Corporate Feudalism and The Culture War

[Joe DeFuria]

You know that it is false. We knew that before going to war ant that the reason (depiste all the bs your propaganda machine spread out) Russia France Germany did not want to go.

No, that's not the reason they didn't want to go. It's not because they believed we had ascertained Sadam's WMD. It's because, as I said, they believed ousting Sadam wasn't necessary in order for that ascertainment to be made. Just more time, more resolutions, or whatever.

Do you think you will make a rule for your foreign politics to invade all country you decide to inspect?

That all depends on why there are inspections in the first place, who supports the inspections, and how cooperative the country is.

 

[John Reynolds]

What boggles my mind about my own countrymen is that they expressed what seemed to me more moral outrage over one second's worth of a bared breast than our nation going to war under false claims. I'll never understand it.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

What boggles my mind about my own countrymen is that they expressed what seemed to me more moral outrage over one second's worth of a bared breast than our nation going to war under false claims. I'll never understand it.

Is anyone even talking about that breast anymore? I think you underestimate your own contrymen.

 

[Natoma]

When it comes to matter of life and death, i.e. war? I certainly can't validate any reason that isn't mired in truth or substantiated fact.

Which of these is not facts:

1) The World agreed that as long as Sadam's WMD program was not properly ascertained, he was a threat.

2) At the time we went to war, is WMD program was not ascertained with any degree of certainty

Both of these are why the inspection process via Hans Blix and his team were instituted. This inspection process was undermined from the very beginning, and then short circuited by the Bush Administration. If they had complete faith in what they were saying regarding the amount of chem-bio weaponry and knowing where those weapons were, why didn't they give that information to the weapons inspectors, let them find Saddam definitively in breach, and take hiim out? Was it because they feared it might not actually be there? That's my guess.

I don't support pre-emptive wars based on bad intelligence and apprently no wish to vet that intelligence. Apparently you do...

I don't consider world agreement on the threat and agreement on the lack of ability to ascertain Sadam's regime for 12 years not "vetting" of intelligence.

It took me 5 minutes of googling to figure out that the Niger claim from Bush's state of the union speech in 2003 was incorrect. And George Tenet a few days ago stated that he repeatedly had to pull in the reins on Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney when they would make some assertion about WMD to the public. In fact, speaking of the SOTU, the only reason Tenet signed off on that assertion was because of the fact that they took the attribution away from the CIA and placed it on the British. He had successfully removed the Niger reference from a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati in September 2002. So that in and of itself leads me to have some doubts. Not to mention the whole OSP business.

And does it shock anyone that just 9 days after Bush's SOTU, Colin Powell didn't mention the Niger claim when presenting his evidence to the UN? What was the reason he gave? He didn't feel the intelligence was sound enough to present to the UN Security Council. But it was good enough for the american public?? That little ditty came out before the war.

I work from the premise that war is the last resort, to be avoided at all cost if necessary.

So do I.

As I said, and you again fail to appreciate this because of your lack of willingness to discuss your "coming out", we just differ on when it becomes or became "necessary."

There is no reason to discuss it because you're looking at the situation with complete disregard for the realities of life. I saw it coming before you made your point which is why I cut off the discussion before it even began and it's quite obvious now. Same reason I declined to engage you in that fantasy run around in that abortion discussion. I knew exactly where you were going and didn't feel like wasting two pages of posts just to get to a particular point. So I just said make your point immediately. You didn't want to do that, so I didn't humor you.

Same situation

 

[John Reynolds]

Is anyone even talking about that breast anymore? I think you underestimate your own contrymen.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-14-senate-cia-iraq_x.htm

"It is a shocking report," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the intelligence committee. "There's got to be some accountability somewhere in the process for failures, for missing information, for ignoring information."

How much has the media covered this compared to the weeks following Ms. Nasty's exposure? FCC fines are going to be increased, shows have been dropped from networks, etc.

 

[Druga Runda]

True. The thing is, everyone in the world agreed that Sadam was a threat, and that his WMD program was in an "unascertained" status. Again, the only disagreement was on course of action.

I am of the opinion, that had we not gone in, we would still trying to be figuring that out today, and that is unacceptable to me in the post 9-11 climate.

hey if we were to have someone as a threat this certainly is Pakistan

of perhaps NK... but hey we chose Iraq.

