I'm an American tired of American lies

[Dauphin]

You mean you are applying the "Cry Wolf" riposte.

In the end the threat of the wolf was real, the dismissal understandable. But had they listened the loss would have been averted.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Tuberski


He's not a messenger, he's the one making the arguments.

If you know someone to be full of crap, do you bother attacking the crap?

Nah. Creates too much of a mess.

[MarkG]

If you know someone to be full of crap, do you bother attacking the crap?

actually, you dont bother at all

if you do bother to get into the issue, you should explain why crap is crap. otherwise you're insulting, something makes you crap like the other crappy guy

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by MarkG

If you know someone to be full of crap, do you bother attacking the crap?

actually, you dont bother at all

if you do bother to get into the issue, you should explain why crap is crap. otherwise you're insulting, something makes you crap like the other crappy guy

AWWW crap, I lost you.......

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Chris 62
Saddam has been a US enemy for 12 years now, if there was even a remote possibility that was true, it would have been blasted all over the press, who LOVE such stories.

What it is, quite frankly, is the anti-war movement grasping at straws, since they know they can't prevent Bush from acting on his threats to Saddam.

It's an old trick, throw as much muck as you can, and see what sticks.

No sale, we didn't create Saddam.

Your thinking is straight out of 1984:

'The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons, one of which is subsidiary and, so to speak, precautionary. [...]

But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party. [..]

It is also that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is a confession of weakness. If, for example, Iraq or Iran (whichever it may be) is the enemy today, then that country MUST ALWAYS HAVE BEEN THE ENEMY. And if the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continuously rewritten.'

George Orwell, 1984

My emphasis, and my (slight) alterations. Saddam Hussein is our enemy, your thinking goes. Therefore, he has always been our enemy.

http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/features98/saddam.htm

In realpolitik there are no allies or enemies, only 'useful fools', to quote a Russian.

Those of you directing ad hominem attacks on Harrelson because of his profession- is Reagan's presidency solely to be adjudged on his unstellar acting career in B-movies? I had thought that one of America's salutary virtues was that no matter what your station in life (theoretically) anyone could try for public office, or even the presidency- even a simple Kentucky frontiersman, for instance....

[Goingonit]

There's a big difference between "always" and "for 12 years". Even you have to admit that he was an enemy when he invaded Kuwait...

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Goingonit
There's a big difference between "always" and "for 12 years". Even you have to admit that he was an enemy when he invaded Kuwait...

Only because we said he was. He believed Iraq had a legitimate complaint against Kuwait that was being ignored (they were stealing Iraqi oil, after all), and he thought the US would support him, given their support of him in the past against Iran. The U.S. delegation to Iraq had seemed to support him and his regime.

Suddenly we're against him for invading Kuwait. And then we're fed a cockamamie story that we have to defend Kuwaiti freedom. What freedom? Why should we care when one oppressive dictatorship invades another oppressive dictatorship? Why would he think we would care?

[Goingonit]

That's a differnet argument. I was just refuting the Orwellian BS:

It is also that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is a confession of weakness. If, for example, Iraq or Iran (whichever it may be) is the enemy today, then that country MUST ALWAYS HAVE BEEN THE ENEMY. And if the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continuously rewritten.'

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Goingonit
That's a differnet argument. I was just refuting the Orwellian BS:

But there does seem to be a great deal of denial/avoidance of the fact that we had a great relationship with Saddam, until we found his interests contrary to ours. Then we're told he's the worst monster ever. Well, that begs the question, if he were such a monster, why were we even friends with him the first place? It's not like we can plead ignorance to the atrocities he committed before Kuwait. We didn't care that he gassed thousands during the Iran-Iraq war, because we operate under the blindingly stupid idea that the enemy of or enemy is our friend (which we still do today).

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Goingonit
There's a big difference between "always" and "for 12 years". Even you have to admit that he was an enemy when he invaded Kuwait...

Yes, he was an enemy after he invaded- not before. That's the difference. The quotation from 1984 is not meant to be interpreted literally in this instance, in any case- merely to show the kind of 'thought' that settles in when discussing the 'enemies' and 'allies' of the Unitd States, or any other country, for that matter.

When did Somalia become more of an ally more than an enemy for instance? When Mengistu's neighbouring Ethiopia turned towards the Soviet Bloc, and Somalia turned away.

When Nimeiry's Sudan was carrying out its suppression of Christian and Animist black Africans, it was still a 'friend' of the United States. When the Muslim radicals that Nimeiry was trying to buy off with his more hard line Islamic stance came to power, it rapidly became an enemy.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0209/S00041.htm

The West saw fit to cosy up to Saddam when it looked like he was going to buy arms from the West (in preference to the Soviet Bloc) despite the destruction with chemical and gas weapons of Halabjah, and the slaughter of its Kurdish population. Clearly, Iraqi Kurds were not worth the cost of a lost Super Etendard sale, or several million barrels of crude oil.
And besides which- the Wicked Witch of the East, the Ayatollah Khomeini was still fulminating against the 'Great Satan' and the West had for the time lost a lucrative arms market.

When the USS Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner, Saddam was still a friend:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5260/vince.html

and after the Lockerbie mass murder, he was still a friend. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, I believe the old adage goes...

[Goingonit]

Thus proving what?

AMERICA ACTS IN ITS OWN INTERETSTS.

as opposed to any other country in the world, right?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Goingonit
Thus proving what?

AMERICA ACTS IN ITS OWN INTERETSTS.

as opposed to any other country in the world, right?

That's the point. Whose best interests? Who is making those decisions of what is in America's best interests?

The problem is that this kind of thinking ultimately ends up working AGAINST U.S. interests. We have a really uncanny ability for creating our own worst enemies. Don't you want to see us stop shooting ourselves in the foot like this?

The people who are determining what is in our best interests seem to lack the vision and forward-thinking to really know what is in our best interests.

And is "best interests" any excuse for cozying up to dictators who kill their own people, or worse, INSTALLING them and propping them up? I certainly don't think so.

[Goingonit]

I'm not defending America's actions, I'm just saying that they aren't morally wrong, just inept.

[Boris Godunov]

How is it not morally wrong to prop up a murderous dictatorial regime to defend our own (perceived)economic interests?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Goingonit
That's a differnet argument. I was just refuting the Orwellian BS:

Actually you weren't refuting it. Failing to understand it as applied to the previous post, possibly. Look at the argument Chris was presenting: because Saddam had been an enemy of the U.S. for x number of years, then he could not have been helped by the C.I.A. in the past, or have been a 'client', stooge or ally of the U.S. , because the leftist/opposition press would have broadcast this, and he, Chris, would have known about it too...

We read selectively, and 'understand' selectively, and what Orwell describes is a process that is apparent in every country, and every political party. It's the airbrushing out of Trotsky from photographs- and the apparent amnesia about 'our' man Saddam.
It's a process that Orwell experienced for himself in Civil War Spain.