I’m with the Scylla’s already admitted he’s wrong crowd.
I don’t admire his politics, but I respect the fact that he admitted he was wrong, a good long time before Thanksgiving.
Princhester: I’ve interacted with Gary Kumquat a bit, and as far as I can tell, he’s just a smart-ass, lager swilling Pom. That is, for the purposes of this discussion, one of us. 
OK Gary, I see now what you meant and I took you the wrong way. But I still don’t think your comment lets Scylla and others like him who believed Bush et al and their bullshit off the hook. It’s one thing to be misled by a politician. It’s another to go on being misled when a/ you are as smart as Scylla and b/ you have a heap of people pointing out to you that you are being misled. The signs were all there, for those who wanted to read them.
Has anyone heard from Scylla lately? Maybe the groundhogs teamed up with the living dead and used BMD (Blimps of Mass Destruction) to eliminate him.
Last post was 11/19/03
Maybe he died of embarrassment?
And it would appear that time has proven you to be right on this occasion. But as a person who was at least prepared to believe that Hussein may have had WMD’s, I can also see why others may have made the same mistake.
Part of my reason for believing this was that I viewed the US President and UK PM as not being stupid enough to make the claims they did without some form of evidence. Usually interpreting a politicians actions with a mind to their survival instincts and hunger to stay in power is an accurate stance to take. In this case, I was wrong to do so. However, perhaps you can see that there was some logic to have reasoned “Bush & Blair must have evidence, otherwise they’re commiting blatant political suicide”.
Alright, where is it?
Yeah I felt the same as we headed into the war.
and yet they both remain in power and have a good (great with respect to Blair) chance of staying there for another term.
Lie about the reasons to go to war and get away with it. Doesn’t say much for the electorate IMO. I would class myself as a minor Blair fan but IMO he should be booted out on his arse on principal.
I also thought that Baghdad had banned WMDs.
I was wrong as well.
Scyllla’s prob’ly just involved w/ familial obs. US holidays and all.
To Gary and Yojimbo:
The only thing I think I’ve got even slightly wrong on this whole Iraq issue is that I didn’t think Blair could go to war without a second Resolution. Thought there were too many checks; the Cabinet, the Parliamentary Labour Party, the media, the public in general but the anti-war campaign in particular, the lack of evidence . . . and he still won the parliamentary vote. I still don’t quite understand how it happened or why he’s not paid the price yet.
It says an awful lot about how convincing Blair was and the goodwill he’d built up but, imho, it also says an enormous amount about a campaign that saw the biggest demonstrations ever in this country and not a shift of one degree in Government policy/lies – the campaign was a woolly-thinking, ill-conceived, fundamentally flawed (from the outset) fucking disaster. And I was right about that as well.
An utter shambles. It can’t make sense until Blair goes.
Hmmm, I was badly wrong too:
Though not as badly wrong as Milum (but that ain’t hard… :D).
He’s been nearly a nonparticipant for a few months now, except for a noteworthy GD thread in which he helpfully explained to all of us his discovery of how to breathe and walk. That seemed to start with the release of the interim Kay report that made it pretty much inescapable that he’d been fooled - which, to his credit, he did admit, grudgingly, unlike most of the Usual Suspects who have simply disappeared. A couple of nutters remain, as do a couple of “True Scotsmen” who act as if they’d never really taken the attitudes that they did.
He’s received more attention than the rest of the Dittohead Chorus here IMHO for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:
- He’s obviously smart enough to know better
- His high persistence in refusing to acknowledge the bleedin’ obvious.
- His continued, even intensifying, personal denunciations of the intelligence and motivations of those who have attempted to explain their way through his cognitive dissonance as the facts pointing to his own gullibility and capacity for hatred mounted.
My guess is that he’s recognized he has a problem with personal interactions here, and has decided to mostly disengage himself to regain some life perspective. Probably a good thing for him, if true, and perhaps he’ll return to activity here with less narcissism and more maturity.
Milossarian disappeared entirely - did anyone notice?
This I think encapsulates the biggest mistake I made.
I wanted to believe both Bush and Blair, for personal reasons. I’m a big fan of both the UK and the US, and prefer not to think of them as aggressors invading another country on fabricated evidence.
One of the main arguments I used to persuade myself that they might have proof of WMD’s was that if it turned out they were lying, surely they would be voted out at the next election.
So, I allowed what seemed like a reasonable argument to reinforce the belief I wanted to have. I worried about it still, but I hoped and thought that evidence would be found.
It appears that what I got horribly wrong, and what Bush and Blair got horribly right, was that actually people wouldn’t care enough to vote them out. There now appears to be a great deal of evidence that both governments issued a number of blatant lies and fabrications, all to engineer a war that has lead to thousands killed, god knows how many injured, and possibly irreparable damage to international relations. I don’t even want to think about the costs of this war, and what that money could have been better used for. Despite all of this, it looks like they gauged the public with the sort of pinpoint accuracy weapons manufacturers can only dream of. They lied, they lied big, they got caught…and they’re going to get away with it.
Well I’d be looking for a bus ticket to crawl under if I’d have started this thread. The OP
DOH!
Yes, I did notice.
And for the record, I too think it’s rather crass to call out a guy for something he’s already kinda-sorta admitted. If Scylla has something to say on or after Thanksgiving, let him say it himself.
For those of you who read the OP, this clarification will be obvious. Others, please take heed.
In the OP, I specifically acknowledged that Scylla had already admitted that which I was bringing up. You did see that, right?
So why, you might ask, author this thread in his name. Basically, Scylla is a poster that is pretty well known to all. Although I have not met him, I do admire his writing and his willingness to admit when he is wrong. I would hope that I would have the stones to do the same if it somehow turns out that Bush was right (though I freely admit that it would be a pretty hard sell at this stage of the game).
That being said, what I was trying to do was to hold his actions up as an example to perhaps inspire other posters to do the same. I know that I am not alone on this board for taking a huge amount of shit for my opposition to the war (although to be fair, the lions share of the crap that I took over that issue was IRL). Never the less, those of us that opposed this war were called traitors, terrorist supporters and all sorts of ugly things. Generally speaking, I think that it is time for some apologies.
I will start. To the friends of Scylla that find this thread in poor taste, I apologize. To clarify, I am 100% sure that the issue that I raise is important but I am open to suggestions for execution that is less offensive to your sensibilities.
In my book, admitting you were fooled doesn’t excuse you for treating those who weren’t fooled like shit. For calling them traitors, or anti-American, or saying they were intellectually dishonest, partisan dupes. As far as I’m concerned eating crow for being fooled is a different meal from eating crow for treating your fellow citizens like shit.
Your mileage may vary.
Enjoy,
Steven
minty, yes, he’s “kinda-sorta admitted” being factually wrong, but no more so than absolutely necessary to stop the Thanksgiving stuff. But, given the volume and intensity of the childishly-personal vituperation that the poster in question has spewed toward those who pointed it out to him, without even seriously starting to “kinda-sorta” apologize, aren’t we entitled to more? If such were forthcoming from him, nothing has prevented it, not even US holiday scheduling.
It is not “crass” to point that out, nor should there be any diffidence in demanding apologies where appropriate from those who wish to remain in our company. And there is no occasion more appropriate than this.