Irans Nukes.Follow

There's a factor you missed gbaji m'dear.

The ability to rationalise facts versus opinions.

Smash, Moebius and ToUtem argue like ****** adolescents, but interpret facts in different ways.

You, my little butt-buddy, rant and ******* random fantasies dressed up as rhetoric, debate and reasoning.

In short, sir, I'd rather get ***** about my disagreement with ToUtem's interpretation, than I would with your verbose inability to interpret.

What relevance does your personal opinions of my debating style have to do with this topic?


The same relevance it has on every topic. You don't "debate" at all. You have an argument with imaginary friends while everyone else watches and laughs. Well, that's not really fair, I suppose. I imagine some of the more empathetic people are full of pity for you as well.

Is fine & dandy when we happen to agree upon what the "main" reasons were. Take Iraq for example: If memory serves there's another multi-paged thread where you argue ad-nauseum how "WMDs weren't the main reason" (I'm paraphrasing) we invaded.

Multiple posters made attempts to prove to you otherwise, yet you argued and posted links to what we would refer to as "secondary reasons" that you believe to be "main" ones.

So everyone agrees to disagree and posts in these multi-thread "debates" while all the while both sides (Right and Left) "hear" what they want to hear (ex: Their "side's" arguement) and ignore the other side's.

The Asylum really is a microcausm for the current political scene in America.

And THAT'S frackin' scary.

Well. For the record, I wasn't arguing that "WMDs weren't the main reason". What I was doing was questioning what exactly "we went to war over WMDs" meant. Many people have interpreted that to mean that Iraq possessed (at the time of invasion) physical, constructed, usable biological, chemical, and/or nuclear weapons which represented and "imminent threat" to the security of the US. My entire argument was that within the context of "Iraq's WMDs" the real "main reason" was Iraq's violations of the cease fire agreement signed in 1991, primarily with regards to their WMD programs and continued attempts to obtain and develop the materials needed to build WMDs rather then abandoning such things as they were required to do in the terms of said cease fire agreement.

Which is significant. If the first interpretation is correct, then the absence of physical, constructed, usable (significant since we found many WMDs, but they were no longer in a usable condition) WMDs would mean that the reasons for war were false. However, if the second interpretation is correct (which I believe it is) then the only "proof" needed to show the war was justified is materials, plans, and actions shown to be in violation of said cease fire agreement (of which there are mountains).

One of the major points of support for my position is the fact that while the Resolution signed by Congress which authorized the war listed a dozen or so violations of said cease fire related to Iraqi attempts to obtain materials and hide equipment related to the design and construction of WMDs, there is not a single mention or claim that Iraq "possesses" physical, constructed, usable WMDs. My point is supported by the facts and official reasons for war. The other position is widely held, but is the result of media interpretation of the situation.


A side issue, to be sure. But still relevant IMO. It's important to assess the facts out of the rhetoric. It's easy after the fact (or even during the fact) to create strawman alternative reasons for why things are happening. It's easy to take something with a tiny bit of evidence (such as the occasional mention of a belief that Iraq "possesses" WMDs) and expand them into the whole reason. But just as it's wrong to take one person's statements and beliefs on the reason why we dropped the A-bombs in Japan and expand them into the "whole reason", it's equally wrong to do the same with regard to our reasons for invading Iraq.


It's just staggering to me how willing so many people are to believe something that has very little factual support purely because it's a popular position to take (and purely for political reason). It's funny, because the reasons are the same in both cases as well. It's "fun" to assume some dark and sinister reasons for the things that happen. It can often be a popular thing for people to speculate about what "really happened" and the "real reasons" for things. But in the real world, those are rarely the actual real reasons. Most of the time, the obvious logical reason *is* the reason. Pouring through documents and speeches to find that one line that supports an alternative reason shouldn't sway an intelligent person to ignore the mountains of fact and statements going in another direction.

Unfortunately, it often does...

So are you admitting you're stupid, or that you're ignoring "mountains of fact(s) and statements going in another (the "WMD") direction"?

Sigh... You can lead a horse to water...


The "mountains of fact" are that Iraq was in gross violation of the terms of the cease fire agreement they signed in 1991. Period. End of story.

All the talk about whether or not Iraq possessed this weapon or that weapon is just that. Talk. It has absolutely zero meaning in terms of the actual violations that Iraq was involved in, nor the actual reasons we went to war. You may think otherwise. Heck, you almost certainly do (as do most people). But just because millions of people believe the same false things does not make them true.


It's just amazing to me that right after I spent several paragraphs explaining *exactly* what the issue was (debate over the actual reason we went to war), you manage to ignore that and continue to argue over whether there was "mountains of evidence" regarding something completely unrelated. Get it through your head. Whether or not Iraq actually had physical, constructed, usable WMD was *not* a criteria used when our Congress made the decision to invade Iraq. It just wasn't. No matter how many times you saw that issue debated and discussed on your TV set, it really was an irrelevant side topic to the actual reasons for war. Sure. It may be something of interest to discuss, but the actual presence or absence of those weapons had absolutely zero bearing on the decision to invade.

While a position may indeed be widely held due to the media's interpretation of the situation. Your position, as is often the case, is due to YOUR interpretation of the situation. What makes your interpretation any better and/or less skewed than the medias?

