want, fire Rumsfeld, fire Cheney. Just be honest with the arguments you try to make or be prepared to be written off as an imbecile.
Not unlike Kos and Atrios after the last election.
people who's ideas about vague plans and shadowy machinations that are beyond anyone's comprehension which are backed up by mere innuendo and ephemera.
Heh.
like bushy boy sealing all daddy's and ronnies records into perpetuity
you know- Iran-contra, Granada, panama. just normal singular nonevents in our little vacuums
doc, i think lee thought his soldiers were braver than the union soldiers, and maybe they were- who knows?
He probably had most of the experienced officer corps and most of the best West Point grads.
Yet Chamberlain was an English professor so it kind of didn't matter in the end.
"Your pathetic defense of Bush is revolting, to say the least."
Should I move to Israel now Pie?
Moron.
i'm not a conspiracy theorist, btw. i'm a skeptic. i don't have any real theories to offer, i just don't believe what the government tells me.
Are you skeptical, or do you just automatically assume that every time they open their mouths, they're lying?
I'm pretty firmly in the latter camp these days. Even when they announce something that seems unequivocally positive, like aid for Africa, I immediately look for either a catch, or a loophole, or both.
Melissa just told me
Use the Fork, agave!
(checking if the Brownies are done)
I'm still laffing!
.
I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe the obvious name. Perhaps the unearned familiarity. Whatever it is matters less than the profound sense I feel that Duncan Hack is one of those people who is stupid, ugly and liked by noone.
Oh, the CIA gave money, not to who it gave money to, but to an intermediary who passed the money right on to who the CIA gave money to. Rrright. One of those second-year-law-school-isms that never works the other way around, like when an Arab/terrorian groups gives money somewhere. Similarly, Bush's group of industrialists never gave moeny to the Nazis in clearlt marked envelopes with receipts, they gave money to someone who gave money to someone.
Seriously, what was the big deal about Hoffa? He was at least as cautious as the CIA.
I think they realized that it was a possibility, but knew that it would work to their advantage, and therefore weren't motivated to make it a priority.
Eli
And - in response to pie's comment about Cheney being in danger - had a 1970's outlook on what an airplane hijacking would entail. Flying into buildings was not part of their scenarios. So they didn't see danger to anyone but the passengers. Acceptable levels of collateral damage.
Cog, if you don't provide a link for your assertions, they're fairy tales, little man.
Link, please.
Or STFU.
One question, has anyone tallied the posts that are negative about Bush and this administration, all the mistakes they have made, and how their supporters are utterly evil, with the posts against terrorists/insurgents targeting innocent civilians?
Why don't you get right on that and then bring us the results?
"It is pretty interesting though, that an effective climate has been established of not questioning TOO much, lest ye be ridiculed and discounted."
Right, what planet are you on.
Yeah, he was wrong, history bore that one out.
However, after the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville Lee wasn't the only one to believe he had a superior army. And the Civil War is the reason we know that a superior industrial base trumps brave soldiers, basically. It all seems inevitable in retrospect.
Not trying to start an argument, just commenting under the influence.
Are you skeptical, or do you just automatically assume that every time they open their mouths, they're lying?
I assume that if it's in their interests to lie, they will.
I also assume that they probably lie at times when they don't have to.
I don't know when they lie or why because I have no way of knowing.
I don't think they lie all the time, maybe not even a majority of the time.
Did it ever occur to you that Bush is a sheltered rich boy who was scared shitless with the thought that the country was under attack and he had no idea what to do without his handlers?
well of course that is another possibility. but i think people misunderestimate this bastard a little too often.
mind you, i'm not saying it was intentional, or even that W knew what was going on. i'm just saying the questions are worth asking.
Correction. I assume that if it's in their interests to lie and they know they can get away with it they will.
[Please, Haloscan Lord, don't let this post get eaten again...]
i thought it was interesting that they managed to draft the enormous uspatriot act within days of 9/11. what is it, like 700 pages?
Don't forget the timing of the anthrax attacks, the evacuation of Congress, and the passage of USA PATRIOT.
"I have thought about it a lot, and my opinion, for what it's worth, is that Bush and his coterie didn't conspire to cause 9/11, or even think it would really happen."
Doc, I have one thing thats been knawing at me since that tragic day that I will "never" ever forget.
The "why are you bothering me look" or "smirk" on shrubs face after the attacks "as a reaction" when he finally hit the airwaves. That haunts me to this day. Let your own mind draw conclusions as I have my own.
During that one moment, when I expected him to be spitting nails ala FDR, we got an "awe sheet, now my days figged up" look.
That was the most bizzare few seconds in history. Chilling.
The new flypaper theory: throw whatever accusations you can until one sticks.
Flypaper baby, FLYPAPER!
Don't forget the timing of the anthrax attacks, the evacuation of Congress, and the passage of USA PATRIOT.
Apropos of nothing, I'm related to the little pyromaniac twerps who almost set the Mayflower on fire. And right after that, they drafted the Mayflower Compact. Coincidence? I think not.
Did it ever occur to you that Bush is a sheltered rich boy who was scared shitless with the thought that the country was under attack and he had no idea what to do without his handlers?
Yes. Remember that in 2000, Bush had no idea who the leader of Pakistan was.
If he were in on some 9/11 conspiracy he would have known that. It made him look like an idiot and cost him votes against Gore.
Check 1 2.. check 1 2.. Can you hear me now?
total amount of that military aid by the US goverment over the last 30 years? Less than 1%.
Somehow that translates to the USA bankrolled and armed Saddam. Russia/China/Germany/France? Not a word.
Less than 1% of what? Giving Saddam less than 1% of US military aid probably tripled the size of his military budget.
I'd call that substantial aid.
Cog said:
And ask Seraphel about how armed and bankrolled Saddam for 30 years. Rumsfeld and the Reagan administration made a horrendous error, giving arms and money to Saddam during the war with Iran, who you will remember had several dozen Americans hostage for their "safekeeping". The total amount of that military aid by the US goverment over the last 30 years? Less than 1%.
Somehow that translates to the USA bankrolled and armed Saddam. Russia/China/Germany/France? Not a word.
Cog, back up what you said with proof or STFU.
CD C:
Delete *.*
.
agave, transcendental texan:
cd
ZAP
..............................
The new flypaper theory: throw whatever accusations you can until one sticks.
Flypaper baby, FLYPAPER!
Go ahead and keep changing the subject, fly boy. The facts, they do not change: you support a president who admits that he wants people die in our allied countries. How do you think our erstwhile allies feel about that?
doc, i didn't mean to start an argument either. i think lee had reasons to believe that his army would be more effective than it was, i just don't know if i would call them good reasons.
What was 1% of the budget back then, Cog?
Shbinga, great point about the Cal energy situation -- I remember when it was happening, and Cheney blamed it all on whiny California.
Now we know different, but while it was unfolding in real time, anyone who thought that Gray Davis was right in blaming Enron and dergulation was thought a naive fool and a conspiracy nut.
Of course, we still haven't gotten our 9 billion back, and nobody's asking about it -- at least not in this little corner or "reality".
I always thought Americans prided themselves on things like "street smarts", "horse sense" and "motherwit". In the past five years all those seem to have flown right out the window and people like Heh, along with most of the MSM, seem more interested in preserving the official story than even attempting to see if there's more there.
And me without any Florida swampland to sell.
re: Occams Razor
I prefer this one - forget whether it was Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Who:
Eliminate the impossible. Whatever is left, however improbable, is the solution.
AHH, semantics. OK, truce on refighting the Civil War.
Here's one I think we can all agree on:
Kee-rist that Cog person is stupid!
It is pretty interesting though, that an effective climate has been established of not questioning TOO much, lest ye be ridiculed and discounted.
Indeed, this is the thing Matthews and the punditocracy think is "being reasonable," what they mean when they drool that "oh I just can't believe the US would do something like that." These people believe or have believed that
--Jewish liberal academics are a Bolshevik conspiracy
--Black civil rights workers are a Bolshevik copnspiracy
--Drug dealing gangs who just happen to be Hispanic (there are plenty of other varieties out there, but not on Newt's Faux special) are the next terror threat
--Nicaraguans are going to "march north"
--Cubans are going to sail north
--Vietnamese are going to sail east
--Terrorists can be fought Napoleon-style, especially by being pinned down (many, many vbariations on this one)
etc
but the idea that repeating the same mistakes for decades in Vietnam, or that our allies might not be as good as their embassies and redundant PR societies say, or that US Aid might be a load of shit, or that we really would send the Marines to fuck up a country that displeased us and do so rather routinely, is just not something they're willing to sully their beautiful minds with.
do not think just turn on the tv
...or read the new republic
The total amount of that military aid by the US goverment over the last 30 years? Less than 1%.
Somehow that translates to the USA bankrolled and armed Saddam. Russia/China/Germany/France? Not a word.
1% of what? And how does it compare to our aid to Israel? I ask this in the interest of honest curiousity combined with a liberal dose of drunken laziness.
...be prepared to be written off as an imbecile. Not unlike Kos and Atrios after the last election.
Cog
Ahem*
Excuse please, "Cog-who-smells-like-queso-putrido"
Both Kos and Atrios saw their site visit numbers rise after the election.
joo arrre a how-joo-say, a Cog who does not Cogitate.
A Cog weethout Cognition.
I hesitate even to leeck myself at you een deesdain.
so.
Not only has nobody in California been reimbursed for what Enron stole, The major-league bleeding assholes that smugly lectured us on how it was all because of environmental regulations have never even bothered to retract, much less apologize.
I find all theories interesting because I enjoy being open to new ideas, and there are times when you never really know the whole story...
The total amount of that military aid by the US goverment over the last 30 years? Less than 1%.
Ah, I love percentages. 1% of what? Our annual GNP? Iraq's military budget? Reagan's IQ? The total mass of the universe?
Make sense please. Or babble elsewhere.
One thing I DO know, that was 100% of a handshake Rummy was giving Saddam/
"If he were in on some 9/11 conspiracy he would have known that."
[Perpetually Annoyed Dick Cheney:]
Why on Earth would you let him in on it? Have you seen this guy try to master a bicycle?
[padc]
OK, truce on refighting the Civil War.
Shit, I missed a thread about the Civil War? And I'd just re-watched Gettysburg on July 4th, as I do every year...
One thing I DO know, that was 100% of a handshake Rummy was giving Saddam
Yeah, that and the senators who visited him pre-invasion and assured him he just needed more PR assistance.
You know who's great? The Persuasions.
That Al Qaeda = database thing could be true. In mainframe land we call databases bases. Could be a gov't type pun.
The bankruptcy of your administration's policy is so nakedly obvious after London that I'm afraid for what they'll do. Good luck, stay safe.
The "why are you bothering me look" or "smirk" on shrubs face after the attacks "as a reaction" when he finally hit the airwaves. That haunts me to this day. Let your own mind draw conclusions as I have my own.
Bush is hopped up on some weird Joy Juice his friends in Big Pharma have cooked up for him - probably a cocktail of Valium, Xanax, Ritalin, Paxil and god knows what else.
That he operates on the level of a brain-damaged baboon is just an unspeakably sad point in my country's history.
AAAAHHHHH!
Can't we just say that this Govs foreign policy was been, for decades, short sighted, expediant, devious, self centered and for those reasons Stupid!
Thus they hate us.
Dems and Repubs are guilty, but the Repubs take it to another level.
.
One thing I DO know, that was 100% of a handshake Rummy was giving Saddam/
Actually, it was only 97%, and I have undeniable proof! Rummy was crossing his fingers...
OCCUPATIONS ALWAYS FAIL
"Ah, I love percentages. 1% of what? Our annual GNP? Iraq's military budget? Reagan's IQ? The total mass of the universe?"
Less than 1% of the total government military aid to Saddam for the last 30 years. I can dig up the Swedish institute that did the study, I believe it even came with a graph. But what is the point?
It is not like it will persuade anyone in here to be more honest with the facts, Atrios in particular.
NTodd,
Honest, we were just talking about how stupid Dubya was. Well, the directions got all mixed up, one thing led to another, and before we knew it . . .
One of the Guardian's professional bigots, Tariq Ali, announces the bombings in London are all the faults of the British and the Americans. Mostly, big deal. The Guardian is a fascist rag and Tariq Ali is the kind of creep who is a buddy of Galloway. But the cynic in me liked this bit:
The bombers who targeted London yesterday are anonymous. It is assumed that those who carried out these attacks are linked to al-Qaida. We simply do not know. Al-Qaida is not the only terrorist group in existence. It has rivals within the Muslim diaspora. But it is safe to assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Blame the US and Britain, but dear lord, do not blame al-Qaeda.
Are you surprised that a Saddam and Taliban defender does not want to actually live in their societies, preferring imperialist Britain?
Liberals are beyond stupid.
I always thought Americans prided themselves on things like "street smarts", "horse sense" and "motherwit". In the past five years all those seem to have flown right out the window and people like Heh, along with most of the MSM, seem more interested in preserving the official story than even attempting to see if there's more there.
And now we come full circle. As tena said upthread, ever since 9/11 our government has been terrorizing us - by keeping us in a constant state of fear they've effectively short-circuited any common sense bullshit detectors the American public once laid claim to.
It's very much in their political and economic interests to keep us in that state.
Leading directly to the never ending War on Terra'.
I wonder if the British like the idea that BushCo signed them up as an extra layer of flypaper?
I know I hate that he thinks thousands of American military are are over in Iraq to be "flypaper."
If there were any kind of grand unified "9/11 conspiracy" you can be sure of one thing, Dubya wasn't in on it.
agave, I only care what's going on in the last five years, because that has had a deleterious effect on my peace of mind.
Let's focus on that, shall we?
One thing I DO know, that was 100% of a handshake Rummy was giving Saddam
And I do know that we were aligned with Saddam against the Iranians even while he was using poison gas.
How many Iranians did Saddam kill? A million?
Why should anybody in the Middle East like Americans? We coldly play dictators off against dictators. We coldly embargo a country. We coldly use them for all.
We don't give a fuck about Iraqis. Any American (or Englishman) who believes that is deluding himself.
If the same amount of money had been dedicated to Head Start and Welfare assistance for single Mothers, that 1% would be expressed with every zero at his disposal.
Yeah, it was some institute in Sweden, you wouldn't know her. But I swear I got laid!
...be prepared to be written off as an imbecile.
oh, did cog say something? sorry, i wasn't listening. i've already written him off as an imbecile.
Less than 1% of the total government military aid to Saddam for the last 30 years. I can dig up the Swedish institute that did the study, I believe it even came with a graph. But what is the point?
Do you want cred? Find the study. I like facts.
