Age Quod Agis makes up quotes in GD, and tells other lies

The BBQ Pit
21

Sorry about being so long gone. I haven’t been on the boards recently, so I haven’t had an opportunity to answer your criticisms until now.

Judging by the reaction of some pretty well-respected folks here, I’ve been unclear. I apologize for that.

I was using quotation marks in the same way someone would use little hand quotes and a funny face: to emphasize that my use of the phrase was facetious or mocking. Obviously, I shouldn’t have done that, or at least shouldn’t have done it in that way.

It wasn’t a quote from Kennedy or Kennedy’s spokesperson, but I believe it accurately summarized her response. When confronted with a reporter who pointed out that the anecdote was false, Kennedy’s spokesperson did not say, “Well then, we apologize for casting our law enforcement officials in such a negative light by proliferating a false story.” She did not say, “It’s unfortunate that we decided to run with an unconfirmed rumor, and we wish we could withdraw that portion.” She did not clarify the record, saying “Yes, the student later admitted to lying about being visited by DHS, and we are unaware of any accurate reports that this has ever occurred.” Instead, she (essentially) responded to someone pointing out that the anecdote was a lie by saying, whether the story is true or not, Bush is violating our Constitutional rights (note – I didn’t use quotes there because I’m not quoting her, I’m paraphrasing).

She thus thought it was more important to use the fact that the story was false to reiterate the talking point – Bush is trampling on our rights – than clarify the truth. She neither apologized, nor attempted to clarify the record, and in fact appeared to leave open the possibility that the story was true. Thus, she certainly gave the appearance that she did not care about the truth nearly so much as the meme.

Anyway, the point is that I put quotes where they didn’t belong. And I apologize for that.

But as long as we’re in the Pit, could you please explain this to me?

Why say this? If we’re just having a discussion, and I try to summarize my point at the end, why use that to take a cheap shot? Do you suppose that grading your own response and the response of others somehow gives you a higher score? Why not just let your comments and mine stand on their own?

22

AQA, I seriously dou8bt that you’d find a politician or spokesman from either party that would deliberately place themselves in such a bad light by saying his. They just don’t work that way, unless truly backed into a corner. The other two formulations you give are a little less self-deprecating, but still extremely unlikely. The spokesperson in this case, I’m sure, thought that the perceived fault the original quote was addressing was much worse than citation of a story that was, at the time, generally believed to be true and not proven false until later.

23

I agree, Cal, that it’s unlikely that a spokesperson from either party would have said any of the 3 things I suggested. Their job is to stay on message, rather than give a soundbite to the opposition. I don’t begrudge them that.

But that was the whole point within the context of the discussion we were having. RTFirefly was saying that the Bush White House was overly political, and I was suggesting that the Bush White House isn’t the only one that occasionally puts politics over substance. That’s why I cited the example of Kennedy, whose spokesperson decided it was more important to stay on message – even to the point of not conceding that the story was false – than to clarify the facts.

24

You’re right, you shouldn’t have. But the problem only starts there. Even if we accept your mocking quote as a slanted paraphrase, that doesn’t even work. Because Kennedy’s spokesperson says nothing that’s even remotely paraphrasable as what you said.

How can you believe that?

How can you believe

is accurately summarized by

or

or

or

Capps doesn’t say the story is “good” or a “good lie.” She doesn’t say anything about raising awareness, or getting publicity. She doesn’t say anything about making anyone look bad.

You’re making shit up.

I’m very sorry she didn’t say the things you think she ought to have said. But none of that justifies your making shit up.

That is your interpretation.

It still doesn’t justify your making shit up.

Nope, the point is that you…oh, never mind.

Why not let Capps’ words stand on their own, instead of making shit up, putting it in her mouth, and acting as if she’d said it?

Forget it, forget you. I’m done with you.

25

Hmmm… When Bush made the decision to invade Iraq based upon current intelligence about WMDs that was accepted as being true, all the libs started screaming that he lied.

Here we have a similar scenario, in which Kennedy made use of something that was believed to be true and later found to be not true, and the libs aren’t screaming that he lied.

Interesting…

26

This sort of post makes me sad. Not because it’s irrelevant partisan flame-bait–that kind of rhetoric just affects the quality of the message board.

It makes me sad because the inability of many Americans to see significant distinctions between superficially similar cases prevents true political progress. False equivocation has got to be the number one rationalization in the partisan handbook.

27

(this was addressed to shodan)

i have been reading this board a lot longer than i have been posting, and i have wondered the same thing from day one.

not the same thing. it seems most people DID believe this one, whereas it has been suggested for quite a while from more than one source that the intelligence was “faulty”, if you doubt this then here is something from two years ago. it seems a lot of *people have “faulty” memories.

*not a personal attack, it just seems that this issue was old two years ago. when bush decided to invade iraq i thought it was a plan to keep our minds off of the fact that we didn’t find bin laden when we went to afganistan (wasn’t that why we went there? oh i forgot, we went to liberate the… wait a minute, i see a pattern!)

