Tribes, you really should read up on what it takes to win the Medal of Honor. You do your argument no good by slighting the highest honor our nation can bestow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
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Tribes, you really should read up on what it takes to win the Medal of Honor. You do your argument no good by slighting the highest honor our nation can bestow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
This not entirely correct, when one looks at stories on the national level only about Iraq the picture you are attempting here is valid - when you look at all levels of the reports - you can find one to two valid good news reports daily.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
Here's one that has not been reported in the National Media here in the United States as far as I know.
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?op...5231&Itemid=21
This is the standard rethoric of any politician. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all, just like claiming that winning the Medal of Honor is just a soldier doing his job.Quote:
which is why that gobshite Rummy is saying don't look , don't question , just trust me .
You go ahead- you're apparently familiar with the follow-ups.
Too damn right I am Xuiahou , why aren't you ? It is after all you who is trying to push the biased party bullshit .
Honestly though- you're just proving my point.
What frigging point???????
You are like a land minevisctim trying to demonstrate how his non eexistsnt legs work so well and his shredded gonads really manage to pump out future generations .
In all fairness to the "good news" vs "bad news" debate, it is true that the major news networks, at least in the United States, rarely report much more than the "bad news" side of things. Look at the Isreal/Lebenon struggle. Since the cease fire I can hardly get much information out of them lately. As long as there was death and mayhem going on we got bombarded with endless coverage. Once all the bloodletting stopped it was amazing how quickly they switched gears, the Mark Karr story for instance. It's the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan I'm sure. The conservatives do have a point about the lack of balance in the media, whatever one might think about Rumsfeld's irritating, condescending, and pompous remarks.
I often watch the BBC news just to get a more unbaised story. Am I wrong in that assumption?
Not that wrong as such Rotor , it is juty that current headlines featured inn the media are not neccasaaaarly reliable , and itis always worthwhile checking the backround information out and aslo the follow up developments on the story .
Tribes, you really should read up on what it takes to win the Medal of Honor. You do your argument no good by slighting the highest honor our nation can bestow.Sorry Lemur , I knoew yhat such awards are only given forsoldiers wgo do their job really really well , but after that bullshit about the national sporting hero getting a valour award(OK t wasn't a CMH it was a star)then it changes hings , tht was a prime example of bad news becmes good news that after aittke bit of scrutiny becomes bollox news
This not entirely correct, when one looks at stories on the national level only about Iraq the picture you are attempting here is valid - when you look at all levels of the reports - you can find one to two valid good news reports daily.
You ar eright Red , once you wade through the hundreds of bad news shite you can accasionly come across some real good news stories , theproblem is the media bias thet reports the good news shite without retractingit whenit turns out to be bollox . damn that traitorous media bias:juggle2:
Getting back to Howlin' Don Rumsfeld, this is a fun bit from a recent op-ed:
Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?
Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — "beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks" — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had "disappeared." American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.
"Islamo-fascism” certainly sounds more impressive than such tired buzzwords as “Plan for Victory” or “Stay the Course.” And it serves as a handy substitute for “As the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” That slogan had to be retired abruptly last month after The New York Times reported that violence in Baghdad has statistically increased rather than decreased as American troops handed over responsibilities to Iraqis. Yet the term “Islamo-fascists,” like the bygone “evildoers,” is less telling as a description of the enemy than as a window into the administration’s continued confusion about exactly who the enemy is.
Getting back to Howlin' Don Rumsfeld
Come on Lemur , that just isn't fair .
Arthur foxache , what are you going to come up qwith next ?
Bush (not the current one as he is a bit thick for finance) and Hitler .
Damn those apeasing supporting sons of a beach .
Tribesman, as hard as it may be for your ranting mind to accept, there is actual good news from Iraq, and it doesn't all turn out as s***** as your post right before Lemur's.
Also, despite your continued raving on the subject, the Medal of Honor is not something given away lightly, and your blabbering just shows far off the deep end you've sunk.
Excuse me while I break out the popcorn to watch the inevitable show to follow.
Lemur; if you're going to knock Rumsfeld for meeting Saddam, you've got to knock FDR for meeting Stalin.
Crazed Rabbit
Yeah, because Rumsfeld was finding desperate allies to fight a freakin' genocidal regime hell-bent on conquering the world. :no:Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
And FDR didn't even live to be hypocritical like Mr. Rumsfeld is now.