[von Rummsveldt voice]
Why, how can you even say it's a handshake? It seems to me, and I'm only Secretary of Defense but it seems to me, that if a milkshake is a nearly-frozen beverage consisting of milk and ice cream, then either milk or ice cream ought to be present, but you know what neither are, and in fact there's no beverage either. It's anothr one of these speculations and exaggerations.
[/vRv]
*duncan hack*
Got your ass kicked, didn't you, Cog.
That is an interesting translation.
Hmmm.
Doncha know there are some huffy folks on the american side the past couple of days.... I'll bet US officials offered to help with the investigation and were politely told to bugger off.
Now we have Blair publicly saying we have to address the causes of terrorism, instead of sticking to chimpy's script of "they're evil-doers and they must be killed."
If you haven't seen it before, it's new to you!
Bathing Curly, chattering at a bird. It's not a re-run, it's just unused footage...
.
'However, to use reason and empiricism to describe anything you need full and free access to all available pertinent info.'
My info: Hans Blix!
Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
Why is this "inexplicable?" We weren't there to replace the Soviets - and, in fact, we did leave Afghanistan completely (probably not a good idea). So the assumption that all this should have been clear at the time is ludicrous. Hindsight is always 20/20, but even if we could have "guessed" intelligently, the conclusion that Osama would come after the west next is just pipe dreaming.
Less than 1% of the total government military aid to Saddam for the last 30 years.
And what percent was it during the 1980's when we were actively supporting him?
Dig up your study please -- or shut up.
And what about the charge quoted by Atrios at the start of this thread? That the USA funded Bin Laden, the man responsible for 9-11 and the deaths of 3000 civilians.
Dont you think the man making that charge has any responsibility to be honest with the facts?
The fact is that money went to the ISI, not directly to those groups fighting the Russians. The real scandal, as voiced by several members of the Northern Alliance, was that the ISI distributed the money to the most radical and hardline fighters.
And judging from a lecture I saw over the weekend, the ISI's involvement with Qaeda in Waziristan underscores the problem.
I did think it was rather funny that the safe house for Ayman Al-Zawahiri had MMA stenciled right on the front wall. Kind of hard for a political party to deny that.
Who would benefit from, as someone called it upthread, a neverending war on terror? Who benefits? It's really that simple.
Less than 1% of the total government military aid to Saddam for the last 30 years. I can dig up the Swedish institute that did the study, I believe it even came with a graph. But what is the point?
The point is, COG, we think you're a lying piece of shit without proof of your assertion.
Just a little thing.
cog is too stupid too live.
Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
I think the Reagan administration probably believed their own propaganda and never thought the Soviet Union was going to collapse like a house of cards. I think they probably thought there would always be an evil Russian empire to keep the Mujahadeen busy.
"I can dig up the Swedish institute that did the study, I believe it even came with a graph."
SIPRI
Iraq was almost entirely armed by the Soviet Union. The United States sold Hussein no weapons of any kind. And yes, insecticide and tetanus vaccines don't count as chemical weapons, boobs.
Rumsfeld didn't just shake Saddam's hand, he was bobbing up and down in the most subservient manner I've seen depicted outside of medieval Russia. He was looking like he wanted a pat on his little head.
The linked article proposes that a war on poverty would be far more beneficial than a war on terrorism, because a war on poverty would be a de facto war on terrorism.
No cut and paste because I'm on a laptop, and I have no idea how to do this. Next to the last graf, if you're interested.
Comments?
Why on Earth would you let him in on it? Have you seen this guy try to master a bicycle?
Yes. It's like America is Lance Armstrong's bike, and Chimpy is the spoilt bastard who made his daddy buy it for him so he could put training wheels on it, run it off the road and wreck it repeatedly.
But it is safe to assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Indeed.
And the cause of Pearl Harbor was American strangling of Japanese mineral wealth.
And the cause of the Holocaust was not "the Goyim," it was the campaign of deliberately fostered misconceptions and the active crusade pursued by the German government.
And the cause of the last fire that happened is to some extent carelessness or deliberate action on the part of the people who just got burnt out.
This isn't "blaming the victims," especially not on an island where most people most certainly are not going to let the rightists sweep them automatically in with Bliar and the Buisheviks, and if you want to prevent it this is the salient fact to look out for.
Who would benefit from, as someone called it upthread, a neverending war on terror? Who benefits? It's really that simple.
The same people that always benefit.
Those that sell the guns and the bombs and other instruments of war.
The vultures of humanity.
As much as I love a good bridge mix of conspiracy speculation--hell, I have a copy of In Plane Site--what matters is what happens after these catastrophes, the response.
Historians are unsure whether the Nazis set the Reichstag on fire, but history shows they knew what to do with the event afterwards.
Did FDR know of the impending Pearl Harbor attacks? Did he provoke them? He, as former Secretary of the Navy, was certainly devastated by the news, but in the end, the plans for war were already in place. FDR knew what to do.
Ah well, for what it's worth: As far as I can tell, 9/11 was allowed to happen.
"The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd."
Hamlet, Act III, Scene i
Speculation beyond the observable aftermath of 9/11 leads you down a very dark road, and the echoes of your footfalls in that lonely place will haunt you.
Few will follow you there.
"Who would benefit from, as someone called it upthread, a neverending war on terror? Who benefits? It's really that simple."
Defense contractors and corporate america tied into those contractors.
Who would benefit from, as someone called it upthread, a neverending war on terror? Who benefits? It's really that simple.
No way. Let's tell Americans it's going to be an neverending war, and see what they say...
...especially if their kids will become fodder.
OCCUPATIONS ALWAYS FAIL
What kei and yuri said.
"Dig up your study please -- or shut up."
Why? What possible reason do I have to do anything for people on this board?
Are you prepared to get into an honest discussion about the situation? Or are you just looking for hatchet material, to furthur the rabid conspiracies that flourish on this blog.
If anyone on this site was even remotely prepared to get into an honest discussion, I would have no problem posting information on here. As far as I have seen, those wanting me to post information about accusations they have previously made, have done nothing but mischaracterize and flat out lie about what I have said anyone.
There is no discussion here.
Well, the troll shit is getting a bit thick up in here, think I'll take a walk to the store for some ice cream, back to lurk some more soon.
Just so, Pancho-- that's what I'm on about!
PS: Agave, consider restoring your brilliant green agave avatar. It was quite distinctive, and sometimes as I scrolled up to it I could swear its fronds were fluttering. Or maybe it's just my synapses fluttering.
The new flypaper theory: throw whatever accusations you can until one sticks. Flypaper baby, FLYPAPER!
Cog | 8:04 pm
Bushco's m.o. has never been better defined.
agave, I only care what's going on in the last five years, because that has had a deleterious effect on my peace of mind.
Let's focus on that, shall we?
pie
Those that fail to learn the lessons of ........
The Base exists and is what it is because of US. What we did in the past.
Can't loose site of that.
Can't loose site of the fact that we used Saddam for our own purposes, when it so suited us!
And I use the word US loosely.
.
http://www.command-post.org/arch...ves/
002978.html
Less than 1% of the total government military aid to Saddam for the last 30 years.
actually, i would be interested in seeing that. i think what you mean (correct me if i am wrong) that if you total all military aid given to Saddam by all other governments over 30 years, ours only amounted to 1% of the total. Of course, we haven't been sending him haid for at least the last 15 years, so I wonder how much of a percentage we were during our heyday? And I wonder is "selling arms" included in military aid, or only money given? I think Saddam had plenty of cash, and was more our customer than our charity. But yes. by all means, if you have hard facts and research please share them. I don't mind looking like an idiot, I just don't want to be one.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but even if we could have "guessed" intelligently, the conclusion that Osama would come after the west next is just pipe dreaming.
That's just stupid.
Anyone with a clue about what the jihadist belief system was could have figured it out.
Many did, and were ignored.
Make that anyway, instead of anyone.
edub,
The Washington, D.C. Quakers have bumper stickers, and a huge sign over by my favorite restaurant, Nora, that says, essentially, "What are you doing with your life to eliminate the causes of war?" It makes me think that those who work to eliminate poverty are peacemakers.
" Rumsfeld didn't just shake Saddam's hand,"
http://graphics.boston.com/news/...s/saddam/
05.jpg
what the fuck does that prve?
Hanz blix was right.
There is no discussion here.
Then why are you here? we think you are too stupid to live.
There is no reason to enter into a discussion with someone who has the capacity to reason of a sea slug.
And what about the charge quoted by Atrios at the start of this thread? That the USA funded Bin Laden, the man responsible for 9-11 and the deaths of 3000 civilians.
Cog, the US did fund the Mujahadeen and Bin Laden back in the 80's to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
"Who would benefit from, as someone called it upthread, a neverending war on terror? Who benefits? It's really that simple."
Asked by someone who's never heard of Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex?
"There is no discussion here."
--Cog
Cog, you're getting desperate. Go get a drink.
"actually, i would be interested in seeing that. i think what you mean (correct me if i am wrong) that if you total all military aid given to Saddam by all other governments over 30 years, ours only amounted to 1% of the total."
http://www.command-post.org/arch...ves/
002978.html
Why? What possible reason do I have to do anything for people on this board?
Cog
Damn right, Cog. It would really show us if you never graced us with your superior intelligence again. I think justice would be served if you just refused to enlighten us with your opinion at all. Honor demands that you leave immediately.
Asshole.
My dry, shriveled cunt itches. Wait, that's a little better.
Ive gone ahead and cited cog's study for pete sake, twice.
Why? What possible reason do I have to do anything for people on this board?
You continue to complain about the people here who are much smarterand better informed than you are.
No one here has any respect for you if you won't provide a source for your assertions.
You continue to refuse to do that.
conspiracy nuts or liars?
Cheney has gone the farthest in publicly discussing possible connections, and he noted on Sunday that "one of the perpetrators" of the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 "did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact."
He repeated an accusation that a 9-11 hijacker "met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack," but added, "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it."
Intelligence officials who have studied the question say there is no evidence of a meeting in Prague between any Sept. 11 plotter and Iraqi intelligence officials.
And right wing nitwits would never blame Britain, right "duncan hack"? They're far too classy. Except Debbie Schlussel did, on the day of the attack. So did Michelle Malkin. In fact just about every right wing site I went to felt it imperative to bring up "London's growing role as a center of radical Islam"[Instapundit], and imply if not say outright the Brits asked for it. On the very day.
It makes me think that those who work to eliminate poverty are peacemakers.
The neocons think war is a natural state.
And maybe it is- maybe humans are so flawed that we can't help but war on each other.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try not to.
the conclusion that Osama would come after the west next is just pipe dreaming.
Other than the fact that Osama actually said it in nearly those words (but then who expects the CIA to pay attention to that?).
The real scandal, as voiced by several members of the Northern Alliance, was that the ISI distributed the money to the most radical and hardline fighters.
First of all, the Central Asian Nazi Rape and Dismemberment Team --er, excuse us, the Taliban-without-the-apititude-to-study -- er, excuse us, the Northern Alliance, is the opposite of a source, especially since they moved back into the American orbit.
What's that? Our toadies say we're not to blame? Huzzah!
Second of all, you're saying that Americans are not responsible for where we put our money? We had NO IDEA that that extremist right-wing organization would fund terror? Try doing that as an individual, twits.
some UFO enthusiast believes them but that the best and the brightest Harvard and Yale boys in the government take them for granted.
kei & yuri - That's very elegantly put kei & yuri.
So is this the Sabre-Tooth thread, and does david kieth have his own production company with a sci-fi channel contract?
.
http://www.command-post.org/arch...ves/
002978.html
again!
http://www.command-post.org/arch...ves/
002978.html
AGAIN, FUCKERS~!
http://www.command-post.org/arch...ves/
002978.html
No way. Let's tell Americans it's going to be an neverending war, and see what they say...
...especially if their kids will become fodder.
You're right, pie, but this one's a delicate balance. I wonder about this neverending war thing, I really do. I mean, obviously there's a need to establish this as openended, but it's also been pitched as sacrifice-free, and that part just isn't panning out.
http://graphics.boston.com/news/...s/saddam/
05.jpg
look, its chirac joking around with hussein!
http://www.command-post.org/arch...ves/ 002978.html
perigord | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:24 pm | #
Pericord's think shows the same flaws as the Bush adminsitration's thinking in Iraq.
He thinks that if he proves that the majority of weapons in Iraq were Russian, that also proves we never supported Saddam or never aligned ourselves with him against the Iranians.
It's an obsession with narrow, military issues.
1.) The US held off on opposing giving military aid to Saddam. Whoever gave it to him, we wanted it there.
2.) We blocked diplomatic initiatives in the UN against Saddam.
3.) We failed to use the same rhetoric about Saddam's "mass graves and rape rooms" when he was killing Iranians as we did when he was killing rich Kuwaitis.
Spin all you like. The US was partially, even principally responsible for Saddam's growth in the 1980s so we have little right to talk about him today.
¡El Gato Negro! | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:10 pm | #
cog you seem a bit smarter than most of the other idiots who wander over here to piss on the commiseration.
but i suggest you regard the black cat.
that black cat is a funny mutherfucker.
oh, one more thing are WE winning? i'm not feel'n it.
Cog, you're getting desperate. Go get a drink.
Preferably of hemlock.
Kent™ Embigulator!
Nah, but Judy Holliday is on TCM and Arthur's huffing loam in the back yard instead of being a proper Dog and eating his dinner.
look, its chirac joking around with hussein!
perigord | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:28 pm | #
So you admit that Saddam was largely a western/Soviet creation and not much of an ally of Bin Laden.
You should go out and explain this to the American people. Last time I checked they thought he was involved in 9/11.
duncan hack
Congratulations, dear boy. Did you type that all by yourself?
perigord's melting.
Hilarious.
" Whoever gave it to him, we wanted it there."
YOU ARE FUCKING IGNORANT.
Iraq was a soviet satellite, the US had practically nothing to do wth Hussein's government.
The fact is that money went to the ISI, not directly to those groups fighting the Russians. The real scandal, as voiced by several members of the Northern Alliance, was that the ISI distributed the money to the most radical and hardline fighters.
And how does this contradict Atrios? bin Laden was indeed one of the most radical and hardline fighters.
Oh wait -- I get it....we didn't hand the money directly to bin Laden - therefore our hands are clean.
Isn't your side supposed to have a problem with moral relativism?
"was largely a western/Soviet creation"
lol
yeah, largely western soviet. and i think his parents may have been involved.
In fact just about every right wing site I went to felt it imperative to bring up "London's growing role as a center of radical Islam"[Instapundit], and imply if not say outright the Brits asked for it. On the very day.
