Some of Fye's beliefs: Anyone to the left of my political right is narrow-minded. Rush is right. Fox News is fair and balanced. Reagan knew nothing of Iran Contra. Nixon was simply misunderstood. George Bush is a great man. It was choking on a pretzel, nothing more. Justificaton after the fact is a good thing. I was wrong before, but I can't be wrong now. Saddam Hussein was a seasoned professional tyrant. The Bush adminstration are just amateurs tyrants, so give them a break. Other people have difficulty handling truths, but not me. When I exaggerate for my cause it is good. When liberals exaggerate for their cause it is bad. The end justifies the means. more to follow....no doubt.
So Bush is in fact nation building, which you support, because things have changed? So much for principled thinking. "Why don't you butt out?" Why don't you make me? Foolish questions deserver foolish responses. "Why don't you butt out?" Now that is the first funny thing you have said in a long time. Does the concept of an open forum mean anything at all to you in your Red, RIGHT, and Blue only America?
Your words. I made an argument and offered a characterization - in response to someone who was claiming that those who favored the war did so either because they were stupid "suckers" or because they were motivated by greed and self-interest. If you disagree, please feel free to demonstrate where and how the Left's attitude towards Iraq - and particularly the attitude of anti-war people like yourself and bungrider, to name two - showed your interests in the values I mentioned. You may not even consider yourself to be on the Left, for all I know. To me your arguments and attitudes certainly seem to be.
Sure, it's an open forum. You have the right to be an ass, and I have the right to ask you to stop. Deal with it. I already told you exactly why I consider your attacks on me and your absurd and annoying misreadings of my arguments unwelcome - not because I care what you think of me, but because, as I said, they at best make for a distraction from any actual discussion, and otherwise mainly serve as surrogate ad hominems for individuals who were taking the other side, and who, if they cared to show they had any principles, and were actually interested in discussion, would join me in asking you to knock it off. I suppose you could try to start a "let's analyze, criticize, and insult KF thread," but the moderators would remove it as a TOU violation.
Breakdown for simplicity: Pointless ad hominem babble. Attack, shift focus. - What planet are you on? - I suppose you believe that ALL of the world's major, middling, and minor news organizations are in on bungrider's HAL conspiracy? - Please do tell if so. If not, then what makes you think you have anything to contribute to a discussion on world events? Forceful, yet unresponsive repetition. Insinuate the unproven allegations are so obvious as to not need proof. - The mass graves and reams of material, video and photographs, and endless direct testimony about the Ba'ath police state have been on display in every venue operated by professionals who aren't ideologically committed to ignorance. - Even the leaders of the anti-war movement decry the evils of the Iraqi regime, however hypocritically. Exaggerated false exasperation. The stupidity of opposition allows dismissal of what they say. (substitutes for stupidity could be 'French', 'unpatriotic', or 'effeminate') - Are there any news sources you consider adequately trustworthy for such purposes? Do you have any source of information about the world?
The question rhetorically expresses honest uncertainty about the other individual's connections to the same consensual world occupied by the questioner. It can be argued that individuals who do not occupy the same consensual world are incapable of having meaningful interchanges - a valid concern, in my opinion, especially on the internet. It seems absurd to me, but it may not seem that way to someone who believes, for instance, that oil interests run the world or that Big Capital or the Jews or Jewish Big Capital controls the media. Such people exist. One encounters them from time to time on the internet. They may believe that the Holocaust never happened. In my opinion, denying the extent and depth of Saddam's crimes is approximately on that same level. You put yourself there, in my opinion. If you told me what news sources you might trust, then I might dutifully dig up some material for you, even though you could probably do it yourself. It's not hard to find, usually. But if you told me you believe only what you read in some news source that I consider obscure and highly questionable, or that I cannot access, then that would obviously be a different situation, but I at least would have an idea what I was dealing with. Mischaracterized: I am not "insinuating" anything, but rather am responding directly and openly stating my position that there is ample material of the sort that I believe most observers would consider "proof." There was nothing false about my exasperation. I asked you to name a news source that you trust, because, frankly, I find it rather hard to believe that you really need new proof of the Iraqi regime's nature. I really don't know you, or what you would consider adequate proof. It may not be the kind of thing that I could present here. Do you trust the BBC enough to be persuaded by their reports on these subjects? The Guardian? NPR? The New York Times? The LA Times? The Minnesota-Star Tribuine? CNN? Le Monde? Der Spiegel? You may be the kind of person who cannot be persuaded by, say, photographic evidence and reporting from mainstream news organizations. If not, then what would be the point of my providing it for you? If so, then why should I need to? You could search the New York Times or BBC or Guardian or whoever's web site under the obvious terms, and you would turn up a wealth of material. For someone who likes to accuse others of using ad hominem tactics, you spend a lot of time attacking me while avoiding the issues.
