We Come In Peace

Again... have you ever met a woman before? zing ZING!

:lol:

It's a question I've asked many times myself. I think the answer depends on the person flying the flag but it's usually one of these two choices: 1. The person is completely ignorant of history, even their own culture that they're allegedly promoting. or (and I've found this to be more common) 2. The person is trying to make a statement/provoke outrage. Kind of like the rebelling teenager who wears the t-shirt with the inappropriate slogan on it.

Umm... sure?

Well, Off the Wall.

De nada

This makes sense to me on a lot of levels. I'm not going to pretend to know the true motives of the people who led us down the path to war and confirmation bias allows a nice sidestep around that mine field. But it also leaves me with another question, is there a solution to this problem? It seems that we're living in a world now where people have their own "facts". If they don't like what they're hearing, they can turn the channel to either MSNBC or Fox or CNN or log onto a blog and get whatever "factual" reinforcement they desire. It's one thing for the mob to fall victim to this (that's kind of our job in the social contract), but it's another thing when it happens to our leaders. As you said, people don't usually start wars over it -- but if we're living in a more polarized world, one where facts are subject to debatable and more slippery than ever before, isn't it safe to assume this won't be such a rare occurrence in the decades to come? Thank you!

I think he would tell you that you're completely missing his point.

You can do better than that! Get into the spirit of the thread!

This is PPP, the one place on TBD where the lunatics run the asylum. We have a responsibility on this board to be better at insulting each other, to be funnier about it or at least more cutting. This is PPP, where you're supposed to wear a cup when you log in. But instead of blazing a trail of hilarious and cutting edge put-downs, we've fallen into a predicable pattern of hurling weak adjectives like "liberal", "conservative", "progressive", and "conner". We can do better! TBD needs PPP to do better! How can we be expected to carry on a civil discourse about the politics of the day without quality insults?! It was Twain who once said, "There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that." With the betterment of the board in mind, I present to you this montage: (NSFW due to language) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEYXWmEse8

Me too. At least on Jupiter.

Have you ever met a woman before? ZING!

Certainly, especially you and I -- or is it, 'me and you'? Considering the size of the intelligence fu*kup, and I don't mean the political fallout or military operations but more in the sense that nearly every single piece of "hard" intel that was presented to the public during the lead up to the war turned out to be incorrect, what's more likely in your mind: (edit: and I realize this isn't an either or situation, I'm honestly curious about your opinion on it) The entire intelligence community was duped and/or misled by Sadam's propaganda and intelligence outfits and that's what led to the failure or The administration, supported by a ratings driven media and fueled by an angry/grieving citizenry, pushed their own agenda for war with Iraq to the forefront of our national consciousness and forced the intelligence community to play ball or shut up?

I don't think he was trying to be cryptic...

Absolutely. Nothing to worry about.

:lol:

At least in Taiwan... http://gawker.com/5991760/size-does-matter-to-woman-who-divorced-her-husband-over-irreconcilable-penis-length?post=58464701

Truth

I did? I don't think I did, or at least didn't intend it that way. I don't believe intelligence was fabricated in the sense it was made up from thin air while administration officials were twisting their mustaches, I DO believe that they cherry picked the intel that fit their narrative. There's a difference.

It was follow the leader. Yes. With senior administration officials cherry picking the data that fit the narrative they were selling.

I'm taking notes.

There are many, many, idiots in the world too. There's a difference between believing and acting upon bad intelligence and fabricating it. W's administration had a lot of hawks who saw to it we went to war, regardless of cause. But they couldn't do it alone and knew it. So a story was shaped. Lots of people on both sides of the aisle went along with it, believing it to be in the best interest of the nation. There were also lots of people who went along with it believing it to be in their own personal best interest.

It takes more than one or two people to lead a nation to war.

Revolutionary War doesn't count, we weren't yet a nation. (Finally got Tom on something!) Mexican-American War / Spanish - American War: I'll take your word for it. Vietnam is an interesting example and one I thought about, the Gulf of Tonkin was (staged/fabricated) to justify increasing hostilities and sell the war to the people. Much like WMD in Gulf War 2.