Comments Posted By Jonathan
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I've been online since the days of 300 baud modems and local BBSes and I figured out a long time ago that the better my posts are and the harder I hit my mark the fewer replies I get.
By ignoring my posts you are only admitting your own defeat.
Silence is the tacit nod of acquiescence.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 23:17
Yes, I know it’s Greenwald and that his over the top, laughable exaggerations of the vast majority of righty blogs are usually fodder for snarky commentary. But notice the hint of hysteria in his attack. You really should read the whole post because the feeling of smug superiority drips from almost every word, not to mention the paranoia, the tiresome falsehoods, and the outright lies that only our Lambchop can feed to his ravenous, sycophantic readers who hang on every out of control word as if from Gaia herself.
Got snark?
Here's a a few examples of rhetoric from the right, the kind of rhetoric that liberals are finally starting to respond to:
Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.
John Derbyshire
National Review, 2/15/2001And another gem:
My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.
Ann Coulter
New York Observer, 8/26/2002And yet another:
We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.
Ann Coulter
2/26/2002Here's more:
Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and they don’t care, couldn’t care less.
Bill O’Reilly
6/20/2005These quotes are from supposedly respectable and responsible journalists and commentators, not random, unknown internet bloggers.
And the right wants to call the left "over the top"!
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 21:08
What is on display is not the understandable human desire for revenge born out of more than a decade of slights and insults at the hands of their enemies but rather the cold, calculated hunger for a reckoning, a settling of accounts. It isn’t enough to put Republicans in their place. It isn’t enough to humiliate them, to poke fun at them, to kick them in the head while they’re lying on the ground. It is time to rack the bastards, to stretch their necks and watch them dangle and twist slowly, slowly in the wind.
Does the phrase "Hoist on their own petard" have any meaning for you?
I have been called some of the most vile names imaginable, had my honor and patriotism questioned and been threatened with bodily harm (according to the rules, I posted under my full name which is unique in the US and probably the world), simply because I had the sheer effrontery to question the advisability of invading Iraq. And this was on an astronomy board, I can just imagine if I had posted at Frei Republik or Little Green Footsmellers.
We on the left are tired of being on the recieving end of such treatment, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more.
As I learned in the Crotch, payback is a motherf**ker.
Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil because I'm the meanest motherf**ker in the Valley. -Marine Corps Saying
Something else I learned in the Crotch, the best defense is an overwhelming offense.
It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.
-Sun TzuComment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 20:12I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for.
Rush Limbaugh
Denver Post, 12/29/1995
They don’t use falsehoods from, say, FOX news to paint FOX news as the enemy. This is because FOX is, basically, on their side.
Faux Nooz has falsehoods?
Who would have guessed?
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. ;-)
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 19:20
Malkin went to bed with Al-Sadr because she hates MSM more than him.
Ahhhhrrr..My Eyes, My Eyes.... Brain Bleach Time.. ;-)
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 19:14
As a parent and grandparent this video angered me a great deal. I have absolutely no tolerance for people who deliberately abuse children.
I emailed the link to my daughter (a mother of three) with the title "Winning hearts and minds" and when I asked a few days later if she had seen it I was absolutely flabbergasted and insulted when she told me "Oh yes, we laughed really hard".
I was insulted because she assumed that I sent it to her because I thought it was funny.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 17:09
Admit it or not, like it or not, it is possible (though only those who know you could tell) that you have done no more than reinforce previous beliefs.
And how does that make me different from yourself?
You are missing the point that I was correct and the pro war faction was wrong, dead wrong.
What part of "General Abizaid confirmed General Shinseki's original estimate to be correct" do you not understand?
When someone makes a correct prediction or a series of correct predictions, their opinion should be worth more than those whose opinions have proven consistently incorrect. This is not the case now, those who were correct from the beginning are still being ignored by the media and the politicians.
I haven't seen anyone yet at Intel-Dump who would claim that the occupation so far has been well managed. The main arguments over there are about what to do next.
One of the best pieces I have read on Iraq is A Soldier's Story by an Army Special Forces Major just returned from Iraq. And before you even start about the source of the story, to complain about the source is an ad hominem fallacy.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 16:56
Being an unconscious tool of the enemy is one thing. But deliberately remaining ignorant that your emotions are being manipulated strains credulity.
Do you deny that our emotions were "manipulated" by the Bush administration and the media in the runup to the Iraq invasion?
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 16:38
As I posted in a previous thread but no one probably read, my son in law (a former Marine as am I) thought I was a fool and a coward for opposing the Iraq war from the very beginning. I will say that he was always respectful to my face and never argued with me to the point of losing his temper. To avoid family conflict I stopped trying to put forth my point of view to both Jeremy and my daughter and just held my tongue WRT to the war and how it was going.
As former Marines both Jeremy and I paid close attention to the war from the beginning. The difference between us was that after about a month or two, when the kinetic combat was over, Jeremy lost interest while I continued to remained fascinated with the ongoing conflict. Jeremy got his information from TV news, I got my information overwhelmingly from the Internet, reading everything from the BBC to individual soldier's blogs.
I knew at the time that General Shinseki had called for several hundred thousand troops to invade and occupy Iraq. I also knew that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had publicly disagreed with Shinseki over his estimate. I also know that General Abizaid has since confirmed that Shinseki was correct in his original estimate.
