Which comments nicely demonstrate your distance from all those who consider a soldier's death in service to his country and to the people of another country to be supremely noble and supremely deserving of respect. We don't view soldiers who fought for Germany during WWII as supremely noble, so it is not the actions of a soldier where the nobility lie, but rather in the view of the "cause" the soldier fights for that generates a concept of nobility. Sure, the actual killing can be thought of as an obscenity, but equating the obscenity of the event with the intention that guided the individual who suffered it is a second crime. Second crime? What statute is that in what case book? Regardless of what you think of the war, can't you see how presumptuous that is? Regardless of your warmongering nature, can't you see how presumptuous you are to suggest that moral "righteousness" is not necessary the consequence of military superiority....but often the willingness to fight against the prevailing "immoral majority?" Imagine yourself at the soldier's funeral, telling everyone how "obscene" his or her death was. (You might even find someone, in the depths of despair, who agreed with you... for a moment... ) One of the reasons that the peace movement and the resistance to the war in Vietnam grew was because many of those who burried their children who died in that war did not understand why we were there, what we were fighting for, and why their child had to die. The same is happening now.
I don't know who "we" is supposed to be. Many are willing to accept that individual Germans during WWII fought with great valor and even nobility. Among military people, German soldiers who conducted themselves according to accepted norms, or who displayed great courage or altruism, were accorded due respect. What makes the question difficult is of course the issue of whether or to what extent serving in the regular German army under Hitler really constituted "service" to the German nation, much less to the people of any other country. Because the Third Reich is considered to have been an extremely evil regime, it is more difficult for some to accept that the sacrifice and suffering of German soldiers could ever have been ennobling. I can certainly accept that it's a difficult question, though the flip side of the argument is the kind of thinking that led self-righteous peace protestors to spit on American Vietnam vets, as discusssed earlier on this thread. When you consider, however, that American soldiers fought and removed a regime that on a moral level was at least in the same broad category as the Third Reich (totalitarian, genocidal, aggressively militaristic), then it would seem your own reasoning would reinforce the nobility of an American soldier's sacrifice in Iraq. Not all crimes appear in case books - though I suppose you could call it a form of libel or slander, or you could even acquaint yourself with the concept of a "figure of speech." Be sure to remind us in your next post that you don't mean to be an apologist for Saddam. In your sick dreams. You presume that others suffer from the same limitations or impairments that make it difficult for you to understand why we are in Iraq, what we're fighting for, and why some people's children have had to die.
More news on Optional777's favorite "immorally" deposed regime: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030717/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_mass_graves_1
DÃJÃ VU IN D.C. By RALPH PETERS July 16, 2003 (excerpt) The current attacks on President Bush over who knew what and when, over who supposedly lied and the merit of crucial decisions, are based in politics, not in a sincere concern for our national interests. Lincoln endured nearly identical attacks in an earlier age of mortal threat to our nation. The repellent personal attacks on the president, the cartoons portraying him as a mentally deficient cowboy stumbling over his own words, call to mind the vicious cartoons of Lincoln as an ape and a hick. Those whom the scribbling classes cannot destroy through the force of argument they mock and caricature. The personal nature of the attacks upon President Bush are indicative of the failure of attacks based upon issues. And why have the policy-oriented attacks upon the president failed? Primarily because they've attacked the wrong policies. Perhaps the greatest failing of the intellectual elite and those elements of the media that pander to it is that they consistently underestimate the American people, imagining that the "common" man or woman might be led by the piques and whims of those who never had to sweat for a living and never will. College professors, journalists or party operatives who assume that the American people are not smart enough to see into the heart of great matters without the guidance of their betters will always be frustrated by the ultimate common sense, moral force and courage of their fellow Americans. The elite regard the masses as politically incompetent, yet the people consistently have been right when the intellectuals were wrong. Americans grasp, intuitively and viscerally, that the War Against Terror, of which our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq were vital phases, is as justified as it is essential. It is the elite, imprisoned still in their Clintonian fairy-tale worldview, who refuse to see that the United States remains in mortal danger from enemies who cannot be appeased, persuaded or deflected. No congressional committee ever won a war, and no columnist ever stopped a terrorist from killing. This column does not mean to idolize the president. Indeed, many