This is classic right-wing distortion of the issue. You never answered WHY we need to spend TAX DOLLARS to right every wrong in the world. Why do we not conduct military action against India, Pakistan, and Saudi when those countries ROUNTINELY conduct extra-judicial executions?? And where are the goddamn WMDs??? Why can't you face the simple truth that they ARE NOT THERE??? Instead of bashing the left, why don't you admire the only faction that actually has enough balls to question THE BLATANTLY OBVIOUS??? Do you not pay taxes??? Do you not care about the many businesses who, instead of opening new locations or otherwise expanding, had to pay for this FUCKING BULLSHIT war??? As for what news source madison may or may not trust, WHO GIVES A FUCK??? NONE OF US GIVE A FUCK ABOUT HOW THE IRAQI REGIME TREATS ITS CITIZENS. NONE OF US WANT TO BLOW $60B TO GENTRIFY IRAQ. Why can't you answer the questions?? Why must you constantly broaden the scope of your meaningless arguments while dodging every single question we throw at you???
The people that are upset now are the same ones that were upset before the war, which are the same ones that simply hate Bush. Did Bush lie about WMD ? I honestly don't know because I'm not in the CIA and neither are any of you. Try to imagine what it would have been like with Gore as president. Do you know what would have happened ? Absolutely nothing, we would probably have Jimmy Carter negotiating with the Taliban right now. I can't believe anybody is so intellectually dishonest that they are still debating the merits of the war. The merits are obvious, it is only the detracting factors that are in doubt. Can you prove Bush lied ? Hell no, and if anybody could he would get impeached just like Clinton, but we all know that isn't going to happen. This is partisan BS at its worst.
I disagree. I was supporting the war effort, as a means to eliminate the threat of WMD, which I was lead to believe were a direct threat to my personal and national security. Now, I have every reason to believe that they still exist (Bush said they exist, right?) but that we have no idea where they are. This doesn't created a sense of personal or national security when there the types of weapons floating around out there as were described by the administration. Imagine a condition where we attacked North Korea, because the administration said they have 50 nuclear warheads capable of being launched onto our shores. Then imagine that we attack North Korea, and conquer the country, but can't find the leader nor the nuclear weapons. Would you feel more secure knowing that 50 nuclear weapons were unaccounted for, and more people now have a reason to use them than ever before? I don't think so. We have proven our intelligence is not very good, as we are incapable of finding Bin Laden after all this time, going on 2 years this September. This is not a situation that is unreasonable to want to know where the WMDs are that were claimed to be a threat to us, and to be getting explanations from the administration now that it really doesn't matter, or hearing from supporters that we should be not be concerned, or that we should be happy about liberating Iraq, or any other justification of the war is not accpeptable to me, and I don't see how it is acceptable to any other rational person who understands the nature of the damage WMD can inflict. Until those weapons are found, or until there is proof that they were destroyed, the threat has actually increased in my opinion of those weapons being used as a means to retaliate for our actions in Iraq. We did not destroy an enemy, we strengthened the cause of one, if not many, and now they may be armed with WMD that they would not have had otherwise. This is fully and 100% Bush's responsibility and duty to solve this problem. He made this mess, he needs to clean it up. It amazes me that the general public is so easily duped as to not understand what really took place, and the potential consequences down the road if those WMD are not found. This is all based on the assumption that WMD did in fact exist in the manner that the Bush administration claimed they in did prior to the beginning of the war. If the WMD were never there, and Bush in any way knew that, or had reason to doubt the intelligence that he used to convince the American people that the threat was real, and one that had to be dealt with militarily....he should suffer the consequences for that lying to the American people to justify his own agenda. In any case, the more the administration tries to tell us that the location of the WMD, or the existence of the WMD is no longer relevant, the more I begin to distrust them. It is very relevant for the reasons I have outlined above.
The Real World between countries is dirty with no rules. This is hard for many people to accept , because we don't live our lives that way, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. I would remind you that Clinton carpet bombed Serbia with B52's and unguided bombs simply to prove a point. Bush hit Iraq because he thought Iraq would hit us eventually, if even only through helping terrorists. It is proven there was a link with Al Qaida, and that is all I really need for justification, the rest is just bonus.