Robin is very angry that George W Bush’s electioneering may have fucked up an intelligence operation that would otherwise have caught last week’s London bombers before they struck.
Me, I’m not even *capable* of getting angry at GWB anymore. With 100,000 needless deaths under his belt, what’s another 50?
Caring about this sort of thing is knackering isn’t it? Sometimes, I almost wish that could just read the Mirror and be satisfied that I knew everything that I needed to. It must be really quite relaxing to be one of those people who just doesn’t understand why politics matter.
Of course, maybe we’re the idiots and they’re right.
If I got a signed note from Devoto telling you to stop using his title for your blog, do you think you’d do it? It’s been my fave song for about 25 years now, and I hate to see it used by a smug fucking johnny-come-lately JOURNALIST like you. Or maybe I’m wrong and you really do know everything.
You pratt.
As far as Bush: yeah, hate him. We all do. But I ain’t going to blame him for this one.
Jack G. is a hippie!
Bring back Jimmy Carter! He’d set these terrorists straight. And we’d all be getting better gas mileage!
Presidents a name
Presidents a label
Highest man on the government table.
America
Land of the free
Free to the power of the people in uniform
So This is War, Eh?
Lately there’ve been rumors of strange goings-on on the fringes. Violence both on the part of the governed and the governments, outraged editorials in daily newspapers, foul-mouthed interviews on live TV and frightened editors dropping contracts faster than a chimp would a hot potato.
Today this madness is mostly an English phenomenon, but there are signs that it will not stop there. May the blogs set this rat-infested industry on fire. It sure could use a little brightness!
So, let’s hope there be no objective reviewing in these pages, and definitely no unnecessary dwelling upon the bastards who’ve been boring the living shit out of us for years with their pseudo-philosophical inanities. Enough is enough, partner! About time we squeezed the pus out and sent the filthy rich old farts to retirement homes in Florida where they belong. Let them scream and rant at the mink and Geritol crowd at the Sheraton hotels, let them remember the old days when they’d rather die than be seen with socialite creeps and being heard talking trash, and then let them shit in their pants with envy.
What, you are on about Alan Rusbridger again?
I’m still a little suspicious. I think Bush is just frustrated. You cant tell it
until you turn on the box amd then this guy’s taking no prisoners. Shoot from the hip, let all the smoke clear, and THEN ask everybody what their name is. I love it. I know he thought, let’s just throw ourselves into it, deal with the consequences later. It was like, ‘This is our chance, let’s go level the cities.’"
GGinn,
Well, we all know how europeans feel about us americans. Just curious, though. Where would Kuwait be today if not for the US initiative in 1991? If the US did nothing, who would’ve done anything of substance?
The same place, but with Saddam’s soldiers still feeding flesh cut from the bodies of the tortured to them.
Don’t take John or his ghouls seriously, he just tlaks shit to get traffic.
"Just curious, though. Where would Central America be today if not for the US initiative in the 1980s? If the US did nothing, who would’ve done anything of substance?"
Well, some thugs would still have killed a few people. But without US ‘initiative’, their brutal, oligarchic reactionary terrorism would have been defeated. As it was, thousands died. The people who pulled the strings in ‘the shining city on the hill’ are still in positions of influence today – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Negroponte and more. Oh, but these fascistic bastards have changed eh, Eric. You plant yourself shoulder to shoulder with murderers in uncritical support for American power. Give them more power to reshape the world. Doesn’t matter, it seems, that you are handing power to monsters.
Andrew,
Your non-answer is an answer in itself. Thanks.
I’m sorry Stan LS, I didn’t realise that your question was anything other than rhetorical. It seemed to me to be a demand the response ‘American power is GOOD!’ by asking for a response to a single example. This, of course, is as worthless a strategy in terms of reasoned debate (though, possibly, an effective rhetorical ploy), as a single counter example can be used to demand the response ‘American power is BAD!’
