Yes, december. I saw that one too. Honestly, wasn’t your first thought, “Well, what exactly is he waiting for?”
Why wait to disclose the information? It doesn’t appear to be a matter of protecting sources, because he basically says, IIRC, that they are simply assembling the information. Dissembling, perhaps, but no more. FWIW.
But, Susma the purpose of those questions is to provide some measure of whether the person is trying to present themselves in a more favorable light than may be true, or answering in ways that they may feel are more socially desirable. They may or may not even be fully aware of their efforts to answer in this way. The point is that there is some degree of uncertainty and inaccesiblity of data in the matter of assessing personality.
In the case of the Bush message on justifications for going to war, we do not suffer from the same problem. The information exists, and is relatively objective. Either he did or did not make public statements as to why we should go to war. These were recorded. A record of them could be made by an enterprising soul, to which we could refer. Since you raised the issue, I nominate you.
I myself, pending results from a review of the evidence, will go with the references that have been made to the State of the Union speech, Powell’s presentation to the UN, and my memories of being in NY in September 2002 listening to Rumsfeld suggest that al Qaeda operatives had been in Iraq, the fact that the UN inspectors were publically asked to search for WMD and not evidence of atrocities, and the speech in which Bush gave Hussein 48 hours to clear out. Why give him the opportunity to escape if his atrocities are so great as to warrant invasion of a sovereign nation? Surely if the basis for the war was the atrocities of Saddam, one would not say that he could simply clear out.
Proving that boobs still come in pairs, Bush also declared this weekend that we actually found WMD.
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60140-2003May30.html
Sheesh. NOw I feel like a boob, posting the same info twice to the same thread.
I feel so…neoconish.
[sub]is that a word?[/sub]
Boy, you guys sure hate neocons.
I might like to hate them too, but first I’d have to identify them.
Could someone please describe the fundamental tenets of neoconservatism, so I can spot one of these evil creatures? What distinguishes a neo-con from a garden-variety harmless conservative?
Isn’t harmless conservative an oxymoron?
The quick-n-dirty neocon tenent is “The United States can do whatever the damn hell it wants to, because it’s the biggest, richest, and most powerful nation on the planet.”
…which really explains everything the Dubya Administration has been doing for the last three years, if you ask me. :eek:
Neoconservatism is basically libertarianism with an aggressive foreign policy. Conservatism without the religious element.
Actually, there is nothing conservative about them. They are revolutionaries in almost every aspect.
I disagree, adaher. I find Neocons to be much more conservative socially than any libertarian stance I have seen - though its not the central plank of their platform, like social conservatism is to most evangelical fundamentalists. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, true, but if they truely were libertarian shouldn’t there be a visable social left/social right schism in the Republican party?
Well first we have to agree on what neocons are. Neocon has become a slur lately, used to target some politicians who aren’t.
Neoconservatism is mainly a grassroots political philosophy, found mainly among the young, and also includes many middle-aged ex-leftists. I can’t think of very many elected officials who would qualify as neocons. Probably the best examples are John McCain and Dana Rohraboker. In the administration, we’ve got Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. In the press we’ve got Andrew Sullivanan and Bill Kristol. Actually, neoconservatives have been most powerful and influential in the press.
The original meaning of “neocon” was someone who had switched from leftist radical to conservative or libertarian. These people were also called “neoliberals” – that was a synonym. Bill Kristol’s father Irving, the “godfather of neo-conservatism,” titled his autobiography, Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. Kristol’s mother Gertrude Himmelfarb made a similar switch, as did David Horowitz and others.
In recent years, “neocon” has been used as a vague slur, but without a clear meaning. AFAIK the people being criticized as Neocons don’t use the term themselves. Presumably they’d use its original meaning. It doesn’t surprise me that people on this Board who use the term don’t agree on what it means.
It’s also only recently become a major issue.
However, you need a word to describe the youth of today. Most young people are social libertarians and economically conservative. But they also aren’t isolationist so they don’t fit well in the official Libertarian Party. I’ve heard the word neo-con bandied about in regards to many of them.
