No, sorry; I’m Stoid’s stooge, 'member?
No. You’re Stoid’s toady. My stooge.
I gotta start keeping notes…
give me a fucking break. I asked a direct question and you gave a specific response. Had you meant “no, you’re right, no one actually said those specific things, but they certainly seemed to think there was a real danger”, you should have said so.
If you’d meant “I believe that they would have done the same had they been in charge, given that they said similar things in the past” that would have been open for debate.
I was very clear on my point. You chose to be obtuse.
If you are claiming as you seem to be now, that it wasn’t supposed to be taken literally, than it was fucking non responsive to my point. Similar to saying “the stove” when asked “Do you favor death penalty”.
Your choice.
Attempting to place the blame on me for misinterpreting your words is fucking low. You didn’t even say “these people said things like that” you answered the question “who said these things” with that list of people.
I even said “Serious question”. your answer of a list of people should have been taken literally** unless you STATE otherwise**, and, frankly your later posts hedge the same way (like telling me I should do a web search instead of you).
Seriously bad debate tactic.
I think the Bush Administration is already doing a wonderful :rolleyes: job of making Saddam’s megalomania look trivial by comparison.
Assuming the guy is still alive, though, I don’t know if he’d want to poke his head back out – after all, he’s got to deal with someone who’s willing to lie to the world to justify a damn fool war, and confronting crazy cowboys ain’t the smartest idea out there.
It was weaseling because you refused to retract the claim as anything other than literal when you were challenged to prove it. Next time you resort to Scylla-speak and somebody makes the mistake of taking you at your apparent word, kindly do us all the favor of clarifying that you were talking out of your ass and did not intend for your statements to be taken seriously.
From the Yahoo News article:
I think my favorite thing about this quote, other than Bush’s utter misuse and apparent ignorance of the meaning of the word “history,” is the smugness of the comment. Bush sounds here like he thinks he invented the phrase “revisionist historians” – he sounds like a little kid who’s just learned to spell a new word, and is anxious to use it in a sentence.
Dink… par for the course as far as the Bush maturity level goes.
this is how you responded to my request to back up the claim.
Note the lack of “I didn’t mean it literally” or “I meant in the sense of blah blah blah” a dismissive “babes”, and “go look for it” Neither of which I called you on before. But fuck - let’s hear it now.
The proper thing to have done, if you’d not meant your post to be taken literally, when some one does, is to say “I didn’t mean it literally of course”. and we would have been done w/this.
your dismissive tone in the follow up post, and then ulitmately to your claim on this page that it’s my fucking fault that I took you literally, takes balls the size of Texas. And although we’ve all heard about your attributes, the fact that folks can still drive through your state w/out a “Scylla nuts detour” means that you fucked up, and don’t want to admit it.
Wring:
What is it that you would like me to do or say?
Seriously. I hate this crap.
I don’t want to play semantic moron games with Minty, Xeno, Hentor or even you.
Your “serious” question was rhetorical. You knew the answer when you asked it, and I’m sure you know what I meant with my repsonse.
You’re not stupid enough to not get it.
Everything else is semantics and games.
See, it’s all your fault, wring. Fortunately, it sounds as if Scylla is willing to forgive you and forget this ever happened.
Scylla, I don’t think that there’s any interpretation of your original answer that doesn’t make you sound stupid. I don’t think that anybody in the thread would argue that SH never had naughty weapons (especially since he had used them on occasion), or had never used them.
The people in your answer had, at points in the past, been able to demonstrate that he did have them. But that’s not what the question was, the question dealt which people thought that
a) He still had them when the new war started
b) Immediately prior to the new war, there was a good chance he’d use these weapons on US interests.
NOT in the past, in the present. That’s the point he was making. He wanted you to see and acknowledge that point, and either surrender to to his superior intelligence, find proof to disprove his point, or make a relevant point of your own.
-lv
Minty:
You’re just another moron getting his kicks fanning flames, doing your best to make the problem worse and taking cheap shots.
You may have thought it was rhetorical, but that wasn’t my intent.
That’s why I labeled it “Serious question”.
What I’d be looking for now, is a simple statement -
“I meant my response as a rhetorical device, thought your question was rhetorical. When you asked me for a cite, I should have said ‘I didn’t mean it literally’, but instead went flippant. and things snowballed from there”
Seriously dude - I can understand NOW what happened - but, all of this could have been avoided had you :
a. first reply said “serious? or rhetorical?” or something along those lines.
b. second response said “I didn’t mean it literally, I thought you were being rhetorical”.
c. third etc responses not suggested that it was my fault that I misunderstood your intention.