In fact, there's a front page story up on that very subject on the NYTimes online this very instant.
Disgusting.
There's a difference between a mischief making "troll" and someone who disagrees with most of the points of view on this blog.
When I have disagreed with the "general consensus" here, people have been polite and engaged in a rational discussion. It seems tonight's mood is to attack anyone who has an idea that isn't in check with the approved viewpoints list.
You know what -- it might be that a massed infantry charge didn't work yesterday on those machine gun positions -- but by gum what if we combined another division...
How is it that Iraq wound up with Cyrillic stencilling all over their American-funded arms? Read Ken Silverstein's Private Soldiers, and especially his work on the Black Eagle Ranch. It's actually painfully simple and logical.
NYMary,
You've got e-mail.
Wow, what a shit-stained thread. I guess Atrios hit a nerve. But I don't play this game. Later, moonies! The trolls will have to go in for their baths soon.
YOU ARE FUCKING IGNORANT.
Iraq was a soviet satellite, the US had practically nothing to do wth Hussein's government.
We blocked the anti genocide treaty in the UN and that was aimed partly at Saddam.
We didn't arm him but we certainly provided him with diplomatic cover.
We drew the line at him having nukes and let the Israelis take that out but we had no objections to his having bio weapons. We drew no line there.
Cog, you're getting desperate. Go get a drink.
He's making me desperate. Can I have a drink too?
"No one here has any respect for you if you won't provide a source for your assertions."
Where is the source for US funded Osama accusation quoted at the top of the site now?
LMFAO! Who cares who you respect. This site is a echo-chamber for rabid insults and partisan attacks.
But thanks for holding me to a higher standard than you do Atrios, or any number of the people he quotes regularly on this site.
Lol.
agave, I only care what's going on in the last five years, because that has had a deleterious effect on my peace of mind.
Let's focus on that, shall we?
pie
Despite what I said earlier about all being in the center of the universe, WTF?
We're supposed to focus on what Affects YOU, in a certain period of time?
I think not
I will be willing and excited to help you, listen to you, whatever, but to shoot me down because my comment isn't in your Sphere of what matters to YOU...
PHHHTTTT!
.
"The US was partially, even principally responsible"
total nonsense. the US had nothing whatsoever to do with hussein for decades.
Iraq was a soviet satellite, the US had practically nothing to do wth Hussein's government.
You dumbshit- we took Iraq's side in the Iran-Iraq war.
You are too stupid to live as well.
LMFAO! Who cares who you respect. This site is a echo-chamber for rabid insults and partisan attacks.
fuck yeah it is!
Mr. Cook is spot on of course. But considering as much would be an admission of error by the Bushman, so deeper into the hornets nest the US stake will go.
"e took Iraq's side in the Iran-Iraq war."
what does that mean? we gave hussein some satellite data once, maybe. this hardly equates to hussein being a us creation and anyone who claims otherwise knows zip about iraqi history.
Hey Miriam! You're posting with rorschach's gravatar!
was largely a western/Soviet creation"
lol
yeah, largely western soviet. and i think his parents may have been involved.
perigord | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:31 pm | #
Once again, the US was arming the Islamists in the 1980s. The Soviets were arming Saddam, the Syrians, and a few other countries.
Yet somehow by 2003, most Americans came to believe that Saddam was allied with the Islamists that we were arming against the Soviets even though you show yourself how the Soviets armed Saddam.
Now why don't you explain that to the guy with the "support our troops" ribbon and show him how a Soviet client is highly unlikely to be an ally of an American time bomb set to go off against the Soviets.
LMFAO! Who cares who you respect. This site is a echo-chamber for rabid insults and partisan attacks.
Again, why are you here then? go play on the freeway.
You won't be missed.
"We drew no line there."
yeah only we did draw a line there if you actually bothered to read those rummy notes via the FOIA.
Iraq was a soviet satellite, the US had practically nothing to do wth Hussein's government.
french more than the US.
SWARM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is no discussion here.
Cog
THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE??!!!??!
what does that mean? we gave hussein some satellite data once, maybe. this hardly equates to hussein being a us creation and anyone who claims otherwise knows zip about iraqi history.
perigord | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:34 pm | #
It means just what it looks like. We were a bit smarter back in the 1980s than we are now. We had the intelligence to think in terms of a balance of power. But we held off when the Russians were (as you say) pouring guns into Iraq.
We wanted Saddam to fuck up Iran.
Lotta trools rolling out for this topic, huh?
Arthur's huffing loam in the back yard instead of being a proper Dog and eating his dinner.
A dog does have his priorities.
I see that a couploe of trolls are tilting at windmills again. It is so sweet to watch them try.
Did you know that according to a pretty graphic (allmost as pretty as the cgi sabre-tooth) say that the us didn't give saddam very many weapons.
(I'm pretty sure we just gave him rusty guns)
.
How is it that Iraq wound up with Cyrillic stencilling all over their American-funded arms?
is this a jke? i can't tell.
Ooo, thanks Hecate!
"And how does this contradict Atrios? bin Laden was indeed one of the most radical and hardline fighters."
As usual, Atrios quoted someone else making the accusation instead of having the balls to post it himself. It contradicts the person Atrios quoted, because it is not factual. Bash Reagan, bash Bush all you want, you will have my blessing, just be honest about it or I get pissed off.
"Oh wait -- I get it....we didn't hand the money directly to bin Laden - therefore our hands are clean."
No, we supported the Pakistan ISI. Big problem. Especially if you watched CSPAN over the weekend, an excellent lecture that detailed the connections between Qaeda/ISI and those tribes in Waziristan as late as January. Once again, Bash the administration responsible, but just use facts. Simple? Understand?
"Isn't your side supposed to have a problem with moral relativism?"
My side? I voted for Clinton twice and volunteered for a campaign against Bush in 2000. I am a registered Democrat.
1. I dont think that term means what you think it means, nor are you using it correctly. And 2., I think you need to take a look at why you think anyone who disagrees with you is a Republican, and exactly how open you are to an honest debate over the very serious accusations this blog makes on a regular basis.
french more than the US.
Jade | Email | 07.09.05 - 8:36 pm | #
Exactly. The US client in the region were the Mujahadeen. Saddam was a Russian/French client.
Now explain to me how a Stalinist client suddenly became an ally of a US sponsored religious fundamentlist.
Our leader can't ride a bike and of course, walk and chew gum at the same time.
This dooms us all.
I can picture him launching our nukes while fumbling with the red button on his desk that Cheney keeps a bowl over to fool him.
I will be willing and excited to help you, listen to you, whatever, but to shoot me down because my comment isn't in your Sphere of what matters to YOU...
What the fuck is the matter with you?
I don't like what's happened in and to this country.
Do you agree or disagree?
I'm not criticizing you, for fuck's sake.
"french more than the US."
the us sold iraq NO weapoins at all. the french sold not only weapons but fucking nuclear reactors (the same ones they sold israel!)
Evening, moonbats.
I haven't let any rabid conspiracies run loose. I swear, mine got all their shots!
Current crop of trolls is hardly worth ridiculing; certainly not worth talking to.
o LMFAO! Who cares who you respect. This site is a echo-chamber for rabid insults and partisan attacks.--cog/avestus
8 fuck yeah it is!
perigord
o Atrios never lets us say our peace
8 These bastards never let us talk! Fuck yeah!
o Why won't you let us insult you intelligence? Is it because this is a censoring echo-chamber?
8 Fuck yeah man! Fucking echo chamber! ECHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Fuck yeah, man. Fuck.
"I don't like what's happened in and to this country. "
pie it's time to call an orderly, i think the diaper needs a change.
the us sold iraq NO weapoins at all. the french sold not only weapons but fucking nuclear reactors (the same ones they sold israel!)
perigord | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:38 pm | #
Note that you won't deny that the Islamist movement was armed by the US.
My side? I voted for Clinton twice and volunteered for a campaign against Bush in 2000. I am a registered Democrat.
Oy.
Here we go again.
"We wanted Saddam to fuck up Iran."
In a nutshell, exactly.
Not that I agree with the decision, not that it wasnt a huge mistake, not that it had a ripple effect with Saddam later using many of the helicopters we sold him [those were not included in the study I mentioned because they were deemed civilian] to massacre many of the Kurds and the Shiites we were trying to protect.
Lotta trools rolling out for this topic, huh?
mena
Yeah,
Did I fall for a name stealer?
.
OT:
republican moral values in the heartland:
Fire, anti-gay graffiti found at UCC church
Demonination endorsed same-sex marriage last week
MIDDLEBROOK, Va. - A small fire and anti-gay graffiti were found Saturday at a church belonging to the United Church of Christ, a denomination that endorsed same-sex marriage last week.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8524348/
NYMary,
De nada! Hope it is useful. I, BTW, have been out slip-n-sliding with the kids from my street, who LOVE my Spidey Slip-n-Slide and my lemonaid.
Whoooo Hooooo!
agave - huh?
Wow. Cog is as dumb as One of a series of teeth or similar projections on the circumference of a wheel, or the side of a bar, etc., which, by engaging with corresponding projections on another wheel, etc., transmit or receive motion.
liberals.
My side? I voted for Clinton twice and volunteered for a campaign against Bush in 2000. I am a registered Democrat.
Richard Perle is also a registered Democrat. So is Zell Miller.
"Oy."
What, you still want me to move to Israel pie? Meshuggah.
slip and slides being the single greatest way to watch a kid wipe out harmlessly.
o why isn't Sweden bombed?
8 because the Swedes are pussies who caved in and can't stand up to terror
o why then was Spain bombed?
8 because the ...Spainds...yeah, the Spainds are pussies who caved in and can't stand up to terror
o But at the time of the bombing the Spanish government was part of the Coalition of the Bribed!
8 ...and they got bombed for it! But you need to support Bush to stop terror!
o so why was England bombed?
8 because the ...Eengds are pussies who caved in and can't stand up to terror [speaker is here smashed by biter veteran of IRA years]
I am muslim. You have the wrong information about Islam!! islam means peace. Those stereotypical images the west and the rest of the world have of arabs and muslims being terrorsts are all because of 1. Osama bin ladin, and 2. MEDIA!..
Anything that harms mankind is strictly forbidden in Islam.
Did you see how the media have been portraying arabs and muslims all around the world, as being either uneducated, or not developed. That's what people would want to see, and that's what the media is giving them.
Islam is AGAINST terrorism!.
1.) We armed the Islamist against the Russians.
2.) We passively supported Saddam againt Iran and Saddam does his job and fucks up the Iranians.
3.) The USSR goes down like a cheap Russian whore. The Islamists think they did it. They say "wow. We can destroy a superpower."
4.) But now Saddam is getting too strong and he's a threat to the Saudis and to Israel so we fuck up his army. We still want him in power but we want him weak.
5.) Meanwhile our Islamist freedom fighter friends are turning their attention to the USA and Israel. No more Russians to worry about (except in Chechnya but that's a sideshow). Bin Laden starts drumming up attacks on the US.
6.) Neither Clinton nor Bush has a plan to stop them.
7.) Boom 9/11.
Who do we attack?
a.) The crippled Saddam.
b.) The Islamist movement.
Mom! I'm home!
It is beyond my understanding.
I am just this little person in America.
This war is wrong, wrong, wrong. Why can't someone in power admit it and take charge?
I'm consumed with this mess. It's getting hard to live anymore.
GWPDA:
Arthur's humping loons?
What have you done to that boy?
The London bombings are entirely our fault. I am sick of the media trying to blame the victims of our imperialist aggression. The sooner this country wakes up to the fact that appeasement works, a fact that has always been glaringly obvious, the sooner these poor folks will leave us alone.
The ME has every right to retain their precious culture and maintaining Islamic law is central to that. Where do we get off trying to tell them they need to switch to democracy? They don't want democracy and our attempt to impose it on them is the root cause of terrorism. How can anyone not recognize this?
Mom! I'm home!
WalterNeff
====
Wipe your feet!
Jade,
Word. But some very kind folks on this blog sent ME a slip-n-slide and I'm getting quite proficient at the run-up-put-arms-out-to-side-and-sliiiiiiiiide. For an old broad, that is. For some reason, it helps if you whooooop really loudly.
me too!
islam means peace
*WHACK!!*
islam means submission to god
(strangely enough, it is nearly cognate for yoga: holy discipline).
gotta watch out for that guttersniping echo chamber, habibi
Our leader can't ride a bike and of course, walk and chew gum at the same time.
Little known fact: The Bush administration has in its employ a staffer whose sole job it is to calm Bush down every morning when he sees that big ball of fire on the eastern horizon.
It's true!
I'm not criticizing you, for fuck's sake.
pie
Well that's how I took it.
My Bad
I agree totally
as for
What the fuck is the matter with you?
It was a Dark and Storming Night.
A boy was born in the Masonic Hospital, Chicago, IL ........
Well it's a long story.
.
Hecate,
That sounds like a productive use of a Saturday. Me, I'm building my props. Today I worked on torches for a gothic cathedral (a cone of linoleum, a fan, a light, a gel, some shreds of fabric--looks surprisingly good) and some more on my styrofoam sand castle. So that was a hoot. Tomorrow we're taking the kids to a local park to a music festival. An infrequent Eschaton poster is one of the acts, so that's really cool.
An infrequent Eschaton poster is one of the acts, so that's really cool.
====
That is! Can you tell us who?
perigord, do you really support Bush?
I hunt Bush likers. Hard to find to these days, frankly. A rare trophy for a wall filled with converted idiots.
I am a Blomberg Republican of sorts. And none of my staunch conservative freinds can stomach Bush no mo.' He's far more liberal than Clinton. A fascist ona good day. But, that's what ya get when ya vote in a reborn ex-drunk c-student lucky sperm clubber.
If your a fascist, then ya got yer man. Elsewise ye might want to grab a
frayed extension cord and plug'er in for a little rebalancing.
Because hope is always in the box.
kei and yuri,
Yes, and, besides, who in their right mind would bomb Sweden? The sun was just shining there at midnight a week or so ago!!!! It would be a crime against the Goddess to bomb Sweden.
Oh! I just heard the first green acorn of the year hit the roof!
And the squirrels go wild!
The ME has every right to retain their precious culture and maintaining Islamic law is central to that. Where do we get off trying to tell them they need to switch to democracy? They don't want democracy and our attempt to impose it on them is the root cause of terrorism. How can anyone not recognize this?
I was reading an old 1999 National Geographic the other day. Great article on Iran.
God it's depressing how far to the right we've moved. Back then Iran was well on the way to moderating itself. The Iranians were beginning to get sick of the Mullahs. They were beginning to want their own kind of Islamic democracy.
