Treat me as blind, please. What is the apparent ulterior motive for the UN to overstate the problem of AIDS?
IOW, you got nothin’; you just want to dick around.
Long before I’d ever heard of Peter Piot, I had very good reasons for not accepting that the Iraq WMDs were an honest mistake.
First of all, securing the purported WMD sites was a low priority of our invading army (i.e. they didn’t bother to secure the sites upon liberating them from Saddam’s control, as a result of which they were looted to the ground before we even had a chance to determine whether there were WMDs there), which makes no sense if the war was about WMDs, and if our leaders were genuinely concerned about Iraqi WMDs falling into the hands of terrorists.
Second, if this was some lower-level mistake, a failure to execute the orders and intentions of Bush, Rumsfeld, et al., no concern has ever been expressed over this failure, and no heads ever rolled.
This despite the fact that if these sites had had WMDs that had represented a threat to us, they’d have been for sale in the Middle Eastern bazaar, and likely snatched up by al-Qaeda, by the time Bush was declaring “Mission Accomplished.”
That would have been a pretty damned big fuckup, don’t you think?
Finally, we have Wolfowitz’ word, that each of the principal players had their varying reasons for wanting war, and WMDs was the one they could agree on, to sell the public on the war.
It was never about WMDs. They were going to war regardless. As Bush said a year before the invasion, way before it was clear what the intel would find, “Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out.”
So, where’s the ‘honest mistake’?
I must have missed these “facts”, since you have introduced none, preferring instead to advance a particularly dull form of argument by incredulity. I didn’t miss you falsely equating a person’s opinions on WMDs with their opinions on AIDS. If your own arguments’ stupidity bothers you, you should avoid making them, rather than accusing them of being strawmen. So disloyal.
Have you explained why, if the UN is so hell-bent on inflating the AIDS figures, it has come forward itself with revised figures? I don’t think you have. I realise it doesn’t fit very well with your warped outlook, but re-evaluation of previously held positions is the very definition of intellectual honesty. And you’re more honest than the UN, right?
Right?
Attention, funding, prestige.
Then I don’t see what your point is.
Do you agree that credibility is important for Al Gore? After all, he has no power to make anyone do anything. Same question for David Duke. Same question for Al Sharpton.
Yawn. Please show me where I claimed that “everyone who opposes AIDS must therefore have opposed invading Iraq”
That’s correct. There are a lot of possible explanations. Before we discuss them, please answer me this: If somebody comes forward with a revised story does it follow that their earlier story must have been an honest mistake?
Probably, yes, although I haven’t followed the UN closely enough to say for sure.
What about you . . . are you more honest than the UN?
The point, as I have now stated three times because you cannot read, is that it is false to say that the UN has no incentive to present accurate information.
Yes. I do agree that credibility is important for those individuals, to greater and lesser extents. Probably Gore, Sharpton, Duke, in order from most sensitive to credibility issues to least.
It’s easy to lose track of the fact that we’re actually talking about people here, and so the question is why people have apparent ulterior motives for what they do. One might expect a Great Entity to behave nobly at all times, but when the curtain is opened, one finds greedy bastards just like us.
I think it’s potentially worse than that. Who rises to positions of leadership in an institution? Often (but not always) it’s the most Machiavellian types. People who have no problem engaging in lying and self-deception in order to get ahead.
I agree with this. But so what? And has anyone claimed otherwise in this thread?
And yet all of these men have engaged in significantly dishonest conduct. Agreed?
So, are you saying that “extra” money for AIDS research, if there could possibly be such a thing, went to these “greedy bastards”? That statement alone calls for cites, such as:
- How much money was overspent on AIDS research,
- Who are these “greedy bastards” you are referring to, and
- Where is your evidence that the money went to them instead of the research?
By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, what the fuck all does this have to do with the topic at hand? Are you actually trying to claim that, because persons A, B, and C have done something dishonest in their pasts, this is actually proof that unnamed group of people D, who have no association with the previous group of people, is also dishonest?
Yes and no, respectively.
Please show me where. Please use the quote feature. Thank you.
As to all 3? If no, which one(s)?
I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Apparently “cites” can also refer to imaginary chains of events in alternate dimensions, so don’t be too surprised if the answer somehow involves supervillain Lex Luthor.
No. Although I’ve seen enough people make incorrect statements (that happen to favor them in some way) to draw a few inferences about human nature.
Again, what the fuck have they to do with your own OP? Can’t you at least stick to your own topic?
Another poster pointed out, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, that the UN has an incentive to be honest. I pointed out that there are plenty of people with similar incentives who nonetheless lie, exaggerate, misstate, and self-deceive.
So I was simply responding to another poster’s point. The other poster’s point may actually be irrelevant. Which would make my point irrelevant too, but there it is.
Any other questions?
Well, his OP was a (poorly) coded message about the IPCC, so I can see where Gore comes in. If only brazil84’s motives weren’t so transparent - I mean, people were onto what he really was getting at right from the word go. So much for Socrates…