Bill Whittle illustrates the dim bulbs graduating from college in the 21st century with a sad lesson from 2006, when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received an honorary degree from Boston College. About fifty brave students showed their bad manners and disrespect fearless rebellion by standing and turning their backs while she spoke. Such brave speaking of a silent truth to power is a good example of immature discourtesy. A maturity they no doubt failed to attain in their college classrooms. I’m impressed: for about $250,000.00 per undergraduate “education” fifty of these students came out even more ignorant than when they entered the ivied halls of Boston College.
And why did they do this? Perhaps a letter of dissent sent by an adjunct English instructor will provide us with a clue here. He says in his epistle to the president of the college:
“Dear Father Leahy,
“I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College. I am doing so — after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret — as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year’s graduation … But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.”
Why is she a liar? Because, he claims, she “knowingly misled the American people regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
Leaving aside the lazy short-cut ad hominem attack on Dr. Rice, don’t you wonder if this terminal Leftist — wherever he is now — was ever moved to reconsider his attack based on the WMD that have been showing up in Syria for quite a while now? From the get-go it was obvious that Saddam Hussein had sent his chemicals and explosives on to Syria, but not before practicing a little genocide on his own Kurds, killing at least 240,000 of them [my emphasis-D]:
…The National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, asserted with “high confidence” that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and France all agreed with this judgment. Even Hans Blix—who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he dispose of the WMD he was known to have had in the past—lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
“The discovery of a number of … chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions…. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery … points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.”
But never mind the evidence — he don’t need no stinkin’ evidence because he is faithfully certain of the gospel truth that Rice is “a liar”.
But at his trial Saddam Hussein’s crimes, using his WMD, were indeed called genocide: the gassing, killing, torturing, and live burial in mass graves (that are still being uncovered) of who-knows-how-many Kurds — or any small hamlet that dared show less than fawning adoration.
In the face of this horror, a petty man calls our former Secretary of State “a liar”. The adjunct English “professor” is at best a useful idiot, and he’s busy making useful idiots of the next generation.
I went back just now to look at the Afterburner page of this video. In reading the comments, I remembered I’d left two, one congratulatory, and a response to another commenter giving him a URL to a list of conservative colleges. As we do here, Bill Whittle’s site uses comment moderation. Neither of my comments was permitted to see the light of day. That’s interesting, if a little sad; one likes to think the people one admires are above that kind of pettiness.
One can only guess at the reasons why they don’t like what I “do” — as Whittle pointed out. The man gave a terrific speech but for some reason — perhaps because the site is sponsored and owned by David Horowitz? — my comments have cooties and must be deleted?? I don’t know what other reason they’d have for blocking me…very curious and interesting.
I’m letting you know about the petty behavior, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Bill Whittle has important things to say that no one else is saying. For example, one of the things I asked in my comment is if they were planning to cover the disturbing police state in Wisconsin. The state of affairs there is a de facto example of what he was predicting for us and it’s already happening.
The MSM is ignoring this the same way it ignored the illegal actions of the Democrats in the legislature who fled Wisconsin to avoid a vote, or the dirty tricks repeatedly played by the union on school districts and Republican members of the legislature.
So far only National Review is giving it much coverage, and they’ve kept at it, exposing the ugly mess.
If you see additional information from other sources, please let us know. This is a crucial story of soviet-type behavior happening right now: home invasions by police, not permitting the people they attack to speak of the attacks (and I use that word advisedly), not even to their extended families. It is hell on those who have come under fire by a rogue DA and his wife.
So while what Whittle says is true, when he fulminates against those three dictators from the history books, using an example from 2006, he could also be addressing what is happening in Wisconsin — it is the most thoroughly soviet-like experience in recent American memory.
This state of affairs in Wisconsin has been going on for at least four years, maybe longer, in one form or another. We did several reports a few years ago, focusing not only on the outrageous law-breaking, but on the utter silence of the MSM. It’s still going on, only pettier and more intimidating.
In all these years the Progressives have utterly refused to accept the people’s vote on their governor, Scott Walker. Nor have they accepted his electoral victory despite their shameful attempt to recall him. But especially important is the rollback against thuggish SEIU leaders whose tactics against school districts and teachers had left the state headed toward bankruptcy. The Democrats and union leaders will not let up. If we had an authentic Department of Justice, they’d have been put on notice by now. If we had an authentic press, one with integrity, this stuff would be on the front pages.
Last I heard from a reliable source, it is thanks to Walker and the legislature that Wisconsin has gone from fiscal hell to a reasonable budget. School districts can now have insurance carriers present bids for health insurance and get much lower rates than the union forced on them. As a result, schools were able to hire more teachers and municipal budgets are no longer trapped on the wheel of the union thug-leaders with their death threats.
It can be hard to do Google searches on the situation, though. The news is so skewed towards the socialists and thugs that genuine news is hard to come by. It’s good to know that National Review is continuing coverage, and I hear The Wall Street Journal has information but that is behind a firewall. Time for Time and The New York Times to get their heads out of the Obama bowl and start reporting real stories.
There are a lot of scared, traumatized people in Wisconsin.
More and more progressives teach children to vilify people for who they are, not what they do.
The modern university protects children from hearing opposing points of view. That young girl is protesting, with her mass-printed “Not in My Name” silliness. And who is this child afraid to hear, pray tell?
I don’t see why it’s so hard to admit that the Bush administration, including Rice, lied about Iraq. They did. I don’t even understand why it’s so important since politicians lie, cheat and steal every single day.
regards
Maybe because they didn’t.
The US intelligence assessment was backed up by every other major nation’s assessments, as well as the assessment of not only Blix, but his predecessor in that position.
And it was verified by findings on the ground.
Not true. From the UK our own dear Princess Toni Bliar told a park of porkies as did Bush and his gang. One can acknowledge the scumminess of the Left without having to delude oneself about the –so-called –Right. They are all liars, [detestable objects], thieves and murderers. That is what Government is all about. Some are worse than others but they are all scum.
On the 4th June 2002 the Zeyzoun dam in Syria collapsed, providing Saddam Hussein with a golden opportunity to get rid of his chemical weapons, which he did in the guise of aid to Syria.
