Nutjobs Ranting About Politics.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Right. Because the Swift Vets would have gone away if Kerry had made that statement, and the media would have quickly gone back to discussing more important stories.

I can only speak for myself, but I have reason to believe that my thinking processes aren't THAT much different than most other peoples'. I find Kerry's initial denial that he'd ever claimed to have been in Cambodia for Christmas, followed by a "we'll get back to you", and then followed by silence, to constitute something more than a simple "this is so stoopid I ain't even gonna reply". And I also think that his "staff's" initial denial, in the face of all of this new shit coming out, would NEVER have been the result of a casual off-the-cuff "oh, yeah, right". Every word on this stuff is being vetted back to Kerry.

Just like Glenn Reynolds attacked the Rassmann piece as not saying enough, his attackers will never be satisfied. There's no point engaging them because it's about the charge, not the verdict.

God, I'd HATE to have to live through such a chapter in a campaign, wouldn't you?

"Delicious." That word just keeps popping into my mind. There truly IS justice. I am renewed.

It's enough to make a conservative regret what they did to Bill Clinton, eh?

You really can't make that leap to owning your own regret, can you? (Hint: try "liberal", and "Bush".)

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
. . . the contrast between what Kerry did in Vietnam and what Bush did in Alabama helps Kerry.

My best bud went in when he was only 16-3/4, down to Florida flight school. He eventually flew medivacs, about 200 of them. Ultimately he got blown apart. He was a true hero. But, (and I say this with love), he would have made a shitty president.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
I can only speak for myself, but I have reason to believe that my thinking processes aren't THAT much different than most other peoples'. I find Kerry's initial denial that he'd ever claimed to have been in Cambodia for Christmas, followed by a "we'll get back to you", and then followed by silence, to constitute something more than a simple "this is so stoopid I ain't even gonna reply". And I also think that his "staff's" initial denial, in the face of all of this new shit coming out, would NEVER have been the result of a casual off-the-cuff "oh, yeah, right". Every word on this stuff is being vetted back to Kerry.

God, I'd HATE to have to live through such a chapter in a campaign, wouldn't you?

"Delicious." That word just keeps popping into my mind. There truly IS justice. I am renewed.

This conversation moves so quickly and fluidly from the support (or lack thereof) for the Swift Vets' claims to the powerful emotional release that you guys get from smearing Kerry with this shit.

As I say, keep talking about Vietnam. And Cambodia, if you need more of Southeast Asia to be fulfilled.

You really can't make that leap to owning your own regret, can you? (Hint: try "liberal", and "Bush".)

I have no regrets, and am only glad that so many others have come around. But then I don't equate shooting melons in the backyard with talking about whether we should go to war.

I know you haven't been around for a while, but they never found any WMD.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
I'm sure this has a lot of influence with her unemployed husband. Wonder how he's spending the extra money from his tax cut? I won't even go into how lame this shit is compared to lying about, oh, leading a nation into war. On the bright side, I'm sure the title of the article will inspire a Gilligan plot synopsis soon enough.

That wasn't even good misdirection. It was okay for Kerry to lie about that because . . . what, because Bush gave me a tax cut?

And, see, you're still repeating the "lying" shit even in the face of Wilson's demise. Amazing. Or, did you mean, lying about about "imminent"? Ooops, no, huh? About SH having WMD? Yeah, him and all his lying buddies, like Clinton, Chirac, Schroeder, Gore - what pieces of dung, huh?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Your president is taking the high road. Why is that?

If I gave you the answer that I think is the correct one, you'd just get all high and mighty and dismissive with me, so let's not do that.

Edit:

Naw, what the hell:

1. After the AWOL shit, he's not a good deliverer of this particular message;

2. In any event, he gets to stay above the fray. Let Kerry yell about Nam, AWOL, lies - in short, let Kerry be the slanderer - Bush gets to be "above all that tawdry shit";

3. The vets, and the reporters who found chemo-lady, and all the other primary connections, make much better deliverers;

4. The part that I think will make you bellow - I have a much higher opinion of Bush's sense of honor than you do (not a high bar, I know), and I don't think Bush is the type to fight these kinds of battles, in this way. I agree that this has degenerated into a dishonorable campaign, but I am comforted by the fact that youse guyz started it about two years ago. I think he's uncomfortable with it, and isn't going to be spouting off such personally insulting crap.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
And, see, you're still repeating the "lying" shit even in the face of Wilson's demise. Amazing. Or, did you mean, lying about about "imminent"? Ooops, no, huh? About SH having WMD? Yeah, him and all his lying buddies, like Clinton, Chirac, Schroeder, Gore - what pieces of dung, huh?

