Bush clearly lied about the reasons for the invasion.
So, why is you with the face not supposed to speculate on that reason?
Given that most of the stuff that the neo-cons were pushing came from Wolfowitz’s (deeply flawed) term paper and that a significant number of the signers of the PNAC letter that was based on Wolfowitz’s term paper played very large parts in the current administration (either as direct members or as apologists or cheerleaders) in the run up to the Iraq invasion, it does not seem to be a circular argument, to me, to suggest that the neo-cons and PNAC had a direct effect on the choice of the U.S. government to enage in a fairly stupid and arguably illegal war.
How does that become circular?
Looking over this thread, I still think that there are two sides talking past each other. The initial links in the OP are clearly anti-semitic (and pretty much stupid). On the other hand, there are fragmentary remarks in the linked articles that, along with the question in the OP are legitimate to ask (even if the ultimate answer is “No”).
What it appears to me has happened is that those who are offended by the anti-semitic message of the linked articles have taken their legitimate scorn for that hateful message and have transferred it onto those who have attempted to ferret out the legitimate questions buried in the OP, and have continued to read a number of posts through a filter of “this is anti-semitism” when it is not really there.
At this point, every sinlge post (from both sides) continues to include assumptions by the author that are imposed on the person addressed that can only be described as strawmen.
I think that you with the face is in error in asserting that Israel had anything more than a tangential relationship to our invasion of Iraq. I think that there is probably a lot more connection to “Israel is the only democracy in the region” than to a “defense of the Jewish homeland.”
However, you with the face has not been pushing the “Jews did it” angle. When FinnAgain wonders why various outside parties tend to connect the neo-con agenda to Israel, it is a legitimate response that the association is based on the fact that the primary architects of the neo-con policies have, coincidenatlly, been (culturally) Jewish. (Many of them do not appear to be practicing adherents of Judaism.)
It is not legitimate for FinnAgain to take that factual observation by you with the face and assume that y w t f is describing a Jewish conspiracy when y w t f has made no such assertion and was only responding to the question as to why the connection is made.
Everyone is talking past everyone else and responding to statements that the other side has not made. I’m tired of having to read the nonsense from both sides and this thread will not long survive any more of the continued flinging of brickbats–most of which are hiting all the scarecrows that are not actually in this thread.
Is anyone puzzled why FinnAgain feels comfortable calling me a liar and attacking my opinions about the reasons we may have to gone to war, but he won’t answer a simple yes or no question about his own beliefs?
I’m finished with this thread. I have time for this bullshit.
No, he did not. The word “sacrifice” has only been used three times in this thread, first by you, then in his question, then in your false claim that he said it first.
May I call you a liar, now?
Or will you calm down and read what has been written and stop falsely ascribing statements and attitudes to other posters?
I suspect that I am more in agreement with your overall position than with that of you with the face, but you are the one who has been ascribing statements and motives to other people that are not found in the text of their posts.
If that’s what I did, that’d be wrong.
Luckily I didn’t.
The vanilla conspiracy theory of US policy makers posits a Zionist conspiracy to aid Israel regardless of any US interests. The Jewish conspiracy theory of US policy makers posits that the Jews in the American government have taken over (to my knowledge, nobody has posted that conspiracy in this thread.)
And, of course, there is also the Lazy conspiracy theory. It can’t be bothered to dig beyond a few names of people who happen to be Jewish, to look at all the players your “evidence” leads to, or to come up with better reasons to suspect only the Jewish people of “dual-loyalties” than that they have family members who hold certain views, or live in foreign countries.
ywtf was describing not a “jewish conspiracy” but the Lazy conspiracy, as I pointed out many times.
And no, tom ywtf was not just responding in a disinterested frame of mind, to a minor factual question.
To begin with, she made the claim that Rummy and Cheney weren’t tied to the conspiracy theory’s PNAC “evidence”, because they weren’t even members. When corrected on that point, she refused to discuss why the conspiracy theory didn’t include them.
