Then you’ll abstain from using the word “lie”, then? We shall see.
Facts can lead one to an “incorrect” conclusion, huh? Let’s ponder that for a moment, shall we? No, no need. I do hope you’re not saying that only pro-Bush “facts” lead to a correct conclusion. But it seems that you are.
See how far your attempt to support a predetermined conclusion that “they’re at least as bad as we are” makes you stretch? You have to equate factual falsehood with factual truth to do it. You excuse an eagerness to believe in lies and denigrate an eagerness to find facts. Shame on you.
51-48.
Zero substance it is, then. And you applaud it.
None so blind. He was as detailed as any responsible challenger could possibly have been.
See above.
Thereby allowing you to pretend to be above it all, ignoring the effects that reality has on policy, washing your hands of this whole responsibility thing, so you can vote for some irresponsible ideologue and think you’re doing a good thing while allowing the greater evil to take actual control of your government.
You made the claim that “THEY” (i.e. “The Democrats”) made it a political issue. You cannot support that claim. That’s not my problem.
??? I thought you lived in Mass, like me.
No doubt. Not long ago, many conservatives opposed racial civil rights on moral grounds, too. They were just as wrong. If you’re going to throw away your vote anyway, wouldn’t you feel better about voting *for * the people espousing *true * morality, however haltingly?
That’s what excusing it amounts to.
True, but how is the country going to *get * ready? By doing nothing about it, and actually opposing efforts to make it happen, like you’re doing? Bull. Blacks didn’t get to vote without becoming activist about it, either. Pretty soon we all understood it was the right thing to do, but it took a century of “waiting for the country to be ready” first to realize it wasn’t going to happen that way.
True, he never personally called the imagined Iraq threat “imminent”. He called it “grave and gathering”. If that distinction matters to you so much, you’re welcome to it. :rolleyes:
(Bolding mine)
He read the report, and told us something different from what it said, and that is merely being imprecise?
There is a gigantic difference between being imprecise and lying. If I tell you I have 59 dollars, when I actually have 56 dollars, that is imprecise. If I tell you I caught a 5 pound trout when it was really a 4.5 pound trout, that is imprecise.]When I tell you I am a multimiliionaire, when I have oh, let’s say 100 dollars it is a lie.
If I tell you Iraq has “a potential”, when all the reports say “no capability” “no indication” “none found” “no evidence”, that is a LIE. PatriotX, are we the only ones who “get it”?
No I wasn’t…I was comparing F911 and Michael Moore with the Swift Boat Vets. All I said was that MM’s tactics were exactly what the Dems accuse Bush…which to me is ironic considering those here willing to defend Moore to the death and buy any tripe he serves up without a shred of critical thinking. Something most of them would be appalled to do on just about any other subject.
I watched through the movie twice but I didn’t catch any obvious lies myself. The crux was in HOW he presented the facts though…to give a certain impression or lead you down a certain path that WAS an untruth…or at best a distortion. You don’t seem to be getting that. You are focused solely on the fact that by and large the various snippets of info were truthful…without looking at the larger picture.
Let me ask you something here…what about the Swift Boat Vets do you consider out and out lies? Why do you consider them so? What proof do you have that they were lies? To me its of a kind…the Swift Boat Vets were mostly telling the truth, but they were doing so in a way that perhaps lead one to false conclusions (i.e. that Kerry was a coward, was a traitor, etc etc)…intentionally. Same as Michael Moore. Its all about HOW facts are presented. Its called ‘spin’.
Whats to ponder? It happens all the time. If I give you two ‘facts’ that are just snippets of info, but don’t give you other facts that are germain to the arguement, then its very easy to lead you to a wrong conclusion. Politicians do this all the time, presenting facts that make their case while not presenting those that dispute it. You see this all the time in creationist vs evolution debates where creationists present SOME factual information while leaving out others…all to lead one to draw the conclusion THEY want you to arrive at. Why this is so hard for you to grasp I have no idea. It has nothing to do with Bush…it has to do with using the critical thinking you’d normally use for just about any other subject.
Predetermined?? Its to laugh. Predetermined would have been if I would have made this statement 4 years ago…not after having witnessed first hand both sides foaming at the mouth at each other. And I see you are still fixated on Michael Moore’s factual truth, blindly chanting the mantra while ignoring the deeper issues I’ve already brought up. Its pretty well hopeless to discuss this further with you, isn’t it? You are convinced that because MM used facts that means his movie was ACCURATE. I wonder if you give everyone who uses facts to distort the truth a pass like that. I’d say shame on YOU for tossing your brain and your critical thinking out the window.
