Yes he was. He claimed to have especial insight and knowledge that was proven false eventually.
No it’s not. Agreed, that period was a rough time for all concerned, but the calling to task here is not a matter of spite, it’s about calling dues. Bluesman made claim to some extraordinary things. They did not come about. He is entitled to be slammed, even ex-membership.
True, but even then I just took it as the sorta boom-rah-rah hyperpatriotism that permeates the military. What’s the old saw about basic training…deconstruct the person and then build back up to suit? It was a particularly fraught time so I just wasn’t too suprised that Bluesman reacted the way he did. Thresholds differ, so no fault or foul. As for purely message board he was just so open about where and why he came from it just didn’t rate lasting offense from me. Purely a personal quirk.
FWIW, I never expected sackcloth and ashes, rending of garments and wails of remorse from people who voted for Bush. Republican, conservative, military, etc. aren’t bad things to be. Whole hearted, sincere people can be betrayed by cynics. BushCo is the obscene travesty. Hell, he systematically exploited every cynical elected-at-all-costs weakness he could find. Religion, FAMILY, race fear, class–and it worked.
It could just be a different threshold for message board bull shit. Bluesman never bothered me that much. His source of rah-rah government support was too obvious. I croggle at casual political arm chair quaterbacks who still–STILL–insist that this vicious, evil idiot betrayed every principle he supposedly supported.
Military folks accept limitations. Assholes who still insist this wannabe dictator is a conservative and righteously bleat about their bait-and-switch tax cuts are more deserving of my ire.
Effect, not cause.
Doors, I am not sure why you quoted part of my post. I am ex-military and was as pro war as you were back then. I have since rethought some of my positions
My point was to simply say I don’t think Bluesman was quite the intel guy he said he was, and I think he was full of shit.
I have no disagreement that the top people were the ones who decided/spun the intel. You guys in the “trenches” so to speak will always have my utmost respect.
In that case I am wrong and have been. I apologise.
But at the time, Bluesman was not just going boom-rah-rah stuff. He was claiming to have pertinent information that would prove that all the ‘anti-war’ people were idjits and morons.
Obvious? Yes, apparently to all but those who defended him at the time.
True enough, Kambucta. I doubted his ‘facts’ then, didn’t like his us-or-enemy stance but am, if anything, more sickened as time passed. My only point of disagreement is how much message board bile that should come his way after all this time.
My only reservation is that using him as a scapegoat is too facile, too easy. He was spectacularly wrong. Of all the folks (myself definitely included) who pontifcate on a message board, he deserves a certain degree of slack as a true believer who was misled. So he mouthed off on a message board. He didn’t maliciously create the lies; he just believed them. So did a lot of people, with much less at stake.
In message board terms, sevastapol’s kill-the-monster grudge just seems pretty stupid.
Or, 3- there were WMD and we haven’t found them yet.
*
Look, Saddam had (before Desert Storm) millions of tonnes *of WMD. Most were destroyed afterwards, then Saddam threw the UN inspectors out. However, even Blix thought that there were about 10% of the old weapons unaccounted for. Well, it now seems that that around 99% of that 10% was either lost, never there (paperwork errors) or destroyed. We have found some pitiful few remains. But certainly Saddam was a prior WMD offender. Let’s not forget that.
So, did SH make any new WMD? Well, if he did, he didn’t make a lot, and we haven’t found even a little. But he acted like he did. So, let us assume for the sake of argument that Saddam started a new WMD programme, had plans, build prototypes, but hadn’t yet built much of anything effective. Well, the Intel would show that he had started a new programme, right? However, we haven’t found any solid evidence of a new programme, beyond SH fishing for sources. So, what could have happened to that possible small amount- and amount much less than the “10%” that went missing after Desert Storm? SH had plenty of time to dispose or hide it. Large convoys of trucks took something to Syria after W’s Ultimatum but before the shooting started. That could have been loot, certainly. It also could have been the plans and prototypes for a new WMD programme. Certainly it was something Saddam needed to get out of Iraq quickly and secretly.
Those "plans and prototypes’ also could have been hidden in Iraq- it is a HUGE country with vast expanses of trackless desert.
Or, maybe it all existed in SH head. Possible- he is crazy of course. Maybe he was just bluffing, and those semis sent to Syria were full of loot or even SH’s porno collection (as was once suggested here). Or maybe the intel was right, and those semi’s were full of evidence about a new programme. But they fact that we haven’t found them doesn’t mean that they never existed. It does cast a great deal of doubt, sure. And, it does show that without any shred of doubt that at that point in time- Saddam was NOT a “clear and present danger” to the USA. To the Kurds, yes, that’s without doubt. To Isreal? Maybe. :dubious: But not to the USA.
