Monday, November 12, 2007

Veterans day

"In their sorrow, these families need to know — and families all across our nation of the fallen — need to know that your loved ones served a cause that is good and just and noble,"
said George Bush yesterday. No it wasn't at Arlington as tradition and duty would suggest, but back "home" in Crawford at the American Legion Hall where his latest vacation wouldn't be interrupted.

Yes, they need to know that. They need to know that so much that they will believe it when it is manifestly untrue and George is there to milk grieving mothers for support by lying about why their children died.
"Their sacrifice will not be in vain."
said the man of leisure, whose family grows richer by the dayand whose boots cost more that what we pay to families in Iraq whose children we have murdered; said the man whose policies have our future teetering on the brink of recession and our grandchildren already in debt and our reputation lost and our leadership lapsed. In our sorrow, we need to know who profits by it, who brought it about, who fights to maintain it, who lies to pass the blame and on whose shoulders rests the shame.

Their sacrifice has brought us torture, murder, rape, the displacement of millions and the death of hundreds of thousands who will never have the chance to tell us how much they love freedom. How hollow such words sound from the man who has been given everything and given his loyalty to profiteers and foreign powers while sacrificing nothing except our sons and daughters.

18 comments:

d.K. said...

I didn't know the depths of contempt I could hold for one human being until George Bush came into my consciousness.

His Saturday radio address (which I know about secondhand, since I refuse to listen to the lying worm), used Veterans Day to lie about the Veterans Appropriation Bill, implying that the Democratic congress was against it. He's pathologically immoral, as close to evil incarnate as some of the loftier recent historical figures like Hitler and Stalin -- and no, I won't regret writing or saying that after I hit "post." It's true.

Capt. Fogg said...

His ends are immoral, his means are immoral and he lies in every word, but a country that tolerates him, that contains large number of people who praise him and is likely to elect someone just as bad doesn't deserve better. It's the rest of the world I feel sorry for.

TorchofLiberty said...

Maybe both of you should actually listen to the President. You can't call someone a liar and then refuse to listen to them. It sounds like you are basing your opinions on distorted analyses of his speeches. I challenge you to name one lie that Bush ever told while in office.

Capt. Fogg said...

Is that a straw man in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? This isn't about lies, it's about incompetence, delusion and conflict of interest.

I don't know why I should accept a loaded challenge anyway, but "We don't torture" is close enough in case those illusory WMD's don't satisfy.

Intellectual Insurgent said...

Bush lies:

1. WMD's
2. We don't torture
3. We don't wiretap
4. Iraq is a threat
5. Iran is a threat
6. SPP (look it up)
7. Signing statements after signing a law
8. Support our troops

Oh goodness, I could go on for days...

But for people like Torch, they will do gymnastics to explain why each of these things is perfectly justified. They like group-think and hate people who actually think for themselves.

TorchofLiberty said...

All Bush said about WMD's is that British intelligence warns us that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. Other intelligence agencies including France and Russia, all said the same thing.

A lie is something you tell that you know is false.

Bush was just stating that intelligence agencies thought that Iraq (which in 1981 had WMD's for sure with Osirak and kicked its weapons inspectors out in 1998 (suspicious)) had them and that it was the policy of the United States to not let threats fester.

No lies here. The situation in Iraq is shaping up quite nicely too. Violence is down and the Iraqis are fed up with al-Qaeda.

TorchofLiberty said...

1. Saying that intelligence agencies thought there were WMD's and then there being no WMD's doesn't constitute a lie.

2. The official policy of the U.S. is not to torture. Show proof otherwise.

3. He never said we don't wiretap.

4. Iraq is no longer a threat b/c we took care of them. They were a threat though.

5. Iran is a threat. They want to exterminate another democracy, Israel.

I won't even justify the others with a response.

Capt. Fogg said...

Fine, then don't. I'm under no obligation to prove anything to you and I'm sure any proof that I might likewise request would be as inept as the rest of your arguments - nor is it possible to overcome such blind bias. Consider the silliness of explaining away a lie by saying Bush didn't know and therefore it isn't a lie, when his not knowing was profoundly intentional.

I've had better rhetorical challenges in Junior High School and fortunately you're in a very small and shrinking minority.

TorchofLiberty said...

It is fact that the intelligence agencies for the U.S., Russia, France, and Great Britain all thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

If that wasn't the case, they would have argued that point and said it wasn't true.

They haven't done that yet.

Bush was only relying on the information from his own intelligence service and from the info from other countries.

