host

The background:
The Rant:
Scotty sez that "we know that members of al Qaeda are trained to mislead and to provide false reports. We know that's one of their tactics that they use. And so I think you have to keep that in mind, as well."

Are you a "free person doing bad things, Scott?" Are you telling us that the detainees released by the Bush Administration from Gitmo and from military detention in Afghanistan and Iraq are lying about abuse such as Koran flushing because they were trained to say such things by Al Aqaeda?

You can't have it both ways Scott, either your doing a "bad thing" by lying to our press representatives, or you are admitting that the people you speak for have released detainees who are Al Qaeda or trained by Al Qaeda. Which is it, Scott?
What the F*** were Rumsfeld and McClellan talking about? Who are the free people doing bad things?

MSD

Once Saddam was overthrown, people were able to express political dissent, and some took it to extremes by attacking others. It's not such a sinister comment if you read it in full and aren't looking for the evil in everything he says.

host

The irony that is the intention of all of the material and my own commentary, in the post, MRSD, is, "who are the free people doing bad things". I wanted a discussion on whether it is The US leaders and population, or the Iraqis.
Are we a violent, imperial society, corrupting our young, setting the example of leadership lying to, and misleadingh the press (the McClellan example) a belligerent, swaggering, in your face, leadership and citizenry?

Are we the society that can determine who needs to be "set free" ? What is it that ouir society, given the material that I posted. possesses, in the way we currently practice it, that is so noble, so truthful, so special, that we have the justification to spread it (impose it) on other sovereignties at the point of a gun?

MSD

Nobody is an absolute authority on who needs to be "set free," but I seriously doubt that any but a few extremists honestly believe that Iraq's people were free under Saddam. Even under his secular rule, morality and vice police, both secret and public, prowled the streets and were not above executing people who did not conform to their fundamentalist standards of decency. It is also a documented fact that in the past, Iraq's former government used chemical weapons against its own people and against US allies.

I agree with you that McClellan backed himself into a corner and proceeded to dig himself into a hold himself into a hole, and that he has severly damaged if not destroyed his credibility. I think you can agree with me that people from every side do bad things because they can. My reaction to your first post would have been more favorable if you had initially clarified your statement as you did in your response to me. It sounded like a typical bashing of the Bush administration rather than a legitimate complaint. Hopefully people will read at least the first few posts and see that clarification before replying.

Ustwo

So if I see a woman being raped, I should just walk on past since it would be wrong to impose upon others my morality?

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

roachboy

the rumsfeld quote is pretty funny--i remember the opposite argument being floated by 1972 republicans to justify the coup d'etat in chile.

i wonder if it is a curious unguarded comment from rumsfeld, however, one that gives a glimpse of the mode of rationalization he uses to understand the actions over which he has presided as sec. of defense. typically for conservative ideologues, such admissions, when they come, are framed as moments of projection--which is a recurrent tic of right ideology--if the right is doing something, you always find the apparatus imputing that thing to their (usually hallucinated) inverse, be that "the left" in america or "terrorists" in the bigger imaginary world of the bush administration, or in iraq.

the point is that i see how the logic of host's posts above works, but i simply don't think about its implications in the same way. it is pretty clear that the lynchpin of the post is the second quote, which sets up the questions that he ends with.


what interests me in post no. 4 is the term "bush bashing" which seems little more than a rhetorical device for trivializing critique of this administration. it seems like the object of the game that surrounds use of it is to reduce criticisms of bush and his merry band to some kind of strange emotional reaction on the part of those who oppose the adminsitration in particular, the far right in general, by stripping away the factual content of the critiques and thereby setting up an excuse to dismiss them. but you would think that there would come a point where this device would cease to operate, that the increasing mountain of evidence of the administration's various lies, their various abuses, their various idiocies, would begin to register even with the most ardent bushfan.

what surprises me is that most conservatives i talk with in 3-d lilfe are reasonable people--not fools who are lead by the nose--they are certainly far more complex and sophisticated in real life than they are in messageboards---nonetheless, in certain situations these folk simply shut down, cannot process what they are being told by folk who oppose their politics. that is when the bush bashing term generally comes up. it is as if the term really operates to prevent these people from having to think too much about the limitations of their position, the problems with the administration that purports to represent them. it is as if they cannot cope with the dissonance that separates who they would prefer to think george w bush is and what he stands for and what the actual administration that operates in his name does in the world. this mechanism is particular to the right--there is nothing similar outside of it, except maybe amongst certain trotskyites. generally folk are able to navigate the problems that arise when an administration betrays what people who might have supported it at one point thought it was about--you might consider how folk to the left of the dlc reacted to clinton-the-centrist...none of this denial business, with all its pathetic implications..more a considered withdrawing of consent....you might consider the reaction of the left at the point where you might have been able to argue that it existed in a coherent sense to johnson's escalation of vietnam: none of this denial stuff, with all its pathetic implications, but a rapid withdrawal of consent and the formation of oppositional movements.

a very strange place, the world of the contemporary american right.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

analog

grinning monkey, smirking chimp, whatever. I'm not sure why i'm supposed to take anything this person has said with any serious consideration, especially since he basically just rants like a poor disaffected youth who realizes his country has forgotten about him, and also writes like a frantic idiot.

It's pretty bad when I, myself, fundamentally agree with the general sentiments hurled at the prez, etc., but I feel put off by his rant because of the way it's written, structured, whatever. I'm not even sure at all how Hunter S Thompson's words fit into that whole thing, except as a sound bite at the end because he lacks the ability to close his own arguments without copping out into a quote.

As far as Rummy's quote itself, it's a perfectly fine (IMO) observation of a newly free people. Yes, there will be anarchy, but also there will finally be some good. Taking that first sentence out of context to exploit it is just stupid, and perfectly transparent. You know, I hate the president too, but i'm not a douchebag writing for an internet news whatever that chimp thing is and trying to make a name for myself by writing my columns in bullshit nonsense.

Also: the Koran/toilet thing is a totally different event entirely, i'm not even sure how in the hell he ties the two together except to cloak an old rant (free people) inside a current news topic. Lame.

Outside of the extremeists, find me a person who thought their situation in Iraq was gumdrops and candy-canes before the "liberation". Practically no one. Even if they were content (which i'm sure few of them were), they certainly could only be happy for getting Sadam out of there. Who wants a person at the top of their country dictating how they live, what they watch on TV, what they hear on the radio, who they love... not me. Yeah, that was intentional.