Then we backed them into a corner and made them circle the wagons.
We fight them in London so we don't hvae to fight them, um, in uh, London.
Look, folks. We've turned the corner, ok! I mean we're TURNING the corner. We've got them bogged down. They're on the run and we've already accomplished the mission. We're simply now in corner-turning mode. Once that corner is turned, we're on a whole new street. One where we will be greeted as liberators. That street is of course Easy Street. We're on Difficult Road now. It's a very difficult road for sure but freedom is on the march on this road and you can't stop freedom from marching. Um...Yea.
mena,
redjb is in a sort of folky trio singing act with her sisters. Like the Roches, kind of, but a bit poppier.
Dozens more FOIA documents, two here:
Document 38: Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the United States Consulate General, Jerusalem. "Follow-up Steps on Iraq-Iran" [Includes Transmittal Sheet], January 14, 1984.
The U.S. intensifies its diplomatic efforts to curtail arms sales to Iran and imposes anti-terrorism export controls on that country. However, it does not plan to prohibit U.S. imports of Iranian oil.
The U.S. was developing plans to liberalize its export policy for Iraq. The revised rules would permit the export of U.S.-origin armored ambulances, communications gear, and electronic equipment for the protection of Saddam Hussein's personal aircraft. The Reagan administration was continuing efforts to persuade the Export-Import Bank to provide financing for Iraq -- a positive Eximbank determination would improve Iraq's credit rating and make it easier for it to obtain loans from international financial institutions.
Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation
Document 44: Department of State Memorandum. "Notifying Congress of [Excised] Truck Sale," March 5, 1984.
The State Department informs a House Committee on Foreign Affairs staff member that the department has not objected to the sale of 2,000 heavy trucks to Iraq, noting that they were built in part in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan. The official policy of the U.S. is that it does not export military related items to Iraq or Iran. When asked if the trucks were intended for military purposes, the official responds, "we presumed that this was Iraq's intention, and had not asked."
Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act
And this:
Between presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld's two visits to Iraq to seek ways to improve U.S.-Iraq relations and to identify measures to assist Iraq's war efforts, the Iraqi military issues a statement declaring that "the invaders should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever their number and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide."
There's no good targets in Sweden.
the us sold iraq NO weapoins at all
Flat lie. Well, literally true, weapoins are hard to find.
Islam is AGAINST terrorism!.
That's why we're making a distinction between Islam and Islamist. Religion can be manipulated to support literally anything - witness the "Christian" movements in this country now...
Not to jump in on the debate or anything, but I've found this site put up by the Center for Cooperative Research to be a great resource for allthings 9/11-related.
And I'm a skeptic. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and all that.
(Oh, and my Gravatar has a special message for the "cog"-toll...)
-
-
I love the Roches.
The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
Admit it, cog.
To you, this is anathema.
The U.S. was developing plans to liberalize its export policy for Iraq. The revised rules would permit the export of U.S.-origin armored ambulances, communications gear, and electronic equipment for the protection of Saddam Hussein's personal aircraft. The Reagan administration was continuing efforts to persuade the Export-Import Bank to provide financing for Iraq -- a positive Eximbank determination would improve Iraq's credit rating and make it easier for it to obtain loans from international financial institutions.
Exactly. We were making it easy for Saddam to buy weapons from the French and Russians.
It's hilirious that the trolls can't even understand how Reagan used diplomatic power to play with the balance of power in the Middle East.
Even Reagan was too subtle for them.
Wow! just finished reading the whole thread( so far). Do I get a cookie?
Why are the trools so anxious about our little liberal echo chamber?
Methinks they doth protest too much.
If we so displease you, go away.
That being said, ain't there new thread?
Mikey the thread killer strikes again!
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSA...SAEBB/NSAEBB82/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm..._Iraq_1973-
1990
The point is not the total amount, not much analysis can come from such gross figures. Note however, the relative amount shot up in 1988 (well after Saddam had committed the chemical warfare crimes that formed one of our invasion excuses).
What matters is that Iraq became a client state of ours as the Soviet Union collapsed. Then Saddam disobeyed/misunderstood orders (or was set up) and invaded Kuwait.
After he was pushed out, we kept him. Our institutions are interested only in stability, and brutal, repressive regimes are what we want.
This policy, of course, is one of the stated grievances bin Laden has against the U.S. Make of that what you will.
Our planners want an Iraq refashioned into another Turkey. However, the current servants of U.S. foreign policy, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and to a lesser extent Bush (he is more of a front than a planner), made what should have been an easy occupation into a bungled mess.
The current crew is in danger of sabotaging, with their arrogant mistakes, a foreign policy that has been more successful than not for the past 50 years.
I see the number of leaks, the revelations of torture (new to us, but not to the rest of the world), and the visible weakening of the administration's support as evidence that those with a long term interest in U.S. superiority have had enough.
The next two years are going to be quite interesting, and not much fun for Bush.
Admit it, cog.
Cog thinks the Guardian is "fascist".
Only a mind shatteringly stupid Kach Party type or LGF supporter thinks that.
These are the people who also think Haaretz is "anti-semitic".
I hope Atrios has gone out and is having a nice dinner. Sometimes things are too hard to take. This is one of them.
Just done with a game of 5-year-old baseball in the backyard. Calvinball was simpler.
So, mon amis, how stands the republic?
It was a Dark and Storming Night.
A boy was born in the Masonic Hospital, Chicago, IL ........
Well it's a long story.
Longer for your mother...
you too!
"the us sold iraq NO weapoins at all"
is that parody?
do you know why we were so sure they had anthrax and botulism and all that chemical crap? because we sold it to him. we knew to the gram how much he had. because we sold it to him. Oh well.
kei & yuri | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:39 pm | #
i've always liked kei & yuri. i don't always understand 'em, but i've always like 'em.
why don't you "troll" motherfuckers piss off we don't like the way bush is doing things. by hook or by crook he's president and he's doing it his way, which apparently to you idiots automatcally makes it right.
he's president, you've nothing to worry about, sit back relax. until it goes down again.
and it will go down again. BOOM!
One of my very absolute favorite poems in the entire universe says, "And an old age, serene and bright/And lovely as a Lapland night/Shall lead thee to thy grave."
Please. Don't anyone think of bombing Sweden.
The next two years are going to be quite interesting, and not much fun for Bush.
Uncle Smokes
====
I don't think the next few years are going to be fun for much of anybody.
mikey sez is the numa numa guy!~
Central S,
I put up some pictures of some threads over at my place, including your requested 1/4 x 28. Also have a bastard 1/4 x 24 (got me gears mixed up)
Hows my boy?
.
These are the people who also think Haaretz is "anti-semitic".
Well the, cog needs to put his life on the line for his beliefs.
Save us, cog!!!
As usual, Atrios quoted someone else making the accusation instead of having the balls to post it himself.
Atrios quotes a former British foreign secretary - who presumably has some expertise in matters of terrorism - rather than giving us the benefit of his extensive experience in the field -- and this is a bad thing?
And I still don't get how it contradicts the quote Atrios posted. We funded the mujahedeen -- directly or indirectly.
No, we supported the Pakistan ISI. Big problem. Especially if you watched CSPAN over the weekend, an excellent lecture that detailed the connections between Qaeda/ISI and those tribes in Waziristan as late as January.
Best as I can make out what this is saying -- you're agreeing that we funded an organization that funded al Queda.
So we indirectly funded al Queda.
Again -- how does that contradict anything Atrios posted.
Moral relativism is the position that moral propositions do not reflect absolute or universal truths. It not only holds that ethical judgments emerge from social customs and personal preferences, but also that there is no single standard by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth.
We're less guilty than ISI -- therefore we're not guilty. That meaning of moral relativism?
Just done with a game of 5-year-old baseball in the backyard. Calvinball was simpler.
So, mon amis, how stands the republic?
Thersites - Eh, okay. 5yo ball sounds a lot like Yellow/Orange Ball. Neither opponent has come to terms with the idea of BRINGING THE BALL BACK, have they eh?
{Sigh}
Yellow Ball is being announced now. It's 107. I don't wanna.
I gots new cat vid, for those interested in ignoring trools...
.
Ice cream, yum!
So, are we sabretooth blogging, or should I just carry on watching the Mets?
The US client in the region were the Mujahadeen. Saddam was a Russian/French client.
You do remember the whole NATO and Warsaw Pact thing don't you. The French were on our side of the Iron Curtain.
karl rove would read this to mean that liberals r weak. ultimately this is the reactionary's blind spot...the ability to see clerly tyhat compassion
for those who see power as the only good thing in life, of course, they see this as the nature of man. it is his nature to doubt himself when unable to see subservience in the eyes of others, to seek the certainy that comes with authority his blind spot is his inability to see that compassion brings a power all its own.
"And an old age, serene and bright/And lovely as a Lapland night/Shall lead thee to thy grave."
Hecate, beautiful and desirable.
Lebensraum.
just sayin'
.
Modern dryers have nothing on old=fashioned clothes=lines. Sheets dried on a clothes-line are the freshest thing you can imagine.
Went to a company paid for Astros game.
Fun
Melissa got me a shirt and a cap for her for the game.
Damn she's cute with a backwards ball cap!
A big 12" hotdog and 2 beers, $20!
.
Couple other interesting FOIA cables:
Document 31: United States Embassy in United Kingdom Cable from Charles H. Price II to the Department of State. "Rumsfeld Mission: December 20 Meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein," December 21, 1983.
At a 90-minute meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein evinces "obvious pleasure" at a letter Rumsfeld brought from President Ronald Reagan. The two discuss common U.S.-Iraqi interests, including Lebanon, Palestine, opposition to an outcome of the Iran-Iraq war that "weakened Iraq's role or enhanced interests and ambitions of Iran," and U.S. efforts to cut off arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld says that the U.S. feels extremely strongly about terrorism and says that it has a home - in Iran, Syria, and Libya, and that it is supported by the Soviet Union.
And this jewel:
The State Department instructs the U.S. delegate to the United Nations to get the support of other Western missions for a motion of "no decision" regarding Iran's draft resolution condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons. Failing that, the U.S. is to abstain on the resolution.
snip
A State Department background cable for Donald Rumsfeld's March 1984 visit to Baghdad notes the distress caused to Iraqi officials by the U.S.'s public condemnation of Iraq's use of chemical weapons "despite our repeated warnings that this issue would emerge sooner or later." Most of the cable is concerned with the Reagan administration's interest in reassuring Iraqi officials that U.S. financing might be available for the proposed pipeline to deliver Iraqi oil to Aqaba, and other U.S. regional interests.
So we were for chemicals weapons before we were against them.
Sometimes things are too hard to take. This is one of them.
mer | Email | 07.09.05 - 8:55 pm | #
====
That was me two days ago, mer. It'll get better for you too. This is a terrible time for the world, and it is too much for any one of us on any given day. That's why this place is so important - so many of us are isolated to some degree with our perceptions. Know that you have solidarity with good people here, and that you do have the strength you will need. And rest.
Thanks for the chart, perigord. I found the original data source even more interesting, since it explains the numbers.
http://web.sipri.org/contents/
ar...atirq_data.html
So it has nothing to do with government aid, it is conventional weapons sold. And it is essentially a volume indicator - SIPRI rates the weapons systems at a trend-indicator value, but states this really means volume.
Interesting statistics. Not sure what it indicates other than the fact that Russia and France sold more arms to Iraq than we did (considerably) between 1970 and 1990. I wish they hadn't, too. But in terms of our support for Iraq in the war against Iran, our support for our good friend Saddam, and whether unconventional weapons were supplied, those factors are not part of this report.
But again, thanks for the facts. Always appreciated, always helpful.
Anyone ever read Stanislaw Lem? He wrote a great story that relates to accumulating facts.
Whoooo Hooooo!
Hecate
Ooooooooooohhhhhh, Spidey slipping.... Try the bottom approach too..
flory - that's huffing loam. As a cheap fix it's pretty much unbeatable. Find a nice loamy place. Dig down to muzzle depth. Put whole face in and breeeeeeaaaaath deeply. Whoaaaa!... Repeat.
Yellow ball.
Rock and Roll. And sexy lyrics. And sexy videos. And sexy, female Rock stars.
Hollywood. And sexy movies. And portrayals of strong women. Sexy women. Intelligent women.
Just like the Communist leaders of the past (Soviets) and the present (Red Chinese), the Al Qaeda leadership hates our democratic cultural exports.
There is a pattern, you see.
Control-freak monopolists, no matter if they're secular or religious, hate the culture and the exports of our free-wheeling, freedom-loving democracy. Even those control-freak monopolists within our own society hate us.
1979 was a pivotal year. In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini became the dictator of Iran...and declared war on the West, and Rock-N-Roll, and Hollywood, and all our democratic cultural exports. Also, in 1979, Jerry Falwell established the Moral Majority...and declared war on our society, and Rock-N-Roll, and Hollywood, and all our democratic cultural institutions including the U.S. Constitution and our traditional separation of church and state.
Out of Khomeini's declaration of jihad against the West, and all our "sinful" influences, arose the Al Qaeda. This declaration of jihad by a religious fundamentalist control-freak led to the 9/11 attacks happening.
Jerry Falwell's declaration of a crusade against all the "sinful" influences he judged to be present in our freedom-loving democratic society (the West) has led to abortion-clinic bombings and the assassination of doctors...and the trashing of the traditional separation of church and state...and the erection of a control-freak theocracy in America.
So how do we fight the Islamic religious fundamentalist terrorists and undercut their support among the mainstream, non-jihadist Muslims? By turning the West into a carbon-copy, theocratic police state like the radical Muslim jihadists want to do to the rest of the world...and some of our own citizens want to do to our freedom-loving, freedom-founded society?
Of course not, silly.
It was raunchy Rock-N-Roll and raunchy Hollywood movies being produced and exported overseas that undercut, finally, the authority and control of the Soviet old-timers in Moscow. Looking back to 50-years-ago, the Soviet leaders hated Rock-N-Roll. They preferred classical music and ballet. Why? NO LYRICS. No revolutionary, flying-in-the-face-of-authority lyrics. These control-freak Communist leaders even burned Rock-N-Roll records.
Sound familiar?
At the same time Communist Soviet leaders were burning Rock-N-Roll records, certain evangelicals in America were also burning Rock-N-Roll records (that, for some reason, rebellious 50's teenagers all over the world loved). Coincidence? No way, Jose.
Teenagers tend to be expansive in their outlook on life. Hey, you were a teenager once. Teenagers tend to push the limits. Teenagers tend to want more freedom. Teenagers, except the bullies, tend to be more accepting and open-minded. Which, of course, certain constrictive and restrictive control-freak adults hate.
