Tal's Iraq War: Blood for Oil, Oil for Food, Food for Thought

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Do you not get the news where you are, or is it all Fox?

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I was in Tokyo about 18 months ago and I was housed for part of my trip in an American military hotel.The television had both Japanese and American channels, including CNN and Fox News.I found two things very interesting regarding the broadcast of those two stations.First, instead of the tagline "Fair and Balanced", Fox used the phrase "Part of the Team", dispensing with any pretense of objectivity or of "fairness" or "balance". Clearly, they were a cheering squad for the Neocon leadership and had no interest in questioning a single thing the administration did or planned to do.Second, on CNN there were sometimes messages that came on the screen before news broadcasts and commentaries that basically said that the viewer should prepare themselves to hear views expressed that may be critical of the US actions in Iraq because CNN broadcasts a wide variety of viewponts.In other words, CNN is a real news agency that doesn't simply toe the party line and regurgitate what Bush Inc. wants them to, unlike Fox.This implies to me that military personel are likely being shielded as much as possible from real news sources.I mean, if they were doing that in the military hotel in Tokyo, so far way from any conflict, how much worse would the avilability of real information be in Bagdhad?

Here's a link to the congressional report on Iraq.http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.htmlenjoyThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-11-2005 09:26 AM

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I've never seen any of that schra.
Here, we watch Fox, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and Al Jazeera.

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There are no codes flashing on the bottom telling us to prepare ourselves to hear views expressed that may be critical of the US actions in Iraq because CNN broadcasts a wide variety of viewponts.

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We simply watch the news.

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I do prefer fox, but I guess that's a given since I'm a conservative.

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OK, well I guess that they had to warn the vacationing generals in Tokyo so they wouldn't get pissed off at the hotel staff or something.Seriously, now that you know that Fox was touting itself as "Part of the Team" instead of "Fair and Balanced", doesn't that make you pause for just a moment to wonder if they are doing journalism or cheerleading?Conservative people who watch Fox News are not interested in actual journalism or integity. They are mostly just wanting to not ever have their preferred beliefs challenged.That's because Fox news lies and distorts the truth. And yes, I can back that up.

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Negative, I am just using those links to refute the assertion that there were no WMD in Iraq.

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Tal, did you read any part of the Republican led US Congressional report on Iraq that I provided for you?It disagrees with you.

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My position (There are WMD in Iraq) is substantiated from multiple sources of Sarin, Mustard, and 1.7 tons of nuclear material.

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You guys are ignoring the facts.

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Tal, have you read the US Congressional report on Iraq?Here is the link again:http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.htmlThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-12-2005 08:56 AM

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Hussein, the report concluded, "aspired to develop a nuclear capability" and intended to work on rebuilding chemical and biological weapons after persuading the United Nations to lift sanctions.

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So, does this mean The US gets to invade and occupy any country who's leader has "aspirations" to build chemical and biological weapons?Gosh, we're going to be busy, eh?Maybe we should only invade the ones with very, very large oil reserves.Oh, BTW, does this mean you admit that Hussein actually did NOT have nuclear or biological capability, but only "aspirations" to REbuild them?

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Go on, murderer, explain it all away.

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Contra, when you use language like this, I just roll my eyes and stop reading your posts.Clearly, you are not at all interested in rational discussion. How is anybody supposed to respond to you when you treat them this way?You are frothing at the mouth and that just makes you look like a crazy asshole.Tal, there's no point talking to contra when he gets like this, I suggest ignoring him.

Contra, if you call a military person a murderer, they are not going to listen to you.It doesn't matter how airtight your facts are, you are going to put them off.Clearly, your goal is not to persuade him and to help him see your side if you treat him like that.So, what is your goal? To stand alone on the top of your little intellectual mountain with nobody listening to you or even trying to see your point of view because you've been so rude to them?It certainly seems so.

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Logical fallacy of distraction: Style Over Substance:

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Definition:

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The manner in which an argument (or arguer) is presented is
taken to affect the likelihood that the conclusion is true.

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I don't know if you are right or not, because I stop reading your posts when you let yourself behave poorly.

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Oh please - I am not obliged to accept a specific rationalisation of murder as a prerequisite to "polite debate".

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Nobody's asking you to accept any definition as a prerequisite for polite debate.You are simply being told what the consequesnces are when you do not debate politely.People stop listening to you.

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I will not be blackmailed in to accepting the other sides presumptions by your tut-tutting.

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Oh, stop being such a drama queen. Nobody is blackmailing you into anything.

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And the irony is you've just been defending the right of anyone to speak freely without exception, so stick to your principles and suck it up.

