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host · 11-21-2005, 12:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Yes, but what does this mean exactly? How can you pretend to be accessing 'transparent' material from sites that are committed to the Left point of view? Of course you are going to get the material you want from sites that resonate with your beliefs. How can you honestly invalidate gop.com while at the same time validate tnr.com?

While I have respect for the amount of time you put into your posts, whenever I respond I get deluged with guerilla op-eds. And not only that (and one or more mods here can attest to this) but you frequently omit key parts of articles that don't support your line.

99% of the sources everyone provides here are op-eds, and these days that means they are strongly partisan. Truthout.org, The New Republic, dailychaos.com are nothing more than mouthpieces for the Left - these organizations have no interest in espousing moderate, rational views. I have found very few sites that take a reasonable, moderate viewpoint, yet they do exist. In the case of this particular thread, one simply needed to cite the official Senate voting records to answer politicophile's question, not Liberal op-eds of those voting records.

So evertime someone posts an opinion or comment, they have to back it up with a source, which inevitably gets knocked down anyway?

Take the last week or so. I have made multiple posts regarding the Democratic cooperation for the Iraq War. What do *I* get for my effort? Snark, patronizing remarks, or sarcasm. Here, for example. I get tired of this shit real fast.

Why should he 'participate as you've described'? He started the thread, he asked a legitimate question, and you (and others) never directly answered his question. Instead, you cite multiple, dubious sources that you think discredits his question to begin with, which you use as justification to avoid the question.

Please...your links are some of the most partisan out there. 2-way street. If we had a judge here declaring guerilla op-eds as inadmissable, the courtroom analogy might work. I truly believe at this point that people are here mostly just to vent their frustrations, not seek the truth.

I'll cut and paste to repeat: Take the last week or so. I have made multiple posts regarding the Democratic cooperation for the Iraq War. What do *I* get for my effort? Snark, patronizing remarks, or sarcasm. Here, for example. I get tired of this shit real fast.

As long as you maintain that guerilla op-eds constitute "unimpeachable points of fact", interesting and intelligent dialogue here will remain the exception to the rule.

Thank you for your rapid and detailed response, powerclown. In the interest of prioritizing my response and abbreviating it, I'll address your "op-ed articles are not unimpeachable sources, and your "deluged with guerilla op-eds" and your "99% of the sources everyone provides here are op-eds" points, first:

I examined the contents of all of the posts that I made in this thread before
thread starter, politicophile, announced that he was no longer participating, since most of my exchanges on this thread were with him. Here is a complete
recap of all of the linked references that I posted, post by post:

Quote:

Did Bush lie about the intelligence he used to make the case for war against Iraq? Were the Democratic Senators duped into voting to authorize the use of force... many of them in both 2002 and 1998? This is a pretty commonly held position, on TFP and elsewhere. It also doesn't make any sense.

My first post on this thread contained:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=12

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20011209.html
December 9, 2001

The Vice President Appears on NBC's Meet the Press (Scroll down to middle of page)

With Tim Russert, on September 8th, 2002: (No Link Available)

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I'm not here today to make a specific allegation

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...mountain&hl=en

"On the separate issue, on the 9/11 question, we've never had confirmation one way or another. We did have reporting that was public,"

http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/...404_flash3.htm

CHENEY: CLEAR LINKS BETWEEN SADDAM, AL-QAEDA; CALLS NY TIMES ARTICLE 'OUTRAGEOUS'
Thu Jun 17 2004 19:00:33 ET

In an EXCLUSIVE interview with CNBC's 'Capital Report':

....BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.