But then, the old-farts die off eventually, and the teenagers who were once young and rebellious and adventurous are now adults themselves. And everthing depends on what influenced them during their teenage years...whether or not they will have an open and free society or one ruled by a bunch of old-fart control-freaks.
1) This is why all the old-fart control-freaks ALWAYS try to get to people while they are young and program them properly. Religious-indoctrination schools. Communist-indoctrination schools. Whatever.
2) And then the old-fart control-freaks set up a political system whose sold purpose is to maintain their control over everyone else in society...including the teenagers. Police powers. Judicial review. A puppet legislature. All geared to maintain control, to maintain doctrinaire dominance over everyone else.
And then, just like what happened in the American Revolution, there was another revolution that occurred in the mid-20th Century...the Rock-N-Roll Revolution. And all the control-freaks around the world freaked out. As they are still freaking out.
In Egypt, did you know they have Rock Concerts? Or should I say Instrumental Rock Concerts because the religious control-freaks don't allow lyrics. Because the lyrics might be subversive and call into question the old-fart control-freaks' authority.
After 9/11, and the Taliban/Al Qaeda religious control-freak nuts in Afghanistan were routed, I read that some Aghani teenagers in Kabul chased down one of the slower agents for the religious control-freaks, a morality policeman, and killed him.
Teenagers in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, are terrorized by similar "morality police" agents which the control-freak religious authorities have patrolling the streets looking for "sinful" behavior. Like Rock-N-Roll music (or any music), or having a crush on another teenager (although one's Orthodox religious parents might have someone else in mind), or co-mingling of the sexes, or whatever.
Teenagers are behind the reform movements in one Islamic, control-freak country after another. Just as they are behind the reform movements in Communist-controlled countries. Just as freedom-loving teenagers in America are aggressively pushing back against the control-freak religious fanatic attempt in America to tear down the wall between church and state and thus theocratize our freedom-loving democratic culture.
In our war against religious fundamentalist terrorism or any terrorism being promoted by control-freaks, therefore, it is the teenagers to whom we must address our message of democratic freedom. It might not have an immediate effect, but the seeds of freedom will have been planted so in a generation or two, the former teenagers who will be adults will have the freedom tools to turn their society into a free and open democratic one.
Therefore, LONG LIVE Rcck and Roll, and all it's "sinfulness"!!!!!!!!
LONG LIVE Hollywood (and off-Hollywood) with all it's "sinfulness"!!!!!!!!!
Because, you see, to old-fart, control-freak monopolists, Freedom itself is the "sin" they always attempt to eradicate. Forget it, you old farts.
So, mon amis, how stands the republic?
We're a republic? I thought we were an autonomous collective...
Kent,
Thanks, I'll check it out.
Trout's sleeping. He had a humongous day playing tag with a squirrel at the place where I'm working. I'll have to post pictures sometime, this guy's house is like a freaking botanical garden. Truly amazing.
Are there any trolls out there? any at all? Robby is very hungry tonight.
It being clobbering time and all.
Here's some troll bait....
George Bush is conservative alright. As in, Big Brother. But trolls think George Orwell was some semi-gay singer from the Eighties who sang of Karmic reptiles. Nope, he's the guy who's book title was but a twetny years early.
I seriously cannot find any half intelligent Bush supporters no mo'.
I picture Gimps and stuff. Freaking boy grabbin' psycho killers wearing Brooks Brothers.
"unconventional weapons were supplied"
unconventional weapons werent supplied. weaponized anthrax wasnt supplied. read the foia docs.
tetanus and anthrax vaccines are precursors.
"he's president, you've nothing to worry about, sit back relax. until it goes down again. and it will go down again. BOOM!"
And if there is another terrorist attack, we can rest assured who you will blame before any other...
Religous leaders passing edicts legitimizing terrorist attacks against Civilians? No. The Arab media that reports terrorist attacks against civilians as legitimate "resistance", not to mention airing even hostage demand and terrorist PR video. No. The Islamic charities that have little control over the vast sums of money the raise anually? Or the Arab Bank that has complete control, and has no incentive to hide where its money goes? No.
Sad.
"And an old age, serene and bright/And lovely as a Lapland night/Shall lead thee to thy grave."
Words that beautiful scare me because I really want them to be true of my life, and fear that they won't...
Make that every, not even.
"Save us, cog!!!" - Pie
You want to become a centrist Democrat? Sorry, in your case I do not think it is possible.
Still want me to move to Isreal?
cog you are clearly a racist bigot in need of re-education. besdies, we armed bin laden. and we give money to egypt. lol.
Still want me to move to Isreal?
Where?
A centrist democrat? Definition, little man.
"And if there is another terrorist attack, we can rest assured who you will blame before any other..."
Bush, the same asswipe who was standing on the wall in 2001. Went to chop wood after reading a report entitled BIN LADEN TO STRIKE US. The dots were all there. But he refused to connect them. The head of the NSA never heard of Al Qeada. A US construct! Way to be in the loop freedom medal winners!
Bush is totally responsible for 9/11. He failed his nation. Not since 1812 has an attack on the US been successful. But your man Bush covered his ass pretty good huh? Using the weak and stupid of theis nation accordingly.
Cog, go to google. Punch in -Jeff record us army war college report-
read it. and join team reality.
I've only heard that Al-Qaida meant "the base". Can we get some verification on this?
And if there is another terrorist attack, we can rest assured who you will blame before any other...
It's a given that the terrorists are the bad guys, but should we not also blame the people who promised us in 2004 that if we voted for them they'd protect us? In Clinton's tenure, we nabbed the WTC93 bombers, the OKC bombers, and prevented the Millenium Plot. During Bush's reign, we've had 9/11 and an incredible increase in global terrorism, including major attacks against our allies in Bali (Aussie vacation spot), Spain (who cynically blamed the attacks initially on ETA) and Britain (the largest non-US member of the Incredibly Shrinking Coalition).
Who is doing a better job?
I'm still trying to figure out from all of the posts how the fact that we only supplied 1% of the volume of known conventional weapons transfers to Iraq prior to 1990 translates to "we never armed Islamists". I guess I'm not adept at arguing that an entire sequence of historical events never happened based on one item of semi-related seemingly contradictory data.
"Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. "
no, it was a monumental calculation, an open theorem, if you will, concerning power and the abilities of humans to influence things they know little abouit through the use of force. enemies always spring from some design, and often result in some ultimate fairness. as equilibrium is reached and lost time and again.
yet, it is this foolishness that most drives our lack of compassion. the hope of power over the world around us. the vain notion that dominion over others can suffice for the lost nature we each share with one another. it's a big hoax.
chris, pass the binger dude.
Not that anyone cares, but I award Uncle Smokes with the most thoughtful posts on this thread. Any relation to Hokey Smokes? Bullwinkle says 'Hi'.
One thing we can all take away from this. The governements - ours, Soviet, French, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, every one in that chart - and arms manufacturers have been making a killing. What's sad is who ends up getting killed.
I've only heard that Al-Qaida meant "the base". Can we get some verification on this?
Kezaro
No
There might be or was a data base, but that's NOT where the name came from.
.
"we only supplied 1% of the volume of known conventional weapons transfers to Iraq prior to 1990 translates to "we never armed Islamists"."
yeah, we were busy selling them WMD's!
tanks and bullets? let the sov's sell them that crap.
yet, it is this foolishness that most drives our lack of compassion. the hope of power over the world around us. the vain notion that dominion over others can suffice for the lost nature we each share with one another. it's a big hoax.
"It is not a myth that violence can alter events. It is a myth that it gives power to the people."
- A Force More Powerful
And if there is another terrorist attack, we can rest assured who you will blame before any other...
Religous leaders passing edicts legitimizing terrorist attacks against Civilians? No. The Arab media that reports terrorist attacks against civilians as legitimate "resistance", not to mention airing even hostage demand and terrorist PR video. No. The Islamic charities that have little control over the vast sums of money the raise anually? Or the Arab Bank that has complete control, and has no incentive to hide where its money goes? No.
I'll be blaming the terrorists who plant the bombs.
Who will you be blaming? Michael Moore or Susan Sarandon?
I'll bet US officials offered to help with the investigation and were politely told to bugger off.
That's what I was thinking when I heard a CNN talking head repeat like a good parrot, "an anonymous top US official says Zarqawi is involved."
"Atrios quotes a former British foreign secretary - who presumably has some expertise in matters of terrorism - rather than giving us the benefit of his extensive experience in the field -- and this is a bad thing?"
Yes, who made a very serious accusation. One with no facts to support his accusation, and one that was wrong. Not my problem if he chose to mischaracterize what actually happened, but dont insult me and say that his mischaracterization was non-intentional.
And look up Appeal to Authority, one of my favorite logical fallacies.
"And I still don't get how it contradicts the quote Atrios posted. We funded the mujahedeen -- directly or indirectly."
My bad. I would think saying we funded Osama is different than saying we funded the Pakistani ISI which in turn neglected an entire segment of the resistance against the Russians and in turn armed the most religously extreme elements. Which included Osama among others.
I am not surprised that such serious accusations are made irregardless of the facts, and with casual abandon. An Atrios staple.
"Best as I can make out what this is saying -- you're agreeing that we funded an organization that funded al Queda.
So we indirectly funded al Queda."
That is the truth. Try it once in awhile. If you can not see the distinction between the two statements, then maybe you should excuse yourself from making or supporting such serious accusations.
"Again -- how does that contradict anything Atrios posted."
Quoting someone making serious accusations about this country, about this administration, and about Bush, that mischaracterize facts, distort the truth, and are flat out false are staples of this website.
Do you think that saying that Osama was funded by the CIA is an accurate statement? Or do you think some semblance of what actually happened should be noted?
Reagan funded Saddam to? Is that an acceptable statement for you? I am sure it is. Who cares if Russia/China/France provided the bulk of his bankroll, arms and political support for 30 years. And if you remember, Tariq Aziz said that Iraq paid for political support on the UNSC.
But you dont see any problems with making either statment? I can criticize Bush, I can criticize policies this government has made, but at least I have the integrity to be honest with the facts.
"We're less guilty than ISI -- therefore we're not guilty. That meaning of moral relativism?"
Sigh. I am sorry. I thought you were prepared for a legitimate discussion. Carry on with the fever swamp.
oh, another thing we can take away.
"Let's not argue about who killed whom..."
or who armed whom.
one fact is IMHO irrefutable:
GW Bush has been one total, unmitigated, absolute fuck up who has made the bad oh so much worse.
"And you're not really interested in engaging the people here to educate, inform, or persuade them to an issue you care about."
Nope. Not my job. I educate and engage people elsewhere. This blog is simply a place to fling ****, nothing more. You have a problem when Republicans do it, but obviously not when Democrats do it.
Cog | Email | Homepage | 07.05.05 - 3:34 pm | #
Just a friendly reminder not to bother with trollus disruptus. And to reinforce the futility, here's another funboy from last night, after hours of tedium:
doing this for fun,Doc. I'm on vacation. You're all getting your BP's up over nothing. It's a all big joke and you clowns go for it every time.
G'night, Suckers
archpoet | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 3:42 am | #
rorschach,
Oh, they'll be true for you. You should trust my witch's intuition on this.
'The Chain of Chance', by Stanislaus Lem.
Most conspiracy theories fail not because of a lack of willingness to act covertly or deceitfully. Rather, most of them simply require too much precision and planning.
We came up with the Paranoid Catechism in the 1960s:
1. It's too much to be a coincidence.
2. That's what they want you to believe.
3. They can't be acting out of sheer stupidity or ignorance. It has to be a plot.
4. Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
#s 1 and 3 often fail. #s 2 and 4 are true until proven otherwise...
I am not surprised that such serious accusations are made irregardless of the facts, and with casual abandon. An Atrios staple.
Illiteracy. A troll staple.
(Find the word that doesn't exist and win a prize!)
"I'll be blaming the terrorists who plant the bombs. Who will you be blaming? Michael Moore or Susan Sarandon?"
That was addressed to the person who originally made the statement. But I too, will blame the individuals that planted the bombs.
Glad we could agree with something. I will let your Michael Moore comment slide.
But I wonder if Atrios shares your opinion? Look at the comments he made after the London bombing.
"irrespective". Sorry. Thanks for the tip. Haloscan ate the first version I typed of that comment.
Oh, just an aside to my previous post.
When the Internet started expanding and growing in popularity in the mid to late 1990s, it was like the Wild West. The really Wild, Wild West.
Which, of course, the old-fart control-freak types around the world felt demanded their intervention, their control, their dominance, their conservative ideology.
So, in Communist Red China, the control-freak leaders asserted control over the Internet Servers, and censored political speech, and...pornography. Whaaat? I thought they were God-less atheists with no morals. Wrong, internet breath.
In our so-called Democracy, some control-freaks are seeking control over the Internet Servers through legislation (with severe penalties) to control...pornography, and as I've been reading lately about blogs, to control flying-in-the-face-of-authority political speech.
Coincidence?
Control freaks are control freaks are control freaks. And every culture or civilization throughout history has always had them. And, inevitably, the control freaks cause hell on earth for everyone else.
BTW, Jesus Christ was NOT a control freak. It was the control freaks who had him crucified. This is how I can tell true Christians from false ones. Are some religious folks like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Antonin Scalia, Sen. Santorum really God-forsaking, democracy-forsaking dictatorial control freaks? Then they aren't really Christian, are they? If you pay attention, you'll notice that they are really acting like a bunch of born-again Communists...in America, of all places. The Land of the Free.
