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LEFT NOT RIGHT
The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam:
Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: “I told you so.”
This was after a declassified National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating. For millions of people who opposed President Bush’s mission in Iraq from the start, this was proof positive that they had been right all along. Yes, they told themselves, we saw this disaster coming.
Only ... that isn’t quite true.
Interesting piece. Read on.
From the column (which is indeed very interesting):
“...A lot of unease in this country is consistent with people not feeling like they are being leveled with.”
Some people felt there was more information available? Is this more hindsight bias? One has to wonder.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 03 at 01:43 AM • permalinkInteresting piece, in as much as it is a bunch of psychobabble based on yet another recitation of “facts” taken out of context and/or purposely spun from an illegally leaked intell appraisal.
Dress bullshit up in a tweed jacket and stick a tobacco pipe in where it’s mouth would be if it wasn’t a pile of bullshit and it’s still a pile of bullshit.
For those who want to read what the thing said before it was passed through the digestive system of a malignant media:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Click on “Declassified Key Judgements” in the upper right of the page.
The anti-Americanism of the “peace/anti-war movement” is much more likely the real motivator to so much of this current spate of jihadism.
Nothing brings out the predators like the smell of rot and displays of weakness.For those who came in late, this ... and this are reminders of when people were smart enough to know happy-ever-after doesn’t come with surrender. Thanks to Jessica’s Well.
Goodness me, talk about clutching at straws!
The war in Iraq was a bad idea from start to finish. Of course no one could predict with certainty how it pan out, but you predict that a lot of innocent people would die.
#4. Iraq was a hornet’s nest. America and her allies came
and poked the nest with a stick.The problem isn’t that the nest was poked. The problem
is that the nest was full of hornets.But that’s the whole point, it wasn’t a hornets nest but it is now. Iraq wasn’t a base for Al-Qaeda before the invasion. Most people knew that as a largely secular nationalist Saddam would be hostile to Islamists. If I knew that then how come Cheny, Bush, Blair and Howard did not?
I can only see this as making the world more dangerous.
#13 Iraq wasn’t a hornets nest for the simple reason that Saddam employed plenty of Mortein on the Kurds and any other uppity hornets that looked like stirring up trouble.
Germany was not a hornets nest under Hitler, but it was after April 1945. Have you ever thought to ask how many Germans got strung up after by other Germans after hostilities were over as the locals engaged in a bit of score settling?
France was also not a hornets nest until after it was liberated. Then the brave frogs turned on the collaborators and it all got pretty ugly for a while.
And France was only occupied for 3 or 4 years. How long was Saddam in power? Long enough to brew up a powder keg of hatreds.
If members of my family had been “disappeared” and tortured and murdered by the secret police, I’d spend the rest of my days hunting them down and chopping them into little bits with a very blunt chisel. Turning the other cheek might be the christian thing to do, but unless I am mistaken, most Iraqi’s don’t follow that creed. What the lefties call “civil war” is what I’d call “an eye for an eye”, and it is going to keep on going until every Baathist henchman is six feet under. Since there were a lot of Baathist henchmen, expect to see lots and lots and lots of bodies.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 10 03 at 06:28 AM • permalinkKalli, you are a bit of a drongo, aren’t you?
“The war in Iraq was a bad idea from start to finish.”
Comment: Why? It has turned to outward expansion of islamic conflict inwards for a time, led to the destruction of AQ’s command and control systems, deprived them of money, drawn wannabe terrorists into the range of Allied guns where we have killed large numbers of them, saved innumerable Iraqi lives and overthrown a genuine national socialist regime. You DO know that Ba’athism is modelled directly on dear old Adolf’s NSDAP, don’t you?
Why is it a bad idea to terminate a regime based on national socialist ideals?
Oh, it also destroyed the DPRK-Iraqi-Libyan plan to get bloody nuclear weapons for Saddam and Gaddafi!
Why is that a “bad idea”?!“Of course no one could predict with certainty how it pan out, but you predict that a lot of innocent people would die.”
