Moominpapa (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} moominpapa) wrote,@ 2003-10-10 09:25:00 |
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Fishmouth again - glub, glub, glub
Unelected fraud and incompetent moron George W. Bush gave one of his "speeches" yesterday. As usual he chose the safety of a military audience, relying on their strong sense of duty to the POTUS as their nominal commander in chief to stop them from tarring and feathering him (which I hope many of them felt like doing). As usual, the "speech" was ridiculous lying BS. Here's a prime sample:
"America must not forget the lessons of 11 September," Mr Bush said.
Ack! Once again the Chimp shamelessly prostitutes the English language in search of justification.
The concept of learning a lesson from an occurrence necessarily implies a train of logic that connects the two. Sometimes the connection is obvious, sometimes it needs to be discovered by after-the-event investigation. From what we saw right away and from what subsequent investigation revealed, the obvious lessons of 11 September are these: (1) America has good intelligence gathering capability but needs to improve its collating and analysis of the gathered intelligence; (2) there needs to be better interagency cooperation between the various agencies responsible for intelligence and national security; (3) determined terrorists will come up with new ways to attack civilian populations; (4) a savage attack on civilians provokes international sympathy and opens opportunities for international cooperation that might not have been there before.
Whatever your political persusasion, you would probably agree with my list, though you may have others. How, then, did we get from these lessons and their implications to having US troops on the ground in Iraq, dying almost daily? You know the answer: it is because the Chimp administration came up with an extraordinary lesson of their own: because of 9/11, we must invade Iraq. Carl Sagan once said, a propos of Velikovsky's work, that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence in support. Likewise, lessons that are extraordinary in the sense that there seems to be no logical connection between the event and the lesson demand extraordinarily strong evidence.
The Chimpies assured America that Iraq was an imminent threat to the citizens and institutions of this country. How so? - because they were sponsoring and training Al-Queada terrorists, because they had an active program to produce weapons of mass destruction, and because they had stockpiles of those weapons ready to use at (in battlefield terms) a moment's notice - 45 mins. This, Americans and the UN and the rest of the world was assured, was the evidence that provided the logical justification for invading Iraq. The only problem is, the Chimp's administration has not yet produced a single shred of that evidence.
The CIA itself, baffled by the administration's claim, said there was no known connection between Al-Queada and Saddam's regime; on the contrary, it was known that Osama Bin Laden despised Saddam for being too secular. There is no evidence that Saddam had an active program to produce WMD. Hans Blix and his inspectors looked all over for it but found nothing; they pleaded for more time; they pleaded with US intelligence to let them in on any sites they might know about; but in the end they still found nothing. Nada. Zilch. Joseph Wilson was sent to investigate the possibility that Iraq was trying to buy Uranium yellowcake; his conclusion: no. The tubes that were supposed to be for a centrifuge? no, said all the experts. And after the invasion, when the US could at its leisure send out teams of special forces troops hungry to find the evidence, still nothing. Nothing. A bioweapons trailer? No, a trailer for producing hydrogen for balloons, said the British. Huge stockpiles of biological agents? Nothing. Deadly weapons that could kill thousands at 45 mins readiness? Nothing. </i>Nothing.</i> "We need more time," say the Chimpies, apparently forgetting that they insisted to Hans Blix (when he asked for the same thing) there was no more time and Iraq had to be invaded right now, dammit, otherwise American lives would be lost.
Well George, you prick, you lying, dumb, draft-dodging, cowardly excuse for a man, Americans did die after all. They died - and are still dying - because you plucked a "lesson from 11 September" right out of thin air, a lesson that had not one single connection to reality, a lesson in fact perfectly suited to your own administration and presidency (which, if there is any justice in the world, will go down in history as the worst ever in the United States).
How can this man stand in front of National Guard personnel and not faint from shame?
Unelected fraud and incompetent moron George W. Bush gave one of his "speeches" yesterday. As usual he chose the safety of a military audience, relying on their strong sense of duty to the POTUS as their nominal commander in chief to stop them from tarring and feathering him (which I hope many of them felt like doing). As usual, the "speech" was ridiculous lying BS. Here's a prime sample:
"America must not forget the lessons of 11 September," Mr Bush said.
Ack! Once again the Chimp shamelessly prostitutes the English language in search of justification.
The concept of learning a lesson from an occurrence necessarily implies a train of logic that connects the two. Sometimes the connection is obvious, sometimes it needs to be discovered by after-the-event investigation. From what we saw right away and from what subsequent investigation revealed, the obvious lessons of 11 September are these: (1) America has good intelligence gathering capability but needs to improve its collating and analysis of the gathered intelligence; (2) there needs to be better interagency cooperation between the various agencies responsible for intelligence and national security; (3) determined terrorists will come up with new ways to attack civilian populations; (4) a savage attack on civilians provokes international sympathy and opens opportunities for international cooperation that might not have been there before.
Whatever your political persusasion, you would probably agree with my list, though you may have others. How, then, did we get from these lessons and their implications to having US troops on the ground in Iraq, dying almost daily? You know the answer: it is because the Chimp administration came up with an extraordinary lesson of their own: because of 9/11, we must invade Iraq. Carl Sagan once said, a propos of Velikovsky's work, that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence in support. Likewise, lessons that are extraordinary in the sense that there seems to be no logical connection between the event and the lesson demand extraordinarily strong evidence.
The Chimpies assured America that Iraq was an imminent threat to the citizens and institutions of this country. How so? - because they were sponsoring and training Al-Queada terrorists, because they had an active program to produce weapons of mass destruction, and because they had stockpiles of those weapons ready to use at (in battlefield terms) a moment's notice - 45 mins. This, Americans and the UN and the rest of the world was assured, was the evidence that provided the logical justification for invading Iraq. The only problem is, the Chimp's administration has not yet produced a single shred of that evidence.
The CIA itself, baffled by the administration's claim, said there was no known connection between Al-Queada and Saddam's regime; on the contrary, it was known that Osama Bin Laden despised Saddam for being too secular. There is no evidence that Saddam had an active program to produce WMD. Hans Blix and his inspectors looked all over for it but found nothing; they pleaded for more time; they pleaded with US intelligence to let them in on any sites they might know about; but in the end they still found nothing. Nada. Zilch. Joseph Wilson was sent to investigate the possibility that Iraq was trying to buy Uranium yellowcake; his conclusion: no. The tubes that were supposed to be for a centrifuge? no, said all the experts. And after the invasion, when the US could at its leisure send out teams of special forces troops hungry to find the evidence, still nothing. Nothing. A bioweapons trailer? No, a trailer for producing hydrogen for balloons, said the British. Huge stockpiles of biological agents? Nothing. Deadly weapons that could kill thousands at 45 mins readiness? Nothing. </i>Nothing.</i> "We need more time," say the Chimpies, apparently forgetting that they insisted to Hans Blix (when he asked for the same thing) there was no more time and Iraq had to be invaded right now, dammit, otherwise American lives would be lost.
Well George, you prick, you lying, dumb, draft-dodging, cowardly excuse for a man, Americans did die after all. They died - and are still dying - because you plucked a "lesson from 11 September" right out of thin air, a lesson that had not one single connection to reality, a lesson in fact perfectly suited to your own administration and presidency (which, if there is any justice in the world, will go down in history as the worst ever in the United States).
How can this man stand in front of National Guard personnel and not faint from shame?