When asked why, if the PNAC paper was evidence of anything, that it wasn’t that same evidence for everybody who signed it, the response was a justification of the shifting-evidence scale, that she believed that Bush and company were merely corrupt and in bed with oil or just wanted money.
She was not making a disinterested statement of fact, but stating her own views.
In other words, even though PNAC was supposed to be evidence, it wasn’t evidence for people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, because the implications had been handwaved away as being just money. But for Wolfy, being incriminated by having a zionist dad, a sister in Israel, a year spent abroad at age 14, and an adult life of studying the region? Wello, then helping Zionist concerns above American ones is a valid guess. For Cheney and Rummy, only money. Just, ya know, because.
I wasn’t saying that ywtf was trying to describe a conspiracy that she thought was a Jewish conspiracy, but that her position was intellectually dishonest and one that ended up falling only on Jews by sheer ennui.
Yes, she did.
Saying that our policy makers were acting in another country’s interst, and using our lives, money, and international credibility for that other nation’s benefit and not ours…? What is the operative term? What’s the discussion really about?
“a gift that you give that hurts you and helps someone else.”
“spending our resources to help another country.” Something else?.
Sure, if you believe that pointing out intellectual dishonesty is lying.
Or are you playing a game of semantics? She said that the operative issue was that policy makers were in a ‘conflict of interest’. They administration members were helping Israel and using American lives, treaure, and prestige to do it. That they policy makers might very well have put concerns other than what’s best for the nation ahead of national security, sacrificing national security to those concerns.
Someone continually accuses people of being quislings for a foreign power, for working to that power’s good and at our expense or our harm, for claiming that we were sacrificing our interests and/or resources to help another country… when called out for suggesting that people were quislings for a foreign power who sacrificed American intersts for foreign ones, that person denies ever using that specific word.
It’s not exactly lying to point their evasion out.
Yes tom, I am the only one. Ywtf never posted anything like:
He can speculate all he wants. He can even provide proof that in fact the neo-cons had some kind of wonky agenda to invade Iraq in order to help out Israel. Perhaps you feel that Wolfowitz’s paper constitutes this proof…I’m skeptical.
In the absence of such proof though (at least in my mind there has been an absence of said proof), the easiest explaination is that YWTF’s world view and assessment of what constitutes US National security is different than Bush and the administrations. IOW THEY may not agree what does or does not constitute a threat to the US, what is or is not in the interest of our national security. No conspiricy needed to explain why the administration decided to invade Iraq wrt Israel…oil alone is sufficient.
Did you really need this explaination? Is it really not clear?
Bingo. You win the stuffed bear.
Maybe you should try harder to grasp the ‘mind numbingly obvious’ then? I’ll agree to try and be MORE mind numbingly obvious and you work on your reading skills. Deal?
Essentially you are dense. As I went to the trouble to point out exactly what I mean, I can only assume by the fact that you STILL don’t get it that either I’m completely unclear, you are deliberately baiting me for your own reasons…or you really are just not catching on. I’ll go with the last one and give you the benifit of the doubt, though I conceed that perhaps my writing style is such that what I think is clear is not…I note that Tom ALSO seemed to require further illumination to what I consider one of those ‘mind numbingly obvious’ points.
:rolleyes: Seriously dude…are you having trouble reading? One last try here…if the Administration THINKS that invading Iraq was in the interest of our national security then no wonky bullshit conspiricy theory about helping Israel is necessary. That they may be WRONG doesn’t enter into it. That I think they were wrong and you do to is meaningless as far as the question is concerned. Really, this is pretty basic stuff. You keep trying to drag in complexity that isn’t there. They think oil is vital to our national interests and worth going to war for…you don’t.
Dude…what the ever living fuck are you talking about? What has this got to do with jack shit or the question we are discussing??
Praying to remain ignorant will probably work out for you then. Good luck with that.
