Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Not exactly.

What I said is true.

What you are saying is that these documents say that the official story is wrong.

Did O'Neal confess to the killing? Or was it his pal who heard the insult over the hail of gunfire, realized it was Tillman, and decided to finish that damn Tillman off once and for all?

To address many points at once--

Seems unlikely to me it was intentional. I guess it Could have been -- but a frenzied fuck-up seems more likely. It is hard to belive that an entire platoon would be complicit in the murder of one of their own, and concoct and stick to a basically consistent story, which is what the conspiracy theory would require.

If it were a murder, of a famous soldier, a General might conceivably want to cover it up for PR reasons, etc.

OTOH the fact that Army lawyers were pleased that they forestalled a criminal inquiry pending the Army's investigation is hardly conspiracy fodder.

S_A_M

[SlaveNoMore]

Secret_Agent_Man
What I said is true.

What you are saying is that these documents say that the official story is wrong.

Did O'Neal confess to the killing? Or was it his pal who heard the insult over the hail of gunfire, realized it was Tillman, and decided to finish that damn Tillman off once and for all?

To address many points at once--

Seems unlikely to me it was intentional. I guess it Could have been -- but a frenzied fuck-up seems more likely. It is hard to belive that an entire platoon would be complicit in the murder of one of their own, and concoct and stick to a basically consistent story, which is what the conspiracy theory would require.

If it were a murder, of a famous soldier, a General might conceivably want to cover it up for PR reasons, etc.

OTOH the fact that Army lawyers were pleased that they forestalled a criminal inquiry pending the Army's investigation is hardly conspiracy fodder.

S_A_M

Or perhaps the fodder that TNR has been peddling under its "Shock Troops" articles, as imagined by a snivelly private married to a current TNR staffer.

Plame, anyone?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Or perhaps the fodder that TNR has been peddling under its "Shock Troops" articles, as imagined by a snivelly private married to a current TNR staffer.

Plame, anyone?

Indeed. The way the right-wing blogosphere is sliming this guy -- who is in Iraq serving his country, unlike most of them -- is entirely reminiscent of what they did to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Or perhaps the fodder that TNR has been peddling under its "Shock Troops" articles, as imagined by a snivelly private married to a current TNR staffer.

Plame, anyone?

Nah. Though an ass, at least Wilson actually existed.

Remember, this kid is fictitious! Just a figment of the imagination of the TNR, which was all part of Franklin Foer's secret plan to move the pro-war TNR to the left. Not by stopping its publication of pro-war pieces, but instead by publishing articles about troops killing dogs in order to make the US look bad.

Or something like that.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Indeed. The way the right-wing blogosphere is sliming this guy -- who is in Iraq serving his country, unlike most of them -- is entirely reminiscent of what they did to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

I make these posts solely to see whether you or I are the bigger joke.

Your response proves that you are, yet again, my superior.

Salut!

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I make these posts solely to see whether you or I are the bigger joke.

Your response proves that you are, yet again, my superior.

Salut!

I always suspected you were a bottom.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I always suspected you were a bottom.

superior/inferior does not equate to penetrator/penetratee. You should see someone about your self image.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I make these posts solely to see whether you or I are the bigger joke.

The guy tells it like it is, and so various wingers who've never been to Iraq explain all the reasons why it's obvious that he's not military. So when he reveals who is he, and that's he's serving, they trash him. Now he's "snivelling?" He's the one who's complaining and whining? That's a pretty fair description of how the wingers reacted to him.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
The guy tells it like it is, and so various wingers who've never been to Iraq explain all the reasons why it's obvious that he's not military. So when he reveals who is he, and that's he's serving, they trash him. Now he's "snivelling?" He's the one who's complaining and whining? That's a pretty fair description of how the wingers reacted to him.

Not a single guy that served with him will vouch for a single one of his "observations"?

Not a one.

Zero.

But somehow, pointing this guy out as a liar is both a "smear" and a right-wing reaction?

Swift Boat, Part 2 - a lying douchebag is somehow smeared when everyone refutes his lies.

The media is odious.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Not a single guy that served with him will vouch for a single one of his "observations"?

Not a one.

Zero.

But somehow, pointing this guy out as a liar is both a "smear" and a right-wing reaction?

Swift Boat, Part 2 - a lying douchebag is somehow smeared when everyone refutes his lies.

The media is odious.

Yglesias has my proxy. When you come up with a lie, you just let us know. As Yglesias says,

• What the right is trying to do is establish a precedent where if you say things the right doesn't want to hear anonymously then you'll be treated with a presumption of guilt. No matter how vindicated the article may be, it's still the case that TNR expended a lot of person-hours on re-verifying things even though nobody on the right raised any serious reason to doubt the story other than that it wasn't something they wanted to believe. It's extremely difficult to operate that way, and people won't want to. But suppose you do identify yourself. Then you get the full Michelle Malkin treatment -- character slimed, all kinds of personal details splayed across the internet, don't say you weren't warned.

How odd that other troops aren't stepping up to get the same treatment.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Yglesias has my proxy. When you come up with a lie, you just let us know. As Yglesias says,

• What the right is trying to do is establish a precedent where if you say things the right doesn't want to hear anonymously then you'll be treated with a presumption of guilt. No matter how vindicated the article may be, it's still the case that TNR expended a lot of person-hours on re-verifying things even though nobody on the right raised any serious reason to doubt the story other than that it wasn't something they wanted to believe. It's extremely difficult to operate that way, and people won't want to. But suppose you do identify yourself. Then you get the full Michelle Malkin treatment -- character slimed, all kinds of personal details splayed across the internet, don't say you weren't warned.