I've been reading a lot over at Intel-Dump a blog for (mostly retired) professional military officers and assorted military geeks and wonks. I've learned there that the Army was not even allowed to plan for the post kinetic combat phase of the invasion and occupation. The reason for this is simple, the Bush administration wished to keep the estimated costs of the invasion down as low as possible in order to more easily sell it to Congress and the American people. There was not and is not the slightest hint of this deception in the main stream media, even unto this very day. And yet I, a humble former enlisted man with nothing more than an Internet connection and a burning desire to understand, have found and digested the information.
If you wish to blame the main stream media for what is happening in Iraq, blame them for being partisan cheerleaders for the war and for not properly investigating and reporting the facts before the war started. The media, by and large are generalists, they have no specific knowledge of things military and hence they almost always get reporting on military matters at least somewhat incorrect and often wildly wrong. This is true for everything that the media reports on, it seems that most electronic media personages are selected for their looks and how well they "present" on camera.
It's interesting that, even now, those who were correct in predicting failure before the invasion are almost entirely shut out of the media. It seems that the more incorrect one has been about Iraq, the more credibility one has with the media. Thomas Friedman, for instance, has been wrong so many times in predicting that things are going to "turn around in the next six months" that six months are now called a "Friedman Unit" on many lefty sites. Thomas Friedman has not been marginalized as a result of his continuously incorrect predictions, he is still just as visible as ever and being listened to just as respectfully as ever. Meanwhile, I have yet to see or hear of now retired General Shinseki, he of the correct estimate of forces needed, being asked his opinion on the war in any media source of which I am aware.
This war was lost even before it was begun, it was started due to political considerations and mismanaged due to further political considerations. The Congress and the American people would not have approved the war had the greatest cost of that war, the occupation after the kinetic combat was over, been included in the original estimate. I have yet to see these facts promulgated anywhere in the mainstream media even now going on four years into a meatgrinder of a war, a war that has now gone on longer than the time from Pearl Harbor to VJ day.
Can we blame the media for the FUBAR that is Iraq? Definitely, but not for the reasons that Rick is speaking of in his post. We can blame the media for not investigating and publishing the deceptions of the Bush administration in taking us into Iraq in the first place.
We can also blame the media for Iraq for shouting down and/or ignoring anyone with reservations about or criticisms of the plan of attack.
I was on an astronomy board before the war, they had specifically added a politics forum so that discussions about politics and the war plans would not infect the astronomy related forums. I remember being called all kinds of names, accused of being a traitor, a coward and a fool for pointing out that the invasion might not go as well as was being portrayed by the media. To tell you the truth, I was shocked at the level of vitriol that was directed at me by otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people who shared a love of astronomy with me. Eventually I was permanently removed from the board due to a minor infraction of the rules, an infraction which I had seen many war supporters commit time after time without even getting a warning.
Jeremy now listens to my opinions with considerably more respect than he did four years ago, but after three thousand American dead and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead it gives me no pleasure to be able to say "I told you so".
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 16:14The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected
Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Those who really support the troops would not be stating in their next breath that they are human fodder fighting a war for oil that is doomed to failure.
As I have already pointed out several times before, this "war" was lost the moment that the decision was made to invade and occupy Iraq with only about one third of the troops necessary to properly do the job. General Shinseki stated in testimony before Congress that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed to occupy Iraq. Rumsfeld (who retired as a Captain) and Wolfowitz (no service) publicly disagreed with Shinseki and Shinseki was forced into retirement. The more pliable General Schoomaker was installed to head the Army and the invasion proceeded with the much lighter force that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted.
The decision to invade Iraq in the first place was a poor one, the decision to do so with far fewer forces than were predicted to be needed by the military professionals like Shinseki was abysmally stupid. That decision can be traced right back to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the civilians in charge of the DOD. Despite this fact we have Cheney hailing Rumsfeld as "the greatest SecDef ever" very recently.
On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, USCENTCOM Commanding General John Abizaid said that General Shinseki's estimate had proved correct. In other words, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were dead wrong.
Now Rumsfeld is out and Gates is in as SecDef. Gates is a CIA spook who basically doesn't know that much about the military but is well connected with the Bush family. Whether or not Gates will be a good SecDef remains to be seen but it isn't auspicious that he'll have to have a lot of on the job training.
The invasion of Iraq has turned out be the mother of all FUBARs, and it is due to the fact that militarily ignorant ideologues were put in places of ultimate power over our military forces.
Don't you find it at all coincidental that we have a President and Vice President who are both oil men and we have preemptively invaded the country with the second larges proven oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia?
Remember the Powell doctrine? Overwhelming force, clear exit strategy. The Iraq invasion had and has neither.
"I think we'd still be there, we'd be like a dinosaur in a tar pit, we could not have gotten out & we'd still be the occupying power & we'd be paying one hundred percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq." -Norman Schwarzkopf, 1997 talking about occupying Iraq after the Gulf War
Recall that Dick Cheney was SecDef at the time, he knew very well that Iraq was a tar pit and yet he did nothing to stop this invasion.
The US forces in Iraq are not making things any better and may well be making things worse. I, for one, do not wish to see any more American blood and treasure wasted in this futile and Pyrrhic effort to make over the Middle East in our own image.
The short answer is: I think this occupation was poorly conceived and incredibly stupidly managed and I'm not going to shut up about it.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 23:03