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I haven't said that you should stop saying anything at all, have I?I simply told you what the consequesnces were likely to be if you continued ranting.

Now, contra, do you see what Tal is doing?He is not taking you seriously and is ignoring what you are saying.Now, he is ignoring what I have been saying to him as well, but he cannot point to any insulting behavior as an excuse to why he has not replied to my questions the way he can with you.It makes my position stronger, and your insistance upon calling people disrespectful names makes your position weaker.

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We only invade as a last resort. IMO the US tried diplomacy.

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No, the Bush admin. didn't really try diplomacy.Actually, for a while there before the invasion, I thought that Bush was pretty smart with all of the sabre rattling he was doing. I was reassured that the UN weapons inspectors were in there, doing their thing.The problem came when the inspectors didn't find anything. Then Bush called the inspectors out of Iraq and invaded.

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The WMD intelligence was wrong from everyone's perspective, not just the US. Iran is in the same boat, but we haven't invaded them yet.

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Well, no, actually the prewar intelligence was pretty good coming out of Iraq from the weapons inspectors. The Bush admin just choose to ignore the inspectors and instead chose to listen to Chalabi and believe in a single forged document.They had long before decided to go to war in Iraq regardless of what the rest of the world said and regardless of the results of inspections.They did know that their case was pretty weak, though, which is why they constantly invoked 9/11 and Osamma bin Laden in the same breath as Hussein and Iraq in speeches and interviews in the run up to the war.They counted on the fear and ignorance of the American people, and they used it well.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-12-2005 15:56 AM

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And what have I lost exactly? One bigot fixated on national hurbis holds me in contempt, boo hoo hoo.

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But wouldn't it have been great to get him to see your side, to accept the rightness of what you say by the weight of evidence alone?What is your goal? To just shout from your mountaintop with nobody listening? Or is your goal to persuade people to your point of view?

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So he doesn't want to hear a hard truth, so what, that only means he's more likely to get himself killed by failing to examine the reality he finds himself in. Stupidity is its own penalty IMO.

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And a blinding lack of tact and subtlety is it's own penalty, as well.If nobody is paying attention to the rude man, it doesn't matter how right he is, does it?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-12-2005 15:55 AM

Tal, you might want to read this regarding Fox News and the Iraq war.http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=2937&f...

Tal, have you read the US Congress's report on Iraq?Here is the link, for the third time.http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.html

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What did we know about Saddam right before we invaded?

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He had stockpiles of WMD before.

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Actually, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush all said that Hussein actually DID have stockpiles of WMD, and that they knew where they were, but that they couldn't tell us where. That turned out to be a lie.Second, according to Blix and the weapons inspectors who were in Iraq right up to the invasion, those stockpiles had been destroyed.

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He USED WMD on his own people before.

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Right. That was back when the US was funding Hussein.Also, there are many terrible dictators killing millions of their own people right now, most notably in Africa. Why aren't we invading them? I'll give you a hint. Those countries don't have the second largest reserve of a certain substance.

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He invaded his neighboring country before.

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...and showed to intent or ability to do so any time soon. Hussein didn't even control a large part of his own country, and hadn't for a long time, what makes you think he was an imminent threat to any of his neighbors?Also, this was not the rationale for war that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld used in the selling of the war before we invaded. It was only we invaded and did not find any WMD that the rationale for the war morphed into "saving the Iraqi people from a terrible dictator".

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He fired SCUDS at 3 of his neighbors before.

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...and did he have the ability to do it again? Wouldn't he have done so at the start of the invasion, at least at Israel, if he had had that capability?

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He gave every indication that he still had WMD.

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But the weapons inspectors were NOT FINDING ANY, and they were not allowed to continue doing their job because Bush and co wanted to invade.

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He tap danced with the UN inspectors.

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Then where are the WMD that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld said were there and that they knew where they were? Why has almost every single claim about the WMD capability of pre-war Iraq made by the Bush admin. been shown to be not true by Bush's own CIA waepons team?

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He violated 13 UN resolutions before.

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So we should invade his country, unilaterally, when he is no threat to US soil?Why couldn't we have managed Iraq the way we have managed Cuba?

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There is a pattern there.

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Sure there's a pattern, but this is no excuse for a unilateral invasion of a sovereign nation that has not harmed the US in any way.

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Saddam could have proved that he had gotten rid of his WMD VERY EASILY, but he chose not to.

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The inspections were working.The inspections were ongoing and had to be stopped because Bush didn't want to wait to let the inspectors continue their work because he wanted to invade.Now, we have not found the WMD that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfelt told us were there, and that they knew where they were.Have you read the Congressional report on Iraq yet?Here is the link:http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.htmlThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-13-2005 09:13 AM