I put this in the pit because it seems the logical place. I will not be the one to commence hostilities here, though. It satisfy to no end if no one else did, as well.
I’ve noticed that Minty has been showing a cite wherein I state that as far as I’m concerned Bush has until Thanksgiving to produce answers on the WMD question. To be precise I believe actually said find the WMDs.
Since then others seem to have picked up the Thanksgiving cry.
There seems to be some kind of belief that if WMDs do not show up I will be eating crow or they will be vindicated, or I will have been proven wrong.
My stance has been and continues to be that we need to give the adminsitration six months or so from the end of the war to justify the WMD claim.
Conclusively making the judgement one way or the other before a reasonalbe time frame had occured and the case could be made seems to me a… umm… premature judgement.
Now I have believed and do believe that Bush will produce such evidence, but I have simply reserved final judgement pending more information.
It seems to me that this is pretty safe and conservative stance.
It certainly seems more conservative than those who have stated flatly that no WMDs exist for the last year or so.
So, I’m wondering what it is that some of you are expecting or thinking my Thanksgiving deadline means, and what it is that you are expecting from me on that day.
Perhaps I am mistaken and exhibiting wishful thinking when I recall what my stance was, and I actually said something completely different and those that assert no WMDs existed are entitled to some kind of vindication from me come Thanksgiving.
Please show it to me so I will be sure not to disapoint if nothing shows up. I would not wish to unfairly rob someone of their due satisfaction.
You clearly stated that the failure to find WMDs by thanksgiving would be reason enough to assume that Bush’s charges were (in your words) “deliberately fraudulent.”
You also indicated an intention to “rub our noses” in it if WMDs were found.
So I think the expectation is that you will remain true to your words and admit that the WMD allegations were bullshit.
I haven’t seen the thread/s in question (a link would be handy), but after reading your post i’m actually more interested in what you think your own Thanksgiving deadline meant.
Was it a minimum, before which no conclusions should be drawn, and after which we might still give the administration some slack?
Was it a maximum, before which we should be open minded, and after which failure to produce concrete evidence of WMDs should be seen as confirmation of administration duplicity or stupidity?
You seem to be implying that taking a “conservative” (evidentially, not politically) stand on the issue is the most prudent one, and that those who come out with firm positive or negative assertions are not being very logical. On face value, this is a reasonable position.
But you also seem to be implying, in this OP, that even if evidence is not presented by Thanksgiving, then those who have been arguing with you will still have no real cause to feel vindicated in their argument.
If this is indeed what you’re suggesting, then i would ask when critics of the WMD claims will have cause to feel vindicated? I mean, it seem to me that your whole position is not much different from that old Rumsfeld line “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” If you do take this position, then that must mean that, even if no evidence of WMDs has been uncovered 20 years from now, those skeptical of administration claims will still have no cause to feel vindicated.
And that strikes me as an all-too-convenient position to take.
And now that i’ve posted, i see Diogenes’s post, with its quotes from your posts in the other thread. If those quotes are representative of your position, then i think some eating of crow, or at the very least a slice of humble pie, might be in order if WMDs are not turned up by turkey time.
I think it’s worth remembering, also, that some of us who are critical of the administration still concede that Saddam may have had WMDs. What concerned us the most, in the aftermath of the war, was that, whether those WMDs existed or not, it was increasingly apparent that the evidence presented to the American people of their existence was, at best, flawed and, at worst, cynically manipulated. The question, for many of us, has come to be as much about the administration’s competence and integrity as it is about the presence or absence of WMDs. Did the US go to war based on poor intelligence, deception, or outright lies?
Claim some semantic obfuscation. pointing out that some wording of your post permits more than one interpretation, and cling desperately to it like L. DiCaprio clinging to frosty floating furniture in the N. Atlantic.
Claim to have been surreptitiously instructive, by presenting a form of debate you disapprove of, in order to offer an object lesson in how not to conduct oneself.
Claim, despite any and all evidence to the contrary. that the WMD bullshit is 100% solid gold and that the rest of us simply lack your perspicacity and insight, as we are unsophisticaed in matters of finance.
Impugn and insult your detractors by implying that thier positions are based on thier unpatriotic and unfounded dislike of Fearless Misleader, the ever popular “Why Do You Hate America So Much?” ploy. (I propose we name this in your “honor”, the Scyllian Defense)
I had previously imagined such a dishonorable ploy to be beneath you. You have demonstrated otherwise. I suggested elsewhere that you apologize to friend Elvis for your repulsive remarks as regards his loyalty. Clearly, you have no intention of doing so.