Even if you pretend that Hussein and Gore were lying buddies, there still weren't any WMD. It's going to be a long fall for you.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Even if you pretend that Hussein and Gore were lying buddies, there still weren't any WMD. It's going to be a long fall for you.

What - you think I'm saying that Bush was right about that? No way. He was wrong. As was the whole informed world. As I've said many times, that was a fuck-up, but it was a supportable belief, a logical belief, a widely-shared belief, and, even if such a belief is held uncertainly, I think it warrants action before we get a form of confirmation that we don't want to see.

(Actually, I know that you DON'T think that I've been saying that Bush was right about that. What I know is that you've been left with absolutely no support for the "lies" stuff, and you're grabbing any port in a storm - even illogical ones that make every reader simply roll their eyes and go "sheesh". There were no WMD's - WE GET IT! And that still doesn't change my view of Bush's honesty in pursuing this course of action.)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
What - you think I'm saying that Bush was right about that? No way. He was wrong. As was the whole informed world. As I've said many times, that was a fuck-up, but it was a supportable belief, a logical belief, a widely-shared belief, and, even if such a belief is held uncertainly, I think it warrants action before we get a form of confirmation that we don't want to see.

(Actually, I know that you DON'T think that I've been saying that Bush was right about that. What I know is that you've been left with absolutely no support for the "lies" stuff, and you're grabbing any port in a storm - even illogical ones that make every reader simply roll their eyes and go "sheesh". There were no WMD's - WE GET IT! And that still doesn't change my view of Bush's honesty in pursuing this course of action.)

I've spent a fair amount of time on lengthy posts explaining what I think Bush was thinking, and what I hold him responsible for, and I think I've been pretty clear that I don't think he knew that there were no WMD and decided to tell people there were. It's much more like a reckless disregarded for the truth. Bush was convinced in some larger way that he was right, and the end justified the means -- he was willing to say what it took to drag an unwilling nation into a war he thought was justified. I concede that Bush did not care about the details about whether Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake from Niger -- actually, a damning point -- but he certainly is responsible for the fact that the people who wrote the State of the Union speech were more interested in saying whatever they could to scare people than they were in making sure they had things right. But every time I bother to spin this stuff out in any detail, whichever conservative I'm talking to disappears. Last time around it was club, and while he sent me a gracious PM regretting that he had to run and couldn't respond, where's the upside in laying out a nuanced view if you guys are just going to disappear on me.

And then there's this:

• On Friday, September 6, Franks and Rumsfeld briefed the president and the NSC on the latest war planning. . . . General Franks had something important to add. "Mr. President," he said, "we've been looking for Scud missiles and other weapons of mass destruction for ten years and haven't found any yet, so I can't tell you that I know that there are any specific weapons anywhere. I haven't seen Scud one."

Plan of Attack 173

• [On Saturday, September 7,] Blair and Bush took questions from reporters. They said they were committed to ending Saddam's threat one and for all. How or when went unanswered. Bush asserted unequivocally, "Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Plan of Attack 178

Bush's top general tells him they haven't found any WMD in ten years of looking, and the next day he's telling journalists -- unequivocally -- that Hussein has them. I'm not sure that lying is the worse-case scenario here.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Indeed.

In the freepers board, fer pete's sakes:

"In a chat room entry last year on freerepublic.com, Corsi writes: "Islam is a peaceful religion -- just as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels are killed."

In another entry, he says: "So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it."

Damn. If this is the standard, none of us had better aspire to public expression. Who among us hasn't made comments about some discrete group at least as obnoxious as this?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Since club professes to have an open mind about this stuff: Debunking of the swift vets' crap here.

Interesting, and I do have an open mind. One question that continues for me is why? Why would all of these men go to this length if they do not believe what they are professing? There are a whole lot of guys who have remained silent all of these years and are just now speaking up, presumably, because they think they know something about Kerry that the rest of us should know if he is potentially going to be the leader of the free world.

