I’m only lecturing because of the question he asked me and the way he asked it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said a thing.
Or, actually the statement he made and the matter-of-fact way he said it.
Airman:
Ooops.
I should have posted a break between points; the last two paragraphs, starting with:
…were actually directed to Scylla, not you. I’ve no doubt that you’ve seen your share of the suffering in this war, and I think its telling as well that as a consequence (apparently) you’ve decided to vote against Bush in the next election.
Indeed. It seems imminently reasonable to begin impeachment proceedings to me; after all, that’s what the did when they suspected that Clinton had lied. But if that’s too extreme, then at least vote him out. But you see, for Scylla, neither of those are consequences of the revelation that Bush lied about this war; he’s going to go on supporting him despite that fact, and vote for him in 2004 anyway.
Anyway, my apologies for the misunderstanding.
Oh, and by the way, on preview; for what its worth, I’m a veteran myself. Just so you know.
That’s eminently reasonable. Imminent is another word entirely, which used to mean “immediate, present, current” and now means “someday, maybe, perhaps”.
Glad to help. You don’t have to thank me, I kinda like being a smartass.
Airman, a simple question for you. Do you recognize the difference between the following?[ul][li]Negligently telling someone something that turns out not to have been correct. Deliberately lying in order to accomplish an objective that the listeners would not otherwise have accepted.[/ul][/li]And if you do recognize the difference, kindly stop insisting that all The Usual Weasel promised was an admission that he was mistaken, and that the people who sold us this war were mistaken.
LondonCalling: oil is a commodity, like anything else. You know, cocoa, wheat, sugar, natural gas, copper.
Indeed, copper is arguably at least as important as oil to the economy. People look at the price of copper to gauge (no pun intended) whether the economy is expanding or not, because it’s so sensitive to the economic cycle. But we don’t go running around taking countries over to get at copper, because people will sell it to us if there’s a profit in it.
Same thing with oil. If Saudi Arabia doesn’t provide, Iran will. If they don’t, Venezuela will. Or Russia. And so on. Or, you can use natural gas, or coal, or whatever. There’s plenty of sources of supply, and plenty of substitutes for it.
This Administration, in every action it takes, shows itself to be not so much capitalistic in its view towards energy as mercantilistic. It’s very strange, until you realize that they’re all oilmen and therefore have a vested economic interest in how the oil markets behave. They also fall into the same fallacy you do: believing that oil is more important than it actually is. It’s not. No commodity is. The only truly valuable commodity is human ingenuity and initiative, which will make use of whatever becomes available in order to turn a profit. We have a patent clause written into the Constitution to encourage innovation; that clause is responsible for more growth in our economy than anything the oil industry or any other industry, for that matter, has ever done. That’s something this Administration doesn’t understand at all.
This sort of blame game, irrelevant as it is, can be foloowed backwards to famous Cold Warriors as well. This a non sequitur.
People of good conscience, can, and do, believe that there are more choices than the War on Terror the way it is currently being conducted, and being fucked up the ass. Some more imaginative people conceive of the possibility of a War on Terror that differs in various ways from what’s currently occuring.
If you were to believe that your only two choices are the War on Terror as is and getting fucked up the ass then I certainly can see why you’d choose the War on Terror as is.
Okay, *pantom, so if the fundies blow up the Saud family tonight, what human ingenuity will we come up with to save Wall Street from opening 5,000 points down in the morning and to stop the barrel price of, say, Brent crude opening at $100 ?
Actually I delivered on my promise and you said you said you were satisfied.
You asked an additional question about how this effects my attitudes towards and the war.
On that answer you are not satisfied. You’ve deliberately misrepresented my subsequent statements, and devolved to name calling.
It’s childish and dishonest, and you don’t return good faith or courtesy.
Airman:
I just want to conclude my clarification to you, if it’s alright.
No. I want accountability.
Maybe. For what it’s worth, I didn’t start this thread and, at least as far as I can tell, have been civil to Scylla in my replies both here and elsewhere.
Basically, you wondered why people were still picking on Scylla even after he admitted that he was wrong. I thought that was a good question. My reply was basically an attempt to explain why I find Scylla’s attitude frustrating.