Remember, Freedom itself is the "sin" that all these control-freak conservatives are really out to eradicate from our freedom-loving democratic society. The question is: will we let them? Or will we fight for our Freedom, and the Freedom of our society, like our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) fought for their's?
actually, we have dropped the equivalent of many hiroshimas on the sunni triangle. in the form of radiation. it is called depleted uranium.
the most evil aspect of its usage is that the amerikan troopies are also victims of the radiation. and that is what should inform you that the usg has no hesitation to kill anyone or anything to pursue the objectives orderd by the POTUS.
as to tinfoil hattery....
i flew lightplanes for years. my last one was a b model baron. one of my interests was airplane accidents. probably because of a specialist publication entitled AIR FACTS. a compendium of aircraft accidents and the results of the investigation into the causes of those accidents.
over the last decade, i have noted a number of aircraft accidents where the investigations were so lamed that i could only conclude a usg-mandated cover-up. and even more to the point, an implication that the usg was responsible for the catastrophe. i was forced to conclude that the usg was covering up the assassination of one[a few] by hiding it within the deaths of many.
my interest was first aroused with the obliteration of pan-am 103. suffice it to say, i was in scotland then and prior to the catastrophe was surprised to encounter a large entourage of american intell. perhaps some of you fail to recall that the lockerbie site was littered with amerikan intell personnel long before brit intell arrived at the site. most unusual.
twa800 was another catastrophe that caught my interest. the official[nhtsa] explanation of a fuel tank explosion was sheer bullshit. and every commercial airline pilot knows it.
swisair 111. egyptair 990. these were also more than likely intell service "removals".
the catastrophe that really caught my attention was AS261. the press ran from that story. i was in LA at the time and i was astonished how the press refrained from doing a real investigation, a real sty. it was as if they had been silenced by the state.
now, why do i say that? within hours of the catastrophe, i was in the port of oxnard. the fbi was everywhere. when i was able to approach a fishing boat and ask a question, i was told to get gone, that they were under orders of the usg to be silent.
the most salient aspect of the catastrophe for me was the hiding of the 11,000ft runway at pt mugu naval air station in all the media reports. think on it, a commercial aircraft, no more than a few miles offshore pt mugu is in enough trouble that it needs to land somewhere. fast. yet LA CONTROL decides to vector it back to LAX instead of Pt Mugu NAS - THE CLOSEST LANDING STRIP.
if you examine the press accounts of the catastrophe, the existence of this runway is not revealed.
i tried to take a picture of it from the periphery of the fencing and was confronted by shore patrol and forced off of public land. shore patrol was onto me within seconds of my parking my car and walking towards the fencing. that told me that the periphery of pt mugu nas is under constant surveillance.
after this experience, i went back to my sister's and tried to access the pt mugu nas website. my conclusion was that it had been edited within hours after the demise of AS261. no mention of the 11,000ft runway was on the site.
i could do this in greater detail, but for all practical purposes, the existence of the airfield at pt mugu disappeared. the press ignored its existence. all mention of it was removed from the pt mugu nas[pacific missile test center] website. hmmmmmm.
clearly, the state was trying to hide from the public the fact that AS261 could have found a landing strip closer than LAX.
after years, i finally found proof of the pt mugu runway. quite inadvertantly. seems that babs streisand sued the california coastal commission to prevent the publication of their photos of her bit of malibu shoreline. reading the sty, i learned that the coastal commission had photographed her coastline as the consequence of a project o photograph the entirety of the california coast.
bingo.
went to that site. explored the pix of the coast. and there, in all its 11,000ft of concrete/asphalt is the pt mugu nas runway.
now, why was it that so many worked so hard to hide the existence of this mechanism for catching this commercial airliner?
there is, of course, even more to the story that intrigued me. continues to intrigue me.
the crew of AS261 was in constant radio communication with LA CONTROL throughout its flight. all those communications are recorded. my recollection is that controller communications are recorded to a 24 hr tape. and that these tapes are retained for 14 days in their original condition. but, if no one[nhtsa, faa, any litigator] demands the tape, then it is redeployed and is overwritten by another day's controller communications with aircraft.
according to my research, no entity requested that tape recording. therefore, all the critical controller communications were lost.
i shall conclude this way, the aircraft accidents of 11/09/01 sort of went the same way. first time since ww2 that aircraft accidents were uninvestigated.
and it gets smellier. the remains of the wtc complex went unexamined. as a forensic metallurgist, i consider this a cover-up.
what makes the usg's avoidance of subjecting any of the wtc to a forensic examination particularly noteworthy is that this is exactly what occurred at the branch davidian compound, at OKBOMB site.
in my experience, when the evidence of a catastrophe goes unexamined, under the auspices of the usg, then you must conclude that the usg[potus] does not want any independent investigation to be undertaken. considering that interpretation, i think that you can only conclude that the usg prevented an independent investigation because any results of such an investigation would reveal that the usg was the TERRORIST.
'The Chain of Chance', by Stanislaus Lem.
Thanks, Prof! Much better than Occams Razor, but I still prefer my earlier quote. Still no one recognized whether it was Holmes or Who, turns out I think neither - I think it was Dirk Gently in Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency":
Eliminate the impossible. Whatever is left, however improbable, is the solution.
Re: Lem, I was thinking of The Cyberiad. Nice to know I'm not the only fan left.
"Nope. Not my job. I educate and engage people elsewhere. This blog is simply a place to fling ****, nothing more. You have a problem when Republicans do it, but obviously not when Democrats do it."
So true. At least I can be honest about what other people claim. JeffCO still is learning that particular talent.
And let me correct myself, quoting someone who says "the CIA funded Osama", or "the USA funded and armed Saddam" is worse than flinging ****.
Another distinction lost on the inhabitants of the fever swamp.
GW Bush has been one total, unmitigated, absolute fuck up who has made the bad oh so much worse.
Shbinga
Cheney
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz
Luti
Bolton
The list goes on!
Infamy!
Thanks for the tip.
Huh, and yet I still get no thanks for helping you to understand the distinction between affect and effect. And I thought you were consistent. Go figure.
Who cares if Russia/China/France provided the bulk of his bankroll, arms and political support for 30 years.
One for three in that statement.
Bankroll came from his oil sales and the 40-50 billion he borrowed (with our assistance) from international banks.
Political support, guess you did not read any of the FOIA cables I posted. We gave him cover in the UN to use chemical weapons against the Iranians among many other things.
guess you did not read any of the FOIA cables
or my posted queries on conspiracy theories. i'd really like to know what the "realism" folks think about them.
but i'll have to check back tomorrow. wife says its time for bed and she has that look in her eyes. got to be better than this thread, no?
goodnight all.
There's a whole lot of wishful thinking going on in this thread.
Osama and the muhajideen are a CIA creation.
Bullshit. These people were going to fight the Soviets with or without support from the CIA. Our support may have helped them, but it never for a second influenced their actions.
OBL and al Qaeda are criminals from the lunatic fringe of Islam.
Right, and if we just catch a few of these criminals we'll put an end to this pesky 'terrorism' problem.
OBL and al Qaeda are firmly in the mainstream of Islamic thought; they aren't criminals, but a stateless Army, a virtual Army if you will, with widespread support from Arabs and Muslims; they have very specific policy goals and grievances; as long as those goals aren't met, they are going to continue fighting and receiving support (and for reasons most of us would consider proper, I think).
Until we recognize that this is a war, and what is the basis for this war, we're going to continue to see events like the London bombings and react with impotent rage.
You don't like the term 'war'? We've been at war with Arabs since the end of WWII. It's just been so lopsided in our favor that until now most Americans have never noticed.
Once we do understand why we are at war, then we can make rational choices about whether or not we wish to pursue policies that garner al Qaeda support and the West a war.
Cog is a prime example of a fucktard; totally unwilling to examine his prejudices and even consider that his facts are outright lies.
Fuck him. Come the Revolution, shit like him will be flushed.
"One thing we can all take away from this. The governements - ours, Soviet, French, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, every one in that chart - and arms manufacturers have been making a killing. What's sad is who ends up getting killed."
True. Not doing anything is almost as bad as doing nothing though. Even with the southern and northern no-fly zones, Saddam was still grinding through tens of thousands of his own citizens that we know about. And many that we will never know about.
So there is the debate. Containment and inspections versus removing Saddam forcibly.
A much more valuable discussion that "war for oil", "Bush is an idiot", "war against Islam", "the USA armed Saddam", etc etc etc.
Oh, and the worthless, fact impaired troll named phine is as one with cog.
"Oh, and the worthless, fact impaired troll named phine is as one with cog."
Sorry, only 1 cog here. In a previous thread there was 1 impersonator. Oh, and to the other Moonbat, I still dont live in Canada.
You don't like the term 'war'? We've been at war with Arabs since the end of WWII.
Interesting way to render a word devoid of any real meaning or usefulness.
Shbinga
It's Holmes.
So there is the debate. Containment and inspections versus removing Saddam forcibly.
We were never given that debate in those terms. We were given "9/11! Terrorism! WMD! Mushroom clouds!"
And we've ground through 100,000 of his citizens saving them. And created more terrorists and more hatred than ever existed in Iraq before.
BTW, correct me with documentation if I am wrong, but everyone brings up the no-fly-zones. They were NOT mandated or even approved by the UN, they were a US/British invention. And used very effectively to start the invasion long before congress was ever approached.
they have very specific policy goals and grievances;
Hmmm - wonder if that's why Bush hasn't been too worried about UBL? Osama's goal was to get our bases out of Saudi Arabia, and that goal has been realized. Maybe we should find out what the others are, they might not be as bad as the terrorist threat.
just sayin.
"Oh, and the worthless, fact impaired troll named phine is as one with cog."
Sorry, only 1 cog here. In a previous thread there was 1 impersonator.
Troll not know how to read.
Oh, BTW, containment and inspections were working far better (less costly, less loss of life, less fallout in the rest of the world). At least, if you listened to Powell and Rice in 2000. I would have voted for that. But no one asked me.
("shbinga! come to bed! i need you now!")
uh, ok. i've stayed to long. bye.
I would refer you to:
Juan Cole's blog entry of yesterday
Michael Scheuer's works (published as Anonymous), "Through Our Enemies Eyes" and "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror."
You may judge for yourself who is fact-impaired.
The argument is not between those who want war and those who do not. It is between those who recognize that war is coming to us as a result of specific policies that we pursue, and those who want to pretend that we are blameless.
So true. At least I can be honest about what other people claim. JeffCO still is learning that particular talent.
Gee, cog, last time you accused me of misquoting you I posted a full 2 paragraphs of what you said that demonstrated that I hadn't, after which you accused others who agreed with me that I hadn't of being stupid. I get the feeling there's simply no pleasing you. I do think I can honestly say (without your contradicting me) that you referred to me as a moron repeatedly for not taking your unsupported claims as gospel, and, I suspect, would be happy to do so again. Another lost opportunity to come clean.
Since you're railing about this mysterious power Atrios has to influence and encourage the enemies of the US, I'm wondering, now that you've had nearly a week to come up with some evidence to support that contention, you're ready to share.
Or are you still just here to fling *****?
It's Holmes.
Omnes Omnibus
whoohoo! thanks, omnes!
"One for three in that statement. Bankroll came from his oil sales and the 40-50 billion he borrowed (with our assistance) from international banks."
And you must have missed the database broke by an Iraqi paper shortly after the paper. It was far from complete, but it was a glimpse into what was actually received in the form of oil credits.
And if you think the loans Saddam received with US assistance are anywhere near what he received from Russia and China, I have a bridge I want to sell you. I would say that they would be much more in the range of the yearly support he recieved from the countries I mentioned. Especially at the height of Russian support. Much of this was done with individuals and front companies, so exact figures are hard to come by. With Russian and US loans.
"Political support, guess you did not read any of the FOIA cables I posted. We gave him cover in the UN to use chemical weapons against the Iranians among many other things."
I did read them. And I believe much of their contents. One problem, we went to war with his regime after those efforts were made.
If you want me to claim that the USA has not been a part of the problem, it cant be done. What can be done, is to take an honest look at the entire picture. Not just point out the money and arms that the US gave him for a 5 year period in the 80's, one in which the Iranians took 60+ Americans hostage, but take a look at all of the contributing factors.
And what I mentioned from Tariq Aziz came last year if I remember correctly. I may be mistaken, but I think that is a little more relevant to the discussion about containment/inspections vs removing him from power, than the items you referenced. As is the corruption I mentioned previously.
If I am wrong, feel free to tell me why.
Someone asked what other policies al Qaeda objects to (I apologize for not giving you credit). The other policy goals have been stated repeatedly. Juan Cole summarizes them as:
"the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, backed by the US; US support for military regimes like those of Pakistan and Egypt; and US military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence of a US onslaught on Islam and Muslims aimed at reducing them to neo-colonial slavery. That is, specific Western policies are the focus of al-Qaeda response, not a generalized "hatred" of "values."
Me, I don't support any of those policies. I think if we had an explicit discussion of them, most Americans might be willing to ditch those policies, too.
I don't think we're ever going to have a rational discussion of those policies.
Shbinga,
NP, Just don't force me to dig up the book for a citation.
"Since you're railing about this mysterious power Atrios has to influence and encourage the enemies of the US, I'm wondering, now that you've had nearly a week to come up with some evidence to support that contention, you're ready to share."
Look at the theme Atrios quoted for this thread.
rorschach:
It was Clausewitz who characterized was as "politics by other means." Our politics with regard to oil-producing states have rarely deviated from the imposition of our policies via force. If you can find a place where the US has abandoned force, either overt or covert, as a means of dealing with oil-producing countries, I'd like to know of it.
How does one quote a theme?
"Since you're railing about this mysterious power Atrios has to influence and encourage the enemies of the US, I'm wondering, now that you've had nearly a week to come up with some evidence to support that contention, you're ready to share."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm..._Iraq_1973-
1990
And that does not detail weapons sales from 1991- 2003, which were significant. I think there was a PBS report that it could have been as high as $5-10 billion a year, after he started gaming the oil for food program.
Well aware of all that, phein. I just object to rendering a word meaningless by excessive application. We've long had a policy of overt and covert antagonism to a wide range of nations. Still, to throw the word "war" around is counterproductive. What we've done to Cuba is different from what we did to Vietnam, for example.
Uncle Smokes, that was the one study I was refering to. Thanks for the link. Although I disagree with a few of your conclusions, especially with the "green light" theory I think you are referencing with your setup comment.
There was another breakdown of Iraq's military I think in 1998 from the foreign policy institute. It was a much more complete analysis.
France/Germany/Jordan were much larger contributers in the late 90's and even as late as 2003.
Look at the theme Atrios quoted for this thread. Cog
I've never disputed that you interpret most anything critical of this administration as somehow supporting the enemy, Al-Qaida, for example. But, interpretations aside, his posting it and it having some kind of influence are two different matters. I asked for your evidence of its impact, and you told me to watch Al Jazeera for a week. If you'll excuse my saying, that's a pretty crappy response for a self-ordained expert on Arab media. Link me to a transcript, a published study, anything demonstrating a causal connection between this or any other leftwing blog and some negative impact on our country or its troops.
To summarize, put up or shut up. I doubt you'll do either, having had many chances already to do so, but I tend toward the optimistic.
Not just point out the money and arms that the US gave him for a 5 year period in the 80's, one in which the Iranians took 60+ Americans hostage...
Facts are for other people, I guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ira..._hostage_crisis
Iran hostage crisis: November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981
For the bonus round:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Oct...rter_vs._Reagan
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
It was suddenly Morning in America!
Let's get some Columbian coffee!
For the double-or-nothing super secret bonus round:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira...e_Iran-
Iraq_war
Remember that the U.S. government is in service to multinationals, not the other way around.