of his domestic policies give cause for serious concern, from his slight of hand on environmental issues, through his questionable respect for women's rights, to his ideologically driven, ill-timed tax cuts. But his foreign policy is courageous, effective and vital. The current flock of interchangeable Democratic presidential aspirants attack the president's strengths, while failing to appreciate his weaknesses. The military equivalent would be a frontal attack across an open field against dug-in machine guns and artillery. Instead of reciting their litany of imaginary failures overseas, can't a single Democratic presidential hopeful admit that the potential danger to the U.S. from hate-intoxicated terrorists could one day cause an even greater loss of American lives than did our Civil War? In 1864, the people voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln's re-election. Unless a Democratic champion emerges who is willing to abandon petty sniping in favor of genuine leadership, at home and abroad, the American people doubtless will favor President Bush in 2004 - as they did his greatest predecessor. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/645.htm
Posted on Thu, Jul. 17, 2003 Blame shifts back to White House over uranium claim BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND WARREN P. STROBEL Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - (KRT) - A senior White House adviser emerged Thursday as a key player in the mention of disputed intelligence on Iraq in President Bush's State of the Union speech, prompting a partisan tug-of-war over Bush's responsibility for the misleading claim. The revelation moves the spotlight back to the White House and away from the CIA, where President Bush and CIA Director George S. Tenet had placed it last Friday. Senior CIA officials told a closed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday that, before Bush gave the speech, they discussed the reliability of intelligence about Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium in Africa with National Security Council aide Robert Joseph, according to two senior U.S. officials. Joseph, a top aide to Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, coordinates policies to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The two U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the hearing was classified. Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and an Intelligence Committee member, said Thursday on ABC News that Tenet told the committee that a White House official - whom Durbin didn't identify - was "insistent" that the uranium reference be in Bush's address. Later, two U.S. officials confirmed to Knight Ridder that Joseph was the White House aide Durbin described. That alleged push from Joseph puts a different light on the controversial allegation, distinct from Bush's emphasis last Friday, when the president stressed that the CIA had approved the wording of his speech. Tenet later issued a statement saying he had done so, though in retrospect he shouldn't have, because the intelligence underpinning the allegation was suspect. Many Democrats reject Tenet's taking responsibility for Bush's allegation, saying the blame lies with the president and some of his aides, who they suggest were so intent on making the case for war against Iraq that they distorted intelligence findings to boost their argument. Bush was asked Thursday at a news conference whether he took responsibility for the uranium statement. He ducked the question, saying he took responsibility for waging war against Saddam Hussein. The White House acknowledged July 7 that the president's uranium statement shouldn't have been in the State of the Union address because it was based on British intelligence that the CIA was unable to confirm. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a White House news conference Thursday that his government still stood behind its intelligence finding that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday that the uranium claim wasn't central to Bush's case against Saddam, which he said "was based on solid and compelling evidence." "There are some in Congress that are seeking to rewrite history," McClellan said. Knight Ridder first reported last month that it was Joseph, working with Vice President Dick Cheney's office, who led an effort by pro-invasion administration officials to include the uranium allegation in Bush's address. The two U.S. officials disputed Durbin's account of Wednesday's hearing, saying it wasn't Tenet, but CIA analyst Alan Foley, who described the White House-CIA discussions on the uranium issue. Foley heads an agency unit, known by the acronym WINPAC, that analyzes intelligence about weapons proliferation. One of the U.S. officials said Foley, recalling his telephone conversations with Joseph, "didn't say `he (Joseph) insisted, he jammed it down my throat,' or anything like that." Foley, the official continued, "doesn't remember the exact conversation" with Joseph because no one anticipated the inclusion of the material would ignite such controversy. When questioned later, Durbin stood by his account. "There were clearly negotiations between the White House and the CIA about the wording of this," he said, noting they took place three months after the CIA persuaded the White House to remove a similar uranium reference from a Bush speech in Cincinnati. "It raised the question in my mind about why we're not focusing on those individuals in the White House who were so hell-bent on including this questionable conclusion on the president's most important speech of the year," Durbin said.