Comment: So we kill X number of innocent people while trying our damnedest not to, and that is WORSE than Saddam killing five to ten times X number of people deliberately? As policy? And you think that is bad? What, you’d rather than five-to-ten times X got killed, provided a national socialist dictator was doing it? THAT would ease your conscience? If so, you are an amoral monster.
“#4. Iraq was a hornet’s nest. America and her allies came and poked the nest with a stick.
The problem isn’t that the nest was poked. The problem is that the nest was full of hornets.”“But that’s the whole point, it wasn’t a hornets nest but it is now.”
Comment: You are truly a dill. A generation of Ba’athist rule CREATED the hornets nest and filled it with hornets. We are now killing the worst of them. This is called a choice between bad and worse. Better to choose bad now than worse later.
Iraq wasn’t a base for Al-Qaeda before the invasion. Most people knew that as a largely secular nationalist Saddam would be hostile to Islamists. If I knew that then how come Cheny, Bush, Blair and Howard did not?
Comment: Because you are really, really stupid. Iraq provided intelligence, money and support for AQ and a galaxy of other terrorist organisations. There were links from the Mukhabarat with AQ, mostly they ran thru Malaysia. And you are really thick in claiming that Saddam was a secularist. He was a DICTATOR and regarded any competing power bases as a threat to be crushed. That is not secularism, it is how dictators behave. The outcome of that behaviour was to make Iraq too ‘hot’ for a competing islamist power structure to arise there (the stick) while turning their attentions outwards to his own enemies and offering support for them to do so (the carrot).
I can only see this as making the world more dangerous.
Comment: Utterly meaningless statement typical of a denialist - more dangerous than what? Is the present world more dangerous than Saddam free of all UN sanctions, conventionally rearmed, and armed with nuclear weapons? Oh, and with a nuclear armed Libya as a backstop?
More dangerous than that same Iraq having conquered the Saudi oilfields? More dangerous than that Iraq becoming a hegemon in control of the region?Woolly, vapid thinking and a firm belief in delusion does not a realistic worldview make.
So dry your eyes, princess, and realise that the choices were between bad, and a hell of a lot worse.
MarkL
CanberraI know this is off the thread, but I can’t help myself.
The SMH today had a story about some Australian Idol judge calling a contestant a “mong”. Here is the link
Until today, I was not aware that “mong” could be a slur. However, now that it is, I think we should put it to good use.
I vote for Phillip Adams as my favourite mong. I should apologise to all mongoloids in advance who might be offended at being compared to Phil, but that’s too bad.
Given how Phillip goes on and on and on about say George W for decade after decade without ever saying anything new, I thought about calling him “Mong the Merciless”. But I had second thoughts and have picked instead, “Mong the Mirthless”.
Perhaps Tim could put one of those “vote now” thingys on the web site where we could vote for our favourite mong?
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 10 03 at 08:56 AM • permalinkHmmm.
Funny how Iraq was a den of terrorism when Clinton needed something to bomb the crap out of but suddenly became never associated with terrorism once Clinton was out of office.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 10 03 at 09:44 AM • permalinkExcellent points #15; the hornet’s nest erupts *after* the dictator falls. And as you say, France got pretty ugly after a relatively short (4 years) period of occupation. Saddam had been in control for nearly thirty years and millions of Iraqis have never known anyone else at the top. That’d make anyone a little crazy.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2006 10 03 at 09:50 AM • permalinkI can only see this as making the world more dangerous.
according to the report, the world will only be more dangerous - ie more terrorists recruited - if the jihadis are seen to be winning in Iraq.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 03 at 10:35 AM • permalinkI can’t decide which bunch is more sanctimonious: those who suffer from “hindsight bias”, or those who deign to explain it all to us. It is obvious, however, that there is a lot of “research” money in “studying” this theory.