That should be universally acknowledged by now, instead the entire western world goes about still to this day squawking the catchy line: “We were taken to war on a lie”. The episode with the Kurds was proof Saddam had chemical weapons, so, they just disappeared into thin air?
Once again our leaders and particularly the media, fails us.
Once again our leaders and particularly the media, fails us.
Thank you. That’s been my point since the “Bush lied people died” idiocy. Well, it precedes that but it’s a good stopping place to examine the universal mendacity.
The media is deeply mired in its own effluvia that it will never get out. The best are ridiculed and driven out; the worst are promoted on the Peter Principle, except that the promoters already know the truth about the mendacious even as they promote them. The latest in a long, long line of ‘jornolists’ is this villain:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/02/04/nbc-shock-brian-williams-forced-to-recant-iraq-war-lie-repeated-for-12-years/
Even after he was suspended, even as the evidence continues to mount that he is a serial liar, NBC is itching to have their “anchor” return to the stage. Unbelievable. More like an albatross than an anchor, but to the Left, that distinction is lost:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/04/27/report-even-as-his-troubles-grow-nbc-news-chief-wants-brian-williams-back/
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Edited for ADDED VALUE: Check out Larwyn’s Linx, here:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2015/04/larwyns-linx-sunlight-foundation-leader.html
Doug Ross is an aggregator par excellence. Every time I visit his site I come away with new information.
BTW, “Larwyn” of Larwyn’s Linx was an email aggregator in the old, very old days. She’d send out daily tips she’d collected to the admin of conservative blogs. She and I used to have an email correspondence until her eyesight went bad…that was all so long ago. I have wondered from time to time if she had the same condition that the B was able to treat and even partly reverse. The stuff they used for the B was only begun to be utilized in cases like his in the last 5 years.
Anyway, Doug Ross took up her cause and continues it to this day. One – wait, make that TWO – of the people I admire.
Please give your sources, Mr. Dynamite, for these purported “lies” about Iraq. You simply throw it out there and we’re supposed to accept what amounts to your opinion?? Did you even read the link I used to source my contention in the posting above? You can’t have, or you wouldn’t have simply repeated what you’ve been fed.
Let’s try this again:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=555
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Just click the link…you’ll see a preponderance of evidence going back over the decade since then…like this list on the sidebar, all of which are linked at the original site I gave you:
Of course, you’ll have to CLICK THE LINK to read documented information that goes well beyond your casual opinion, dropped here with not one resource to back it up.
Regards back atcha, Mr Dynamite from Denmark.
The real question is, why is it so hard for you to believe that they didn’t lie?
Is it because you can’t believe that mass media would push a false narrative for political reasons?
Politicians may lie, but so do the media. They may lie to support the lies of politicians, or create new lies to slander politicians they oppose.
The presumption of protesting against someone because they are a liar is that not everyone lies as badly as the person against whom you are protesting. Indeed, the usual implication of protesting against someone as a liar (rather than fulminating against some particular lie), is that the protester is not a worse liar. Of course, everyone protesting about the lies of the Bush administration is a worse liar, and the implicit claim that they are not worse liars than the Bush administration is itself just another of their lies.
I do not deny that I can and have asserted falsehoods in my life, some wittingly. But I have not engaged in a long-term pattern of grandiose and obvious lies for the purpose of abolishing truth from the public sphere, as have those who claim that there were no prohibited chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons stocked or under development in Iraq AND that the Bush administration knew this to be the case with certainty while making the opposite representation.
We now know beyond even unreasonable doubt that Saddam had stockpiles of prohibited chemical munitions, we also have a very high degree of confidence that an extensive if only marginally successful biological weapon development program was in place, and further substantial indications of preliminary nuclear weapons development have been uncovered. Most the indications which could be expected to be uncovered without substantial military control of the country were evident before the war. To claim that the Bush administration believed the (entirely false) proposition that Iraq had no prohibited weapon stockpiles or development programs is fatuous. To claim they were so certain of this falsehood that, in making assertions which were later proven entirely true, they were intentionally lying at the time…is impossible for any sane person to sincerely believe.
I think that our society has been gripped with mass insanity, but there are also those who are deliberately and consciously lying to the public in order to further this mass insanity. I’m not saying that those people are fully sane, just that they know well enough that they are deliberately spreading falsehoods.
Well, actually they found the chemical weapons. Shortly after the invasion the Italian found a cache of chemical/biological weapons. This was followed later by a much larger stash of chemical/biological weapons found by American troops. Insurgents made some attempts to use weapons that fell into their hands. These failed because they tried to use artillery shells as IEDs, but the shells were designed to mix the chemicals in flight by the spin of the shell, so the chemicals weren’t activated. We found some of the chemical weapons facilities, at least one of which was captured by ISIS. Saddam Hussein had also used them to wipe out Halabja, a town of 45,000 people; only a few shells were needed. And that is an important point. Only a small amount of these weapons are needed to kill hundreds of thousands of people. (Karl Rove thought it was politically advantageous to let the issue go, and liberal media had no desire to admit the existence of such weapons.)
We didn’t find an atomic bomb, but we didn’t expect to. We did find an atomic weapons program that had been mothballed so that it could be restarted at a later date. Saddam Hussein actually made an effort to retain the suspicion that he might have an atomic bomb. Before his execution, his handlers asked Saddam why he did this when the US was threatening him, his answer was that he feared an Iranian invasion.
So, no, they didn’t lie about the weapons. Saddam had them and had used them. He murdered 100s of thousands, invaded other countries, harbored terrorists, sent money to Palestinian terrorists and others, he violated armistice agreements, shot at coalition planes, etc. Doing nothing was not an option. We know how that ends.
“The intelligence was as clear as any intelligence I’ve ever seen … yet, she also said, “The problem is, the intelligence wasn’t right.” Rice would like the public to believe that no one is to blame because everyone was misled by the intelligence. In fact, U.N. weapons inspectors declared weeks before the invasion that Hussein did not possess WMD. As far as Saddam Hussein using wmd’s against his own people, the US was complicit (Reagan continued Carter’s pro-Hussein policy – Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran. The US didn’t protest this brutal violation of international law. Instead, they worked to protect Iraq in the UN). The United States has the world’s largest collection of weapons, and has often bombed or invaded other countries and murdered people with their weapons of mass destruction. The hypocrisy of the US breathtaking.