No I wouldn't support invasion on the other two either, but just to point out Iraq was a minor threat at the time, and it was only intesivly discussed because of US insistance on it - ie US tried and gain some kind of credebility, and even spied on memebers of SC to get it it's way - which shows that they had no reasons to go to war, and that bullying partners like Chile, Mexico and some other countries was the last resort to get aura of legallity for unreasonable actions.

And as Patrick said Germany, France, Russia did not support US claims and precisely because they knew just as well as US that Iraq was no threat to anyone, and they had more interests for Status Quo than for a regime change.

Check this out

Prior to 2002, the intelligence community appears to have overestimated
the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq but had a generally
accurate picture of the nuclear and missile programs. (p. 50)
The dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October
2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), together with the creation of
an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon and other steps, suggest
that the intelligence community began to be unduly infl uenced by
policymakers’ views sometime in 2002. (p. 50)
There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between
Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda. (p. 48)
There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred
WMD to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it. (p. 48)
The notion that any government would give its principal security assets to
people it could not control in order to achieve its own political aims is
highly dubious. (p. 49)
8 | WMD in Iraq: evidence and implications
Today, the most likely source of a nuclear terrorist threat would be
from theft or purchase of fi ssile material or tactical nuclear weapons
from poorly guarded stockpiles in Russia and other former Soviet
states, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The security
of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, including technology and know how, is
also a major concern. (p. 50)
Administration offi cials systematically misrepresented the threat from
Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence
failures noted above, by:

Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single “WMD threat.â€
The confl ation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose,
distorted the cost/benefi t analysis of the war. (p. 52)

Insisting without evidence—yet treating as a given truth—that Saddam
Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. (p. 52)

Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present
in intelligence assessments from public statements. (p. 53)

Misrepresenting inspectors’ fi ndings in ways that turned threats from minor to
dire. (p. 53)

While worst case planning is valid and vital, acting on worst case assumptions
is neither safe nor wise. (p. 54)
The assertion that the threat that became visible on 9/11 invalidated
deterrence against states does not stand up to close scrutiny. (p. 57)
Saddam’s responses to international pressure and international weakness
from the 1991 war onward show that while unpredictable he was not
undeterrable. (p. 57)
The UN inspection process appears to have been much more successful than
recognized before the war. Nine months of exhaustive searches by the U.S.
and coalition forces suggest that inspectors were actually in the process of fi nding
what was there. Thus, the choice was never between war and doing nothing about
Iraq’s WMD. (p. 55)
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | 9
In addition to inspections, a combination of international constraints—
sanctions, procurement investigations, and the export/import control
mechanism—also appears to have been considerably more effective
than was thought. (p. 56)
The knowledge, prior experience in Iraq, relationships with Iraqi scientists
and offi cials, and credibility of UNMOVIC experts represent a vital resource
that has been ignored when it should be being fully exploited.
(p. 51)
To reconstruct an accurate history of Iraq’s WMD programs, the data
from the seven years of UNSCOM/IAEA inspections are absolutely
essential. The involvement of the inspectors and scientists who compiled the
more-than-30-million-page record is needed to effectively mine it. (p. 56)

Considering all the costs and benefi ts, there were at least two options
clearly preferable to a war undertaken without international support:
allowing the UNMOVIC/IAEA inspections to continue until obstructed
or completed, or imposing a tougher program of “coercive inspections†backed by
a specially designed international force. (p. 59)
Even a war successful on other counts could leave behind three signifi cant
WMD threats: lost material, “loose†scientists, and the message that
only nuclear weapons could protect a state from foreign invasion.
(p. 58)
The National Security Strategy’s new doctrine of preemptive military action
is actually a loose standard for preventive war under the cloak of
legitimate preemption. (p. 60)

In the Iraqi case, the world’s three best intelligence services proved unable
to provide the accurate information necessary for acting in the
absence of imminent threat. (p. 61)[/]

from here
http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/Iraq3FullText.pdf

good document lenghty but clear

*copied from adobe so it's a bit weird formatting

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Both of these are why the inspection process via Hans Blix and his team were instituted. This inspection process was undermined from the very beginning...

Yes, by Sadam's regime.

There is no reason to discuss it because you're looking at the situation with complete disregard for the realities of life.