I think neo-liberal is better, or even better, classical liberal. The modern liberal isn’t really very liberal, but more of a conservative. Liberals spend more time defending the status quo or rehashing old ideas than coming up with anything new.
That’s interesting, seeing as how President Bush has only been in office for two years and four months. :rolleyes:
Nice hijack, december.
You take a baby-step toward admitting we were lied to and and suddenly two-thirds of the posts are debating the meaning of “neoconservative”.
Dear Hentor:
Thanks for the compliment in your notice of my post. And also for your nomination that I collect all the instances where Bush and company set the location and destruction of WMD’s as the main purpose for the war against Iraq. But isn’t the whole world (hyperbole intended) cognizant of that fact? And isn’t the whole world (hyperbole intended) demanding to see evidence of those WMD’s?
I myself maintain the same position as yours and for the same records as you refer to about the WMD’s as the main purpose of the war and their absence so far. However, the opposite camp should have a good rebuttal insisting that the search is still ongoing, in the meantime absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sounds familiar?
My laboratory curiosity is drawn to the presence of only three posters in this thread who are out and out in defense of the position that Bush and company did not set forth the discovery and destruction of WMD’s as the main purpose of the war, namely: December, Brutus, and Jeffe. There are some over twelve posters against them.
Now, I notice also something interesting on the basis of my laboratory curiosity.
The thread was started by Reeder with the contention: “So the Neocons had no real evidence of WMD in Iraq”, on 053003 at 11:43 PM.
On 053103 at 02:24 PM December seems to have deviated the topic to the question of who and what are the neocons.
The original topic was brought back by Samclem on 060103 at 01:16 AM.
Then on the same day at 05:02 AM Sam Stone deviated it back to the neocons.
But Aramis brought it back to the original topic at 04:23 PM, claiming to have detected the ploy of December.
I think all that is interesting from my laboratory curiosity.
Index of sincerity, anyone?
Susma Rio Sep
(Annex)
Are you suggesting that in a thread about what neo-cons believe, it is somehow a hijack to ask for a definition of neo-con?
To me, it seems like a derogatory slur being tossed around, which means, “Republicans who do things I don’t like”.
Before the War, I had quite a few polite conversations (in contexts not really appropriate for debate) about the War to come. The most common justification for it, in the absence of any presented conclusive evidence for WMD, was “they know more than thay are telling us.” I always did the mental equivilent of shaking my head with pity. Yeah, like there really isn’t any evidence, maybe. It is just interesting how after Clinton and in the face of 9-11, all the Viet Nam era cynicism of our government and its motives for its actions, had transmuting into trust … into government as the kind parent protecting us from the evil even though it can’t tell us all.
It is what I imagine the 50’s must’ve been like. Will the pendulum swing back in the face of obvious prevarication or will apathy ring dully across the land?
The insistence on determining one main purpose of the war is in itself just a fun exercise, so don’t be surprised at the lack of defense. Why can’t there be two reasons to go to war. Or ten reasons. Is there a law? How many did we have in Vietnam, or WWII, or Kosovo? “But we were sold…” Frankly I don’t know who sold what to whom, I was on board from Day 1. And that was in 1990 or thereabouts. I do agree that the WMD issues were offered as evidence, but never the sole evidence, and it was offered as indicative of something besides mere existence: the continuing efforts of the regime to thwart the controls and limitations placed on it by the world community, which had previously laid out a handful or so of reasons why those controls were necessary.
And that evidence included proscribed equipment related to the production of WMD. Not just inventory…production capability. Which makes all kinds of sense if WMD is what you’re most concerned with - the ability to create more negates any success the inpectors might have had in locating and destroying what was already in possession. Hell yes, finding an actual mobile weapons plant is relevant here. I suspect that it is not big or fancy enough for the political-capital relevance that the US administration would like, or that the political opposition would accept, because it just doesn’t have the same splashiness factor in the news outlets. But that’s merely the politics of it all which is a lesser concern. Factually, the discovery of mobile plants is exactly the kind of thing - the damning evidence - we were looking for, and now that the suspicion (or intelligence) has been realized, we have to tackle the matter of accounting for the rest of them that are also said to exist. A Pandora’s Box of sorts.