And then there is this Kalli person who simply must see the world as more dangerous because he/she is so surprised that the enemy has risen to fight a war they declared. I wonder what kind of syndrome “I’m too stupid to admit my ignorance of the way the world operates so you must all listen to me” is.
#3: Dress bullshit up in a tweed jacket and stick a tobacco pipe in where it’s mouth would be if it wasn’t a pile of bullshit and it’s still a pile of bullshit.
Hey! I hope that’s not a reference to my tweed jacket with the intellectual-looking elbow patches and my German oompah pipe! Right now, that get-up is the only thing standing between Mentalfloss and his final decision that I’m a total rube.
“But that’s the whole point, it wasn’t a hornets nest but it is now.”
No, it was merely the site of over 300,000 graves, including children abducted from Kuwait. The neocon loving NY Times reported this.
It was also the launching point of at least two chemical weapons assaults, one of which was directed at civilian targets (Kurds)
It was also the origin of payoffs to homicide bombers and their families in Israel.
It was also the haven of Abu Nidal. A not very nice person.
It was also the refuge of at least one of the 19993 WTC bombers.
It was also the subject of several UN resolutions, and the lucky recipient of a no-fly zone, which was maintained for over ten years. The one drawback was that we allowed helicopters to be excluded from that, which were then used to strafe and dump chemical weapons on civilians, as mentioned above.
It was also trying to obtain weapons grade uranium. Don’t believe us eeeeevil necocons; ask the Europeans; they’re the ones who detected this and tracked it. George Bush had the temerity to listen to the Europeans he’s accused of ignoring, and then went so far as to repeat it in public.
But according to you and Michael Moore, everyone was flying kites in Iraq until The thugish American brutes arrived, and they put down their kites and picked up their IEDs and, in the spirit of minutemen, waited until a crowd of children gathered for candy before setting off bombs.
Hand-in-hand with hindsight bias is hindsight selective amnesia. To hear them tell it now, the left was largely supportive of invading Afghanistan. Bush’s mistake was to leave with the job unfinished and invade Iraq—in the name of Daddy, oil and Haliburton—to depose Saddam who, of course, had no connection to terrorism in general or 9-11 in particular.
But, that’s not how I remember it. The left was uncategorically opposed to invading Afghanistan. The left wanted us to serve international arrest warrents and deliver the “criminals” to the jurisdiction of the international court. If I hear one more lefty say “I supported the war in Afghanistan, but we didn’t finish the job”, I swear I’ll start taking hostages myself.
If I knew that then how come Cheny, Bush, Blair and Howard did not?
Kalli, it’s quite evident that you don’t know jack. Give a rest already.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 10 03 at 12:19 PM • permalinkI can only see this as making the world more dangerous.
Actually, the world got more dangerous when the Berlin Wall fell and the nuclear balance of power vanished. The Islamists have been busy filling the vacuum ever since, and woe betide us when they get their hands on nuclear weapons.
So tell us, Kalli. Should the communists have stayed in power, knowing what we know about them? Should we continue to “negotiate” with the Islamists as we did with the communists, knowing Islamists have a fundamentally religious-millenialist view of the future which precludes the secular west remaining free and independent? What are your solutions, do tell us. Are you for the Islamists, or against them?
Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness should be required reading in every high school.
#26 I’ll come to the defense of research money going on things like “hindsight bias.” Hindsight bias is just one of a number of systematic errors that humans make. The research on these things is mostly done in economics and psychology. It also tends to be rigorous and scientific, unlike (for example) the Marxists across campus in the sociology department.
Plus, this kind of research is cheap to fund, relatively speaking.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 03 at 05:00 PM • permalinkForbes: Wikipedia tells us that:
``In Australian slang, the word drongo is a synonym for a total loser or idiot.’’
Non-idiot drongos are a kind of bird that eats insects.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2006 10 03 at 05:04 PM • permalink#42 a “drongo” is definitely a loser, but I thought the origin was from horseracing… a drongo being a slow horse.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 03 at 05:23 PM • permalink#17. “The coup that brought the Ba’ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.
