Comments on: Stop this

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 09:27:00 +0000

More like "asking awkward questions". But basically yes.

By: Jarndyce

Jarndyce — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:45:00 +0000

‘Annoying’ meaning ‘often right with uncomfortable stuff’?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 07:18:00 +0000

Perhaps he has been fed some of this stuff to make him look like a whacko, and thereby make us all forget he was largely right last time. Now there's a conspiracy for you.

This is absolutely standard operating procedure for dealing with annoying journalists, btw.

By: Jarndyce

Jarndyce — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 05:42:00 +0000

Ritter also has a book coming out soon…

By: Jarndyce

Jarndyce — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 05:40:00 +0000

Unlike last time (when he clearly was), I can’t believe Ritter would be privy to this sort of info anymore, or be able to obtain it from any reliable source. Perhaps he has been fed some of this stuff to make him look like a whacko, and thereby make us all forget he was largely right last time. Now there’s a conspiracy for you.

By: jamie

jamie — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:05:00 +0000

I think it may be significant because a party requires two thirds of the seats in the Iraqi assembly to get the absolute majority required to get its measures into the country's new constitution. I don't know how vote shares translate into seats, though.

On vote rigging, I remember that the government closed the polls on election day an hour earlier than previously announced in heavily Shia areas.

By: Matthew Turner

Matthew Turner — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 09:32:00 +0000

Apologies for not following it too closely but was there any specific advantage in getting over 50% of the vote, rather than the seats, which I though the alliance did anyway?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 08:50:00 +0000

I'm not sure on this one. Ritter started out making some pretty decent points; in particular, that you cannot refine uranium without big power cables. But then he got all Andrew Wakefield about it. On the general issue of the WMDs (and you have no idea how much it hurts me to rub this in), there was actually quite a lot of evidence that Coiln Powell was lying, from all corners and of all sorts. I wouldn't go around believing Ritter's unsupported word, and in any case it's a bad use of your own credibility to lend it to propositions on which there will never be a specific event which proves you right.

(btw, "Enlightenment values" does pretty well as a litmus test these days; it's rare to see someone talking complete crap without linking it either to Orwell or the compilers of the Encyclopedie).