See, I thought I was being clear when I said “serious question”. Obviously, you didn’t. Now that I see that, my response would be “Sorry, I did in fact mean it as a serious question and not a rhetorical device”, but you never gave me the chance. And I generally** offer the tone of “ok, there was a misunderstanding, perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I’d hoped” vs. “You idiot for not understanding me***”.
****Izzy**esq disclaimer, just in case there’s one example over 3 years and 8000 posts that I was bitchy about it.
*** not claiming that’s what you said or implied.
Wring:
I meant my response as a rhetorical device, thought your question was rhetorical. When you asked me for a cite, I should have said ‘I didn’t mean it literally’, but instead went flippant. and things snowballed from there.
Absolutely.
In all seriousness, I thought I did when I called it a “loaded” question. Did you miss that, or think it meant something else?
I missed the “loaded question” part.
Ok, we’re cool now.
What was it, the ‘balls the size of Texas’??? 
(which would make those marathons pretty difficult to run, I suspect)
Good. Now can you call off the Stooges?
:: calling in loud voice::
off the stooges
wring is far more forgiving than me, Curly and Shemp.
But this particular Stooge is done; I just want to repost something wring said after the loading and reloading of rhetorical questions began, because it’s the heart of the point she was making, and I’d hate to see that get lost.
Indeed.
Sadly, however, the imagery that I utilized is a reality that we face. Men and women dying is an image that will hopefully be imprinted upon our president’s soul. Then, maybe he will think twice before trying his next “spin” on the American people.
Sure, I hear, every once in a while, the statement from his administration that this “will be a long road”. Then they go about proclaiming all of their magnificent accomplishments.
Even if defined in the most positive light espoused by our president, this war is not an accomplishment because the primary goal has not been achieved and our troops are still dying- too frequently I may add. Furthermore, our goal of capturing Osama Bin Laden has still not been achieved either.
I know, I know, we can talk about the “liberation” of two countries until we are blue in the face, BUT this does not change the fact that the primary goal, and justification, for attacking Afghanistan and Iraq was a pre-emptive strike to get at Saddam and Osama Bin Laden who were the identified organizers of terrorist attacks against America (although Saddam never was really linked). We did not accomplish either of these goals.
I recall two “dead or alive” statements made by this administration that have not been fulfilled. Nonetheless, this does not prevent the president from seeking political gain from both of these actions. I expect to hear in the next few months that finding Saddam Hussein, WMD’s and Osama Bin Laden do not matter.
This is an extremely sad situation IMO. The deaths of our soldiers continue and Bush is touting the magnificent revival of pseudo-trickle down economics on his campaign trail.
I am disgusted.
wring, I understood your “serious question” to be a rhetorical way of alleging that
1. Bush said that[list=a][li]Iraq was an imminent threat to the US, [] the level of risk to US citizens was so high that it required us to invade another in order to protect ourselves and Saddam was ‘months’ away from having Nukes ready to use". [/list][/li]
And,
- None of those other parties said these 3 things.*
By calling it a “serious question” instead an “assertion,” you avoided what should have been your responsibility to find cites supporting your contention. That may be the reason why Scylla treated your “serious question” somewhat unseriously.
Let’s address the 3 parts of your question:
a. Are you claiming that Bush literally used the words “imminent threat” or simply that he said words to that effect? Note that UN Resolution #1441 also more-or-less said words to that effect, and it was passed 15 to 0. Or, more precisely, #1441 effectively said Saddam was a threat to various nations, not just the US.
b. Resolution #1441 used the term “serious consequences,” words most have interpreted to mean “military action.” So, the 14 other UN members who voted for it came close to saying that Iraq should be attacked if they didn’t change their behavior and fully cooperate. Although Iraq did cooperate in part, they didn’t fully cooperate. In particular, they never explained what happened to their knows stores of WMDs.
c. You’re on stronger grounds on your third point. I don’t believe Bush quite said Iraq was months away from having a nuke, but he came close. He quoted someone from outside his administration, I forget who, who had said that Iraq might be months away if he got nuclear material. However, there was far from universal agreement that Iraq was likely to be close to having nukes.
The bottom line is this: What Bush said wasn’t terribly different from what many others were saying. I admit that he gave the strongest possible arguments for his actions, and some of his fears appear to have been overstated.
But, the real difference isn’t in the words. The difference is that Bush took action consistent with the words. To attack Bush, one should show that his decision to overthrow Saddam was a bad choice. But, most Americans don’t buy that POV. The most they will accept is that Bush did the right thing in overthrowing Saddam, but that some of his reasons turned out to be overly pessimistic.