It becomes circular when, for instance, you read over the PNAC documents which say that having a strong presence in the ME is in our national interest, that our first concern should be our nation’s power and strength, that we should use other countries to achieve this goal, that striking first and influencing an area was in the interest of our national security.
And then, they first claim that national security cannot possibly justify a preemptive war if the war isn’t based on immediate self-defense as well as more general national security concerns. Using this decree by fiat, they decide that even though a major piece of evidence they’re using “shows” that the administration did indeed think that, they can handwave it away by fiat. Even though the “evidence” they’re using points to 100% selfish national-security concerns, that is handwaved away, because the person doesn’t believe it’s valid.
As they don’t believe premtive war as envisioned by the PNAC it’s valid, then obviously it wasn’t for the administration members either, and some had ‘conflicts of interest’ instead of believing that we might invade for reasons of national security. The administration members had to have acted in a manner that wasn’t supposed to benefit America, but another country. Proven, of course, by the fact that they don’t think it’s valid.
Actually, I haven’t been talking ANY conspiracy. You’re the only one framing the discussion in terms of a stealth agenda masterminded by a band of villanous traitors who have pulled the wool over Bush’s innocent, WASPy eyes. I see it as being a whole lot simpler and direct than that.
You rather focus on Jewish persecution rather than focus on the question at hand. What part, if any, did a pro-Israel agenda play in the war?
If the answer is none because there is no good evidence that shows that it is a likely influence, then that should be stated and supported with facts. If the answer is yes, one of the possible motivations for war was to help out Israel and that is a justified use of our military resources, then that should also be stated and defended. You’re arguing both things at the same time, and that’s the problem I have with you, in addition to your paranoia and immature style of debate.
I still find it amazing that on one hand, you can suggest that we went to war to support “our numerous allies in the ME”. But on the next hand, you vehemently deny that Israel had anything to do with it. How can you square these two positions with each other? Why is it plausible that we went to war to benefit SA and Egypt, but you have to believe in a “Lazy Conspiracy” to say the same thing about Israel? It makes no sense.
Whatever it is, “sacrifice” is only one possible description and you accused her of using that term. She did not.
I have not claimed that y w t f is innocent in this matter. However, you continue to interpret every post by her through the filter of the idiotic blog linked in the OP. I do not accuse you of dishonesty, only of spending too much time fighting strawmen and attacking the poster rather than simply demonstrating the error of the claims. y w t f is also guilty of that, but you have invested more emotion and energy into that approach.
Actually, you with the face did not come into this thread pushing any “Israeli conspriacy” theory.
Her complaint from the beginning has been that any theory that even includes Israel at any level (or even simply favoring Israel), is immediately attacked as anti-semitism. Her initial posts were simply responding to exactly what I pointed out. Now, once the the defenses went up and the “anti-semitism” line was trotted out, (for which there is some legitimate backing), her posts (as did yours) began to get more and more personal and (IMO) more outlandish.
Perhaps if you and xtisme and others would simply address the issues without going perosnal, immediately, you folks could actually persuade her of your positions. (Perhaps not, of course. By now, you folks have all staked out your turf and generally rely on broadsides and barrages to carry your messages. Every barrage will carry some phrase that can be misconstrued, provoking another tangent to be misunderstood. And you with the face may now be as committed to her viewpoint as you are to yours, so perhaps there is simply no way for you people to discuss this rationally.)
And, again,
You are the one insisting on inserting Israel into the discussion (apparently based on the OP’s links) when y w t f has not actually proposed an Israeli conspiracy.
Yes, except that type of “simplicity” lies in doing things like absolving Rummy and Cheney, by fiat, when the exact evidence used to ‘convict’ Wolfy, Perle, etc… is ignored in their case.
And yes, even though you won’t admit to what you’re saying, you are indeed claiming that there were a group of people who put other interests before American interests due to a group ideology. We have a word for that.
That statement bears no similarity with reality. Neat.