But that doesn’t mean “we were duped” by the Administration. They could have just been wrong. Which means we were wrong to invade Iraq, but I think we all know that…now.
But certainly some low level NCO could have seen stuff that convinced him 100%. So there’s no reason to pile on some poor ex-poster.
OK. So?
You have made claims about Bluesman’s work product. No evidence has been presented.
Not even circumstantial evidence.
Awwww.
It doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is you keep making claims that you can’t back up.
But ‘that’ was what I was referring to. You did not bring Bluesman’s name into the previous thread as a courtesy.
Thanks for providing this background, Doors. If this was how it indeed was for Bluesman, then everything makes a lot more sense.
On this, though, I’d have to disagree with you. My recollection is that even at the time, Bluesman’s arrogance stood out. There may have been a few others who had the arrogance meter pegged, who thought a few key phrases, be they about evil and appeasement, or PNAC and oil, trumped the necessity for debate. But Bluesman was, at a minimum, in a tie for first in the Iraq Arrogance Derby.
Indeed. Not to mention, there’s a big difference between correctly pointing out that someone was in-your-face arrogant AND spectacularly wrong on a message board, even if it was roughly an eon back, and making baseless claims about the integrity of his work product.
Show me where i implied that you, Bluesman, or any other war supporter was a traitor, a coward, or a supporter of Saddam/terrorists. When you do that, i’ll accept the moral equivalency you’re trying to assert.
That’s an excellent point. If the situations were reversed, and he turned out to be correct, would be giving the war detracters the benefit of the doubt, as some people are doing for him here? He sure as shit didn’t before.
I strongly suspect he’s getting an assload more slack from some people here than he would be giving if WMDs were actually found. He’s sure getting more now than he gave before.
I understand what you’re saying, but you have to understand that even now people (not necessarily you) are calling right-wing conservatives idiots, evil people, equating them to murderers, etc. And this is much less contentious than it was in 2003.
This isn’t about you. I don’t know that you said anything like that, and I don’t care. But if you go back and look at those war threads from that time they were nothing but condescension, scorn, and sarcasm.
mhendo
Please take this as representative of your post in general, it would be impolite to quote it all…
It will not do, it simply will not do at all.
The 45 minute launch claim by Tony Blair was just laughable, but yet despite it being so, no-one put too much effort into denying it, and that includes the so-called all seeing US intelligence led officials.
We were never duped, it was absolutely plain that there were no WMD, not in the sense that was being used as the trigger for the attack.
As time went on, it also became clear that the decision to remove Saddam Hussain had been taken long before the intel came in, when in fact the process should have been completely reversed.
The US administration was not ‘wrong’, they knew damn well what they were doing.
Some folk may have been duped, but when you go back to the international support that the US had for the regime change in Afghanistan, you have to wonder why so much of it evaporated when it came to Iraq. Why is it that those resolutions at the UN were knocked back, don’t you imagine for one second that they all saw an opportunity to get into Iraq, and the huge reconstruction profits that would certainly flow from a post war Iraq ?
Those other nations had plenty of incentive to go along with it, to ensure their continued influence in the region, for the immense profits to be made, and to have some way of getting involved in the control of stategic reserves.
I’m not niaive enough to believe that those other nations that were critical were taking that position because they were warm and fuzzy, that they were standing up for international good order and all that stuff.
The answer was obvious to anyone with eyes, many of the nations that supported the US position in Afghanistan also had access to the same intelligence as the US, and had come to entirely different conclusions.
Most of those nations looked at their electorates, and also looked at the likely outcomes and the potential benefits against the costs, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
Those other national intelliegence agencies retained their critical analysis, they were not working to a political end, which is what the US agencies did.
The US intelligence community could hardly work any other way, since the policy had already been decided.
But, to me, there’s something fundamentally different about being called a traitor and a friend of Saddam.
I don’t care if someone calls me an idiot. It’s water off a duck’s back. And condescension, scorn and sarcasm aren’t much of a problem either. But when you calling me a supporter of Saddam Hussein and implying that i’m a traitor simply for having a different opinion, that’s a different ballgame.
I don’t doubt that there were people on both sides of the aisle who said awful things. But, for me at least, what made Bluesman’s posts so contemptible (as opposed to yours, for example) was not that he believed what he was saying about the intelligence issues (after all, you believed it too, and i feel very differently about you than about him), but the way he viewed anyone who even raised a contrary position as treacherous and a Saddam sympathizer.
I think that’s right. But i also want to add something else.
