Dump the Party Line
 

joeclarke
Senior Member

Registered: Jan 2004
Location: To the moon Alice
Posts: 147

quote:
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unfortunately the country is split down the middle like it hasn't been since Viet Nam
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"This, I believe is the real root of the problem. Not the split itself, but the fact that the split is actuated along party lines. I know some of you may find this hard to believe but many, many Republicans are far, far too smart to really buy all that BS that Geo and the boys pitch about Iraq - but they feel duty bound to support the lads in Washington because they're Republicans. The only possible alternative (in their minds) is to support the Democrats - and that's just plain unspeakable.

I'm trying to set an example here - I don't support Iraqnam and this issue is too big to ignore - so I can't support GWB. But I ain't no Democrat. I believe that there are a million iterations of me in America that just need to be prodded "out of the closet". I have far too much faith in American brains and free thinking to believe otherwise."


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the odd Porsche here and there

VenezianBlau 87
Enthusiasm run amok

Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Grayson, GA
Posts: 306
Joe,

"Sounds like a good thread in it's own right."

Bob


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'87 Coupe
'03 Jetta GLI

Bob: I appreciate the post.

I think a lot of posts parrot 'party line' answers because Americans get their news second-hand, spun and filtered unless they really *work* at getting information.

Personally, I wish there was a similar level of political involvement here as in most of the rest of the world. Instead, folks know more about the minutia of their favorite sports teams than they do about national politics. And that's just sad.

Dude, but like, did you hear about the Mariners last night? That was so cool!!! I mean, left field really took the game home for us -- you can't ignore that fact!!!!


(ahem) Sorry. I can't think that I've ever agreed with either of you on anything, but I'll succumb to temptation on this one. Americans in general (and sadly, guys like us. Ok, me, specifically) are often pathetically under-informed. Worse, it isn't because the information isn't available, but rather because of our own failure to prioritize being informed about events, we lackadaisically accept whatever it is that's fed to us as truth.

Dan

I think it is just the opposite...too many americans are over-informed. Anyone can post most anything on the internet...truth is usually the casualty. The major sources for "news" seem to have political agendas and report the news in that light. Most folks are not well educated enough to separate the truth from the chaff. Others know "facts" but cannot place them in the proper perspective with other information.

"Too many Americans are over-informed".

Hadn't ever really looked at it that way, Fintstone.

I repeat my nomination for you for the extremely high-paid position as Bush/Cheney's new information minister. :cool:

Thank you. I would love to work for the administration. I nominate you to replace Scott Ritter in his highly paid position as as Saddam's mouthpiece.

You can surf the web and find idiots claiming that our govt knew about the attacks on 9/11 beforehand, that our president was a deserter, that the second most succesful war in US history was a failure, etc......when any reasonable person would believe differently. There are sites that claim it is perfectly reasonable to kill americans at will and burn their bodies. Skewed information is just propaganda.

A good example was the German people in the '30's. they were well educated in their inherent superiority and the Jewish people's inherent inferiority. Obviously all the problems of post WW1 Germany were caused by the Jews according to popular information sources.

hmm...I'll agree that there is a lack of critical thinking skills in this country. We are in total agreement there. As for being over-informed, I disagree. There is an active minority who gobble "information" at a high rate, and of course the trick is to create *meaning* out of the data.

The web, while providing a forum for every crackpot with a computer and a modem, also provides opportunities for information to be distributed that would *never* make it to people otherwise (ie weblogs from people living in Iraq). While you can argue about the veracity of the stories, the reality is that I question major media just as much or more. And the interesting thing is that vetting with online information takes place within active online communities...like this one. We are now afforded the opportunity to see, experience, debate, and then make much more informed decisions about what is "true."

You can argue about the slant of sites like moveon.org, oneworld.net, freespeech.org, tv.oneworld.net (great site), witness.org, etc, but I don't think you can make the case that the world is worse off with access to these kinds of materials and media.

There's multiple reasons IMHO.

1. News Fatigure - Too much being shoved down our throats and into the frontal lobe at once. Too many pointless crawls across the screen having nothing at all to do with what's being commentated on during the broadcast. Who wants to bet me that sometime soon someone's going to come out with a study that implicates news crawls with contributing to ADD?

