Not only that, but once the interview was over, O’Reilly started making a speech. Who needs to edit an interview if you can command the camera after it’s over and say anything you want? If there’s any one single worst thing I can’t stand about him, it’s his deliberately disingenuous pretense at giving others “the last word”.
I thought both of them could have made better points had they spent some time here on the SDMB. Seriously, after being exposed to some of the thoughtful and informed discussions I’ve read here, those two lightweights came off looking like rank amatuers. Not all of the discussions mind you (see above), but more than a few.
I gave the first half to O’Reilly and the second half to Moore. Still, both of them missed numerous opportunities to make valid, opponent crippling points.
I kept turning to my wife when one of those two would offer up a real boner and ask her “Why doesn’t he mention this” or “That’s bullshit because…”. She’d say “Honey, you’re so smart” and I’d just reply “No, I read the Dope.”
I think you typoed, Spoofe; you meant to say Bush, not Saddam.
Sorry Lib, what I meant was (see way above). BTW, thanks for the heads up this was coming.
I totally agree. We’d turn those two losers into shark chum if they ever stepped foot into here.
The point Moore was trying to make with the misinforme/lying part of the “debate” was, I think, that Bush may have successfully maintained deniability–O’Reilly certainly bought the denial–but that the deniability was a sham. Bush sent his cronies to CIA to explain exactly the kind of intelligence they wanted, and they got what they ordered. Then they blamed the chef.
No doubt the CIA should’ve refused to bend the truth to suit Bush’s agenda.
But Bush was gonna bomb the fuck out of Iraq by hook or by crook, and spinning all the intelligence out there to excuse a preemptive strike based ENTIRELY on weapons of mass destruction was 100% dishonest.
This wasn’t O’Reilly’s defense; it was his point. He was asking Moore, given that many independent analysts from different countries ( including those opposed to the war) agreed that Saddam had WMDs, why is Bush necessarily a liar? Calling someone a liar is quite different than calling them a poor judge of information quality and/or a poor manager of information gatherers.
You’re welcome. 
I caught it by sheer luck. I reached to turn down the volume, and hit last channel instead.
Frankly, Congress, which is charged with overseeing the CIA and whatnot, has gotten away with gross irresponsibility. Keeping them honest is their job.
Man, I was dissappointed in that interview. Either Moore isn’t nearly as smart as I gave him credit for, or we’re all exceedingly bright. I expected a great deal more out of him than I saw last night. Watching that exchange was like reading any of dozens of threads on this board. The conservative makes a valid point, and the liberal doesn’t speak to it, instead answering some question that wasn’t asked (and doing it over and over again)…or he twists his opponent’s words and acts like he was asked something completely different and then implies idiocy on the part of the conservative for for saying such a thing. Very amatuerish. Again, I was dissappointed. We conservatives need to work to get Moore on television (unrehearsed, and arguing his stance, that is, not simply giving uncontested speeces) much more often. I think he is his own best criticism.
Well Moore may not be pro-Hussein, but many quotes attributed to him lurch quite close to being pro-Baathist
Several reasons, all of which we’ve hashed out in GD. To a large degree, he was being told there were WMD’s because he was, in effect, ordering people to tell him that. Any caveats, doubts, concerns, other possible or more likely interpretations were discarded in favor of a preconceived answer. When he turned around and told us, all that was stripped away. The Niger uranium forgery and the Aluminum Tubes of Death were the most notable things that had already been independently debunked long before the war, but he didn’t want to hear about that, did he? He and Cheney still haven’t stopped, either - the story became “WMD program-related activities” and then “Well, he *wanted * the stuff, and anyway, he was evil.”
Except that what Bush stands accused of is far worse than that. He was already being told, quite strenuously, that he was either vastly overreaching or flat wrong, and he simply dismissed it. Try this, then: He, and Cheney and Powell, told us he *knew * the stuff was there, and he *knew * where it was. He obviously didn’t know, and he knew he didn’t know. Isn’t that a lie by even the strictest, seven-year-old’s definition? As for the more-general statements, isn’t it just as bad, or perhaps even worse, not to *care * whether something you say is false as it is to *know * it’s false?
The legislative branch is charged with oversight of the executive branch. If there were these sorts of goings on that you allege, Congress was responsible for identifying and eliminating them.
Let me get this straight. Bush ordered most of the countries in Europe, the Soviet Union, virtually all of the countries in the Middle East, the FBI, the CIA, the U.N. and even Bill Clinton himself, to believe and state that Iraq had WMD? Wow! He’s more powerful than I thought.
And on the other side? A few arms inspectors saying “We haven’t found much so far, and we don’t really believe he has any.” And the U.N. saying, "No. We need resolution after resolution, and inspection after inspection, ad infinitum. Anything but, ya know, action!
So, yeah, Bush thought must have thought those damn inspectors were right, and he’d better lie and deceive and employ cunning obfuscation so he could send thousands of young Americans off to fight and perhaps die in a war for no good reason, other perhaps than to get even for Daddy…and perhaps lose the next election as a result of all the dissent the war would surely cause.
Yeah, that sounds reasonable. :rolleyes:
Most of the countries in Europe?
Bush didn’t order shit, he probably made it worth his old boy Putin’s while to make some vague off the cuff comment. Same shit for blair. Who else did we miss?
All those people you list were either (A) listening only to each other, or us, or to Chalabi, or to us after we listened to Chalabi, or (B) aware of the limitations of their knowledge, or © both. And look what the “evidence” was - the *best * of it was the load of crap Powell dumped onto the UN floor. No wonder nobody else thought there was a good basis for invasion, except for Tony the Poodle and the Coalition of the Bought.
“Wake up and smell the coffee.” - the late Ann Landers, many times
Well, Russia wasn’t one, but you missed Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, and Italy in Western Europe; Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the Baltics; Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary in Central Europe; Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia, and Slovenia in the Balkans; and Ukraine in Eastern Europe. There were also 14 nations in Asia, 6 in South and Central America, 5 in Africa, plus Kuwait and Australia.
Thanks. Now who else above had firm intel in Iraq’s WMD?
Action? It ain’t a video game. 13,000 dead Iraqis, 900 dead Americans and another 12,000 Americans with severe wounds.
Hoo-boy, wasn’t that fun.