"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."
-- John Dewey
I think
No, sadly, no.
Cog, you refuse to believe that which is right in front of you.
Nothing more to say.
Dear rorschach:
In this context, I do not think the application excessive. Given the state that I believe we have achieved (a belief founded upon what I take to be a convincing analysis exemplified in Michael Scheuer's works), it would be foolish for us to pretend that we have been in any other mode vis-a-vis the Arab oil-producing world since the end of WWII. Wars may blow hot and cold; it is the nature of the conflict (one of applied violence, against say, market competition) that merits the denomination.
This is of more than an academic argument. If we continue to treat the al Qaeda phenomenon as a criminal matter, we will not give due respect and consideration to the causes, and therefore not be able to reach a desirable end.
"How does one quote a theme?"
"War for Oil"
"Throughout the 80s [Bin Laden] was armed by the CIA"
His comments are sensible, assuming that it was, in fact, this shadowy Al Qaeda that, indeed, did attack us.
Anybody ever consider Operation Northwoods, the Reichstag fire, and other false flags designed to put into operation a preconceived project?
If, in fact, these attacks are conducted by these shadowy terrorists, this makes too much fucking sense and will be rejected out of hand by the idiots in charge.
The more shit that comes down, the more I am of the opinion that there is some insidious conspiracy afoot. I guess that rates me a tinfoil hat.
If we continue to treat the al Qaeda phenomenon as a criminal matter, we will not give due respect and consideration to the causes, and therefore not be able to reach a desirable end.
We haven't been treating it thus. We've been treating it as conventional war, and that's why we're only making things worse.
Shbinga:
Thanks...while some of my thoughts were grim, and I often see that 2 and 2 sometimes make 22, when someone acknowledges a post I feel connected.
Most of the time here I join in the snark to blow off steam.
Those moments come, however, when a comment sparks a flurry of online searches and an attempt to understand what one truly believes.
Almost as good as a journal, and in some ways better--a journal doesn't talk back!
JeffCO writes (in response to someone else):
I've never disputed that you interpret most anything critical of this administration as somehow supporting the enemy, Al-Qaida . . .
Given that this Administration has done more for al Qaeda than Osama Bin Ladin could have hoped for in his wildest dreams, it's difficult to see how criticism of the Bush Administration is to al Qaeda's advantage. Could the target of Mr. JeffCO's reply elaborate?
The more shit that comes down, the more I am of the opinion that there is some insidious conspiracy afoot.
Conspiracy aside.
People are dying. For what?
You see, that's the big problem with this. Cog can say what he wants. People are dying for some pie-in-the-bullshit.
Fuck that.
I realize it may be hard to remember what you wrote, so I'll just quote, rather than summarize:
"It's a teachable moment, so teach. I can assure you that your glib attacks on my intelligence are not particularly effective at persuading me of the correctness of your views."
Ok, here is the first lesson. Watch Al Jazeera for a week. And then tell me if any of the harmless accusations floated by Atrios and Kos, which perpetuate through much of the in-kind media, tell me if any of those accusations are harmless.
If they are true, then by all means follow them and hold those responsible accountable. But for two years, we have gone from scandal to scandal, with what was committed far overblown, and in many cases completely fabricated by the Arab media. Now I was upset when this happened to Clinton, but now it is effecting(sic) our troops on the ground.
Cog | Email | Homepage | 07.04.05 - 8:07 pm | #
"Iran hostage crisis: November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981"
My apologies. I was wrong. It happened prior.
For some reason I was thinking 89 instead of 79. Thanks for clearing that up. If you want to bash me furthur, it was also not 60+, it was 66.
And the rumor in the second link you posted is one I would never mention without verification. But I guess that is the difference between you and me. Also in league with the "CIA armed Bin Laden" link quoted by Atrios today, and the "USA armed Saddam" quote referenced repeatedly by other commentors on this blog.
And since we are talking about facts, the information in the third "double-or-nothing super secret bonus round" has already been mentioned on this thread. By me no less.
Thanks for coming out.
Tariq Ali, columnist, and Tariq Aziz, former Baathist, are two different people. You'd think the word would have gotten around.
Cog, why don't you make love and not war?
Do you realize how boring you are?
"Given that this Administration has done more for al Qaeda than Osama Bin Ladin could have hoped for in his wildest dreams, it's difficult to see how criticism of the Bush Administration is to al Qaeda's advantage. Could the target of Mr. JeffCO's reply elaborate?"
"USA armed Saddam", Reagan delayed the Iranian hostage release as an October surprise against Carter, and "the CIA armed Bin Laden" criticisms on this blog is not to "al Qaeda's" advantage?
Sad.
Mr. Cog:
For critiques of US actions to be of benefit to al Qaeda, the critiques would have to further the actions of the Bush Administration.
Anything that sends the neo-cons to hell is a blow to al Qaeda.
Tariq Aziz was the Foreign Minister of Iraq from 1979-1991, and the Deputy Prime Minister from 1979-2003.
One guess as to why he relinquished his position.
Sad.
Yes. You are. You will not see.
What is Al Qaeda?
Let's have a country where it's based, a list of members, something.
"USA armed Saddam", Reagan delayed the Iranian hostage release as an October surprise against Carter, and "the CIA armed Bin Laden" criticisms on this blog is not to "al Qaeda's" advantage?
That's a lot of words which, taken all together, mean exactly nothing.
People chatting on a blog forum is way to Al Qaeda's advantage. Hell, it's better than sending Bin Laden cash, guns, and a beard comb.
Could the target of Mr. JeffCO's reply elaborate? phein
The answer seems to be that whether he can or not, he won't. I quoted him earlier that he is not really interested in backing up what he says here, and I conclude he is interested more in tearing down what others say with pithy and condescending rejoinders.
The part I don't understand is this: if I had an opportunity to educate people on a topic in which I was expert in order to reduce the harm I believed to come to my country in part via their ignorance, I would leap at the chance. Cog just doesn't seem to care - he'd rather bitch at us and call us names and think we're sad. How does this help?
Mr. rorschach wrote:
We haven't been treating it thus. We've been treating it as conventional war, and that's why we're only making things worse.
Dear rorschach:
No, we haven't. Had we treated it as a conventional war, there would have been a large-scale deployment of troops to Afghanistan starting on September 12th, 2001, combined with a closure of the frontier through massive use of mines, and the deployment of counter-insurgency tactics throughout al Qaeda's theaters of operation.
Instead, we have the despicable and cowardly invasion of a harmless nation, and the slaughter of an untold number of innocents.
"For critiques of US actions to be of benefit to al Qaeda, the critiques would have to further the actions of the Bush Administration."
True in part. But right now the Arab media runs with any criticism, true or not. If they can attach a quote by a Democratic party leader, or a quote from a legitimate news organization, it adds that much credence to the accusation.
So I would think that any criticism needs to be grounded in a firm examination of the facts, and some attempt of context must be given, instead of saying "USA bad" all the time.
I understand that I am in the minority, but so be it. At least I know I have the support of my friends on Eschaton.
Thanks for the love.
Oh that is right, JeffCo wanted links to articles from the Arab media, Seraphel wanted the link to the breakdown of government arms suppliers to Iraq.
My apologies for getting the moonbats mixed up.
phein, we know that, sweetie.
If you'd been around here, you'd know that.
"That's a lot of words which, taken all together, mean exactly nothing."
Yes, especially when comments like that, and many like them, are regurgitated by the Arab media 24-7.
Means nothing whatsoever.
Mr. Cog:
I would agree with you on this point:
So I would think that any criticism needs to be grounded in a firm examination of the facts, and some attempt of context must be given . . .
I don't think that any examination of facts is going to make us look good in this context. I also observe that the Bush Administration is doing it damn'dest to ensure that such an examination never happens.
People are dying. For what?
I made the following list yesterday, and would like to repost it...and yes, I know these ideas can be found stated elsewhere in this thread, but here is my (incomplete) list so far:
1. Permanent military bases to wage further aggressive wars
2. Largest U.S. embassy (surpassing the previous winner in Honduras--take note of what that was used for)
3. Continuing the 20th century U.S. policy of encircling and controlling the world's strategic resources
4. Ensuring the outflow of capital to investors aligned with the U.S.
5. Implementing the PNAC/neocon dream of turning the entire Middle East into client states like Turkey (i.e. "spreading democracy")
6. Continuing the successful campaign to render the U.N., the World Court, and the rule of international law worthless
7. Ensuring the U.S. taxpayer continues to fund high-tech development through the inefficient Pentagon system, instead of "wasting" such huge sums on infrastructure and needy people
8. Testing new weaponry (as napalm and the atom bomb were tested on live targets at the end of WWII--be looking for suspicious minor earthquakes in Afghanistan as we test designs for the new nuclear bunker buster)
9. Disciplining the U.S. citizenry, who still suffer from an "excess of democracy," to accept the profoundly anti-democratic Straussian "great father" mode of government
10. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is no one to deter us (well...as long as we continue to believe we somehow have China under our sway)
Instead, we have the despicable and cowardly invasion of a harmless nation, and the slaughter of an untold number of innocents.
Just because it's the wrong war--a criminal and idiotic war--doesn't mean it's not a war.
So I would think that any criticism needs to be grounded in a firm examination of the facts, and some attempt of context must be given, instead of saying "USA bad" all the time.
Let's talk about Iraq.
Tell me what the US has been doing right there.
Painting schools?
Yes, especially when comments like that, and many like them, are regurgitated by the Arab media 24-7.
Liar.
So...no criticism of the U.S. government is allowed, else it's aiding and abetting "the enemy"? We can no longer question the actions of the government, despite what the First Amendment says, because "the enemy" might see the people of this country do not lock-step in thought with one another or the precise whims of those holding political power? Been hearing a whole lot of that lately, and it makes me wonder just what and who we're fighting for. Is this really where we want to go?
Dear pie:
I lurk around here a lot; Eschaton is my homepage at work. My employer (with the .mil address) doesn't appreciate posting from work, so I rarely get a chance to engage.
What people here know, and don't know, is suspect. I don't think much of it is factually-based, but rather emotionally driven. As much as I may agree with it, that doesn't make it a basis for policy discussions.
In the present instance, there seems to be a belief that if only we got rid of Bush, our problems would end. Our war with al Qaeda predates Bush, and will extend beyond his incumbency (Supreme Court willing). Our conflict with the Arab world is rooted in concrete policy differences (they think they own their natural resources; we think they don't), not psycho-pathologies of OBL or religious extremism.
If we don't address these policies explicitly as a nation, all the Bush-bashing in the world will be as nothing.
Is this really where we want to go?
No, and we're not going to go there.
America will survive in spite of these fools.
Their arguments are becoming blase.
Yawn.
They're also criminals. Hope they lose their heads.
"Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west."
Noooooo shit!
Dear rorschach:
Just because it's the wrong war--a criminal and idiotic war--doesn't mean it's not a war.
It does mean that it's not a war against al Qaeda, conventional or otherwise, no matter how often Bush says that it is.
"I don't think that any examination of facts is going to make us look good in this context. I also observe that the Bush Administration is doing it damn'dest to ensure that such an examination never happens."
No way we can look 100% clean. But tell me the same people in this thread would not be making similar accusations if we folded up both no-fly zones, removed the troops from Turkey/Saudi, ended the sanctions, and went home. Saddam would have slaughtered even more of his own people, probably started another war, and guess what? It would have been our fault.
Like I said, I have many criticisms of Bush and company. Probably even more of Cheney and Rumsfeld. I just afford my criticisms, especially during wartime, the same amount of consideration of those waged against Clinton. Most of which were completely bogus.
Already this thread has much more information than several of the potshots regurgitated daily when discussing Iraq and Afghanistan.
We haven't the faintest idea who is attacking us.
We pin bin Laden who happily took credit but his connection was very very tenuous in nearly all ways.
He may be the spiritual leader but aught else.
Elaine Supkis
The Bush White House was behind 9/11.
Osama was just their instrument.
they think they own their natural resources; we think they don't)
Ithink they do, actually.
Why can't we figure out another energy source?
Please, sapre me the AQ crapola.
Al-Qaeda means "the base" dude.
Cog, shut up.
Nobody cares.
" So I would think that any criticism needs to be grounded in a firm examination of the facts, and some attempt of context must be given, instead of saying "USA bad" all the time."
Right now, the USA is bad.
I'm sick of this "criticizing Murka = you're with the insurgents" bullshit!
Let's see - if I read something from a far left British publication critical of the British government, I put that in context. If I see some report that a faction in the Middle East is critical of its own goverment, I put that in context. Yet if the fundamentalist Islamic world hear something attributed to the political Left in the US (the ones who don't control all three branches of government and are regularly pilloried in the mainstream media, and the blogs for that matter, by those who do control everything), then somehow the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who want to do harm to us and our troops are encouraged (as though they need more encouragement). Oh, and this is somehow more salient to them than the facts of our behavior they observe around them daily.
Ok, say I bought into this condescending fantasy (and you think we're batty?) - I continue to await your evidence to support it. Once again, insulting our intelligence does not consitute evidence, any more than throwing out a few irrelevant factoids does. Surely there has been some study done to demonstrate this link.
I would think if you had the goods, you'd have laid them on the table first, letting the facts speak for themselves. That you didn't, and still won't, speaks clearly enough for most of us. That is what is sad - you with your vast knowledge cannot effect even the tiniest change. I realize you externalize that all to our stupidity, but really, do you honestly think everyone here is simply too dumb to understand you? Never mind, I think I sense the answer dawning in my enfeebled brain.
Cog:
Why don't you go over to the Free Republic site?
You'd be much happier with your own kind.
"Why don't you go over to the Free Republic site?"
Never been there before. I thought this blog was open to Democrats of all stripes?
Was I wrong?
I would think if you had the goods, you'd have laid them on the table first, letting the facts speak for themselves.
Is Cog really Colin Powell?
Whoa.
Night, moonbats.
"Right now, the USA is bad."
Is this the new 2006 Democratic Party campaign platform? I do not think it will go over well, but maybe you should ask Atrios.
just look at Bush's grin. he knows who is attacking us. his connections.
Hierarchical, relational, object-oriented, or could it be...Access-Quaida?
The more you know...the less likely you are to
select *war mode* as a solution to an insurgency. How come even I know this?
Keep the oil, make the peace....
Was I wrong?
yes.
duh!
lol.
Once again JeffCO, you demonstrate that you are incapable of being honest about my statements.
Sorry, thanks to Uncle Smokes for finding the study I referenced about arms sales to Iraq with Seraphel. Nice list of conspiracy theories too.
