Tuesday, March 11, 2008

It doesn't matter

By Capt. Fogg

While the media circus continues to direct our attention to the prurient side show featuring Eliot Spitzer, those of us who have already found the egress might notice that a Pentagon sponsored review of hundreds of thousands of documents captured in Iraq has corroborated what Dick Cheney alternately admits and denies: there was no operational link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

I've been waiting all morning for the thunderclap of public indignation, or at least for the apologetic "never mind" George Bush owes us; not to speak of what he owes to the millions of people whose lives have been ruined by the assertion that Iraq was a hotbed of international terrorism with one foot in the door of the nuclear club.

Of course those who maintain the "plan B" cover story won't reconsider and that is a group larger than the perpetrators of this war. Even Christopher Hitchens of brilliant mind and trenchant wit seems to think that a visit by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Iraq means collaboration despite all current and prior evidence to the contrary. I have to wonder what he thinks about the Taliban visits to the Texas Capital in 1997 when George Bush was governor, or the visits of Donald Rumsfeld to Saddam's Baghdad.

But Bush has added the maxim that facts don't matter to the canon along with the credos that debt doesn't matter and the Constitution doesn't matter. That's what you get from a Commander Guy.

And that's the way it is.

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15 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Isn't it amazing how many people are so easily distracted by titilating snippets of gossip and so uninterested in the news that actually affects their life and liberty?!

10:42:00 AM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

Say - what's Paris up to lately?

We've paid a big price for making Americans into mindless consumers. Liberty was only the down payment.

11:06:00 AM  
Blogger Swampcracker said...

The Spritzer story is not exactly a throbbing issue, but Iraq continues to be a suppurating sore.

One comment my daughter (the one in Iraq) used to say that still rings true: Al Qaeda is in Iraq because we are in Iraq, and when we leave, they leave ... the Pied Piper phenomenon. But you can't convince anyone in Washington; fools believe what they want.

12:23:00 PM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

Commander Guy needs them to be there otherwise he could never justify us being there. It's amazing that he continues to hide such a big disaster behind such a transparent smoke screen.

Unfortunately most people are stupid. Nearly everyone, in fact.

12:30:00 PM  
Blogger Swampcracker said...

Just got an email from Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake about the FISA issue. Here is a link in case anyone is interested on one last ditch petition to stop telecom immunity:

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/getevenforfisa

2:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's right, Ecophotos, al-Qaeda is in Iraq because we're there, and it was planned that way. Please go to www.stratfor.com and read some of George Friedman's stuff. Disrupt the Middle East and keep al-Qaeda jumping around, except NOT in the U.S. If you topple a duicatator in the meantime, it's 2 for 1.

2:50:00 PM  
Blogger Swampcracker said...

Anon: If you topple a duicatator [sic]

Get an education, asshole!

3:30:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have an education. B.A., University of Pennsylvania, History, magna cum laude, 1992. They tried to indoctrinate me there -- and failed.

Have you ever heard of George Friedman? Have you ever heard of startfor.com?

4:17:00 PM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

There's such a pattern of so many years standing in which people show up all cynical and huffy because the writer never went to some web site or read some obscure guru who has all the answers - for those who can pay. There are thousands of newsletters and thousands of swamis and millions of disciples. For every prediction or analysis you cite, I can find another that says something different.

Sound like you're young enough to be smitten by his condescending air of authority, but do realize that it doesn't stick to you. You're just another guy with an opinion, like the hundreds who have told me I didn't know what I was talking about and have silently slunk away when it turned out that I did.

Some day I will run into the fellow who chewed me out in the most vulgar fashion because I was too liberal and too stupid to realize the war would be "won" in a matter of weeks. That was five years ago. As I recall, he had all kinds of web sites and professors and experts and other snake charmers too.

Frankly I think Friedman is full of shit and makes a living by pulling shifty predictions out of his ass.

Hey, I could be wrong and Bush could be honest, but I rarely am and he rarely is.

4:56:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well thanks, Fogg, for being honest enough to admit you've read (apparently) at least some of Friedman's stuff. And listen, I think it's fine you think he's full of shit. Also, if I'm on this blog, you could say that I'm willing to look at other sources of information as well.

5:47:00 PM  
Blogger Swampcracker said...

Anon, I have a BA, MEcon, and PhD. I think these trump your ba, a degree for bleating sheep. I am shocked that UoP lowered its standards so much over the years. Consider yourself lucky but by no means educated.

6:34:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fine Ecophotos. I have a law degree from Vanderbilt, as well. People like you are all for diversity, unless, of course, someone just to right of Karl Marx is permitted to attend. I'm for diversity - diversity of thought and opinion. If you don't like that kind of diversity, please move to North Korea.

7:19:00 AM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

I drove past a law school once.

I'm fascinated by America's ability to see everything in terms of right and left. It's nearly as amusing as our propensity to measure everything in football fields.

What, pray tell, does the hypocrisy of prosecuting people for one's owe vices have to do with that worn out political scale? To what purpose does one compare a discussion of our success or failure in a mission demonstrably contrived for reasons other than those stated to a political philosophy advocating government ownership of the means of production?

If ever a sophistical tool was blunted by over use, it's the dismissal of an argument over matters of fact by chanting "liberal" or to a degree far more egregious, by invoking poor, dead Marx.

The number of actual, bona fide al Qaeda fighters in Iraq seems to be about 2% according to credible sources. There are probably more of them in the US and Europe than in Iraq. What does this have to do with Marx? There were none there at all until we destroyed the country. Why is that a Liberal opinion?

I'm sure you're not old enough to remember the same bogus statistics that proved we were winning in Vietnam, that we were convincing them of the benefits of not voting, of a corrupt colonial government and most of all that we were killing them faster than they were killing us. I was a lefty of course for pointing out the truth at the time and somehow being proved right still left me in left field.

Isn't it time we got back to truth vs palliative government lies?

Didn't law school teach you to pay some attention to the meaning of the words you use?

8:53:00 AM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

Dear anonymouse

In reply to your rightly deleted riposte:

So that's what I get for treating your comments with respect and self deprecation? An anti-semitic tirade? Yes, I am a Jew, sorry, but I don't take that as an insult. no, I'm happily married, not filled with hate at all - I just hate you and your neurotic bigotry and your deranged, furious, politics.

I wish your comment were still here so that people could laugh at your angry hate-soaked denunciation of me as a hater; laugh at your condescending put down of me for being condescending. Go back and read your arrogant comments

Sorry if my words are too big, sorry if your mind is too small. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt but I doubt you got any benefit from it.

If you can't lose an argument like a man, just go away and stay anonymous - or hire an exorcist.

10:02:00 AM  
Blogger Swampcracker said...

Anon: If you don't like that kind of diversity, please move to North Korea.

This circumstantial ad hominem of the ridicule type resembles the “America, love it or leave it” epithet hurled by hardhats during the Viet Nam war era.

It is doubtful whether anonymous has been truthful about himself/herself. An authentic person would not hide behind a shadowy moniker, invent a false persona, and engage in drive-by behaviors meant to harass.

Anonymous meant to offend, but the argument is too fallacious to offend, and this troll is too character-disordered to deserve any more time or consideration.

11:58:00 AM  

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