I agree re the hypocrisy, but even more so about our choice of target in MENA. However, it was a bloody learning curve. Everywhere we intervene, we’re wrong. Everywhere we don’t intervene, we’re wrong. In the second case, Rwanda and Laos.
If we had done nothing after 9/11, those who like us to play Tar Baby would’ve howled.
As John Bolton said, it would take a generation to clean out the Augean stables of the State Department. I partly agree, but I think it would take longer than that.
The role of the US as the world’s interventionist was as much pushed on us by others as it was willingly shouldered. In the wake of the evils exposed after the Second World War, we were expected to be the point man in the push back against the USSR – and the Soviets were a HUGE threat to Europe. But because of us Europe was free to disarm, to cut out the expense of maintaining their military, and leave it all to the U.S., all the while continuing to complain about what we did or didn’t do. They argued among themselves about what the big clumsy giant ought to be doing now, and now, and then again, in this now.
The Coalition pushed for the war in Iraq, but we were told to lead. The only reason it took as long as it did was because (among other things), France needed that supply of oil from a country which the UN had sanctioned. Plenty of room at the Hypocrites’ Table for all.
There are NO innocent by-standers here. Our “breath-taking hypocrisy” is matched and exceeded by the moral superiority of those who call us hypocrites. Name-calling is such an easy out when faced with factual evil.
And now the U.S. is being deliberately led again. Our president is on a destructive march through North Africa and the Middle East even as he decimates his own military leaders, replacing strong men with those who will do as they’re told, even if it violates the Constitution.
As Whittle says, it’s about what we DO, and the “we” in America has been in a long slow divorce from its crony capitalist “leadership”. It has become glaringly obvious that anyone from either side who shows up at the Kremlin-by-the-Potomac will be suborned…or they will leave. As did Michelle Bachman.
@Dymphna – Yes, yes, and yes, to what you’ve stated. There are no innocent bystanders, and I’ve included my disconnected, corrupt and incompetent European leadership, vassals to the powers that shouldn’t be. Maybe it is time to write a requiem for the continent.
American behaviour in regards to other Powers like France and Great Britain both during and after WWII pretty much guaranteed that the USA would end up with the job of being the world’s policeman. A job that GB had been doing pretty well for the previous 130 years.
The bigger point which is missed is that Bush and company blamed Saddam for 9/11 not KSA and Pakistan because no one in D.C. had the nerve to condemn them because of Saudi investments in American politicians. So instead we rolled in and destroyed a secular Arab state.
Heaven forbid that we would dare take our wrath out on the principle agent and funder of Islamic terrorism in the world – KSA.
At least under his regime(compared to the American approved puppets) Christians, secularists and others had a degree of security and prosperity that was taken away by Americans and their desire to impose “democracy” them which ended up turning Iraq into a Shia client state of Iran who happily persecuted Christians and others.
Way to go Bush and Obama.
As for the WMD’s and Saddam being a mortal threat to the U.S. It was so much hogwash promoted by beltway bandits, desk driving jingoists and Neocons. Saddam’s military was a wreck after GW1 and couldn’t fight, he had no AF, no Navy, nothing. He was no threat to us.
It was amusing at the time how a bunch of paid jingos went on TV and compared Saddam to Hitler(just like they are doing with Putin and Assad) in the MSM and pounded the war drums that he had to go.
In the end we sent over 4ooo of our men to their graves and turned tens of thousands of others into damaged and crippled men(not that the supporters of that war give a rats behind about them) and breaking the back of our Army all for nothing.
It was our Carrahe.
Where and when did “Bush and company blame Saddam for 9/11”?
It’s just another part of the false narrative.
The reason we focused military operations in Iraq is because we were already legally at war with them, the previous hostilities having been suspended by an armistice (not a treaty) which Saddam had intentionally, flagrantly, repeatedly, and continuously violated.
In point of fact, legally (both under U.S. law and international norms of war), Bush needed no additional justification to unilaterally increase the tempo and scope of military operations in Iraq as far as deemed necessary. The previous war had never ended, and military hostilities had not ceased. The massive political fight to escalate the engagement against a hostile nation already at war with the United States only proves that taking action against any other nation in the region was a simple political and diplomatic impossibility.
As it turned out, even after the war had been clearly and decisively won, the Bush administration proved incapable of resisting political pressure to redefine victory in terms that were logically impossible to achieve, thus insuring defeat and the dissolution of Iraq into a haven for terrorists. I may believe that a more adept and committed administration might have managed to resist the domestic enemies of the United States and their international allies, but the American people had long since passed the tipping point of ever actually voting for such an administration in the face of determined opposition.
Fundamentally, the political battle to decide whether the American military would ever again be used effectively to defend the freedom and security of the American people had already been lost before Bush ever entered office. Bush tried to reverse this loss, but proved incapable of doing so. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have tried.
It was a rhetorical question, of course. I knew that anon would have to struggle mightily to attempt an answer. But thanks for filling in the details, with intelligent analysis.
It is certainly true that the Bush administration made military resolution of the ongoing Iraq conflict (I think at some point it was legally not an active war as such, just an indisputable justification for war) a central element in the larger “War on Terror”, which was certainly a response to the 9/11 attacks. And the vast evidence of Saddam’s material support for terrorism meant tracing some of it Al-Qaida.
But if anyone other than the leadership of Al-Qaida and the actual hijackers was really to blame for 9/11, then it was the Clinton administration far more than Saddam. I think it would have been a fine thing if Bill Clinton had been hanged for treason, but it was not really a possible thing, whereas hanging Saddam was.
The Bush Administration could have used the facilities at Salman Pak as a claim that Saddam was behind 9/11… and they didn’t do that. They told the truth and said that Salman Pak was NOT related to 9/11.
Bush could have pretended to find WMD. It would have been a simple matter to have “the evil Halliburton” plant something and then “find” it. He didn’t. He went up to the podium and told the American people that we couldn’t find WMD – which cost Republican power in Congress and led to another near-loss for Bush.
Not only did Bush not lie, but he told the truth to the detriment of his own power and the power of his party.
‘Fraid we part ways on this one. I have met Iraqis who wish Saddam was back in power because of what has happened since the US invasion–and these were refugees who had hated him. Those in the west who protested against the war by resigning from their jobs *were* brave standouts. Students had every right to protest against and disrespect politicians who *did* lie to us, or at the very best heavily embellished the truth.