Tribesman, as hard as it may be for your ranting mind to accept, there is actual good news from Iraq, and it doesn't all turn out as s***** as your post right before Lemur's
Silly boy Rabbit , would you like to read what was written and then try to understand it .
Anyhow some good news from Iraq .
A group of legless veterans is learnng to surf , sure its bad news that they lost limbs , but anything that introduces people to surfing has got to be good news .
Poor Tribes are you confusing sports hero's getting the valor award (the silver star) during an attack where he was shot by his own troops as an examble of bollox? Are you confusing this with what it takes to get the highest award for valor? Are you confusing the actions of the commanders in attempting to cover up the soldier's friendly fire death with the bravery in the face of fire in which the award represents?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
Tsk Tsk did I say the media was traitorous in their biased reporting? I think not.Quote:
This not entirely correct, when one looks at stories on the national level only about Iraq the picture you are attempting here is valid - when you look at all levels of the reports - you can find one to two valid good news reports daily.
You ar eright Red , once you wade through the hundreds of bad news shite you can accasionly come across some real good news stories , theproblem is the media bias thet reports the good news shite without retractingit whenit turns out to be bollox . damn that traitorous media bias:juggle2:
Doesnt America have freedom of speech? SO basically the world is fascist just because we disagree?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Lemur you are my hero of the day! That picture of good ole' smilin' Donald just says it all IMHO. This picture comes to mind every time he opens his pie-hole about how we needed to invade Iraq to oust his ole' buddy Saddam. He is the penultimate beaurocratic, sycophantic, hypocritical stooge of the Republican party that has ever existed. He has been hanging on to the coatails of Republican politicoes since the days of Nixon, for God's sake. I have never wanted to punch the lights out of a Secretary of Defense before, until he came along.
Pheww! :sweatdrop: Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.
No, just the Soviets. :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by AntiochusIII
Ya got me there. :laugh4:Quote:
And FDR didn't even live to be hypocritical like Mr. Rumsfeld is now.
Actually guys this is how we want the Org to be ran. Even if you dislike what a person stands for, be polite, even if you are about to take over his country and wipe out his family, be polite, smile, shakehands.
At times even I have such visions of reason, and can acknowledge we (the US) have a moron running our DoD.Quote:
Originally Posted by rotorgun
Having said that, it is rather honorable (to say nothing og gullable) for our President to continue to support a Nixon appointee. Rummy.
The USA is within a nats-ass of having a military coupe, but no one realises it. Why? The loyalty of the generals that haven't been fired. Er, can someone tell Donny and George that all these men served together as Lt's and as boys? Even the fired ones.
Rummy needs to say bye-bye. Bush needs to be the one to tell him (not that the dickless whimp ever could). But the reality is, Rummy needs to go. So does Dick, but that's another story.
Not since Kennedy have the Generals been so angry as to consider .... assassination, or stepping in to "correct things". The Gens really wanted that air-support for Cuba (as tho it would have mattered), and held a grudge because of its denial - some anyway). Today, it is more a matter that civilian rule, versus military dictum dictates the conduct of conflict (war).
The wisest Presidents have basically said, "Point the direction the army needs to take, and allow the generals to solve the problems - resolve how it [the mission] is to be accomplished. After all, why else do we need Generals?".
Regardless, the GOP and the present Lame-duck administration seem convinced that by creating new terminology - "Fascis-Islamic" - that the average American in the Dakotas, Indiana, Mo, Ks, etc. doesn't comprehend the meaning - but accepts the import of the message (Nazis) .... then it is job well done. Face it, the GOP truely believes Americans are idiots. Twist a word, change a phrase, exagerate an item, lie about a persons military service record (regardless of good = McCain, or bad = GWB), or accuse a war hero of cheating (on how he became one = Kerry, JFK, etc).
We live in an era of mysticysm. We live in a time where the errosion of liberties seems some how justified - for some.
Personally, anyone stupid enough to still believe the BS coming out of Donny's mouth, needs to be return to the remidial Nixon GOP acceptance class - they missed the lesson about how to properly eat S__t. Had their parents been aware that the child could'nt think - I am sure they would have put it on a rock to weather the elements. Maybe not. After all, if a kid can swallow the the crap the GOP parents have, it must be a pat on the head and and extention of time to listen to Limpballs.