On the Cambodia issue, I think it is important because he used his first hand "experience" of actually being there to contradict the CIC (i.e., that we were in fact in Cambodia) in a time of war for his own political purposes.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I've spent a fair amount of time on lengthy posts explaining what I think Bush was thinking, and what I hold him responsible for, and I think I've been pretty clear that I don't think he knew that there were no WMD and decided to tell people there were. It's much more like a reckless disregarded for the truth. Bush was convinced in some larger way that he was right, and the end justified the means -- he was willing to say what it took to drag an unwilling nation into a war he thought was justified. I concede that Bush did not care about the details about whether Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake from Niger -- actually, a damning point -- but he certainly is responsible for the fact that the people who wrote the State of the Union speech were more interested in saying whatever they could to scare people than they were in making sure they had things right. But every time I bother to spin this stuff out in any detail, whichever conservative I'm talking to disappears. Last time around it was club, and while he sent me a gracious PM regretting that he had to run and couldn't respond, where's the upside in laying out a nuanced view if you guys are just going to disappear on me.

And then there's this:

• On Friday, September 6, Franks and Rumsfeld briefed the president and the NSC on the latest war planning. . . . General Franks had something important to add. "Mr. President," he said, "we've been looking for Scud missiles and other weapons of mass destruction for ten years and haven't found any yet, so I can't tell you that I know that there are any specific weapons anywhere. I haven't seen Scud one."

Plan of Attack 173

• [On Saturday, September 7,] Blair and Bush took questions from reporters. They said they were committed to ending Saddam's threat one and for all. How or when went unanswered. Bush asserted unequivocally, "Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Plan of Attack 178

Bush's top general tells him they haven't found any WMD in ten years of looking, and the next day he's telling journalists -- unequivocally -- that Hussein has them. I'm not sure that lying is the worse-case scenario here.

Yet you conveniently leave out that in 2003 (i.e., much closer to the decision to go to war) Tenet told Bush it's a "slam dunk."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Yet you conveniently leave out that in 2003 (i.e., much closer to the decision to go to war) Tenet told Bush it's a "slam dunk."

Since that was many months in the future, it doesn't really bear on what Bush was thinking that Saturday morning.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
That wasn't even good misdirection. It was okay for Kerry to lie about that because . . . what, because Bush gave me a tax cut?

Kerry didn't lie, same way Gore didn't lie about "inventing the internet." We can contrast with the lies W told the American people about how the "overwhelming majority" of the tax cuts would go to the middle class, or that the tax cuts were a way of giving the surplus back to the American people, or that the tax cuts would stimulate the economy, etc.

And, see, you're still repeating the "lying" shit even in the face of Wilson's demise. Amazing. Or, did you mean, lying about about "imminent"? Ooops, no, huh? About SH having WMD?

Is there any de-Chalabified intelligence you'd like to share with us? Maybe something secret and British, like Austin Powers?

Yeah, him and all his lying buddies, like Clinton, Chirac, Schroeder, Gore - what pieces of dung, huh?

They didn't lie about leading a nation into an unnecessary war. If SH had WMDs, containment seemed to be working. Not Me says the WMDs are now in Syria or somewhere. I wonder if AQ can get to them more easily now?

etft -- t.s.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Since that was many months in the future, it doesn't really bear on what Bush was thinking that Saturday morning.

And I suspect that Tenet wasn't the only one telling him the "slam dunk" story.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I concede that Bush did not care about the details about whether Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake from Niger -- actually, a damning point -- but he certainly is responsible for the fact that the people who wrote the State of the Union speech were more interested in saying whatever they could to scare people than they were in making sure they had things right.

Sorry, I have to go now.

Kidding, kidding, . . .

First - "a damning point"? Damning to which viewpoint? My impression from what I was able to see was that Wilson essentially found that Iraq WAS trying to buy yellowcake from Niger. Or, goats. I guess it could have been goats.

And, British intelligence still stands by the info it gave to Bush, to this day, about that subject.

And, yeah, I'm sure you can find individuals who told Bush "no WMD's". I can find people who believe in global warming, and others who don't. Franks fell into one camp on the WMD subject, and was pretty consistent all throughout the inspection era, and the war-planning era. But there were quite a few others who thought otherwise. Bush had to weigh the differing viewpoints that were presented to him, and choose. The only dangers of a wrong decision were nuclear (sorry - nucular) detonation here, or stopping the new Holocaust with a predictable small loss on our side. (Yes, I'm actually saying that 900+ American military deaths is a small loss. Resist the urge to start calling me a murderer, or whatever. To take over a hostile country with 900 deaths so far is quite small. To take out a murderer responsible for - what did National Geographic estimate - seven million dead Kurds alone? with only 900 casualties is, on balance, a good trade for humanity.) I think he chose the safer option, for all concerned. Well, except for Saddam. I bet he's still pissed.