2. Dumbing down - Everything being boiled down to a 15 or 20 second sound bite leaves very little time for any in depth analysis or balanced presentation of the facts. The fact that ad time on regular broadcasts television continues to eclipse the amount of content doesn't help either.

3. Multiple sources - causes a dissonance in that there's no clear trust that can be developed for the facts as being presented. Who do you trust? CNN? MSNBC? FOX (God no....ahem.)? PBS? NPR? ABC? Internet?

4. Apathy. Think voter apathy is bad? Try engaging someone on an indepth discussion of the economic impact of rising oil prices. Think the average Joe Sixpack wants to even THINK about how this will impact not only his gas tank but his heating bill next winter? Or his groceries that get delivered by truck to his local market? Nah. It's kind of like a bumper sticker I saw back in the Quayle days:

"Vote Republican - It's easier than Thinking"

5. Time - I have less and less of it these days with the job, 1 kid and a pregnant wife... Am I typical? You betcha....

The great thing about it though is that at least if your willing to take the time to wade through this mess, and actually THINK about this we have more options from which to choose to get our info.

This whole things really becomes a cyclical self fulfillign prophecy - kind of the chicken and egg discussion a la "I have less time so I need to get my news quicker so i like the crawls but that leads to me not comprehending all thats in front of me so that I get bored and frustrated and turn the TV off then go to the Internet where I sometimes get bogus info so I go back to the TV where I have to wade through adds for Cialis to get to the real news but then they only tell me 30 seconds of details cause that's all they have time for but I want more so I can be informed...."

and so on and so on and so on.....

LMAO. beautifully put :D

Fintstone: "... I nominate you to replace Scott Ritter in his highly paid position as as Saddam's mouthpiece."

Now this is a perfect example of what the thread starter was talking about.

The above post has the intellectual content of a carrot.

A respected former UN weapons inspector is a 'mouthpiece for Saddam'?

Beyond being just the most ludicrous concept I've seen on this BBS, how would you suppose Saddam is compensating him in this supposed employment?

And your post is a perfect example of what I am talking about.

The above post has the intellectual content of a turnip....naw not even that much.

He was compenstated with cash. He was hired...a GI with no film making experice... to make a $400,000 documentary about Iraq. Do you suppose that is why Mr. Ritter had the sudden change in view regarding Saddam's WMD capabilities?

Flint,
I don't recall anything sudden about it. He was saying the same thing before resigning, after, and still to this day.
Just another minor fact you seem to feel the need to place your own personal spin to. Once again, no source is credible enough for you, yet you decline to back up your own statements with "credible" fact. It would seem that you enjoy the argument for the sake of the last word, regardless of it's worth. It's a pattern in all of these threads. Read them again. SmileWavy

So who is paying Ritter today?

Even if there was any credibility to the ludicrous 'Saddam's mouthpiece' comment, Ritter would have no obligation now that Saddam's assets are frozen.

I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics is also 'Saddam's mouthpiece' now, come to think of it!

I really don't know if he is still getting paid or the the $400,000 was enough to set him up for life. It would me. Maybe that is why he stopped saying we should invade Iraq....didn't want to stop the gravy train. I have read that he is doing pretty well on the lecture circuit.

He was being paid through an intermediary..an Iraqi-American who is currently being investigated for the large amount of money he made through the"oil for food program."

I assumed this was common knowledge to all you well-read liberals. What kind of "proof" would you like to see about what I posted? Would a newspaper article do? Do you expect me to produce Mr. Ritter's tax returns?

I'm not sure Scott Ritter's position has changed at all. I've read about him in testimony and interviews from 1996, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003 and 2004.

His problem with the Clinton administration was that he felt the U.S. and Britain were interfering with his efforts to inspect for that 'last 5%' or WMD programs/capabilities/facilities to reach a certainty that there were none -- which in turn would allow lifting of sanctions that were 'costing the lives of 6,000 Iraqi children a month.' These deaths seemed to be pissing him off.

His problem with the Bush administration was/is the same: interference with inspections and sabre rattling, which later became a war predicated on wrong assumptions that he felt could have been disproven.

I'm not finding an inconsistency in his positions excepting that he appears to have come to believe that the rumors of WMD materials -- and even programs -- were untrue. It would be disingenuous for him to think otherwise, now that we've been there a year, and all the 'exact locations of WMD programs' that Powelll touted have been sifted through.