As for appeasement.
Me? Chamberland did what his nation wanted him to. Were he to have done other, or been confrontational? Look at the whole of situation ..... The Brits as a whole would not have been happy (the world applauded his acheivement). After all, they just wanted to live in peace. Something Rummy can't quite grasp since now he has the power to send 10s of thousands of American boys into harms way with the wave of his hand. Chamberland, got duped - it happens to the best of us. Rummy? Well, he's an idiot that any President that actually had control of his government would have asked to resign years ago. Bush, can't - because the people that control Rummy ... control him. Chamberlain did his job, he made an attempt to preserve world peace - unfortunately he was dealing with a madman.
The known hotbed of liberal appeasement elite cut-and-run leftist communism, The Financial Times, has commented on Rumsfeld's reasoning:
It may be unfashionable to acknowledge this, but Mr Rumsfeld is making one valid and important point. There should be no moral confusion about who is responsible for the heartbreaking violence in Iraq. It is not the American army that is planting car bombs in markets. Some of the most ardent critics of the Iraq war are in danger of almost welcoming further bad news as an opportunity to say "I told you so". They should recognise that it is still overwhelmingly in the interests of those who want a freer and more peaceful Middle East that the Americans and their allies succeed in stabilising Iraq.
The trouble is that while some of Mr Rumsfeld's more ardent critics may be guilty of "moral confusion", the US defence secretary himself gives every sign of intellectual confusion. To call Iraqi insurgents and Islamist terrorists "fascists" and to accuse opponents of the war of "appeasement" may be a useful rhetorical device in the run-up to the American mid-term elections. But it also suggests that the Bush administration is still falling back on tired intellectual categories drawn from the 1930s, rather than thinking seriously and creatively about the new challenges it is facing.
Worse, the Bush administration is sowing further confusion by equating today's war with the struggle against Nazism - and then resisting any suggestion that victory may require higher taxes or more troops. Such a rhetorical mismatch inevitably feeds growing domestic cynicism and disillusionment with the war.
In the coming weeks Mr Bush is expected to make a series of speeches that will seek to rally support for the war in Iraq. He will need to go beyond Mr Rumsfeld's angry denunciation of critics of the war. Instead, the president must lay out a frank and calm analysis of what has gone wrong in Iraq and state clearly what he thinks is now required to help that tortured country to achieve stability. If that means more troops and more money, Mr Bush should say so. For without a convincing and honest analysis of the current situation, he may find that the domestic demand for a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq becomes unstoppable.
Or, as Otto von Bismarck so memorably said, "People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."
hah, that gets Rumsfield on two counts then. And Dick Cheney on three :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Sigh.Quote:
The USA is within a nats-ass of having a military coupe, but no one realises it. Why? The loyalty of the generals that haven't been fired. Er, can someone tell Donny and George that all these men served together as Lt's and as boys? Even the fired ones.
Rummy needs to say bye-bye. Bush needs to be the one to tell him (not that the dickless whimp ever could). But the reality is, Rummy needs to go. So does Dick, but that's another story.
"Um, I didn't shoot anything...":laugh4:Quote:
And Dick Cheney on three
Crazed Rabbit
I would've bolded that part myself. :yes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Umm, I dont get it... they are fascists arent they? Let's look to Webster's:Quote:
To call Iraqi insurgents and Islamist terrorists "fascists" and to accuse opponents of the war of "appeasement" may be a useful rhetorical device in the run-up to the American mid-term elections. But it also suggests that the Bush administration is still falling back on tired intellectual categories drawn from the 1930s, rather than thinking seriously and creatively about the new challenges it is facing.
facsism: 1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of oppositionSounds pretty close to their stated goals to me. :shrug:
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
I also think it's much more contentious, but it certainly is arguable that opponents of the war tend towards 'appeasement' or 'defeatism'. It's important to distinguish between critics of how the war in Iraq is being handled- but it's totally unproductive to run around screaming about how we never should've gone... We're there now- it's too late. Further, the idea that we should pull out now is pretty much, by definition, defeatist is it not? So, if that's someone's actual position, why cry foul whenever someone calls you on what your advocating?