Well, I agree with you that the Bush 44 administration lied. Further, they worked to personally discredit anyone who disagreed with them, like Valarie Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson. They ruined the CIA career of Valarie Plame herself because Wilson publicly disagreed with the lie that Saddam Hussein was trying to attain uranium at that time.
I also agree that the 2003 invasion of Iraq, like the invasion of Afghanistan, was an unmitigated disaster, both for the US and for Iraq. The Bush administration was riddled with unprincipled narcissists like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who had no hesitation in leading Bush off a cliff. Bush himself was a nebbish as far as any detailed discussion of actions or consequences.
And yet, one has to question if we are contributing to the rational, informed discussion of principles by publicly disrupting, actively or passively, every public appearance of an official associated with policies we don’t like.
The adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the lives of thousands of US soldiers, for what is obviously an ill-considered and fruitless effort. I’m furious about it. Yet, the only real way to deal with an out-of-control government (See the above article on Wisconsin by dymphna) is through more law, and the logical application of political effort. The disruptions by college students contribute to an atmosphere, not only of intimidation, but of suppression of rational discussion.
Right now, we’re losing the war. The left, and more important, the Muslims, are organizing rapidly and effectively. The Obama administration is important tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants into the US every year, and trying to hide them until they are so politically ensconced in wherever they were dumped that it is impossible politically to try to get them out. The first line of offense of the left and the Muslims is to suppress, shout down, marginalize, and criminalize any rational discussion of the real issues.
People even in 2003 who were aware of the true nature of Islam and Muslims were highly skeptical of our objectives of democratizing Iraq. The Bush administration didn’t listen to them, which is not surprising knowing the character of Bush and his appointees. It is in our interest to have public officials engaged in real public discourse, and not shut down as a means of cheap publicity.
The problem with the US policy is that most of the time it was half-done. They wanted to get tough in the ME, they wanted to get those oil advantages and they also wanted to sound politically correct -some of the liberals agreed that a democratic Iraq would be better than under dictatorship.
DUH – you’ve got it all wrong on Valerie Plame – her husband, Joe Wilson lied, it is pretty clear. And she wasn’t some sort of CIA operative, if so she and Mr. Wilson would not have been so public about who the worked for, and incidentally he was not a diplomat but was sent off to Africa on a sort of diplomatic mission.
The invasion of Iraq, like that of Afghanistan were disasters of sorts – until the surge in Iraq which was the right military strategy. Afghanistan is not a good place for us to wage war, but Iraq is – big, flat terrain (for all that big armor) as opposed to mountains. Plus it drew all sorts of terrorists to Iraq where we could ‘deal’ with them. But Obama has now removed our troops from Iraq – causing a vacuum leaving plenty of room for ISIS.
Better an administration with unprincipled narcissists like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld than some loose cannons like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton (who did manage to get an American ambassador killed and then lied about it).
This is the first time I’ve known of Bush to be called nebbish, usually he is called a cowboy – but it is a cowboy that is needed in in the ME, not some metro-sexual who seems to think that the world will listen to him – yeah, their listening, and laughing.
Honey, you cannot have a rational, informed discussion with crazies, with tyrants, nor with the left. Sorry to break it to you. The best thing would be to man up, get rid of the loose cannons (like the present POTUS), return to the Constitution, aid our allies, and do everything we can to get help Israel, the Kurds, etc. you know the real fighters.
As to all those fighters we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan – they joined knowing that could happen. I’m more concerned that their loss was for naught thanks to that POS under whom there have been greater losses.
To Susan the warror:
“Valerie Plame – her husband, Joe Wilson lied, it is pretty clear.”
I think you need at least one citation or url to back this up.
“And she wasn’t some sort of CIA operative, if so she and Mr. Wilson would not have been so public about who the worked for, and incidentally he was not a diplomat but was sent off to Africa on a sort of diplomatic mission.”
“”Valerie Elise Plame Wilson (born August 13, 1963), known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, and Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA operations officer, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her forced resignation from the CIA.””
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame
“Plus it drew all sorts of terrorists to Iraq where we could ‘deal’ with them.”
“”Scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq War found that between 151,000 to over one million Iraqis died as a result of conflict during this time. A later study, published in 2011, found that approximately 500,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the invasion. Counts of deaths reported in newspapers collated by projects like the Iraq Body Count project found 174,000 Iraqis reported killed between 2003 and 2013, with between 112,000-123,000 of those killed being civilian noncombatants.
For troops in the U.S.-led multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. A total of 4,491 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014.””
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
“Better an administration with unprincipled narcissists like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld than some loose cannons like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton”
Once you’ve dealt with narcissists (they tend to be unprincipled by definition) you realize dealing with them is a lose-lose proposition.
“”Only by the end of his sixth year did Bush finally conclude that Rumsfeld had to go, a decision that represented the most fundamental break with Cheney, who was informed, not consulted.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/the-final-insult-in-the-bush-cheney-marriage.html?_r=1
“This is the first time I’ve known of Bush to be called nebbish, usually he is called a cowboy”
I may have to plead guilty on being mistaken on that one.
“As to all those fighters we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan – they joined knowing that could happen. I’m more concerned that their loss was for naught thanks to that POS under whom there have been greater losses.”
Well, I think the US losses in Iraq were unnecessary and avoidable. The fact that soldiers know they may be in danger does not excuse poor strategy.
“”(CNSNews.com) – Fifty-five U.S. servicemen were killed in Afghanistan in 2014, bringing the total number of American fatalities in the 13-year war to 2,232, according to a CNSNews.com database.
Of those 2,232 deaths, 1,663 – 74.5 percent – occurred since President Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009. “”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/under-obama-75-casualties-13-year-afghan-war-55-more-2014
RB, you already asserted that Val and Joe were thoroughly discredited publicly. Every possible evidence you can present of that is also, prima facie, evidence that they were lying. You may choose to interpret it as evidence that they were smeared, but the fact remains that this is an interpretation, there is no primary evidence that they were smeared which does not also serve as evidence that the ‘smears’ were true.