The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba’ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2694885.stm
(I particularly like that photo of Rumsfeld meeting his good mate Saddam in the 1980s and having a good old handshake!)
So, the United States brings a dictatorial regime to power costing thousands of lives and then thousands more are destroyed bringing it down.
I have to disagree with yu on the Ba’ath comparison to the NSDAP.(But more on that later.)
As for draining Al-Qaeda of resources by pinning them down in Iraq, that is a very, very strange way of looking at the situation. As that recently released US Intell report said, the Iraq war is creating moreterrorism.
As for a ‘national socialist dictator’ killing more Iraqis/Kurds than the US, check out these figures;
Annual deaths during Saddam rule: between 25,000 to 50,000
Annual deaths during U.S. Occupation: about 66,000
Will the US-led occupation stop before they overtake Saddam in the mass murder stakes?
As for Saddam funding Al-Qaeda, I very much doubt that but would like to see some evidence if you have it. But anyway, the point is that they were not operating in Iraq at the time and now have virtually an entire country to recruit and train from and use as a platform of operations.
I think the blame for the whole mess would be more appropriately pinned on the US as they 1. helped Saddam come to power
2. nurtured the seeds of Al-Qaeda through their support of the Islamists in Afghanistan in the 1980s.Ciao.
Kalli
Maybe the US should re-install your mate saddam? he could bring about this lovely orderly society again where “the traions run on time”.
Back him to the hilt, give him nukes, supply him with everything he needs, according to you it would make bagdad a paradise on earth.There was this little thing called the cold war around the time saddam came to power, It eventally was lost by that peace loving workers paradise the USSR. Most decisions made by the Americans at the time were focussed on that threat.
I cant be bothered responding to you any more, you are one of the least original, witty, or coherent trolls ive seen so far.Maybe we could blame Saddam on the romans, after all they were invollved there yars ago as well.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 10 03 at 07:10 PM • permalinkMark L - me too on #17. Bullseye!
stats - is that just a guess that Kalli is LLL? I wouldn’t have connected them, Kalli doesn’t seem anywhere near as long-winded as L3. The thinking is at about the same level, though.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 10 03 at 08:02 PM • permalinkTiodi, why do you address your comments to yourself? Leave the cute quirky habits on Usenet, please.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 03 at 09:09 PM • permalinkOh, and Kalli the Troll has passed its shelf life. When it starts babbling about how the CIA and [CUEPSYCHOSCREAM] George Bush I [/CUEPSYCHOSCREAM] were all thrilled-like when Saddam came to power way back when as some sort of indictment of now, it’s time to get the vaudeville hook out of the cupboard. Excuse me, folks…
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 03 at 10:33 PM • permalinkOkay, boring troll banned. Let that be a lesson to you, would-be trolls: don’t be boring!
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 03 at 10:35 PM • permalinkYou must get tired of stuffing all these empty heads before you put them on display in the trophy room, Andrea.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 10 03 at 11:24 PM • permalinkSwinishCapitalist
Stuffing the heads is easy compared to extracting them from their own asses first….
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 10 04 at 12:26 AM • permalinkMarkL, as fine a fisking as ever I’ve witnessed.
I, for one, was amazed to see the troll return and post even more inane comments with nary a word in response to your post.
Andrea, I wondered for a minute or two about why tiodi prefaces each post with tiodi’s handle: ego. tiodi wants to quickly google tiodi’s own handle and bask in the number (not the quality) of tiodi’s posts.
MarkL, on the other hand, signs each post; but there is a vast difference. Frankly, so would I (sign each post) if I composed as lucidly and thoughtfully —on so consistent a basis—as does he.Oh, and paco, I knew immediately I read grimmy at #2 that yet another had succumbed to the insidous effect of repeated reading of “pacoisms”. I also knew that you would note the reference personally. I am only surprised you waited so long to comment.
paco, paco, paco. Surely you know the esteem in which I hold you (how else does one remove unwanted creases from a tweed jacket)?