As for the documentary Ritter produced, it was 90 minutes long -- about enough to absorb all of the $400K.

Reference:
http://www.afc.gov.au/gtp/mpdocoscostperhour.html

Ritter said there were WMDs and that he was not allowed access to do a proper inspection...then he was paid to do a documentary that said there weren't. The only thing that changed was who was paying him and how much.

I didn't realize he made his documentary in Australia or had the associated costs. As a guest of Saddam, I would bet his expenses were quite low.

Seems several prominent anti-war democrats were also given money by the same "oil for food" benefactor as Ritter had. I'll bet that didn't affect their position on the war either.

Well, since you are insinuating that he was bribed by Saddam, yes I will need a little more than just your word on it before I find that a “credible” claim.

So, which part of what I posted do you not believe?

That Ritter was paid $400,000 to make the case that there were no WMDs in a documentary??

Than an Iraqi-American who was getting funds directly from Saddam through the "Oil for Food " program paid it?

That he changed his position?

That is what I posted. The word bribe is yours.

Major news outlets have printed all these stories..with reasonable proof....they are no secret. You just missed them because they print the stories that make liberals look bad on the last page so you don't notice. You can do a simple Google search. Of course one could easily find out that Cheney has no financial interest in Haliburton too...but that would not fit the liberal agenda. It is easier to read the propaganda on the "black helicopter" sites.

He quit in 1998 during the the Clinton administration after claiming that Iraq had not disarmed and that he felt that Clinton was not nearly hard enough on Iraq. After 4 years of not going to Iraq or receiving any type of intelligence...suddeny he started claiming Iraq was disarmed. Of course his current liberally funded lecture circuit story is otherwise. I guess it is good to be a liberal and when things don't work out as you planned...all you have to do is change your story and all your supporters ignore your previous mistatements..Kerry has that flip-flop down to an art also.

That Ritter was paid $400,000 to make the case that there were no WMDs in a documentary??

I'd like to put forward an alternative hypothesis. Maybe, just maybe, they weren't there. I put forward as evidence Hans Blix and David Kay.

"He quit in 1998 during the the Clinton administration after claiming that Iraq had not disarmed and that he felt that Clinton was not nearly hard enough on Iraq."

That's not what my reading of his 1996 and 1998 interviews told me. Please cite a source on this.

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040321-101405-2593r.htm
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001904477_collin16.html
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004976
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/605fgcob.asp
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/International%20figures'%20positions%20on%20invasion%20of%20Iraq

Hey CamB,

Do you guys get the oil for food scandle in the news down there? Seriously currious.

Boy I miss those meat pies Kliberne

Actually, we don't really - not a lot anyway. I got more information out of the top link fint posted than I have thus far.

It is damning stuff, but I view it the same way I see Haliburton etc. I believe generally that specific corporations and persons are responsible for these sorts of aberations. I don't blame countries or governments, unless there is a clear link (I don't think the US govt invaded Iraq for oil, for instance).

I had a pie for lunch. Bloody good. About US$1...

Finstone: you post a bunch of op-ed pieces? The standard for factual proof in op-ed pieces is far below actual reporting.

Everything the right-wing Reverend Moon's Washington Times publishes is suspect. Especially op-ed.

The Seattle Times piece is op-ed.

The Weekly Standard piece is laughable. Not even close to grade-school journalism.

The last lin k didn't work for me -- even by cutting & pasting.

Perhaps you will find one of these acceptable. I have included articles written by Ritter as well as transcripts of interviews. Even an article from the Aribic News:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec98/ritter_8-31.html
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/12/21/981221-scott.htm
http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/ritter.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A56950-2002Oct20&notFound=true
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980903/1998090351.html

I think the issue here is that a person can hold two possibilities in his mind.

He thought through the mid-late '90s that he was close to finding WMDs. He was pissed when pulled off the job. The fact the Iraqis lied to him made him especially suspicious. But at the same time, he made it clear that one reason he wasn't finding WMDs could have been that there weren't any.

He wanted 'substantive proof', but proving a negative is particularly difficult. He now has that proof, in that all the intelligence he was relying on (and progressively came to distrust) pointed to programs and facilities that never existed.

