stupid is as stupid does

John Kerry: "If you make the most of (education), you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

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New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin: "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day."

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Rep. Bob Wexler: "I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do."

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LoneStarMadam wrote:

Murtha did say that terrorism started with Abu Graib, just because I didn't post the Iraq invasion as well, doesn't make any difference.....

Yes it does. When you put something in quotation marks, it has to be word-for-word exactly what that person said. It can't be the gist of what someone said, or a summary of what someone said, or something that could be interpreted as having the same meaning as what he said. It has to be what someone said precisely. They should have taught you that back in elementary school.

Ticomaya wrote:

Did you think I was trying to claim that the quote I posted was identical to the quote she typed?

The above statement was made by someone trying to support you, who gave us Murtha's real quote. He then tried to argue that what you typed was the same in meaning as to what Murtha said. I disagree, but that is beside the point of contention now-Murtha never, ever said "Terrorism started with Abu Ghraib".

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[quote] REP. JOHN MURTHA: You have got to remember, Margaret, there was no terrorist activity in Iraq at all before we went in there[/B]. There's been an increase. The State Department said there's been an increase in terrorist activity in the last couple of years, before they stopped putting the report out.

.....
MARGARET WARNER: Okay. But the president does say, as you know, that for whatever reason Iraq --

John MurthaREP. JOHN MURTHA: But the president said a lot of things, and they turned out not to be true. The president said there are weapons of mass destruction. The president said oil would pay for it. The president cut taxes at a time when we're in a war.

MARGARET WARNER: So do you reject -

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Just because he says it doesn't make it so. The American people don't believe this president.

MARGARET WARNER: But may I ask you, sir, if you believe -- he says -- for whatever reason, Iraq has become the center of terrorism - that if the U.S. appears to retreat in the face of that, that it will be a blow to the American fight against radical Islamic terrorism? What do you say to that?

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Well, I say that the fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib. It began with the invasion of Iraq. That's when terrorism started. It didn't start when there was criticism of this administration. This administration doesn't want to listen to any ideas.
etc etc etc
[/quote]

It's pretty obvious that Murtha's saying that terrorist activity in Iraq started when the US invaded Iraq.

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kelticwizard wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:
The two [quotes] are, however, functionally identical....

No, they are not. When one starts a sentence like "terrorism started", it is akin to "the world started", "life started" or "democracy started"-all of these, taken alone, imply the for the first time in history or in the modern age.

Let's set aside for the moment your assertion about what "terrorism started" at the beginning of a sentence implies, and focus instead on what the two quotes actually say.

Quote #1: "Terrorism started with Abu Graib" .

Quote #2: "Well, I say that the fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib. It began with the invasion of Iraq. That's when terrorism started. ..."

The plain language used by Murtha shows a clear meaning to express the belief that terrorism started with Abu Ghraib and the invasion of Iraq.

Thus, we can revise Quote #2 by taking out extraneous matter and be left with the following:

Revised Quote #2: "The fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib [and] with the invasion of Iraq [and] that's when terrorism started."

If you don't agree with that revision, please explain why.

Revised Quote #2 can be further revised as follows:

Further Revised Quote #2: "Terrorism started with Abu Ghraib and with the invasion of Iraq."

So, I think it is perhaps more accurate to say Quote #1 is nearly the functional equivalent of Further Revised Quote #2, with the only exception being that Murtha believes terrorism started both with Abu Ghraib and the invasion of Iraq.

If that is your point, I concede it to you.

And again, it remains a monumentally stupid thing for him to have said.

Quote:

Now when we take Murtha's real quote, stated below,

Quote:
"Well, I say that the fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib. It began with the invasion of Iraq. That's when terrorism started. ..."

With the second quote, it becomes clear that by terrorism, Murtha means violence against Americans by Iraqis. That is quite a different slant from saying "Terrorism started with Abu Ghraib", as if terrorism was unknown before that prison was used by the US.

I don't know what Murtha meant, and I'm not willing to concede that you have a grasp on his true meaning. But what I do know is IF that was his meaning as you claim, it was very stupid for him to say, "[T]hat's when terrorism started," because those words carry an entirely different meaning, and the context does not rescue him.

And I believe the point that it was a stupid thing to say is the point of this thread.

Quote:

Now, when you add the context, which is that Murtha's quote was in answer to a television moderator's question about terrorism in Iraq specifically, the real statement becomes even more clear and to the point.

Wrong, that is certainly not made clear by the context. The context reveals a question about whether a US retreat would be a blow to the US fight against radical Islamic terrorism, and Murtha's response was to say terrorism started with with Abu Ghraib and with the invasion of Iraq.

nimh wrote:

Not for the first time, Keltic already said everything I'd wanted to say... :wink:

Well it's not the first time you've been wrong. :wink:

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kelticwizard wrote:

The above statement was made by someone trying to support you, who gave us Murtha's real quote. He then tried to argue that what you typed was the same in meaning as to what Murtha said. I disagree, but that is beside the point of contention now-Murtha never, ever said "Terrorism started with Abu Ghraib".

I wasn't trying to support anyone. Several of you asked for a citation to the quote, and I provided a citation to a similar quote, which also happens to be a stupid statement, keeping with the theme of this thread.

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Mame wrote:

It's pretty obvious that Murtha's saying that terrorist activity in Iraq started when the US invaded Iraq.

That might be what he meant, but that's not what he said. Thus, wouldn't you agree that if he said something that conveyed a completely different meaning than what he intended -- specifically that terrorism started with Abu Ghraib and the invasion of Iraq -- that was a stupid thing to say?