BLUE 72! BLUE 72! HUT HUT!
Why did you put this in btw? The margin Bush won by?
I didn’t applaud it…I explained it. You are frantically trying to fit me into a Bush supporters mold but its just not working. If you really didn’t understand the point I was trying to make then I suggest going back and re-reading what I wrote more slowly.
None so blind as a partisan on a rampage. Perhaps he was as detailed as he could be…his plans were still vague about the critical issues. I never did know what his stances were on some things because he kept changing them in different speeches. Maybe you just knew because of some sooper sekrit understanding…but even reading his web site and seeing this debated in various threads I didn’t have a firm idea…and I wasn’t the only one just based on the number of ‘Whats Kerry’s stance on’ this or that issue threads. Imagine for a moment a citizen who ONLY got their news from TV, maybe caught a bit of the debates on the news and never went on a web site in their life. Vague is being kind.
Hey, its my vote. If I didn’t feel either of the candidates deserved my vote its my business. It was up to THEM to convinve ME that I should vote for one or the other of them. It wasn’t up to me to hem and haw and bend over backwards to choose the lesser of two wevils between them. My choice was to vote 3rd party or not vote at all as I didn’t find either man appealing. Serve up someone better next time if you want my vote. That goes for both sides.
I wasn’t aware that any of the activist judges that ignited this issue during an election cycle were Republicans. Do you have a cite for that? My understanding was that they were Democrats. In addition, the Democratic party DID make it a campaign issue to a lesser degree, and their supporters certainly made it a major issue by busting on the Republicans on it. I think that a case can be made easily enough that the gay marrage issue became a campaign issue…and that the Dems initially sparked the debate on it and brought it to the averagae Americans radar screen. I can’t see how any other conclusion is possible…if activist judges weren’t trying to circumvent the system by granting gay marrage via government fiat how WOULD it have come to main stream America’s consious?
I USED to live in Mass (Boston actually), but I live in New Mexico now.
They most certainly were wrong…I agree completely. They are wrong now to oppose gay marrage. I’m confident that given time the majority of people in the nation will come around to that way of thinking in fact. Its just not that time yet unfortunately.
I didn’t throw my vote away at all. Badnarik and the Libs are keen on personal freedom. He would have been all for gay marrage. Unlike Kerry who actually wasn’t for it…just like Bush. Nothing substantially different on that issue would have changed had Kerry been elected…sort of like nothing substantially different on abortion will change with Bush’s re-election instead of Kerry.
Who is excusing it?? I’m EXPLAINING it. Do you understand the difference? The majority of your fellow citizens are opposed to gay marrage at this time. Want to change that? The right way is to educate them, the get them comfortable with the idea, the change their view point. The wrong way is to shove it down their throats when the majority of them are opposed to the idea at this time. Its a fucking democracy…change takes time but it DOES happen. Look at civil rights and how long that took to change peoples perceptions. But look at how things are today in comparison to the earlier times and how far we’ve come. Gay rights will be the same thing. A decade from now I a quite confident it will be a non-issue except to a fringe few nut balls…just like there are still a fringe few nut ball racists who want to go back to the way it was when the minorities were kept in their place.
Its already happening. You see more open references to gays today than ever before. There are sit coms out there about gays. Openly gay celebrities who are quite popular. This is exactly what happened with the minorities. Black musicians, sports stars, actors, etc.
This isn’t ‘doing nothing’, its educating the populace and making them comfortable with the idea that gays are people just like they are. Once they realize that on a deeper level they will be UNCOMFORTABLE with denying them the same rights as everyone else…and then they will be clamoring for change. And THEN the politicians will be clamoring for change. TELLING the people they are just stupid and granting rights that are opposed by the majority by government fiat is NOT the smart way to effect change. Activism in the form of getting the message out is good…going against the majority of the citizens when they aren’t ready for such change is bad IMO. YMMV of course.
Have fun spinning your usual “It’s a lie if a Republican said it, even if it is true, but not if a Democrat said it, until it isn’t, but not always, unless it needs to be”.
I continue to be amused at watching Bush apologists defend George on the most hair-splitting principles around (“He never used the word ‘imminent’”), while raking Michael Moore over the coals for stating the facts.
And I continue to be amused by the Bush-bashers who argue that, if Bush said it, it was a lie, but if someone else said exactly the same thing, it was true.
december called it post-modern thinking. I think of it as the genetic fallacy.
The questions are: Where the mis-information originated, and what was the intent of repeating that mis-information.
Those originally responsible for the mis-information are liars, and intentional deceivers. The ones who accept that information, and repeat it in good faith are mis-informed.
