Polls show Americans are 'confused'

Maybe someone much smarter than me on the other side can enlighten me on this specific point.

If it is true that Saddam and Iraq HAD them, and they show no signs or proof of having destroyed them, then they a) destroyed them and didn't tell us (unlikely, because if this were the case, Saddam would still be in power) OR b) THEY STILL EXIST AND THEY HAVE BEEN MOVED ELSEWHERE!


So, what is being gained (other than a political advantage) by harping on the "deficiency in the present administrations intelligence gathering" rather than uniting to locate and eradicate them?

Acquiunk - I assume you missed my more recent post on this subject. My point was that I know of no willfully false reports that weapons were found--either during the war or since. I also commented that I may have wrongly inferred that you meant willfully false reports as opposed to reports of suspected WOMD that were later determined not to be WOMD and so reported.

Yes and no. A news outlet that is constantly dedicated to its efforts to scoop the others on potential stories has no resources left to do any sort of investigative reporting, to follow up on a lead and see what the full story is -- nor can they take the tie to see whether an initial flash in the pan is a real story or not. A news agency has a limited amount of resources at its disposal and a limited amount of time and/or space in which to disseminate information. Putting aside my suspicion/paranoia about the parties who control information, how can, say, a network that is constantly dedicated to breaking news ever make time to return to what happened with yesterday's breaking news.

I don't mean to relieve the passive consumer of news from any responsbility for their choice of news source; I do mean that the sources from which most Americans do get their news are utterly negligent about presenting news in any sort of thoughtful, intelligent, and considered manner.

To go back to a point made briefly earlier -- if the networks were held to anything like the investigative standards that scientists were, they'd be run out of town. I don't mean that there should be, but if the reliability of information were to be ranked on a scale defined by the Enquirer at one end and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the other, I'd want them to fall closer to PNAS than the two-headed-baby rag available at your supermarket checkstand.

Apparently obtuseness is found in place some prefer not to look.

Think about this for a second, Max.

Just how in hell could "focusing on whether or not the weapons are in Iraq" possibly be "counterproductive to our determining whether or not they have been transported elsewhere?"

We want to know where the weapons are (in large quantities as the Bush administration insisted) -- and if they still exist.

We must first determine whether or not they are in Iraq -- or indeed we are going off half-cocked.

Only when we determine there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (or meaningful stockpiles of those weapons) should we go on to the next question -- which should not be, "Are they somewhere else?"

The question we should go onto next is a two parter: Do they still exist? -- and if so, where are they?




The problem here obviously is not what you seeem to think it is -- that some of us do not agree with your position -- and therefore we are obtuse. The problem is that some -- such as you -- have already determined that there are weapons and that we must find where they are.

But if you had the open mind you seem insistent upon charging that we other don't have, you would be willing to acknowledge that THEY MAY NOT EXIST.



I'm sure those words were easy to type. No real big ones in there! But I think they distort the truth of where you are on this issue.

And frankly, I think you do go off half-cocked on a whole range of issues -- particularly when you are being an apologist for conservative stances.




Some of us are smart enough not to have "beliefs" on issues of this magnitude. Some of us are smart enough and ethical enough to acknoledge that we are swayed in our thinking by our political and philosophical inclinations -- and that we are guessing in a particular way because we feel the way we do.

You seem to look down your nose on conduct in which you regularly engage.

There's a word for that.

Can you come up with that word without help?

Nat Parry over at Consortiumnews.com has written about the bleak landscape Bush Inc. has created before our very eyes. It goes to the self-delusional quality this discussion (and of course by extension the polled majority of Americans) has taken on:

For the rest of the world, the broad American disconnect from reality must be unnerving, given the awesome power of the U.S. military arsenal. What does it mean when the most powerful nation on earth chooses fantasy over truth? What are the consequences when an American president realizes he can broadly falsify the factual record and get away with it?

If the American people don't demand accountability for the lies that led to war, a new political paradigm may be created. Bush may conclude that he is free to make any life-or-death decision and then unleash his conservative allies to manipulate the facts and intimidate the opposition. By inaction, the American people may be sleepwalking down a path that takes them into a land controlled by lies, delusion and fear.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., one of the few members of Congress to consistently raise questions about Bush's case for war, said the discrepancies between Bush's pre-war WMD claims and the facts on the ground "are very serious and grave questions, and they require immediate answers. We cannot - and must not - brush such questions aside."

Byrd also noted Bush's curious disinterest in the truth. "What amazes me is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation," Byrd said in a Senate speech on June 5. "It is his integrity that is on the line. It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his leadership that has come under scrutiny. And yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity about the strange turn of events in Iraq, expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled. … "

Bush and the End of Reason

Ooft!

You have nicely walked into traps in the past, scrat, or sprung snares you set yourself, ("find ONE"), so I thought it was worth a shot. As I already said, though, not very well thought out. No grand claims here.