Okay, my apologies. I honestly hadn't read much of the above debate. It never occurred to me you were arguing with yourself over the tense of the chemical weapons.

You lose the forest for the tree gjabi.

Well... we'll all die eventually.

Have you ever heard someone argue that the war in Iraq wasn't justified because when we invaded we found no evidence that Iraq ever had stockpiles of WMDs?

This is why we'd be perfectly justified in invading Germany.

Good luck getting him to do that. He'll never admit it, just like Glenn Murphy Jr. won't admit he resigned as both The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party & as the President of the Young Republican National Federation for attempting to blow a passed out 22 year old (he claims he resigned because of a business opportunity).

Of course, any record of him ever being President of the Young Republican National Federation has been removed from their website.

Nope. While there were plenty of different reasons given pre-invasion to justify invasion, the common theme was simple possession and potential non-Iraq use of WMD, the most-often cause by Bush in speeches was WMD. The intended reason (to be accepted by the public) by the Administration was WMD. The reasons of: Removing a dicatator; Liberating the Iraqis; Violating UN Resolutions; Links to 9/11 & al qaeda; were all given then retracted then given again as the facts changed and public perception was tested. WMD was the lynch thread, or whatever it is in knitting and/or looming that holds the rug together. If there is such a thing, probably not. These other reasons wove in and out, crossing WMD at times, mainly smokescreening and allowing the administration MORE reasons so that when one was dismissed, the rest could be highlighted.

If you didn't see this during the actual time period, you have a selective memory now, or poor awareness then. Violating UN treaties was only a cause internationally, in an attempt to gain more international support and more importantly an offical stamp on the invasion. Even before that failed and we reneged on our promise to put forth a final war resolution to the UN, WMDs were being pimped as the primary reason for our own public to accept. Just WMDs, with an occasional secondary linked reason. It was like:

1.WMDs a)Saddam will give them to al qaeda
1.WMDs b)violaton of UN resolution
1.WMDs c)Iraq link to 9/11
1.WMDs d)dispute over Iraqi compliance with current inspections
1.WMDs e)Saddam's use of WMD on his own people
1.WMDs f)Iraq's shooting at planes in no-fly zone
1.WMDs g)Iraq supports Palestinian terrorist's families

Etc. WMDs was always numero uno, with those secondary reasons changing constantly dependent on which ones the administration felt would be best swallowed by the public. A couple of them may have taken center stage at points, but WMD was ALWAYS the scare word, the speech word, and the overwhelming emphasis.

EDIT: If you have serious doubts about this even though you saw it at the time, here are Bush speeches about Iraq. I'm watching football at the moment so can't cherry-pick quotes out of them all. I'll just use one from the Jan. 2002 state of the union speech to get you started:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/archive.html





Edited, Dec 16th 2007 3:13pm by Palpitus

Edited, Dec 16th 2007 3:16pm by Palpitus

Gonna answer your post Palpitus, since it also addresses questions brought by other folks as well.

I really think you (and most people) are still missing the point of what I'm saying. I'm not arguing about whether we went to war "over WMD", or if it was "about WMDs". What I'm trying to do is get you to narrow that down to exactly what "about WMDs" we went to war over.

It's amusing because I just spent several paragraphs explaining this exact point about how the vague "it's about WMD" is stated, but then assumed to mean "Iraq possesses WMDs" when it comes time to assess the validity of the original reasons for war. Read your post. You just repeated the same thing. You repeated the same vague "It's about WMDs" statements, clearly referring to statements made "about WMDs", but assuming that it means "they possessed physical usable WMDs".

Your entire list includes references to things that could happen if they had WMDs. Not things that were happening.

To illustrate this further, let me change the bolding of your quote just a bit:




Notice the word "seeking" (which for some reason you didn't bold, while you bolded the phrase "weapons of mass destruction"). Don't you think that's a significant word in that sentence?


Again. It's not about whether someone said the phrase "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that's important. It's what exactly they said about those weapons. I pointed this out. I thought I was very clear when I pointed this out. Yet you still keep seeing nothing but that phrase or a reference to it, and drawing conclusions that aren't correct.

Seeking. That means "don't have but are trying to get". What part of that would you say was proven to be wrong if after the invasion we didn't find any physical usable WMDs?


In what way did you think this disproved my point? If anything, your entire post just supports my position. Heck. It's almost a textbook example of exactly the kind of semantic bait and switch I was talking about. I actually lost count of the number of times you quoted the phrase "weapons of mass destruction", and in each case you are arguing that this somehow invalidates my argument. Which in turn requires that you interpret those phrases automatically to mean "physical and usable weapons of mass destruction", when the context of those statements clearly don't support that assumption.


It's a common tactic. You start with a statement someone makes. You broaden the statement and apply that broadened version as a label. Then you interpret the new label/phrase/whatever back down to a narrow meaning that isn't the same as the one you started with. It would be like if I said that "Joe owns a Ford Excursion", and over time you expand it to "Joe owns an SUV", and then later argue that since Joe doesn't own a Honda CRV that my statement was false.

Sound dumb? It is. But that's exactly the sort of illogic at work with the whole "The Iraq was was unjustified since they didn't have any WMDs" argument. It's just surprising that even when it's pointed out, so many people can't see it.