New roll-out (propaganda campaign) for war with Iran?

Though perhaps to your mind it does. Perhaps you do consider that american citizens ought not to know what is going on, that they ought to be deceived, that they really cannot be counted on to have correct ideas and that it is really just a small elite who have the capacity to rule a republic.

Consider our sciences too. Every one of them, without exception, has besides its elementary groundwork certain "higher" regions that are inaccessible to the layman--symbols, these also, of our will-to-infinity and directional energy. The public for whom the last chapters of up-to-date physics have been written numbers at the utmost a thousand persons, and certain problems of modern mathematics are accessible only to a much smaller circle still--for our "popular" science is without value,detraquee, and falsified. We have not only an art for artists, but also a mathematics for mathematicians, a politic for politicians (of which the profanum vulgus of newspaper readers has not the smallest inkling,* whereas Classical politics never got beyond the horizon of the Agora), a religion for the "religious genius" and a poetry for philosophers. Indeed, we may take the craving for wide effect as a sufficient index by itself of the commencing and already perceptible decline of Western science. That the severe esoteric of the Baroque Age is felt now as a burden, is a symptom of sinking strength and of the dulling of that distance-sense which confessed the limitation with humility. The few sciences that have kept the old fineness, depth, and energy of conclusion and deduction and have not been tainted with journalism--and few indeed they are, for theoretical physics, mathematics, Catholic dogma, and perhaps jurisprudence exhaust the list--address themselves to a very narrow and chosen band of experts. And it is this expert, and his opposite the layman, that are totally lacking in the Classical life, wherein everyone knows everything. For us, the polarity of expert and layman has all the significance of a high symbol, and when the tension of this distance is beginning to slacken, there the Faustian life is fading out.

The conclusion to be argued from this as regards the advances of Western science in its last phase (which will cover, or quite possibly will not cover, the next two centuries) is, that in proportion as megalopolitan shallowness and triviality drive arts and sciences on to the bookstall and into the factory, the posthumous spirit of the Culture will confine itself more and more to very narrow circles, and that there, remote from advertisement, it will work in ideas and forms so abstruse that only a mere handful of superfine intelligences will be capable of attaching meanings to them.

*The great mass of Socialists would cease to be Socialists if they could understand the Socialism of the nine or ten men who today grasp it with the full historical consequences that it involves.

The Administration has been clear that it favors a political/diplomatic solution to the affronts Iran is posing to the Western World. I have been clear here that an attack on Iran is very unlikely. It is Blatham and the other anti-Administration commentators here who have shrilly insisted that an attack or something like one is in the offing. I find this to be a highly unrealistic and illogical interpretation of the available facts. For them to go on and insist that not only is such an attack likely, but that its consequences are certainly unplanned is an unfounded extrapolation from facts that strongly suggest the opposite.

it is clear that it [the administration] favors a political/diplomatic solution to the affronts Iran is posing to the Western World.

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects.

Scoop for Spanish Daily: Transcript of Private 2003 Bush Talk Promising Iraq Invasion

By E&P Staff

Published: September 26, 2007 8:00 AM ET

NEW YORK El Pais, the highest-circulation daily in Spain, today published what it said was the transcript of a private talk between President George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on February 22, 2003, concerning the coming U.S. invasion of Iraq. It took place at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The conversation took place on the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas. The source for the leak was said to be someone in the Spanish government.

Bush purportedly said he planned to invade Iraq inf March "if there was a United Nations Security Council resolution or not....We have to get rid of Saddam. We will be in Baghdad at the end of March."

He said the U.S. takeover would happen without widespread destruction.

I have to demand, as a matter of intellectual integrity, that you cease misrepresenting what I have said. Or I'll beat you up.

Just a few pages back, I again clarified that I too do not think this administration will do something so foolish, counter-productive to world peace and stability, not to mention downright evil as to begin bombing another country. I did NOT say an attack was in the offing or likely.

But I did add that if any administration in my lifetime MIGHT be this insane, this administration is it.

And pleaaaase do not try to argue that US citizens (or anyone else) have reason to agree with you that

Quote:

it is clear that it [the administration] favors a political/diplomatic solution to the affronts Iran is posing to the Western World.

because we KNOW beyond any doubt from documents and accounts of many who were involved that precisely the opposite was true as regards Iraq. War plans were on Bush's desk even though he explicitly lied to US citizens that they were. The administration deceitfully continued to say that war had not been decided upon long after it had.