I am not fit to carry your pipe cleaners, much less footle with your dottle.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 04 at 12:50 AM • permalink“I, for one, was amazed to see the troll return and post even more inane comments…”
I’m never amazed at the capacity leftists have for spewing absolute nonsense.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 04 at 02:03 AM • permalinkI LIKE this game. Pity in this case, kalli, that I engaging in a battel of wits with an unarmed leftie…
“The coup that brought the Ba’ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.”
Comment: You conflate the ‘contain the USSR’ strategic drivers of the hottest part of the Cold War with today? Thank you for proving that you are a drongo with your first sentence.
The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba’ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.”
Comment: Again, within what strategic milieu? Yet again you show a total inability to comprehend that in the real world choices have to be made between bad choices and worse choices. This is the origin of the term ‘he might be a bastard, but he is our bastard’, a term IIRC invented by a US Democratic president about a South Vietnamese premier. (Can a sensible reader with a functioning intellect [no, kalli, not you, put your hand down] confirm or deny this?)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2694885.stm
(I particularly like that photo of Rumsfeld meeting his good mate Saddam in the 1980s and having a good old handshake!)
Comment: So what? Was that not during the time when iraq was being used by the Saudis and the West to contain islamofascist Iran? Was there not a little conflict going on called the Iran-Iraq War? Was that itself not tied to the US and Allied efforts to defeat the USSR following its conquest of Afghanistan? Are you even capable of comprehending that history did not start with the elections of Howard and Bush?
So did Chirac when he was French Minister for nuclear energy when he was trying to sell weapons-grade plutonium to Saddam. So did a host of others. This is an astoundingly new thing called ‘international diplomacy’. You will be amazed to discover that this has been around for 5500 years based on the treaties between Ramses II and Hattusilis discovered in the Hittite archive at Hattusas, and that the present set of diplomatic rules dates from the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 when the Treaty of Westphalia was enacted.
Guess you missed all that, eh?
So, the United States brings a dictatorial regime to power costing thousands of lives and then thousands more are destroyed bringing it down.
Comment: Hee! I love it when leftards speak in their mother tongue of leftardish (the written form among themselves is patterns in their drool). This is AFFIRMATION OF THE CONSEQUENT,:an argument from the truth of a hypothetical statement, and the truth of the consequent to the truth of the antecedent. You have also converted the conditional. Two logical fallacies in one statement, an achievement by which you clearly demonstrate that your own argument is wrong.
Well done!
Part One Ye Ende
I have to disagree with yu on the Ba’ath comparison to the NSDAP.(But more on that later.)
Comment: No, how about now? ‘Anti-Semitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted both in some Islamic traditions and more tellingly in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda as guided and durected by the Mufti of jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. Important to this process were the Arabic-language service broadcast by the German shortwave transmitter in Zeesen between 1939 and 1945. The role of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was the first to translate European anti-Semitism into an Islamic context backed by an ideology which encouraged this and linked to traditions of anti semitism in the koran (see khaibar oasis). Islamofascism is an independent, anti-Semitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters – the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine – were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist government.
It was not only Heinrich Himmler who waxed lyrical about the “ideological closeness” of National Socialism and Islam, coining the concept of Muselgermanen (“Muslimo-Germans”). Haj Amin el-Husseini, too, referred to the parallels between Muslim and German ideals, identifying the following points of contact:
(1) monotheism – unity of leadership;
(2) the ordering power – obedience and discipline;
(3) the struggle and the honor of falling in battle;
(4) community;
(5) family and offspring;
(6) glorification of work and creativity; and
(7) attitude toward the Jews – “in the struggle against Jewry, Islam and National Socialism come very close to one another.”(Speech by the Mufti to the imams of the Bosnian SS Division, cited in Gensicke Klaus, Der Mufti von Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini und die Nationalsozialisten (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1988)
Major Nazi sympathizers of this era include Ahmed Shukairi, the first chairman of the PLO; Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, future presidents of Egypt; and the founders of the Pan-Arab socialist Ba’ ath party. One Ba’ath leader has since recalled of this time:
“We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading their books and sources of their thought. We were the first who thought of translating Mein Kampf.”
