Okay, I’ll bite… what reasons were given out after the war that weren’t brought up prior to the war?
Well they didn’t say that “Saddam is evil” was a sufficient justification until after the WMD thing blew up in their faces.
{quote]Spoofe: An HONEST question would be “Would you support your child’s decision to put his life on the line for something he believed in?”
[/quote]
But an even more important question would be "Would you support a President who mistakenly led your child into believing something that that led her or him to sacrifice that precious life for a reason that did not actually exist?
Bullshit. Saddam’s past crimes and unreconciled wrongs were thrown about plenty. The WMD thing got the most press because that was the only one that hadn’t been conclusively proven.
Don’t try to rewrite history.
You’re trying to tell me that Saddam DIDN’T try to shoot down our planes a couple thousand times since the UN imposed sanctions on 'im?
Or are you just talking about the WMD thing again? The, oh, 1/6th of the reason, or so?
After reading the transcript, I have to say the thing was pretty much a tie, or perhaps a slight victory for Moore. But not by any significant margin. Moore didn’t do a whole lot wrong per se, but he sure could have gotten more (hah) out of it.
O’Reilly scores a point for correctly assessing that the Cold War’s arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, which Moore for some reason seemed unwilling to accept. But then, O’Reilly blows all his credit away with the “You’re Saddam’s biggest defender in the US” shite. Actually, that’s really a disqualification right there, so I should probably amend my assessment.
So, here it is: Moore won, but only because O’Reilly eliminated himself by playing the “You Love Saddam”-card. New Godwinism.
Also, Reeder isn’t exactly winning in this thread. My word, what an embarassment to progressive thinking people the world over you are.
Oh, well. Instead of Klingons beating war drums, the promo should have had fairies tinkling musical triangles. What a letdown. Anyway, here’s the transcript…
Moore: I don’t know telling a lie from being misinformed.
O’Reilly: At least I don’t demonize people, you Saddamite!
Meant to mention, though, I was pretty impressed with Ben Affleck. A bit misguided about a point or two, but an agreeable fellow overall.
Feel free to explain how throwing up blind shots at our planes in the no fly zone thousands of miles away is a threat to the continental United States.
As far as the show went, I was sort of impressed with Afleck. I was hoping that when BO was rambling about Zarqawi living in Bagdad, Ben would have said “well you know Bill, he was actually living in northern Iraq for years up until the invasion. The Pentagon went to the Bush 3 seperate times to ask if they could take him out, but Bush said no. I think the reasoning is because if they kill him, there isn’t a big AQ guy who’s technically in Iraq, even though he had nothing to do with SH. What do you think about that BO?”
Also, don’t give me this Bush didn’t know shit, I never get this lame reasoning. So at best he’s an incompetant executive who starts wars without doing some fact checking, and at worst he’s…,well, we all know.
Bottom line is Moore never addressed what was a fair and unloaded first question about multiple intelligence agencies offering evidence and the possiblity of their being a mistake versus an outright intent to lie. Neither of them know how to debate but Moore is more willing to use loaded questions and logical dodges. O’Reilly should never have brought up the “unseating a brutal dictator” argument because it gave Moore a Straw Man to attack, even though his counter-argument was fallacious. Moore never really answers a question. O’Reilly answers a question by not answering it (sacrificing a kid to die). The problem is, O’Reilly interpreted the “Would you sacrifice your kid” question as “Would you be willing to have your son killed to have peace in Falluja” rather than “Would you be willing to have your son fight for peace in Falluja.” If I were judging, I’d give a slight win to O’Reilly because Moore never answered the first question, which was the most fair and unloaded of the bunch. A skilled debator would absolutely destroy Moore. Not because his beliefs are wrong, but because his arguments are poor. Regardless of ideology, I think O’Reilly is much more willing to fight fair, whereas Moore just wants appear to win to the untrained ear by dodging questions and countering.
That’s right, I’ve got to take away major points from O’Reilly for the “supporter of Hussein remark.” I think it would be a lot of fun and very enlightening to have TV shows with skilled debaters argue, with form, the topics of the day.
I’ll have to back down on this one. After doing my best to remember, most of the reasons were given beforehand. The administration just started elaborating and rotating through them as each one was found to be false.
