Isn’t it also a lie, then, to say things like “Americans rape Iraqi children”? Doesn’t the English language have articles and adjectives for a reason — namely to distinguish between meanings like an American, few Americans, some Americans, most Americans, all Americans? And isn’t it a lie in any case, since there is a substantive linguistic (if not legal) difference between committing a rape and filming one? Would it not require a certain amount of rationalization to say that one man is lying when he exaggerates the number of graves (knowingly or not) but another is not when he exaggerates the actions of people?
I think that thread title just represented a misunderstanding of the allegations, not a deliberate attempt to deceive. And the moral difference between watching and videotaping the rape of a child and actually putting a dick in his ass is rather negligable, IMO. Legally the videotaper would still be an accessory. Also, the OP of that thread was not a major world leader fomenting war.
**I have nothing to add other than the bolded part (bolding mine) cannot be repeated enough. It is the crux of the issue.
That may have been me, Zoe. If so, I was speaking of the number of Iraqis said to have been murdered during Hussein’s regime, which goes back to the late sixties.
Don’t forget Saddam’s industrial-sized plastic shredders. That one still gets a lot of play among the righty-tighties, even though nobody’s actually found one of those things, much less a real witness.
How much time do you need to make up nonsense? Just say whatever you want to justify your position, then brand anyone who disagrees with you as “unAmerican” – that’s the Republican way.
Can’t see why. It would be the equivalent of saying, “Saddam had Iraqis killed and buried in mass graves.” Both true, both nonspecific.
But if I were to say, “I have discovered that Americans have raped hundreds of Iraqi children,” that would be a lie, because I have discovered no such thing, nor do I have solid evidence that it’s even happened.
Amen to that. And I’d like to add the “oppression of women” card to that, which Bush played to the hilt before the invasion of Afghanistan. Of course, the women there are still in their burqas, which shows how deeply he cared about that issue. And in Iraq, it was the “rape rooms”.
It is unfortunately true that all sorts of slimeball rulers use rape as one more tool in their arsenal of intimidation. It would be great if the U.S. were to do something about this. But there’s a difference between doing something about it, and using one particular slimeball ruler’s use of that tool as just one more psy-ops technique on the American people.
I was thinking about that one, too, when I wrote the OP.
It’s scary to think about how much energy Dubya invested in manipulating our emotions to pull us into this war. I guess that’s what ‘leadership’ consists of, these days.
For comparison.
I’m not one to be easily offended or shocked by the lies of politicians, but the thing that always upset me the most about the bullshit build-up to this war was when moronic politicians started tossing around the words “genocide” and “genocidal” when talking about Hussein’s regime. Was Hussein killing thousands of his political opponents? No doubt. But there has never been any evidence that his actions were anywhere near approaching genocide. Genocide of who? The Kurds? The Shia? It was never made clear - probably because these politicians have absolutely no understanding of the meaning of genocide.
Do they realize that it’s not just a catchphrase or handy hot topic to throw around when convenient? It’s the ultimate crime, you soulless mother-and-child-killing whores. It’s disgusting when I think about how the American government danced all around the word “genocide” during and after the real genocide of Rwanda in 1994 in order to avoid getting our hands dirty.
BTW, great succinct OP by RTFirefly.
Are you clueless, stupid or what?
We are arguing that estimates of 400,000 people killed by Hussein actually amount to 5,000 corpses verified by physical remains.
You are trying to sneak in totally unproven number of Iraq invasion casualties.
Where is your physical head-count?
By Diogenes ratio your number, divided by 80, becomes around 150 dead.
A smaller note. We tend to get caught up in the broad, magnificent sweep of GeeDubya’s mendacity, the grand vistas of his duplicity, his epic visions, and we lose sight of the subtle nuances, the artful little touches, the grace notes in a grand crescendo of Bushwah.
“…clutching their little toys…” Ahh, the bathos, the pathos, the poignant touches that are so crucial a part of the mendacious arts! We are in the presence of an artist, a sublime master of dissimulation! He is not content, as lesser liars might be, with the thunderous falsehood and the towering, majestic crock o’ shit. He takes the time, the painstaking effort, to add such details as a lesser craftsman might overlook.
I have, as have others, misunderestimated him. It won’t happen again.
This appears to be a far less shocking observation than the Observer would have it. At best, Blair can be accused of having implied that the bodies had already been exhumed. And anyone who interpreted him as saying that certainly wasn’t reading contemporary news accounts very carefully. For example, a Fox news story from last November begins with the lead
.
(Note that many other periodicals ran this story, so don’t give me grief about quoting Fox news.)
Reading the stories from last November, the facts are:
a) Estimates are 300,000 possibly killed.
b) Many, many mass graves.
c) Very few of them had been exhumed or examined. One forensic anthropologist said that it would take many years to do so. (http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/ad/Qiraq-us-graves.RpOt_DN8.html)
As far as I can tell, the Observer is noting only that 5000 or so have been exhumed to date (a number that seems a bit low, seeing that at least one site had 3000+ bodies and given that the Iraqi citizens have been reclaiming the bodies themselves.). They don’t seem to be claiming that there * aren’t * at least 200K missing Iraqis – only that no one knows where they are.
So, did the British government inflate the number of people killed by the Hussein regime from 5000 to 400,000? Probably not by more than a factor of 2. That number is still unknown, but it’s likely over 200,000 from what I can find on the net.
Blair’s statement could have been interpreted as stating that they’d actually uncovered 400K bodies. But no one reading the papers last Novermber should actually have believed that, including the Observer. As the cite above states,
It is with such details that the true spin power of the administration is fueled. Had the toys been missing, young Master McCarthy would have been able to accuse Saddam and his evil henchmen of stealing toys from dead children.
Ah, the credit undoubtedly goes to his speechwriters. George can’t interrupt his golf game for this stuff…
No shit!!! :eek:
I´m debating wheter that minister occupies several blocks of Baghdad or a refurbished broom closet on the basement of a gas station.
(hijack)
You are my hero elucidator. Even if posts pass by that aren’t commented on, be well assured that there are those of us out here reading everything you write who practically weep with pleasure reading your posts. If I posted every time you said something that made me thing “My god, that was beautiful” I’d soon look like an obsessed stalker.
Thank you for being so articulate, so poetic and, in my eyes and humble opinion, on the side of good and reason.
(/hijack)
So, are some of you more upset that you think you have been lied to or that there are only 5000 dead in mass graves?
What if Bush and Blair had said, “Saddam has gassed 100 Kurds and we have discovered 400 bodies in a mass grave!”?
What bodycount threshold triggers outrage?
It’s a good thing you qualified that.
All seriousness aside however, I too look forward to and enjoy elucidator’s posts. What they lack in judgement and insight they more than make up for with humor.
You know I love ya, luci…heterosexually, that is. 
The question is not what triggers outrage but what justifies war.
Moreover, if 5000 bodies is sufficient for “outrage,” then what was the need to so greatly inflate the numbers?
So you’d be encouraging people to bomb the US over the ten thousand some odd Iraqis we’ve killed in this little spat? Bueller? Bueller?
Read the article more carefully. It doesn’t say that there are only 5000 bodies in mass graves. It says that only 5000 have been exhumed to date.
No one knows how many people were killed by Saddam, but it’s a lot more than 5K.