My 2nd post on this thread was directed to ustwo:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=23

My 3rd post on this thread contained:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=37

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-...625.pdf#page=2

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

(membership roster)

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/s020304b.html
Congressional Record: February 3, 2004 (Senate)
Page S389-S391
U.S. INTELLIGENCE
Mr. DURBIN (speaking)

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAE...per.pdf#page=10

(pages 294 - 295)
C. White Paper Conclusion (Two conclusions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence)

My 4th post on this thread contained:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/securit...0630selling.htm
The Selling of the Iraq War: The First Casualty
By John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman*
New Republic
June 30, 2003

........The Battle In Congress
Fall 2002

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/10/dci100702.html
Source:
Congressional Record
October 9, 2002
Page S10154

Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC

October 7, 2002

The Honorable Bob Graham
Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...004Jul11_2.html
Report Says CIA Distorted Iraq Data
Senate Panel Cites Exaggerations in Paper Made Public in 2002

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A0

My fifth post on this thread contained:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=44
A numbered, six paragraph synopsys of the points that I had already made in previous posts..

My sixth post on this thread contained:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=47

I have posted a record of 'this guy said different, and this guy said this' that includes MSM news reports and a copy of Tenet's letter in response to Bob Graham's Oct. 4, 2002 request for declassification, the membership list of the senate intelligence committee in the 107th congress, and the voting data of five democratice intel committee members on the Oct. 11, 2002 resolution vote.

You have me at a decided disadvantage. I am detail oriented.

I directed two questions to ustwo

My seventh post on this thread contained:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=58

politicophile....I've already explained that a combination of restrictions that confine who in congress was authorized to view classified information, combined with overwhelming political pressure and administration co-ordinated propaganda, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, caused the senate October 11, 2002 "vote" to be as skewed toward the authorization for the president to use force, as it was. The chairman of the senate intelligence committee tried to open the consideration of all of the facts that he was privy to....to the rest of the senate. The white house blocked the CIA director from co-operating. Chairman Bob Graham then voted against the resolution.

I've lived through all of this before.....I know how it ends...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...uly/pent71.htm
Court Rules for Newspapers, 6-3

Decision Allows Printing of Stories on Vietnam Study
By John P. MacKenzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 1, 1971

My eigth post on this thread contained:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=74
Uhhh....there was more to Feinstein's "not in 1000 years, sound byte.....

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...itroom.02.html
THE SITUATION ROOM (scroll 45 percent down from top of page....)

Positive Comments from Senators on Alito; Fallout of Rule 21 Secret Session in Senate

Aired November 2, 2005 - 16:00 ET............

Feinstein opened her answer with, "I think statements were made in major public policy addresses prior to the Senate vote that clearly stated that with a matter of certainty."

and.....who made the "statements [were made] in major public policy addresses"? Why it's.....it's.....

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security...630selling.htm
The Selling of the Iraq War: The First Casualty
By John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman*
New Republic
June 30, 2003

The Battle In Congress
Fall 2002

The administration used the anniversary of September 11, 2001, to launch its public campaign for a congressional resolution endorsing war, with or without U.N. support, against Saddam.

Is this really that hard to get your mind around? Feinstein is a senator and she has constituents who watch TV and read newspapers. Guess who is filling the airwaves and the newsprint with a carefully co-ordinated propaganda "Op", timed to coincide with the one year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?

Answer...the same thugs who drove their own approval rating to 90 percent backing for war in Iraq by "catapulting the propaganda" by saying the same thing, over and over again, until the truth sinks in....
Quote:
President Participates in Social Security Conversation in New York
See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. ...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0050524-3.html

My ninth post in the thread, in it's entirety:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=77

Going out for a while....a parting thought to leave you with....

Imagine how difficult it must have been for any legislator who wanted to remain in office, to vote against what the president wanted them to vote for, in the climate of his high approval rating, just after his 9/11 anniversary propaganda campaign.

An indication of the impact of the manipulation of his regime is that, after all his and Cheney's claims were thoroughly discredited, and Iraq has turned into a military and a policy disaster, and his approval rating has cratered 54 points from where it was then, he still doesn't take responsibility for his manipulation of intelligence and his mistaken course of war, and there are still people, in the tiny conservative universe of logic....to have to debate here! Sheeeesh !!!!