So who was originally responsible for the mis-information?
Also, who should be accountable for the repurcussions of that mis-information, regardless of whether or not they were mis-informed, or what their intentions were? Where does the buck stop?
And where are the people who hold up and defend the principles of responsibility and accountability?
The problem here is did they know it was misinformation. I’ve seen no proof that Bush et al thought the majority of the info they had was ‘mis-information’. All I’ve ever seen when discussing this is hand waving and perhaps trotting out one or two isolated pieces of info that Bush et al supposedly ‘knew’ was misinformation and then claiming this proved that ALL of it must then have been misinformation. Again, it comes down to did Bush et al BELIEVE the info over all was true (i.e. did they really think Iraq had WMD), even if they knew specific parts of it might not be very solid? My own Occam’s Razor says that Bush et al DID think they had WMD in Iraq. As rjung says, QED (of course, his own use of it in this thread was classic rjung :)). Thats my own provisional until I see some of that proof stuff that says otherwise. I’ve yet to see any.
They are only intentional deceivers if you can prove that they knew the base line arguement (i.e. did Iraq have WMD) was KNOWN by them to be false. Otherwise they are what we commonly refer to as ‘politicians’, as politicians routinely use the tactic of over emphasizing information that makes their case and ignoring information (or at least not publicly diseminiating it) that does not.
Again, do you have proof that Bush et al KNEW thta the base line arguement was false and pursued the war anyway? Because if you do I’ll join you at the pickets to get Bush impeached.
Here I’ll agree with you wholeheartedly. In fact I’ve been trying to say this for over a year now. The Dems have focused solely on the losing arguement that ‘Bush Lied!’, instead of focusing on the ramifications of Bush being wrong. I usually get shouted down when I try to make this arguement by the various Dems on the board as a Bush supporter. Curiously the Bush supporters are usually very quiet on this point. Go figure.
They are all partisans mostly, so they only think of ‘responsibility and accountablility’ in terms of the OTHER party. The Dems of course are still screeching about ‘Bush lied’, so they aren’t likely to get much traction there. The Republicans are unlikely to hold Bush responsible or accountable…he’s their guy after all and it was just a big mistake, blah blah blah. If a Dem was in office the roles would be reversed of course. Anyone (like me) trying to make a reasonable point or to try and focus on ‘responsibility and accountability’ is simply shouted down by either right or left depending on who is in power. Aint partisan politics American style grand? Its nothing new of course, but its still sad…to me.
As someone that voted for Bush in the most recent election, I agree wholeheartedly with you here. I’ve seen you make this argument a few times on this board, and I’m consistently confused by the Left’s failure/refusal to see your point.
In the interests of full disclosure, I doubt I would have voted for Kerry even if the Dems had focused on the Bush admin’s intelligence failures (mostly because everyone looked at the same evidence and arrived at the same conclusions), but I personally think that the Left would have gained a lot more traction if they had not a) raised the burden of proof from “Bush was wrong” to “Bush lied,” and b) made the attacks seem more personal than practical.
Just my humble opinion. I now eagerly await the shouting masses coming in to insist that Bush lied.
If Bush was only wrong, there would still be demands of proof. History will tell. As it is, I still have to ask, if he was right and his reason for doing it was right, why did his reason keep changing? Iraq has WMD. Iraq is making WMD. Iraq has the capability to make WMD. Iraq can’t prove they aren’t making WMD. Osama and Saddam are plotting against us. Clear and present danger, or imminent threat, or they hate us, or they r no r0x0r they r sux0r, whatever words you remember. America haters. Freedom. The justification kept changing. The message was never the same for more than a few days.
Assuming he was right, then does it not stand to reason that the justifications would be unchanging?
A man who has misinformation will stick to that story, until he is convinced of the real info. He will then stay with that. Just how many different types of misinformation did he have? Could it be he was fishing for a “sellable” reason for his personal war? Wouldn’t it have been more honest, more worthy of respect if he just came out and said “Saddam is a no good rotten bastard and I wanna get him”?
Also, he intially swore to get Osama. No place to hide. Nowehere to run. What happened? He outsourced the hunt to Afghan warlords who botched it (maybe on purpose) and then during the debates had the gall to infer Osama is not important. What happened to the “I’m comin’ and hell’s comin’ with me”??? Was it a lie, or just no longer expedient?
Kerry said “I have a plan”. It was lame, yes. But it was also consistent. It wasn’t I have a plan and then I have a (different) plan and I have a (third) plan. He was weak, but consistent.
Totally unrelated news flash - I just found out the “backdoor draft” has been invoked again.