For me, what he said would have been contemptible even if we had found WMDs and he had been proven correct. The notion that everyone should just shut up and listen to the Administration and the military because they know what they’re doing—a fundamental principle behind Bluesman’s posts—is profoundly antithetical to the spirit of open and honest debate.
What i would be interested to know, given that there are people posting here who know Bluesman in real life, is whether he has any humility or regret or anger at the administration over all this, or whether he’s still pretending that everything he said back then is actually true.
casdave, i agree with your post, but i’m not sure it’s me you were paraphrasing in your quoted passage.
But you miss my entire point. My point was that even if there weren’t enough WMD to be a “clear and present danger” to the USA, there could have been enough- even one minor instance for example- to lead a low-level NCO to have a sincere beleif he had seen solid evidence of WMD. In other words, could the subject of the OP have honestly seen what he claims he saw even though we now know there was no significant programme? Of course, having one minor low level intel worker come up with one good solid peice of evidence in NOT the same as enough WMD to endanger the Free World.
Let’s take an analogy. There is a murder case, very political and very newsworthy. The DA clearly wants a case to forward his political career. Much evidence is gathered, and one of the things is a smudged fingerprint, which matches the suspect everyone wants to be guilty to 90%. The fingerprint expert testifies as much. However, in the trial, nearly all the evidence is shredded by the defence- bad chain of possession, technicallitys, eyewitnesses with no credibility, other material eveidence that is found to be simply wrong. The suspect is found “not guilty” even though he did have a good motive. In fact, the body has never been found, and maybe there even was no murder, even though the suspect had been convicted of murder before. Now, after the trial, it is very clear that the DA went forward on the smallest of pretext simply for political reasons. So, assuming this analogy:
Does that mean that the fingerprint tech lied about the fingerprint?
Does it mean that our supect really did not commit the crime?
He did not lie if he testified that the fingerprint matched to 90%, assuming it did. The fingerprint tech’s actions obviously cannot affect whether or not a person already comitted a crime.
If, however, he then went out into a bar and suggested apropos of a conversation about, say, impanelling the jury in this case, that he had access to all kinds of confidential information in his role as a “member of the prosecution team” and that he knew for certain that this guy did it and further that any jury member that voted to turn him loose was obviously doing so to drive that juror’s own personal agenda, then 1) his credibility as an expert witness would be shot and he would be quite thoroughly shredded in a very public forum on cross (and he would deserve it) and 2) if this occurred in a number of cases, the process by which forensic experts were recruited, hired, and retained and their working conditions would likely be the subject of some investigation, possibly involving impanelling a Grand Jury to do it.
DrDeth
What it means is that the evidence is not conclusive, however it goes beyond this, because any conclusion drawn must be qualified, its what you do not say that matters as much as what you do. As a specialist expert, you have not interest in the outcome of your analysis, you merely present facts.
As a small cog in the machine, with a slightly more informed view than the rest of us, Bluesman asserted as fact a picture that he was not himself informed enough of to be able to make the definative statements he made. You cannot make complete and accurate assessments of a jigsaw by looking at just one or two pieces without a context.
The fact is, his views coloured his interpretation, and it shows just how the intelligence machinery becaome politicised, this charge was levelled by the JIC in the UK about itself.
Any evaluation he made would be informed by this view, and not the proffessional detatched analytical one required.
This view became his context.
Regardless of whether Bluesman lied (I had just kind of assumed he was full of shit at the time and probably making everything up about having anything to do the NSA or CIA or whatever the hell it was he claimed to be), it was still a chickenshit move to run away from the board and avoid taking his medicine after being so derisive, insulting and smug to anyone who didn’t support the war. It wasn’t just that he was wrong or misinformed or whatever (I’m still not convinced he wasn’t just making up an identity out of his ass), it’s that he was a total dick to everybody and then run like a pussy rather than admit he was wrong. His user name was misleading. He ain’t no “man.”
Y’know, Dio, Bluesman’s identity and occupation have been pretty thoroughly corroborated by a lot of Dopers, most of whom are quite respectable, and nearly all of whom are (presently) on the opposite side of the arguments he was putting out three years ago. If the words of Polycarp, Airman Doors, MsRobyn, Jonathan Chance, and RTFirefly aren’t sufficient for you to accept those claims about him as factual, I’m afraid your skepticism circuits are tuned to such a degree of oversensitivity as to render them pretty useless.
He was a name on a message board to me. If you say all those people have been able to verify his occupation Then I won’t argue but he set off my bullshit detector at the time.
Doesn’t make him any less of a chickenshit, though.