Your own ‘evidence’ says “None, it was a cynical selfish pro-United States plan as evinced by PNAC documents”.
But I’ve already pointed that out. Too bad I was focusing on the question at hand, I’m sure you missed that due to hysterical screaming blocks of electons on your screen.
You can’t reverse the burden of proof by fiat, either.
You make the claim, you prove it. I don’t have to do anything other than show that your evidence makes no sense in the context you cast it, and doesn’t prove what you’re trying to say it does. I’ve done that.
No, you’re making that up.
Go figure.
Seems like you’d be much more comfy in the Pit rather than continually whining about such things, no? It’s awfully cute that someone who sees conspiracy theories because someone has a sister living in Irsael and studied the region wants to call me “paranoid”. What, exactly, have I evinced paranoia on, exactly?
As for you complaining about my “immature” style of debate, not only would I wonder how using proper epistemology is “immature”, but how someone who makes claims out of pure ignorance, like claiming that Cheney and Rummy weren’t PNAC members, then wants to complain about “immature” debate. Lemme tell ya, mature debaint aint got a large portion of people spouting off without knowing the facts. But you may continue to fancy yourself as rational and me as “immature” if that fantasy pleases you.
Flinging jello at a wall might not be the best use of your time, though.
It’s amazing because that never happened. I have never denied that Israel is a nation in the ME that we are allied with, and if we wanted to strengthen our ME influence for our own benefit that Israel would be included as one of our strategic allies in the region.
But that, as your own damn cites say, this was purely in America’s selfish interests.
You, on the other hand, have continually talked of a ‘conflict of interest’, or putting another country’s goals agove our own national security, etc… but your own cites say the exact opposite.
Because you’re deliberately distorting the issue to obfuscate matters?
It makes no sense because you are, again, making things up. I never, ever, ever said it was plausible that we went to war to benefit anybody else, at all.
It does not make sense that we went to war “to benefit SA and Egypt.”
It does make sense that if increasing our influence in the region was our goal, that we went to war to benefit the cause of increasing our influence in the region and used other countries to accomplish our goal, not acted in order to benefit them.
Did I? Maybe YWTF (who on inspection is female…sorry for all the ‘he’ and ‘dudes’ there) didn’t mean what I took her to mean in statements like this:
This SEEMS, to my mind at least, to imply that there is some ‘wonky conspiricy theory’ wrt the reasons the US invaded Iraq with a nebulous hand wave toward Israel. There are a couple of other posts that reinforced this concept for me as well…though they are up thread and frankly I’m not going to trouble finding them all as the above is representative IMHO.
Now, perhaps you don’t read it that way…I TOOK it that way though, and didn’t see YWTF dispute that interperetation when her and Finn got into their monster post war. Granted, my eyes tended to glaze over in some of them, so maybe I missed it.
Well, as I didn’t get personal (well, not about the possibilty of anti-semitism on the part of YWTF or anyone else…I did imply she was dense, but this had nothing to do with her being or not being anti-semitic) I’ll just ignore you putting me in there as an oversight on your part.
I agree that tempers have flared and positions have solidified. I like to think I can discuss things rationally still, but I have to admit that to my mind YWTF has said some rather bizzare things in response to my own comments…things having to do with all manner of wierd shit. And I also have to admit that I find them highly inflamatory, besides being beside the point. As a Mod and someone who has been reading along, I assume you do not see it that way…based on your last two posts anyway. C’est la vie.
She did indeed, time and again, say that the dynamic of helping another country above showing concern for your own national intersts was at the crux of the issue. That that was the claim she was making. That that was what disturbed her.
Putting another country’s intersts above your own is sacrificing your interests for that country.
Arguing her use of the speicifc word, tom, is like arguing about whether someone who says “You engaged in the illegal and premeditated killing of another human being with malice aforethought.” said that the issue was about 1st degree murder.
But if you want that quibble, okay. She didn’t use the word “sacrifice”, she just constructed the entire issue so that, for her, it was about sacrificing our interests for another country’s. Just like the example above someone is being accused of 1st degree murder.