Contrast this to the smears of the Bush administration as having “lied us into war”. There are a great many of these which, of themselves, demonstrate that the smears are lies, and there is a great deal of primary evidence that the Bush administration did not lie. Yes, there were intelligence failures which resulted in the escape of significant stockpiles of chemical weapons from Iraq, and possibly of biological and nuclear material as well. Half the reason an invasion was necessary was because the intelligence that can be secured without military control of the ground is considerably less than perfect (the other half was because it doesn’t matter how perfect your knowledge of a hostile attempt to create an existential threat to your society is if you can’t actually do anything to stop it).
To accuse the administration of incompetence because they gained a better picture of the actual disposition of prohibited assets after gaining substantial military control of the country is somewhere between perverse and obscene.
To answer the original post, there are people who wish their [manly generative organs] had been cut off when they were children because of mistakes they made later in life which they think (sometimes correctly) might have been prevented if they hadn’t had testicles. That doesn’t mean that everyone who didn’t get castrated as a child is a fool or a criminal.
Th Chiu ChunLing
“RB, you already asserted that Val and Joe were thoroughly discredited publicly. Every possible evidence you can present of that is also, prima facie, evidence that they were lying. You may choose to interpret it as evidence that they were smeared, but the fact remains that this is an interpretation, there is no primary evidence that they were smeared which does not also serve as evidence that the ‘smears’ were true.”
Huh?
You’re saying that if I tell a lie about you, it is evidence that you did what I said you did. I prefer to look for truth using harder means than that logic, which seems strained to me.
I did considerable reading on the matter subsequent to our exchanges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
In the first place, I said ” Further, they worked to personally discredit anyone who disagreed with them, like Valarie Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson. They ruined the CIA career of Valarie Plame herself because Wilson publicly disagreed with the lie that Saddam Hussein was trying to attain uranium at that time.”
This is not an assertion that both of them were thoroughly discredited.
Wilson in his report stated that Hussein had made an inquiry to Niger concerning the purchase of yellowcake, but it had not gone anywhere. Wilson concluded Iraq was not actively trying to obtain yellowcake. This conclusion was disputed, legitimately, by some governmental bodies.
The question came up of how Wilson came to be selected for the mission, as he had no expertise in the subject matter of tracking down Iraqi activity. The answer, which administration officials bandied about with much too much impunity, was that Wilson’s wife was a CIA official with authority in the area of Middle East nuclear programs. It seems unlikely that they actively intended to ruin her career.
To me, one of the prime villains was Robert Novak himself, the reporter who printed the information, in spite of requests from CIA officials. Novak claimed they should have told him directly she was a covert agent, although that in itself would be revealing classified information.
I don’t know that Wilson or Plame could be, or were, accused of lying at all…Actually, Plame said nothing at all about the issue of Iraq obtaining nuclear material. I picked up the impression that Wilson wouldn’t have been first pick for the investigation without his wife’s suggesting his name, but he wasn’t totally inappropriate either.
“To accuse the administration of incompetence because they gained a better picture of the actual disposition of prohibited assets after gaining substantial military control of the country is somewhere between perverse and obscene.”
I can’t put my finger on the posting right now, but I actually accused the administration of incompetence because they totally destroyed the social control mechanisms of Iraq after the victory. I did make statements opposing the attack itself, but my fervent opposition concerned the attempt to remake Iraq into a democratic country by totally dismantling the previous government and security forces.
Some of the sources cited on this thread indicate that Iraq had a significant amount of yellowcake, which would only have been obtained after Operation Desert Storm, assuming our forces did an effective job of cleaning Iraq out at that time.
So, yes, I am aware of facts now that I wasn’t aware of before. I still think most of the US deaths were unnecessary. And I think some, though not all, Bush officials involved in the release of Valerie Plames status, not to mention Robert Novak, were, at best, unbelievably blase about handling a covert secret.
I explained already how it is possible for a completely fact-free lie to be evidence only of the dishonesty of the liar and not of anything else.
But none of the accusations against Plame and Wilson were anything other than substantially evidenced truth. You admit as much in your post, yet fail to make the obvious moral distinction between lies and the revelations of damning information.
By the way, I just noticed that my previous post was edited to refer to “manly generative organs”, which may be less vulgar but is also somewhat more explicit than I had intended to be. I’m cracking up here.
Oh, and you might want to check your history. Operation Desert Storm did not involve any substantial assertion of U.S. military control over any sites where Iraq might have been suspected of attempting to manufacture nuclear weapons or stockpile materials essential to such a program.
The late Christopher Hitchens knew that if Saddam did not immediately possess WMD, then he had access to them and was prepared to use them. I suggest you read “Hitch 22”
A classic
I would suggest there needs to be a refinement in terminology.
The term “WMD” is used to describe chemical weapons, which have been around since World War I, biological weapons, which have been around since the 1880’s, and nuclear weapons, which require sophisticated facilities and modern technology.
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons, and probably had some usable chemical weapons at the time of the invasion. He had no nuclear capability whatsoever. But, whenever a country has even a shell with World War I vintage mustard gas, it can be accused of using WMD, and pinned with all the horrors of thermonuclear bombs.
So, it is no wonder that governments wishing to mount an attack will blur the distinction between chemical weapons and nuclear weapons.
The real losses to the US and to Iraq occurred not as a result of the initial invasion, or the deposing of Saddam Hussein. They occurred in the ill-considered attempt to completely replace the security structure of Iraq, and install a “democratic” government. The 4000 US deaths occurred not during the invasion, but during the occupation.
The US systematically disbanded the Iraqi army, police, security apparatus, and government structure. Even teachers who had been members of the Ba’athist party were dismissed. Iraq was left totally unable to defend itself or combat the partisan Islamist groups engineering kidnappings, assassinations, and bombings.
A far better strategy, if Hussein were to be deposed, would be to go in, leave him in hiding, allow a successor dictator to rise to the top of the stinking heap, and just leave. The advantage of the successor dictator would be that he would know that he can’t ignore the vital interests of the US.
As it is, the ill-considered actions of the Bush administration, followed by the malevolent actions of the Obama administration, have basically wiped the Middle East clean of Christians and have brought political Islam into a world-threatening position.
This is a circular argument. I’m done.
No, it isn’t entirely circular. It may be stupid, but not totally circular.