White House adopts a fact-checker's credo By Ellen Goodman, 7/17/2003 HEN I WAS 22 I went directly from being a history major in college to being a researcher at Newsweek. The moment of culture shock came late one Friday night when I was reluctant to put my red line of approval under some data. Deadline loomed, and a more experienced and harried fact-checker said to me in exasperation: ''You know, it doesn't matter if it's right, as long as you have a source for it.'' The dubious hint from this journalistic Heloise was that no one got into serious, job-ending doo-doo as long as they had a citation. It was OK to print something wrong as long as you could shift the blame. I have been thinking of that fact-checker over the past week. I wonder if she went on to a career in the White House. Today the search for the elusive weapons of mass destruction has become the search for the elusive accuracy of 16 little words in the president's State of the Union address. The words under the microscope are these: ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' It turns out that the Niger-uranium connection was as phony as those Nigerian e-mails asking for money. The only true thing we learned is that ''yellowcake'' isn't a Betty Crocker mix. Last week the administration admitted it shouldn't have put the sweet 16 into the speech. CIA Director George Tenet confessed, sort of, that it was his fault for not excising them. And then the credo of the infamous fact-checker took over. Condoleezza Rice said: ''The statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that.'' Donald Rumsfeld said, ''People think it was technically accurate.'' And Ari Fleischer added, ''No one can accurately tell you it was wrong.'' So here we are. The AOL news line is flashing ''Another day, another death.'' We haven't found weapons of mass destruction. Saddam is on the loose. The postwar meter is running at $3.9 billion a month. Meanwhile, the White House has gone from saying its facts were right, to saying you can't prove they were wrong and, anyway, we had a British source. Never mind that the source is in trouble over its own ''dodgy dossier.'' Despite all this, there's one thing I can agree with. As Rice put it, the idea that ''the president of the United States took the country to war because he was concerned with one sentence about whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa'' is ''ludicrous.'' It was far more than one sentence. What matters isn't the footnote but the overall case for war. And the case for war was, at heart, fear. One year ago Iraq was just another point on the ''axis of evil.'' But in October Bush warned a country still reeling from 9/11 that if America didn't confront Iraq it would ''resign itself to fear.'' In the State of the Union address he added: ''Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein.'' The fear dossier was built on WMDs, and there's no W with more MD than a nuke. So long before the Niger fiasco, Rice said famously, ''We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'' I'm not one of the folks Bush accuses of wanting to rewrite history - ''revisionist historians is what I like to call them.'' Yes, Saddam had chemicals and wanted nuclear weapons. But as Bush himself said, ''Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003.'' So what made this despot (as opposed to other despots) a target for war (rather than containment) in 2003 (rather than 2001 or 2005)? What made it critical enough to go to war virtually alone? The rationale - if not the reason - was a clear, immediate Iraqi threat. The president used fear writ large to justify preemptive war as ''anticipatory self-defense.'' This is a policy that depends - far too much - on trust and on straight information. Now proof has gone down the drain with the yellowcakes. Some 56 percent of Americans polled by CBS now think the administration overstated its case. Less than half think Iraq was a threat that needed immediate action. In the meantime, nukes are rattling in Iran and North Korea. We have no idea if our intelligence is ''darn good'' or damn skewed. We're left to pick up the rising bill and weigh the shrinking credibility. In the midst of this, Donald Rumsfeld declares the political storm over: ''End of story.'' Someone get that man a red pencil and a much better source.
Very manipulative tactic: Ask open-ended questions, then provide simplistic, conclusory answers without evidence or reasoning. Another manipulative tactic: Find the one poll response that appears to back up your position. Considering that this poll was taken at the height of the two-pronged Niger-uranium/Iraq chaos anti-Bush propaganda offensive, I wouldn't consider those numbers very bad at all. The real tests will still come a) when the Iraq WMD survey team begins releasing its findings, b) when it becomes more clear which way things are really going with Iraqi reconstruction, c) when Americans vote in the "only poll that counts." Some other numbers are also noted in the following article, which in its unexcerpted portions analyzes some other manipulative uses of opinion polls, and also offers some speculations on the continuing influence of the Vietnam mindset on journalists: Note: I believe it was when I was pointing out just such a likely response to the "unacceptable" poll question a week or so ago, that I was accused by Optional777 of posing as a polling expert. So that's what Bush has had to sacrifice by not responding more forcefully to the recent attacks: A 7% shift. Notice also how the question frames the issue solely in the form of US self-interest - somewhat in manner of the "casualties acceptable/unacceptable" question - nudging the respondent to a more stringent view. I'm confident that Bush et al will, if pressed, try to frame the question to the electorate a bit more advantageously. If the poll had asked "Was the war justifed?" or "Was the US right to remove the vicious evil murdering America-hating terrorist-connected tyrant Saddam Hussein from power?" it would yield more Bush-favorable numbers.
You're making far too much sense. Optional is not designed to handle clear logic. He was made to argue, not reason.
Hapaboy the cheerleader. Give me an H. Give me an A. Give me a P. Give me an A. Give me a B. Give me an O. Give me a Y. What does that spell? What does that spell? What does that spell? LOOOOOOOOOZer!!!
Hey, I'm already huddling in fear here... What if he brings out... the big font!? Then I'll really be in trouble...