Actually, I don’t. I’ve just been pointing out that they are half-baked, as well.
Fair enough, but I haven’t used strawmen and I have demonstrated the error of her claims.
Finn, you are prolonging this with a semantic quibble.
You are the one who has decided that it has to be a “sacrifice” when you with the face has explicitly said that it may not have been.
The issue is not one of semantic quibbling; it is one of you inferring certain beliefs that you ascribe to you with the face, then arguing against your inferences of her statements and calling her dishonest when she denies your inferences.
You have presented your case for your inference of “sacrifice,” but I suspect that if we opened a thread solely on that point, we could go a couple of pages with different posters wrangling over whether “sacrifice” was the only (or even the best) word that could describe that event, yet you are hanging your accusation of her “dishonesty” on your insistence that that could be the only interpretation. (This is not the only instance of this sort of thing in the thread; it was simply the one that caught my eye as being a point that could be more easily discussed than some of the lengthier paragraphs that demonstrate the same phenomenon.) Nearly this entire thread has been filled with the same sort of assumptions, projected inferences, and claims that disagreements are due to the lack of honesty of other posters.
you with the face is not innocent in all this. Her earlier well poisoning by claiming that you would always defend anything regarding Israel regardless of the situation is no better.
I would just prefer that these threads did not turn into interminable pissing contests based more on prior prejudice and inference than on addressing the actual posts. (We have the theist/atheist threads for that sort of witnessing.)
[QUOTE=tomndebbyou with the face is not innocent in all this. Her earlier well poisoning by claiming that you would always defend anything regarding Israel regardless of the situation is no better.
[/QUOTE]
I fail to see how you get a “wonky conspracy theory” out of anything that I’ve written. Let’s dissect what I said.
This is a fact. No need to put on tin-foil hats to believe this is true. A good grasp of current events bears this out.
This is also true. The govt lied to us about WMDs. They lied to us about Saddam’s relationship to bin Laden and 9/11. They lied when they told us Iraq was a threat to us. They’ve lied to us so many times and they are still lying to us. We don’t know why we are in Iraq. This too is a fact.
Where is the conspiracy theory in this question? Do you deny the existence of evidence that shows that key players in the build up to war already had designs on Iraq waaaay before there was any talk about WMDs and 9/11? Do you deny that Israel was cited as a consideration in these documents, along with oil and other interests?
Why can we not speculate on what this evidence means without facing an onslaught of hysteria and name-calling? Such speculation would be expected if any other issue was being discussed. It’s a troubling double standard to me. I think the very fact that I’m having to repeatedly defend myself against accusations of being a “wonky conspiracy” theorist and exhibiting anti-Jewish bias demonstrates why rational debate is simply impossible when it comes to this subject.
No tom, she just tried to have her cake and eat it too. Time and time and time again, she formulated the issue in terms of someone using American power to accomplish another country’s goals, or someone having a ‘conflict of interest’ between loyalty to this country and loyalty to Israel, or someone putting Israel’s best interests before considerations of the United States’ interests.
All of these are saying that people are sacrificing American interests for a foreign country. Denying that is an act of evasion, similar to someone talking about you killing someone with premeditation and malice aforethought, and then acting indignant when you say that they’re talking about murder.
In this case, it is dishonest for someone to spend most of the thread saying things like:
There is a huge difference between “Our government took the balance of power in the ME into consideration while planning a war they had determined had to be fought so that America could preserve and increase her sphere of influence, thus securing our national security.” and “Our government put concerns about Israel and/or doing things for Israel before ensuring our nation’s own national security interests.”
There is a non-trivial difference between the two, and pretending that if you write the latter you can claim to really be saying the former is a disingenous claim.
Just as there is a difference between our leaders “playing a chess game” with America at the center, or, ahem, sacrificing our own interests so that we could center the game on Israel.