In your opinion. This is a common occurance with you. Completely ignore an other point of view because you disagree with it. Dismiss it off-hand, and refuse to hear it out.

In my opinion, I'm not disregarding the realities of life. But then, you're not interested in actually understanding my opinion, so you create these self-fullinging "denials." Good show.

I saw it coming before you made your point...

Which is why you demonstrated a lack of understanding of my point, by spouting some irrelevant crap about me not being a homosexual?

Please, Natoma, what is my point? Relay it back to me in your own words. I'm interested to know if, now that I've at least partly elaborated on it wrt to "coming out", that you really do get my point or not.

 

[Natoma]

Great way to skip over everything I wrote regarding our use of the intelligence we had Joe, and make a snippy one liner regarding Saddam. Head in the sand as usual.

As for the rest, yes, you are denying the realities of life. You make it sound almost surgical that coming out is some sort of black and white financial/personal struggle that can be quantified like evidence of WMD can. You made that point very clear from the very beginning. Obviously you can't understand it from your perspective and you have to quantify it in that manner because you are a heterosexual male. Of course, there are heterosexuals who understand the process of coming out because they look at things other than the black and white quantifiable aspects of a particular endeavour. You obviously cannot, thus, no reason to go there. If you're not happy with that, well that's too bad I suppose.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Great way to skip over everything I wrote regarding our use of the intelligence we had Joe

Why, because it's already been addressed previously? What is the intelligence of the entire world at the the time, and did the world believe we had reliably ascertained the WMD situation in iraq at the time?

Nice of you to not directly answer my question about identifying which of those two are not "facts". But keep trying to avoid my point, by pointing out some intelligence, or conclusions based on intelligence, was wrong. It's irrelevant.

As for the rest, yes, you are denying the realities of life. You make it sound almost surgical that coming out is some sort of black and white financial/personal struggle that can be quantified like evidence of WMD can.

How on earth did you reach EITHER one of those conclusions? How did I imply that coming out was some sort of black and white struggle, and how do you reach the conlcusion that intelligence gathering and evidence in trying to ascertain WMD status from a regime which is not being cooperative IS black and white? I don't agree with either of these things you assert.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions that you completely have no idea what I'm trying to say. And thanks also, for refusing to allow me to present my point of view in a way I think will get you to understand it.

I honestly have no idea what you seem to be "afraid" of. You talk constantly about "how you can't have a discussion" with me, and yet at the same time, you refuse to have one. Nice.

You made that point very clear from the very beginning. Obviously you can't understand it from your perspective and you have to quantify it in that manner because you are a heterosexual male.

Eh? The ONLY "quantifiable" aspect of your specific coming out that's relevant at all, is as you stated it ultimately having some large, quantifiable, impact on your (you and your partner's) finances. According to you, you were forced to leave home because of it, and this had some unforseen financial impact.

You did decide to leave home out of "necessity" because of your coming out, correct? Or were you just lying?

I have no idea what your personal coming out process was like, nor do I belive any two are alike. Not that any of this is relevant, but I don't understand why you believe I think in some "black and white" way about coming out. All I know, and am asserting, is the following, assuming you haven't lied:

1) You claimed to have gone into significant credit card debt.
2) Some if not all of this debt was due to your leaving home.
3) You moved out of your home "out of necessity due to bad conditions at home" after coming out.

This is all in support of your insistence that your credit card debt came "out of necessity" (so you are fiscally responsible.) Where you get this "black and white coming out" nonsense is beyond me. But then, you're not a heterosexual, so I guess you're not qualified to understand my point of view.

 

[Natoma]

Joe I've been here long enough to know your posting style quite well. Please don't cry crocodile tears now for being called on it.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Joe I've been here long enough to know your posting style quite well. Please don't cry crocodile tears now for being called on it.

Called on what, exactly?

What's my "style", other than trying to make my point understood. A point as I've shown you have repeatedly demonstrated a lack understanding of? What's my "style", other than constantly correcting your misperceptions of my personal views?

I've also been here long enough to expect this kind of lack of cooperation from you, but I still hold out hope.

Again, I don't possibly know what you could be "afraid of." It's pretty obvious that neither of us is going to change our opinion, but it is plain dumbfounding to me that you have no interest in understanding my point of view.