See D. Roberts, The Ba’ath & the Creation of Modern Syria 1987’
The two founders of the Baath Party were educated at the Sorbonne University. They were middle-class Arabs from the then French colony of Syria. Michael Aflaq was a Greek Orthodox Christian and would become the main ideologue of Baathism, preaching freedom from Western colonialism, Arab unity and socialism. He died in Iraq in 1989, embittered.. And Salah al-Din Bitar, born of a Muslim family in Damascus, would be the practical politician, later becoming prime minister of an independent Syria. He was murdered by the Syrian secret police.
Part Two, Ye Ende
Their early Baathist ideas were strongly affected by german national socialism. The movement was based on classless racial unity, hence the strong anti-Marxism, and on national socialism, including nationalised industry and an autarkic economy serving the needs of the nation. Hence, the antipathy towards Western capitalism.
But the rise of German national sopcialism also played a role. Many in the Arab world saw Hitler as an ally. In May 1941, the Arab world was electrified by a pro-Axis coup in Baghdad. At that time, Iraq was nominally independent but Britain maintained a strong military presence. An Arab nationalist by the name of Rashid Ali al-Kailani organised an army coup against the pro-British Iraqi monarchy and requested help from Nazi Germany. In Damascus, then a Vichy French colony, the Baath Party founders immediately organised public demonstrations in support of Rashid Ali. The British crushed Ali with ease despite the assistance the Germans sent to him.
Like the Nazi and Communist parties, the Baath is organised through small cells in a rigid hierarchy. Members are expected to devote their life to the party. In Iraq, would-be members passed through four stages even before becoming a full member: supporter, sympathiser, nominee and trainee. There were about two million Iraqis in these categories. The system requires passing successfully a series of tests, so full members of Saddam’s Baathist organisation were the most hardened and fanatical of his supporters.
In 1947, the Baath Party was set up as a single party covering all the Arab counties, under a National Command (actually a pan-national body). In each Arab nation, a Regional Command - ostensibly the leadership of the local Baath Party - was created. The Iraqi branch of the Baath party was established in 1954. In the post-war period, the restored Iraqi monarchy was stoutly pro-Western, but it was overthrown in a military coup in 1958.
The new Iraqi strongman was Abdel Karim Qassim. He disappointed pan-Arabists like the Baath by rejecting joining a United Arab Republic with Syria and Egypt.
As a counterweight to the Baath, Qassim allied with the Iraqi Communist Party (the strongest in the Middle East).
On 8 February, 1963, the Baath Party staged a bloody coup against Qassim, killing thousands of communists. Many believe that the CIA was involved in the coup as a way of destroying communist influence in the region. Ali Saleh Al-Sa’adi, the Baath Party secretary general, said: “We came to power on a CIA train.” Unsurprising in the middle of the Cold War, although it seems to be a surprise to you.
As for draining Al-Qaeda of resources by pinning them down in Iraq, that is a very, very strange way of looking at the situation. As that recently released US Intell report said, the Iraq war is creating moreterrorism.Comment: Aside from your not having access to the full document (I do not either but I am wearily familiar with this form of watered down ‘consensus intel’ writing where the words of the analysts have been so watered down by their agencies as to be all things to all people), what sort of terrorism and where? If you mean terrorist attacks inside Iraq, sure. If you mean terrorist attacks involving mass casualties in the West, no.
As for a ‘national socialist dictator’ killing more Iraqis/Kurds than the US, check out these figures;
Annual deaths during Saddam rule: between 25,000 to 50,000
Comment: Making a guesstimate at his total as being 600,000-1,200,000 of his own people killed
Annual deaths during U.S. Occupation: about 66,000
Comment: BULLSHIT. You are trying to tell me that 180 people PER DAY have been killed by Allied forces since the invasion? Nearly 200,000 people? Absolute garbage not supporttable by any data I have seen. What are your sources for this, your local methamphetamine dealer? But your wording is interesting: ‘annual deaths’, are you including deaths from all causes to inflate your figure, perhaps?