I would posit that I am arguing the clear implications of what she has said, while she wants to have her cake and eat it too; to make claims, and then avoid having them called out for what they are. You disagree… but I don’t see a mod hat, so I’m not quite sure how to take that disagreement.
In any case, I would still argue that there is a huge difference saying “we went to war for Israel”, and “We went to war for our national security interests, and planned to use Israel and other nations towards these ends.” One is a claim of an organized attempt to subvert American power/money/lives/resources/credibility/etc… “for” Israel, the other is that we went to war “for” American interests, and planned on using nations like Israel to help maintain our influence in the region.
I’ve been doing my absolute best to address both the posts, and more importantly, their logic, epistemology, and implications. I haven’t based anything on prejudice, prior or not… and I certainly don’t see how making valid inferences from something someone has said ruins a debate.
It’s interesting reading the thread, to see how it appears differently to me. My discussion was with Puzzler and I took his silence to be assent to the general proposition, perhaps not the safest conclusion. Although that would be the prudent action by him.
You’ve made a number of reasoning errors.
Your argument is corrupted by claiming the proposition is ridiculous. Why did you claim that? There is adequate evidence to sustain the proposition, even if it is not sufficient to convince you. Perhaps the better question is: What would convince you? Are you impeded from answering this question so far by a position that Jews cannot be seen to be evil?
It is also flawed reasoning to argue, as Puzzler did, that the failure of the strategy means it was never implemented. Like I said then; we’re dealing with stupid people here. Of course what they plan doesn’t work out. It’s failure tells you nothing about whether it was executed.
Lastly, you’ve misrepresented the argument, as though US troops were put in jeopardy solely and exclusively to benefit Israel. Why did you do that? What causes you to believe there weren’t multiple reasons for the invasion, one of which, a principal one, was the security of Israel?
Of course Iraq was invaded to help Israel, I can’t see how it is a subject of debate. That’s not to say it was the only reason, but is astounding to see an attempt to debate it. It’s probably time for some further evidence.
It is also interesting to note that the Wiki article on General Zinni has been denatured, such that the second point skirts around the direct connection to Israel:
Presumably the condition of auto-Israeli defense, which appears to be afflicting xtismeet al has infected the Wiki community too. Pity, it was trying to be evidence-based.
Well as the initiator of this conflagration, it really has become a pissing contest of inferences, and I’m mostly to blame for using a pointed, but sloppy OP reference, even if the actual points of debate quickly moved past that.
If there is a better way to frame the substantive points at issue here please close this thread, and set up a new one with those rhetorical elements defined in a way that the discussion can proceed without attributions of mutual dishonesty.
I don’t think the main point at issue is any one’s notion that this was actually an Israeli directed operation, plan or conspiracy of some sort. The neo-con actors directing the collection, vetting, and analysis of intelligence in the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq were all Americans, and were pursuing agendas they had been quite open about for some time, and had been actively promoting for years.
The question is (I think) did the American neo-com ambitions for protecting and securing the political landscape surrounding Israel, supercede or come into conflict with the best interests of the United States with respect to national security? It appears, based on evidence to date, that intelligence was manipulated and massaged to keep US decision makers focused on the necessity of invading Iraq.
Was it simply a confederacy of dunces, or was there a larger American, neocon goal in mind in this process?
Several Neo-Cons were Americans and also Israelis at the same time. The ‘simpler larger’ neo-con goal was Israel. It is quite simple really.
The reasoning had to be couched in terms of American security for marketing purposes. cf the WMD scam.
But examine the brute facts. Iraq was a real and material problem for Israel. There is no need to speculate on refined or academic or philosophical positions. The brute facts are adequate to tell you what you need to know.
The neo-cons set up the propaganda shop; The OSP
The US deployed military force against Iraq
Which solved a problem for Israel.
It was obvious that was what went on from the outset. Nobody outside the US was fooled for a moment. Do you know what they call US troops in Iraq? “The Jews.”