28

Unfortunately, they’re not even superficially similar.

In one situation, Bush created the OSP in order to cherrypick intel including bits that all the experts were telling him weren’t true. In the second situation, Kennedy mentioned a story that the media had covered and which was had not been gainsaid.

It’s the Politics of Tu Quoque.
Whee.

29

But it certainly comes in handy whan you haven’t got anything else.

30

RTFirefly, you’re all class.

I understand that you disagree with my interpretation of what was said. I explained the basis of why my interpretation was accurate. Your response has been to hold your breath and repeat childish insults. Well done.

I think people can reasonably disagree about things like this. Unfortunately, you’ve given no indication that your disagreement is anything other than banging your spoon on your highchair.

You might have tried to explain why Kennedy’s spokesperson left open the possibility that the story was true after the supposed victim admitted he’d made the whole thing up. You might have tried to explain why Kennedy’s spokesperson chose not to clarify the record by reiterating the truth. And you might have tried to explain why Kennedy would cite to a highly dubious and unconfirmed anecdote to begin with. Oddly enough, you chose to ignore these issues, presumably because they’re bad things done by a “good guy” (before RT gets his skirt over his head, this is not a quote).

You might even have justified the silly grades you gave my post. But instead, you decided it would be more effective to repeat the word “shit” over and over. Well done.

Oh, how I wish this was true.

31

Waht was more telling was later on in Kennedy’s op-ed piece:

32

Only it was ‘accepted as being true’ only because (a) few people yet believed the Administration would lie to the world over stuff like this, but they did so, and did so knowingly; and (b) at one time, Saddam had had biochemical weapons.

The big difference, of course, is that there’s no reason to believe Kennedy knew the story wasn’t true. But we do know (see linky above) that either Bush knew his story wasn’t true, or he hadn’t a clue what was going on in the inner circles of his own Administration. Since by now the lies have been thoroughly demonstrated, and he hasn’t fired anyone, I think you can draw your own conclusion.

33

[AQA’s head explodes.]

34

Ah, yes.

35

Oh, good. Now we get to address RTFirefly’s distortion of the truth. Note that he says his cite provides proof that Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. But if you click through the link, you’ll see that it merely provides evidence that some people didn’t agree with the Bush administration’s conclusions. The article refers to this evidence as “dissents.” It also says the following:

Obviously, the article does not support RTFirefly conclusion that Bush knew he was communicating false information about WMD in Iraq; at most, it shows that it was possible to arrive at a different conclusion. But of course, that part of the article doesn’t seem to have made it past RTFirefly’s fact filter.

Absolutely. I mean, other than that the story was absurd on its face, it was reported second hand and without any verification (it was reported by a professor who heard it from the student, and the newspaper didn’t bother to interview the student, DHS, or the library for confirmation), the book was requested by phone and not through the interlibrary loan process (making it difficult or impossible for DHS to pick up on the loan request), and three days before Kennedy published his op-ed, the UMD chancellor’s office said the following (same cite):

And there’s the small matter of the DHS saying the following the day before Kennedy’s op-ed was published:

And all of these facts were nicely collected in an article posted by the American Library Association before Kennedy published his op-ed.

So when Bush arrived at a different conclusion based on the evidence, that’s a lie. But when Kennedy arrived at a different conclusion based on the evidence, that’s just an innocent mistake.

Riiiight.

36

I should have provided a cite for this. So, here’s a cite to the first time the story was reported in the South Coast Standard Times:

I’m interpreting the fact that the story quotes only the professor to mean that they didn’t speak with anyone else. Presumably, the DHS and University library’s take on the subject would have been newsworthy, if they’d been asked.

On the other hand, the Boston Globe did interview the student. Here’s their conclusion:

So, yeah, there was no reason to doubt the veracity of those reports before Kennedy published his op-ed. Riiiiiight.

37

Here’s the cite for this.

38

Pick one. Show how that’s a mere difference of opinion that doesn’t undermine the claimed authoritativeness of the Administration’s statements. You say I’m distorting the truth? Make a real case. Go for it.

Maybe you should re-read what Kevin Drum wrote. Drum doesn’t say it would be a good case for war, or even that the best possible case would have been based on WMDs.

Absurd on its face, after everyone’s had three weeks to pick it apart. :rolleyes:

Do you believe in the tooth fairy too? Sheesh.

Which Kennedy must have read; how could he have not? :rolleyes:

If he had arrived at a different conclusion based on the evidence, that would have been honest. But if he only told the American people the implications of the evidence supporting the case for war, and omitted the fact that there was evidence undercutting his claims on all these points, that’s what you call lying.

Or at least I do. I guess you could call it dissembling, or hiding the truth, or some other expression in the same ballpark, but it all comes down to the same thing.

Yep, Kennedy knew when he wrote that op-ed that there was evidence that that anecdote was made up.