There are three arguments here. First, the assertion that Saddam’s current possession and past uses of chemical weapons had no implications for his efforts to develop biological and nuclear weapons. This is invalid not because it is circular but because it ignores the facts of the case, most strikingly in claiming that the existence of an undetonated WWI munition is equivalent to deliberately evading a mandated program of chemical munition disposal by maintaining, relocating, and hiding large existing stockpiles, or that a national government used chemical weapons generations ago before international bans is identical to a dictatorship under a man who has personally, while in power, given extensive orders to use such weapons against helpless civilians, even citizens in his own country.
Second, the implicit claim that the Bush administration was primarily responsible for shifting the focus of the war from an achievable military objective to an exercise in the impossible task of rapidly creating democratic institutions by means of short-term military occupation. This completely ignores the actual history of the vast hue and cry raised by the left (domestically and internationally) over every attempt to characterize the war as a military success (a tradition which RB is here following). Yes, the Bush administration lost the political battle to keep the war winnable, but they were fighting on the right side (obviously, as it was the losing side).
Third, the notion that conventional military occupation for the purpose of eliminating remaining effective resistance and then transitioning to an imperfect (and undemocratic) but allied government was impossible. The U.S. has a long history of successfully supporting clearly undemocratic governments through military alliances which eventually (over the course of generations) liberalized and yielded up power to democratic institutions. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, a mixed bag of Central and South American nations, much of Europe…it hasn’t always worked out perfectly, but it has worked often enough.
It hasn’t worked well in the Middle East mostly because we usually set the bar far too low, helping autocratic leaders who are openly and publicly hostile to America and Israel stay in power as long as they aren’t too effective in carrying out their stated goal of annihilating us. But there isn’t any reason we absolutely had to go down that path in Iraq, we could have installed and supported a friendly but completely undemocratic government of anti-Baathists determined to keep a lid on things, and then pushed them around when they were doing things we found unacceptable. After a few generations, they might gone down the path of dozens of other nations that had undemocratic governments imposed by American military fiat which later increased their reliance on democratic institutions.
Or they might have stayed a client dictatorship or whatever forever. It would still be better than ISIS, Saddam, or some one ruthless and Islamic enough to climb to the top without U.S. assistance. In short, we could have used the U.S. military to ADVANCE THE SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES.
I’ll take your points one-by-one.
1)” First, the assertion that Saddam’s current possession and past uses of chemical weapons had no implications for his efforts to develop biological and nuclear weapons. This is invalid not because it is circular but because it ignores the facts of the case, most strikingly in claiming that the existence of an undetonated WWI munition is equivalent to deliberately evading a mandated program of chemical munition disposal by maintaining, relocating, and hiding large existing stockpiles, or that a national government used chemical weapons generations ago before international bans is identical to a dictatorship under a man who has personally, while in power, given extensive orders to use such weapons against helpless civilians, even citizens in his own country.”
You actually have two points here. One is that I am complaining that WMD is used as a blanket term, which complaint ignores the fact that Saddam’s regime was actively pursuing biological weapons and nuclear material. To this point I say, it was not I that commingled the two different programs. I simply complained that the commingling was taking place. If you want to focus on present-day dangerous programs, do so.
The second point is that if Saddam was willing to do one, he would be willing to do the other. Fair enough, but let’s make that a clear, distinct argument.
2) “Second, the implicit claim that the Bush administration was primarily responsible for shifting the focus of the war from an achievable military objective to an exercise in the impossible task of rapidly creating democratic institutions…”
What you were saying is that the Bush administration was forced to shift the focus as a result of leftist criticism. With all due respect, I don’t accept that as an excuse. Bush spent his political capital to initiate the war…let him put it on the line to follow through properly for the sake of the 4000 plus US servicemen killed there.
3)”Third, the notion that conventional military occupation for the purpose of eliminating remaining effective resistance and then transitioning to an imperfect (and undemocratic) but allied government was impossible. ”
I don’t think you made a bad argument here. One thing I disagree strongly with was your strategy of making the government anti-Ba’athist. In fact, all the Ba’ath party members were purged from the government during the occupation, leaving it an empty, ineffective shell…actually, totally destroying any mechanisms of social control.
If you can ally yourself with a less-than-democratic dictator, you can go a bit further and work with Ba’athists willing to play ball. But, as I say, you have a strong strategy here, even if I disagree with a tactic.
There are a lot more than two facts which invalidate the nit-picking over what mode of WMD a current national leadership is able and willing to employ unilaterally. I just picked two important ones to keep things short, but of course I referred to “facts” as a plural. I guess you’re trying for a “gotcha” of some kind, but really you just look stupid.
“Bush spent his political capital to initiate the war.” That’s it, period, end of sentence. If you want to add something, recognize the implications of that statement first, the political capital spent to make the argument for war was SPENT.
Next time you spend money on something, I’m going to blame you for not following through by sending it to me for my service. No, better, I’m blaming you for all the money you’ve ever spent without then turning around and sending it to me.
Have you any notion of what the Baath party was and why having them in control was a problem? Yes, transitioning a government is difficult, you always have a competence gap. But that’s far better than a fundamental principles gap. You don’t leave people in positions of authority who are, as a matter of principle (or lack of same), diametrically opposed to your goals.
Thank you for pointing the absurdity of the WMD argument. Ohh Mustard gas, that’s so WWI. Same with the mobile weapon labs – how could anyone believe that, a 4th world country trying to pull which we could only marginally do.
BTW Saddam’s biological and chemical precursors for his pre-Desert Storm arsenal came almost entirely from American and European companies who were given the okay by our government at the time. Some even built factories for him.
It’s also really amusing you don’t hear a peep of protest or the pounding of the war drums from the same people to invade Pakistan that has at least 60 nuclear warheads and is a proud sponsor of Islamic terrorism including AQ and the Taliban.
What about Saudi Arabia that is the primary money man for Islamic radicalism in the world or the fact the most of the hijackers were Saudis not Iraqi nationals.
Or how the same claque was eagerly promoting invading Syria and attacking Russian Naval assets in the Mediterranean until the people of the U.S. and GB said no!! These war promoters didn’t even care they could have started WWIII. Even now they are still demonizing Putin the same way they demonized Saddam and are slowly pushing for a military show down with him.
