wombat_socho (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wombat_socho) wrote2007-05-09 09:50 am
wombat_socho) wrote2007-05-09 09:50 am
Entry tags:
Lies, damned lies, and politics
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mplsvala wants to convince me (and, presumably, others) that we were all lied to about Iraq, W is EVIL, etc. This is wasted effort.
She quotes a commenter at Townhall.com who claims that the UN inspectors were making good progress before W ordered them out. Does this look like good progress to you? And this is just one month of the many months that the inspectors were in Iraq. The whole history of the weapons inspection process is one of people being led around by the nose and continually frustrated by the Hussein regime. To those who say there were no WMD in Iraq, this is obvious nonsense. Iraqi use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds is a matter of historical record, and in fact chemical munitions have been found. Why haven't we found more? Probably because they were shipped to Syria.
As for the accusation that "facts were being fixed", this is asinine. Everyone in the intel business understands that intelligence work is not 100% guaranteed. Good sources don't always deliver, bad sources sometimes tell the truth, and there can be honest disagreement about what the evidence means. Unfortunately a lot of politicians either don't understand this or prefer to exploit those disagreements and call those choosing different interpretations "liars", which doesn't help sort out what's actually going on. I find it interesting that the commenter would name Joe Wilson, in fact; let's look at what's happened to him, shall we? The man is free and walking the streets despite having lied to Congress and damn near everyone else about his wife, his trip to Niger, and what the Iraqis were up to there. All of this is on the record, but people still hold Wilson and Plame up as soem kind of holy martyrs to the lies and wrath of W. Some martyrs.
You can believe what you want to believe, but save your concern, okay? I don't just read the mainstream newspapers and I don't just read the right half of the blogosphere. The notion that I would undergo some kind of Damascene conversion if only I could see the truth is patronizing at best and insulting at worst. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd, if you want to talk politics, buddy, you just wastin' time.
EDIT: Post title edited to be slightly less inflammatory.
mplsvala wants to convince me (and, presumably, others) that we were all lied to about Iraq, W is EVIL, etc. This is wasted effort. She quotes a commenter at Townhall.com who claims that the UN inspectors were making good progress before W ordered them out. Does this look like good progress to you? And this is just one month of the many months that the inspectors were in Iraq. The whole history of the weapons inspection process is one of people being led around by the nose and continually frustrated by the Hussein regime. To those who say there were no WMD in Iraq, this is obvious nonsense. Iraqi use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds is a matter of historical record, and in fact chemical munitions have been found. Why haven't we found more? Probably because they were shipped to Syria.
As for the accusation that "facts were being fixed", this is asinine. Everyone in the intel business understands that intelligence work is not 100% guaranteed. Good sources don't always deliver, bad sources sometimes tell the truth, and there can be honest disagreement about what the evidence means. Unfortunately a lot of politicians either don't understand this or prefer to exploit those disagreements and call those choosing different interpretations "liars", which doesn't help sort out what's actually going on. I find it interesting that the commenter would name Joe Wilson, in fact; let's look at what's happened to him, shall we? The man is free and walking the streets despite having lied to Congress and damn near everyone else about his wife, his trip to Niger, and what the Iraqis were up to there. All of this is on the record, but people still hold Wilson and Plame up as soem kind of holy martyrs to the lies and wrath of W. Some martyrs.
You can believe what you want to believe, but save your concern, okay? I don't just read the mainstream newspapers and I don't just read the right half of the blogosphere. The notion that I would undergo some kind of Damascene conversion if only I could see the truth is patronizing at best and insulting at worst. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd, if you want to talk politics, buddy, you just wastin' time.
EDIT: Post title edited to be slightly less inflammatory.