My response was to Eric’s lurid tales of Saddam’s brutal human butchery. Eric would no doubt describe Saddam as a monster, and this fact alone legitimates his removal from power in a war involving tremendous amounst of human destruction. Unfortunately for Eric, supporting this war involved standing side by side with men who had roles in human butchery at around the time Saddam was at his worst. Would Eric feel that quotations of the terrible acts that these men instigated in Central America in the 1980s justified a military strike on Washington, killing many thousands of innocents, in order to strip these men of power? Of course he wouldn’t. Why? Are latino lives brutally ended in the 1980s worth less than arab lives brutally ended in the 1980s? Or are American lives currently worth that much more than arab lives are currently valued at? I don’t know.
Andrew,
My post was in response to GGinn’s " Shoot from the hip, let all the smoke clear, and THEN ask everybody what their name is." We get it. Americans are brutes, Europeans are sophisticates. Yet these same sophistacates can’t do much in Balkans (their backyard) without the oversea help from these stupid American brutes, right? Kuwait would still be under Saddam if not for these American imbeciles, etc.
I’m trying to work out why 1980s Latin American policy should stop us removing dictatorships.
Besides none at all of course.
So, if Saddam was willing to overthrow Assad, should we have supported him?
So why should we support Cheney, Rumsfeld and Negroponte. If we were really concerned about removing human rights abusers from power, we would arrange for the police to cart these three off to jail. That would cost billions less than the War in Iraq and, unless one of these brutes decided to go out in a hail of bullets, would involve no human destruction.
Instead, we put them in charge of a war. And cheer them on.
What you forget, Andrew, is that everything is different now.
So don’t even go there.
So, if Saddam was willing to overthrow Assad, should we have supported him?
Eh?
I’m still trying to work out how opposing the Iraq war will help dead South Americans.
Have you thought of obtaining a book of logic?
I didn’t argue that it would. What I wonder is how, in the name of human rights, you can stand with terrible abusers of these rights. Furthermore, if we should not withdraw our support from human rights abusers on the basis that this would not help their now dead victims, I hope you adopt the same logic when you justify the Iraq War. Saddam’s victims prior to the launching of the war cnnot be taken into account – what good would the war do them? Only those living can enter the equation, and it is difficult to rgaue that Iraq has not seen greater levels of death and destruction since the war than would be expected had the war not taken place.
My point about Assad was that you are willing to cheer on the architects of death squads and torture regimes, so long as they are causing death and destruction on a massive scale in the cause of democracy. Would you be willing to cheer on Saddam if he was to overthrow Assad. Or Assad if he had promised to overthrow Saddam. Or, more to the point, would you oppose the assasination of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Negroponte, perhaps by Ba’athist insurgents? After all, this would rid the world of powerful abusers of human rights, and who can quibble who we stand with to do this, right?
You are happy to accuse the anti-war left of making alliances with unsavoury people. But these alliances are far less ‘material’ than supporting the actions of brutes.
I don’t need lessons in logic from you, Eric. My points are perfectly clear. The lesson that Saddam should have taught us is that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. And it is impossible to remain on the left and support the American CIA/gangster clique that wreaked so much terror during the 1980s.
We should deal with the very real villians in our own governments, not support them as the accrue more power.
I think you need serious help Andrew.
Why is that?
Because he can’t actually *beat* you in an argument, therefore has to resort to accusing you of being evil/mentally ill/incapable of logic.
Andrew,
Would you be willing to cheer on Saddam if he was to overthrow Assad.
US did "cheer on" Saddam when he was fighting the Iranians.
No John,
He actually thinks supporting the removal of Saddam Hussain is some sort of tacit approval of an "American CIA/gangster clique that wreaked so much terror during the 1980s".
What is the point of debating with him.
Thomas Aquinas he is not.
Supporting the same people who were members of the CIA/gangster clique that wreaked havoc in the 1980s could, arguably, be perceived as tacit approval of said CIA/gangster clique.
