I disagree. Good foresight is reached when the proper action is taken in order to forestall disaster. And in my opinion, the action Bush took to forestall disaster by removing Saddam Hussein was the correct one.
On this we can agree. 
And now I’m off…maybe to eat, maybe to play in another thread, maybe to ask RedFury how he’s going to spend his evening…who knows? But at any rate, I’ll be out for a while.
Ah, delusion in the flesh, again everyone else can see how you are avoiding dealing the cites that show that Cheney tainted the information. The disaster was made by invading with the wrong assumptions reached with the tainted information.
Information that you still tell yourself is important to continue believing.
And then the disaster of the invasion was made worse by following the recommendations of “I’m most likely an Iranian spy” “heck of a job” Chalabi.
Repeating your say so’s on the “Good foresight” are just silly.
Fine and well, a little skepticism is a good thing. But, keep in mind she retired. She would not have the same axe to grind as someone who was fired. This was also a career officer, not some here today gone tomorrow gadfly. So, be skeptical, but at the same time consider her claims.
Not exactly. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter who it came from. But, that was marital infidelity (Monicagate). As to Whitewater and Foster, there were allegations, but nobody ever came up with anything even strong enough to keep going, as I remember. I know, given the choice between getting a blowjob or getting tortured, I’ll take the blowjob ANY time 
Duly noted, you were making an example of that sort of thing.
Bush was elected and re-elected. That’s simple fact. I didn’t vote for him, but he won anyway. Then Obama won. I voted for him and he won in spite of me (joke). The nation’s voters elected him, not the media or the left. There are those who feel he is not middle enough or not left enough or whatever enough, but he was elected.
OMG- His middle name is Hussein?! Why didn’t anyone mention this before?!
Isn’t that the same as that man, Saddam Hussein, who hated our freedom, so we took him out?
Damn. Debate over. And *just *when they were about to convince Starving Carol to join reality, too!
Seriously. Why do you people bother?
And Cheney is still a dick.
Come now, I told you I’d like to hear your opinion and you said something to the effect of not giving me that pleasure. Are you so fickle that you’ve forgotten so soon?
The difficult we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer.
Further, it offers useful experience in dealing with the obstructive argument. The obstructive argument is not designed to carry the point, it recognizes that as impossible, but concentrates on keeping alive the notion of controversy, that so long as the issue is not 100% settled, the obstructive advocate may be right. This permits the use of self-serving phrasing, such as “the question is controversial”, which permits the notion that the issue is open, and that each side of the issue has validity.
A good example is the effort by Creationists to insist that “teaching the controversy” is a valid approach to teaching evolution, as it pretends that there is some argument about evolution, when, for all practical purposes, the issue is settled.
Another is the appeal to bias, accompanied by the rueful admission that, yes, we are all victims of bias derived from our various political persuasions. Hence, what appears to be a Matterhorn of citation, evidence, and expert testimony may be waved away, it simply *appears *to be a mountain of evidence due to the unfortunate bias of the observer.
This latter is a long-standing favorite of StarvArt, and he is currently its foremost practitioner (if a word like “foremost” is appropriate for something so bass-ackwards…) He entices you to accept the obvious truth that human bias is universal by his aw-shucks admission, but if you do you must accept that, really, both sides of the argument are equal, being equally biased.
Failing that, there is usually an effort to parse the question to death by definition, to haggle over every term and tenet, an argument that most closely resembles being nibbled to death by ducks. StarvArt doesn’t do this as much, it is an approach that embarrasses even him. You may refer to Magellan 101 in GD for a definitive exposition of its power of exasperation.
Then, one of my favorites, the denial of the obvious. I show a mountain of gumballs, and aver that it is, in fact, a mountain of gumballs. The obstructionist arguer will seize one particular gumball and insist that it is possible, just possible, that this is not a gumball, but a shotgun pellet wrapped in hard candy. We cannot be sure, it is Shroedinger’s gumball. Well, then, if any one of these ten thousand may not be a gumball, then they might all be questionable. Thus the obstructionist invites you to take on the absurd task of examining each and every one, promising that as soon as you do, he is willing to take up the question again.
Scylla is/was the foremost practitioner of this approach, but he has lately resumed spending the majority of his free time at his hobby, taunting the homeless.
Keep in mind, the goal of the obstructionist argument is not victory or conviction, but to keep alive, however dimly, the very notion of controversy. So long as the obstructor can convince himself that there is, at some distant remove, a valid argument to be made, then his argument is just as good as yours, the shadow cast by your mountain of corroborating evidence is a trick of lighting.
I am currently at work breeding a variety of atomic super-hamsters, who are genetically enhanced to spot poor reasoning. (Note: this is not, by any stretch, a plot to take over the world, hippies don’t want to rule the world, we simply don’t want the world to rule us…). As a test, I have presented StarvArt’s arguments. I am happy to report that I have a breeding pair that can spot the fallacy in under ten seconds!
Unfortunately, they are gay, and of slightly different specie. I am exploring the potential of artificial miscegenation, and will advise of any progress…
General Patreus , another bleeding heart liberal ,comes out against torture and Gitmo. He obviously does not have the grasp of the issues that our righty Dopers do. I hope they have an opportunity to straighten him out.
So did Colin Powell.
Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney For Torture Speech (VIDEO) | HuffPost Latest News Here’s a story about an interrogator who disputes Cheney. He has conducted 1000 interrogations and claims Gitmo and Abu are huge recruiting tools. I suppose he must be wrong too. There is no saving grace on enhanced interrogations. They are a lose/lose. We create more enemies and don’t get valid info.
You were asked to share in another thread. For reasons probably best known by you, you declined to do so.
You fool. The commentary is by a 42 year veteran of the CIA, That removes it far from your uninformed biased remarks. His actually has weight.
That’s easy – still astonishing, but easy: Millions of Americans believed those lies and still do. Just thank Og they’re not a majority.
:dubious: Because RedFury is Spanish? I don’t think so. American foreign policy is everybody’s business. That comes with superpower status.
Well, sure, but we’ve known he’s a closet liberal pinko faggot democrat since, like last July.
-Joe
Commentary does not equal fact.
You should try to make that a rule by which to live.
Quoth elucidator, which means “he who speaks behind backs”
But soft…
So sayeth the mighty bearer of false witness, slayer of strawmen, whose words have defeated many an argument that was never made, and antagonized many a poster not present.
He has brought the argument from ignorance out of the closet of shame and wields it as his primary weapon of debate, the old “if I don’t understand it, it ain’t so,” and whose primary rhetorical shield is to only make arguments so vague as to lack any debatable points while cloaking them in Shakespearean cliches.
He has come not to praise facts nor logic but to bury them.