Personally I’m sickened of these in stupid, useless, elective wars because all they’ve done is degrade our military and destabilize a region that didn’t need it and cause Europe to be overrun by Islamic refugees. It’s clear these people failed to heed our founders warnings and history to know the price of foreign entanglements and cost to the treasury and ones military.
Forget the WMD discussion…let’s go back to Wisconsin, Baltimore, Ferguson, Detroit, the homosexual agenda, et. al.
Ace of Spades and cfbleachers over at PJM have both firmly come down on the side that the great American experiment is over. There is blue, red and from now on never the twain shall meet. I’m now 63, have seen my country taken apart at the seams by the Left since Viet Nam and the split is now irreconcilable. I’m sorry to say I now agree with CF and Ace.
An article 5 convention is too fraught with danger and would be taken over by the Left anyway. That’s a dead end.
There is a map on Ace’s site today that shows the divide on “gay” “marriage” by state and why (the why’s are *very* important) all here should take a look. With Ginsberg’s and Kagen’s refusal to recuse themselves, Kennedy’s probable vote for and Roberts’ pretty much assured defection this map shows what secession would probably look like. This is also a apt metaphor for all else that ales us.
There is no way even a strong Republican POTUS and control of both houses for the next eight years could clean up the mess we are now in. It would take 3X that to even begin.
America, as we know it, is over. I’m just glad I won’t be around to see her final destruction.
When you cite sources, could you please give us the URL? Just cut and paste it out of the header where you read these things. Besides simply backing up your own sensibilities about the situation, PLEASE PROVIDE THE REST OF US WITH ACCESS. Other readers, particularly non-Americans, may not be familiar with the short-cut names you use. I know who Ace of Spades is, but cfbleachers is a new one on me.
I understand your dystopian view but I’d offer a counter-suggestion:“America, as we know it, is not only over…it never even existed.” I have lived in a number of places where the things you mention aren’t on the agenda. Those are urban issues you enumerate. In the small places where I’ve lived over the course of my life, the issues were much closer to home than those, though sometimes we found ourselves pulled into the larger problems and had to make a stand according to our conscience.
When Boston’s infamous busing problem – “solved” by a Federal judge who lived the next block over from me, his family under guard – became a crisis, I took part in our town’s program to bring children in from Roxbury for their schooling. In the town, elementary school kids all came home for lunch, so anyone who took part in the program had to be home at lunch time for “their” Roxbury kid. I grew to like the tough mom who enrolled her two girls in the program – it took a lot of courage to show up in the rich suburb for her kids’ sake. She said if the busing program hadn’t happened, she’d already decided she’d keep them at home (long before homeschooling was even thought of in the mainstream) rather than have them exposed to the drugs on the street. A street she couldn’t get out of bec she didn’t make enough money to move nor would the red-lining real estate racket have ever let her out. Today,both girls are doing well. Neither ever went on welfare, had kids out of wedlock, and both of them had good jobs and were married…
I taught Sunday school with the Judge’s wife, Barbara, whose face showed the stress of it all. [Imagine: Catholic “Sunday” school on Wednesday afternoons and the kids were let out of public school to attend. Couldn’t happen today.] Judge Garrity is one who, as Malvolio would say, was “called” to greatness. That is, he drew the busing case by lottery, and by chance his name is still hissed at in South Boston. While I don’t agree with federal intervention at that level, he was a man of integrity who did well in the Dem political machine in Massachusetts. He wasn’t a prophet and he had no way to see the future of unintended consequences. He died in 1999, still beloved and still hated.
…we don’t have any way to see the future either. I don’t believe it lies in Washington – both sides are rotted through. Once there, no matter your level of integrity, you learn you have to play by the rules of a rigid corrupt system…or you can choose to go home, pace Michele Bachmann.
Try reading Peter Schweizer’s book. Not the new one, but the one of several years ago where his exposure of Washington’s ways cut right to the bone. A strong Republican POTUS wouldn’t change much…
Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets
After several years, this is still the #1 book in Political Economics on Amazon (and Amazon’s rankings are probably more accurate than the New York Times, who only do best-selling of the moment).
In sum, Bill C., the things you demand we cover aren’t necessarily part of our own self-chosen job description. Yes, we do on occasion touch on those issues, but in my opinion most of them are part of the Left’s distract-and-destroy mission. If we simply ignored the “gay” problem, it would go away. People need to learn to fight smarter, and refusing to serve pizza at a gay ‘wedding’ isn’t smart.
Wisconsin definitely is and definitely needs to be understood by those who plan to join the fray. In other words, grassroots folks like the Tea Party, whose Wisconsin members are being flayed alive by the Dem machine in Madison and the thug union reps there. You may choose to retire to the sidelines, but many others your age have chosen a different direction, knowing full well the dangers they face.
Your opening imperative to us is: Forget the WMD discussion…let’s go back to Wisconsin, Baltimore, Ferguson, Detroit, the homosexual agenda, et. al.
But what if those issues aren’t at the top of everyone else’s agenda? What if many of us have recognized that the polarization and uglification of our common discourse is based on a Leftist push to MAKE YOU WORRY about those parochial issues? Look again at the name of our blog: Gates of Vienna does not mean Gates of Vienna, Virginia. It is supposed to invoke the never-ending war of Islam against everything else.
Many websites are devoted to the issues you mention. And NO blog can be all things to all people.
Tony Blair told the British public the WMD’s had indeed been found, he was immediately contradicted by the US Authorities (Bremer). The question is, if WMD’s were found, why did the Bush administration keep quiet about it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3351915.stm
I have reason to believe that Blair was not lying in this case, there were some British officers on the ISG team who would have been making direct reports. Unfortunately everything is still subject to the ‘Official Secrets Act’ and therefore cannot be published.
It was very strange that Bremer effectively called the then British Prime Minister a Liar, one does not do this to the leader of your main ally without a good reason.
Well, one doesn’t do it without a reason, but the reason doesn’t have to be a good one. it can be (and usually is) a bad one instead.
Essentially, the Bush administration assessed that they were losing the domestic propaganda war and attempted to sue for peace on whatever terms they could get. I believe that the assessment was and remains correct, the American people have been too throughly (easier-to-spell/say version of thoroughly) conditioned to accept leftist agit-prop for there to be any real hope of victory in the propaganda war until after the breakdown of society and civil/internecine war eliminates those unwilling or unable to acknowledge reality rather than live in a media-created fantasy world. But I do not believe that surrender on ‘best available terms’ is a rational response, as surrendering the propaganda war only insures that the breakdown of society will be more complete and destructive when it occurs.