By "Thomas Aquinas he is not" and based on my reading of Aquinas, I can only assume you mean "he isn’t an intelligent sophist trying as hard as he can to justify an inherently insane conclusion using his full powers of obfuscation and fallacy".
Perhaps "Oliver Kamm he is not" would be a more contemporary parallel.
"US did "cheer on" Saddam when he was fighting the Iranians."
Yes, I know, so my question is this – is supporting the overthrow of Saddam by means of a destructive war and occupation managed by men with no demonstratable concern for human rights, indeed, with a rapsheet of horrific crimes, a shift from the same sort of political thinking that lead to the backing of Saddam in the first place?
"He actually thinks supporting the removal of Saddam Hussain is some sort of tacit approval of an "American CIA/gangster clique that wreaked so much terror during the 1980s"." Well, if you argue that it is not, would you have supported the overthrow of Saddam by Assad. After all, it would not be tacit approval of Assad, only approval of the overthrow of Saddam.
Well, you are either arguing that it is not tacit approval of those actually doing the overthrowing, or you are arguing that the people who hold power in the military side of government in Washington are not members of the CIA/gangster clique that has been responsible for human destruction on a vast scale. This clique has been in existence since the late 1960s, if not before. We see a geneology that runs from the Watergate burglars, through the death squad backers, through the drug-runners, up to the present in the staff of the Office for Special Plans. A bloody, poisonous family tree of crooks, assasins, torturers and drug smugglers.
I thought john b was batty, but Andrew Bartlett takes the biscuit. These guys seem to support the BBC not calling the bombers terrorists, they trot out their stupid and irrelevant timewarp references to South America, they can’t see that the real nasties in Iraq right now – killing Muslims day in day out – are the Al Q types, not the Americans. They prefer to stay with their seething hatred of Bush blinds them to any logic or rational discourse. Their seething consumes them – and it is pathetic.
Supporting the same people who were members of the CIA/gangster clique that wreaked havoc in the 1980s could, arguably, be perceived as tacit approval of said CIA/gangster clique.
I think you are changing what I was supporting i.e. the removal of Saddam with something else which I was not supporting.
The removal of Saddam was a good thing. The fact that Rumsfeld agreed with me, does not mean I retro-actively agree with all his previous decisions or actions.
andrew,
Yes, I know, so my question is this – is supporting the overthrow of Saddam by means of a destructive war and occupation managed by men with no demonstratable concern for human rights, indeed, with a rapsheet of horrific crimes, a shift from the same sort of political thinking that lead to the backing of Saddam in the first place?
You are comparing actions of a few (naked pyramid??) to Saddam’s official policy of murder and torture? Nice.
Saddam was supported because US viewed Iran as a bigger threat. Simple as that.
Thanks for your psychiatric diagnosis* JiL. So, what mental pathology results in one calling the BBC terrorist appeasers?
*It’s nice to see the old totalitarian analysis of dissenting views back. Nothing like nostalgia, eh?
"You are comparing actions of a few (naked pyramid??) to Saddam’s official policy of murder and torture? Nice."
No, I am comparing the running of death squads and torture camps in Latin America in the 1980s with Saddam’s crimes.
"Saddam was supported because US viewed Iran as a bigger threat. Simple as that."
So you [would have] supported Saddam in the 1980s? Do you think that his crimes during this period should be pardoned? If not, do you think those who supported him while he committed these crimes [including yourself?] should be put on trial as material accomplices?
"The removal of Saddam was a good thing. The fact that Rumsfeld agreed with me, does not mean I retro-actively agree with all his previous decisions or actions."