My tenth post in the thread, in it's entirety:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=83

This is not the first time that roachboy and host have reminded you that it is absurd and irrelevant to focus on what senator Feinstein, or any other senator, knew or did not know on October 11, 2002.

The overwhelming compilation of evidence is that, as Andrew Card infamously said, "you do not launch a new product in August". The "product" a propaganda campaign timed to take full advantage of the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and the spontaneous sentiment of Americans triggered by the memory of that day, embellished with the co-ordinated message of all Bush administration heavy weights. The message was a litany of all the menacing items in Saddam's arsenal that Bush could keep us safe from, if we authorized him to invade Iraq, with, or without the authorization of the UN.

It would be my pleasure to vigorously lobby the voters of California to recall senator Fienstein for incompetence and stupidity, immediately after Bush and Cheney are impeached, tried and found guilty in the senate of "high crimes and misdemeanors", and turned over to the DOJ for deportation to the Hague to satnd trial before and international court on charges related to crimes against humanity......

My eleventh post in the thread, in it's entirety:

My post to you here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=42 on another thread on this poltical forum contains a reminder to you that you did not indicate that you had considered my points in a previous post to you.

If the GOP "video" that you referred me to is so compelling, why did Bush's speechwriter and "re-write" history" "Op" co-ordinators blow it with the weak and transparent distortion of a senator Levin quote, used in Bush's Veteran's day speech to the troops.
Quote:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=lizza111505
....... The problem is that some of the quotes Bush now uses are highly misleading. "Another senior Democrat leader said, 'The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power,'" Bush told his Alaskan crowd. The quote is from Senator Carl Levin during a CNN appearance on December 16, 2001. Here's the full context:

The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power. But that does not mean he is the next target.

You also failed to respond to the unusual reaction by Washington Post reporters to that speech, the reporters judged that the speech contained "less that truthful" statements from Bush.....
Quote:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=lizza111505
........The White House's new Iraq strategy entered its second phase this week. The offensive--against critics of the war, not insurgents--was unveiled on Friday with Bush's already infamous Veterans Day speech. Speaking to a military crowd in Pennsylvania, Bush made a pair of dishonest arguments that are notable mainly for the speed with which they were debunked by the press. It is extraordinary and rare for a major American newspaper's frontpage coverage of a presidential address to highlight that the speech's core assertions were false.

Here is the article, described in the preceding quote box....
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111101832.html

Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page A01

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ebriefing.html
Republicans Want Answers, Too

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; 12:42 PM

......The White House also released another of its relatively rare Setting the Record Straight memos, this one in response to Senator Carl Levin's suggestion yesterday morning on CNN that Bush "tried to connect Saddam Hussein with the attackers on us, on 9/11, so often, so frequently and so successfully, even though it was wrong, that the American people overwhelmingly thought, because of the President's misstatements that as a matter of fact, Saddam Hussein had participated in the attack on us on 9/11. That was a deception. That was clearly misinformation. It had a huge effect on the American people."

But the White House memo doesn't actually dispute Levin's assertion -- it simply responds with old quotes from Levin and other Democrats. All those prove is that many Democrats were indeed mouthing many of Bush's talking points in the run up to war. It doesn't prove that what Levin was saying yesterday is untrue..........

Bush's approval poll numbers won't be coming back, even if you choose to stick to your interpretation of Bush and Co's pre-invasion presentation to justify a choice for war. roachboy rightly describes the conservative reasoning process as "tiny", because so much of what actually happens has to be left out, because it just doesn't fit with the conclusion that the reasoning process arrives at.

Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...802397_pf.html
,b>What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005; B07

powerclown here is analysis of the recap of my 12 posts, above:

In twelve posts, I posted 20 links to references in support of my points.
A link in my post #4 pointed to a June 30, 2003 TNR article. It was not a "guerilla op-ed". I then posted two links to neutral sites to provide support for points highlighted in the TNR article.