Here is a tip, if you want anything from me. Be prepared to be honest about what I actually said in the first place, instead of a delusional slip into fantasyland like your last post.
After you said you did a keyword search for "Atrios" on memri, found no results, and posted on here that I was a liar, I lost all interest in your banter.
Sorry. If I publish anything, I will make sure to send it to Atrios, which I am positive he will not post. It would not meet the Bush=Hitler quotient necessary for publishing on this website.
"Right now, the USA is bad."
"Is this the new 2006 Democratic Party campaign platform? I do not think it will go over well, but maybe you should ask Atrios."
Cog
-Nahh, the Republicans will say that is what the Democrats think.
Of course, Tipsy Mc Stagger can't seem to find Osama Bin Laden, but best not to talk about that: if you do guess that means USA is bad.
The first I heard of this was in about 1980 in a report on the CBS Evening News by Dan the Man Rather from a mujahadeen base in Afghanistan, about all the good work the "freedom fighters" were doing against our mortal enemies, the Russki's. I turned to my g/f at the time and said "This can't be a good thing". He devoted a show or two to the activities of the mujahadeen. I'd love to see a tape of those shows, now.
Dr. Pedant |
Yeah I mentioned that during the Dan Rather smear boats campaign. Rather was an asset to foreign policy and it is highly likely CBS helped deliver stingers by proxy with their CIA accompaniment on the Dan Rather Afghanistan reports.
Of course Rather shit his pants on 9-11 too, he knew how close that branch was to the repubs at one time in the near past.
Once again JeffCO, you demonstrate that you are incapable of being honest about my statements.
Now there is an odd statement, coming as it does from someone with a well-established record of persistent lying.
anyways there's too much value in this thread not to paste some at huffy's blog
btw a relative was talking about his younger days, letters sent to Intel.Committee members from his let youth, about the need to maintain human contacts, as eventually the technology would be avaialable everywhere and level the play field, and leave America challenged to coordinate response
He got a reply , i believe it was read into the record
was in the 80s though... the data mine is very likely hard to find now
anyways the other argument he said was the need to have assets in areas outside the cold war , we would encounter new foes eventually... seems like he was on that point as well
You don't like the term 'war'? We've been at war with Arabs since the end of WWII. It's just been so lopsided in our favor that until now most Americans have never noticed
Since World War one dickbird, WInston CHurchill helped neogtiate consessions from the trucks/Ottomans, at the town of Tikrit(then spelled Tekreet in English):
"General Townshend, in a last desperate ffort to escape from the trap, tried to bribe the enemy with L2 million carried in his baggae wagons. The end finally came in Aprial 1916, after the british held out for 147 days. Britain's effort to snatch the Mespot oil lands(undertaken just about the time Turkish petroleum's controllers were seizing the Deutchs Bamk's twenty-five precent share as enemy property)
cost the empire almost forty thousand troops. "The Mesopotamian mess," Lloyd George would call it, "the paradise of the steel helmet." Actually it was the paradise of the dreamed-of oil derricks, the attainment of which was alloted to generals unprepared for that kind of campaigning."
Rssuel Brandon(New York, 1970) The Siege
From "The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur" by Richard O'Connor, (Little,Brown,1971)
He then goes on:
"And it was hell for the thousands of survivors who had to march for thousands of miles across deserts and mountains through Arab mobs howling for their blood, with a Turkish prsion at the end."
{Insert airplane reference here}
"At the village of tekreet the column of British prisoner came across surviors of a previous batch of their captured comrades... "
(Capt.Armstrong recalled)"Later we heard our men came here by the hundres, until this beach was black with men crawling they could not stand...Under the raging sun they died, while the Arabs gloated over them and looted them..."
"By the end of the warBritish forces finally succeeded in grasping the oil-rich prize of the Mespot after that theater, as British military historian Cyril Falls has written, "was allotted a disproportionate strength from britain's war potential"(Cyril Falls, Armageddon, 1918,p166)
"Even the admiring Cpatain Fall, in his history of the final Mespotamian campaign, had to conclude that it "witnissed an undignified rush to secure Mosul, with its oil potential, before the Turkish Armsitice came into effect."
So this is a repeat of history for Britain after all.
Fall's final quote by O'Connor:
"Mosul was not actually secured until after the armistice has been signed and the legality of its occupation was more than dubious."(Falls, Armageddon,173)
Hate to end the comic book perception of Boosh and his 'hate our freedoms" references.
Face it George Bush loves their oil more than they hate our freedom. He has poised half the planet into another religious war. We got out of Europe's crusades and dark ages and state religion for a reasoon.
You guys you are misreading what Robin Cook is saying about the word "Al-Qaida". I think Atrios is confusing the matter with his post title implying that cook is saying that "database" is the translation of Al-Qaida. Cook is NOT saying that Al-Qaida translates to "database" but that Al-Qaida was literally a database. That's literally the NAME of the DATABASE file that the CIA found on a computer in the 90s that led to the US calling Al-Qaida Al Qaida. Al Qaida is really only called Al Qaida by the west - they don't refer to themselves as Al-Qaida. I sense great irony in the way he phrased that entire paragraph.
yeah, largely western soviet. and i think his parents may have been involved.
perigord | Email | Homepage | 07.09.05 - 8:31 pm | #
Once again, the US was arming the Islamists in the 1980s. The Soviets were arming Saddam, the Syrians, and a few other countries.
Yet somehow by 2003, most Americans came to believe that Saddam was allied with the Islamists that we were arming against the Soviets even though you show yourself how the Soviets armed Saddam.
Now why don't you explain that to the guy with the "support our troops" ribbon and show him how a Soviet client is highly unlikely to be an ally of an American time bomb set to go off against the Soviets.
SWR |
SWR, splendid post. You disembodied his wild eyed fervor from the body truth, with a blade sharpened on his own words. All that is left is a puckered head sputing radio talk points with no facts or brains connected to them.
there is no ubl. he is a notional figure.
one of his creators is this fervent zionist yossef bodansky. you can look him up.
more, later.
"True. Not doing anything is almost as bad as doing nothing though. Even with the southern and northern no-fly zones, Saddam was still grinding through tens of thousands of his own citizens that we know about. And many that we will never know about"
So wrong Cog
This war creates more enemies
Doing nothing is far better than doing anything in this specific sintance.
Once again JeffCO, you demonstrate that you are incapable of being honest about my statements.
Spin it any way you want cog, but I once again simply posted what you wrote and then later you called me a liar. Again. How am I lying when I quote two full paragraphs from you?
I also don't understand why you keep saying the fact that my searching for "Atrios" "Kos" or "blog" at your site yielded nothing makes me a liar. Are you saying there really is something there? Or that you never suggested there was? I did do the search and found nothing - that's no lie. You never claimed there was, and I never said you did. You did claim (as quoted) that things Atrios and Kos say that are negative toward the Bush administration get picked up by the Arab media, so since yours is the relevant translation site, I naturally expected to find some evidence of that. That may have been naive, but it certainly isn't lying. You'll have to explain what you mean.
I could hardly be clearer about this point. Even if you think I am a stone cold idiot lying bastard, you still know what has been asked for. You can't produce even one link to support your ridiculous assertions, so you call me a liar and a moron. Why don't you just admit you cannot support this statement and be done with it:
Ok, here is the first lesson. Watch Al Jazeera for a week. And then tell me if any of the harmless accusations floated by Atrios and Kos, which perpetuate through much of the in-kind media, tell me if any of those accusations are harmless. [snip] Now I was upset when this happened to Clinton, but now it is effecting(sic) our troops on the ground.
I call again upon your expertise, for the good of the country. If you can change just one mind, even if it isn't mine, won't that be worth it? Show us all how we would learn by watching Al Jazeera that something Atrios has posted has been perpetuated through the in-kind media (whatever that is) to have a harmful effect on our troops. Pretty please?
What goes through the mind of every arab speaking muslim every single time they hear a reference to Al Queda?
Baseball: Kurat al-Qaida
perigord, The US armed Iraq in the 1980s through the extension of credit, including a 3 billion dollar government-guaranteed loan channeled through the Banco di Lavoro branch in Atlanta, GA. Weapons were bought through a shadowy matrix of companies, under the management of, well, a company called Matrix Churchill, headquartered in Cleveland, OH.
I always heard that Ian Paisley trained for the ministry at a fundamentalist university in the US, maybe Bob Jones. They draw financial support from the same sources.l
It is no co-incidence that his anti-catholic retoric is very similar to fundamentalist anti-muslim retoric.
"perigord, The US armed Iraq in the 1980s through the extension of credit, including a 3 billion dollar government-guaranteed loan channeled through the Banco di Lavoro branch in Atlanta, GA. Weapons were bought through a shadowy matrix of companies, under the management of, well, a company called Matrix Churchill, headquartered in Cleveland, OH."
Dwarfed by the yearly under the table deals and front companies the Russians and Chinese used to sell him weapons.
"Spin it any way you want cog, but I once again simply posted what you wrote and then later you called me a liar. Again. How am I lying when I quote two full paragraphs from you?"
When you do 1 keyword search on memri and call me a liar. Sorry, thanks for coming out moron.
Nice of Seraphel to completely ignore the link to the graph of government weapons sales to Iraq. Almost as if he is more concerned with calling someone a liar than he is with the information he called me a liar about.
I can understand why he would want to ignore it.
Why does it matter if I look at your graph?
The last time I tried to explain the situation to you, you decided to ignore what I was saying, apparently because it gave you some false sense of moral superiority to pretend that I hadn't said anything about it.
I would just say the same thing, and you'd once again claim I didn't say it, and you'd still be a liar.
"Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.."
If this is true, I wonder how long it took the CIA to catch on to the origin of the name "Al-Qaida". It definitely seems to me that by choosing that name, Bin Laden was giving the finger to his former CIA patrons. By the way isn't it funny that, after all this time, NOBODY - and I mean NOBODY in the media took the time to even state what "AL-QAIDA" meant?
"Why does it matter if I look at your graph?"
Because you called me a liar for making up the information in the first place. Here it is, linked in this thread. But why should you look at that?
Moron.
I'm still waiting for your evidence cog. It's a simple request - why won't you provide any? See if you can respond without including the words liar or moron.
Maybe you just didn't read down far enough to get to my point. All I want is for you to justify with documented evidence (your personal opinion excluded) this assertion you made (here it is, in your own words):
Ok, here is the first lesson. Watch Al Jazeera for a week. And then tell me if any of the harmless accusations floated by Atrios and Kos, which perpetuate through much of the in-kind media, tell me if any of those accusations are harmless. [snip] Now I was upset when this happened to Clinton, but now it is effecting(sic) our troops on the ground.
I repeat, show us all how we would learn by watching Al Jazeera that something Atrios has posted has been perpetuated through the in-kind media (whatever that is) to have a harmful effect on our troops. Pretty pretty please with sugar on top?
"See if you can respond without including the words liar or moron."
You mean, unlike yourself?
Oh, cog, I'm so sorry - did I give you a little narcissistic injury by suggesting you may be less than truthful in your characterizations of what I and others have written and that your arguments are specious and unsupportable? You seem to be having quite the little hissy fit about it. Given that I've repeatedly read you calling people liars and morons, I can only assume you are in fact no great intellect deigning to play among the rabble, but nothing more than a rather plain variety of timewasting hypocrite. Too bad.
And given further that you won't even acknowledge the simple question I've asked you over and over and over, let alone provide even one link to material in support of your fairly simple-minded contentions, I conclude you have no response worth giving. Again, too bad: I really do think there's an argument to made on your point, but you are apparently incapable of making it. Case closed.
How are you coming with your demonstration that O'Donnell's story from last weekend is "bogus"? I've seen nothing but complete confirmation of his exact words - in fact, aside from you, no one else questions it. Feel like admitting you were wrong about that?
Wait, let me use my amazing powers to predict your response: I'm a liar and moron. Happy trails.
Because you called me a liar for making up the information in the first place.
No, I called you a liar for denying that I had said something that I posted in that old thread no fewer than three times. You quoted my comment, and then proceeded to pretend as if I had never written it.
"Oh, cog, I'm so sorry."
Apology accepted.
"No, I called you a liar for denying that I had said something that I posted in that old thread no fewer than three times. You quoted my comment, and then proceeded to pretend as if I had never written it."
I never denied that you have a different standard for the countries that sold most of the arms to Saddam than you do for for the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm..._Iraq_1973-
1990
Your welcome.
you have a different standard for the countries that sold most of the arms to Saddam than you do for for the USA.
And that is another of your oft-repeated lies.
People responsible for supporting dictators should be punished. The quantity of that support is relevant, but the act of doing it at all is quite bad enough.
"People responsible for supporting dictators should be punished. The quantity of that support is relevant, but the act of doing it at all is quite bad enough."
Yes, I would think that a country responsible for selling less than 1% of his arms sales is less relevant to the problem than one that provided 40 or 50%. What are you going to say next, that support for 20-25 years is more relevant than support givin for about 5 years?
To a normal person, this would seem like common sense. But dont let that get in the way of your "war criminal" rants.
Oh, and thanks for calling me a liar again. Coming from you and Jeff, that is mildly amusing.
The other part of the equation that you seem incapable of comprehending is that the US government used my taxes to support Saddam Hussein, and they continue to do with Islam Karimov. They are doing these things on my behalf, in my name. The French government doesn't claim to speak for me, and they aren't using my money for anything.
(And, as I tried to explain before, supporting Saddam Hussein is not something that I would consider a war crime, in and of itself. But Reagan and his lot did plenty of other things, aside from that, to earn the title.)
>That "Al-Qaida" means "The Database" is... angrifying
All the way back to the fourth post. And, hey, it's still refreshing to hear someone talk intelligently about Al-Qaida.
***
I can't say I disagree with albertchampion.
Hey, say what you want about the guy, Osama's eluded a 100,000 man, $250 billion dragnet for 1000 days (as of today). Ant there's a $1 million bounty on his head. And he still manages to run his organization.
This guy is sharp. He could probably teach BushCo a lot about effective action during wartime.
"And, as I tried to explain before, supporting Saddam Hussein is not something that I would consider a war crime, in and of itself. But Reagan and his lot did plenty of other things, aside from that, to earn the title."
So Reagan was a war criminal, and the Russians/French/Chinese/Germans who bankrolled and armed Saddam [who also are responsible for plenty of other things] are not?
Not that I agree with that statement, but you seem to be backpedaling with your "other things" comment. And this does seem to reinforce the fact that you do have a different standard.
You seem embarassed to admit it. Why?
So Reagan was a war criminal, and the Russians/French/Chinese/Germans who bankrolled and armed Saddam [who also are responsible for plenty of other things] are not?
I didn't say they weren't.
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