Okay, fine. So would yoy have support Saddam’s overthrow by Assad? My point here is that you cannot simply support the ‘removal of Saddam’. You must support (or oppose) the removal of Saddam by means of the plan currently on offer. In this case is was a [woefully inadequate] plan devised by men with a history of human rights abuses. This war would grant these men even greater power, as they would govern an occupied country and occupy positions of political power in a militarised political environment domestically. Furthermore, the war itself is not simply, ‘the removal of Saddam’, but the violent invasion and occupation of a country. Even if these had been planned by Ghadi it would have killed thousands and destroyed the lives of countless more.
Given you ‘supported the overthrow of Saddam’, presumably on the basis that he is a very bad man with a lot of power to do very bad things, would you also support the overthrow of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Negroponte (to name just three)? How much death and destruction would be acceptable? And which human rights abusing thugs would you support in the task of doing this?
The BBC has trck record in ppeasement – if we are going to talk history – remeber the 1930s ?
These days they chicken out from damning with the word "terrorism" the suicide-bombing attacks in Iraq and Israel. They say it is value-laden. And they and Reuters adopted the policy in part to stay well in with "sources". They openly declare that.
It is a craven policy. appeasement in my book. And certainly stupid, now being mocked around the world. Which is why the BBC has just been named Knave of the Week by the Washington Times.
So you [would have] supported Saddam in the 1980s?
I was too young in the 80’s to support anything politically. Iran was viewed as a bigger threat, so it made sense to support Iraq. We don’t live a in a perfect world.
Do you think that his crimes during this period should be pardoned?
No, that’s why I am telling you that he was supported as a counterweight to Iran. Not because he’s a nice guy or a friend to democracy, etc.
If not, do you think those who supported him while he committed these crimes [including yourself?] should be put on trial as material accomplices?
That’s silly, unless you can prove that particular crimes were supported. One can make a better case vs EU for sending tens (hundreds?) of milions of dollars to the Palestinians knowing that a sizable chunk ends up in the terrorist hands.
Latterly, Saddam had lots of support from the Russians and the French – after the Kuwait invasion should have turned him into a total pariah. For over a decade there was nil support from the US.
But of course the moonbats keep harping on about the US being to blame for everything. It is their mantra, their comfort blanket, their cause for faux sympathy. Realpolitik is too difficult for them.
The extreme left does not give a tinker’s cuss about Iraqis, they don’t listen to what the Iraqis through their elected goverment wants. Any excuse to chant their mantra against the US, that is all they understand.
Andrew Bartlett,
You say:
"Even if these had been planned by Ghadi [sic] it would have killed thousands and destroyed the lives of countless more."
And this is meant to convince me that I shouldn’t supported the war?
Did you think we thought the war would be fought with harsh language and tickling sticks?
No, patently not. I was simply making overt what you had left unsaid when you said that you ‘supported the overthrow of Saddam’, while trying to hold off committing yourself to support of the actually existing war and the consquent increase in power of men complicit in terrible crimes.
There’s the mantra again Needle stuck in the groove.
But of course the moonbats keep harping on about the US being to blame for everything. It is their mantra, their comfort blanket, their cause for faux sympathy. Realpolitik is too difficult for them.
Or alternatively: But of course the wingnuts keep harping on about European moonbats being to blame for everything. It is their mantra, their comfort blanket, their eternal scapegoat. Diplomacy is too difficult for them. Easier just to send in the troops.
Who said anything about you moonbats being to blame for everything ? Except yor own ignornce and blinkers.
Stop fighting issues that are past tense. We are in Iraq. Deal with it. Get your head ot of your ass. "Move-On" LOL
Still, everything’s the BBC’s fault, right?
Good – get rid of the BBC and there will be no more problems, anywhere, ever. Easy.
Why can’t The Left see this?
"they don’t listen to what the Iraqis through their elected goverment wants"
This, at least in Basra, appears to be a fundamentalist islamic government. Shame on us for finding this unpalatable.
Who said anything about you moonbats being to blame for everything ?
Good, well I’m glad we’re in the clear then. Now piss off. Silly person.
Piss off yourself, you clown