And let’s not just broad brush the military of the USA, OK? MOST are simply doing their admittedly horrible job, as they are ordered to do. The rapists and torturers are outliers, and you know it.
According to a
Red Cross report:
From Wiki:
Please do not give any credence to the former Gen Karpinski. That bitch was the most incapable, unqualified whistle-blowing piece of shit I’ve ever heard of.
No, I don’t have a cite, but goddamn it Dio, are you certain you actually served in the US military?
One has to wonder. You don’t seem to “get it”.
Yes, I’m certain, and what don’t I “get,” sir?
She was not the only source, and your (probably totally uninformed) opinion of her does not equal a refutation. Most of those prisoners were released, you know, and no charges were brought against them. Multiple sources within the military said they were mostly innocent civilians arrested by mistake. How about you providing a cite that they were guilty of anything?
But it’s not my argument, is it? It Digenes’s. He’s the one who says that following orders, vis-a-vis the Iraq invasion, makes someone a war criminal and deserving of death.
If Tony Snow’s a war criminal and deserving of death, so is every American soldier who helped the invasion, especially those who’ve joined or re-enlisted since 2004, at which point the war’s justification was proven false. Their contributions to the crime DtC claims is deserving of a slow death are even more immediate and relevant than Snow’s.
If Tony Snow’s a war criminal because he followed orders, so’s everyone in Iraq in an American uniform - or so Diogenes’s argument must logically go. It’s not me saying it, it’s him. He’s just too cowardly to either back over his first claim (Snow a war criminal) or admit the logical road it takes him on (everyone who follows Bush’s orders, like Snow, must also be a war criminal.)
Arrests by mistake in a time of war…NO WAY!
Look, I’m not trying to defend what happened to the extent that innocent people were imprisoned and/or interrogated.
What I am saying is not only is this par for the course, but that during the invasion period, many people were captured and we weren’t exactly sure what their affiliations were.
If a person was firing rockets at your position and you captured them, isn’t it reasonable to try to find out why? And whom may be supplying the rockets?
Please don’t paint all Democrats with that broad brush. The fact that some speak loudest doesn’t make them the majority.
Personally, I disagree with at least 90% of the Bush administration’s policies, but I still think Bush and his followers genuinely think they’re doing the right thing for this country. I just think they’re wrong – sometimes tragically wrong.
Frankly I think it’s a little sick to take pleasure in anyone’s death, and more so to take pleasure in their suffering. Even if it’s Osama bin Laden, or Sadam Hussein and his sons. But the fact that Diogenes raised them as examples in defending his attitude towards Tony Snow, as if one is even remotely comparable to the other, displays a profound lack of perspective.
Anyway, I think the extremists on the conservative side are just as bad. You can’t tell me the people who are accusing anyone who’s pro-Choice of endorsing baby murder really think they just “have bad ideas”.
First, I already explained why Snow is culpable and the troops aren’t. Secondly, let’s be clear that I never said anyone deserved to be intentionally killed. I said I was gratified that Tony Snow got cancer. It’s a poetic justice thing, not a call for retribution. I wouldn’t support intentionally giving him ass cancer, I just won’t object when Karma does it.
Your whole angle with this is fucking garbage and fuck you for calling American troops war criminals.
Fair enough. I have to say that this fucking board’s timeouts are completely frustrating, btw, and I paid to be here. Goddammit.
Anyway, Dio’s comparison between Snow and Goebbles holds no water. For one, it was a completely different power structure, for two, it is a bygone era of media suppression, and for three, Snow isn’t and wasn’t complicit to information that led up to the war. He came on late to the show and was a mouthpiece to the press for Bush’s policies.
And to elaborate, even if the guy was privy to all the “secret stuff” (which he likely wasn’t), he simply did his job addressing the press, nothing more.
Goebbels did far more than “address the press”.
It’s not that hard to figure out, and for posters to continue this inanity is well, insane.
**But ** Dio’s thoughts are well known on these issues by now ans speak for themselves.
For the record, I never said this.
My apologies. Of course, when people talk about Democrats and Republicans, they aren’t talking about every single person associated with them. These are by necessity generalizations and observations about tendencies punctuated with empirical evidence. I’m sure there are many, many people on both sides who don’t fit the pattern. Maybe even a majority. But the squeaky wheels not only get the grease, they tend to set the tone and perception. Just as the Christian Right is nowhere near a majority of Republicans, but they tend to set the tone of their party.
As bad as? Why even go there? But a couple of points of aggravation. Hitler has nothing to do with me, I’m an American. Bush, however, is a whole different kettle of piranha. And all the people who died as a result of Hitler are already long dead. The people dying for Bush’s misdeeds are still dying. Makes a difference? Yeah, I’m inclined to think so.
And while it is true that Mr Snow did have any official capacity until after the shitstorm was well begun, he had long been a cheerleader for Bushivik policy when he was with Fox Gnaws. That’s how he got the paychecks that he cashed.