You really don’t get it, do you? You are so hag-ridden by your own ego, you just don’t get it. You were being teased! That’s all. Nothing scurrillous, no vile intentions, just having a bit o’ fun.
But in your desperation to preserve even this smallest scrap of your “dignity”, you have abandoned every pretense of honorable debate. You burned down the village in order to save it.
I expect you to apololgize for your reprehensible comments. Or to go pound burdocks.
is utterly unequivocal. And then you said if WMD turn up, you’ll mock the doubters; if they don’t, then (lightheartedly speaking) you’ll run away and hide.
I’ve never before seen a thread where the OP has to ask other people to explain exactly what they themselves meant in another thread, when it was set down in such pure clear language…
To paraphrase a cliché: “What part of what you said are you failing to understand?!?”
Are you offering Thanksgiving gifts? I wouldn’t mind reading an old-fashioned Scylla vignette about your wife if you’re so inclined to produce one. I don’t think it is productive to talk of war with you.
Superscyllious, you’re claiming the right to “rub our noses in it”, but just can’t stand the thought of the reverse? Crybaby. The derision you’ve been getting is the price of not accepting responsibility for your own statements. That’s what adults do, in case it’s escaped your notice thus far.
elucidator, thanks for your intercession attempts, but our interlocutor has already shown that his judgment is not on a level worth taking seriously, and I certainly don’t. Hell, he doesn’t take it seriously himself. Responsibility is for suckers like us.
It was clearly not about Thanksgiving and never was.
It was about Christmas 2030. Any god feeling loyal American can see that clearly as day.
Oh hold on it wasn’t about that either it was about Thanksgiving but which Thanksgiving is a secret that can’t be revealed yet due to security reasons.
… and on and on and on till all the muppets actually buy the shite.
I tell you what I would like at this point, given how the situation in Iraq has continued to develop:
[ul]
[li]I would like an apology from the pro war folk that were implying that those of us that opposed the war were somehow un-American, or aiding the terrorists is some way.[/li][li]I would like an apology from the folks that were making fun of us when we predicted a quagmire (I sure don’t know what else you would call the situation at this point).[/li][li]I would like for the pro war folks to admit that at very best the Bush administration did not do their homework about the supposed existence and location of the WMD, and that the very real possibility exists that they lied about them (assuming that they would turn up later and that they would be vindicated). [/li][li]I would like an admission that WMD were the main reason that we were all given in speech after speech for this war, and that even now the fact that they have not surfaced means that there are some very tough questions that we should all be asking.[/li][li]I would like a retraction and apology from all of the tools that were posing the “neener neener neener” threads in the early days of the war every time some unsubstantiated report of banned weapons surfaced.[/li][/ul]
In short, at very least what I would like to see come from this is the admission that (while you may not agree with them) the folks on the Liberal side of the fence are not just loonies that you can dismiss. That our point of view is worthy of some respect and consideration.
Scylla I am apparently a conservative in the microcosm of this board. I must say that you are wrong. Dead wrong. I give you points for being bold in giving a specific date by which you would concede that the claims of WMDs by the Bush administration were erroneous. Having been so bold it would be lovely to see some stoicism in admitting your error and moving on.
The burden is clearly on the administration to prove the existence of WMDs as promised by the evidence they presented over the last couple of years. To demand that protestors prove the negative, that there were never any WMDs, is disengeuous at best. So buddy, buck up and let’s hear it. No Decembering is possible at this point. You made an unequivocal statement and were wrong it isn’t the end of the world.
Dunno what Scylla will do on Thanksgiving (I have a dynamite coleslaw recipe I’m willing to share) - but as someone who felt confident that the war and its aftermath would turn up stocks of WMDs, I would willingly state that if we have nothing more by that time but the same indications of only a potential threat, I will concede that at best the Bush Administration used extremely flawed intelligence to push us into an ill-advised war - and should face a harsh judgment on that count alone, never mind any deliberate lying (which has not been more convincingly demonstrated than the presence of WMDs, in my opinion).
Yeah, maybe stacks of photon torpedoes and caches of laughing gas will be found under some mosque in Mosul before Thanksgiving.