Are any of you reasonable people willing to admit that it was a stupid thing to say?

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Funny it is, a topic covering who are our stupidist government agents. So far 815 views with 106 posts. Might very well be a2k's version of American Idol.

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Ticomaya wrote:

Mame wrote:
It's pretty obvious that Murtha's saying that terrorist activity in Iraq started when the US invaded Iraq.

That might be what he meant, but that's not what he said. Thus, wouldn't you agree that if he said something that conveyed a completely different meaning than what he intended -- specifically that terrorism started with Abu Ghraib and the invasion of Iraq -- that was a stupid thing to say?

Are any of you reasonable people willing to admit that it was a stupid thing to say?

Sorry, I'm not getting you. Having read the interview, it was pretty obvious to me that he was talking about terrorist activity in Iraq. Not everything needs to be spelled out. Taken in the context in which it was said, it was obvious that's what he meant. He wasn't talking about Sudan, he was talking about Iraq.

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kelticwizard wrote:

LoneStarMadam wrote:
Murtha did say that terrorism started with Abu Graib, just because I didn't post the Iraq invasion as well, doesn't make any difference.....

Yes it does. When you put something in quotation marks, it has to be word-for-word exactly what that person said. It can't be the gist of what someone said, or a summary of what someone said, or something that could be interpreted as having the same meaning as what he said. It has to be what someone said precisely. They should have taught you that back in elementary school.

Ticomaya wrote:
Did you think I was trying to claim that the quote I posted was identical to the quote she typed?

The above statement was made by someone trying to support you, who gave us Murtha's real quote. He then tried to argue that what you typed was the same in meaning as to what Murtha said. I disagree, but that is beside the point of contention now-Murtha never, ever said "Terrorism started with Abu Ghraib".

Murtha did say it & that's why there's quotation marks. The fact that he spewed other lies with it has no bearing on it.

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"Ah nevah inhaled"

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LoneStarMadam wrote:

Clinton pleads to perjury

reagan and iran-contra

rumsfeld meets and shakes hands with saddam

reagan "can't recall"

ollie north can recall, but lies to congress

fawn hall is a li'l hottie - what's she doin' with those guys ???

over 150 people indicted in reagan administration

newt gingrich ditches cancer infested wife and takes up with his assistant

bob packwood chases female pages around, ravishes them and writes about it.

jim baker nails jessica hahn, gets caught and cries for us.

jimmy swaggert pays hookers to walk around in his hotel room while he ..uhhh... is feelin' the spirit; gets caught and cries for us.

spiro agnew (aka "forrrrrre!) popped for tax fraud, bounced from veep's office.

nixon.

tom delay, abramoff, cunningham, et. all caught being nefarious, blame the liberals and secular progressives.

the cheney/rove junta outs plame, throws libby under the bus.

bob novak, caught in the crossfire of his own arrogance, reacts as the consumate pro and cusses out james carvel on national television. the li'l powell's fcc fails to notice. still rerunning the wardrobe tape to see just how much boob you can really see if ya try real hard.

"kenny boy" lay, ceo of enron (and special advisor to gw bush) busted for perpetrating the 2nd largest accounting scam in history.

george w. bush. the name says it all.....

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...and that's a wrap.

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LoneStarMadam wrote:

"Hell, if you work for Bill Clinton you go up & down more than a whore's nightgown"
James carville

an americanization of a trusty spanish phrase. the meaning of which is ruffly "they're working me so hard i have to stand up again as soon as i sit down".

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DontTreadOnMe wrote:

LoneStarMadam wrote:
"Hell, if you work for Bill Clinton you go up & down more than a whore's nightgown"
James carville

an americanization of a trusty spanish phrase. the meaning of which is ruffly "they're working me so hard i have to stand up again as soon as i sit down".

I thought it was funny, Carville is hilarious. Since there's been more than stupid quotes posted, i didn't see anything wrong with posting that one. I knew what it meant.

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Mame wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:
Mame wrote:
It's pretty obvious that Murtha's saying that terrorist activity in Iraq started when the US invaded Iraq.

That might be what he meant, but that's not what he said. Thus, wouldn't you agree that if he said something that conveyed a completely different meaning than what he intended -- specifically that terrorism started with Abu Ghraib and the invasion of Iraq -- that was a stupid thing to say?

Are any of you reasonable people willing to admit that it was a stupid thing to say?

Sorry, I'm not getting you. Having read the interview, it was pretty obvious to me that he was talking about terrorist activity in Iraq. Not everything needs to be spelled out. Taken in the context in which it was said, it was obvious that's what he meant. He wasn't talking about Sudan, he was talking about Iraq.

Yes, he was indeed talking about Iraq. And what he said about Iraq was that Abu Ghraib and the US invasion of Iraq was "when terrorism started."

Stupid.

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LoneStarMadam wrote:

DontTreadOnMe wrote:
LoneStarMadam wrote:
"Hell, if you work for Bill Clinton you go up & down more than a whore's nightgown"
James carville

an americanization of a trusty spanish phrase. the meaning of which is ruffly "they're working me so hard i have to stand up again as soon as i sit down".

I thought it was funny, Carville is hilarious. Since there's been more than stupid quotes posted, i didn't see anything wrong with posting that one. I knew what it meant.

and it is one of my faves.

yep, carville is witty and quite funny. and so is mary. i'd love to be a fly on the wall at their house. bet it's hysterical.

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Ticomaya wrote:

Yes, he was indeed talking about Iraq. And what he said about Iraq was that Abu Ghraib and the US invasion of Iraq was "when terrorism started."

Stupid.

terrorism started in the garden of eden...

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stupid is as stupid does

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