Shows Saddam was willing to violate the UN rules imposed on him. In my book, a kid that’s been grounded and sneaks out at night gets double punishment.
Here it is, Planet Muncher… Step 1: Saddam invades Kuwait. Step 2: Gets his ass thwomped. Step 3: Agrees to abide by certain rules to keep us from fully obliterating him for committing Step 1. Step 4: Almost immediately begins violating those rules. Step 5: WE go back to Step 2.
But I guess it’s okay that Saddam tried to invade Kuwait and wouldn’t abide by his punishment for doing so, huh?
What part of “threat to the continental United States” do you not understand?
Hoo-boy, if only it were that simple. Prior to Step 1 Hussein stuck his toe in Kuwait (wasn’t “tried to”, he did it) and Bush Sr. specifically said, meh, we don’t care, do what you like. Probably because we’d helped arm him some years before.
And re: step 4, my memory of the news at the time is that UN inspectors found that he’d started behaving better. At the very least the UN didn’t find WMD (and if we knew where they were, why didn’t we send Hans Blix after them?) But we invaded anyway. Under the auspices of the shifting boogeyman - - 9/11!! WMD!! Terrorism!! Scummy Dictator!! He’s bad he’s bad!!
Well, we did, sort of. Clever Hans was finding anything, and the Bushiviks were sneering at his “incompetence”, along the lines of “Look at that! Iraq is simply awash with vast stockpiles of VX nuclear anthrax, and this dipshit can’t even find one warehouse full! So, their either hopelessly inept or corrupt.”
Blix came back with a “put up or shut up”. You’ve got intelligence, you tell us where they are, and we’ll go there. The Bushiviks tried a little side-step dance, about how they were reluctant to share intelligence of such vital importance with such a bunch of French-infested screwups, but eventually they caved and gave Hans the vital proof (probably from Chalabi by way of “Curveball”).
And they weren’t there. Further proof of the incompetence and mendacity of those fuzzy-thinking “one-worlders” at the UN. Shit, we told them exactly where they were, and they still couldn’t find them!
I understand that it excludes one state, several territories, and a shitload of embassies.
I wasn’t asking you. You don’t have to stick your beak into everything, you know.
Shows he was willing to violate UN rules? That’s what you’re coming with?
So fucking what? So we invade his ass and set him straight, oh yeah, good move Bushy boy. :rolleyes:
Do you even realize stragically how stupid invading was? From a security of our country standpoint (the only point I really give a shit about), we were a lot safer when he was wildly shooting (how many planes were shot down again?) away, and his ass was still in power.
Now we’ve pissed off the muslim world even further (if that’s possible)
Now we’ve created a power vacuum in which terrorists can really thrive
Now we’ve got most of the civilized world pissed at is, (and rightly so, we were wrong about WMD)
We’ve over extended our military, racked up our national debt, and diverted countless resources from addressing the ACTUAL PROBLEM. Then when a country (Spain) rearranges their resources to go after the real problem, we call them a bunch of punk ass bitches?!?!?!.
Shit man, the BUSH administration has had more contacts with SH then AQ, wake the fuck up. The witchhunt should lead to the front door of the whitehouse.
Yeah, well in teaching him a lesson, we’ve totally fucked ourselves.
Yeah, we go back to step 2 by ignoring the same UN that we’re kicking Sadddam’s ass for ignoring.
How very noble.
Moore on points, even without disqualifying O’Reilly for the “Saddam supporter” crack (What the hell was he thinking? that his core viewership thinks so too?).
Moore nailed O’Reilly’s pouty defense of Bush as not lying, just misinformed, as “that works for a seven-year old”, but should have gotten into *why * Bush was so misinformed and incurious, not just stopped at “he said something untrue”. He also needed to list all the other bullshit reasons Bush offered, and their utter lack of follow-through.
The question about sending one’s children to die to secure Fallujah was right on target. That’s exactly what Bush has done.
But give Moore the most credit, and more than one can give Affleck btw, for not respecting O’Reilly’s standard tactic of framing the question to make the range of possible answers favorable to him. His replies, on the line of “The real question is …” need to be used far more often.
But then O’Reilly only opened up 15 minutes for this - knowing he couldn’t hold up his end any longer than that?