In my post #8, I posted an excerpt from the same June 30, 2003, TNR article as I did in post #4, and I backed the point in the article with a Bush quote that was linked to the white house site.

In my post #11, i cited portions of a second TNR article, linked here:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=lizza111505

I then posted these two WaPo news reports to support what I had highlighted in the two citations from the one TNR article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...11101832.htmli

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ebriefing.html

TNR has been publiished since 1914. It does have liberal bent, and it claims to report political news and expose hypocrisy and report the truth. It is not simply a source of "guerilla op-eds".
http://www.tnr.com/about.mhtml

TNR has a subscription demographic that contradicts your dismissal of it as a
credible source: http://www.tnr.com/media-kit/print-research.mhtml
In a 2004 subscriber study, it's readers were 76% male, avg. age 56,
91% college grads, 67% post grad study with degree, had an average net worth of $1.3 million, and averaged an annual income of $153,300 each, 65% were married, and 85% held professional/managerial jobs. 22% served on a board of diirectors, and 32% were owner/partner in their enterprise.

I repeat....I recognize that some readers will contest an excerpt posted from TNR, since it is not an MSM, WaPo or NY Times level, news provider. Four of my 20 linked excerpts displayed above were to two TNR sources. Each of the two was cited with a link twice..... Each TNR sourced point that I was trying to stress was backed by a link or two to MSM or to authoritive archived sources, as in the example of the CIA's letter to senator Graham.

powerclown, I posted nothing here that you could fairly or accurately label as
a "guerilla op-ed" piece. If you disagree....point the link and the excerpt out, and back up your accusation, please.

If you disagree with my contention that the above analysis is representative of my post content in other threads, please point out examples, liikewise if you disagree with my analysis of the references that I've
posted and reviewed from this thread.

I am confident that you've made up your mind about what you will find in my posts, before you read them, and that you reflexively dismiss all content from sometimes accurate sources, such as TNR. As far as your criticism was intended for me, I don't see how you cannot reconsider your opinion as to the extent of my use of "guerilla op-ed" pieces, as I endeavor to avoid doing that, unless the information that they contain can be supported by other sources.

To put TNR.com on the same partisan level as gop.com , is to entirely dismiss that TNR has any merit or validity. That is not accurate, especially in the way that I posted TNR sourced material on this thread, supported by linked excerpts from news articles.

Early in your last post, you stated: "While I have respect for the amount of time you put into your posts, whenever I respond I get deluged with guerilla op-eds. And not only that (and one or more mods here can attest to this) but you frequently omit key parts of articles that don't support your line. "
One moderator accused me of "omitting", and as you can read at this link, quickly retracted the accusation. It also did not appear that it was an accusation made during the duty of moderating, but it seems to have been made during participation by the moderator in a discussion:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=40

Here is the full page where that exchange took place: (Post #40)
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ed#post1884790

And....I was grateful for the supportive comments posted in that thread:
here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=36

and here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=38

You stated that my "links are some of the most partisan out there. 2- way street." Why don't you challenge them when you take exception to them, and the same goes for pointing out the intentional omissions that you accuse me of making when I post a supporting, linked excerpt?

I'm hoping that you'll read this response and consider that your grievances either do not apply to the majority of stuff that I post, and that it influences your to reassess your "take" of what I've been presenting on these threads.
If you think that what I've posted on this thread is not indicative of the larger portion of my linked references on other threads....show me. If i'm wrong, I will admit it....promise. All points and opinions and linked citations are not equally approximate to the truth, or as near to it as we can potentially get.
There aren't many politicians on either side of the aisle that merit an unquestioning attitude towards. Fortunately or unfortunately for you, there are no democrats who have the power to make policy or to vote a law into being. Hence, the focus will continue to be on the republicans, because they are in total control of the legislature and executive branch, and they already had the SCOTUS, two appointments ago, if Bush v. Gore was an indication.
So......