The US administration claimed that the Hussein regime possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that it was intent on using them against the US. For this reason we had to go to war, a war that was framed in defensive terms: we must defend ourselves from Saddam Hussein. I spent hours upon hours arguing over the details of those claims on these boards, refuting them one by one. Now, afterwards, it appears that I was right in my assessment. But it’s a pyrrhic victory, I tell you. Because it seems that for many of the pro-war crowd, the entire WMD argument was a more-or-less convenient rhetorical maneuver anyway, since apparently it doesn’t matter if there ever were any from the beginning – the “defensive” war is justified regardless. Y’all could have saved me a lot of time and effort by simply making it known that you didn’t care whether or not there were WMD’s in Iraq in the first place.
Obviously, for someone who has invested a lot of time and energy into this question, hearing someone from the other side of debate imply that he would be willing, at some definite point in the future, to admit that he was wrong – or more importantly, that the administration had lied – is important. To be told, “yeah, yeah, he lied. I admit it. Not that changes anything for me – I’m still voting for him next year,” is, well, just a bit of let down. Why bother admitting your wrong in the first place? It doesn’t matter either way, apparently.
elucidator:
Thanks for the correction, your Eminence.
Yes, and you’re so good at it, too!
Oh, good! You’re back! Now, about those dreadful lies we war opponents were spreading about so eagerly? If you could demonstrate? I know you’re dreadfully busy, what with defending your dignity, and all. But you have these facts at your fingertips, I’m sure.
Of course, by “perfidy”, one must assume that you mean the “lies” of the opposition equal or exceed any of the little fibs your hero has let slip from his innocent lips.
Or is that a “trick question”?
Yes you have. I was the one who lost his cool, because I thought you were directing a jibe at me. You cleared that up, and so I apologize for the little tantrum I threw.
Until you resumed your weaseling about negligence, mistakes, good faith, etc.
The motherfuckers lied, Scylla. They looked us right in the eye, assured us that their case for WMDs was airtight, couldn’t possibly be mistaken. And they knew, they fucking knew that their case was a fraud.
I thought you were capable of acknowledging that essential truth. Instead, you pay lip service to it when backed into a corner and forced to admit it, then you immediately return to pretending that everything was just a mistake, that maybe they overstated their case here and there and weren’t really as sure of their information as they should have been. The very definition of weaseling, I’m afraid.
I thought you had a remaining shred of personal integrity. I was wrong.
Airman:
No problem. It’s an emotionally charged issue for most of us, and must be especially for you, considering your job.
LC: if Brent Crude opens up $100 on any given morning, my next post after that is coming from my yacht in the Mediterranean, first of all.
Beyond that, it would be a one time event, everyone would adjust, and I’d get to live the life to which I’d love to become accustomed.
Seriously. The price won’t stay that high for long, and if it does they’ll be looking for oil in the streets of London, probably. They might even find some. In the longer run, say two or three years, it wouldn’t be an economic problem.
This has to be one of the best threads I’ve ever read on the SDMB ever – and I’ve wasted more time here than I’ll ever admit to.
Has done wonders to remind me that not all Americans are of the sheepled-weasel variety. But like many of you here, I remain baffled and more than a bit angry at those that continue to express their undying support for the lying bastards that got the world into this predicament.
If killing people wholesale based on lies and deceptions is not enough to condemn those that made you do it, you have become your enemy.
In the words of St. Pogo of Okeefenokee: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
This reminds me of something.
Drone1: “Heil Hitler!”
Drone2: “Heil Hitler!”
Drone3: “Heil Hitler!”
Scylla: “Klopf.”
You lied. You misrepresented my arguments. You’ve devolved to childish name-calling when you don’t get your way, and you do not return good faith or courtesy.
That’s not a vantage point from which you can can comment on the integrity of others.
Svin:
Svin:
If you’re expecting me to grab a beret and join the revolution and change my philosophies and beleifs, than I think the blame for unfulfilled expectations isn’t mine.
Gimme a Lieberman in '04 and he’ll get my vote. Gimme another centrist choice and that will probably get my vote.
Gimme a Howard Dean and I’ll choose the lesser of two evils, IMO. That’s gonna be Bush.
I think we had to go to Afghanistan, We had to go to Iraq and we are right to be there. Our foreign policy is correct, our implementation is flawed.