Part Three, Ye Ende
Will the US-led occupation stop before they overtake Saddam in the mass murder stakes?
Comment: Aha! The Fallacy of Interrogation! I was wondering when you’d use that one. By using this, you prove that you have no understanding of the realities, and that you have no case to make.
As for Saddam funding Al-Qaeda, I very much doubt that but would like to see some evidence if you have it. But anyway, the point is that they were not operating in Iraq at the time and now have virtually an entire country to recruit and train from and use as a platform of operations.
I think the blame for the whole mess would be more appropriately pinned on the US as they
1. helped Saddam come to power
Comment: Princess, this is priceless! Saddam came to power because of the USA. What a nong you reveal yourself to be.
Actually, ‘in 1963, a group of Baathist army officers tortured and assassinated General Qassim. This was done on Iraqi television. They also mutilated many of Qassim’s devotees and showed their bodies (in close up) on the nightly news for more than one night. Saddam, hearing the news, quickly rushed back to Iraq from Egypt to become involved in the revolution. And involved, he was, as both an interrogator and torturer at the infamous “Palace of the End”, in the basement of the former palace of King Faisal. According to reports by Hanna Batatu (a government reporter), Hussein rose quickly through the ranks, due to his extreme efficiency as a torturer. The Baathist party split in 1963 and Saddam had supported the “winner” in the latest party struggle. He was appointed by Michel Aflaq to be a member of the Baath Regional Command. In 1964, Hussein was jailed by some “rightist” military officers who opposed the Baathist takeover. Through other political influence provided by his older cousin, General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, Hussein became deputy Secretary-General of the Baathists in 1966.
In 1966, Hussein escaped from prison and set up a Baathist internal party security system known as the Jihaz Haneen. It was to serve as the continuation of his political and real rise to power in Iraq. In 1968, another major upheaval in Iraq gave Hussein the greatest opportunity for further advancement; his mentor, Gen. Bakr and the Baathist seized the government. Hussein was made Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, in charge of internal security.
At the age of thirty-one (31) he had acquired what could have been deemed the number two spot in the Baathist party. He would continue in the position for approximately the next ten years. During that time, he would continue to consolidate his power by appointing numerous family members to positions of authority in the Iraqi government. In his position of Deputy in Charge of Internal Security, he built an enormous security apparatus and had spies and informers everywhere in the circles of power in Iraq.
During this time, Hussein also began to accumulate the wealth and position that he so relished as a poor sheep-herder in the desert of al-Auja. He and his family, now firmly entrenched in the infrastructure of the country , began to control the country’s oil and other industrial enterprises. With the help of his security network and several personal assassins, Hussein took control of many of the nation’s leading businesses.
In 1978, Saddam had been working with other Arab nations to ostracize Egypt for it’s diplomatic initiative in resolving Israel/Arab questions. An ally, President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, almost became the undoing of Hussein’s ascension. If a Syrian/Iraqi federation were formed against Egypt, Assad, not Hussein, would rise to a position of greater power in the relationship. President Bakr would lead the federation with Assad as second in command. Hussein could not allow that to happen and began to urge the President to step down. Again with the help of his family and security apparatus, Hussein was able to accomplish his task.
On July 16, 1979, President Bakr resigned, officially due to health problems, but in reality a victim of Hussein’s political in-fighting. Moving quickly to consolidate his power, he called a major Baathist meeting on July 22, 1979. During the meeting, various family members and other Hussein devotees urged that the party be “cleansed”. Hussein then read a list of names and asked that they step outside. Once there, they are taken into custody, tortured and killed.’