How odd that other troops aren't stepping up to get the same treatment.

I could link you to a gazillion other sites - Malkin, Insty, Blackfive, Allah - to show letters and emails from this guys "comrades" demostrating he is a fucking lying scumbag, but what is the point.

More interesting, is you of all people sticking up for the TNR. Truly the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I could link you to a gazillion other sites - Malkin, Insty, Blackfive, Allah - to show letters and emails from this guys "comrades" demostrating he is a fucking lying scumbag, but what is the point.

Careful -- Hank's going to mock you for getting your worldview from crackpot blogs.

More interesting, is you of all people sticking up for the TNR. Truly the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

That's what particularly crazy about the way the wingers are going batshit about that piece. The TNR is pro-war.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

• Regular care, in other words, makes a big difference. That’s why Congressional Democrats, with support from many Republicans, are trying to expand Schip, which already provides essential medical care to millions of children, to cover millions of additional children who would otherwise lack health insurance.
  
  But President Bush... has declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds. It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes....
  
  So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?
  
  Well, here’s what Mr. Bush said after explaining that emergency rooms provide all the health care you need: “They’re going to increase the number of folks eligible through Schip; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a — I wouldn’t call it a plot, just a strategy — to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care.”
  
  Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.
  
  And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.
  
  This sounds like a caricature, but it isn’t. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan “in any form,” because “its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”...
  
  But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you’re afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong...

Krugman

[Diane_Keaton]

On the Iraqi soccer team victory:

"Those heroes have shown the real Iraq. They have done something useful for the people as opposed to the politicians and lawmakers...," said Sabah Shaiyal, 43, a policeman in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City.

Huh? They're a fucking soccer team and their win won't do dick for their country. The team captain isn't even bringing the trophy back there ("I don't want the Iraqi people to be angry with me," he said. "[But] if I go back with the team, anybody could kill me or try to hurt me.") Translation: I'm a pussy.

On the car bombs that blew up Iraqis celebrating a win (not even the final one) that killed a baby: ""His mother said when her child was killed in front of her, she didn't cry. She said, 'I present my son as a sacrifice for the national team'. Then we had to win," he said.

This is exactly the violence-as-romantic, backward view that predominates no matter how educated or sophisticated a Muslim becomes. Particulary retarted when combined with run of the mill soccer frenzymania.

Amir Mohammed, a Shiite, joined a Kurdish friend to celebrate. "The soccer team has shown that we are united from the south to the north," he said.

Go figure. I thought Kurds were being slaughtered or deported in the millions since the late 1970's and here they were united all along.

Post-game hoopla is awful enough without the added Muslim-think bullshit.

Carry on.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
The team captain isn't even bringing the trophy back there ("I don't want the Iraqi people to be angry with me," he said. "[But] if I go back with the team, anybody could kill me or try to hurt me.") Translation: I'm a pussy.

• The remains of 13 members of an Iraqi tae kwon do team kidnapped last year have been found in western Iraq, police and hospital officials said Saturday.
  
  The team had been driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan in May 2006, when their convoy was stopped and all 15 athletes abducted along a road between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, in Anbar province.
  
  Members of the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of Sunni tribal leaders who have partnered with U.S. and Iraqi officials to fight al Qaeda influence in Anbar, found the 13 bodies Friday west of Ramadi, near the main highway leading to Jordan, said Anbar police Col. Rashid Nayef. Two of the athletes remained unaccounted for.
  
  The remains — mostly skulls and bones entangled in tattered sports uniforms — were transferred to Imam Ali Hospital in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Sadr City neighborhood, home to most of the athletes. A doctor there, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the bones would undergo DNA testing to determine their identities.
  
  Relatives gathered at the hospital Saturday to mourn the victims. Women in black Muslim robes cried out while men hoisted rickety wood coffins atop minivans and cars. Plastic athletic sandals lay scattered on the ground near the bodies.
  
  The athletes were members of a private sports club that hopes to one day send members to the Olympics.
  
  “We were hoping that we would see them alive and competing for their country in international championships, but regrettably, they were killed by the Takifiris in a very ugly way,” said Hussein al-Obeidi, the secretary-general of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, referring to Sunni Muslim extremists.
  
  Ali Kanoun, said his cousin, one of the victims, was never involved in politics and was unfairly targeted.
  
  “His dream was to represent his country in sports, but instead he was killed,” said Kanoun, cousin of Rasoul Salah.
  
  “I tell the killers, you should point your guns at the Americans and the foreigners (fighting in Iraq) instead of hurting athletes who were representing all of Iraq, not their tribe or sect,” Kanoun said by telephone from a crowd of mourners at Imam Ali Hospital.
  
  Athletes and sports officials have increasingly become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts in Iraq, either as part of tit-for-tat violence between Shiites and Sunnis or for ransom.
  
  Victims have included the Sunni head of one of Iraq's leading soccer clubs, an Iraqi international soccer referee, a top player on the Iraqi Olympic soccer team and a national volleyball player.
  
  A blind Iraqi athlete and paralympics coach were kidnapped last year but later released unharmed after sports officials said their abductors determined neither man was linked to the Sunni insurgency.
  
  Gunmen also kidnapped the chairman of Iraq's National Olympic Committee and at least 30 other officials last year, including the presidents of the tae kwon do and boxing federations, in a bold daylight raid on a sports conference in the heart of Baghdad. Iraq's national wrestling coach, a Sunni, was killed around the same time in a Shiite district of Baghdad.

CBS News