Going by Webster's, (1) the fundamentalists we're facing are not overly concerned with nation or race. They've happily accepted caucasian jihadis when they could get them, which ain't often. They're all about religion and ideology, not race and border.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
(2) Hard to ascribe autocratic and/or dictatorial control to a diffused, networked band of like-minded murderers who are by their very nature decentralized. If Al- Qaeda and their lot were using centralized command and control, don't you think we'd have wrapped them up by now?
Nope, Webster's version doesn't support the latest re-definition of the GWOT. Feel free to grab some more definitions, though.
You missed the qualifier "often" when it applies to race didnt you? Easy mistake.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
As for point 2, you're clearly confusing means with goals. Their goal is now and has been:linkQuote:
The principal stated aims of al-Qaeda are to drive Americans and American influence out of all Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia; destroy Israel; and topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East. Bin Laden has also said that he wishes to unite all Muslims and establish, by force if necessary, an Islamic nation adhering to the rule of the first Caliphs.
Clear it up for you?
Clear it up for you?
Nope ......
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
and topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East.
So who tends towards or strong autocrats or dictators ? Osama , Rummy or both .
Pehaps Rummy should have said " appease fascists , thats my job"
Oh, I know perfectly well that the Jihadis think they want an Islamic dictatorship, but if that extremely unlikely event were to pass, they'd be in for a surprise. They've been perfecting a distributed system of violence accountable to no-one. What do you think would happen if, by using such means, they actually got their Kingdom of God? What would happen the first time the Caliph did something not-quite-holy enough for them?Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
Their claims are dictatorial, but their methods are distributed. If they ever come to any sort of power, that's going to create a methodological and cognitive dissonance. The only reasons they were able to exist with the Taliban were (a) money, (b) bin Laden's constant kissing-up to the Taliban leadership, and (c) an understanding that none of the dictatorship's rules applied to the "arabs" (as al Qaeda were known).
I'm not digging in my heels or being deliberately dense -- I truly don't think "fascist" is a helpful term in this conflict. We need to see them for what they are, not what we'd like them to be. The various jihadi groups have differences, and we can use those differences to our advantage. To say and pretend they're a unified group is to do ourselves a disservice.
What benefit do you see to going along with the fascist label? Do you feel it's helpful? If so, why?
To your first point- first, the leaders are the ones who decide what is "holy" or not- its a very convenient position for them. Second, Saddam Hussein was a textbook example of how oppressive Arab dictatorships can deal with dissent in ways that we in the West can barely imagine. Jail protestors and their families- rape their mothers and sisters. If someone opposes them with force, you torture and kill them and then proceed to kill every man, woman, and child from the town where he came from. It's barbaric- but effective.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
To your second point, if someone is a dedicated communist yet lives and works in the US does that make them a capitalist? :wink:
Is it a productive term? As a slogan- yes I suppose it's ok. Islamo-facism is a good catch-all term to describe the goals of terrorists. It also implies fanaticism and reminds people that they cant be bargained with because of their ultimate goals. I'm sure you could parse it down to more specific and precise terms- but that wouldnt make for very good stump speeches.
Xiahou - Lemur:
Fascinating debate guys, thank you. I'm particularly interested in the emotional nuances evoked by the choice of words and terms used in politics, so it's compelling to see the arguments from both sides.
:bow:
Um, so you're lumping an atheist totalitarian like Saddam with the holy warriors of al Qaeda? And equating them? I think you're illustrating my position very well -- it does the West no favors to lump disparate groups together for political convenience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
I think actions and methods are more important than words. If you spout off about communism, but you're working your butt off in a capitalistic system, then your claims of Socialist Unity are clearly hot air. In much the same vein, there are a lot of people who claim to be small government conservatives who behave rather differently when they're in power. I'll take them at their actions, not their words.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
It seems that you're saying that the point of the "fascism" label is entirely political. And more, that it's for domestic U.S. politics, not the broader propoganda war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
That's depressing. Stump speeches. Yay. So glad that our conflict could provide some talking points. I guess it's going to be all-partisan-politics all the time until November.
Update on the use of "fascism" in the admin's speeches:
In a controversial move within the administration, Hughes and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seem to have persuaded Bush — temporarily, at least — to drop the label “Islamic fascism” from his speeches; diplomats say that Muslims hear it as an attack on their religion, thereby validating the extremists’ false charge that the United States is at war with Islam.