Perhaps critics should read this one as well:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/carter-andress/why-the-world-did-not-know-about-wmd-in-iraq/
People who have their minds made up, their slogans safely in place, ignore further information. Settled “truths” are so much more comfortable than digging.
Thanks, MC – that one’s radioactive:
After U.S. Central Command called on us to help transport from Iraq enough yellowcake uranium to make several atomic bombs stored at Saddam’s nuclear weapons complex, I realized why neither the Pentagon nor the White House advertised the presence of this WMD precursor: safety and security.
[…]
Gee, he was there, but what is a first-hand account worth if it says Bush was right??
Here’s another essay by the same Carter Andress:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/carter-andress/we-drove-saddams-yellowcake-to-the-baghdad-airport/
I’ll bet no one reads that, either. Hard to change minds, even with facts.
Something tells me a lot of minds were “made up” out of the desperate need to blame someone and thereby feel more secure.
Basta.
It would have been possible and advisable to publicly acknowledge that the quantities of WMD stockpiles and resources being uncovered were posing serious challenges to the occupation forces without yielding up actionable intelligence to enemy forces. Everyone already knew before the invasion that the prohibited weapons and materials were in the country and would be ‘in the wind’ until Coalition forces secured them, making it clear that this effort was being actively pursued would have been a better deterrent than claims that the U.S. was simply too incompetent to figure out what had happened to all the WMD’s.
But the Bush administration didn’t want to get crucified in the press for ‘causing’ the release of WMD stockpiles and materials. I wouldn’t have wanted that either, but I wouldn’t have (and, at the time, didn’t) surrendered to the prevailing narrative. Everyone who actually cared whether there were WMD’s was aware that weapons and materials were being uncovered, and that securing them was a difficult and dangerous proposition. I certainly knew, and I didn’t care about them enough to go freelancing about trying to score some for myself.
After the first Gulf War the US was tasked by the UN with instituting a No Fly Zone over Northern and Southern Iraq in order to prevent further genocide by the Iraqi gov’t. What many want to forget is that Iraq violated this treaty scores of times and, it became normal for Iraq to “light up” our aircraft enforcing this no fly zone.
In addition, the “Oil for Food” treaty was greatly abused, in large part by our European “partners” who would sell their Grandmother for a nickle if they could make 3 cents on the trade…
I often wondered what might have happened if the US said they were no longer willing to enforce the UN mandate and pulled their assets out of the area. I bet the Europeans would have gone nuts! Too bad we didn’t do it.
Good points. I remember how frustrated most Americans were that Bush I and his General Colin Powell refused to go on in and simply take Saddam out. Cut off the head, where – as the Chinese say – the rot starts. Darn shame…
Babs, you might enjoy this stroll down memory lane:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/12/world/war-in-the-gulf-commanders-top-brass-in-gulf-profiles-in-uniformed-authority.html?pagewanted=1
My feeling was that the Bush administration wanted to make the case for actually prosecuting the war (as mentioned, unquestionably fully legal and justified) as part of the response to global terrorism, so as to send a message to leaders about the dangers of sponsoring terrorism. This strategy did bear some significant fruits in terms of increased cooperation and docility from many former bad actors in the region…but all those gains were eventually completely squandered by the strength of the leftist reaction against fighting with an aim towards U.S. global security interests.
My nephew was over there – he’s a pretty likable guy, doesn’t lie, drinks a bit too much but he’s probably seen more in his short tour than I’ll ever see in my life. They did find stuff – unless he’s lying which, for all his flaws, isn’t likely – it’s not in his character. The findings didn’t make the light of day as far as the journalists were concerned because it wasn’t good for their story line. Proof? I don’t know whats out there – just that a bunch of vets came home and said that there were WMD’s and that they’d seen them.
Too many did more than see them, a lot of guys ended up with serious health consequences, and then were left in the care of a VA that seemed determined to support the anti-American narrative of events.
Am I alone in finding the whole concept of WMD complete horse excrement? Burning and crushing 50o men to death with a massive hightech bombardment=good, killing the same men with chemicals=bad? As for the atomic stuff. Have a read up on what happened on the ground in Hiroshima. Gassing would have been more humane. Give me a break, WMD is a crock of.
The real meaning of WMD is White Man’s Death-machines, the ones nonwhites are not allowed to have. It’s a racist term.
Whatever their use, they are not confined to white people. Come on, this ‘white man bad’ is just another socialist meme. We will not have that facile distraction here.
I don’t know if you’re “alone” in your views or not, but if you spread this virus on our website, I’ll delete it. You’re saying people of other colors aren’t intelligent enough to have weapons of mass destruction. They are and they do. So stop it right here.
I don’t think that (“aren’t intelligent enough…”) is what hej is saying, and that interpretation is hard to square with the idea that hej is making a “white man bad” statement.
Rather, hej is saying that other (white) people say that people of color should not posses weapons of great destructive capacity even though white people possess and have employed weapons of equal or greater destructiveness; and (by implication, I think) that the WMD label is selectively used according to the racial identity of the possessors.
I.e.: the “white man bad and racist” idea governs the whole comment.
As hej confirms, the initial post was completely devoid of any hint of intelligence. As is hej, apparently.
No, I am not, I am saying that westerners and Americans in particular do not want non-westerners to have certain classes of weapon. I didn’t mention intelligence and indeed intelligence has nothing to do with what I am saying. I think you are missing the point here.
Once upon a time South Africa had a nuclear weapons program which they voluntarily dismantled.
Just imagine a guy like Zuma with the bomb.
I am amazed that Pakistan and India have yet to pop off a couple tac nukes over Kashmir. We may yet see this as the water situation in that region grows ever more precarious.
There is a title on rt.com saying “No place for asylum seekers: EU reportedly plans to kick out 29 of every 30 refugees”
how much truth is in these news?
The liberals must be hanged anyway for treason against the European people.
Well, I’m not particular about hanging, though I think that many a traitor will wish for such a merciful end when the actual consequences unfold.