LOTS of US influence visible there, eh? How nuanced and forward looking Chimpster W Neoconazi was in 1963-1979! Wonder where he got the working crystal ball? tell me, when he was flying Delta Daggers for the TANG, where did he find the time to groom Saddam to become President of Iraq?
2. nurtured the seeds of Al-Qaeda through their support of the Islamists in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Comment: PETITIO PRINCIPII! Hehehe, your fourth logical fallacy. What, are you having a competition with someone? Your ‘argument’ assumes its conclusion is true but DOES NOT SHOW it to be true.
You see, the US was supporting ANY group able to militarily oppose the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Sure, the people who later became AQ were among them but were not then a distinct islamofascist group, that came later with the rise of the Taliban. That was a post-Afghan war development Those opposing the Soviets they were the Mujahideen so utterly loved by leftards of the era – all except for those leftards in the direct pay of the local Soviet Embassy, who loathed and despised them because Moscow said so and paid their bills.
Which were you? A shill for the CPSU, or a Mujahid supporter who has now turned his coat?
Your ‘response’ here is an utterly worthless mishmash of wishful thinking, made up ‘facts’, logical inconsistencies and pure bullshit, laced with glaring logical fallacies.
MarkL
CanberraPart Five, Your Ende, Kalli
Keep going MarkL. If nothing else it’s educational to the rest of us readers.
Especially the part where you show knuckledragges like me why we dont want to argue with you. You’re scary.
Here for your reading pleasure:
Declassified NIE Key Judgments
From the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.It’s interesting. It says almost nothing of what the MSM spinners said it said.
It does say that much of what draws these attacks and encourages the jihadis is the open dissention of the “peace” activists. And it is them what give the bad guys hope of victory.What it says about Iraq is about what you’d expect of a war front opening up. Those prone to fight have gone to fight and if they get their asses whipped, it’ll demoralize the lot of em. Very standard issue concept for a war time event.
Of course, that’s my take on it. I could be just spinning the other way.
Never fear, MarkL of Canberra, banning parrots such as Kalli does not prevent them from viewing this site, just from continuing to post their regurgitated foolishness once revealed as such.
Kalli has, in this instance at least, had one positive effect: while your valued contribution will doubtless fall on sightless eyes in the case of Kalli, it is very much appreciated by me and other thoughtful folk.
Thanks again for taking the time.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 04 at 05:13 AM • permalinkLet me see if I can fire up MarkL again :)
Wow dude, you’re like, cheating man. You’re using facts and things like that. How can we share our feelings if you’re being mean like that, dude.
You keep minimizing me and ridiculing the emotions I need validated. You’re not validating me, dude.
Saddam was so a puppet of the CIA. This guy said so while we were waiting for class to start.
Amerikkka killed 500 people every day since before the first gulf war. This guy in my wymins studies class said so. He was the youngest person to ever fly a plane for the Air Force. He flew a super secret bomber plane that could fly from the US to Iraq in an hour and bomb Iraq all day and not ever show up on radar. He flew his 1000th mission over Iraq on his 18th birthday.
Wow, Grimmy, you are so insightful, dude. Wanna smoke a joint after the peace rally?
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 04 at 11:07 AM • permalinkI getting a bit worried about the structural strength of Andrea’s trophy wall though. it’s got a lot of troll heads on it - lucky most of ‘em are empty!
Still, the shelves are getting a bit crowded. I’m going to have to get another set put in.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 04 at 10:03 PM • permalinkADDENDUM TO MARK’S COMMENTS
The idea that the United States played a role in bringing the Baathists to power in Iraq is patent nonsense. During the years that the Baathists came to power we didn’t even have diplomatic relations with Iraq (broken off by the Iraqis after the June 1967 war), we had a near total embargo against them, and Iraq was a de facto client state of our bitter enemies, the Soviets, a situation that continued until the mid-1980s.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 05 at 01:15 PM • permalink
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Hindsight bias: all those people who always knew there were no WMDs in Iraq, but who strangely didn’t at the time consider the UN weapons inspection regime a waste of time.