A hysterical defense that he wasn’t nearly as bad as Goebbels is all very well, but he wasn’t all that good a person, IMHO. So why should I get all panty-twisted because Dio hates his guts, and says so. What’s to like? Need we despise him as much as a Godwin goblin? Certainly not, but need we admire him, need we defend him?
And note how shrilly some of us blubber over the feelings of Snow’s near and dear, who have no idea any of us even exist, much less our thoughts and feelings, and in the next breath heap hatred on someone they do know, who might very well be hurt. or at least every attempt is made to make it so. You don’t know Tony Snow, but fervently defend him from entirely theoretical injury, and in your fury do your level best to hurt someone you do know, as much as any of us do.
Maybe that isn’t all that weird, but sure seems like it to me. Seems to me some of you have a rather odd set of moral priorities. Some of you clearly have issues with Dio and are glorying in an opportunity to put the boots to him. As has recently been pointed out, other people here said much the same things, and nobody gave them the least attention.
So, some of you have issues with Dio, some others, just have issues.
I caught some pieces of a discussion about Tony Snow last night. One of the people was Bob Beckel, who hosted a show with Snow years ago. A die-in-the-wool liberal, he had extremely nice things to say about Snow. Both professionally and personally. He mentioned one story that went to the man and his level of partisanship.
Beckel and Snow were to give speeches someplace. Beckel the liberal view, Snow the conservative view. Well, it turns out that Beckel got really drunk the night before they were to give the speech and passed out. The next morning Snow handed a hung-over Beckel a speech he had written for him. It made all Beckel’s point as well as Beckel would and even had some good jokes thrown in. He used it and was very grateful.
Just thought I’d share.
I wonder if Goebbels did something like that?
I wasn’t the one who went there. Your pal Dio was the one who stated this despicable equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Bush Administration in Post 136:
When asked by myself and others to reconsider his position, rather than back down and admit he was in error, or at the very least say that he was speaking hyperbolically, he did neither and in fact dug in his heels. This is what I have a problem with, not his gloating over Snow’s painful death, as I have already stated twice in this thread (once to Dio and once to prr).
So it’s a symptom of hysteria to assert that a press secretary/conservative commentator was not in the same league as the pack of ghouls whose murderous regime is universally recognized as one of the most evil in all of recorded history? I’d argue that was largely a self-evident proposition, but it appears that you and Dio don’t share this view.
Have I expressed any admiration or praise of Snow? I don’t think so. And I’m not intending to defend Snow when I call Dio on his bullshit. Rather, I’m trying to defend the memory of those who were slain at the hands of the Nazis, whose dignity is cheapened when their killers are diminished in culpability by specious comparisons to petty villains.
Other than calling him an “asshole” in direct reply to his labeling of me as a “scumbag”, I haven’t leveled any insults at all at Dio, and I have no desire to inflict any psychic wound upon him. I just wish he would back down from his horrible positions as put forward in this thread.
I did initially miss Drain Bead’s statement, but then when I called her(?) on it, she did not cling to the “Bush = Hitler” theme and in fact expressed a much more temperate opinion, something that Dio has not done.
I have an issue with filthy slander, no matter out of whose mouth it comes, and I did not come into this thread with any pre-existing baggage regarding Dio. Unfortunately, I won’t be leaving this thread with the same neutral opinion of him, but that’s his doing, not mine.
Great story. Thanks for sharing that. I think the world would be better off with a lot more Snows and one less Diogenese.
So why did Snow deserve death? Jesus, you’re a chickenshit.
On last night’s COUNTDOWN, Keith Olbermann, who’s on vacation this week, asked his guest host to read a brief tribute to Tony Snow. Apparently, despite wide political differences, they talked often and affably (usually about baseball) and treated each other with respectful good humor. (Olbermann said that Snow claimed to be able to restrain himself from shouting at the TV when COUNTDOWN was on, at least most of the time.) So plainly Snow was not an irredeemably evil being.
But there is still a valid comparison between him and Goebbels, as there is between Dee Dee Myers and Goebbels–all were paid, official spokespeople for governments that told bald-faced lies to the public, to the press, to the world.
In Goebbels’ case, that makes him complicit in defending a policy of genocide and waging unprovoked, aggressive war.
In Snow’s case, that makes him complicit in defending a policy of waging unprovoked, aggressive war.
In Myers’ case, that makes her complicit in defending a policy of getting blown.
You might choose to draw a thick line grouping Snow and Myers. I draw that line grouping Snow with Goebbels.
I didn’t say he “deserved death,” but the reason I don’t feel sorry for him is not that he “followed orders,” but that he was complicit in helping those who gave theorders.
Your first post in this thread.
So if he didn’t deserve death (at least any more than the rest of us), why rejoice in his death and suffering and why wish a similar death on others?
Never mind - I’m sure I won’t get a straight answer from you on this point.