I already expanded upon what I was getting at. Patiodog said it more clearly -- like him, I would prefer to see more news that is closer to the PNAS side of the spectrum. Lacking that, I would prefer to see more people, of all political persuasions, spend more time reading a variety of news sources to get a more nuanced story. Lacking both of those, I say things like "ARGH!" and get extremely irritated with people's idiocy. I'm this close to finally making this my signature, from Men in Black:

Scrat, found the post, I did not mean to imply false reports and did not assume you were implying false reports, sorry if I created a wrong impression.

On the contrary! I think my mistake was purely a function of the bias I brought to reading what you wrote! Thanks for the courtesy, though. It is a rare treat and much appreciated!

I have copied this posting from the "Where are all the W.M.D.'s" thread, because i feel it is germaine here, as well.

What may prove interesting down the road is the heat that Mr. Blair is getting in Parliament. If the furor in England grows, can the American public continue to hide it's--what is the claim now, 60%?--collective head in the sand? If Blair takes a fall (actually, something which is currently unlikely), would Americans continue to content themselves that this is a trustworthy administration? I am saddened by the lack of courage on the part of liberals in the Congress--the current Senate action is characterized as a "review" and not an investigation. Many administrations throughout our nation's history have lied, and sometimes gotten away with it. Rarely have the lies had such an impact on the world, however. And, often enough, in matters much less crucial, the political opposition has called the sitting administration's bluff. The usual outcome is the sacrifice of one or a few employees, but the effective result is also the neutralization of any claim by the administration to good performance based on the matters about which they have lied. The current administration may well get away with this one, and, if so, then liberal members of Congress will bear a good deal of the responsibility for that, as well as the shame.

because they dont exist any more.

http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/us030409.html

"DISSENSION IN THE RANKS: Scott Ritter began his fall from grace in the eyes of the US establishment in the first Gulf War, when as a junior military intelligence analyst he began filing reports contradicting the official US estimates of the number of Scud missiles destroyed. Later appointed chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, he resigned in 1998, claiming that President Bill Clinton was too lenient on Saddam Hussein's regime. Since then, Mr Ritter has performed what his critics see as an about-face; he now says it is highly unlikely Baghdad possesses dangerous amounts of weapons of mass destruction.

Ritter believes that the UN inspectors destroyed 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the seven years they spent there. He also argues that it would be impossible for Iraq to build new weapons in the three years since inspectors left, without being detected


"I have clearly stated that Iraq could reconstitute a limited capability within six months, so the potential is there for Iraq to have done this, but that potential doesn't automatically translate into reality, and we did have inspectors on the ground for almost four months, and they found nothing. Furthermore they investigated over a dozen sites highlighted by the Central Intelligence Agency as being prime suspects for producing weapons of mass destruction and they have found nothing."

"Clearly Iraq could have hidden something, we know that Iraq tried to hide things from us in the past, but this 5 to 10 percent of unaccounted-for material doesn't mean that Iraq didn't account for it, it means that we can't verify the Iraqi accounting. Iraq claims to have destroyed everything, they just can't prove that they destroyed everything. We can prove that 90 to 95 percent were accounted for."

"But let's talk about that missing material. In the field of biological materials, anthrax. Iraq produced anthrax in liquid bulk form, it has a shelf life of three years under ideal storage conditions, the last known batch came out in 1991. I might be a simple marine, not able to do adequate mathematics, but I think 1991 plus three gives you 1994. What anthrax does Iraq have? None of the anthrax they produced prior to 1991 can be viable today, it simply can't be."

"The nerve agent sarin: there's talk of 1000 tonnes of Iraqi nerve agent unaccounted for, because there's 6500 munitions that we can't account for dating from 1983 to 88. The problem is, that even if Iraq tried to hide that stuff, it can't be viable today because that nerve agent has a shelf-life of five years. So even though we can't give a final disposition of that 5 to 10 per cent that's unaccounted for, I can tell you this; regardless of what happened to it, it's not worth anything today, it can't hurt anyone. So I come back to the basic question: what weapons of mass destruction?"

You can download or hear via streaming his hour long talk and Q & A session at Cal Tech on these issues.

http://www.sass.caltech.edu/events/ritter.shtml

nailed it, kuvasz

I found your word, frank. Supercilious.

I'm still looking for mine.

I'll let you know.

Now I got ya, Max.

Max is being sarcastic and insulting, and trying to be subtle. Shocking departure, no?

Edgar, he was intent on being hateful to someone who attempted to get him to admit hypocricy, but he moved too quickly to get it right--he's attacking you for what someone else wrote . . .

Ah, hit the wrong nail, as it were.

Mea Culpa, mea culpa!

I zigged when I should have zagged.

I said edgar, when I should have said frank.

Other than that, I think I was exceedingly accurate in my assessment.

I'm also not surprised that the usual suspects would disagree with me.

CNN had an extensive report on the new Harry Potter book this morning. This was followed by a rather involved look at the trend of turning comic books into movies. Great coverage, good stuff. I'm glad I tuned in.

meanwhile, i tried honestly, with reference sources, to answer a question and it was ignored, conjuring up the image of a person sticking their fingers in their ears and humming "lalalalalalala, i'm not listening."

Sorry, kuvasz.

Was that for me?

My ADD kicks in sometimes at the most inappropriate of times......