Why haven't I heard of this guy before?Follow

No, but Congress did vote on the issue and did give the President the authorization to use military force on Iraq. So please quit using this argument as if it had any backup.

My hovercraft is full of eels btw

Alright, what have you guys done with Monxdot? This is clearly an imposter...

No. Ari was a crappy White House press secretary, and allowed the reporter to lead him with the question. He made the mistake of answering what he thought was the crux of the question (that we went to war to dismantle Iraq's WMDs), but ended up essentially allowing the reporter to put the "imminent threat" phrase into his mouth in the process.

Note that *he* does not use the phrase. The guy asking the question did. That's a logical fallacy called "Complex question" in case you're wondering. Ari thinks he's addressing the issue of whether or not we'll find WMDs (which is what he talks about), but the reporter's pupose in phrasing the question in that way was to make it appear that Ari was confirming that those WMDs constituted an "imminent threat".

Let me again point out that the problem here is one of scale. We did "find WMDs in Iraq". We just didn't find large quantities that were in a fully usable state. You'll note that Ari specifically says that he's had a "long time to hide them". Yet, when the weapons that were found were old and decrepit, everyone seemed to dismiss them as old useless weapons that don't count. Um... If he's been hiding them for a long time, what state did you think they'd be in?


There's a whole lot of presumption present in the anti-war case. You have to deliberately interprete the statements of the White House in a very specific way in order to later argue that those intepretations don't match the facts. You have to assume that when they talked about WMD's they meant physically assembled, and immediately usable weapons. When they talked about the "Threat of Iraqs WMDs", you again had to assume this was an "immediate threat" presented by those assembled and usable weapons, and not a future threat presented by the fact that they were hiding what they had and clearly attempting to retain as much knowledge and capability as possible (presumably so as to be able to resume construction as soon as it was possible). You had to interpret Iraq's role in the "War on Terror" to mean that they were somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks, instead of again referring to the potential for support for future attacks by other organizations.


In otherwords, you basically had to ignore 90% of what was actually said by the White House and by Congress, focus on the remaining 10%, twist it around a bit, and then argue against that instead in order to come to the conclusion that you were lied to and the war was somehow illegal or unjust. But fortunately for the anti-war folks, you had a lot of help. The media was more then willing to hype the "imminent threat" of Iraq's WMDs. It was more then willing to spend hours and hours of prime time speculating about possible connnections between Iraq and 9/11. And it was certainly very very good at repeating short snippets of speeches that highlighted only the most scary bits in order to reinforce all of those. All that was needed was an anti-war movement that would make sure to argue against just the right phrases being repeated in the media and it was very very easy to convince the masses that these things were the key issues to be debated. And once that is done, they've hijacke the entire issue and replaced it with something else.


Why else is it that so many people talk about whether or not there were WMDs in Iraq as though that's a key determinant of the legitimacy of the war, yet the presense of those WMDs does not appear in the document Congress wrote at all? Think about it. Clearly, there was a huge disconnect between why your government was doing things and why you *thought* they were doing things. Just ask yourself why that is...

You.

Why, because I can.

In Nobby spirit:



FTFY

You can get anything you want at Alices' Restaurant.

I love you man.

For the record, there is exactly zero chance he will get 6 years in Jail.

It's nice to see that Gbaji still can't win an arguement on Iraq, it totally justifies my anti war stance.

They could be, they could not be. I haven't seen interviews for them. If someone thought long and hard about the war and decided the honorable thing was to go, then I admire that, too. I don't admire a man who either closes his eyes to a conclusion out of fear or rote obedience, though. I can't say which most people fall under until they state it.


As for John Walker Lindh, of course he's a thinker, but he used it to be destructive of innocent life and reactionary. Your comparison doesn't apply, unless you know something about this guy you're not saying. Edited to add that actually, in your mind, it probably makes perfect sense because you're reactionary and simplistic as well. Quelle coinkydink.

Edited, Jan 4th 2007 12:24pm by Atomicflea

I think that most terrorists think in some way that they're fighting the system, but I guess what you say is true: there are no truly original thoughts.

Really? I thought he pled guilty and is serving time.

this raises questions in regards to the diffrerneces in responsibility taken for certain actions between an Individual Mind and a Collective Mind that can be percieved as groups of people sharing an intent and purpose; pack mentality if you will. It seems that the Collective Mentality is a more primal force and is more easily influenced to do thing that an otherwise rational Individual Mind wouuld never do. This is for any number of reasons. Where does the Individual Mind recoil to wehn one is within a Pack Environment? It would seem that it transforms itself into any number of justifications and rationalizations and excuses for the activities taking place on the collective level; a compartmentalization of the consciousness. That is why the question is important involving whether or not the Individual is Responsible for the Group.