The key phrase to understanding his thinking is this, from the Time article: "...I've said that no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact. To say that Saddam's doing it is in total disregard to the fact that if he gets caught he's a dead man and he knows it. Deterrence has been adequate in the absence of inspectors..."

The problem with this quote is that it seems to state more what he feels now than any of the contemporaneous quotes I found.

The best stuff is the 1998 fas.org quote, which is one I drew on. He indicates that there might be enough of several substances to fitt a couple dozen bombs or ballistic missle warheads. He then admits that wouldn't be much, but could serve as a 'seed program'. IOW, it wasn't so much what Saddam had, but what he might eventually have.

After all, anyone knows, several of the biologicals he mentioned didnt' have the shelf life to be toxic by 1998. And a couple dozen bombs with chemicals aren't a real threat to any target larger than a village.

Bottom line for me is that what Saddam had wasn't a threat to the U.S. To Iran? Maybe. To Israel? Possibly. He had rockets with a range of what? 600 miles?

Ritter didn't want the U.S. to attack Iraq. He didn't think anything there was threat enough to warrant attack. He just wanted to finish his inspections and continue monitoring. The weapons examples he used seemed to me more for the purpose of dramatizing the need for his continued employment.

I am glad you find these sources (which say the same thing) more acceptable. If Ritter resigned as an inspector in 1998, he has less knowledge of current intel than even I do. How do you suppose that he is any more knowlegeable about Iraq's weapons programs after he stopped being an inspector than when he was one? We know that on the day he resigned, he felt Saddam had an active program. The only thing that really changed was where his paycheck was coming from. Of course he done a good job, aided by the liberal press, revising what he said and wrote about at the time. Sorta like Mr. Kerry does.

Cam
I can't find much to argue here except I cannot understand your problem with a private company like Haliburton. Do they have some kind of bad reputation where you live?

Finstsone: "I am glad you find these sources (which say the same thing) more acceptable. If Ritter resigned as an inspector in 1998, he has less knowledge of current intel than even I do. How do you suppose that he is any more knowlegeable about Iraq's weapons programs after he stopped being an inspector than when he was one? We know that on the day he resigned, he felt Saddam had an active program. The only thing that really changed was where his paycheck was coming from. Of course he done a good job, aided by the liberal press, revising what he said and wrote about at the time. Sorta like Mr. Kerry does."

The answer to your statement above is in the links you sent. you seem to be suggesting that after being a weapons inspector for 7 years, he suddenly had his memory erased? Are you suggesting that he never had any further contact with David Kay and other weapons inspectors? He was in Iraq in 2000 -- you yourself told me that. Were you there, too? is that why you compare your knowledge of WMD programs to his?

Did you read nothing I quoted?
* The biologicals had a short shelf life. Most were harmless by '98.
* The chemical weapons were of limited utility.
* Saddam only had rockets capable of about a 600 mile range.
* A "program" is not a weapon.

I did not compare my knowledge of WMD with his, although I have also worked in that area. I compared my access to recent itelligence to his....which he has not had since '98 when he said that Saddam had WMD. No, I do not expect that David Kay or any of the other inspectors illegally shared any classified intelligence with him after he lost his clearance. Especially since he was working on a highly paid project that benefitted Saddam.

"I compared my access to recent itelligence to his....which he has not had since '98 when he said that Saddam had WMD. No, I do not expect that David Kay or any of the other inspectors illegally shared any classified intelligence with him after he lost his clearance. Especially since he was working on a highly paid project that benefitted Saddam."

Clearly his documentary project was not highly paid -- again, requires reading -- and it didn't really beneift Saddam, did it?

Shared info between present and former weapons inspectors? I can practically *guarantee* that it happened. They were all there for the same reason: to discover something that turned out not to be there. Kay, Blix, et. al. no doubt once ate 'highly nutritious' cashews grown in Iraq. Does that make them suspect, too?

By the way, the full "intelligence" of every department of the U.S. has been available to operatives in Iraq for over a year now. And it has proven... what?

Ritter claimed a very small amount of toxic materials were 'possibly' in Iraq. Nowhere did he -- or anyone else with a shred of credibility -- claim Saddam posessed anything that was a threat to the U.S.

I have some broken car parts do you think I can *practicly* get them warrantied?

Scott Ritter's testimony to Congress, 3 Sept 98