It was based on that and the fact that Iraq was not allowing weapons inspectors (acting very guilty) that Bush made his assertion.

That is not a lie. That is a President acting on information, which may or may not be true. It seemed to have crediblity.

Capt. Fogg said...

You're arguing from the propaganda. In my opinion, and I think it's been adequately documented, Bush would have invaded Iraq with or without that story and the data used had no credibility, your testimony notwithstanding.

As to whether Bush has lied about anything, my assertion doesn't require support from the heavy evidence that Bush concocted evidence and deliberately used flawed material, obtained from unreliable sources and obtained under torture.

I'm about as interested in debating this as I am of debating Fermat's theorem - it's been established to the satisfaction of nearly everyone and the evidence against your assertions is so massive that it's simply impossible to discuss here, but I'll give you this much: He said the International Atomic Energy Agency had produced a report in 1998 noting that Iraq was six months from developing a nuclear weapon; no such report existed (and the IAEA had actually reported then that there was no indication Iraq had the ability to produce weapons-grade material.) Spare me the convenient definitions of lie. I'm not interested in hearing how we don't torture people either. Statements like that give you as much credibility as Larry Craig.

Bush lied about social security. Bush's statements about S-CHIP weren't honest - Bush is a liar and that's the most forgivable of his sins.

Intellectual Insurgent said...

Torch, is there anything Bush & Co. can do that will elicit even a hint of skepticism from you?

Iran is a threat. They want to exterminate another democracy, Israel.

Really??? Who told you that? How do you know? Do you speak Farsi?

So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in Farsi:

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

The full quote translated directly to English:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/norouzi.php?articleid=11025

Never used the phrase "wiped off the map", which, by the way, is a very American figure of speech. Ahmedinejad said that Khomeini called for regime change. Not so different than what your deity GW does all the time.

TorchofLiberty said...

I don't have to understand Farsi. I can simply observe Iran's actions, namely it's funding and arming of Hezbollah which constantly launches Katyushka (spelling?) rockets into Israel and targets Israeli civilians.

Intellectual Insurgent said...

The way that the US funded and armed Al-Qaeda, right? The way the US funded and armed the Kurds who are attacking Turkey? And the Chechen rebels? And the Islamic "rebels" held up in the camp in Lebanon?

Like I asked before, is there nothing our government can do that will elicit a hint of skepticism from you?

Capt. Fogg said...

Probably not. Belief is impervious and it's belief of the religious sort that comprises Bush's remaining support.

No matter what Ahmedinajad said, or what he really meant, he doesn't make that kind of policy anyway. Even if I don't like him as a person, I believe that he's a politician and is using the kind of hyperbole a politician like Bush uses, but as for him or his government being insane enough to use nukes and suffer immediate annihilation in response - I don't think so, nor do I buy the "suitcase" bomb scenario either. Anything they might build would be larger than a Volkswagen beetle and weigh a lot more.

But again, you're talking to someone who thinks Saddam posed a direct and immediate threat to the existence of the United States. . .

d nova said...

"The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030714-3.html

Capt. Fogg said...

Right, that's the White House version, but it's not nearly so simple. We withdrew the inspectors, not Saddam and Bush had plenty of information that there were no chemical labs and no nuke program.

The evidence is that he planned the invasion before he became president and the evidence that he refused to listen to contrary advice is damning.

d.K. said...

What's so interesting in this whole exchange is the tone that Torch uses. He's (she?) not a troll, not rude, not out-in-space. He's simply drumk the Kool-aid. This is the view of the 28 percent of Americans who still support the president. I say this because, until recently in my adult life, I actually scoffed at conspiracy theorists and believed almost everything the government told me -- and if later proved wrong, I was sure that the government had acted in good faith when they said/did whatever proved false. So I think I get him. Everything he says is echoed by the White House talking points, so if you trust this White House, it's easy to see where this guy is coming from. He has a right to think the way he does, but quite honestly, it scares me.

And I've conceded many times that I do myself a disservice by not watching Fox News or listening directly to Bush -- I just can't do it.

d nova said...

wait a sec! DOES he really have "a right to think the way he does"?

a right is something to which one has a just claim.

are u saying it's just for him to have such dumb thoughts?

i don't think i agree.

btw, the bush quote i posted 3 comments up is meant as one obvious lie that torch denies bush ever told. another is "no war plans on my desk," since we'd already begun strategic bombing that same month.

http://phobizone.blogspot.com/2006/08/correction-early-this-month-i-said.html