The reasons don’t keep changing. There have always been numerous reasons why the Iraq war was (in my opinion) justified. I’ve been over this in numerous threads. For example, buried deep within this fairly recent post is an extended recitation of many of the reasons I think it was the right decision to go to war against Iraq (scroll down to “The case for war against Iraq includes many, many factors”). So there have been many reasons discussed over the past couple of years because there were many reasons to go to war in the first place. (I had a similar post reciting the reasons for war before we actually went to war, but I can’t find that post anymore.)
I’m going to avoid your arguments that Bush “outsourced” the hunt of ObL, that Bush has now given up the hunt for ObL, and that Kerry offered a portrait of consistency in the face of Bush’s shapeshifting. All those subjects have been debated to death in other threads and are hijacks of this thread. I’ll just say that I think that the first two premises are ludicrous, and I disagree strongly with the last, and leave it at that.
Well, there were a number of reasons floated to try and convince the American people and congress that we needed to go to war. The administration took kind of a scatter shot approach, tossing out a lot of trial balloons in the early days, and playing on a lot of rhetoric from Clinton and even Bush I about Iraq. Still, their main justification was WMD in Iraq, and the fact that Iraq was a terror regime that COULD pose a threat to US interests in the ME. None of those were most likely the REAL reason we went to war with Iraq, but they were the arguements that the administration tried to use to justify war to the people, congress, and a lesser degree The World™ and the UN as well.
Where are you getting THAT from. A politician will go with the flow…he’s not going to stick with a sinking ship. It rapidly became appearent in the early days of the war, especially after the collapse of the Iraqi military and during the consolidation phase that massive stockpiles of WMD weren’t being found. So, the administration and Bush shifted focus to some of the other trial balloons they had tossed out in an effort to divert the debate to other channels. This however has nothing to do with whether or not Bush et al thought Saddam had WMD BEFORE the invasion…it was covering his and the administrations ass after the fact.
It wouldn’t have been more honest to say “Saddam is a no good rotten bastard and I wanna get him” because that wasn’t really the reason we went to war in Iraq either. There are plenty of rotten bastards out there…more than the US has troops to take on in fact. Besides, that wouldn’t be as ‘sellable’ to congress OR the American people. You see any hue and cry to send troops to Africa or North Korea or any other shit hole nation out there? Why do you suppose that is?
In addition it wasn’t a ‘personal war’ for Bush…it was a geopolitical move by the US taking advantage of a situation that existed (i.e. Iraq under sanction by the UN, Saddam being stuborn and stupid, etc) to assert US power in the region. It was cold blooded and calculating and took advantage of a window of oppurtunity that existed at the time…and might not exist again for quite a while, if ever. I personally think it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but don’t make this a cartoon comic of a mad Bush out for war for purely personal reasons.
He’s a politician Steve…what do you expect? As to the ‘outsourced’ thing, thats just lame. Afghanistan was masterfully done, at least in the initial military phase. The occupation has been less well done. Do you understand WHY we couldn’t send massive troops into Afghanistan to go after Osama? Why we used ‘local help’ there and only sent in Special Forces troops to interface with that ‘local help’? Look at a map some day, then think about HOW we would have gotten massive amounts of troops to that region in a timely fashion without months and months of build up…during which Osama would have most likely bolted anyway. And how we would SUPPLY those troops once we got them to Afghanistan…especially to those mountains were Osama supposedly was hiding out.
As to Osama’s importance or lack of importance its debateable. I actually DON’T think Osama is all that critical, except symbolically. The fact was that we didn’t ‘get’ him quickly, so now its a long slog that may never have a conclusion. Osama might already be dead for all we know. We may NEVER know if he’s alive or dead if he dies in some obscure mountain village and is buried under a rock or something…or killed in some incidental skirmish somewhere. So, the prez being the politician he is, he attempted to shift the focus onto things he felt he could get better milage out of. Standard political tactics 101.
It wasn’t lame, it was vague. Kerry seemed to be saying that his great ‘plan’ entailed getting other nations more involved in Iraq…which just wasn’t realistic. He wanted more of an international consensus on things, which perhaps would be good in theory, but realistically I have to say I doubt it was going to happen, especially with the attitudes in Europe over this whole mess…from the get go. Other than that Kerry’s big plan sounded a hell of a lot like exactly what Bush was saying, at least to me…I could detect little or no difference myself.
Our current personnel logistics sucks big time…no doubt. It will probably be 2006 until the military gets its shit together on this thing and gets more combat troops into the pipeline. Major FUBAR IMHO.