I think I’ll let you have the last word:

39

Why must I pick one? The authors of the piece you’ve cited have already weighed in on the issue, and they disagreed with you (I’ve quoted them and pointed this out in my previous post, but that apparently didn’t make it through your fact-filter).

If you feel the piece means something different than the authors say it does, please feel free to show me why.

How exactly does this mean that Bush lied about WMD? Do you see any difference whatsoever between “making the best possible case” and “lying”? If not, maybe the basis of our disagreement is a difference of vocabulary.

Take another look at the date of those cites and quotes. All of them came from before Kennedy’s op-ed. (I pointed that out in my previous post, but that apparently didn’t make it through the fact-filter either.)

What evidence do you have that the DHS guy was lying? Just an overriding faith that the Bush gov’t will do everything bad?

Frankly, I find your statement very revealing. You don’t have or provide any evidence that the government is applying this law in any manner other than what they say. But according to you, it’s patently obvious that the they’re lying. In other words, it’s an article of faith. And I suspect that no amount of truth will convince you otherwise.

So that’s the standard? We’ve left behind whether or not this is an example of someone other than Bush contributing to the noise – rather than truth – for political gain. Now it’s a matter of whether Kennedy knowingly lied?

Fine. What evidence do you have that President Bush read (what your article calls) “dissenting reports”? (Note – I don’t think that’s a good reason to let him off, but for the sake of argument, we’ll apply your standard.)

How do Kennedy’s actions differ from the President’s? Did he cite to evidence undercutting his claims? Did he enumerate the reasons that Republicans argue the President’s actions were authorized by law?

Well then, I guess he was lying.

Personally, I think he was making an argument. And arguments don’t necessarily require citation to all arguments contrary to your evidence. Any suggestion otherwise seems to me to be inherently dishonest. But thanks again for providing yet another example of someone other than the Bush White House putting politics over substance.

40

There’s no way I can show you why. Your head is too thick, your willingness to read everything the way you want it to read, and only that way, is too strong, to persuade. Drum isn’t saying what you say he says.

The reason you must pick one is to show, on the basis of the actual evidence, that I’ve distorted anything. Then Drum’s words, nor our respective interpretations of them, will be neither here nor there.

But if you can’t go to the sources he cites on one single point to show how I’ve distorted a single one of them, then I say you can’t.

All you’re doing is bullshit handwaving, based not on the evidence Drum is citing, but on how he words his overall presentation of the multiple instances where Bush hid the truth from us in 2002. That’s not the rock to stand on.

Since you missed my point the first time, let me bold it: just because A precedes B, doesn’t mean the actor in B is aware of, or even should be aware of, A.

No, just repeated instances, reported during the past couple months, of the Bush Administration’s investigating people and organizations that weren’t violating the law, or likely to. Quakers, gays, vegans investigated as security threats. 30,000 national security letters. That sorta thing.

No, it’s just not particularly reliable that they’re telling the truth.

I find your statement very revealing. You don’t seem to have kept up on the news much lately, but you still want to debate it.

Well, yeah. Or that it should have been obvious to him that the news account wasn’t true. Or that the news source itself had a reputation for unreliability.

That’s the sort of due diligence called for in citing a newspaper story on a point that’s helpful to, but not essential to, one’s argument.

OK, what’s the standard of due diligence when it comes to taking a nation to war? Pretty damned high, wouldn’t you say? It isn’t something one does along with a half-dozen other things one morning. The President has an affirmative duty to make sure he’s presenting the case for war fairly and accurately to the American people. He should certainly argue his case for going to war as best as he can, but he’s got to represent the evidence as fairly as possible. That involves knowing the significant evidence. In many of Drum’s instances, the contradictory evidence was part and parcel of the overall package; it took work to separate the aspects of the evidence that supported going to war (e.g. Curveball’s claims about mobile bioweapons labs) with the aspects that undermined it (Curveball hadn’t held the positions he said he had held, he hadn’t observed anything firsthand, we weren’t interviewing him firsthand either, the Germans thought he was a nutcase, and when finally interviewed by Americans, they thought he was an alcoholic).

What Bush told us was that Saddam had mobile bioweapons labs. Period. Full stop. I consider that a lie.

Kennedy did due diligence; Bush didn’t. End of story. The notion that the same level of due diligence is required to support a minor point in an op-ed piece as is required to support a critical claim in making the case for war is asinine bullshit.

But that’s the sort of equivalence you’re drawing. Which is a good for-instance of why you are fundamentally not worth arguing with.

Arguments don’t need to be inclusive when everyone has access to the same set of facts. They do need to be inclusive when the people arguing against you don’t have access to the same secret intelligence you do.

Lots of people here argued against the war on various grounds. But we could not base our arguments on Curveball’s unreliability as a source. To make an argument based on Curveball’s claims, without the appropriate caveats - that Curveball was a freakin’ nutcase - was, in that situation, a lie.