There are two issues here. Can these people be trusted to be truthful or transparent with their citizens and the answer is not a bloody chance. Please stop justifying this level of dismantling the foundations of democracy in your country. It's embarrassing.

The other issue is the pathological arrogance - the evil - of the US to act such that hundreds of thousands of children and adults end up dead and dismembered. I really do not feel compelled in the slightest to support all your justifications for such facts and consequences.

Lincoln figured that the US would author its own demise. He was right about that. You are.

In the last two decades of his rule Saddam caused far more than just a few hundred thousands of deaths and dismemberments of Iranians, Kuwaitis and Iraqis in his various adventures and oppressions.

You will have to start doing better than that superficial nonsense.. Did I say anything that claimed absolution for the casualties in our Iraq invasion?

Just a few pages back, I again clarified that I too do not think this administration will do something so foolish, counter-productive to world peace and stability, not to mention downright evil as to begin bombing another country. I did NOT say an attack was in the offing or likely.

But I did add that if any administration in my lifetime MIGHT be this insane, this administration is it.

Oh, I see, Bernie didn't say this Administration would attack Iraq. Instead he said that only they would be insane and foolish enough to do so.

I took a moment to ponder this fine distinction.

How can one misrepresent the words of a speaker who insists on having it both ways ? He misrepresents himself !!!

georgeob1 wrote:

You will have to start doing better than that superficial nonsense.. Did I say anything that claimed absolution for the casualties in our Iraq invasion?

I certainly haven't seen anything resembling a sense of responsibility on the subject; not meaning to go after you personally, George, but there certainly is a lot of criticism of Saddam for doing the same sorts of things that we are doing, and little description of our actions in the same language used to describe his. In fact, when Bernie attempted to do so, it seems he was criticized for doing so.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

You will have to start doing better than that superficial nonsense.. Did I say anything that claimed absolution for the casualties in our Iraq invasion?

I certainly haven't seen anything resembling a sense of responsibility on the subject; not meaning to go after you personally, George, but there certainly is a lot of criticism of Saddam for doing the same sorts of things that we are doing, and little description of our actions in the same language used to describe his. In fact, when Bernie attempted to do so, it seems he was criticized for doing so.

Cycloptichorn

Huh?

We're gassing people? We're beheading citizens of Iraq?

Where is this coming from?

woiyo wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

You will have to start doing better than that superficial nonsense.. Did I say anything that claimed absolution for the casualties in our Iraq invasion?

I certainly haven't seen anything resembling a sense of responsibility on the subject; not meaning to go after you personally, George, but there certainly is a lot of criticism of Saddam for doing the same sorts of things that we are doing, and little description of our actions in the same language used to describe his. In fact, when Bernie attempted to do so, it seems he was criticized for doing so.

Cycloptichorn

Huh?

We're gassing people? We're beheading citizens of Iraq?

Where is this coming from?

We're either directly or indirectly causing the deaths of thousands in Iraq. The method of doing so is immaterial.

I only bring this up, b/c Saddam is often reported as having killed 'hundreds of thousands' of Iraqis. That's only true if you include the Iraq-Iran war - an action analogous to our attack upon Iraq.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

woiyo wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

You will have to start doing better than that superficial nonsense.. Did I say anything that claimed absolution for the casualties in our Iraq invasion?

I certainly haven't seen anything resembling a sense of responsibility on the subject; not meaning to go after you personally, George, but there certainly is a lot of criticism of Saddam for doing the same sorts of things that we are doing, and little description of our actions in the same language used to describe his. In fact, when Bernie attempted to do so, it seems he was criticized for doing so.

Cycloptichorn

Huh?

We're gassing people? We're beheading citizens of Iraq?

Where is this coming from?

We're either directly or indirectly causing the deaths of thousands in Iraq. The method of doing so is immaterial.

I only bring this up, b/c Saddam is often reported as having killed 'hundreds of thousands' of Iraqis. That's only true if you include the Iraq-Iran war - an action analogous to our attack upon Iraq.

Cycloptichorn

This bull-sh!t police action really has to end soon.

You people are going absolutely crazy with this nonsense. I guess it is somewhat deserved given the terrible job GW has done executing it.

We're either directly or indirectly causing the deaths of thousands in Iraq.